this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 week ago (19 children)

Socialism is a transitional status from Capitalism to Communism. There can be no immediate jump from one to the other, this jump must be gradual.

Agreed. As in, Capitalism is also a transitional stage to Communism. China is a decidedly capitalist society, as evidenced by their production of commodities.

Furthermore, even Communism will have an “employer-employee” relationship, insofar as it still retains labor for labor vouchers.

There will be no "employer" class under communism. A communist society is classless. China does not use labor vouchers even, it has a system of money.

Finally, the PRC has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. You can’t simply assert the opposite when it’s very clear that in the PRC the State is absolute over the Bourgeoisie.

The state is the Bourgeoisie in centrally planned economies. They extract surplus value from the Proletariat just like in a private market economy. The difference between the State Bourgeoisie and the Private Bourgeoisie, in China, is just aristocratic rank.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (18 children)

I am sorry, but none of what you have said makes any sense from a Marxist perspective.

  1. The presense of Commodity production does not mean the system is Capitalist. To that extent, if you have a 99% publicly owned and centrally planned economy, it must be Capitalist, and once that final 1% is absorbed, it becomes Communist. There is no Socialism by this definition, it's a straight jump from Capitalism to Communism. Even in the PRC, the majority of the economy is Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned. Engels disagrees with your stance:

Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?

Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.

You kill the Scientific and Dialectical aspects of Marxism and deny the existence of Socialism.

  1. This is really 2 points in 1. "Employer" is not a class. Classes are not jobs, but relations to production. Communism will have managers, planners, and so forth to assist with economic production. The other point, on the PRC not using labor vouchers, that's for when China reaches Communism, when they are currently Socialist.

  2. This is entirely anti-Marxist. The State is an extension of the class in power. In a fully centrally planned economy with full public ownership, there is no state. The bourgeoisie is focused on competition and accumulation, it isn't a "power dynamic" but a social relation to production. From Engels:

When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society -- the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society -- is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase "a free people's state" with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.

Bolded the most relevant bits. The state ceases to exist when classes cease to exist, because when all property is public there are no classes. However, production remains administrated and directed! I think it's quite obvious from reading the source material that Marx was no Anarchist, nor did he believe that Socialism was devoid of private property, nor could it be. This is a gradual process for Marx, one we call Socialism, as it works towards a fully Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned Economy, Communism. The government does not "extract surplus value" in a profit accumulating manner, but to pay for public services and infrastructure, directly spelled out by Marx in Critique of the Gotha Programme. The State is an extension of the dominant class, and the class which is dominant can be found through real analyzing of the trends and conditions of an economy. In the PRC, those trends are towards uplifiting the working class and continuing to fold Private Property into the Public Sector.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 week ago (17 children)

The presense of Commodity production does not mean the system is Capitalist.

The first sentence of Capital:

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”1 its unit being a single commodity.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Leftcoms favorite pastime, reductionism so severe you can split the atom with it

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's not reductionist to say that China has all the elements of a Capitalist mode of production.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I swear to god ultras are more interested in the sort of masturbatory philosophising of categories than it actually producing any useful insights. It's the most anti Marxist thing to insist that a thing has to be only a singular thing with a concrete and rigid definition, it's like Marx didn't bludgeon you with dialectical materialism hard enough on practically every work of his. He spends decades insisting on the dialectical process and the necessary work to resolve contradiction through material means, which is an integral part of development, only for y'all to go "but this is vaguely like thing, how can it be other thing?"

Man said communism and the abolishment of the commodity form, of private property, the development of the productive forces, couldn't be achieved overnight, and every ultra went "but it's already been overnight, so now it can be, right?"

China has all the elements of a capitalist mode of production

It does when you ignore all the material differences. A state where the biggest capital holders are regularly punished if they break the law or step out of line politically is not a state where capital has final say.

There's been no counter revolution in China, the organs of proletarian power remain in place even as reforms have been undertaken in every facet of life in China. It is the utmost chauvinism to pretend to know better than the biggest communist party in the world where even local officials are required to study Marxism diligently. Being really confident and having misunderstood Das Kapital to be a prescriptivist economical taxonomy doesn't make you an authority on Marxism. Applying that shit is what does.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A state where the biggest capital holders

So you admit it is capitalist?

are regularly punished if they break the law or step out of line politically is not a state where capital has final say.

The state are capitalists, they employ workers in state enterprises and pay them a wage in exchange for their labor. They are just a different aristocratic rank then the private capitalists

There’s been no counter revolution in China, the organs of proletarian power remain in place even as reforms have been undertaken in every facet of life in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

This system would NOT be possible in a DoTP.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

So you admit it is capitalist?

Are you twelve? Jfc.

It's obvious you're skimming a comment for gotchas, so I find it just as likely you've skimmed excerpts of Marx rather than take on the rather arduous task of reading and understanding him, let alone fucking applying any of it

Infantile disorder moment.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

“996” was never legal, was never pervasive, and the state cracked down on it years ago.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

“996” was never legal,

Cool. Union-busting is illegal in the US too. Not paying overtime is illegal in the US too. Doesn't make it DoTP.

was never pervasive

Proof?

and the state cracked down on it years ago.

Proof?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

was never pervasive

Proof?

It was a private tech industry thing, occurring within the relevant special economic zones. The same NATOpedia entry you posted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system#Companies_involved

and the state cracked down on it years ago.

Proof?

Again, the same NATOpedia entry you posted.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Because the Chinese state has fiat monetary sovereignty, it doesn’t function in the capitalist mode. It has no need to make a profit because it has infinite money[1]. It doesn’t need to extract surplus value from workers, and it doesn’t even need to break even. The logic of capitalism doesn’t apply.

Ultras fear the scroll.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because the Chinese state has fiat monetary sovereignty, it doesn’t function in the capitalist mode.

Yeah all nation states have this. Countries that don't call themselves socialist have state owned enterprise and turn a profit. Non-seqitur.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

All states don’t have it, actually. None of the Eurozone states do, for instance, and the US didn’t until 1971.

You don’t seem to be engaging with the content I’ve posted, but here’s one by Gabriel Rockhill anyway: How The Left Should Analyze the Rise of a Multipolar World, China, Russia & BRICS

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