this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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industrial development also is a highly contextual term, what does it mean when a country has enough industrial development? It doesn't mean anything, its purely in relation to others. It is the development of productive forces, which can be done under socialism better than it can under capitalism. I'm saying that full 'development' is just not a good thing to strive for. Every country cannot be as 'developed' as the parasite that is the core, because if it does it would mean exploiting the resources and capital of several earths. Natural capital would not survive. We need to degrow the development in the first world since much of it exists to profit from extracting goods from the south. Without colonial extraction, unequal exchange, and whatnot many of those industries wouldn't be able to exist.
I too recognize that we do need some industrial centers in order to produce the necessary goods to effectively generate goods for the nation and people, but I just cant understand trying to become 'developed' when that just means becoming the exploiter, not the exploited. We should end exploitation and redistribute actually existing wealth back, their food back, their land back, and live just dandy without all this blood capital. Equal footing per capita.
im still learning and hammering out my viewpoints and ideology, but I cannot abide by a view that is totally class and economy essentialist, without taking in consideration of the necessary reality of solving the crisis of capitalism.
Full development doesn't have a definition.
This is not China's approach. They are not trying to develop every country to the same level as the imperial core. They are trying to develop their country, the current leading socialist country, beyond the development levels of the imperial core. That's a huge difference. Why would you judge China by the standard of "should every country do exactly what you're doing?"
And what is the path to this degrowth? While you figure that out, China is worrying about the actual material conditions of a billion people, which includes far better stewardship of the environment than any country in the North Atlantic.
Do you, though? Because in the next breath you literally say:
So either you understand that we need industrial centers or you don't. Which is it?
Personally, I don't think we need industrial centers. I think that developing an anti-imperialist industrial center is likely the only path to full decolonization, but the process of decolonization will likely include the distribution and embedding of industrial capacities much more evenly, and technological developments will be focused on resilient and circular industry that can be distributed far and wide so avoid any centralization. The only way to get there, though, is through centralized development. This is essentially a fractal of centralization of political power under the party until such time as reactionary forces have been eliminated and governance capabilities have been distributed downward towards smaller and smaller polities.
And how do you propose we get there? China's current strategy is to intermediate imperial commodity flows. The West is consuming no matter what. If China doesn't produce for them, they will produce for themselves or they will neocolonize another locale and do production there. The consumption is happening, the production is happening, the exploitation is happening. These are material conditions that are massive in scale and impossible to change overnight. China has maneuvered itself between the imperial core and the periphery. It now has intermediated the consumption, production, and exploitation that was already happening. It has not created more of it. In fact, through it's own social development it has reduced exploitation, but only by a modicum. Through it's lending practices, it has reduced exploitation globally, but only by a modicum. The more it intermediates, the more power it has to decide what is going to happen. The more it fights the West on principle, the less it fights the West materially.
China's solution to socialism is not going to be understood for many decades. We only understood what Deng was doing decades after he did it. We only understood China joining the WTO as a gambit 15 years after it joined. Not even the West understood what was going on and they had all the power to figure it out. China is playing Weiqi (Go). They are not trying to dominate the world and then impose their ideology on it. They are trying to build something truly sustainable. The current biggest threat to any sustainable society is the US war machine. China's solution to that is Seki (Mutual Life). If war is the process by which a capitalist bloc destroys the productive capacity of a competitor, than every single society that tries to develop itself into self-sufficient will be bombed by the USA. China's solution? Make it so that bombing China is equivalent to bombing the imperial core. How did they do that? They did everything necessary to attract American capital to develop their productive capacity. Now it's American and European capital that will be destroyed if the USA bombs China. But that's not enough. The West needed to become dependent on China for commodity production to ensure they would never bomb China. So China not only needed to attract imperial capital, it needed to make investment in China so much better than anything else that the West would voluntarily deindustrialize itself.
And that's exactly what happened. The USA and Europe absolutely went through degrowth over the last 40 years because they sent all their productive capital to China. And now, if they bomb China, their society will not be able to get the commodities it needs. China is safe from US bombs so long as it is better for the US to not bomb them. This is also why China has been focused on peace in the last 40 years, because they cannot be seen by the USA military establishment as a genuine military threat or the bombs will fly. So China has to be very careful to be defensively superior AND productively indispensable in order to avoid being carpet bombed.
And you know what, China could just stop there. Join the imperialist camp, collaborate with the international billionaires, sit on top of the world. But that's not what they're doing. They do not allow foreigners to run anything in their borders, they maintain an iron grip on their land reform strategy, they execute corrupt billionaires, they do not ever let private companies get big without deep integration with the state for control. They continue to educate the entire population on Marxism.
And they could stop there, and just be a rich nation that is self-sufficient and doing well for itself. But that's not what they're doing. They are building coalitions with anti-imperialist nations, they are building coalitions with historically colonized nations, they are providing an alternative to the North Atlantic financial hegemony (WTO, World Bank), they are engaging in diplomacy between long-standing enemies and brokering peace, they are contributing to the development of critical infrastructure in historically colonized nations and they are building momentum on developing national capabilities and capacity that are owned and operated by historically colonized nations.
