No, my comment is not confusing correlation with causation. You never explained this point, you just stated it as though it counters all of the hard evidence I brought supporting how well socialism works and how poorly capitalism has done in its place.
I didn’t explain my point because I do not have the time to go through every single bullshit point you made, that would just be a waste of time. I’ll pick one but this point could be made of every example you gave. You used the increase in life expectancy in the USSR as one reason why communism is superior to capitalism.
You fail to mention that life expectancy in the capitalist west increased to even greater figures or explain why USSR life expectancy tailed off in the 50’s only to rise after communism.
Prostitution, which is fine by me, oldest profession in the world and all that, where did all of the demand come from following the collapse of the USSR? Did capitalism corrupt the people’s minds or was the soviet government lying?
That’s like suggesting that if a scientist makes a mistake in calculating gravity, that the law of gravity is wrong
No it’s not and you have revealed the fatal flaw all of your crowd exhibits. You view economics as a hard science like physics, where there are universal immutable constants. Economics is a soft science where things are constantly changing depending on multiple factors. Marx did not “discover” the universal secrets of economics in the way Newton or Einstein did. Where in that article you send does Marx debunk George? It just reads like intellectual snobbery by a myopic man unable to see beyond his own work and defending his own views. You sit in an echo chamber of confirmation bias.
Marx’s ideas don’t work or add up, they are from another time, same as George for that matter. Their ideas do not work for modern globalised economies. If they did surely we would have seen the proletariat rise up and seize the mean of production. I am sure this is coming any day now buddy.
However, nationalist Russia still plays an internationally progressive role in undermining imperialism, which is positive.
WTF? Hilarious statement! RUSSIA IS AN EMPIRE! All of the empires try and undermine each other as they always have. You are displaying the third worldism tankies have adopted since the proletariat never rose up, now relying on rebel groups in developing countries to carry on the revolution.
This was already true a decade ago, and yet no Chinese invasion of Russia seems plausible.
No invasion necessary here, Putin is so deep in Xi’s pocket at this stage he is playing with his balls! Russia is so overdependent on China and China alone that they are now just a vassal state of China. No matter the outcome of the war this will be true. China will reclaim their lost territories without blood and secure the water their large population requires.
Not a single one of my points was bullshit. Life expectancy increasing in the imperialist west was largely due to said imperialism, plundering the global south of resources and labor power while exporting contradictions and violence. Life expectancy increased in the imperialist west off the backs of the global south, life expectancy increased in socialist countries due to pro-social policies and industrial development.
As for prostitution, it skyrocketed because poverty skyrocketed. Women’s employment was dramatically harmed, and many were forced to sell their bodies or else end up homeless and on the streets. Regardless of your view of sex work, certainly you can see that being forced into it by a lack of social safety nets is akin to socially compelled sex slavery.
As for Marxism being correct, Marx’s major predictions are all coming to pass. The fact that we do not instantly live in global communism does not contradict Marx in any way. Capitalism has continued to centralize, and imperialism has grown, causing revolutions around the world. The imperialist west is now collapsing under its own weight, and socialist countries like China are rapidly rising. Marxism has carried forward into new conditions by Marxists since Marx, such as Lenin, Rodney, Cheng Enfu, and more.
You have not explained how Marx “does not add up.” Georgism was debunked long ago as having an incomplete and insufficient view of political economy, overly focusing on land while ignoring the contradictions within capitalism itself necessarily leading towards a collapse in capitalism. No amount of land value tax can prevent the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
As for Russia being an “empire,” it is not. It is governed by nationalists and a national bourgeoisie that is largely industrial in character. Russia has a pitiful amount of finance capital, and does not base its economy on capital export but instead commodity export, like oil and natural gas. A country cannot be imperialist if it isn’t imperializing.
As for Russia being a vassal of China, it is not. It is certainly weaker than China, but the two are strong allies. This is certainly unthinkable for a westerner, but it turns out having shared interests and not being dominated by finance capital means countries can genuinely ally.
Life expectancy increased in the imperialist west off the backs of the global south, life expectancy increased in socialist countries due to pro-social policies and industrial development.
Now we are back to confusing correlation with causation. Life expectancy increased dramatically across the 20th century as a result of improved sanitation, medical breakthroughs like antibiotics and vaccines and better obstetric care for childbirth. You are also hilariously forgetting that the USSR was an empire with the European states being kept in line often brutally by their Russian overlords. Did Russian imperialism increase Russian life expectancy then? You should at least be intellectually consistent.
As for prostitution, it skyrocketed because poverty skyrocketed
And this was the fault of the imperial west how? The USSR collapsed due to its own bad governance.
The imperialist west is now collapsing under its own weight
Wake me up when this happens babe.
socialist countries like China are rapidly rising
Most economists would describe today’s China as hybrid state capitalism. China’s communist days are long behind them, I noticed how even you referred to them as “socialist” which would be a stretch considering the oppressive conditions most live under.
You have not explained how Marx “does not add up.”
There are plenty of information online debunking Marx’s theories, I do not have time to do what you can search yourself. I also know that you will be like the proverbial horse brought to water. You mentioned earlier that capitalism in the imperial west is now collapsing under its own weight, as Marx predicted. Marx predicted that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, leading to the inevitable collapse of the system, falling rates of profit, and widespread immiseration of the working class. In reality, capitalist economies proved adaptable, driving technological innovation, creating modern welfare systems to regulate markets, and lifting billions out of poverty globally over the last century.
