You're viewing a single thread.
Remember folks: China is communist in the same way that North Korea is democratic and the Nazis were socialist.
It's just a smokescreen.
A core tenant of socialism is a democratized workplace, being able to vote for your wage and company policy, like an Engineer choosing when to launch the rocket instead of some MBS degree.
Last time I checked I dont think factory workers in China that make all our shit can do that.
Yes. That was the point of what they posted. None of those groups are what they claim to be beyond nominally.
ThAt's jUst WeSTeRnn prOpaGAndA
Workplace democracy isn't necessarily a core concept of Socialism, at least not in the Marxian sense. Removing the issues that come with the profit motive alleviates issues you describe. Instead, Marxists advocate for public ownership and central planning with extensive democratic controls, without necessitating competing democratic worker coops. Engels argued against such a concept in Anti-Dühring, actually, believing such a system to revert to Capitalism through competition and accumulation.
Which is also why socialism will never work. Humans are piss poor at evaluating the common good and making decisions collectively (see also: the last US election.)
And ceos are somehow significantly worse and consistently (and in many industries), almost exclusively make decisions directly opposing the common good including intentionally leading the world forward into societal and ecological collapse and quadrupling down on that stance.. Because it makes them more quarterly profit. I guess we just have to let AI do it.
Eh, there's a notional aspiration to socialism at least, which is more than can be said about the US sphere of countries.
In practice though? Yeah, China is hyper-captialist, without much of the social security present in wealthier countries.
Why Leftist get a hard-on for the former USSR, Russia and China, or frankly any country, is beyond me.
There are positive and negative outcomes in line or against socialist ideals everywhere (I think people are too black and white about China in both directions personally)
I just do not understand simping for any country, just because they are "socialist".
That notional aspiration to socialism is basically the ideological smokescreen. It was much more effective in the Cold War era, but it condenses down to: "Suffer through our version of (state) capitalism and exploitative labour for our capital accumulation" - be it by state institutions or even state-sponsored billionaires - "and at the end of it, we promise, there will be communism."
But that "communism" then tends to be like nuclear fusion - always 20 years away.
My money is on fusion before proper socialism.
There is always someone willing to twist the rules and game the system to get more money and power than everyone else. The 1% have always existed and so have the worker class. It will always shake out to that.
Even just as a technicality, the 1% have not always existed, most tribal societies did not have class divisions like that. Both anthropological studies of existing tribal societies show examples of that, and the archaeological record, too, lays out it was common.
And I understand feeling like that, but it is a pretty weak argument, tbh. It is even hard to engage with, because it's basically starting at a completely different outset of concepts and understanding. Firstly, it reduces socialism to only systems of perfect equality of power - when even Marx acknowledged that this is not only impossible but also undesirable.
Then it just packs all kinds of class arrangements into "The 1%" and "the worker class". Was European feudalism like that? Ancient palace economies? Tribal gift economies? Pre-historic tribal arrangements? The Incan/Andean planned economy? Each with their own complexities, class relations and all showing that the basic idea - humanity evolving along it's material capabilities and necessities - hold true.
Lastly, related to the idea that proper socialism would mean perfect equality of power - sure, corruption in some way has probably always existed. People will also always murder each other in some way. Using that as an argument to say it is impossible to establish a system that minimises murders is how your reasoning sounds to me.
And the system is always what limits or enables the way this corruption and gaming the system plays out. How much property and/or power can be concentrated? Capitalism concentrates vastly more wealth and capital than the systems before it, both for good (e.g. the development of productive forces has enabled many things) and ill. Just because perfection may not be possible, does not mean a system without exchange of value and capital accumulation is impossible (has existed before for sure, yes, even for more complex economies than a small tribe), and it does not mean it has to exist in a way that is more barbarous than the current state of affairs.
My money is on fusion before proper socialism.
Utopia is literally "no place" for a reason, and anything less than a utopia will be deemed "not proper socialism" (like literally every place that has ever tried some flavor of communism/socialism) so my money is on fusion as fusion is more likely than utopia.
