Objection

I'm sure that your branding of the Chinese economy is based on a very high degree of intellectual rigor and definitely not just pulling words out of your ass based on vibes.

I didn’t say they weren’t doing fine or that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.

So your position is that their system is "Fascist Corporatism," but also... that's fine, actually?

I just said that they’re not communists. This is not a bad thing! But lying about it is of course somewhat distasteful, especially for those people who think themselves as being communists.

Whether they're "lying" is a matter of interpretation and ideological differences. Like, if I'm a hardcore, traditionalist Roman Catholic, maybe from my perspective, all Protestants are "lying" about being Christian because "true Christianity" means my interpretation of it. Likewise, if you're a hardcore Maoist, then maybe you'd argue that China is governed by revisionists who are "lying" about being communists.

If we want to look at it from a relatively objective point of view, the largest number of self-identified communists in the world are Marxist-Leninists, who don't view China as "lying about being communist" but rather agree with or at least critically support their approach. So, idk, if you want to join some fringe Christian sect that claims every other sect as being heretical and themselves as the sole defender of the faith, or if you want to join some fringe communist group that denounces every other communist group as revisionist and themselves as the only "real" communists, then idk, you do you ig. But not everyone who believes different things from you is "lying."

“As part of the Department's ongoing commitment to strengthening our national defense, the Secretary of Defense has directed the disestablishment of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and the development of a plan to rebuild it in alignment with the Department's strategic priorities. The Department remains committed to conducting rigorous, forward-looking strategic assessments that directly inform defense planning and decision-making."

Like many of his other cuts, it's likely more about restructuring so he can put his own people in the roles. I remain skeptical that Trump is actually some sort of committed isolationist as liberals want me to believe (even though I'd prefer if he was).

Both tweets are fake.

What do they do in China, exactly? It looks like single-party fascist corporatism.

The funny thing about discussions about China's economy is that you can use pretty much any term to describe it as long as it's bad. If "socialist" or "communist" is understood to be a bad thing to those in the conversation, you can use those terms without objection, but you can also say stuff like "Feudalism" or "Fascist Corporatism" or "Colonialism" or "Capitalist" or "State Capitalist" or whatever tf else, it's all just vibes-based and the only requirement is that the vibes be bad.

China has a mixed economy with a combination of state ownership and private investment, with the state maintaining a controlling share in certain key industries, and preventing (at least so far) economic elites from infiltrating the government for the purpose of widespread regulatory capture and deregulation. Billionaires exist but sometimes face real consequences for illegal activity, and the balance between public and private ownership tips more heavily towards public when compared to other countries such as those in Europe.

The partial liberalization of the economy is meant to encourage economic development post-industrialization, and prevent the challenges the USSR faced with economic stagnation post-industrialization. Central planning works great if you're just trying to meet people's basic needs like food or shelter, but the demand for consumer goods is more fluid. This policy is also adapted to the global situation, China has benefitted greatly from industry moving there and by becoming a major trade partner of the US and other countries (while also holding the bulk of manufacturing output), that makes it difficult for outside forces to go to war or level sanctions/tariffs on them.

It is not a "communist" country in the sense of having achieved communism (in this sense, a "communist country" is an inherent contradiction). It could be called a communist/socialist country in the sense that it is governed by (self-identified) communists. Socialism, or I should specify Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, aren't a set of specific policies but rather a materialist and class-based mode of analysis to be applied and adapted differently depending on material conditions.

Some hardcore Maoists would argue that China's current system is a deviation from the correct socialist ideas, as espoused by Mao. However, there's also this odd branch of Westerners that don't like China's liberalized system because "it has billionaires," but also don't like what they had before under Mao when they didn't have billionaires, but also claim to dislike full-on capitalism - so as far as I can tell, they just dislike China regardless of what they do or don't do. I've yet to find any such person who's actually willing and capable to engage in a discussion of "what should they do/have done economically" as opposed to just bashing them. And in fact, when asked what kind of economic system they support, they'll often describe a mixed system similar to what China has, but then be like, "but not like that."

From Grammerly:

It is also customary to use less with regard to time, even though we can count time in seconds, minutes, hours, and so on.

