It's so exclusive it took Xi 3 tries to get in, but it has 90 million members?
In a country that struggles with income inequality having a high bar seems like it's in danger of just entrenching a new elite class.
edit: w/ 90 million you're probably reaching a broad segment, I'm just saying this is a weird sort of elitism mixed with being broad.
It’s so exclusive it took Xi 3 tries to get in
For context, his dad was purged and Xi was sent down to the countryside, so there’s a little more going on there.
90 million people is around 8% of the adult population. The equivalent would be people in the US who went to "good" Universities. Basically anywhere in the top 50 schools per US News and World Report.
Functionally, that serves the same purpose here as CPC membership does.
He's kinda tipping his hand. He probably only knows PMC members so his personal experience with that would be true.
I never meant to imply that CPC members were all PMC goons. Just trying to draw a parallel to the US, where no one questions our ~10% elite.
Right, compare it to say SCOTUS where something like 3 of 9 went to the same elitist high school.
This sounds more like going to UCLA or UW or something. Pretty achievable barring really lousy circumstances.
The Atlantic (lol) did a story on America's elite 10% for comparison
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
I think you're confusing exclusivity with minimum threshold of qualification.
I see what you're saying, but it's not like they sit in Ivory towers and laugh at the failed entrants, it's like graduating from a school, and you can keep trying. Unlike a school, it's not a minimum threshold for participating in society like a degree is here.
Or maybe it's the same I dunno.
I know we're used to just about any clueless person being part of a party and a politician, but "license to drive? You know I'd like to see some competency exhibited by people before they drive"
And 90 million members already make it the 2nd biggest political party in the world, I'm really not siding with you on it being elitist
I'm saying ~1/15th of the population does not paint a picture of an elitist party, but the rhetoric of even Xi needing 3 tries does. It's contradictory, but it makes more sense when @KiaKaha reminded me that Xi had more complicated circumstances.
You're totally right that having standards for entry isn't elitist, that's not what I meant. I'm not judging the CCP, just the post.
In some dynasties there were exams people took to determine if you could be a government official, it kind of reminds me of that tbh.
I wasn't making a value judgement, I was just saying what it reminded me of.
galaxy brained Western leftists
socialism achieved, we have been publicly owned
At the very least, it means Marx isn’t anathema.
Given the circumstances, it’s no surprise that at least some would turn to the most comprehensive, powerful critique of capitalism and markets yet developed: Marxism. To a degree, this leftward shift feels like a return to form. Young leftists are reclaiming the ideological heritage of their country, which was after all founded on the notion of ending the capitalist class’s oppression and exploitation of workers and peasants. And because they grew up in an educational system with mandatory courses on Marxism and socialism, even seemingly impractical or outdated concepts like class and “surplus value” become handy analytical frameworks when many students encounter difficulties later in life.
But the current trend goes beyond the classroom. Indeed, many students complain that their mandated Marxism classes — long treated as pro forma exercises by teachers and students alike — aren’t doing enough to prepare them or give them the knowledge they really want.
They have a point. “If you want to be the masses’ teacher, first you must be their student,” Mao once exhorted. But many teachers of Marxism on Chinese campuses have grown too comfortable with their marginalization to adapt to the changing circumstances and increased demand for their subject matter; others actively belittle Marx, lionizing libertarians like Friedrich Hayek or even KMT princelings like Chiang Ching-kuo in his place.
This forces their students, who generally have little patience for either libertarianism or KMT nostalgia, to look elsewhere. This ironically has driven many to move past the country’s textbooks and start reading figures like Marx and Lenin in their own words. For others, online videos purporting to explain the core tenets of Marxism-Leninism have proliferated, many of them attracting millions of views.
Interestingly, one of the most popular interpreters of the Marxist tradition isn’t Chinese at all, but the American academic Richard D. Wolff. Netizens have pulled videos of his lectures from YouTube and re-uploaded subtitled versions to sites like Bilibili under titles like “Why Aren’t You a Marxist?” Despite his academic background, Wolff has garnered praise for his clear-eyed analysis and accessible explanations of core concepts, and some of his videos on Bilibili have gone on to rack up more views than the originals.
