So recently, I've seen more stupid China/Hong Kong drama, as apparently a new propaganda sub has emerged that's adding more shit to the shit fire that is the Coronavirus.

Anyways, for the first time, someone actually bothered to back their arguments for China keeping their hands off Hong Kong with an actual Source Document. This one to be precise: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=ilr It's the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong. Of course, the person throwing sources around evidently did not bother to read the document and are presumably parroting others. Such is Propaganda.

Based on my understanding of the current issues regarding HK, folks are throwing a fit because China passed a "National Security Bill" to keep foreign political interference (e.g. the CIA) out of HK. People allege that infringes on HK's sovereignty. Most of all, people are alleging that the bill violates the above treaty. But lets take a moment to actually bother reading the treaty, shall we? What does it say on the 5th page of the PDF linked above?

" (2) The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be directly under the authority of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence [sic] affairs which are the responsibilities of the Central People's Government. "

So. This is where the discussion comes in. I didn't come here just to be a smart ass and just throw a refutation out there and walk away.

First: I don't have the text to the National Defense bill. If someone has it in English, I would like to see it, because based on my current understanding, China is still in compliance with the Treaty. This post was not made in defense of China, it was made in defense of Truthfulness. If China legitimately violated the treaty, then it violated the treaty. I need proof.

Second: I do not know if someone other than China would be liable if China was to interpret the US's or even Britain's treatment of HK as an undifferentiated part of it as a violation of the above treaty, and if in doing so, render the treaty null? I was, unfortunately, not able to understand most of the later parts of the treaty, and what, if any, enforcement exists in it. Legalese is hard to read, even more so for an almost 30 year old geopolitical legal document.

Third, are there any other documents that relate to, or otherwise influence China's relationship with HK? If a more recent agreement, say, give China more ot less power over HK, then it would have priority. Additionally, even if a document is older, if it is more general AND has more authority, it would take priority (e.g. a U.N. resolution returning all land stolen through imperialism back to it's rightful owners).

I'm interested in hearing y'all's thoughts on this. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm getting sick and tired of the anti-China circlejerk elsewhere on reddit. It is very hard to have a civil discussion when everyone has already made up their damn minds. AFAIK there is a non-zero percent likelihood all the circlejerk is rooted in Racism. Plain and simple. But don't quote me on that, I need sources first.

EDIT: What does the "AGITPROP" flair mean? It's been a while since I was last here to discuss political thoughts.

EDIT2: TEST

This sub is neither a safe space nor a free-for-all. It is a lightly-moderated casual sub that encourages discussion, debate, and education on the topic of socialism and asks only that you refrain from shitting the place up and observe the following rules.

• No literal nazis/fascists/neoreactionaries/that kind of shit
• If you're going to troll, be funny/interesting, and don't be spammy
• Don't use slurs unless you have a legitimate serious-discussion reason for it
• No getting the sub quarantined or banned

So, for starters, please read this entire post and respond BEFORE clicking any links. Links are provided for convenience, NOT context.

So I was reading the comments in this shitshow here: https://old.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/g10u9r/

And it got me thinking. What are y'all's view on Sex Work? What do you think of when you hear the acronym "SWERF"*? Does Sex Work count as Work? Or am I using the wrong terminology? Does Porn and Prostitution have any place in a post-capitalist or socialist or communist society? If it does, in what form would it exist?

Part of a series(!??)** on "What does a Socialist Society even look like?", now accepting cross-post suggestions since this place isn't very active.

 * Sex Work Exclusionary Radical Feminism
 ** Maybe, not sure yet

• State and Revolution, Lenin
• On Authority, Engels
• Late Capitalism, Ernest Mandel (on emerging neoliberal state apparatus)
• God and the State, Bakunin (warning on antisemitism)
• Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin
• Marx and the State, Ralph Miliband
• State Capitalism in Russia, Bookchin
• Ecology of Freedom, Bookchin
• Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Louis Althusser
• Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson
• The People's Democratic Dictatorship, Mao
• The State and its History and Development Viewed Sociologically, Oppenheimer
• Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation, Peter Gelderloos

​

Collected from these two threads I've made:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/c0fl8g/aside_from_lenins_state_and_revolution_what_other/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/bov1xj/materialist_analysis_of_the_state/

​

What else ought be added or removed?

I was going to appeal an unexplained c101 ban, but then I noticed some of the mods there are also current LSC mods, and I remembered about the coup thing.

Then I started cross-checking modlists and moderated subreddit lists of the mods, and found out that the same post-coup-LSC-related mods are all over virtually every leftist sub.

So I decided - why grovel? I'm gonna run afoul of the same guys sooner or later, and the more times I've already run into them for making some unforeseeable faux pas, the more likely it is they'll shoot me down in the future for perceived slights.

So I compiled a list of said mods and subreddits, and spammed it in almost every one of them along with an angry explanation of it all.

I'm aware this is "old man yells at cloud"-grade foolishness, but if it's acceptable that the same network of people have a hand, or two or three in every leftist subreddit; and each one of them can have unlimited power of silencing "commoners" in several of them (up to 115 and hidden in most of them!), why shouldn't I speak against it?

Here's a cap illustrating the few subs where my idiotic campaign has had some acceptance:

https://imgur.com/a/yRhdqci

I am asking this question because of this comment in the rules:

Social democracy is liberalism. Socialists want worker control of the means of production; social democrats want a capitalist welfare state.

