almost nothing was created …

In the place where history saw the fastest ever rise in productivity until China improved on Soviet economics.

Before the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine was an industrial powerhouse. Then the capitalists sold it all off and now look at the place.

The problem is that violence and ideology do not cancel out…

What Marxist says they do?

Joining in with pointandclick and Aru

That’s the mistake. You’re not supposed to be part of a community. The next iteration of this AI will have AI multiplayer, where you go online to play but there aren’t any real people on your server.

“if I can’t see how busy they’re working, they can’t be doing much”

It’s on the other side.

My local supermarket has started to lower prices. Not on everything. And there’s still shrinkflation. But on many basics. I doubt they’re doing it to be kind. It’s likely because they reached the limit of customers’ overdrafts and their overall sales were dipping or because they’re trying to undercut the competition to drive them out of business.

And you think this has what to do with modern China? This is like criticising the USSR for Tsarism. You realise the CPC overthrew the previous system? And when it did, it had the cultural revolution to overcome the trappings of that system, for which it is regularly criticised?

Makes sense. That’s a lot of cash!

That’s fantastic! Well done!

What next? Do you think you’ll keep going with just Duolingo or will you start adding in some other kinds of resources?

What’s it like with car finance? Do people tend to buy cars they can’t really afford? EVs are expensive in my country, too, but many people get into debt to buy them anyway.

This is the kind of thing that helped me. I’ve a friend who kept on pushing back in this way when we had political discussions. They simply asked, is that possible under capitalism and why? Eventually, it clicked and then I had to figure out why so I asked for reading recommendations and kept reading until I understood.

You’re welcome. I hope it’s as good as I remember! It was one of the books I read as I was beginning to read Marxist works and it helped me to mentally demolish the overton window that liberalism had built into my brain.

I think ‘centrist’ is used as a kind of shorthand, a lot of the time. Similar to ‘leftist’. And when they are used in this way, they’re practically meaningless. It seems to stem from lazy liberal thinking. Similar to ‘middle class’.

These terms that are bandied about in mainstream liberal discourse aren’t really backed by any kind of analysis. It serves the bourgeois to have us all arguing within this very narrow horizon. And it makes it difficult to have fruitful conversations.

the idea that our dystopian panopticon is meaningfully less intrusive than China’s dystopian panopticon is cope.

Well said.

It’s been a while but I think Tariq Ali’s Extreme Centre: A Warning is a useful book. It’s quite short, too. Michael Rosen makes a similar point: the ‘centre’ isn’t so much in the middle of left and right; they are three points of a triangle. I’d add, in agreement with your conversation above, that this triangle is bourgeois.

I’m not sure if it makes sense to map communist politics in the same way. I’m inclined to say it wouldn’t make much sense.

Edit: wiki link – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extreme_Centre

I’ve been told that, but I haven’t seen any kind of evidence supporting the theory.

The example you’re discussing is the evidence. Reorientation does not mean fully reoriented. It means things are changing. An example that shows a changing relationship is evidence that relationships are changing. This remains true even if you don’t like the type of change or if things go back to the way they were.

At the moment we are still witnessing quantitative changes. Enough of those and we will see qualitative changes. The fact of quantitative change does not discount the fact of change i.e. reorientation.

Georgia is not in the EU.

A similar thing has happened with me. It’s usually when there’s a picture. When I scroll down the picture shrinks, takes up less space and the page slides upwards to fill in the space.

Does it happen more with threads where you’ve opened some screenshots, etc?

The article still manages to paint China as the bad guy and gets in a few shots at Russia. Look at this:

Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Xi you sneaky mf. Propaganda of the deed with Chinese characteristics.

Fr, though, the US is run by truly, truly despicable people. The US could’ve chosen not to limit its global influence efforts to propaganda or straightforward coercion but instead it doubled down. Not content with murdering 1 million of it’s own, it killed countless others in the shadows. For anyone wondering whether the US ruling class would rather destroy the planet with nukes than change it’s ways or give up power, there’s your answer.

Have fun!

That may have been true once but Boeing has cracked it: if you let compressed helium leak from a little hole, you get a whistle blown.