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Cake day: March 23rd, 2022

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  • Thanks but i think my answer barely scratched the surface. I didn’t even mention any of the cultural policies. This is a huge topic and there are so many interesting things that one could talk about. Entire books have been written on these subjects and i still have so much to learn.



  • cfgaussiantoAsk LemmygradWhat was the Great Leap Forward?
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    7 hours ago

    The Cultural Revolution had many good aspects to it but also many problematic parts. The main critique nowadays in China boils down to it having been fundamentally ultra-left in its conception. I don’t know if they have this saying in China but here in the West we would call it “putting the cart before the horse”. In essence, ultra-left errors consist in attempting to leapfrog necessary stages of development and trying to force society into modes of production for which the economic basis is yet too premature.

    The collectivization and radical democratization initiatives that were attempted in the Cultural Revolution were a way of trying to establish the social and productive relations of full communism before the necessary productive forces for such an advanced stage existed. From the point of view of the CPC today this was dangerous mistake, because a communist government that is not careful and tries to advance faster than a society is ready for can cause significant damage to the society and lose the trust of the population.

    The intention was of course noble, and we can greatly benefit from studying some of the revolutionary ways in which workplaces, communities, villages, etc. were organized and run during the Cultural Revolution. They put into practice many of the sorts of things that we will one day want to see implemented under full communism. Sadly, they were too ahead of their time. China still had a long way to go developing the material basis for a prosperous society and if it had failed to do so the communist party may well have been overthrown.


  • cfgaussiantoAsk LemmygradWhat was the Great Leap Forward?
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    4 hours ago

    Why would that be a bad idea? China needed to industrialize as quickly as possible and for this it needed a lot of steel. It could not produce that steel itself in factories on a sufficient scale because of the lacking level of industrialization. It was sort of a chicken and egg problem. You needed steel to build the factories but you needed the factories to make the steel.

    Its only options therefore were either to import what they needed, which was not really possible without unacceptable concessions to foreign powers (by this point the relations with the Soviet Union had declined significantly, and of course the West wouldn’t help a communist state), or to use a decentralized/distributed approach employing cheap and technologically feasible artisanal production methods but scale things up by having millions of people do it simultaneously. In this way they utilized two of their greatest strengths: the unparalleled ability of a communist party for mobilizing the masses toward a common goal, and the large population size of China. They were able to multiply an otherwise small scale process up to the enormous quantities needed to fuel their nascent industries.

    Obviously the quality and consistency of the steel produced in this way was not up to that which you would get from industrial production, but it was good enough for the purpose. And what other choice did they have? This was a difficult period, but it was a necessary step on the road to industrialization without which China would not be where it is today.

    The end result being that something which took the first industrial powers centuries to do, China did in the span of a less than a decade.




  • Germany may not have much of a military industry compared to the US or Russia, but it still has enough to be one of the more significant weapons suppliers to the Zionist entity. And they’ve been the second largest supplier of Ukraine. The energy prices are hurting the competitiveness of the private sector, but when it comes to heavily subsidized industries that the state considers vital they’re not a real impediment.

    The biggest threat to the German arms industry is actually not energy prices but the US arms industry, because the US is always trying to push everyone to buy its shit instead. Even in Europe they are trying very hard to replace French and German military products. And the reason why countries decide to go with US military products is not necessarily because they are more competitive - their shit is overpriced too, and not that great - but rather political. The US bribes the hell out of politicians in other countries to get these contracts. And where bribes don’t work they use various types of threats. And Germany as a geopolitically neutered vassal state just can’t compete with that.


  • Yeah my mind was kinda blown when i saw a Huawei car for the first time. I still remember way back when Huawei was first coming out onto the smartphone market in Europe, must be over a decade ago now, i bought my then girlfriend (now wife) a Huawei phone, cause i thought it looked cool - they had a model in pink i thought she’d like - and it had pretty good specs at an affordable price. I could never have imagined how far they would come.




