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!
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
I think you misread what I said. I wasn’t saying China would have become India I’m saying India would have been used as the cheap manufacturing hub “helping imperialism rebound in the 80s and 90s” without any of the benefits of industrialising a power that could act as a counter balance to the cure hegemony.
The KKE’s “imperialist pyramid” model argues that all non-communist states form part of a single imperialist hierarchy. The problem is that this framework blurs the decisive distinction between imperialist and imperialised nations. Taken to its logical conclusion, it can lead to absurd conclusions such as: because the Democratic Republic of the Congo participates in commodity production and the world capitalist market, it is a part of the imperialist system in a politically meaningful sense. But this plainly contradicts material reality. The Congo is not an imperialist power; it is an imperialised nation. Its labour, land, minerals, and strategic resources are subordinated to foreign capital, unequal exchange, debt, comprador relations, and imperialist intervention. A country whose wealth is systematically extracted by external monopolies and global supply chains cannot be placed in the same analytical category as the powers that dominate and profit from that extraction.
The standard Marxist-Leninist position, and the more materially correct one in my view, is that the world is currently divided into three broad zones: the imperial core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery. The imperial core is the ruling bloc of imperialist nations, centred mainly in North America, Western Europe, and their allied advanced capitalist states. These countries dominate global finance, military alliances, technology, trade institutions, currency systems, and multinational capital. The periphery refers to the oppressed and imperialised nations. These countries are often rich in labour, land, minerals, agricultural products, and strategic resources, but they are structurally subordinated within the world economy, as seen clearly in the Congo. The semi-periphery sits between the two. These countries are not simply helpless colonies or fully dependent peripheral states, but they are also not dominant imperialist powers. This category can include anti-imperialist minor powers like Iran, modern socialist states, and states such as Russia, which have regional power and independent state capacity but remain outside the dominant imperialist bloc and thus take the side of anti imperialist struggle as a means to compete in a meaningful sense with the entrenched core.
The core issue with the KKE’s model is that it mistakes the existence of capitalist relations for imperialism itself. But imperialism is not merely the existence of commodity production, a bourgeois state, or integration into the world market. It is a concrete relation of domination, monopoly capital, finance capital, unequal exchange, military pressure, and the extraction of value from oppressed nations. By flattening these distinctions into a pyramid where every non-communist country is “imperialist” to some degree, the KKE replaces concrete material analysis with abstract formalism.
This is a common ultra-left error: prioritising ideological purity and hypothetical future development over present material reality. Yes, a dependent capitalist country could theoretically develop into an imperialist power under different historical conditions. But Marxists analyse the actual balance of forces as it exists now, not abstract possibilities. To call, for example, the Congo imperialist because it is capitalist is to erase the distinction between exploiter and exploited nations, weaken anti-imperialist analysis, and ultimately obscure the real structure of global capitalism.
Yeah I misread, thanks for pointing it out. I agree that would be bad, but I’m unsure how plausible that situation would be. From what ive read about the period (stuff like Vogels book on Deng), China’s labour force was much more attractive to the wests than india (the main things i see mentioned are education, sociopolitical stability and infrastructure), so they wouldnt be able to rely on india in the same way they did china
I appreciate you explaining, but I have heard similar explainations before and still fail to understand how it is different from the core-periphery model. In the former, congo is at the bottom of the imperialist pyramid, in the latter its in the periphery—in both cases its understood as being on the recieving end of imperialism (i.e. capital exported to them etc) as part of the imperialist world-system. Same thing with semipheriphery vs middle of the imperialist pyramid; in both cases its countries that both export capital and have capital exported to them.
It all feels very much like a semantics debate more than any disagreement over reality to me