/lit/ - Literature

This will be remembered as the Mein Kampf of the 21st century

man, he's really setting himself to be the neo-Mao, isn't he?

>>11870394
But now the good guys will win.

>socialism with Chinese characteristics
Does anyone really believe that

>>11870496
It isnt completely baseless. They have many big state-owned companies.

>>11870496
I mean, they've definitely made their own use of Marxism. Still, it is weird to see them putting up portraits of Marx everywhere and completely dismissing Chinese thinkers of the past.
>>11870501
Pretty sure the people in the state also own "private" companies outside of China's direct sphere of influence. And Xi has slowly been purging everyone that isn't in his circle of loyalists.

>>11870496
Isn't one of the key tenants of orthodox Marxism that national particularities are just false consciousness ?

>>11870537
I hope they will redact out this nonsense from Marx, luckily China seem to have enough censorship capabilities.

>>11870537
I am sure there's many ways to put a spin on it. In any case, the Chinese are supremely nationalistic. Kind of insanely so.

>>11870384
Is there a reason for him to say that? Is he sincere or just cozying up in this way for his own benefit?

>>11870537
imagine spending your whole life writing and propagating your ideas only to be completely misunderstood by morons.

>>11870496
It's just Lenin's NEP in different clothing.

>>11870583
>implying the chinese are moronical and misunderstanding
I think you're misunderstanding the Central Committee. They're only taking what they want and what they need.

Interesting thread, OP.
I truly wonder what will come out of pic related.
Chinese cyberpunk?

>>11870384

A cartoon bear unironically kills the Xi

>>11870993
Something truly great. Westerners cry that it is muh surveillance or that AI is racist, whatever, AI managed social order is a huge step forward and other countries wont be able to compete.

>>11871023
>Westerners cry that it is muh surveillance
I mean, they aren't wrong? Do you really want to live under a system where anyone can fucking go and buy the data on you? Should your angry-ex be able to go and spend money to buy enough data about you to ruin your fucking life?
Because that's the problem here. It's not that this system is inherently bad or whatever. But let's face it, most chinks are fucking insufferable, soulless creatures without a moral bone in their body. And given that most are poor, and will continue to be poor for a long time, they'll abuse the fuck out of something like this if it pays off.

>>11870537
No, this >>11870583.

>>11870600
He was implying the guy who wrote that post was a moron, duh.

>>11871029
>I mean, they aren't wrong? Do you really want to live under a system where anyone can fucking go and buy the data on you?
No, but I won't mind this if it will generally improve the society by punishing bad people and elevating good.
> ruin your fucking life?
How exactly?
> most chinks are fucking insufferable, soulless creatures
That's just meaningless bunch of words.

>>11871029
>Should your angry-ex be able to go and spend money to buy enough data about you to ruin your fucking life?
How would this work exactly?

>No, but I won't mind this if it will generally improve the society by punishing bad people and elevating good.
>I want the CCP to decide who is good and bad for me
Really, now? You want a government that openly harvests organs from peaceful protesters and uses its prisoners for slave labor until the fucking skin of their fingers starts to peel to decide who is good and who is bad and more or less cancel them out of the polis?
Holy shit, the amount of delusion.
>How exactly?
By releasing information you do not want others to know? Like where you go at all times? Who you associate with at every fucking moment? What you buy and for what purpose and who you're buying it for? What movies you're watching? What books you're reading?
Wow, you read some reactionary literature? -10 points for you, anon. Guess you're not going to have access to a car anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3LZP_ZZWjY
Here. This just scratches the surface, but I'm sure it will give you a test of what is already implemented in many provinces, let alone what this could grow into in the near future.
>That's just meaningless bunch of words.
Oh, yeah, definitely. It's not like we have have a two thousand year history to judge just what the attitude of officials towards people is in China and what the predominant attitude towards life is there. It's not like there are tons of videos of drivers brutally murdering people they ran over because they didn't want to pay insurance. Or people having their posts deleted on social media because they were talking about earthquakes or how a relative died due to something the state was responsible for. Nah, this is all a myth, of course. Pure anti-Chinese propaganda.

>>11871088
It already happens. The CCP collects data on you and all of that is stored. However, not only is it not stored very well, but many people that work with it don't exactly have qualms about selling it to others.

>>11871102
i'll play devils advocate: a social credit score would actually help people determine whether or not your ex is just a lying harpy. if social credit really does rate all this private information there's no way that finding it out or exposing it publicly because it would be factored into your score. your ex says nasty stuff and your credit is high, you're in the clear. she talks shit and your score is low, it's low for a reason

>>11871102
So how does anyone advance? If you piss off some rich person isn't your life basically over? If there are no defences against this shit how can you move up? Wouldn't you inevitably antagonise someone higher than you?

>>11871135
if you piss off a rich person your life is basically over under capitalism, too

>>11871159
Not the same thing. In red china if you piss off the government anything can happen to you.

>>11870496
100% socialist

>>11870496
It’s true, the workers not owning the means of production is a cornerstone of the Chinese national character.

>>11871120
Yet, not everything works in that way. There are many interpersonal factors that will not enter in their social score. At least for now, since I doubt they can can ascertain why you do certain things (like if you lie to your father about being busy and going over to fuck your girlfriend instead, or something).
>>11871135
Well, yes, it is. If you're poor, you'll probably be sent to a prison where you'll work as a laborer creating cheap goods from dawn to dusk. And if you're a religious person, an insurrectionist, or just in the wrong party clique, you'll probably go straight to the organ harvesting, buddy.
Fun fact, but for YEARS all the stuff about organ harvesting was said to be a conspiracy spawned by the Chinese diaspora that had a bone to pick with the CCP and wanted to bring China back to the religious dark ages. And what do you know, it was fucking true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China
Granted, there's no way to know who exactly sanctioned this, and whether or not they were purged as a result. But the idea that the higher-ups in the CCP were just totally unaware sounds oddly similar to the Nazi apologists saying that the Holocaust was just one big secret and they're, like, totally innocent, man. Dindu nuffin.

>>11871173
of course. the government is the ccp and the ccp is the manifest will of the chinese people. if you turn against your own nation how can you expect anything less than total annihilation?

Marx is rolling in his grave.

"What a beautiful model of barracks communism! Here you have it all: communal eating, communal sleeping, assessors and offices regulating education, production, consumption, in a word, all social activity, and to crown all, Our Committee, anonymous and unknown to anyone, as the supreme dictator. This indeed is the purest anti-authoritarianism..."

>>11870993
>I'll actually get to see 1984 become a reality in my lifetime
based af

>>11871235
good post

>>11871233
Shit like this makes me think of Tiananmen. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

The Chinese people may yet rule the world, but eventually they'll have to reckon with their odious oppressors.

the true pleb filter

>>11870537
marxism is an empty ideology, you have to put something in there when you try to actually implement it

>>11871278
>The Chinese people may yet rule the world, but eventually they'll have to reckon with their odious oppressors.
It's very sad. Even though most of the Chinese are shit people (and I don't say that with hostility, I'm also from an ex-Soviet country, so it's about the same here), there's still a lot of good ones that are probably risking their lives just to ensure the survival of historical landmarks and using their position to protect people that aren't fans of the party line.
I swear, there's nothing quite as triggering as reading about the Cultural Revolution when you're from /his/ or even /lit/. People meme a lot about Alexandria and Constantinople, but it's almost nothing compared to the untold amounts of temples, sculptures, paintings and texts - not to mention living masters of different traditions - that were destroyed under Mao in a few short years.

>>11870583
marx wrote about removing the power from markets and putting it somewhere else, he wrote nothing about how to actually organize that power, people filled the gaps however they see fit

>>11871188
Underrated.

>>11871192
the workers "owning" the means of production means nothing without a clear definition of "owning", by some definitions the party may be working with "their" means of production to provide the most beneficial outcome for them

>>11871313
That's just switching the name from bourgeoisie to government official. It's the same thing. Private ownership with the workers having no control.

