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this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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China is in the developing stages of socialism. Billionaires exist, but are gradually decreasing in number over time as the working class gradually increases in prosperity. China has not yet achieved communism, where distribution is based on need. Instead, distribution is mostly based on the market for now.
If you're going to quote Marx, the least you could do is read him.
China saw a 60% increase in billionaires between 2020 and 2021 alone. It fell since then but it's still higher than it was pre-pandemic, and WAY higher than it was in the '70s before China went free market.
China never went "free market." They adopted some market reforms, but even prior to it still had private property and markets. They never once had a fully publicly owned and planned economy.
China was also dramatically poor and underdeveloped. I believe I already explained why, the Gang of Four thought it was better to be "pure" and poor than it was to adopt reforms while maintaining socialism in the interests of rapid development. China's socialist system and strong public ownership while flexibly adopting market mechanisms in controlled manners is what has brought them such success, and is why they are on track to become the world's most developed and advanced country in the near future.
Again, if you're going to quote Marx, the least you could do is read him.
I have read Wage, Labor and Capital in its entirety, as well as Value, Price, and Profit. Both are better than the manifesto, which I've also read. His critique of Gotha was also interesting. I think Engels was honestly much more interesting than Marx, though Eugen Dühring was more practical (as demonstrated by the success of SocDems and the Nordic model, while "Marxism" never went anywhere in a practical sense.
It's nice to read those, so props to you for that, but you should absolutely read Anti-Dühring to understand why social democracy is a failure while Marxism-Leninism is the governing ideology of the largest and most successful country on the planet, leaving the imperialist nordic countries in the dust. You should also read Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism to see how the social democracies you uphold act as parasites on the global south, living off of their labor and resources via financial domination.
Really, the idea that Marxism never went anywhere is absurd in the 21st century. Not only was the USSR the fastest developing country in the 20th century, but right now we are watching China adopt Marxist analysis and continue their rapid improvements year over year since their inception. Dühring was highly impractical, which is why his ideas were all failures.
I have read Anti-Duhring , that's why I specifically brought up Duhring immediately after saying I liked Engels better than Marx.
The problem is, social democracy didn't fail in practice, and Marxism did because, while China is economically successful, the Nordic states are much more successful per capita and have things like basic human rights, AND China's success largely occurred after they switched to a mixed economy, effectively abandoning Marxism.
If you actually read Anti-Dühring and came to the conclusion that the Nordic countries are somehow more successful and that having any private ownership whatsoever means abandoning Marxism, then you did not actually understand it.
You have never actually addressed that the Nordic countries achieve their metrics through imperialism. The only conclusion here is that you support that, and believe imperialism to be necessary and good.
All economies are "mixed," even the DPRK has some small level of private ownership in its special economic zones like Rason. That doesn't mean there are no socialist states, none aligned with Marxism. China adopted a more traditional understanding of Marx than they had under the Gang of Four (which also had private property and markets).
The PRC is more classically Marxist than under the Gang of Four, when they abandoned materialist analysis and attempted to implement Communism through fiat. Large firms and key industries of the PRC are firmly in the public sector, while small firms, cooperatives, and sole proprietorships make up most of the private sector.
Marx didn't think you could abolish private property by making it illegal, but by developing out of it. Socialism and Communism, for Marx, were about analyzing and harnessing the natural laws of economics moving towards centralization, so as to democratize it and produce in the interests of all. This wasn't about decentralization, but centralization.
Markets themselves are not Capitalism, just like public ownership itself is not Socialist. The US is not Socialist just because it has a post-office, just like the PRC is not Capitalist just because it has some degree of private ownership. Rather, Marx believed you can't just make private property illegal, but must develop out of it, as markets create large firms, and large firms work best with central planning:
I want you to look at the bolded word. Why did Marx say by degree? Did he think on day 1, businesses named A-C are nationalized, day 2 businesses D-E, etc etc? No. Marx believed that it is through nationalizing of the large firms that would be done immediately, and gradually as the small firms develop, they too can be folded into the public sector. The path to eliminated Private Property isn't to make it illegal, but to develop out of it.
This is why, in the previous paragraph, Marx described public seizure in degrees, but raising the level of the productive forces as rapidly as possible. China adopted a more traditional understanding of Marx, rather than the idealist Gang of Four.
The Nordic states are members of the imperial core, and the (increasingly deteriorating) Nordic model was successful on the backs of the Global South, through classical colonialism and nowadays neocolonialism.