The USSR at least outwardly promoted socialist values like solidarity and being kind to your fellow people. They fucked up pretty bad in practice, but at least they made an attempt.
I think in both cases (modern China, and the USSR), there is a genuine feeling/desire towards the ideals.
In both cases though, it is co-opted for propaganda purposes, and falls pretty flat when inequality is off the charts.
Which is a shame, if you have socialist beliefs
I wish them the best though, and hope they figure things out to bring outcomes more in line with the ideals.
IMO this is why it takes an additional axis to define a government, not just left/right but also free/authoritarian. You can find examples of all combinations. Left wing and repressive? Cuba. Left leaning and free? Sweden. Right wing and repressive? Russia, Saudi Arabia, whatever. Right leaning and free (mostly)? USA.
Obviously, there’s a gradient within these axes, but it’s strange to see people cheering on a country that matches their preferred left or right wing ideology if they’re super repressive.
This is why we need to reeducate people and stop using the traditional left-right spectrum and start using the axis spectrum
Even the axis spectrum is unproductive, ideologies and frameworks cannot be distilled into single data points on a map, no matter how many axes you add.
The axis spectrum has proven to be very efficient imo. A lot of the politics we talk about are mainly composed of social and economic elements which the axis spectrum portrays well.
How in the world has it "proven to be very efficient"? Did you run laboratory tests?
You cannot distill complicated views into linear axes, though.
And yet tankies do this daily as a defining aspect of their identities.
Inb4 Biden caused ww3 somehow.
WWIII hasn't officially started, as of today. But history may yet point a finger at Biden if his longer range missiles heading towards Russian lands end up being a major factor in it beginning. That's one hell of a hot potato to pass to the next admin. Certainly Biden received some hot potatoes too. Well see how the next six months go.
I don't know what you're trying to refer to, here. Marxists have always discredited the Political Compass as overly simplistic and erasing nuance.
These views aren't complicated though, or aren't as complicated as you think. Most of our political opinions can be boiled down to any of the 4 quadrants of the axis.
Can you name any view that doesn't fit into this axis?
Many. Which is more "authoritarian" and which is more "libertarian," a fully publicly owned and democratically controlled economy, or a highly decentralized market economy with a nightwatchman state?
Well it depends right, let's not act like there isn't nuance to this.
a fully publicly owned and democratically controlled economy
It falls on the libertarian-left if individuals and communities genuinely govern themselves without coercion e.g democratic socialism. However, if the system requires a strong central authority to enforce public ownership and suppress alternative systems, it moves toward the authoritarian-left e.g Marxist-Leninism
a highly decentralized market economy with a nightwatchman state
This is just a straight up libertarian right economy. A nightwatchman state equals laissez-faire capitalism which aligns with libertarian-right philosophy.
To answer your question, it depends on the type of publicly owned and democratically controlled economy we're talking about.
See, this is where your analogy falls apart. Marxist-Leninists support recall elections and more democratic methods than what you describe as "democratic socialism." You're trying to add to the existing example to make it mean something it doesn't, I asked you a straightforward question and you had to add to it in order to force it into your tidy and neat boxes.
Same with what you call "lib-right," I would consider that more "authoritarian" because people have far less actual control over their lives than they would in the other example, despite focusing on decentralization. In such an economy, warlordism would be the dominant factor in decision making.
This is why the Political Compass is an exercise in absurdity, you cannot simplify viewpoints to 4 quadrants because that's not how economics or politics actually works. You can only describe them by their real and existing mechanisms.
The thing is, Left vs Right is already a measure of authoritarian vs Democratic.
The original use of the terms comes from the French Revolution. There was a vote on if the King should have an absolute veto over laws passed by the assembly. Those who said no sat to the left of the Speakers podium. Those who said yes sat on the right.
The reason why left and right were applied to economic policy was because Marx described Communism as a form of extreme Democracy. Whereas Capitalism concentrates power into the hands of a select few.
It's still a measure of where the power rests. In the hands of the people or the hands of the state/leader.
You can break it down to dozens of categories, but it's all authoritarian vs Democratic in the end.
