I'll take a crack at attempting to explain why it's important for western Marxists to take a decisive position on the PRC: it's a matter of international solidarity. If the Uyghurs are in any way oppressed or underprivileged in Xinjiang, international solidarity requires balancing the scales between critical defense of the PRC on an anti-imperialist basis, and correctly answering the national question. If the PRC is socialist, its socialism is so immature that it resembles state capitalism. If one's position is "China bad but America worse", that's saying the PRC is at best a lesser evil, not exactly something worth bleeding for.
My organization is just one part of an international org which has no choice but to attempt to develop a correct take on China. We also have skin in the game because our tendency historically tends to be ruthlessly purged in "AES" countries.
The PRC draws from an extrapolation of the Stalinist/ML tendency which absolutely screwed the pooch foreign-policy-wise, so much that their compounding mistakes trapped the USSR in a cold war, that they eventually lost because capitalists penetrated most of the the third world before they could to the point that the proto-Maoists/early Maoists had no choice but to split from the twice-degenerated Soviet leadership, created deformed workers' states that survive to this day only because of their concessions to international capitalism.
I would rather have gone down fighting to the last man than pretend to still have a socialist state that's been screwed up beyond all recognition, and I'm beginning to understand why so many in the 4th International split off to become Posadists when the prospect of mutual destruction (with the capitalists more likely to pull the trigger first) changed objective conditions inestimably for the worse on the global scale for the major capital-C Communist powers.
How Deng and even Mao in his twilight years could have tolerated western-controlled sweatshop labor and sacrificed so much working-class control over workers' lives, I fail to understand. The PRC is pumping out neoliberal economists now. Is such betrayal necessary for the long-term success of socialism? Is this what the "lower stage" of socialism is supposed to look like until the economy is developed enough to feed everyone 4 times over?
This is what Dengists (and to a lesser extent, all MLs, especially those on the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet split) seem to imply when they all but uncritically support the PRC. Choosing a patient strategy, waiting decades for western imperialism's collapse even after you have the biggest economy on the planet, condemns entire generations of your workers to lifetimes of continued exploitation and suffering, at least some of which might be redundant. I don't think I can get behind that, but I will try to remain open-minded.
History is a hell of a drug. If it works, we will never know untill after the fact, that it will have been worth it. Anything will have been worth it. If china creates the future falgsc all of human history will be rendered a footnote.
Did the USSR fail yes? Could they have known the things they were doing wouldn't work? No.
The only data is that failure, destruction by imperalists, and further degredation are the most likely outcomes. So every bit where china isn't moving as gast as we'd like has to be weighed against a seccond hundred years of misery and the revitalization of western powers. Compared to that, a little state capitlaism is worth it to blunt the risk.
But even so. China is less than one lifetime old. You can really only call 40 or so of those years in any way modern. And in that time they have done wonders. So both optimism and fear are appropriate.
I know the mantra "no political work goes wasted" has some utility here but the thought of the possibility that I could spend years or even decades of my life backing the wrong horse and acting as an unwitting enemy of the correct path haunts me to no end.
Correct path? There are two paths in this story. Us and China. If china was bad, they'd be on our side. What other side is worth considering? even if china ends up failing, there is no better horse in the race.
It will be hundreds of years before someone else will get to try. And there is no reason to think their campfire tales of the sunken cities of cuba and vietnam will give them better odds than china has with the biggest richest country on earth with all the means of production in it.
I know reliable information about China is scarce but do you not believe in Xi's public recommitment to socialism? From where I'm standing he has taken a firm stance against capitalist corruption and is working to bring China back to the right path. Changes in a state do take time, and I think Xi is doing a good job changing things for the better. Perfect excuse for the CIA to drum up some bullshit about a genocide too, if you look at their history with the USSR
Probably the biggest shortcoming is the absence of working-class democracy, the absence of apparent proletarian dictatorship. The PRC looks like like it's governed by a party of bureaucrats who tolerate the continued exploitation of workers by capitalists, who cooperate with said capitalists. An environment where Jack Ma can make an inconceivable fortune pressuring workers to adapt to the 996 workweek, one in which Foxconn is able to operate sweatshops with working conditions so awful (while lying to party regulators about adhering to minimum standards and getting away with it) that they had to set up suicide nets, one in which a panopticon is used to monitor the behavior of all citizens (instead of just capitalists and known CIA saboteurs) and controlled only by the ruling party, does not resemble socialism. It more closely resembles state capitalism.
