Agreed 100%. Every day I am more and more convinced of Roderic Day's thesis that brainwashing is not real and chauvinism is the driving cause of anti-Communist sentiment.
Reading the arguments about why China is capitalist from various Global South economists and entrepreneurs really opened my eyes about how the vast majority of "ackutally China is capitalist" from Western leftists is mostly motivated by Eurocentrism and Sinophobia. The first observation you would find after reading their arguments is that their arguments are far stronger than your tired "China is capitalist because it has billionaires" mantra that Westerners trot out. Why do these Global South economists, who speak on behalf of the Global South national bourgeoisie, make more compelling arguments than Western leftists, who purportedly speak on behalf of the global proletariat?
The broad answer is because those Global South economists aren't Eurocentric and Sinophobic through their place within the periphery, they are far more likely to understand where China fits with respect to the rest of Asia and the Global South in general, how China's past could inform the present state on how to run their economy, and internalize the reality that China has made great economic strides and incorporate those economic achievements into their arguments about why China is capitalist. On a more negative note, they are also more likely to somehow explain China's (and the rest of East Asia's) success by awkwardly shoving Confucianism into their arguments.
Meanwhile, China lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty means absolutely nothing to these pampered Westerners. China being able to dodge multiple financial recessions, including a recession that specifically targeted East Asian countries in 1997, receives blank stares from Western leftists. They have never asked themselves why India wasn't able to replicate China's success. Mughal India at its absolute peak had a larger economy than Qing dynasty China, but the discrepancy between the past and the present just isn't thought about by Westerners.
I was talking about a specific comment, the intended subtext of which is that Marxism-Leninism (or at the very least, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics) and Capitalism are the same. I want everyone who believes that to [EDIT: FURTHER INVESTIGATE THE SUBJECT, I LOVE ALL MY COMRADES].
Not according to them! According to them, this crackdown on a protest is the same as what Capitalism has to offer. If they're correct, then all they have to worry about is minor bodily harm. If I'm right, then that's a pretty fucking arrogant thing to say from people who are parasites on the Global South, who are facing the worst that Capitalism has to offer.
This was a mistake and I hope that the Chinese central government puts strong pressure to reverse course (though they will, of course, have to navigate the contradictions of Foxconn's importance, especially in light of the increasing importance of the Taiwan Question). It hurts Chinese workers, it hurts the perception of China as a society building Socialism, it damages Socialism.
But people are acting like this is DEFCON 0 for SWCC, a total condemnation of the political project, and comparable to the worst Capitalist abuses.
The people who are beaten with the alternative to The People's Stick aren't around to dwell on the comparison.
Moreover, to say "the people don't care" is putting words in the mouths of the Chinese people. The Chinese people objectively do prefer The People's Stick, with all its contradictions.
The broad answer is because those Global South economists aren’t Eurocentric and Sinophobic through their place within the periphery
Yeah. I really think this is the core contradiction in the global proletarian movement. Why did the Second International disband? Why did German revolution fail? Why did every single revolutionary movement come about where they did while Eurocommunism and Council Communism (etc.) developed where they did?
I really need to get around to Divided World Divided Class because I'm starting to think the answer is that generally people in the Imperial Core exploit (or, more accurately, benefit from the exploitation of) the Global South more than they are exploited by their own Capitalist class.
There's a material component that's answered in works like Divided World Divided Class, but there's also an ideological component as well. Capitalism having a single birthplace has profound consequence since the ideology used to justify capitalism (liberalism) has a single birthplace as well, in this case Western Europe. This was not true for feudalism, where it arose independently multiple times. But the multiple birthplaces of feudalism meant the feudal ideological justification for feudalism had multiple birthplaces as well. In Western Europe, this was Catholicism, in the Abbasid Caliphate, it was a particular school of Islam, and in Song dynasty China, it was neo-Confucianism. But even though all three ideologies uphold feudalism, they aren't interchangeable. Feudal French peasants won't accept their Catholic feudal lords suddenly becoming neo-Confucian bureaucratic-scholars even if neo-Confucianism is also a feudal ideology designed to reproduce feudalism because it's not just to reproduce feudalism but feudalism with Chinese characteristics.
