If the stagnation of China in the 60's and 70's continued, it would have gone the way of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. Deng was right. Poverty is not socialism. It is fuel for counter-revolution.
China is not socialist now, either. It the the productive center of the world led by a Communist Party that has shown a complete willingness to undermine the forces of Capital. It is much closer to socialism than any point in its history.
I don't have time to effort-post more right now, but one question:
China actually lost competitive advantage in many cutting edge fields - advantages that are sorely needed in order for China to overtake the United States.
How do you square this with the fact that China has become the global leader in countless cutting edge fields in the past 20 years? In my field, software engineering, China is well beyond the shit we are working on. Something like 90% of new patents in my field are registered in China.
This is becoming the norm in most fields, structural engineering, public transportation, renewable energy, medicine, etc. There are only a handful of technologies that China lags behind in now. I don't really buy any argument that "oh, but they could be more ahead" when we are talking about unprecedented development.
I don't think anyone says that there weren't problems with Maoist economic policies. However, choosing to regress back into capitalism demonstrates a failure of imagination and a capitulation to the idea that you need capitalism to develop production. The interesting thing is that for the first 15 years of dengism there wasn't that much of an economic improvement. In fact, the economy went into crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It's a society lead by a communist party that gave into revisionism and built a new sort of capitalism.
They did not "build a new sort of capitalism."
They have allowed capitalist development to exist in order to access the technology and expertise capitalists have a monopoly on. This is not anything new. Most oil infrastructure in the USSR was built by the Koch family between 1923 and 1931 through capitalist relations, under the guidance of the CPSU.
China has used the same method of development to catch up to the United States. They have been focused on developing a production chain which is independent of western capitalist hegemony. I think micro-processors are their only major hole right now.
After that, it is just a matter of political struggle within the party. The faction advocating for continued socialist development is significantly more popular, and seems to have more power under Xi Jinping than under past leaderships.
After that, it is just a matter of political struggle within the party.
Yeah, because they allowed reformers to take over to the point where capitalists can join the fucking party now.
It's a capitalist regime. Quit deluding yourself.
Yeah, because they allowed reformers to take over to the point where capitalists can join the fucking party now.
Again, you are describing the CPSU between 1923-1931. Did that prevent the transition to collectivization throughout the 1930's?
"China will always continue capitalist development" is dogmatic drivel. I'm not bold to claim they will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, develop socialism following years. There are several factions within the CPC. There are people who want to continue capitalist develop ad infinitum. There are people who have always opposed economic reforms. There are people (who share my political line) that capitalist development can play a progressive role in building socialism in specific circumstances.
Socialism in China is one intra-party political struggle away. That is much close to socialism than they were back in 1976.
There are people who want capitalism, there are people who oppose capitalism, there are people who foolishly think that allowing inroads is fine and hasn't already tossed the whole thing off track.
Socialism in China is one intra-party political struggle away.
Socialism is one struggle against capitalism away.
Socialism is one struggle against capitalism away.
If you can't tell the difference between an internal change in party policy and revolution, lol
Which ended capitalism in the USSR, the 16th Party Congress or the October Revolution?
If you can’t tell the difference between an internal change in party policy and revolution, lol
I mean sometimes there isn't much of a difference between the two. The cultural revolution is a good example of this
Again, you are describing the CPSU between 1923-1931. Did that prevent the transition to collectivization throughout the 1930’s?
The NEP was a progression from what had come before, SWCC is a regression in terms of economic relations.
That is much close to socialism than they were back in 1976.
No, markets now comprise a huge proportion of the economy now, most economic output comes from the private sector. It would require a massive transition to get the economy to become socialist.
The NEP was a progression from what had come before, SWCC is a regression in terms of economic relations.
Selling peasants to oil barons and industrialists is not "an improvement in terms of economic relations." It did help develop the USSR's productive capacities in important ways, though.
No, markets now comprise a huge proportion of the economy now
Neither socialism or capitalism is defined by "markets"
most economic output comes from the private sector.
