It’s like China is just that one country (aside from the Khmer Rouge) that every ML (aside from Dengists like us) agrees to hate on.

Fellow Traveler and leftypol uploaded videos criticizing them, the Shining Path hung up literal dogs to protest them, Maoists go all insane saying that it’s some red fash social-imperialist nation because (insert nato propaganda here). And Hoxhaists claim that China was never socialist and that the only socialist nation ever was USSR before Khrushchev and almighty holy Albania.

What is it that makes China so controversial even among MLs? I get that it’s not perfect and every AES state has their Ls, but jesus.

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.mlM
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    11 months ago

    A lot of it is the western left’s fetish for defeat, as Jones Manoel pointed out in that great article, and which Losurdo is really good at highlighting.

    Another part is western chauvinism, that communist expertise must come from those in western europe or the US (who’ve never had any victories and so are talking out of turn), and that eastern communists / (insert whatever racialized term like hordes here) can’t comprehend and apply Marxism.

    Anarchists are the biggest offenders for both of those.

    Another big part is the short-term mindset that’s unable to see the bargain (ie the tradeoff of temporary low wage exploitation for long-term technology and expertise) , for what it really is: a long-term strategy to end colonialism, transfer control of production out of the hands of western capital, and a way out of the low-wage trap every global south nation is suffering under.

    The Long Game and Its Contradictions is probably the best introduction to SWCC, and outlines what this strategy entails.

  • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    It’s important to remember that China before Xi’s reforms was pretty much a capitalist hellhole. Corruption, environmental degradation and poverty were rampant, while the high rates of profits in China kept western capitalism on life support. Things have improved from 2010 onward, but even the CPC’s official stance is that Deng made some rightist errors. The CPC’s ability to improve things and correct past errors doesn’t mean that they don’t make any errors. And given that the CPC made rightist errors, it is only expected that it would receive criticism from the left.

    Furthermore, the CPC itself claims that it is only in the very early stages of building socialism. As a result, there are a lot of similarities with capitalism such as a very high Gini coefficient and long working hours. The western left has correctly learnt from its past struggles that reducing working hours and levels of inequality improves productivity and living standards. They have fought against the bullshit excuses from their ruling class which has argued the necessity of poor working conditions for decades. They do not however realize that China does not have the luxury of setting its own working conditions to whatever it wants. It has until very recently been at the whims of the imperialists, who only invest in countries where they can squeeze profits.

    The CPC has also made errors in recent years by becoming more nationalistic and has moved slower on LGBTQ rights than is expected of a socialist country. We cannot even justify these mistakes by appealing to the economy or national defense. These latter mistakes are just pure mistakes.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    A lot of people have a fairly superficial understanding of ML theory, so they see China having capitalism as a betrayal of the core principles. Effectively this shows lack of class analysis on their part. My reply to this point is that if China allowing a limited form of capitalism makes it capitalist, then Canada must be communist because we have some social services like free healthcare. It’s an absurd line of argument to make, yet it’s the level of understanding a lot of people are stuck at.

    Once people internalize the idea that China is communist only nominally, then other stuff easily builds on top of that. For example, the atrocity propaganda becomes easy to swallow because obviously capitalists would exploit minorities, we see them do it in our own countries and everywhere around the globe.

    I suspect another big aspect is chauvinism. People just don’t want to accept that China managed to succeed where their society failed. It’s much more comfortable to believe that China is just a different branding of the same system they live under. Acknowledging that China is a successful socialist society run by a principled Communist party means also having to grapple with the failure of western left.

    • The_Walkening [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Marx: “Societies develop their economies in stages and industrialization is necessary to achieve socialism.”

      China: Develops the economy through industrialization, which means a controlled capitalist economy run by socialists

      Western Leftists: “kitty-cri-screm No not like that socialism is supposed to happen through some spontaneous magic!”

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Gotta be honest, I was one of those MLs before the pandemic.

    Seeing China take COVID seriously while every other capitalist nation left us to die really drove the lesson home, and now I understand that politics are still in command despite the apparent liberalization of the economy. Using capitalist development and investment (i.e. getting the capitalists to sell us the rope) is extremely dangerous but it seems China has somehow made it work despite all my doubts. I was wrong.

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    Turns out that not everyone that calls itself a marxist-leninist is a marxist-leninist. You need to internalize the dialectical materialist outlook, its painfully obvious that China is socialist when you can hear the music.