u/FugueGame - originally fromr/GenZhou
WDYM chauvinistic? I’m saying it’s groundless and impotent. To the extent you want it to be grounded, you have to live there. To the extent you want it to be potent, yes then you become a chauvinist/universalist of sorts.
This ties to you begging the question of “support”. What does it mean for someone in New Zealand to “support” Gorbachev or someone living in France to “support” Xi? Do you send money to them? Do you fight in their armies? When writing about criticism, Mao was not supporting westerners who did not live in China leveling “good faith criticisms” at the party. It was addressed to the party internally as most of his writings were, about the way they dealt with their own institution and combating dogmatism.
I also think you are begging the question of “knowledge of material conditions etc.” What is knowledge if you do not live in a country/only “know” of the country through mediation through channels of media and second hand sources? Certainly that knowledge is incomparable to the least educated person who does live in that country but does not read, and it cannot be the basis for meaningful criticism.
It is a different thing entirely if you mean “learning from their failures and successes” as applied to your own country, but that is a completely different character of question entirely.
Certainly that knowledge is incomparable to the least educated person who does live in that country but does not read, and it cannot be the basis for meaningful criticism.
I think you are confusing different types of knowledge here. People who live on the ground will be aware of the conditions of their village, but not necessarily the broader context. If I wanted to learn about Chinese political history, it would make more sense to go to Kenneth Hammond (a well regarded Marxist historian on Chinese political history) than to interview a random illiterate peasant in China. The ground knowledge is helpful and should be collected and considered seriously but is not obviously applicable on the scale of nation building. What would they know about China/Vietnam relations, for example? The specifics of the economic trade situation China is in?
This ties to you begging the question of “support”.
Sure, I do mean “support” in the non-materialist way here. But having a correct line on foreign parties is important for multiple reasons:
Socialism doesn’t need to reinvented from scratch each time we do it. Previous attempts at building socialism should inform our efforts. The Chinese themselves had criticisms of the Soviets, and this played out in how they structured their government.
Discussion on these topics is often complex and requires further study of Marxism. Talking about AES is a good way to sharpen our understanding of Marxism.
Support of AES can itself be dogmatic. This was my point by mentioning Gorbachev. For example, it is not widely discussed here that China does not support independent unions - all unionization must go through the state ACFTU system. The validity of this can be debated (I think it makes sense for their conditions), but I think I would not expect to see such criticism in threads outside this one.
I think you are confusing different types of knowledge here. People who live on the ground will be aware of the conditions of their village, but not necessarily the broader context.
I think that a so-called “knowledge” of the broader context is impotent and irrelevant without an irreplaceable “empirical” knowledge of life and being in a particular culture and country. This is what Mao means when he discusses that you must make savage the body to civilize the mind. Steeping yourself in reality and taking reality as a premise will never be replaced by having decades of experience reading books and never stepping into reality. I will always value the expertise of any random Cuban or Chinese citizen regarding their own country over a so-called “western intellectual”. This is condescending racist garbage. This can be understood intuitively if you have respect for other peoples and cultures:
You, a person that does not live in this country, have such profound, unprecedented insight into this country’s problems? Email them! Email the CPC, email the PCC, let them know! You’re telling me that you, somehow, have discovered a crucial and profound insight that no intellectual, no policy-maker, no administrator, no ideologue, no writer, no businessman, no worker, in that country, has ever considered or contended with before? I’m sure they’d love to hear it and be “corrected” by you and set on the right course. I’m being sarcastic of course.
So respectfully, shove your “broader context” up your ass. Because the thing is, China has it’s own academics, it’s own thinkers, it’s own random internet “experts” on it’s own public fora. If you think you’ve come across this crazy world changing insight for them, you’d be racist to assume that they, steeped in that experience and reality that only they have access to have not already considered or come into conflict with it. And while you may not believe the random illiterate peasant is more useful for the people living there, not for some shmuck’s intellectual curiosity, guess what? China has it’s own historians, it’s own political theorists. I don’t give a fuck which books you read and what interests you.