I think the idea that China is still working towards an actually socialist state is eminently false, or if they are it is beyond foresight, so predicting or hoping for it is a waste; but I think China still presents a strong stance against US hegemony + western imperialism and represents a better version of capitalism than the West offers. This is not a very socialist position. Any thoughts? Thanks
You cannot raise multiple generations of young Chinese people on a steady diet of Marx and Lenin and Mao from elementary school onwards and be a little surprised when you end up with a lot of genuine communists. The new generations will eventually fill those positions in their politburo. Even were that not the case, China has demonstrably done more for poverty alleviation than any capitalist nation can claim.
Even were that not the case, China has demonstrably done more for poverty alleviation than any capitalist nation can claim.
But so far they have achieved this largely because of their own type of capitalism, which I claimed is better than the West's, but is not yet socialism. I could easily see a future where China is always "almost ready to start actual socialism" for decades on, without end
This is going to be an unpopular position here, but the Chinese system is neither a temporary retrenchment to capitalism, nor is it just state capitalism with socialist rhetoric covering it up- China is socialist. Period. Having a market sector in the overall framework of a planned, publicly-owned economy is what Socialism looks like in the 21st century. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Belarus, and Vietnam use this model, and increasingly Cuba and the DPRK are moving in the Chinese direction. There's nothing false or fake about Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Maybe in the future they'll move in the direction of a fully centrally planned economy, and there are factions in the party that want to do just that, but that takes nothing away from the fact that their system right now is an example of real, actual socialism, even with their billionaires. Western communists who are wondering whether China will become their ideal picture of a socialist state or whether it's actually some kind of state capitalist hat trick are missing what's right in front of their faces.
I don't disagree. Equally though, they don't don't interfere with our own ability to build socialism, which is also a lot more than can be said about western imperial nations. So they are in the best case scenario, an imperfect socialist nation inching slowly along to a post scarcity level when they can finally hit the full socialism switch, or an equally imperfect capitalist nation that nevertheless manages to improve their own citizenry's lives while also not interfering with other socialist projects.
Yes, agreed. At worst they are probably the best capitalist superpower in history so far. The least imperialist, the most helpful to their citizens. Not perfect but no one is.
The Soviets post Stalin were revisionist, but much of that was walked back by Brezhnev, and yet the split intensified (and the reason for this is squarely laid at Deng's feet here, as he was in charge of the negotiations.) The PRC abandoned critical support and went into shockingly bad tit-for-tat policy measures against the SU when together they might have very well survived. The west nearly fell in the late 70s, during the oil crisis. And that's the most damning criticism I have as someone who supports left unity. The first rule is don't fucking split, support everyone who isn't literally Pol Pot (who was an agrarian-primitivist-nationalist with communist trappings).
Perhaps some market reform was inevitable during the 80s to lessen siege socialism and allow primitive accumulation, the fall of the Union and full Chicago-School Dengism was not. China may have survived, for which I'm grateful, but like Vietnam they're playing with fire and risking Capitalist co-option.
That said, if China is "State Capitalist" it is a deliberate, worker driven state capitalism with a defined goal. And it's under the control of a genuine DotP. Under these circumstances I think critical support is justified.
As for the take of leftists in the West. well it's hard for us to critique without playing into red-scare propaganda. Firstly, most of Xi's work is in English. Comrades should read On the governance of China, or at least a sympathetic summary before critiquing. As for political positions, we should support and uphold the thought of his advisors on the Neo-Maoist left like Wang Shaoguang while critiquing the Autocratic Rightists in the government like Wang Huning and the hard-partyist revisionists like Jiang Shigong who openly seek to drop the "utopian judeo-chrstian" aspects of Marx in favour of an eternal Party rule.
As for Xinjiang, China's doing some bad things, some cultural oppression, some isolated Han nationalistic acts, and we should say they're bad.
It doesn't appear to be Genocide or any worse than what the US does to its own population or its client states, let alone what it would do to a rebel-sympathetic population on a strategic border. You try putting down a CIA funded Wahhabi extremist led rebellion in a province that has had CIA rebellions since the 1960s without breaking eggs.
