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
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.