Permanently Deleted
zelensky is jewish ukraine is winning china made covid covid is harmless so we should open up covid is deadly (remember that video from wuhan where people were passing out in the streets and people wore hazmat suits and that scares me) china is locking down because covid is deadly?
china has the lowest covid death rate of any major country and is only outperformed by micronations
:lets-fucking-go: WOOOOOOOO
I don’t care if China is “socialist” or “state capitalist” or just “normal capitalist actually,” I would fucking kill to just have a functional state with the actual capacity to govern and do basic things like this.
I mean I do care, and I think they are socialist, but more important is the basic governing.
How are they socialist? Their economy is clearly based upon a capitalist mode of production. Perhaps they are led by a socialist party, but since the market reforms of the 70s-90s, the arrangement of their economy has been decidedly capitalist, no?
Furthermore I think proletarian internationalism has always been an important tenant of socialism, and china has not engaged in that in a long time (See: giving money and guns to Israel, Philippines, etc).
China is cool for this but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
I mean, there’s multiple camps on this (ultimately semantic) debate, right? And which position you take has less to do with reality and more to do with your politics.
There’s the marx-against-marxists people who’d point out that Marx defined the DoTP as a phase of capitalism in the Gothakritique.
Then there’s the Leninists who define the DoTP as the lower phase of socialism.
There’s the immediatists and communizers who believe that China is capitalist because the MoP aren’t in the control of the working class “to do communism you have to do communism.”
There’s the trots who believe that China isn’t internationalist enough.
There’s the maoists who believe that China’s liberal reforms were revisionist.
There’s the anarchists who don’t care if China’s socialist because it isn’t trying to do away with the state, but often opportunistically say it’s not socialist.
But ultimately, these are more reflections of your own politics rather than what China is, which is a capitalist mixed economy managed by an ML party, to put it as neutrally as possible.
The more interesting questions are “what roles does China play in the world system?” “How can western leftists combat empire?” “When is China an ally (for example in Bolivia)” “When is China an enemy? (for example in the Philippines).” Because ultimately you can only act from the space and position of your own body, and no state is going to be any one thing.
Hey, I was around before mass content moderation, and I absolutely will not click on a no-context shortened link.
Soviet Union also had aspects of capitalism, as does China. But China’s aspects of capitalism are more bigly and significant than USSR’s, and it is thus far more closer to capitalism than the USSR or other previously existing socialist societies were. Because China’s Aspects of Capitalism include having privatized workplaces and free markets (to a greater and more significant extent than the USSR did), and because the socialization of workplaces and distribution of goods (I, as a reasonable person, would assume) is a tenet of socialism, this makes China a country with a capitalist mode of production. Hence China is not a socialist country yet.
The party exerts inordinate power over businesses, forcing technology transfer from foreign businesses, nationalizing industries on a regular basis to be run by the party, creating and favoring co-op models, etc. It also centrally plans large portions of the economy and development, even with Deng’s reforms, like the “ghost cities” that actually do fill up, the massive mass transit infrastructure development, the elimination of absolute poverty through providing public housing, job training, etc based on sending out party cadres to assess needs and problems in local communities. It is moving increasingly in these directions.
Whether a country is socialist is a distracting question without a lot of payoff when it comes down to brass tacks, as there are so many aspects of society that you could call more or less socialist during any DOTP-focused process. Following a Marx-ish process, you should expect to see aspects of capitalism all over the place. This makes answering the question “hey is that country socialist?” hard to even define. Is it socialist if there are still landlords? How about a petty bourgeois owner class? Private property in any sense? Nobody actually has (nor should) have concrete definitions that make any sense. Instead, they are kept general. Does the party represent and respond to the workers against capitalist class interests? Is the party dominant over the capitalist class? Per Marx, that means you’re probably looking at a DOTP and struggling through a socialist process. And then people will argue endlessly about whether the party really represents the workers, etc etc.
Rather than asking whether China is socialist, it is more useful to ask whether they are engaging in a sustainable socialist project, and the resounding answer there is yes.
Allow me to preface by saying I’m generally not against deng or the market reforms, nor am I an ultraleft Maoist. I just think China is absolutely not a socialist country yet.
I don’t agree with obfuscating the definition of socialism as you have done, because with a flexible or nebulous definition we end up with people claiming that social democracies are socialism so long as they’re run by a “worker’s party”. To the contrary, I think there are real conditions a society must observably reach for it to be regarded as socialist. If we define socialism as, generally, a society in which “the means of production, distribution, and exchange are democratically controlled by the workers”, then China is not socialist. A large proportion of China’s wealth comes from privatized companies. Much like in capitalist countries, goods and services are distributed through the (more or less) free market. I imagine a majority of Chinese people labor for wages in privatized or state-run workplaces.
Take a second and just read this paragraph. This is the country you describe as being socialist (inb4 redsails article):
As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires – there were 658 Chinese billionaires[96] and 3.5 million millionaires.[97] In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse.[98][99] In other words, as of 2019, a hundred million Chinese are in the top ten percent of the wealthiest individuals in the world – those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000.[100] In 2020, China has the world’s highest number of billionaires, which is more than the US and India combined,[101] and as of March 2021, the number of billionaires in China reach 1,058 with the combined wealth of US$4.5 trillion.[102] According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2021, China is home to six of the world’s top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Hangzhou and Guangzhou in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Wealth_in_China
China surely is at the primary or early stage of socialism, and probably is on the path of socialism, but it’s still very far from genuine socialism. It’s okay to be excited about China’s progress and achievements, I am too, but as I said earlier, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m sure we can at least both agree that China has many leaps and bounds to make before they are able to realize a genuinely socialist country.
The party has never claimed of having achieved a primarily socialist economy or not utilizing capitalism as a mode of production . They claim to have just entered the primary stage of socialism as a historical and developmentall process utilizing state capitalism and market forces largely And under the control of the party to achieve prerequisite to get to the next step levels of development, infrastructure And technology,as well as superiority against western capital in order . And that’s not some dengist make up theory, it’s a process and stage analysis outlined by Mao himself.
There should be a bot for this: https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