EDIT: if you like this content, go subscribe to !sino@hexbear.net. It’s all the info on China with none of the struggle sessions.
Hope is a dangerous thing, but I feel hopeful about China's young Communists. Pushing Biden left was always a joke. The real game is pushing Xi left. :mao-aggro-shining:
Did you give this a watch? It's a vid summerizing the book "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" published in the PRC. If you find the vid on it interesting, you might want to get yourself a copy of the book.
I went through some of the speeches in one of his books, they were pretty interesting.
Kind of a slog to read translated political speeches in text.
Time to learn Chinese then lol.
For real, I've tried to learn Korean and Japanese, which use Chinese characters as a way to look fancy as fuck, and fuck me learning it was rough. Like memorizing the character and it's basic meaning is easy enough, Like "火" means fire because it looks like a campfire and "月" means Moon/Month (Chinese calendars are based off of the lunar cycle) since it's sorta shaped like a crescent moon, but start stringing that shit together? I'd need a premium healthcare plan and a Chinese tutor with a bat to beat some knowledge into my dummy head for that.
As someone who studied Mandarin for four years in high school and is now independently studying it on my own the best way to memorize characters at first is just to use flashcards. I recommend you try out the AnkiDroid app if you have an Android phone which has several large decks for Chinese. Even Duolingo is very helpful for beginners to help you understand the basic characters. Once you learn a good base of some basic characters then you can try watching Chinese language content with subtitles on so that you can see how 汉字 are used in their native context
The Official Domino Chinese Level 1-20 Complete Vocabulary and Timo's All-In-One Chinese Anki Deck are the two decks I use. Both are extremely large and good enough by themselves with tens of thousands of cards. The first deck has a lot more slang phrases while the second one mostly sticks to the official HSK word list.
yeah I noticed that because I remembered being taught the fire symbol in Japanese with three of those hash marks and not just two of them, and I thought "huh, I guess that's what they meant by simplified Chinese"
Yeah it's impossible to say the CPC is "the vanguard of the Chinese working class,” (as its constitution states) when, in 2019, there was more than 4x as many Managers/Professionals than actual workers among its membership .
Read the billboard:
https://wuyihk.org/Main_Diy/diymodule/puc/term/a5cbe658aca3eaecce7fc37160f866ac.jpg
In 2019 workers and peasants made up 34.8% of the Communist Party, while professionals, managers, students, and Public Servants made up 37.2%. So at minimum they are outnumbered by a far more materially rich, and influential/powerful, faction within the party.
public servants are ‘workers’,
Marx wouldn't think so, the interests of civil servants are aligned with that of the state, not with those of the Proleterian and Peasantry.
The bureaucracy is the state formalism of civil society. It is the state's consciousness, the state's will, the state's power, as a Corporation. (The universal interest can behave vis-a-vis the particular only as a particular so long as the particular behaves vis-a vis the universal as a universal. The bureaucracy must thus defend the imaginary universality of particular interest, i.e., the Corporation mind, in order to defend the imaginary particularity of the universal interests, i.e., its own mind. The state must be Corporation so long as the Corporation wishes to be state.) Being the state's consciousness, will, and power as a Corporation, the bureaucracy is thus a particular, closed society within the state
Unless it can be proven that the Chinese state is genuinely a DOTP, the interests of its civil servants are opposed to those of its Proletarians and Peasantry.
You can't justifiably argue that "a large chunk of the retirees are likely former workers" when a large chunk of the active membership now are not workers.
Unless you believe that the interests of the Chinese PMC are genuinely aligned with those of its Proletarian and Peasantry, their large presence in the communist Party is counter to the interests of the Chinese proletarian and Peasantry.
Look at the CPC's own breakdown of the occupations of their members (translated)
Occupation of a party member. There are 6.445 million workers, 25.561 million farmers, herders and fishermen, 14.403 million professional and technical personnel in enterprises, public institutions and social organizations, 10.104 million management personnel in enterprises, public institutions and social organizations, and 7.678 million staff in party and government agencies There are 1.960 million students, 7.104 million other professional staff, and 18.661 million retirees.
