WASHINGTON (AP) — Communism, President Donald Trump says, is the greatest threat the U.S. has ever faced.
This summer, citing similarly grave concerns, he took the rare step of delivering a primetime address to the nation, accusing China of “sinister election meddling” in 2020 and reviving his yearslong push to dispute his loss in that year’s election.
Even as Trump seeks to decry Democrats as communists ahead of November’s midterm elections, he is rolling out the red carpet this week for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s most powerful communist country.
The state visit comes as the president himself has increasingly directed his administration to take large stakes in private companies to try to stimulate the economy — something even some Republicans decry as corporate socialism.
China is a developing socialist country run by a communist party. Their primary concern at the moment is with developing the productive forces to a level at which the economy can be efficiently publicly owned and planned, so marketization is employed in secondary industries to rapidly develop, while maintaining public control of the commanding heights. Their form of economy is called the socialist market economy.
There’s a case to be made that it’s more of a stratified ethno-centric state capitalism more akin to theoretical fascism than a true socialist market economy. It compares reasonably close to something like the state capitalism of Rhodesia before its collapse. It’s just not a settler colonial state, so it’s more stable due to the more favourable ethnic ratio by comparison to the dominated ethnic minorities. It’s not unreasonable to question the authenticity of the CPP’s claim to the label of “Communist”, anymore than it is to question North Korea’s self-description of being a “Democratic People’s Republic.”
The important factors, from a Marxist standpoint, are that the working classes control the state and that the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned. Rhodesia was as you said, a settler-colony that ran on colonialism as their primary mode of production and class character. As for questioning the authenticity of the CPC, I invite everyone who knows a decent bit about Marxism to read statements from the CPC and critique them here.
For a Marxist like myself, you can’t really “fake” this kind of understanding. Even if Marxists can disagree with him here, what cannot be said is that this is all talk. The people of China do study Marxism, and though it is true that a good number tune out as we all do from class, it becomes incredibly difficult to present a “faux-Marxism” in a well-educated socialist state.
Talk is cheap, actions speak clearly. It’s very hard to claim that the workers control the state, when they are responding more out of fear of falling into a disfavoured underclass (or worse) than they are responding to their own needs. I have no doubt that in spirit the people of China consider the promise of Communism their goal, but the political class speaks a different truth with their hands than they speak with their voices.
The actions of the CPC do back up their talk with action. Did you read the article I linked? China is progressing exactly as Xi Jinping described, in my opinion, which is why I invited you to criticize openly so we can discuss. One thing I think you have confused is the idea that there is a “political class.” In Marxist analysis, there is no such thing. Administration is not a class, but an occupation. What determines class is ones relation to ownership of the means of production, which administrators in socialism share in common with factory workers and whatnot.
Can you explain how the CPC is not adhering to Marxism? I think the article presents a good intro point for discussion.
Sounds great in principle except while the devolution of profit is far more equitable, the devolution of authority is not, so the claim that administrators have devolved ownership to the worker is only half true. The fundamental problem is that true devolution of ownership would imply equal participation in defining objectives and a synthesis of perspective. The tight information controls, aggressive, punitive discipline rather than integrative discipline methods, and extremely harmful consequences for breaking with party narrative, even with good cause create a de facto class stratification between the partisan administration and the proletariat. This not only harms the individual in lack of self-actualization, but also the nation as a whole in terms of limiting adaptability, and preventing the integration of feedback not previously modelled, and producing misguided, misinformed leadership, corrupted by their own personal biases.
It’s the same semi-devolved state of ownership which most socialist societies get stuck at. Systemic authoritarian bottlenecks and a failure to learn, integrate, and achieve mutual consensus rather than imposing consensus from above ends up recreating the worst sins of tyranny, and plutocracy. China has done better than most at navigating this obstacle, but it hasn’t overcome it. Its hybrid semi-socialist state creates exploited underclasses out of ethnic minorities and perspectives deemed incompatible with the flawed perspective of the political elite.
There are two major disagreements I have with your analysis.
The first is your firm break from Marxism and materialism into idealist analysis. Administrators in socialism perform a socially necessary form of mental and managerial labor in coordinating society. This does not make them a distinct class, just like managers are not a distinct class. Again, ownership of production is the primary distinction between workers and owners, not whether one coordinates other workers. The administrators in the CPC are overwhelmingly proletarian, but you divert from Marxism here.
