Alright, now I get that your opinion is positive on average, but we gotta address the elephant in the room, which is that China is a market economy and that there’s no soviets or direct ownership of the means of production (or at least not as far as I know). How is China socialist then? I have heard many Trotskyst define China as “state capitalist” more than socialist
EDIT: Thank you all for your detailed responses, I will make sure to do my homework and study well
China is not state capitalist.
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
Secondly yall, this should be an educational space, please post sources along with your commentaries.
We should be doing better than vibe-posting liberals who never cite a single source.
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To begin with, our first undertaking is that we must dispel your fundamental error of treating markets and capitalism as synonyms. They are not. Markets predate capitalism by millennia through simple commodity production and exchange, and they will likely outlive it as well. The market is merely a mechanism for resource allocation and a tool to develop the productive forces, not the defining characteristic of a capitalist mode of production. Socialism utilizes the market to build the material wealth required for a higher stage of communism, subordinating it to the needs of society rather than allowing it to dictate social relations.
Furthermore, the expectation of direct, individualized ownership of the means of production is petty bourgeois nonsense. What Marxists actually advocate for is the ownership of the means of production as a class. It is the proletariat, organized as the ruling class, that collectively owns and controls the commanding heights of the economy. Demanding that workers hold literal, individualized deeds to their factories reflects a profound misunderstanding of socialized production and retreats into utopian petit-bourgeois ideology.
Finally, addressing the Trotskyist accusation of state capitalism requires looking past superficial appearances. State capitalism and the primary stage of socialism are necessarily very similar because they share many identical economic forms, such as commodity production, wage labor, and state enterprises. However, analyzing form devoid from class content is nonsense that elucidates nothing. The decisive factor is which class holds political supremacy and dictates the purpose of these economic forms. Under bourgeois state capitalism, the state apparatus serves to maximize profit for the monopoly bourgeoisie. In China, the state is an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Communist Party. Here, state capital is directed consciously to develop the productive forces, eradicate poverty, and build the material conditions for communism. The forms may resemble those of the transition period from capitalism, but the class content is entirely socialist because the market is strictly subordinated to the political and economic objectives of the working class.
As they themselves have pointed out, they’re still in a primary state of socialism where the main objective is the development of the productive forces. Due to the scale of china, their cultural context and past socialist projects experienred they considered that a market economy is the way forward for them, when it no longer makes sense they will advance into a new system.
In a nutshell, China is communist because the political power is solely focused on the communist party, whereas in the rest of the world political power is in the hands of capitalists. You won’t see a BYD executive dictating policy in China, whereas in the US you will see Jeff Bezos and other oligarchs acompanying the president to diplomatic meetings.
The commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned and controlled, and the state itself is dominated by the proletariat. There are worker councils as well. This is pretty clearly socialism, the marketization that exists exists in largely emerging markets so as to accelerate the process of socializing production. The basis of the Socialist Market Economy lies straight in Marx and Engels, and measures they propose.
Not all of China has communes or the Soviet equivalent, but they do exist in villages and even some neighborhoods in the cities. Market economies are something socialism will do away with simply because it won’t have a need for them, but since the abundance/surplus of material conditions and, primarily, the productive forces and industries necessary for a robust, socialist economy do not exist yet, they must be developed.
They’re not a capitalist country since they have abolished the dictatorship of capital under the bourgeoisie that stands above the state and the working masses. This isn’t to say that the capitalist/bourgeois class doesn’t exist, but it’s effectively living under the authority of the Communist Party, a party comprised of working and popular classes. To that end, the bourgeoisie has no political power to overthrow the revolutionary government. Under the dictatorship of the proletarian and popular classes, the bourgeoisie is allowed to exist, but only so long as it understands that they serve China, the people, and the socialist revolution.
Someone may have already mentioned this, but the Party and the central committee, in particular, especially in the previous and current 5 Year Plans, have more direct control on how enterprises are to function. Entrepreneurial autonomy has been greatly reduced and many of the industries that have reached national influence have been brought under state control, which was the ultimate goal. It’s necessary to allow entrepreneurs and small bourgeois enterprisers to build up industries, especially those in their infancy, regulate them, directing their purpose, while promoting their growth. Once these industries reach the national level, then they are brought under state control and socialized.
It is of great importance that the Party, its cadres, and its members are resolute in their duty to bring about socialist and communist revolutions. The productive capabilities and achievements under capitalist economies, despite the brutality that the working masses have been historically subjected to, cannot be ignored as these are unequivocally proven to lead to the creation of surplus and expansive productive industries, which would serve as the foundations for a socialist economy.