I am a bit confused because Social Democracy is not Liberalism. Or is this rule only enforced because the American Democratic party are liberalist that claim to be Social Democrats? So a "Social democracy" is only liberal in the eyes of an American?

Also to avoid any confusion, I want workers to own to means of production. I also want everyone to be equal. I look at socialism and communism for this. But while I like some communistic ideas, I dislike that someone would stands above the people. Because that opens up the possibility of abuse. To put it plain please don't ban me for asking this question, I am just a fellow socialist/equalist looking for an answer. It's totally possibly that I totally misunderstand the meaning of modern democracy.

EDIT. This post is about the sub /r/capitalism_in_decay. I post this here because discussion is not allowed there.

I'm not sure if any of y'all have been reading /r/all , but if you haven't, apparently an organization with potential relations with China, has, allegedly, given Reddit tons of money. This has led to a ton of posts on the front page about Tienanmen, and Tibet, and Winnie the Pooh, presumably from reactionaries worried about the possibility of reddit being censored of anti-china sentiments.

Now, I cannot supply my opinion on China at this time, as I do not wish to "muddy the well", as they say, but now that I think about it, I do not recall there being a consistent opinion on China from reddit's leftist subs, for the time I spent reading them. I recall there being debate as to whether they are even still communist or not, and I don't think there is an official consensus. I mean, maybe there is? I do not know, and I feel this sub is probably the best place to ask.

In effect, I guess I am asking how I should feel about this most recent development, as I do not know.

Update: The official new home of LSC is at r/capitalism_in_decay

This sub will probably be linked to by LSC for a while, because LSC has just demodded almost everyone who does work on the subreddit. The remaining team is almost entirely made up of people who abandoned the subreddit in order to spend time on Discord. When I made the LSC Discord in order to ensure the site admins couldn't just remove LSC as an entity, those mods went over to the LSC Discord and immediately started running it as their clubhouse. That was the extent of their contributions for a long time, until they decided to ignore the team's well-established internal democracy and push out the people actually moderating the sub.

The claim they're pushing seems to be that the removed mods were organizing a coup attempt. I can't speak for all the mods they removed; I'm sure they were as overzealous as ever, but I haven't compared lists. I was, in fact, on a "secret discord" in talks with a few other mods over the behavior of other mods--because they do this kind of shit, because they bullied members of the mod team, because they don't pull their weight as mods, and because they're only on Reddit in order to find a clique they can exercise dictatorial control over. Their coup proved I was right to be concerned, and it also meant the end of the experiment this sub was originally designed for (that is, as a test case to see how open and how educational LSC could be and still function as a large sub).

I was already getting sick of dealing with Reddit's administration and the way they treat mods of large subs (basically, like unpaid employees), so leaving LSC is not a huge deal, but the new team's friendliness to the Democratic Party is terribly concerning to me, especially considering how prominent LSC is, so I intend to keep pushing for a voice for the actual left on Reddit. I'm not interested in returning to LSC in its present form, because it's run by liberals and bullies; I think the sub would disintegrate if it were up to Juror and company to run it, so I think they're going to continue bringing in new people to delegate the actual work to so that they can continue feeling like important leaders. I strongly caution anyone against taking the position; it will be thankless, they will make your job difficult every step of the way, and they will throw you out and drag your name through the mud the instant you publicly object to their behavior or disagree with their liberal positions.

LSC is dead as a leftist sub unless the ruling clique is somehow removed. However, the LSC people are actually used to and the LSC being run now by Juror and company are two separate entities. The LSC people are actually used to is run by the people Juror and company just booted. Therefore, what I want to do with my time on Reddit is to work toward rebuilding the LSC the left actually wants, without Juror and company, who were only an obstacle to building the existing LSC anyway. I'm extending an invitation to the rest of the couped LSC mods to join me here, though this is basically just a show of solidarity, because this sub is going to stay moderation-lite. I hope to be announcing the new LSC here soon. Watch this space.

Derp

As far as I can tell, society is predicated on the existence of a hierarchy. Pack animals have an alpha male (usually) , and it seems to be important for aligning the goals of the group.

My understanding is that our current society gives a social hierarchy, mostly based off of economic success. I think this is where Marxism steps in and says that an economic hierarchy is bad because we miss out on the innovations of those without resources. I may be a bit wrong on that.

Most of what I see about socialism and anti-capitalism wants to remove the economic hierarchy. Is there a consensus on what hierarchy should replace it?

So the other day I posted an evidently really poorly worded comment over on /r/FULLCOMMUNISM , a comment that at least in my mind, I intended for it to be broken down into 3 parts:

1. Is NATO still relevant?
2. If so, what is it's current purpose?
3. If Vladimir Putin is displaying Fascist/Authoritarian Tendencies, and NATO is still relevant, does NATO intend to do anything about it?

And now I am here, seeking an unbiased explanation of why NATO is a bad thing. Googling the question led to several conservative websites, and I do no feel like getting my information from those people. I apologize in advance if this is not the best place for this question.

For the record, the title is a compacted way of asking "Do Communists hate NATO" and "Why do Communists hate NATO", I was uncertain which title was more suitable, and I wouldn't want to make any blanket assumptions, that would just be rude.

/r/DiamatsDungeon is /r/LateStageCapitalism with the "Safe Space" settings cranked down a few notches. We allow debate and education. We still don't allow slurs and bigotry.

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