Or more importantly, why has the proletariat not risen up yet? I mean they’ve had almost 2 centuries at this point!
As for Russia being an “empire,” it is not.
Do you know nothing of Russian history? Read a book dude! How did the Russian state expand over the centuries, magic?
A country cannot be imperialist if it isn’t imperializing.
You say this with a straight face when they are invading Ukraine in an imperialist land grab. This is just after Russia stole a slice of Georgia. I don’t think you understand the meaning of words buddy.
but the two are strong allies. This is certainly unthinkable for a westerner, but it turns out having shared interests and not being dominated by finance capital means countries can genuinely ally.
Back to you not understanding words again. Russia and China are not allies, they pay lip service to their “friendship” and strategic partnership. Alliances in the traditional sense are military and Russia and China are most definitely not this. This war going on for as long as it has is in Xi’s interest, he wants a weak junior partner Russia who he can get cheap gas from and water. It is never an equal partnership when one side absolutely depends on the other. Xi has Putin right where he wants him.
considering the oppressive conditions most live under.
You really know so little about China but talk with such arrogance. Have you tried listening and learning rather than being a smug shitheel? But reading the rest of your smug drivel I have a feeling you’ll just call me a “CCP Bot” or “brainwashed” if I point out the sky high approval rate of our government and how most of us are satisfied with our rising living standards or that your image of China as this oppressive dictatorial place with no rights is nothing but orientalist nonsense. You seem like a white saviour type. Also talking about Marxism being debunked while being a Georgist is peak comedy.
Most economists would describe today’s China as hybrid state capitalism. China’s communist days are long behind them
I don’t think you know what socialism is. Also most economists (in the west at least) have qualifications not worth wiping your ass with as their job is to cheerlead for whatever those with money want. China is socialist and has been since October 1st 1949.
You really know so little about China but talk with such arrogance. Have you tried listening and learning rather than being a smug shitheel?
Oh, I’ve got an angry one on the line here! Calm down son, they are only words, they cannot hurt you! You love your government bla bla bla, I get it, boot heals are delicious!
You seem like a white saviour type
Who am I trying to save here?
Also talking about Marxism being debunked while being a Georgist is peak comedy.
I am not a Georgist any more than I am a Marxist. Both are outdated and flawed economic ideologies from another era. We can take the good from them and progress is my point. Marx is a great starting point to anyone’s economic education, if Marx is also your endpoint this is worrying, you have a very narrow understanding of economics, especially in the modern era.
China is socialist and has been since October 1st 1949.
Do you believe China’s economic set up is the same as it was in 1949? You must just be uneducated, this makes more sense. Let me teach you why China is not socialist.
Private ownership and capital accumulation
Although the state owns the land and key strategic sectors, a vast majority of the economy is driven by privately-owned corporations and foreign investments. The country is home to hundreds of billionaires, and market-driven wealth accumulation contradicts the socialist goal of eliminating the capitalist class.
Labour rights and exploitation
In orthodox Marxist theory, a socialist state is defined by the empowerment of the working class and collective control over the means of production. In reality, independent labor unions are illegal, and workers frequently face severe labor conditions (such as the intense “996” work schedule). The system relies on the exploitation of surplus labor value to remain a dominant player in the global capitalist market
High economic inequality
Despite official goals of achieving “common prosperity,” market reforms have resulted in massive inequalities between the booming coastal urban centers and the poorer rural provinces. This wealth gap, which extends to the Gini coefficient, is more aligned with advanced capitalist economies than an egalitarian socialist society.
Integration into global capitalism
China’s explosive growth is heavily tied to its integration into the global capitalist market, export-driven manufacturing, and participation in organizations like the World Trade Organization. The state leverages its cheap labor to attract multinational corporations, prioritizing global market success over traditional socialist internationalism.
Lack of democratic workers control
Under traditional socialist ideology, the economy and society are meant to be managed democratically by the working class. In China, decision-making is heavily centralized under a single-party government. There is no bottom-up workers’ control, free speech, or independent political assembly, which are foundational principles of true socialist governance.
I hope you now understand why China is not a socialist country by any stretch of the imagination. To quote Deng Xiaoping when asked about this, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”. Even Deng didn’t believe China was socialist, why do you?
You also oppose “global market success” to “socialist internationalism” as if socialist internationalism means loudly exporting revolution while leaving one’s own people poor and militarily vulnerable. China’s international role is not reducible to charity or rhetoric. It provides an alternative pole of development finance, trade, infrastructure, technology transfer, and diplomatic space for countries suffocated by imperialist conditionality. It protects strategic space for states such as the DPRK, supports multipolarity, and weakens the monopoly of the imperialist bloc. You may dislike that this does not look like your fantasy of permanent insurrectionary theater, but serious anti-imperialism is measured by changes in the balance of world power, not by slogans shouted from safe countries.
