China

[dudalb]

nothing wrong with having a utopian ideology as long as you have a pragmatist methodology

Problem is the two don't seem to go togeher. And Utopis is juat an urealistic, silly idea. you will not have a perfect society because people are imperfect.

 

[Puppycow]

You can bet the US Pacific Fleet is writing contingcy plans for deployment to the Phillipinees as we speak.
Leyte Gulf 2.0?

The US and the Philippines used to be closer, but they asked us to leave.

According to the Navy Times, that appears to be changing again.

A return to the Philippines

It’s been more than 30 years since the U.S. Navy said goodbye to Naval Station Subic Bay and other bases in the Philippines, ending what had been nearly a century of U.S. military presence in the Asian nation.

The amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood became the last Navy vessel to leave Subic Bay in 1992, following a series of failed negotiations between the two countries that resulted in the Philippine senate voting against hosting any more U.S. bases.
. . .

Flash forward 32 years, and the Navy appears poised to make a return of some sorts to the Philippines under an agreement announced Feb. 2 by the two nations that will grant U.S. forces access to nine bases across the country, an increase from the five Philippine installations from which U.S. forces can currently operate.

Much has changed in the region since the 1992 departure: namely, China has ascended and sought to assert its primacy in the South China Sea, while building up its military and ratcheting up the rhetoric about a forced reunification with Taiwan.

The Feb. 2 announcement comes as the United States continues to marshal other nations to its side in what it frames as an existential battle for the current world order against China, and as the new Philippine president appears to be increasingly concerned with Chinese meddling in the region.

I joined the Navy in 1992, the same year they closed those bases and many of the senior guys I met had actually been stationed there. It was a very popular place among sailors and many wanted any orders that would keep them in the P.I. as they called it. One reason was that it was a sort of adult Disneyland for the sailors. Their paychecks were enough to make them comparatively wealthy compared to most of the locals.

The two countries are also moving “expeditiously” to build up the sites from which U.S. forces operate, according to the Defense Department.

Already, the United States has invested $82 million to improve infrastructure on the five bases already in use.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

And the methodology seems to have been to kill those who didn't like the ideology. Pragmatic in the extreme.

you are mixing up the box with the content - Utopian Ideology (any) is a great way to get rid of rivals in your own group - simply claim that the others aren't as committed as you to the CAUSE.
Trump has demonstrated this masterfully with his complete takeover of the GOP, from local elections all the way to Congress and the RNC.

And you wouldn't accuse him of being a Marxists.
Getting rid of rivals is Pragmatic when you want more power for yourself. It has nothing to do with the ideology.

More to the point: Marxism is not, and was never meant, to be a way to run a country, only a Factory, Farm or other "means of production". Any kind of Central Control is doomed to fail because of lag.

The political side comes from the fact that most political systems today depend on rich individuals having all the money&income, and would lose their power if economic units were run according to Marxist principles.

As always, most criticism of left-wing ideology comes from straw manning.

 

[dudalb]

The US and the Philippines used to be closer, but they asked us to leave.

According to the Navy Times, that appears to be changing again.

A return to the Philippines



I joined the Navy in 1992, the same year they closed those bases and many of the senior guys I met had actually been stationed there. It was a very popular place among sailors and many wanted any orders that would keep them in the P.I. as they called it. One reason was that it was a sort of adult Disneyland for the sailors. Their paychecks were enough to make them comparatively wealthy compared to most of the locals.

Intersting, but the very quiet talks with Vietnam about the possible basing of US troops is even more interesing.
Of course, VIetnam and China have a "history". Think an Asian version of England and Ireland you have it about right
It says something that four years after the end of the Vietnam War ,Vietnam and CHina were at war.........
I understand CHina expected some political control over VIetnam as the price of the aid they gave, and Vietnam said no.

 

[dudalb]

you are mixing up the box with the content - Utopian Ideology (any) is a great way to get rid of rivals in your own group - simply claim that the others aren't as committed as you to the CAUSE.
Trump has demonstrated this masterfully with his complete takeover of the GOP, from local elections all the way to Congress and the RNC.

