Western coverage of events in China is highlighting a lurch leftwards by Xi Jinping. But this misunderstands Beijing’s approach and is fuelled by dismay that Xi has not followed the path that the West wanted him to.
Yeah those are different things. I think it's unreasonable to consider China in the context of what maybe they could have done that might have worked and been less alienating. We'll never know. But it's clearly hard to compete in terms of existential survival with the capitalist hegemon when you're growing your new socialist economy slowly but in a way that isn't as alienating. It's the story everywhere in AES or former AES countries. The USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, China, they all had the same immediate strategy upon achieving victory. They also immediately had to try and overcome the contradictions that come along with inheriting a deeply unequal society and economy. No one said building socialism would be quick or easy. What I think a lot of us are trying to express is the idea that it's not unreasonable to wait and see what the CPC is going to do to resolve the contradictions that came with Dengism and opening. In another comment, you asked if people were supposed to just wait a while to see a brighter future? They literally are, but they also have seen the brighter future, very many of them. Yes, capitalist mode of production is alienating. It's still better than being a literal peasant in a lot of ways. Marx wrote about how capitalism paved the way for many improvements in European life over the old feudal nobility and serfdom. What's important is the idea that the Chinese economy nor government are controlled by a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The CPC have social solidarity with the people. It's a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, not the magic contradiction resolution squad. They've taken a poor, vastly populated, relative backwater and developed it into a country that is just now beginning to challenge u.s. imperial hegemony. So yeah, critical support for developing to this point, let's see what they actually do with post-scarcity now that they've gotten close to achieving it. We used ours (imperial west, u.s. in particular) to create a global climate collapse. Hopefully the CPC is able to use theirs to shield their people from it. We'll see.
Yeah those are different things. I think it's unreasonable to consider China in the context of what maybe they could have done that might have worked and been less alienating. We'll never know. But it's clearly hard to compete in terms of existential survival with the capitalist hegemon when you're growing your new socialist economy slowly but in a way that isn't as alienating. It's the story everywhere in AES or former AES countries. The USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, China, they all had the same immediate strategy upon achieving victory. They also immediately had to try and overcome the contradictions that come along with inheriting a deeply unequal society and economy. No one said building socialism would be quick or easy. What I think a lot of us are trying to express is the idea that it's not unreasonable to wait and see what the CPC is going to do to resolve the contradictions that came with Dengism and opening. In another comment, you asked if people were supposed to just wait a while to see a brighter future? They literally are, but they also have seen the brighter future, very many of them. Yes, capitalist mode of production is alienating. It's still better than being a literal peasant in a lot of ways. Marx wrote about how capitalism paved the way for many improvements in European life over the old feudal nobility and serfdom. What's important is the idea that the Chinese economy nor government are controlled by a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The CPC have social solidarity with the people. It's a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, not the magic contradiction resolution squad. They've taken a poor, vastly populated, relative backwater and developed it into a country that is just now beginning to challenge u.s. imperial hegemony. So yeah, critical support for developing to this point, let's see what they actually do with post-scarcity now that they've gotten close to achieving it. We used ours (imperial west, u.s. in particular) to create a global climate collapse. Hopefully the CPC is able to use theirs to shield their people from it. We'll see.