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?
If a nation has a DOTP and is working towards building socialism, they are AES, or in other words, not ideal visions of fully-developed socialism but nations that are in the process of building socialism.
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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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My touchstones for DOTP are:
If both are yes, you have a DOTP.
I would definitely classify the Chinese state as operating in the interest of the people, but I don’t know how useful that is as a delineation. I only think that way because I agree with them that SWCC is a sound model and they will eventually arrive at a mode of production that is fully controlled by the proletariat. But I’d prefer if the definition of DOTP didn’t depend on a future hypothetical.
E: thinking about it a little more, I think that your second touchstone could be phrased a little differently and it would work. “Is the government pursuing the betterment of conditions for the working class in contradiction to the will of the capitalist class?”. I think it works better because it’s a claim that can be falsified a lot easier but also shown to be true.
I agree that your phrasing of the second touchstone is an improvement. As for tying this to a future hypothetical, I don’t think we have to do that: you can see plenty of things China and other AES states are currently doing that benefit the people at the expense of capital. I think you can call it a DOTP as long as you have a government that keeps doing that – keeps moving in the right direction – and that is not simply doing minor liberal improvements while largely operating at the behest of capital.