Your section on “democratic workers’ control” is perhaps the most revealing. You define democracy as liberal pluralism, then declare China undemocratic because it does not reproduce liberal pluralism. That is not an argument; it is a preference. China has grassroots elections, village self-governance, people’s congresses, consultative mechanisms, mass organizations, petitioning, internal Party discipline, cadre evaluation, and a system in which officials rise through demonstrated administrative capacity rather than television charisma and donor patronage. At the lower levels, people directly elect deputies and participate in local governance. Higher bodies are formed through structured indirect election and appointment systems tied to performance, consultation, and Party leadership.
Is this the same as Western multiparty competition? No. That is the point. Western liberal democracy is not class-neutral democracy. It is a political form adapted to capitalist rule: money controls media, parties, lobbying, think tanks, universities, NGOs, and the boundaries of acceptable debate. You call that “free speech” because capitalists are free to manufacture consent. China does not grant capitalists, separatists, comprador forces, or reactionaries an unlimited right to organize the restoration of bourgeois rule. Good. A socialist state that allows its class enemies to dismantle it in the name of abstract freedom is not democratic; it is suicidal.
Finally, your use of Deng’s “black cat, white cat” line is a spectacular misreading. Deng was not saying China was not socialist. He was arguing that planning and markets are tools, not class essences. A planned mechanism can exist under capitalism; a market mechanism can exist under socialism. The decisive question is what social project these tools serve. Deng’s point was not “capitalism is fine.” It was that socialist construction in a poor country must develop the productive forces, and that mechanisms should be judged by whether they serve that task. This is basic. The fact that you turned it into “even Deng didn’t believe China was socialist” suggests you have quoted a sentence without understanding the debate it belongs to.
You have not shown that China is “not socialist by any stretch of the imagination.” You have on the other hand shown that your understanding is embarrassingly shallow. You define socialism as an already purified society without markets, without inequality, without labor conflicts, without foreign trade, without bureaucracy, without contradiction, and without the need for historical development. Such a society has never existed. It is not socialism; it is a moral cartoon.
China is socialist not because it has solved every contradiction, but because the dominant political power remains organized around Communist Party leadership, public ownership of the commanding heights, national planning, land socialization, poverty alleviation, rural revitalization, technological sovereignty, and the subordination of capital to national and social development. Its contradictions are real. Some are dangerous. Some require sharper struggle. But contradictions inside socialist construction are not evidence that socialism is absent. They are the very material through which socialism develops or fails.
The difference between us is simple: I analyze China as a historical society moving through real contradictions under pressure from imperialism, underdevelopment, class struggle, and uneven development. You analyze it as a checklist you copied from liberal anti-communism and then delivered with the smugness of someone who thinks condescension is a substitute for study. Before telling Chinese communists that we do not understand our own country, perhaps do the minimum work of understanding what socialism actually means.
Firstly, I do not “love my government.” Love is not a category one applies to a state. I support the People’s Republic (just like 90+% of my countrymen according to Harvard) because I judge states by historical function, class orientation, developmental outcome, and the material transformation of people’s lives. That may sound strange if your political imagination is limited to liberal consumer preference, where a government is either a brand one likes or a boot one licks. But for people whose villages, families, and regions were actually transformed by socialist construction, the question is not whether the state gives us sentimental feelings. The question is what social forces it represents, what historical tasks it has accomplished, and whether it continues to push society toward collective development rather than private domination. You sneer at Chinese people supporting their own system as if we are all hypnotized, bribed, or afraid. That is a convenient colonial habit: when Westerners support their institutions, it is “democratic legitimacy”; when Chinese people support ours, it must be servility.
Your remarks on Marxism are even weaker. Nobody (except maybe you) says Marx is the endpoint. Marxism is not a religious attachment to one nineteenth-century writer. It is a developing body of analysis that has passed through Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng, and into contemporary Marxist political economy and philosophy. If you had even a basic familiarity with the field, names such as Cheng Enfu, Wang Weiguang, Zhang Yibing, Yang Geng, Li Shenming, and other contemporary Marxist scholars would not be invisible to you. The fact that you think “Marxism” means stopping at Marx shows exactly why you should lower your tone when speaking with others.
Calling Marxism “outdated” while treating modern bourgeois economics as neutral is also not the devastating critique you think it is. Bourgeois economics is very good at formal modeling, price signals, and technical management; it is much weaker when asked to explain class power, imperialism, unequal exchange, historical development, ownership, crisis, and the political character of production. Marxism did not become obsolete because marginalists learned to draw curves. A science is not abandoned because the world changes; it develops because the world changes. “Orthodox Marxism” frozen in the nineteenth century would indeed be useless. But that is not Marxism as a living method. That is your straw man, and frankly not a very sturdy one.
Then you ask whether China’s economy is the same as it was in 1949. Of course it is not. This is such a childish point that it is embarrassing you presented it as education. China in 1949, China in 1956, China in 1978, China in 2001, and China today are not identical because societies develop. The Soviet Union in 1949 was not identical to China in 1949; both were socialist. The United States in 1949 is not identical to the United States today; both are capitalist. Britain, France, Japan, and the United States all have different institutional forms; all remain capitalist because capital retains social dominance. Political-economic systems are not defined by whether every policy, ownership form, or administrative mechanism remains frozen forever. They are defined by the dominant relations of power, the direction of development, and the class character of the state.