What we’ve suffered, for centuries, under capitalism when it enters into an era of “crisis” would not happen under socialism, as the overproduction and surplus of commodities would not spell a disaster for the profiteer, as the profit motive and the profiteer’s dictatorship would be abolished. Instead, we would experience prosperity unlike humankind has ever experienced even under capitalist periods of prosperity.
To understand our Chinese comrades’ aims, we must think in the long-term and we must think of posterity and the future, beyond even our own lives. Could the path to socialism have taken a different path? Indeed, but we mustn’t forget that developing Socialism with Chinese Characteristics cannot be done in a vacuum, within the confines of China’s national boundaries, especially since the world it exists in is a world that has been under the vice grip of capitalist imperialism. Going from a semi-feudal nation that had just ended a decades-long civil war and foreign invasion and occupation, the imperialist threat yet remained. It was imperative that industries take root as quickly as possible, as the main enemy to socialist revolution were nations that already had strong, industrial bases and militaries. This pressing necessity is the reason why, in under 80 years, China was able to become a nation of moderate wealth, rivaling that of its Western, capitalist counterparts. Without the threat of Western capitalist imperialism poking, prodding, and provoking at every turn, the development towards socialism would’ve likely taken a far more different character, likely, utilizing an economic model that did away with systems used under capitalism.
How is China socialist then?
market economy
socialism is about ownership, not about economic model. so socialism can use market economy and does not have to use planned economy. the planned economy serves to make socialism better. capitalism can also use planned economy. an example is werner sombart’s idea.
and china does not use regular market economy. China uses planned market economy.
no soviets
socialism does not have to use soviet democracy. but by using soviet democracy, socialism can remain.
State capitalist is a fine description so long as one understands that to mean it’s a transitional system. Socialism can only be fully acheived (marked by the abolition of class) at an international scale, but a workers’ state can be established in individual countries and develop the forces of production there in the mean time. This not only serves the purpose of internationally demonstrating the superior suitability of the workers as a ruling class compared to the bourgeoisie, but builds the necessary material conditions that gives rise to full socialism. The official CPC theory is that China is on the socialist road guided by the whole process people’s democracy. They’re 2035 goal is to basically realize socialist modernization, and by 2049 to be a great modern socialist country.
One way to think about it is that China has a bourgeoisie the same way Great Britain had a monarch and aristocracy in the 19th century: the old ruling class is deliberately propped up to the rest of the world for appearance’s sake, but their power has been hollowed out to the point that they’re mere figureheads who provide cover to the actual ruling class that would otherwise be treated with extreme suspicion & hostility. China’s bourgeoisie face many restrictions on investing capital, liquidating capital, operating a business, setting prices, and are broadly subject to have their assets taken by the state for any number of reasons. Of course, they’re still able to become immensely wealthy and live in luxury, but they face significant scrutiny and are culturally encouraged to live quiet lives. This enables the PRC to operate a market economy that on the whole functions dramatically better than market economies operated by a bourgeois ruling class, and that’s before you consider the large share of their economy that is directly controlled by the state and the central planning apparatus that reigns over the entire economy. It’s a truly impressive system (granted, all centrally-planned systems are impressive relative to capitalist systems), and perhaps their greatest stroke of genius was taking advantage of cold war geopolitics to become the cornerstone of the global economy.
And what’s so cool is that this is just a peak at what international proletarian rule could accomplish to bring about full socialism and the abolition of class.
Some previous discussions on this:
It’s the workers that run the government and dictate investment. It’s a market economy because it needed resources and development and thus needed to play the game in a capitalist world. As it becomes more advanced and self-sufficient, this is less of a concern.
Easiest answer for me is who does the government respond to and prioritize in planning, regular people or the billionaires? The former is a dictatorship of the proletariat (China), the latter is a dictatorship of capital (the US).
state capitalist countries dont LARP as socialist because socialism is a threat to capitalism. why would a Piece of Shit advertise the ideology of Flushing the Toilet when Flushing the Toilet disappears the Piece of Shit?
Hmmm. Not the most compelling argument. I get what you’re saying, but I can see many reasons why a form of government would want to project an image to the public to try and hide it’s true colours. The US larps as a democracy after all.
being a socialist state makes you an enemy of the whole world though
I agree there. But again, I could point to the huge interconnected economy between china and the west and say that they aren’t really socialists because they wouldn’t want to trade. Certainly they never traded with the Soviets to this degree.
We need an argument with more meat.
This’ll be controversial here but it needs to be said:
Yes, China is by definition not a socialist state.
Not only are the means of production privately owned by the capitalist class but the state, likewise, is controlled by the capitalist class who make up the majority of the communist party’s membership. To deny this obvious fact is pure cope and doesn’t help our analysis of the Chinese model but hinder it. The reality is Deng Xiaoping was the Chinese Gorbachev but without the liberalism and modern China is a glimpse at what the USSR could’ve looked like if Gorbachev had been more ruthless and less idealistic.
