AES- Actually-Existing Socialism
Edit: Dictatorship of the Proletariat + Predominant, collective ownership and control of the economy = AES?
AES- Actually-Existing Socialism
Edit: Dictatorship of the Proletariat + Predominant, collective ownership and control of the economy = AES?
Worker control of the state via democratic centralism and a healthy oppression of the bourgeoisie.
Some examples of how this manifests in China specifically:
Most, if not all, critical industries and infrastructure have SOEs in monopoly control in their sectors, and all SOEs, as CPC-controlled entities, must adhere to the five-year plan as set forth by the central committee. Many are managed through the State Council’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which is charged with hiring and firing executives, reforming and restructuring firms, and auditing. In addition, most of the major banks are state-owned, which allows them to offer better interest rates for SOEs and maintain dominance over private enterprises.
All enterprises with 3 or more CPC members must establish a local Party branch, elect a secretary, and engage in Party building. Party organizations exist to ensure adherence to “social responsibility” principles. These principles include social benefit, poverty alleviation, environmental improvement, education, guidance and improvement of public opinion, core socialist values, Party building, and the continued development of socialism.
In the US, they say that some companies are too big to fail and use taxes from workers to bail them out. In China, when the Evergrande failed, the CPC said they “would only extend a lifeline if [the chairman of Evergrande] gave up his fortune to repay the company’s debts” and let the company default.
And of course, China is known for executing billionaires, which is something I don’t think you’d see with any regularity in a capitalist state.
These points all do a good job verifying that the government is working for the benefit of the proletariat, but how do you determine that it is actually the workers that are in control? Can a state work in favor of the proletariat and then regress into something that favors the bourgeoisie?
For example, were the workers ever in control in the USSR? If they were, did they lose it? It seems hard to square the dissolution of the USSR with a concurrent dictatorship of the proletariat.
China’s constitution both state that it is a DotP and that they practice democratic centralism. This has some good info and history on China’s workers’ congresses in practice.
Yes, they had workers’ councils.
Post-Stalin USSR lost their revolutionary identity after revisionists and opportunists came into power. It was either Khruschev or Brezhnev that removed the DotP from the constitution. After that, the dissolution of the USSR was inevitable.
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