Regardless, the CPC is deeply unrepresentative of the Chinese working class, as 27.5% of the Chinese labor force is Industrial workers, but they're a far smaller percentage of CPC members, at minimum they are under 7% of the party's membership. (as, the category of workers does include more than just industrial workers, and they wouldn't fall under any other category of CPC members)
China's a well managed State-Capitalist society, which has been beneficial for its working class, but the CPC is not Communist.
professionals, managers, students, and Public Servants
That's an incredibly broad spectrum of people. And it isn't clear what divides these people from "workers" dialectically.
It's beginning to sound like the anti-union line, where you try to claim organizers aren't Real Workers.
OK this complaint is a bit misleading, I don't think there's any prominent or effective Marxist party that still narrowly defines the working class as "workers" the way that Marx did 150 years ago. Notably absent from this conversation are peasants, who outnumber "workers" 4:1 in the party.
There are reasons to argue that industrial workers innately have greater class consciousness than peasants or gig economy "petit-bourgeois" but there are far more reasons to include almost anyone who earns a livelihood through labor rather than capital gains in the working class.
Looking at your link PMC types make up 26% of the party and college graduates around 50% of party membership, they're over-represented but far from a dominant or majority faction.
Another way to look at it is that in 2019 workers and peasants were 34.8% of the Communist Party, while professionals, managers, students, and Public Servants made up 37.2% of the membership. It's laughable to argue that such a composition could possibly create a working class vanguard party.
There are reasons to argue that industrial workers innately have greater class consciousness than peasants or gig economy “petit-bourgeois” but there are far more reasons to include almost anyone who earns a livelihood through labor rather than capital gains in the working class.
The economic class interests of Managers and the Petit-Bougroise stand in opposition to that of the Proletarian, this is true regardless of whether they earn a livelihood from their labor. If they are the dominant force in a political party (as they are in the CPC) then the party is not Marxist.
This analysis is way, way too simplistic as it ignores the realities of the 21st century economy and glosses over the compositions of each group. "Worker" has a very restrictive definition that excludes many professions, like teachers, doctors, and postal workers. I can't imagine any working class movement that aims to shut out these groups and ignores their revolutionary potential from the get-go.
By Marx's definition, Uber drivers are petit-bourgeois. Someone selling handicrafts on Etsy is petit-bourgeois. An unemployed person isn't even that, they're lumpenproletariat. Do all of these people "stand in opposition to the Proletarian"??
Even if your answer is yes by a purely textual perspective, you have to recognize that the types of "workers" that Marx talked about are a tiny fraction of the population in most developed economies and that fraction is shrinking by the day. How can this tiny fraction represent "the working class"? How can any successful revolutionary movement rely on industrial workers to the exclusion of every other type of laborer?
That isn't Marxism, it's dogma.
Is Jack Ma a worker?
Here's the CPC's own occupation breakdown of the party (Translated)
Occupation of a party member. There are 6.445 million workers, 25.561 million farmers, herders and fishermen, 14.403 million professional and technical personnel in enterprises, public institutions and social organizations, 10.104 million management personnel in enterprises, public institutions and social organizations, and 7.678 million staff in party and government agencies There are 1.960 million students, 7.104 million other professional staff, and 18.661 million retirees.
So no, the PMC in the CPC are not actually Uber drivers, and regardless 27.5% of the Chinese Labour force are industrial workers so even by the most reductive definition for "Workers" possible, which is not the definition that the CPC uses, CPC membership is still vastly non-representative of the Chinese working class. It is however, like the National People's Congress, disproportionally representative of Chinese billionaires, which I fail to see as a good thing in a purportedly "Communist" party. That certainly isn't Marxism.
But if you find evidence that the CPC is actually including millions of Uber drivers and corner store owners in their definitions of Managers, and Professionals, I'd be happy to hear it.
I support the PRC, but this dosen't mean I'm blind to the composition of the CPC.
I stand by my definition of "the working class" as anyone who makes their livelihood through labor rather than capital gains. Jack Ma could never work another day in his life and still make more money than 99.999% of the population so I think he fits squarely in the latter category.
