Yes. Anyone saying that the economy of China is not capitalist is wrong. What tankies say about China is that the CCP is a ML institution, and is in control of the capitalists. The goal being to build enough productive forces to overcome the US.
Why would anyone believe that tho. It's so much simpler to believe they're just regular capitalists instead of thinking there's this huge conspiracy to eventually implement communism somehow, despite building up the power of literal billionaires
??? One of the main points of Marxism is that capitalism is good at building productive capabilities. According to Marx, the industry built by capitalism is a prerequisite of socialism. Orthodox marxism holds that you go ...feudalism->capitalism->socialism. China went ...feudalism->communist led revolution. They can't go straight to socialism, so they're building productive forces using capitalism, without letting the state be controlled by capital.
That's only true if you blindly follow the idea of "feudalism->capitalism->socialism" in that order without any regard for the reasons that drive it. The idea is that capitalism would be necessary to create the conditions that lead to revolution, it's not some quota where if you have a successful revolution without ever building capitalist industry you have to go back and do capitalism for a little bit to check it off the list.
Besides, China already has productive forces that are the envy of the entire world, how much more time do they spend on brutal exploitation before they're done "building productive forces"?
You are aware that China's economy is still way, waaaaaaay smaller than the US, right? And that's not taking into account the US military, or airforce, or navy. Or the US's mass of allies. Really, if you wanna get a real picture of what the global situation looks like, take the stats of the US, the rest of north america, the EU, the commonwealth of nations, occupied Korea, Taiwan and Japan, and add them together. Then, add together the stats of China, Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and any other leftist area's I'm forgetting. How does that look in terms of GDP, military, etc? China is not currently able to take on almost the entire globe by itself. And Marx himself admired how well capitalism did growth. An economy based on capitalism, which is the reverence of growth to the exclusion of all else, will obviously grow faster than socialism or communism, based on production towards needs. If you're not a marxist, or a believer in historical materialism, fair enough, but if you are, you need to understand capitalism as a pre-requisite to socialism. And if you're not a marxist, you still need to realise that, unless China industrialises to a point where it can compete against capital directly, it needs to avoid conflict with the west, and build it's productive forces. Like what do you think would happen if China was just like "ok, gonna expropriate everything now and implement full communism?" Do you think capital's gonnna go "Ok, fair enough. Have fun with your communist utopia that will destabilize our regimes by existing"? No, there'd be a new cold war, massive embargoes, etc, etc. The US economy, by itself(not including the rest of the capitalist world), is 32% larger than China. Until China is more powerful than capitalists, they're gonna have to keep building up.
edit: an->and b/c I'm waaay too drunk to be arguing politics at 1 AM
That building massive amounts of consumer goods factories is not something it's good for. China has just decided that cornering the global consumer goods market is something that can keep imperialists from fucking with them.
It's worked so far, but I guess only time will tell. If the things I mentioned above start getting privatised, I'll lose a lot of faith in the Chinese communist experiment.
One of the earliest observations about capital is that it creates it's own grave diggers. Marx was very clear that the crisis of capitalism is of over production followed by collapse.
Capital brings people into cities, towns, etc so that they can work for a wage. It then organizes them on the shop floor, in kitchens, in sweatshops, and in office buildings, and then skims off the surplus they produce. It's at this point that the workers can realize "Hey wait a minute, we already do everything. Why should we allow the "owner" to take our surplus when can decide what to do with it ourselves.
Yes. Anyone saying that the economy of China is not capitalist is wrong. What tankies say about China is that the CCP is a ML institution, and is in control of the capitalists. The goal being to build enough productive forces to overcome the US.
Why would anyone believe that tho. It's so much simpler to believe they're just regular capitalists instead of thinking there's this huge conspiracy to eventually implement communism somehow, despite building up the power of literal billionaires
deleted by creator
??? One of the main points of Marxism is that capitalism is good at building productive capabilities. According to Marx, the industry built by capitalism is a prerequisite of socialism. Orthodox marxism holds that you go ...feudalism->capitalism->socialism. China went ...feudalism->communist led revolution. They can't go straight to socialism, so they're building productive forces using capitalism, without letting the state be controlled by capital.
That's only true if you blindly follow the idea of "feudalism->capitalism->socialism" in that order without any regard for the reasons that drive it. The idea is that capitalism would be necessary to create the conditions that lead to revolution, it's not some quota where if you have a successful revolution without ever building capitalist industry you have to go back and do capitalism for a little bit to check it off the list.
Besides, China already has productive forces that are the envy of the entire world, how much more time do they spend on brutal exploitation before they're done "building productive forces"?
You are aware that China's economy is still way, waaaaaaay smaller than the US, right? And that's not taking into account the US military, or airforce, or navy. Or the US's mass of allies. Really, if you wanna get a real picture of what the global situation looks like, take the stats of the US, the rest of north america, the EU, the commonwealth of nations, occupied Korea, Taiwan and Japan, and add them together. Then, add together the stats of China, Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and any other leftist area's I'm forgetting. How does that look in terms of GDP, military, etc? China is not currently able to take on almost the entire globe by itself. And Marx himself admired how well capitalism did growth. An economy based on capitalism, which is the reverence of growth to the exclusion of all else, will obviously grow faster than socialism or communism, based on production towards needs. If you're not a marxist, or a believer in historical materialism, fair enough, but if you are, you need to understand capitalism as a pre-requisite to socialism. And if you're not a marxist, you still need to realise that, unless China industrialises to a point where it can compete against capital directly, it needs to avoid conflict with the west, and build it's productive forces. Like what do you think would happen if China was just like "ok, gonna expropriate everything now and implement full communism?" Do you think capital's gonnna go "Ok, fair enough. Have fun with your communist utopia that will destabilize our regimes by existing"? No, there'd be a new cold war, massive embargoes, etc, etc. The US economy, by itself(not including the rest of the capitalist world), is 32% larger than China. Until China is more powerful than capitalists, they're gonna have to keep building up.
edit: an->and b/c I'm waaay too drunk to be arguing politics at 1 AM
That building massive amounts of consumer goods factories is not something it's good for. China has just decided that cornering the global consumer goods market is something that can keep imperialists from fucking with them.
It's worked so far, but I guess only time will tell. If the things I mentioned above start getting privatised, I'll lose a lot of faith in the Chinese communist experiment.
One of the earliest observations about capital is that it creates it's own grave diggers. Marx was very clear that the crisis of capitalism is of over production followed by collapse.
Capital brings people into cities, towns, etc so that they can work for a wage. It then organizes them on the shop floor, in kitchens, in sweatshops, and in office buildings, and then skims off the surplus they produce. It's at this point that the workers can realize "Hey wait a minute, we already do everything. Why should we allow the "owner" to take our surplus when can decide what to do with it ourselves.