My god, even the best chance for socialism is hopeless because of the dollar. “it’s not doomer because the party could do something different” idgaf day after day it’s more dollars and less long term hope. Nothing China does can matter because all the green energy, all the bnr, all the poverty elimination, all of it is paid for with imperial currency and little to no interest in changing this arrangement from within. The party will talk about win-win arrangements and mutually-beneficial cooperation until the fucking nukes are flying.
You’re not helping the doomer, comrade. Everyone is a lib, and there’s not a Stalin in sight. So imperial core residents just wait until the planet cooks us alive, maybe doing some charity work for migrants and people on the streets with a red flag in the mean time. Fantastic
Ok man. I understand it’s about being correct, but there’s a reason I made a separate post to vent rather than replying to you directly like I actually think good things can happen
And even then they started to seep back into the Soviet bureaucracy as soon as Stalin died.
They existed in there semi-covertly from well before his death, as Khrushchev's coup itself demonstrated.
Nothing China does can matter because all the green energy, all the bnr, all the poverty elimination, all of it is paid for with imperial currency
The physical capital improves domestic livelihood whether its paid for with dollars, gold bullion, or bottle caps.
Don't get all doomer because the glut of petrodollars in the market has made it a preferred form of liquidity. That's a transitory condition.
The party will talk about win-win arrangements and mutually-beneficial cooperation until the fucking nukes are flying.
A big reason why the nukes never launched stems from the globalism that made life too good to throw away on ideology.
sorry for using the word nukes, they’ll keep talking about cooperation with the imperialists while the oceans rise. They can’t beat climate change on their own and per some replies I got, it’s impossible for capital to plan for the future, so we’re cooked
China could drop USD and all trade with the US tomorrow and not lose anything of value. That was their entire point in selling bonds in USD in Saudi Arabia recently. China can issue bonds at Treasury levels... Without US permission. Meaning they could, if they needed to, pay off all USD based loans regardless of the creditor... Which ends the US dollar and removes all incentives of the petrodollar.
To China, USD is now play money, worth no more or less than the euro or timber or any other base renewable trade good. It's no more a currency than fish.
Also check this out and see what you think? It seems to be the polar opposite of your take
https://hexbear.net/comment/5663045
If you’re correct, that’s even worse, it means they could drop the dollar, but choose not to because ???
Because they don't deal in the short term. Short term thinking without fully planning situations caused the loss of life during the great leap forward. China doesn't care about tomorrow, just ten, twenty, a hundred years from now... And the US isnt going to make all of those milestones regardless of China's involvement.
Now let's say brics lead by a strong China does push to dedollar the world; what's the US response? Probably nukes. The US is a dangerous dying empire who may just convince its military members and financial backers that a world without US hegemony is equal to nuclear annihilation, and we all know anyone stupid enough to join the US military is dumb enough to believe that. If a highly visible threat to power happens before China et al are sure the US doesn't have the internal political will to lash out in its dying breath, then you've just given the empire a target, and China would very much not like to be that target.
So what's China doing? Reassuring the world. They built up a navy not to attack the US, or even defend against a US attack, but to replace the US when it's time -- piracy is a legitimate issue after all and someone needs to be patrolling the waves. They issue bonds at the same interest rate as the US Treasury in USD, which assails any fear of defaulting on imf or US debt by the global south -- China can take care of you if they act up and pull some dumb shit. This climate change thing? China builds more solar panels alone than any other country builds any kind of power generation, combined with their turbine factories they're poised to coat the world in cheap renewable energy that lasts.
China is setting up to help the world recover from the fall of the West, to do that they need to survive the fall of the West, which means not directly fucking with the US until it is too weak and disjointed to go full nuclear Holocaust.
Now let's say brics lead by a strong China does push to dedollar the world; what's the US response? Probably nukes.
Because they don't deal in the short term.
China doesn't care about tomorrow, just ten, twenty, a hundred years from now...