>>11871313
How is it not clear? What exactly do you think a coop is?

>>11871323
a coop is a bunch of people piling up resources under capitalism and suffering the consequences if their enterprise goes to shit

>>11871341
How would it be different if it went to shit in a socialist system instead?

>>11871289
I tried but it was dull. Mostly just direct democracy: 101.

>>11871322
that's why communism is so uninteresting, ok, no markets and no private ownership, but how are you going to organize actual political power and structure society

revolutionary vanguard is just the communists realizing the need for an aristocracy but justifying it with different memes

>>11871038
What was moronic about the post

>>11870496
No. It's just state capitalism with one party authoritarian rule, i.e. Fascism - it kinda works if you don't mind having no rights.

>>11871341
>>11871323
It's coUp. Pronounced "Coo".

>>11871352
that depends what you mean by socialism, if you have a society where coop A triumphs and coop B goes to shit, and people from coop A get to laugh at the losers from coop B and their misery, i'm not sure about calling that socialism

if coop A is forced to take care of the people from coop B and shield them from their failure, then it would be different in that they wouldn't suffer the consequences of their failure and responsibility gets socially dissolved to the point that nobody has to care about anything

>>11871370
we are referring to cooperatives, businesses where the workers are also the owners, not about seizing power by force

>>11871020
Jack Black: Master wooden-shoe chucker.

>>11871370
nice bait

>>11871356
It's just pure democracy. Politically and economically.

Revolutionary Vanguard is Lenin. Not Marx.

>>11871382
so it's a negative ideology, it has no content and it has to be filled as soon as it meets the real world

>>11871402
Marx wrote some basic guidelines. The rest is on us.

>>11870993
I'd like to see a similar system monitoring government officials desu

>>11871374
what is the weishaupt's plateau?
something from statistics?

>>11870537
False consciousness is when poor people blame irrelevant things (often they've told to do this by the capitalists) for their situation like immigrants or one particular issue rather than the system. No consciousness is being apolitical. Trade Union consciousness is when you don't understand socialism but you know the capitalist is to blame in an instinctive way and fight for reform. Class consciousness is when you are fully aware of class conflict between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Obviously there's always going to be different people in different places with different ways of doing things, Marx never thought there wouldn't be.

ITT: A bunch of pro-Chinese bugmen

>>11870993
This is truly some "mark of the beast" bullshit, we never should have laughed at the fundies

no one who posts here has a good social credit score

>>11870384

It's very, very dry. I read the opening speech where he takes power and that's it so far. It's still more than the rest of you have done, though.

Paging through the thing, one can pick up on a few things. Xi has read extensively, and he makes a point of name-dropping western works of political literature like Plato, Federalist Papers, etc, to shore up his (earned) /lit/-cred. I wish he would have said anything at-all about the Chinese space program, but I don't see anything in the index.

I think there's a Chinese tradition (heh) of collecting speeches and excerpts together in a single work, and I think that's the cultural tradition that Xi and his editors are drawing upon, for the legitimacy of the work. Even the Little Red Book is structured similarly, and I think there's one or two Chinese political classics which have the same narrative form.

>>11873066
this is true

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/30/mind-reading-tech-used-monitor-chinese-workers-emotions/
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/china-facial-recognition-technology-works-in-one-second-2018-3
https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/telepathic-computer-reads-your-mind-to-see-what-you-see
China is sentient

>>11870583
He made good diagnosis but he was so caught up in the nineteenth century idealism that ended up fucking the world several times over.

trump thinks about building a big wall

xi is building the true panopticon

>>11873249

All of them should be murdered, shot dead outright. All ~20 million of them.

>>11873249
Utterly horrifying. Everyone who reads 1984 becomes a libertarian for at least a week. Learning about China rekindles those feelings.

>>11873278
i can't stop thinking about fucking social credit tho. it's like Yelp for human beings. you're the state, you rate everyone. all of them. some get a pass, some do not. those who do not get a pass will just be graded out of the system. permanent report-carding for an entire civilization, with the numbers tied directly to your finances.

it's going to work. i don't want it to work but i think it's going to work. i don't even know what other stuff xi will accomplish but i can imagine this being his lasting contribution, the total programming of the chinese nation.

i guess people can opt to leave, maybe they will. i am darkly fascinated with this thing. i would prefer that it not work. i think it will work tho.

>>11873357
and in my hopelessly damaged imagination it just leads right into things like the voight-kampff empathy test. the crazier that politics get in the west the more i see this kind of thing working. we can't do the same thing over here, people would go bananas. but the idea of technologizing a nation and morally wiring it like this to purity signals is amazing to me, it's like a PKD or ballard novel in real life.

>>11873357
This is the future. This is what technology has brought.

>>11873405
when i used to play fallout 2 i actually used to love becoming a member of Vault City and joining the team, you know, Vault City Prevails. i'm not a filthy outlander anymore, i'm not a ghoul! i'm a member of this awesome city-state. Vault City Prevails!

now it's here in real life.

>>11873430
and, in case you're wondering, i would IRL have perma-ghoul status owing to my abysmal social credit score. i would be scum.

but imagine how this is going to work tho. you know how people wig out and become consumed with fantasy football? that would be your daily life. incredible.

i i mean i guess if you really decided you wanted to work on it, it would be like going to the gym, maybe...it sucks, but look at the benefits to your life!

i wonder what the chinese are going to say about this. i really do. i could give two shits about brett kavanaugh or w/ev the fuck else. social credit is more interesting, but in a genuinely scary way.

>>11870537
If 'communist countries' stuck to ideology the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts would have never happened

>>11873455
read about the wrongthink detecting cuckhelmets

>>11873472
source? link? i have time for this

>>11873480
>>11873094

>>11873488
derp. ty anon

>>11873357

I doubt it. The infrastructure for it doesn't exist in enough areas of China for it be truly ubiquitous. It's also likely to result in massive inefficiencies once sycophants inevitably figure out how to game the system, filling the bureaucracy with corrupt kleptocrats. This is not to say China isn't likely to succeed with many of its other dystopian schemes like universal facial recognition though.

Oh please.
I was in China last month and the fuckers don't even have an integrated
police system. The neighborhood police can't inform the national police about anything and vice-versa.
Besides, the first sign of economic slowdown will cause civil unrest which will destroy the government.

>>11873595
>The infrastructure for it doesn't exist in enough areas of China for it be truly ubiquitous. It's also likely to result in massive inefficiencies once sycophants inevitably figure out how to game the system, filling the bureaucracy with corrupt kleptocrats

i hope so. and this is a good point also, maybe it will be like this.

i mean part of me can really imagine the appeal of this, which is why i am fucked up by it. everybody would love to have this if you were leading your country like it were some video game. why not min-max your whole citizenship? or even when i look at my own busted and hopeless life like a self-loathing existential wonk, i think, yes, exactly, who needs people like me? and like a whole kafkaesque fairytale plays out in my mind, the cockroach and the whole family being More Wholesome together at the end. all this.

i can almost imagine a benevolent version of this, even, like starfleet. or my mind just goes - yes, of course! all credit really is social credit! all glory to the hive!

but i'm certain life is hard over there even for people who have the good score also. because it will just never be good enough...and then you can imagine all kinds of stuff that will happen when officials begin abusing this power, and so on.

god. xi jinping really is That Guy at the moment but man, this stuff messes with me on some level. probably because i still harbor all kinds of deep-seated inner fantasies about governing a totalitarian state like it was a video game.
>but that is what SMAC is for i guess

>This is not to say China isn't likely to succeed with many of its other dystopian schemes like universal facial recognition though.

yeah. they're going to try all that stuff out. i read somewhere about facial recognition becoming the universal password system for a lot of things - after all, you can't change your face
>outside of M:I films

>>11871362
china is nat-bol

>Falling for chinese lies

>One of the most secretive governments in the world
>Suddenly their leader """writes""" a book
>people still fall for chinese lies

>>11873817
Socialism in 20 years ironically

>>11870384
>>"I've bought copies of this book for my colleagues as well. I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics." —Mark Zuckerberg, Founder & CEO, Facebook
What the fuck is Mark's deal? Why does he shill for China so hard?

