Genuine question so please don’t hate on me. It seems to me that china now is more of a mixed market than a planned economy. Billionaires and class disparities definitely still exist in China and it seems like american communists almost romanticize china while ignoring obvious flaws in its system, only because they (rightfully) hate america and america hates China. China also supplies all of the world’s exploitative corporations with the vast majority of their goods. While China is probably better than the capitalist economies of the west, I don’t understand why a lot of people seem to hold it in the same regard as the USSR.

  • shoe [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    This answer in Stalin’s interview with Emil Ludwig touches on the same thing:

    Ludwig: I am very much obliged to you for that statement. Permit me to ask you the following question. You speak of “equalitarianism,” lending the term an ironical meaning in respect of general equality. But is not general equality a socialist ideal?

    Stalin: The kind of socialism under which everybody would receive the same pay, an equal quantity of meat, an equal quantity, of bread, would wear the same kind of clothes and would receive the same kind of goods and in equal quantities—such a kind of socialism is unknown to Marxism. All that Marxism declares is that until classes have been completely abolished, and until work has been transformed from being a means of maintaining existence, into a prime necessity of life, into voluntary labour performed for the benefit of society, people will continue to be paid for their labour in accordance with the amount of labour performed. “From each according to his capacity, to each according to the work he performs,” such is the Marxian formula of socialism, i.e., the first stage of communism, the first stage of a communist society. Only in the highest phase of communism will people, working in accordance with their capacity, receive recompense therefor in accordance with their needs: “From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs.” It is obvious that people’s needs vary and will vary under socialism. Socialism never denied that people differed in their tastes, and in the quantity and quality of their needs. Read Marx’s criticism of Stirner’s inclination toward equalitarianism; read Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme of 1875; read the subsequent works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and you will see how severely they attacked equalitarianism. The roots of equalitarianism lie in the mentality of the peasant, in the psychology of share and share alike, the psychology of primitive peasant “communism.” Equalitarianism is entirely alien to Marxian socialism. It is those who know nothing about Marxism who have the primitive idea that the Russian Bolsheviks want to pool all wealth and then share it out equally. It is the idea of those who have never had anything in common with Marxism. It was the idea of communism entertained by such people as the primitive “communists” of the time of Cromwell and the French Revolution. But Marxism and Russian Bolshevism have nothing in common with the equalitarian “communists.”

    My main issue, when it comes to class inequalities, is not that it exists, but the fact that ‘Billionaires’ with a big ‘B’ exists in china. A billion dollars is a lot of money, and money inevitably affords political power.