this shit pisses me off so much, they will blame china for emissions while 90% of the shit they own has ‘made in china’ on it without noticing the contradiction
It’s not even that, per capita China is far from the biggest polluter. If you put Europe + north America together to reach around the same population, we pollute much more than China by far
Absolutely, I find it just shows liberal ignorance for the historical relations between the west (UK) and China through the opium wars and why we pay them so little for the surplus; it is coercion.
I agree with this and also think we should frame it carefully when taking with liberals.
One of our other talking points, to challenge the idea that individuals recycling their cereal boxes won’t do shit for the climate, is to move the debate from the consumer side to the production side. This is difficult if we then point to China’s emissions and blame western consumers. (I mean, it’s hard not to see it as their fault.)
I’m unsure what the answer is, although I have three interconnected suggestions:
It’s the western imperialists who controlled the move of western factories to China. And even though China now has a slice of the pie, the same forces that are happy to run China’s environment are the same people who still control production and distribution over western markets: western imperialists.
Chinese production is a problem, but the CPC is on top of things and is transitioning to a green economy.
Western consumers are to blame because they are happy to be bought off. The same factors that mean they ignore working conditions in the global south also make them happy to ignore environmental degradationb in the global south.
Yes, but it’s incredibly hard to explain to people not knowing what colonialism and neocolonialism are. Point 2 is usually dismissed by simply don’t beliving it because China bad, and 1st and 3rd while being acknowledged in theory are immediately also handwaved by “and now China is the capitalist/colonizer/polluter”
Hard agree. And when you put it like that, it is very different looking at the consumer/producer within e.g. France and the consumer/producer within China. Because that’s the thing with China: they have the production but not the consumer (proportionately speaking).
She started a global environmental movement that includes direct action, civil disobedience, and groups that are explicitly anticapitalist. She’s done more to disrupt the capitalist machine than most off y’all, and she’s barely in her 20s. Y’all really need to pick your enemies differently
No we definitely don’t need to pick our enemies differently than cracker liberals chosen by the bourgeois establishment as figure heads to defang global movements, especially not when they’re now misappropiating climate movements to support the warmachine of Western imperialism.
I get it, and I agree in some ways. I don’t think her or FFF are gonna be the break with imperialism. BUT, it has garnered revolutionary potential. I myself am part of the Greta Generation of naive and propagandized liberals that thought a couple million youths on the street every week could change something. This was a reality check, all of us disillusioned with the system and years of non-progress. Some of us retreated into complicity, but most of us adopted deeply anticapitalist sentiments. Also, many are still in school and have little potential for theoreticaldevelopment. I really think we need to give it some years to see the fruits of this disjunction.
If you’d notice my username, 68 and the years that followed, were carried by a similar development that started with a naive youth movement coming to terms with reality. Similar developmentts can be seen now.
Yes, but people only progressed from those naive, liberal tendencies towards revolutionary action because of revolutionaries attacking them not because principled communists were praising the white liberal.
We criticize people, parties and organisations when their stances are wrong. Whatever good they might or might not have done in the past is no grounds for refraining from attack.
If there’s one thing that’s more than abundant in this world, it’s people defending milquetoast, apologetic liberals. We as communists don’t need to beat that drum too, but have to offer a different tune.
Again, I don’t disagree. Criticism is warranted and necessary.
I will still refrain from attacking the movement as a whole, because it has been, unediably, a crucial aspect of the revival of the left in the imperial core among the younger generations. This is precisely why the movement is most viciously attacked by the right, because they are afraid not of some harmless marches, but from the conclusions that the participants will gather. This is why I hope for the organization to flourish, because the conclusions that individuals will come to is always the same: revolution or capitulation. But getting people to this point is hard, especially in this scale, and has not been achieved in any form in the imeprical core in the last 40 or so years.
So I guess to conclude this hottake, I mean to say that Greta, FFF, or whatever similar organization, while most certainly not in any form revolutionary, is nonetheless the ground upon which we can flourish. Or, of anything, have pulled millions of young people to the left while the trend was drastically going in the other direction. All we have to do is drag them a little further, but some work has already been done for us. This is why I wish FFF etc all the best, despite not being aligned anymore in any form.
This is why I hope for the organization to flourish, because the conclusions that individuals will come to is always the same: revolution or capitulation.
Yes and liberals like Thunberg are actively working so people avoid the conclusion is revolution. Those that came to that conclusion did not get there, because principled communists were defending white liberals, but because they offered an alternative and a systemic critique to the shortcomings of liberal climate movements.
Revolutionary organisations can work on the grounds of liberal organising and even with liberal organisations, even on the grand strategic level as in the Russian, Chinese, Cuban and many other revolutions. But they decidedly do not do that by merging with them or refraining from citicizing them when they’re objectively wrong and to be criticized.
Communists don’t need to do the work of the liberals, the liberals are doing that already. The communists need to do the work of the communists, which is attacking liberal ideology relentlessly and structuraly, offering alternatives for the contradictions within liberal ideology. You don’t get someone from FFF to a CP by defending the liberalism within FFF.
I mean to say that Greta, FFF, or whatever similar organization, while most certainly not in any form revolutionary, is nonetheless the ground upon which we can flourish
Yes, but that is only so if we provide and attack them from the left, not if we defend them. If we do so, there’s no meaningful difference between us and them and then ultimately there’s no movement from them to the left.
Some of us retreated into complicity, but most of us adopted deeply anticapitalist sentiments.