Reassuring the world.
setting up
I want to push back on this kind of thinking cuz I see it a lot when people are trying to defend China against, what is imo, valid criticism of an inactive, excessively "pragmatic" policy by appealing to some kind of grand plan
The USSR did many of these things that people say China can't do while they won't do it. Dedollarization? The USSR had an almost entirely separate economic bloc where, when trade was conducted with currency it was done in the ruble, not the dollar. Ofc it wasn't free from trade in the dollar and countries still had to retain dollar reserves (if they could get them) but this arrangement, while definitely not being perfect, allowed countries like Cuba or Vietnam and others to survive, even thrive sometimes, while being strangled by the US-led imperialist economic order despite the USSR never having the kind of technically advanced, massive economy like China does now
It didn't result in nuclear war, even though it did get close sometime cuz this is what confronting imperialism on a world scale entails, cuz nuclear war is suicide for everyone involved. It's not GOOD but it is better than doing nothing but selling solar panels (quite compatible with capitalism btw, also doesn't solve climate change) while the oceans boil and a negative "peace" reigns. While an alternative economic system that actually exists is extremely threatening to capitalism, the ruling class of the West aren't "dumb" or suicidal and I think it's harmful to think of them that way cuz they are very "rational" considered from their perspective
Also, even if the CPC refuses to meet it right now, confrontation is inevitable and the ongoing provocations will continue to increase and increase no matter how much "reassuring" they do cuz the US cannot permit another country to surpass it in economic power or the entire structure that keeps the third-world locked into US-led imperialism falls apart and they will not let that happen passively so either China will have to submit to the US or confront them
The reason the USSR and their bloc collapsed so relatively peacefully is cuz it was self-destruction. In the end, they mostly gave up power willingly. In the CPSU, so rotted internally by revisionism, most of them watched Gorbachev destroy the country for years and then they gave in to Yeltsin (I'm oversimplifying but yeah lol) and let him finish it and the most of the rest actively helped this process, which visibly began with Krushchev, along. Not to say there was no fighting but yeh
When the US starts to go, I can't even imagine how violent it will be cuz the ruling class of the West are quite willing to fight to keep their privileges, even if that means the state has to intervene in a collapsing economy directly against the whining of many
and traditional neoliberal ideology if it's necessary to protect capitalism (fascism is also on the table for them ofc), where the CPSU was unwilling to protect the power of the working class in the USSR (cuz many of them just wanted to restore capitalism anyway lol) and the masses had long been demobilizedHow does the west fall without nuclear holocaust? Or would it be a partial nuclear holocaust rather than a full one?
How does China building solar panels solve climate change? No matter how many renewables they invest in, it’s a group project with a group grade
For the first point; by simple collapse. We know from the ussr that nuclear powers can collapse without it ending the world (even if some of us think it maybe should've and we'd be better off). The government fails to stop a revolution, some rich guys get a little too self assured and back some legal separation, some banks simply collapse without anyone bailing them out, there's a hundred scenarios, and most of them would happen if any single one happens... But the easiest thing would simply be if the global south stopped being exploited and instead was openly armed with just 13 nuclear icbms each.
To your second point, if you shrink fossil fuels customers, you reduce emissions fucking up the cycle. Moving all but the West away from fossil fuels, essentially making some countries leapfrog the technology tree, shrinks overall demand while reducing emissions enough that we might keep under 2c. We reduce demand, the producers can't export while maintaining their economies, meaning the West must produce and consume, and use government resources to prop up both sides of that industry. The economics behind such a move from the West don't favor longevity, and if the West becomes more poor, then renewables look even better as a survival tactic.
I gotta be honest, the example of the ussr does not make me more secure that the US would go equally as quietly into that dark night. And the only country making progress is China, not the rest of the global south and especially not India.
it means they could drop the dollar, but choose not to because
they probably don't want wwiii to start today
I mean central axis is exploitation, not nerd dollars. And that chinese won't liberate nobody been obvious since 70s, same with ussr. People control their destiny. not magical hand from god. Would be nice if they did it, but it's not expected.
