Real western chauvinism hours
If you want to talk about socialism, let us not forget what socialism achieved in China. At one time it was the land of hunger, poverty, disasters. Today there is none of that. Today China can feed, dress, educate, and care for the health of 1.2 billion people.
I think China is a socialist country, and Vietnam is a socialist nation as well. And they insist that they have introduced all the necessary reforms in order to motivate national development and to continue seeking the objectives of socialism.
There are no fully pure regimes or systems. In Cuba, for instance, we have many forms of private property. We have hundreds of thousands of farm owners. In some cases they own up to 110 acres. In Europe they would be considered large landholders. Practically all Cubans own their own home and, what is more, we welcome foreign investment. But that does not mean that Cuba has stopped being socialist.
Castro in 2004:
Socialism will definitively remain the only real hope of peace and survival of our species. This is precisely what the Communist Party and the people of the People's Republic of China have irrefutably demonstrated. They demonstrated at the same time, as Cuba and other brotherly countries have shown, that each people must adapt their strategy and revolutionary objectives to the concrete conditions of their own country and that there are not two absolutely equal socialist revolutionary processes. From each of them, you can take the best experiences and learn from each of their most serious mistakes.
China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries. I do not hesitate to say that it is already the main engine of the world economy. In what time? In only 83 years after the foundation of its glorious Communist Party and 55 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Fidel in 2014:
Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
40 years ago China had the statistics of sub suharan Africa
China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in a generation
From being illiterate, backward farmers still binding the feet of women and a million other backward characteristics to a space faring nation
Without exploiting a single colony as the imperialists did
Now im not a communist that believes China is socialist right now (though I am sympathetic to the arguements made) however China under CPC leadership has moved mountains on Earth
And the Chinese Communist Party acknowledges the many contradictions within Chinese society
So im all for a comradely debate on China...Only when Westerners acknowledge CPCs achievements
You can recognize all of the above and have them not be socialist, it really isn't complicated. There's not much materially different between how Singapore runs their country than what China does.
The interlocking of state and economy with limited judicial oversight is an incredibly effective way to uplift an entire country.
There are a number reasons for the western left to view China favorably, but they don't really have much to do with them being socialist.
Hell, ask political leaders in China what they are and they'll tell you that they view themselves as a social democracy that arrived to that point but in the opposite direction.
That's I think the reason western leftists are skeptical more than anything.
There is a lot more than just that. From the outside everything about it looks insanely sketchy. I know how most of it is justified but I'm very skeptical still. I don't think I'd stop being skeptical until the promised transition from capitalism begins. I really hope it works out.
I have not, and Google didn't give me any useful results other than amusing article written by a landlord complaining about not being allowed to throw people out in the streets during the winter anymore in Seattle.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2019/12/06/seattle-eviction-ban-are-we-headed-to-the-end-of-private-property-rentals/amp/
Incredibly based. My confidence in China is boosted. Actually giggling at the thought of landlords fearing that happening and being able to do nothing about it.
The same poverty rate diminishment (what the fuck is the word for it in english) was there for a lot of southeast asian countries and korea too, it's not a uniquely chinese thing.
Also they're extorting African countries for their natural resources just as western imperialist countries are.
Also making use of capitalism just confirms (wrongly) that it's capitalism that can lift people out of property and not communism.
