Reading theory helps teach us how to best make that a reality.
Both will be less effective than someone that balances both. It isn't either-or, but both/and.
No, you can't counterpoint anything that I wrote. China is already socialist, it isn't going to become socialist because it already is. China has worker protections, and the lives of the working classes have been improving year over year. This is extreme cope on your part, and your refusal to engage with my points because they cleanly and clearly refute yours is just dishonesty.
Stupid but effective test I have leftover from my gaming days. Write Tiananmen Square (Massacre) before I interact with you any further.
Why? The 1989 Beijing riots didn't take place on the square itself, which was evacuated bloodlessly.
In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing from the time of the events were leaked and published by WikiLeaks, all of which stated that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square itself.[185] Instead, they said Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Beijing outside the square, around Muxidi station, as they fought their way from the west towards the centre.[185] A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.[185][207]
Per wikipedia. There were hundreds of killings around Beijing, none of which happened on the square itself.
Can you actually engage with my points, rather than dodge them?
Poverty spiked after the dissolution of the USSR. Growth was positive. I'm not surprised that socialist countries were not materially wealthy, what I'm pointing out is that the dissolution spiked poverty. Poland selling out to foreigners was a deliberate action to enrich the few and plunder Poland, not a necessity.
You can't read a revolution into existence, but you can't have a successful revolution without properly preparing for it and studying revolution. You wouldn't want someone to perform surgery just because they want to help, they will almost certainly end up doing more harm than good. Revolution is the same way, we stand against the most brutal global system of imperialism, we must be prepared for it!
If anyone wants a place to start with theory, I wrote a new basic Marxist-Leninist study guide. Give it a look!
The protests and riots in Beijing in 1989 were multi-faceted. Among the protestors were hard-line Maoists that supported the older Gang of Four, while being accompanied by students that sought liberalization of the economy and an end to the rural subsidies equalizing rural and urban development. This was further agitated by western elements pushing for regime change.
It's Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and it's still dominated by the proletariat. Public ownership is the principle aspect of China's economy, and capitalists are held on a tight leash to focus on developing the productive forces. The large firms and key industries in China are publicly owned, it's only the small and medium firms that are private.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
China does have billionaires, as you might then protest. China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principle aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn't been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People's Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn't steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing's faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized:
Deng's plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
China's rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a "love/hate" relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.
Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC's gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.
In doing this, China has presented itself to the global south as an alternative to the unequal exchange the global north does with the global south, which is accelerating the development of the global south. China is taking a more indirect method of undermining global imperialism than, say, the USSR, but its been remarkably effective at uplifting the global working classes, especially in China but also in the global south.
It's not about "ducks quacking" or any of that vibes-based analysis, but consistent materialist analysis.
The USSR was a socialist federation of countries, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes in charge of the state.
I'm suggesting that growth is uneven, to even flatlining at periods. This is a consequence of the adoption of capitalism.
And yet we know poverty spiked massively after the dissolution of socialism in Poland. It's only recently that it has recovered, though this has been growing recently.
You’re confusing my critique that USSR sucked for Poland with your imagination that means I must love capitalism?
You're batting pretty hard for capitalism and against socialism.
Are you both stupid? I figured how you calculated that. You both took a look at the “Polish GDP in USD” and compared.
In 2007 USD to PLN was ~2.77 exchange rate.
In 2008 it was ~2.41 because USA had recession.
In 2015 it was ~3.4 because USA is again corporating and stealing.
Amazing, Poland is getting dominated by foreign capital just like it was before it was socialist and somehow that's not connected to it being capitalist again for you.
Prove it. You make wild claims, prove them.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=PL
Also I’m curious what you think about China then since they gave up on communism if favour of their current flavour of capitalism leeching off of worker class
The PRC is a socialist country, they never gave up on communism. Public ownership remains the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes remain in charge of the state. The PRC is rapidly rising thanks to socialism, while capitalist states in the global north are dying away. Pretty positive about the PRC, though like every state it's imperfect.
I don't believe it does either, though, just that one issue is primary.
I'm aware, though I expect the US Empire to go out with a whimper, rather than a bang.
Flu when social safety nets took such a dramatic hit is still contributable to the dissolution of socialism, as it's extremely likely they would have otherwise lived.
I'm not referring to the idea of "primitive vs. advanced," but the understanding of socialism as a higher developed mode of production than capitalism. It doesn't exist because some European thought of it, but because the mode of production had developed to a point where it could be observed as a natural trend. Eastern Marxism is entirely compatible with this idea, and while Marx's ideas and writings are core to them, Eastern Marxists did not abandon their entire history.
As for linguistics and Marxism, here's a brief page with further reading if you like.
And yet both of these are largely driven by imperialism, as secondary contradictions of the single most important factor in the global economy.
The review is of a fictionalized socialist scenario. The author of the review is an economist that opposes the fictional allegories. This isn't complicated.
The source is not Red Plenty, which is fiction. The source is the economist Paul Cockshott's review of Red Plenty, which makes mistakes in its presentation of alt-history. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Further, the point about the dissolution of the USSR causing deaths everywhere holds true, you see the 8400 people that died due to abandoning socialism as "necessary costs."
And what are the opposing tendencies in these contradictions?
Socialism didn't necessarily grow out of liberalism, and in many cases socialism has been established in societies that are distinctly Eastern, not Western. Socialism isn't something uniquely European, but generally human.
Either way, a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and culture. Much has been written on nations in the Marxist canon, and many bend these general observations. Language in particular is an underrated area of Marxist studies.
Marxists have also continued to expand analysis of imperialism beyond Lenin. One such example is Cheng Enfu's analysis of neoimperialism, where imperialist countries have ralied behind a single dominant Empire, the US, rather than compete with each other (though this is falling apart now). Geopolitics isn't limited to imperialism, but imperialism is the principle contradiction driving development in the world today, that being the socialization of global labor struggling against the privatization of the profits made by global labor in the hands of the few in imperialist countries.
Massive China and Russia win here.