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.
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.
Cool! thanks again for the answers