• 0 Posts
  • 75 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle
  • The transitory period of New Economic Policy lasted only a few years in USSR

    Who’s to say that’s the best length of time for a transitory period, in all countries? Why are you sure you’re right and China’s leadership is wrong? If the USSR could allow limited private control of businesses for a time and then revoke that, why can’t China?

    Note that Mao himself was far from strictly opposed to private ownership of capital, at least as long as the national bourgeoisie did not seek to undermine the socialist project:

    In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie comes under the category of contradictions among the people. By and large, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticizing and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours.



  • The point about Norway wasn’t that it’s socialist (it’s not). The point was that Norway’s low rate of poverty and generous social supports come directly from parts of the economy that are publicly owned.

    The notion that a country’s entire economy must be under public control otherwise it’s not Real Socialism is too idealistic. China in 1949 was a late-feudal/pre-industrial country that had just been through a century of colonial invasions and civil wars. It needed to attract capital and expertise in pretty much every field, and it needed to build an effective, modern administrative state. How was it supposed to do all of that at once, wholly through the government? The Soviets ran into the same problem and the result was the New Economic Policy, which, like China today, involved markets and some private ownership, but ultimately subjected both to real state control. You need a transitory period to go from pre-revolutionary society to whatever your vision of Real Socialism is.

    For me, China is socialist because the state is ran to the benefit of the working class (see massive poverty alleviation), that state really does control the capitalist class, and China seems to be doing more of both as time goes on.


  • You said:

    China is capitalist… It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one.

    The response was a well-souced refutation of the idea that the Chinese economy is developing like a capitalist economy. You replied with Wikipedia. All I’m saying is that you’re not looking at this in a whole lot of detail and you might have some things to learn.

    For instance, you say Nordic countries have low rates of poverty and good social supports despite private ownership of the means of production. But in reality a lot of that is due to sovereign wealth funds, like Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, which is owned by the government and managed by a state-owned bank.





  • Hezbollah surrendering without a ceasefire in Gaza

    I don’t think they surrendered to anyone – they just negotiated a ceasefire between them and Israel. Bad, but they’re not off the board like Syria.

    Assad won’t really be missed for anything but his compliance in transporting weapons to Lebanon.

    Who knows what information Hezbollah had about the impending collapse of Syria that we didn’t have? Who knows how that impacted their ceasefire decision?





  • As a result of Yoon’s enhanced role in U.S. military strategy in Asia, the disgraced president has been the darling of the think tanks and Korea “experts” in the U.S. capital. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has even suggested that Yoon should get a Nobel Peace Prize for putting aside Korean differences with Japan to make the trilateral alliance work.

    Is there even one foreign leader the U.S. likes who is actually decent?

    Yet even as the United States backs Yoon’s stance on North Korea, the enhanced ties between the Pentagon and the South Korean Army, coupled with memories of what happened in Gwangju 44 years ago, is an explosive combination. Many Koreans remember that after Chun’s coup and the slaughter in Gwangju, President Jimmy Carter directed the Pentagon to help the Korean martial law command crush the uprising by sending an aircraft carrier and advanced reconnaissance aircraft to monitor the actions of the Korean troops dispatched to the city from the Combined Forces Command. After assisting Chun to reassert military control over the country, South Korea suffered seven more years of authoritarian rule.

    Even in the most generous possible reading, the South Korean government has been a straight-up U.S. puppet for much of its history.