Example:

Ethan has been at his job for less than five years.

I wish I could spend less time on household chores.

Yet, depending on how general or specific your reference to time is, it may require the use of fewer.

Example:

I wish I could spend fewer hours on household chores and more on watching television.

Both less and fewer are perfectly acceptable in this context.

Kinda seems unfair that somebody's aunt should have to purchase insulin she needs to survive, like she shouldn't have to work harder to have the same lifestyle as someone without a disability. Maybe we should just give her the insulin she needs to survive, and compensate the people who make it out of some sort of common pool of resources everyone is required to contribute to, in order to distribute the costs more fairly.

Yeah, or like they do in China.

Unfortunately for many parts of the world, it doesn't matter if you're trying to go full socialist or not, if you get in the way of multinational exploitation and neocolonialism, you're gonna get couped. There's no shortage of left-leaning non-socialists who have also been targeted by the CIA. Like Guatemala, where they just wanted to do basic land reform so farmers could work their own land, but Chiquita didn't like that so it became the origin of the term "Banana Republic."

This article is like a case study in how to present data to support the conclusion you want. Sure, more people support Ukraine than Russia, and that question would be relevant if the question was "which side to support" rather than "whether to continue being involved."

The reality that the polls show is that it breaks down along partisan lines. 2/3 of Republicans support the suspension of aid to Ukraine, and of the 21% who oppose it, only half say the support should continue "as long as it takes," with the other half saying either less than a year or 1-2 years. So only about 10% of Republicans are on board with supporting Ukraine for "as long as it takes," with the majority opposing aid entirely, and the rest either unsure or wanting it to be time-limited.

This marks a significant departure from the start of the war when there was wide bipartisan support. Based on the actual numbers in the article, the headline is dead wrong - Trump has dampened support for the war, mostly just within his base.

I have less money, because I have fewer dollars. I have less time to live than them, because I have fewer years left.

I made this point clear ages ago

But then you kept contesting it, because like I said, you just wanna fight me. Every word you said about how I was supposedly making an "appeal to authority" was arguing against my case that a person can be "authoritarian" and communist, there was no reason for you to say any of that if you were willing to concede the overall point. You were just arguing for the sake of it.

It takes deliberate obtusity to claim the the op’s point is that there’s only one definition of communism or any word

"You can’t support hierarchical dictatorships that take away the rights of workers and call yourself a communist"

Yes, clearly one would have to be "deliberately obtuse" to read that as her saying you can't call yourself a communist if you're an "authoritarian." I don't know how I possibly interpreted "you can't call yourself a communist" as... "you can't call yourself a communist."

This discussion is such a waste of time I can’t believe how many words you’ve written on it.

Takes two to tango, buddy. You were the one who chose to keep fighting me on a point you didn't actually disagree on. Every single thing you've said in this whole conversation has been wrong and/or irrelevant.

The appeal to authority is you insisting that because Engels was calling himself communist, then we have to accept his definition of communism.

I never said anything remotely like that. What I said is that because Engles is obviously a communist (as established by how the word is used both commonly and in academic circles and so on), and also an "authoritarian," it proves that communists can be authoritarian. I could've used any other figure so long as they're widely accepted as a communist and were "authoritarian," Che Guevara if you like, it doesn't really matter. The only reason I don't choose somebody nobody's heard of is because I wouldn't be able to establish that they are widely regarded as a communist. It has nothing to do with them being any sort of "authority." Engles is just one of the most ridiculous figures for you to dispute being a communist, so he made a good example.

You yourself are conceding the point that one can be both "authoritarian" and communist when you suggest the term "authcom!" But you can't actually, you know, say you're conceding any point under any circumstances even if it's trivial and even if you agree with it. You have to keep contesting it just because you want to fight with me, so you randomly challenge every single thing I say as a knee-jerk reaction.

But the point is that going by the anarchist definition of communism, these two concepts are incompatible.

This is a completely different discussion that's not particularly relevant to the point being discussed. The point is that one can be both a communist and an "authoritarian."

If you want to have an argument about whether the goals of various different types of people identifying as communist are compatible or not, then I guess we can start an entirely new discussion about that. Maybe in another thread sometime, since it's a different topic?