Western coverage of events in China is highlighting a lurch leftwards by Xi Jinping. But this misunderstands Beijing’s approach and is fuelled by dismay that Xi has not followed the path that the West wanted him to.
you sent me a bunch of professors saying that opening up chinese citizens to foreign and domestic capitalist exploitation is a necessity for developing socialism. That most likely is true, that doesn't mean billionaires, awful working conditions, and an unrealization of even a fraction of the fruits of the worker's labor is an intrinsic by-product of that. China is developing socialism for the ~future , but that does not require the exorbitant, exploitation of billions of people in the meantime. It's like seeing the bare minimum and being completely satisfied, and not asking why things cant be improved or better.
Do you understand even remotely the inequality of development in 1970's China? By absolute standards? I'm guessing you don't appreciate the magnitude of that. It's the contradiction that Mao couldn't figure out how to bridge. Western powers had developed some industry before the CPC took charge. But large swathes of the country were stuck in roughly medieval peasantry. Mao was able to spread wealth in an egalitarian way but not actually realize sufficient growth to survive western imperialism. There is essentially no reduction in global poverty over the last several decades without china taking large fractions of their alienated labor product and investing it in rural areas. Marx's ideas about socialism were written under the assumption of wide spread industrialism -- existing capitalist production. The peasants seizing there farms can produce a rural communalism at best, but you simply can't reach abundance that way.
you sent me a bunch of professors saying that opening up chinese citizens to foreign and domestic capitalist exploitation is a necessity for developing socialism
it was a necessity for china
seriously, do you have any idea how miserable china was in 1980? people couldn't afford fucking bicycles, they were poorer than all of sub-saharan africa except for like 2 countries, and much poorer, just try to picture the meaning of an $160 per capita gdp (no missing zeroes here, it really was in the low 3 digits)
they had to do something because clearly a planned economy just wasn't working, they didn't have endogenous capabilities for growth given that despite every previous effort they were still basically in the 19th century
if you don't have those endogenous capabilities then you gotta go somewhere else and they sure as hell wouldn't go to the soviets, so what did you want them to do? to stay miserable?
even with all the exploitation of the 90s (which has been falling consistently since the late 00s), they were still living in better material conditions than 1980. it was cool that people had some of the basic stuff before then, but life still fucking sucked over there
you sent me a bunch of professors saying that opening up chinese citizens to foreign and domestic capitalist exploitation is a necessity for developing socialism. That most likely is true, that doesn't mean billionaires, awful working conditions, and an unrealization of even a fraction of the fruits of the worker's labor is an intrinsic by-product of that. China is developing socialism for the ~future , but that does not require the exorbitant, exploitation of billions of people in the meantime. It's like seeing the bare minimum and being completely satisfied, and not asking why things cant be improved or better.
Do you understand even remotely the inequality of development in 1970's China? By absolute standards? I'm guessing you don't appreciate the magnitude of that. It's the contradiction that Mao couldn't figure out how to bridge. Western powers had developed some industry before the CPC took charge. But large swathes of the country were stuck in roughly medieval peasantry. Mao was able to spread wealth in an egalitarian way but not actually realize sufficient growth to survive western imperialism. There is essentially no reduction in global poverty over the last several decades without china taking large fractions of their alienated labor product and investing it in rural areas. Marx's ideas about socialism were written under the assumption of wide spread industrialism -- existing capitalist production. The peasants seizing there farms can produce a rural communalism at best, but you simply can't reach abundance that way.
it was a necessity for china
seriously, do you have any idea how miserable china was in 1980? people couldn't afford fucking bicycles, they were poorer than all of sub-saharan africa except for like 2 countries, and much poorer, just try to picture the meaning of an $160 per capita gdp (no missing zeroes here, it really was in the low 3 digits)
they had to do something because clearly a planned economy just wasn't working, they didn't have endogenous capabilities for growth given that despite every previous effort they were still basically in the 19th century
if you don't have those endogenous capabilities then you gotta go somewhere else and they sure as hell wouldn't go to the soviets, so what did you want them to do? to stay miserable?
even with all the exploitation of the 90s (which has been falling consistently since the late 00s), they were still living in better material conditions than 1980. it was cool that people had some of the basic stuff before then, but life still fucking sucked over there