True. The CPC has taken serious steps to increase national control of industry this year [1] Also, the entire private sector is loaded with incredible amounts of debt to the national bank, which provides the legal grounds for nationalization.
The mechanisms exist for a transition to socialism. The current administration has taken clear moves in that direction. The CPC has been pretty clear on their commitments to building socialism. And history has demonstrated that the CPC follows through on their commitments.
None of this is to say "China will definitely be socialist by 2035." I can not see the future. However, their current actions are consistent with that aim.
It would require a massive transition to get the economy to become socialist.
It would require a transition, yes. It does not require the development of the productive capacities necessary for socialism, which China lacked in the 1970's. That is why I say China is the closest it has ever been to socialism.
Maybe Mao's China could develop the capacity to both resist imperialism and provide continued material improvements to the people, necessary to prevent color revolution. The USSR and Eastern Bloc failed horribly in this regard. It is reasonable that the CPC decided to pursue a different path.
Selling peasants to oil barons and industrialists is not “an improvement in terms of economic relations.” It did help develop the USSR’s productive capacities in important ways, though.
When did they do that? I'm not familiar with that aspect of the NEP
Having state control over all major industries and utilities is an improvement over what existed in the Russian Empire though
Neither socialism or capitalism is defined by “markets”
Markets require commodity exchange, commodity exchange presupposes private property. Capitalism is literally defined as the private property of the means of production and the production of commodities for exchange. Markets are the beating heart of capitalism.
True. The CPC has taken serious steps to increase national control of industry this year [1] Also, the entire private sector is loaded with incredible amounts of debt to the national bank, which provides the legal grounds for nationalization. The mechanisms exist for a transition to socialism. The current administration has taken clear moves in that direction. The CPC has been pretty clear on their commitments to building socialism. And history has demonstrated that the CPC follows through on their commitments. None of this is to say “China will definitely be socialist by 2035.” I can not see the future. However, their current actions are consistent with that aim.
Khruschev said that the USSR would achieve communism by 1980. We all know how that turned out.
It remains to be seen if the CPC will actually turn to socialism, what evidence do you have that the CPC follows through on their commitments?
Maybe Mao’s China could develop the capacity to both resist imperialism and provide continued material improvements to the people, necessary to prevent color revolution. The USSR and Eastern Bloc failed horribly in this regard. It is reasonable that the CPC decided to pursue a different path.
Basically, the entire reason why China hasn't fallen to a colour revolution in the past 30 years is that they haven't challenged western capital nearly as much as the Soviets did. In fact, the reform and opening-up process likely helped western capital a lot by giving them the opportunity to outsource to a skilled, cheap labour pool in the 1990s and 2000s. China is not as anti-imperialist as people on this site like to make them out to be. Even if the state is committed to anti-imperialism, there is only so much you can oppose imperialism while at the same time being a part of their supply chains.
Sit and wait bro, Gorbachev is totally gonna bring back non-revisionist Leninism! Just you wait, that Yeltsin, he'll make sure we finally have actual democracy, then we'll build communism proper! I promise bro!
Gorbachev would have brought in Western NGOs to assure that Wang Dan and Chai Ling's pro-capitalist insurgency had an equal voice in society. The CPC made sure their only future was as anti-China dissidents.
You don't get it, the difference between the Dengist and the Gorbachev approach is simply the prioritisation of native capital and aesthetics over foreign ones. Gorbachev and his clique were suckers for anything western. You can ascribe it to his naiveté, or the neurotic wish to be admired, or the general Russian feeling of inadequacy vis à vis the West which was a thing long before the revolution and remained a thing in many sections of the populace (especially the so-called intellectual circles) to this day. It has zero effect on the restoration of capitalism as such. So yeah, the CPC saw very clearly where the wholesale surrender to the West would lead, so that's the one path they avoided, but the general capitalist trajectory remained all the same. Which is why I'm saying what they concocted is an improved version of capitalism, a capitalism 2.0 where the state reserves the right to intervene in matters of economy, technology and culture unbeholden to the private interests of the individual bourgeois. You can call it state capitalism, or collective capitalism, the label doesn't matter. This was in a way where the US was moving after the Great Depression, only there the "libertarian" faction turned things back again, because they thought they are strong enough as it is and don't need the state guidance any more. China has learned from this, so their capitalism is more effective. Obviously they are also in the unique position where they are also beholden to their origin mythology, so they need to at least pay lip service to the communist creed and keep the aesthetics intact, because this is their formal source of legitimacy. The upside of this is that not only is Chinese capitalism more effective in terms of industrial production but is also a somewhat "gentler" one (for now), which honestly is to be expected from a Keynesian offshoot.
