there are 5 stars in the chinese flag. the big one is for the CPC, then you get 1 for the proletariat and 1 for the peasantry, 2 are left, can you guess what the other 2 are? the petty bourgeoisie and the industrial (nationalist) bourgeoisie
it's the same flag from 1949, so was mao a dengist then? no, he was just a marxist - he never wanted to destroy the bourgeoisie, as he thought they still had a historical role to play, he just wanted them to be under the control of the CPC as that historical role was fulfilled
this historical role thing comes from an actual materialist interpretation of history: if i could sum it up, for a materialist, it’s not enough to replace capitalism, you need to make it obsolete this is how every new mode of production came to be, it made the previous one obsolete, and any attempt to replace them without this particular condition failed
so (for a marxist) you can’t just do a revolution and claim “capitalism is over now guys”, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work (remember, the USSR had a huge black market on the side): the role of the revolutionary is to induce and accelerate this historical process, to smooth it out, and to keep the conservative forces (such as the bourgeoisie) in check (hence dictatorship of the proletariat) so that they don’t get in the way of our progress
so there's no such thing as "dengism", it's just marxism applied to the chinese material conditions
So essentially the concept of Dengism is "we have to do state capitalism until we make it obsolete"? Not arguing in bad faith, just trying to understand it.
it has to be a somewhat long explanation because calling it dengism is kind of a misunderstanding of marxism
first let me note that marxism (historical/dialectical materialism) is a methodology, a set of tools for understanding reality, not a set of prescriptions - marx repeatedly insisted on this
and reality is different from country to country, so whatever solutions we find from using those analytical tools must also be different for each of them
marx developed those tools by first analyzing how western european society developed, and he noticed that it transformed alongside the mode of production; and everything, including social relations, seemed to sort of "emanate" from the system we used to produce and distribute resources, instead of the other way around (or at least this system expresses itself in all of these aspects; it doesn't explain everything, it structures the whole)
this is the biggest difference between idealist conceptions of history and a materialist one: idealists think society changes itself through changes in ideas, materialists think society changes itself from changes in the mode of production
in this process, marx also realized a new system to produce and distribute resources only took over once it made the previous one obsolete, almost in a sort of "evolutionary" way
and by making it obsolete i mean it's more efficient at producing and distributing things
so feudalism was replaced by capitalism not because a group of people decided it was time to do so, but because of stuff like "focusing on producing surplus to sell it and accumulate capital" (an aspect that wasn't dominant in feudal society) making everything more easily available for everyone
this is why even in the communist manifesto he was already railing on conservative/reactionary conceptions of socialism - for him, you could only overcome capitalism by developing further
and you could only develop further if you took advantage of its contradictions to form a new system which didn't suffer from the same issues while still being in a high stage of development
lenin, mao, deng, all of these people were actual marxists and all of them reached similar conclusions about their own country, which were behind in terms of development: lenin concluded the USSR still needed the NEP; mao saw their country still had almost 90% of its population in the countryside, and china was extremely poor and unproductive, so he concluded they still needed the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie - as long as they were under the control of the CPC; deng saw it was still taking too long (in 1978, $156 per capita gdp, 82% rural population, etc) and decided to allow foreign capital (the international bourgeoisie) in to accelerate development (because they would bring industries, and also technical knowledge and intellectual property for the chinese to uh... steal (based))
so, again, calling it dengism is a mistake, it's just marxism; not only that, this didn't come from deng himself, this was the result of huge, long ass debates between party theoreticians that happened throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, especially later on discussing the reasons behind the failures of the cultural revolution and the great leap forward
to sum it up and answer your question:
a) the idea behind marxism, not dengism, is that you can't "will" capitalism away, you need to develop away from it
b) this means that, specifically for china (and the USSR), given their backwardness, they had to accept state capitalism¹ as a way to induce and accelerate this process while keeping conservative forces in check² so they can't do shit once we start moving ahead
¹ some supporters of the CPC's conclusions/actions don't like calling it state capitalism, i have no issue with this - lenin himself called the NEP state capitalism
² it's so weird to me that some self-styled marxists are fine with the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat for the transition from socialism to communism, but not for the transition from capitalism to socialism - it's all part of a historical process, and the steps we must take are supposed to be based on our actual material starting point, not our wishes
i don't understand this "dengist" stuff
there are 5 stars in the chinese flag. the big one is for the CPC, then you get 1 for the proletariat and 1 for the peasantry, 2 are left, can you guess what the other 2 are? the petty bourgeoisie and the industrial (nationalist) bourgeoisie
it's the same flag from 1949, so was mao a dengist then? no, he was just a marxist - he never wanted to destroy the bourgeoisie, as he thought they still had a historical role to play, he just wanted them to be under the control of the CPC as that historical role was fulfilled
this historical role thing comes from an actual materialist interpretation of history: if i could sum it up, for a materialist, it’s not enough to replace capitalism, you need to make it obsolete this is how every new mode of production came to be, it made the previous one obsolete, and any attempt to replace them without this particular condition failed
so (for a marxist) you can’t just do a revolution and claim “capitalism is over now guys”, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work (remember, the USSR had a huge black market on the side): the role of the revolutionary is to induce and accelerate this historical process, to smooth it out, and to keep the conservative forces (such as the bourgeoisie) in check (hence dictatorship of the proletariat) so that they don’t get in the way of our progress
so there's no such thing as "dengism", it's just marxism applied to the chinese material conditions
So essentially the concept of Dengism is "we have to do state capitalism until we make it obsolete"? Not arguing in bad faith, just trying to understand it.
