The political compass is an attempt to reduce incredibly complicated political questions into two simple lines, and people accept it because it aligns with oversimplified narratives and cultural preconceptions.
“Liberty” and “authority” have little meaning beyond “good” and “bad.” If authority is defined more rigorously, or if we use more neutral terms like “centralization” or public vs private, then it becomes a lot less clear that what we’re talking about is contrary to “liberty.” The private sector, and private individuals, can be just as restrictive of liberty.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is the American Civil War. The southerners were the champions of decentralization, they spoke constantly about how they were fighting for “liberty” against the supposed tyranny of the northerners - and the reason they wanted “states’ rights” and decentralization is that they would be able to keep people enslaved. It was big, centralized government, that evil “authoritarian” force imposing it’s authority that resulted in a greater degree of liberty. But that is not just some freak exception.
If someone can’t go out at night without fear of being attacked, that person is no more “free” to go out than if they feared legal repercussions. Governments are, at their worst, no different from a criminal organization, and yet there is this tendency to assign special status to restrictions imposed by the law, rather than being on the same level as restrictions imposed by private individuals or organizations.
And again, we can see how “big government” or “authoritarianism” can increase liberty in the context of regulations, of pollution, of food safety, and of untested drugs. If I can trust regulators to stop a restaurant from serving anything unsafe, then I’m free to order anything off the menu, whereas if not, then everything’s a gamble and I might feel restricted to foods I expect to be “safe,” if I don’t avoid the restaurant entirely.
There once was a time when states viewed things like murder as a personal dispute between families, and didn’t generally get involved. This led to all kinds of generational feuds, with people killing each other over a long forgotten dispute between their great-grandfathers. Was that “liberty?” Is that something we should idealize and try to return to?
I’m sure there are people who will read this as me being “pro-authoritarian” and ignoring all the bad things done by states. But that’s missing the point. The point is not that centralization or state power are always good, the point is that it’s not automatically bad. Having a knee-jerk reaction against it is just oversimplifying complicated issues, and doing so in a way that lots of powerful people want you to do. Because the ruling class understands that they can wield private institutions and privatization just as they can wield public institutions.
You can’t just blindly apply an idealist ideological framework of “anti-authoritarianism” to every problem and expect that to produce good results. You have to look at things on a case-by-case basis, applying class analysis.
COVID gave us material proof. Why did China pursue a policy that was so detrimental to its overall productive capacity and economic growth? Even if you multiply their numbers by ten (which is absurd) they had a death toll in the same order of magnitude as islands like Japan and New Zealand, and they outperformed every continental capitalist nation because they waited until vaccination rates were high enough to reopen. China saved millions of lives because they were guided by science, not markets.
It’s hard to explain that without accepting that China is doing something different, because they’re a workers’ state.
China’s response to covid being proof that they’re socialist isn’t convincing. Good for them, but is the existence of forces coercing the ruling class into decisions that benefit the working class proof that it’s a working class state?
In instances where a capitalist state does something which benefits the working class, it is coerced by forces outside the state. The capitalist state may implement policies and programs to protect workers, but historically we see that this only happens when the capitalist state is coerced by organized labor and mass movements.
In China’s case, the forces that coerced their bourgeoisie into decisions that benefited the working class came from the state itself. That’s why Zero COVID convinced me, back when I was still more of an anarchist and very anti-China. China proved it is a workers’ state when it acted in workers’ interests without needing to be coerced.
And in so doing they saved countless lives, while we were all marched to our deaths for the money line.
Look, the covid stuff is important to me too, I still wear a well fitting n95 everywhere that’s not my own apartment. I think China probably did a better job than the USA in terms of covid. Even as someone much closer to anarchism than anything resembling state socialism, I am all for lockdowns/shelter in place and whatever is required to protect the populace from pandemic. I would just suggest not being uncritical when it comes to China. Better than the US, sure.
All that said, I’m not convinced any of this “proves” that china is a worker controlled state. In fact I’m convinced that it doesn’t prove that. Really I don’t think any of your logic connects. whatever forces coerce the ruling class into things that are beneficial for the working class, in whichever state structure, it exists because the working class is not in control. It’s bizarre to bring up China in this. Certainly you don’t believe they’re actually socialist
China is socialist and has been since October 1st 1949.
counterpoint, no, not even close
Explain why is china not (never even close to being) socialist in your mind?
Because workers doesn’t control the means of production? Unless you make some massive and stupid logical leaps, it’s not fucking socialist
What would count, in your view, as workers controlling the means of production?
Because if your answer is every workplace instantly becoming a self-managed island with no state, no party, no planning authority, no contradictions, no markets, no hierarchy, no technical authority, and no transition period, then you are not describing socialism. You are describing an abstract fantasy of communism detached from history and honestly reality.
