Thread 17843268

>communism has irrefutably never worked once
>there are still millions of people who support it
>this includes people who have studied history, politics, and economics their whole life
unironically, why?

unironically, unlucky

communism (socialist states) functioned much better than the current west

>>17843268 (OP)
>>communism has irrefutably never worked once
Wrong, communism has never succeeded or failed because no country has ever come even close to reaching communism, it's always been and remains an untested theory, no socialist country has achieved the transition to communism.

>>17843307
perhaps no country every achieving it means that the ideal utopia is actually unreachable?

>>17843268 (OP)
>this includes people who have studied history, politics, and economics their whole life
You mean academics?
There you go anon, there's your answer

>>17843317
The only time in all of human history that was ever remotely attempted to reach was a couple of decades in the 20th century while they were also fighting off the two most capitalistic countries in the world (the US and Britain). We've barely tried.

>>17843332
if it could be implemented, it would be implemented, but it isnt, and it also failed when people hard tried

Capitalism however organically evolved in most of the socieities around the world without much outside influence

It's a faith & a dogma. A millenarian cult. Communism is their atheistic messianic age.

>>17843317
Compared to feudalism capitalism achieved almost utopistic living standards in developed countries, however it has its limits as we see it today. Unless you claim that capitalism is the end stage of humanity's development why do you think that humanity can't or won't overcome it? Btw the fall of the British Empire proves that capitalism became suboptimal by the 20th century. Hell, even American capitalism was saved by FDR's quasi socialist reforms.

>>17843384
And then the managerialism of the interwar period was replaced by neoliberalism in the 80's. If you're trying to play this game you have to basically rewrite the entire development framework.
Marxist version is slavery-feudalism-capitalism-socialism.
A reformed version would probably give up on the first two, since the periods before liberal economic thought are so diverse systematising them in any kind of whiggish ladder is pointless(a lot of scholarship on these topics simply didn't even exist in the times of Marx so he's not really guilty of the mistake he made), then you go capitalism-managerialism-neoliberalism, as opposed to the unreformed, outdated marxist thought it's hard to find any particular direction in wealth distribution, technically capitalism was more egalitarian in comparison to previous regimes, managerialism more so in some aspects(society at large), but less so in others(distribution of not so much wealth but economic power), but neoliberalism is definitely less so. Hard to be a prophet these days.

>>17843369
And that's a good thing.

>>17843268 (OP)
Communism is just a mask for the pan-Eurasianist project

>>17843411
Neoliberalism is not really an original 'movement' on its own. It's basically a reactionary attempt to bring back an earlier form of capitalism which is of course as successful as the aristocracy's attempt to retake power after the French Revolution.

>>17843268 (OP)
You have the media and the acedemics convincing the dumb masses that its the best shit ever while the democrats in DC salivating thinking about ruling over a totalitarian state knowing its out of reach unless we import the brownies to ensure the right never gets elected again. Then goes the Constitution, and the last glimmer of hope for any freedom ever again sans a global civil war.

>>17843268 (OP)

but what is communism?

>>17843268 (OP)
>It never worked
>Outside of all of the times in which it saw massive increases to standards of living.
Define working.

>>17843384
>>17843411
Managerialism, neoliberalism, whatever these are fluctuations within capitalism, not stages beyond it. The basic relations of production didn’t fundamentally change. You're just describing different elite management styles of the same economic engine.

Also, people love saying capitalism is dying. But capitalism isn’t some planned ideology you can replace like a bad product. It’s the emergent result of people trading, owning stuff, and trying to optimize profit

>>17843268 (OP)
>never worked
for whom? And what are the alternatives?

>>17843462
>But capitalism isn’t some planned ideology you can replace like a bad product
It's not always been there and it's going to replace itself. The rise of the merchant class and its effects is effectively what is meant by capitalism- although Marxists will often add on and focus on the replacement of workers with consumers as an additional dimension of capitalism.

