Like the title says, I'm new to Marxism and have only read a couple works relating to socialism. I don't think I know enough about Marxism to firmly define myself into any "type" (although council communism sounds pretty interesting.) Second Thought and Yugopnik are what got me into Marxism, but more recently I've been listening to Socialism For All's audiobooks and reaction videos while driving. In his reaction video to The Deprogram's China Episode, he makes some interesting points about how China could become "social imperialist" and succeed the US/NATO as the new imperialist global hegemon, among some other things. From an outsider's perspective, I don't consider the current China socialist because of the fact that private property and many other capitalist elements still exist within it, but I do appreciate how much it has been able to develop over the past few decades, like poverty reduction and massive infrastructure projects that wouldn't be possible with typical liberal democracies. People excuse the private property and "restricted" capitalism as necessary evils until China has the conditions to create socialism, but I have doubts about whether China's still even working towards socialism or whether the Chinese proletariat actually hold power over the bourgousie. China doesn't support communist movements internationally, and the liberalized economy has gone on far longer than the NEP in the soviet union despite both being created for the same reason, and I can't seem to find a good reason why it's lasted this long. (I also have concerns about privacy and the fact that access to the outside internet is restricted, although that's not really related to this topic.) I'd stumbled across this reddit thread a while ago, and while I know reddit isn't the best place for serious discussion, I think that the person in the video does make good points, as do the people in both the r/TankieTheDeprogram and r/ultraleft threads and I honestly don't know what to think or who to take seriously in that discussion. I would appreciate if anyone could give me a genuine response to these concerns, thanks.
Edit: Thank you all so much for the responses! I've learned quite a bit reading them, although I haven't had a chance to check out the links people have sent yet. I'll try to update this post with any new questions and respond to comments whenever I have time.
From an outsider's perspective, I consider myself someone who knows very little about China. I've learned a lot more than I knew before since my time on lemmygrad, but there is still a lot I'm unclear on or only have a vague impression of.
How much do you actually know about China? Have you been to China? Have you heard directly from Chinese marxists and anti-imperialists in China? Have you examined what China's leaders are doing and saying in detail, or are only operating on vague telephone game impressions?
Western empire propaganda conditions people to look at AES states with extra suspicion, prejudice, and unrealistic (and double) standards. On top of some good ole' racism. It tends to start from the conclusion that AES states are all or any of: corrupted, a failure, oppressive. Then it looks for vague data points to support this narrative (or, failing that, makes shit up). "Somebody was treated poorly in an AES state! Look at how bad it is! It's not fully realized communism yet! Look at how bad it is! It's communist! Look at how bad it is!" Etc. And notice the contradictory examples there because that is something the western empire will do. It will argue both from an anti-communist perspective and from a purely theoretical pro-communist perspective against "communists in practice failing to do communism right." In this way, it attacks communism from multiple angles. From the "right" and from the "left".
The empire's goal is to wreck solidarity, drive people away from practical proven revolutionary solutions, and put them in an academic corner cleansed of revolutionary organizing where they can crow about how communist revolutions were never pure enough.
I decided to respond this way since others have already provided a myriad of information sources on the subject, as a more general point about interrogating how you view socialist projects (aka: AES states) and how you think about information you encounter about them. The empire, and it is one empire that we are talking about (the western one), is ruthless and shameless when it comes to lying. I could say lying about its "enemies", but often its "enemies" are peoples who don't even want to be enemies with it in the first place and would rather coexist in peace.
It's good that you're asking questions, and it's healthy to also be asking, what do I even know to begin with on this subject? If the subject was biology and I studied it in bits and pieces, am I now qualified to judge how effective career biologists are at their jobs? The point here is not to kowtow to anyone calling themself a marxist because "they know more." The point is to take seriously the nature of decades of a people practicing communism and how much depth there is involved vs. some podcasters on the internet weighing in from the outside.
We have so much to learn from places like China, Cuba, and other socialist projects. Our task is not to figure out to what degree we should be condemning or praising them, but to figure out what we can learn from them and implement where we are, so that we can build a better world together. Not to say condemning or praising shouldn't ever happen, but it's often beside the point. The primary point is to be able to enact revolutionary goals and that requires depth of practice and study, not superficial passing of judgment of existing socialist projects.
Part of the issue is that I don't know what news I can trust. Obviously mainstream western news is going to be biased against China, but I don't know where to learn about China in a way that stays "neutral" I guess, since I feel like reading Chinese media will only show me the good side of things, the same as any country's news would do.
Maybe this will help: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11544287
But also, try Xiaohongshu / Red Note. It may be a more casual way to get views from Chinese people living in China than filtering everything through a publication. Just understand they are not all going to be full-throated practicing communists.
Right that's the easiest triangulation. Convince people all "state media" (public broadcasting) is inherently unreliable. The US + allies run the largest scene of "independent" magazines and papers, often showing up before actual African countries' public broadcasting in search results. So of course they would encourage you to trust some "random" private shit that's out there. Or the paper of a "neutral" country that is actually one of the financial satrapies and focused on propaganda in its region, e.g. you all endlessly pretending Al-Jazeera is reliable even when you know better. Or pretending the Intercept isn't funded by Pierre Omidyar.
There's also the problem that the alternative MSM / compatible left alt media get "the scoop" first, that being leaked information literally nobody else can get from the most powerful and evil finance + surveillance firms in the world (their "anonymous sources in the know" can easily control them this way). So yeah sometimes Klippenstein does actually find out the US is doing something evil 30 seconds faster. But then he also drops the fake Luigi manifesto on us and nukes his entire chance of the US public believing he is innocent from anyone who buys it.
I can tell other people don't notice this because they're not doing shit like scraping the news with regex and #actuallyreadingthearticles it's not even hard.