This is the idea of class action lawsuits, a bunch of people who normally can be kicked around by giant corporations, coming together and taking them to court because the corporation abused everyone in the same way.

So the answer here is a strong “maybe”.

Do you actually hold this position in all situations? It was illegal to harbor Jewish fugitives in Nazi Germany, should those laws be respected?

When you say “no, of course not”, maybe actually consider what your position is before posting. Because nobody’s position is to just “respect laws” in all circumstances.

I actually convinced my boss to get us a ping pong table, all I had to do was forego my pay for a year!

Totally worth, since I’m not working for the money, I’m working for the culture (our culture is now a ping pong table). It’s so awesome that I can use it during my state-mandated breaks 🙂

“from a private third party” where? A (non-foolish) socialist would advocate for rules against renting people, just like we’re not allowed to buy people right now.

That would mean there would be no private third parties that are renting out factories of rented workers.

If what you’re saying is “from a private third party outside the socialist space”, then that’s a problem for all kinds of socialist spaces. We can’t control productive forces outside of the space we have domain over.

It sounds like the market socialists you’ve been talking to haven’t been socialists if they’re in favor of private property, that’s strictly a capitalist position. They’re probably just welfare capitalists.

An actual market socialist is against private entities owning the means of production, they’re owned communally by some mechanism (be it some democratically run cooperative, the state, etc .) It wouldn’t be a group of stakeholders that are a separate, private entity disconnected from the workers (though the state arguably is an entity like that, and that’s where the line between state socialism and state capitalism gets blurry).

I’m a huge anti-capitalist/socialist, and often times I find it useful to use this mix-up of markets and capitalism in my favor.

When people say “but we need capitalism because the alternative to markets is so bad” I say plainly that I’m not advocating against markets, I’m advocating against classes. The vast majority of self-described capitalists aren’t trying to defend massive corporations or employer exploitation, they’re defending markets.

If all those pro market capitalists became market socialists, dismantling capitalism would be far easier, then we could have much more interesting discussions about the merits of markets and when to use them versus centralized planning, without a leech class exploiting wage slaves or scalping houses.

Authoritarian state capitalism is different than liberal capitalism, I wasn’t trying to say they’re the same as the U.S, and you correctly outlined some differences that I agree with.

As for beliefs, I also recognize many Chinese people believe they have socialism, just like many Americans believe that we live in a free democratic first world country. The similarity here is that both these takes are just state propaganda that have been successfully fed to the masses.

China has successfully reverted anything remotely socialist about the country over the last 40 years. Like I’ve said previously, I recognize one day they might flip the switch, eliminate all the landlords & business owners, seize the means of production, and dissolve the State. I don’t believe this will happen though, and they’ve made no indication of even moving vaguely in this direction.

If/when the day arrives that the workers own the means of production and are no longer wage slaves to a bourgeoise class, they will have successfully installed socialism. Before that day comes you can’t just execute a few billionaires and claim you have socialism, if you’re at all concerned with the true state of things.

I didn’t tell anyone how to run anything, I pointed out how they’re an entirely capitalist nation that pretends to be socialist. Maybe the current authoritarian regime will suddenly revert all the market reforms they’ve implemented over the last 3-4 decades, seize the means of production, and then dissolve the state when it’s no longer needed.

I don’t believe this will happen, and I don’t think many people do. Most of the “socialists” that support China are more than happy with the bourgeoise class existing and exploiting working class people “for the betterment of the State”. This kind of thinking falls much more in line with Mussolini than Marx.

“core values of socialism”? Like reintroducing landleeches after they were outlawed? Like allowing the bourgeoise to own the means of production and exploit the over a billion working class Chinese people in horrible conditions? Using the profit motive to “incentivize entrepreneurship”?

China is the epitome of SINO, they’re an authoritarian capitalist regime.

On this note it’s crazy there are people who will spend over $100 on a Windows license, when all they do is use a web browser or simple productivity apps like spreadsheets or word.

I can get if you’re using some adobe products, or some game that hasn’t been updated to the Linux compatible EAC, but for the vast majority of people paying over $100 (or having that cost passed onto you from the manufacturer if Windows is preinstalled) is crazy.