And ip laws fucked more people over than dollar dominance
The USSR legit helped multiple peoples win their national liberation struggles and then keep their freedom (as free as it gets while being strangled by a global US-led imperialist alliance)
Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Laos, Korea (halfway lol, that one was mostly China though), even a lot of Eastern Europe, not even mentioning all the free aid that was sent to national liberation struggles still in progress to this day (like to the PLO) or that were defeated, even through direct military intervention like in Cuba and Afghanistan
Ofc you know this but the defeat of the USSR wasn't just a defeat of the USSR and it wasn't a tragedy just for that reason, but because it was the defeat of an entire world anti-imperialist movement :(
Even the AES-stans on this site will acknowledge that modern China is not like the USSR in this aspect and that China actively refuses to form an anti-imperialist bloc like the USSR led despite now having a more powerful economy and better diplomatic status than the USSR ever had and despite the increasing aggression from the imperialist powers who can no longer tolerate the very existence of China as any kind of independent power even though China's "opening up" and participation in the world market literally rescued their economies in the 70s and 80s (although BRICS is a good movement in this direction even if completely inadequate)
Idk, I am asking that the "critical support" be a little more critical :3 as things continue to heat up, geopolitically and literally
I used to be cool with and do the China and BRICS "cheerleading" thing but I am more skeptical now. Idk, have been averse to expressing this cuz I have seen so many get dogpiled for even mentioning this kind of thing :/
I'm critical ideologically (and was), but uncritical structurally (world-systems wise) of china. (USSR i mentioned since 70s specifically, they did lots of cool stuff before that, but after that were mainly in holding pattern, not developing further.). And cheerleading is nice, i don't mind it, i just don't place hopes on it changing things in the way or at speed people think. (and hope might be praxis killer in some scenarios)
It's just....... the same ideological tendencies that led to the USSR taking a liberal class-struggle-devoid view of "coexistence" with the West and increasingly led them to some kind of "situationally practical" negative peace until it caused their self-destruction, the same tendencies which people here will rightfully criticize as "Krushchevite revisionism" and which made China break from the Soviet-led bloc, are now reflected in China's internal and external policy and within the CPC's ideological line in a massively bigger way than the USSR and the CPSU ever did. China has just managed to avoid the self-destruction part, probably cuz the West was cool with China as long as they remained a non-threat competitively on the world market and they kept sending extremely cheap input goods to the economy of the West (and we can see the ruling class of the global imperialist bloc is no longer cool with this arrangement from their recent actions toward China but the flow of cheap commodities never stopped so it's probably for the former reason (without getting into implications of what that could mean given that China is now a financial and industrial superpower))
Imo it's not possible to be critical ideologically of China while remaining uncritical structurally (if we assume being "uncritical" is ever a good thing, at least in political economy) cuz one of the basest conclusions of Marxism is that the oppressed classes don't have to remain passive objects to the material conditions of history (which the ruling classes have, until recently, had asserted the most control over) but that we can use ideology to understand these forces and exert influence on them for our own benefit using the state as led by the communist party like in China. The current structure of China and China's role within the larger structure of the imperialist world-system is highly influenced by the ideology of the CPC. Like..... yeah, China was in a particularly difficult situation in the mid-to-early-late 20th century because the CPC had broken all ties with the USSR and "their" (social imperialism or whatever hehe) anti-imperialist bloc and after their attempt to build their own competing bloc wasn't going so well, they willingly chose to cooperate with the West and give the West's economy a massive boost while it was in the middle of completely and finally wrecking the USSR and their bloc, which.... definitely means something about their ideology cuz China didn't just accidentally end up like this (however someone views the goodness or badness of "this"). To criticize ideas on a basis other than relations to other ideas (which we definitely want to do cuz we are materialists) is to criticize their effects on the world, and the world isn't looking too good rn while China isn't doing a whole lot about it despite no longer being powerless to effect it (ofc that assertion is extremely contentious and complicated to get into lol)
And ofc, it depends how we define what "cheerleading" is cuz when I just used it, it was vibes-based lol. What I mean is a whole tendency of this site sometimes to overfocus on the cool things China does like build trains or forgive loans (I do like trains and free stuff :3) while overlooking massively concerning things like the role of capital, especially finance capital, plays in China's economy and the extent to which it has penetrated into the state and the party to not only siphon state resources through state contracts but even through direct corruption or changes that have taken place since the end of the Maoist period like the massively reduced role of central economic planning or agricultural communes and similar local economic organizations in the economy while substituting capital or even the extent to which multinational corporations extract surplus from China to export to the West
