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!
Thanks for the elaborate response. I actually bought Rockhill’s book and is on my reading list, I’m pushing it up right now! I’ve heard Rockhill already, some talks of his which are uploaded to YouTube by ChemicalMind, and some interviews to podcasts like The Deprogram, but I’m so interested in understanding the actual, specific underlying reasons for the existence of the so-called compatible left
I listened to several interviews with Rockhill too - I was eager to learn more while I waited for a non-PDF version of the book. The ones I heard were good but mostly covered the same ground as each other. A couple of weeks ago, though, The Black Myths Podcast released a very different, praxis-focused interview with him.
https://blackmyths.libsyn.com/myth-all-marxisms-are-created-equal-w-gabriel-rockhill
The hosts ask how he sees his findings applying to the concrete practice of organizing in the US, and his answer surprised me. He notes that the compatible left was always meant to be a temporary concession by the bourgeoisie, with the ultimate goal being to remove any and all space for Marxism. In the context of the stated goal for his work being to help reorient the Western left against imperialism, his thesis in short is that in many instances this goal will require tactically working to defend elements of the compatible left from attacks by the right.
He said it might be a tough pill to swallow, and for me it was. At first I thought he had to be wrong, because it sounded like he was suggesting we undialectically try to push history backward. But situating it in the context of rapidly changing material conditions, I’ve started to think he’s right. Anticommunism can no longer rely on perverting people’s evaluation of real material conditions to sustain its legitimacy, increasingly leading to the failure of mechanisms used to harness compatible left sentiments toward imperialist ends.