  • The idea of suing the West for reparations is interesting…or maybe i should say amusing, because i doubt it will go anywhere with how much control the West has over international courts. And best case scenario, say they win, the US can always just refuse to pay. I mean can you see Trump ever paying Ukraine or any other country reparations if an international court orders him to? Never in a million years. And frankly i think the same goes for any US administration. They’d rather just pull out of any organizations or treaties that they’ve signed that would try to make them do something like that.

    No, i think the simpler solution is for Ukraine to just default on their debt. In fact not even call it a default but simply declare that they just don’t recognize that debt - as far as the new government is concerned it never existed since it was taken on by an illegitimate regime. What’s the worst the West can do? Sanction them? The worst sanctions the West could impose would still be better than the only other alternative which is privatize and sell off literally everything and let the IMF run your country (which is what will happen if any kind of western controlled government remains in charge).


  • I probably shouldn’t be comparing the situation here in Europe to the USA, because even our worst suburbs here are probably not as bad as US ones, but i recently moved from a small suburb (what we would call here a village, but really it’s a residential suburb just outside of the city) to the city and it was the best choice i ever made.

    I immediately felt this immense liberation. I’m finally within walking distance of grocery shopping (the only shop i had nearby before was a bakery since those things are basically mandatory in this country) and pretty much everything else i need as far as services. Not needing a car anymore for every little errand feels great, and so does having good public transportation just around the corner (if only it wasn’t so expensive…). Of course there was some public transportation in the suburbs because this is still Europe after all, but it was not great; i’d have to take a not-always-so-reliable bus into the city itself to get any useful connections…

    Plus, i’m now surrounded by people who are predominantly of immigrant background and i have never felt more comfortable. It’s not the most well off neighborhood but i don’t feel unsafe in any way, even at night (i like to take walks around the block in the evening and it’s mostly pretty well lit). And my new neighbors are some of the nicest people i’ve ever met.

    Where i lived before it was full of petty bourgeois and upper middle class NIMBY type assholes who could never mind their own business and would constantly treat you like an outsider, you’d feel like they were always looking out their window about to call the cops on you as soon as you trimmed your grass or parked your car the wrong way.

    And the biggest surprise of all: even the rent and other costs of living like utilities (especially heating and water) are cheaper for me now, and that’s with basically the same size apartment as before. The infrastructure is just better, i even have faster internet, and there’s a ton of great and reasonably cheap takeout places just a ten to fifteen minute walk away. So yeah, fuuuck the suburbs.

    Only thing i’m missing is some nature, since there was a forest just at the end of the street i lived on before. But i know there’s a nice big park on the other side of the city i’ve been meaning to go to.

    Oh, and the parking is a pain the butt, but that’s a small price to pay. More incentive for walking.




  • There are thousands of videos of Ukrainians being kidnapped off the streets, and i’ve seen actual videos of fleeing Ukrainian soldiers being killed by their own side, and i’ve read numerous first hand accounts about soldiers who refused to carry out orders being shot, but still i have a difficult time believing the part about being tied to one another with rope. Honestly that sounds too much like the kind of nonsense that you hear in the West about the Soviets in WW2.

    Do you have a source for this? Because i try to be careful to not exaggerate when it comes to these things and not say things that i haven’t seen credible evidence for.



  • And now they are replicating this same kind of operation in Kursk… Throwing battalion after battalion of their best troops into a literal fire bag for purely political optics, and the Russians are once again happy to let them do it for as long as they want. How their own soldiers that they are so pointlessly sending to their deaths haven’t turned on them yet i still struggle to understand.




  • Not so sure about the purges. The Russian state is pretty soft and liberal these days. I think we will see a significant number of terrorist attacks initially before Russia decides to properly crack down. By that point though these Banderite terrorists will have discredited themselves with the majority of Ukrainians since their attacks will primarily harm other Ukrainians, so Russia won’t encounter much resistance from the population.


  • cfgaussiantoshitpostingBased
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    1 day ago

    Apps are pretty good at teaching you vocabulary and pronunciation but they suck at teaching grammar which is what you need to advance in a language beyond that basic level.