Just a few concerns, seeing anyone saying they are 100% communist and admitting they're not just betting on them is making me extremely uncomfortable (even thouh the video is cool)
Those other Asian countries are generally as wealthy as they are because of Western countries strategically dumping large amounts of wealth into them during the Cold war, in essentially a form of global wealth redistibution in which the super profits from imperalizing other regions went towards developing these nations to compete with N. Vietnam, DPRK, PRC, etc. The same occured in Europe with the Marshall plan. This is why my conservative history teacher said that the losers of WWII (Germany and Japan) were really the winners, seeing how they managed to eclipse the old powers of the UK and France postwar. China has many obvious surface level similarities to the Asian Tigers, mainly being the use of markets with extensive government oversite, public planning/investment, and a greater degree of public ownership than in Neoliberalism. One important historical difference is that China was not recieving the same massive foreign investment as its neighbors, and had to essentially "trick" the west into doing this by allowing foreign industry in to exploit some workers under controlled conditions. This is obviously a risky strategy, but seems to have worked out quite well, as the relative low cost and high skill of laborers and the amount of existing infrastructure made it a deal that just couldnt be turned down. Few other existing socialist nations have had these factors in enough proportions to seduce Western investment, which is generally discouraged to go towards socialist nations for obvious reasons. All I have described took place during and following Dengs liberalization, starting in 1978. China essentially "hid its power level"(acted lib enough) well enough for the west to buy in and give it a seat at the table (WTO around 2001, etc), and most leaders and pundits in the West believed it would continue its course. Today there are many of the same people announcing that china indeed "tricked us," but actions prove this too, such as the continuing nationalization, extending all the way to things like rental properies, which have been being begun to be expropriated in North China recently. The one thing that makes China's Socialist path most obvious to me though is the style and amount of fearmongering that has been pumped out about it over the past few decades, and this growth of CHINABAD seems to line up directly with the period following the height of liberalization circa 2001, as over the slow period from then to now it has become obvious that liberalization is not what western interests hoped it to be. For other big differences between China and the Asian Tigers, ask these questions: Are there capitlists in government? How many? Are they ever rightfully prosecuted and do they have assets seized/nationalized when they commit crimes? Is Marxism taught in schools? Is it the ideology of the state/ruling party? Is banking public? Is there a large or any amount of cooperatives? Youll find the answers for China differ very much from those of the Asian tigers, in ways that lend much credibility to the idea of it being ×1000 closer to Socialism than any Asian tiger. Truthfully, i believe China is in, though probably quite close to the end of, a state capitalist phase. This makes complete sense considering PRC in 1978 was much more underdeveloped than the semi-industrialized, petite commodity economy of the USSR at the start of the NEP. The USSR came out of the NEP and implented Socialism; Considering much longer and insanely succesful state-cap period, as well as much more stable circumstances than interwar period USSR, i have plenty of faith China is correctly treading the path to Communism.
As a newer socialist I don't entirely understand whats going on in china but that part does confuse me. I heard it was a transition phase but I still don't think I entirely understand what that entails.
they were one of the poorest countries in the world back then (around $156 per capita gdp when the reforms were enacted), and the party decided they needed to allow the return of capital to develop their productive forces before having the appropriate conditions for socialism
bear in mind that allowing the return of capital (that is, the existence of capital and market forces within your country) is not the same as allowing the return of capitalism (which is a system like ours where capitalists wield actual decision-making power, something i'm sure even the critics of the CPC would agree is definitely not the case in china)
this is not a brand new take either, the basis of the whole thing is very similar to lenin's NEP and i don't see anyone here being skeptical about lenin's motives
it's also so weird to see people arguing whether china is a socialist or a capitalist country when it's basically neither and they even admit it themselves - "socialism with chinese characteristics" is just their way of saying "we're not a capitalist country, because capital isn't making any key decisions on how the country works; but we haven't reached the ideal point to transition into actual socialism either", that's what the "chinese characteristics" part is supposed to mean
(edit for a typo)
thanks for the answer, this has helped me grasp this whole situation a lot better!
Now I'll preface this by saying I haven't actually studied any Dengist theory.
But from what I understand Dengism is effectively a synthesis of Marxist-Leninism and the orthodox Marxism of the original Social Democratic Party of Germany or Mensheviks. It would definitely be considered a right-deviation from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, probably the closest to a "Bukharinist" position I think you could see.
Original SPD, the Mensheviks, and other orthodox Marxists in the early 20th century dogmatically believed that in order to achieve communism a country MUST experience a period of bourgeois liberal capitalist development. Hence why SPD and the Mensheviks turned against the more radical left-wing parties like the Spartacists/KPD and the Bolsheviks, respectively. But a problem that has consistently plagued countries where actually existing communism has successfully taken hold, such as the USSR and the PRC, is a severe shortage of indigenous capital. The answer Stalin arrived at to solve this problem in the USSR was effectively to force march industrialization and modernization through a complex economic model that skimmed profit off agricultural revenue combined with economic planning and brutal coercion. But this model can only be so successful - it is likely to stagnate a la an S-Curve and requires an immense amount of resource self-sufficiency (for example, Cuba and the DPRK have great difficulty maintaining this economic model).
