You don’t need to convince me that capitalism is bad, I am already convinced of that— though obviously I disagree that socialism is the only path forward for Russia.
Based on what you’ve said, the USSR appears to have done well while it was still up and running.
But:
The repressed groups I was talking about were queer people, not just “capitalists”.
If you’re trying to say that the reason why West Europe (especially Scandinavia) is a much safer place for queer people is “imperialism”, I would consider that a non-sequitur.
So long as communism leads to queer oppression (and historically it has in all of them — except Cuba which is the progressive anomaly in this regard), I will oppose it as I do not see it as “liberation”. We also have very different views on what is acceptable in terms of censorship and hierarchy (which I’m not debating in this thread), so I do not see communism as offering people liberation.
What I don’t understand is why the USSR just flatlined after all the success you’ve mentioned.
Queer rights in the soviet union were more progressive than peer countries, and queer people saw an expansion in rights as compared to Tsarist Russia. In fact, Kollontai was a bisexual woman and one of the first women in a government administrator role. The USSR did re-criminalize homosexuality after decriminalizing this, and this is seen as an error. The reason the USSR became more socially regressive in regards to queer people than in the beginning was due to the constant crisis and siege. Over time, queer rights improved, with the GDR even providing free gender affirming care.
The process of queer liberation goes hand-in-hand with the rise of socialism. In every existing socialist state, queer rights have been improving over time. This is easiest to watch in Cuba and China. In the west, the percentage of queer communists outweighs the standard population, meaning queer people are more common among communists by ratio than the standard population. It isn’t at all that socialism leads to queer repression, it’s much the opposite.
I never once made the point that queer rights come from imperialism, and I consider that deflection a non-sequitor. When I am talking about the standard of living in imperialist countries, and the social progressivism on the backs of absolute terror of the global south, I am not blaming queer people for this. I am pointing out what is called “Herrenvolk democracy,” or “democracy for the master race alone.” The progressive, good change in social views in the west coincided with increasing plunder and torture abroad, and then the fact that many of these colonized and imperialized countries are lagging the west in queer rights is used as justification for regime change.
So long as communism leads to queer oppression
It has not. Queer rights have improved in socialist countries compared to what they had before. You’re comparing their improving queer rights with the west. I could be just as dishonest and say anarchism leads to queer oppression and antisemitism given the views and actions of Bakunin, Makhno, and other existing anarchist societies, but I don’t because there’s no direct link between the two.
What I don’t understand is why the USSR just flatlined after all the success you’ve mentioned.
Because starting with Khrushchev, reforms that went against the socialist system and enabled the rise of bourgeois power existed alongside a deliberate blindness to these problems. This allowed the Yeltsin faction to take hold and nuke the system from the top, allowing for immense profits. It wasn’t socialism that became exploitative, it was a failure to safeguard it that allowed capitalism to return.
To stress this further: even as corruption built up in the USSR, the system still worked for the majority, the problems came when corruption overtook the system and changed it. Socialism therefore was not the problem, a failure to safeguard it was. Your critique mandates that socialism be exploitative as well, but it wasn’t even as corruption began to take hold.
How come Scandinavian countries are miles ahead of literally all communist countries w.r.t. queer rights (Cuba excluded)?
Simply because progressivism coincided with imperialism, doesn’t mean it’s because of it. Correlation does not equate to causation.
You say queer rights have improved compared to what they had before, but homosexuality is something that remains to this day significantly stigmatized outside of urban centers (Beijing, Shanghai etc which are more accepting)— when it wasn’t stigmatized as much before. Though perhaps that is more owing to Christianity, I’m more privy to Japan’s history than China’s if we’re going beyond the last century.
What’s wrong with comparing them to the west? Is the west a nebulous “evil”? (See above, I don’t believe it’s better there due to imperialism)
How come Scandinavian countries are miles ahead of literally all communist countries w.r.t. queer rights (Cuba excluded)?
I explained this a bit already, but to rephrase and simplify, when your country is under the threat of imperialism, colonialism, settler-colonialism, or neocolonialism, social progress is stunted. Imperialist countries like Scandinavia have had more time benefiting from imperialism, and as such have a form of “Herrenvolk” progressivism. In Scandinavian countries (and imperialist countries in general), social progress itself is allowed as a concession to workers and as a way to justify imperialism, not out of the kindness of the ruling class.
