I posted that one comment from another thread on lemmygrad on the reddit thread, an analysis of why China is socialist. I’ll put it in the comments.
The idea that a moneyless, classless society can develop from any hierarchical structure is ludicrous and demonstrably false at this point.
Anarchist taking down anarchism with one fell “holier than thou” swoop.
What do they even think it means, i seen that very same sentence few times and was pretty puzzled.
If I was being extremely charitable, I would think it means “A state cannot naturally develop into statelessness, the state must be destroyed.”
Though far more likely it just means “Help, my brain is like swiss cheese from all these brainworms.”
I once asked about that, how does they want to reach the statelessness from what we currently have, since all current societies are class societies. I expected he would answer something like “revolution” since they had at least that point covered usually, but no, he started to debate pervert me with some not very related things. After wading though that for i while it turned out he didn’t understand what “class society” means and how it relate to the state. He also completely couldn’t parse any concept of having anything transitional or even the transition itself.
The way I interpret it (without much thought to be fair, I’ve got more important things to spend my time on than reddit anarkiddies), is that the long process of the state withering away proposed by Marx means a whole lot of time spent on the transitional yet still in part “stated classed moneyed” society. This is unacceptable to an anarchist, who just wants us to press the end-game communism button and be done with it.
Of course they haven’t developed their analytical skills whatsoever, so they can’t see that both situations have a classless moneyless society being built out of a moneyed hierarchical society, where only one actually has a path to success. The other has a path to, well, I’m not even sure where anarchism leads.
IE, “if you want to build a castle out of legos, you have to skip the building part. Just go straight to the castle (instructions unclear)”
The trot version of this: “your castle is doomed to fail unless europe builds one first.”
“Buh b but all the redfash authoritankietarian states have been around for decades and haven’t withered away yet. That means they were never meant to wither away and that the marxists just want to be the new ruling class!”
– an anarchist, probably
There’s a reason why anarchism is often portrayed as an appropriate way to rebel against authority in the western media while Marxism is invariably demonized.
you don’t need some long winded pseudo intellectual essay
But here goes anyway
There’s just something so ridiculous about anarchists trying to give anyone advice, considering they’ve never had a single historical success, and have no idea what they’re talking about. Like a middle-schooler taking biology trying to tell a professional biologist that they’re wrong.
I read Anarchy works on recommendation of several anarchists. Peter gelderloo is like the anarchrist parenti ig. Its working examples of anarchism are all primitive communism and it shrugs its shoulders at the end, acknowledging that if your anarchist society did win, they would then be surrounded by hostile armies. Like it ends with zero solution to these problems, but anarchy still works somehow
Great name for that book lol.
I have a lot of respect for Gelderloos, he’s one of the few decent anarchist writers imo, and yet still he has no solutions when it comes to our most important questions.
The analysis I posted:
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.
So yes, China is socialist.
tl:dr juat because it didn’t turn into star trek from day one and had to make concessions to imperialism, doesn’t mean it its capitalist.
another piece of that puzzle i would add how they handled covid, imo they only countries that has the moral fiber to criticize chinas policies are the other 4 socialists countries.
while the capitalist world where trying to find of sweet spot of acceptable deaths in order to save business, the 5 went far to save
This is a really good explanation.
Very interesting. Thank you. I really ought to read.
saved to send to my brother! thanks comrade 🫡
(he is a very confusing combination of demsoc/trot/ultra and idfk what’s going on)
Some other good introductory ones he might find useful:
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#is-china-state-capitalist
Do the workers own the MOP - yes
Is there private property - no, you rent the land from the government
Are there billionaires while others are in poverty - yes, wow a 1.4B population developing country coming out of a century of humiliation has uneven development!
Are there sweatshops and child labor - no
China is socialist
Can someone post that clip of Hillary where she admits the problem with china is literally who owns the means of production. Like she even uses the phrase
Ok for the land but are the factories, machines and offices on ranted land also owned by the state?
Yes, every inch of land is owned / controlled by the entire people, with a maximum of 90 year leases.
I think they were asking about the means of production sitting on top of the land, not land itself. Aren’t those privately owned?
