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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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Which communists? The USSR was infiltrated and the US then spent millions getting the bumbling mass of ethanol known as Yeltsin to win an election. They (the new capitalist government) even sieged the parliament building and sent tanks in Moscow to disperse the huge waves of protestors. It then lead to one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the modern age almost overnight.
And in China they are assuredly not capitalist, this becomes very clear once you read Deng Xiaoping. It's Schroedinger's China: when they do something bad they're communists, and when they do something good (like lifting people out of poverty) they're capitalists.
Cuba is still socialist, DPRK is still socialist, Vietnam is also reforming and opening up kinda like China did but a bit differently so still socialist
Are we really denying that the "Chinese Characteristics" of the PRC's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is Capitalism? Btw, I think the good parts of China are the socialism bits.
The CPC controls all capital in the country. They are coordinating and intervening in the economy with the goal of building a socialist society. This is very different from the US and it's client states. Capital is controlled by the bourgeois, with no obligations other than a gluttonous desire to accumulate.
capitalism is not bits and pieces here and there, it's an entire mode of production with its own base and superstructure. In that sense China can't be called capitalist. At best we could say it has "capitalist elements" but even then that's a stretch when getting down into the details of what these elements actually are.
I mean, some (most? Idk) of the means of production are owned by the state (ostensibly a proxy for the people, I'd rather it was more direct but the government has consistently high approval so I'll give it a pass) and those are clearly socialistic.
But there are certainly factories and what not owned by capitalists, and as that accounts for much of the production that goes on in China, and as these products are not destined to serve the public weal but rather to be sent abroad as bits and bobs to be sold and promptly thrown away as serves global capital, I really don't get the desire to not call this capitalism.
China, to me, has a very clear mixed economy with elements of both socialism and capitalism.
But as I've argued, having elements of capitalism like commodity production (and the subsequent export of these commodities) does not make China capitalist by themselves, which is also the original point I was making, that China has not "turned" to capitalism* like OP might have implied.
Markets are not inherently capitalist, and these capitalist elements in China allow them to build their productive forces which are required to achieve socialism, they're also the same commodities they build for the Belt and Road initiative, for example ๐
Capitalism can be summed up in many ways, and one of them is production for the sake of finding a market and making money. There is capital in China (in the marxist definition) and people can make money, but while these capitalist want to simply make more money, for the Chinese government the goal is to build up production and achieve socialism, hence why the superstructure of China vs. any country in the imperial core is different. In the first case (capitalism) we'll just keep producing and creating markets infinitely, the "anarchy of production and socialisation of labour", and in the second case they're using some methods (with the consequences that come with it -> if you make a factory to produce stuff, you will have to find a market to buy that stuff so you can produce more stuff) as a stepping stone until they don't need to any more.
Of course the superstructure is predicated on the base, and in China for example land is leased to businesses, but never sold, and the government can take back their property at any time, including whatever is on it. It's fundamentally different to capitalism in the west.
This was super helpful comrade, thanks for this post