me when I do liberal reductionism and don’t understand anything Lenin, Chairman Mao or Stalin wrote.
Edit:
To more properly explain.
You rely on a crude, ahistorical definition of socialism and treats China as a static abstraction rather than a real society developing under concrete material conditions. You reduce Marxism to a legal-form checklist and ignores class power, historical development, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a fundamental error.
In Marxism, “who owns the means of production” is not a question of paper titles but of class rule. Ownership only matters insofar as it expresses which class holds political power, controls surplus, and sets the direction of development. Defining socialism as the immediate abolition of all private enterprise is not Marxism; it is utopian liberal nonsense.
Lenin addressed this explicitly. Under proletarian rule, state capitalism is a socialist tool. His formulation is unambiguous: state capitalism under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not capitalism in the bourgeois sense but a form subordinated to socialist power and goals. The decisive issue is not whether markets or private firms exist, but which class commands them.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned and planned: land (state-owned in cities, collectively owned in the countryside), finance, energy, heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, arms production, and strategic resources. These sectors form the backbone of the economy. Private capital exists, but it does not dominate accumulation or political power.
The Chinese bourgeoisie does not rule. It has no independent state power and no ability to capture the party. Capitalists are subordinate to the Communist Party and can be regulated, expropriated, imprisoned, or eliminated when they conflict with socialist objectives. Recent crackdowns on tech monopolies, finance, real estate speculation, and billionaire figures demonstrate this class relation. In capitalist states, capital disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines capital.
Surplus extraction and allocation further expose the difference. Under capitalism, surplus is privately appropriated and reinvested for profit. In China, surplus (especially from state and regulated sectors) is redirected toward long-term national development: infrastructure, industrial upgrading, poverty eradication, and technological independence. The largest poverty reduction in human history did not occur through laissez-faire capitalism, but through state-directed socialist accumulation (nearly a billion people lifted from poverty).
Chairman Mao was also clear that socialism is not a finished endpoint but a long historical process filled with contradictions. He emphasized that class struggle continues under socialism and that development occurs through uneven, conflicting processes. Socialism is transitional by definition: it emerges from capitalism, contains remnants of it, and advances toward communism through struggle and transformation. Treating socialism as a stable, contradiction-free end state is anti-Marxist.
Calling China “authoritarian capitalism” is ridiculous. I’ve already dealt with the “capitalism” issue but also authoritarian is a useless modifier used by liberals to easily bundle together countries that opposed the status quo as evil and immoral. Try reading On Authority
“Everything else follows from there” is exactly wrong. Everything follows from class power, historical conditions, and the direction of development. Your reductionist liberal framework cannot explain why China plans five-year strategies, suppresses finance capital, controls land, resists imperialism, and openly declares socialism as its goal. Marxism can however.
The mental gymnastics you need to go trough trying to defend why being capitalistic is basically anticapitalist when the ruling party has “communist” in their name is telling.
A tankie is when people point out you don’t understand what you’re talking about and are just regurgitating talking points and it makes you feel bad.
Come to China I can give you a tour I can translate so you can talk to the locals and you can see we’re humans too not just some brainwashed peasant “untermensch”. You chauvinist loser.
When did I say chinese people arent people? Are you replying to the wrong comment? You sound like you are 14 with your reading skills and going straight to calling me a loser lol.
You are a loser. You don’t view us as independent people who have our own views on our country. You ignore the fact that even western outlets report over 80% of us support the government. But none of that matters to you because we’re just peasants brainwashed by the evil “authoritarians”.
Not exactly related to the main discussion, but none other than Jeffrey Epstein described the Chinese government, and Xi in particular, as peasants. Said you guys spoke in “fortune cookie language.” It goes without saying that is the highest compliment to be an enemy of such people, so China is clearly doing something right.
China itself just like Chairman Mao is imperfect but I strongly believe the merits out way the wrongs and the real question isn’t is China good or bad but by how much the good out ways the bad e.g. is it 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 etc.
You are defending and agreeing with someone calling China evil and authoritarian capitalist. He is wrong and so are you. No amount of dodging or hiding behind semantics will change the position you chose to defend and that you clearly chose to defend it for chauvinist reasons.
They try to keep a low profile globally, but they fully support Russia and North Korea. Not to mention, all the drama in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the surrounding seas.
That “drama” in Hong Kong is the result of 100 years of British colonial occupation. North Korea is the result of the US bombing the entire country until there were literally no structures left. Koreans in the North needed to live in caves to avoid being covered in napalm (and if you haven’t read about how napalm interacts with human flesh, please do).
China is not the bad guy in these situations. Britain, the US, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany - these are the bad guys.
If it’s your first time Beijing is a must. You get a perfect mix of the old and new china plus museums galore and old Beijing hotpot is a must try as well as proper Beijing duck.
why is china the bad guy?
Social and political misalignment I think. Being wary of anyone “bigger than you” is a common defensive stand too.
Authoritarian capitalistic state?
For all the tankies disagreeing simply ask yourself two questions:
Who owns the means of production in a socialist society?
Who owns the means of production in China?
Everything else follows from there
Edit: To more properly explain.