As a note, Lenin style single party "communism" is about as far from Marx's ideal as you can get.
Dictators and Kings are all the enemies of the people.
I think Saudi Arabia is the perfect example of why even that model isn't even enough. I mean sure they are a monarchy and quite self-focused but not really in a nationalistic way. To be fair I don't know much about their domestic politics. To put them into the same corner as Russia, eh dunno.
I couldn't ask for clearer evidence than not accepting Saudi Arabia as authoritarian to demonstrate that "free vs authoritarian" are just propaganda terms and that how "free" a country allegedly is is really just a function of how aligned it is with the US.
In what universe is Saudi Arabia more free than Cuba?
I think some aspects of freedom are to some extent objectively observable, eg, is freedom of speech or religion observed? These can exist independently of US alignment - there are many countries in the global south that can qualify as free or partially free.
Mhm. I wonder, which objective metrics led you to list the US as more free than Cuba?
Cuba's family code is one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in the world concerning LGBT rights and gender equality, meanwhile, there are parts of the US where you can get arrested for using the bathroom, or for merely failing to rat out trans kids to the cops. The US performs mass surveillance on all citizens and has the most sophisticated spy network in the world, it has used extrajudicial, indefinite detention without trial (in addition to having the highest incarceration rate in the world), along with torture (ironically, on illegally occupied Cuban soil). The US has kangaroo courts where children as young as six have to represent themselves in court with no right to an attorney, against threat of deportation. The police are equipped with military-grade equipment designed to fight insurgents, with the police budgets of individual cities exceeding that of the militaries of many countries: Cuba's military spending is several times less than the police budget of Phoenix, AZ.
Does any of that factor into your analysis?
Cuba’s one-party communist state outlaws political pluralism, bans independent media, suppresses dissent, and severely restricts basic civil liberties.
Cuba lacks basic freedom of speech or freedom of the press, to say the absolute least. Typical tankie whatabout-ism. In fact, you’re proving the point of the person I originally replied to in this thread!
What did I say that's whataboutism? You claimed that Cuba was authoritarian and the US is free, therefore it's perfectly valid for me to compare the two against each other. It would only not be valid if you had placed them both in the same category.
Freedom House is literally funded by the US State department lmao. Nice objective and unbiased source you've got there!
The only "freedom" that Freedom House cares about is how free the bourgeoisie are to infiltrate the government and capture regulatory agencies. By that metric, Cuba is much less "free" than the US, sure.
Authoritarianism doesn't necessarily require nationalism or vice versa, though they're often linked, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. The USA is pretty flag waving, nationalist brained but individual freedom exists. Versus a country like Saudi as you mention is not particularly nationalist, but repression is widespread.
They are quite different than Russia, but looking only at individual freedom, the two are similar in that freedom of speech is not respected and leaders are not fairly elected.
China has a Socialist Market Economy, it hasn't reached Communism of course but at the same time the Public Sector covers over half of the economy, and is gradually folding the Private Sector into it with the degree to which it develops. This is the process Marx and Engels described a Socialist State would take. From Principles of Communism:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
The backbone of the PRC is central planning and public ownership, Marx is regularly taught in class, and Marxism-Leninism continues to be the dominant and guiding ideology. They are ideologically Communist, and it is rather silly to protest otherwise simply because they haven't immediately siezed all property, which would be anti-Marxist as the PRC is still underdeveloped.
The purpose of Marxian analysis of Capitalism is the insight that markets naturally centralize and develop complicated methods of planning. You can't just will these into existence, and markets provide a quick way of creating them. Once they have sufficiently developed, markets cease to be the best tool to use, and public ownership and central planning becomes more efficient. Given that the PRC is Marxist, it stands to reason it is useful to analyze them with a Marxist lense. I have yet to see a genuine Marxist take on why the PRC is not Socialist, only liberals paying lip service to Marx yet vulgurizing him into a Utopian Idealist, and not a Materialist.
You can call their economy whatever you want, doesn't stop them from being a dictatorship.