>>11870993
>>11873053
>>11873249
>>11873357

That whole thing is fucked in every single way. Why the fuck do the Chinese stand for it?

>>11873852
He wants Facebook unblocked ya dip

>>11873852
>Man who runs just about the world's largest collection of information on people wants access to a place that has a gigantic percentage of the world's people.
Who could've guessed

>>11873852
To impress his chink wife and those sweet sweet chink bux

>>11873852
pre-emptive tl;dr: China has 1 billion consumers who are completely untapped by Western (That is, Anglo-Jewish) corporations. That's a BIG fucking market. Zuckerberg and Google want in. Google is currently engaging in frog-in-the-pot censorship to make non-Chinese users conditioned to the censorship that the CCP demands all corporations acting within China engage in.

Societies come up with games and rituals in order to help make sense of the world. We use a spelling bee to determine who is the best speller; we use courtship rituals to show who is a proper mate. These work good as long as everyone plays the game. But, when someone realizes a game can be gamed, this person is a "Try-Hard". The Try-Hard is the person who bribes the spelling bee judge or commits rape. The Try-Hard understands that the game is just a game and is truly meaningless, the reward is what's important.

China looks out at Western civilization and sees these lofty ideals it engages in and sees that the vast majority of them are either stupid ("Genes don't exist, everyone is a blank-slate meat-mecha piloted by a soul") or outright deleterious to the continuation of human life ("Diversity is a strength"). China wants to get ahead, so China acts as a Try-Hard. China levies massive tariffs while Westerns won't; China ignores """"""""""intellectual property laws"""""""""" because it knows the West won't do anything to stop it; China engages in censorship because it knows the West can't do anything to stop it; China acts as a functioning civilization because it knows the only way the West can stop it is by acting as a functioning civilization, which is heretical under the principles of Non-theistic Progressive-Christianity. The West looks towards the next election, China looks towards the next generation.

There's money to be made in China, and Zuckerberg is too dumb to see that the money isn't important and the Chinese are Try-Hards who will lead Kikes like him along by their noses for their own benefit. Working with China is a deal with the devil, once they let you in you can't keep them out. Anyone who thinks the CCP will just fucking willingly let Google beat Baidu is a moron.

>>11874293
You're on point, I think, especially with the
>Working with China is a deal with the devil, once they let you in you can't keep them out. Anyone who thinks the CCP will just fucking willingly let Google beat Baidu is a moron.

The Chinese will never let that happen

>>11871362
China is not fascist.

>>11874456
It's not that they won't let it happen, it's that you can literally get nothing out of it. Many US companies have run into this problem. Because China only allows Chinese-Run subsidiaries with Chinese Communist Party Parties (Cells) at all levels of the subsidiary, you're not actually in control of """""""""""""""""your""""""""""""""" company if you do business inside China. Rather, you're giving the CCP all of the information you have and a line directly into the veins of your corporation (and everything in contact with it) under the condition of occasionally getting some revenue in return (You're not actually entitled to receive revenue, of course). If you pull out, the subsidiary strips the logos off and continues to operate as if nothing had changed.

This is a problem with US manufacturers who have moved to China, then tried to move to SEA or Mexico to lower costs further, only to find the Chinese keep producing """"""""""""their"""""""""" stuff and selling it. When they go to the government to try and get them to do something, the government either outright tells them to fuck off, or just lies.

And that's as a manufacturer, where what's being stolen are your designs (the products of which are being sold to your customers by the Chinese instead of you because the CCP can afford to plummet the price to drive you out of business, of course). Imagine doing that as fucking Google, which essentially owns an internet monopoly. Imagine the CCP with full access to all of the goodies Google looted from Boston Dynamics.

>>11874484
Correct, it's National Socialist.

>>11870394
This but unironically

>>11870583
>World superpower by 2020

>>11873894
A 4000 year history of blind obedience to authority.

>>11874506
>Imagine the CCP with full access to all of the goodies Google looted from Boston Dynamics.

Google wouldn't be stupid enough to bring over that aspect of their business to China, right? Right?

>>11874522
Google is slowly altering what they're famous for (their search engine) to conform to CCP censorship norms in the hopes of one world under Google, so you tell me.

The big tl;dr of this is that Non-Theistic Progressive-Christianity is rooted into a distaste for "back-door" dealings and in-group preferences deriving from anger over corruption and skullduggery by the Catholic church. This open society works great as long as everyone is playing along. The Chinese, however, have been practicing in-group preferences at a societal level since before Plato was writing things down. This traps Westerners in a loop: In order to beat the Chinese who are engaging in in-group preferences, Westerners have to engage in in-group preferences, but Westerners can't engage in in-group preferences because that's sinful/racist/sexist/misogynistic/transphobic/etc.

>>11873894
Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment.

>>11874536
I wonder when the West will wake up. Hopefully things change, I'd hate to see the West crumble.

>>11870384
This man, in my country he is nothing.

>>11874583
this is the GOAT yang quote for me.

>>11874506
>Correct, it's National Socialist.
Imagine being this stupid

>>11875494
>>>11874506
>>Correct, it's National Socialist.
>Imagine being this stupid
How is he wrong?

>>11875615
It is state capitalism, this is just NEP on steroids

>>11875615

>>11875615
>>11875630

>>11873852
The Chinese hackers got into him.
>>11873680
The thing is, social credit isn't a bad idea so long as there's enough flexibility to decide how the points should be distributed.
Just an example, but imagine a guy from work keeps asking him you out and you say no. If your profile that you broadcast to the world said that you're friendly, that might come across of as harsh - even unsocial enough to take away a point. But should you seriously lose a point if you state from the get-go that you're unfriendly? Maybe there could be some other sort of overall penalty, but the idea of disregarding different people's values, personality quirks, let alone mental conditions seems like a recipe for disaster.
This reason alone should give you cause for worry. "No parental care." Uhm, so what if your parents are dicks? You have to take care of them even if they were abusive your whole childhood and left you scarred? Not to mention just how this can be abused by people to get to you. It's just so stupid.
Not to mention the
>don't comment online
>don't protest
Wonderful, so you're just supposed to shut up and do as they say. I don't understand how they don't see that this could lead to revolts. Like, people protest in the US and fucking nothing happens. How would this be different in China? Why make it such a big deal to stop protests when THEY ARE TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE? It essentially lets you to turn a valve and release some social pressure. It's almost like this is designed by someone that wants to unleash a dystopian nightmare. HMMMMMMM, WHO IS IT THAT WE KNOW LIVES IN CHINA...

>>11870384
Why don't we just bomb this embarrassment of a country?
I mean they already destroyed their own culture and sucked the soul out of their own people so what else is there to lose

>>11876048
We would lose, and the EU would side with them against us at this point.

If you think China is weak, you're completely blind.

>>11870993
this is genuinely fucking terrifying

>>11873357
jesus h christ
and these people practically own canada as well
we're all fucking fucked

>>11874583
This but unironically
>>11870993
>>11873249
>>11873357
How is this any different than what Silicon Valley wants to do?

>>11871626
Doesn’t mean anything.

>>11873894
Improved living standards are hell of a drug.

>>11870496
Xi probably does, Mao talked about how in a ML state you eventually get these autistic economy guys who just want to maximize central profits. Xi probably really thinks this is still communist.

>>11870583
If people like my writing I won't have to.

>>11876338
it's coming/here already, just hasn't seeped into IRL too noticeably in most cases yet. no one cared except when drumpf did it, it's inconceivable or acceptable to them their side could be manipulating them too. i think people are going to snap.

>>11873852

>>11875888
>The thing is, social credit isn't a bad idea so long as there's enough flexibility to decide how the points should be distributed.