Further, Scandinavian countries are not miles ahead of literally all socialist countries. Queer rights are gradually improving in all socialist countries, which are still under siege but ultimately progressing faster than peer capitalist countries. As the aging populations die off, much of their social conservativism does too, which is why in China for example queer rights have been rapidly improving.
Social progress happens not in a vacuum, simply due to having better and better ideas. Ideas are formed from our material conditions, and alongside economic development comes social progress. The fact that Scandinavian countries have been able to develop earlier due to relying on imperialism is what has allowed their proletariat to struggle for queer rights more effectively, as they aren’t struggling against siege. That’s also why socialist countries have brought positive momentum to queer rights when previously they were more oppressed.
This gradual process of improvement comes from a long struggle towards liberation. Comparing countries with entirely different historical contexts directly is a metaphysical analytical error, which is again an example of why dialectical materialism is so important.
To borrow from Gramsci, who I’ve been reading lately:
To judge the whole philosophical past as madness and folly is not only an anti-historical error, since it contains the anachronistic presumption that in the past they should have thought like today, but it is a truly genuine holdover from metaphysics, since it supposes a dogmatic thought valid at all times and in all countries, by whose standard one should judge all the past.
The method of anti-historicism is nothing but metaphysics. That past philosophical systems have been superseded does not negate the fact that they were historically valid and served a necessary function: their obsolescence should be considered from the point of view of the entire development of history and the real dialectic; that they deserved to perish is neither a moral judgment nor sound thinking issued from an “objective” point of view, but a dialectical-historical judgment. One can compare this with Engels’ presentation of the Hegelian proposition that “all that is rational is real and all that is real is rational,” a proposition which holds true for the past as well.
This doesn’t just apply to past philosophy, but also to past ways we view social rights, gender, sexuality, and more, and this development is not flat and even across all of humanity but often restricted by dialect, language, and level of development.
many of these countries have not been under the attack of imperialism for the better part of a century, if not a century atp.
when has Scandinavia engaged in imperialism?
re: correlation ≠ causation w.r.t. imperialism and progress occuring together
They are quite literally miles ahead. Apart from Cuba— no socialist countries have marriage equality for gay couples, no socialist countries have discrimination protections rights for gay people, legal recognition as the gender opposite to the one assigned at birth is contingent on undergoing surgery. The majority of gay people in China do not feel comfortable to coming out to their parents. Scandinavia outperforms socialist countries on all these accounts.
You are severely downplaying how staggered they are in this regard. The etiology of social backwardness aside, these are still facts.
If imperialism is what you are equating to what leads to social progress, then china should be at its forefront because it has had a fairly imperialistic history itself. So what is the distinguishing factor?
You are severely misreading my point. Imperialism does not lead to social progress, social progress accelerates alongside development and the lack of siege. Imperialist countries got to develop faster due to plundering wealth from the global south.
Incorrect, every single socialist state has been under siege by imperialist countries, either through embargoes like Cuba or through constant trade wars and propaganda, like against the PRC.
Scandinavia is engaging in imperialism now, and has been. Imperialism is an epoch of capitalism, characterized by the domination of finance capital and monopoly. Western countries all play into this system of imperialism.
Already answered earlier, I never made the point that imperialism itself causes social progress, just that development and lack of outside pressures provides a better environment for social struggle.
No, Scandinavian countries are not “miles ahead.” At a legal level, Scandinavian countries are ahead, but discriminatuon is still found. Using China as an example, younger generations are more progressive and open, and since China is a democratic country, it’s more of a conflict between generations, rather than a policy caused by socialism. You’re also ignoring that the USSR, for example, was more progressive in its time than western countries, that the GDR was providing free gender-affirming care, and that Cuba is more progressive than Scandinavian countries. All socialist countries have gradually been improving in queer rights over time, which goes directly against your nonsensical idea that socialism causes LGBTQ oppression.