So the PRC, facing economic problems in the 1970s and being increasingly recognized internationally as part of the United States' Cold War strategy to exploit the Sino-Soviet split, decided reform was necessary after Mao's death. So Deng and his successors decided to liberalize the economy, but to maintain the Communist Party's ironclad monopoly on political power. They are effectively doing capitalism in order to develop the country and raise their population out of poverty a la the archaic Marxist orthodoxy, but while maintaining the Leninist Dictatorship of the Proletariat. I must insistently point out that the Chinese model is NOT neoliberal (IIRC David Harvey has revised his once-hostile position regarding China in the 15 years since A Brief History of Neoliberalism was published). It is arguably more accurate to say that the Chinese are doing Keynesianism. Their economic growth is heavily based on state-directed investment; they still practice comprehensive economic planning; most key industries are state-owned; and the Communist Party does indeed ensure that the gains of their incredible economic growth fall in part to the working class (As in, you know that stat neoliberals like to bandy about regarding "declining global poverty"? That's almost entirely because of China. If you erase them from the statistics, the trend reverses) . This has, however, been allowed to happen because of the brutal rise in exploitation of the labor of the Chinese working class, despite their material gains - to attract Western investment, one of the things the Party had to do was shutter a lot of stable, heavily-unionized industry in northern China in favor of a much more "flexible" neoliberal-style labor market.
Thanks for the in depth answer, this actually nearly perfectly answered my question, I have one more though. You said that the progress was allowed to happen because of the brutal rise in exploitation of the labor of the Chinese working class, so how is china going to deal with that now? I thought I heard somewhere that companies were moving manufacturing away from china because there were cheaper options in nearby countries. Is china doing something to combat the worker exploitation going on?
I don't know if they are. China is transitioning form labor-intensive industry (ie textiles, mining, steel) to capital-intensive industries (ie tech, green energy) and are starting to invest capital overseas. While I doubt they will gut their industrial base like the West did (that would create a gigantic strategic vulnerability for them, one which the US is experiencing now in their drive to start a new Cold War) I believe they plan to simply stay the course until they reach whatever theoretical level of material abundance to fundamental transform social relations of production and transition to communism.
Of course the leftcom answer is "they never will" and that their model is either unsustainable or impossible to achieve communism because of the very monopoly of political power held by the Leninist party. The leftcom answer would be that communism is only achievable by the conscious self-organization of the Chinese proletariat from below and their seizure of state power (for modern China does contain the conditions of capitalist economy for this that Marx described whereas 1949 China where the Communist Party took hold emphatically did not). Matt, for example, holds this position.
Do you think expanded automation might lead to a decrease in need for low wage factory workers? With china's great strides in AI development do you think they could have better automation sooner than places like the US where it's still running on DOS and windows XP? Sorry for bombarding you with questions I just never actually talked to someone about this even though it's been something I've wanted to understand for a while.
I mean I really can't say for sure. But certainly the presence of modern miniaturization and computerization presents opportunities that were never available to the USSR.
They are still capitalist, but their government is structured in such a way that capitalists are subservient to the government and not the other way around, and they are insanely strict about ensuring it stays that way. It's also illegal to criticize certain core tenants of their version of socialism, and they are quite strict about enforcing that.
Ok and that's so they can transtion to socialism once they have built up enough industry?
That's the plan. A lot industries are also state owned. Once a large enough business in an industry develops, the state tends to seize it. I believe something like 50% of the economy is state owned? I don't remember exact numbers, and things are always changing of course. The government also directly interferes with the economy quite often, only because their decision making process isn't clouded by the influence of capitalists, they don't screw things up by doing so like liberal governments often do.
plus I would rather have a capitalist country that promotes communism and educates people on it, in hopes of transitioning in the future along with suppressing capitalism as it can, than having corporations basically controlling to government like in the us.
