this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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i used to feel badly blocking accounts
If you're that shook just from somebody mentioning the commies I don't think you're gonna provide much in the way of productive discussion anyway, so, by all means.
Pasting my comment from earlier:
Any "leftist" that thinks the fact that China has billionaires means it therefore isn't actually Socialist needs to read Marx and Engels. There are many such liberals here in these comments. Marx predicted Socialism to be the next mode of production because markets centralize and create intricate methods of planning. As such, he stated that folding private into the public would be gradual, and by the degree to which industry would develop. From the Manifesto:
In even simpler terms, from Engels in Principles of Communism:
That doesn't mean billionaires are good to have, necessarily, either. It remains a contradiction, but not an uncalculated one. I highly recommend anyone here read China has Billionaires. As much as Marxists want to lower wealth inequality eventually as much as possible (insofar as thr principle "from each according to ability, to each according to needs applies, Marx was no "equalitarian" and railed against them), in the stage of developmemt the PRC is at this would get in the way of development, and could cause Capital Flight and brain drain. Moreover, billionaires provide an easy scapegoat that the USSR didn't have, and thus all problems of society were directed at the state. It's important to consider why a Marxist country does what it does, and not immediately assume you know better. The CPC has an over 95% approval rate, you can't just assume you know what's best.
The phrase "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is meant to depict higher stage Communism. Until that is possible, the answer becomes "to each according to his work," because as Marx said in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
At least take a consistent stance, if you believe the PRC to not be Socialist simply because it has billionaires either you disagree with Marx or you have flawed analysis. There are genuine Marxist critiques of the PRC that don't rely on nonsense. If you consider yourself a Marxist, correct your study. I have an introductory Marxist reading list if you need one.
The PRC is not socialist because, it produces commodities (the commodity form), Has A Dictatorship of The Bourgeoisie, The Wage System, and an employer-employee distinction.
Which um, is in the passage you quoted:
Socialism is a transitional status from Capitalism to Communism. There can be no immediate jump from one to the other, this jump must be gradual. Moreover, you cannot eliminate Wage Labor without eliminating Private Property, and you cannot eliminate Private Property overnight, but gradually, and by the degree to its development. Socialism is about which is primary, Public Ownership and Central Planning, or Private Property and Markets, not the mere existence of one in purity or the other. Such a stance is anti-dialectical and erases Marx's analysis of Capitalism and Communism.
Furthermore, even Communism will have an "employer-employee" relationship, insofar as it still retains labor for labor vouchers. Communism is about Central Planning and Public Ownership, not horizontalism. The passage you reference is indeed the essential condition for the existance of the bourgeoisie, and its eventual elimination, but not the existence of Socialism.
Finally, the PRC has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. You can't simply assert the opposite when it's very clear that in the PRC the State is absolute over the Bourgeoisie.
All of these misconceptions of yours betray a deeply "Wikipedia-educated" notion of Marxism. If you want, you can start reading with my introductory Marxist reading list.
Agreed. As in, Capitalism is also a transitional stage to Communism. China is a decidedly capitalist society, as evidenced by their production of commodities.
There will be no "employer" class under communism. A communist society is classless. China does not use labor vouchers even, it has a system of money.
The state is the Bourgeoisie in centrally planned economies. They extract surplus value from the Proletariat just like in a private market economy. The difference between the State Bourgeoisie and the Private Bourgeoisie, in China, is just aristocratic rank.
I am sorry, but none of what you have said makes any sense from a Marxist perspective.
You kill the Scientific and Dialectical aspects of Marxism and deny the existence of Socialism.
This is really 2 points in 1. "Employer" is not a class. Classes are not jobs, but relations to production. Communism will have managers, planners, and so forth to assist with economic production. The other point, on the PRC not using labor vouchers, that's for when China reaches Communism, when they are currently Socialist.
This is entirely anti-Marxist. The State is an extension of the class in power. In a fully centrally planned economy with full public ownership, there is no state. The bourgeoisie is focused on competition and accumulation, it isn't a "power dynamic" but a social relation to production. From Engels:
Bolded the most relevant bits. The state ceases to exist when classes cease to exist, because when all property is public there are no classes. However, production remains administrated and directed! I think it's quite obvious from reading the source material that Marx was no Anarchist, nor did he believe that Socialism was devoid of private property, nor could it be. This is a gradual process for Marx, one we call Socialism, as it works towards a fully Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned Economy, Communism. The government does not "extract surplus value" in a profit accumulating manner, but to pay for public services and infrastructure, directly spelled out by Marx in Critique of the Gotha Programme. The State is an extension of the dominant class, and the class which is dominant can be found through real analyzing of the trends and conditions of an economy. In the PRC, those trends are towards uplifiting the working class and continuing to fold Private Property into the Public Sector.
The first sentence of Capital:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf
Leftcoms favorite pastime, reductionism so severe you can split the atom with it
It's not reductionist to say that China has all the elements of a Capitalist mode of production.
Because the Chinese state has fiat monetary sovereignty, it doesn’t function in the capitalist mode. It has no need to make a profit because it has infinite money[1]. It doesn’t need to extract surplus value from workers, and it doesn’t even need to break even. The logic of capitalism doesn’t apply.
Ultras fear the scroll.
Yeah all nation states have this. Countries that don't call themselves socialist have state owned enterprise and turn a profit. Non-seqitur.
All states don’t have it, actually. None of the Eurozone states do, for instance, and the US didn’t until 1971.