It states right there in your quote "7.104 million people employed in other fields" (其他职业人员710.4万名). It doesn't imply that they're PMC, only that they're employed in fields that don't qualify them as workers, farmers, professional/technical personnel, or managers. Given that there are millions of "petit-bourgeois" delivery drivers alone in China, I don't see why you find the idea that some of them are members of the party to be absurd.
The CPC definition of worker (工人) is also fairly restrictive and applies only to industrial workers, although the inclusion of skilled and technical workers (工勤技能人员) means it includes people like welders. It absolutely does not apply to taxi drivers.
Honestly I'm not quite sure what you're arguing, I never once said CPC membership perfectly represented the class and strata breakdown within the PRC, only that it's a working class party and most party members are working class. The vast majority of party members are not billionaires and only a small fraction are managers, most are or were working class people.
I think you could make a strong argument that the CPC is not (or should be) a working class party but a "whole of society" party given its priority of economic development but that requires a much more in-depth and nuanced discussion than looking at party membership and calling anyone who isn't a worker or peasant bourgeois.
My argument is that the CPC is unrepresenatative of the Chinese labour force, given its underrepresenation of industrial workers, peasants, and almost certainly other informal workers, and overrepresentation of Professionals, Capitaliststs, and Managers.
This is a fact, even if the CPC is not wholly dominated by the latter, membership is still disproportionately held (in comparision to their share if the overall population) by those who are opposed to the interests of the working class.
The construction of the CPC as an elitist and exclusionary organisation is bad, and should be changed such that it's genuinely a force for socialism that is not undermined by its membership including figures like Jack MA.
The economic class interests of Managers and the Petit-Bougroise stand in opposition to that of the Proletarian
This isn’t even inherently true in a capitalist country, let alone a socialist one
There are reasons to argue that industrial workers innately have greater class consciousness than peasants or gig economy “petit-bourgeois”
Peasants don't exist in China as feudal relations have been abolished. So yes, they're workers.
I know more working class Chinese people who have the class consciousness to better process the political economy (that’s what Marxism is called in China) education than the “elite” party members.
That's a point in China's favor in it's own right. American working class people and elites, alike, think Marxism is when you are a totalitarian dictator of a large caribbean island.
the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
Yes, that has been the policy recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacya child having its throat cut by an Australian soldier
Passive voice :agony-consuming:
theres some there gold to
The phrase is derived from the patriotic Rambo-style Chinese film Wolf Warrior 2.[10] Wolf Warrior 2’s tagline was "Even though far away, anyone who affronts China will pay."
thats literally just CIA talking poitns as someone in the field lol, keep reading us articles in english about chinas FP
unfortunately its super difficult to find good IR analysis from a marxist perspective as marxists tend to self exclude from the discipline (which emerged in the us like 70 years ago)
read zack cope and check LeftReviewOnline and a bunch of weird tankie sites and Communist party affiliated shit for that <3
hopefully someday ill get published lol
This perhaps: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/336289033
But I'm no expert, and don't trust too much details of translation; often their are euphemisms or similar.
Wait hang on is CCP Membership is just the Imperial Examinations with a new paint job?
There’s more to it than that.
There are imperial examinations with a new paint job, but those are more for getting into universities, government positions, and public companies.
Party membership is more community involvement, which varies based on where you are. If you’re urban, it means having a couple of people in the party recommend you, then doing stuff like participating in ecological monitoring, being class representative (which is way more intense and basically an unpaid tutor role), etc.
Ew, Xi failed the Marxist exam three times, not a good look.
Funny enough, it seems they waited for Trump to get out. Might be a doofus, but he at least projects "strong man." Whereas Biden projects scoliosis.
I think it's less "Strong man" vibes and more "Nutcase with the red button" vibes.
I'm strong enough to admit when I've been dunked on, and... yeah.
