I read it, but the authors seem to be of the opinion that if China is doing it, it must be socialism. They also seem to have a very loose definition of what it actually means for the workers to control the means of production. And boy, they really gloss over the failures of the planned economy.
The Chinese economy really wasn’t planned in any but the broadest and fuzziest terms, if only because the central government simply lacked the material ability to plan out production and logistics directly on the scale of the entire Chinese economy. That left individual regions highly autarkic and free to experiment: the model of the Great Leap Forward came out of the experiments of individual rural communes, for example, and the central government only popularized it after the supposed success it was having (to mixed results that varied heavily by region, with it doing ok in some places and proving catastrophic in others). For urban factories, the organization ranged from traditional strict management-led patterns that any capitalist would expect of a business, to radical worker-led systems where individual workers had considerable leeway to set their own pace and procure their own tools and materials on behalf of the factory - both models functioned about as well as the other, and both ran into the single biggest problem China faced which was the crushing lack of industrial capital.
That last point is really the core of the whole issue: China as of the revolution was one of the most underdeveloped places on earth, with less total industrial output in 1949 than Russia had in 1917, and that problem was a heavy influence on every decision the CPC made since. They received an influx of industrial capital from the Soviets, but then Khrushchev happened and the USSR shifted its focus from producing industrial capital to further industrialize towards producing consumer treats since the left-liberal bloc with Khrushchev thought that was better (it wasn’t and it led to stagnation and increasing dissatisfaction from the liberal bloc who wanted treats and couldn’t understand why they weren’t getting as many treats as white americans were and this led to Gorbachev and Yeltsin), and with the Sino-Soviet split that potential solution ended entirely. Ultimately their revisionist cooperation with the US solved that problem: they got the industrial capital they needed to actually develop their economy and they got a flow of resources in exchange for the industrial output of their large and well educated labor pool - by solving the need of American Capitalists for ever larger labor pools and a market to sell lots of brand new industrial capital in, they solved their own problem.
And now they have their own modern struggle in the CPC between the communists who want ever more aggressive reforms and a move towards socialism with their now-developed economy and the liberal opportunists who will maybe concede to some socdem style regulations and welfare programs but mostly want to keep the status quo and keep lining their own pockets. From afar it seems like the left is winning that, and things like the massive infrastructure projects and anti-poverty campaigns of the past decade shows that at the very least they’re to the left of any modern socdem party which would clutch pearls over the cost and then surrender to liberal demands for austerity instead.
The clearest thing I can remember is that Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union despite mostly being a blow-by-blow of the reforms and political situation of the 80s talks a bit about the further-industrialization vs consumer-goods camps in the 50s. I haven’t come across anything that goes into the same sort of detail about what the actual material policies and conditions at any given point in the USSR were as, say, Sorghum and Steel does for China up to the 70s (caveat for Sorghum and Steel: it was written by ultras who are vocally anti-CPC, but it’s still the most nuanced and sympathetic piece I’ve ever seen about China because of how much it goes into detail about why this or that decision was made and what the material conditions behind it were).
It’s not loose at all. The means of production are currently controlled by the bourgeoisie through private ownership and the bourgeois state. If instead those are transferred to state ownership controlled by the proletariat it is then under their control. The CPC structure itself plays a major role here.
You’re the one glossing over this. It feels like you have something closer to the anarchist position on the topic rather than a marxist one. Marx’s Conspectus of Bakunin’s
Statism and Anarchy is pretty explicit about the marxian difference to that. He quotes Bakunin and responds so it reads a lot like a forum thread too lol.