Ah, my bad. In the SEZs (special economic zones), private capital can of course paper-own their own productive equipment, but if they ever wanted to move out large-scale equipment, they would likely get export-controlled. The most-likely scenario would be that you sell it to either a state-owned company or another competing company. This differs from liberal countries which let them tear apart entire industries and cities and ship the equipment elsewhere. The primary “bargain” being not necessarily to capture the specific productive equipment, but rather to gain technological expertise that you can apply to your home-grown industries.
I see, so if I understand correctly, private corporations can on paper privately own (with caveat) means of production but only in the SEZs and that “ownership” is very restrictive such that the company isn’t allowed much control of what is to be done with those outside of using them strictly for production. Is that it? I suppose that apply to chinese national companies too? They can have their “private ownership” in the SEZs but aren’t allowed to own means of productions anywhere else in China? Not even on paper? Is everything outside of the SEZs state owned?
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Wrong. China is a mixed economy, with the state-owned enterprises dominating the economy, in nearly every industry. What private capital does exist, is in SEZs (special economic zones), and it is restricted and limited by the state, to serve its long-term goals. The chinese people collectively own the economy, the socialist surplus being used to eradicate poverty and raise the average wage by 4x in the previous 25 years.
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
You work for your boss, you buy stuff, you rent from a private landlord, etc.
Socialism doesn’t mean you don’t have a boss, buy stuff, or pay for housing.
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Why are they a mixed economy and not just a socialist market economy? Or does the latter mean the former and I’m a dope
Both are correct. I spose the latter is more talking about how goods are distributed(via a market), whereas mixed economy refers to ownership and the form of surplus (both socialist and capitalist). China undeniably has capitalist companies, but the state and state-owned enterprises are dominant in every industry, must adhere to the plans set out by the state, etc.
Because like 60% of their economy is on owned and centrally planned.
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The real socialists and communists, the anarchists, have notoriously been betrayed and murdered by the state socialists when they fight back against this obvious powrer grab and betrayal of the working class.
Not only do I firmly believe that this person has no idea about which one was the role of the Four Elders in the Shanghai Massacre was: I am also completely convinced that they know neither who the Four Elders are, nor what the Shanghai Massacre was.
tbf I don’t know much about the Shanghai massacre. Care to enlighten me?
In 1927 the CPC was purged and massacred after Jiang Jieshi (you may know him as Chiang Kai-Shek) and the rightists took power of the KMT following Sun Zhongshan’s death, ending the previous collaboration between the parties.
“The four elders, that’s like…from The Last Airbender, right? That show reminded me how evil tankies were and that we need to free Tibet!”
They know wholesome chungus Makhno and Catalonia. They don’t know that their favorite bandit king initiated hostilities and that Catalonia was an unmigitated disaster.
Anarchists when you ask them why the arrival of the Black Army to Mennonite colonies was usually followed by an increase in cases of STDs amongst their inhabitants.
Having never read a book is one of the core tenants of anarchism. They become marxist once they do or become fascists when they don’t.
I looked this up and I’m not seeing anyone in charge who remotely acts like an anarchist? It seems like it was nationalists and criminals versus leftists.
I really don’t agree with the whole “the state communists are coming for us” vibe regardless, so please don’t see this as anything other than curious discussion. At least y’all want to help me pay for my estrogen.
Anyways, I feel like if this person was a REAL anarchist (lmao) they would be complaining mostly about the fucking socdems, who would sooner pay fascists to kill us and advertisers to alienate us. If anything, statcoms make it far easier to achieve our goals as anarchists, because you aim to educate, feed, and house the population while giving them increasing levels of personal freedom.
Pls no dogpile
Again, read about the Four Elders, beginning with Zhang Renjie. Staunch anti-communist anarchists that held enough influence inside the KMT to influence Chiang Kai-shek to initiate a purge against communists that killed in a single blow more marxists than in all events of “betrayal” against anarchists together.
Of course you will never hear of this event from an anarchist, since it goes completely against the myth of christian-like martyrdom and persecution they love to surround themselves with.
I feel like the distinction between right-wing and left-wing anarchy should be of some importance?
I genuinely don’t see how I have any similarities in ideology to a person who would genocide leftists and communists, as well as establish their friend as a national ruler for 46 years. It seems like the man just said whatever he thought people wanted to hear so he could retain his wealth and power. A politician.
I don’t trust someone’s ideology immediately after they claim they’re a leftist, so I don’t expect statcoms to do the same, but y’all clearly see us as an enemy, regardless of our material effects. I don’t agree that someone who was given anarchism for fun by their girl and then purged leftists is someone I personally consider an anarchist.
