Sorry if the title is a bit weird, I’m curious about what made you believe what you do. Mainstream leftism usually doesn’t go any further than trans rights or maybe UBI in some places, at least from what I know, so what made you go beyond that? You can answer generally or talk about a specific belief, just wanna see what caused the more radical opinions in you
I’m particularly curious about what changed your opinions about the USSR and China, most people think they’re awful, but in here they’re really liked and defended, I’ve even seen a lot of posts denying the Tiananmen massacre and the Holodomor and stuff like that, what made you go to such lengths?
It would surprise me if it was Huawei. Huawei is largely owned and democratically controlled by its workers, remarkable in its structure even for an AES country like China and one of very few large firms of this kind in the world (this is why the Failed States tries so hard to smear and destroy it, harder than say for example Xiaomi, which is publicly traded and subject to the whims of capital). If you are talking about pushback from software firms maybe you are thinking of eg. Tencent or Alibaba, which are publicly traded.
Ok I looked it up, it was Alibaba
https://hub.packtpub.com/jack-ma-defends-the-extreme-996-work-culture-in-chinese-tech-firms/
Is Huawei really a full on worker coop? that’s honestly awesome, and the fact that they could compete with other corporations is really remarkable
The CEO does have more shares than most but more or less it follows that model. It really is quite amazing, learning about it was a bit of a revelation for me.
https://www.huawei.com/my/facts/question-answer/who-owns-huawei
There’s a reason America hates it and wants it destroyed.
All that aspirational talk you hear about industrial democracy from the “libertarian” left in western countries? Yeah that actually concretely exists. In “authoritarian” China. On the scale of companies that can go toe to toe with fucking Google and win.
Of course they will tell you Huawei is evil.
Also also this is a big reason why the Failed States is so hellbent on stifling the development of Chinese microelectronics. Imagine if it got out that really, China is the democracy, a country of free citizens of democratic firms battling a hegemonic empire representing the divine right of modern despotic kings, the private shareholders. The ones who demand starvation, immiseration, the blood sacrifice of layoffs to satisfy their demented fucking god, the capital market.
Of course this is not to say that all Chinese firms are like this or that China is perfect. But please understand, unlike the Failed States, China is trying. China is constructing socialism with communism as an aspirational goal. And China has been forced by the Failed States and international market forces to cede ground in various ways regarding even its internal structure. But how are we, from outside, from countries that are not even trying, to judge any of this too harshly?
In China, Huawei can exist. You don’t see it in California.
yeah if a worker coop in america rose to a quarter of the level of power of Huawei it would be dismantled immediately
If China does genuinely strive for every company to be like this though, I wonder what they can do about the other huge companies that are run like most capitalist corporations, like the one I mentioned with 996 and all… and also if they do have something to do I wonder why they haven’t done it already
It’s a hard problem when, as you can clearly see even reading western news, companies like Huawei are uniquely targeted by international trading partners like the Failed States and its subject nations with sanctions and boycotts. For example, it had to spin off its smartphone brand Honor and reform it as a capitalist company so it could continue selling phones in the west with Google enabled. This was a terrible sacrifice but they did it to keep the people working in that division employed.
The great virtue of the existing Chinese state is that it allows for firms like this to exist, and it is demonstrable that, like in the old cliche a nation of free people can beat a nation of slaves, a company of free people can beat a company of slaves, even in the arena of the market that capitalists worship. The state pushing for it is hardly required, the state only needs to allow its possibility. Unfortunately China exists in a world of states hell bent on preserving the notion that democracy will always lose to dictatorship in market competition, and they manipulate the rules of the game to make it seem that way.
To offer a small partial answer to your question though, learning about Huawei and the fact that such a firm was able to exist in China while so relentlessly attacked by the Failed States of America and its imperial subjects, the profound difference between the reality one discovers about this specific company and the propaganda, is a big reason I personally have a positive view of the modern Chinese state.