Imo it's not even just a tendency of this site but, more broadly, a tendency in the entire western left that didn't immediately out themselves as imperialist chauvinists when the latest cold war against China began. Idk, ofc as someone in the West I will always criticize my country more than China and defend China from one of these "leftists" if they start going off lol. Idk, we have to figure out wtf is going on cuz passively "cheerleading" AES and tepid third-world social democracies or just being a running dog for imperialism isn't gonna help us. I know this site is overly hostile to criticism of China, mostly cuz the site was once was filled with those running dogs who had to get purged but, idk am voicing these feelings for once
Am sry if being too long-winded or unnecessary expositiony of things you already know, is just kinda how I think through stuff
Oh, i meant structurally, as in weight in global economy. Assuming all else equal, getting 2.5 billion people good life (tm), will shift the productive forces in the global south into higher gear, china either consciously (if commies) or unconsciously (if porkies) will have to build out productive capacity in the rest of the world, simultaneously reducing western pie (no sense in being coffee harvester for 0.50 cents an hour if chinese funko pop factory pays 2). While it is not, strictly speaking, good from climate perspective, the alternative from the west is getting murdered on the border, so, let them do their stuff with cheap solar and shit working conditions (or good working conditions), its good in either case, because the alternative is getting shit working conditions and getting killed.
Higher order thinking says capital is not, exactly, sound, profit-wise, but that includes lots of fat they can shed in consulting/advertising/lawyering/lobbying to recover, so ai might give some time there
It's not good in either case imo. Cuz obviously China and the CPC are not comfortable remaining in typical third-world economic conditions of total subjection to the West which excludes this "compromise" situation going on for much longer and if I understand what you mean by like.... a "commie" type or "porkie" type of path of development in the world......
- China consciously helps the the third world to "develop" (redevelop, achieve economic existence on an equal standing) along an anti-imperialist and communist line kinda similar to the USSR
The world is divided again into the imperialist and anti-imperialist blocs, led by the US and China, respectively, cuz the imperial core cannot allow the periphery to exist on an equal relationship without the current imperialist world system shattering and an economic crash, basically total self-destruction of the current economy of the West, like NOTHING ever seen. The contradiction between imperialism and anti-imperialism is irreconcilable, yet the only forces capable of actually permanently resolving the contradiction are the anti-imperialist ones
Results: If imperialism is successful, again, then the nations of the anti-imperialist bloc will be forced back into third-world conditions and total subjection to the West. If anti-imperialism is successful...... there is no imperialist contradiction anymore and the proletariat can actually address climate change and uhhh idk I can't even imagine how incredible that would be, no words
- China "unconsciously" (porkies know what they're doing) "develops" (exploits) the third-world via the export of capital to the third world and the extraction of surplus back to China
The world is also divided, this time into 2 imperialist camps also led by the US and China, respectively. The CPC has totally given in to its revisionist line, who knows what that looks like yet it is possible. The contradiction between the 2 imperialist camps is irreconcilable and can only be resolved with the destruction of one of them
Results: Possibly world-ending imperialist war, WWI with nukes and drones and missiles and global computer networks and figuratively-boiling oceans
Cuz poverty reduction is not socialism on its own and there's two ways "shift[ing] the productive forces in the global south into higher gear" cuz of higher living conditions (read: higher input costs for labor that makes profit go down) can go and that is along an imperialist or an anti-imperialist line cuz this exact thing is what led to the current imperialist world system happening. Is probably way too early to say and I should look into wtf China is up to in the third world with their development contracts but I REALLY don't like thinking about "Chinese funko pop factor[ies]" paying 2 whatevers currency units an hour and I think we should never be thinking that way is good cuz that is just imperialist surplus extraction done by someone other than a Burgerian lol and only leads to the same place even if a world war ran by the worst people on the planet doesn't blow us all up
Respectfully, this feels like unsupported pablum. The dollar is a mechanism of control and exploitation from which the only socialist project with a modicum of global influence refuses to separate. People control their destiny, but they don’t control it in a vacuum
Bigger vibe-check problem is them owning mines in congo rather than dollarization.
