What I've seen of global geopolitics suggests there are plenty of corners of the world that are happy enough to adopt their own variants of socialism if left unimpeded.
So much of US foreign policy is playing socialism wake-a-mole. China's role as an alternative economy may simply work because it relieves neighboring states of the threat of sanctions and armed conflict.
I think that even western leftists barely can comprehend a vision beyond the four year election cycle. It's so ingrained for us to focus on short term.
I hope youre right. Is East Timor socialist or at least good for its people? I know they escaped colonialism and have sort of dodged foreign influence.
This is literally the end game every succdem I've heard of has
Except succdems want to work within the framework of a dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, and thus will lose power once Capitalism is threatened.
without raping the third world to accomplish it
damn, its gonna be really shitty for you when you hear about all the awful shit chinese industry is doing in africa
I work with a lot of Africans and they all seem to think China is far from perfect, but better than the west to deal with.
It's more like negotiation and less like do X or we will murder you all.
It's definitely better than anything the IMF/World Bank and the added fear of western gunpowder bring to the table. The biggest issue is that there needs to be more of a technology transfer from China to whichever African countries they're dealing with. Definitely not a perfect arrangement.
damn, its gonna be really shitty for you when you hear about all the awful shit chinese industry is doing in africa
Could you explain in more detail what that is?
I'm not even sure they're doing that either though to be fair, that seems to be the thing. The worst I've had is that they own 2 ports outside their borders... Both of which aren't debt traps and they constructed them themselves. It's obviously soft power projection but it's hard to feel bad about it? Nobody is getting a bad end of any deal.
High risk loans, not even debt traps, and the credit available with the least strings attached, its like a chinese marshall plan where its set to benefit china (although this may be more true in central asia)
That doesn't reflect what Yanis' experiences with dealing with them were when Greece was desperate and he was re-negotiating existing deals with the Chinese. They seem incredibly reasonable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBgbYQ5QAM0
i think you may have misunderstood my comment
it aligns pretty closely with what im saying, loaning to greece is a high risk loan though lol
i think the marshall plan was good for western europe (yes obviously it worked to benefit the US too, but like China here the biggest benefit is elevating potential future allies/sphere of influence shit)
Just the mention of “planners” (central planners of Mao’s era) is seen as a joke among top Chinese economists, and is often used in a derogative manner.
Can't remember who explained this in a talk, it's either Mark Blythe, Richard Wolf or David Harvey but I can't remember which or what talk it comes from :(.
China's economy isn't a centrally planned one, It's still state controlled but it's in large parts decentralised. When the Chinese state wants something done it tells all districts (not Chinese so don't know the proper term) what they want to achieve, officials in districts determine their own course of action and the central government makes the money available. Some of the districts waste the money on corruption, some of them fail, but a few succeed. The government then goes to the district that succeeds and gets all other districts to replicate what they have done. This allows china's economy to run multiple parallel economic experiments and find the best solution.
China has also resisted privatized banking as I believe they know that wallstreet will use a privatized banking system to loot the country (se Greece etc. etc). This is also a large part how companies in China are able to out compete western companies, the major state owned ventures can simply go to the central banks and borrow at almost non existent rates for near indefinite periods of time. It's a huge competitive advantage over the west, and angers western capital to no end. China is essentially running the largest venture capital fund in the world.
I see this as an evolution of the USSR's state capitalist model, it's still state control of the economy but its not the old style centralized planning that many western economist have critiqued greatly.
I can't speak to whether or not the Chinese government subscribes to the "eternal growth" ideology that has infect western ideology. It's clear that china benefits from growth right now as it's still raising the living standards of the population, but they have shown themselves willing to limit growth before.
Edit: Thanks for the info about the floods, shows how insular western media is, haven’t seen any stories about this anywhere.
When the Chinese state wants something done it tells all districts what they want to achieve, officials in districts determine their own course of action and the central government makes the money available
Interesting, that's exactly how Brazil's universal health system works. Every single building has a lot of autonomy (one little health unit will determine what goal they want to achieve within the community, then get the resources), and the biggest problems arise from where they don't (commissioned chairs get us health secretaries that don't have any experience in health, for example, so the federal money leaks into their pockets and the rest is badly distributed - in my city, it's some random lawyer). I've asked many professionals during classes and literally every single one of them confirmed me that the health system would be 1000 times better if the professionals could decide the funding between themselves
You are saying China today is like if the SU stuck to the NEP instead of moving to a top down planned economy
Not familiar enough with the details to say if its the exact same thing, sounds similar from what i can grok from the wikipedia, though china doesn't pretend it's internal market is a free market, It's very clearly heavily regulated.