There's no way to universalize these particular feudal ideologies. A de-Sinicized neo-Confucianism just wouldn't be Confucian (Confucian teachings rely on rituals particular to a Chinese cultural context), a de-Arabized Islam wouldn't be Muslim (if you didn't say the shahada in Arabic nor pray in Arabic, can you really call yourself a Muslim?), a de-Europeanized Catholicism wouldn't be Catholic (that would mean not recognizing papal primacy of the Roman pope). The only way towards universalization is through conquest and subjugation of the rest of the world, essentially killing your competitors and being "universal" because it's the only one in town.
Liberalism, as an capitalist ideology birthed from a Western European context, can also not be universalized. But an additional detail is that by the time liberalism was formally developed as an ideology during the Enlightenment, Western Europe had already begun colonizing the world. So, liberalism isn't just designed to reproduce capitalism with Western European characteristics but capitalism with Western European colonizing and imperializing characteristics.
And since capitalism was born in the West, capitalism had more time to crush, purge, and subsume every single illiberal (ie feudal) ideology within Western Europe so that the entire Western European populace had centuries of being marinated in liberal ideology compared with the rest of the world. At this point in time, there isn't anything illiberal left outside of fascism if you don't count fascism as an extension of liberalism. Even things like neo-paganism wind up being an incredibly individualistic (ie liberal) understanding and practice of religion. To be Western is to be liberal and to be liberal is to be Western.
Meanwhile, liberalism was imposed on the rest of the world by European colonizers, so a similar process of destroying native feudal ideologies occurred. The difference is because liberalism isn't designed to serve the interests of the colonized, the populace tacitly reject this in the same exact way feudal French peasants would reject neo-Confucianism. Part of this rejection is trying to hold on to those feudal ideologies and being more eager to find alternatives. This is why even today, the biggest proponents of liberalism in the non-Western world, be it China, India, Nigeria, Mexico, or Russia, are all Westernophiles. There's no such thing as liberalism with Indian characteristics. There's only Indian liberals believing in capitalist ideology with Western characteristics who worship the West too much. To be Western is to be liberal and to be liberal is to be Western.
Principled socialist and anti-imperialist orgs can use this inherent aversion of Westernization/liberalization, expressed in its most vulgar and chauvinistic form as "fuck whitey," towards anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist ends with the ultimate goal of building a socialist society where the people there are masters of their own collective destinies. Being anti-Western is by no means sufficient (there are plenty of anti-Western and anti-white dead ends like Black Israelites), so a principled org must be there to steer the people away from those dead ends.
A citizen of the Global South undergoing de-Westernization would, as pointed out by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, first attempt to replace liberalism with an ossified version of their native feudal ideology. With political development through class and anti-colonial struggle, the reactionary parts of that feudal ideology get dropped and the emancipatory parts of that feudal ideology get emphasized. Eventually, this progressive form gives birth to a new ideology that's anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.
To finally loop back to your comment, the process of de-Westernization is far more challenging for Western Europeans. What would a de-Westernized French person or German even look like? Is it even possible? Combating liberalism is fine, but what do you replace it with? "Don't be a cringey liberal lmao" is not enough if there isn't anything to fill the ideological void. The Global South can temporary fill the void with their previous native feudal ideology with the understanding that it will eventually be superseded by a socialist ideology. What does the Global North have?
Liberalism, as an capitalist ideology birthed from a Western European context, can also not be universalized. But an additional detail is that by the time liberalism was formally developed as an ideology during the Enlightenment, Western Europe had already begun colonizing the world. So, liberalism isn’t just designed to reproduce capitalism with Western European characteristics but capitalism with Western European colonizing and imperializing characteristics.
I think multiple books I've read lately touch on this. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View discusses the origin of Capitalism specifically in the English countryside and how you can see the evolution in social relations reflected in the records of the evolving superstructure. As Wood points out, when you examine Agrarian Capitalist English land speculators and Feudal French land speculators in the same time period, they operate completely differently. The French speculator is trying to find or invent ancient land deeds and titles to allow the aristocracy to coerce more money out of the peasantry (because every mode of production before Capitalism has relied on increasing the ruler's coercive powers rather than systematically increasing production). The English speculator is examining the land on the basis of its cultivation (or lack thereof) and comparing it to the market in Southern England, to charge tenants the highest possible rates (due to Agrarian Capitalism separating people from the means of their own reproduction, and thus imposing the necessity to increase productivity in order to compete with other tenants).
