Decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the legacy of the Sino-Soviet split stands out sharply in the history of socialism and the Cold War as a major turning point, impacting conflicts all over the world and within the movement, the collapses of 89-91, and China's relationship with the West and embrace of foreign investment.
How do Marxists in China (inside and outside of the CPC) think of it? As justified, as a mistake, as well-intentioned but with bad consequences? What works of theory analyzes its causes, effects? And in light of China's reform and opening up, how is "revisionism", in general and as an ideological rebuke of liberalization in the post-Stalin era in particular, understood?
Any and all answers appreciated, let me know if another comm is better suited for this post.
CPC is a Marxist Leninist party and currently helmed by Xi and other committed Marxist Leninists
Basing analysis on words and statements versus concrete reality, very Marxist
-the vast majority of economic activity takes place under capitalist relations of production.
-The vast majority of people are wage-labourers selling their labour to capitalists.
-The vast majority of means of production are privately owned. Private ownership and exploitation is growing, rather than retreating.
-While land is de-jure publically owned, it is de-facto treated as private property which is bought, sold, rented and traded on markets like any other commodity.
If raising hundreds of millions out of poverty and improving their lives in essentially every way, all while engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships with the rest of the global south to help them similarly develop and not engaging in warfare or imperialism (THIS is concrete reality, not “words and statements” lmao) is non-Marxist what would even be the point of Marxism? The reality is that the CPC plan to develop socialism is not inconsistent with Marxism, which requires the rapid development of productive forces to the point that can sustain socialism and eventually communism. The people’s democratic dictatorship in China exists to suppress the capitalist class and ensure that development of the productive forces happens in a way that benefits the entire society, with the goal of building socialism and toward communism. I hardly have the energy to argue against this nonsense anymore, Marxism is not dogmatic adherence to a particular set of rules, it’s about investigating the material conditions of the particular place and time, and designing a program that best builds socialism in that context, which is exactly what the Marxist-Leninist CPC has been doing since it took power in 1949 and continues to do today. It’s also highly possible (I won’t say likely, because its hard to evaluate such hypotheticals) that if they had followed a more dogmatic approach rather than make the reforms that they did, they would have faced far more immense pressure from the capitalist powers led by the US and ended up going the way of the USSR. The fact that they are in a position to be powerful enough that the US won’t be able to undermine their revolution, while also making the enormous, unprecedented gains they have for all of their people, is a testament to the strength of the revolutionary program.
Classic article which addresses this nonsense better than I could myself. https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
thanks for this very informative post, comrade! I've been wanting to ask for more information regarding this, I will definitely check out that redsails article! :deng-salute:
not engaging in warfare
That whole “attacking Vietnam to defend Pol Pot” thing just didn’t happen huh
exists to suppress the capitalist class
Suppressing the capitalist class is when you create billionaires hand over fist
Also I don’t see who died and made Roderic Day the arbiter of what is and isn’t socialism.
War with Vietnam happened in 1979 over 40 years ago, and before the reforms that you're complaining about here took effect, so it does say a ton that you have to reach that far back.
"China has billionaires"
Great, wow what a novel new argument that I haven't literally already addressed.
You're right, the arbiter of socialism isnt Roderic Day, nor is it your stupid ass which obviously doesn't have a clue. I'd trust the nearly 100 million members of the CPC over either of you, but his arguments are a hell of a lot more compelling than yours. Either way, it doesn't matter, Chinese communists will keep building socialism while you screech about how it isn't real Marxism or whatever.
“China has billionaires”
"The UK is still a feudal society because it's still ruled by a king with a legislative body comprised of the aristocracy. I am very smart."
Like I keep saying, the day the Chinese economy stops being capitalist is the day I will happily tell all the dengists they were right. So far it’s just been 40 years and counting of capitalist exploitation except with the promise that “communism is coming in another decade or three, trust us bro”.
Luckily because of the CPC still retaining control, capitalist restoration isn’t as set in stone in China as it is in the former USSR for example. The course can still be corrected.
