Look. I'm not trying to start another pointless struggle session. Far from that, I want each and every one of us to confront this most strange attempt at multilateralism by two of our favourite existing socialisms.

There's no substantial article on the environment. Not a single word on climate or pollution. And nothing on labour issues.

I get that the whole thing is brand new and the member countries will probably amend to add more to the document in later stages.

But now is the point the heads of governments go back to their respective legislative body for ratification. Again, nothing on labour, the environment or the climate.

I want us Chapos to confront the likelihood that existing socialist experiments are faltering, even abandoning, a key promise of socialism to workers: reducing work hours for more leisure time. That, and no idea how trade is going to connect to the climate crisis.

  • Civility [none/use name]
    2·
    4 years ago

    I think "the west" is a reactionary social construct tbh. Don't really like using it. I was more referring to the USSR as a socialist project on the scale of the PRC that massively improved living and working conditions without allowing the exploitation of wage labour for private profit or (from 1928-88) trading with capitalist powers.

    I don't think anyone's saying the PRC was never socialist, but that Deng and gang fucked up the Maoist project almost beyond recognition and it's arguable whether Xi and Co can get things back on track, and, given their material interests run in the other direction (most of the CPC higher ups, including Xi's family are all super fucking rich) how hard they're actually trying to.

    Critical support for not being the US or anywhere near as bad and all, but there's a critical component to critical support and that component involves criticizing free trade deals and questioning whether or not a "communist party" whose membership includes actual billionaires and under whose leadership wealth inequality is rising, is in fact, communist.

    • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
      1·
      4 years ago

      the USSR as a socialist project on the scale of the PRC that massively improved living and working conditions without allowing the exploitation of wage labour for private profit or (from 1928-88) trading with capitalist powers

      This is a great observation. The counterpoint is that the PRC seems to be set up for long-term success as of right now, which by itself is a significant step up over the USSR.

      But that gets back to the central question raised by Deng and China's subsequent path: how far can your socialist state deviate from "pure" socialism (however that's defined in practice) before it's unrecognizable as a socialist state?