50% of China’s economy is state owned enterprise. 12% is mixed ownership. 38% is private. Many of these “private” companies are also not bourgeois. Remember Huawei? That huge phone company the west freaks out about? It is a huge worker-owned private company. The state is controlled by the proletariat using a modified variant of soviet democracy, Cuba, Vietnam and several others also use variously tweaked and evolved over time versions of the soviet system. Constituencies are small and representatives are usually known well, anyone can recall this reps with a simple majority vote, reps take part in the local council and the members of that council vote to select a representative for the council at the next tier up, that council then does the same, this continues up the chain many tiers all the way up to the supreme assembly. Every single person at the supreme assembly has worked at every single level, working all the way up, every single one of them achieved actual results at every single tier of councils in order to get selected by that council to represent it higher up. Xi was born and lived in a literal cave in poverty for much of his early life, this is the very epitome of working class control with a democratically determined meritocratic structure that rewards competence and actual results.
The bourgeoisie do not “run things”, they have zero control over the state and they do not own the majority of the economy. 44% of the population are union members, 7% of the population are communist party members, there isn’t a household in the country that doesn’t have a direct relative who takes part in the party, and 95% of the population is satisfied with their government (a stark contrast to any capitalist country).
That 95% number sounds a lot more like “disagree and your life will become more difficult” than genuine satisfaction with the government. Also, dude, the union membership rate is kinda pointless when literally all unions save one are considered illegal. These things are irrelevant to the question of whether China is primarily communist/socialist or capitalist, but they’re too ridiculous not to comment on.
Anyway, you keep going back and forth on whether the bourgeoisie actually own and run the business, so I’m not sure what you meant when you first claimed that they did, if you’re now claiming they don’t.
That 95% number sounds a lot more like “disagree and your life will become more difficult” than genuine satisfaction with the government.
Ahaaaa but you see I did a bit of a cheeky gotcha here (sorry). Everyone always comments on this figure because it’s sensationally high.
That number comes from the longest independent study carried out of its kind (30 years long). Carried out by Harvard who I’m quite sure you will agree is not going to be biased in favour of China, quite the opposite in fact. They also very specifically state that the findings are not due to propaganda but that Chinese people’s opinions change based on actual material improvements in their lives.
The survey team found that compared to public opinion patterns in the U.S., in China there was very high satisfaction with the central government. In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing. In contrast to these findings, Gallup reported in January of this year that their latest polling on U.S. citizen satisfaction with the American federal government revealed only 38 percent of respondents were satisfied with the federal government.
We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. Second, the attitudes of Chinese citizens appear to respond (both positively and negatively) to real changes in their material well-being, which suggests that support could be undermined by the twin challenges of declining economic growth and a deteriorating natural environment.
While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for
granted. Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread, our survey reveals that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being
Responding to the rest of your response now:
Anyway, you keep going back and forth on whether the bourgeoisie actually own and run the business, so I’m not sure what you meant when you first claimed that they did, if you’re now claiming they don’t.
I am not sure what made you think that I said they did? I did not. Can you quote the part that caused this confusion? Maybe I misworded something?
Also, dude, the union membership rate is kinda pointless when literally all unions save one are considered illegal.
Why? You should not be measuring the effectiveness of unions by how many independently exist but instead by the effectiveness of their organising and frequency of their action. China had 1500 major strikes last year that were negotiated. You should focus less on an aesthetic and more on outcomes, what you care about is improving people’s lives yes? That is your preferred goal? We are on the same page in that I hope as it is the goal and desire of everyone on this site as well.
It’s not loose at all. The means of production are currently controlled by the bourgeoisie through private ownership and the bourgeois state. If instead those are transferred to state ownership controlled by the proletariat it is then under their control. The CPC structure itself plays a major role here.
Now I realize the second sentence is referencing a general capitalist society and the the third a communist. I thought the second was referencing China.
I’m going to have to tap out, because I have an acquired disability which makes long, dense reading very difficult, but I’ve pulled up a few academic papers on the Chinese economy and I’ll be slowly reading them a few paragraphs at a time. Cheers.
I’m sorry if I wrote too much! I would have chunked things up a bit more if I had known.
