this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I don't know how idealistic and utopian you'd have to be to think that there wouldn't be corruption in communist parties and the governments of socialist nations.
You see a slow but steady stream of corruption cases coming out of countries like China and Vietnam.
What's most telling is that often the officials and party members who are found guilty of corruption are given extremely harsh sentences. China often hands down the death penalty for the most extreme cases of corruption, although in effect these are usually commuted to being life sentences in practice.
What you're approaching this article with is a one half of the unfalsifiable orthodoxy; if the Chinese government punishes cases of corruption within its ranks then it proves that their model has failed and the government is corrupt yet if there are no corruption cases against Chinese government officials then that's proof that the Chinese government is hiding its corrupt nature.
Of course there are going to be abuses of power and corruption within the government. That's what happens and nothing is going to change that fact.
What I'm more interested in is how an organisation works to prevent these corruption and abuses of power and what steps it takes to punish them when they are discovered.
Is it idealistic? My country in western Europe is pretty corruption free as far as anyone can tell. Seems perfectly achievable to me.
Or... we actually did something about it, and as a result enjoy some of the highest standards of living on the planet. But sure, we should strive to live more like the Chinese do.
Yes, your legislators renamed it lobbying or consultancy. Now corruption doesn't exist.
I don't really care what they've done. All that I know is that the parties I've voted for generally vote in my interests, and that actual noticeable change comes from it. As a result I enjoy high standards of living. The impression I get from my government is that they're genuinely trying to make things better for their citizens (even if it doesn't always work out). That's all I really need to know.
If corruption/lobbying is somehow rampant, it hasn't stopped many legislative measures to protect my interests. A good recent example is the many actions the EU has taken against anti-consumer tech giants. I lobbying was a thing here, do you think that would've happened? God knows these companies have the money.
I'm not omniscient, but I think we're doing quite alright.
So by the same standard, if China, for example, were to lift 800 million people out of poverty, a little corruption would be okay?
As lobbying is a fact throughout Europe, yes, I think the fact of gains and the fact of corruption can happen at the same time.
For another look at a contradictory unity of opposites, here's a look at how the corrupt EU is willing to fund research into combatting excessive PFAS in water while at the same time allowing companies to pump excessive PFAS into the water: https://www.uva.nl/en/content/news/news/2023/02/pfas-in-drinking-water.html?cb
If the Chinese government acted in the interests of their people I wouldn't care where they got their money from. Unfortunately, they do not. Luckily, I do not live there. And I will fight any attempts to make my country more like China.
I look forward to the day when the Chinese can be freed from the tyranny of collective wealth so that Europeans can feel more comfortable with Chinese corruption.
Right, that’s why you have this standard of living, not centuries of colonial exploitation of the Global South
We were prosperous long before that and are prosperous long after that.
Oh wow, "Museum of mercantalist past"?
Wonder what exhibits they have...
Huh, so that's how they got prosperous.
Theft.
Tell me, how'd we get the funds to sail and conquer these countries in the first place?
And without our colonies, how are we still rich today after many economic collapses and resets?
If Europe is nothing without colonies, why are we still here.
Because colonialism ended only in name dumbass. Most of your exocitc fruit and foods are from the global south, most of your electronics are made with minerals and workforce from the global south, most of your clothes are manufactured by overworked women in the global south. I could go on.
And also are you seriously just memory holing the African Franc? The most blatant and easiest to point to example of modern day colonialism? Not mentioning Canadian mining firms or Norwegian oil drilling operations or... I digress.
The gist of it is, we were poor as shit and needed to find more lucrative sources of natural resources because we were essentially forced to by our envirnoment and material conditions and because we already drained what we had. Britian has no forests for a reason, the steam engine needed fuel and wool farming was lucrative. They ran out of forests very soon and newly born capitalism needed to expand, and quick.
Also; wars. We "civilized" europeans loved killing each other brutally, often and at massive scale. We needed supplies for the meat grinder to continue on grinding.
So two "demons" you could say led to not only deaths of millions, but the enrichment of the few. And even for the breadcrumps we've got, and which are nothing considering what our capitalist have. It's mountainloads more to what the people of the global south have.
Laughable. Europe outside of Constantinople was a backwards shithole that needed to purchase all its manufactured goods from the superior civilizations of India and China. Absolutely nothing before colonialism.
Ekhem.
Istanbul.
You don't want to be called a :LIB: by me, the one true leftist, now do you? :smuglord:
Europe was a backward hellhole before the 1500s and wasn’t really “modern” by any standard until the 19th century, which very curiously coincided with the Scramble for Africa. Hmm, interesting.
Edit: so you’re Dutch. Isn’t the Netherlands’s wealth built on slavery? Why didn’t you guys give all that stolen money back?
Didn't you hear? They spent it and everything they have since the 1960s is due to hard work and intelligence (just don't ask whose).
After? It's ongoing
What do you think China is doing now?
Arresting one man instead of changing the system that lead to his corruption in the first place. Classic.
China has actually been doing a mass anti corruption campaign for about a decade to root out corruption throughout the country; this guy is just the latest guy to get prosecuted.
Cool, but an anti corruption campaign is meaningless without democracy. Call me when Xi can be voted out.
ahh but the system that legalizes corruption and bribery -- that's ok and doesn't need changing because it protects your interests.