This ideological preoccupation with land and cultivation is then immediately used as justification to steal land from everyone around the globe. "These savages aren't making some parasite like me a shitload of money by working every square inch of the land as efficiently as possible. Really we're doing them a favor by taking it away from them."
As capitalists, their basic argument is the same tired argument that capitalism is good, but needs a strong state to regulate its excesses. With regards to China, they use China's dynastic past and how the various dynasties had complete control over their economies (not actually true as some dynasties like Ming had a fairly laissez faire policy) to demonstrate that China as a polity always had a hands-on approach towards the economy, and the reason why capitalists control Western governments but not China is because Western polities lack the political tradition of having a strong centralized state. They also shoehorn Confucianism here by stating that part of the strong centralized state is Confucianism as a political philosophy (not really true either but it's just their way of trying to understand why all the "good" capitalist countries like Japan and the four Asian tigers have strong Confucian influences). Japan and the four Asian tigers being economic powerhouses and investing in China's economic development is supposed to be a harbinger for things to come.
Their arguments have flaws. For one, a lot of their arguments boils down to "Chinese capitalist smart Western capitalist dumb." Chinese capitalists are smart enough to enact zero-Covid so their workers do not suffer productivity from long Covid while Western capitalists are too stupid to realize the dangers of long Covid. Asking why Chinese capitalists have fractal brains while Western capitalists have frictionless spherical brains leads to uneasy answers. Many of their answers are essentially chauvinist. In other words, capitalism with Chinese characteristics is superior to capitalism with Western characteristics because Chinese culture and people are superior to Western culture and people. For obvious reasons, I see this reasoning often in Chinese capitalists even if it's implied. Their understanding of China's past is also not the greatest, perhaps purposefully misleading, and is somewhat Orientalist, although recasting many Orientalist tropes as a good thing so reverse Orientalism(?) I guess.
I still give them credit for at least trying to understand China's past and China's neighbors in order to understand present China. I can't say the same for these Western bozos though.
Agreed 100%. Every day I am more and more convinced of Roderic Day's thesis that brainwashing is not real and chauvinism is the driving cause of anti-Communist sentiment.
Reading the arguments about why China is capitalist from various Global South economists and entrepreneurs really opened my eyes about how the vast majority of "ackutally China is capitalist" from Western leftists is mostly motivated by Eurocentrism and Sinophobia. The first observation you would find after reading their arguments is that their arguments are far stronger than your tired "China is capitalist because it has billionaires" mantra that Westerners trot out. Why do these Global South economists, who speak on behalf of the Global South national bourgeoisie, make more compelling arguments than Western leftists, who purportedly speak on behalf of the global proletariat?
The broad answer is because those Global South economists aren't Eurocentric and Sinophobic through their place within the periphery, they are far more likely to understand where China fits with respect to the rest of Asia and the Global South in general, how China's past could inform the present state on how to run their economy, and internalize the reality that China has made great economic strides and incorporate those economic achievements into their arguments about why China is capitalist. On a more negative note, they are also more likely to somehow explain China's (and the rest of East Asia's) success by awkwardly shoving Confucianism into their arguments.
Meanwhile, China lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty means absolutely nothing to these pampered Westerners. China being able to dodge multiple financial recessions, including a recession that specifically targeted East Asian countries in 1997, receives blank stares from Western leftists. They have never asked themselves why India wasn't able to replicate China's success. Mughal India at its absolute peak had a larger economy than Qing dynasty China, but the discrepancy between the past and the present just isn't thought about by Westerners.
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I was talking about a specific comment, the intended subtext of which is that Marxism-Leninism (or at the very least, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics) and Capitalism are the same. I want everyone who believes that to [EDIT: FURTHER INVESTIGATE THE SUBJECT, I LOVE ALL MY COMRADES].
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Interesting that that's what you take away. If these people are right, then surely all they have to worry about is some bruises and broken bones.
And again, it's not "people who criticize China" it's specific people supporting a specific comment making a specific comparison.
