I’m not saying Christianity as a personal practice needs to be destroyed, but essentially that the country needs to be secularized […] There can be no privileging Christians above other citizens, no “teaching the controversy” on science and myth, no cultish Christian home"schools" […]
On this we are in complete agreement. I think even most Christian communists would agree with this. This is what i meant by denouncing the reactionary elements of religion.
I think most of us who live in America would say that Christianity absolutely does need to be rooted out of the culture because it is monstrous.
On a personal level i agree with you, but politically that is probably a non-starter. You have to work with the material you have in front of you, not the material you wish you had. The masses that form the basis of a revolution exist in a real cultural context and ignoring that reality is idealism.
I don’t know what the right answer is here, but it’s probably going to involve some sort of pragmatic compromise, otherwise your revolutionary movement will remain small, sectarian, insular, dogmatic and isolated from the masses. It goes without saying that this is a recipe for perpetual failure, and the bourgeois state knows this too which is why COINTELPRO has always strived to encourage that sort of narrow ideological dogmatism.
And before anyone misunderstands what i am saying, this does not mean that we should be tailing the masses. Absolutely we should continue to denounce the reactionary elements of our culture, because it is precisely these which are the biggest hindrance to waging a successful revolution (false consciousness, etc.).
Confucianism, being a philosophy and not a religion, really loses wiggle room that religions have in terms of benign beliefs
I’m actually inclined to give Confucianism more leeway because of this. Religions, especially theistic ones, are fundamentally anti-materialist, whereas an atheistic philosophy at least could (not saying that it is…again: i just don’t know enough about it) be compatible with materialism.
It’s almost entirely things that have real, practical significance, like filial piety and ren (which are reactionary).
I am not a big fan of the whole “filial piety” thing myself, but then again i didn’t grow up in that culture. I’m sure if you asked Chinese communists many of them would disagree with your view that filial piety is necessarily reactionary. They might acknowledge some downsides but ultimately view it as a net positive.
I just think we could all do with a little more humility and not be so quick to dismiss other cultures’ mores just because they don’t align with our own cultural ideas of what it means to be progressive.
Rejecting the impact of culture and traditions developed in any given society is not marxism but a vulgarization of marxism, and an efficient way of getting dismissed by the people.
This is the view that i have come around to accepting as well.
Coming from a scientific background for me this is ultimately a matter of pragmatism. We can have abstract ideological and philosophical debates all we want but what it really comes down to when we are considering whether to adopt a political line or a policy is this: will it advance the goals of the revolution or hinder them? Ultimately that is the most important thing because all further progress depends on the success of the revolution.
A correct line/policy is that which helps the cause of the revolution to succeed. An erroneous one does the opposite…whether we call it vulgarization or idealism or just ultra-left deviation (that is trying to advance socially and ideologically too far ahead of where the material and cultural basis of a society is currently at) is less important to me than what the practical result is in relation to the success of the revolution and the building of socialism.
The tricky part is that often we can only know what works and what doesn’t with the benefit of hindsight, which is why proceeding according to trial and error is important (China for example often does this by trying out new and experimental policies on a smaller local scale first before adopting the successful ones on a larger scale), but also studying and learning from past revolutionaries and their successes and failures.
Should all of Christianity and all of Islam be combated as well? Once upon a time i might have said yes, but now i don’t know. Maybe eventually.
But is it really a priority at the moment? Is this the primary contradiction that we are facing? Would adopting such an uncompromisingly hostile line be a strategically smart thing to do at the moment, or would it be counter-productive from the point of view of bringing about the success of the revolution?
Would it not be more prudent to focus on denouncing specifically the most reactionary elements of these philosophies/religions while ignoring the more benign ones, at least for the time being? I acknowledge your point that everyone is able to familiarize themselves with and judge what elements of these things are detrimental and which are less so, but we should also be careful to not fall into the trap of cultural chauvinism.
