Tesla on Thursday agreed to promote “core socialist values” with over a dozen Chinese car manufacturers who also vowed to do so, according to The Wall Street Journal.

  • Radicalized@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Tesla is incompatible with socialism. Also this usually just means the government wants the company to tow the party line.

    You have to play by China’s rules if you want to do business there as a westerner. Apple does basically whatever the Chinese government asks for — as a result they’re the top selling phone in that country, even beating out Chinese made phones. For a country that’s been so nationalized and isolated that’s a huge deal.

    • Running_Out_of_Ideas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Dengism is authoritarian crap, but at least that part has been consistent.

      If you believe you need a massive amount of internal development to achieve socialism, and you believe Marx that the capitalist class cannot help but constantly revolutionize production, then letting corporations in on a leash, using them for development, and then eventually kicking them out is a pretty smart play. You slow down the capitalist world’s desire to burn down any country with a red flag AND you get development.

      Unfortunately, of course, what this leads to in practice is pushing hundreds of millions of citizens into sweatshops and building an unaccountable class of capitalists and corrupt, self-interested, state-approved union bosses. It leads to suppressing striking workers and college Marxist reading groups. In other words, a type of capitalism just as ruthless as private capitalism, but without even the very limited protections you see in a lot of capitalist republics.

      • burningquestion@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I mean the whole idea with the Chinese revolution was to build on the Russian revolution’s model, but the model developed in the Soviet Union was explicitly the horrible backup plan if the revolution in Germany failed and there was not going to be a highly-developed socialist European power to help Russia develop on a socialist basis. That was actually the original plan for the Russian revolution, and if the revolutionary wave of 1917-1919 or so hadn’t been crushed, it might actually have worked, or at least opened up a different developmental path than the one developed by the Soviets.

        And the Soviet model they developed was full of problems, to say the least.

        So in a sense, it kind of makes sense that if you don’t have a super-functional model for developing an economy, you can hack it by bringing back capitalism, but of course, now you have billionaires in the party and it’s politically extremely awkward to even try to talk about abandoning the market system in China even if you’re not advocating a return to the old planning system.

        • ikiru@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          This may reveal my own ignorance, but where could I read more about original plans for the October Revolution to coincide with or depend on a German socialist revolution?

          • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            The Chapo Traphouse podcast had a series on this called Hinge Points. I suspect it was on the Patreon feed. I remember listening while visiting family in late 2021 if you want to look it up on a feed’s timeline.

          • burningquestion@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s been too long since I did my reading on this to know where exactly to send you anymore (sorry) but I could clarify there was no actual plan for the German and Russian revolution to “coincide” (didn’t use that word, you’ll notice), because how would you even extract a promise to revolt in different countries at the same time, but the hope was that the Russian revolution would inspire revolutions in other countries. Which did very literally happen, although they grossly overestimated how easy it would be to unseat the governments of imperial Germany, UK, etc and the revolutions in Europe failed, at least in the places the Bolsheviks needed them to succeed. Ireland got its independence in this wave though, so that’s something!

            And to be clear, there was no specific backup plan. Loose phrasing on my part. What happened after that was that Lenin, who had generally managed to hold the Bolshevik party together, died, or was assassinated, who knows, and then they fell into power squabbles, and the USSR sort of cobbled together a social system out of the wreckage after the faction Stalin wound up leading won. Then we got everything that came after.

            Anyways, this is all crazy far afield of the original topic.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Tesla is incompatible with socialism

      What does China have to do with socialism?

      Do you think North Korea is a democracy too because their government’s name is “Democratic Republic of North Korea”?

      • Don Corleone@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In fact most countries with names starting with “Democratic” or “People’s” are not democratic at all…a true democratic country does not need to advertise it in its name.

        Same goes for human titles like “Honorable” for instance.

      • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        China is more socialist than the States, and it advertises itself as such too. They have to stick to that branding because it’s popular.

      • Radicalized@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Lol okay let me try again

        “Tesla is incompatible with whatever the Chinese government thinks the Chinese government is.”

        Do you feel better now?

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No, because Musk has been saying for years that he envies China because of how they can treat their workers.

          Musk and therefore Tesla aren’t just compatible with China’s leadership styles, Musk would love for them to be exactly the same.