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Name one time in the past 50 years that a western country has nationalized the assets of, and imprisoned or executed a corrupt billionaire found to be violating or manipulating the law to their benefit.
China on the other hand has no qualms with that. Even if allowing the corruption to continue might even be…. Profitable, in some circumstances.
Based
allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism.
Here's one of the holes.
Being a member of the CPC doesn't grant you political power any more than being a registered Democrat or Republican does. You get a vote in party matters just like Pubs and Dems get a vote in closed caucuses or primaries, and that's the extent of 'power' you get it at basic membership.
Being a wealthy party member gets you less advantage in the CPC because of the strict regulations on how money can be used in politics, i.e. you can't influence through donation. You also get excluded from considerstion for promotion. You get the same voice as every other member, and put on committees that match your area of expertise, but you're not on the promotion track toward the Central Committee if you're a billionaire.
Jack Ma built up Ant Group in the private sector and got rich but not promoted, Jiang Zemin built up First Auto Works in the state-owned sector and got promoted but not rich. They are not the same.
allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism
I'm also curious as to where this is defined.
First of all, don't start by assuming there is anything to refute - never accept the premise of an anti-communist argument without investigating whether it's actually true! Does China really have billionaires in the ranks of the party or is that just a myth that has been popularized to try and discredit the CPC in the eyes of gullible western leftists with ultra tendencies? If they do then how many and in what positions? What is the proportion of capitalists to non-capitalists in the party, and more importantly how much actual influence and power do they really have?
Do not simply accept the framing of these sorts of "gotchas", you must always dig deeper and investigate beyond the cliche phrases and surface appearances, instead looking into the actual dialectical conditions that exist. Whether or not individual capitalist elements are allowed in the ranks of the party says nothing about the fundamental class character of the party itself. If the party was supposedly taken over by revisionist and bourgeois forces, then how is it that the way the Chinese state and economy are run and the results that their system produces are still so radically different from what we see in Western capitalist systems? If the same class is supposedly in power in China as in the West why are they not experiencing the same social and economic dynamics? If the CPC is so revisionist why has it not liberalized the country into the ground and abolished itself like the CPSU did once it was hijacked by revisionists?
And bear in mind that what happened in the USSR happened despite there technically being no capitalists whatsoever in their ruling party right up until that party voluntarily totally disempowered itself and dissolved the dictatorship of the proletariat handing the country to the enemies of the working class on a silver platter. Clearly one must look not just at the composition (though that also matters) but at the guiding ideology and the dominant political line within the party, in addition to how the party is organized and how it governs in practice.
Excellently stated, comrade!
And yet china refuses to make policies that support billionaires and benefit the bourgeoisie class specifically, they instead do the opposite and fuck them over to the point where western media makes articles about how china is fucking over billionaires as if that's a bad thing.
That's what separates MLs from reactionaries and people like maoists who do not understand dialectical materialism and operates on idealism and being dogmatic.
If china really were revisionist they would be stripping social safety nets, reducing funding for public infrastructure, increasing privatization of everything that's currently public and increasing policies favoring the bourgeoisie. Change happens in elliptical motion. For example when the USSR became revisionist they switched over real quick and policies favoring the proletariat were quickly stripped away in favor of pro bourgeoisie ones. The revisionists in powere immediately enriched themselves with this.
Maoists and reactionaries don't look at objective material reality.
From the little I know (which is admittedly not a lot) China did seem to be sliding towards revisionism during the late 90's through the aughts (I think the aughts were maybe the bigger issue). In that there was so much deep corruption at all levels. Which is certainly something Xi has made a point to both acknowledge and began dealing with. I read somewhere last year or so, that it really caught the US intelligence agencies with their guards down when Chinese intelligence agents were starting to do things to show off that they knew who was in the pockets of the US and the West. I think that the issue with what has become known as "Dengism" is that the push to allow a bit of bourgeois stage of development for catching up with modern industrialism and whatnot was given too much freedom. Which allowed for folks to claim that China is socialist in name only (I really didn't mean for that to be a pun so sorry for that). It is awesome to see that the party and the current leadership is being so focused on correcting the mistakes. While also making sure to keep pushing for advancements as China is getting closer and closer in closing the remaining gaps in technical and industrial processes.
