Welcome!

[His Name Is John]

It seems to me, that new members rarely post a introduction thread anymore. As such I am making this thread as a way that new members can say hi, and get to know a couple of people on the forums.

So to all the new members:

First of all, hello!

Second, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[MinRogerCooper]

Hi my name is Roger Cooper,
I am a licensed minister, and i love Jesus. I live in NC, and i spend all of my freetime pondering the word and studying it. I love to have peaceful debates so i finally sought out a forum so i could do just that. Hopefully i can learn some new information, and teach some people new things too.

[Haven]

[Replying to post 318 by MinRogerCooper]

Welcome !

[Lion IRC]

[Replying to post 318 by MinRogerCooper]

Hi
Welcome. I'm new here too.
It's a nice forum.
They are pretty strict about the rules - but they are excellent rules so whats not to like?
Glad you're here.

[3Gindeed]

[Replying to post 1 by His Name Is John]

hi I'm 3gindeed I'm a fairly new Christian and I joined to learn more about other peoples points of view and also to learn how to debate wisely without becoming biased or defensive in my approache, that all folks!

[Haven]

[Replying to post 321 by 3Gindeed]

Welcome!

[tfvespasianus]

Greetings everyone,

I am a refugee from another religion discussion board that will be closing next month. I participated there for about 15 years or so (I had more than 18K points. I have no idea how those are calculated, but I will be sad to lose them even though they are not real). My education was in history (ancient and modern European history – don’t ask me about stuff in between ancient and modern as I am not that conversant), but studying Christianity has been something more than a hobby for me for a very long time although I am not a religious man. Specifically, I enjoy discussing historical and text critical questions.

Take care,
TFV

[Haven]

[Replying to post 323 by tfvespasianus]

Welcome!

[ThePeopleAreMyGod]

Greetings everyone.

I'd assume I'm a bit of an unusual one here.

In short, I'm an American citizen living in China, probably intent on settling down here indefinitely. Despite coming from a relatively conservative Christian family background, I've considered myself somewhere in the irreligious/atheist/agnostic spectrum for going on about 8 years now. Academically, I find religion (either on a level of doctrine or culture or as a social movement) quite fascinating.

I suppose it's fair to say that while at the very least I don't actively believe in God or the supernatural, my guiding philosophy is not so much atheism as Marxism-Leninism. In particular, I find myself drawn to tendencies of MLism of "Scientific Socialism" (in particular Titoism, Maoism, and Kimilsungism - a certain ideological cross-pollination could be argued between them). Particularly, I find President Kim Il Sung's Juche Theory a particularly good life outlook and have tried to model my life as consistently as possible after its principals. (Hence the username - President Kim Il Sung's personal motto that I've tried to make my own). I guess in a sociological sense, that could be comparable to a religion, though lacking supernatural claims.

It's my goal to continue to study Marxism-Leninism, particularly as it exists in East Asia on an academic level, and I have a number of personal friends who are members of the Chinese Communist Party.

So, with all that in mind, why on earth would I be on a forum like this, one might naturally ask? Funnily enough, a rather good Chinese friend of mine happens to be a Christian. In a strange sense, perhaps because both of our beliefs lie so outside the purview of what is viewed as "normal" in our respective cultures, we've become rather close. She's a very intelligent individual, and I've really enjoyed our conversations. Recently we've been discussing the fundamental philosophical ethos of Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and whether or not they can be synthesized.

So I guess that's kind of what draws me here; to take this sort of conversation between two very large belief systems that I feel, tragically, have had very little actual civil discussion and understanding with one another for a variety of historical reasons, to a much larger level.

Despite the ... less than flattering portrayal my ideology often gets in the West, I hope to be able to honestly and openly answer questions you may have regarding my belief system and how it relates to yours. I know there's probably a lot of misconceptions on both ends, but if we can be civil with one another, perhaps a lot of thought-provoking discussion lies in wait for both of us?

As St. Paul said, "let us reason together".

That, and at the end of the day, I'm a fairly normal (if nerdy) guy who loves sci-fi, video games, travel, anime, liquor, martial arts. good food, and generally the good things life has to offer.

I look forward to meeting and reasoning with you, my hopeful future friends.

~ ThePeopleAreMyGod

[Haven]

Welcome! I used to be a Marxist, but have evolved into a centrist who reluctantly supports capitalism.

May I ask what you think of China's progress toward socialism? It seems like it's moved completely in a capitalist direction.

[ThePeopleAreMyGod]

Welcome! I used to be a Marxist, but have evolved into a centrist who reluctantly supports capitalism.