Imperialism does not lead to social progress. Again, you’re entirely butchering my point. Imperialism provides western countries with more resources and no outside threat, so social struggle was easier. Imperialism itself is not the driving force for queer rights, this is the argument made by imperialists. As for China, it hasnt ever been at the imperialist stage of capitalism, and the last time China was a world power was hundreds of years ago. Queer rights in China went down during the Century of Humiliation, the adoption of socialism presented an incredible expansion in women’s rights and new avenues of social progress.
Overall, two things are clear: you haven’t been checking out any of my links, and you haven’t been paying actual attention to my points, given how much you’ve twisted them, such as the idea that imperialism causes social progress. Nobody made that point, and yet you made it the focus of this comment.
I highly recommend reading the article LGBT Rights and Issues in AES countries. It will give you a far better understanding of the real issues faced in socialist countries, and what direction the struggle is heading in, what’s blocking it, etc, without imperialist narratives and pinkwashing getting in the way.
I want you to grapple with a single question, and answer honestly: what do you believe the best path forward is for the LGBTQIA+ activists in, say, China, right now: rebelling against socialism, or fighting for reforms within socialism, as they already are and are presently progressing?
I have to ask this before I can answer that question: Is reformism acceptable under socialism, when it is otherwise looked down upon?
I’d like to focus on one point at a time.
I didn’t say socialist countries haven’t been under siege, I said there are ones that haven’t been in a long time. When was China last under siege? There’s always drama between it and US sure but the US depends on China too and it’s not like Cuba where it’s being obliterated because of the US.
Without being significantly attacked by imperialism in a long time, and with clearly being an economic superpower, what is China’s excuse for not performing on the same level as Scandinavian countries?
Granted China engages in imperialism itself— and I hope you can recognize that and not disregard imperialism when it occurs under socialist countries/China.
Reforms aren’t a problem in capitalism or socialism by themselves, the issue arises when those with socialism as a goal believe you can establish socialism via reform, without the conquest of political power. Ie, the problem of reformism or revolution. The capitalist state will always work in the interests of capitalists.
The economic basis of socialism is in large-scale industry, as this is best suited for collective planning. In this way, capitalism aligns the small manufacturers and stitches together all of the disconnected forms of old production into a new system. It socializes production while keeping profits privatized.
The political basis of socialism is in a dictatorship of the proletariat, a worker state. Capitalism will never create a worker state by itself, its contradictions will heighten and this increases the revolutionary potential until people overthrow it. The belief that capitalism can smoothly change into socialism is where social democracy and reformism comes from, but this is a dead-end. Revolution is necessary.
The necessary first step in the establishment of socialism is the conquest of political power, destroying the old capitalist state, and then establishing a worker state. With this, the existing large industry can be immediately or near-immediately folded into the public sector, and heavily state-managed markets can help fill in the gaps (as we can see in China and Vietnam quite well today, and the NEP in the USSR).
Both economy and politics are intertwined, forming the base and the superstructure. Without siezing the state and the commanding heights of industry, however, any revolution can be ruthlessly overturned, such as in Chile with Allende.
As for China, it’s still at siege, and threatened by imperialism. China is a developing country, much of it is underdeveloped in rural areas. It’s easy to look at the achievements of China and assume they must be a developed country, but in fact they still have a great ways to go. Further, China is not imperialist, while Scandinavian countries are.
China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes and the state, run along the lines of a common plan, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized.
Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
China’s rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a “love/hate” relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.
Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC’s gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.
In doing this, China has presented itself to the global south as an alternative to the unequal exchange the global north does with the global south, which is accelerating the development of the global south. China is taking a more indirect method of undermining global imperialism than, say, the USSR, but its been remarkably effective at uplifting the global working classes, especially in China but also in the global south.
Perhaps most obvious is the fact that trade partnerships with China have resulted in dramatic development for the global south, while imperialist countries have underdeveloped countries in the global south. The change in the trajectory of the global south towards rapid improvements was brought about by anti-colonial movements and beneficial partnerships with other developing countries like China, resulting in a multipolar world. China is absolutely not imperialist, this is mainstream socialist consensus.
You say that the global south is accelerating in its development because of China, can you give me data/graphs for this claim?
Land-grabbing and seizing other resources unethically also constitutes imperialism, though. China keeps trying to bully the countries that have broken off from China (i.e. Taiwan and Hong Kong). I hope you can recognize that without blind support for China and asserting the secession of some of its parts was/is “invalid” (or “never happened”).