>>17843268 (OP)
>>communism has irrefutably never worked once
Not a commie at all but we're getting raped hard by China atm

>>17843268 (OP)
Because the education sector is captured by ideologues. In fact a communist literally figured that out a little over a century ago. Gramsci.

>>17843268 (OP)
>communism has irrefutably never worked once
False and vague premise.

>>17843268 (OP)
all commie niggers deserve the rope no exceptions

>>17843307
Thats because too much socialism tanks the country and kills it, there is only so much you can take from the productive to give to the unproductive before the productive leave leaving a country of starving dependents

>>17843651
Human productivity is less and less meaningful through history thanks to the automatization of the working processes. You can train a factory worker or someone to use an office software in a few weeks. A medieval smith required years of training.

>>17843675
No it is not. Technology does not merely make our current tasks easier, it also allows us to then focus our attention on new, more difficult problems in turn. Productivity will always be a factor, for even a complete automatic system will still have new problems, new possibilities, will require maintenance. If we fully automate offices, someone will find something new that needs our attention.

>>17843268 (OP)
China

>>17843268 (OP)
>unironically, why?
Because thinking otherwise would mean that our current society is the peak that humanity can and will ever reach theoretically. All the poors, the destruction, the exploitation etc would simply be something necessary to maintain the best system(tm) there is. You can argue that capitalism has better praxis than socialism, but it's hard to assert that it's ideally better.

>communism has irrefutably never worked once
Most developed countries have mixed economies supporting both their citizens' needs and leaving the free market decide for resource allocation. It's becoming more and more clear that countries can't purely rely on capitaism to satisfy their population's needs, both pragmatically (i.e. not letting companies fuck the environment or profit) and ontologically (Maybe life is indeed better if we aren't simple productions tools). The reason why socialism has historically failed in places like Cuba or the USSR is that a centrally planned economy is simply too inefficient and created an aristocracy of bureaucrats (tfw Weber was right).

>>17843893
>The reason why socialism has historically failed in places like Cuba or the USSR is that a centrally planned economy is simply too inefficient and created an aristocracy of bureaucrats (tfw Weber was right).
I think was the basic problem. Marxist ideology didn't put forward the idea that socialism was simply supposed to be better (i.e. fairer) than capitalism, it was supposed to be economically superior to capitalism: more capable of rationally allocating goods and resources, and more effective at reigning in the "anarchy of production" that characterizes capitalism, by subjecting the economy to scientific planning. But you look at those societies, there was massive waste, ecological damage, and a completely irrational (anarchic in practice) way of distributing the stuff. And on top of it all was a new social class who basically acted like a group of greedy monopolists, refused to interpret the world realistically, and thought that the rest of the world would stagnate and destroy itself in conflicts. This did not happen. The breakdown of Western capitalism did not happen. The colonies were freed but they didn't become communist. This didn't happen because capitalism itself is good or bad, but because the capitalism the Soviet leaders ranted about no longer existed.

>>17843268 (OP)
real communism literally and unironically has never been tried
you can meme about it but it's true

>>17843996
The way to communism kills the population, because it hasn't yes succeeded in killing an entire country doesn't mean it hasn't been tried

Communism brought the backwards, quasi-feudal states of Russia and China to superpower status in the space of only a few decades. In what way did it "not work"?

>>17843268 (OP)
>communism establishes a variety of quantitatively and qualitatively different states, administrations, etc. most of which are stable and some of which are superpowers
>communism has never been tried
>communism has irrefutably never worked once
welcome to reddit newfriend

>>17844010
It scared OP of his dream to be the next Elon.

>>17843445
Is that what OAN tells you?

>>17843268 (OP)
You don't know enough socialist theory to understand. Unironically. Communism is not something that has ever been tried, Communism is a future economic system that Marxists believe we are inevitably headed towards due to how the economy works. Communist revolutions are attempts to speed the process along, rather than just attempts to implement a fully formulated "communism" that doesn't exist.
Plus it promises a lot of nice things people want. And it had (and arguably still has, even if just as a legacy now) a very robust intellectual backbone because of Marx and Engels and people building off of their work.
>>17843999
Wasted.

