Stephen Gowans (author of the banger 'Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom') made a blog post. I critiqued what was pretty stupid analysis of China ( see comments ) and in response he kind of said 'no, you're wrong' and then proved me right. Am I missing something? This feels very strange.

  • robinn [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    lmao. I guess Mao is not a socialist then because he didn’t think to call modern China a Worker’s Republic instead of a People’s Republic.

    My exact point, he supports Mao as well so it's nonsense. I don't like the 'random white guy' comment, his book on the DPRK was very good and one of the best modern retellings of the Korean War. The fact that land cannot be privately owned but merely leased from the state might have been something to bring up if I cared to have an argument on SWCC but I just wanted to point out the "people vs worker" bs.

      • robinn [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Lenin also critiques the use of the term "people's state" for this reason though, "The 'free people's state' was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. this catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic, Engels was prepared to “justify” its use “for a time” from an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it amounted to something more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also a failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a 'special force' for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not 'free' and not a 'people's state'. Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies." ( The State and Revolution , p. 16). Lenin is saying the term people's state is ridiculous because the state is a machine for suppressing a certain class at the whim of the other, thus it cannot represent the whole of the people. That's why I included the Mao quote in the original comment, because that definition of the people is specific to SWCC. Can't find the quote from Lenin also but he defines the DOTP as a union between the petty-bourgeoisie, peasantry, and proletariat, with the latter at the head, for the purpose of suppressing the total bourgeois elements. Also in a lot of the Black Panther Party's rhetoric, speeches by leaders, and so on, they use the term "people" to mean proletariat.