One is fat?
Some resources for a lot of the people below claiming that China is just like any other capitalist country.
Is China State Capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
- Did Lenin say anything about Market Socialism, or productivism?
- Vijay Prashad - Is China capitalist?
- Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.
- China cracks down on billionaires - Ben Norton interviews Ian Goodrum
- Do capitalists control the communist party? No, pic
- How the State runs business in China.
- 50% of the economy is in the socialist public sector and directly follows the plan (40% if you ignore the agricultural sector). 20 to 30% is inside the state capitalist sector, which is the sector partially or totally owned by domestic capitalists but run by the CPC or by local workers councils. The rest is made up of the small bourgeois ownership like in the NEP.
- China pushing forward Marxist training in colleges, attracts 1M students.
- China tells the US that it has no plans to weaken the role of its State-Owned-Enterprises, one of the US’s main demands in the trade war. “Beijing plans to make the state economy stronger, bigger, and better.”
- Unlike the US, China refuses to bail out over-leveraged property developers, and lets them go bankrupt.
- A China misinformation Megathread.
smd admin
Wow this one really brought out the votes, both kinds 😂
Putting the agitation in agitprop
That’s why you should all do one each.
Putin: all my CEOs executed themselves
I heard they all accidentally fell out of windows.
Three times
Oh, so like Boeing whistleblowers?
The difference is that Xi is now the CEO.
What does that even mean? Do you think he personally plans and runs all of the public sector of the PRC that take’s up over half of the economy?
> government runs half the economy
‘But how is dear leader like a CEO, unless he signs every paycheck by hand?’
The public sector has their own planners, Xi deals more with broad policies and decisions. That’s like saying Biden is the “CEO” of Amazon, it doesn’t make sense, plus the CPC heavily plans even the Private Sector. This is all in line with Marxism.
… how directly involved do you think any CEO is?
If the state is making policy and planning decisions for both the public and private sectors, how does the distinction even matter? It’s like if Biden was Jeff Bezos’s boss.
It’s just an extremely odd thing to say and paints any leader as a CEO. The coach is the CEO of the football team, the Starbucks manager is the CEO of the store, etc. Etc.
Not an argument. You’re just complaining about how there’s multiple words for “some schmuck in charge.” Do you realize that’s incompatible with your prior insistence he is not in charge?
Xi is in the highest seat of the CPC, that doesn’t make him a “CEO.” Your comment is nonsense word salad.
Xi can disappear anyone he doesn’t like. He doesn’t need to personally oversee every company, the threat of being visited by police is enough to keep them in line.
📽
- https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-targeted-killing-disposition-matrix
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_black_sites
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Clark_(activist)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Malcolm_X
- https://americanexception.com/book/
Oh, so you noticed the US is bad, congratulations. Let me know when you realize China is just as bad.
It’s not just as bad though, you’re just a chauvinist.
Let me know when you realize anything that wasn’t spoon-fed to you by Western governments, NGOs, and corporate media.
“Just as bad” — are you fucking kidding me?
- List of Atrocities committed by US authorities
- A Detailed Chronological List of US Interventions, Invasions, Destabilzations, and Assistance to Oppressive Regimes (ending in 2002)
- The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
- Shock therapy (economics)
- Are We The Baddies?
- The blueprint of regime change operations How regime change happens in the 21st century with your consent
- Infographic: US military presence around the world The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.
- Michael Parenti: Africa is Rich
- World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
.
Feb. 2022 President Biden on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline if Russia Invades Ukraine: “We will bring an end to it.” Sep. 2022 
Dec. 2022 U.S. LNG exports both a lifeline and a drain for Europe in 2023 Dec. 2024 
Source?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64781986 You are allowed to use search engines btw, we aren’t living behind china’s great firewall yet.
None of it says Xi can kill anyone he likes, moreover this is BBC, which frequently pays to report anti-China propaganda regardless of validity.
Xi can disappear anyone he doesn’t like
Is actually what I wrote. But I get it, I wrote two whole sentences, that’s a lot of information right there. And if you’re not happy with the BBC, go look for other sources then. Like I said, using search engines isn’t illegal yet. I certainly won’t waste my time looking for a source you deem impartial.
See, I have done research, and have come to the conclusion that Xi can’t disappear people willy nilly. The burden of proof is on you for making that claim.
Who told you that?
Western supremacists think every country they’re in a trade war with doesn’t even elect their leaders.