>>17844240
Just 2 more years...

>>17843307
So when did the Soviet Union cease the transition to Communism?

>>17844221
Why not just listen to what the media says?

>>17843485
What is the GDP per capita of China?
How do they compare with the GDP per capita of a country like America Germany or Japan?

>>17843996
So what method of Government was Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong practicing?

>>17845347
>muh GDP
Why is this meme still a thing, especially in the U.S.

>>17845363
He didn't say GDP, he said per capita GDP, which the US is within the top 10, while China isn't even in the top 60, and is below the global average
You also ignore the fact that China has an HDI comparable to Mexico while the US is within the top 20

>>17845363
The GDP per capita of America is 82,769.41 USD (2023)
The GDP per capita of Germany is 54,343.23 USD (2023)
The GDP per capita of Japan is 33,766.53 USD (2023)
The GDP per capita of China is 12,614.06 USD (2023)

>>17845363
>"GDP is a meme!"
Okay, what about per capita GDP and HDI? Are those memes too? Tankies are a special kind of retard aren't they?

>>17845374
>per capita GDP
The reason the U.S has a high per captia GDP is because Americans
1. Work significantly longer hours than any EU country (they work more than Japs do) and
2. They don't pay into a welfare/healthcare system like every other country on earth has.
Furthermore, things in the U.S are also more expensive than anywhere else in the world outside of city states and some EU countries.
>You also ignore the fact that China has an HDI comparable to Mexico while the US is within the top 20
None of this quality of life meme shit matters when you're talking about power/influence. The USSR was a far shittier places than the U.S and yet it went toe-to-toe with us everywhere on earth for decades and split the planet into two sphere of influence (and they often had the upper hand). North Vietnam and the Taliban were far inferior militaries to the U.S Army and far shittier countries/societies and yet they emerged triumphant in their lengthy wars against us.
I'm not pro-China or a commie at all, just noting that none of this stuff really matters on the international stage. And even then, there's other quality of life stats like obesity rates or life expectancy that the Chinks mog us in.

>>17843268 (OP)
discourse is epiphenomenal, worldviews are determined through assent to feelings, not reason
no one is going to understand what i'm saying, but i'm certain that they'll still reply and confabulate some reason why i'm wrong

>>17845377
>Tankies
I'm not a tankie you dumb /k/tard, I just don't understand how over the past decade or so you could come to the conclusion life in the U.S keeps getting better and better and that for some magical reason we're going to beat China by not doing anything constructive or productive at all. It's pure imperial hubris at its finest.

It's impossible to implement socialism because as soon as you overthrow a government you need to take dictatorial power over the military to keep rival factions at bay

>>17845390
The US remains the second largest industrial power anon, you're framing of the US just doing nothing is just your own personal incredulity because you never go outside and don't keep up with current events outside of social media echo chambers
> for some magical reason we're going to beat China
The Chinese economy works by undercutting competition through cheap labor and materials, you should not even want to compete with this. China isn't a gold standard we should aspire to be.

>>17845399
>second largest industrial power anon
On paper, but in reality most of that shit is simply assembled here in an elaborate process that is outsourced to every other country on the planet (especially China).
>you never go outside and don't keep up with current events
Quite the opposite, my extremely pessimistic view of the U.S comes from the fact that I engage with the country on a personal level nearly every day.

>>17843268 (OP)
>>there are still millions of people who support it
I would be more willing to forgive communism if they at least dropped their internationalist shit and their love for social justice/social progressivism

>>17845415
>my extremely pessimistic view of the U.S comes from the fact that I engage with the country on a personal level nearly every day.
If that's really true, it just means you're probably a miserable retard no matter what country you're in

>>17845420
>it just means you're probably a miserable retard no matter what country you're in
Untrue, I was the happiest I had ever been in my entire life when I was at Aubagne last year when I attempted to join the FFL.
I've lived in the "flyover" areas of this country my entire life and seen almost all of it, and I've progressively seen everything just get shittier and shittier and run all together into sludge. I thought maybe moving back to the valley in my home state of AZ after growing up/living in smalltown MN for so long would give me a fresh perspective and start, but it just blackpilled me even more.

