A top economist has joined the growing list of China’s elite to have disappeared from public life after criticizing Xi Jinping, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Zhu Hengpeng served as deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for around a decade.
CASS is a state research think tank that reports directly to China’s cabinet. Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, described it as a “body to formulate party ideology to support the leadership.”
According to the Journal, the 55-year-old disappeared shortly after remarking on China’s sluggish economy and criticizing Xi’s leadership in a private group on WeChat.
Do show me where Marx said that the path to communism is eliminating private property and the ability to accrue capital and then bringing it back again.
From Wikipedia article on Mensheviks: (you’ve been talking to someone else in the comments)
Mensheviks came to be associated with the position that a bourgeois-democratic revolution and period of capitalism would need to occur before the conditions for a socialist revolution emerged.
So yes, mate, there are literal historical figures of communism debating this exact same issue that you find so laughable, it’s literally the raison d’etre of the word Bolshevism. There is no specific “Marx passage” as if it was the bible, where it says “in case some fella called Mao organizes a socialist revolution in a peasant agrarian society, pls pull it back to capitalism first, and then go to socialism once it’s capitalist, ok?” If you generally read Marx, you can see how he puts socialism as the necessary and logical end of capitalism, as something inevitable that will happen because capitalism will bring forward the material conditions for the revolution. But despite that, Marx also was a highly politically involved individual, who pushed forward momentously the socialist movement in Europe together with Engels.
Marx isn’t a gospel that you’re supposed to be able to chant and have undying faith for, it’s an analysis of reality that you can agree or disagree with, which explains the existence of different flavours of communism such as menshevism and bolshevism or such as Maoism and Dengism, which can be explained by the material and historical conditions leading up to those moments. Marx himself said that Marxism has to be constantly interpreting the reality of the moment and critically adapting everything. So if you’re looking for a direct quote from Marx about Dengism or Menshevism, I’m not here to provide that, I’m here to tell you that the definition you consider stupid has been hotly debated for a hundred fucking years, so maybe it’s not so stupid.
Mensheviks came to be associated with the position that a bourgeois-democratic revolution and period of capitalism would need to occur before the conditions for a socialist revolution emerged.
And yet they never said you would go from a position of socialism where the earning of capital was eliminated to a pretty much entirely capitalist country and then somehow reach communism.
Because that makes no sense.
And you and everyone else arguing for this are ignoring that.
My brother in Christ, Mensheviks and Dengists were against the consolidation of centralised socialist economy before the historical consolidation of capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the difference being that Menshevism died off and Dengism ended up taking the lead after Maoism. The restoration of capital is simply a consequence of Dengism taking over AFTER Maoism, not because Dengists believed there should be first Maoism and then Dengism.
And yet they never said you would go from a position of socialism where the earning of capital was eliminated to a pretty much entirely capitalist country and then somehow reach communism.
Socialism with Chinese characteristics is just taking cues from the popular sport of ping-pong.
In his theory of Historical Materialism. Mao and the later Gang of Four succeeded in broadly eliminating private property, but had done so without developing the Means of Production adequately, resulting in economic stagnation. The people were poor, they had tried to leapfrog development to Communism in an idealist, Utopian manner, which was a rejection of the Historical Materialist idea that the next Mode of Production emerges from the previous.
Communism requires a certain level of industrial development that the PRC did not have, and for that reason the Cultural Revolution was in many ways highly damaging.
Would you have had the PRC uphold the Gang of Four’s dogmatic, anti-Marxist line simply because China had largely abolished Private Property? Is it better for the proletarist to be poor under Socialism, or rich under Capitalism?
In his theory of Historical Materialism.
Yes, you can claim that. I asked you to show me where. At the very least a reference to where he says it, but you could quote him. I don’t see why you think I should just trust your interpretation.
Also, I am not making a value judgment about communism. Do not try to twist what I am saying into an argument against communism, because you are starting to look like you’re here in bad faith.
Yes, you can claim that. I asked you to show me where. At the very least a reference to where he says it, but you could quote him. I don’t see why you think I should just trust your interpretation.
Marx hadn’t lived in a time where there was a society that tried to jump to Communism immediately without developing the Means of Production first, so the closest we can get is his critique of Anarchism. Critique of the Gotha Programme also provides perspective on the transition to Communism:
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
However, I encourage you to read Marx for yourself. You shouldn’t “trust” my interpretation, you should dive into Marxism if you wish to critique Marxists along Marxist lines. You can critique as a non-Marxist, that’s perfectly valid, but trying to critique as a Marxist without a solid understanding of Marxism isn’t good-faith in my opinion.
Also, I am not making a value judgment about communism. Do not try to twist what I am saying into an argument against communism, because you are starting to look like you’re here in bad faith.
I am not trying to say that you’re making a value judgement. My argument is that, as a Marxist-Leninist that has read no fewer than 2 dozen books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Parenti, Politzer, and other Marxist writers, it is evident to me that your understanding of Historical and Dialectical Materialism is lacking, and that clouds your judgement when you critique using Marxist analysis.
Don’t worry, ML theorists like Stalin take precedence over Marx, like how the New Testament takes precedence over the Old. It’s basic theology.
Frankly, Marx strikes me more as an anarchist than a communist, at least insofar as those labels are used today. I suspect he’d find tankies repellent.
