Incorrect choice of grammatical tense in that headline. Clearly it’s “has lost”, not “is losing”. Hitler in the Führerbunker in 1945 waiting for Steiner to save the day was more in touch with reality than this delusional clown.

Seriously, why couldn’t they have put a picture of Nasser up instead?

The more education the better. We just have to make sure that people actually actively engage with it and don’t just read the title, leave a like and scroll by.

I just posted a couple of days ago on Genzhou which i understood to be the dedicated theory com: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9127572

I was hoping there would be at least a little discussion around that topic but alas…

If you think that another com would be more appropriate for initiating discussions about theory, i would love to know what you had in mind. I for one definitely support having more and regular discussions on theory.

There is only so much you can learn by yourself, and i think if we really want to develop a good grasp on the theory we need to engage with it collaboratively in study groups, as communists have historically always done.

They didn’t have enough evidence to go to trial. But the damage is already done, because the accusations and the paranoia have permeated into the country’s subconscious while the exoneration receives little to no circulation beyond a few articles that hardly anyone will read.

Great questions! I don’t get the Bismarck one either. On the others i would have to give it some thought. In the case of Caesar my first instinct is to say that he himself failed, since he was assassinated precisely for challenging the established power of the old senatorial elites. However the question arises: did Augustus succeed where Caesar failed, and if so does that not sort of count as Caesar’s posthumous victory since he was the one who set the ball rolling?

Neither do i, for the record. But we have to acknowledge that we are not in their position, we don’t have all the facts available, we don’t have all the data they do, we are not privy to their internal discussions, and so we shouldn’t think that we know better than they do how they should run their country. If we did that, would we be any better than the western chauvinists who think that every country should adopt our liberal model?

We can only judge by looking at the results, and so far, looking at where China is now vs where it was 40 years ago, the results are not just good, they are amazing. This doesn’t mean there aren’t significant problems and contradictions within China, partly as a result of the very same policies which got them to where they are today. Sooner or later these contradictions will have to be resolved. How, i don’t know. That’s for them to figure out.

The simple answer is: because it’s working. Why would they abandon a policy that has been and continues to be incredibly successful? That’s not to say there haven’t been issues that have come up along the way, such as the massive corruption problem in the 90s and early 2000s, or the real estate bubble, or the out-of-control private tutoring industry.

Whenever such an issue appears which starts to seriously threaten social stability and negatively affect the positive trajectory that China is on, it is addressed and dealt with, as the aforementioned issues were. Other more minor issues are handled in a less top-down way and left to local governments to experiment and find the best solutions. China’s approach is less ideological than maybe we would like and more practical, result-focused.

In addition to the general trend beginning in the late 1980s of decentralizing and delegating responsibilities to local governments, higher education in particular is a field where China has experienced a real revolution over the past 30-40 years, with an explosive growth in the number of students each year, and that can be hard for a government to deal with in a country as big as China while still maintaining high academic standards that let them compete internationally. For comparison:

China produces more STEM graduates each year than the entire Western world combined, and currently graduates about 12 million people each year in total, and yet its per capita GDP, even adjusted for PPP, is still lower than that of most European countries. So there is a huge amount of competition for a still not that high number of higher education spots considering the immense population size.

The way they currently deal with this challenge is by providing a lot of grants and scholarship programs for citizens from lower socio-economic or ethnic minority backgrounds, while letting those who can afford it pay their own tuition. Also, compared with other tuition systems it is still relatively cheap, because universities also receive extensive public subsidies, and because the vast majority of the system is essentially state run.

Here’s a 2018 research paper on how financing of higher education in China has changed over the years: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325171750_Higher_Education_Financing_in_China

As with everything in China if the current system starts to no longer be fit for purpose they will adapt and change. I can definitely foresee them going toward a tuition free model like some of the European countries if the current model begins to cause social issues, or impedes their technological and scientific advancement. I am definitely all for it, but China tends to be very conservative when it comes to making major changes when there is not a pressing need for them.

Decolonize your mind!

There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.

Like laws, TOS only apply to those who the enforcers want them to apply to.

For those unfamiliar with early Marxist theory, please note that whenever Lenin talks of “social democracy” in his pre-October revolution works, and especially prior to the split in the Second International, he is referring to what we today would call communism or revolutionary socialism. At the time revolutionary Marxists called themselves “social democrats”. The term “social democracy” did not yet have the reformist meaning that we associate with it today.

And last year Nepal signed onto the BRI and made a deal with China on a cross border railway infrastructure project.

This may sound odd but i’m not sure it’s a good idea for Russia to be adhering to this treaty anymore. This may actually increase the risk of nuclear war. By not conducting regular tests you run the risk of adversaries becoming less and less certain that your nuclear deterrent actually works. Eventually they may talk themselves into believing that your nuclear weapons are no longer functional, and that is very dangerous for the world. More and more their temptation will grow to launch a first strike in the belief that your retaliation will either not come, or that if it does it will be ineffectual.

