So I recently joined a socialist org (Eur*pe), been participating in some cool anti-imperialist protests and anti-fascist local struggle.
The topic of China’s socialism came up in conversation, and I naturally said that China is socialist. They looked at me as if I were nuts, and a discussion ensued about China not being socialist.
Their points are that it’s not expanding worldwide socialism, that it’s engaging in imperialism in Africa, that it’s only shifting to renewables because it’s profitable for them, and the classic “but they have rich capitalist owners and the Chinese workers are exploited”.
Doesn’t matter that their capitalists don’t control the media and state apparatus (which they somehow disagree with), that they’re the only country capable of fighting the fossil fuel lobby, that they’ve uplifted 800mn people from poverty in 30 years, that they deindustrialized NATO, that they support Iran and are creating the possibility of a multipolar world, that most investments in Africa are in electric infrastructure, that Chinese people overwhelmingly say that they live in a democracy and support their socialist government, that housing is not only not prohibitively expensive but actually prices are going down, that food is incredibly affordable, that they don’t engage in imperialist war… Nothing is good enough, they’re capitalists because they conform to capitalist mode of production (which isn’t even true because like half their economy is state-owned). And they have the guts to tell ME I’m being dogmatic and only seeing black and white, because I dare speak about a model of socialism that doesn’t conform to their narrow views.
I swear it’s impossible to find socialists in Eur*pe who aren’t patronizing, condescending, and honestly fucking racist to global south socialist movements. They literally told me that Cuba “should have industrialized”. Like, god fucking damn it, do you SERIOUSLY believe you know better about the possibilities of the economy of Cuba than the people devoting their entire lives to it in the country, supporting and maintaining the revolution throughout the 70 years of murderous embargo? Like, how do you believe you can thoroughly industrialize a 10mn inhabitant island entirely cut from trade with the rest of the world? The Eastern Block could only do this because it had like a fucking third the landmass of Earth and some 400mn inhabitants, and even then they suffered limitations such as lack of access to critical semiconductor technology due to embargo. But no, Cuba is not socialist because it has private hotels for tourists, as if they had any other way to get foreign currency to purchase high-tech medical diagnosis machines and critical energy resources. Fucking bunch of idealist, anti-materialist, condescending pieces of shit!
Imo you and your comrades are by the sound of it having issues where you confuse “socialist”, “dictatorship of the proletariat”, “anti-imperialist”, “nice to live in” and “progressive” for semisynonymous moral categories instead of seperate political-economic categories without moral weight.
Also by instead of respecting democratic centralism and party discipline going and posting about it in public online spaces you are sorta in the wrong here imo. Instead of posting about this online you should do further investigation and discuss it further with your comrades while engaged in the work of leafletting or postering where youre less likely to be dogpiled
Anyway, the capitalist mode of production is a different thing from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist mode of production is M-C-M`, it is the laws of value and the production and circulation of commodities. “‘Accumulate, accumulate’ this is Moses and the Prophets” as Marx put it. The chinese economy operates, including in the state sector, on M-C-M’ and on the law of value and production and circulation of commodities.
This is in contrast to the soviet union, whose plans followed M-C-M’, but did not allow things to circulate based on the laws of value but instead the needs of the economic plan (and this planning structure was itself a development of the war communism compromise, not what the bolsheviks had in mind in october 1917).
And both of these are very different from Cuba’s economy, which is much closer to the lower stage of communism (socialism) than any other socialist project: they have made strides towards the abolition of the urban-rural divide, the divison between manual and mental labour, the metabolic rift and the commodity form.
Whether china is a dictatorship of the proletariat or of the bourgeois is a seperate question from whether its economy is organised along capitalist lines, and this is an entirely seperate question from whether china’s interests are opposed to american imperialism and from the 4th question of their poverty reduction—which, you will note, is accompanied by increased investments of capital overseas, including to buy up land and resources to export food, minerals, etc to china. Bolivian and Ethiopian peasants arent much happier if their land is stolen or waters poisoned to supply china with cheaper food and lithium.
By tying these questions together in a nebulous “is china socialist” (by which you mean “good” rather than any marxist analysis) you confuse the matter and make discussion impossible. China has reduced poverty in China during one of the greatest increases in global poverty in world history—see for example the massive land grabs and dispossesions in Africa from the 00s on.
It remains to be seen whether China will dismantle the global systems of imperialist oppression (the institutions they joined in the 90s and 00s like the imf, wto, world bank etc) to allow the global population to also stop being fucked over, or take them over and merely reform them while BRICS becomes a new G20 or OECD. It remains to be seen whether they will return to supporting revolutionaries like the USSR and Cuba, or if they will continue to trade with Israel and the Phillipines and the USA while they commit genocides and snuff out revolutions. It remains to be seen if, as the USA collapses and oyher global south countries can increase their working and living conditions, China will accept these losses. But based on how China doesnt seem to do much about the industrial abuses their companies commit overseas (thinking especially of the big mining disaster in africa a while ago), my hopes are sadly at a record low atm.
