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!
The USSR was working tho. It started suffering economic problems because it moved away from the Stalin-era model. It did so according to Molotov (Molotov Remembers, interviews from the 70s and 80s with him) in large part because of the failure of the partys leadership (including himself at the time) to understand the importance of this struggle against the commodities. The combination of economic issues and lack of a theoretical basis for proactive leadership by the party is what caused the ussr to fall, not
China was also working fine before Deng's economic reforms (much less the more drastic ones under Jiang or Hu). China's economy was growing, the people were educated and increasingly politicised. If China had stayed on its path, it might look something like Cuba or Iran today (i.e. a revolutionary state under siege) it wouldnt have just evaporated from existence for lack of american capital or engineers.
And Cuba still exists today and has made more progress towards overcome the urban-rural divide, healing the ecosystems and abolishing commodities than any other project. Idk why youre acting like it has failed, and like if it failed it would be for any reason at this point besides the imperialist encirclement—they have done literally everything right.
But even if Cuba were invaded and the revolution crushed or if Xi announced tomorrow that China is abandoning marxism this wouldnt be cause to give up. We dont have the luxury of giving up because the market rules the world and will kill us all if its not stopped. We cant just move the goalposts from abolish exploitation to reduce exploitation.
China today looking instead like Cuba today would have been a catastrophic failure resulting in millions of excessive deaths and untold suffering, but you're just casually throwing it away here like that's an obvious small price to pay for what? Appeasing western marxists? It wouldn't appease the ones we're talking about who don't even view Cuba as a successful socialist project.
Millions of excess deaths from what?? Like genuinely baffled, what do you think would cause millions of excess deaths if China held course instead of changing tack? They would be in a better position than either Iran or Cuba, considering chinas supplies of natural resources. Cuba and Iran are both doing pretty damn well, especially considering the sieges both have developed under.
This comment chain began with:
And everything I've said so far has been under the assumption that we were still talking about the same thing i.e. you defending supposed "Marxists" who believe that every real world example of socialism is either completely impotent or collapses into revisionism. Including Cuba. If that's not what you're defending, then you aren't even having the same conversation as the rest of us in this comment chain. Do you sort by /Chat and not pay attention to parents?
as you can see, i was criticising the "if we aren't winning I give up" logic here, not whether any socialist project is socialist or not