it will have to be imposed on them from the outside.
I think historically this has been proven out to be the opposite after all the USSR fell.
The only real hope that this is a way is that the CCP:
CCP economically (and at one point militarily) is able to defend itself against global imperial capital
CCP brings about real communism, moving more towards MLM roots in terms of social and economic arrangements
CCP brings in the tanks.
I have doubts about the practicality and reality of each of these steps. Even if you believe that steps 1 and 2 are going to happen. Step 3 is the most tenuous of all. China is very much a mind your own business country. They CCP does not and will not care that the people of the imperial core are suffering. It’s not their problem.
I think the real problem for Marxists is they get too stuck on the “scientific” parts, and assume that means “determinism”. This leads them to advocate ripping off previous playbooks (What Is To Be Done posting) wholesale rather than understand what from each previous playbook would work for their specific situation. You cannot build even a nascent state capitalist state that is attempting to build socialism let alone communism through a set of replicable steps. When in reality Marx describes the interaction purely through base and superstructure. There is no “if this then that” of building communism, you have to move these structures into alignment and continually reinforce base and superstructure in the direction of communist development. What works in one society may not work in a different one, (See Sino Soviet Split) what works in one society in the past may never work again in the same society in the future.
It’s a similar reason why typically our capitalist societies cannot make good software. Not only is there simply not a “single way”, but most people have their own experiences from the negative problems they have suffered building software for previous companies. These experiences may reinforce practices that seem to be helpful, but were only helpful in the context of the previous company.
Meanwhile China has done great things for its people, but it has put itself into the same position as those in the imperial core. There are contradictions in the Chinese economy. In order for China to make good on socialism by 2050, it essentially needs to kill its guided capitalist prosperity engine. This is going to make a lot of people uneasy and upset and many of them are also people who are in the CCP. Chinese development has also made it become a treatler country in many respects, I think American Communists don’t recognize that. I think in practice we’re all just doing a prisoners dilemma with each other and ultimately ourselves.
A huge example of the difference between China and the USSR right now is food. The USSR had always been a seasonal agriculture country, because having Western style supermarkets that are both price stable and more-or-less unaffected by seasonal availability is based on a network of global trade that requires extraction by its very nature. If you cannot produce food half the year, and the people that can produce food the other half of the year are equals, you can maintain price stability of food through trade. But the reality is that the Global South where this stability is based in, are not equals. So the way price stability is maintained is through deprivation, extraction and manipulation of global markets. In a socialist global system we’re back at third worldism, you have to convince people who have it good to sacrifice for those that don’t in a place they’ve never been, for reasons that are extremely difficult to articulate. China is a rich country now and in this way has created this problem for itself and historically benevolent internationalism hasn’t really been a cultural tendency. Culturally and politically to China trade is trade, no more no less.
I think historically this has been proven out to be the opposite after all the USSR fell.
The only real hope that this is a way is that the CCP:
I have doubts about the practicality and reality of each of these steps. Even if you believe that steps 1 and 2 are going to happen. Step 3 is the most tenuous of all. China is very much a mind your own business country. They CCP does not and will not care that the people of the imperial core are suffering. It’s not their problem.
I think the real problem for Marxists is they get too stuck on the “scientific” parts, and assume that means “determinism”. This leads them to advocate ripping off previous playbooks (What Is To Be Done posting) wholesale rather than understand what from each previous playbook would work for their specific situation. You cannot build even a nascent state capitalist state that is attempting to build socialism let alone communism through a set of replicable steps. When in reality Marx describes the interaction purely through base and superstructure. There is no “if this then that” of building communism, you have to move these structures into alignment and continually reinforce base and superstructure in the direction of communist development. What works in one society may not work in a different one, (See Sino Soviet Split) what works in one society in the past may never work again in the same society in the future.
It’s a similar reason why typically our capitalist societies cannot make good software. Not only is there simply not a “single way”, but most people have their own experiences from the negative problems they have suffered building software for previous companies. These experiences may reinforce practices that seem to be helpful, but were only helpful in the context of the previous company.
Meanwhile China has done great things for its people, but it has put itself into the same position as those in the imperial core. There are contradictions in the Chinese economy. In order for China to make good on socialism by 2050, it essentially needs to kill its guided capitalist prosperity engine. This is going to make a lot of people uneasy and upset and many of them are also people who are in the CCP. Chinese development has also made it become a treatler country in many respects, I think American Communists don’t recognize that. I think in practice we’re all just doing a prisoners dilemma with each other and ultimately ourselves.
A huge example of the difference between China and the USSR right now is food. The USSR had always been a seasonal agriculture country, because having Western style supermarkets that are both price stable and more-or-less unaffected by seasonal availability is based on a network of global trade that requires extraction by its very nature. If you cannot produce food half the year, and the people that can produce food the other half of the year are equals, you can maintain price stability of food through trade. But the reality is that the Global South where this stability is based in, are not equals. So the way price stability is maintained is through deprivation, extraction and manipulation of global markets. In a socialist global system we’re back at third worldism, you have to convince people who have it good to sacrifice for those that don’t in a place they’ve never been, for reasons that are extremely difficult to articulate. China is a rich country now and in this way has created this problem for itself and historically benevolent internationalism hasn’t really been a cultural tendency. Culturally and politically to China trade is trade, no more no less.