I wouldn’t say “extremely” reactionary but it does have reactionary elements. Probably not more than Abrahamic religions do, though i will admit i’m not an expert on Confucianism. (And yes i know it’s a philosophy and not strictly speaking a religion, but i think the comparison is fair in the sense that it’s one of the ideological frameworks that left a very big historical imprint on the cultures and systems of government in the region, much like religion did for Europe and West Asia.)
Whether it should be combated or not is not for me to say since i’m not from that region or culture.
The capitalist class and the bourgeois state are always waging class war against the workers. Every time they increase your hours, cut your wages, cut your benefits, increase your rent, increase your cost of living, gut your social safety nets, fire you, evict you, outsource your job…that’s class war. What they want is for you to not fight back; they want you to just silently take it like an obedient wage slave.
They want you to remain atomized, alienated and asleep, fighting over scraps against your fellow worker, not congnizant of your shared class interest and disengaged from any form of collective struggle. Blame yourself, blame the poor, blame the immigrant, blame “the other” who is different, just don’t look up to see the real architects of your misery above you. Never question the system and never ask why so many have so little while so few have so much - “the rich are just like you, don’t you know?”.
Yet workers have no choice but to fight the class war because they are always under attack. There will always be class war as long as there is class society, because the interests of the exploited and exploiter classes are irreconcilable and diametrically opposed. There is only one way that the class war can end, and that’s when one class eliminates the other. And since capitalists cannot exist without workers whereas workers can exist just fine without capitalists, there is no question who will be left standing and who will go into the dustbin of history.
Have you seen the one where they think Putin taught Trump how to poison Biden before the debate?
I don’t like this framing. I feel like it absolves the West too much of its knowing complicity.
It’s not “the West” as a collective entity that’s being spoonfed Zionist propaganda, it’s the regular, everyday people living in the West. And the ones feeding it to them are not just the Zionist entity but also - and i would even say primarily - the West’s own media and own institutions. And many people in the West willingly go along with it, they find it comfortable being put on this diet of pure propaganda because it validates their prejudices and their chauvinistic beliefs about themselves. It gives them permission to be racist.
Don’t care. I still want to Learn From Lei Feng’s Good Example.
Demagogue actor turned president
And now turned dictator holding onto power only with the help of a Nazi junta since his term has expired and he refused to hold elections.
That’s my country’s foreign minister, Annalena 360°. Some say she is the world’s dumbest foreign minister. Of course i would never say that because if i did she would try to have me criminally prosecuted.
Now that’s praxis.
a territorial claim is NOT objective
That’s correct. That’s what i’ve been trying to tell you, that the subjective matters and that we can’t just ignore it and pretend like we can establish an objective framework for everything where human relations are concerned, which is ultimately what international relations are just on a larger scale.
I have a question for you: do you think that the people of Tibet would be materially better off if they had been turned into an anti-China proxy by the imperialists like Ukraine is now for Russia? Do you not think that maybe being a part of China and enjoying the peaceful economic and social development that China has brought to Tibet has been to the advantage of the people living there?
What exactly would you hope to achieve by making Tibet “independent” (leaving them more vulnerable to imperialist meddling and exploitation) and how do you know that Tibetans actually want that? I’m trying to understand, why are Europeans so fixated on creating ethno-states everywhere? What is wrong with Tibet being a part of the multi-ethnic Chinese nation to which they have deep historic and cultural ties?
Then it was independent 1912-1950
It formally wasn’t. China never recognized it as independent and neither did the “international community” (however you want to interpret that term).
Should Mongolia also be absorbed into China?
That’s not for me to say. The PRC recognized Mongolia’s independence and they have great and lucrative relations now. I don’t currently see that anyone who matters has any material or ideological interest in changing that.
I’m not making a prescriptive statement. I’m telling you how things are and not how they should be.
Countries are not inert objects in a universal logical framework, they are made up of people and what the people of a country think and want and feel matters, even if that’s subjective. And when that country is a civilization state like China that carries a certain weight.