That's moving the goalposts though, isn't it? I was responding to the claim that the PRC isn't at all Communist, which is false regardless of your opinion of it being "good" or "bad" whether overall or in comparison to the US.
Further, I am not sure why you describe it to be a dictatorship, even Mao was forced to step down after the tremendous struggles during the Cultural Revolution. Xi is an elected official, and there are 8 political parties besides the CPC that actively contribute to the decision making progress of the PRC, the CPC is merely the largest at 96 million members out of 1.4 billion people.
In order to accurately judge the merit or lack thereof of the PRC, you have to actually take a real look at what it looks like, question why Beijing has an over 95% approval rate, and see what the living conditions look like for the people that actually live there. If you perpetuate sloganeering because it is convenient, then actual, systemic problems you could be criticizing go under the radar.
Xi is an elected official, and there are 8 political parties besides the CPC that actively contribute to the decision making progress of the PRC,
Right right right, just like Russia and North Korea has "elections" lmao
Beijing has an over 95% approval rate
Lol, and I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that speaking against Xi and the CCP makes you disappear or that China has been known to lie about official statistics all the time
You didn't just drink the Kool-aid, you're drunk on it
That's really funny, given that you listed 0 sources against what I said. Just general suspicions and vague gesturing. Why is it that you believe I must have drunk kool-aid yet believe yourself to be immune to it?
Is Harvard now Chinese propaganda? "While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for granted. Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread, our survey reveals that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being."
What about the fact that the US passed 1.6 billion dollars to propagandize against China? These are public record, you are not immune and neither am I. We exist in largely the same systems and probably similar circumstances, and those circumstances include direct US State Department propaganda against the PRC.
You have no counter-narrative, when faced with real, present facts you toss them aside and come up with your own justifications, rather than re-evaluating your prior perceptions. That's no way to get to the truth of the matter, it's dogmatism and reflects an unwillingness to tackle real problems.
The fact you have so many down votes is astounding to me. People really dont like to face that they may be wrong or biased about something. Easier to tap the down vote and scroll on.
I posted it elsewhere in the comments here, but I truly believe Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" should be mandatory reading. People tend to accept the narratives that align with their percieved interests, ergo no matter what lengths I go to myth dispelling and citing facts, articles, numbers and more, I get accused of "getting drunk on the kool-aid." Nobody is immune to propaganda, helping understand why people believe what they do is important in combatting that.
Look, I'll admit I'm not as smart as some of the folks who debate this topic, so for me it comes down to a simple question:
Do the Chinese people own the means of production? Not a government body claiming to represent the people, but the people themselves; do the people own the means of production? Can the factory workers choose how the factory operates?
If no, then what's the point?
I recommend backing up a bit so that we can frame these questions.
One of the more pointless questions anyone asks is a simple binary of, "is XYZ socialist?" Being real people doing real projects in the context of global capitalism and relentless imperial oppression, there is no such thing aa purely socialist, but many things are projects by socialists to advance socialism. When people learn this, they start to use the term as a shorthand: "my communist organization is socialist", "the Cuban revolution was socialist", "China is socialist". These claims only mean that the project is a socialist one. This is different from saying any of those projects have achieved socialism. None of them have and I have yet to meet a socialist who defends China while saying they have achieved socialism.
So really, this is a question of semantics and language using similar or identical terms with different meanings, and this is one of the reasons why those who read up on the topic have such a dramatically different opinion from those who do not.
So, for example, China has a stated ambition of becoming socialist within the next 30 years or so, setting concrete targets for what that means. And it is still a socialist project created and maintained by socialists.
Regarding owning the means of production, this is a Marxist concept. Marx's postulate was that the ruling class is that which owns/controls the means of production and that society is then crafted according to the interests of that ruling class. Under feudalism, the ruling class was landlords (own/control land), with the major underclass being peasants, serfs (they work the land). Under capitalism , the ruling class is the bourgeoisie, those who own factories, shops, etc and the major underclass is workers, those who work in the factories and shops. Marx hyoothesized that the proletarians who work in ever-concentrated companies would have the capacity to take the means of production by force and then continue running it themselves.