I'll take a crack at attempting to explain why it's important for western Marxists to take a decisive position on the PRC: it's a matter of international solidarity. If the Uyghurs are in any way oppressed or underprivileged in Xinjiang, international solidarity requires balancing the scales between critical defense of the PRC on an anti-imperialist basis, and correctly answering the national question. If the PRC is socialist, its socialism is so immature that it resembles state capitalism. If one's position is "China bad but America worse", that's saying the PRC is at best a lesser evil, not exactly something worth bleeding for.
My organization is just one part of an international org which has no choice but to attempt to develop a correct take on China. We also have skin in the game because our tendency historically tends to be ruthlessly purged in "AES" countries.
The PRC draws from an extrapolation of the Stalinist/ML tendency which absolutely screwed the pooch foreign-policy-wise, so much that their compounding mistakes trapped the USSR in a cold war, that they eventually lost because capitalists penetrated most of the the third world before they could to the point that the proto-Maoists/early Maoists had no choice but to split from the twice-degenerated Soviet leadership, created deformed workers' states that survive to this day only because of their concessions to international capitalism.
I would rather have gone down fighting to the last man than pretend to still have a socialist state that's been screwed up beyond all recognition, and I'm beginning to understand why so many in the 4th International split off to become Posadists when the prospect of mutual destruction (with the capitalists more likely to pull the trigger first) changed objective conditions inestimably for the worse on the global scale for the major capital-C Communist powers.
How Deng and even Mao in his twilight years could have tolerated western-controlled sweatshop labor and sacrificed so much working-class control over workers' lives, I fail to understand. The PRC is pumping out neoliberal economists now. Is such betrayal necessary for the long-term success of socialism? Is this what the "lower stage" of socialism is supposed to look like until the economy is developed enough to feed everyone 4 times over?
This is what Dengists (and to a lesser extent, all MLs, especially those on the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet split) seem to imply when they all but uncritically support the PRC. Choosing a patient strategy, waiting decades for western imperialism's collapse even after you have the biggest economy on the planet, condemns entire generations of your workers to lifetimes of continued exploitation and suffering, at least some of which might be redundant. I don't think I can get behind that, but I will try to remain open-minded.
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Jesus christ, I did not know this.
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History is a hell of a drug. If it works, we will never know untill after the fact, that it will have been worth it. Anything will have been worth it. If china creates the future falgsc all of human history will be rendered a footnote.
Did the USSR fail yes? Could they have known the things they were doing wouldn't work? No.
The only data is that failure, destruction by imperalists, and further degredation are the most likely outcomes. So every bit where china isn't moving as gast as we'd like has to be weighed against a seccond hundred years of misery and the revitalization of western powers. Compared to that, a little state capitlaism is worth it to blunt the risk.
But even so. China is less than one lifetime old. You can really only call 40 or so of those years in any way modern. And in that time they have done wonders. So both optimism and fear are appropriate.
I know the mantra "no political work goes wasted" has some utility here but the thought of the possibility that I could spend years or even decades of my life backing the wrong horse and acting as an unwitting enemy of the correct path haunts me to no end.
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Correct path? There are two paths in this story. Us and China. If china was bad, they'd be on our side. What other side is worth considering? even if china ends up failing, there is no better horse in the race.
It will be hundreds of years before someone else will get to try. And there is no reason to think their campfire tales of the sunken cities of cuba and vietnam will give them better odds than china has with the biggest richest country on earth with all the means of production in it.
it's okay if you're a trot, you're allowed to admit it. mods have a policy of deleting outright sectarian shitfighting
I know reliable information about China is scarce but do you not believe in Xi's public recommitment to socialism? From where I'm standing he has taken a firm stance against capitalist corruption and is working to bring China back to the right path. Changes in a state do take time, and I think Xi is doing a good job changing things for the better. Perfect excuse for the CIA to drum up some bullshit about a genocide too, if you look at their history with the USSR
No. Or more charitably, not yet. All I can say (given what I've learned so far) is he's significantly better than Deng.
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Probably the biggest shortcoming is the absence of working-class democracy, the absence of apparent proletarian dictatorship. The PRC looks like like it's governed by a party of bureaucrats who tolerate the continued exploitation of workers by capitalists, who cooperate with said capitalists. An environment where Jack Ma can make an inconceivable fortune pressuring workers to adapt to the 996 workweek, one in which Foxconn is able to operate sweatshops with working conditions so awful (while lying to party regulators about adhering to minimum standards and getting away with it) that they had to set up suicide nets, one in which a panopticon is used to monitor the behavior of all citizens (instead of just capitalists and known CIA saboteurs) and controlled only by the ruling party, does not resemble socialism. It more closely resembles state capitalism.
