this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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And what have you built? Where's your great non-hierarchical ecofriendly alternative?
Community networks. Turning vacant lots into garden spaces we all pitch in on and benefit from. Seed exchanges and planting native species that benefit our wild pollinators. Local buy nothing groups that reduce the amount of waste going into landfills. Showing up to town halls to fight for walkable developments and better public transit. None of this stuff is that difficult, it just requires one to connect with the humans that live around them, the ones they’re going to spend most of their lives engaging with. What works in one city might not work exactly the same in another. A community garden in St Paul is not going to be the same as one in San Diego, and it shouldn’t be. Public transit in a tiny town in the Midwest isn’t going to be the same as in NYC. Still all interconnected, the water you shit in or divert upstream affects the people downstream, but again it’s about making those connections and figuring it out personally.
Also, are you arguing for the existence of hierarchies? Because when you start building those you’re setting up a system where people who have “more” whether they deserve it or not are coming in with a greater advantage and now have a framework to exploit.
This is just utopianism. These individual actions are not bad, but you cannot get the necessary systemic change by just advocating everyone to do it. You need organization and coordination, which involves hierarchy, establishing socialism, and directly addressing the root causes.
That's perhaps good for addressing things at the individual level, but the fact of the matter is that those whose destructive footprints are the largest are the elites at the top and the companies they control.
This entire conversation is about the existence of Chinese billionaires and their companies being defended as a necessary evil for the progress of the state, as well as the point MLism isn’t environmentally conscious beyond maintaining the environment as is needed to support the state. No shit it’s the elite and their industries causing the most destruction. The world doesn’t need billionaires or their companies, whether they’re based in the west or China. However, a good deal of communists will defend their team’s billionaire’s right to exist rather than break party policy and ask “why do we abide these few who enrich themselves at the expense of the world we have to share and create vast wealth inequity?”. I know why America tolerates their billionaires, it’s a capitalist country. Why does a socialist country tolerate theirs?
China has billionaires because it has private property, and it has private property because the CPC decided to integrate with the global market for the purposes of more rapid development and technology transfer. Every ML that exists has had to consider why China still has a bourgeoisie, the idea that we simply ignore it is absurd. Secondly, Marxism-Leninism does have a strong environmental component, you need a healthy environment in order to have a lasting environment for humanity. If we do not take care of the planet, then we will be wiped out.
As has been linked in this thread before, China Has Billionaires is an excellent starting place for understanding China's socialist system and its contradictions, contradictions that propel it to move forward and change.