>Social credit isn't a bad idea if it is not social credit

Once the metric and how it is measured is set, people will optimize for it (re: instagram clout, etc.) and you will have no say in it, because you can be reduced to a number and that requires no thinking and emoting effort, just a binary way of acting (swipe right, swipe left).

>>11876384
This is honestly incredibly pathetic. What a fucking spineless degenerate. Imagine lowering yourself to such a degree only in chase of profit. Loser.

>>11870583
>When you're not a real socialist because some fat NEET on the other side of the world understands Chinese material conditions better than you

>>11876400
So the tryhards that >>11874293 talked about. I guess the question then isn't "how do you stop tryhards" but "how do you setup a system so that the most good comes from tryhards". Google and Friends attempts at this produce human sewage, and I doubt China's idea will do much better.

>>11876384
Kek, why the hell did he think this was a good idea?

>>11873249
>>11870993
>listening to lying western propaganda
Reminder that China has 1 million people less in prison than the US and this "social credit" "system" is literally just a way to work out who's entitled to what social products.

>>11873249
>>11873354
>>11873894
You people are fucking stupid, you do know the US already has all this shit right? You think the government doesn't have a legal record of your taxes and previous employment?

All these LVT autism has to go, labour doesn't have any I internal value.
But I am really worrying about all this Marx stuff backfiring badly in China.

>>11876527
The LVT has been proven. Its the SVT that is autism, its literally the LVT but with value taken out to hide the fact workers are being exploited.

>>11876631
> The LVT has been proven
How so?

>>11876641
Because you need it to explain what happens when supply and demand are in equilibrium. SVT has no answer for this.

>>11876527
>>11876631
>>11876651
The LTV is false because it tries to derive a price with only the value of rent and labor determined objectively. Interest necessitates the price and vice versa.

Meanwhile a system which figures the price of money (interest) to rely on the supply and demand of it as composed in other working firm’s budgets, would be able to reliably determine the price of a good.

The labor theory of value is shortsighted and misguided, then.

>>11871382
>Revolutionary Vanguard is Lenin. Not Marx
No. The vanguard party was an established idea within marxism, shared by multiple social democrats of the time including Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin was an orthodox marxist and took most of his ideas from Marx.

Written about in The Communist Manifesto by Marx, The Class Struggle by Kautsky, and What Does the Spartacus League Want? by Luxemburg. It was in no way an idea that Lenin came up with or was alone in supporting in the international socialist community of his time.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2PEdfIRh8

>>11876670
It doesn't try to derive a price, value =! price, its only correlated with it. Use and exchange value determine price.

>Reminder that China has 1 million people less in prison than the US and this "social credit" "system" is literally just a way to work out who's entitled to what social products.
You're delusional if you think you are ever going to get accurate numbers on anything China. They hid the fact that they had a fucking organ harvesting facility - yet you think you'd know the EXACT number of prisoners they have? You think the numbers the USSR put out were ever accurate?
Let me give you another example. China, supposedly, has some of the highest IQs. But, oh wait... oh, no, no, no... could it be that they're making an average only out of certain areas in the country that have the smartest people? Nah, I'm sure the CCP would never do that. They're just so, so honest.

>>11870993
>chinese implement good boy points nationwide

based

>>11876713
Are you that one autistic boomer that goes in all the threads talking about sneaky Asians?

Jesus Christ you sound exactly like you escaped a nursing home and hopped on 4chan.

>>11876384
Hahahahahaha, what the actual fuck.

>>11871029
>Do you really want to live under a system where anyone can fucking go and buy the data on you? Should your angry-ex be able to go and spend money to buy enough data about you to ruin your fucking life?
are you a closeted pedophile or something?

there is literally no data on me that could ruin my life because i'm a good person. i have no secrets.

maybe try being good unironically, degenerate.

>>11876734
>can't supply a decent counter-argument
>must be that I'm a MAGA boomer
Nice try, sweetie.
Also, I don't dislike Asians. I don't even truly dislike the CCP. But you must know almost nothing about China or the CCP if you think that the figures you get are ever accurate.

>>11876812
So you are that guy
Thanks for confirming
I'll let the orderlies know you're safe

>>11876822
Heh. Funny how you don't actually have anything to say except 'Wow, you're biased!'
Not like you're a CCP plant or anything trying to save face. Either put down some sources proving me wrong or wash your fucking neck, laddie.

So, has anyone actually read it?

t.not OP

>>11876837
Why would the PRC need to save face? Because some delusional old man was racist about Chinese on the internet?

>>11876755
Imagine unironically having the position of “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” in 2018

>>11876866
>racist about the Chinese
>calling out the fact that the CCP abuses its own citizens
>that it abducts them and harvests their organs
>that it puts prisoners into work camps that destroy them
>that it threatens people that talk on social media about disasters caused by their own incompetence and deletes those same posts
Yeah, you're right, senpai. I'm just a fucking racist boomer. MAGA MAGA USA!!! Am I right?
Don't think you're fooling anyone with your rhetoric. Best case scenario, you'r trolling. But I have no doubt you could very well be a paid shill. The CCP is smarter than any other current government and has extended its tentacles everywhere. That it would be defending its cause on a popular board such as 4chan is more than likely.
Don't you feel a little bit guilty defending a criminal regime?

>>11876651
I never claimed that SVT is true tho. I am not an economist, neither is anyone in this thread, but I just feel that it is not just labour. But you can't make your worldview on feelings, there should be facts showing that LVT is true, for example I would expect to see lots of enterprises owned by workers, as noone would steal their "value" so these enterprises would have an advantage, while there is just one relatively big company which is somewhat like this.

>>11876755
>degenerate
If the words "i'm a good person" didnt set my disdain for you off already, that word most definitely did

>>11874506
This is all very interesting anon. Is there a book you recommend where I can read about it?

>>11876361
Isn't it, though? I find the possibility that the CCP is actually still Communist fascinating. I mean, in the LONG RUN, doesn't it make PERFECT SENSE what the CCP has been doing for half a century? If one takes a look at what China was before the CCP took power and what it is now, one is forced by the facts to think that maybe, just maybe, they aren't wrong. It's not impossible that they made a deal with the devil (international capitalism) in order to fuck him in the ass at the end of the day.

>>11876940
>there should be facts showing that LVT is true, for example I would expect to see lots of enterprises owned by workers
??? One thing has literally nothing to do with the other. All enterprises could be successfully owned by workers and that wouldn't prove that the LVT is true. I'm not sure what would count as "proof" that the LVT is true; I guess some correct predictions of price derived from "socially necessary labor" (I have no idea how one would go about that)? I hope some anon more knowledgeable about Marxism could answer this question because it really interests me (I'm sympathetic to the LVT because intuitively it seems to me more realistic than the SVT, but at the same time I can't shake the feeling that the LVT is much more metaphysical than the SVT, and I have no idea about empirical studies made within a LVT framework).

>>11876483
>>11876384
He's really sucking China's dick, even married that ugly chinese chick just to appease them. Based chinks will never let him in.

>>11877837
>??? One thing has literally nothing to do with the other. All enterprises could be successfully owned by workers and that wouldn't prove that the LVT is true
To clarify my point: as far as I understand it, the LVT is a theory about the nature of (economic) value, and that has intrinsically nothing to do with the success or failure of an enterprise within a given economic system. The problem I have with the LVT is that the term "value" within Marxist economics has always struck me as kind of metaphysical. I mean, if you talk about prices, I understand what you mean because I buy stuff all the time. But if you say that value is *not* the same thing as price, you have to either: 1) show me where that value is (and I hope is not in some Platonic realm) or 2) show me the relation between value and the actual prices I can see in the market with empirical studies. Do any of the Marxist anons have some book recommendations about what I'm talking about?

