Go actually study what's going on in China, rather than eating up all the US propaganda.
What they're doing in tech innovation is astonishing. And you can look at even just something like high speed rail, and its amazing. They're also connecting western Europe as well to the rail system. Look up Belt and Road initiative.
They're also on the forefront in green/clean tech. And thorium reactors. Oh, and fusion.
I'd say their 'try' is doing damned well. Its certainly blowing the USA out of the water. Well, unless you count number of homeless. We're beating them handedly there.
The Overton window dynamically shifts between “true socialism has never been tried” and “no true socialist,” but all growth or development in China must be attributed to China being sufficiently capitalist. Do you mean to say that China’s socialism is a mirage, a fig leaf for authoritarian state capitalism in a country that was once socialist, or do you mean that China was never even socialist to begin with, that it was just authoritarian all along?
Is socialism incompatible with capitalism or is it incompatible with democracy? Because if the successes of China can be attributed to capitalism while discounting socialism/communism, then why are we even talking about socialism in the first place, if it’s totalitarianism which is the problem?
Somehow, if China stopped being totalitarian tomorrow, but remained socialist, whatever that might mean to you or look like, if they kept doing the same things in the market and in the party, the US would probably still treat China like we do Mexico now, and I doubt anything would change in how US treats China.
Maybe I just lack faith in most folks in US. Since the “end” of the Cold War, there’s been a kind of search for economic, political, and cultural scapegoats. The potential end of demonizing China if it ever even happened for good cause would probably just cause transference of that moral outrage and social opprobrium to the next consent-decreed valid target for market-validated hate, which in this case would probably be Russia. The problem is that Russia doesn’t have much global economic impact on their own so US has to find a new big bad if China doesn’t fulfill that role anymore.
"Do you mean to say that China’s socialism is a mirage, a fig leaf for authoritarian state capitalism in a country that was once socialist, or do you mean that China was never even socialist to begin with, that it was just authoritarian all along?"
Well, it started of as authorian socialism and now is just authorian party state oligarchy with lots of red flags.
And I have no connection to US demonisation policies (and this article was about a european country).
My background is, that the alternative left in europe(where I socialiced) - rather traditionally does a glorification of China. So I am aware of all their glory.
I just happen to value free thinking and free speech. And this is not possible there. And that is no propaganda, but official chinese policy.
So I don't know about "true socialism" but I do know that all the marxists experiments ended up in authorian dictatorship, which is why I am more than sceptical to base new experiments on Marx again.
In the 80s and 90s, Japan was the vaguely menacing economic bogeyman but that seems to have been in stark contrast to all I read about how Japan had almost no growth in GDP through those years due to inflation or something I have already forgotten. Which is why I don’t really look at what China or the US is doing as being surprising. China has been the bad guy since they were admitted to the WTO, if I had to put a date on it. I mean, the Vietnam War didn’t help much either, but that war was China’s Vietnam war also. But economically, China is still treated differently than any other country. Actions against China like tariffs seem like a massive hedge against inflation, but I don’t know if it will put meaningful pressure on their economy or ours, but we get the government we deserve. I’m not sure if they have a saying like that in China, but it would be interesting if they did.
I think federalism in the US allows a kind of “freedom gradient” where the patchwork of overlapping legalities allows for uneven enforcement and a distribution of norms of business and in behavior. These gaps allow for growth and innovation but can lead to voter approved market failures in one jurisdiction that might as well be a world away from those who work in the state capitols or in D.C.
I don’t know why socialism, Marxism, or whatever is blamed for dictators doing bad things for good/bad/no reason. I don’t blame democracy for the bad policies of its adherents either. Any system of government can produce bad results.
"I don’t know why socialism, Marxism, or whatever is blamed for dictators doing bad things for good/bad/no reason. "
Maybe because the base of the theory comes with violence included? The need to take something of other people away(means of production) and maintain that order against expected resistance of the current owners?
It is really not surprising to me, that all experiments ended with totalitarism, because how else to do it like this?
(I am pretty sure there was some exchange between Marx and Engels I read, that already discussed the need to have camps where all the capitalists would have to be imprissoned)
Also there is the concept of global domination. As far as I understood it - Marxism needs to rule globally to really work. No other model allowed. But in reality there are indefinite more possibilities between socialism and capitalism. But then again, I did not read much Marx. What I read confirmed what the (stalinists influenced) socialist priests told me before. And they definitely had the world revolution concept ingrained. But I also met and debated with lots of other alternative folks and the totalitarian concept seems universal with marxists.
Anarchistic socialism is a bit of a different story, but in my eyes the same principle, just more local.
I don’t see the violence inherent to the system, at least not any more violence than is in any system in which the state has a monopoly on violence and has the power of eminent domain.
If everyone in China could vote, and they voted along party lines as they do now, the system would be democratic in nature, and yet, nothing would change immediately as far as the US-China relation because the issue is multidimensional. Compromise between nations is a kind of diplomatic solution that is not available to individuals with respect to their government. It would be great for many people if China were democratic. Would it be better for all? Would it be better for the US? I’m not sure, but probably. But that’s not a mandate to subvert sovereignty, it’s a matter of trade offs. No one cares if Vietnam is socialist now, and they barely care that Cuba is. These things matter geopolitically, but they don’t matter to the average person.