You don’t seem to be engaging with the content I’ve posted, but here’s one by Gabriel Rockhill anyway: How The Left Should Analyze the Rise of a Multipolar World, China, Russia & BRICS
I swear to god ultras are more interested in the sort of masturbatory philosophising of categories than it actually producing any useful insights. It's the most anti Marxist thing to insist that a thing has to be only a singular thing with a concrete and rigid definition, it's like Marx didn't bludgeon you with dialectical materialism hard enough on practically every work of his. He spends decades insisting on the dialectical process and the necessary work to resolve contradiction through material means, which is an integral part of development, only for y'all to go "but this is vaguely like thing, how can it be other thing?"
Man said communism and the abolishment of the commodity form, of private property, the development of the productive forces, couldn't be achieved overnight, and every ultra went "but it's already been overnight, so now it can be, right?"
It does when you ignore all the material differences. A state where the biggest capital holders are regularly punished if they break the law or step out of line politically is not a state where capital has final say.
There's been no counter revolution in China, the organs of proletarian power remain in place even as reforms have been undertaken in every facet of life in China. It is the utmost chauvinism to pretend to know better than the biggest communist party in the world where even local officials are required to study Marxism diligently. Being really confident and having misunderstood Das Kapital to be a prescriptivist economical taxonomy doesn't make you an authority on Marxism. Applying that shit is what does.
So you admit it is capitalist?
The state are capitalists, they employ workers in state enterprises and pay them a wage in exchange for their labor. They are just a different aristocratic rank then the private capitalists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
This system would NOT be possible in a DoTP.
Are you twelve? Jfc.
It's obvious you're skimming a comment for gotchas, so I find it just as likely you've skimmed excerpts of Marx rather than take on the rather arduous task of reading and understanding him, let alone fucking applying any of it
Infantile disorder moment.
Unfortunate that lemmy is such awful software it doesn't syndicate my changes I made months ago. I do not support Ukraine anymore, and have not for a long time.
That’s good to hear.
“996” was never legal, was never pervasive, and the state cracked down on it years ago.
Cool. Union-busting is illegal in the US too. Not paying overtime is illegal in the US too. Doesn't make it DoTP.
Proof?
Proof?
It was a private tech industry thing, occurring within the relevant special economic zones. The same NATOpedia entry you posted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#Companies_involved
Again, the same NATOpedia entry you posted.
Yes, Capitalism is dominated by such a Mode of Production. It is not defined by it being present even in the microscopic. Answer, why do you think Marx and Engels wrong in the context of my quotations? This is a very "wikipedia" understanding of Marx. Do you think Marx believed Capitalism to not be dominant because feudalism was still apparent? This is silly.
Yeah, China does not have a 'microscopic' amount of commodity production, it is infact, dominated by commodity production.
They aren't in that a certain level of productive forces are required to be present before the early stages of communism (socialism) can begin. No nation state has ever reached Socialism, in fact, it is impossible for a "Nation State" to really be socialist, from Engels principles of communism:
China is a bourgeoisie nation state, with a DoTB like every other nation state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
This system would NOT be possible in a DoTP.
The PRC has a hair over 50% of its economy in the Public Sector, and another near tenth in the Cooperative Sector. The Private Sector makes up the minority of the economy. Furthermore, this Private Sector is gradually being folded into the Public Sector. Moreover, the Public Sector has key industries like Steel that the Private Sector must rely on, further making the Public Sector primary. In what manner is the Private Sector dominant? At what arbitrary point would you say the PRC needs to reach for it to pass your imaginary thresholds? This is silly, and anti-Marxist.
Your next paragraph elaborates on your conflation of Socialism with Communism. Communism must be international, and must be global, eventually. Socialism can begin in one country, as Socialism is the transitional phase to Communism. By your definition, a fully socialized economy in one country would still be Capitalist! Again, you directly shatter Marx and Engels telling you that under the DotP, Capital will be wrested gradually with the degree to which it develops, and call this phase "Capitalism" for seemingly no other reason than to discredit AES, even if it ends in absurd conclusions like a 99% socialized global economy being Capitalist, or a 100% socialized country being Capitalist.
This "no true Socialism" stance is anti-Marxist as well, Marx referred to the Paris Commune as a DotP and a Socialist system until it was overthrown. Even if we ignore all of AES that Marx never lived to, there has been Socialism even by Marx's words. Same with Engels, who analyzed Utopian Socialists who were working down the wrong path, but still could be considered "Socialist."
Additionally, productive forces have different levels of development in different sectors where public ownership and central planning makes more sense. There isn't such thing as a "general" level of development. Your steel industry may be well developed and thus easily planned, but your automotive may not be yet, at which point you want to use markets to centralize and then gradually increase control and ownership over that industry until its fully socialized. To go further than reality is anti-Marxist.
Further, you reference a joke, and not actual working hours, when trying to discredit the PRC. Furthermore, such a system absolutely can be present in a DotP, a DotP does not mean there is suddenly a "worker's paradise," but that the Proletariat is in control. The CPC has an over 95% approval rate, unheard of in most countries, and it owes this to the rapid transformative capacity of a Socialist economy to rapidly plan and build up infrastructure, and eliminate poverty. I want to stress, you opt to not analyze the structures and class dynamics at play, and instead believe you can reference a joke about how the PRC isn't a wonderland, not actual working hour statistics, and think that means the Bourgeoisie is in control? This is absurdity.
You have no points, Socialism is Communism for you, and you refer to a DotP with a largely publicly owned and centrally planned economy that is further absorbing the Private Sector as "Capitalist." Can you please make a point that logically follows what Marx and Engels were writing and explain why they clearly stated that the DotP will gradually wrest Capital from the Bourgeoisie, and why you believe this phase to be called "Capitalism?" This reeks of Trotskyism, which coincidentally is only really found in western countries as it isn't practical in any capacity and thus isn't dangerous to the status quo, and moreover adopts an anti-solidarity stance with AES in the Global South.