>>17845427
>I've lived in the "flyover" areas of this country my entire life
You make this way too easy dude

>>17845427
>"I was happy when I was in France"
>"Thus, America should be more like China"
Tankies are all mentally ill

>>17845427
Have you tried gardening

>>17845431
>You make this way too easy dude
How so? Are you somebody from the coastal cities who has it worse? I have no urge to even go to places like California or New York given it's the source of the blight that's been rotting the country.

>>17845439
>Tankies
I literally wanted to join the FFL you dumb fucking /k/igger, if I were 5 years older I'd be dead or alive fighting in Ukraine.
>>17845444
>Have you tried gardening
I did when I lived in MN, it was nice.
But now I live here and gardening is a bitch because pests are far worse and everything dries out faster. I also work more, so I can't be on the ball with it.

>>17845455
>I have no urge to even go to places like California or New York given it's the source of the blight that's been rotting the country.
You make this WAY too easy dude

>>17845458
>if I were 5 years older I'd be dead or alive fighting in Ukraine.
You have to be at least 18 to use this website

>>17845458
>/k/igger
People were calling militant communists tankies long before you were even alive

>>17845466
I'm 21 (my 21st Birthday was actually the day I made it into bleu, and i'll turn 22 on the 26th).
The "if I were 5 years older" thing refers to military training/experience, of which I have none.
>>17845473
I'm not a communist and am a vehemently anti-communist religious catholic. I'm just saying the U.S is getting ridiculously complacent regarding China and is under the pressure of serious, potentially existential intitutional and cultural rot internally.

>>17845459
>you make this WAY too easy
Yup, definitely some smug cuck from the Beltway, NYC area, the bay, or LA.

>>17843999
truth digits

>>17844244
No one knoews when it's coming, only that it is.
Is it kind of like Christianity and the second coming? Yes.
But still.

>No one knoews when it's coming, only that it is.
>Is it kind of like Christianity and the second coming? Yes.
>But still.
>knoews

>>17843268 (OP)
From my personal experience in talking with people who refer to themselves as communist/socialist, its more often than not pure ignorance.

These people are almost always just turbo libs that want more extensive gibsmedats and support more radical pushes against "nationalism" fueled by a pathological oikophobia.

None of these people have any real concept of what communism is and have this reddit dork take that "dude, its just like when you share things ok?"

I once talked to a girl who graduated from Columbia University about this. I mentioned gulags in a joking way and she had no idea what I was talking about. She had never even heard the term "gulag" and I had to explain it to her and she look really distraught after realizing that the Soviet Union had a system of concentration camps.

>>17845703
>These people are almost always just turbo libs that want more extensive gibsmedats and support more radical pushes against "nationalism" fueled by a pathological oikophobia.
The U.S in particular seems to be most vulnerable to this type of bullshittery given Americans have no history with communism or Marxism-Leninism the way Europeans do.

>>17845692
These commies really do make it too easy.

>>17843268 (OP)
1. communism is an end goal, not a means. how many people sent their knees smashing through their shoulders jumping off buildings before we figured out how to fly?
2. nobody's come up with anything better. the current system works, but one of its flaws is that it cannot generate new big ideas. all that's left is digging through the rubble of the 20th century looking for an ideology that isn't this. depending on one's disposition, one either winds up as a fascist, a communist, a postwar-consensus nostalgist, or a status-quo apologist bore.