It's been 40 straight years of life improving year over year for the workers, rising wages, rising life expectancy, the end of food insecurity, incredible development of infrastructure and technology and the state run by the communist retaining control of the commanding heights of the economy while responding dutifully to the needs and wants of all its people. What's the sense in acting like your way would be better than the near miracles they've managed to achieve?
I will happily tell all the Dengists they were right
Nobody gives a shit lol.
Life expectancy, access to food, development of technology and infrastructure, and even “wage rises” can all rise under capitalism and indeed usually do in the initial stages of capitalist development.
I’m not “acting like my way would be better”. It’s a very simple and provable point that china’s economy is arranged in a capitalist manner. Whether you want to argue about if that capitalist economy is being steered towards socialism by a party that cares to do so, and if/when they’ll get around to steering it that way is a whole different discussion.
Marketisation under a socialist party is possible for strategic reasons, see the NEP. Although I’d argue the circumstances are very different, there’s an argument to be had there.
What can’t be argued is the capitalist orientation of the Chinese economy 🤷♂️
usually do in the initial stages of capitalist development
No, that's not really true. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169
That's the other thing about this dumb "chinas just capitalist" argument, it's reactionary in the sense that if you accept it, you essentially have to accept that capitalism is or could be good for people generally, since Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has been unequivocally and inarguably good for people generally.
Capitalism overseen by a well-entrenched socialist party clearly can be good for people generally. That fact doesn’t change the definitions of capitalism and socialism though. Words mean things.
Capitalism is not and cannot be good for people generally, it can only benefit a small percentage of people at best, by brutally exploiting the rest. The illusion of capitalism benefiting people generally in the imperial core is built on the rape and pillage of the imperial periphery, not the case for China where Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has benefitted the masses without resorting to imperialism. China is a socialist country because the masses successfully took state power and direct the economy and society via the Communist party, which explains why their economy and society actually work for the benefit of the masses. Your initial assertion is that China is not Marxist, yet you haven't made a single convincing argument for that notion. Retaining some elements or degree of the capitalist mode of production under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not inconsistent with Marxism, Mr "Words mean things".
Your initial assertion is that China is not Marxist, yet you haven’t made a single convincing argument for that notion.
As far as I’m concerned the people who rule China are dengist, ipso facto they are revisionists and not marxists. As far as you’re concerned they are staunch Marxist-Leninists upholding everything good about socialism.
Clearly we’re never going to agree and there’s not much point going back and forth, we’ll just have to sit and wait for communism by 2050.
"Communism by 2050" is not even a thing so idk what you're talking about. There's no way to expect any country to achieve communism by then given the power still wielded by the empire of capital today.
It’s not? Then you should probably let your fellow true believers know
Communism, a stateless, moneyless and classless society could not possibly be achieved by 2050. Maybe if the Russian revolution had spread to Europe and from there to the rest of the world we could be close by then. What China seeks to be by 2050 is a modern prosperous socialist society and I have no reason to doubt they will achieve that as they have generally achieved all that they have set out to do (like eradication of absolute poverty by 2020 for example). There's little reason to doubt a communist party that has consistently done right by their people and met their stated goals when they state their goal to be a prosperous modern socialist society by 2050. What that really means to me is that before 2050 they will be in a position to begin doing away with private property relations and no outside actors (eg the US) will be able to do anything about it. Until then the state will continue to control the commanding heights of the economy as they do now and have since the revolution.
The PRC also hasn't experienced a real boom-bust cycle. The lack of a real boom-bust cycle is a major argument towards the PRC not being capitalist because the boom-bust cycle is an inherent feature of capitalism. What you do observe in concrete reality, as you yourself put it, is almost uniformly positive economic growth. Even the Cultural Revolution was marked by a period of economic stagnation rather than economic decline. The only point in the PRC's history where you saw negative economic growth was during the GLF, and that has more to do with the PRC not properly managing food production. It has nothing to do with capitalism since negative economic growth in capitalism has more to do with overproduction than underproduction.
If the PRC was completely capitalist, why was it almost completely unaffected by the Great Recession? Why has the PRC, in contrast to virtually every other capitalist country, pursued a strict policy to contain Covid even against the wishes of its own bourgeoisie? I guess Chinese capitalists are extremely big-brained in foreseeing the effects of long Covid on their wageslaves versus their Western counterparts. The brains of Western capitalists, with a completely smooth and near frictionless surface, pales in comparison with the fractal brains of Chinese capitalists.
