China already surpassed the US in terms of the real productive economy. The US includes financialized nonsense in its GDP, things that aren't productive at all but are rather weights on production and individuals. Examples:
When someone has to pay an overdraft fee, that gets counted in GDP as a financial service. A situation that is actually a personal debt is counted as creating and selling a commodity.
Increasing housing values / prices are included as well. A house sits there doing squat for a decade doubles in value and gets sold. Hundreds of thousands get added to the GDP even though the price difference is due to financial speculation and a physical monopoly (location). Also, housing costs outpace inflation, so this scenario is actually increasing the cost of living.
Don't even get me started on health insurance.
China has surpassed the US because it has become vastly more productive in its real economy, in its ability to make real things and useful services. It has been able to do that by increasing capital intensive production and technology by dangling cheaper costs in front of the international bourgeoisie, which they gladly accept. A bit of an imperialism switcheroo and a risky yet successful gambit.
Is this good for socialism? Of course. International capital, seated in the white supremacist North Atlantic countries, depends on imperialism, ultimately through hybrid warfare (military and financial weapons). A strong China undermines imperialism in several ways:
Directly in their own country by creating a geopolitical position in which they can set their own terms of governance, including economic. Compare China's situation to that of India since the 90s. India went in precisely the opposite direction and suffers tremendously by imperialism. Also China is literally run by a communist party
By providing an alternative trading partner that undermines US sanctions, a real weapon of war.
By providing alternative financial systems, e.g. what BRICS may deliver. Groups like the IMF are an arm of imperialism and they are increasingly undermined. Dollar debts are used to trap countries on imperialized suicide paths. Watch Argentina nosedive straight into that trap.
By providing an alternative model that is entirely realizable, arguably more realizable, through socialist anticolonial revolution.
US/UK-led imperialism has been the primary barrier to socialism for over a century. It has murdered millions upon millions to keep the ruling class at its perceived advantage. This is usually why revolutions failed and nearly always why they were dismantled after early success. Hell, the imperialists don't even allow us to exist when we win elections, with examples in Latin America, Africa, and Asia (the global south, not coincidentally). They are an ontological evil, the greatest threat to socialism, and they must be destroyed at all costs.
US/UK-led imperialism has been the primary barrier to socialism for over a century. It has murdered millions upon millions to keep the ruling class at its perceived advantage. This is usually why revolutions failed and nearly always why they were dismantled after early success. Hell, the imperialists don’t even allow us to exist when we win elections, with examples in Latin America, Africa, and Asia (the global south, not coincidentally). They are an ontological evil, the greatest threat to socialism, and they must be destroyed at all costs.
Correct. The US-led Global North must be decapitated before any serious discussion of revolution or socialism can be made.
Capital will only ever do the most profitable thing. This is an iron law. China used it to their advantage to develop the productive forces in their country.
Capital does what the individual capitalists perceive as gaining the most profit for themselves, albeit sometimes as cartels. The capitalist system makes sure that they know this is things like cutting wages and destroying competition.
By this I just mean that capital can actually fail to find even higher profits so long as the more profitable regime would require a coordinated effort or would give up some of their power. Capitalists would make more profit if they reined in finance, but they constantly fail to do so, in part, because they gain short-term profits from dealing with finance. They can only see what's right in front of themselves as the ruling class cogs in the machine of capital.
Capital will do what it takes to survive, not necessarily what makes the most profit. Capital absolutely will do protectionism and autarky if it's deemed necessary for some form of capitalist class to administrate some working class. China's gamble worked out because it was in the interests of the international bourgeoisie at the time.
Now that we're seeing a re-emergence of ideologically coherent fascism/chauvinism there could arise a situation where the western nations cut off their own nose and break away from China in order to keep their own domestic bourgeoisie in power.
China already surpassed the US in terms of the real productive economy. The US includes financialized nonsense in its GDP, things that aren't productive at all but are rather weights on production and individuals. Examples:
When someone has to pay an overdraft fee, that gets counted in GDP as a financial service. A situation that is actually a personal debt is counted as creating and selling a commodity.
Increasing housing values / prices are included as well. A house sits there doing squat for a decade doubles in value and gets sold. Hundreds of thousands get added to the GDP even though the price difference is due to financial speculation and a physical monopoly (location). Also, housing costs outpace inflation, so this scenario is actually increasing the cost of living.
Don't even get me started on health insurance.
China has surpassed the US because it has become vastly more productive in its real economy, in its ability to make real things and useful services. It has been able to do that by increasing capital intensive production and technology by dangling cheaper costs in front of the international bourgeoisie, which they gladly accept. A bit of an imperialism switcheroo and a risky yet successful gambit.
Is this good for socialism? Of course. International capital, seated in the white supremacist North Atlantic countries, depends on imperialism, ultimately through hybrid warfare (military and financial weapons). A strong China undermines imperialism in several ways:
Directly in their own country by creating a geopolitical position in which they can set their own terms of governance, including economic. Compare China's situation to that of India since the 90s. India went in precisely the opposite direction and suffers tremendously by imperialism. Also China is literally run by a communist party
By providing an alternative trading partner that undermines US sanctions, a real weapon of war.
By providing alternative financial systems, e.g. what BRICS may deliver. Groups like the IMF are an arm of imperialism and they are increasingly undermined. Dollar debts are used to trap countries on imperialized suicide paths. Watch Argentina nosedive straight into that trap.
By providing an alternative model that is entirely realizable, arguably more realizable, through socialist anticolonial revolution.
US/UK-led imperialism has been the primary barrier to socialism for over a century. It has murdered millions upon millions to keep the ruling class at its perceived advantage. This is usually why revolutions failed and nearly always why they were dismantled after early success. Hell, the imperialists don't even allow us to exist when we win elections, with examples in Latin America, Africa, and Asia (the global south, not coincidentally). They are an ontological evil, the greatest threat to socialism, and they must be destroyed at all costs.
Correct. The US-led Global North must be decapitated before any serious discussion of revolution or socialism can be made.
Agreed. This is the primary contradiction of our time.
Capital will only ever do the most profitable thing. This is an iron law. China used it to their advantage to develop the productive forces in their country.
Capital does what the individual capitalists perceive as gaining the most profit for themselves, albeit sometimes as cartels. The capitalist system makes sure that they know this is things like cutting wages and destroying competition.
By this I just mean that capital can actually fail to find even higher profits so long as the more profitable regime would require a coordinated effort or would give up some of their power. Capitalists would make more profit if they reined in finance, but they constantly fail to do so, in part, because they gain short-term profits from dealing with finance. They can only see what's right in front of themselves as the ruling class cogs in the machine of capital.
Capital will do what it takes to survive, not necessarily what makes the most profit. Capital absolutely will do protectionism and autarky if it's deemed necessary for some form of capitalist class to administrate some working class. China's gamble worked out because it was in the interests of the international bourgeoisie at the time.
Now that we're seeing a re-emergence of ideologically coherent fascism/chauvinism there could arise a situation where the western nations cut off their own nose and break away from China in order to keep their own domestic bourgeoisie in power.
Thanks for this very well written explanation. May I save it so I can share it with others?
Of course! Feel free to fix my typos lol
Thanks
Isn't there also something ridiculous like mortgage payments get double counted towards GDP as some sort of imputed "rent payment"?