>>17843268 (OP)
1. communism is an end goal, not a means. how many people sent their knees smashing through their shoulders jumping off buildings before we figured out how to fly?
2. nobody's come up with anything better. the current system barely works and makes people miserable, but one of its flaws (or advantages, depending on your view) is that it cannot generate new big ideas on what to replace it with. if you hate how we do things, all that's left for you is digging through the rubble of the 20th century looking for an ideology that isn't this. depending on one's disposition, one either winds up as a fascist, a communist, a postwar-consensus nostalgist, or a status-quo apologist bore.

>>17843651
That's a dumb take that mistakes wealthy = productive when it's obviously not true. The more wealthy you are the less likely you are to be productive; having more wealth makes you lazier and less productive as people just use it to effectively buy more wealth. Which is how you get billionaires owning noticable chunks of a countries wealth, 8 yachts and 14 houses while supposedly holding 7 different board positions and getting generous pay to do nothing all day.

Still not one for supporting communist revolutions of course. But I see it more as a bunch of people in a car driving 80mph down a highway arguing that if they made the car electric and maybe added some safety gear it'd be much better all round, and while arguably true the problem is that they seem to think they can do the conversion while the car is still doing 80.
I suspect hundreds of years in the future if we haven't ended up in the neo-feudalist cyberpunk future the current elites want then yeah, we might get Star Trek brand communism. But it'll be the work of centuries and we're probably more likely to all die slaves to the rich.

>>17845377
>>17845375
>>17845347
>le gdp & hdi!!
btw china has the gdp per capita of an eastern eu country (better than Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine etc but slightly worse than eastern countries in the EU). Keep in mind that this was a country who was Africa tier until the 2010s (1000$ of gdp per capita in 2000). Their GDP/capita growth has been higher than any developed country in the world and has been steadily rising (but with a drop in the last 3 years). I'm not a tankie but the fact that China managed to do so much in so little time with market socialism is quite impressive, even in regards to GDP.
Besides, as an other anon has pointed out, you can't assess a country's economy purely by gdp/capita. You have to factor into account other standards like trade balances & influences. In which, again, China has become a serious threat to most countries.

>>17845703
Cool story bro, could you do a real one next time ?

>>17843268 (OP)
>this includes people who have studied history, politics, and economics their whole life

I call BS. Few people keep "studying" things once they're done with college. Restating your opinion over and over for years isn't "studying"

>>17843485
>I'm not a communist and am a vehemently anti-communist religious catholic. I'm just saying the U.S is getting ridiculously complacent regarding China and is under the pressure of serious, potentially existential intitutional and cultural rot internally.
>>17846426
>I'm not a tankie but the fact that China managed to do so much in so little time with market socialism is quite impressive, even in regards to GDP.
I take China more seriously too. Now, it probably looks rosier than the reality because they have a highly authoritarian government which controls the media and censors information. It's like, you rarely hear about PLA fighter jets having accidents and crashing but it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Honestly the level of discipline / control they exercise in terms of censorship and surveillance is both scary and impressive but stuff does get through (like a rocket crashing and exploding close enough to a populated area that the locals filmed it and it bled through the information control system).

But my take about this (and I don't see it often) is that one reason for why China has performed well is the influence of scientific rationalism. People can debate how communist China really is, but this was a big thing in classic communism. Like say what you will about communism but they did send the first man into space. That's part of the reason why China has this:
https://youtu.be/WIiORnu4aIU

I get a whole vibe from Chinese propaganda that recalls high modernism of the 1940s/1950s with its belief in science, progress, and a historical mission:
https://youtu.be/dtaaj3z_mNM

Okay it's propaganda, but it's trying to influence the minds of Chinese. In much of the world from the U.S. to Russia to the Islamic countries, there's a prevailing spirit of irrationalism, conspiracy theories, woo-woo thinkers, and various nightmare e-cults. I think it's a big problem.

>>17846426
China just took out massive loans from the World bank retard, the Xi is already ruining all the progress they have made.

>>17846482
China is a massive global lender. What are you talking about.

>>17843307
Saying something works in theory or that it didn't succeed is an oxymoron, theories need to be proven to be seen as successful, it's an abstract, theories on themselves are nothing.