Imperialism is a world system, any participation in the global economy as a winner (and china is increasingly a winner) is participation in imperialism. You are the one deviating from lenin’s theory by turning it into a set of policies a nation can choose or reject. Youve turned critical support agaisnt imperialism into uncritical support against criticism.
That said, your comrades are 100% wrong on Cuba imo, both bc of the supply situation and bc the USSR was much less helpful there than it could or should.have been (because, from Khrushchev on, the USSR also increasingly operates according to the laws of value and commodity circulation, or, as one of the leaders of the communist party of british guyana put it in the 60s when the soviets wouldnt give help developing their industry bc it wouldnt benefit soviet economy enough: “theyre just as businesslike on this [east] side of the iron curtain as the other”)
I’m posting it anonymously without mentioning my org. A violation of democratic centralism would be to publicly rant about it Trotsky style. The act of posting this here exposes me to other viewpoints and research such as yours, which contributes to my ideological growth.
Regarding your explanation of M-C-M’, China does operate to a certain extent according to the capitalist mode of production, this much is obvious, that doesn’t mean that they can be described a capitalist country anymore than you’d describe Lenin’s New Economic Policy as capitalist, or agriculture during the Stalin eras as capitalist (most farmers were organized in cooperatives which did reproduce the M-C-M’ cycle and operated under the profit motive, only with most grain being sold not on free markets but at fixed prices designated by the state).
Whether China is a socialist country goes beyond the dominant mode of production, and any analysis lumping together China with, say, Germany or the USA, is bad analysis. China being a dictatorship of the proletariat is a much more useful definition of it being a socialist country, note I said socialist and not communist. Nowhere in your comment do you mention that China developed in a world dominated by western capital. Failing to acknowledge the realities of siege socialism / actually existing socialism in the current world and focusing exclusively on the internal economic relations will lead to ultra-left analysis.
It does remain to see whether China will dismantle the global systems of imperialist oppression, but the fact that they are a dictatorship of the proletariat would lead one to think that this is their endgoal in the long term, which they themselves say is communism, and that their current geopolitical stance and economic relation with the rest of the world is a matter of strategy and not of ideology. It’s also lazy and selfish to expect other countries to do the work of revolution for you, and while I agree there should be criticism of China and even a degree of skepticism, it should primarily come from support of its project and not from rejection of their extremely successful model.
As I said before: leaving aside the realities of siege socialism is bad analysis. Ask yourself this question: is China in a better position in 2026 to start a struggle against global imperialism than it was in 1980? Throwing oneself naked at the guns of capitalism may seem like a very honourable thing to do, but the fact is that China survives and western capitalism patently doesn’t want it to.
Your final bit on the USSR operating under the laws of value and commodity circulation in international exchange is simply wrong, btw, there is extended analysis of this in Albert Szymanski’s “Is the Red Flag Flying”, and the numbers are given proving that the USSR didn’t engage in the way whatever Guyanan official declared in 1960. The USSR actually mostly invested in foreign countries through direct industrialization schemes, where they would loan the necessary materials or industrial goods or even currency to put the industry there in the first place, and then they’d receive the payment back in kind in the industrially produced goods. This can be hardly described as “the Soviets wouldn’t give help developing their industry”. The USSR also put itself in the short end of the stick of unequal exchange by being a net exporter of raw materials and energy resources to the eastern block, and a net importer of industrially produced goods, which made possible the industrialization of the rest of countries of the Eastern Block, yes, also during and after Khruschyov.
Dont have much time so dont have time to edit
Fair, I shouldnt have assumed your org has the same rules as mine
I would describe both of those policies as still operating within the global capitalist mode of production, overseen by a dictatorship of the proletariat rebelling against that mode of production with the goal of building productive forces to defend against imperialism/counterrevolution and transition towards socialism. I try to avoid phrases like “capitalist country” or “socialist country” (or “imperialist country”) as I view such formulations as overly simplistic and anti-marxist. For me the gold standard of description of economic systems is the opening line’s of capital, describing “societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production”; I would describe all socialist projects such societies. A major goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to struggle against and dismantle the capitalist mode of production towards the goal of establishing a community of producers and eventually abolishing the commodity form.
As I’ve said, I don’t think the phrase “socialist country” or “socialism” is a synonym for “dictatorship of the proletariat”. The terms describe two different things imo.
China sided with the Americans against the USSR to get the west to lift its economic siege so it could abandon the economic aspects of siege socialism in favour of integration in the global economy. I have mentioned the current state of affairs of China, which, far from being under siege is at the centre of many of the global imperialist institutions. To my understanding, ultraleftism is a tactical rather than analytical error, i.e. forming a sect instead of participating in the mass movements. Lenin didn’t disagree with the dutch and italian ultraleft bc he thought their analysis of trade unions and parliament being reactionary was wrong, he criticised them because he believed their tactic of abstaining from participation in reactionary trade unions and parliament was wrong
And imo, the more powerful China gets, the more opportunities to weaken America it lets pass with mere strongly worded letters, the more they don’t discipline their companies as strongly for abuses internationally as domestically, the more in feels they’ve transitioned into exactly the sorta social imperialists Deng worried might emerge with his policies.