Governance of China is such a cool title. I'll call my next poetry book that way

>>11873357
>it's going to work.
In the most basic sense of the word, it will. It will function as devised. Speaking about its consequences for the psyche of the individual human (and I know that chinks aren't human, but let's now assume that they are) and for the society as a whole, however, these would be utterly fascinating and totally disastrous. They'll make everything China did with itself in the XX century, and all the little shit like the Holocaust, look pale and innocent in comparison.

>>11877899
>I'll call my next poetry book that way
It better come with Chinese characteristics.

>>11871261
It's 2018 anon you already missed 1984.

>>11877883
>Do any of the Marxist anons have some book recommendations about what I'm talking about?
Sorry, whish I could help you. I don't know any books that specifically deal with this question you raise.

>>11871374
How stupid would someone have to be to believe that graph

>>11876907
Grandpa, you need to go back

>>11878115
Probably someone stupid enough to believe IQ is a legitimate measure of intelligence, like Drumpf.

>>11877797
Yes!
And after it's done, they will make the Star Wars sequel trilogy not-canon!

>>11877952
>Fuck you with Chinese characteristics.
I dig it desu

>>11871023
>We finally set up this system to encourage good behavior!
>Okay, "good" defined by who?

We already have a system of ethics called "universally preferable behavior". Simple shit like don't murder and try not to rape if you wouldn't mind. Once you get out of the 'universal' part, it becomes subjective. Who gets to decide the specifics of what constitutes "outstanding behavior"?

It literally says it will track your online activity in real time. What if 4chan links you to a website your government deems immoral without your knowledge? If your computer gets infected with malware and keeps trying to connect to porn pop-up websites, does your social credit score drop because the government deems you a pervert? Moreover, what if you get blackmailed? "Give me $10 or I'll scream rape" becomes "give me 10$ or I'll give you a bad social review".

There are just so many fucking holes in this thing it's staggering.

>>11878588
>What if 4chan links you to a website your government deems immoral without your knowledge?
4chan would be deemed immoral by any reasonable standard anyway.

>>11870496
>socialism with Chinese characteristics
>capitalism sans democracy
bet you can't spot a difference

>The sophistication of the Panopticon is a product of centuries of combat analytics that predate Planetfall, and likely the Great Mistake itself (why else would "Mutually Assured Destruction" be found within its solution space?). What the Panopticon represents is the adaptation of these analytics to an accurate, if basic, understanding of the planet itself. It represents the point at which another tool of the colonists went from Earth-centered assumptions to ones appropriate for the new world.

>For the interested student of history, the Panopticon's algorithms are an insight into paranoia and violence. Everything detectable is screened for threat, and then parsed within categories (and such truly fascinating categories!) and matched with a response ranging from "evaluate again in n seconds" to the euphemistic "terminate with extreme prejudice".

>The hardware of the Panopticon has long since been lost to time, but archaeological remains of it show up in surprising places from time to time. Most recently, the Altar of St. Mendez of the Sect of Post-Dehn was found to be made from the casing of an inert Panopticon hardpoint.

>+5 Diplomatic Capital
>+5 Orbital Strike Range
>All Military Units receive +1 Sight.

why did this game have to suck so bad

why

if we are to be forcibly submitted to panopticon control IRL can we not at least get a passably enjoyable version of it to build in fake reality

also i know we all hate foucault & everything but still

>>11870575
Fuckerberg wants facebook in China, he even asked Xi to name his son and Xi told him to fuck off lmao

>>11877837
> One thing has literally nothing to do with the other.
Of workers owned their enterprise collectively, they wouldn't have their labour value stolen, so they would be more successful in the free market by providing cheaper prices or better working conditions/salaries because of the extra "value" which they preserved.

>>11878802
There were also a number of examples where democratic governments tried to manage economy sectors(which is what socialism supposed to be), and it was less efficient than free market. I generally explain it to myself as that the value of your labour depends on the system, and without capitalist system you just won't get the same value.
Tho I am open to alternatives to capitalism, it just should be something more realistic than socialism and have some successful examples in reality.

>>11878830
>people should work for their economy, and even the value of their labor should be defined by it

>>11878802
>Of workers owned their enterprise collectively, they wouldn't have their labour value stolen, so they would be more successful in the free market by providing cheaper prices or better working conditions/salaries because of the extra "value" which they preserved.
No, not really. The amount of value produced by an enterprise is independent of how you distribute that value. If a box company makes 50,000 boxes a month, it would still be producing 50k boxes a month whether it is owned by a small group of capitalists or by all the workers. Not to mention that the economic environment in which the enterprise exists won't magically change just because the enterprise is now owned by workers, so market forces would still be at play just like before.

>>11878830
>I generally explain it to myself as that the value of your labour depends on the system
Not really. A diamond is worth X amount of money in the international market, whether it was produced in a capitalist or a communist country.

>>11878981
> If a box company makes 50,000 boxes a month, it would still be producing 50k boxes a month whether it is owned by a small group of capitalists or by all the workers.
They are supported to get better pay as noone is taking profits from them, so they can attract more skilled workers or use the value they saved to acquire more mops.
>>11878856
> >people should work for their economy
People should maximise their survival, sometimes it means to fork for their economy.
>>11878994
> Not really. A diamond is worth X amount of money in the international market, whether it was produced in a capitalist or a communist country.
It worth so because it can be sold to capitalists. In the USSR the labour you have spent making shoes is lover than in the USA because it would be illegal economic activity to sell your product. You can say that these shoes have a price/value global, but now imagine ussr/usa as a "global" system.
Again, this proves nothing, that's just semantic tricks I use to explain it to myself and feel better. We need some facts from the real world to prove theories, for example successful socialist communes in the us are examples of successful socialism, successful capitalist countries are examples of successful capitalism.

>>11878318
>it's hip to be square
no one's buying it

>>11879081
>We need some facts from the real world to prove theories, for example successful socialist communes in the us are examples of successful socialism
Sure, but what does that have to with the LTV? The labor theory of value is an economic theory that explains the nature of value (i.e. what it is and where it comes from). Whether it's right or wrong does not depend on whether a given economy (capitalist, communist, or what have you) is successful or not. The LTV, if true, should make correct predictions (which predictions? I'm not sure. My guess is price predictions calculated from a Marxist "value", i.e. the socially necessary labor) whether it is applied in the study of a capitalist or a communist society. I can't understand why you insist on the success or failure of an enterprise (whether owned by capitalists or workers) as a test of whether the LTV is true or not. A successful coop would not prove that the LTV is true; an unsuccessful coop would not prove that the LTV is false.

>>11873357
>it's going to work. i don't want it to work but i think it's going to work
>i would prefer that it not work. i think it will work tho.
Girardfag you are right but you are also breaking my heart. Guess I didn't take my Landian blackpill regimen seriously enough.
I feel like I need to abandon the Enlightenment pretensions of individuality and just go with the flow (and hope my alcoholism get unnoticed for a little while). Who cares about my half-assed nebulous critique of capital anyway? I could write it on a blog for fun but at the end of the day, I need to spend my time in an """open-space""" doing some assigned shit for a living, and if my government would decide to pull up that kind of surveillance on me, I would be absolutely impotent.
I guess there is no escape. Born as a wageslave or born as a ruler, that is the bloody question.

>>11873357
>it's going to work. i don't want it to work but i think it's going to work
>i would prefer that it not work. i think it will work tho.
Girardfag you are right but you are also breaking my heart. Guess I didn't take my Landian blackpill regimen seriously enough.
I feel like I need to abandon the Enlightenment pretensions of individuality and just go with the flow (and hope my alcoholism get unnoticed for a little while). Who cares about my half-assed nebulous critique of capital anyway? I could write it on a blog for fun but at the end of the day, I need to spend my time in an """open-space""" doing some assigned shit for a living, and if my government would decide to pull up that kind of surveillance on me, I would be absolutely impotent.
I guess there is no escape. Born to be a wageslave or born to be a ruler, that is the bloody question.

>>11876940
The LTV is true. How the fuck do you think Stalin and Mao ran their economies?