There’s also the sea-grabbing china has been doing in the sea below it where it’s got conflicts w the phillipines, Malaysia/Indonesia and other countries in the area where from what I last remember china was conducting unauthorized operations in the area despite nobody in the region recognizing the area as China’s— though this may be off.
you say china isn’t imperialist by “socialist consensus” but that’s not really relevant here; of course supporters of XYZ party/ideology aren’t going to criticize a member. I am not a socialist, outside of socialism it seems pretty clearly to be imperialist.
You don’t need to convince me that capitalism is bad, I am already convinced of that— though obviously I disagree that socialism is the only path forward for Russia.
Based on what you’ve said, the USSR appears to have done well while it was still up and running.
But:
So long as communism leads to queer oppression (and historically it has in all of them — except Cuba which is the progressive anomaly in this regard), I will oppose it as I do not see it as “liberation”. We also have very different views on what is acceptable in terms of censorship and hierarchy (which I’m not debating in this thread), so I do not see communism as offering people liberation.
What I don’t understand is why the USSR just flatlined after all the success you’ve mentioned.
I see it as hypocritical but I digress on that.
Queer rights in the soviet union were more progressive than peer countries, and queer people saw an expansion in rights as compared to Tsarist Russia. In fact, Kollontai was a bisexual woman and one of the first women in a government administrator role. The USSR did re-criminalize homosexuality after decriminalizing this, and this is seen as an error. The reason the USSR became more socially regressive in regards to queer people than in the beginning was due to the constant crisis and siege. Over time, queer rights improved, with the GDR even providing free gender affirming care.
The process of queer liberation goes hand-in-hand with the rise of socialism. In every existing socialist state, queer rights have been improving over time. This is easiest to watch in Cuba and China. In the west, the percentage of queer communists outweighs the standard population, meaning queer people are more common among communists by ratio than the standard population. It isn’t at all that socialism leads to queer repression, it’s much the opposite.
I never once made the point that queer rights come from imperialism, and I consider that deflection a non-sequitor. When I am talking about the standard of living in imperialist countries, and the social progressivism on the backs of absolute terror of the global south, I am not blaming queer people for this. I am pointing out what is called “Herrenvolk democracy,” or “democracy for the master race alone.” The progressive, good change in social views in the west coincided with increasing plunder and torture abroad, and then the fact that many of these colonized and imperialized countries are lagging the west in queer rights is used as justification for regime change.
It has not. Queer rights have improved in socialist countries compared to what they had before. You’re comparing their improving queer rights with the west. I could be just as dishonest and say anarchism leads to queer oppression and antisemitism given the views and actions of Bakunin, Makhno, and other existing anarchist societies, but I don’t because there’s no direct link between the two.
Because starting with Khrushchev, reforms that went against the socialist system and enabled the rise of bourgeois power existed alongside a deliberate blindness to these problems. This allowed the Yeltsin faction to take hold and nuke the system from the top, allowing for immense profits. It wasn’t socialism that became exploitative, it was a failure to safeguard it that allowed capitalism to return.
To stress this further: even as corruption built up in the USSR, the system still worked for the majority, the problems came when corruption overtook the system and changed it. Socialism therefore was not the problem, a failure to safeguard it was. Your critique mandates that socialism be exploitative as well, but it wasn’t even as corruption began to take hold.
How come Scandinavian countries are miles ahead of literally all communist countries w.r.t. queer rights (Cuba excluded)?
Simply because progressivism coincided with imperialism, doesn’t mean it’s because of it. Correlation does not equate to causation.
You say queer rights have improved compared to what they had before, but homosexuality is something that remains to this day significantly stigmatized outside of urban centers (Beijing, Shanghai etc which are more accepting)— when it wasn’t stigmatized as much before. Though perhaps that is more owing to Christianity, I’m more privy to Japan’s history than China’s if we’re going beyond the last century.
