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Other than how annoying all this political economy stuff is, I have no comment to say.
ReplyDeleteBut to be somewhat relevant - I remember being young and clueless about what a "capitalist" or "bourgeoisie" was, and what was even a "proletarian". Even after my dad and history lectures explained, I still had no more clue than one term indicating the rich and another indicating the poor.
Knowing what those terms truly mean is to realize... *sigh* they are mostly relevant to the West. None of this stuff has ever been relevant to my country, and should never have been, in the first place to begin with.
And when it's not just relevant to the West, then it's just some out of date talks that no longer make sense.
To be honest, I used to be interested in this stuff, and even spent about 4 years of my life reading anything related to it (Marxism, Milton Friedman, macroeconomics, Asian countries' development history etc.). I wouldn't exactly call those years a waste of time, given that I mostly didn't have anything better to do.
This (talks about socialism versus capitalism) is like talking about god or alchemy, and the difference between alchemy and god as well as socialism versus capitalism being that: nobody has a take on alchemy, let alone acting triumphant over their hot take on it.
Not that I want to complain about Western stuff on a blog about the very thing, but it's really tiresome to see all the... "OMG China is capitalist, Vietnam is communist, Japan is fascist, Russia is collectivist, etc." - even among my fellow hobbyists. But then again, you don't usually want to socialize with other people about your hobbies (at least for me).
Still, nothing is more awesome than seeing people talking all enlightened about communism and having "nuanced" takes like they're some of the most thoughtful people on Earth, and even proceeded to lecture other countries what the latter are like. All the meanwhile all the countries that chose it didn't even have a choice (maybe except for Russia). Really cute to see people with choices sneering at you trying to choose the least terrible alternative possible each turn.
ReplyDeleteJust to elaborate on my previous comment, in case some narcissist decided to interpret it through their favourite lens.
ReplyDeleteWhat I have been trying to say being that people in the West seem to love to think they're more thoughtful on this very topic, and even proceed to let out takes along the lines of "Communism is bad socialism good", "China is not socialist but capitalist", "socialism is well-intentioned but wrongheaded", "Canada is more socialist than China". Blah blah blah I can keep listing more for an entire day. None of these talks is any meaningful however, and yet some in the West seem to love to insist people in Vietnam or China to care about it.
When I said "All the meanwhile all the countries that chose it didn't even have a choice (maybe except for Russia)": I wasn't trying to say 'the evil commies shoved it down our throats and we had no choice but it, please save us you superior and enlightened white tras- I mean Westerners'. I was saying you don't have debates about what is even communism when the communists are the only group of people that is strong enough and is the only one who tried to upthrow foreign occupation. There are of course nuances here, but as a simple general case - if your country is gonna fight against occupation anyway, and the only strong group is solely composed of fascists, buddhists, pedophiles, or any of that sorts, -- then your country has no choice but becoming a fascist or buddhist or pedophile country.