To two generations of the same family.

That’s not necessarily true. Global north labour aristocrats get paid higher, and in this example significantly higher, than global south proletariats because of the global system of exploitation.

Through various mechanisms of global value transfer, labour aristocrats functionality exploit the proletariat proper.

Labour aristocrats are not necessarily being robbed of their labour so much as they are part of the process of robbing others of theirs; and upset that they aren’t robbing quite as much as they would like because someone else, the bourgeois proper, is more effective at the robbing.

There is an issue to watch out for, here. Local authorities don’t always get their money from the central government. They may have to find another way to raise the capital. This is sometimes achieved by borrowing against or selling other local authority assets. Doing it this way can empower the banks. Michael Hudson has suggested that this is a contradiction that the CPC hasn’t yet been able to resolve.

That’s the mistake. You’re not supposed to be part of a community. The next iteration of this AI will have AI multiplayer, where you go online to play but there aren’t any real people on your server.

“if I can’t see how busy they’re working, they can’t be doing much”

It’s on the other side.

He’s not wrong, but the idea that the government is just one of many tools used by the ruling class to enslave humanity—that just doesn’t register with these people. They love the police and military but hate the government

This is where a little liberal theory can be used judicially. Anything on the separation of powers thesis. It’s hard to push people to understand the state from a Marxist perspective when they don’t fully understand what it looks like from the liberal perspective.

My local supermarket has started to lower prices. Not on everything. And there’s still shrinkflation. But on many basics. I doubt they’re doing it to be kind. It’s likely because they reached the limit of customers’ overdrafts and their overall sales were dipping or because they’re trying to undercut the competition to drive them out of business.

And you think this has what to do with modern China? This is like criticising the USSR for Tsarism. You realise the CPC overthrew the previous system? And when it did, it had the cultural revolution to overcome the trappings of that system, for which it is regularly criticised?

Makes sense. That’s a lot of cash!

That’s fantastic! Well done!

What next? Do you think you’ll keep going with just Duolingo or will you start adding in some other kinds of resources?

What’s it like with car finance? Do people tend to buy cars they can’t really afford? EVs are expensive in my country, too, but many people get into debt to buy them anyway.

This is the kind of thing that helped me. I’ve a friend who kept on pushing back in this way when we had political discussions. They simply asked, is that possible under capitalism and why? Eventually, it clicked and then I had to figure out why so I asked for reading recommendations and kept reading until I understood.

You’re welcome. I hope it’s as good as I remember! It was one of the books I read as I was beginning to read Marxist works and it helped me to mentally demolish the overton window that liberalism had built into my brain.

I think ‘centrist’ is used as a kind of shorthand, a lot of the time. Similar to ‘leftist’. And when they are used in this way, they’re practically meaningless. It seems to stem from lazy liberal thinking. Similar to ‘middle class’.

These terms that are bandied about in mainstream liberal discourse aren’t really backed by any kind of analysis. It serves the bourgeois to have us all arguing within this very narrow horizon. And it makes it difficult to have fruitful conversations.

Keep yours up. It’s got some extra text so I don’t have to click through to twitter; https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4870524

the idea that our dystopian panopticon is meaningfully less intrusive than China’s dystopian panopticon is cope.

Well said.

It’s been a while but I think Tariq Ali’s Extreme Centre: A Warning is a useful book. It’s quite short, too. Michael Rosen makes a similar point: the ‘centre’ isn’t so much in the middle of left and right; they are three points of a triangle. I’d add, in agreement with your conversation above, that this triangle is bourgeois.

I’m not sure if it makes sense to map communist politics in the same way. I’m inclined to say it wouldn’t make much sense.

Edit: wiki link – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extreme_Centre

I’ve been told that, but I haven’t seen any kind of evidence supporting the theory.

The example you’re discussing is the evidence. Reorientation does not mean fully reoriented. It means things are changing. An example that shows a changing relationship is evidence that relationships are changing. This remains true even if you don’t like the type of change or if things go back to the way they were.

At the moment we are still witnessing quantitative changes. Enough of those and we will see qualitative changes. The fact of quantitative change does not discount the fact of change i.e. reorientation.

‘Never interrupt your enemy when they make a mistake’ includes when they bathe in pig shit expecting any other outcome than smelling of pig shit and the consequences therefrom.

Georgia is not in the EU.