--- budge <budge at el-pleasant.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 at 12:34pm Thomas Seay wrote:
> >
> > some of these types of people on here to talk
> about
> > their experiences under so-called "real
> socialism".
> > Now, I have yet to hear ONE Chinese say much good
>
> Hmm. You don't get out much, do you?
Well I can see that your source, PBS, is much more reliable than my own:
My wife is Chinese and was a member of the Young Communist League in China. Her parents are still members of the Communist Party of China. I have a large number of friends and relatives in the Chinese community here as well as in China. I speak the language. I occasionally visit there.
My point was not that China is better or worse now. Somethings have gotten better and some things have gotten worse. However, to promote China, under Mao or now, as some kind of model and imagine that it was not a police-state, which it was (hell, your family even has to pay for your own food if you are thrown in prison...I am not sure what happens to those whose families cant pay...I need to ask) is to be living in a leftist dream world.
There certainly is a greater disparity in wealth now than there was then, but again, my point was not to promote the present China over old maoist China.
Maybe I should ask my friend who was one of the organizers of the student democracy movement at Beijing University whether he thinks they would have gotten a better audience from the government under Mao. What do you think?
Maybe you need to get out of the mellow world of PBS and check out the immigrants in Chinatown, who despite getting the hell exploited out of them by greedy restaurant owners still dont seem to have too much nostalgia for the "dictatorship of the proleteriat" or state capitalism.
-Thomas
===== <<Be like me! The Primal Mother, eternally creative, eternally impelling into life,
eternally drawing satisfaction from the ceaseless flux of phenomena.>>
-Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy"
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