That brings us to your central error: you confuse the existence of contradictions with proof that the system is not socialist. This is the sort of mistake one makes after learning socialism as a moral aesthetic rather than as a historical transition. Socialism is not the instant abolition of every inherited contradiction. It is the period in which the working people, through their state and institutions, subordinate old and new social forces to a long process of transformation. It contains commodity production, uneven development, bureaucracy, class struggle, technical backwardness, market mechanisms, ideological struggle, and the remnants of older social relations.
On private ownership and capital accumulation, you again reduce socialism to a children’s diagram: private firm exists, therefore capitalism. But the question is not whether private capital exists. The question is whether private capital rules. In China, land is publicly owned. The banking system, energy, transport, telecommunications, heavy industry, military industry, strategic infrastructure, and macro-planning capacity remain under decisive state control. The private sector is important, but importance is not sovereignty, also the state sector still dominates the top 100 listed Chinese firms by market value, while the private share was only 37.2% in mid-2025. Private capital in China operates inside a political structure it does not command. It may accumulate, but it does not possess the state. When capital collides with the strategic direction of the socialist state, capital is disciplined.
That is the distinction you keep missing. In capitalism, the state is structurally subordinated to the reproduction of capital, even when it regulates individual capitalists. In China, capital is used, limited, corrected, and periodically struck when it threatens social priorities. The existence of billionaires is a contradiction. But the existence of a contradiction does not settle the class character of the state. If your argument is that billionaires create real dangers and pressures inside Chinese socialism, that is true. If your argument is that their existence automatically converts China into a capitalist state, that is crude formalism.
Your labor argument has the same problem. Yes, there are labor contradictions in China. Yes, overwork exists. Yes, private firms and even some state-linked entities can impose harsh conditions. But you bring up “996” as if you have discovered a permanent legal principle of Chinese socialism rather than a contested labor abuse that was concentrated in ~40 firms in the tech sector during the 2016-2019 tech boom that was explicitly ruled illegal by the Supreme People’s Court in 2021. The state’s direction has been toward limiting unlawful overtime, strengthening enforcement, expanding protections, and tying consumption policy to rest, paid leave, and work-life balance.
Your statement about “independent unions” is also shallow. The mere existence of formally independent unions does not prove workers’ power. Many Western unions are independent in form and politically domesticated in substance. They bargain over the terms of exploitation while the dictatorship of capital remains untouched. China’s system places unions within the broader political structure of the workers’ state, not outside it as separate civil-society pressure groups modeled on liberal pluralism. There are weaknesses in that model, especially where enterprise-level unions can become passive or bureaucratic.
On inequality, you again confuse socialism with the final goal of communism. China has serious inequalities: coastal and interior, urban and rural, skilled and unskilled, property owners and non-owners. These are real contradictions produced by uneven development and the use of market mechanisms. But to discuss inequality without discussing the starting point is intellectually dishonest. China was not a wealthy egalitarian society that market reform ruined. It was a poor, devastated, semi-feudal, semi-colonized country emerging from invasion, civil war, famine, blockade, and underdevelopment. The historical question is not whether Shenzhen developed faster than a mountain village. The question is whether the overall movement of society lifted the masses, expanded capacity, and created the basis for a higher stage of equality.
As someone from rural minority China, I have very little patience for Western lectures about what development means in our regions. Villages like mine did not experience socialism as an abstract slogan. We experienced roads, electricity, plumbing, schools, clinics, public transport links, poverty alleviation, subsidies, communications infrastructure, and the ability to participate in national life rather than remain trapped as picturesque poverty for foreign observers. No, this is not luxury communism. No, every problem is not solved. But the transformation from isolation and destitution to modern infrastructure and rising social provision is not a minor footnote. It is the material content of socialist legitimacy.
Your point about integration into the global market is equally mechanical. China exists in a capitalist world-system. It cannot develop by pretending the world market does not exist. Revolutionary purity that preserves poverty is not socialism; it is moral vanity. China used the world market, foreign investment, export manufacturing, and WTO accession tactically to develop productive forces, acquire technology, build industrial capacity, and strengthen national sovereignty. The question is not whether China touched the world market. The question is whether it was absorbed and politically subordinated by it. The answer is plainly no. Western capital entered China dreaming that markets would dissolve socialism. Instead China used that opening to become the central industrial power of the world while retaining Communist Party rule and state direction over the commanding heights. That historical outcome is precisely why Western states are now panicking.
Nope, I am not confusing correlation with causation. Industrialization and development is what drives the increase in life expectancy, as this is directly related to access to medical equipment, food, housing, and more. The west achieved this by exploiting the global south, which is why the global south did not see the same leaps in life expectancy. The Soviets achieved this via pro-social policies and central planning, on their own labor. The soviets were anti imperialist and de-colonial.
As for the disollution of the USSR, it’s complicated. In any case, it was the adoption of capitalism and the ensuing plunder by the imperialist west that created the economic devastation that caused the skyrocketing prostitution. Socialism did not cause it, capitalism did.
As for the PRC, no, it is not “hybrid state capitalism.” By “most economists,” you mean purely western liberal and neoliberal economists. Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state. This is true of the PRC, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and former USSR. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production, and has not yet existed. Rather than being behind China, communism is in the future.