Many of the chronically online social media poster (read: western professional class) are closer to the CEO than they are to any other group. The temporarily embarrassed millionaires as they’re also known.
Statistically a not insignificant number of them are millionaires by net worth. Especially when we consider demographics where it’s mainly tech workers. But of course that doesn’t count because of some indeterminate line between evil CEO and average Joe who worked hard.
The cognitive dissonance is that they’re all part of the same system. Climbing the same ladder. In any other context these people are bragging about being executive of some random startup or whatever.
They’re not, they just think they are. They’re every bit as oppressed and the sharing of the imperial spoils hasn’t been a thing since at least the fall of the USSR, once there was literally no alternative. Now there is an alternative but the population has been so thoroughly propagandized that you mention any enemy of the State Dept and they start frothing at the mouth.
Non-westerners’ view on what life is like here always amaze me. Then they complain they’re not rich besides earning “a lot”, because they’re fed the propaganda that we’re all dirty imperialists exploiting them. No, most of us are not millionaires. Most of us can’t even buy a place to live without enslaving ourselves for half our life to bankers. But OK buddy
I am a westerner. No other comment. You’ve already made up your mind. And I can’t be assed to talk over what ever incronguencies you have of mindset.
we’re all dirty imperialists exploiting them
Okay just one comment I’ll have to withold else I’ll probably get banned for insulting your intelligence
Most of us can’t even buy a place to live without enslaving ourselves for half our life to bankers.
It’s perplexing then, why people most likely in this situation claim that capitalism is the best system.
Which is why the rest of us is confused about why most of y’all so rabidly do the propaganda work for your oppressors. Y’all consistently get to the line of class consciousness and then do a 180 and sprint in the opposite direction whenever it concerns foreigners.
The corporate media has been consistent in their response to both.
which is why it boggles my mind that liberals don’t connect the dots
This thread is funny because it’s filled with a bunch of libs criticizing but bringing nothing of value to the table except vibes, and communists and comrades providing extensive source material to support their arguments, while avoiding low-hanging fruit like ad hominem.
If you’ve ever done any sort of research into democratic socialism, you’d quickly learn that this is the way. Criticism and self-criticism are at the forefront of cadre training and will make you a better person. If you view a person trying to provide you with educational material as your enemy while you spout off vibe-driven nonsense, you’re not getting the picture and are still hindered by your country’s propaganda, as well your own apathy and ignorance. You’re criticizing people that are passionate because they see a chance to have a better world for all working class—you included—while responding with empty words.
Unchain yourself from the criticisms of figures your country has implanted in you over your lifetime, and think in terms of ideas.
Really, I thibk anyone considering themselves a Leftist needs to read False Witnesses and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing.” Both are excellent examples of why people don’t change their minds when seeing indisputable evidence, they willingly go along with narratives that they find more comfortable. It explains the outright anger liberals express when anticommunism is debunked. That doesn’t mean Communists don’t do the same thing, but as we live in a liberal dominated west (most likely, assuming demographics) this happens to a much lesser extent because liberalism is that which supplies these “licenses” to go along, while Communism requires hard work to begin to accept. This explains the mountains of sources Communists keep on hand, and the lack thereof from liberals who argue from happenstance and vibes.
Huh, I’ve come across this False Witness article before, years ago.
In retrospect, this desperate, shotgun appeal to religious authority demonstrated why the dossier itself was probably futile. It was an acknowledgment that the people they were attempting to convince were beyond the reach of mere fact or reason — people who did not find reality compelling.
This reminds me of the requisite Parenti quote:
During the Cold War, the anti-communist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
Exactly. I read it for the first time this week, and it’s made a pretty big perspective shift. The Parenti Quote is evergreen as well, and tying it together with the conclusions of False Witnesses and Masses, Elites, and Rebels is a cool way to see people independently coming to similar conclusions of observed phenomena.
If you’re a glutton for this kind of stuff, I found philosophy prof. Hans-Georg Moeller’s YouTube series on the media to be illuminating.
I think philosophy prof. Jeffrey Kaplan’s video “Advertising doesn’t work the way you think it does” is good as well. It too hinges on what Moeller calls the “general peer,” which he gets deeper into in his series on “identity technology.”
and communists and comrades providing extensive source material to support their arguments, while avoiding low-hanging fruit like ad hominem.
sorry I’m late
Unchain yourself from the criticisms of figures your country has implanted in you over your lifetime, and think in terms of ideas.