The catch here is that China is developing along a very different path from that of the West. It isn’t developing through imperialist plunder and colonial conquest and it isn’t abandoning its peoples’ needs nor ignoring them. It isn’t trying to align with the West nor compete with them for hegemony, as post-Soviet Russia has done.
The cynical interpretation here is that the Chinese are just doing what Europe did during the Cold War with their Social Democracies; bread & circuses to keep the masses in check, only this time to stave off a U.S. backed color-revolution instead of a communist uprising.
But I don’t agree with that perspective. If the CPC was truly captured by the interests of capital they’d just become a fascist state, social democracy, or neoliberal shithole. Instead they’re building a society much closer to the Soviet model - an improved version, I’d say. They’re not robbing their people & country blind and instead are investing in its future in ways that no social democracy ever could.
Because of that I believe that true comrades are still in charge of the Party and, at worst, are bourgeois class traitors in support of the revolution; e.g. Zhou Enlai-types. I believe they’re pursuing an unorthodox approach to genuine socialism, but one which is ultimately proving successful nevertheless. For that reason I give them my critical support with a silent prayer that it all works out. Their success would quite literally change everything.
Not only are the means of production privately owned by the capitalist class but the state, likewise, is controlled by the capitalist class who make up the majority of the communist party’s membership. To deny this obvious fact is pure cope and doesn’t help our analysis of the Chinese model but hinder it.
This is completely false. See my sources above.
The central nervous system of any modern economy is finance. In the West, private banks dictate state policy through debt and credit allocation. In China, the banking system is entirely state owned. The state controls capital allocation, directing credit toward strategic sectors like green energy, high speed rail, and advanced manufacturing based on Five Year Plans rather than short term profit motives. The state also maintains absolute ownership over land, energy, telecommunications, and heavy industry. This means the proletariat holds the dominant economic levers. Private capital is permitted to operate in the consumer and service sectors, but it is strictly subordinated to state planning. Expropriating all private property is neither necessary nor strictly Marxist. When the Soviet Union attempted to nationalize every small enterprise, it created massive bureaucratic inefficiencies as well as a thriving black economy of small firms ripe for counterrevolutionary leveraging. Only national scale industries and monopolies require direct public ownership to prevent the formation of oligarchies. Small and medium enterprises actually provide vital flexibility, local employment, and innovation. As long as the state controls finance and the commanding heights, private property in the nonstrategic sectors acts as a dynamic supplement to socialist construction rather than a threat to it.
Your comparison of Deng to Gorbachev fundamentally misreads the ideological trajectory of both nations. Gorbachev was the final tragic link in a long chain of ideological degradation that began with Khrushchev. Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956 introduced historical nihilism into the communist movement by attacking Stalin with bourgeois lies. Khrushchev fractured the ideological unity of the Soviet vanguard and planted the seeds of revisionism. This ideological rot festered for decades until Gorbachev completely capitulated to Western liberalism, actively dismantling the party apparatus and surrendering state power. Deng took a radically different path based on a materialist analysis of China’s primary contradiction. China inherited immense historical backwardness. The most critical task of the Chinese revolution at that stage was the modernization and rapid development of the productive forces. Deng recognized that you cannot build a higher stage of society on a foundation of poverty and scarcity. He consciously adapted the strategy to utilize market mechanisms while strictly upholding the leadership of the Communist Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Deng developed the economy to strengthen the socialist state, whereas Gorbachev destroyed the state to appease imperialists.
Far from being an unorthodox approach, China’s current path is actually a return to the orthodox Marxist understanding of historical development. Marx and Engels clearly theorized that socialism requires a highly developed material base. It is the Soviet command economy model that was historically unorthodox. The Soviet system of total public ownership, extending down to the smallest retail shops and local services, was not a blueprint for socialism but an emergency measure necessitated by the brutal realities of a war economy and total imperialist encirclement. By forcing full public ownership of all small and medium firms, the Soviet state created a fatal contradiction. They outlawed legitimate small scale private enterprise, which directly pushed those economic activities into the shadows. This created a massive black market and a second economy. The operators of these shadow enterprises accumulated illicit wealth and eventually allied with counterrevolutionary elements within the party bureaucracy. When the Soviet state weakened, this shadow capitalist class actively supported the dissolution of the USSR so they could legally privatize their stolen wealth. By legalizing and regulating small and medium enterprises under the strict supervision of the vanguard party, China avoids creating a disenfranchised black market class. China is successfully building the massive productive forces required for transition.
even like logistically speaking how could the majority of the party membership be bourgeois…?
This is frankly entirely wrong.
The commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, and the CPC is overwhelminly proletarian, with capitalist membership blocked from the highest ranks. China is a socialist country.