>>11879269
my aim in the cosmotech threads is to put a white hat on acceleration. my personal issue is the rage inherent to postmodernity, but think there is nevertheless a silver lining in the blackest of landian black clouds. reading (and posting!) has convinced me that i'm not the only one seeing these things, and that there are ways of comporting yourself to Planet Meme. cultivating yourself, withdrawing from the control apparatus, trying to forgive others, things like this...i think these things are possible and necessary, and so i'm hopeful in that sense. to me trying to survive not capital, but a culture of militancy driven by acceleration is the deal.

china is a whole other story.

they're on a different trajectory: we're moving towards decentralization, they're opting for super-centralization. i'm certain that the state of the current western zeitgeist informs decision-making over there. and i really don't know how you win an ideological battle with CCP state lawyers dual-wielding marx in one hand and confucius in the other. to me that is a DNA helix of CTRL like no other. so i am fascinated by social credit because it represents something very different from the sorcerous mechanics of postmodernity i am familiar with. the ghosts of marx and nietzsche, the loop that runs from hegel to land, heidegger, girard et al are names i'm good with and can shitpost about ad nauseam (and i have).

but social credit is to me is this other thing. in some sense it is the culmination of postmodernity itself - Unironic True Panopticon - and in another a kind of outrageous rebuff of it (CTRL > critique). and it is happening in china, and not over here, but this is also the potentially more worldly china of 2018 and not of an earlier period. this is also the Trumpocene era in the west, which also isn't offering so many nice non-radical alternatives to this either. and the worse things get, the more the appeal of a soft totalitarianism may be.

but the last thing i want to be is the heartbreaker and professional doomsayer of /lit/. i really don't want to shit in anyone's punch bowl. my hope is not to fucking depress anyone, as i get depressed enough on my own thinking about this stuff sometimes. i do think there are ways to comport oneself to postmodernity that don't lead to defenestration, and that the way forward is via a rigorous engagement with acceleration so as to de-escalate the infinite Blue Team/Red Team feuding, and hopefully in favor of a wiser, saner cosmopolitanism less inclined to political romanticism. there are tough times for us ahead, and the sooner we drop the political horseshit and focus on building better humans, the better. i do think is that a lot of the problems we have are urban. leave the city - Exit - and perspectives change almost overnight.

but as for the east? i have no idea.

perhaps the best way to avoid depression is to remember that i am not an expert in any of this stuff. just a wee little fish with wi-fi.

>>11879269
>I feel like I need to abandon the Enlightenment pretensions of individuality and just go with the flow (and hope my alcoholism get unnoticed for a little while).

i think it's an oscillating thing. and the Enlightenment isn't the monster it's made out to be. if anything, as douglas murray said, maybe we have overlooked the fact that the roots of that project didn't go as deep as we thought it did, and perhaps what it did accomplish has been overplayed by overly-sensitive academics who mined it for academic careers successful beyond imagination (i'm looking at you, michel, and theodor and max, you too). imho civilization is the exception to the more general rule of barbarism, superstition, and ignorance. an Enlightenment civilization, where and when it happens, is an *achievement* and not a default state.

i liked how Beyond Earth handled the concept of utopia: it was a *state,* a condition, and not a fixed or final form. get the health of your people up high enough, acquire utopia status.it didn't necessarily mean that you were winning. often when i *did* win i won with negative happiness. would my colonies have cared? probably not. the wins weren't even satisfying. make of this analogy what you will.

>Who cares about my half-assed nebulous critique of capital anyway?
me, fucker! it might be interesting!

>I could write it on a blog for fun but at the end of the day, I need to spend my time in an """open-space""" doing some assigned shit for a living, and if my government would decide to pull up that kind of surveillance on me, I would be absolutely impotent.
pleasing the government is impossible, as impossible as pleasing the crowd, i think. kafka knew the deal.

>I guess there is no escape. Born to be a wageslave or born to be a ruler, that is the bloody question.
the buddhists talk about the Wisdom of No Escape. situations of paradox and uncertainty seems to be the condition of the samurai and their teachers also. nothing is ever more odious than advice, but i do feel these things also. and i really don't know what the answers are, either, after all the reading &c. but i do believe, at least, that people cooler than me have found ways through this stuff, and as such that it is possible.

no doubt the world is going through some phase-shifts right now: the Interesting Times you hear the chinese talk about. it's why i have virtually zero hopes for demotic politics, but quite a lot of belief in the capacity for people to at least be *surprised* by things. i do think enlightenment, peace, sanity, charity and hope are within everyone's grasp, to some degree or another. peterson has his flaws, no doubt, and even though he shits on guys i like i still think his heart is in the right place. and i find the buddhists and the taoists always scratch where it itches after i find myself getting really absorbed in Nick Land's Wild Ride.

this thing is a marathon and not a sprint. good luck my man. sorry for depressing you.

>>11876384
Can you imagine sucking up this hard to a group of people who not only not care to hide their disdain of you but clearly intend to take full advantage of you when finally given the chance? Can you imagine seeking out the bugmen!Rumpelstiltskin purposefully, and selling him your son like this?

>>11879395
>How the fuck do you think Stalin and Mao ran their economies?
Poorly?

>>11879703
>Poorly?
Russia under Stalin made a lot of progress though. It wasn't all at once, and clearly a lot of disasters happened like the late 20s and early 30s famines - nevertheless, they did get it together eventually.

>>11879554
Imagine memeing yourself into depression through pseudo-intellectualizing like this. You should go outside and stop wasting so much time on the internet worrying about boogeymen created by your brain filled with ""theory"" of dubious worth and truthfulness.

>>11880126
true

>>11876713
>China, supposedly, has some of the highest IQs. But, oh wait... oh, no, no, no... could it be that they're making an average only out of certain areas in the country that have the smartest people?
By what measure isn't this a sensible idea? IQ should be weighed in the most favorable first-world conditions, not some backwater hut rife with airborne pathogens and industrial chemicals that physically incapacitate the brain.

>>11880155
>>>11876713
>>China, supposedly, has some of the highest IQs. But, oh wait... oh, no, no, no... could it be that they're making an average only out of certain areas in the country that have the smartest people?
>By what measure isn't this a sensible idea? IQ should be weighed in the most favorable first-world conditions, not some backwater hut rife with airborne pathogens and industrial chemicals that physically incapacitate the brain.
What a story, Mark.

>>11880155
Because other countries don't do that, retard? Because we are comparing the AVERAGE of different countries, which includes people from the poorest areas? How else would this even matter? Most top unis in any country tend to have high IQ people. It would be totally irrelevant comparing them.
But as always, China has to cheat because they're insecure as fuck.

>>11879703
Poorly if you want a bunch a high "GDP" where a bunch of rich bourgies own everything and everyone else lives like shit. But if you were working class, the USSR was a paradise.

>>11881004
>But if you were working class, the USSR was a paradise.
China isn't though. They have only state run unions, crack down harshly on strikes, and just generally have terrible working conditions.

>>11881155
China after Mao died is revisionist. Only socialist countries left in the marxist sense are Cuba and NK.

>>11881187
>Only socialist countries left in the marxist sense are Cuba
Sure
>and NK
No, man. Goddamn. I mean anti-imperialism is fine, but we don't gotta go the extra mile and say that it's socialist. It's about as socialist as it is democratic. The north is as socialist as the south is independant.

>>11881209
They are socialist, they're Marxist-Leninist. They run almost exactly like the USSR under Stalin with *some* liberalization. But then, Cuba and NK are basically under siege, they're allowed a little bit of survival revisionism, China is not under siege and could easily be socialist if it wanted to, they just choose not to be.

