Chiming in to say this appears to be a quote from David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs.

I’m not saying that imperialist aggression didn’t / doesn’t contribute to the collapse of socialist states - it most certainly does - I’m saying campists tend to get tunnel vision and think that it’s the only reason they fail. Cuba has actually been quite successful at enduring in spite of imperialist aggression, and I think there’s a lot of benefit in asking what it is they are doing better than past socialist states. In my opinion the answer lies in the fact that their governmental structure is far more horizontal in comparison to other attempts at socialism such as the USSR, and that has resulted in policy that is far more responsive to the specific material needs of local communities within Cuba. Contrast the USSR in which the pseudoscientific beliefs of a central authority figure turned what could have been a brief and localized food shortage into a full-blown famine spanning the entire union.

With regard to China being state capitalist, I skimmed the essay you linked well enough to see that it does not address the anarchist critique of state “socialism,” namely that state ownership does not truly constitute collective ownership because the state is a hierarchical institution that centralizes decision-making power in such a way that the will of the people affected is often ignored. Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge the undeniable successes and advantages of central planning when compared to the neoliberal method of not planning at all beyond the fiscal quarter, but those are not the only options. I believe that horizontal planning is superior to both, and is the only way for an economy to be truly socialist in character. Examples of this being done can even be found in the revolutions that created the USSR and the PRC before they seized state power. It’s also not a discrete binary; there is a spectrum between totalitarian dictatorship and full horizontalism, and the projects which are most successful tend to veer towards the latter rather than the former.

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How does this make sense in response to a meme showing that I support Palestine? I know y’all love to use rule 1 to censor people for “bigotry” but at least put some effort into making it plausible.

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I also do yardwork, snow removal, maintenance, and I pay out of my ass when anything breaks because I have an obligation to provide for my tenant and I take that seriously.

You’re right, it is the system that is the problem. The relationship between you and your tenant is unequal. There is nothing forcing you to do right by your tenant by performing all of that maintenance work because you have not entered into an equal agreement with your tenant. You could stop doing all those things and your tenant would have no recourse because they aren’t paying you to perform any service, they are paying you for the privilege of staying in your property. You may feel that you have an obligation to do those things but you aren’t actually obligated by law, and that’s a problem.

He initially set out to prove Charles Darwin’s assertion that competition is the law of the Jungle and ended up discovering the opposite, and that’s why he wrote Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. It was intended to be a refutation of Charles Darwin’s work.

I’m responding to the meme which presents learning and critique as separate and mutually exclusive. In order to learn from something you have to critique it, and if you believe that China is not perfect then you know this and should agree with me.

There’s also another thing you’re doing that I see MLs do all the time, which is posit that Chinese socialism is uniquely suited to China and that it must be implemented differently in other places. While I do agree that this is the case, I often see MLs use this argument to excuse flaws in the implementation of socialism in China as necessary alterations required due to the particular conditions and historical circumstances in which it was created.

IMO there were many wrong turns and mistakes that China made in its socialist transition that have had lasting negative consequences, and though they can often be explained by China’s particular conditions and historical circumstances, that doesn’t excuse them.

I wish we were as organized as they claim we are. We ought to make them regret the insinuation by turning their lie into the truth.

Learning and critique are the same thing. If you look at China and go “this is perfect in every way and we should copy it,” then you aren’t actually learning anything at all. In my experience MLs don’t get angry with anarchists and others critical of China because they don’t learn from Chinese socialism, but because they don’t like the conclusions they’ve made.

Modern urban grimdark fantasy is a reflection of our modern urban grimdark reality. Writing hopeful fiction in a modern setting requires a much more vivid imagination.

I didn’t say they weren’t, I just said their prefigurative politics were more prominent. I’m of the opinion that what someone does is more important than what they say, and if they hadn’t been undermined by COINTELPRO who knows where their thinking and organizational structure would have gone. I just think there was something truly transformative about the BPP that could have grown into something beautiful if they’d had the opportunity.

The Black Panthers get a pass; they didn’t live long enough to become the villains, and there’s no guarantee that they would have. The BPP was far more prefigurative than vangaurdist, and it was the combination of these things that made them seem so threatening to the powers that be.

Well, there are no unsolvable logistical problems with public clothing ownership. A clothing library could easily be a thing, and probably does exist somewhere.

They’re in the wrong program then, that skill is more useful for business majors.

The person asking the McDonald’s AI how to reverse a linked list in Python is almost certainly an undergrad in a programming 101 course, so this was definitely quicker for them (although they didn’t learn anything).

There are some billionaire governors, and some of them are paradoxically progressives who call for taxing billionaires. I just think they’re afraid of the guillotines coming out and are trying to get out ahead of a revolution they think might be on the horizon.