As for Marx, his predictions are coming to pass, and he has not been “debunked.” I’ve seen the nonsense neoliberals and liberals allege against him plenty, I’ve been a Marxist for years. It has not been capitalism that has uplifted the proletariat, but instead capitalism that has systematically underdeveloped the global south, swelling the welfare states in the imperialist west, while socialist countries like China have been lifting billions from poverty.
You are erasing imperialism from the equation because it immediately causes your argument to fall apart. Many countries around the world have gone through revolution, as Marx correctly predicted, and billions now live in socialism.
As for Russia, it was imperialist under the Tsar. The Soviets abolished the Russian Empire, and the Russian Federation has no colonies nor neo colonies. The Russo-Ukrainian war is not imperialist in nature, it’s resolving the conflict between the Donbass region and Kiev as sparked by the Banderite coup in 2014, backed by the west.
As for China and Russia, they have great relations and mutually benefit.
I am a Marxist-Leninist, and my analysis of the soviet union and imperialism in general is aligned with the overwhelming majority of Marxists. Whether or not you want to call me a “tankie” is irrelevant to the conversation, there is no cognitive dissonance on my part. The Soviet economic model worked tremendously well, as I already proved earlier, and as I also proved earlier the majority of those who lived in former Soviet socialism regret the fall of the USSR. The Soviets did not imperialize anyone.
As for socialism being the cause of soviet disollution, no, this is incorrect. The Soviet economy had slowed down a bit towards the end, but it was never in danger of collapsing. This is backed up by data I already linked and you promptly ignored. The largest reasons for Soviet disollution were the coup by Yeltsin, and the policies from people like Gorbachev that weakened internationalist unity within the Soviet Union, leading to a rise in nationalist movements. After the disollition, the west took advantage of the shock doctrine, buying up tremendous parts of the former Soviet economy, and then in Russia a nationalist movement took place, leading to the west getting kicked out and the modern Russian nationalist bourgeoisie taking power.
As for China, the backbone of the economy is in the public sector, in huge State Owned Enterprises. The large firms and key industries in China are overwhelmingly publicly owned, while private ownership is relegated to small industry and highly competitive industries. As for working hours, the average is between 40 and 48 hours, usually hovering around 44-46. 996 is illegal, was largely in big tech firms, and is overall rare.
The PRC is a socialist state, not a state capitalist state like the Republic of Korea, US Empire, or Singapore. China being socialist has nothing to do with the name of the party in control, and everything to do with the mode of production and distribution in China. Rather than a neoliberal paradise, it’s closer to a nightmare for neoliberals. This editorial from The Guardian explains it quite well, actually:
But Xi’s support for mixing private and public ownership structures was purely pragmatic. It had value, he said in another forum, because it would “improve the socialist market economic structure.” Xi’s assessment is echoed by Michael Collins, one of the CIA’s most senior officials for Asia. “The fundamental end of the Communist party of China under Xi Jinping is all the more to control that society politically and economically,” Collins argued earlier this year. “The economy is being viewed, affected and controlled to achieve a political end.”
…
The party’s overarching aim, though, has remained consistent: to ensure that the private sector, and individual entrepreneurs, do not become rival players in the political system. The party wants economic growth, but not at the expense of tolerating any organised alternative centres of power.
…
“[Capitalists] act as if they are being chased by a bear,” wrote Zhang Lin, a Beijing political commentator, in response to these comments. “They are powerless to control the bear, so they are competing to outrun each other to escape the animal.”
How then, does China’s economy work? Public ownership is the principal aspect of China’s economy. This means that public ownership governs the large firms and key industries, and is what is rising in China, as private ownership is kept to small and medium non-essential industries. No system is static, meaning identifying the nature of a system depends on identifying what is rising and what is dying away. Cpitalists are held on a tight leash, and are prevented from gaining political power as a class. The reason private ownership is allowed at all is because China has very uneven development due to their rapid industrialization, and private ownership does help with filling in gaps left by the primary aspects of the economy like SOEs.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
China does have billionaires, as you might then protest. China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes and the state, run along the lines of a common plan, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized.
Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
To dogmatically collectivize the entire economy would actually be a move undesirable by Marxist standards. Certain economies like the DPRK and USSR have had to do so in order to develop military deterrence, China managed to negotiate itself into the global economy and take advantage of the utility of markets in socializing the small industries, making them ripe for central planning. Your understanding of Marxism is painfully shallow. You erase historical materialism from Marxism, reverting it from scientific socialism back to the very utopianism Marx and Engels criticized of their predecessors!
I don’t know why you think the revolution has been “disappointing,” Marxists understand that the progress to socialism and communism is long and protracted, winding and uneven, with temporary setbacks and strategic retreats. The fact that Marxists correctly predicted this is the opposite of Marx being wrong!
As for social democracies “redistributing wealth,” this is purely from the global south to the global north. Framing imperialism, where the west plunders the global south and shares the spoils among its people, as “wealth redistribution” is an utterly tortured use of the English language.
You’ve proven nothing, only that you don’t understand imperialism or Marxism. Russia and China are allies, and the Russo-Ukrainian war is not a matter of imperialism on Russia’s part, but instead the west using Ukraine as they use Israel.
I didn’t explain my point because I do not have the time to go through every single bullshit point you made, that would just be a waste of time. I’ll pick one but this point could be made of every example you gave. You used the increase in life expectancy in the USSR as one reason why communism is superior to capitalism.