That’s like saying I bought one Eminem album and now I’m a Stan. Actions speak louder than words, and arguing that since I’m an anarchist I’d somehow be inclined to do the same as Renjie is potato-brained. Were I to do the same, I could continually call statcoms out for purging Jewish people, though that would be equally in bad faith, as the Red Guard did the vast minority of pogroms compared to the White Army and Ukraine.
I don’t think I hear about this from anarchists because they have a better grasp on cause and effect than the people who want to try doing exactly what a failed nation and an authoritarian regime have in the past.
Just because you say you’re doing a communism doesn’t mean you ever did. Unless communism is “when the government does stuff.” This is baby shit, the simplest levels of synthesization that I would expect someone able of comprehending theory to understand, if they graduated high school.
That’s a nice rant. It’s unfortunate that most of it has little to do with what I was talking about in the first place.
My message is not representing a supposed belief that you, dear out of place anarchist, have some kind of deep and hidden urge to grab a sword and start decapitating communists on the streets in the manner in which Renjie’s actions resulted in. The premise of my message, since the beginning, is that anarchists as a whole are very prone to embrace a culture of victimisation while being very much ignorant of their less than innocent history (or at least, the one that carries their label) when it comes to either dealing with other leftists or dealing with the populations that their projects encompassed.
The Shanghai Massacre is far from being the only example that exists of anarchists screwing over other leftists, so if in this case you want to dismiss it as “no real anarchism”, there is plenty more for you to choose. The CNT/FAI of Spain, the pride of anarchist history and often characterized as brave soldiers of freedom betrayed by the evil stalinist tankies, is as equally guilty of sectarianist offensives, with the reason of them being “purged” (not by a “statcom” NKVD plot, but by the Spanish Republican faction in general) was for blocking communications between heads of government of the Republic during wartime, effectively yielding territory to fascism because their social revolution against the Republic was more important than halting the nationalist armies. Not enough of a good example? Perhaps you may want to research for yourself who was the responsible for the city of Madrid fall to Franco, and which ones his political sympathies were.
Someone wants to be an anarchist? No problem for me. But the same way it is a duty for MLs to have to do extensive research on Gulags, purges and so on, it is also the duty of anarchists to know about the darker parts of their history the same way they often reprimaind MLs for theirs, and perhaps this way learn how hypocritical the “tankies have always betrayed us” argument really is.
Nice self-aggrandizing and frankly pedantic rant, but I wasn’t arguing in favor of “tankies have always betrayed us”. If you read what I said you can clearly see that I think the poster in the image is acting like a feckless, unread idiot who at best needs to just keep statcoms at arms length. I don’t have issue with taking historical actions of people I aspire to into account, but the way you approach it is like a kindergarten teacher.
I wasn’t arguing in favor of “tankies have always betrayed us”
So? It was the point of my first comment nonetheless. That you had to come and for some reason reply to it “not all anarchists are like that, I am one of the good ones” changes neither the fact that the anarchist movement is characterized by a general lack of knowledge of its own history, not my opinion of them for it. And as cherry on top, anarchist incompetence collaborated in plunging my country into fascism for 40 years as mentioned above, so excuse me for not having the same good opinion about anarchism that you have about us.
I’m trying to communicate that there are anarchist groups that do not have the same issues, as they are constantly working with MLs in the area, and have generally acted as their armed guards, in the sense that they protect unarmed leftists during collective action. This is local to me. I’m really just trying to show that anarchists can be good and helpful, just not ones like this. I’m also unable to find a source on the “fact” that the anarchist movement is characterized by a lack of knowledge of its history.
I’m sorry for coming off so argumentative, but I think I got frustrated from the lack of willingness to educate the infighters without condescension. I have had discussions easily aligning such people with a greater vanguard in the past, so I really don’t understand where the deep seated resentment with anarchochuds comes from. (Though I do not discount your localized historical reasons)
Am I appreciably more receptive than the average anarchist people talk to online? In that case, I can definitely understand the vitriol, as I imagine arguing with someone over whose side killed the most people could be quite annoying.
If not, I think y’all are obviously very reactionary in your own right, as I’ve definitely seen many of you argue in far ruder ways than I, with even less knowledge or willingness to research topics.