If one were to believe that the PRC is capitalist, then the only real explanation for the reason why the PRC is outperforming the West is something pertaining to Chineseness. After all, if China is capitalist and the West is also capitalist, then the main difference between capitalism with Chinese characteristics and capitalism with Western characteristics is the Chinese part of it. Whether it's Chinese culture, Chinese genes, or Chinese skull shapes, the West are getting owned. I guess Western capitalists are too stupid to figure how to make capitalism not suck, but what else do you expect from the laboratory freak creation of Yakub.
Of course you can try to argue that the PRC isn't outperforming the West and that it'll collapse any day now, but that's just Western cope lmao
The chinese standard for recession is single digit economic growth instead of double digit
If the PRC was completely capitalist
What is “complete” capitalism? Pure capitalism only exists in the mind of libertarian ancap weirdos. There have at various times been varying levels of socialisation in western economies, it didn’t make them socialist.
China may have a ruling party that keeps a handle on the worst excesses of the bourgeoisie (which is good), but the national economy is still organised in an extremely capitalistic manner. Whether or not that changes in the future is the question, but it’s been the best part of 40 years and private ownership and exploitation are growing, not contracting.
After all, if China is capitalist and the West is also capitalist, then the main difference between capitalism with Chinese characteristics and capitalism with Western characteristics is the Chinese part of it. I guess Western capitalists are too stupid to figure how to make capitalism not suck, but what else do you expect from the laboratory freak creation of Yakub.
There are always winners and losers in capitalist competition. That’s literally how capitalism operates. China outperforming other capitalist economies isn’t prima facie proof that china’s economy is socialist. Was the US socialist in the 50s because it was outperforming other capitalist countries?
There are always winners and losers in capitalist competition. That’s literally how capitalism operates.
You completely glossed over the lack of a true boom-bust cycle in the PRC. No capitalist economy can escape this. The UK didn't escape it despite colonizing India and half of Africa. The US didn't escape it despite rigging the world's economy through the Bretton Woods system system. But China did. Why is that?
China outperforming other capitalist economies isn’t prima facie proof that china’s economy is socialist.
No, it is not, but I see the lack of a true boom-bust cycle as strong evidence that it is not capitalist.
Was the US socialist in the 50s because it was outperforming other capitalist countries?
No, it was not socialist because despite its prosperity being due to the theft of Indigenous lands, Black slave labor, and its collection of colonies, neocolonies, and proxy states, the US still wasn't able to escape the boom-bust cycle. The time between the Great Depression and the 1973 recession was around 4 decades. Even with everything going in its favor, the US economy couldn't even last for half a century without experiencing a recession. That recession marked the fall of Keynesianism and the rise of neoliberalism. The US economy would then last for less than 4 decades before hitting the Great Recession. And now, less than 2 decades later, the US is poised to hit yet another recession due to Covid. Boom-bust-boom-bust. Such is the fate of a capitalist economy.
The formal proclamation of the PRC until now is almost 80 years, and in that time period, the PRC has experience not one major recession. The PRC was completely unaffected by the 1973 recession, it was barely affected by the 1997 Asian financial crisis that hit every single capitalist countries in East Asia, it was also completely unaffected by the Great Recession of 2008, and it registered "slower than predicted growth" in the current Covid recession.
I guess the plucky Chinese capitalists are just super-duper smart compared with every single other capitalist in world history.
Capitalism is no longer just a business owner hiring wage labor and taking the profits. That's an antiquated, simplified view. It's now morphed into financial capitalism, where both workers and businesses are indebted to giant private banks in perpetuity. That's without exaggeration. The interests and fees charged to debtors exceeds the worth of physical property that would have traditionally been used as collateral to secure a loan and the productive capacity of a worker, factory, or government (whoever the debtor is) to repay a loan. Think of a country like Greece being saddled with debt payments, IMF economists warned that austerity to make payments would contract the Greek economy so they would not be productive enough to be able to pay off the loans. Well, that's not an accident, that's by design. Today the financial capitalist design is one of permanent peonage of the bottom 90% of people paying fabricated rents to the top 10% of financiers through complex monopolistic financial institutions and agreements.
