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I had the most hilarious discussion with a Tankie about China a while back. They refused to accept that China is pretty much communist in name only. I pointed out that they had billionaires, privately-owned companies, a stock exchange and private property, meaning you can earn capital in China.
The Tankie actually said something on the lines of, "If you would JUST READ MARX you would know that earning capital is a fundamental cornerstone of communism!"
Tankies are just communist cosplayers.
Where are the "real" Communists? What draws the line between a Marxist and a tankie?
Might be a few left in a small part of India.
If by definition but not by name, a lot of advocates for direct democracy, public goods and services, and nationalized industry still exist all over the world. They just don't refer to themselves with the same moniker as Mao "History's Greatest Killer" Zedong.
I mean you can still have private property under communism, it's the capital making property that's more owned by the workers themselves, but you can still own things under communism.
Similarly, you can earn capital under communism too, it's just that the tools for earning said capital aren't owned by corporations under corporations under CEOs under the 1%. It's not a cornerstone for sure, but it's not like communism is anti capital and growth and owning things
Directly from The Communist Manifesto:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Read a bit ahead if you may:
A bit nitpicky here, but personal property isn't Private Property. That being said, Marx and Engels maintained constantly that Private Property cannot be abolished in one sweep, that goes fundamentally against Historical Materialism. Socialism emerges from Capitalism, you can't establish it through fiat, hence why the Cultural Revolution wasn't a resounding success. Mao tried to establish Communism immediately, misjudged, and then Deng stepped in.
Thank you you've put the difference in better terms than I did
No problem. Marxism is pretty difficult for most people to understand entirely without reading far more than you would expect, it isn't simply criticism of Capitalism or advocacy for Socialism and then Communism, but also Dialectical and Historical Materialism, which is where people can easily trip up.
That's probably the smartest tankie in existence
This is actually hilarious
I mean, you definitely should read Marx. China is Socialist, guided by a Communist Party. It hasn't reached Communism, and when they tried to jump to Communism under Mao and the later Gang of Four, they ran into massive issues because the Means of Production weren't developed enough.
Marx maintains that the next Mode of Production emerges from the previous, dialectically. That doesn't mean China needed to let Billionaires run rampant, doing whatever they want, it means that it was the correct gamble to heavily industrialize and interlock itself with the global economy while maintaining State Supremacy over Capital, focusing more than anything on developing the productive forces.
Like it or not, the USSR largely collapsed due to trying to stay isolated from the West, which legitimately led to dissatisfaction towards the lack of consumer goods. They had strong safety nets and all the necessities they needed, but lacked the fun toys (to simplify a multi-faceted issue, along with increased liberalization and betrayals from Gorbachev). The PRC watched this in real time, and didn't want to repeat it.
In that manner, the PRC is Socialist. It maintains a Dictatorship of the Proletariat over Capital, Billionaires fear persecution, state ownership is high and growing, the Proletariat's real purchasing power is growing. The bourgeoisie exists, but has been kept no larger than can be drowned in a bathtub, in terms of power relation to the CPC, so to speak.
There is risk of Capitalist roading, and the bourgeoisie wresting control from the CPC. This risk is real, and is dangerous, but it hasn't happened yet. Wealth disparity is rising, so we must keep a careful eye on it.
The greatest analytical tool of a Marxist is Dialectical Materialism. When analyzing something, it isn't sufficient to take a present-day snapshot, you must consider its history, its relations to other entities, its contradictions, and its trajectory. Engels was a Capitalist, was Marx hypocritical for keeping Engels as his closest friend and ally? No. Class reductionism is dogmatic, we must analyze correctly.
The most obvious flaw in your narrative is the assertion that China maintains a dictatorship of the proletariat, which is patently false. China is an autocracy of the party elite, with one man at the top. A dictatorship of a dictator. The fact there may be high level power games and intrigue among the upper echelon doesn't significantly change this. It doesn't matter that Xi happens to be the dictator du jour.
What this means for day-to-day life of the citizenry is something very divorced from socialism or communism. There are some elements of safety net and job placement, but just beneath that is a hyper-capitalist libertarian hellscape punctuated by fearful, feigned, and forced reverence of the party. As long as businesses play along and grease the right wheels the exploitative accumulation of wealth is sanctioned and encouraged.
That's legitimate reasoning for a pre industrialized china, much less so when modern China is basically the production capital of the world.
I don't think there is a legitimate excuse for the modern wealth disparity, the large transient work force, or the use of forced labor currently happening in China.
The USSR didn't collapse because they were isolated from the West, leading to dissatisfaction towards the lack of consumer goods. They collapsed because they still utilized empirialist tactics to expand their holdings.
Their failed push into Afghanistan was the final blow, but the Soviet Union had already been spending way too much of their national budget on the military, siphoning away from the robust social safety networks they built in the 60's.
Russia didn't want communism in every country, they wanted every country to be Russia, and thus communist. This of course didn't track well with the East or the West, leading to the schisms between the USSR and the communist East.
But does it? Marx described a dictatorship of the proletariat as workers mandating the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership.
Now one would assume that if workers controlled the means of production, then they would have more direct control of their working conditions and pay than somewhere like the United States. We would also hope to see a steady progress towards collective ownership, however in recent history we have seen more and more production being privatized, not nationalized.
I'm sorry, but cracking down a few billionaires that step out of the party line is not the same as keeping some small enough to "drown in a bathtub". 1% of the country owns a third of the wealth of their nation, and as you say the disparity is not shrinking.
Yes, and now let's look at modern China under the lens of dialectical materialism. We've gone through some of the history already, and can both agree that the transition to collective ownership requires a certain level of productivity to achieve.
What is that amount of productivity required, and if modern China isn't productive enough to make that particular leap....who the hell can?
As far as relationships go, China is one of the most globalized nations in the world. When compared to the USSR, who actually achieved a modest level of collective ownership....modern China is one of the most popular nations in the world.
Last but not least, contradictions and trajectory. Which I'm grouping together, as their current trajectory seems to contradict the entire purpose of a communist government in the first place. Industrialization has improved the quality of life in the country, but if that isn't coupled with an increase in a workers control of the means of that production, how is that different than a industrialization in a capitalist nation?
Not to belittle your point, but calling Marx a socialist and Engles a capitalist is a kin as calling Jesus a Christian who's disciples were Jews.
You can't be a lone socialist, and people tend to wildly extrapolate on what Marx would have thought of modern economics.