>>11879616
>>11879554
>we're moving towards decentralization, they're opting for super-centralization
> it's why i have virtually zero hopes for demotic politics
> and that the way forward is via a rigorous engagement with acceleration so as to de-escalate the infinite Blue Team/Red Team feuding, and hopefully in favor of a wiser, saner cosmopolitanism less inclined to political romanticism

Unfortunately, the way I see it, it's this decentralization that you mentioned that will, almost inevitably, bring us even further into that super party politics hellhole. Not only are we heading towards decentralization politically (perhaps) but also socially: with the internet especially, we now can literally only see what we want to see, only be with those who are like us, and there are an infinite amount of labels we can now apply to ourselves in hashtags and follows and the like. Do you not think that this extreme individualization - this almost collective individualism ("I am these things, and I will only try to exist with others who carry these labels too") - won't expand to the political field even more than it has already?

>>11881213
>They are socialist
>They run almost exactly like the USSR under Stalin

>>11881257
>all means of production brought under the control of a worker's state
>work is collectivized, distribution is collectivized
>attempting to merge work with education and social life
They're socialist.

>>11881268
It's not a worker's state if it's not controlled democratically by the people. I don't disagree that they have/had state ownership over the means of production, but that cannot be seen as common ownership because the state is/was not under the control of the working class. Their "elected" were/are not subject to recall at any time upon the demand of a majority of the electors, which was one of Lenin and the bolsheviks requirements for having a worker's state.

>>11881297
They are democratically controlled. OK they're not perfect democracies, but saying they're not democracy is like saying Britain isn't a democracy because the Queen has veto power and there is an unelected hereditary house in parliament that has a hand in the law making process. That's far worse than Cuba or NK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aMsi-A56ds&t=56s

>>11881326
Wasn't saying anything about Cuba. Perfectly acceptable democracy there imo. Only talking about NK, which is nowhere near Cuba's or even eastern Europe's democratic level.

>>11881218
>Do you not think that this extreme individualization - this almost collective individualism ("I am these things, and I will only try to exist with others who carry these labels too") - won't expand to the political field even more than it has already?

so, long schizopost inbound. i guess i had some madness to vent w/r/t social credit and other things.

1/4
what 2016 meant for me at least was the degree to which politics has become a question of philosophical axioms that for the forseeable future are mutually exclusive. the core of the Blue Team philosophy is imho comprised of radical left philosophy, the witches' brew cocktail of neoliberalism and neomarxism. that is its fundamental operating system. and for the time being the Red Team can identify itself as Not That. what got Trump elected was another form of populism, the Dark Side populism of all of the things that the Blue Team ideologues are opposed to.

i believe that at the moment the US is primarily Blue Team and regard themselves as being the chosen people with the correct ideology. and it entitles them to smear and shame anyone who disagrees with them. it wasn't always so, perhaps, but it is that way now. both teams are, as you say, 'collective individualists,' and prefer the company of their own. and the irony is that once upon a time, the US was quite a powerful nation because it managed to work in spite of these huge differences and across a vast geography.

one of the things that has changed more recently is the role played by media, which is solidly dominated by the Blue Team, until - again - technology gave Trump a tiny piece of kryptonite, that being his twitter account. but ofc it wasn't only this, it was also the hegemonic power the Blue Team had been wielding for the longest time over the collective media consciousness, and which was proven to be epically, catastrophically mistaken as they confidently and almost unanimously predicted a Hilary steamroller right up to election night. and ever since then there has been a full-court press to prove that the numbers were right all along, and that Trump is simply illegitimate, it's all conspiracies, and so on. the Blue Team has all of the confidence in its own rectitude that the early Christian martyrs perhaps have felt in Rome in the first and second centuries. and there too a universalizing intellectual power with religious implications became wedded to state authority.

>>11881665
2/4

political axioms are powerful weapons but invariably produce purity spirals. and the need to profess public fidelity to transcendent causes - whether it's I'm With Her or Make America Great Again - turn politics into holy war by introducing the sacred into discourse. for a long time it was simply taken to be the case that the critique of power, for instance, situated one on the side of the Good. the trouble with this is that it formed the seductive concept of the Patriarchy, like a constant enemy. but this is why i find girardian ideas of scapegoating more interesting, and germane, than academic righteousness, because postmodernity in the end does not seem to be able to abandon its own need to create a spectre of power and maintain a stance of constant vigilance against it. but it is conjured up through the critique itself.

the true collectivity is the church itself but, of course, nobody really believes in that old meme anymore. well, except JBP. and you can see the ungodly shitstorm he has brought down on his head - incredibly, from *both* sides. the far left *and* the far right both hate him, which to me is extraordinary, but it tells you that they both have a lot more in common than they would like to think. he challenges *both* their assumptions (and, even more scandalously, ventures one of his own: Sort Yourself Out. purest heresy!) or, consider this: as prevalent as racism has become in political discussions, it is nevertheless the case that Trump cannot allow his opponents to stick that label on him. he cannot become the party of racism, this would be a disaster. he has to say, 'i'm the least racist person ever!' and members of both the Red Team and Blue Team skeptics can say, we're not racists/sexists/homophobes, the other guys are the real racists/sexists/homophobes. and so on.

even where one side is militantly committed to eradicating bigotry, and will go to any conceivable length to do this or use this as a tool for political gain, it is nevertheless the case that even their political opponents will not use this for their own purposes. both sides really do profess a 'collective individualism' (or individual collectivism?), it's just that the axioms differ. and yet, beyond a certain horizon, i believe that the truth is that they are both secretly aligned to a single universal principle, which is ultimately just a kind of cynical bad-faith protestantism. or, in other words, just plain old guilt and suffering, bewilderment, despair, and confusion masked as cynicism, irony, bitterness, and resentment. everyone's mad that nobody else will believe the lies they don't even want to have to tell anymore, but, you know, you have to, because Things Are The Way They Are, and so forth. irony is the default condition, it's not even irony about anything, it's just weariness and fatigue, and it leads to anger and mimesis.

and, ultimately, to myth-making.

>>11881670
3/4

but meanwhile, over in china, there is now this other experiment going on, which is unlike anything that has been seen in the west since WW2. there the revolution *actually happened,* and yet now china under Xi has to join the family of nations and become a trading power. but they're not the slightest bit interested in postmodernity, and they have had an intellectual history very much unlike our own. personally, i always like to see the best of both worlds brought together. i happen to think confucius is a pretty boss philosopher in many ways. but he too can be abused by cynical state officials for political gain, and to my mind there is no question at all that he will be: you couldn't possibly ask for a better philosopher to serve as the ideological center for a system of social credit, for example. of course, it seems to be fairly well known that Xi himself prefers han fei and legalism to confucius and the analects, but this is no surprise, really...

if this were Beyond Earth a confucian state orthodoxy aided by a homebrew blockchain tech and social credit would seem to me like one of those stupidly broken late game techs you could acquire because the developers hadn't play-tested the game enough, or didn't really care about balance. but, on the other hand, all of this depends in the end on whether or not Xi can actually make it rain over there, and make the spice flow. the germans in the early 20C were prepared to put up with a lot of craziness from hitler provided that he could solve their economic and psychosocial woes. and he did indeed do this. so did napoleon, in his own way. Xi isn't the same man, and he doesn't have exactly the same ambitions, but he's looking to modernize the entire state in fairly short order, and he has a nascent and incredibly powerful technology on his side with which to do this.

the most amazing part of it to me is how very similar it is to the blockchain itself, that is, a fundamental transformation of the meaning of capital. social credit basically makes the seal of the Party itself the gold standard of the economy. once upon a time we traded and bartered. then we created a paper currency and used this as a mechanism of exchange pinned to gold reserves. then we abandoned those gold reserves and entered into the free-floating world of the (petro)dollar. and now an even greater level of abstraction with cryptocurrency and bitcoin: the numbers simply reflect upon the numbers reflecting upon numbers. almost like an artificial consciousness, but a consciousness without a purpose (or is that to say, conscious?)