The West thought the Great Firewall existed to protect China from Western ideas. Only now are they realizing that it existed to protect the West from China's merciless dunks.
if they continue to call themselves marxist and use marxist language, is there any action that will stop you guys from liking them? how long can lip service cover for being openly part of a capitalist system? Would a communist state allow its population to work grueling factory jobs making products for a western imperial country? and without having an independently controlled union? their elite accumulates massive capital.
and like whatever you think theyve objectively changed course since the days of mao. If you like china now i dont see how you can also like maos revolution with any amount of coherence
is there any action that will stop you guys from liking them?
forcing 800 million people back into poverty
this lifted out of poverty stuff is bullshit too, its the exact same argument capitalists use, the idea going through the stages of capitalist development is an objective improvement to the world. Capitalism creates poverty. China gets richer and someone else has to get poorer, its just how it works if youre still working on the concepts of rich and poor. As they "develop "they outsource lower profit jobs to other countries and now they have the shitty jobs with no leverage. Without a rejection of capitalism poverty is completely unchanged.
this lifted out of poverty stuff is bullshit too, its the exact same argument capitalists use
The neoliberals are lying and simply taking credit for China's success.
I mentioned above that the MDGs moved the baseline year back in a manner that claimed China’s gains against poverty during the 1990s, which had nothing at all to do with the MDGs. If we take China out of the equation, we see that the global poverty headcount at $1.25 actually increased during the 1980s and 1990s, while the World Bank was imposing structural adjustment across most of the global South. In 2010 (the final year of the MDGs' real data), the total poverty headcount excluding China was exactly the same as it was in 1981, at just over one billion people. In other words, while the MDGs lead us to believe that poverty has been decreasing around the world, in reality the only place this holds true is in China and East Asia. This is an important point, because China and East Asia are some of the only places in the developing world that were not forcibly liberalised by the World Bankand the IMF. Everywhere else, poverty has been stagnant or getting worse, in aggregate.
These poverty lines suggest that global poverty is much worse than the official narrative would have us believe. Most analysts recognise that the $1.25 line is too low, but it remains in favour at the World Bank and the UN because it is the only line that shows any progress against poverty – at least when you include China. Every other line tells the opposite story.
thats wrong though, cause the development is usually much slower and more lopsided and in China qol, height, hdi have all improved drastically
China gets richer and someone else has to get poorer,
economics is not a sum zero game lol, humanity as a whole has been getting "richer" per capita and net wealth wtf are you talking about
buildling schools in Xi'an doesnt hurt you lol and Chinas built a lot of fucking schools and hospitals and provides for its citizen, and now thats imperialism too because you decided its impovrishing someone because???
if you say debt trap diplomacy i will not respond to just entry level cia shit
capitalism is absolutely a zero sum game, somebody has to be the bottom for there to be a top. if there is no rich and poor there is no capitalism.
Saying humanity has gotten wealthier per capita and that this is good is inherently capitalist logic, the line going up doesnt mean anyones life is improved. There were non capitalist areas colonized and made to be capitalist, like tribes or whatever, and get jobs, and now they have more money (before they had zero money) but theyre lives are shit.
And they do collect interest on third world countries, thats a fact, whatever youd like to call it. because again theyre capitalist and thats what every capitalist country does
OK then who did China hurt by building hospitals and schools lol?
im not really saying that hurt anyone, its not a totally good-evil situation. But like mark zuckerberg built a hospital. its not a pass and there are other reasons to do it
also, who ever said that Marxism = pushing the "destroy all capitalism button" and having Utopia automatically built to replace it?
Marx literally says that the next stage of productive development would be born from the womb of capitalism & have all its birthmarks
Lenin and Engels both suggest that state capitalism is the initial stage of socialism
Mao himself said that this stage of socialism would take a long time and be fraught with many obstacles including the choices between "capitalist-road" and "socialist-road" and that class struggle would itself be a protracted and drawn own affair
Just because you think PRC needs to do it a certain way, doesn't mean you're right or that your "criticism" means anything in light of their history & trajectory
ike tribes or whatever, and get jobs, and now they have more money (before they had zero money) but theyre lives are shit.
read some history buddy
You're correct. All they did is take 300 million rural peasant farmers who live off the grid, stuck them in factories, gave them a meager stipend (hey, they technically were earning ZERO before that), and used this as justification to say "brought 300M out of poverty".
