By most metrics i’d give favour to China over comparable projects; China has a 90% house ownership rate in a country of a billion+ people, has a network of high speed rails all over it and subway systems in most major cities.
There are always halfway points to devolopment in society; go read ‘Critique of the german ideology’ by Marx, he goes into stages of devolopments.
To call it that would actually be exactly right, minus the ‘real socialism’ bit; My question is how do you build socialism? All at once? Was industrialization built in one motion? Slavery abolished in one step? Of course not, its a project to work towards; China is working towards it. It is ‘real’.
We have started, but how will it all end? Stalin and the USSR also started, but how did it all end? Stalin was poisoned, and the USSR was betrayed and destroyed.
Just because one socialist project collapsed (under intense seige of most global super powers) doesnt mean all are doomed to fail, or not worth pursuing.
The chinese socialist project lives and is thriving, its not in an 80s death spiral like the USSR, its actually pulling ahead of america and is now the biggest economy on the planet due to socialist planning; this enables it to keep wages low due to the fact houses are all owned by the workers.
Like in Shenzen, rent is 80% lower than in London on average; if you imagine how that reduces labour costs, when you dont need to pay rent. It increases competitveness. Shenzhen is also a much nicer city than London.
That’s not how it works. A system cannot be “half socialism half capitalism” as these two concepts quite literally contradict each other.
Socialism is the process of transition from capitalism to communism. It’s defined by a society where the proletariat has become the ruling class, after having the former ruling class overthrown through revolution; a society where the state serves the interests of the workers and naturally withers away (as Lenin puts it) as the concept of class begins to disappear (as we get closer to communism). For more info on this, you can read state and revolution, by Lenin. As for dialectical and historical materialism, you can read Socialism: utopian and scientific, by Engels
Capitalism is the system that came after feudalism and before Socialism. It’s defined by giving full power to the Bourgeoisie and, contrary to under Socialism, the state serves the interests of the Bourgeoisie. It can be split into several stages:
Early capitalism (idk the marxist term for it): Trade agreements between bourgeois
Monopoly Capitalism: As the nature of Capitalism naturally leads to monopolization, the means of production are at a large scale concentrated in the hands of a few.
Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism: Capitalism needs infinite growth and expansion to survive, so it exports capital (workers, firms, factories) abroad in order to expand and increase profits.
~My definitions might be slightly incorrect, i haven’t had the time to read theory in a while due to life circumstances~
One could assume China is revisionist for adopting a market economy instead of a strictly planned economy, like the one in the USSR and former Socialist bloc, but this argument is fundamentally wrong, since it’s extremely idealistic to think of Socialism as a fixed set of rules that must be forced upon the material conditions of said society and not the other way around (and that’s why the “not real socialism” argument doesn’t even make any sense). The truth is that, while it’d have been more desirable for China to keep a planned economy, opening up to the West and its capital (under heavy supervision and control of the CPC) allowed China to flourish and become the very industrialized nation that it is today, and I think if Mao could see what his country became, he would be very proud.
There will be no real socialism for several reasons.
China already exists?
And compare it with the capitalist project :-)
By most metrics i’d give favour to China over comparable projects; China has a 90% house ownership rate in a country of a billion+ people, has a network of high speed rails all over it and subway systems in most major cities.
About China I heard somewhere the opinion that there is half socialism, half capitalism, and not real socialism.
There are always halfway points to devolopment in society; go read ‘Critique of the german ideology’ by Marx, he goes into stages of devolopments.
To call it that would actually be exactly right, minus the ‘real socialism’ bit; My question is how do you build socialism? All at once? Was industrialization built in one motion? Slavery abolished in one step? Of course not, its a project to work towards; China is working towards it. It is ‘real’.
We have started, but how will it all end? Stalin and the USSR also started, but how did it all end? Stalin was poisoned, and the USSR was betrayed and destroyed.
Just because one socialist project collapsed (under intense seige of most global super powers) doesnt mean all are doomed to fail, or not worth pursuing.
The chinese socialist project lives and is thriving, its not in an 80s death spiral like the USSR, its actually pulling ahead of america and is now the biggest economy on the planet due to socialist planning; this enables it to keep wages low due to the fact houses are all owned by the workers.
Like in Shenzen, rent is 80% lower than in London on average; if you imagine how that reduces labour costs, when you dont need to pay rent. It increases competitveness. Shenzhen is also a much nicer city than London.
China can also be betrayed and won in a hybrid war. Everything can change for the worse after a while if the enemies and traitors try hard.
The same premises exists for any other country on the planet, its an empty statement.
You could get hit by a car tomorrow, why try at all?
That’s not how it works. A system cannot be “half socialism half capitalism” as these two concepts quite literally contradict each other.
Socialism is the process of transition from capitalism to communism. It’s defined by a society where the proletariat has become the ruling class, after having the former ruling class overthrown through revolution; a society where the state serves the interests of the workers and naturally withers away (as Lenin puts it) as the concept of class begins to disappear (as we get closer to communism). For more info on this, you can read state and revolution, by Lenin. As for dialectical and historical materialism, you can read Socialism: utopian and scientific, by Engels
Capitalism is the system that came after feudalism and before Socialism. It’s defined by giving full power to the Bourgeoisie and, contrary to under Socialism, the state serves the interests of the Bourgeoisie. It can be split into several stages:
Early capitalism (idk the marxist term for it): Trade agreements between bourgeois
Monopoly Capitalism: As the nature of Capitalism naturally leads to monopolization, the means of production are at a large scale concentrated in the hands of a few.
Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism: Capitalism needs infinite growth and expansion to survive, so it exports capital (workers, firms, factories) abroad in order to expand and increase profits.
~My definitions might be slightly incorrect, i haven’t had the time to read theory in a while due to life circumstances~
One could assume China is revisionist for adopting a market economy instead of a strictly planned economy, like the one in the USSR and former Socialist bloc, but this argument is fundamentally wrong, since it’s extremely idealistic to think of Socialism as a fixed set of rules that must be forced upon the material conditions of said society and not the other way around (and that’s why the “not real socialism” argument doesn’t even make any sense). The truth is that, while it’d have been more desirable for China to keep a planned economy, opening up to the West and its capital (under heavy supervision and control of the CPC) allowed China to flourish and become the very industrialized nation that it is today, and I think if Mao could see what his country became, he would be very proud.
such as?
Try asking some drug lord to share at least half of his money and power with you. What do you think he or his gang will do to you? :-)
I dont think a drug lord is comperable to a socialist project honestly