Socialism is the transitional period between capitalism and communism. It still contains contradictions inherited from capitalism: classes, class struggle, law, administration, uneven development, commodity forms, wages, technical hierarchy, bureaucracy, and limited market mechanisms. The question is not whether contradictions exist. Of course they do. The question is which class holds political power, which class commands the decisive levers of the economy, and in what direction society is moving.
China has been socialist since October 1st 1949 because the old landlord-bureaucrat-comprador state was destroyed and replaced by a people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class through the Communist Party (over 100M members, 1/14 people). Landlord power was destroyed. Foreign imperialist domination was broken. The commanding heights were brought under public ownership and state direction. The new state was built to suppress reaction, defend sovereignty, develop the productive forces, and transform society.
Also, the state is not “the government.” Government, broadly, means administration, coordination, planning, record-keeping, infrastructure management, public decision-making, and the organisation of social production. That does not disappear under communism. Hospitals, transport systems, power grids, agriculture, housing, logistics, education, science, and industry still need coordination.
The state, more specifically, is government as an instrument of class rule. It is the organised force by which one class suppresses another. Under capitalism, even the most democratic republic is a dictatorship of capital because capital controls production, finance, land, media, lobbying, courts, policy formation, and the basic conditions of social life. You can vote every few years, but you do not vote on whether banks, factories, logistics networks, mines, ports, data infrastructure, and energy grids serve profit or social need.
Under socialism, the state does not vanish overnight. It changes class character. It becomes a tool of proletarian rule against old exploiting classes, new bourgeois elements, comprador forces, imperialist pressure, corruption, sabotage, and restorationist tendencies. Only when class antagonisms are abolished does the state, as a tool of class domination, wither away. Government as social administration remains, but it ceases to be a state in the strict sense because there is no antagonistic class left to suppress.
That is also why “socialism means no hierarchy or authority” is infantile. Engels already dealt with this. Large-scale production requires authority in the technical and organisational sense. A hospital cannot run on the idea that the surgeon, nurse, cleaner, patient, and administrator all have equal authority over surgery. A nuclear power plant cannot run as a vibes-based commune where everyone takes turns deciding reactor procedure. Railways, ports, mines, aerospace, flood control, public health, and defence all require expertise, discipline, command structures, and binding decisions.
The issue is not whether authority exists. The issue is what kind of authority, rooted in which class power, serving which social purpose, and subject to what supervision. Authority as such is not the problem. Class exploitation is.
In China, the bourgeoisie exists, but it does not rule as a class. Capitalists can own firms, make profits, and accumulate wealth within limits (as quickly advancing the productive forces serves social goals), but they do not command the state, the army, the land, the central banking system, or the strategic direction of the economy. They do not sit above the Communist Party as sovereign power. When they conflict with the long-term interests of socialist construction, they are disciplined, subordinated, investigated, broken up, or politically neutralised.
That is not how bourgeois dictatorship works. In a bourgeois dictatorship, the state serves capital. In China, capital is permitted to exist and develop under conditions set by the socialist state, because developing productive forces, technology, infrastructure, industry, and national strength is not optional in a world still dominated by imperialism.
People act as though China could press the communism button in 1949 after the century of humiliation, semi-colonial dismemberment, warlordism, Japanese invasion, civil war, mass poverty, illiteracy, and productive backwardness. That is childish. Socialism does not abolish scarcity by decree. It inherits a real society at a real level of development inside a hostile capitalist world system. If a socialist country remains poor, weak, dependent, and militarily vulnerable, it gets strangled, sanctioned, invaded, or colour-revolutioned.
China’s use of markets after reform and opening was not a restoration of bourgeois rule. It was a controlled and dangerous method of developing the productive forces under the leadership of a socialist state. Dangerous, yes. Full of contradictions, yes. But “contradictions exist” is not the same as “capitalism has been restored.”
Capitalist states across Europe and America impose austerity while telling people there is no money for housing, healthcare, rail, wages, or basic infrastructure; China, without funding itself through imperial plunder, lifted over 800 million people out of extreme poverty (excluding China global poverty is actually worsening), and saw the most successful and equal land reform project in history. A capitalist state does not build HSR at world-historical scale because of its immense social value, even when many lines have little or no profit on the books.
And (I know what you’re about to say) no, bureaucrats or administrators are not automatically a ruling class because they administer. Class is decided by relation to the means of production. Can they privately appropriate surplus as owners? Can they sell, inherit, and transfer productive property as capital? Can they reproduce themselves as a property-owning class independent of the state and above society? If not, they are not a separate ruling class. They may become privileged, corrupt, revisionist, or bureaucratic. They may become a site of class struggle. But that is not the same as being a bourgeoisie.
