Comradeship // Freechat

To many of us, socialism is simply the opposite of capitalism rather than its negation, therefore socialism must be the absence of the most hated features of capitalism in our experiences and opinions. China doesn’t always live up to these expectations.

I would say a couple important components of this that are hard for some of us to grapple with at times (if only because of how complex it is to understand):

• The realities of socialist states operating in a global economy dominated by the capitalist mode and its imperial tendrils. Had socialist China developed in a world where socialist states were common, it might be they'd look a lot more socialist right now even on a surface level. But they instead had to develop under a kind of siege from global Red Scare violence and it was critical to develop their "productive forces" in order to be capable of meeting the moment. As far as I can tell, they effectively decided the way for them to do this was to couple themselves up intricately in the global economy and its capitalist mechanisms, while taking care to maintain collective control over the means of production and distribution at home.

• The nature of transition itself. If I understand right, China came from being largely feudalist prior to the revolution and from fighting off imperial Japan. It wasn't like they had highly developed capitalist, industrial forces already and for reasons unknown, decided to make them less restricted. They didn't have that kind of development yet, or at least, not at scale. So they essentially had to spend decades playing catch up with the world's biggest industrial powers to be able to stand up to them properly, much less do what they're doing now and surpass them. They could have tried to do this while also being as dogmatically "true socialist" as possible, but they needed rapid growth and were probably not going to get that from dogma.

And in spite of this, China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and is a much more equitable and helpful government than anything western capitalist governments tend to provide. So even despite the limitations of the conditions, they're still something to look to as a good example.

It's sort of a funny thing in a way, seemingly contradictory. I think China may be the most successful example of applied marxist theory, or "scientific socialism", in spite of how they can look on the surface. When the conditions were more fitting for revolution and the dismantling of the old reactionary ways, they were led by Mao. When the conditions were more fitting for industrializing as fast as possible, they were led by Deng. Obviously it was not all neat and tidy along the way, and even internally there were splits on how to do things, but overall, what they appear to have done is faced down "contradictions" (in the dialectical meaning) on both a global and local scale.

And one way I think ultras can get tripped up is in viewing the struggle as primarily local and that if you make allowances for geopolitical scale contradictions, you're betraying the cause at the local level somehow. But it truly is about the global proletariat and liberating the local is sometimes inexplicably intertwined with the global as well. And in this way, China's Belt and Road, and other such forms of interdependence, are strides toward increasing the quality of life for thousands or millions beyond themselves, while also helping those places to extricate themselves from western imperialist exploitation and dependence.

I feel like in some sense, you could say they are working to build "dual power" on a global scale context, which might be a lot harder if not possible, if they were not so thoroughly coupled into global trade and production. And they are already so far into the transition, that one of the western empire's more clumsy attempts to punish the world and decouple (the tariff nonsense) has more helped secure China as an alternative to others than reaffirmed the bullying mob boss that is the western empire.

This turned into a huge post more so than I meant to lol, but I was kind of thinking things through as I wrote. I think anyone who doubts China as a force of "scientific socialism" should look at what they mean for some of the most exploited, not just what they mean for people in a sense of transitioning from developed capitalism to more developed socialism. And that goes back to what you originally said. It really comes down to looking at things in their proper context.

To many of us, socialism is simply the opposite of capitalism rather than its negation, therefore socialism must be the absence of the most hated features of capitalism in our experiences and opinions.

I have been thinking about this since I read it a couple hours ago. Brilliant insight, thank you for sharing.