Realistically, that’s not gonna happen for most people. Hear me out:
In 1500s when the printing press was invented, Martin Luther (not to be confused with Martin Luther King) saw the opportunity to print “bibles for everyone” to transform everybody into a priest - an enlightened being that always (or at least mostly) does the good/right thing.
We know from history that that didn’t succeed. Not everybody turned into a priest, not even close. Instead, he caused Evangelism, and is partially causal for the Thirty Years’ War.
Realistically, people thinking in terms of ideas is an inclination you’re born with (or so I believe). There’s just a lot of people who are not gonna do that. Especially if people see themselves at a (economic) disadvantage because of it. Most people just wanna live through ordinary life.
BTW, I guess something similar happened with the internet. When the internet was first invented, people guessed that it would lead to the total education of all human beings. Instead, it has caused smartphones, “social” media (which is more antisocial media tbh), and a lot of spreading dumb narratives. So i’m not sure it really “enlightened” the people.
You really pissed off the .world neolibs with this one. Good work.
All this comment section proves is that if the only thing that changed was that Thompson was a Chinese healthcare CEO called Zhao Qiang and got clapped by the government libs would be calling him a working class hero and a martyr like the fucking NYT.
I have not seen a single Marxist make this claim. Deng wasn’t pro-billionaire, but wished to return to a Marxist analysis of the PRC’s economy. It had taken on an ultraleft character and was unstable, they had socialized more than they should have with their level of productive forces, and have consistently been working their way back to that level of socialization now that the Socialist Market Economy has proven wildly successful. Without doing so, extreme poverty could not have been eradicated like it has been.
All those uyghur CEOs man.
Laughs in temu/shein
25 of the 2,975 deputies attending the second session of the 13th NPC were Uygur, making them have roughly the attendence as a proportion of their polulation overall.
I guess if you can survive the camps and can be virtuously re-educated you deserve to be a sycophant.
So happy for them 🥳🙌 this means there wasn’t any crimes against humanity after all, must have all been a big western propaganda operation. 🤡
While I agree the concept of work is bad and we should do everything possible to make sure no one ever works again, jobs programs aren’t crimes against humanity. Neither are housing investment programs or schools
Western countries do not even pay the same level of lip service to their own minority populations, white people continue to dominate parliament and leadership roles in a manner that well overrepresents their makeup. Do you have sources for “crimes against humanity” that don’t originate with Adrian Zenz, a US State Department propagandist? The re-education program is complete already.
You would do well to see why this story is so long-lasting despite a clear and odd lack of evidence, from UN inspectors finding no evidence to the ability to openly travel to Xinjiang, by reading The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz. Your attitude that the Uygur deputies must be sycophants and instead trust US State Department Propagandists over the people you claim to be fighting for is wildly chavanistic and racist.
Just because they didn’t pay you to spout nonsense doesn’t mean there’s not verifiable evidence that they have paid people to do it, it just means you’re gullible enough to do their legwork for free.
Congress just approved a 1.5 billion anti china propaganda package lmao, it was in your fucking news, how do y’all not get it.
Laughs in you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Deny discredit defend
Are you dumb libs still claiming an Uyghur genocide despite being like 10 years, zero evidence, and multiple western sources calling out the atrocity propaganda? How does that look like, if Xinjiang’s economy is growing enormously, there’s tons of video evidence from travel bloggers of the bustling cultural and religious activities there? Plugging your eyes and ears to let the state department guide you doesn’t seem like a wise way to go about anything.
The people boosting claims of an Uyghur genocide are still denying and aiding the fucking Palestinian genocide ffs.
Ah yes! Vloggers funded by Xi showing the bustling life there. Of course this is a clear indication of good faith acting from the Chinese government. Usually i reject authority, but I’m taking the word of Chinese authorities here because it advances my agenda. Look at me, I’m a Marxist that likes to operate under logical and scientific praxis
Instead, you make up ideas like Xi bankrolling vloggers when we have very open record of the US approving 1.6 billion to bankroll anti-PRC propaganda. Do you have any sources to back up your claims, at all, or do you invent them for your arguments?
Now go ahead and try to discredit them that they’re a bourgeois run agency so their journalism is biased
I had to make my point. The mods can proceed to ban this account too
So predictable. The source for that is the australian strategic policy institute, a right wing australian defense department war-hawk think tank, with close ties to the US DoD.
Vice is also just western supremacist media targeted to hipsters. They mostly do shorts / videos against all the US empires primary enemies, and get most of their funding from fox news and other right-wing outlets.
