this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
68 points (93.6% liked)
Socialism
5796 readers
43 users here now
Rules TBD.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
China is already socialist. At least they claim to be.
China isn't an Empire. Being a large country is not the same as being an Empire, the US is an Empire because of how it leverages IMF loans to force countries in the Global South into privatizing and opening themselves up for foreign plundering, as well as maintaining hundreds of millitary bases globally to keep this process of foreign plundering going.
China is Socialist, just not an Empire.
Has China made any progress towards socialism lately or are they solidly authoritarian capitalists?
If we are to judge the PRC on Marxist lines, given that they are Marxist-Leninists, then they are already Socialist. The large firms and key industries of the PRC are already overwhelmingly under public control, while private enterprise is a mix of small corporations, sole proprietorships, and cooperatives, all of which would not be able to go away simply by making them illegal, and need to be developed out of.
That's a more classical interpretation of Marxism than the later Maoist era, which tried to achieve a fully publicly owned economy in an extremely underdeveloped economy. That's why Marx was such a stickler about developing the Productive Forces.
I want you to look at the bolded word. Why did Marx say by degree? Did he think on day 1, businesses named A-C are nationalized, day 2 businesses D-E, etc etc? No. Marx believed that it is through nationalizing of the large firms that would be done immediately, and gradually as the small firms develop, they too can be folded into the public sector. The path to eliminated Private Property isn't to make it illegal, but to develop out of it.
This is why, in the previous paragraph, Marx described public seizure in degrees, but raising the level of the productive forces as rapidly as possible.
China does have Billionaires, but these billionaires do not control key industries, nor vast megacorps. The number of billionaires is actually shrinking in the last few years. Instead, large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and small firms are privately owned. This is Marxism.
If we are to judge the PRC on Anarchist lines, then no, they are certainly not Anarchists, but they aren't claiming to be, either.