You believe Marxists see private property as a sin, rather than something becoming gradually outdated as production advances. This is the crux of your “Marxism.”

As for Engineers needing less training to swap from industry to industry, yes, this is a simplification. However, the fact of the matter is that within branches of engineering, transferability is high. Solidworks is a common engineering software, and its incredibly standardized. Engineering drawings used to be entirely by hand, and thus had no automated error catching. They also varied far more by industry. Now, a mechanical engineer can take their solid works experience and transfer it to another industry, like automotive to home applicance, and it’s relatively simple.

Of course, said engineer will have to understand the new standardization for BOM structure, how part numbers are handled, and company culture. However, it is gradually standardizing how work is done for mechanical engineers, making it a field that is increasingly generic among those trained in mechanical engineering. This is all oversimplified, but again, you entirely ignored the points on smithing, textiles, and carpentry, which all falls into the same point.

I’ve read it, you’re wrong.

The transition to communism, a fully collectivized economy, is built on highly centralized productive forces. Markets naturally centralize over time, and erase their own basis. Unless you think the progress of time doesn’t exist, then thus process will continue to unfold naturally. The fact that markets centralize, and the fact that planned economy is more efficient with centralized production than with non-centralized production, is not a “lie.” It’s basic economics.

The utility of listing off economists that have advanced on Marx in a manner that disproves him is in putting forth a positive position, rather than a negative, ie putting your back behind something you believe in, rather than rejecting understanding.

As for Han populations increasing, this isn’t colonialism. Colonialism involves pilfering the surplus of a colonial territory while stripping them of their own sovereignty. To the contrary, money flows from the central government to the local governments in Xinjiang and Tibet at far greater rates than flows out. Connolly was anti-imperialist to the core, correct, which is why you do him a disgrace by labeling every socialist government you don’t like as colonial or neocolonial. This isn’t a “civilize the savages” argument like you imply, it’s the fact that Xinjiang and Tibet are a part of China, are not being culturally erased but instead being culturally protected, and are soveriegn within China.

China isn’t neocolonial nor does it debt trap. This is baseless. The west is actively imperialist. The west uses financial domination of the global south, including dollar hegemony, IP monopoly, unequal exchange, and more to extract as much surplus from the global south as possible. China does not, and the reason it does not is because it isn’t dominated by private finance capital. Private finance capital is the main driver of imperialism as a stage in capitalism, and because you have not looked into the causes of imperialism and neocolonialism and have not looked at the numbers, you assume that the socialists must be guilty as well:

• Five Imperialist Myths About China’s Role in Africa

• China debt trap? PH an ‘expert in bad loans,’ Locsin says

• Deborah Brautigam Debunks the Chinese Debt Trap Theory in New Research Paper

• China’s Debt Relief for Africa: Emerging Deliberations

You have no sticking points. You reject materialist analysis in favor of vibes.

You keep making the moralist argument that private property is a sin. This is not Marxism. Marketization is useful in underdeveloped production, when planned economy is better in centralized production. Markets inevitably transition to centralized production. There is no specific timescale, but this general process is observable fact.

As for the fact that you can “sub-specialize” in engineering, I’m well aware. However, the idea that it takes a tremendous amount of time to train an experienced engineer in one field on another field is also incorrect. Knowledge increases, yes, and so too does our ability to standardize and simplify what we know. An engineer that works in automotive can quite easily transfer to home appliances, and vice versa. The processes and actual work at hand are more uniform across the board.

You also entirely ignored that fields like textile work, smithing, etc. have all largely been taken up by tooling with similar means of operation. The time to train for these jobs is lowering as time goes on.

Do better, be serious.

You keep pretending Marxism is about dogmatically paying everyone equally, and I have explained time and time again that you are confusing late-stage communism with early-stage socialism. Nobody has ever suggested anyone gets paid equally, and payment according to labor exists well into the later stages of socialism. You keep pretending China is hypocritical for not being Utopians and instead being pragmatic Marxists, but this point still seems to stick for you even though it’s utterly baseless.

As for advancements since Marx, I agree! Lenin, Walter Rodney, Cheng Enfu, and many other economists have carried his work forward. You haven’t given any examples, though, just continued to defend your own colonial adventures in Hong Kong while defending the European safety nets achieved by pilfering the surplus value of the global south.

