AES- Actually-Existing Socialism
Edit: Dictatorship of the Proletariat + Predominant, collective ownership and control of the economy = AES?
[What makes a country “socialist”?]
A society where public ownership of the means of production, a state controlled by a politically organized proletariat, and production for societal use rather than for profit is the principal aspect (main body) of the economy.
Key term here is principal aspect. There is a weird phenomenon from both anti-communists as well as a lot of ultraleft and leftcom communists themselves of applying a “one drop rule” to socialism, where socialism is only socialism if it’s absolutely pure without a single internal contradiction. But no society in the history of humankind has been pure, they all contain internal contradictions and internal contradictions are necessary for one form of society to develop into the next.
If you applied that same logic to capitalism, then if there was any economic planning or public ownership, then capitalism would cease to be “true capitalism” and become “actually socialism”, which is an argument a lot of right-wing libertarians unironically make. The whole “not true capitalism” and “not true socialism” arguments are two sides of the same coin, that is, people weirdly applying an absolute purity standard to a particular economic system which is fundamentally impossible to exist in reality, so they then can declare their preferred system “has never truly been tried”. But it will never be tried ever because it’s an idealized form which cannot exist in concrete reality, actually-existing capitalism and socialism will always have internal contradictions within itself.
If no idealized form exists and all things contain internal contradictions within themselves, then the only way to define them in a consistent way is not to define them in terms of perfectly and purely matching up to that idealized form, but that description merely becoming the principal aspect in a society filled with other forms and internal contradictions within itself.
A capitalist society introducing some economic planning and public ownership doesn’t make it socialist because the principal aspect is still bourgeois rule and production for profit. This would mean the state and institutions carrying out the economic planning would be most influenced by the bourgeoisie and not by the working class, i.e. they would still behave somewhat privately, the “public ownership” would really be bourgeois ownership and the economic planning would be for the benefit of the bourgeoisie first and foremost.
A similar story in a socialist society with markets and private ownership. If you have a society dominated by public ownership and someone decides to open a shop, where do they get the land, the raw materials, permission for that shop, etc? If they get everything from the public sector, then they exist purely by the explicit approval by the public sector, they don’t have real autonomy. The business may be internally run privately but would be forced to fit into the public plan due to everything around them demanding it for their survival.
Whatever is the dominant aspect of society will shape the subordinated forms. You have to understand societies as all containing internal contradictions and seeking for what is the dominant form in that society that shapes subordinated forms, rather than through an abstract and impossible to realize idealized version of “true socialism”.
Countries like Norway may have things that seemingly contradict capitalism like large social safety nets for workers funded by large amounts of public ownership, but these came as concessions due to the proximity of Nordic countries to the USSR which pressured the bourgeoisie to make concessions with the working class. However, the working class and public ownership and economic planning never became the principal aspect of Norway. The bourgeoisie still remains in control, arguably with a weaker position, but they are still by principal aspect, and in many Nordic countries ever since the dissolution of the USSR, the bourgeoisie has been using that dominant position to roll back concessions.
The argument for China being socialist is not that China has fully achieved some pure, idealized form of socialism, but that China is a DOTP where public ownership alongside the CPC’s Five-Year plans remain the principal aspect of the economy and other economic organization is a subordinated form.
Deng Xiaoping Theory is not a rejection of the economic system the Soviets were trying to build but a criticism of the Soviet understanding socialist development. After the Soviets deemed they had sufficient productive forces to transition into socialism, they attempted to transition into a nearly pure socialist society within a very short amount of time, and then declared socialist construction was completed and the next step was to transition towards communism.
Deng Xiaoping Theory instead argues that socialism itself has to be broken up into development stages a bit like how capitalism also has a “lower” and “higher” phase, so does socialism. The initial stage is to the “primary stage” of underdeveloped socialism, and then the main goal of the communist party is to build towards the developed stage of socialism. The CPC disagreed that the Soviets had actually completed their socialist construction and trying to then build towards communism was rushing things far faster than what the level of productive forces of the country could sustain and inevitably would lead to such great internal contradictions in the economic system to halt economic development.
