this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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These are pretty solid answers. This helped me connect the dots to what I have been having trouble articulating and formulating in my mind regarding this topic. Thank you very much, comrade.
And frankly you don't need to delve into any kind of theory or economics to see that this argument that China is actually a capitalist state pretending to be socialist is prima facie nonsense. That's just not what the bourgeoisie do when they manage to overthrow a socialist state.
They have nothing to gain from continuing to pretend like they are Marxist-Leninists. When socialism falls it is unmistakeable, it looks like what happened in the former Soviet Union, it looks like genocide by economic collapse.
They gain much more benefits from declaring outright that they are in power than from such an elaborate decades long charade in a world where capitalism is still dominant. If nothing else they would gain good relations with other bourgeois states which can help them stay in power and enrich themselves even more as comprador elites.
So this is just nothing more than a childish conspiracy theory, to believe that if socialism was actually defeated the new ruling class would keep up the pretense that it has not, maintaining the inevitable animosity with the imperialist world that such a status brings with it.
It is absurd even to imagine it. Do you know of any capitalists who would sit through and even mandate hours and hours of classes in the study of socialist theory for themselves and their fellow ruling class elites?
The entire argument comes from having internalized that "communism is when poor". Since China is no longer poor, it must mean that it is no longer communist.
Indeed, I believe that the only way to make a "coherent" argument that somehow China is ruled by a bourgeois that pretends to be Marxist is through racist stereotypes. Only if you accept the racist trope that the chinese people are always hiding their intentions and are deceptive by nature you could argue that the CPC is in fact deceiving the entire world and their population by posing as communist.
It always goes back to western chauvinism in the end. China is doing something to how these western ultras think is the One True Correct Path of Socialism, so they find excuses as to why China isn't really socialist because they aren't following the advice of an enlightened westerner who knows what real socialism looks like. A lot of these people claim to be third worldists as well, but are extremely dismissive of the voices of anyone in the third world who disagrees with them.
And to what end? What motivation would they possibly have to do that? I have yet to have someone who believes this weird conspiracy theory answer this simple question: why?
Yeah, an actual collapse of socialism looks like US committing genocide via shock therapy during the overthrow and balkanization of the Soviet Union, which was magnitudes worse than the COVID pandemic. Yet we don't see Russia being called "well ackshually they are capitalist state pretending to be socialist" in the same vain as China. That's because they did have a capitalist takeover, and they don't pretend to be socialist nor have a reason to. I totally agree with your statement here. I just didn't have the words to dismantle the other ultra-leftist arguments, which you helped greatly.