Yeah, yeah, sure; we’ll see about that when y’all’s generation actually has fully-developed frontal lobes. Til then, Ion’t believe that shit for a second-- 'cause what I remember of the years that followed '68, the Woodstock generation became fuckin yuppies and sold out their whole shit wholesale.
She at least criticized capitalism, and part of me doubts that she was always a flytrap.
Lol, and then she blamed China for highest carbon emission. She is a western idiot nothing else.
this shit pisses me off so much, they will blame china for emissions while 90% of the shit they own has ‘made in china’ on it without noticing the contradiction
It’s not even that, per capita China is far from the biggest polluter. If you put Europe + north America together to reach around the same population, we pollute much more than China by far
Absolutely, I find it just shows liberal ignorance for the historical relations between the west (UK) and China through the opium wars and why we pay them so little for the surplus; it is coercion.
This applies to HK and Taiwan also.
I agree with this and also think we should frame it carefully when taking with liberals.
One of our other talking points, to challenge the idea that individuals recycling their cereal boxes won’t do shit for the climate, is to move the debate from the consumer side to the production side. This is difficult if we then point to China’s emissions and blame western consumers. (I mean, it’s hard not to see it as their fault.)
I’m unsure what the answer is, although I have three interconnected suggestions:
Just some initial thoughts.
Yes, but it’s incredibly hard to explain to people not knowing what colonialism and neocolonialism are. Point 2 is usually dismissed by simply don’t beliving it because China bad, and 1st and 3rd while being acknowledged in theory are immediately also handwaved by “and now China is the capitalist/colonizer/polluter”
Hard agree. And when you put it like that, it is very different looking at the consumer/producer within e.g. France and the consumer/producer within China. Because that’s the thing with China: they have the production but not the consumer (proportionately speaking).
I never said that she wasn’t ridiculous for blaming China. She is.
She started a global environmental movement that includes direct action, civil disobedience, and groups that are explicitly anticapitalist. She’s done more to disrupt the capitalist machine than most off y’all, and she’s barely in her 20s. Y’all really need to pick your enemies differently
No we definitely don’t need to pick our enemies differently than cracker liberals chosen by the bourgeois establishment as figure heads to defang global movements, especially not when they’re now misappropiating climate movements to support the warmachine of Western imperialism.
I get it, and I agree in some ways. I don’t think her or FFF are gonna be the break with imperialism. BUT, it has garnered revolutionary potential. I myself am part of the Greta Generation of naive and propagandized liberals that thought a couple million youths on the street every week could change something. This was a reality check, all of us disillusioned with the system and years of non-progress. Some of us retreated into complicity, but most of us adopted deeply anticapitalist sentiments. Also, many are still in school and have little potential for theoreticaldevelopment. I really think we need to give it some years to see the fruits of this disjunction.
If you’d notice my username, 68 and the years that followed, were carried by a similar development that started with a naive youth movement coming to terms with reality. Similar developmentts can be seen now.
Yes, but people only progressed from those naive, liberal tendencies towards revolutionary action because of revolutionaries attacking them not because principled communists were praising the white liberal.
We criticize people, parties and organisations when their stances are wrong. Whatever good they might or might not have done in the past is no grounds for refraining from attack.
If there’s one thing that’s more than abundant in this world, it’s people defending milquetoast, apologetic liberals. We as communists don’t need to beat that drum too, but have to offer a different tune.
Again, I don’t disagree. Criticism is warranted and necessary. I will still refrain from attacking the movement as a whole, because it has been, unediably, a crucial aspect of the revival of the left in the imperial core among the younger generations. This is precisely why the movement is most viciously attacked by the right, because they are afraid not of some harmless marches, but from the conclusions that the participants will gather. This is why I hope for the organization to flourish, because the conclusions that individuals will come to is always the same: revolution or capitulation. But getting people to this point is hard, especially in this scale, and has not been achieved in any form in the imeprical core in the last 40 or so years.
So I guess to conclude this hottake, I mean to say that Greta, FFF, or whatever similar organization, while most certainly not in any form revolutionary, is nonetheless the ground upon which we can flourish. Or, of anything, have pulled millions of young people to the left while the trend was drastically going in the other direction. All we have to do is drag them a little further, but some work has already been done for us. This is why I wish FFF etc all the best, despite not being aligned anymore in any form.
Yes and liberals like Thunberg are actively working so people avoid the conclusion is revolution. Those that came to that conclusion did not get there, because principled communists were defending white liberals, but because they offered an alternative and a systemic critique to the shortcomings of liberal climate movements.
Revolutionary organisations can work on the grounds of liberal organising and even with liberal organisations, even on the grand strategic level as in the Russian, Chinese, Cuban and many other revolutions. But they decidedly do not do that by merging with them or refraining from citicizing them when they’re objectively wrong and to be criticized.
Communists don’t need to do the work of the liberals, the liberals are doing that already. The communists need to do the work of the communists, which is attacking liberal ideology relentlessly and structuraly, offering alternatives for the contradictions within liberal ideology. You don’t get someone from FFF to a CP by defending the liberalism within FFF.
Yes, but that is only so if we provide and attack them from the left, not if we defend them. If we do so, there’s no meaningful difference between us and them and then ultimately there’s no movement from them to the left.
Yeah, yeah, sure; we’ll see about that when y’all’s generation actually has fully-developed frontal lobes. Til then, Ion’t believe that shit for a second-- 'cause what I remember of the years that followed '68, the Woodstock generation became fuckin yuppies and sold out their whole shit wholesale.