Magical thinking ("someone powerful will do something nice") is not productive for any movement. The usa intransigence might force them to stop using dollars, it might not
They'll still tilt the world economy even if they were (fully) capitalists. its like observing tide: would be nice if it brought me some fish, but probably still have to work for it, even it becomes slightly easier with the tide.
Personally, global financial transformation is a bigger vibe check issue than selling some mines to other capitalists
Chinese business and SOEs have a shit ton of exploitation in their supply chains. that would not change if Canadians or Brit’s owned the mines. You know this. I’m talking about the dollar
And the dollar what? If dollar disappeared, it wouldn't change capitalism, or ownership. Maybe make american consumers 5% poorer. Capitalists made them 20% poorer for a time, and they've dealt with it without riots.
Dollar might implode by overextension of usa or it won't if they don't, it's very irrelevant
It’s ok comrade. This state of affairs doesn’t have to be permanent, and China may in the future find it beneficial to promote de-dollarisation due to a change in material circumstances. Hegemonies always fall. We are seeing the US empire crack and crumble around us right now.
The cracking and crumbling you note feels like it would be the change in material circumstances necessary. And yet, nothing
These things play out over years, decades even. I am not an expert either but looking to the long term, it seems to me that green energy has to overtake fossil fuels at some point, and China is the global leader in green tech. So eventually countries will switch to cheaper green tech coming out of China and the petrodollar will decline in relevance.
Yeah to put things in perspective, just a decade ago the concept of dedollarizing the global economy wasn’t even discussed. The fact that it’s now presented as a, albeit extremely unlikely, possibility is itself a dig of a shift in global economic power.
I admire the optimism, but the dollar isn’t just the petrodollar. Thank you for the hopium tho
Agreed, I was more using that as an example of the kind of shift that might weaken attachment to the dollar over time. Love & solidarity
If I wanted to just have religious faith in the PRC ultimately saving the world, I could.
Remember China and western leftists spaces had to deal with massive anti-China racism seemingly out of nowhere in 2019. Do you even remember the stressful and tiresome years of having to constantly read some shitty Xinjiang conspiracy theory.
It was through careful study and examination of the available facts that we understood it was BS, you know its not like Muslims themselves would approve of their own genocide right? Even writing this today feels silly but that was the climate.
So their stance to support Russia against the neoliberal consensus was a historical big deal. Likewise the sanctions blowback was something nobody expected, including China and Russia themselves.
Not to go on a historical tour but its not possible to very hopeful when a few months of "wolf warrior" and Yellen/Blinken's vacation home in Beijing followed by Financial times "finexplaning" to the CPC how they're stupid, their country is in a crisis and they must become like a western consumer economy because their overcapacity is unfair was enough to cause the CPC to act so deeply and swiftly to change course.
The future now is on whether China realy believes embracing neoliberalism is a solution. The outlook is bad.
The retirement age reform, even defended by some as "common sense" is a huge red flag(the bad kind). The fact some people even in left spaces defended is reminiscent of the same "we can do no wrong" attitude found in right wing spaces. The left struggle is written with exactly this sort of incremental defeatism. TINA except the obvious one we can't actualy pick.
Likewise, the recent incentives, particularly liberalization of foreign investments is concerning.
We're all thinking the Taiwan is the key but from the beginning there was never an indication of that being a long term issue. Taiwan is irrelevant if not now then soon enough. US is coping with CHIPS and CN already on a path to their own e.g Huawei's advances.