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/5b8165f4-9e20-47eb-ad04-dc5c88f007c4.png
You fail to mention that life expectancy in the capitalist west increased to even greater figures or explain why USSR life expectancy tailed off in the 50’s only to rise after communism.
Prostitution, which is fine by me, oldest profession in the world and all that, where did all of the demand come from following the collapse of the USSR? Did capitalism corrupt the people’s minds or was the soviet government lying?
No it’s not and you have revealed the fatal flaw all of your crowd exhibits. You view economics as a hard science like physics, where there are universal immutable constants. Economics is a soft science where things are constantly changing depending on multiple factors. Marx did not “discover” the universal secrets of economics in the way Newton or Einstein did. Where in that article you send does Marx debunk George? It just reads like intellectual snobbery by a myopic man unable to see beyond his own work and defending his own views. You sit in an echo chamber of confirmation bias.
Marx’s ideas don’t work or add up, they are from another time, same as George for that matter. Their ideas do not work for modern globalised economies. If they did surely we would have seen the proletariat rise up and seize the mean of production. I am sure this is coming any day now buddy.
WTF? Hilarious statement! RUSSIA IS AN EMPIRE! All of the empires try and undermine each other as they always have. You are displaying the third worldism tankies have adopted since the proletariat never rose up, now relying on rebel groups in developing countries to carry on the revolution.
No invasion necessary here, Putin is so deep in Xi’s pocket at this stage he is playing with his balls! Russia is so overdependent on China and China alone that they are now just a vassal state of China. No matter the outcome of the war this will be true. China will reclaim their lost territories without blood and secure the water their large population requires.
Not a single one of my points was bullshit. Life expectancy increasing in the imperialist west was largely due to said imperialism, plundering the global south of resources and labor power while exporting contradictions and violence. Life expectancy increased in the imperialist west off the backs of the global south, life expectancy increased in socialist countries due to pro-social policies and industrial development.
As for prostitution, it skyrocketed because poverty skyrocketed. Women’s employment was dramatically harmed, and many were forced to sell their bodies or else end up homeless and on the streets. Regardless of your view of sex work, certainly you can see that being forced into it by a lack of social safety nets is akin to socially compelled sex slavery.
As for Marxism being correct, Marx’s major predictions are all coming to pass. The fact that we do not instantly live in global communism does not contradict Marx in any way. Capitalism has continued to centralize, and imperialism has grown, causing revolutions around the world. The imperialist west is now collapsing under its own weight, and socialist countries like China are rapidly rising. Marxism has carried forward into new conditions by Marxists since Marx, such as Lenin, Rodney, Cheng Enfu, and more.
You have not explained how Marx “does not add up.” Georgism was debunked long ago as having an incomplete and insufficient view of political economy, overly focusing on land while ignoring the contradictions within capitalism itself necessarily leading towards a collapse in capitalism. No amount of land value tax can prevent the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
As for Russia being an “empire,” it is not. It is governed by nationalists and a national bourgeoisie that is largely industrial in character. Russia has a pitiful amount of finance capital, and does not base its economy on capital export but instead commodity export, like oil and natural gas. A country cannot be imperialist if it isn’t imperializing.
As for Russia being a vassal of China, it is not. It is certainly weaker than China, but the two are strong allies. This is certainly unthinkable for a westerner, but it turns out having shared interests and not being dominated by finance capital means countries can genuinely ally.
Now we are back to confusing correlation with causation. Life expectancy increased dramatically across the 20th century as a result of improved sanitation, medical breakthroughs like antibiotics and vaccines and better obstetric care for childbirth. You are also hilariously forgetting that the USSR was an empire with the European states being kept in line often brutally by their Russian overlords. Did Russian imperialism increase Russian life expectancy then? You should at least be intellectually consistent.
And this was the fault of the imperial west how? The USSR collapsed due to its own bad governance.
Wake me up when this happens babe.
Most economists would describe today’s China as hybrid state capitalism. China’s communist days are long behind them, I noticed how even you referred to them as “socialist” which would be a stretch considering the oppressive conditions most live under.
There are plenty of information online debunking Marx’s theories, I do not have time to do what you can search yourself. I also know that you will be like the proverbial horse brought to water. You mentioned earlier that capitalism in the imperial west is now collapsing under its own weight, as Marx predicted. Marx predicted that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, leading to the inevitable collapse of the system, falling rates of profit, and widespread immiseration of the working class. In reality, capitalist economies proved adaptable, driving technological innovation, creating modern welfare systems to regulate markets, and lifting billions out of poverty globally over the last century.
Or more importantly, why has the proletariat not risen up yet? I mean they’ve had almost 2 centuries at this point!
Do you know nothing of Russian history? Read a book dude! How did the Russian state expand over the centuries, magic?
You say this with a straight face when they are invading Ukraine in an imperialist land grab. This is just after Russia stole a slice of Georgia. I don’t think you understand the meaning of words buddy.
Back to you not understanding words again. Russia and China are not allies, they pay lip service to their “friendship” and strategic partnership. Alliances in the traditional sense are military and Russia and China are most definitely not this. This war going on for as long as it has is in Xi’s interest, he wants a weak junior partner Russia who he can get cheap gas from and water. It is never an equal partnership when one side absolutely depends on the other. Xi has Putin right where he wants him.