It's like I say I'm gonna get chocolate and make you feel better if I stab you but I instead get blood and you die, then I say "chocolatism hasn't been tried yet".

It's complete nonsense.

>>17843268 (OP)
The thread has offered its fair share of truth and gibberish alike, but the central error persists: the entire framing of "communism has never been tried" or "capitalism evolved organically" is a deception, and one perpetrated by fools, ideologues, and those too cowed to ask, for what end does society exist?Let us begin with the axiom: No economy can be judged apart from its moral-intellectual purpose. Communism, in its Marxian expression, presumes that man's highest destiny is defined by his material condition. It equates human freedom with the abolition of private ownership of productive means. But what, in reality, is abolished in such regimes is not property, but the soul. The power to will, to imagine, to create outside the boundaries of State dogma. What does it mean to say communism “hasn’t been tried”? It has manifested materially in manufacturing quotas, and in the skeletal remains of agricultural collectivization. But communism as a theoretical telos (a classless, stateless world of material abundance) is unrealizable precisely because it stems from a misdiagnosis of man’s nature. Marx did not merely err in his economics; he degraded epistemology, denying the cognitive principle of hypothesis as Plato and Cusa understood it.

The USSR was a British-Venetian manipulated geopolitical wedge used to destroy the Eurasian heartland and rob it of Renaissance potential. The managerialism praised by today’s commentators is a mere technocratic evolution of the Aristotelian-slave model of man: that some are born to labor, and others to administer. You want a society that works? Then ask what kind of mind the society exists to cultivate.

>>17843450
The idea that people across all walks of life are capable of using their mental faculties to a degree that would allow them to participate in politics and the economy beyond the shop floor and the voting booth.

It's a very optimistic outlook.

>>17843332
And a free market system in the US had to profligate just coming out of a bloody revolutionary war which bankrupted them and they still become the global superpower in 2 centuries. Maybe this free market thing is really good for increasing the standard of living.

>>17845355
State socialism, duh

>>17846482
>China just took out massive loans from the World bank retard
As opposed to the U.S and its allies which have the highest debt to gdp ratios of anywhere on the planet?

>>17846978
But there was no private property.
The state owned all the means of production. I thought this communal ownership meant they achieved communism
Socialism is just heavy regulations by the government and heavy taxes for redistribution, but you still have capitalists owning the factories deciding who gets hired and fired and what gets made in the factory.

>>17843268 (OP)
Yugoslavia and China were successful Communist countries. The former was physically and ideologically destroyed by the Unipolar West because it opposed its global hegemony, whereas Russia submitted to it.

>>17846226
>having more wealth makes you lazier and less productive
Elon Musk sleeps in the office all the time, he works like hell

>>17843317
You need to learn the difference between utopian and scientific socialism. Only one of those has ever been put into practice; trust me socialists are just as frustrated by idealists and utopian fanatics as you are.
>>17843335
You need to check your moral arguments here and apply them to what you're trying to defend. "because it failed" and "outside influence". Capitalism failed a number of times and it too has been forcibly established in a number of countries outside of the initial economic core.
>>17843337
based, fuck reddit, it's a festering liberal nightmare

Cos it looks cool

>>17847155
You thought wrong. Socialism=social (not common) ownership of the means of production=state ownership. In communism there is no state at all.

>>17847293
>Elon Musk
>work

>>17847289
Yugoslavia stopped being a socialist country in 1990 with communists failing to win preceding elections. Even when it transitioned to the "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" it was a parliamentary republic

The great brown seethe at their masters.

>>17847403
For me, it's Islamist Asuka

>>17843268 (OP)
Monarchism and capitalism failed to achieve pic related after trying for thousands of years. The recent rise of China is the 2nd time in a hundred years a communist country inexplicably outcompetes the rest of the world.