>>11881673
4/4

but in china, the numbers are themselves now bound once again to the will or presence of the Party itself: it is *shame* which ultimately re-grounds finance in reality. and on some deep level this resonates with me. read Graeber, for instance; what is debt, ultimately? it used to appal Marx that bankers could simply conjure loans or liquidity out of thin air, this fucked up his entire system. and yet it could be done. in 2008 it was a similar thing in the US: when the big businesses failed, the Fed intervened on their behalf and simply conjured up liquidity for them so that the entire system didn't collapse (and iirc, a lot of that debt was bought by the Chinese). a story of the world's historical debts to itself would be an interesting story to tell...

and the thing is, with CCP-style social credit, the party itself can now do something curiously similar. the sheer rectitude and purpose of the will of the nation, as enshrined in the irreducibly common-sense logic of Xi Jinping Thought, can underwrite all debts as if by magic itself. and it is very difficult to *argue* with this. pick any speech out of the Governance of China and find a flaw in it. you won't be able to, it's all common sense. they're not literary tracts, they're the language of a people whose fundamental aim is a moderately good life. but it astounds me to no end that this can actually work to be the new bedrock of a financial plan.

again, this is all some pretty wild speculation, no doubt. but these are some of the things that i think about. it will be left to history to decide whether or not this is a workable plan or not, there's no question. i really have no idea how these things are going to shake out. but imho the social credit idea makes a kind of a sense to me that is on the one hand completely crazy and yet even in its most maximally crazy form has a kind of internal coherence to it that i can't seem to dispel. it’s pure force of will, of course, but it is the collective will.

and that's basically my thing. with bitcoin and with cryptocurrency, all of the things that land has said about the creation of artificial-synthetic kantian time, there is one trajectory for the further story of capital. with social credit, on the other hand, is another one: maybe we could call it artificial communist time. and so long as people like the schedule they are on, things can continue, one way or the other...and if they don't, they don't. in revolutionary france, for example, one of the first things they did was change the name of the calenar, they inaugurated a whole new system of time pinned to events or moments in revolutionary history.

just things to make you think about, i guess. thanks for letting me ramble.

>>11876713
Chinese are consistently flabbergasted that Israel does everything better than China with a much smaller population. They believe in a Jewish conspiracy, but that Jews are a master race who are simply better at everything else.

t. Talked to some monks in the mountains

>>11876755
You post on 4chan, and to most people that’s enough to at least put you into a moral grey area just right off the bat, if not directly into a pile of just being bad. Face it motherfucker, we’re all in this anti-data collection boat together whether you like it or not.

>>11875888
>people protest in the US and fucking nothing happens. How would this be different in China?
The difference is that the Chinese have no qualms about bloody revolution

>>11881759
The chinese government also has no qualms about suppressing unrest they worry may lead to revolution with brutal bloody force.

>>11881848
Exactly. That’s why they choose repression instead of liberalization, liberalization which may give space to dissent.
Did you read the post I replied to?

>>11875888
>maybe if we commodify experience I’m just the right way it’ll all work out for the better!
No, there can be no retreat from here, the level of commodification of social interaction is already way too fucking pervasive, and I personally do not want to give another inch of ground to this insidious and, honestly, inhuman idea

>>11870496
Many CPC members unironically do. They aren't all cynics. They follow Deng's opinion that communism is only possible if capitalism runs its full course.

neo-china bumps from the future

>>11877883
Marxism, Philosophy and Economics by Thomas Sowell is what you're looking for, after that read any works by Friedman or Hayek.

>>11874293
>Societies come up with games and rituals in order to help make sense of the world.
Best thing I've read all week. Where did you get that from?

>>11883598
Why read pre-Socialism with Chinese Charactertics era "economists?"

>market socialism

>>11883598
Sowell, Friedman and Hayek are pre-marx writings. They're completely useless ad-hoc pop-economics bullshit. Read Wealth of Nations then Marx.

>>11883751
who do you recommend we read instead?

>>11883804
Michal Kalecki and Paul Sweezy

>>11883804
Read:
Wealth of nations.
Das Capital and all of Marx and Engles.
All of Lenin.
All of Stalin.
All of Mao.

>>11883681
You can't be serious.

>>11883760
Sowell and Friedman are worthless.

But here comes the no fun police because I’ve gotta tell you, The Road To Serfdom, if not entirely correct, is still worth a read. Hayek advocates FOR government interference and government established monopolies when necessary. Just saiyan

>>11884402
>when necessary
So Hayek was a communist?

>>11870496
>Socialism but everyone smells bad and fucking yells everything when a sensible whisper would do

bump

>>11871772
>Class consciousness is when you are fully aware of class conflict between the proletariat and bourgeoisie.
I thought class consciousness was the objectively existing activity of one class acting in its own interests against those of another rather than some kind of epistemologically dubious subjective position of enlightenment

>>11876734
>fabricates GDP reports for decades
>fabricates claims on international territory
>fabricates claims on contested territory with 2+ countries
>brushes aside mass intellectual property theft
>brushes aside mass human rights violations
>fabricates claims of massive strength
>soon after brushes off fabrications of strength in order to not seem so threatening to rivals
>disregards a number of international treaties, only joined UN when trade benefits were offered
I'm not saying the CCP is entirely untrustworthy, but you won't catch me believing any vermillion decrees from Emperor Xi

>>11870993
4chan is a den of pedos, if you post here you would automatically get bad score even if you posted on /his/ and /lit/.

But here is a real thing, if you buy too much alcohol you get labelled as an alcoholic, it completely disregards context, it does not matter if you are buying it for a party and you are abstemious.

Also, by China's current standards, buying a Winnie the Pooh pluchie would lower your score.

>>11873249
>Reliability of information posted or reposted online

Reminder that a chinese girl did a documentary on chinese pollution and went to jail for it.

So it has be reliable data that is in line with the party beliefs.

>>11871135
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration-poverty-reduces-brainpower-needed-navigating-other-areas-life?section=topstories

The thing China should need to understand that in America for instance there already many things that inadvertently make it so the poor stay poor, burocracy, banks, the mentality that poor families pass to one another, I don't have the right articles at hand unfortunately, I honestly should not even be on 4chan right now.

>>11871233
That might have been a thing of the past but this is happening right now
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html

>>11885897
Not sure what conversation you are having but that's a. a link from the fucking New York Times and b. a good thing that is happening.

bump

>>11870496

>>11871233
>But the idea that the higher-ups in the CCP were just totally unaware sounds oddly similar to the Nazi apologists saying that the Holocaust was just one big secret and they're, like, totally innocent, man. Dindu nuffin.
What a boring sentiment

>>11870384
>Wherever we look in Chinese history we find it characterized by this absolute meaninglessness of words, with the virtues of loyalty, reliability and truth all tumbled into a sterility of mere outward noise. A few centuries ago, when China was a nation enlightened to a greater degree than any of its neighbors in the matter of arms and munitions, Malay pirates were troubling the South China coast. The pirates evidently made raids now and then upon the coast villages, settled temporarily and then took sail again. To break up this practice, the Emperor of China issued orders that all Chinese residents along that coast should remove inland a certain number of miles. For, he reasoned in his instructions, if there was nothing valuable along the coast for the pirates to come after, they would cease to trouble the Flowery Kingdom. At that time, theoretically, China was the strongest power on earth, yet she withdrew in alarm before a few small prahus full of naked Malays. Had the pirates set up residence on the coast, Chinese talents could have met the problem handily - the Chinese could simply have outlied them and outbred them. But an issue of swords and spears, though the Chinese possessed many thousand times the resources of the invaders, filled them with terror. In the journal of a traveler of a century ago among the Mongols - frontier nomads of the farmer Chinese Empire - we find that the lament of the Mongols was that while the Chinese would not fight them, their wheedling traders, pawnbrokers and the like managed progressively by flattery, skilled deception and eternal thrift to reduce them to a state of impoverished subjection.

>>11870384
God I wish that were me.

t

>>11870384
no but check this out

>>11892420
Oh cool, is it out on Amazon yet? How does the translation compare to the original?

What does he even mean by "Chinese Characteristics"?

>>11893833
The little squiggles they use to write with silly! :)