Yeah, Xi has a doctorate in Marxism and routinely purges people he doesn't view as Marxist.
That's essentially true in Singapore too, and singapore doesn't consider itself to be communist in the slightest.
China is a social democracy with a more centralized power structure. They're like Singapore, an authoritarian country ran by technocrats with meaningful links between state and economy.
It's just they reached the point of social democracy by moving society to the right rather than moving society to the left as was done in western europe.
There are other reasons to support China as a western leftist that are unique to them that pertain to geopolitics.
hmmm, how curious...
That is a very thick blue line. It was released in August of 2020 amid a purge of police officials.
It is notably similar to the Fire and Rescue Service flag created in 2018, and various Flags of the PLA.
Pictures from the flag award ceremonies for Fire and Rescue and Police force show the shade of blue is identical; also the same as in the old badges of the now disbanded Fire Services of the Ministry of Public Security (via zh.wikipedia).I doubt that any resemblance to the various Thin Blue Line flags was intentional.
Well, there is your problem. Stop reading theory and you will have the correct answer (as long as its the same as mine)
Therer are 90 million people in the Chinese Communist Party yet western leftists convinced themselves that they're the ones who figured it all
People who discovered socialism a few months ago acting like they're enlightened on the entire history of socialist and working class struggle and that they've discovered something the rest of the world has never thought of before is absolutely mind bogging and enraging. I've seen so many surface level "socialists" with absolutely no understanding of anything beyond just wanting free healthcare who talk about socialist countries around the world with the utmost disdain and how we actually need to distance ourselves from them to be successful socialists lol. Do people never ask themselves why the us isnt even a social democracy?
this is silly, unless you're a Western Chauvinist yourself, the Socialist movement is not confined to struggles between Western internet kiddies, there are actual Maoist movements engaged in Protracted People's War in India and the Philippines. MLM is not what China practices, it was synthesized by the Maoists in Peru and India, they see China as Capitalist since Deng's reforms. If you guys were around when Jiang Zemin was in power, I would guess there would be far fewer Dengists around. Jiang and his Shanghai clique were the most blatant expression of Chinese Capitalism. It was under Jiang's rule that the CCP officially allowed Capitalist to be members of the "Communist" Party. That's why Chinese Bezo, Jack Ma is a full Communist member. The CCP and Xi knows that the excesses of Capitalism will lead to more and more unrest in China, that's why they will try to keep the mega capitalists under their control. Defend China against Western Propaganda, a strong China will at least give countries under the chokehold of US imperialism some breathing space.
Respectfully, I don't see a lot of newer socialists saying China is "doing socialism wrong". What I do see is a lot of confusion on how China is socialist when it appears awfully capitalist. And I think it's pretty reasonable to be confused. It doesn't help that I haven't seen it explained in a form that is from a Chinese source, is accessible in English, and understandable to anyone less than a black-belt ML. Like, I get that we shouldn't trust western sources on this but I haven't seen the CCP really explain it much either.
What I do see is a lot of confusion on how China is socialist when it appears awfully capitalist.
This runs dangerously close to the inverse of the "Socialism is when government does stuff".
Capitalism isn't when market participants do stuff.
The Chinese state bureaucracy has, time and again, demonstrated a willingness to prosecute corrupt business practices. The various industrial sectors are not calcified by the demand for profit, and so environmental reforms can occur far more rapidly. Neither are state bureaucrats beholden to the nation's investor class in a way that inhibits development of education, housing, or medical services.
I'd dig up links, but Google only wants to show me the crap trending on CNN from last week. But pick up a copy of "The Third Revolution" and - after you're done scraping off the neoliberal dog-whistling and agitprop - you end up with a picture of Chinese bureaucracy and economic management that is markedly dissimilar to Western Capitalism. Or just dig in and learn about the nation's fifteenth five-year plan, it's BRI initiative, and it's domestication of foreign technologies.