That's the hell that America is and what it imposes on the rest of the world: financial capitalism. China stands in opposition against it. China's treasury controls its own monetary policy and uses it for the development of its people directed by the Communist Party. China does not engage in trapping foreign countries into unrepayable loans. Conflating the two systems as capitalism is an oversimplification. Marx thought that capitalists would abolish the unproductive rentier class and replace it with productive competitive industry. In fact, the opposite happened and industry was captured by financial creditors.
If you're curious, read more in Imperialism by Lenin and Super Imperialism by Michael Hudson.
Yeah, along with the Chinese state suppressing labor strikes and protests
Yeah, along with the Chinese state suppressing labor strikes and protests
won’t someone please think of the gusanos
if you’re new here and not a troll, go subscribe to !sino@hexbear.net.
arresting Maoists organising factory workers to build socialism.
But I’m sure the dengists will tell me it was all a CIA plot to overthrow the CPC.
there are systems to address labor disputes through the party. Look up how it functions.
the US has a long history of funding “labor activists” and “political dissidents” in countries it wants to destabilize. I trust none of it.
Also see:
:zenz:
The CIA infiltrated truckers unions in Chile before 9/11 to try and shut down the country, and the anti-communist Union "Solidarity" in Poland was largely responsible for the fall of the socialist system there during the turn of the 90s. Unions are an important tool in class struggle but they can realistically only go so far, a well armed and studied party can be almost infinitely more effective.
:10000-com:
Unions are of course an extremely powerful system, which is why the USA spends so much money and time trying to infiltrate them.
Enough to know what I’m talk about, not providing doxable information here. How much time have you spent in China?
It’s not that there aren’t legitimate labor issues in China, it’s that there are mechanisms for those issues to be resolved internal to the country and the communist party at the helm of China.
The classic defence of online Dengists who are generally speaking terminally online westerners lol
Chauvinism is a very real thing as are the galaxy brained sinophobic slogans that accompany it.
Thinking that china’s economy is organised in an extremely capitalist manner is racism now? 🤔 ok
Op said contemporary Chinese Marxists, and was also careful to state:
How do Marxists in China (inside and outside of the CPC) think of it?
yeah I would have liked more constructive responses than a anti-Dengist vs Dengist struggle session
My fiance specifically left PRC, though remains a national of that country for various reasons, a little more than 10 years ago because she was/is Marxist and figured the original theory would have more purchase in the US since most people were downwardly mobile (eg the upward mobility of most Chinese will probably lead the state to attempt at least regional hegemony and it will become increasingly reliant on market economics and never return to socialism in her lifetime).
someone in a discord I also frequent has said this and it makes no sense to me. the CPC is an explicitly marxist party? their constitution indicates the party (and subsequently the nation) is driven by ML ideals?
from the Preamble of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China:
"The victory in China’s New-Democratic Revolution and the successes in its socialist cause have been achieved by the Chinese people of all nationalities, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, by upholding truth, correcting errors and surmounting numerous difficulties and hardships. "
and
"Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of Three Represents..."
IDK! seems like a country piloted by marxist-lenist ideals to me
(http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/content_1372962.htm )
the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory
One of these things is not like the others.
Also, the irony of someone arguing about Marxism using words rather than deeds as their evidence. Very materialist. If Joe Biden woke up from his sundown nap tonight and declared the US a vanguardist state building communism, would that instantly make the US socialist?
-China is a country where the vast majority of economic activity takes place under capitalist relations of production.
-The vast majority of people are wage-labourers selling their labour to capitalists.
-The vast majority of means of production are privately owned. Private ownership and exploitation is growing, rather than retreating.
-While land is de-jure publically owned, it is de-facto treated as private property which is bought, sold, rented and traded on markets like any other commodity.