800m and guess what in my 3rd world coutnry id fucking love to have the majority of the people go from being literally the wrecthed of the earth to office workers whose domestic consumption is the largest in the world and shit in a generation lol
Well yeah. This is exactly what I mean. You're a victim to the window dressing.
yeah im a victim of not wanting to see my neighbors die of prevetnable disease, window dressing fuck off lol
i want my community to be better, i want peoples needs to be met and their leisure to be greater, not to project dead russian thinkers from a centrury ago
if you find a way to both im on board, but i care about material reality, not fantasy
well im not going to completely sign off on that, i mean the farmers didnt really live off the grid either they had shitty feudal lords and stuff. im not a maoist either, but life in china definitely improved for a lot of people after his revolution.
I mean, if "80 hours a week of hard labor to funnel 99% of revenue into the top 0.1% of capitalists" is your kind of revolution, well we'll agree to disagree.
billionaires get executed in PRC
President Xi just this year jailed a billionaire for 18 years for mouthing off online lol
Dictatorship of the proletariat & mass line are both alive and well within PRC, you're just not going to admit that they're doing far better than the US at both capitalism & socialism lmfao
The fact that billionaires exist at all should be a bigger point of contention for you. But if one ritual sacrifice is enough to keep you glommed on to their team, have at it, Capitalist 2.0.
doing better at capitalism and socialism lol. talk about a galaxy brain
yeah i mean its absolutely not lol, im just objecting to what youre saying about the farmers. but i do agree with the point that yeah more money on paper isnt neccesarily better.
and like whatever you think theyve objectively changed course since the days of mao. If you like china now i dont see how you can also like maos revolution with any amount of coherence
why not lol?
also are you just discovering that dengists and maoists dont believe the same things? i like socialist states that exist and serve the people and china does, sure they use markets and companies to do so but they use them not vice versa
its that they believe radically different things, like the companies are still making a profit. if they couldnt use the chinese people for profit theyd shut down. the philosophies of mao and deng are in direct conflict
youre telling me that chinese people have complex thoughts? and they dont all share the same political vision? god this almost sounds like a democracy
what are you talking about? im saying its incoherent to like mao and deng at the same time cause they directly conflict. wtf does that have to do with the diversity of thought in china
Yes, it's completely tribal. Americans in capitalist prisons are victims of a system, but those stricken to Communist gulags must have done something to deserve it.
ok so are there more prisoners per capita in america or china?
surely that should give some indication of how delusional this line is, i get it you hate states, good for you welcome to the 20th century its states buddy, you cant abolish 1 state at a time,
You're the one that brought up the US. I think they're a bigger shithole than China. But that's your prerogative to defend.
Yes, PRC is doing better than the US socially & economically & from a public health perspective
Almost like state capitalism can be used toward the general welfare & improving social development
Should we be praising state capitalism? China's obviously better than a neoliberal hellscape, but isn't that a pretty low bar to be set?
I'm not "praising" anything other than to say that this is in keeping with Marxist-Leninist tendency
Lenin "expanded "socialism" and the period of the DotP into a much longer historical stage, during which the proletariat's struggle with the still-vibrant bourgeoisie would require a more intense struggle with the full weight of state power under Communist Party control being directed at the capitalist classes. Throughout this period, the restoration of capitalism would be a constant threat and the Communist Party could use any means necessary to destroy the capitalists' social, economic and political power."
When I hear that CPC executes billionaires & jails them for posting cringe & pursues their Superyachts in the East River... then I know state capitalism for a Communist just hits different
I don't really think having billionaires is keeping in line with Marxist-Leninist tendency. I'll support China's state capitalism in the same way that I'll support social-democratic politicans in the US, but it's important to acknowledge that they're just creating a less shitty version of capitalism. Capitalism's internal contradictions are still vibrantly alive in China, there's still a bourgeoisie whose existence relies entirely on the state. I might just be misunderstanding you, but saying it "hits different" seems to be minimizing the current flaws China has. While its less flawed than the West, it's still highly flawed and deserves criticism, imo.
Yes, it’s completely tribal.
you said theres no difference and im pointing out a difference
y es, it’s completely tribal. Americans in capitalist prisons are victims of a system, but those stricken to Communist gulags must have done something to deserve it.
You’re the one that brought up the US