That's great. I'm happy for you, really. I want that experience for everyone, but you still have to go to work tomorrow.
That's the sense in which I mean it doesn't matter. The certainty of labor under a system of control operated for profit is another sort of pseudo-democratic state we find ourselves in, and I hope I'm not too old to see the day that the last person works the last shift of wage labor, as that will be another sort of cause for celebration.
"I hope I'm not too old to see the day that the last person works the last shift of wage labor, as that will be another sort of cause for celebration."
Oh, I agree to that, that is why I would not like to repeat the misstakes of the past on the pursuit to get there.
So in the now I prefer to have the freedom to really choose my jobs or also choose to go away or choose to freelance. All not really possible before.
I think a lot of the dicussion is around the conflation of socialism/communism as a form of government or as an economic system. In practice, no country is self-sufficient and need not be due to comparative advantage. Thus, no country could truly be independent of capitalism as long as it exists, but capitalism is really just goods and services and salespeople and ads. It's a system of control that is powered by scarcity and incentive structures. It's designed to find the diamond in the rough in every capitalist subject, and then sell it back to you. Even your very dissent against the system is commoditized, and I think this is why China operates the way it does, as some kind of principled countervailing force against the inexorable nature of capitalist headwinds. If you can't beat the profit motive, you can at least drive the wage for labor to zero.
Arguably, China stands to benefit more from recent advances like AI than the US, because China already had cheap solutions better than AI for manufacturing, human workers. Now knowledge workers have an efficiency boost by working with AI, which may help keep wages from rising too fast for those whose jobs aren't impacted by AI yet, but they're going to go up.
"because China already had cheap solutions better than AI for manufacturing, human workers."
Yeah. They have cheap workers.
But wasn't the whole point of socialism and the workers movement to not have cheap wage slaves anymore?
But to value humans?
"capitalism is really just goods and services and salespeople and ads. "
And you don't think this is kind of an useless oversimplification?
The point of free market systems is, that there is no central authority doing all the planning.
So when you want that central authority, it is authorian by design.
Now you can argue that there is indeed a lot of planning and regulation in our free market capitalism. And that the "blood" of free markets, money creation isn't free either. And that some people have so much money in effect controlling the regulators etc.
> But wasn't the whole point of socialism and the workers movement to not have cheap wage slaves anymore? But to value humans?
I don't know if socialism has a point as such. Value and dignity of humans is one goal, but the means by which that is accomplished is the distinguishing characteristic of socialism to my reading; that is, the means of production is not privately owned. What precludes inherently valuing humans under such a system?
Allende was probably using the most promising approach that I know of and yes, that was killed of.
"I don't know if socialism has a point as such. "
And since many different people used the word for very different things .. definitions are not clear. But people can be treated as slaves whether the factory is owned by a multinational cooperation, as well as a state run factory.
So what does it even mean, workers control the means of production?
Not a trivial question at all and it boils down who has power. And often or rather allmost always it developed to: not the workers working there.
But even if you would make a iron socialist law, that this should be the case. The workers always decide what they build - then you wouldn't have central planning anymore. And why should other workers decide to give their products to that factory?
Ah, they could negotiate contracts. Like in a free market?
Or they cannot and then it just means, they don't really control their means of production.
> So what does it even mean, workers control the means of production?
> Not a trivial question at all and it boils down who has power. And often or rather allmost always it developed to: not the workers working there.
> But even if you would make a iron socialist law, that this should be the case. The workers always decide what they build - then you wouldn't have central planning anymore. And why should other workers decide to give their products to that factory?
> Ah, they could negotiate contracts. Like in a free market?
> Or they cannot and then it just means, they don't really control their means of production.
To this reading, the workers cannot even exercise their ownership rights over the means of production meaningfully without free markets, thus aligning the goals of capitalism with socialism. Somehow I expect both parties to be disappointed, which might be a workable compromise?
But what do Marx and Engels or other socialists etc say about free markets and freedom to enter contracts, and what bearing those aspects have compared to owning the means of production? I don't think they were talking about stock exchanges, for example. The goals were economic, opt-in via free association of free workers, but were governmental or democratic aspects even addressed in their works?
What if workers owning the means of production looks like cryptocurrency?
Perhaps some socialists and capitalists would agree: no, not like that!
But would they be arguing out of self-interest, or would they be right about crypto not being compatible with socialism?
Wouldn't that just reduce to capitalism all over again?
Do workers do the work, or does capital?
Is capital simply a voting/allocation mechanism for a given work unit of decision-making control enacted upon the means of production?
Does owning the means of production in the economy imply controlling the means of governance in the government? Would one presuppose the other?
These are honest questions because I'm honestly curious about the answers.
> But people can be treated as slaves whether the factory is owned by a multinational cooperation, as well as a state run factory.
Doesn't capitalism just make us slaves with extra steps?
What they're doing in tech innovation is astonishing. And you can look at even just something like high speed rail, and its amazing. They're also connecting western Europe as well to the rail system. Look up Belt and Road initiative.
They're also on the forefront in green/clean tech. And thorium reactors. Oh, and fusion.
I'd say their 'try' is doing damned well. Its certainly blowing the USA out of the water. Well, unless you count number of homeless. We're beating them handedly there.