Secondly, the actual, practical experience of China paints a wildly different picture of society than you describe as its supposed shortcomings. Even according to western firms like NIRA data, perceptions of democracy are incredibly high:
This is no accident. Policy in China comes from the bottom-up, in a process called “Whole Process People’s Democracy.” It then gets interpreted by the CPC, who relay and simplify policy with a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, which then gets feedback and is implemented. Democratic centralism makes policy quick when necessary, and gradual when consensus needs to be built. It’s why policy in China has radically adapted over the existence of the PRC, far more so than other countries, while maintaining more political stability.
In essense, you critique China from a liberal perspective while maintaining Marxist phrasing. That’s why I invited you to analyze the article and critique it, so that we have a common basepoint.
Survey data is not reliable in that kind of controlled information environment. I don’t discount the value of administrative labour, I dispute the claim of decentralized ownership. Effective distribution of material gain does not represent effective distribution of authority. You too quickly glossed over the inherent power imbalance of “interpretation of the feedback.”
Describing the “whole democracy process” mechanism in principle does not make it the process in practice, and the punitive disciplinary system is not compatible with its ideals.
Survey data is consistent in China, though. Jason Hickel explained that the data regarding support for China’s system and government is accurate. You keep returning to these claims of “equal distribution of authority,” which is not a Marxist critique nor something avoidable in building socialism. China is not a classless society in a communist world.
Further, simply hinting that Whole-Process People’s Democracy doesn’t exist in practice is not evidence against it. For proof, read Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance by Professor Roland Boer. It’s a lot longer than the article from Xi Jinping I linked earlier though, so if you aren’t going to read that article I don’t see why you’d read either of the things I linked here.
They don’t in any sense control the state. An authoritarian “vanguard party” rules on their behalf. And the commanding heights are owned by whom exactly? That same party, not the working class itself.
The CPC is a proletarian party. I think you’re confusing what class is, in Marxist analysis. The party is not its own class of people, but a subsection of the working class. If plumbers were the only ones responsible for administration, it would not be accurate to say the “plumber class” owned the means of production. Classes are relations to ownership of the means of production, and in that administrative labor is one subset of the proletariat.
Clearly you have never been to China nor ever watched anything else but fox news or Newsmax. Good news for you is that the best president of the best country ever, is now launching his own news channel. Enjoy living the dream!!!
I haven’t been to China, no, but I also don’t watch Fox or Newsmax. I’m a member of a communist party, and I try to get my news from left organizations like Breakthrough News, Liberation News, Granma, CGTN, etc.
deleted by creator
They’re authoritarian state capitalist imperialists with a stong dose of Han nationalism.
They’re not socialist since workers neither own nor control the means of production. Though it might be arguable that, as Marx strongly implied, socialism is a phenomenon that emerges from the contradictions of capitalism, so China has to go through all that bullshit as part of the journey, since the country was almost entirely feudal when the CCP took over.
All states are “authoritarian,” in Marxist analysis, as the state itself is a monopoly on violence in service of the ruling class. China is not state capitalist, because the bourgeoisie has no political power, and the commanding heights of the economy are both publicly owned and run to service societal need. China is also not imperialist, neither in the colloquial sense nor the Leninist analysis, as it is not super exploiting the global south for super profits. Finally, minority ethnicities in China all have strong minority Protections and over representation in bodies like the NPC.
China is socialist because the state is run by the proletariat, and the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned. The principal aspect of the economy, ie rising and dominant factor, is public, collective ownership. The job of the CPC is to facilitate the process of developing into higher levels of socialism, and the method of marketizing secondary industries is the most rapid way to create the basis of socialized production.
I’d really like to see a Marxist analysis, not just a declaration with no backing.
Sure.
Yes, the class background of the CPC is generally salaried workers. The bourgeoisie in China are prevented from attaining political power and prevented from forming a coherent class by which they can overturn the state. This editorial from The Guardian explains it quite well, actually:
What other class could rule China, if not capitalists or workers? In Marxist analysis, in any society where there is class struggle, there are two broad classes that form the principal contradiction. It certainly isn’t the peasantry, who no longer exist, nor is it the petite bourgeoisie, who largely exist in sole proprietorships, nor is it the aristocracy, who again no longer exist. The classes at struggle in China are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, with the proletariat at the top, settled by the revolution.
I keep seeing sarcastic remarks that don’t actually present a coherent Marxist analysis, as though snark is a suitable counter to verifiable material reality. Is it really so hard to present an argument on who you believe is the class ruling China, and grounding that with Marxist analysis?