What’s wrong with comparing them to the west? Is the west a nebulous “evil”? (See above, I don’t believe it’s better there due to imperialism)
I explained this a bit already, but to rephrase and simplify, when your country is under the threat of imperialism, colonialism, settler-colonialism, or neocolonialism, social progress is stunted. Imperialist countries like Scandinavia have had more time benefiting from imperialism, and as such have a form of “Herrenvolk” progressivism. In Scandinavian countries (and imperialist countries in general), social progress itself is allowed as a concession to workers and as a way to justify imperialism, not out of the kindness of the ruling class.
Further, Scandinavian countries are not miles ahead of literally all socialist countries. Queer rights are gradually improving in all socialist countries, which are still under siege but ultimately progressing faster than peer capitalist countries. As the aging populations die off, much of their social conservativism does too, which is why in China for example queer rights have been rapidly improving.
Social progress happens not in a vacuum, simply due to having better and better ideas. Ideas are formed from our material conditions, and alongside economic development comes social progress. The fact that Scandinavian countries have been able to develop earlier due to relying on imperialism is what has allowed their proletariat to struggle for queer rights more effectively, as they aren’t struggling against siege. That’s also why socialist countries have brought positive momentum to queer rights when previously they were more oppressed.
This gradual process of improvement comes from a long struggle towards liberation. Comparing countries with entirely different historical contexts directly is a metaphysical analytical error, which is again an example of why dialectical materialism is so important.
To borrow from Gramsci, who I’ve been reading lately:
This doesn’t just apply to past philosophy, but also to past ways we view social rights, gender, sexuality, and more, and this development is not flat and even across all of humanity but often restricted by dialect, language, and level of development.
You have a not in the first sentence, I think shouldn’t be there.
Thanks! I goofed that one up, sorry!
many of these countries have not been under the attack of imperialism for the better part of a century, if not a century atp.
when has Scandinavia engaged in imperialism?
re: correlation ≠ causation w.r.t. imperialism and progress occuring together
They are quite literally miles ahead. Apart from Cuba— no socialist countries have marriage equality for gay couples, no socialist countries have discrimination protections rights for gay people, legal recognition as the gender opposite to the one assigned at birth is contingent on undergoing surgery. The majority of gay people in China do not feel comfortable to coming out to their parents. Scandinavia outperforms socialist countries on all these accounts.
You are severely downplaying how staggered they are in this regard. The etiology of social backwardness aside, these are still facts.
You are severely misreading my point. Imperialism does not lead to social progress, social progress accelerates alongside development and the lack of siege. Imperialist countries got to develop faster due to plundering wealth from the global south.
Incorrect, every single socialist state has been under siege by imperialist countries, either through embargoes like Cuba or through constant trade wars and propaganda, like against the PRC.
Scandinavia is engaging in imperialism now, and has been. Imperialism is an epoch of capitalism, characterized by the domination of finance capital and monopoly. Western countries all play into this system of imperialism.
Already answered earlier, I never made the point that imperialism itself causes social progress, just that development and lack of outside pressures provides a better environment for social struggle.
No, Scandinavian countries are not “miles ahead.” At a legal level, Scandinavian countries are ahead, but discriminatuon is still found. Using China as an example, younger generations are more progressive and open, and since China is a democratic country, it’s more of a conflict between generations, rather than a policy caused by socialism. You’re also ignoring that the USSR, for example, was more progressive in its time than western countries, that the GDR was providing free gender-affirming care, and that Cuba is more progressive than Scandinavian countries. All socialist countries have gradually been improving in queer rights over time, which goes directly against your nonsensical idea that socialism causes LGBTQ oppression.
Imperialism does not lead to social progress. Again, you’re entirely butchering my point. Imperialism provides western countries with more resources and no outside threat, so social struggle was easier. Imperialism itself is not the driving force for queer rights, this is the argument made by imperialists. As for China, it hasnt ever been at the imperialist stage of capitalism, and the last time China was a world power was hundreds of years ago. Queer rights in China went down during the Century of Humiliation, the adoption of socialism presented an incredible expansion in women’s rights and new avenues of social progress.
Overall, two things are clear: you haven’t been checking out any of my links, and you haven’t been paying actual attention to my points, given how much you’ve twisted them, such as the idea that imperialism causes social progress. Nobody made that point, and yet you made it the focus of this comment.
