Ugh horrible argument. No, you have to contend with the source I provided, not skip it and provide a different source, especially when the prolewiki page is a challenge to the Wikipedia page, and so citing the latter is like citing a work against which a polemic is directed at the polemic as an "alternative."

Apparently Wikipedia is "not biased", they just forbid certain sources, include U.S. government aligned sources by and large (this article you've cited sources Radio Free Europe, a CIA propaganda outlet; the New York Times summaries of situations in countries the U.S. is opposed to (this is done 10x), despite the source being a rubber stamp for the U.S. government; a Washington Post opinion article which completely obfuscates the nature of the press as a tool of class rule), and so on. Sorry, Wikipedia is biased.

I will have you shot

1. It's CPC, read a book.

2. Hexbear comments criticizing Russia and China (prepare for the goal posts to move lmao): [1] [2] [3]

Some like to call you Nazi or imperialist if you disagree with them, while in many aspects their ideology and that of their paragon countries is much closer to Nazism than that of liberal democracies like the ones you mentioned.

Unsure how this could be the case. Norway and Sweden both exploit the third world and have horribly racist attitudes towards immigration. And of course both cozy up to the United States, the country which inspired Nazi Germany in the first place [1] [2] [3].

I was trolling. Thomas Sankara was executed in a U.S.-backed coup. Do you think maybe he should have exercised more authority, better strengthened defenses and built up a stronger base for combatting imperialism, that he could have avoided this (I don't have an exact policy path, and it's not like Sankara didn't put down certain reactionary movements when necessary)? I'm sympathetic to Sankara of course, but if your ideal system of resisting authority succumbs to counter-authority, then maybe you don't have grounds to condemn greater authority exercised to these ends. I don't know how a "communist" could see authority in a vacuum to the point of accepting "authoritarianism" as anything other than the singling out of the authority of certain systems over others in safeguarding and expanding interests.

"Communist utopia" is the strawman of any support whatsoever for China and the DPRK, they're arguing in bad faith. They know this but it will be fun to see their example (probably a shitpost from 2 years ago).

Am I a tankie? I like socialism but think communism (total state control) is too far. We need, as AOC said, "an end to unregulated capitalism", but we can't go the authoritarian route of China or North Korea. I envision socialism as Norway and Sweden, these nations that have achieved harmony through peace and cooperation with liberal capitalism; we need nations that don't put down pro-democracy protests or have "socialist" attitudes around immigration/investment which restrict genuine freedom. I have seen several "tankies" (I hope I am using this right) say, verbatim, "North Korea is heaven on earth and a genuine utopia in every way", which really worries me. I tried to show them Yeonmi Park videos and Human Rights in North Korea articles but they all just laugh at me. Honestly I've considered leaving this instance, since even anarchism seems too far to me (how will capitalism be regulated without a state?), plus a lot of anarchists here are tankies as well, and they have no regard for human rights or the genocide China is currently committing. My only shining light of hope is the people like you who check these attitudes with credible sources and expose these lies in detail. Slava ukraini and freedom to all!

and yet almost all of the userbase is jingoistic westerners

What is extremism? Large deviation from the status quo. What is the status quo? Well it’s perfectly fine for people to defend the U.S. despite it being the inspiration for Nazi Germany; it’s perfectly fine for people to defend NATO despite its support for Nazis/fascism [1] [2] [3] and its terrorization of the third world; it’s perfectly alright to defend the “democratic” bombing and starvation of Afghans by the U.S.; it’s right in the realm of acceptable opinion to love cops as they kill ~1,000 poor and black people and brutalize their families; it’s respectable to justify sanctions to starve people in Cuba and the DPRK; so on and so forth, these are the realm of acceptable opinion. It is okay to oppose some of these things lightly of course, but total opposition is too extreme, and you are met with the nonsense of “extremes on both sides.” Nevermind that equivocating Nazism with left “extremism” (even in the most drastic cases) is recognized as a form of Holocaust denial, centrism can never be challenged.

You argue Hexbear users should be treated the same as Nazis? Very well, then Hexbear users can roam free and comments saying Hexbear users are bad should be deleted. This is your instance lmao. Get better arguments.

