Agreed, but I think we have to look at the historical context. If the CPC stuck to the old ways, given the changing global tides, they would have been destroyed like the USSR and those very same workers would be substantially worse off.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
I saw this a while ago and I'll try to paraphrase it, but I probably won't get it exactly right. In the pre-Russian revolution era the Russians had pretty extensive correspondences with western European communists, and they had major disagreements about the course of revolution. The western Marxists wanted the Russians to not have a revolution, as they believed that following Marxist historiography a revolution needed to happen in an industrial core, not in an extractive/agrarian economy. The business of industrializing an economy will always be ugly, and they feared a Revolutionary Russian state rushing this process would poison the well of communism with the misery that would create. Better to let the capitalists take the blame for the suffering of industrialization and then have the communists come in, seize the MOP and reap the rewards.
Of course, the Leninists didn't listen, did their revolution, and went through the fairly unpleasant process of industrializing, but in the end were successful and were able to beat the industrialized Germans. China had a fairly similar process with a revolution happening within an agrarian, extractive, and extremely poor economy, and they've also had to deal with mechanizing their economy, which took a different path, but again has been pretty successful.
It would be nice if the communists had gone and won a revolution in France or Germany or England in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, but so far communists have only had success in the colonized world and not in the industrialized metropole. And that means that communists have had to do the ugly work of industrialization, and suffer the blame of that process.
Yeah, plus Cuba is not a threat to global American hegemony in any serious way. A truly red China would have been the target for the neocon freaks who took over in the early 2000s were it not "opened up" to the West. Of course the CPC went far too much into market openness in many areas, and there was a real possibility of the fall of the communist system entirely. Thankfully it looks like that path has been closed by Xi and the left wing of the party, who are beginning to correct the excesses of the Reform period. :inshallah-script: they'll bring back universal healthcare in the next decade.
I think it's funny how western propaganda has build this whole myth of China being not really communist because of the reforms. At the same time, these reforms are supposed to be good, because communism is evil. The cognitive dissonance is mind boggling.
Agreed, but I think we have to look at the historical context. If the CPC stuck to the old ways, given the changing global tides, they would have been destroyed like the USSR and those very same workers would be substantially worse off.
I saw this a while ago and I'll try to paraphrase it, but I probably won't get it exactly right. In the pre-Russian revolution era the Russians had pretty extensive correspondences with western European communists, and they had major disagreements about the course of revolution. The western Marxists wanted the Russians to not have a revolution, as they believed that following Marxist historiography a revolution needed to happen in an industrial core, not in an extractive/agrarian economy. The business of industrializing an economy will always be ugly, and they feared a Revolutionary Russian state rushing this process would poison the well of communism with the misery that would create. Better to let the capitalists take the blame for the suffering of industrialization and then have the communists come in, seize the MOP and reap the rewards.
Of course, the Leninists didn't listen, did their revolution, and went through the fairly unpleasant process of industrializing, but in the end were successful and were able to beat the industrialized Germans. China had a fairly similar process with a revolution happening within an agrarian, extractive, and extremely poor economy, and they've also had to deal with mechanizing their economy, which took a different path, but again has been pretty successful.
It would be nice if the communists had gone and won a revolution in France or Germany or England in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, but so far communists have only had success in the colonized world and not in the industrialized metropole. And that means that communists have had to do the ugly work of industrialization, and suffer the blame of that process.
Western leftists have always been the same huh
Ya I see it with Cuba. Even if they were not crushed instantly, the great Satan is a persistence hunter
Yeah, plus Cuba is not a threat to global American hegemony in any serious way. A truly red China would have been the target for the neocon freaks who took over in the early 2000s were it not "opened up" to the West. Of course the CPC went far too much into market openness in many areas, and there was a real possibility of the fall of the communist system entirely. Thankfully it looks like that path has been closed by Xi and the left wing of the party, who are beginning to correct the excesses of the Reform period. :inshallah-script: they'll bring back universal healthcare in the next decade.
I think it's funny how western propaganda has build this whole myth of China being not really communist because of the reforms. At the same time, these reforms are supposed to be good, because communism is evil. The cognitive dissonance is mind boggling.
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So which is capitalism, the way China is doing it, or the way America is? And why?
Then, whichever they don't say, delve into what makes it not capitalism.
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