As I’ve stated before on this site when the dengists come out swinging, if Xi hits the communism button tomorrow I’ll be there first to congratulate y’all and gladly admit I was wrong. Until then, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
I really don’t get the hate on Deng. He did successfully what Gorbachev tried to do. Just because China engages with capitalism does not mean it isn’t a communist country. If hexbear existed in the 1940s there would be a lot of :wojak-nooo: noooo you can’t just do socialism in one one country you have to export the revolution globally~ wait, what are you doing with that pickaxe, no don’t kill me, I’m Leon Trots-ACK!
If it wasn't for Deng, the Anglos would've weaseled their way towards keeping parts of Hong Kong that wasn't under the 99 year lease. Yep, having a part of China be a permanent British colony would've surely help further the Chinese project and not be a hotbed of Western spies and agents.
It’s a boring argument / struggle to have and I’ve seen it play out a hundred times. Maybe I’ll make an effort post with Deng information at some point so we can link users to it.
Personally I would really appreciate that post, any information about :deng-smile: (and :china-stars: in general) is always appreciated, especially as I'm a stinky unwashed westoid with a pile of earthworms for a brain :biden-alert:
I’ll see what I can do then. Almost all information you are going to get about China in the west has been warped to the point of it being nonsense.
It’s very similar to the DPRK / North Korea in that way, very little positive press is being reported by western journalists.
We’re in the middle of a second, shittier cold war. The good news is that so far the USA is losing.
perfect, this is exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much! :chavez-salute:
Have we had a Deng megathread? Maybe it's time for a new one in any case.
IMO xi really is the best Chinese leader to date. He really is the best of deng and mao.
How did two seperate people think I was seriously referring to a “communism button”. It was a pithy way of saying “if China pivots back towards socialism in the future and I’m around to see it”
China pulled more people out of poverty in the last few decades than any other country in the world.
You know capitalists use this as an example of capitalism pulling people out of poverty? Really makes ya think.
Capitalists use their data to claim that capitalism has elevated people out of poverty. They do not say out loud that all the observable progress in poverty reduction they can measure is due almost entirely to China. It's a lie by omission. The World Bank intentionally moved back the date they started measuring global poverty to retroactively capture China's data. Remove China's data from the model and global poverty has stayed relatively the same except a bigger global population means that there are actually more people living in poverty than when they started measuring it. Capitalists do not encourage the rest of the world to adopt China's model.
if Xi hits the communism button tomorrow
this is embarrassing to see written seriously
I was being facetious. There is no “communism button”, obviously. If you thought this was serious it explains the quality of your other comments on this matter.
AFAIK the split happened primarily over Destalinization. Looking back we can see that China was right and the CPSU was setting the USSR up for failure, but at the time the Soviets were still riding a wave of massive postwar growth and were the second most powerful country in the world - but with the Cold War getting more intense it may have also seemed like a prudent move to disassociate themselves from either the western or eastern blocs, in the same way that many countries joined the non-aligned movement.
I think the Soviets were wrong in the initial split in the 50s, certainly, they could have handled it better. That doesn't excuse China's disastrous foreign policy decisions later on.
I don't think either side comes out looking particularly good. Mao was rash and took his personal dislike of corn dude too far despite some valid concerns over the Soviet geopolitical direction (a direction that China ironically took even further in the 1970s. I mean, breaking relations with the USSR over not starting nuclear war with the USA over Cuba was shockingly dumb.
Conversely, the Soviets sometimes did treat China as a de facto Eastern Bloc member rather than an independent Socialist state with its own line.
I think we agree that aside from outright Nazbols and Capitalist Restorationists, the motto for Communists is the same as the motto for D&D, "Never split the party." This split should have never left the realms of internal practice.
I meant that they were right to decouple themselves from the Soviet Union. Imagine if Gorbachev had wrecked China's economy on the way out along with everybody else's.
You're right that their foreign policy after the split was like two decades of trying to play both sides by making the worst calls possible.
I have heard people talk about it as pragmatic. It was obvious that the Soviet Union was declining and headed for eventual collapse, China at the time could not have realistically done anything to prevent that, they were barely afloat with their own problems. So why shackle yourself to a sinking ship? What would have been gained if China also imploded in the 90s because their economy depended on a now defunct parent state?
It was obvious the USSR was headed for collapse in the late 1950s? that is not believable, they were a superpower near their peak and no one expected them to just collapse.
