MeowZedong @ MeowZedong @lemmygrad.ml

(Any/Comrade, Tankie for the unserious)

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2 yr. ago

I felt the same way until I started trying to correct errors in my professional field of research and they stubbornly refused to fix the errors despite a wealth of primary literature showing that the current scientific consensus contradicts what was written on Wikipedia.

As useful as it is for science, it has serious issues. I wish I could say I haven't found many similar errors or poor/outright contradictory sourcing over the last decade. They need to seriously examine their own biases and restructure their editing process. Wikipedia is one of my favorite human projects, but that doesn't mean we should ignore its flaws.

It looks like only a portion of the article is available on Prolewiki. Is the page still being edited or is the partial transcription on purpose? Shouldn't be a problem since the source is open access, but I'm curious since it cuts off in the middle of the introduction.

Living rent-free in your mind. Kudos on your dedication to your community, but your time may be better spent on a different hobby. Maybe try reading "tankie" theory?

China bad! Yellow Peril!

Look, the commentor knows how to Google, but not well.

Every media source is biased, some are just open about their biases while others like to hide theirs. Take the time to read with a critical eye instead of dismissing the source because some website told you they couldn't be trusted.

There are plenty of examples of mainstream, Western sources publishing absolute garbage, they just have better optics.

It's only stupid if you don't address the root causes of the problems that you are listing. If you don't do anything to lift the people out of their desperation and end the cause of that desperation, then of course they will sell it.

Your middle paragraph is the first part of what I'm talking about, do what is needed to help people lift themselves back up. Only a small part of that is helping with housing. The bigger problem is the second part, if you do nothing about the conditions that contributed to their downward spiral, then that first part will only be a temporary relief.

This second comment made it much more clear that you weren't just saying, "nah, fuck them," but covering all of the nuances of what needs to change just isn't a realistic expectation for text comments online. Frankly, I have a feeling you and I agree a lot on that first part of what is needed to help people, no clue about how you feel about the second part. I appreciate you coming back with a thoughtful answer instead of trolling, because I expect trolling.

I agree with your conclusion, my explanation was just a matter of addressing the context of the question, not covering how imperialism can operate under all systems, just the system in question.

I'd say that, generally, imperialist motivation is a matter of gaining power. In a capitalist system, capital is power, so they are seeking capital.

The way I explained it was meant to break it down into a modern context to help answer the question, not to address imperialism in the context of feudalism or other systems. End of the day, someone is exploiting someone else for their own gain. It was just a matter of the context of the question and I erred on the side of keeping the scope within capitalism.

Why do you think people are living this way? Do you think it's personal failure or maybe desperation? Where else do they have to go? If you tear down the buildings but don't address the root problem, do you think they will just stop existing or will they be forced to find a new spot to live? Were these places always this way? What would you like me to call them?

Please continue making assumptions about my personal life and deriding me for my choice of words rather than contributing something useful. I try to meet people where they are at, which means speaking to what they know. In this case, you seem to know the symptom, but not the cause.

I think you missed the point of the meme and then argued about a common, tangentially related topic, which made it sound like a strawman argument. Because you seem to be more genuinely confused as to my response than arguing in bad faith, I'll drop it. Those types of dismissive comments are meant for people arguing in bad faith.

The image is not attacking urban sprawl, it's attacking the very mindset that you displayed in your comment: "why do I have to choose between these two things? I hate living in apartments, so why would you force me to do this?"

The meme is showing two different approaches to dealing with a massive housing crisis where many people did not have access to housing. In the first image, we see how the USSR dealt with it: they needed more houses for people, so they forced families with homes to share with those without until new homes had been built. The government subsidized the construction and focused on building economical housing that functionally fixed the problem, but at the expense of luxury and some comfort. Would people have liked more space? Yes. Was it reasonable to accommodate that want before the needs of people without housing? No.

The lower image is showing how the US has handled a massive housing crisis...it hasn't. If someone can't manage to find and/or afford to house themselves, they choose to force those people to live on the streets. The thought process is more individual focused rather than community focused as in the top image. "Why should the people who have houses be inconvenienced by those who do not?" This assumes that those without have some type of moral or personal failure that justifies them having nowhere to live rather than the situation being a result of a system that does not prioritize human needs. It rests on the callous assumption that people do not deserve a place to live, but they instead must earn a place to live.

As to your argument, I don't think you offered a third option so much as a complaint about the state of the things. To be honest, I agree with your complaint. Assuming the context of your comment was focused on the US, there is plenty of space for people to live in larger homes and there isn't some false dichotomy where we only have the options of urban sprawl or dense apartments. The problem with how you approached the problem is that without further analysis of why a housing crisis exists and how we can eliminate the source of the problem, saying "just build more medium-density housing" equates to no more than a complaint.

