I’m not sure if this is serious but China’s a textbook definition of a mixed economy and has been since at least the 80s.
Their utilities are all state owned enterprises. They have an enormous public sector for housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. Then the private sector handles consumer logistics and private lending and luxury goods and entertainment, which is how you get a guy like Jack Ma or Hui Ka Yan arrested for embezzlement and fraud from time to time.
Where? In a country with high quality of life, low cost of living, ample at-cost amenities, and a sub-60 retirement age? Is the material wealth of the nation distributed in an egalitarian manner Not Real Communism?
What then is Communism? Is Communism when everyone has a 401k full of private equities (worker ownership)? Is it when they all own the same number of Bitcoins? Does everyone just need their name on their company letterhead?
Marx would frown at confusing fictitious assets for material analysis.
Yeah, that’s not what I’m getting at in the least. You have socialism when the workers receive the full benefits of their labor. You have communism when society is organized around providing what you can, and taking what you need. On a mass scale, I don’t see this happening anywhere in the world, but it does exist in smaller groups.
You have socialism when the workers receive the full benefits of their labor.
You have socialism when the community receives the full benefit of working labor. Even then, trying to slap a puritanical lens that ignores the dramatic shift in social equity between pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary China isn’t materialist. To say a modern working class Chinese resident isn’t enjoying a vastly larger share of their collective surplus labor, you’ve got to ignore a ton of social investment and commensurate benefits to the public.
But if you do want to be puritanical, we can go back to Old School Maoism. Per Michael Parenti, the Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry. Hard to get more Communist than that. The catch was that China’s subsequent divorce from global trade crippled their domestic economy and forced urban and rural proles into conflict. Dengism was an effort at reconciling the contradictions of industrial development.
We can debate the trade-offs. We can condemn the violence during the transition. But we cannot deny that these are Chinese people setting their own domestic policy. Maoism, Dengism, and Xi’s Socialism With Chinese Characteristics aren’t being imposed by Americans on Wall Street or the British Empire or the IMF Banking Committee. Chinese people are running the Chinese economy for the benefit of the collective community of Chinese residents.
On a mass scale, I don’t see this happening anywhere in the world
If you don’t see it happening, you’re not looking.
Or, you’re attempting to apply Socialism and Communism in such an orthodox manner that you’ve defined “Real Leftism” it out of existence.
But that would work imply China isn’t Communist…ahh, yes, I see your point.
I’m not sure if this is serious but China’s a textbook definition of a mixed economy and has been since at least the 80s.
Their utilities are all state owned enterprises. They have an enormous public sector for housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. Then the private sector handles consumer logistics and private lending and luxury goods and entertainment, which is how you get a guy like Jack Ma or Hui Ka Yan arrested for embezzlement and fraud from time to time.
Being “state owned” isn’t seizing the means of production. Workers largely remain alienated from the fruits of their labor.
Where? In a country with high quality of life, low cost of living, ample at-cost amenities, and a sub-60 retirement age? Is the material wealth of the nation distributed in an egalitarian manner Not Real Communism?
What then is Communism? Is Communism when everyone has a 401k full of private equities (worker ownership)? Is it when they all own the same number of Bitcoins? Does everyone just need their name on their company letterhead?
Marx would frown at confusing fictitious assets for material analysis.
Yeah, that’s not what I’m getting at in the least. You have socialism when the workers receive the full benefits of their labor. You have communism when society is organized around providing what you can, and taking what you need. On a mass scale, I don’t see this happening anywhere in the world, but it does exist in smaller groups.
You have socialism when the community receives the full benefit of working labor. Even then, trying to slap a puritanical lens that ignores the dramatic shift in social equity between pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary China isn’t materialist. To say a modern working class Chinese resident isn’t enjoying a vastly larger share of their collective surplus labor, you’ve got to ignore a ton of social investment and commensurate benefits to the public.
But if you do want to be puritanical, we can go back to Old School Maoism. Per Michael Parenti, the Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry. Hard to get more Communist than that. The catch was that China’s subsequent divorce from global trade crippled their domestic economy and forced urban and rural proles into conflict. Dengism was an effort at reconciling the contradictions of industrial development.
We can debate the trade-offs. We can condemn the violence during the transition. But we cannot deny that these are Chinese people setting their own domestic policy. Maoism, Dengism, and Xi’s Socialism With Chinese Characteristics aren’t being imposed by Americans on Wall Street or the British Empire or the IMF Banking Committee. Chinese people are running the Chinese economy for the benefit of the collective community of Chinese residents.
If you don’t see it happening, you’re not looking.
Or, you’re attempting to apply Socialism and Communism in such an orthodox manner that you’ve defined “Real Leftism” it out of existence.