China will not save us. The global proletariat must rise up.
NOWHERE did I say I oppose China. I just thought this was an interesting video. Watch the fucking thing before hating and yelling about ultras.
China will not save us. The global proletariat must rise up.
NOWHERE did I say I oppose China. I just thought this was an interesting video. Watch the fucking thing before hating and yelling about ultras.
What these “China no socialist” ultras don’t have is lack of conceptual understanding of what socialism is. The way they think is brilliantly described by Gabriel Rockhill in his Understanding Siege Socialism appearance, where he actually quoted Mao on this topic. In essence - ultras only have sensory understanding of what socialism should be, but not conceptual - let alone doing any praxis. They don’t have a good grasp of dialectical materialism, they see socialism as “being this and that and that” - a set of characteristics that are present (or absent) in a given society.
Conceptual understanding of socialism is the realization that socialism (and communism) is first and foremost a long, painful, tedious and prudently planned contradictory process of consciously building towards a certain type of socio-economic order. It concedes that building socialism, whatever form it initially takes, means that a new society is born OUT OF capitalism and under tremendous imperialist pressure. It does not, however, preclude using different tactics (when appropriate) which may seem to contradict the overall goal or strategy.
No one in their right mind would say the USSR was not socialist, even though the NEP certainly allowed a wide range of private economic activity. Oh, by the way - it never went away fully because for that you have to develop productive forces to a colossal degree. On the other hand, the USSR did have a powerful planned/socialized sector by the time Khrushchev was in power, yet his right deviations and revisionism were obvious to many.
Perhaps it reflects their weak theoretical grounding, perhaps something else (ahem fed ahem). BTW the “global proletariat must rise up” is a big red flag imo (no pun intended). Even fucking capitalists admit China is not capitalist…
I’ve listened to that Rockhill interview before; it’s great. A somewhat related interview: How The Left Should Analyze the Rise of a Multipolar World, China, Russia & BRICS
Fellow Traveler makes clear he supports the USSR til the end and is hopeful about China.
Last I used that argument I got the response “why tf should I expect people who don’t know what socialism is to tell me what is socialist.” I didn’t know what to say. They’d say the same if China were just a rival capitalist tbh. Republicans and democrats both get slandered as socialists.
That said, I am hopeful about China and no one in their right mind wants war with China. Everyone can agree the rest of the world needs to have it’s revolution before China can dissolve into full communism.
The Soviet model is not the only model of socialism.
That’s what this issue devolves down to, at the end of the day, and I disagree with that underlying belief.
Agreed, those “China is not socialist” people hold the steadfast opinion that socialism is “when like the USSR or China under Mao”, completely ignoring the dialectical aspect of it all or the simple fact that socialism is a process and not a discrete thing.
And the process is never going to be a cookie-cutter clone of any previous one, if it wants to succeed, because the material conditions are never identical. It won’t do!
Yes, it’s a process, and a transitory state, ultimately.