Now yeah, by all appearances Xi has shifted the course somewhat, but neither you nor I know what their end goal is. Maybe you're right and they are slowly moving towards socialism again but it's at least just as plausible that they are just optimising the economy towards greater internal harmony (a term that gets repeated in official propagandistic statements) and a stronger projection of power internationally. I know where Occam's razor is pointing for me for the moment. But obviously you have a different outlook.
neither you nor I know what their end goal
There are several end-goals in mind within the CPC. There are people that want to continue capitalist development ad infinitum. There are people who have rejected all reforms. There are people who think the bourgeoisie in China have served a progressive role, but their usefulness is coming to an end.
I tend to agree with the last line. I think Xi is carrying out that line right now. But that may change, or he may lose power.
The bourgeoisie are becoming less useful in China. They used to be the all-important connection to western technology and expertise. Now, China has caught up in all but a handful of fields.
I'm hopeful that Xi Jinping is not an anomaly.That he is the product of the conditions in China. The bourgeoisie are less important to socialist construction in China, and therefore, their political power is waning.
I tend to think the membership of the CPC are (mostly) genuine Marxist-Leninists. Marxist-Leninists who believe the color revolutions in the Eastern Bloc were only possible because stagnation in peoples' quality of life. Their political line centers constant improvements to peoples' quality of life above all else, and preventing a color revolution from gaining popularity.
I think, I hope, I believe... that's way too vague mate. What you're basically admitting is that you also don't really know. Which is exactly what I'm saying: maybe China will transition to socialism down the road but at the moment there are precious few concrete signs of this, the likelihood of it happening is not strong and I have yet to see a convincing motivation for the leadership (whether current or future) to commit to it. At the same time I'm not denying the good things China has achieved and the unmistakably better deal they offer for the developing world, but "good things" do not by themselves constitute socialism.
I think, I hope, I believe… that’s way too vague mate.
I cannot read Chinese and I only know a handful of CPC members. There's only so much I can glean about how the Party functions. I won't claim to know more than I do.
What you’re basically admitting is that you also don’t really know
I just said that... The future is not decided. Anything can change. The direction the Party goes will be the product of political maneuvers and the voting membership.
I have yet to see a convincing motivation for the leadership (whether current or future) to commit to it.
The Party Congress has been pretty explicit about finishing the development of their economic base by 2035, and finish their transition to socialism by 2050.
Every conspiracy theory claiming that China lies about their timelines - from economic growth projections, to alleviating extreme poverty, to constructing public infrastructure, to filling their "ghost cities", etc - have been unfounded. Therefore, the official timeline set out by the CPC must hold some weight.
I wouldn't even say that the Chinese Communist Party was only paying lip service to Communism, Capitalism must be fully developed and matured for Communism to replace it. While the Americans are letting Capital forces run amok, the CPC is developing capitalism to be a system that they will later be able to remove and replace.
What bullshit idealism is this? Capitalism does not magically lead to communism! It is not a linear progression, it is not some upgrade. Capitalism does not essentially differ from feudalism, or ancient slave-owning societies, etc. except for in details. The fault line lies between exploitative socio-economic systems, that arose during the Neolithic and constituted a paradigmatic shift from seeing nature as a resource to be exploited to seeing humans themselves as a resource to be exploited, on the one hand and cooperative socio-economic systems on the other. There is no natural law that automatically enables a "phase transition" from the one to the other once we arrive at the capitalist iteration of the exploitative socio-economic paradigm. So the question here is: is the CPC actively working towards shedding the exploitative nature of its economy? If the answer is yes, then it is measurably moving towards socialism, if the answer is "I don't know", "maybe later", "let's just wait and see" then that's functionally the same as no movement to everyone but the innermost party insiders.
