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China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

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Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#41

Post by meric »

Retric wrote: post #33
scottLobster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on China, but this fits the pattern of them making extreme laws (ie death penalty for corruption) and then selectively enforcing them. Laws are tools for the party to use when it feels it might benefit, not universal rules.

What's really interesting about this is how unstable it makes the country. Clamp down and eventually you end up in a USSR situation where the government suddenly disintegrates with little real warning because there is no feedback loop to maintain stability. Things seem ok because everyone ends up walking around pretending things are good even the people enforcing the rules. Untill you get a little spark and suddenly…

It it's quick it will recover fast, it's if it's a grinding situation like Venezuela or Ukraine or Syria, where change occurs but there are still large blocs of people fighting for the government then it gets horrible.

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#43

Post by sushcount »

Retric wrote: post #33
scottLobster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on China, but this fits the pattern of them making extreme laws (ie death penalty for corruption) and then selectively enforcing them. Laws are tools for the party to use when it feels it might benefit, not universal rules.

What's really interesting about this is how unstable it makes the country. Clamp down and eventually you end up in a USSR situation where the government suddenly disintegrates with little real warning because there is no feedback loop to maintain stability. Things seem ok because everyone ends up walking around pretending things are good even the people enforcing the rules. Untill you get a little spark and suddenly…

Chinese government is panicking over its crashing economy, and it shows in its actions. As of this year, it

- banned soft cheese

- banned all korean music and entertainment

- (got rid of) Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Laureate, and prevented his wife from leaving China

- banned ICO

- banned a bitcoin exchange

- prevented its companies from investing overseas (Wanda, etc)

- (rumored) prevented the richest person from leaving China

- banned beards and veils in xinjiang

- banned 'muhammad' and 'jihad' as baby names

- banned entertainment news that promotes western lifestyles

etc

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#44

Post by saryant »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #14

Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its minions a month ago to prosecute twitter users who expressed dissent? He even inspired them to put them 30 years in jail. What we are seeing here is the instantiation of that strategy in internet messages. That doesn't mean that it is not their normal for ever…

Since when has The Economist ever been pro-communist? They don't even like Piketty.

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#45

Post by meric »

yarg wrote: post #15
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #14

Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its minions a month ago to prosecute twitter users who expressed dissent? He even inspired them to put them 30 years in jail. What we are seeing here is the instantiation of that strategy in internet messages. That doesn't mean that it is not their normal for ever…

The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.

The land distribution and collectivisation I think we're communistic - you're right it's very early on.

I think the Khmer Rouge were communistic too - everyone became a farmer. The city people can't farm properly and died.

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#46

Post by sillysaurus3 »

Retric wrote: post #33
scottLobster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on China, but this fits the pattern of them making extreme laws (ie death penalty for corruption) and then selectively enforcing them. Laws are tools for the party to use when it feels it might benefit, not universal rules.

What's really interesting about this is how unstable it makes the country. Clamp down and eventually you end up in a USSR situation where the government suddenly disintegrates with little real warning because there is no feedback loop to maintain stability. Things seem ok because everyone ends up walking around pretending things are good even the people enforcing the rules. Untill you get a little spark and suddenly…

Eh. I think we'd like to believe that, mostly because we don't want to face the possibility that China's system might work out fine.

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#47

Post by etplayer »

oculusthrift wrote: post #36
mirimir wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this can't be stressed or repeated enough! The Soviet Communist Party was/is rather like Scientology. At the noob level, in the Pioneers (a lot like US Boy Scouts) it was all about ideals/ideology and honor. At some point, you realized that members got nice perks. More money. Access to stores that carried better food and stuff. And eventually, as you got into higher-level leadership, you started to get that it w…

did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?

>did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same?

Communists have. Anarchists have. I know you're using the question rhetorically, it deserves an answer. Some say that it lies in praxis - the method in which lower-stage Communism is established; some say that it is because of Lenin's praxis, that is, Marxism-Leninism, not Marxism or Communism in general; some say that it is because the state must immediately cease during revolution (this is the position of the anarchists); some say that it is because of poorly maintained democratic models and incorrect transfers of power; some say that it is because of the action of counter-revolutionaries within the party.

It could also be what you said. But I do not think it is nearly as simple as you are making it; arguments have been advanced for the reasons I have mentioned. Where are yours?

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#48

Post by golemotron »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #46
Retric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really interesting about this is how unstable it makes the country. Clamp down and eventually you end up in a USSR situation where the government suddenly disintegrates with little real warning because there is no feedback loop to maintain stability. Things seem ok because everyone ends up walking around pretending things are good even the people enforcing the rules. Untill you get a little spark and suddenly…

Eh. I think we'd like to believe that, mostly because we don't want to face the possibility that China's system might work out fine.

I wish I knew more about Chinese history. They have about 4K years of institutional memory to draw on and they likely are more aware of their history than we are of ours in the West.

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#49

Post by etplayer »

quotemstr wrote: post #40
oculusthrift wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?

It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature. Attempts to force human nature to conform to the ideals of utopians in power leads to tyranny and misery. We should bear this experience in mind when looking at our own utopian projects. It's easy to mock China's defiance of human nature, but it's much harder to look in the mirror ask whether we've gone too far in our own pursuits of "justice".

>It's because utopian projects are at odds with human nature

This asks the question - what isn't at odds with human nature? Why do you think that utopian projects are necessarily at odds with human nature? Marx and Engels were sociologists, and in fact many modern sociologists are Marxists too. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's some indication that the "human nature" argument needs looking into.

And it has been looked into. Erich Fromm, a member of the Frankfurt School, wrote a book called Escape From Freedom in which he details the investigation of the human condition and attempts to identify what human nature is and to what extent it is malleable. The idea that "human nature" is suited to our current mode of production is as he notes a little fallacy stretching back to Freud's time.

The nature of humans is at least in part influenced by their environment. The mode of production we currently see (capitalism) is part of our environment. Are not changed men the product of changed circumstances? Perhaps Marx himself would agree with both you and I here:

"The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." — Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach, III"

To "human nature" I say firmly: human society.

Re: China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages

#50

Post by etplayer »

meric wrote: post #45
yarg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.

The land distribution and collectivisation I think we're communistic - you're right it's very early on. I think the Khmer Rouge were communistic too - everyone became a farmer. The city people can't farm properly and died.

That said, there are modern Communist projects which rely not at all on agrarian population; they believe that education should be tailored to fit the current mode of production; for a view on this, you may be interested in Paul W. Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism in which he elaborates what a society might look like under lower-stage Communism and what methods can be used to get there, and how an economy might be organised.

Communism is nothing about farming or peasantry - this was largely a Leninist invention to apply to the feudal society of pre-revolutionary Russia, and strengthened by Mao Tse-tung in the Chinese revolution. Marx, to my knowledge, had no support for the idea, nor did his contemporaries or predecessors.

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