I highly recommend reading the article LGBT Rights and Issues in AES countries. It will give you a far better understanding of the real issues faced in socialist countries, and what direction the struggle is heading in, what’s blocking it, etc, without imperialist narratives and pinkwashing getting in the way.
I want you to grapple with a single question, and answer honestly: what do you believe the best path forward is for the LGBTQIA+ activists in, say, China, right now: rebelling against socialism, or fighting for reforms within socialism, as they already are and are presently progressing?
I have to ask this before I can answer that question: Is reformism acceptable under socialism, when it is otherwise looked down upon?
I’d like to focus on one point at a time.
I didn’t say socialist countries haven’t been under siege, I said there are ones that haven’t been in a long time. When was China last under siege? There’s always drama between it and US sure but the US depends on China too and it’s not like Cuba where it’s being obliterated because of the US.
Without being significantly attacked by imperialism in a long time, and with clearly being an economic superpower, what is China’s excuse for not performing on the same level as Scandinavian countries?
Granted China engages in imperialism itself— and I hope you can recognize that and not disregard imperialism when it occurs under socialist countries/China.
Reforms aren’t a problem in capitalism or socialism by themselves, the issue arises when those with socialism as a goal believe you can establish socialism via reform, without the conquest of political power. Ie, the problem of reformism or revolution. The capitalist state will always work in the interests of capitalists.
The economic basis of socialism is in large-scale industry, as this is best suited for collective planning. In this way, capitalism aligns the small manufacturers and stitches together all of the disconnected forms of old production into a new system. It socializes production while keeping profits privatized.
The political basis of socialism is in a dictatorship of the proletariat, a worker state. Capitalism will never create a worker state by itself, its contradictions will heighten and this increases the revolutionary potential until people overthrow it. The belief that capitalism can smoothly change into socialism is where social democracy and reformism comes from, but this is a dead-end. Revolution is necessary.
The necessary first step in the establishment of socialism is the conquest of political power, destroying the old capitalist state, and then establishing a worker state. With this, the existing large industry can be immediately or near-immediately folded into the public sector, and heavily state-managed markets can help fill in the gaps (as we can see in China and Vietnam quite well today, and the NEP in the USSR).
Both economy and politics are intertwined, forming the base and the superstructure. Without siezing the state and the commanding heights of industry, however, any revolution can be ruthlessly overturned, such as in Chile with Allende.
As for China, it’s still at siege, and threatened by imperialism. China is a developing country, much of it is underdeveloped in rural areas. It’s easy to look at the achievements of China and assume they must be a developed country, but in fact they still have a great ways to go. Further, China is not imperialist, while Scandinavian countries are.
China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes and the state, run along the lines of a common plan, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized.
Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
China’s rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a “love/hate” relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.
Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC’s gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.
In doing this, China has presented itself to the global south as an alternative to the unequal exchange the global north does with the global south, which is accelerating the development of the global south. China is taking a more indirect method of undermining global imperialism than, say, the USSR, but its been remarkably effective at uplifting the global working classes, especially in China but also in the global south.
Perhaps most obvious is the fact that trade partnerships with China have resulted in dramatic development for the global south, while imperialist countries have underdeveloped countries in the global south. The change in the trajectory of the global south towards rapid improvements was brought about by anti-colonial movements and beneficial partnerships with other developing countries like China, resulting in a multipolar world. China is absolutely not imperialist, this is mainstream socialist consensus.
You say that the global south is accelerating in its development because of China, can you give me data/graphs for this claim?
Land-grabbing and seizing other resources unethically also constitutes imperialism, though. China keeps trying to bully the countries that have broken off from China (i.e. Taiwan and Hong Kong). I hope you can recognize that without blind support for China and asserting the secession of some of its parts was/is “invalid” (or “never happened”).
There’s also the sea-grabbing china has been doing in the sea below it where it’s got conflicts w the phillipines, Malaysia/Indonesia and other countries in the area where from what I last remember china was conducting unauthorized operations in the area despite nobody in the region recognizing the area as China’s— though this may be off.
you say china isn’t imperialist by “socialist consensus” but that’s not really relevant here; of course supporters of XYZ party/ideology aren’t going to criticize a member. I am not a socialist, outside of socialism it seems pretty clearly to be imperialist.