The argument was not a rejection of the Marxist or Marxist-Leninist understanding of what socialism is, but a disagreement over the development stages, viewing socialism’s development as much more gradual and a country may remain in the primary stage like China is currently in for a long, long time, Deng Xiaoping speculated even 100 years.
I recall reading somethings from Mao where he criticized the Marxian understanding of communism, but not from the basis of it being wrong, but it being speculative. He made the argument that Marx’s detailed analysis of capitalism was only possible because Marx lived in a capitalist society and could see and research its development in real time, therefore Mao was skeptical the current understanding of communism would remain forever, because when you actually try to construct it you would inevitably learn far more than you could speculate about in the future, have a much more detailed understanding of what it is in concrete reality and what its development stages look like.
In a sense, that’s the same position the modern CPC takes towards socialism, that the Soviets and Mao rushed into socialism due to geopolitical circumstances and did not have time to actually fully grasp what socialist development would look like in practice, and Deng Xiaoping Theory introduces the concept of the primary stage of socialism based on their experience actually trying to implement it under Mao.
Despite common misconception, the CPC’s position is indeed that China is currently socialist, not “will be socialist in 2049” or whatever. The argument is that China is in the primary stage of socialism, a system where socialist aspects of the political and economic system have become the main body but in a very underdeveloped form.
by aimixin
GOOD post.
The Chinese were right to criticize the Soviet system because the Soviet Union collapsed. We don’t know yet if they made the correct adjustments but they’re certainly doing well enough right now.
If a nation has a DOTP and is working towards building socialism, they are AES, or in other words, not ideal visions of fully-developed socialism but nations that are in the process of building socialism.
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Worker control of the state via democratic centralism and a healthy oppression of the bourgeoisie.
Some examples of how this manifests in China specifically:
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Most, if not all, critical industries and infrastructure have SOEs in monopoly control in their sectors, and all SOEs, as CPC-controlled entities, must adhere to the five-year plan as set forth by the central committee. Many are managed through the State Council’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which is charged with hiring and firing executives, reforming and restructuring firms, and auditing. In addition, most of the major banks are state-owned, which allows them to offer better interest rates for SOEs and maintain dominance over private enterprises.
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All enterprises with 3 or more CPC members must establish a local Party branch, elect a secretary, and engage in Party building. Party organizations exist to ensure adherence to “social responsibility” principles. These principles include social benefit, poverty alleviation, environmental improvement, education, guidance and improvement of public opinion, core socialist values, Party building, and the continued development of socialism.
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In the US, they say that some companies are too big to fail and use taxes from workers to bail them out. In China, when the Evergrande failed, the CPC said they “would only extend a lifeline if [the chairman of Evergrande] gave up his fortune to repay the company’s debts” and let the company default.
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And of course, China is known for executing billionaires, which is something I don’t think you’d see with any regularity in a capitalist state.
These points all do a good job verifying that the government is working for the benefit of the proletariat, but how do you determine that it is actually the workers that are in control? Can a state work in favor of the proletariat and then regress into something that favors the bourgeoisie?
For example, were the workers ever in control in the USSR? If they were, did they lose it? It seems hard to square the dissolution of the USSR with a concurrent dictatorship of the proletariat.
how do you determine that it is actually the workers that are in control?
China’s constitution both state that it is a DotP and that they practice democratic centralism. This has some good info and history on China’s workers’ congresses in practice.
Can a state work in favor of the proletariat and then regress into something that favors the bourgeoisie?
For example, were the workers ever in control in the USSR?
Yes, they had workers’ councils.
If they were, did they lose it? It seems hard to square the dissolution of the USSR with a concurrent dictatorship of the proletariat.
Post-Stalin USSR lost their revolutionary identity after revisionists and opportunists came into power. It was either Khruschev or Brezhnev that removed the DotP from the constitution. After that, the dissolution of the USSR was inevitable.
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My touchstones for DOTP are:
- Is capital firmly subservient to the government?
- Does the government represent the interests of the people?
If both are yes, you have a DOTP.
