I couldn’t care less about AI art.

That’s what the OP is about, so…

Has AI made you unable to read?

In the US they run over protesters. Just sayin.

Oh yeah, after Congo got independence from Belgium. Their purchasing power reduced to not even 10% of what it was at 1960 at the time of 1979.

Yes, and that was revenge. Countries were punished for winning independence.

But these railroads and trains are still being used today.

Those railroads are just supply lines that ship from resource extraction points to seaports. The railroads don’t connect cities or provide infrastructure for actual people or act as part of the supply chain for internal production. They were built to be purely extractive. That’s not real development, that’s underdevelopment. The railroads ship out cobalt and ground nuts and the people of the DRC are deprived of access for their own civilian or industrial uses.

Colonizers did not develop Africa. This is a lie spread by colonizers to hide their crimes against humanity.

In Congo, any Belgian was forcibly deported and many were murdered.

Yeah, because Belgians raped and tortured and murdered so many Congolese people. The sick shit colonizers did in Africa rivals the Nazis.

The west developed China.

No no no, China developed itself by fooling the West (into selling them the rope, get it?) because the West never develops anything by choice.

Look, if revolution can be avoided that’s great! Venezuela managed to do it and they’d be doing quite well if it weren’t for imperialist meddling from the US. I’m not saying that revolution is the only option, only that the abolition of capitalism must be the end goal. I say “end goal” because it’s not realistic to just abolish markets and commodity production and wage labor instantly and expect it to work. The abolition of capitalism will take time.

But if your goal is to keep capitalism alive forever you are not a leftist. Deal with it.

You should read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, capitalism didn’t help them at all. They were intentionally deprived of industrial and intellectual property that would allow them to build up their own means of production – underdeveloped by capitalism — and intentionally kept at a lower stage of development to superexploit the workers and extract superprofits.

Flag independence and so-called decolonization didn’t mean freedom to develop either, now under neocolonialism the same underdevelopment takes place. Libya and Syria are just more examples of the same neocolonial agenda, to underdevelop nations and force them to be subservient to the imperial core. Those weren’t revolutions, they were Western dirty wars: coup the government, pour in weapons to fuel whatever terrorist groups are willing to work with the West, sanction the people to make the economy scream, etc. etc.

So, no, capitalism wasn’t the best way to develop any of those countries.

The reason China needed to use capitalism to develop was solely to fool the West into doing business. There’s a saying attributed to Lenin; “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” That’s all China has done. Not only did the capitalists sell them the rope, the capitalists also sold them the rope factories and outsourced every step of rope production.

China was never capitalist. They’re communists wearing the flayed skin of capitalism to trick it into lowering its guard.

Capitalism also isn’t developing the imperial core anymore. We have reached a stage of deindustrialization, where now instead of building up infrastructure and production capacity we’re letting capital strip the wiring from the walls to maximize cost cutting without actually developing anything. There is some development that still happens thanks to government grants and public institutions, but now neoliberalism is cutting those too to “save money”. Thanks to rampant privatization and austerity everything is worse.

And of course there’s no popular support for a communist revolution here in the West, this is the imperial core. We grew fat and rich off of the superprofits from imperialism, revolution would mean a redistribution of wealth from the imperial core to the periphery. That means Europe and Canada and the US will have to pay repairations for what they have done to the world. I don’t expect that to be popular here!

In both Cuba and the DPRK they’ve been under a brutal siege war from the United States since the revolution, don’t pretend like they struggle for no reason. There are certainly problems, but they can be laid firmly at the feet of the US empire and its proxies.

But the US won’t be around forever and BRICS is opening the world economy to them. They endured a near century of humiliation and its finally coming to an end, I’m excited to see how they develop without a US boot on their necks! Aren’t you?

As for China, I was skeptical about the Dengist reforms. It’s like you said, they boosted private sector development and investment. The created billionaires. They allowed for heightened exploitation of workers. They suppressed Maoists.

They proved politics are still in command with Zero COVID, though. Ever since China’s heroic pandemic response I am optimistic that the private sector is subordinate. They’re willing and able to tell their billionaires “no” and force them to obey.

See, the purpose of the Dengist reforms was to develop China’s economy as fast as possible while avoiding Western retaliation, like what happens to every other communist country that becomes the subject of endless siege and proxy warfare, and it worked. Unlike under capitalism where the anarchy of the market dictates production, China has its productive capacity firmly under the control of the government. They still issue marching orders to the private sector and they centrally plan their development.

China is now a world leader in technological innovation and is critical to the global supply chain as a key node of production. As much as Trump wants to do a trade war he’s more likely to hurt the US than to actually hurt China. China is still dominated by the capitalist mode of production, like you said, but since the Party remains in command they’ll be able to abolish the market entirely without fear of Western retaliation. Capitalism is just a stage of development, after all.

Also, don’t ignore Vietnam. They have been on a similar trajectory as China, developing their economy and integrating themselves into the supply chain, and now they’re growing closer with China with every new idiot tariff imposed by Trump.

I find that “”“social democrats”“” are just pessimists. You think revolution never works and communism always fails, and so you retreat into reformism and liberalism. I still have revolutionary optimism, though, which means I don’t even need to win this argument. I’m certain that you’ll see that I’m right soon enough. ☺️

Do you want to abolish capitalism? Not just reform it, but completely abolish it.

That’s the bare minimum.

At some point prices will get so low that it’ll make sense to buy a Tesla and rework the body so no one knows it’s a Tesla.

It should obviously be Light Mirror anyway, to represent the phone being on.

I’m constantly arguing with liberals, the whole reason I’m on .ml and not one of the defederated instances is because I want to talk to y’all instead of stay in an echo chamber of people that agree with me.

Also liberals aren’t leftists 😘

Hardly an echo chamber, then. Echos don’t argue, they just repeat the same stuff back.

Then why do we keep arguing with each other?

I think this is a very strict small-r republican moral framework for understanding government legitimacy, but I don’t think the consent of the governed has to strictly come from casting ballots in an election.

When a government loses their legitimacy they have to rely on violence against their own people to remain in power, and this is true whether there are elections or not. Zelensky would lose power if he was not kidnapping Ukrainians off the street to fight Russia, therefore, he needs to employ violence to retain power.

Compare that with Hamas, who never lack fighters and don’t bother with conscripts because the masses are willing to fight and die for them.

Hamas is able to operate because of the many people willing to volunteer their help as smugglers/informants or hide them from Israel intelligence or join them directly as fighters. Guerillas live and die by their support from the people, a guerilla movement like Hamas would not be able to exist without the masses. Their continued existence, itself, proves legitimacy imo

Not to say that Zelensky has lost legitimacy, per se, just to say that I don’t think using a moral framework based on elections will tell the whole story. I do question his legitimacy, though, which is why I don’t think he’ll be in power next year. Hamas, on the other hand, isn’t going anywhere.

Would you say Ukraine’s government is also illegitimate because they aren’t having elections?

Okay, so by this logic Israel can revoke the legitimacy of other governments simply by preventing elections.

Hamas aren’t the ones preventing elections. They don’t lose legitimacy just because other parties have illegally halted the electoral process. They’re not the obstacle.

It’s only entrapment if you’re rich.

Disabilities exist.

That said, my rural county has this neat shuttle service that people without cars can use to get to their jobs and the grocery store. There’s no reason every rural community couldn’t have the same thing.

🤢

Read more history, watch fewer movies about wizards in space.

Do you plan on defeating capitalism by asking nicely?

The revolution won’t be polite, civil, or peaceful. Our enemies won’t just let us win.