The Chinese state is not withering away tomorrow because the conditions for that do not exist. The state withers away when class antagonisms disappear, and class antagonisms cannot disappear in one country while global capitalism and imperialism still exist. So long as hostile bourgeois states, finance capital, military encirclement, sanctions, comprador forces, separatist projects, colour revolution networks, etc. exist, the proletarian state remains necessary. Giving up the state before the bourgeoisie is defeated globally would not be more socialist. It would be suicide.
The end goal is the abolition of class society. But you do not abolish class society by pretending class enemies no longer exist, and you do not abolish administration by pretending complex production can run without coordination. You abolish class rule by using proletarian state power to suppress reaction, develop production, socialise the economy further, reduce material inequalities, discipline capital, and expand the real capacity of ordinary people to govern society.
That is what China has been doing, unevenly and with contradictions, since 1949. China built sovereignty where there was semi-colonial subjugation. Industrialised on a world-historical scale. Eliminated extreme poverty. Built infrastructure, education, healthcare capacity, science, technology, and productive power at enormous speed. Maintained public ownership and planning over the commanding heights. Kept the Communist Party, not the bourgeoisie, at the centre of political authority. Repeatedly disciplined capital when capital threatened social stability or party leadership.
So no, “China has markets” is not an argument. “China has billionaires” is not an argument. “China has inequality” is not an argument. “China has hierarchy” is not an argument. These are observations of contradictions and organisational necessities inside a socialist transition. They only become arguments if you can show that the bourgeoisie rules the state, commands the commanding heights, controls the army, determines national policy, and has turned the Communist Party into its political instrument.
That is the actual standard.
China is socialist because the proletarian-led state holds political power, commands the strategic economy, subordinates capital to national and social development, suppresses reactionary threats, and continues the long transition out of capitalism under conditions of imperialist encirclement and uneven development.
In a bourgeois state, the state will never coerce the bourgeoisie to do anything unless the state itself is coerced to do so by outside forces (organized labor, mass demonstration, revolutionary violence, etc etc). None of that happened in China. In China, the state decided on its own to force Zero COVID policies onto its bourgeoisie, because the bourgeoisie are not the ruling class in China.
The forces that coerced the bourgeoisie are not mysterious. The CPC coerced them, because politics are in command.
Explain why China had Zero COVID policies while the rest of the developed world abandoned us to our deaths.
I feel like we’re devolving into talking about one anecdote that doesn’t represent China or the CCP on its own. This is a logical fallacy. the ccp did something that one could describe as being evidence of china being a worker state, thus, china is a worker state. And there were tons of bourgeois countries that responded to covid in ways that hurt capital
This is also patently false. I get what you’re trying to say here, but there are way too many examples of this NOT being true to even list. It would support your argument if it were true. But it’s not.
your zero covid example demonstrates an episode in which the ccp made a policy decision that potentially negatively effected the bourgeois in the country, but it does not prove that the ccp is worker controlled.
I could point to the fact that in china, the vast majority of production is actually private enterprise. Or the fact that the police regularly crack down on labor strikes to protect bourgeois interests. How about that it’s literally illegal to form a union in china?
“Oh but those are totally normal contradictions in socialism” well then I don’t want your fucking brand of socialism
There’s too many examples to even list, but you don’t provide even one.
We are only given concessions when the bourgeois state is forced to do so by the things I listed: organized labor, mass demonstration, revolutionary violence, etc. It’s only ever an external threat that can force the capitalist ruling class to give anything to the working class, and that’s true across capitalist nations. You don’t think they have NHS in the UK because they’re just so jolly nice, do you? No, it was because there were all those communist revolutions happening and it scared the shit out of them.
Yet in China none of that was necessary. They recognized a threat to their workers and they addressed it, without workers needing to strike or protest or bomb political offices. Compare this to capitalist countries, where every concession we get we pay for in blood.
No, these are contradictions that exist during socialist development. Socialism isn’t a switch you can just flip and suddenly wage labor and the commodity form are abolished. Revolution doesn’t simply magic socialism into existence, it has to be built first.
But it’s still a workers’ state because politics are in command, unlike under capitalism where markets are in command. That’s why China can tell the markets to shut down, but capitalist “democracies” have to open up before it’s safe to appease the market.
you can very easily find this yourself, if you can bring yourself to not make some excuse as to why it doesn’t fit into your ideology.
Ok then it’s not socialist then! It’s promising you socialism at some point in the future. …when no other bourgeois nation exists. More tautology from the ideology built on tautology.
It’s so easy, yet you won’t give me even one example because you know I’ll poke holes in it to demonstrate my point: the bourgeoisie only ever give concessions to the working class when they are forced to by external pressure from the working class. It’s only the working class that can bring about material change in their own interests.
It’s socialism in development, and we’re seeing it happen before our eyes. It’s not just promising, it’s delivering.
Compare this with our shithole capitalist countries where everything just enshittifies forever while we wait for the next economic crash.