• Jusog@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I talked with a communist the other day, who was advertising for a communist newspaper he, I’m guessing, works for. Well he asked me if I am organised, to which I said yes and we started talking. At some point I said smth positive abt China and he was like: “uh… So China is socialist to you?”. That’s when I took a deep breath and started having a discussion with him.

    I stated that there are only like 24 capitalists in the bottom part of the Party, which consists of thousands of people. I also said that the government is known to support workers on strike. But he in turn argued that the Chinese gov may support strikers, but since it’s “state-capitalism” they still have to bend in the direction of the companies, cuz of the profits and so on. He also said that their economy is sure to collapse soon. I just thought abt the metric shitload of videos that comes out every year claiming China’s economy will collapse any second now My guy cited the fact that Evergrande, a company that according to him makes up a rly big part of their economy, filed for bankrupcy in the US or so.

    Well quite frankly I was standing there, I’d say a pretty good understanding of China, but I couldn’t outright refute his claims or present a compelling counterargument. So I’ve been looking forward to talking with any comrade abt that so that I could learn abt how to deal with this in the future, and to learn abt valid counter arguments as well.

    • Water Bowl Slime@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I think political convictions aren’t normally swayed by debate. You can dispute individual claims all day but beliefs are more than the sum of their parts. I mean, even if you debunk every single justification he has, that doesn’t mean he’ll stop believing that China is capitalist. No, he’ll probably just invent new reasons instead. So rather than asking why he believes it, you should ask why the idea is compelling to him.

      Part of the reason is surely because his job depends on it. But besides that, what about China does he take issue with? That they do business with the US? That their capitalist class still exists? That they’re unlike western “socialists”?