挂路灯人

He treats Marx’s theory of alienation as Marx’s definition of capitalism.

He misreads “co-operative property of the workers themselves” as supporting predominantly workplace-level ownership.

The Engels “national capitalist” quotation is badly truncated conceptually. Engels absolutely does say that nationalization by the existing bourgeois state does not magically abolish capitalism. But the same passage proceeds to say that the proletariat seizes political power and initially transforms the means of production into state property.

The Chairman Mao quotation about “not eliminating capitalism” is removed from its stage-specific context. Chairman Mao was describing the New Democratic transition of an overwhelmingly agrarian, semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. In the same 1949 analysis he called for moving from an agricultural to an industrial country and from New Democracy toward socialism, with the state-owned sector as the socialist leading sector.

“If socialism needs capitalist mechanisms to develop productive forces, then capitalism must be superior to socialism” is a non sequitur. Transitional concessions reflect the inherited material structure of society, not the abstract superiority of capitalism.

He compares forms while disregarding class content.

Also several of his arguments are internally inconsistent

He says anarchists do not fetishize cooperatives, then repeatedly uses cooperative workplace control as his principal empirical test of socialism.

He says anarchism is not opposed to transition, but defines the Marxist transition as capitalist because it still contains transitional categories.

He accepts economic and political compromises in Spain but treats comparable compromises in Russia or China as proof of counterrevolution.

He excuses anarchist projects for being defeated externally while using external defeat against ML projects.

He says local institutions must federate into an integrated economy but treats centralized integrated economic decision-making as worker alienation.

He says capitalism can only be overcome through long historical transformation, yet faults the Bolsheviks for not abolishing money, commodity relations and inherited bourgeois norms almost immediately.

He correctly insists that socialism cannot merely mean better welfare, but then fails to seriously analyze the abolition of private capitalist ownership and planned social investment because his definition already excludes state-socialist ownership.

He rejects state ownership because ownership must belong to society itself, but never adequately solves how “society itself” makes binding macroeconomic decisions except through federated institutions, which are themselves organized political power under another name.

Given her influence relating to Libya and Yugoslavia you might still be right

This is more what I was thinking of with putting her ahead but “super predator” is just fucked up.

😱

That’s definitely an argument that could be made I simply think number 1 is too hotly contended for him to make the cut. Honestly I’d put Hillary “Super Predator” Clinton over Biden and she’s certainly not number 1.

I think Biden is arguably the most destructive American politician in living memory.

There’s some really strong competition for that spot. Reagan, Kissinger, both Bushs’, Obama, and more

For the sake of your hypothetical if we say this article was instead about modern Russia leveraging ai for chemical research that had a clear through line to weaponization, I would call anyone who thought they weren’t exploring those avenues incredibly naive.

If I had said that about China, that would also be Chauvinist.

Would it not?

But these aren’t equivalent due to the vastly different histories of the 2 countries. Taking history into account isn’t chauvinism. Is it not perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of the country that pardoned Unit731 and then used their knowledge to terrorise Vietnam and Korea with chemical and biological weapons (many that have lasting effects to this date), that employed biological terrorism on its own minority populations such as through the Tuskegee syphilis study or operation big buzz?

Not trusting a serial killer with a loaded shotgun isn’t chauvinism, it’s common sense.

Edit: Just to add that if America did not have the history it does it would be chauvinism however it does and as such it is only reasonable to be sceptical.

Is it chauvinism to judge a country on its long history of bio and chemical terrorism/warfare rather than taking them at their word that they’re not going to do it this time?