• PhaseFour [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    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.

    • Rev [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      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.