We are never going to understand what the cutting edge of socialist revolutionary experimentation is doing. We didn't understand everything the USSR was doing the year it did - it took decades to understand what they were doing, why, and how it was working. You don't get to judge these experiments in real-time. You have to use analytical methods that require you to posit multiple hypotheses (e.g. they are doing it right. they are doing it wrong. they are disoriented and scrambling. they are fighting internal counter-revolutionary movement. etc) and then develop a historical analysis over the past N years to support your hypothesis. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of fashioning an ideal standard in a vacuum and then cherry-picking from history to show violations of our purity test or using current events to show violations of our purity test. We have to accept that we have no idea what's going on and that the "fog of war" for socialist experimentation spans at least 5 years and, if history is any guide, likely closer to 20 years.
I apologize for my recent anger, I spent a while writing up those and I got very passionate. I do believe you are a devoted Marxist Leninist, and have given serious time to formulate responses to my points which I thank you for. Although I disagree with much of your points so far, I am glad to have actual counter critique and arguments. Although its not that all the time, neither am I also lacking in areas.
I cannot argue with this. My position wasn't established very well. I am still developing my analysis. My concern is just taking more than can be regenerated, or trying to reach western style 'developed' status. Everyone with a car, a suburb house, countless commodities for personal use, and the like. I do not think such is sustainable nor necessary. Who really needs their own car? Not many, with a well developed public transport system (like china has, in fact they have the best one in the world). It is a mindset that had the USSR biting off more than it could chew, without realizing that the standards of the west were sustained by Imperial profits. China took a piece of the pie in such profits and many sections of its government want to do something similar. Although from my view its not the ones in charge currently. I hope they are unable to take a leadership role.
I do not blame China for providing for its citizens, I of course think its a necessity and one that the PRC under Xi has handled very well. Especially with the green campaigns and future economic development massively investing in green energy and environmental friendly development. But you don't need capitalism for this. Cuba has some of the highest living standards in the world even while blockaded due to their socialist economy. They were able to develop a large medical sector, many productive forces, and such while on an 8 hour work day and without removing their socialist protections.
Most of what I mean is that a lot of capitalist development around the world doesn't serve any purpose and we could do with doing a massive cutting down on it. The crisis of overproduction is building and is already at levels that are devastating. I don't blame china of course, or its economy, as the main force behind this is western capital. I just see it as necessary to solve overproduction, something capitalism is unable to do. Something Capitalism always tends towards.
Just because the red social democracy has some successes, doesn't mean that capitalism somehow doesn't exist when you succeed.
the confusion over this is solved simply: there must be a balance. I do not blame china for this, but even if the west dies such a view of constant growth and development cannot continue.
The only people who had no idea what china was doing or why are people who have no idea whats going on, namely the west. The west thought that capitalism = becoming western democracy and capitulation to them.
Yes, that is what i'm saying. China integrated into global capitalism in order to avoid capitalist encirclement. It has made global capital interest its own interest. It will not destory something that is so deeply tied to it, even against its own interest. They are massively increasing exports in order to have a trade surplus, to the massive detriment of their internal consumption. @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net has many good posts on the subject. China will not change capitalism being the dominant economic system.
I never said that china would become the next US, they are a different type of hegemon, but one that engages in capitalist exploitation all the same. Far more sensible, far more humanistic, far more diplomatic, far better deal, but only in relation to the US.
They do not want to be subsumed into western capitalism, they are an emerging economy that wants to establish their own influence. They are taking a state capitalist approach to growing their economy with western capital investment and growing their national capitalists.
I dont know what you mean by foreigners run anything in borders?
Land has been privatized, large rent speculation companies exist and contribute to rising prices.
Again, state capitalism, just because the state exists within the economy, doesn't mean it doesn't serve capitalist interests. Again, Deng thought that private ownership of any more than 10 percent of the economy would definitely signal that reforms had failed and capitalism had been restored.
their education on marxism is lacking, as many people who enter the party learn about marxism leninism just to move up in the party while still being just liberals. The Shanghai Clique is an example of this. Many people don't have a very complex definition of socialism when asked. Some is better than none, but don't say some is all.
this proves very little, there is a tenious alliance between emerging capitalist economies to fight thehegemon
This is irrelevant. Of course things become clearer over time, but that does not mean critiquing china is wrong because we haven't had the big surprise yet! I am not holding them to a pure standard, I am critiquing them for the existence of a state capitalist economy and their revision of the definition of 'building socialism', among other things. I am holding them to the standards of their own leaders and thinkers, not a vaccuum at all. This is just nonsensical dismissal. Critical support has no meaning to yall anymore does it? I am not a china hater, but that doesn't mean I am just falling in line waiting for 2050 to suddenly have them turn around and say 'this is socialism now'. Market Socialism is not the savior ya'll think it is, or do i have to show yugoslavia as an example.