I don't have a lot to add cuz I also feel kinda doomer about this (maybe not doomer but it's pretty fuckin bleak rn lol) but I just wanna say uhhh stuff
Ofc dedollarization, like anything else, does not reflect a state of the world being dedollarized or not being dedollarized. From what I understand, dollarization has been an ongoing process that has only become so strong after the US managed to secure some kind of a monopoly on many important natural resources and economic input goods that are the result of some highly technical, advanced process and especially after the USSR self-destructed in the 90s. The USSR and its economic bloc was basically like BRICS but way better lol. The reason Cuba survived, and even thrived in a lot of areas, is cuz of this economic bloc and the USSR and friends would often extend very favorable deals for Cuba, especially for their natural resource exports (especially sugar) lol, so that they could diversify and develop their economy faster after years of being a Spanish and then a US colony had left them with the extractive economy of a typical overexploited third-world nation (
). And there are many examples like Cuba throughout the worldOfc, even the USSR and friends had to keep dollar reserves around to buy stuff from the West that wasn't available internally, but even if a country were totally cut off and strangled by from the US-led imperialist world economic system, they could still survive and thrive back then
My point with this is........ if "we" could do it once, we can do it again
And China has a more powerful and technically advanced economy than the USSR ever had, even if it is totally, and currently irreversibly, entangled with the West's economy the potential is there. Like if the CPC ever decides to actually acknowledge and confront the West over their increasing provocations and do something about it, and they may be forced to do this in the end (thank you, Comrade Trump lmao [just to be clear for any libs that read this, I am referring to a Chinese internet meme lol]) idkIdk I'm sure you know all this already, but how tuned in are you to the attitude within the CPC? Obviously with Xi things have been changing, at least a little bit, within the party and I've heard there are lots of younger, more radical people getting involved again especially in the lower sections of the party
Thank you for this, responding to the last bit. I don’t know a ton, but I’ve read a lot of young Chinese people are disillusioned with the current state of things. Whether that makes them fervent Marxist party members who will fight the good fight or libs who blame the party for their problems, I can’t say. But that’s through western media so I could be way wrong
Idk either tbh, I have heard this mainly from friends who were a little more tuned in to happenings in China cuz they know Mandarin and can overcome the language barrier that is partly why China's internet is so separate from the rest of the internet, I think they might know some party members too, not sure (in other words this rumor of mine is basically worthless lol)
Def something I should investigate more
The ultimate question here I guess is the question of 2-line struggle like with what happened inside the CPSU. Is the party too cooked to fix or not? Idk, I lean toward it's not but I'm really not qualified to even say at this point, not to mention I am Amerikkkan lmao
I def wouldn’t say it’s cooked, xi is proof that progress can be made, but it depends on the ideological perspectives of the youth
Is this in responce to the recent news article that china started issuing their own USD and people like theirs better than America's?
In response to XHS-posting mostly, but specifically their extraordinary effortpost in the news mega about this event
When you put that much effort, repeatedly, over the course of months, to make this particular financial point, I’m going to take it seriously. The future is affected by the restrictions of the present, but thanks for the hopium
Ironically, i put some of my retirement savings into a gold fund a couple years ago, and it did way better than the various US industry positions I had
Oh I know, I always feel conflicted between keeping money invested to overcome inflation, vs taking it out because there's no way everything's not about to crash, right?
In the end, I just constantly resent the fact that the neoliberals have forced our retirements to be tied up in stock market bullshit.
I'm so far thinking of this as like the launch of the financial Prius. A hybrid dollar essentially, which is a transitional step towards a future without the dollar. It still relies on the dollar to function, but it starts to prove out the potential for alternatives that are not hegemonic tools of the US.
Not a ton of Prius sold at first except to institutional fleets that could make a case for saving money on fuel for their fleets, but it wasn't quite a entry-level vehicle comparitively. If the calculation was over a long enough time frame, it made sense for a lot of institutions to transition. This is partly why Saudi is where this is being done as far as I can tell.
Once the concept of dollar alternative has been normalized via this, then it starts to give credence to a lot of what BRICS+ is working towards. If this can work in Saudi, it can work almost anywhere that wants it. So I think it could snowball eventually, but there has to be a stepwise process of transitioning away from US dollar hegemony first to open the way.
Maybe this bloomer cope, but that's where I'm at so far from reading the different takes that have been posted.
America will never be felled by financial war, it will be felled by war war
That’s even worse lol, because if America falls militarily, we all go down in nuclear fire
theres many ways for this not to be the case, chiefly i can imagine american civil war due to climate disaster
they could be used, but nuclear civil war would not be the end of the world
As a resident of a major metropolitan area, it would be the end of mine