By that logic no small country could ever become independent of a big one.
They usually can’t unless their independence is to the advantage of one of more big countries. For instance, although Mongolia being independent has more to do with Russia and the Russian civil war than it does with China, it is nevertheless a useful buffer state for both.
If it wasn’t, it probably wouldn’t be independent.
You or i may think it’s not a good justification but for a lot of people it is. China was subjected to a century of humiliation during which imperialist powers invaded China and attempted to rip it apart, to separate it from territories which had been a part of China for centuries. The restoration of China’s national unity, integrity and sovereignty was and is viewed by a majority of Chinese people as a national imperative if China is to regain its dignity. It’s why they will never accept “Taiwan independence”.
It is very dangerous when westerners refuse to understand this and think that borders are meaningless and that this or that territory can be separated from China and they will just accept it. You have to understand that China is determined to never again allow to be done to them what was done in the 19th and early 20th century. (The same goes for Russia too, which is why we have the conflict in Ukraine which Russians view as an existential one and will never accept losing.)
All this fancy philosophical talk about objective ontology is meaningless when you ignore how a nation of a billion people feels.
That is, as pretty much all western media on the topic of China and Tibet, an awful article full of complete nonsense. They throw around bullshit buzzwords like “occupation” and “forced collectivization” that betrays either a total ignorance or purposeful and malicious distortion of the history and status of Tibet in the PRC. But as you yourself recognize even they cannot help but admit that over 95% of the population of Tibet were essentially enslaved and that the fairy tale image of pre-liberation Tibet that has been sold to westerners is a crock of shit. And yet the CIA funded “free Tibet” crowd are even lying about that and trying to claim that that history is all “Chinese communist propaganda”. So ask yourself, why should anyone believe anything else they say about Tibet?
I want to correct a few misconceptions that are evident in your comment:
I’m not convinced the Tibetan people supported the invasion.
It wasn’t an invasion, it was a liberation, and a peaceful one at that until reactionary forces, fearing the loss of their privileges if the serfs should be liberated, started a brutal armed insurrection.
The vast majority of the people of Tibet at that time were serfs and lived in miserable, inhumane slave-like conditions. Are you arguing that slaves would prefer to continue to be enslaved?
justified by “slavery existed in Tibet”
That was indeed not the primary reason why the PLA first entered Tibet. It was rather to preserve the territorial integrity and safeguard the sovereignty of China, of which Tibet was and is recognized as an integral part.
by that logic any country with slavery […] deserves to be invaded
Tibet was not and is not a country. For a period of a few decades during which China was in chaos and turmoil following the fall of the Qing dynasty, the local government of Tibet had merely ceased to answer to the central government of China, but the region never formally declared Independence and never ceased to legally be a part of China.
Pro-independence forces fomented and backed by western imperialists who had already once invaded Tibet were however attempting to break Tibet away from China just like they are trying to do with Taiwan today. This created an urgent necessity for the PLA to intervene to protect Tibet and secure its borders.
I don’t think the motivation was to free the slaves.
Whether or not this was the primary motivation, this was still one of the main goals that the CPC openly declared needed to be accomplished sooner or later, as it was evident that the system of feudal-theocratic serfdom was halting virtually all social and economic progress in Tibet. The CPC emphasised the need for democratic reform as soon as the people of Tibet were ready to make that step.
All of this is explained in greater detail in the documentary which i linked in my other comment.
If that is the case then Germany is currently backsliding hard on the civilization scale. The state of the German railways seems to get worse by the day. Feels like every other train is either delayed or cancelled these days. And they don’t even announce the cancellation ahead of time, if you go online they have the train as on time and supposedly running according to schedule until 10 min before it was supposed to come and then it’s suddenly “never mind, it’s not coming after all”. And by then it’s too late to look for alternative connections, you just gotta wait for the next one and hope that one comes. Makes getting anywhere on time impossible.
Sorry i know this was barely related to the topic of the post, i just needed to get that rant off my chest.