Yes. Anyone saying that the economy of China is not capitalist is wrong. What tankies say about China is that the CCP is a ML institution, and is in control of the capitalists. The goal being to build enough productive forces to overcome the US.
Why would anyone believe that tho. It's so much simpler to believe they're just regular capitalists instead of thinking there's this huge conspiracy to eventually implement communism somehow, despite building up the power of literal billionaires
??? One of the main points of Marxism is that capitalism is good at building productive capabilities. According to Marx, the industry built by capitalism is a prerequisite of socialism. Orthodox marxism holds that you go ...feudalism->capitalism->socialism. China went ...feudalism->communist led revolution. They can't go straight to socialism, so they're building productive forces using capitalism, without letting the state be controlled by capital.
That's only true if you blindly follow the idea of "feudalism->capitalism->socialism" in that order without any regard for the reasons that drive it. The idea is that capitalism would be necessary to create the conditions that lead to revolution, it's not some quota where if you have a successful revolution without ever building capitalist industry you have to go back and do capitalism for a little bit to check it off the list.
Besides, China already has productive forces that are the envy of the entire world, how much more time do they spend on brutal exploitation before they're done "building productive forces"?
You are aware that China's economy is still way, waaaaaaay smaller than the US, right? And that's not taking into account the US military, or airforce, or navy. Or the US's mass of allies. Really, if you wanna get a real picture of what the global situation looks like, take the stats of the US, the rest of north america, the EU, the commonwealth of nations, occupied Korea, Taiwan and Japan, and add them together. Then, add together the stats of China, Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and any other leftist area's I'm forgetting. How does that look in terms of GDP, military, etc? China is not currently able to take on almost the entire globe by itself. And Marx himself admired how well capitalism did growth. An economy based on capitalism, which is the reverence of growth to the exclusion of all else, will obviously grow faster than socialism or communism, based on production towards needs. If you're not a marxist, or a believer in historical materialism, fair enough, but if you are, you need to understand capitalism as a pre-requisite to socialism. And if you're not a marxist, you still need to realise that, unless China industrialises to a point where it can compete against capital directly, it needs to avoid conflict with the west, and build it's productive forces. Like what do you think would happen if China was just like "ok, gonna expropriate everything now and implement full communism?" Do you think capital's gonnna go "Ok, fair enough. Have fun with your communist utopia that will destabilize our regimes by existing"? No, there'd be a new cold war, massive embargoes, etc, etc. The US economy, by itself(not including the rest of the capitalist world), is 32% larger than China. Until China is more powerful than capitalists, they're gonna have to keep building up.
edit: an->and b/c I'm waaay too drunk to be arguing politics at 1 AM
That building massive amounts of consumer goods factories is not something it's good for. China has just decided that cornering the global consumer goods market is something that can keep imperialists from fucking with them.
It's worked so far, but I guess only time will tell. If the things I mentioned above start getting privatised, I'll lose a lot of faith in the Chinese communist experiment.
One of the earliest observations about capital is that it creates it's own grave diggers. Marx was very clear that the crisis of capitalism is of over production followed by collapse.
Capital brings people into cities, towns, etc so that they can work for a wage. It then organizes them on the shop floor, in kitchens, in sweatshops, and in office buildings, and then skims off the surplus they produce. It's at this point that the workers can realize "Hey wait a minute, we already do everything. Why should we allow the "owner" to take our surplus when can decide what to do with it ourselves.
Actually, it's communism with billionaire characteristics.
You'd be surprised how strongly some people disagree with this obvious truth lol
What I disagree with is Chins isn't ML because it's capitalist, which is a complete non sequitur.
What reason is there to believe they're ML other than aesthetics
The argument is that capital is completely subservient to the party, rather than the other way around. I think it's partially true, and enough to keep China in the socialism family, but they're on watch. If they can make good on their promise to turn back toward a socialist mode of production in a decade or two, then great, if no, then they are what they are, and socialist countries/movements will need to carry on without them (or in direct opposition to them, which they should be doing anyway tbh)
If capital were completely subservient to the party and the party were actually trying to do communism, they wouldn't have billionaires and they wouldn't be doing imperialism. I get what you're saying and I think it might be true, but it's feels a bit like jumping through hoops to justify capitalist exploitation instead of just admitting that that's what they're doing
They are absolutely doing capitalist exploitaition. It's more a question of "is it worth it?" and "will they stop?". They have billionaires as a result of their liberalism, yes, but at least their billionaires can get prison sentences or death sentences for their crimes. Compare that to the US where billionaires have near-impunity.
I wouldn't call Chinese foreign policy "imperialistic" myself, you can see what a western liberal who directly worked with Chinese diplomats has to say about the issue, if you'd like. I would consider them to go to far in a non-interventionist direction, personally. They don't seem to have very much concern for international socialist movements, which makes them bad comrades (though we are also discussing whether they are comrades at all). I am posting in parallel, but to add to my other post in this thread, the CCP is not homogeneous either. It's very opaque, so it's difficult to get a fix on how things work, but there are both neo-Maoists and liberals inside the party (among others).
if you believe that China is neither capitalist nor state capitalist and that it's actually currently a socialist state i don't know what to tell you because that is just manifestly not the case. to me the real argument is whether they're doing capitalism to exploit workers and get rich, or if they're doing it as part of some transition to socialism, but it sounds like you don't agree with either of those
Yes China is in fact state capitalist.
https://youtu.be/zQk5zd4Y1A0
You'd be surprised how many people here disagree with this simple obviously correct statement
They disagree with your lots manipulative usage of that statement, China is good despite being capitalist just like voting for capitalist Bernie was good. You morons think your arguing with Stalinist but you're so goddamn imperialistic you don't realize your arguing with your fellow Keynesians
No I didn't. Why do people keep comparing Bernie and china
Edit: NVM my question I see now that you're the same person who made the same comparison the other day
Because Bernie’s liberalism was widely accepted by the left, in fact the whole harm reduction narrative is a type of liberalism that is widely accepted by the left, if it works for Bernie and his lost vision for the American empire then it works for china
You're ignoring the vast differences in circumstances between Bernie - a demsoc hugely outnumbered in the halls of American power by neolibs and fascists - and the Chinese "communist" party, which absolutely dominates political power in China and has no legitimate reason not to just do socialism, other than the fact that they're capitalists.