You mention that socialism doesn’t need to be started from scratch. And you mention the criticisms of the Soviets. Doesn’t this help my point? The Soviet advisors and aligned powers were directly antagonistic to Mao’s faction and set China, through their “good faith input”, down a path that was in conflict with it’s own traditions and realities. You forget that the Soviet influenced model of highly centralized kolkhoz style farming in Russia was based in Russian traditions, the 100-men to a whip system, and that China had it’s own traditions of decentralized intensive farming that were temporarily obfuscated in favor of this foreign influence. So this actually helps my point by illustrating the historical inadequacy of “good faith” foreign advice in the face of fundamentally domestic realities that foreigners do not have access to.
We are talking about criticism. As materialists, we understood criticism is always materially premised and instantiated. And as such, your own personal ideological understanding and idiosyncrasies are besides the point. To fixate on the example of the Chinese, the Chinese have ground knowledge, this we agree on. But don’t you think they have their own Kenneth Hammond’s?
I take issue with this notion that there is this great knowledge and wealth of insights to be taken from the Western netizens, by the Chinese, for the concrete end of effectuating change in Chinese society, for the benefit of the Chinese people, that supersedes equivalents in Chinese society proper.
And I focus on the Chinese to give you berth. If I really wanted to expose just how ridiculous your position is, I’d fixate on North Korea, a country far less transparent to the West.
u/leninfan69 - originally fromr/GenZhou
Taking your stance to its logical conclusion would mean having to accept the criticism of a Falun Gong adherent in mainland China over a Marxist historian/political scientist with half a lifetime of studying its systems and problems
u/FugueGame - originally fromr/GenZhou
Do you think the Chinese people are incapable of determining what perspectives and criticisms are substantively valid on their own?
Absolutely ridiculous. I am saying you need to acknowledge they have an agency and vigorous domestic scene of domestic criticism at all stratas. It is none of your business to decide what they should or should not triage regarding criticism. The implication being the racist notion they need westerners to help them figure out Falun Gong is a death cult? They figured this out on their own lmao.
u/leninfan69 - originally fromr/GenZhou
Did I even lay out any criticisms or are you lashing out at someone because they pointed out how dumb your stance was
u/FugueGame - originally from r/GenZhouWDYM chauvinistic? I’m saying it’s groundless and impotent. To the extent you want it to be grounded, you have to live there. To the extent you want it to be potent, yes then you become a chauvinist/universalist of sorts.
This ties to you begging the question of “support”. What does it mean for someone in New Zealand to “support” Gorbachev or someone living in France to “support” Xi? Do you send money to them? Do you fight in their armies? When writing about criticism, Mao was not supporting westerners who did not live in China leveling “good faith criticisms” at the party. It was addressed to the party internally as most of his writings were, about the way they dealt with their own institution and combating dogmatism.
I also think you are begging the question of “knowledge of material conditions etc.” What is knowledge if you do not live in a country/only “know” of the country through mediation through channels of media and second hand sources? Certainly that knowledge is incomparable to the least educated person who does live in that country but does not read, and it cannot be the basis for meaningful criticism.
It is a different thing entirely if you mean “learning from their failures and successes” as applied to your own country, but that is a completely different character of question entirely.
u/InDirectX4000 - originally from r/GenZhouI think you are confusing different types of knowledge here. People who live on the ground will be aware of the conditions of their village, but not necessarily the broader context. If I wanted to learn about Chinese political history, it would make more sense to go to Kenneth Hammond (a well regarded Marxist historian on Chinese political history) than to interview a random illiterate peasant in China. The ground knowledge is helpful and should be collected and considered seriously but is not obviously applicable on the scale of nation building. What would they know about China/Vietnam relations, for example? The specifics of the economic trade situation China is in?