This is also the reason why the placement of anti-ballistic missile systems close to another nuclear power’s borders is considered to be highly destabilizing. Anything that has the potential to neutralize the other side’s deterrent increases the incentive to launch a first strike by the side that believes it can do so without incurring unacceptable losses in the retaliation. For deterrent to be effective the other side has to keep believing that your deterrent works, and unfortunately regular testing is the only really certain way of demonstrating this.

It should be done in such a way that minimizes environmental contamination, perhaps underground, but it should be done semi-regularly, at least once every few decades. Now i am aware that with the new Oreshnik hypersonic weapon, Russia may potentially have a new non-nuclear strategic deterrent which can be tested without violating the nuclear test ban, and if in the long run that kind of technology can replace the nuclear deterrent that would be great, but so far the numbers are not there yet.

Unfortunately, they might still cheer even then…

I don’t know that it’s completely clear but more indications point to it than not. I think we still need to wait to see what really comes of this, but one thing is clear, the country is now in a very dangerous situation.

Even if these protests were 100% organic and the West had nothing to do with them (unlikely imo given the orgs and platforms involved and just the sheer speed and violence with which this happened, but i guess it’s still possible seeing as the discontent over the corruption and the poor economic situation are definitely real), this has still caused immense damage to the country and has for sure opened the door wide open to Western interference.

If the West’s regime change tentacles weren’t involved at first they are for sure involved now. Seeing a country in such a destabilized position with a fragile interrim government “elected” by a few thousand anonymous users on a discord server and still months away from holding real elections, they are like sharks who have smelled blood in the water, and all the usual suspects will be claiming to be concerned about making sure that there is a “democratic transition”, promoting the usual liberal clichés, and will swarm all over it.

Unless the military seizes control of the interrim government, keeps potentially compromised actors away from any levers of power, and makes sure that the elections are held without outside interference, whether it’s in the form of a western funded media blitz, astroturfed “youth” social media campaigns, western funded electoral organizing, “civil society” groups with ties to western foundations, etc. the result will undoubtedly be one that has been highly predetermined by the West, just as it was in all of the post-Maidan Ukrainian elections.

It has been a bit disappointing to see some really good commentators such as Arnaud Bertrand whose analysis i have a lot of respect for not get how the dynamics of such a situation work. I’m not even saying he’s completely wrong to be skeptical that this started out as a deliberate western op to begin with (although some people make a pretty good case for it).

I also think we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But i think he is seriously underestimating the danger here. And as Brian Berletic points out in his reply , it’s not that people in countries where this happens don’t and can’t have agency, or that most of the people involved don’t genuinely think that they are doing this on their own initiative and for a good cause. It’s that most of them are not aware when they are being used to create chaos that will allow nefarious actors to insert themselves.

It’s not that you can’t have genuine revolutions anymore, or that we must always immediately suspect everything is a color revolution, it’s that genuine revolutions don’t tend to look like this. Genuine revolutions take real organizing and groundwork, they revolve around organized groups and movements with a history of struggle, not social media campaigns and online chatrooms. They don’t spontaneously erupt out of a mass with no ideological program and no leadership.

And we can see a huge and glaring issue with such a spontaneous uprising, which is that no vanguard group or leader from the movement itself has stepped up to fill the power vacuum. They don’t have a real plan for how to organize a new political and economic system, all they say is “we want to end the corruption”. Great, but what does that mean concretely? How will you ensure that the system does not reproduce itself? If we take everything at face value, they have simply delegated all of that to this interim government which they hope will be incorruptible and will hold real elections, and that this will then all somehow result in a much improved situation than before. To call this idealistic is an understatement.

I really hope someone writes a proper piece on this whole affair once the dust has settled and we have some more clarity, to set things straight and to help people clear up these misconceptions about how color revolutions work, what the inherent problems are with spontaneous uprisings (particularly when they are youth led and have such vague grievances as “corruption”) and why they are vulnerable to co-optation, and what (historically) a real revolution looks like.

It’s not looking good for Nepal if these ghouls are praising the regime change:

Anything in particular that you would recommend for a first time read by this author?

The point is to maintain a presence wherever people are, not to form some secret society off in the corner.

I very much agree with this and i think we should strive to maintain at least some form of presence on the “mainstream” platforms. Communists should go to where the people are, not isolate ourselves in echo-chambers.

That being said, this must not become a justification for self-censorship. If the rules and the moderation on those platforms make it impossible to openly express principled progressive, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist beliefs, then it’s not we who are chosing to abandon these platforms.

The response to “mainstream” platforms driving communists out can only be to create, join and support alternative platforms that will not censor us, and to try our best to make these new platforms into ones which are big enough to reach the masses. We have to become the new mainstream for those disaffected with the system.

The increasingly censorious and repressive nature of the big corporate platforms - and not just toward communists but toward anyone who steps out of the ever shrinking window of acceptable status quo - is already having the effect of forcing people to migrate. So this shift is happening either way. Our task is to maintain enough of a presence on those platforms to be able to guide people to the leftist alternative before the right wing captures them.

“Overtakes” is not an ideal word to use here. That implies their MMR was lower than the US’s and is now higher, but it’s the other way around. I would say China “falls below” the US in MMR, because low MMR is good.