And you wouldn't accuse him of being a Marxists.
Getting rid of rivals is Pragmatic when you want more power for yourself. It has nothing to do with the ideology.

More to the point: Marxism is not, and was never meant, to be a way to run a country, only a Factory, Farm or other "means of production". Any kind of Central Control is doomed to fail because of lag.

The political side comes from the fact that most political systems today depend on rich individuals having all the money&income, and would lose their power if economic units were run according to Marxist principles.

As always, most criticism of left-wing ideology comes from straw manning.

SIgh.

 

[Ziggurat]

More to the point: Marxism is not, and was never meant, to be a way to run a country, only a Factory, Farm or other "means of production". Any kind of Central Control is doomed to fail because of lag.

And yet, Marxists keep trying to run countries based on Marxism. Apparently they aren't Doing Communism Right^TM. I'm sure if you were in charge, you could get it sorted.

 

[theprestige]

More to the point: Marxism is not, and was never meant, to be a way to run a country, only a Factory, Farm or other "means of production".

Interesting.

I always understood Marxism as requiring a complete change in society. Certainly the proletariat cannot seize a factory, farm, or other means of production without the support of society in general. There has to be some sort of drastic social upheaval, a true revolution of the proletariat, to establish the broad consensus that society will now be run along Marxist lines. Private property - capital - is abolished in favor of collective ownership. The investor class is eliminated entirely, along with the bourgeoisie.

My understanding is that where Lenin and Mao went wrong was not in trying to apply Marxism to a whole country, but in trying to apply Marxism artificially. Marx predicted that the worker's paradise would emerge spontaneously from the social conditions of late-stage capitalism. Marxism-Leninism and Maoism held that it would be possible to force the advent of Marxism without waiting for society to evolve naturally into the prophesied predicted state.

And I don't see how Marxism necessarily means central planning on a national level. Certainly Marx himself envisioned his utopia as nation-spanning, society-spanning, globe-spanning.

Anyway, it is what it is. China had revolutionary Marxism forced on it by Mao and others, and many other indignities besides. Now it is what it has become. Would it have become something else instead, if Chiang Kai-Shek had prevailed? Would it have become a liberal democracy with capitalist markets, in the western model? Or would it have manifested some other form of centrally-governed oligarchic bureaucracy?

We'll never know. But I suspect that, under the skin, the Mao dynasty and the Xi dynasty are of a piece with the Qing and Ming dynasties that preceded them, and the Chiang dynasty that almost was.

Any kind of Central Control is doomed to fail because of lag.

Whereas handling lag seems to be an out of the box feature of capitalistic markets. Ironic.

But I do think it's possible to have a central communist government without going all in on central communist planning. It's just that for some reason whenever communists get hold of a government, they want to do central planning as well. Why is that? They must be bad Marxists, I guess.

I wonder if it has something to do with the capitalist implications of regional or local planning. The workers seize a factory, alright. Now they own it, essentially. If they're allowed to choose their own customers, organize their business to ensure their own local prosperity, it's just capitalism all over again. Private ownership of property, and private decisions by the owners about how to use that property, how to invest the capital it represents. I'm pretty sure that's not what Marx had in mind.

Nor what Mao had in mind.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The societal and political Change, according to Marx, would come automatically as a result of Workers owning and running their factories, etc. because that would shift power so dramatically from the Capitalists that Politicians would work For the Proletariat instead of the Bourgeoisie.
For this revolution, it is absolutely not necessary for Communist to become politicians.
Arguably, the job of Politician itself is so at odds with the principles of Communism that no actual Communist would want to take it.

And no, it's not just Capitalism again, when you have to put actual work in, and not just Capital, to get a share of the profits.

But it is still very much a Market Economy

 

[Ziggurat]

The societal and political Change, according to Marx, would come automatically as a result of Workers owning and running their factories

But it hasn't. So the Marxists have had to... encourage the revolution. And then we get the whole "no true Marxist" excuses, but somehow it's always the same story.

Arguably, the job of Politician itself is so at odds with the principles of Communism that no actual Communist would want to take it.

And yet, and yet...