You really know so little about China but talk with such arrogance. Have you tried listening and learning rather than being a smug shitheel? But reading the rest of your smug drivel I have a feeling you’ll just call me a “CCP Bot” or “brainwashed” if I point out the sky high approval rate of our government and how most of us are satisfied with our rising living standards or that your image of China as this oppressive dictatorial place with no rights is nothing but orientalist nonsense. You seem like a white saviour type. Also talking about Marxism being debunked while being a Georgist is peak comedy.
I don’t think you know what socialism is. Also most economists (in the west at least) have qualifications not worth wiping your ass with as their job is to cheerlead for whatever those with money want. China is socialist and has been since October 1st 1949.
Oh, I’ve got an angry one on the line here! Calm down son, they are only words, they cannot hurt you! You love your government bla bla bla, I get it, boot heals are delicious!
Who am I trying to save here?
I am not a Georgist any more than I am a Marxist. Both are outdated and flawed economic ideologies from another era. We can take the good from them and progress is my point. Marx is a great starting point to anyone’s economic education, if Marx is also your endpoint this is worrying, you have a very narrow understanding of economics, especially in the modern era.
Do you believe China’s economic set up is the same as it was in 1949? You must just be uneducated, this makes more sense. Let me teach you why China is not socialist.
Private ownership and capital accumulation
Although the state owns the land and key strategic sectors, a vast majority of the economy is driven by privately-owned corporations and foreign investments. The country is home to hundreds of billionaires, and market-driven wealth accumulation contradicts the socialist goal of eliminating the capitalist class.
Labour rights and exploitation
In orthodox Marxist theory, a socialist state is defined by the empowerment of the working class and collective control over the means of production. In reality, independent labor unions are illegal, and workers frequently face severe labor conditions (such as the intense “996” work schedule). The system relies on the exploitation of surplus labor value to remain a dominant player in the global capitalist market
High economic inequality
Despite official goals of achieving “common prosperity,” market reforms have resulted in massive inequalities between the booming coastal urban centers and the poorer rural provinces. This wealth gap, which extends to the Gini coefficient, is more aligned with advanced capitalist economies than an egalitarian socialist society.
Integration into global capitalism
China’s explosive growth is heavily tied to its integration into the global capitalist market, export-driven manufacturing, and participation in organizations like the World Trade Organization. The state leverages its cheap labor to attract multinational corporations, prioritizing global market success over traditional socialist internationalism.
Lack of democratic workers control
Under traditional socialist ideology, the economy and society are meant to be managed democratically by the working class. In China, decision-making is heavily centralized under a single-party government. There is no bottom-up workers’ control, free speech, or independent political assembly, which are foundational principles of true socialist governance.
I hope you now understand why China is not a socialist country by any stretch of the imagination. To quote Deng Xiaoping when asked about this, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”. Even Deng didn’t believe China was socialist, why do you?
You also oppose “global market success” to “socialist internationalism” as if socialist internationalism means loudly exporting revolution while leaving one’s own people poor and militarily vulnerable. China’s international role is not reducible to charity or rhetoric. It provides an alternative pole of development finance, trade, infrastructure, technology transfer, and diplomatic space for countries suffocated by imperialist conditionality. It protects strategic space for states such as the DPRK, supports multipolarity, and weakens the monopoly of the imperialist bloc. You may dislike that this does not look like your fantasy of permanent insurrectionary theater, but serious anti-imperialism is measured by changes in the balance of world power, not by slogans shouted from safe countries.
Your section on “democratic workers’ control” is perhaps the most revealing. You define democracy as liberal pluralism, then declare China undemocratic because it does not reproduce liberal pluralism. That is not an argument; it is a preference. China has grassroots elections, village self-governance, people’s congresses, consultative mechanisms, mass organizations, petitioning, internal Party discipline, cadre evaluation, and a system in which officials rise through demonstrated administrative capacity rather than television charisma and donor patronage. At the lower levels, people directly elect deputies and participate in local governance. Higher bodies are formed through structured indirect election and appointment systems tied to performance, consultation, and Party leadership.
Is this the same as Western multiparty competition? No. That is the point. Western liberal democracy is not class-neutral democracy. It is a political form adapted to capitalist rule: money controls media, parties, lobbying, think tanks, universities, NGOs, and the boundaries of acceptable debate. You call that “free speech” because capitalists are free to manufacture consent. China does not grant capitalists, separatists, comprador forces, or reactionaries an unlimited right to organize the restoration of bourgeois rule. Good. A socialist state that allows its class enemies to dismantle it in the name of abstract freedom is not democratic; it is suicidal.
Finally, your use of Deng’s “black cat, white cat” line is a spectacular misreading. Deng was not saying China was not socialist. He was arguing that planning and markets are tools, not class essences. A planned mechanism can exist under capitalism; a market mechanism can exist under socialism. The decisive question is what social project these tools serve. Deng’s point was not “capitalism is fine.” It was that socialist construction in a poor country must develop the productive forces, and that mechanisms should be judged by whether they serve that task. This is basic. The fact that you turned it into “even Deng didn’t believe China was socialist” suggests you have quoted a sentence without understanding the debate it belongs to.