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Not according to them! According to them, this crackdown on a protest is the same as what Capitalism has to offer. If they're correct, then all they have to worry about is minor bodily harm. If I'm right, then that's a pretty fucking arrogant thing to say from people who are parasites on the Global South, who are facing the worst that Capitalism has to offer.
deleted by creator
This was a mistake and I hope that the Chinese central government puts strong pressure to reverse course (though they will, of course, have to navigate the contradictions of Foxconn's importance, especially in light of the increasing importance of the Taiwan Question). It hurts Chinese workers, it hurts the perception of China as a society building Socialism, it damages Socialism.
But people are acting like this is DEFCON 0 for SWCC, a total condemnation of the political project, and comparable to the worst Capitalist abuses.
The people who are beaten with the alternative to The People's Stick aren't around to dwell on the comparison.
Moreover, to say "the people don't care" is putting words in the mouths of the Chinese people. The Chinese people objectively do prefer The People's Stick, with all its contradictions.
deleted by creator
Yeah. I really think this is the core contradiction in the global proletarian movement. Why did the Second International disband? Why did German revolution fail? Why did every single revolutionary movement come about where they did while Eurocommunism and Council Communism (etc.) developed where they did?
I really need to get around to Divided World Divided Class because I'm starting to think the answer is that generally people in the Imperial Core exploit (or, more accurately, benefit from the exploitation of) the Global South more than they are exploited by their own Capitalist class.
There's a material component that's answered in works like Divided World Divided Class, but there's also an ideological component as well. Capitalism having a single birthplace has profound consequence since the ideology used to justify capitalism (liberalism) has a single birthplace as well, in this case Western Europe. This was not true for feudalism, where it arose independently multiple times. But the multiple birthplaces of feudalism meant the feudal ideological justification for feudalism had multiple birthplaces as well. In Western Europe, this was Catholicism, in the Abbasid Caliphate, it was a particular school of Islam, and in Song dynasty China, it was neo-Confucianism. But even though all three ideologies uphold feudalism, they aren't interchangeable. Feudal French peasants won't accept their Catholic feudal lords suddenly becoming neo-Confucian bureaucratic-scholars even if neo-Confucianism is also a feudal ideology designed to reproduce feudalism because it's not just to reproduce feudalism but feudalism with Chinese characteristics.
There's no way to universalize these particular feudal ideologies. A de-Sinicized neo-Confucianism just wouldn't be Confucian (Confucian teachings rely on rituals particular to a Chinese cultural context), a de-Arabized Islam wouldn't be Muslim (if you didn't say the shahada in Arabic nor pray in Arabic, can you really call yourself a Muslim?), a de-Europeanized Catholicism wouldn't be Catholic (that would mean not recognizing papal primacy of the Roman pope). The only way towards universalization is through conquest and subjugation of the rest of the world, essentially killing your competitors and being "universal" because it's the only one in town.
Liberalism, as an capitalist ideology birthed from a Western European context, can also not be universalized. But an additional detail is that by the time liberalism was formally developed as an ideology during the Enlightenment, Western Europe had already begun colonizing the world. So, liberalism isn't just designed to reproduce capitalism with Western European characteristics but capitalism with Western European colonizing and imperializing characteristics.
And since capitalism was born in the West, capitalism had more time to crush, purge, and subsume every single illiberal (ie feudal) ideology within Western Europe so that the entire Western European populace had centuries of being marinated in liberal ideology compared with the rest of the world. At this point in time, there isn't anything illiberal left outside of fascism if you don't count fascism as an extension of liberalism. Even things like neo-paganism wind up being an incredibly individualistic (ie liberal) understanding and practice of religion. To be Western is to be liberal and to be liberal is to be Western.
Meanwhile, liberalism was imposed on the rest of the world by European colonizers, so a similar process of destroying native feudal ideologies occurred. The difference is because liberalism isn't designed to serve the interests of the colonized, the populace tacitly reject this in the same exact way feudal French peasants would reject neo-Confucianism. Part of this rejection is trying to hold on to those feudal ideologies and being more eager to find alternatives. This is why even today, the biggest proponents of liberalism in the non-Western world, be it China, India, Nigeria, Mexico, or Russia, are all Westernophiles. There's no such thing as liberalism with Indian characteristics. There's only Indian liberals believing in capitalist ideology with Western characteristics who worship the West too much. To be Western is to be liberal and to be liberal is to be Western.
Principled socialist and anti-imperialist orgs can use this inherent aversion of Westernization/liberalization, expressed in its most vulgar and chauvinistic form as "fuck whitey," towards anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist ends with the ultimate goal of building a socialist society where the people there are masters of their own collective destinies. Being anti-Western is by no means sufficient (there are plenty of anti-Western and anti-white dead ends like Black Israelites), so a principled org must be there to steer the people away from those dead ends.
A citizen of the Global South undergoing de-Westernization would, as pointed out by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, first attempt to replace liberalism with an ossified version of their native feudal ideology. With political development through class and anti-colonial struggle, the reactionary parts of that feudal ideology get dropped and the emancipatory parts of that feudal ideology get emphasized. Eventually, this progressive form gives birth to a new ideology that's anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.
To finally loop back to your comment, the process of de-Westernization is far more challenging for Western Europeans. What would a de-Westernized French person or German even look like? Is it even possible? Combating liberalism is fine, but what do you replace it with? "Don't be a cringey liberal lmao" is not enough if there isn't anything to fill the ideological void. The Global South can temporary fill the void with their previous native feudal ideology with the understanding that it will eventually be superseded by a socialist ideology. What does the Global North have?
Agreed on all counts.
I think multiple books I've read lately touch on this. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View discusses the origin of Capitalism specifically in the English countryside and how you can see the evolution in social relations reflected in the records of the evolving superstructure. As Wood points out, when you examine Agrarian Capitalist English land speculators and Feudal French land speculators in the same time period, they operate completely differently. The French speculator is trying to find or invent ancient land deeds and titles to allow the aristocracy to coerce more money out of the peasantry (because every mode of production before Capitalism has relied on increasing the ruler's coercive powers rather than systematically increasing production). The English speculator is examining the land on the basis of its cultivation (or lack thereof) and comparing it to the market in Southern England, to charge tenants the highest possible rates (due to Agrarian Capitalism separating people from the means of their own reproduction, and thus imposing the necessity to increase productivity in order to compete with other tenants).
This ideological preoccupation with land and cultivation is then immediately used as justification to steal land from everyone around the globe. "These savages aren't making some parasite like me a shitload of money by working every square inch of the land as efficiently as possible. Really we're doing them a favor by taking it away from them."
What type of arguments do Global South economists makes?
As capitalists, their basic argument is the same tired argument that capitalism is good, but needs a strong state to regulate its excesses. With regards to China, they use China's dynastic past and how the various dynasties had complete control over their economies (not actually true as some dynasties like Ming had a fairly laissez faire policy) to demonstrate that China as a polity always had a hands-on approach towards the economy, and the reason why capitalists control Western governments but not China is because Western polities lack the political tradition of having a strong centralized state. They also shoehorn Confucianism here by stating that part of the strong centralized state is Confucianism as a political philosophy (not really true either but it's just their way of trying to understand why all the "good" capitalist countries like Japan and the four Asian tigers have strong Confucian influences). Japan and the four Asian tigers being economic powerhouses and investing in China's economic development is supposed to be a harbinger for things to come.
Their arguments have flaws. For one, a lot of their arguments boils down to "Chinese capitalist smart Western capitalist dumb." Chinese capitalists are smart enough to enact zero-Covid so their workers do not suffer productivity from long Covid while Western capitalists are too stupid to realize the dangers of long Covid. Asking why Chinese capitalists have fractal brains while Western capitalists have frictionless spherical brains leads to uneasy answers. Many of their answers are essentially chauvinist. In other words, capitalism with Chinese characteristics is superior to capitalism with Western characteristics because Chinese culture and people are superior to Western culture and people. For obvious reasons, I see this reasoning often in Chinese capitalists even if it's implied. Their understanding of China's past is also not the greatest, perhaps purposefully misleading, and is somewhat Orientalist, although recasting many Orientalist tropes as a good thing so reverse Orientalism(?) I guess.
I still give them credit for at least trying to understand China's past and China's neighbors in order to understand present China. I can't say the same for these Western bozos though.
Sounds interesting, thanks for the summary