Of course it’s gonna be that, they’ve been squeezing all the juice out of that and the Zenz study the BBC commissioned from him with the specific goal of manufacturing a genocide
And you provide leftist sources to buttress your claims, so i guess we’re both speaking from the echo chamber then.
If you don’t speak up for the war hawks and murderers of innocent civilians, who will?
Cool, so now we have the idea that states pay influencers money. This still hasn’t translated to execution of billionaires being done out of opposition instead of mass corruption and breaking the law. You need to provide sources for your arguments, not justifications that they could be true.
You are directly decieving yourself because you license yourself to. If you actually looked at real sources and didn’t reject them reflexively, instead of accepting bourgeois media at face value, you’d sit much closer to where I do. You should read False Witnesses and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing.” Both are excellent examples of why people don’t change their minds when seeing indisputable evidence, they willingly go along with narratives that they find more comfortable. It explains the outright anger liberals express when anticommunism is debunked. That doesn’t mean Communists don’t do the same thing, but as we live in a liberal dominated west (most likely, assuming demographics) this happens to a much lesser extent because liberalism is that which supplies these “licenses” to go along, while Communism requires hard work to begin to accept. This explains the mountains of sources Communists keep on hand, and the lack thereof from liberals who argue from happenstance and vibes.
We both know the corruption claims were cover ups for the corporate witch-hunt. Also, you’re very aware of my readiness to change my views in the presence of convincing evidence. This evidence is however not so convincing.
What do you mean “corporate witch hunt?” I believe the evidence of corruption is valid, do you have evidence to the opposite? Why do you say it isn’t convincing?
Furthermore, I believe you have displayed the exact opposite of being willing to change your views in the face of evidence, and have proven the articles I provided here quite accurate given your refusal to read any of the evidence I provided in our last conversation where you not only refused historical books, but even an 8 minute article.
You shattered any impression of openness back then, so you’ll forgive my lack of faith in you.
Libs are probably not gonna read them but thanks for linking them because I will
The more people the better, leftists are included in that!
🍆🚴
Yessss, bring on the personal insults. That’ll show me for speaking the truth!
American liberals would only speak the truth if the state department told it to them for once lmao
i used to feel badly blocking accounts
If you’re that shook just from somebody mentioning the commies I don’t think you’re gonna provide much in the way of productive discussion anyway, so, by all means.
what XJP/beijing does is authoritarianism under the guise of communism. Lemmy of all places would be fine with actual communism but authoritarian regimes are a no go.
Pasting my comment from earlier:
Any “leftist” that thinks the fact that China has billionaires means it therefore isn’t actually Socialist needs to read Marx and Engels. There are many such liberals here in these comments. Marx predicted Socialism to be the next mode of production because markets centralize and create intricate methods of planning. As such, he stated that folding private into the public would be gradual, and by the degree to which industry would develop. From the Manifesto:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
In even simpler terms, from Engels in Principles of Communism:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
That doesn’t mean billionaires are good to have, necessarily, either. It remains a contradiction, but not an uncalculated one. I highly recommend anyone here read China has Billionaires. As much as Marxists want to lower wealth inequality eventually as much as possible (insofar as thr principle "from each according to ability, to each according to needs applies, Marx was no “equalitarian” and railed against them), in the stage of developmemt the PRC is at this would get in the way of development, and could cause Capital Flight and brain drain. Moreover, billionaires provide an easy scapegoat that the USSR didn’t have, and thus all problems of society were directed at the state. It’s important to consider why a Marxist country does what it does, and not immediately assume you know better. The CPC has an over 95% approval rate, you can’t just assume you know what’s best.
The phrase “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” is meant to depict higher stage Communism. Until that is possible, the answer becomes “to each according to his work,” because as Marx said in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
At least take a consistent stance, if you believe the PRC to not be Socialist simply because it has billionaires either you disagree with Marx or you have flawed analysis. There are genuine Marxist critiques of the PRC that don’t rely on nonsense. If you consider yourself a Marxist, correct your study. I have an introductory Marxist reading list if you need one.
At least take a consistent stance, if you believe the PRC to not be Socialist simply because it has billionaires either you disagree with Marx or you have flawed analysis.
The PRC is not socialist because, it produces commodities (the commodity form), Has A Dictatorship of The Bourgeoisie, The Wage System, and an employer-employee distinction.
Which um, is in the passage you quoted:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour.