May I ask what you think of China's progress toward socialism? It seems like it's moved completely in a capitalist direction.

Interesting question. I think I might fit in rather well here after all. : )

I guess in short I'd say that China - like any state dealing with material reality - has a lot of contradictions (both in the Marxist and vernacular sense of the word). Any Chinese person - Party Member or otherwise - would tell you as much I'm sure.

Funnily enough, just over a week ago, I traveled to Guang'an - Deng Xiaoping's hometown. I used to outright despise him as a revisionist who destroyed the revolutionary spirit of China, and I never really understood why any Chinese person could possibly admire him except for wanting to run a business and grow wealthy at the expense of others.

Recently, though, after a bit of self-criticism, I see I'd been taking accounts of him, generally by individuals hostile to (or at least operating outside of the praxis of) socialism more or less at face value instead of reading the man's own words. So recently I've read a fair amount of works, and he seems to actually, for the most part be consistent with the main ideas of Maoism. For most of his life, he was in the same faction of the Party as Mao, and defended Mao against the ultra-leftist faction.

Did he criticize some of Mao's theory and practice? Of course. But I see that as part of the Marxist-Leninist praxis, that incidentally, Mao himself was big on. No one should be "above" criticism (or self-criticism). And to be frank, even though I align myself mostly in Mao's field, I think as a human being, he made some mistakes. Some fairly big ones at that. Deng did too. As do all of us humans.

I guess my point is the narrative that there was some sort of huge ideological shift in China post-Mao is probably without particularly much historical backing. Deng Xiaoping himself didn't seem to think he was making much of a departure from Maoism. (Interestingly, Xi Jinping was a former Red Youth, and I think is doing a lot of work to get rid of some of the endemic corruption here).

But of course, different historical conditions require different actions on the part of states. Lenin himself advised that we ought to "use capitalism against itself". So while it certainly has its dangers, it isn't necessarily a betrayal of socialism to allow the opening of a market economy or foreign investment therein if ultimately the state still retains controlling interest. It's easier to serve the people's interests with a strong economy than one sanctioned into the abyss. Sad, but in a Post-Soviet world especially, probably necessary for the time being. Socialism is a goal.

Since the Chinese Communist Party still maintains political control, and is still operating ideologically more or less under Marxist-Leninist praxis (or at the very least, the Party Members I've talked to seem to know their stuff), I'd still consider the PRC to be a socialist state. Economically perhaps not, but that's the goal it's working towards. More or less that's what the CCP's campaign of the "Chinese Dream" is openly saying these days - the economy has become strong enough that everyone should be able to attain at least a decent standard of living and we're going to continue to work to make things better for the people from there.

Sure, there are a lot of corporations - both domestic and foreign in China - but I'd say, unlike, say, the US, the government still has a lot of controlling leverage. The government was able to make factories close down for several weeks before the Victory Day Parade to ensure low pollution for Beijing. All factories of above a certain size are required to have a local branch of the CCP, if the leadership is not already CCP. Instead of capitalists controlling the state - as is the case in capitalist states - the state controls the capitalists.

It's possible things could swing the other way in the future, but for now I'd consider it relatively socialist politically. Economically it's more ... pragmatic I suppose, but likely a better choice in that sense than being sanctioned into oblivion as happened to the DPRK/Cuba/even Russia these days. China's playing the long game, I think, of becoming economically powerful enough to have some sway on the world market/economy, and it's really starting to pay off.

Where I would fault the CCP most harshly is that they've somewhat lapsed in creating a socialist superstructure. I've traveled to Vietnam and the DPRK as well, and when you walk down the streets in say Ho Chi Minh City or Pyongyang, you see communist banners, murals with slogans like "Serve the people wholeheartedly", "work together for a better future", etc.

I've traveled to over a dozen cities in China, and with the exception of historical sites, you don't see that anywhere here. Just advertisements (which I would argue are propaganda of a sense for consumerist/capitalist ideology). I think that, more than anything, is destroying the ethos of communism in the minds of young people here. A lot of them seem to idolize the west and the idea of getting rich more than making themselves or their country as a whole fundamentally better. To me, I have to question what is the role of the Communist Party as a Vanguard if not to instill proper consciousness in the people.

But I'm probably going on way too long-winded on this (2:00 AM here in China, and I tend to ramble about these things. >_< ). Out of curiosity, might I ask what tendency of Marxist you were?

Though if we're derailing this thread too much, I'm happy to go elsewhere.