I do hope this has been interesting. That Harvard study is particularly useful in breaking down the (racist/orientalist) idea that the Chinese people are all somehow under a magic spell that controls them all through either omnipotent threat of harm or propaganda. A silly premise for a society.
Nah don’t worry, it’s much easier to pretend I’m normal, since I can fake it pretty well. I just don’t want to disappoint you with a sub-par conversation partner, and I’m struggling to parse, anyway. Thanks for the starting points, I’ll dig deeper at my own pace.
I read it, but the authors seem to be of the opinion that if China is doing it, it must be socialism. They also seem to have a very loose definition of what it actually means for the workers to control the means of production. And boy, they really gloss over the failures of the planned economy.
The Chinese economy really wasn’t planned in any but the broadest and fuzziest terms, if only because the central government simply lacked the material ability to plan out production and logistics directly on the scale of the entire Chinese economy. That left individual regions highly autarkic and free to experiment: the model of the Great Leap Forward came out of the experiments of individual rural communes, for example, and the central government only popularized it after the supposed success it was having (to mixed results that varied heavily by region, with it doing ok in some places and proving catastrophic in others). For urban factories, the organization ranged from traditional strict management-led patterns that any capitalist would expect of a business, to radical worker-led systems where individual workers had considerable leeway to set their own pace and procure their own tools and materials on behalf of the factory - both models functioned about as well as the other, and both ran into the single biggest problem China faced which was the crushing lack of industrial capital.
That last point is really the core of the whole issue: China as of the revolution was one of the most underdeveloped places on earth, with less total industrial output in 1949 than Russia had in 1917, and that problem was a heavy influence on every decision the CPC made since. They received an influx of industrial capital from the Soviets, but then Khrushchev happened and the USSR shifted its focus from producing industrial capital to further industrialize towards producing consumer treats since the left-liberal bloc with Khrushchev thought that was better (it wasn’t and it led to stagnation and increasing dissatisfaction from the liberal bloc who wanted treats and couldn’t understand why they weren’t getting as many treats as white americans were and this led to Gorbachev and Yeltsin), and with the Sino-Soviet split that potential solution ended entirely. Ultimately their revisionist cooperation with the US solved that problem: they got the industrial capital they needed to actually develop their economy and they got a flow of resources in exchange for the industrial output of their large and well educated labor pool - by solving the need of American Capitalists for ever larger labor pools and a market to sell lots of brand new industrial capital in, they solved their own problem.
And now they have their own modern struggle in the CPC between the communists who want ever more aggressive reforms and a move towards socialism with their now-developed economy and the liberal opportunists who will maybe concede to some socdem style regulations and welfare programs but mostly want to keep the status quo and keep lining their own pockets. From afar it seems like the left is winning that, and things like the massive infrastructure projects and anti-poverty campaigns of the past decade shows that at the very least they’re to the left of any modern socdem party which would clutch pearls over the cost and then surrender to liberal demands for austerity instead.
GOOD post
Do you have any good sources for reading more on this part (the transition away from industry)?
The clearest thing I can remember is that Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union despite mostly being a blow-by-blow of the reforms and political situation of the 80s talks a bit about the further-industrialization vs consumer-goods camps in the 50s. I haven’t come across anything that goes into the same sort of detail about what the actual material policies and conditions at any given point in the USSR were as, say, Sorghum and Steel does for China up to the 70s (caveat for Sorghum and Steel: it was written by ultras who are vocally anti-CPC, but it’s still the most nuanced and sympathetic piece I’ve ever seen about China because of how much it goes into detail about why this or that decision was made and what the material conditions behind it were).
It’s not loose at all. The means of production are currently controlled by the bourgeoisie through private ownership and the bourgeois state. If instead those are transferred to state ownership controlled by the proletariat it is then under their control. The CPC structure itself plays a major role here.
