you can explain how having the public (specifically the demos using the greek idea of democracy) have input in government policy within the Chinese system. i only know about cuba's system tho which is, in my opinion, the most democratic one there is.
do the public in China have the ability to recall their delegates?
do their delegates in the national assembly bring drafts of bills to them for community input at public meetings?
do they have referendums for major changes to laws and the constitution?
what portion of the delegates in the highest levels are people who aren't career politicians?
etc. etc.
these are all things Cuba has but I don't know if China has them. China might not be a democracy by any reasonable definition and even if you support its ruling party you should be open to that possibility while researching.
a major thing you might come across is that Chinese citizens will say that democracy means a government that does what the people want. it's outcomes based. in the west we often focus entirely on process for defining democracy. but some are very restricted and insist that a democracy is a government made up of regular people, who are chosen by regular people, and who act for regular people (of, by, and for the people). it seems that in liberal circles they care more about the "by" and in China they care about the "for" and in ancient greece they cared about the "of".
god forbid i play a game where i do something that doesn't happen in real life lol
this whole article reads like one of those evangelical forum posts warning about the dangers your kid could have playing dungeons and dragons.
you aren't going to convince your prof.
the term democracy is defined in many different ways by many different people. it's an argument of semantics.
if your prof is a political scientist they are likely to be using/familiar with Polity, VDem, Freedom House, and the Democracy-Dictatorship Index. The important thing to note is that each of these essentially defines democracy as a government in which there are competitive multiparty elections. Anyone who defines democracy as requiring that will find it lacking in China and will never be convinced.
I would suggest stating that outright before explaining the ways in which the demos have say in government and control over government actions and ONLY if it is in line with your assignment.
China is not a democracy by any common definition used in western academia. Acknowledge this, and instead use it as an example of how the mainstream definitions of democracy are limited.
Ah ok. I didn't get that haha.
I hope you don't get too much vitriol from the comments lol.
This is a metaphysical question and can't adequately be answered.
You can believe it if you want. There is nothing we can say to dissuade you.
Materialists reject this view tho. We believe that the material world, made of particles, is all that exists.
But if believing we're all in a dream makes you win power for the oppressed peoples of the world, then who am I to judge.
And don't forget that even without money, we will still be able to measure embodied labor content. Even if the social arrangements don't let embodied labor content be what determines distribution, it will still be measurable. Altho one would have to fix it relative to a specific year otherwise the growth in embodied labor will just be the size of the proletariat times the average hours worked.
You are correct. This source, and many others from first world "third worldists" ignore this basic fact.
The term "unequal exchange" is misused by people. To say that profits come from unequal exchange is proudhonist, not marxist.
And this research paper assumes that all labor is of equal intensity.
Both are incorrect. This paper means nothing.
Labor in the third world of all skill levels produces less value per hour because of the lack of development of the means of production. Third world labor of equal skill produces less value in a global marketplace per hour when compared to that same labor applied to means of production in the developed first world. This is why the main task of every socialist government is to rapidly increase the stock of means of production and implement labor saving advances. i.e. a rapid industrialization.
@sovecon
@lemmygrad.ml