You cannot fix a problem unless you address the root of the problem. Pushing the homeless out of sight does not fix the problem. Much of the problem is caused by our economic and political systems, but there is also the influence of the cultural aspect in how we think about the problem and how we think about people (individualistic vs collective focus). When you focus on yourself and how the problem affects you, it is often at the expense of other people. For the people this hurts and the people cognizant of the cultural influence, seeing individualist-focused complaints really rubs them the wrong way.

Nonono, it's unreasonable for taxes to go toward helping the poor. They live on the street and starve by their own choice. No one wants to pay for those wretched people!

Where are the police when you need them to quickly usher the inconvenient truth of my selfish lifestyle out of my sight?

The top is meant to represent the socialist solution to homelessness. These are socialist block apartments built to ensure that everyone had housing because homelessness was a huge problem. They were functional, but because they were built to functionally address a need quickly, they weren't large or luxurious. They were built to last and the rent levels were controlled at a low rate if the people didn't outright own the place themselves.

The bottom picture is the liberal solution to homelessness. Apartments suck, fuck the homeless, jack up the rent prices. The convenience of the few is prioritized over the needs of the many.

Funny how someone who is mentally 12 could put this together, but you couldn't be bothered.

Fucking tell me about it. The best part is how they try to justify how they are only focused on themselves by shit like calling apartments "inhumane." JFC, living in an apartment is not inhumane. Living on the street is inhumane.

Nobody is saying this stupid strawman you are arguing! If the kitchen is on fire and the trashcan is full, what do you do first? Do you take out the trash first because you can't live in such a wretched state?

Your vile passion is just thinly veiled narcissism. You can get your just desserts after we take care of major societal problems affecting the wider community. POOR YOU.

You make dense housing like these apartments because it is the most practical way to house everybody quickly. Once you take care of the immediate problem, homelessness, you can continue to expand and build nicer, bigger housing for everyone.

What's more important, that we have enough resources to house everyone, but there are still people forced to live on the streets or the fact that you don't like the inconvenience of living in an apartment because it's too small for you even in the short term? Guess that makes you one of the greedy few that can't see past their own problems to think of their community.

Fuck you doubly.

Imperialism is a result of capitalism...

When the resources of your home country are insufficient to feed the need for constant growth of profits, the resources of other people begin to look attractive. It's just a matter of convincing your people that it's worth it to go take those other people's resources. Its easier to convince your people to exploit other people if you have dehumanized the other people, so you revert to racism and other tactics of making the others look like barbarians. Then you go make colonies and suppress the native population while exploiting them for labor and resources.

Fascism is imperialism turned inward...

Either the flow of resources from your colonies are insufficient to feed your need for the continual growth of profits or you don't have the means to colonize far away lands, so the resources of countries closer to home begin looking very attractive. Its easier to suppress people at home first, so you turn that imperialist oppression on for a portion of your population at home, exploiting them more than other parts of your population. This doesn't satisfy your needs for more resources for long, so you continue to exploit your own people more and expand the definition of who gets to suffer the imperialist oppression.

When your population can no longer satisfy your needs for continued growth of profits, you turn that imperialism on countries nearby. This process is why people say fascism is imperialism turned inward.

More food for thought...

Some argue this process is why Hitler and the Third Reich are looked on as the ultimate evil. The Nazis took imperialist oppression, a tool that every European country had historically only used on people in far away lands where the culture and the way the people looked was strange to the people at home and they turned that imperialist oppression on the white populations of Europe. Europeans finally began to experience the horrors they had been inflicting on the rest of the world for centuries.

You were called a liberal because of your support of liberal governments, making it related to the topic. The holier-than-thou tone of your response highlights your lack of education on the relevant topics. Seeing as you think no one else provided any value to the discussion and you knowingly chose to contribute nothing of your own (is coat-tail time vampire an established term?) Let's try to salvage something out of this thread. Beyond the derisive tone of this first paragraph, everything beyond is provided as a measure toward engaging in a good-faith conversation.

Why were you called a liberal and why would a communist see this as a fault? To add some clarity before the quote, communists usually apply the term "liberal" to what people in the US refer to as "conservatives" and "liberals." They are lumped together due to their mutual support of liberalism and neoliberalism. The following quote is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Section 2.4. It does not fully answer the above question, but it will begin to give some context. Any additional clarification can be gained by reading further into Marxist theory.

In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation—essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties—and human emancipation. Marx’s reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings who are a threat to our liberty and security. Therefore, liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility—for Marx, the fact—that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. Accordingly, insisting on a regime of liberal rights encourages us to view each other in ways that undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of feudalism and religious prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the ideas of non-alienated labour and meaningful community.

The only empire is the US empire and the way they talk about themselves as an empire, they're proud of it too. Yell one-word feel-good slogans at them like "CHANGE", "FREEDOM", or "DEMOCRACY" and all the citizens shout and cheer because that's what they've always been told to do.

Try sitting during the pledge, the singing of the national anthem, or insulting the military. The US empire will have none of that. Truly the land of the free.

Yes, too much capitalist oppression has poisoned my general tolerance of apologia for this type of garbage.

Ever heard of the Yellow Peril?