this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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It doesn't matter what ultras claim, the fact is that China is not imperialist and this is objectively demonstrable. The myth of Chinese "debt traps" has been extensively debunked by now, and the notion that all loans are imperialist is frankly infantile and an indication that the person claiming this has a very superficial understanding of both imperialism and political economy.
Accepting capitalist investment has nothing to do with the DotP, it does not change in whose hands the state power lies, so this is a total non-sequitur. As is the question of market or planned economy, which is by the way a false dichotomy. Markets and economic planning are both just tools that can be used by bourgeois and proletarian states alike, and they can and do coexist in most countries.
These are pretty solid answers. This helped me connect the dots to what I have been having trouble articulating and formulating in my mind regarding this topic. Thank you very much, comrade.
And frankly you don't need to delve into any kind of theory or economics to see that this argument that China is actually a capitalist state pretending to be socialist is prima facie nonsense. That's just not what the bourgeoisie do when they manage to overthrow a socialist state.
They have nothing to gain from continuing to pretend like they are Marxist-Leninists. When socialism falls it is unmistakeable, it looks like what happened in the former Soviet Union, it looks like genocide by economic collapse.
They gain much more benefits from declaring outright that they are in power than from such an elaborate decades long charade in a world where capitalism is still dominant. If nothing else they would gain good relations with other bourgeois states which can help them stay in power and enrich themselves even more as comprador elites.
So this is just nothing more than a childish conspiracy theory, to believe that if socialism was actually defeated the new ruling class would keep up the pretense that it has not, maintaining the inevitable animosity with the imperialist world that such a status brings with it.
It is absurd even to imagine it. Do you know of any capitalists who would sit through and even mandate hours and hours of classes in the study of socialist theory for themselves and their fellow ruling class elites?
Indeed, I believe that the only way to make a "coherent" argument that somehow China is ruled by a bourgeois that pretends to be Marxist is through racist stereotypes. Only if you accept the racist trope that the chinese people are always hiding their intentions and are deceptive by nature you could argue that the CPC is in fact deceiving the entire world and their population by posing as communist.
It always goes back to western chauvinism in the end. China is doing something different to how these western ultras think is the One True Correct Path of Socialism, so they find excuses as to why China isn't really socialist because they aren't following the advice of an enlightened westerner who knows what real socialism looks like. A lot of these people claim to be third worldists as well, but are extremely dismissive of the voices of anyone in the third world who disagrees with them.
And to what end? What motivation would they possibly have to do that? I have yet to have someone who believes this weird conspiracy theory answer this simple question: why?
Yeah, an actual collapse of socialism looks like US committing genocide via shock therapy during the overthrow and balkanization of the Soviet Union, which was magnitudes worse than the COVID pandemic. Yet we don't see Russia being called "well ackshually they are a capitalist state pretending to be socialist" in the same vain as China. That's because they did have a capitalist takeover, and they don't pretend to be socialist nor have a reason to. I totally agree with your statement here. I just didn't have the words to dismantle the other ultra-leftist arguments, which you helped greatly.
We also don't see capitalist, cracker politicians hiding their primitiveness, surely some socialist theory, let alone merely reading a book, would have helped:
The entire argument comes from having internalized that "communism is when poor". Since China is no longer poor, it must mean that it is no longer communist.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: