Everybody knows about the backstory, there was a civil war, KMT fled to Taiwan creating two Chinas sort of, maybe, neither recognises the other, whole thing. ROC (Taiwan) ended up transitioning from military rule to a multi-party democracy, while the PRC (mainland China) didn’t do that (they did reform economically, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and all that, but still a one-party state, not a multi-party democracy). The status quo right now is that Taiwan is in the grey area of statehood where they function pretty much independently but aren’t properly recognised, and both sides of the strait are feeling pretty tense right now.
Taiwan’s stance on the issue is that they would like to remain politically and economically independent of mainland China, retaining their multi-party democracy, political connections to its allies, economic trade connections, etc. Also, a majority of the people in Taiwan do not support reunification with China.
China’s stance on the issue is that Taiwan should be reunified with the mainland at all costs, ideally peacefully, but war is not ruled out. They argue that Taiwan was unfairly separated from the mainland by imperial powers in their “century of humiliation”. Strategically, taking Taiwan would be beneficial to China as they would have better control of the sea.
Is it even possible for both sides to agree to a peaceful solution? Personally, I can only see two ways this could go about that has the consent of both parties. One, a reformist leader takes power in the mainland and gives up on Taiwan, and the two exist as separate independent nations. Or two, the mainland gets a super-reformist leader that transitions the mainland to a multi-party democracy, and maybe then reunification could be on the table, with Taiwan keeping an autonomous status given the large cultural difference (similar to Hong Kong or Macau’s current status). Both options are, unfortunately, very unlikely to occur in the near future.
A third option (?) would be a pseudo-unification, where Taiwan becomes a recognised country, but there can be free movement of people between the mainland and Taiwan, free trade, that sort of stuff (sort of like the EU? Maybe?). Not sure if the PRC would accept that.
What are your thoughts on a peaceful solution to the crisis that both sides could agree on?
You’re right, Lenin, not Stalin. The two are very ideologically similar so I hope you’ll forgive my misremembering. It doesn’t change the validity of my argument however.
Any analysis that automatically rejects 90% of historical imperialism as suddenly not imperialism is unserious. If you wish to call it capitalist imperialism that would be one thing but one obscure and frankly not all that serious theorist doesn’t just get to tell everyone else in the world they’re suddenly using a word wrong just because they decided to and because it’s convenient for their, yes, imperialist politics.
It changes your argument entirely. You claimed Stalin made it up to justify “soviet imperialism,” ie that it was an unscientific definition created for the purpose of justifying actions after the fact. The truth, on the other hand, is that analysis of imperialism predated the USSR, and was used to help analyze tsarist Russia’s place in the world and wage a successful revolution, because it was a scientific analysis of imperialism.
That’s not what Lenin’s analysis of imperialism does, though. You’re doing the thing where you confidently make a statement easily debunked, which leads me to believe that you either have no concern for accuracy, or instead are deliberately making things up. Roman imperialism was different in form and function to what Marxists recognize as the imperialist stage of capitalism.
Again, no, Lenin developed the Marxist analysis of imperialism in the context of the coming inter-imperialist war (World War I), and the successful analysis of imperialism helped establish socialism. There was no USSR, so you couldn’t even accuse Lenin of trying to justify “soviet imperialism,” which doesn’t exist anyways.
Are you being genuine, or have you made up your mind already and are making things up as you go to justify that? Honest question, because you’re doubling and tripling down on this.
I got a lot of people attacking me right now so I didn’t read as carefully as I should have, so I didn’t know it was a concept created before Lenin came into power. That changes my understanding of the context in which he created it, specifically.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that auth-left people use this confusing language that is in total contradiction to how the rest of the anglosphere uses the word exactly as it’s being used here–to deflect from actions that are very obviously of the same nature as historical imperialism. Yet because the PRC claims to be socialist, suddenly we ignore all of the power dynamics and all of the coercion and decide this is benign simply because it supposedly doesn’t match Lenin’s definition.
Such that even when it does match the common definition, I get tons of people attacking me and saying I don’t know what imperialism is when I’m not even using the word in the Marxist sense. Marxism isn’t of much interest to me, so yeah, I’m not an expert on it. That is not relevant to the fact that China’s attempts to crush Taiwanese autonomy and seize control of the island are textbook imperialism.
I understand that you’re flustered, and you feel attacked. It’s good that you’re changing your understanding to reflect new information, rather than reflexively dismissing it. My advice, if you’ll hear it, is to try to research things more before saying potentially inflammatory things about them, and this type of situation happens much less frequently.
There’s 2 major factors here:
Lenin’s analysis of imperialism isn’t at all in total contradiction. It’s a more developed, scientific analysis of late-stage capitalism. Marxist analysis of capitalism isn’t mainstream in the English-speaking world either, yet it’s important because it accurately explains the mechanisms of capitalism. I presume that you’re more anarchist inclined, the anarchist analysis of society isn’t mainstream either. If we hold your idea that being mainstream in English is synonymous with validity, then we’d be trapped into capitalist analysis of everything.
Marxists analyze imperialism scientifically not so as to deflect, but instead to understand how it develops, where it’s heading to, and what contradictions are at play. Dialectically, imperialism is dying while the global south is rising.
This isn’t true, either. The PRC is socialist, not because it claims to be, but because public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. The PRC isn’t imperialist, not simply because it doesn’t match what one guy said, but because said guy accurately analyzed an existing phenomenon and that phenomenon is not present in the PRC.
Why is it that countries participating in BRI rapidly develop and escape underdevelopment, while western IMF loans perpetuate underdevelopment? Why are the results so different? Marxism is not a dogma, we don’t twist reality to meet theory. Dialectical materialism does not tell us the answers, but tells us where to look, and that reality must be testef.
I think it would be a good idea for you to read Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism for yourself. This isn’t a “read theory” argument, I know you can’t force people to read if they don’t want to, but instead a suggestion for you to understand why Marxists analyze the behavior of late-stage capitalism this way.