I would definitely classify the Chinese state as operating in the interest of the people, but I don’t know how useful that is as a delineation. I only think that way because I agree with them that SWCC is a sound model and they will eventually arrive at a mode of production that is fully controlled by the proletariat. But I’d prefer if the definition of DOTP didn’t depend on a future hypothetical.
E: thinking about it a little more, I think that your second touchstone could be phrased a little differently and it would work. “Is the government pursuing the betterment of conditions for the working class in contradiction to the will of the capitalist class?”. I think it works better because it’s a claim that can be falsified a lot easier but also shown to be true.
I agree that your phrasing of the second touchstone is an improvement. As for tying this to a future hypothetical, I don’t think we have to do that: you can see plenty of things China and other AES states are currently doing that benefit the people at the expense of capital. I think you can call it a DOTP as long as you have a government that keeps doing that – keeps moving in the right direction – and that is not simply doing minor liberal improvements while largely operating at the behest of capital.
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How would we treat the ‘pseudo’ AES, which include China, Vietnam, and such? As allies for only critical support or merely counter-revolutionaries?
I do not believe China, Vietnam, and such can be considered AES as such, and indeed I think their leadership is actively moving in a capitalist direction (read Lin Chun’s Revolution and Counterrevolution in China). I don’t know enough about the political economy of Cuba to speak on that.
I think if you phrase the question as “why has China experienced so much economic growth relative to other Asian countries like India or Indonesia?” you wouldn’t come to the conclusion that China is capitalist because the obvious subsequent question would be why did capitalism with Chinese characteristics take over while capitalism with Indian characteristics and capitalism with Indonesian characteristics haven’t taken off. And I haven’t heard any answer that didn’t just boiled down to “Chinese capitalists are just big-brained while the other capitalists are dum-dums.”
They may not be socialist, but they are not capitalist either. For example, I would argue the PRC is not capitalist because the country hasn’t experienced a real boom/bust cycle in its 70+ years of existence. Notice that a bust cycle is different from any economic downturn like the GLF or Vietnam hitting an economic downturn because the Soviet Union collapsed and they still were heavily sanctioned. People don’t emphasize this, but all other things equal, a socialist society should be able to more effectively and efficiently use the collective labor-hours of their society than a capitalist society.
Take something like the reserve army of labor, something that is inherent in all capitalist societies due to the inherent logic of capitalism but not inherent in socialist societies. A capitalist society can never reach full employment but a socialist society can. Because the capitalist society can’t reach full employment, the workers there would have to work longer hours to make up for the reserve army of labor that could be employed but aren’t. Longer hours means burnout, wear-and-tear of the body, greater chance of disease due to suppressed immune system and stress, and so on, which has a cumulative effect on how productive that society is. And by productive, I don’t mean line go up GDP or just mindlessly producing commodities without caring about whether those commodities are socially necessary. I mean things like literacy rates, average child height (low height means children are suffering from malnutrition), miles of rail, whether a society is food sufficient, and so on.
On a micro level, no, I don’t think a Chinese worker is fundamentally experiencing a society that is a whole lot different from a US worker. But just because this is true on a micro level doesn’t means that it’s true on a macro level. The question is how do you make sense of a society where on a micro level it’s not a whole lot different from a capitalist society but on a macro level it’s completely different?
So what I understand is, China follows generally socialist policies, but the workers in China aren’t really living in a socialist society? Do you think that can/will change?
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I don’t really disagree with your points (although the 4 Asian tigers have definitely peaked and are experiencing some degree of stagnation and recession at least for the case of HK and Taiwan) but it goes back to my main point that the PRC isn’t capitalist. Whether the PRC is socialist or not is whether you think “the PRC is neither capitalist nor socialist” is a copout answer or whether you think you can have a non-capitalist, non-socialist, and non-feudal mode of production.
