I think I cannot possibly have an informed take on China without understanding Chinese. On one hand they are nominally Communist, which is good. On the other hand, they embraced marketization, which is bad. On the other other hand, USSR didn't do that and they collapsed, so which is the greater evil? Survival, or purity?
From my funhouse mirror understanding of China through the language barrier, their political principles at least seem to be in a better condition than the US, where our political establishment is telling us we either elect a septuagenarian segregationist groper or we will lose democracy. That said, there are some questionable choices in their history, and no nation of 1+ billion people will be free of contradictions.
i think most people would understand china a lot better if they just read the german ideology, because without reading that book (or the method outlined/described in the book, though obviously marx uses that method in all his works and you can get there, i just think it would be easier/faster this way), most who call themselves marxists are actually still idealists rather than materialists
what china is doing is to not ignore the necessity of a certain historical process before the next one becomes possible
there's a big amount of materialism in that necessity and that possible and most takes regarding them not applicable words are inherently idealistic/utopian
if i could sum it up: for a materialist, it's not enough to replace capitalism, you need to make it obsolete; this is how every new mode of production came to be, it made the previous one obsolete
so you can't just do a revolution and claim "capitalism is over now guys", unfortunately that doesn't seem to work (remember, the USSR had a huge black market on the side): the role of the revolutionary is to induce and accelerate this historical process, and to keep the conservative forces (such as the bourgeoisie) in check (hence dictatorship of the proletariat) so that they don't get in the way of our progress
I think I cannot possibly have an informed take on China without understanding Chinese. On one hand they are nominally Communist, which is good. On the other hand, they embraced marketization, which is bad. On the other other hand, USSR didn't do that and they collapsed, so which is the greater evil? Survival, or purity?
From my funhouse mirror understanding of China through the language barrier, their political principles at least seem to be in a better condition than the US, where our political establishment is telling us we either elect a septuagenarian segregationist groper or we will lose democracy. That said, there are some questionable choices in their history, and no nation of 1+ billion people will be free of contradictions.
i think most people would understand china a lot better if they just read the german ideology, because without reading that book (or the method outlined/described in the book, though obviously marx uses that method in all his works and you can get there, i just think it would be easier/faster this way), most who call themselves marxists are actually still idealists rather than materialists
what china is doing is to not ignore the necessity of a certain historical process before the next one becomes possible
there's a big amount of materialism in that necessity and that possible and most takes regarding them not applicable words are inherently idealistic/utopian
if i could sum it up: for a materialist, it's not enough to replace capitalism, you need to make it obsolete; this is how every new mode of production came to be, it made the previous one obsolete
so you can't just do a revolution and claim "capitalism is over now guys", unfortunately that doesn't seem to work (remember, the USSR had a huge black market on the side): the role of the revolutionary is to induce and accelerate this historical process, and to keep the conservative forces (such as the bourgeoisie) in check (hence dictatorship of the proletariat) so that they don't get in the way of our progress