Sure, I do mean “support” in the non-materialist way here. But having a correct line on foreign parties is important for multiple reasons:
u/FugueGame - originally from r/GenZhouI think that a so-called “knowledge” of the broader context is impotent and irrelevant without an irreplaceable “empirical” knowledge of life and being in a particular culture and country. This is what Mao means when he discusses that you must make savage the body to civilize the mind. Steeping yourself in reality and taking reality as a premise will never be replaced by having decades of experience reading books and never stepping into reality. I will always value the expertise of any random Cuban or Chinese citizen regarding their own country over a so-called “western intellectual”. This is condescending racist garbage. This can be understood intuitively if you have respect for other peoples and cultures:
You, a person that does not live in this country, have such profound, unprecedented insight into this country’s problems? Email them! Email the CPC, email the PCC, let them know! You’re telling me that you, somehow, have discovered a crucial and profound insight that no intellectual, no policy-maker, no administrator, no ideologue, no writer, no businessman, no worker, in that country, has ever considered or contended with before? I’m sure they’d love to hear it and be “corrected” by you and set on the right course. I’m being sarcastic of course.
So respectfully, shove your “broader context” up your ass. Because the thing is, China has it’s own academics, it’s own thinkers, it’s own random internet “experts” on it’s own public fora. If you think you’ve come across this crazy world changing insight for them, you’d be racist to assume that they, steeped in that experience and reality that only they have access to have not already considered or come into conflict with it. And while you may not believe the random illiterate peasant is more useful for the people living there, not for some shmuck’s intellectual curiosity, guess what? China has it’s own historians, it’s own political theorists. I don’t give a fuck which books you read and what interests you.
You mention that socialism doesn’t need to be started from scratch. And you mention the criticisms of the Soviets. Doesn’t this help my point? The Soviet advisors and aligned powers were directly antagonistic to Mao’s faction and set China, through their “good faith input”, down a path that was in conflict with it’s own traditions and realities. You forget that the Soviet influenced model of highly centralized kolkhoz style farming in Russia was based in Russian traditions, the 100-men to a whip system, and that China had it’s own traditions of decentralized intensive farming that were temporarily obfuscated in favor of this foreign influence. So this actually helps my point by illustrating the historical inadequacy of “good faith” foreign advice in the face of fundamentally domestic realities that foreigners do not have access to.
We are talking about criticism. As materialists, we understood criticism is always materially premised and instantiated. And as such, your own personal ideological understanding and idiosyncrasies are besides the point. To fixate on the example of the Chinese, the Chinese have ground knowledge, this we agree on. But don’t you think they have their own Kenneth Hammond’s?
I take issue with this notion that there is this great knowledge and wealth of insights to be taken from the Western netizens, by the Chinese, for the concrete end of effectuating change in Chinese society, for the benefit of the Chinese people, that supersedes equivalents in Chinese society proper.
And I focus on the Chinese to give you berth. If I really wanted to expose just how ridiculous your position is, I’d fixate on North Korea, a country far less transparent to the West.
u/leninfan69 - originally from r/GenZhouTaking your stance to its logical conclusion would mean having to accept the criticism of a Falun Gong adherent in mainland China over a Marxist historian/political scientist with half a lifetime of studying its systems and problems
u/FugueGame - originally from r/GenZhouDo you think the Chinese people are incapable of determining what perspectives and criticisms are substantively valid on their own?
Absolutely ridiculous. I am saying you need to acknowledge they have an agency and vigorous domestic scene of domestic criticism at all stratas. It is none of your business to decide what they should or should not triage regarding criticism. The implication being the racist notion they need westerners to help them figure out Falun Gong is a death cult? They figured this out on their own lmao.
u/leninfan69 - originally from r/GenZhouDid I say that or was I merely telling you what your brain dead first post implied?
u/FugueGame - originally from r/GenZhouGo email the CPC! I’m sure they’d love to hear all your genius feedback.
u/leninfan69 - originally from r/GenZhouDid I even lay out any criticisms or are you lashing out at someone because they pointed out how dumb your stance was