Decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the legacy of the Sino-Soviet split stands out sharply in the history of socialism and the Cold War as a major turning point, impacting conflicts all over the world and within the movement, the collapses of 89-91, and China's relationship with the West and embrace of foreign investment.
How do Marxists in China (inside and outside of the CPC) think of it? As justified, as a mistake, as well-intentioned but with bad consequences? What works of theory analyzes its causes, effects? And in light of China's reform and opening up, how is "revisionism", in general and as an ideological rebuke of liberalization in the post-Stalin era in particular, understood?
Any and all answers appreciated, let me know if another comm is better suited for this post.
Capitalism is no longer just a business owner hiring wage labor and taking the profits. That's an antiquated, simplified view. It's now morphed into financial capitalism, where both workers and businesses are indebted to giant private banks in perpetuity. That's without exaggeration. The interests and fees charged to debtors exceeds the worth of physical property that would have traditionally been used as collateral to secure a loan and the productive capacity of a worker, factory, or government (whoever the debtor is) to repay a loan. Think of a country like Greece being saddled with debt payments, IMF economists warned that austerity to make payments would contract the Greek economy so they would not be productive enough to be able to pay off the loans. Well, that's not an accident, that's by design. Today the financial capitalist design is one of permanent peonage of the bottom 90% of people paying fabricated rents to the top 10% of financiers through complex monopolistic financial institutions and agreements.
That's the hell that America is and what it imposes on the rest of the world: financial capitalism. China stands in opposition against it. China's treasury controls its own monetary policy and uses it for the development of its people directed by the Communist Party. China does not engage in trapping foreign countries into unrepayable loans. Conflating the two systems as capitalism is an oversimplification. Marx thought that capitalists would abolish the unproductive rentier class and replace it with productive competitive industry. In fact, the opposite happened and industry was captured by financial creditors.
If you're curious, read more in Imperialism by Lenin and Super Imperialism by Michael Hudson.