this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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About China I heard somewhere the opinion that there is half socialism, half capitalism, and not real socialism.
That's not how it works. A system cannot be "half socialism half capitalism" as these two concepts quite literally contradict each other.
Socialism is the process of transition from capitalism to communism. It's defined by a society where the proletariat has become the ruling class, after having the former ruling class overthrown through revolution; a society where the state serves the interests of the workers and naturally withers away (as Lenin puts it) as the concept of class begins to disappear (as we get closer to communism). For more info on this, you can read state and revolution, by Lenin. As for dialectical and historical materialism, you can read Socialism: utopian and scientific, by Engels
Capitalism is the system that came after feudalism and before Socialism. It's defined by giving full power to the Bourgeoisie and, contrary to under Socialism, the state serves the interests of the Bourgeoisie. It can be split into several stages:
Early capitalism (idk the marxist term for it): Trade agreements between bourgeois
Monopoly Capitalism: As the nature of Capitalism naturally leads to monopolization, the means of production are at a large scale concentrated in the hands of a few.
Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism: Capitalism needs infinite growth and expansion to survive, so it exports capital (workers, firms, factories) abroad in order to expand and increase profits.
~My definitions might be slightly incorrect, i haven't had the time to read theory in a while due to life circumstances~
One could assume China is revisionist for adopting a market economy instead of a strictly planned economy, like the one in the USSR and former Socialist bloc, but this argument is fundamentally wrong, since it's extremely idealistic to think of Socialism as a fixed set of rules that must be forced upon the material conditions of said society and not the other way around (and that's why the "not real socialism" argument doesn't even make any sense). The truth is that, while it'd have been more desirable for China to keep a planned economy, opening up to the West and its capital (under heavy supervision and control of the CPC) allowed China to flourish and become the very industrialized nation that it is today, and I think if Mao could see what his country became, he would be very proud.
And I heard the opinion that China has hidden capitalism under the guise of socialism :-) The USSR also began to build socialism, but on the road to communism it was betrayed and destroyed, and before that Stalin was poisoned.
Well, that opinion is definitely wrong. China isn't perfect (living in a world with less desirable material conditions does that), however, it's the Socialist nation that has managed to develop itself the most, so there's that. The reason why it survived the 80s and the 90s wave of color revolutions was because it learned from the mistakes of the USSR and the eastern bloc.
Also, yeah there was a lot of incompetence in the communist parties of both the USSR and the Eastern bloc in general, but there were also many principled communists as well. There was also a lot of friction between its countries, for example, Albania siding with China and denouncing the USSR and the events that led to the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia.
Well, let's see what the final result will be? Success or failure :-)
Its been succeeding for over 100 years now, let us know if it fails!
this person has gotta be a troll. There's no way
:-)
What? :-)