>C-c-china isnt true communism
>then those other countries also arent true communism and it has never been tried
>NO, WAIT, DELET THIS, SHUT THIS DOWN!!1! NOW

>>17849198
>China
having the HDI of Mexico, a per capita GDP that's not even in the top 60, and being in 2nd place behind the USA in terms of nominal GDP despite having 3x the population is hardly winning

>>17849206
Keep your head in the sand until it's too late

>>17849206
>muh neolib policy wonk meme stats
I have no idea why you think the power and influence of a state is tied to quality of life in that state. Going by your logic Norway should be the mightiest empire on earth because they excel at all your meme stats.
>>17849198
>after trying for thousands of years
Yet who actually landed men on the moon? Oh right, the Christian, Capitalist, Liberal America.
The achievements of both the USSR and U.S in space were largely due to them recruiting German rocket scientists and the fall-off after they retired was staggering btw, no matter how much tankies meme about Gagarin or neolibs about muh Black women math whiz this is the reality of the space program/space race. it was a historical blip we will likely never see again.

>>17849218
>Going by your logic Norway should be the mightiest empire on earth because they excel at all your meme stats.
No, I think Norway is the most developed on Earth because it is. I think America has the largest economy on Earth because it does. I think Ireland and Switzerland have the highest per capita GDP, because they do. China has none of these qualities.

>>17849218
Korolev, Glushko, Tikhonravov, Pilyugin and Chertok doesnt sound german to me...

>>17849198
>>17849218
>>17849231
The Americans had Robert Goddard before they brought on German rocket scientists. Von Braun himself even admitted his work was largely based on Robert Goddards work on rocketry

For the Russians, it was not Communism that was a primary driving force for their space acheivements, it was Cosmism. Russian Cosmism predates Communism

>>17849222
>China has none of these qualities
China has several other stats that are in their favor that are far more important than more abstract concepts like HDI or GDP.
An example would be research, where top Chinese universities such as Tsinghua, Peking, and Nanjing along with other ones punch well above their weight given the country they are in and produce some of the most important and cutting-edge research and scientists in the world (no matter how unethical or dystopian the research often is). China brutally mogs every country in terms of industrial capacity in virtually every field (with some vital exceptions such as chips), they have the busiest ports, conduct the most international trade of any country in the world, and have the largest (and most rapidly modernizing) military. The Belt and Road is the largest infrastructure program in history and has had an impact on the third world comparable to the Marshall Plan, while China has also managed to swallow the economic influence of the U.S in several deeply entrenched American spheres of influence such as East Asia, Australia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Latin America.
These are the things the U.S really needs to worry about, and it is the sad reality that the U.S is increasingly uncapable or unwilling to confront due to both imperial hubris and rampant institutional rot domestically.

>>17849250
> China brutally mogs every country in terms of industrial capacity in virtually every field
Except that's not even true since the US is stil the second largest industrial power in-spite of deindustrialization
The thing is, does anyone actually want to be China? Exercising soft power over third world shitholes with an economy that is based entirely on cheap materials and labor? China could become the largest economy in the world tommorrow and I would still not care for them. You could call things like HDI a meme all you want, but it does reflect real human development. I think most people would agree that they would rather live in Switzerland or Norway than China. Sinophillia is a deep mental illness you clearly suffer from

>>17849231
>>17849237
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim
Regardless, the point still stands that the space race was an exception and incredible high point for mankind that will likely never be reached again in our lifetimes.

>>17849250
>>17849258
Also to further my point, China is literally the second largest source of immigration into the United States, literally MILLIONS of Chinese would rather live in the United States than China. You're not seeing the forest through the trees here

>>17849250
>top Chinese universities such as Tsinghua, Peking, and Nanjing along with other ones punch well above their weight given the country they are in and produce some of the most important and cutting-edge research and scientists in the world

>>17849250
>These are the things the U.S really needs to worry about, and it is the sad reality that the U.S is increasingly uncapable or unwilling to confront due to both imperial hubris and rampant institutional rot domestically.
You want to know how the US can compete with China?
Lower working wages and standard of living, because that's literally how China operates, that's why things like HDI are useful metrics, you illiterate dumbass.