I think the idea that China is still working towards an actually socialist state is eminently false, or if they are it is beyond foresight, so predicting or hoping for it is a waste; but I think China still presents a strong stance against US hegemony + western imperialism and represents a better version of capitalism than the West offers. This is not a very socialist position. Any thoughts? Thanks
You cannot raise multiple generations of young Chinese people on a steady diet of Marx and Lenin and Mao from elementary school onwards and be a little surprised when you end up with a lot of genuine communists. The new generations will eventually fill those positions in their politburo. Even were that not the case, China has demonstrably done more for poverty alleviation than any capitalist nation can claim.
But so far they have achieved this largely because of their own type of capitalism, which I claimed is better than the West's, but is not yet socialism. I could easily see a future where China is always "almost ready to start actual socialism" for decades on, without end
This is going to be an unpopular position here, but the Chinese system is neither a temporary retrenchment to capitalism, nor is it just state capitalism with socialist rhetoric covering it up- China is socialist. Period. Having a market sector in the overall framework of a planned, publicly-owned economy is what Socialism looks like in the 21st century. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Belarus, and Vietnam use this model, and increasingly Cuba and the DPRK are moving in the Chinese direction. There's nothing false or fake about Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Maybe in the future they'll move in the direction of a fully centrally planned economy, and there are factions in the party that want to do just that, but that takes nothing away from the fact that their system right now is an example of real, actual socialism, even with their billionaires. Western communists who are wondering whether China will become their ideal picture of a socialist state or whether it's actually some kind of state capitalist hat trick are missing what's right in front of their faces.
I don't disagree. Equally though, they don't don't interfere with our own ability to build socialism, which is also a lot more than can be said about western imperial nations. So they are in the best case scenario, an imperfect socialist nation inching slowly along to a post scarcity level when they can finally hit the full socialism switch, or an equally imperfect capitalist nation that nevertheless manages to improve their own citizenry's lives while also not interfering with other socialist projects.
Yes, agreed. At worst they are probably the best capitalist superpower in history so far. The least imperialist, the most helpful to their citizens. Not perfect but no one is.
The Soviets post Stalin were revisionist, but much of that was walked back by Brezhnev, and yet the split intensified (and the reason for this is squarely laid at Deng's feet here, as he was in charge of the negotiations.) The PRC abandoned critical support and went into shockingly bad tit-for-tat policy measures against the SU when together they might have very well survived. The west nearly fell in the late 70s, during the oil crisis. And that's the most damning criticism I have as someone who supports left unity. The first rule is don't fucking split, support everyone who isn't literally Pol Pot (who was an agrarian-primitivist-nationalist with communist trappings).
Perhaps some market reform was inevitable during the 80s to lessen siege socialism and allow primitive accumulation, the fall of the Union and full Chicago-School Dengism was not. China may have survived, for which I'm grateful, but like Vietnam they're playing with fire and risking Capitalist co-option.
That said, if China is "State Capitalist" it is a deliberate, worker driven state capitalism with a defined goal. And it's under the control of a genuine DotP. Under these circumstances I think critical support is justified.
As for the take of leftists in the West. well it's hard for us to critique without playing into red-scare propaganda. Firstly, most of Xi's work is in English. Comrades should read On the governance of China, or at least a sympathetic summary before critiquing. As for political positions, we should support and uphold the thought of his advisors on the Neo-Maoist left like Wang Shaoguang while critiquing the Autocratic Rightists in the government like Wang Huning and the hard-partyist revisionists like Jiang Shigong who openly seek to drop the "utopian judeo-chrstian" aspects of Marx in favour of an eternal Party rule.
As for Xinjiang, China's doing some bad things, some cultural oppression, some isolated Han nationalistic acts, and we should say they're bad.
It doesn't appear to be Genocide or any worse than what the US does to its own population or its client states, let alone what it would do to a rebel-sympathetic population on a strategic border. You try putting down a CIA funded Wahhabi extremist led rebellion in a province that has had CIA rebellions since the 1960s without breaking eggs.