So I recently joined a socialist org (Eur*pe), been participating in some cool anti-imperialist protests and anti-fascist local struggle.
The topic of China's socialism came up in conversation, and I naturally said that China is socialist. They looked at me as if I were nuts, and a discussion ensued about China not being socialist.
Their points are that it's not expanding worldwide socialism, that it's engaging in imperialism in Africa, that it's only shifting to renewables because it's profitable for them, and the classic "but they have rich capitalist owners and the Chinese workers are exploited".
Doesn't matter that their capitalists don't control the media and state apparatus (which they somehow disagree with), that they're the only country capable of fighting the fossil fuel lobby, that they've uplifted 800mn people from poverty in 30 years, that they deindustrialized NATO, that they support Iran and are creating the possibility of a multipolar world, that most investments in Africa are in electric infrastructure, that Chinese people overwhelmingly say that they live in a democracy and support their socialist government, that housing is not only not prohibitively expensive but actually prices are going down, that food is incredibly affordable, that they don't engage in imperialist war... Nothing is good enough, they're capitalists because they conform to capitalist mode of production (which isn't even true because like half their economy is state-owned). And they have the guts to tell ME I'm being dogmatic and only seeing black and white, because I dare speak about a model of socialism that doesn't conform to their narrow views.
I swear it's impossible to find socialists in Eur*pe who aren't patronizing, condescending, and honestly fucking racist to global south socialist movements. They literally told me that Cuba "should have industrialized". Like, god fucking damn it, do you SERIOUSLY believe you know better about the possibilities of the economy of Cuba than the people devoting their entire lives to it in the country, supporting and maintaining the revolution throughout the 70 years of murderous embargo? Like, how do you believe you can thoroughly industrialize a 10mn inhabitant island entirely cut from trade with the rest of the world? The Eastern Block could only do this because it had like a fucking third the landmass of Earth and some 400mn inhabitants, and even then they suffered limitations such as lack of access to critical semiconductor technology due to embargo. But no, Cuba is not socialist because it has private hotels for tourists, as if they had any other way to get foreign currency to purchase high-tech medical diagnosis machines and critical energy resources. Fucking bunch of idealist, anti-materialist, condescending pieces of shit!
Not really, I'm arguing that based on the sorts of understanding of socialism and socialist states that most western leftists have, AES and former AES models are not at all the way to get there because they have always "failed".
This isn't something I believe at all, but it is something that I think follows from their logic, but it isn't (usually) something they adhere to.
My view is theyve failed less as a result of fundamental failures of the "AES model" and more as a result them moving away from that model after the 50s and 60s, and (in the case of the USSR particularly) ideological and theoretical failures of the party's leadership resulting in them providing little to no proactive leadership. This last point (ideological and theoretical errors of leadership, including himself when he was stalins right hand man) is talked about a lot by Molotov in Molotov Remembers.
[1] tho tbh this is vague; the USSR and the other Warsaw Pact countries had very different models, and their individual policies varied a lot over time, but i'm assuming by that you mean "state control", correct me if i've inferred wrongly
Sorry if this is a little vague, I am trying to argue "for" a position that is incoherent and inconsistent as far as I'm concerned, let's call it the "western chauvinist left" position, that particular strange of vaguely sort of ultra-left but oddly demsoc kind of "leftist" who loves ever socialist experiment except the ones that had any successes, and refuses to learn the history of any AES.
The sort of person who knows nothing about the USSR except that it "failed" and isn't interested in actually understanding the nuances of why it was destroyed and what led up to that, only interested in lumping in all AES alongside the USSR and saying they are all on the same path to destruction. While also bizarrely arguing for "socialism" which I take to mean proletarian control of the state, but without any sort of way to prevent the same sort of "revisionism" that they claim is responsible for the downfall of all AES, just insisting that it won't happen "when they do their revolution" (but like, never actually organise for it, at most they maybe go to a protest every now and then, and their org is more of a social club than anything actually revolutionary).
I realise I'm just venting about a vague attitude that I have to deal with a lot than I am about any actually specific idea, most of the people like this I know would consider themselves an ML, not a Maoist or anything, just "Socialist with CIA characteristics" kind of person who will happily regurgitate any lies they have fed about AES and refuse to look further, even to understand "how they went wrong" better.
Your addendum is the most important point here, the sort of person I'm talking about despises nuance and understanding and would much rather paint all AES with a broad brush, instead of looking at their different models and what worked and what didn't work. Barely one step above just calling them "authoritarian" (and sometimes literally doing exactly that).