Socialism is a transitional status from Capitalism to Communism. There can be no immediate jump from one to the other, this jump must be gradual. Moreover, you cannot eliminate Wage Labor without eliminating Private Property, and you cannot eliminate Private Property overnight, but gradually, and by the degree to its development. Socialism is about which is primary, Public Ownership and Central Planning, or Private Property and Markets, not the mere existence of one in purity or the other. Such a stance is anti-dialectical and erases Marx’s analysis of Capitalism and Communism.
Furthermore, even Communism will have an “employer-employee” relationship, insofar as it still retains labor for labor vouchers. Communism is about Central Planning and Public Ownership, not horizontalism. The passage you reference is indeed the essential condition for the existance of the bourgeoisie, and its eventual elimination, but not the existence of Socialism.
Finally, the PRC has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. You can’t simply assert the opposite when it’s very clear that in the PRC the State is absolute over the Bourgeoisie.
All of these misconceptions of yours betray a deeply “Wikipedia-educated” notion of Marxism. If you want, you can start reading with my introductory Marxist reading list.
Socialism is a transitional status from Capitalism to Communism. There can be no immediate jump from one to the other, this jump must be gradual.
Agreed. As in, Capitalism is also a transitional stage to Communism. China is a decidedly capitalist society, as evidenced by their production of commodities.
Furthermore, even Communism will have an “employer-employee” relationship, insofar as it still retains labor for labor vouchers.
There will be no “employer” class under communism. A communist society is classless. China does not use labor vouchers even, it has a system of money.
Finally, the PRC has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. You can’t simply assert the opposite when it’s very clear that in the PRC the State is absolute over the Bourgeoisie.
The state is the Bourgeoisie in centrally planned economies. They extract surplus value from the Proletariat just like in a private market economy. The difference between the State Bourgeoisie and the Private Bourgeoisie, in China, is just aristocratic rank.
I am sorry, but none of what you have said makes any sense from a Marxist perspective.
- The presense of Commodity production does not mean the system is Capitalist. To that extent, if you have a 99% publicly owned and centrally planned economy, it must be Capitalist, and once that final 1% is absorbed, it becomes Communist. There is no Socialism by this definition, it’s a straight jump from Capitalism to Communism. Even in the PRC, the majority of the economy is Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned. Engels disagrees with your stance:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
You kill the Scientific and Dialectical aspects of Marxism and deny the existence of Socialism.
-
This is really 2 points in 1. “Employer” is not a class. Classes are not jobs, but relations to production. Communism will have managers, planners, and so forth to assist with economic production. The other point, on the PRC not using labor vouchers, that’s for when China reaches Communism, when they are currently Socialist.
-
This is entirely anti-Marxist. The State is an extension of the class in power. In a fully centrally planned economy with full public ownership, there is no state. The bourgeoisie is focused on competition and accumulation, it isn’t a “power dynamic” but a social relation to production. From Engels:
When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase “a free people’s state” with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.
Bolded the most relevant bits. The state ceases to exist when classes cease to exist, because when all property is public there are no classes. However, production remains administrated and directed! I think it’s quite obvious from reading the source material that Marx was no Anarchist, nor did he believe that Socialism was devoid of private property, nor could it be. This is a gradual process for Marx, one we call Socialism, as it works towards a fully Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned Economy, Communism. The government does not “extract surplus value” in a profit accumulating manner, but to pay for public services and infrastructure, directly spelled out by Marx in Critique of the Gotha Programme. The State is an extension of the dominant class, and the class which is dominant can be found through real analyzing of the trends and conditions of an economy. In the PRC, those trends are towards uplifiting the working class and continuing to fold Private Property into the Public Sector.
Any “leftist” that thinks the fact that China has billionaires and therefore isn’t actually Socialist needs to read Marx and Engels. There are many such liberals here in these comments. Marx predicted Socialism to be the next mode of production because markets centralize and create intricate methods of planning. As such, he stated that folding private into the public would be gradual. From the Manifesto:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
In even simpler terms, from Engels in Principles of Communism:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
That doesn’t mean billionaires are good to have, necessarily, either. It remains a contradiction, but not an uncalculated one. I highly recommend anyone here read China has Billionaires. As much as Marxists want to lower wealth inequality as much as possible, in the stage of developmemt the PRC is at this would get in the way of development, and could cause Capital Flight and brain drain. Moreover, billionaires provide an easy scapegoat that the USSR didn’t have, and thus all problems of society were directed at the state. It’s important to consider why a Marxist country does what it does, and not immediately assume you know better.
Thank you for your service comrade. o7
No problem comrade 🫡
What are you on about