Read my other reply. And I have never said that capitalism will magically lead to communism, what I said is that capitalism must be used to develop productive forces until communism can replace it just like how feudalism was to mature before capitalism can replace it. And it's pretty strange to say that Capitalism is not fundamentally different from feudalism because there is exploitation. I suppose then all states are the same because they have laws.
To extend a little bit, the French Revolution cannot have happened in the 8th century, and Marx would not have written Das Capital had he not studied the industrial revolution brought about by British capitalism.
Capitalism must be fully developed and matured for Communism to replace it.
Does this mean that the revolutionaries of years past were wrong to push for communism? Should they instead have become capitalists and try to "fully develop" capitalism?
I hope you can see how absurd this take is
Maybe I worded it wrong. But productive forces of a society must be adequately developed for communism to take hold. What this means, and what the revolutionaries of the past has done is to seize the state to take control of the development of the productive forces. I'm saying is that the CPC is using certain elements of capitalism to acquire the capital to develop while maintaining enough state control in the economy to dictate the direction the economy will develope.
Saying "it is just a matter of political struggle within the party" is like saying: yeah you could totally just flap your hands and fly, it's just a small matter of gravity. It is an immense obstacle. If China can build a more successful version of capitalism, if their bureaucracy are invested in having such a capitalism enable their affluence where's the impetus for change gonna come from?
It's also very disingenuous to compare the 40 (40!) years of Dengism to the NEP, which was much more limited both in time and scope. How come the USSR managed to create their semiconductor and other industries, that rivalled anything the West had to offer, from scratch without resorting to restoring capitalist rule?
Saying “it is just a matter of political struggle within the party” is like saying: yeah you could totally just wave your hands up and down and fly, it’s just the small matter of gravity.
You are saying a change in a political line is impossible. That is a lie. Obviously, political struggles are hard. However, the forces in favor of transition toward socialism have significantly more power under Xi's leadership. Right-wing deviations are possible. Stalin was followed by Khrushchev. Left-wing deviations are possible. The 16th Party Congress saw the end of the NEP and a transition to collectivization. As China's productive base exceeds and becomes independent from western capitalists, the left-wing deviation becomes the correct political line.
It’s also very disingenuous to compare the 40 (40!) years of Dengism to the NEP, which was much more limited both in time and scope
Not really. The idea that 1910's Russia was 10 years behind the capitalist west & 1970's China was 50 years behind the capitalist west is not a far stretch.
How come the USSR managed to create their semiconductor and other industries, that rivalled anything the West had to offer, from scratch without resorting to restoring capitalist rule?
Because they were leading the West? There was not much to learn. Free exchange of information between the capitalist west and the USSR would have been advantageous for the capitalist west.
Anything is possible. Maybe aliens will save us all tomorrow. We're not talking about the possible but the probable.
And as for your last point that is simply not true. The RSFSR was certainly not leading in more than a tiny handful of niche areas of research. They had huge geographical disparity to boot. Maybe you should look up the drive towards a new science-enabling organisation of connected research institutes to see where the later scientific lead came from.
What? You mean like the Elbrus that introduced superscalar architecture almost a decade before Intel (which Intel probably just bought for cheap after the collapse) and one of whose chief designers then lead the Intel team that developed the Pentium III processor? The Elbrus which in its second iteration performed on par with its contemporary Cray supercomputer competitor while running at one fifth the clock frequency and that in its third iteration outperformed its contemporary Cray supercomputer competitor by a factor of 2, that semiconductor industry?
The "stagnation" of the 60s and 70s is a fiction. During that period China enormously improved the life of its poor. At the time of Deng's coup life expectancy was already at 68.
a complete willingness to undermine the forces of Capital.
Hundreds of Chinese billionaires disagree.
The “stagnation” of the 60s and 70s is a fiction. During that period China enormously improved the life of its poor. At the time of Deng’s coup life expectancy was already at 68.
