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Unlike Maoism or traditional Marxism-Leninism, Deng Xiaoping Theory posits that the driving force behind the social progress of mankind isn’t class struggle, but advances in the productive forces.
“the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.” — Mao Zedong, On Contradiction
“…in consequence of the growth of productive forces, out of one system of social life another and higher system develops” — V.I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
The productive forces are the base of class, where capitalist industrialization is what leads to proletarianization and the socialization of production, which is the basis of socialism. Idealist nonsense to regard class as some immutable thing apart from the productive forces.
It is also important to note that Deng Xiaoping theory has a colossal lapse in judgement in its assumption that class struggle and economic accumulation are mutually exclusive.
Fellow Traveler! You forgot to put the document on screen where Deng writes this! Video editing is hard.
On Stalin’s quote about Sinified socialism, he in the next sentence states that the building of socialism must take into account the peculiar features of the particular country in which it is being developed, i.e. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