This kind of sentiment from anarchists is just incredibly cringe and honestly anti-communist. I don’t know how this guy could’ve read what I posted and still say it was a “LoNg wiNdEd pseUDo-iNtELLeCtuAL essay” lmao. He obviously just doesn’t understand Marxist analysis or have any realistic understanding of how the world works. He genuinely seems to think we can press the communism button and that state socialism was created in a vacuum and not because of capitalist powers forcing them into that position.
“The real socialists and communists, anarchists” BAHAHA
The only thing more authoritarian than bedtimes: Reading things.
From an anarchist perspective
Whenever I see these words, I get the same feeling I get when opening the door of a public toilet which hasn’t been flushed in a while.
When you know one of these is comin
Advice from anarchists, always unwarranted and completely useless.
Its interchangeable with “from an idealist perspective”
When I see them I ask myself why they would admit to it from the start
Shouldn’t this be in /c/shitultrassay?
Forgot that community existed. I thought it got archived or something
Average reddit comment
this analysis would also mean there has never been a socialist country, which is probably what most anarchist think anyways. either way i think that by definition a country is socialist if they are building communism, if that is the goal and what they are working towards then they are socialist.
I stopped reading at “No, China is not even remotely socialist”
When were these socialist states supposed to wither away? Would these uhhhhh ‘autonomous territories’ (not a state somehow) be left alone by the rest of the world except to provide them with beneficial and fair trade? The capitalist world they would presumably have had to do a domestic revolt against to make their 'Consensus Based Free Occupation Zone (not a state btw). After they do an anarchism there it will exist perpetually and self sustaining in a global vacuum until the rest of the world does a critical mass. Fucking Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems would say that’s a risky fucking gamble. Cause it’s guaranteed to fail as a demonstrated fact. Consolidation or dispersal of power has been the constant ebb and flow of history and switching from one to the other has generally been how new phases of history form. Tribalism to consolidated slave empires to diffuse manorialism to consolidated mercantilisim to diffuse modern capitalism I don’t think it’s some woo predestination thing, it’s just how one status quo is replaced by another, one is the others weakness to be exploited and that do be the cycle. Communism at least anticipates it’s own diffusion and hopes for it.
All you gotta do is ask an anarchist how they would protect their revolution once they’ve overthrown the capitalist regime. And if they are unwilling to admit that whatever state experiment they’ve constructed is in fact a state, then they’re not worth discussing with anymore.
How this convo usually goes:
A: “Its not a STATE!!! Its an autonomous federated syndicated collective for mutual …” [goes on for 10 minutes]
M: Okay, then what prevents literally anyone (other anarchists especially) from calling your “collective” a state, and you an authoritarian redfash tankie?
A: “SHUT UP”
They’ll say they don’t need to because they’ll have the Perfect Riot that makes everyone be on their side. Then we can have no states or corporations but the idea of both really fresh in everyone’s mind and no centralized authority to stop anyone from practicing it even more brutally than before. To be an anarchist under capitalism is to be an anarcho capitalist whether you like it or not.
From what I see the criticism is that China isn’t doing enough to assist the workers of the world in overthrowing their own governments and replacing them with socialist ones. I’m afraid that they’ve devolved into ‘peaceful coexistence’ same as the Soviet Union, which will build internal contradictions and ultimately cause them them to backslide into capitalism just like it did the Soviets.
So yeah government/vanguard cannot either while they’re surrounded by enemies, but they’re not doing enough to eliminate those enemies either
You can disagree with China’s strict non-interventionism, and its refusal to get involved in war-quagmires and export revolution like the USSR did (that ultimately proved to be a massive drain on the USSR’s economy via the cold-war-arms-race), but it doesn’t make them any less socialist.
The CPC underwent tremendous struggle to liberate China from foreign domination, and they believe it’s the responsibility of each country to do that same difficult work of liberating themselves.
I do disagree. Like, to me the basic philosophy that underpins socialism is that if someone needs help you should do your best to help them… as opposed to talking about how it’s their own responsibility to help themselves
How many socialist countries that the Soviet Union once fully supported still exist?People don’t cherish what they are given, they only cherish what they gain through struggle.
“people don’t cherish what they are given” isn’t this a classic right wing talking point tho. like, bootstraps ideology
This is reality. The difference between left and right It lies in people’s subjective behavior rather than denying objective existence.
