Terrible article, the entire way through. The general assertion is that Russia and China have some degree of influence, and are therefore imperialist according to Lenin. This ignores the following:
-
Russia, though capitalist, has an incredibly small amount of finance capital compared to imperialist countries like the US, Germany, UK, France, etc. Without a share in the world’s monopolies, Russia cannot super-exploit the global south.
-
The PRC is socialist, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. The author treats claims of China being socialist as inherently wrong, without addressing said claims.
-
Neither the PRC nor RF have anywhere close to the number of millitary bases overseas that the west has. They cannot dominate the global south millitarily if their millitaries aren’t in the global south! The PRC has ~3 millitary bases overseas, the US Empire alone has hundreds.
All in all, a horrible butchering of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism in a manner that minimizes western imperialism and exaggerates the sins of enemies of western imperialism. It is western imperialism that has global hegenony presently, and caping for it just serves to help protect it.
The PRC is socialist, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state.
Why do financial institutions like banks and stock markets exist, and then lock their customers out of their money?
How does public ownership tangibly present itself in the real world, if billionaires still hold billions without giving billions worth of labour value, and poor people do not receive a fair share of their labour?
Through what means do the working classes control the state?
The overwhelming majority of finance is publicly owned in the PRC, and it exists because the PRC is a developing, socialist economy. Stock markets exist largely for secondary industries and medium firms, while the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and run. Public ownership presents itself in the real world via the vast, pro-social infrastructure projects, poverty alleviation campaigns, central planning, Five Year Plans, and consistent improvements in the lives of the working classes.
In China, they have direct elections for local representatives, which elect further “rungs,” laddering to the top. The top then has mass polling and opinion gathering. This combination of top-down and bottom-up democracy ensures effective results. For more on this, see Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. This system is remarkably effective, resulting in over 90% approval rates.
I’m not sure what your point is. Is your point that the presence of any private property whatsoever means a state isn’t socialist? Such an understanding isn’t based in Marxism, and would mean Capitalism doesn’t exist either as public property exists within capitalism.
The overwhelming majority of finance is publicly owned in the PRC
Okay, but you can’t just say it is publicly owned and then not have any actual tangible way of individual members of the public of accessing what they apparently own.
socialist economy
By every definition of “socialism” that I can find, China is breaking virtually every rule. What specifically about their economy makes it more socialist than, say, any other economy in the world?
Public ownership presents itself in the real world via the vast, pro-social infrastructure projects, poverty alleviation campaigns, central planning, Five Year Plans, and consistent improvements in the lives of the working classes.
Okay, I think socialism is a little bit more than when the government does stuff, but maybe I was taught differently. I guess by that definition even India is socialist and publicly owned.
In China, they have direct elections for local representatives, which elect further “rungs,” laddering to the top.
And how do you avoid the inherent corruption issues the one-party system presents? Since anyone who is already higher up in that ladder holds power over those underneath them, and power leads to corruption.
Every western democracy on earth fits these criteria - elections for local representatives, who themselves go on to vote on the leadership (parliamentary or electoral college, take your pick). And we all have mass polling and opinion gathering.
This system is remarkably effective, resulting in over 90% approval rates.
Those approval rates exist only at the federal level, not the provincial or municipal.
Not coincidentally, it’s illegal to publicly criticize the federal government in China, or accuse it of failing to adhere to socialist ideals.
Again, power leads to corruption.
I’m not sure what your point is. Is your point that the presence of any private property whatsoever means a state isn’t socialist?
Is your point that having democratic elections and governments that do good things for the people makes a country socialist?
Because by all the criteria you’ve named, I can name a lot of countries that are even more socialist than China. Canada is more socialist than China and we don’t even call ourselves socialist.
So what’s the difference? It sounds like just any other western capitalist country except you just call it socialist and publicly owned?
Okay, but you can’t just say it is publicly owned and then not have any actual tangible way of individual members of the public of accessing what they apparently own.