China isn't America. The Chinese economy is not following American neoliberal rules. The Reagan Revolution never happened in Beijing. It's still authoritarian and nationalistic, but it is not beholden to financial interests in any way comparable to Western governments.
China’s success story is a capitalist success story, or rather, a success story of authoritarian capitalism.
Compare China under balkinized colonial rule in the 19th century and China under a unified People's Republic in the 20th century.
I see substantial differences in everything from local autonomy to economic prioritization to legal standing of native peoples that would suggest a very explicit change in policy.
Maybe I've got my eyes too focused on the colonialist neoliberal ball, and I'm missing all the same sins playing out domestically. But I would argue the major distinction between Chinese domestic policy and western economic policy is that the Chinese government leadership is focused on satisfying the expectations of Chinese locals in order to maintain political security and autonomy. Westerners are attempting to upset Chinese locals, manufacture discontent and division in the Chinese state, and use the chaos to plunder the Chinese economic interior.
I might go so far as to compare the Chinese state as a massive multi-industry union and western capitalists as bosses attempting to fracture and exploit that union. Whether you believe the Chinese union leaders are clean or corrupt is incidental to the core class struggle - the solidarity they're trying to cultivate versus the disunity western agencies are attempting to inspire.
The point is, China’s economy is operating within the global capitalist framework
China's economy is operating alongside the western capitalist framework. There's an interface. But the systems remain distinct. The policies and goals of western society are not driving China's domestic agenda. Wall Street and the IMF are not writing up China's next five year plan. The CIA/MI5 is not setting China's production or infrastructure development goals. Beijing is not a puppet state.
They might still be adhering to capitalist growth strategies, but the benefits for western investors are incidental rather than engineered. The real strategy is to build a strong, unified Chinese state that can operate independently of western business.
What? Capitalism does not belong to the “West”.
Institutions of economic control - large brokerages and banks, military bases and technology labs, research universities, international embassies, HQs of major media and energy and manufacturing centers - have been controlled by western agencies.
Capitalism as an ideology might not belong to westerners, but - at the end of the 20th century - high value capital itself was under the dominion of Western institutions.
China's independence is rooted in its development of parallel competitive institutions. It isn't beholden to western centers of capital. And, as a consequence, westerners cannot extract rents from Chinese laborers either directly or through a captured Chinese bureaucracy.
What does not being a puppet state has to do with not being able to confront the realities of capitalism?
It goes to the very basis of Capitalism as an economic institution - the ability for one individual to garnish the labor of another. Chinese residents are not held hostage by western capitalist institutions in the same way Mexicans or Africans or Japanese residents have increasingly become.
This is seriously getting into crazy conspiracy theory territory where you seem to think that “global capitalism” is run by some cabal of Western “elites” secretly pulling the strings from behind.
If you're writing off the Petro-Dollar, the US network of military bases and clandestine agencies ( Five Eyes international spy network), western control of major arteries of trade like the Suez and Panama canals, and a century's worth of corporate conglomeration as "a conspiracy", I honestly don't know what to tell you.
That guy is a joke. I watched his video on Uyghurs and he ruthlessly cites Chinese media. I don't trust Zenz, but forgive me for not blindly believing everything the Chinese government tells me. It's like believing everything from the CIA world factbook.
Ok but best case scenario i still agree with the premise of the video cause Zenz is shit proof. I understand Uyghurs is a sensitive topic and thus it is pretty smart to be media scepticle when it comes to the subject, but I was talking about his video on SWCC. I dont expect the CIA factbook to factually represent or even mention the ICE eugenics program, but i cant see why they would try to deny that America has a Capitalist economy. The same logic applies to China.
Whenever you are told communism is a soviet style command economy, which China doesn't have and China's surface level is extreme capitalism, I wouldn't blame them for being mistaken. Propaganda works.
I don't know it seems like there's something missing. Maybe it's just doesn't seem organic enough.
Eh I don't like them happily selling manufacture to the genocidal neolibs dictators from the Plan Condor. But yeah, politics and history and shit is complicated.
Anarchism does not exist outside the west. Anarchism has never worked