I just personally hope that they are able to push for getting the 996 stuff removed. I know they did rule that it isn't constitutional, but it is still (from what I can gather) a thing that is a mindset and just kind of expected in various industries. Which being fair to China isn't just a them thing, as it is in Japanese and Korean cultures too. But that is all just my opinion and I am not Chinese, and haven't been there or worked there. So I am willing to yield to being super wrong on that and really all the above.
Well that explains why Deng's reforms worked while Gorby's didn't.
A rule of thumb is to look at Deng vs Gorby.
Deng's reforms are actually less drastic compared to Gorby's. What Gorby did was essentially fuck the country over and let the boojees run amok. Deng on the other hand said "hey, you boojeee scum can exist for now. But cross the line and you're fucked"
The amendment to the constitution of the CPC in 2002 allowed "any advanced element of other social strata" to join the party, this was and still is controversial even among party members.
Private entrepreneurs do not equate to capitalists, though they do attract the same negative sentiments due to capitalistic tendencies. There are national laws and party rules/regulations that prevent both civil servants and party-member leading cadres from holding posts in private enterprises. So private entrepreneurs can join the party, but cannot hold government or party posts unless they stop participating in private businesses.
From Law of the People’s Republic of China on Civil Servants:
Article 59 Civil servants shall abide by disciplinary rules and laws. They shall not commit any of the following acts:
(16) Engaging or participating in for-profit activities and concurrently holding a post in enterprises or other for-profit organizations in violation of relevant regulations;
Note that out of the 96.7 million CPC members (as of 2021), there are
Not saying that private entrepreneurs don't have any voice, but they are a very small minority in both political representation and political power.
The wierd thing with this argument is that there isn't even a clear contradiction with the very basis of Mao's action and theory. Just look at the flag of the PRC : it is a reference to a speech where Mao defines the four classes of Chinese society that converges towards the Party (hence the four stars pointing at one big star). Those four classes are, obviously the proletariat and peasantry, but also the urban bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. Note that there is no ambiguity on what bourgeoisie means here, since there is two dedicated stars to include both the intellectual and cultural elite but also the national-level property owners.
If the national bourgeoisie is represented on the flag of the PRC as a class that is united with the others around the Party then why would they be barred from entering the party like every citizen who's able to pass the test.
Mao was never about pressing the Communism button and destroying the national bourgeoisie, he was about building the ship that will eventually lead the people to Communism after a long trip where the national bourgeoisie has a role to play.
Maybe you find this essay has some useful ways to think about it: https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
It quotes from mainstream media sources to support the charge that the communist party keeps their reins on the billionaires in a way that just doesn't happen in capitalist countries, with an eye towards long term goals.
One of the stars on the PRC's flag is for the petite bourgeoisie. It's a continuation of new democracy (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/New_Democracy) started under Mao.
Maoists don't care about any of this, yesterday I had one tell me Chinese people were "literally fleeing" the countryside after the communes were disbanded. When I pointed out they were now staying in the countryside (since at least 2018) because the level of development was catching up to that of the cities, they suddenly disengaged.
China is kinda revisionist. It is making a gamble through its special economic zones and embedding in global capital, and there are real fights among those with power about which direction(s) to go. There are even neoliberals, usually Western-trained, vying for power and influence over policy. Under Xi, many of these elements have been weakened, but hardly totally. There are also various kinds of communist there all pulling in other directions.
On the plus side, the gamble is working out pretty great so far. The need to reign in the great satan is paramount and China is doing that. The communist party also has primary control over the country, including making sweeping decisions about whole sectors and preventing the takeover of finance capital (it really needs to do even more on that, though).
Anyways revisionism tends to be a silly word. Orthodoxy doesn't matter, only accurate analysis and socialist revolution matter (in that domain). The conditions of countries all over the planet would require "revisionism" for any real revolution to happen there and Mao was called a revisionist in his time. Building revolution primarily from the peasantry was a big deal, quite different from other folks who had tried purist approaches of building the proletarian class up first (including a similar suggestion by the USSR itself that this is how revolution must develop in China).
The key to a healthy perspective on revisionism is really just whether someone, or some project, is incorrect. Whether they understand their country, the people, the material base, and can apply Marxist theory nevertheless to reach truth.
@DamarcusArt I'm curious, have you really learned about China?Since its establishment, the People's Republic of China has been a monster mixed with the idea of an autocratic monarchy.