I don’t expect them to do the work of revolution for me, I am disappointed that they no longer express much material solidarity with other revolutionary organisations and in fact trade with and supply reactionary regimes like Israel, the USA and the Phillipines. Criticial support in the context of the west means, imo, absolute support for China against western imperialism, in particular NATO’s current drive towards war, while internally among comrades acknowledging and analysing the current shortcomings.
No, imo they’re in a much worse position considering their integration into the global economy (including their supply of US dollars!) has made them try to talk Iran down repeatedly from challenging global imperialism and disrupting China’s trade, as well as not pursuing de-dollarisation back in 2022. They might have sufficient resources to win a struggle against global imperialism, but their integration has made them increasingly unlikely to want to disrupt the status quo by starting a struggle against global imperialism.
The official in question is Janet Jagan, found the name, if you were curious. She asked the USSR for aid, and the USSR decided they wouldn’t be able to produce enough stuff in kind to make it economically worthwhile for the USSR. Loans and repayment of certain value of goods is exactly what I am talking about with the law of value still prevailing, not just the use of money.
You think China would be in a better position if they didn’t have a seat at the UN and the US still recognized the ROC as the representative of all of China? Interesting take.
A better position to challenge imperialism yeah. “A better position” by itself is abstract and means nothing
You’ve already explained how if the siege had continued China might be in an ideologically more militant (better in your mind) position to challenge imperialism but that means nothing without the material means to back it up. Could you explain how China being less developed in every way through being cut off from the world would improve it’s ability to challenge imperialism?
If China had not taken the path of development Cuba would have no solar infrastructure to help it withstand the imperialist blockade and would not have received over a hundred thousand tons of food aid, the DPRK would not have been able to leverage China for their own developmental miracle, most of Africa would not have alternative developmental pathways and would still be under the thumb of the IMF and world bank, Iran would not have the drone and missile architecture it has since it is built in large part on Chinese dual use components and rocket precursor.
Your ultraleftism sounds revolutionary and great from an ideological point of view but ideology removed from material reality holds no meaning. You also seem to lump all of the blame for the Sino-Soviet split on China with the nebulous idea of China jumping into opportunism simply wanting to escape sanctions but make no mention of Moscow’s wrongs of attempting to subordinate Beijing (which created the initial wedge).
I think your second paragraph us very good criticism, thanks for it. In particular i had no idea about irans missiles.
To answer the first paragraph I think without China’s supply of labour and resources imperialism probably wouldnt have been able to rebound like it did in the 80s and 90s
Re: ultraleftism, thats an issue of tactics not analysis. Ultraleftism is when you go around campaigning and shouting about how bad china is, helping NATO drive towards their war against China. Ultraleftism is not when you criticise china to other comrades.
Re: sinosoviet split, i dont “blame” china for splitting with the ussr, i “blame” them for joining ranks with the western imperialists against the ussr. I agree with most of chinas criticisms of the ussr (e.g.,revisionism, hegemonism and cancelling economic programmes); i dont think this justified throwing in with the western imperialists
I think this is clearly wrong as if China didn’t open it’s economy to take in this manufacturing (on great terms for china might I add as we’re seeing with the benefits of tech transfer etc) it would have been pushed onto the likes of India (as it has been in recent times anyway) without the benefits of building a real counter balance to present hegemony.
Again I disagree, this is a reductive take on ultraleftism. Taking bordiga as an example the issue with his party line was not simply that they campaigned against existing socialism of the time but that their criticisms were sterile and negative stemming from poor analysis. In a similar vein the KKE and their pyramid of imperialism nonsense is ultra leftist analysis that obscures the material reality of what imperialism truly is and how it functions which is again not simply an issue of tactics but of poor analysis.
I agree with this largely however it is important to look at matters from the perspective of the actors of the time. I simply felt in your previous comment you appeared to be simplifying what was a tragedy caused by serious missteps on both sides to a fantasy of China simply seeking sanctions relief and self gain in siding against Moscow with no mention of how Moscow created the initial wedge through their attempts to subordinate the Chinese project rather than seeing us as equal.
Imo (as I’ve said elsewhere in the barrage of replies, sorry if i already said it to you) given the dictatorship of the bourgeois and what i’ve read about mao era china and the transition to markets (stuff like “From Commune to Capitalism” and “The Battle for China’s Past”) they’d end up more like Cuba than India if they’d held course
This disagreement is more semantics than substantial, but i’d call that a “poor analysis” and explain what the problems are rather than calling it “ultraleftist” and moving on
unrelated to anything else, but i’m in an org that subscribes to the kke’s imperialist pyramid thingy and i still don’t understand what the difference is between it and imperial core / periphery lol