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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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People on lemmy.ml thinking we just really enjoy Mali.
It's actually been super refreshing to, generally, be able to say I am a Marxist-Leninist and not immediately get downvoted into oblivion. There are still some of the kneejerk reactions to the CPC, but even then people seem more willing to engage on good-faith even with disagreements.
I think those two things are not the same and quite incompatible. Modern China is a capitalist hellscape, certainly not the communist utopia Marx had in mind. They have one of the highest levels of wealth disparity in the world and the highest number of billionaires, even more than the US.
I fully believe that Marx would be horrified if he saw modern China.
It's always the people who haven't read Marx who say this.
Where's your source on wealth disparities and number of billionaires? I see this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires (make sure you're sorting by per capita)
Theres is a lot of nuance to that argument. Even Marx agreed that a capital stage is a necessary step on the way to communism. That's the whole dialect part of dialect materialism. Each step of the ladder has to be walked through and past as it becomes obsolete.
I think he meant that it was necessary when going from a capitalist society to a communist society. China went from a rural society to a communist society to a capitalist society.
To be honest, nothing against that, it's obvious to me that communism as applied by the USSR or Mao or the Kims does not really work and the people really suffered for that, but if you do believe in the communist tenants, then China and Russia are as far away from that as you can possibly get.
No dog in this fight but Marx actually argued for a scientific society and not a utopian one. I guess to a casual reader it doesn't really matter but it does regarding theory.