>>17849258
>US is stil the second largest industrial power
This is a technicality due to the fact that it includes stuff assembled in America that is manufactured all over the global supply chain (including China).
>The thing is, does anyone actually want to be China?
This is part of why the U.S is losing out to China, because it's stuck in this Cold War/neocon mindset of it being "free liberal West vs. totalitarianism", when competition with China is a lot more abstract than that. China isn't a messianic Maoist regime, it doesn't give a shit about what political system other countries have or what their laws or worldviews are as long as they're allowed to trade with them as freely as possible. Whether you're Australia or Afghanistan, all they care about is money and influence because they play the realpolitik game as ruthlessly as possible.
>China could become the largest economy in the world tommorrow and I would still not care for them
I'm not at all a fan of China or any of the BRICS tankie meme regimes; I just see the West disorganized and flailing in response to the creeping, suffocating threat that they pose and falling apart at the seams internally due to neoliberalism being taken to its logical extreme.
>Sinophillia is a deep mental illness you clearly suffer from
Quite the opposite, I'm an old-school hawk who is simply deeply disappointed and disillusioned by both the internal state of the West and their incoherent, jumbled, and fractured non-response to the threats posed by China. I want us to win, but I just don't see us taking the steps necessary to do so for a number of highly complicated reasons.
>tldr I'm not a tankie, just blackpilled

>>17849274
You want the west to lower their wages in order to be competitive with third world shitholes, that's how the west competes with China. Basing your country on manufacturing will always result in a race-to-the-bottom scenario because you have to justify being a hub to outsource labor to. It's not worth it

>>17849264
I was talking about more recently, dumbass; like past decade or so.
>>17849270
>You want to know how the US can compete with China?
I know exactly how we can beat China: by nationalizing and organizing several vital industries into a network akin to the war production board so we can get rid of just-in-time production for these industries and start seriously stockpiling and manufacturing again, withdraw from the Middle East so we can focus on Europe and Asia, curb immigration sharply, build an official treaty network similar to NATO in Asia between the treaty states we already have there (SK, Japan, Flips), and co-ordinate policies to disentangle, isolate, and strangle China's economy and trade with our allies.

>>17849280
>You want the west to lower their wages in order to be competitive with third world shitholes
That's what the U.S abd several other Western countries are currently doing and is a serious part of the problem.

>>17849285
>I know exactly how we can beat China: by nationalizing and organizing several vital industries into a network akin to the war production board so we can get rid of just-in-time production for these industries and start seriously stockpiling and manufacturing again, withdraw from the Middle East so we can focus on Europe and Asia, curb immigration sharply, build an official treaty network similar to NATO in Asia between the treaty states we already have there (SK, Japan, Flips), and co-ordinate policies to disentangle, isolate, and strangle China's economy and trade with our allies.
Nope, China just undercut our product because they can make it cheaply since China has relatively lower working wages and a lower valued currency that has a more favorable exchange rate with western countries. To compete with China we have to agressively lower working wages and devalue our currency.
Or, in an even worse scenario, we swap places with China, China sees the writing on the wall, raises working wages and the value of their currency goes up as a product of increasing standard of living for the average Chinaman. There is no winning in your scenario. Things operate the way they currently do because the US is Chinas largest trade partner, because it's more profitable for US companies to outsource to China, and China obliges becauses they would rather have a reliable trade partner and economic stability

>>17849293
>>17849285
Or alternatively, we go through with your plan of relative economic isolationism, everything then immediately becomes more expensive, because labor and living standards are higher within said economic network, and everyone ends up even more fucked over.

>>17843268 (OP)
>communism has irrefutably never worked once
It irrefutably never has been achieved. I know it's a meme but it's also true. Socialism has been tried and it still works in some places just fine.

>>17849285
but thats communism

>>17843289
The west of the time functioned better too. The communist cunts collapsed or turned capitalist.