You could say Marxism is a study of capitalism and Anarchism a study of the state. Leftcoms don’t do shit but talk so they’re basically useless.
The purpose of Chinese firms is to fulfill the goals of the Communist Party.
IMO, this leads to an interesting question - is capitalism determined by the end result or by the process of things?
I don’t know. I’m inclined to say the latter - the relation of the producer to the means of production determine whether the system is capitalistic or not. Yet, there are measurable differences between these systems as they exist in different nations. Which means this definition only has a limited utility (in terms of its explainable and predictive power).
You could say capitalism isn’t just the relation but also the systems that emerge from it and the responses of other systems to it. But I don’t know where that notion leads us.
If the Chinese state is an external entity to capitalism that is using capitalism for its purposes (rather than vice versa), then how long can this go on for? I know MLs believe that capitalism can be used for good but for how long can you play with fire until you get burnt?
And what does it say about Socialism that such a parasitic form of production relations (that is Capitalism) needs to exist for Socialism to be possible in the future? Was Feudalism ever needed? Couldn’t we have developed without it?
Even worse, what about slavery? Slave Economics have played a huge role in creating our modern society. Yet arguing that modern society needed slavery for it to exist implies all sorts of nasty and evil things of modern society itself. If true, this would call into question the value of having a modern society at all. There has to be an alternative path to development, which, if we haven’t taken yet, we need to take now. Else what we create will forever be tainted by what it came from. This isn’t just a moralistic argument. If it’s tainted by it, it can be infected by it and ultimately killed by it.
China didn't have to have foreign investment and capitalism in a vacuum. Mao was attempting to resolve contradictions and industrialize without resorting to capitalism, but the contradiction between rural and urban labor got huge. Not to mention the u.s. knocking on the door of it all. The u.s. assumed that if China accepted foreign investment, they'd eventually become liberalized politically by proxy. But that hasn't happened. The CPC has actually managed to maintain their political power and crush bourgeois powers from forming a coherent class. Jack Ma isn't buying up Pinkertons to smash his business; he's getting put in his place by the party. I found it very hard to believe that China could have separated it's politics from its business, but I really think they have. And Xi is very clearly a true believer in the people, listening to the mass line, and now that foreigners have funded the no more poverty project, he's even starting to press the socialism button. I'm no uncritical Dengist by any means, but the results sort of speak for themselves if you don't read western society into them.
If china declared war on the US and seized the mans of production through force, how many lives would be a fair trade for that prize? By contrast how many lives have been spent in this gambit of simultaneous povetry eradication and means seizing? China's doing okay
I don't necessarily think that the Marxist history is a good framework for moral analysis. The conditions which brought about societies are just a scientific process, the societies themselves should be judged on their own merit. Capitalism isn't bad because feudalism and slavery were required for it to arise, its bad because it maintains the owners and structures of those prior forms of accumulation.
You could say Marxism is a study of capitalism and Anarchism a study of the state. Leftcoms don’t do shit but talk so they’re basically useless.
IMO, this leads to an interesting question - is capitalism determined by the end result or by the process of things?
I don’t know. I’m inclined to say the latter - the relation of the producer to the means of production determine whether the system is capitalistic or not. Yet, there are measurable differences between these systems as they exist in different nations. Which means this definition only has a limited utility (in terms of its explainable and predictive power).
You could say capitalism isn’t just the relation but also the systems that emerge from it and the responses of other systems to it. But I don’t know where that notion leads us.
If the Chinese state is an external entity to capitalism that is using capitalism for its purposes (rather than vice versa), then how long can this go on for? I know MLs believe that capitalism can be used for good but for how long can you play with fire until you get burnt?
And what does it say about Socialism that such a parasitic form of production relations (that is Capitalism) needs to exist for Socialism to be possible in the future? Was Feudalism ever needed? Couldn’t we have developed without it?
Even worse, what about slavery? Slave Economics have played a huge role in creating our modern society. Yet arguing that modern society needed slavery for it to exist implies all sorts of nasty and evil things of modern society itself. If true, this would call into question the value of having a modern society at all. There has to be an alternative path to development, which, if we haven’t taken yet, we need to take now. Else what we create will forever be tainted by what it came from. This isn’t just a moralistic argument. If it’s tainted by it, it can be infected by it and ultimately killed by it.
Sorry, I’m just gonna go to sleep.
Marxism is also a study of the state.
China didn't have to have foreign investment and capitalism in a vacuum. Mao was attempting to resolve contradictions and industrialize without resorting to capitalism, but the contradiction between rural and urban labor got huge. Not to mention the u.s. knocking on the door of it all. The u.s. assumed that if China accepted foreign investment, they'd eventually become liberalized politically by proxy. But that hasn't happened. The CPC has actually managed to maintain their political power and crush bourgeois powers from forming a coherent class. Jack Ma isn't buying up Pinkertons to smash his business; he's getting put in his place by the party. I found it very hard to believe that China could have separated it's politics from its business, but I really think they have. And Xi is very clearly a true believer in the people, listening to the mass line, and now that foreigners have funded the no more poverty project, he's even starting to press the socialism button. I'm no uncritical Dengist by any means, but the results sort of speak for themselves if you don't read western society into them.
If china declared war on the US and seized the mans of production through force, how many lives would be a fair trade for that prize? By contrast how many lives have been spent in this gambit of simultaneous povetry eradication and means seizing? China's doing okay
I don't necessarily think that the Marxist history is a good framework for moral analysis. The conditions which brought about societies are just a scientific process, the societies themselves should be judged on their own merit. Capitalism isn't bad because feudalism and slavery were required for it to arise, its bad because it maintains the owners and structures of those prior forms of accumulation.
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