I would also caution against view this as a linear sequence of events. One of the best points that Richard Wolf makes is that the USSR was an experiment, an attempt at building an alternative to capitalism, viewing the USSR as the holy text that must be followed is a bad idea as it in the end did collapse.
I try to see what the Chinese are doing in much the same way. An attempt at finding new paths while learning from the worst failures of the USSR.
Oh that'd be David Harvey. I remember re-watching his talks on China and mentioned that. I don't recall which video it was specifically though.
This sounds familiar, I think I remember hearing something like it in one of those live Wolff update episodes from d@w where he talks for an hour or two in the lecture hall. I’ll link the playlist when I get to my desktop
-I am still looking for the video... maybe it was a mark blyth one after all?
why are all the famous economists - the economist superstars, the ones who made front pages in Chinese news, the ones who are most influential in China’s economic reform policies, the ones that the central leadership relied on - are all neoclassical or Austrian school trained economists?
Because of deng
The job of the Marxist state is to manage class conflict and contradiction, not pretend they don't exist.
We say the end result of that in the USSR. It wasn't sustainable and now the ex Soviet block is neo liberal hell holes.
The Chinese are well aware of this and conciously avoiding the Soviet model because, well, it completely backfired...
Marx advocated for taking control of the state apparatus in order to elimate class.
Right and along the way you have to cleverly manage class conflict and contradictions. Classes aren't going to just disappear in a very short time because you really want them too. There have been enough attempts at Marxism to show that the elimination of something as ingrained as class is extremely difficult long term task.
If the most well intentioned marxists leaders took control of China tomorrow morning, it would still take decades if not generations to eliminate class and the state.
Where does the seeming pivot under Xi fit in?
I’m thinking in particular of the crackdown on liberal economists, and the caution against neoliberalism in this party-wide document.
The link to the party document is the same as the Bloomberg article.
I'm just happy to see actual substantive leftist critiques of China in this thread rather than stupid ass China Bad bullshit
I've honestly given up on reddit anarchists because of this. Chapo anarchists are great, IRL anarchists are great. Reddit anarchists think the US is better than the USSR or China.
Dude from your lips to Marx's ears. Left unity is possible, it ain't happening on reddit.
They won't be able to go Communist until the US empire is no longer existent and or threatening them with war. Competing with the US is the reason they had to do capitalism.
The USSR existed pre-globalisation of the modes of production. Globalisation was the neoliberal strategy to prevent another USSR from ever happening again, its aim was to force countries to take part in globalised trade (and thus markets) if they were going to have all the resources they required in order to produce everything they need for development. Pre-globalisation of these modes all countries had significant farming and manufacturing bases that allowed them to usually only trade with 4 or 5 local partners in order to get all the things they need. Now just to build a vehicle, you need parts and resources from a dozen different countries. Even if you DID have the ability to do it all yourself you're going to be at higher cost than the globalised countries and thus your development will be slower than theirs, this essentially guarantees they will always be ahead.
This is why every single country with AES today currently includes markets. Whether it's Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, or the upcoming socialism of Venezuela(and hopefully Bolivia if they get back on track). All will include markets out of complete and total necessity.
We live in a different world now. It has been reconstructed with new material conditions that are not the same as when the USSR existed. The capitalists went to great lengths to create a new system that makes it MUCH harder for socialists to succeed.
Understanding this is essential to understanding the strategy of modern socialist countries and why they all differ to the strategy the USSR was able to take. We now live in an incredibly different world.
The USSR was able to do socialism and go against the US
evidently it wasnt huh?
Imperialism is bad but if you believe this you are very dumb and stupid
prove it to me a westerner, regardless of how muchtangible material benefit a billion 3rd worlders have recieved, regardless if the country has become a gloal superpower with a planned economy, regardless if the country is the most peaceful superpower in history, regardless of if half the jobs hace great benefits,
I a western socialist am here to criticize your state, which I don't live in or have any control just like every western conservative imperialist
The United States is more likely to get to Socialism before China at this rate.
The next leader will kick the can further and further.
China going socialist in action is going to be the Cold Fusion of Political Science.
The United States is more likely to get to Socialism before China at this rate.
pathetic cope