You rely on a crude, ahistorical definition of socialism and treats China as a static abstraction rather than a real society developing under concrete material conditions. You reduce Marxism to a legal-form checklist and ignores class power, historical development, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a fundamental error.
In Marxism, “who owns the means of production” is not a question of paper titles but of class rule. Ownership only matters insofar as it expresses which class holds political power, controls surplus, and sets the direction of development. Defining socialism as the immediate abolition of all private enterprise is not Marxism; it is utopian liberal nonsense.
Lenin addressed this explicitly. Under proletarian rule, state capitalism is a socialist tool. His formulation is unambiguous: state capitalism under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not capitalism in the bourgeois sense but a form subordinated to socialist power and goals. The decisive issue is not whether markets or private firms exist, but which class commands them.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned and planned: land (state-owned in cities, collectively owned in the countryside), finance, energy, heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, arms production, and strategic resources. These sectors form the backbone of the economy. Private capital exists, but it does not dominate accumulation or political power.
The Chinese bourgeoisie does not rule. It has no independent state power and no ability to capture the party. Capitalists are subordinate to the Communist Party and can be regulated, expropriated, imprisoned, or eliminated when they conflict with socialist objectives. Recent crackdowns on tech monopolies, finance, real estate speculation, and billionaire figures demonstrate this class relation. In capitalist states, capital disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines capital.
Surplus extraction and allocation further expose the difference. Under capitalism, surplus is privately appropriated and reinvested for profit. In China, surplus (especially from state and regulated sectors) is redirected toward long-term national development: infrastructure, industrial upgrading, poverty eradication, and technological independence. The largest poverty reduction in human history did not occur through laissez-faire capitalism, but through state-directed socialist accumulation (nearly a billion people lifted from poverty).
Chairman Mao was also clear that socialism is not a finished endpoint but a long historical process filled with contradictions. He emphasized that class struggle continues under socialism and that development occurs through uneven, conflicting processes. Socialism is transitional by definition: it emerges from capitalism, contains remnants of it, and advances toward communism through struggle and transformation. Treating socialism as a stable, contradiction-free end state is anti-Marxist.
Calling China “authoritarian capitalism” is ridiculous. I’ve already dealt with the “capitalism” issue but also authoritarian is a useless modifier used by liberals to easily bundle together countries that opposed the status quo as evil and immoral. Try reading On Authority
“Everything else follows from there” is exactly wrong. Everything follows from class power, historical conditions, and the direction of development. Your reductionist liberal framework cannot explain why China plans five-year strategies, suppresses finance capital, controls land, resists imperialism, and openly declares socialism as its goal. Marxism can however.
The mental gymnastics you need to go trough trying to defend why being capitalistic is basically anticapitalist when the ruling party has “communist” in their name is telling.
The German brainpan not able to comprehending a popular socialist government
You didn’t read anything I wrote. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Please read a book.
The people, the people.
Good luck trying to state the obvious here, lots of tankies on lemmy.ml (as you can see from the other replies)
It’s .ml, not .lib
Come to China I can give you a tour I can translate so you can talk to the locals and you can see we’re humans too not just some brainwashed peasant “untermensch”. You chauvinist loser.
When did I say chinese people arent people? Are you replying to the wrong comment? You sound like you are 14 with your reading skills and going straight to calling me a loser lol.
You are a loser. You don’t view us as independent people who have our own views on our country. You ignore the fact that even western outlets report over 80% of us support the government. But none of that matters to you because we’re just peasants brainwashed by the evil “authoritarians”.
Not exactly related to the main discussion, but none other than Jeffrey Epstein described the Chinese government, and Xi in particular, as peasants. Said you guys spoke in “fortune cookie language.” It goes without saying that is the highest compliment to be an enemy of such people, so China is clearly doing something right.
China itself just like Chairman Mao is imperfect but I strongly believe the merits out way the wrongs and the real question isn’t is China good or bad but by how much the good out ways the bad e.g. is it 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 etc.
70/30 is the usual split
Does lemmy.ml include entirety of China? Because I was only talking about lemmy.ml. Again, you sure you replied to the right comment?
You are defending and agreeing with someone calling China evil and authoritarian capitalist. He is wrong and so are you. No amount of dodging or hiding behind semantics will change the position you chose to defend and that you clearly chose to defend it for chauvinist reasons.
You said I didnt see Chinese people as people, which I never said ever. Are you gonna retract that? Cause you are still wrong.
They try to keep a low profile globally, but they fully support Russia and North Korea. Not to mention, all the drama in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the surrounding seas.
That “drama” in Hong Kong is the result of 100 years of British colonial occupation. North Korea is the result of the US bombing the entire country until there were literally no structures left. Koreans in the North needed to live in caves to avoid being covered in napalm (and if you haven’t read about how napalm interacts with human flesh, please do).
China is not the bad guy in these situations. Britain, the US, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany - these are the bad guys.
Good.
You 白左 really hate the liberation of your owners colonial holdings and fascist attack dogs.
Unrelated, but I wanted to say you’ve got fantastic english skills
Also, if I was to visit China, do you have any recommendations on where to visit?
If it’s your first time Beijing is a must. You get a perfect mix of the old and new china plus museums galore and old Beijing hotpot is a must try as well as proper Beijing duck.