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I said at the top that everyone who got into absolute power on a Communist platform did so for Power, not for Communism.
Just like Trump is taking complete control of the GOP not because he is such a straight Republican, but because he doesn't like power in the hands of anyone but his own tiny ones.

There is nothing special about left-wing ideology in this.

 

[Ziggurat]

I said at the top that everyone who got into absolute power on a Communist platform did so for Power, not for Communism.

I don't care how many angels dance on the head of your "no true communism" pin.

Just like Trump is taking complete control of the GOP not because he is such a straight Republican, but because he doesn't like power in the hands of anyone but his own tiny ones.

There is nothing special about left-wing ideology in this.

I didn't say there was. But it's a really strange comparison you're making, because Trump doesn't really have any ideology at all.

 

[theprestige]

Enh. I'll give TGZ that one. Certainly the Maoists weren't doing Marxism right, in the sense of simply waiting for society to spontaneously rearrange itself along Marxist lines, as a natural outcome of the collapse of industrial capitalism.

Two things that get me are:

One, the number of Marxists who seem to seriously think Marxism-Leninism and/or Maoism are valid alternative routes to the promised utopia. Starting with Lenin and Mao. I'd be interested to know TGZ's view of Maoism. Was Mao merely mistaken in practice, or was he mistaken in principle as well? Can the Marxist eschaton be immanentized through the efforts of the faithful? Or must it be simply awaited? Do the revolutionaries need to get out there and start revolting, in order to bring about the change they wish to see in the world? Or do they need to quietly wait for the end time, when the revolution will emerge spontaneously from social conditions? Can they accelerate the process by creating the necessary social conditions?

The other is, why believe in even the passive version of Marxism? It should be pretty clear by now that there is no such thing as "late stage capitalism" in the Marxist sense. There's no through-line of history, from feudalism to capitalism to communism. The Marxist prophecies just aren't going to come true. IIRC, this was the essence of an early schism among Marxists. Socialist factions in the UK were discovering that they didn't need to wait for the revolution of the proletariat. They could proactively address the conflict between labor and capital by forming labor unions. This offended continental Marxists, who held that labor unions were just keeping capitalism on life support, and delaying the next stage of human social evolution.

It should be obvious by now that communism/socialism is not the next stage of human social evolution. There is no next stage. There's just various options, with their various trade-offs and failure modes. Liberal democracy and capitalist markets seems to be about the best we can hope for. But I suppose people are free to try Iranian theocracy or Chinese oligarchy, if they think western civilization is played out.

tl;dr - I think the question of whether the PRC did Marxism right is moot, at this point. It was never going to happen on its own; Marx was a false prophet. And it's pretty obvious it cannot be made to happen. You just end up with a bog-standard totalitarian dictatorship, headed by a junta, a personality cult, or both. Marx said what he said, and people took it and did what they did with it. It's long past time we dispensed with the canard that Marx has anything useful or even true to say to us.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Yeah, everyone who thinks they can build a Utopia hasn't understood the first thing about humans - or entropy.
And yes, most very vocal Marxists are among those who think that their system is going to solve all problems.

Of course what we need is processes that continuously work to identify and fix the most egregious problems.
Everyone who tells you they got it all figured out is hopelessly naive or selling something.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Thing is: authoritarian countries can be incredibly well administered: yes, Russia is corrupt, kleptocratic and run by a Dictator.
And yet, it's run surprisingly well: the speed with which Russia moved to a War Production footing whilst mostly maintaining living standards for anyone but the causalities of the war is, frankly, amazing and very much unexpected.
Similarly, the technocrats in Beijing might be corrupt and power hungry, and have only a flimsy control over corrupt local governments - and yet they have achieved so much in such a short time! They are building more renewable energy sources and nuclear reactors than anyone else while at the same time developing new technology. And at a fraction of US defense spending, they are building multiple aircraft carriers.

You can call it whatever you want, but clearly Capitalism isn't necessary the best way to get things done.