Yes, because the CPC was addressing the social ills that were within the capabilities of their productive base. If you think the poverty alleviation China has carried out in the past 40 years would be possible without using the industrial expertise of western capitalists, you are not connected to reality.
Hundreds of Chinese billionaires disagree.
I do not think they would lol, most financial news I read from China has billionaires PISSED with the increased regulations in the past couple years. Jack Ma is actively falling out with the party lol
Right now, there is a socialist turn within the CPC. Remaining blind to this fact helps no one.
Socialism is when dead billionaires? Oh no Mr. Epstein, seems like your death was proof of socialism all along
Good for them, but even in this article it seems really fishy.
In policy recommendations for the nation’s upcoming five-year plan, released on Tuesday, the Communist Party’s Central Committee called for deepening mixed-ownership reform, and it particularly vowed to promote the market-oriented reform of energy, railway, telecom and public utilities.
...
Huang Qunhui, head of the Institute of Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said last month that China must concentrate resources in selected areas but can still allow competition in other sectors, such as “power grids, telecoms, railways, petroleum and natural gas”.
well its moving away from markets in some areas, and will probably move away from the others late soon
Increased regulations make billionaires uncomfortable?!? Yeah, sure, that means they're one step away from socialism. You live in a fantasy world.
I have literally said multiple times China is not socialist lmao
The fact that they are closer to socialism than any time in their history says nothing about the future.
The fact that they are closer to socialism than any time in their history
A "fact" that is completely the product of your imagination, repeating it endlessly doesn't make it true. Seriously, why are you here when you could be posting on r/neoliberal? Your argument that a communist country can only develop economically by reintroducing capitalism would be a success there.
Your argument that a communist country can only develop economically by reintroducing capitalism
I never said this. A coalition between:
- The centralized economies of the USSR & China
- Armed Communist Parties in Western Europe
- The armed national liberation movements in the Global South
in the after war period would have defeated capitalist-imperialism without the reintroduction of capitalism. There were plenty of opportunities to develop socialism in that time period.
However, a shit ton of things went horribly wrong for the Communist international movement:
- The Comintern pressured the disarmament of communist parties in France, Italy, and Greece.
- Krushchev's complete condemnation of, and lies about, Stalin caused fractures in every single communist party in the world.
- The Soviet Union refused to help China industrialize in order to maintain detente with the US
- China dumped anti-USSR propaganda around the world, claimed the USSR is "capitalist-imperialist" and "no different than the US"
To name a few.
Capitalist-imperialism successfully carried out counter-revolution around the world. In the era of counter-revolution, there were two successful methods of survival:
- The introduction of some capitalist reforms while maintaining a democratic centralist government led by a communist party (Vietnam, China)
- A complete inward-turn, focused on defense and self-sufficiency (Cuba, DPRK)
China demonstrated the only successful model for building international influence, which is has been completely lacking from international communism for decades.
The fact the China does not look like some combination of Ukraine and Afghanistan right now is commendable, only a handful of communist parties pulled that off. The fact that China is the center of global production and has been faithfully sticking to it's benchmarks in building socialism is one of the only signs of hope in the 21st century.
I generally agree with the CPC's line: poverty is not socialism. Poverty and economic stagnation were incredibly powerful weapons utilized by capitalists to carry out color revolution in the Eastern Bloc. Eradicating poverty is a necessary component to building socialism. Throughout China, the people experience a quality of life never before seen there and trust in the party's leadership is at record highs.
Qanon supporters are less deluded than you are. China is run by a billionaire oligarchy while its workers slave away in sweatshops and you write it has been "faithfully sticking to [its] benchmarks in building socialism..."
so if i am a good communist and inact some kind of policy that makes china completely rid of billionaires, what happenes? what did you gain? how does this reality look like for you?
If that community is created it will start a sitewide civil war lol
I think we really need more Chinese (or at the very least fluently Mandarin speaking) comrades on here before we can make any definitive judgements one way or another. And at the same time obviously whatever judgements we pronounce here will have zero bearing on which path the CPC actually takes.