You’re the one glossing over this. It feels like you have something closer to the anarchist position on the topic rather than a marxist one. Marx’s Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy is pretty explicit about the marxian difference to that. He quotes Bakunin and responds so it reads a lot like a forum thread too lol.
Well now I’m just confused, is China socialist/communist or not? Because if the bourgeois own and run things…
What are you confused about?
50% of China’s economy is state owned enterprise. 12% is mixed ownership. 38% is private. Many of these “private” companies are also not bourgeois. Remember Huawei? That huge phone company the west freaks out about? It is a huge worker-owned private company. The state is controlled by the proletariat using a modified variant of soviet democracy, Cuba, Vietnam and several others also use variously tweaked and evolved over time versions of the soviet system. Constituencies are small and representatives are usually known well, anyone can recall this reps with a simple majority vote, reps take part in the local council and the members of that council vote to select a representative for the council at the next tier up, that council then does the same, this continues up the chain many tiers all the way up to the supreme assembly. Every single person at the supreme assembly has worked at every single level, working all the way up, every single one of them achieved actual results at every single tier of councils in order to get selected by that council to represent it higher up. Xi was born and lived in a literal cave in poverty for much of his early life, this is the very epitome of working class control with a democratically determined meritocratic structure that rewards competence and actual results.
The bourgeoisie do not “run things”, they have zero control over the state and they do not own the majority of the economy. 44% of the population are union members, 7% of the population are communist party members, there isn’t a household in the country that doesn’t have a direct relative who takes part in the party, and 95% of the population is satisfied with their government (a stark contrast to any capitalist country).
That 95% number sounds a lot more like “disagree and your life will become more difficult” than genuine satisfaction with the government. Also, dude, the union membership rate is kinda pointless when literally all unions save one are considered illegal. These things are irrelevant to the question of whether China is primarily communist/socialist or capitalist, but they’re too ridiculous not to comment on.
Anyway, you keep going back and forth on whether the bourgeoisie actually own and run the business, so I’m not sure what you meant when you first claimed that they did, if you’re now claiming they don’t.
Ahaaaa but you see I did a bit of a cheeky gotcha here (sorry). Everyone always comments on this figure because it’s sensationally high.
That number comes from the longest independent study carried out of its kind (30 years long). Carried out by Harvard who I’m quite sure you will agree is not going to be biased in favour of China, quite the opposite in fact. They also very specifically state that the findings are not due to propaganda but that Chinese people’s opinions change based on actual material improvements in their lives.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
Quote on 95% figure that I’ve used:
The actual study is here: https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf
Quote on it not being because of propaganda:
Responding to the rest of your response now:
I am not sure what made you think that I said they did? I did not. Can you quote the part that caused this confusion? Maybe I misworded something?
Why? You should not be measuring the effectiveness of unions by how many independently exist but instead by the effectiveness of their organising and frequency of their action. China had 1500 major strikes last year that were negotiated. You should focus less on an aesthetic and more on outcomes, what you care about is improving people’s lives yes? That is your preferred goal? We are on the same page in that I hope as it is the goal and desire of everyone on this site as well.
Now I realize the second sentence is referencing a general capitalist society and the the third a communist. I thought the second was referencing China.
I’m going to have to tap out, because I have an acquired disability which makes long, dense reading very difficult, but I’ve pulled up a few academic papers on the Chinese economy and I’ll be slowly reading them a few paragraphs at a time. Cheers.
I’m sorry if I wrote too much! I would have chunked things up a bit more if I had known.
I do hope this has been interesting. That Harvard study is particularly useful in breaking down the (racist/orientalist) idea that the Chinese people are all somehow under a magic spell that controls them all through either omnipotent threat of harm or propaganda. A silly premise for a society.
Nah don’t worry, it’s much easier to pretend I’m normal, since I can fake it pretty well. I just don’t want to disappoint you with a sub-par conversation partner, and I’m struggling to parse, anyway. Thanks for the starting points, I’ll dig deeper at my own pace.