 

[Lplus]

Thing is: authoritarian countries can be incredibly well administered: yes, Russia is corrupt, kleptocratic and run by a Dictator.
And yet, it's run surprisingly well: the speed with which Russia moved to a War Production footing whilst mostly maintaining living standards for anyone but the causalities of the war is, frankly, amazing and very much unexpected.
Similarly, the technocrats in Beijing might be corrupt and power hungry, and have only a flimsy control over corrupt local governments - and yet they have achieved so much in such a short time! They are building more renewable energy sources and nuclear reactors than anyone else while at the same time developing new technology. And at a fraction of US defense spending, they are building multiple aircraft carriers.

You can call it whatever you want, but clearly Capitalism isn't necessary the best way to get things done.

You are conflating Capitalism with Democracy. If things need to be done in a hurry it is Democracy that is incapable of reacting anything like as quickly or as forcefully as a Totalitarian state, not Capitalism.

But then, those who hate Capitalism for what it is will always find excuses to blame it.

 

[The Atheist]

Yeah, everyone who thinks they can build a Utopia hasn't understood the first thing about humans - or entropy.

And can't or doesn't read.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

You are conflating Capitalism with Democracy. If things need to be done in a hurry it is Democracy that is incapable of reacting anything like as quickly or as forcefully as a Totalitarian state, not Capitalism.

But then, those who hate Capitalism for what it is will always find excuses to blame it.

I think you got it wrong.

Capitalism is extremely reluctant to change, because once you have a monopoly, you can stop innovating.
That is because Capital will always prefer a calculable win over a gamble.
It takes State Investment to do really risky or long-term projects.

One look at US Pharma should prove this beyond any doubt.

 

[theprestige]

You are conflating Capitalism with Democracy. If things need to be done in a hurry it is Democracy that is incapable of reacting anything like as quickly or as forcefully as a Totalitarian state, not Capitalism.

But then, those who hate Capitalism for what it is will always find excuses to blame it.

Ironically, TGZ himself has already acknowledged that command economies cold suck at responding to market lag - something that free market capitalism handles quite well by comparison.

 

[Ziggurat]

Similarly, the technocrats in Beijing might be corrupt and power hungry, and have only a flimsy control over corrupt local governments - and yet they have achieved so much in such a short time! They are building more renewable energy sources and nuclear reactors than anyone else while at the same time developing new technology.

China's nuclear reactor buildout isn't so much an achievement on their part but a failure on ours. We have the industrial capacity to build reactors. We CHOOSE not to for political, not technical, reasons. And their solar/wind buildout is going to turn out to be a waste of money, just like their high speed rail was.

And at a fraction of US defense spending, they are building multiple aircraft carriers.

They're building them, but will they work? And what are they going to fly on them? China has bet their carriers on using electromagnetic catapults, but so far they have not demonstrated that it actually works. If it doesn't, the aircraft carrier is useless.

And even if it does, what are they going to launch? They've got the J15 (a 4th gen fighter), but it's built to use ski jump takeoff, which means it's not built to carry heavy payloads. It wasn't designed for catapult launches, so even with catapult assist they might need to limit takeoff weight. And their only 5th gen fighter, the J-20, is not carrier capable at all.

In other words, Chinese carriers are not the equivalent of American carriers.

 

[The Atheist]

In other words, Chinese carriers are not the equivalent of American carriers.

I think you've missed the point - China isn't interested in having carriers like America's.

America's are there to project power around the world; China's military focus is near China and they already have [fairly] indestrucible bases in the SC Sea that are much more useful than any carrier. Their carriers are for show for their 3rd world pals who vote with them on economic/geopolitical fora.

If you look at what's happening in the south Pacific, China & US are involved in a battle for friends and China's pulling them in nicely. One of the island groups changed allegiance just the other day, and they don't have any interest in what kind of carrier either side has. When it ties up in port and the crew start spending money, the locals won't care if it's loaded with F35s or Fairey Swordfishes.

Thinking China is imperialistic in the way America is is an error. China is aggressive close to home and uses renminbi diplomacy elsewhere. I'm not aware of any Chinese troop involvement in Africa or the ME right now, and I'm sure there aren't because it's a stupid move. They've quietly put a base in Djibouti and that's all at the moment, more will come but not through force - it's one thing Wolfman used to note: China thinks in decades or centuries, not weeks and months the way the west does.