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5 months ago

Just a disclaimer for normal ppl:
What op is referring to as “Marxists” are (what the irl leftists call) revisionists who think that Marxism is somehow compatible with bourgeois counter revolution (PRC after Deng, under whom the crackdowns in Tiananmen happened btw) and “anti-american” imperialism (what Russia and modern-day China are doing militarily (mostly Russia) and financially (mostly China))

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Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml

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5 months ago

Nobody believes the PRC is economically Socialist, just that it has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and keeps their bourgeoisie in check, which is in the eyes of the CPC a safer option than shutting out the entire world like the USSR did, leading to its collapse. I don’t think anyone is calling the PRC full Socialism, not even the CPC itself.

As for Imperialism, most people talking about it are using Lenin’s definition, a sort of International Bourgeois/Proletarian system, not just expansionism or international trade.

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0 points

5 months ago

There is no DoP left in the "P"RC. At best it’s social democracy combined with one of the most brutally efficient capitalist systems of exploitation to date (which from a purely liberal economic pov is quite impressive, but so is Japan)

(following quotes are not meant as an appeal to authority, but rather me using wording which put it better than I ever could)

'Politics cannot but have precedence over economics. To argue differently means forgetting the ABC of Marxism.’ ‘Opportunism does not extend the recognition of class struggle to what is the cardinal point, to the period of transition from capitalism to Communism, to the period of the overthrow and the complete abolition of the bourgeoisie.’
(Lenin, The State and Revolution)

Mao Zedong also pointed out:

“Never forget classes and class struggle.” “Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle; class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it.”

This was directly levelled at Deng Xiaoping, whom he assessed as follows:

“This person does not grasp class struggle; he has never referred to this key link. Still his theme of ‘white cat, black cat’, making no distinction between imperialism and Marxism. This tells us that both production and modernization will go astray if we abandon the key link of class struggle, and if we reject the correct, Marxist line and the socialist road. If we follow his revisionist line, we can never develop production but will only sabotage it; we can never achieve socialist modernization but will only degenerate into capitalism!”
(Notes: “production” as in ‘socialist mode of production’ and “modernization” as in ‘socialist modernization of society’)

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Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml

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5 months ago

Yes, I’m aware, Deng is absolutely a revisionist. I was explaining what most Marxists at least on Lemmy believe about China.

Personally, I understand why they went down that road after the fall of the USSR, but it remains to be seen if this will actually end up being the correct play. I think it would have been better had they taken a more hard-line stance in favor of Marxism than Revisionism, but we are now so far from that point that the entire last 35 years of global history would have been completely different.

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0 points

5 months ago

yeah, alt-hist stuff isn’t all that productive

the thing I meant was, that the ppl who defend China as well as China itself, have forsaken Marxism and should not be called that

it means a complete revision of the understanding of class struggle (being replaced with class collaborationism and often the CPC taking up the role of the bourgeoisie) and thus dialectical/historical materialism

which is why I am referring to them as “social democrats at best”

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Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml

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5 months ago

100% agreed on Alt-History, no questions from me on that.

However, I do want to flip this around just a bit, for the sake of a thought experiment. For critical supporters of the PRC, it seems that opposing US hedgemony and creating a multipolar world is the primary means by which Lenin’s Imperialism can be fought in our present moment, even if we lack any hardline Marxist powers.

In your eyes, what should these Marxists instead be supporting? The US? It seems everyone is agreed on supporting the Global South, but when it comes to countries with any real influence on global geopolitics, are all of them bad and unworthy of even critical support, generally, or is there a force you believe is on somewhat of the right track, as a Marxist?

This isn’t a gotcha, I am genuinely interested in this conversation.

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0 points

5 months ago

I’d say that you don’t have to support either side in an inter-imperialist conflict.

Just because China’s ruling elites have virtually no military bases abroad (compared to the USA), doesn’t mean that they aren’t imperialist. Only that they are “smarter” in that regard.

To use Jimmy Carters words (about the “smarter”-part):

“Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None. And we have stayed at war.” The U.S., he noted, has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” Carter said. This is, he said, because of America’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles.”

In China, meanwhile, the economic benefits of peace were clear to the eye. “How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” he asked. While China has some 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, the U.S. has “wasted, I think, $3 trillion” on military spending. “It’s more than you can imagine. China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”

“And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover. We’d have high-speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Our education system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong,” Carter told the congregation.

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China might be a so called “social democracy”. It is, however, - in contrast to the European model - in large parts funded internally: most prominently the coastal cities and their SEZs (special economic zones), which host abhorrent labour/environmental laws, red-tape-cutting corruption and whatever else international investment capital needs (or be it internal one, like the allowing 996 culture at Huawei or Chinas tech sector in general)

To quote Michael Parenti:

Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. […]

Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated “business zones” risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women.

I’m not sure whether an integrated periphery constitutes imperialism., their export of financial capital, however, definitely does! (eg. their debt traps and following decade-long leases)

So yes, from my POV the Global South or rather the periphery in general, (unfortunately) have no strong advocate on the geopolitical stage

(Please bear in mind that I do not claim to have studied the addressed topics in proper detail and all this being my ad hoc take)

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