Public ownership doesn’t mean anyone can do whatever they want with it. For example, a publicly run nuclear power plant isn’t going to let random citizens walk around and do whatever they want.
By every definition of “socialism” that I can find, China is breaking virtually every rule. What specifically about their economy makes it more socialist than, say, any other economy in the world?
Can you explain this? What do you think socialism is, and how is China “breaking virtually every rule?”
Socialism is a mode of production where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes in charge of the state. China fulfills both of these requirements.
Okay, I think socialism is a little bit more than when the government does stuff, but maybe I was taught differently. I guess by that definition even India is socialist and publicly owned.
Socialism is not when the government does stuff, but socialism allows the working classes to direct production and distribution to do good stuff for the working classes more effectively.
And how do you avoid the inherent corruption issues the one-party system presents? Since anyone who is already higher up in that ladder holds power over those underneath them, and power leads to corruption.
Power does not lead to corruption, it isn’t a supernatural force turning people evil. Corruption comes from people desiring to improve their own conditions and taking advantage of their position to do so, which is contested by transparency and kicking bad actors out of the party. There is nothing about being a one-party system that makes it more corrupt.
Every western democracy on earth fits these criteria - elections for local representatives, who themselves go on to vote on the leadership (parliamentary or electoral college, take your pick). And we all have mass polling and opinion gathering.
And yet private ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, meaning the capitalist class has a hold of the state and thus manipulates it as it sees fit.
Those approval rates exist only at the federal level, not the provincial or municipal.
Nope, the approval rates at local and provincial levels are also 85%+.
Not coincidentally, it’s illegal to publicly criticize the federal government in China, or accuse it of failing to adhere to socialist ideals.
Not true either. What’s punished is when groups try to undermine the socialist system for liberal ends, meaning capitalists are often punished.
Again, power leads to corruption.
Again, it does not. This is idealism, using the supernatural to explain real, material phenomena.
Is your point that having democratic elections and governments that do good things for the people makes a country socialist?
No, a country is socialist if public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes are in charge of the state. Democratic elections controlled by the working classes, and a government that uplifts the people over profits, are both outcomes of socialism, not the definition.
Because by all the criteria you’ve named, I can name a lot of countries that are even more socialist than China. Canada is more socialist than China and we don’t even call ourselves socialist.
Private ownership is the principle aspect of the economy in Canada, and capitalists control the state. Canada is not “more socialist,” it’s a capitalist settler-colony.
So what’s the difference? It sounds like just any other western capitalist country except you just call it socialist and publicly owned?
The difference is that socialist countries have public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state.
-
Garbage Western Marxist. Multipolarity is not an ideology. It is a description of a world system. There is no path from the unipolar world to a socialist world without first going through a multipolar transition.
The reason Great Power Rivalry does not factor in to contemporary Marxist analysis of geopolitical is because Russia and China are not yet great powers. The context of Great Power Rivalry during the period when the Marxist analysis of imperialism first emerged was a context in which multiple European war machines had already sailed clear around the globe and committed various genocides to claim entire populations as their subjugated peoples and were actively extracting their wealth to maintain their empires and war machines. It was not merely an analysis resting on big militaries but rather big imperialist states fighting with each other.
Russia and China do not meet the standard of Great Power in this sense. If you take England, Spain, and France and scale them up to 21st century standards, Russia and China do not measure up.
If Russia and China had, say even 100 foreign military bases each, while they wouldn’t be as strong as the USA’s 700, they would rightly be seen as imperialist Great Powers and thus engaged in inter-imperilaist conflict. But they do not have such an empire. They are almost entirely confined to their own long-standing geographical space. In short, “big military” is not equivalent to Great Power and to argue that they are simply because they have a big military and a capitalist arrangement of production is a complete misunderstanding of materialism and an adherence to idealist conceptions of imperialism. Which is what Western Marxists are consistently criticized for doing and which this author fails to avoid.