Why are you presuming liberals are dumb? Liberal societies are functioning in the real world while the most successful attempts at socialism are those that moved towards hybrid economies (Vietnam and China).

The case of Vietnam and China is well-explained in Chinese Marxist economic study and experience (not that you would know this), as Primary Stage Socialism. To explain this, it’s necessary to look at the history of these two countries. Before Vietnam emerged under modern socialist-orientation it was being pillaged by French then Japanese then French (again) colonialism; the French were overthrown by the Vietnamese, with France receiving support for some time from America until the U.S. decided they wanted the territory for themselves, where they bombed the country emerging just out of colonialism into oblivion, killing 1M+ for their resources until they were forced out, then employing sanctions and IMF pressure afterwards. This is clearly not an orthodox path of economic development and not conducive to a balanced test of economic competition that you’re implying. You of course know of China’s underdevelopment under semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism prior to socialist-orientation (with U.S. support for the KMT as the communists won the civil war).

Now I didn’t think I’d have to explain this, but the Marxist analysis isn’t “state ownership is good at all times and private ownership is bad at all times”; first there’s the question of class orientation of the state, tearing apart this ridiculous “mixed economy” nonsense, which is really just a method of obscuring this fact and simplifying economics into a ratio of (private/”public”, with both metrics gaining new context under different orientations of the class dictatorship, especially the latter). You cannot simply fully nationalize a drastically underdeveloped economy (nor is this the traditional socialist/Marxist prescription, with Engels stating for instance in Principles of Communism, “Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke? No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.”

Scientific socialism is specifically the approach that states that different scales of production demand different and mirrored relations of production which then determine the social relations of that society. Separate forms and scales of production demand the supremacy of separate emerging and progressive classes (just as feudalism nurtured and birthed the early bourgeoise to overthrow it, so that same bourgeoisie will eventually nurture its own successor, the proletariat, by virtue of the socialization of production and the decay of the capitalist mode of production). Primary Stage Socialism is specifically a new concept created by Deng Xiaoping to flesh out an understanding of the development of socialism on an underdeveloped platform. The basic explanation is that in developed countries there will be large-scale capitalist production, then revolution, then advanced socialism, whereas in artificially underdeveloped countries there will be revolution, then the development of large-scale capitalist production, then advanced socialism. The common enemy of imperialism nullifies the singular revolutionary character of the national bourgeoisie and, with the masses gaining new understanding from this experience, the dictatorship of the proletariat (typically headed by the proletariat with a mass base of the peasantry, as in China’s PDD). The objective under this new governance is to “modernize” the forces of production (by utilizing foreign investment, the patriotic national bourgeoisie, and market relations) so that they may correspond to this progressive class leadership and under this progressive class leadership as well as build the framework for socialist relations of production (directly state owned economy is still dominant in China). This isn’t some smashing rebuttal of socialism, nor is this “total/vs. mixed economy” nonsense anything other than a false dichotomy. These nations assumed this theory and practice because it is the correct approach (and not in the revisionist sense of abandoning Marxism-Leninism), and this notion of failure of socialism is a complete misunderstanding.

As for liberalism, it works for the bourgeoisie, is the ultimate ideology of the bourgeoisie undercutting all obstacles of outdated social (and economic thought to an extent) thought that hinders the bourgeoisie while uplifting this group and maintaining their select privileges. The vast majority of those ascribing to “liberalism” as an ideology do not belong to the select privileged group for which the ideology is oriented, and are defending demonstrably incorrect incorrect ideas with relation to the “second” and third world and upholding the pretexts of the dominant class not as a matter of sly infiltration but genuine mistaken belief (and the person you were replying to never stated that all people who uphold liberalism are genuinely confused or dumb, but that they had been arguing with those who are (talking incorrectly and against their ultimate interests). The misnomer of liberal societies “functioning” lies in the fact that “functioning” is seen as a blind metric (success/failure) rather than a relative idea (with certain modes functioning for certain groups, usually for those by which they were designed and carried out). China has been growing at a much faster rate than “liberal societies”, and is doing so without engaging in imperialism and massacring millions of people for regional influence and natural resources. Your entire critique is useless.

Also Parenti's Inventing Reality and "Monopoly Media Manipulation" and Roderic Day's "Brainwashing" [Pt.1] & [Pt. 2]