This month the Weibo account Weibo Finance, which has more than 1.5 million followers, issued an instruction against posting any comments “that bad-mouth the economy”. The post appears to have since been deleted. Bloomberg reported that several other finance influencers had been told by Weibo to “avoid crossing red...
It’s so hilarious seeing them just plain state that people aren’t allowed to talk about normal-ass stuff if the government doesn’t like it, and then seeing people online who try to defend them.
Fuck Lenin for turning a philosophy of freedom and cooperation and consensus into just another tool of State/authoritarian power.
bUt It’S nOt PrAcTiCaL oThErWiSe
No, you’re just scared of what it would actually look like. Lots of supposed Communists who are scared of the whole “stateless” part meaning they can’t finagle their way into power, or who just want the revolution as a vehicle to change who is in power (i.e. them).
Communism is a very doable system, the problem is that people have false expectations of it and what it should look like (largely thanks to Leninism).
Collaborative, democratic consensus, is the normal way that groups of people work. Coercion is not, but that is how majoritarian systems work, and it is how states work. People have been living under Western nation-state and administrative-state systems for so long, within defined borders that denote both behavior and identity, that it’s tough for people to take how things work on a micro scale (e.g. family or friend-group dynamics), and apply that thinking at larger scales. The common response is, “but someone will always try to take charge/ seize power”, and that is true, but before the time of the modern state, you could walk away.
Now the state itself has become a self-perpetuating threat to its own citizens (which you can’t leave without subsuming yourself to another state), and majoritarian democracy is just used to maintain the state through the illusion of choices that hold that threat at bay. “Don’t let ‘x’ get in power, because if they do they’ll hurt those of us that are ‘y’.” You can’t fuck off and make a community that doesn’t allow ‘x’, because a state will come along and destroy or seize it.
Scale is half the problem. There is a reason that climate destruction, world-spanning wars, nuclear weapons, etc. all took off the same time that population exploded. You can’t separate scale from technology from destruction. I’m not arguing for de-dev, but the complex, “scalable” systems we’ve built and now rely on are literally either designed to kill us or are inadvertently killing us (emission, plastics, deforestation, PFAS, etc.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m advocating being unprepared for evil? Even in Anarchist systems, which do not have systems of authority, the use of force to counter someone hurting you is well understood.
If your argument is that state systems will scale large enough to destroy non-state systems, I agree, but then you’re just agreeing with what I said about the state setting itself up as a threat that must be participated with in order to counter (i.e. in this case arguing, “if you don’t want the state to consume you, make your own state”). That doesn’t make those other systems bad, it makes states bad. “Might makes right” is not generally considered a very modern or positive way of interacting with each other.
Nearly 90% of the foreign investment inflows into Chinese equity markets in 2023 has been withdrawn as sentiment crumbles and investors losing confidence in major Chinese institutions....
It’s going to be very difficult for China to attract money when other countries with less authoritarian practices are stepping into spaces that China previously dominated, and China really cannot afford to lose that money and those jobs.
China cracks down on negativity over economy in bid to boost confidence amid record high youth unemployment and struggling property sector (www.theguardian.com)
This month the Weibo account Weibo Finance, which has more than 1.5 million followers, issued an instruction against posting any comments “that bad-mouth the economy”. The post appears to have since been deleted. Bloomberg reported that several other finance influencers had been told by Weibo to “avoid crossing red...
The Great China Unwind: Foreign Investors Pull $29B Out Of Chinese Equity Markets In 2023 despite the People’s Bank's efforts at making China an attractive opportunity for foreign investment (markets.businessinsider.com)
Nearly 90% of the foreign investment inflows into Chinese equity markets in 2023 has been withdrawn as sentiment crumbles and investors losing confidence in major Chinese institutions....
North Korea ramps up preparations for war with US (www.newsweek.com)