I was born in 1999 and am therefore completely qualified to talk about life in the 1900s. It was a lot of milk drinking and shitting in diapers.

I somehow doubt the owners of Anthropic are revolutionary socialists or even just pro-union.

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’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.

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.

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.

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).

dont know how web designer as a industry is doing now.

Bereft with AI slop following sweeping layoffs, so not well.

Modern states suspend the rights of individuals to lifer or liberty as a punishment for breaking a rule. Rules like “don’t rape people”.

They also do it for rules like “wrong skin color,” “wrong country of origin,” “wrong sexuality or gender identity,” “born into poverty and stole food,” “suffering from drug addiction,” or even “possessed a completely harmless drug like weed.” And the punishment is often the total depravation of rights and forced labor tantamount to slavery.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike from stealing loaves of bread.”

At least in theory, you can move to another nation or campaign for better treatment in essentially all modern states, exempting a small group of pariah states that still mostly don’t rape people as punishment.

This wasn’t a good argument in feudal society when peasants could leave and find another Lord or live on their own, and it’s not a good argument now. Choice is pointless when all your choices share the same constraints.

Not a single person I’ve seen has so much as suggested any mechanism whatsoever that would keep “self organizing collectives” from becoming fetit pools of bigotry and violence. We know that will happen because such groups arise in every nation already, but their impact is curbed specifically by the power of the state.

What mechanism prevents states from becoming fetid pools of bigotry and violence, and how has it been working so far? The power of the state does not curb this behavior, it curbs its rivals while engaging in that very behavior themselves by maintaining a monopoly on violence.

“Get rid of the government and we’ll all do the right thing” is libertarian bullshit to cover their glee at taking things away from others. If you aren’t a pro-rape libertarian, figure out how your proposed system would protect the vulnerable at least as well as modern states do.

Anarchy is not the lack of government, it’s horizontal governance. Hierarchy is not necessary for community policing or restorative justice. I’m not an American Libertarian which is an irrational ideology, as it wants capitalism without the state, which is impossible because capitalism is enforced by the state. Without the state protecting private property there can be no capitalism.

What stops a self-organizing collective from becoming racist, sexist, transohobic, and pro-rape?

What stops a state from becoming the same?

Modern states at least have the benefit of a basic theory that they cannot simply un-person people who live within their borders.

What are you talking about? Most modern states routinely strip people within and outside of their borders of rights, deport, murder, or enslave them.

Without the backing of the Israeli state they would not be so untouchable.

Anarchy is a great ideal, but there are some things governments do that we shouldn’t trust to self-organizing collectives.

What makes states more trustworthy than self-organizing collectives?

Nice, more instructions to send to revolutionaries in Myanmar.

Congrats on your soft, velvety pubes. Mine are coarse enough to use as a scrub brush.