The bits on “forced labor” are entirely unsourced on your part. Tibet was a feudal slave society before integration into the PRC, where slavery was abolished. Both Uyghur and Tibetan culture and language are preserved, with courses on Mandarin being promoted alongside them. You have no clue what you’re talking about here, and equating Tibet and Xinjiang with Ireland is horrendously insulting to Irish anti-imperialists like James Connolly. Do better than insulting your own people.

China is absolutely Marxist, social ownership is the principal aspect of the economy and the working class controls the state. Equating imperialist countries in Europe that have private ownership as principal and capitalist dominated states with socialism, purely because they distribute the spoils pilfered from the global south to their labor aristocracy, is laughable.

Got any supporting evidence for that?

I know what I’m talking about, and the fact that you cannot actually counter what I said but instead attack me directly is evidence that it’s yourself that doesn’t know. Ignorance isn’t a sin, to learn is to grow.

You’re still not getting it, even though you’re more than smart enough to. It is impossible to implement “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” tomorrow, because agricultural labor and medical labor are too distinct. We do not have sufficiently advanced means of production and distribution as well as polytechnical education to where we would not need to compensate skilled labor higher yet. That’s the entire reason why no socialist society has ever implemented what you’re talking about.

5 centuries ago, textile work, carpentry, smithing, and logistics all required dramatically different skillsets. Today, most production relies on tools that share in common means of operation. They all have their own characteristics, but the specialization of labor is eroding. This is also true across fields like engineering, where tools like CAD are industry standards. Barriers to job switching are lowering. In the far future, this process will continue, until no individual field needs more strenuous study than others.

I refuse to believe you are incapable of understanding this. I understand it as you deliberately refusing to. Do better, be serious.

KCNA is a good news source IMO, as are sites like DPRKToday. They don’t fulfill your requirements for independence, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good sources for understanding the DPRK.

The meme you posted has already been circulating around Marxist communities as a sarcastic jab against reformism, PotatoesFall is correct.

This is a meme made by Marxists, making fun of reformism. Here’s another example:

Nah, it’s a pretty popular meme in Marxist circles making fun of reformism. Here’s an example:

The super obvious editing is part of the joke, it isn’t a sincere belief in the edited statement but pointing out the absurdity of the statement in combination with the revolutionaries making them. With the recent wave of social democrats winning elections against establishment liberals, an ongoing struggle right now is in understanding the historically proven limitations of social democracy.

My evidence never contradicted me, you didn’t even know what you were saying for the majority of this conversation and got your talking points mixed up.

Why would you put a capitalist state and socialist state at the same level? The state is not outside class struggle, but is a product of class struggle, meaning it has a definite class character.

Why don’t you trust working people to honestly report on their own system? Again, “independence” in this case means “private.” You can listen to common people already, that’s what socially owned news does, and you can listen to people on the street in videos like the one I linked. You’ve claimed a point, but I don’t see the logical basis for it other than a generic distrust for organizations.

Those are all linked with corporations, though, with few exceptions. The DPRK has a planned economy, the means of production and distribution are socially owned. Thus, “independence” is in reality private ownership. Your decision to distrust socially owned media is more of a personal choice, but there’s a lot to learn from it.

I agree. There’s a dialectical link between the rising of the new and the violence of the old in resisting that.

The global south is developing and rising, and imperialism is crumbling. The birth of a more equal world will not be clean or even, but it is happening, a world where all nations are soveriegn.

In that case, you’re going to be extremely limited. There’s plenty of YouTube videos like this one from Boy Boy, but that’s going to be the limit if you want neither corporations nor governments. Media is gatekept globally behind deals and limited access.

I am once again pointing out to you that both the factory worker and medical worker would benefit from pursuing development and collectivization. Both have surplus value stolen from them, as is the basis of wage labor under a capitalist, and for those in the public sector they would also benefit from greater collectivization as is the basis of their shared prosperity.

You keep repeating the nonsense idea that communism is when everyone gets paid the same amount, but this has never been true. Not only is it a horrendous misreading of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” as everyone has unique needs, but the point at which that becomes reality is the point at which all labor is interchangeable and scarcity no longer exists for the majority of produced goods. Until that point, distribution is largely according to labor, meaning more skilled and more strenuous work is paid better.

You deliberately refuse to understand these basic points and keep retreating to the most nonsense attacks on communism possible.