So why am I giving this crash course in Marxism? Well, because Marx himself described the period in which the working class had seized the means of production from the bourgeoisie not as socialism, but as the dictatorship of the proletariat. A period in which society still functions as capitalist in many ways, as the mode of production has not changed and production itself must be maintained, and the bourgeoisie still exist, but in which the working class has become dominant and can oppress the bourgeoisie. China is firmly in this category, exactly what Marx described as this transitional period of unstated duration, attempting to survive and thrive while under constant pressure from imperialists.
I appreciate this comment immensely. I wasn't being facetious about my comparative lack of understanding on the topic. This was well-worded and informative, and I'm going to take some time to process this into my understanding. Thank you.
I'm glad it's helpful! I could tell that you are trying to figure these things out and apply them in good faith. Happy to answer any questions you might have. Otherwise, just keep reading and challenging yourself!
Marxism is not the same as worker cooperatives, or workplace democracy. In fact, with respect to worker cooperatives, Marx and Engels were more against than for with respect to the concept of making them the base of the economy. For Marx, Public Ownership and Central Planning were the way to go. Moreover, what denotes a system as Capitalist vs Socialist is not purity but dominance, ie which is the principle? Is it public ownership and central planning, or private property and free markets? No system is devoid of the other, but to pretend that one isn't transforming into the other is anti-dialectical.
For the PRC, a hair over 50% of the economy is in the Public Sector, and nearly a tenth in the cooperative. This alone means it is certainly heavily public, but not alone does that mean it is Socialist. Within the public sector are key industries like steel, which the remaining private sector relies on. You cannot divorce the Private Sector from the Public, because it depends on it, and this is what additionally adds credibility to its Socialism as the driving factor.
You ask "what the point" of Socialism is if you aren't "picking your boss" and whatnot, but the real answer is efficiency and supremacy over Capital. Markets have a natural tendency to centralize, but at the peak of this they stop actually progressing, because the amount of information required to direct production becomes massive. Central Planning alleviates this, and by folding all property into the Public Sector related industries can be better coordinated, all in service of maximizing human happiness and raising the floor as high as possible.
That doesn't mean democracy isn't also incredibly important, but it does help show that democracy isn't the goal, either. Democracy is simply another tool for satisfying the population, and its one employed in the PRC as well.
Hope that helps!
You ask “what the point” of Socialism is if you aren’t “picking your boss” and whatnot, but the real answer is efficiency and supremacy over Capital. Markets have a natural tendency to centralize, but at the peak of this they stop actually progressing, because the amount of information required to direct production becomes massive. Central Planning alleviates this, and by folding all property into the Public Sector related industries can be better coordinated, all in service of maximizing human happiness and raising the floor as high as possible.
You lost me here. I'm afraid this is above my comprehension. I'm not arguing against it, I don't understand what you're saying (I assume this is my ignorance not any lack of eloquence on your part).
Regarding the public vs private sector that preceded that section, I want to ask clarifying questions if you'll allow: to you understand does this pathways towards eventual goal then include plans for further assimilation of key assets of the private sector into the public somehow? Is this possible/necessary or is the presumed reality of the ideology at play that some level of capitalistic private sector is inevitable? If it is within the plan, what does this look like?
Well, for starters, I have an introductory Marxist reading list linked on my profile if you want to take a look, or you can get there from here. No need to do so, just if you want to learn more for your own personal knowledge.
As for your question, an emphatic and wholehearted YES! You nailed it, Marxists believe at lower levels of development markets are faster at developing, but that eventually public ownership and planning becomes more efficient. The PRC does this, it increases state ownership incrementally and graduallly, without risking Capital Flight. It's a "boiling the frog" approach, and it's necessary because it keeps the PRC integrated with the world economy and rapidly developing alongside it, as it sees the USSR's isolation as a key aspect of its downfall.
This is an interesting reframing of my understanding of the situation. I appreciate you replying; I'm going to process this for a bit.
No worries! Feel free to ask any questions or dig in for yourself elsewhere.