a good way to get me to ignore whatever you're saying is to paint someone with the brush of "mental illness" for seemingly no reason.

And while it may be difficult to acknowledge that China’s growing prosperity has less to do with socialism and far more to do with capitalism, especially the country’s emulation of the mercantilist policies that built the capitalist West, this is the reality. There is no socialist China. There is a capitalist China, which, in its industrial planning and state owned enterprises coexisting with privately-owned enterprises, merely recreates what other successful capitalist countries did to lift their millions out of poverty. If we’re going to talk of a socialist China we might as well talk of a socialist Germany and a socialist Japan and a socialist South Korea, for all of these countries, and more, relied heavily on industrial planning and state owned enterprises to lift their millions out of poverty, as capitalist China is doing today.

I've stopped reading. Guy has zero understanding of imperialism. How was West Germany rebuilt after WW2, and South Korea after the Korean war? How have South Korea and Germany acted since then, simply being outposts for US imperialism, filled with US military bases. How many US military bases are in China again? This is completely different from the situation in China post Mao. The whole point of China's project is to take the means of producing certain things away from the west and into their own countries, and then use that to grow their own industries and start decoupling. Meanwhile South Korea and Germany were given huge funds by the US to rebuild and have no intentions of decoupling in any way from the USA.

Horrible article

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Russian imperialism is transformed into Soviet anti-imperialism and Chinese billionaires are turned into socialists with Chinese characteristics.

Wow I didn't know supporting other revolutions was imperialism, and that building socialism will never involve control of the bourgeosie*. Granted I feel that people absolutely should be critical of socialist states both historical and actually-existing, however I feel like this dude is proposing the broken "works in theory" version of socialism that must be frictionless, perfectly round, and equally balanced for it to be successful. Also, he's conflating skepticism of NATO's narrative re: Ukraine and willingness to take Russia's statements about the war in good faith (with an understanding that states are always going to be self-serving in their public statements) with some sense of USSR revivalism or that Russia is somehow not a thoroughly capitalist country now. While there are leftists that are entirely and irresponsibly uncritical of Russia's narratives, a shit-tonne of online leftist discourse is in service to NATO's narrative - is the pro-Russian side of the argument really the problem here?

* A society in which the bourgeosie can be punished by the state is better than one where the state is subordinated to the bourgeousie. Additionally, saying "China has billionaires and is thus not socialist" totally paves over the idea that building socialism should be approached from a wider historical perspective than mere decades and that you absolutely cannot bootstrap your way into socialism by control of the government alone; rather than you'd need an economically matured, industrialized society to attain something resembling Marx's descriptions of Communism in its lower forms.

To put the question of China's socialism in more immediate terms, if the role of the state is to resolve the contradictions inherent in its society and economy, is China resolving those contradictions to the benefit of the working class in China? I'd say yes in many cases, however the ability of the state to resolve these contradictions effectively on its own is fundamentally limited by economic and social circumstances. Because SwCC has its basis in Marxist theory there's an awareness of these contradictions and the Chinese state's role in resolving them,the CPC can in crisis choose to resolve these contradictions in favor of the working class. Does that mean the CPC will press the big red Communism button? Fuck if I know.

:fedposting:

One sentence in and man's tryna start a china struggle session. He lurks hexbear and posted this as bait for sure

I mean I get what they're saying to some degree. I'm not as skeptical on China as they are, but I have seen people in leftist uncritically parroting nonsensical Russian positions and explanations. And a lot of my opinions do just come as reflexive anti-State department contrarianism :thinkin-lenin:

Had no idea John Mearsheimer and Vladimir Pozner were "Anachronist radical socialists", the irony of clueless motherfuckers like this is that they're so desperate for brownie points from liberals that they attempt to integrate the most radical and far right interpretation of the neocons and third way liberals into their imaginary socialist schema

This shit is 1990s shock trauma translated into dismay at the fact that they bought into the bullshit and are now worried that a new generation of socialists won't compromise on a position that is ALREADY MAINSTREAM among left AND EVEN RIGHT leaning liberal academics!

NATO Expansionism is a fuckin fact, there is no anachronism here other than this cringing need to take MSM and DC think tank narratives seriously on the issue

Also wtf does China have to do with this? The meandering dipshit can't even keep his critique on topic, yeah sure let's all subscribe to a comfortable, incoherent, liberal approved definition of socialism that doesn't deal with the world as it is and pretend this is the REAL radicalism. Let's all pretend the Soviet Union didn't fall, Cuba isn't embargoed, and that China in the face of global ascendant neoliberalism could have easily magicked its way into Full Luxury communism in 1990, yeah lets act like this shit ain't fantasy and instead own the "mentally ill" socialists who can totally affect state proceedings thru their twitter discourses

:zizek-preference:

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