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If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.
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If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.
That is another western chauvinist talking point. That any development of industry (the primary task of countries who’ve just freed themselves from colonial rule), is a “betrayal” of socialism, because it didn’t go according to whatever the given critic laid out as sufficiently socialist enough, and that only the western critics of socialist countries have the correct plan.
China specifically can’t be called state capitalist in the slightest, considering that the CPC stands above the political system, unlike capitalist dictatorships where capital rises above political power:
You’ve done a really good job misrepresenting my argument, keep it up.
Yeah, any critique of 3rd world communist countries is western chauvinism, therefore we should avoid looking at those countries through objective materialist perspective and uncritically support them just because they’re third-worldist - that’s something an imperialist crakkka like me should know.
I’d like you to point out where I said that industrialization is bad. The argument is literally about how the development was achieved and I concluded that it was through (state) capitalism and capitalist mode of production rather than socialism, even saying how it’s good that they managed to build up wealth. I explicitly didn’t moralize this either, this is literally how these countries materially functioned.
My critique also comes strictly from Marxism which is essentially the basis for communism regardless of culture, but sure.
You’re confusing political power with class relations, the key isn’t who holds political power but what social relations of production are. If a state (CPC controlled or otherwise) oversees an economy where wage labor, capital accumulation, commodity exchange persists, then it’s still state capitalism.
Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.
Some more quotes from an article on China’s Long road to socialism:
“”We want to do business.” Quite right, business will be done. We are against no one except the domestic and foreign reactionaries who hinder us from doing business. … When we have beaten the internal and external reactionaries by uniting all domestic and international forces, we shall be able to do business with all foreign countries on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Yes, trade isn’t exclusive to capitalism, I never claimed otherwise. However, there is a distinction between commodity exchange for exchange-value (capitalist trade) and international distribution of goods to satisfy needs (socialist distribution), whether through planned allocation or transitional forms like labor vouchers.
Wage labor is specific to capitalism, it’s a sale of labor-power as a commodity, exchanged for a wage, with surplus value being appropriated by a class/managerial apparatus. This is THE fundamental relation of capitalism, and you’d be better off reading theory than blindly quoting it.
Though I will give a concession - socialism is such a meaningless term that it means like 4 different things depending on who says it: liberals would say it’s social democracy, ML’s say its state capitalism, Marxists and Leninists say it’s socialist mode of production (post-transition period) and Posadists would say it’s when nuclear annihilation. A word doesn’t make a thing so if you consider state capitalism to be socialist - fair, all power to you. However - Marxists, Leninists, Liberals would all collectively disagree. You did drop a Lenin quote to strengthen your argument so let me do the same:
In the same text he also calls NEP USSR as state capitalist due to the concessions he had to make for the transition, which is explicitly made distinct from Socialism.
You liberals act like these arguments against the “state capitalism” haven’t been debunked for > 100 years, even by Marx and Engels themselves.
Socialist states have a surplus, after all, they do need to use some of the value to defend themselves from imperialist aggression, and to direct it into social services, research / science, and capital accumulation just like any country. The point is, that this surplus is not controlled by private capital, but by political decision within the communist party, whose members are made up of the worker-peasant alliance.
From Parenti:
The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world–as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.
First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West [even more so when compared with today’s grotesque compensation packages to the executive and financial elites.—Eds], as were their personal incomes and lifestyles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess. {Nor could they transfer such “wealth” by inheritance or gift to friends and kin, as is often the case with Western magnates and enriched political leaders. Just vide Tony Blair.—Eds]
The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.
Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.
Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.
Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.
All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.
But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.