It’s hard for me to not see AES as a nascent stage of socialism in the same way I see Italian city-states of the Renaissance as a nascent stage of capitalism. Like AES of today with regards with socialism, Italian city-states aren’t archetypal capitalist societies. They lack a proletarian and bourgeois class for one, and they have the trappings of feudal societies. But if you analyze them on a macro level, those Italian city-states don’t really behave like feudal states. For one, actually existing feudalism like the Tang dynasty or the Carolingian empire derive their power from the land they control and the peasantry who work on that land. The peasantry can be utilized through corvee labor to work on public infrastructure projects or to form the bulk of a feudal army. The Italian city-states, on the other hand, are tiny in comparison, but despite their size, they punch well above their weight if they were just feudal societies. They derive their power more from being at an advantageous location of important trade routes, ruled by powerful merchant families rather than feudal lords. Unlike feudal societies but very similar to capitalist societies, the Italian city-states tried to solve many societal problems by simply throwing money at it. This is how they became (over)reliant on mercenary armies that would constantly betray them for the ever higher bidder. On an ideological level, the Italian city-states embraced Renaissance humanism, which is fundamentally anti-feudal and has various components that survives in liberalism. It doesn’t make sense for an anti-feudal ideology to spring forth from a feudal base but perfectly reasonable if it’s a nascent capitalist base which gave rise to an anti-feudal ideology.
If you traveled back in time to 1523, nobody would believe that Renaissance Italy would be the birth of a completely different mode of production. After all, Renaissance Italy weren’t the first polities to leverage their advantageous location to get rich through trade. It’s only through 500 more years of hindsight that people could see what would blossom in the Dutch Republic and Industrial Revolution England had its origins in those Italian city-states.
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Do you know why hexbear supports China so much?
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I would also suggest that some of the support is in the form of challenging questionable and sometimes outright racist/xenophobic Western narratives on China. Red Scare propaganda is real, and has existed for generations, so regardless of whether China is good or bad, you would be an idiot to simply take the US State Department’s position as legitimate. All of that is completely aside from whether or not China is worth supporting for reasons A, B, or C above.
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Pretty much all of the above for me. B with the qualifier that I just think the leadership is not as cartoonishly evil/stupid as the Western ruling class and the systems being put in place and claims being made by the state have a path to socialism. It’s not like the USA, where nothing is taught about socialism during education unless you go out of your way during university. I do think 1917 was the last truly realistic chance, which didn’t pan out mostly due to momentum (capitalist wealth stolen from other nations for decades/centuries and reinvested in the destruction of revolutions). It’s just that not all hope is lost.
The ruling class of the West seems to be a mix of (1) too stupid to realize their class will eventually bring about the Fourth Reich and very possibly end the world and (2) smart enough to approximately realize it but mostly stupid enough to not be interested in addressing it as anything other than individuals with NZ bunkers/WALL-E ambitions.
Also I just saw your handle and if you deal with that wanted to recommend benzoyl peroxide. I dealt with that (diagnosed) for a couple of years before finding this dermatology clinic’s report from the 80s. Cleared it up in a couple weeks.
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Just anecdotally, I worked for a short period of time in China, and was simply stunned by the level of public investment that was occurring. There is so much we could do if we had the political power to do anything. Also, my colleagues were pretty open about their collective sigh of relief that the nightmare their parents went through was long over, their anxiety that it could return, and their enthusiasm for the current path. Of course this was a rather nonrandom sample of tech workers, so there is that. My opinion is that I have no idea if China will end up being AES, but at least it represents an intention to do so, and an alternative to the dominant system.
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Yes. The end of the Maoist era was pretty horrible for a lot of people.
I think one major aspect is that even if their leadership was 100% cynically lying about their intention to build socialism in China, they’ve still been a tremendously less evil superpower than any of their peers.
Here in the US, we started with white supremacist genocides and have continued that tradition up to the present. Domestically we run a perpetual military counterinsurgency campaign against our population, and internationally we drop countless bombs on countries we “aren’t” at war with while we coup their elected leaders and train torturers and death squads for our puppet regimes. Western international “development” programs have been nakedly exploitative and repressive, while Chinese international development programs have instead been mutually beneficial
All of this happens in public view, and the worst allegations anyone can make up against China always both pale in comparison to what the US admits to doing and get retracted after a few months of our Reputable Journalistic Institutions lying about them
Our leaders are clearly trying to scapegoat our problems onto China. As things get worse they will get more and more aggressive to China. I don’t want a war with China. I want us to actually deal with our problems at home.
China may merely be a lesser of two evils. But it makes no sense in doing my rulers work for them by letting people become more sinophobic.
My personal answer always is, imagine China is really as evil as our propaganda portrays them to be. I have real, super reliable evidence that the US is just as bad or worse. What can I do about China? Absolutely nothing. What can I do about the US? Also not a whole lot to be honest, but when the working class organizes and we have collective power, it obviously behooves us to smash the state that sits over us, and cooperate with its enemies to do so as long as that doesn’t compromise our values (which might require questioning if that propaganda was really true in the first place).
Do we? I have yet to see billions of Hexbear user’s money invested into China, yet USA’s, EU’s billionaires do. Seems that those capitalists are supporting China much more than Hexbear is supporting China.
I think if the United States calls you (and I mean the acting functionary of the State) calls you socialist and is gearing for your destruction thats probably the best and most clearly defined thing we in the West can agree on.
“you are what the cops think you are” but for geopolitics instead of race
The AE in AES can work a couple of different ways. If the question is, “What would allow rigidly defined Socialism to exist,” then the answer is usually confined to history or speculation. If the question is, “Which extant states best represent an effort to dismantle capitalism,” then I’d generally say it’s the usual ones that identify as Socialist - China being the only superpower among them.
If we broaden the question out past AES to, “Which political efforts deserve support,” then virtually any enemy of NATO can qualify. Sure, a multipolar capitalist order won’t guarantee the end of capitalism, but destroying western hegemony is absolutely a prerequisite for it and pessimism on that front is needlesly tiring
What does support from the proles actually look like? Anti-interventionism, or is there anything else? I don’t really know what it would mean to say “I support Syria/Rojava” when I’m halfway across the globe.
Pretty much anti-interventionism. Personally I like to educate the people around me on the ways that the US has been explicitly evil from its inception, and to use context to derail hatefests against our targets, but I don’t think either of those really qualifies as meaningful support.
On a personal level, what I mean by support is mainly internal. It affects how we approach certain issues - especially calls for intervention - but it isn’t a form of aid. The issue of support is much more material between nations, but for us to have any personal say in that we’d have to gain control
For me personally the DOTP is the main factor. The rest follows regardless, so something is AES at the very moment it enters the transitionary stage between capitalism and communism, and that is the very moment that the proletariat seize power.
Literally every single other thing about a country can have various and significant differences to other AES countries, the important factor is simply what class is in power.
I don’t think it’s a very useful term in itself, more of a bumper sticker clapback at radlibs or ultraleftists or such who have tepid criticisms of nominally socialist states.
If those people aren’t part of the conversation, I think we can go a bit deeper than categorizing countries into “these are/are not socialist”
For me the important part is about perspectives. I try to understand where entities and groups of people come from and try to use frame works to understand them and their labeling for themselves and the labeling and frameworks of others on them.
This way I can without trouble understand why some Trots say China isn’t AES and yet understand why from the perspective of the US State Department China is AES and how it is altered from the CPC’s self description. This is quite important to not end discussions with properly having applied a label to things which has a moralist meaning attached to it, too.
However what does in fact is the case and if you can describe structures and objectify some views is another question, that takes for me is subordinate to the societal struggle taking place in regards to that country (and where I am, what power I have and what I can influence). I also like:
Wir nennen Kommunismus die wirkliche Bewegung, welche den jetzigen Zustand aufhebt
Which means communism is the real movement which changes the current situation. Since that is somewhat in the future I might be wrong with labeling some groups communist. Doesn’t matter much though. There are also plenty things besides those true communists you can only asses from future point of views.
Edit To do that you have to still read the theory and understand it somewhat, by discussing it with comrades and academics, else you end up with a discursive liberal geo politics that can’t explain anything and misses that your position is bound to you.
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They have a liberal president and social safety nets