it has to be a somewhat long explanation because calling it dengism is kind of a misunderstanding of marxism
first let me note that marxism (historical/dialectical materialism) is a methodology, a set of tools for understanding reality, not a set of prescriptions - marx repeatedly insisted on this
and reality is different from country to country, so whatever solutions we find from using those analytical tools must also be different for each of them
marx developed those tools by first analyzing how western european society developed, and he noticed that it transformed alongside the mode of production; and everything, including social relations, seemed to sort of "emanate" from the system we used to produce and distribute resources, instead of the other way around (or at least this system expresses itself in all of these aspects; it doesn't explain everything, it structures the whole)
this is the biggest difference between idealist conceptions of history and a materialist one: idealists think society changes itself through changes in ideas, materialists think society changes itself from changes in the mode of production
in this process, marx also realized a new system to produce and distribute resources only took over once it made the previous one obsolete, almost in a sort of "evolutionary" way
and by making it obsolete i mean it's more efficient at producing and distributing things
so feudalism was replaced by capitalism not because a group of people decided it was time to do so, but because of stuff like "focusing on producing surplus to sell it and accumulate capital" (an aspect that wasn't dominant in feudal society) making everything more easily available for everyone
this is why even in the communist manifesto he was already railing on conservative/reactionary conceptions of socialism - for him, you could only overcome capitalism by developing further
and you could only develop further if you took advantage of its contradictions to form a new system which didn't suffer from the same issues while still being in a high stage of development
lenin, mao, deng, all of these people were actual marxists and all of them reached similar conclusions about their own country, which were behind in terms of development: lenin concluded the USSR still needed the NEP; mao saw their country still had almost 90% of its population in the countryside, and china was extremely poor and unproductive, so he concluded they still needed the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie - as long as they were under the control of the CPC; deng saw it was still taking too long (in 1978, $156 per capita gdp, 82% rural population, etc) and decided to allow foreign capital (the international bourgeoisie) in to accelerate development (because they would bring industries, and also technical knowledge and intellectual property for the chinese to uh... steal (based))
so, again, calling it dengism is a mistake, it's just marxism; not only that, this didn't come from deng himself, this was the result of huge, long ass debates between party theoreticians that happened throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, especially later on discussing the reasons behind the failures of the cultural revolution and the great leap forward
to sum it up and answer your question:
a) the idea behind marxism, not dengism, is that you can't "will" capitalism away, you need to develop away from it
b) this means that, specifically for china (and the USSR), given their backwardness, they had to accept state capitalism¹ as a way to induce and accelerate this process while keeping conservative forces in check² so they can't do shit once we start moving ahead
¹ some supporters of the CPC's conclusions/actions don't like calling it state capitalism, i have no issue with this - lenin himself called the NEP state capitalism
² it's so weird to me that some self-styled marxists are fine with the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat for the transition from socialism to communism, but not for the transition from capitalism to socialism - it's all part of a historical process, and the steps we must take are supposed to be based on our actual material starting point, not our wishes
What a great answer. Thank you.