You have not shown that China is “not socialist by any stretch of the imagination.” You have on the other hand shown that your understanding is embarrassingly shallow. You define socialism as an already purified society without markets, without inequality, without labor conflicts, without foreign trade, without bureaucracy, without contradiction, and without the need for historical development. Such a society has never existed. It is not socialism; it is a moral cartoon.
China is socialist not because it has solved every contradiction, but because the dominant political power remains organized around Communist Party leadership, public ownership of the commanding heights, national planning, land socialization, poverty alleviation, rural revitalization, technological sovereignty, and the subordination of capital to national and social development. Its contradictions are real. Some are dangerous. Some require sharper struggle. But contradictions inside socialist construction are not evidence that socialism is absent. They are the very material through which socialism develops or fails.
The difference between us is simple: I analyze China as a historical society moving through real contradictions under pressure from imperialism, underdevelopment, class struggle, and uneven development. You analyze it as a checklist you copied from liberal anti-communism and then delivered with the smugness of someone who thinks condescension is a substitute for study. Before telling Chinese communists that we do not understand our own country, perhaps do the minimum work of understanding what socialism actually means.
Split into sections due to length.
Firstly, I do not “love my government.” Love is not a category one applies to a state. I support the People’s Republic (just like 90+% of my countrymen according to Harvard) because I judge states by historical function, class orientation, developmental outcome, and the material transformation of people’s lives. That may sound strange if your political imagination is limited to liberal consumer preference, where a government is either a brand one likes or a boot one licks. But for people whose villages, families, and regions were actually transformed by socialist construction, the question is not whether the state gives us sentimental feelings. The question is what social forces it represents, what historical tasks it has accomplished, and whether it continues to push society toward collective development rather than private domination. You sneer at Chinese people supporting their own system as if we are all hypnotized, bribed, or afraid. That is a convenient colonial habit: when Westerners support their institutions, it is “democratic legitimacy”; when Chinese people support ours, it must be servility.
Your remarks on Marxism are even weaker. Nobody (except maybe you) says Marx is the endpoint. Marxism is not a religious attachment to one nineteenth-century writer. It is a developing body of analysis that has passed through Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng, and into contemporary Marxist political economy and philosophy. If you had even a basic familiarity with the field, names such as Cheng Enfu, Wang Weiguang, Zhang Yibing, Yang Geng, Li Shenming, and other contemporary Marxist scholars would not be invisible to you. The fact that you think “Marxism” means stopping at Marx shows exactly why you should lower your tone when speaking with others.
Calling Marxism “outdated” while treating modern bourgeois economics as neutral is also not the devastating critique you think it is. Bourgeois economics is very good at formal modeling, price signals, and technical management; it is much weaker when asked to explain class power, imperialism, unequal exchange, historical development, ownership, crisis, and the political character of production. Marxism did not become obsolete because marginalists learned to draw curves. A science is not abandoned because the world changes; it develops because the world changes. “Orthodox Marxism” frozen in the nineteenth century would indeed be useless. But that is not Marxism as a living method. That is your straw man, and frankly not a very sturdy one.
Then you ask whether China’s economy is the same as it was in 1949. Of course it is not. This is such a childish point that it is embarrassing you presented it as education. China in 1949, China in 1956, China in 1978, China in 2001, and China today are not identical because societies develop. The Soviet Union in 1949 was not identical to China in 1949; both were socialist. The United States in 1949 is not identical to the United States today; both are capitalist. Britain, France, Japan, and the United States all have different institutional forms; all remain capitalist because capital retains social dominance. Political-economic systems are not defined by whether every policy, ownership form, or administrative mechanism remains frozen forever. They are defined by the dominant relations of power, the direction of development, and the class character of the state.
That brings us to your central error: you confuse the existence of contradictions with proof that the system is not socialist. This is the sort of mistake one makes after learning socialism as a moral aesthetic rather than as a historical transition. Socialism is not the instant abolition of every inherited contradiction. It is the period in which the working people, through their state and institutions, subordinate old and new social forces to a long process of transformation. It contains commodity production, uneven development, bureaucracy, class struggle, technical backwardness, market mechanisms, ideological struggle, and the remnants of older social relations.
On private ownership and capital accumulation, you again reduce socialism to a children’s diagram: private firm exists, therefore capitalism. But the question is not whether private capital exists. The question is whether private capital rules. In China, land is publicly owned. The banking system, energy, transport, telecommunications, heavy industry, military industry, strategic infrastructure, and macro-planning capacity remain under decisive state control. The private sector is important, but importance is not sovereignty, also the state sector still dominates the top 100 listed Chinese firms by market value, while the private share was only 37.2% in mid-2025. Private capital in China operates inside a political structure it does not command. It may accumulate, but it does not possess the state. When capital collides with the strategic direction of the socialist state, capital is disciplined.
That is the distinction you keep missing. In capitalism, the state is structurally subordinated to the reproduction of capital, even when it regulates individual capitalists. In China, capital is used, limited, corrected, and periodically struck when it threatens social priorities. The existence of billionaires is a contradiction. But the existence of a contradiction does not settle the class character of the state. If your argument is that billionaires create real dangers and pressures inside Chinese socialism, that is true. If your argument is that their existence automatically converts China into a capitalist state, that is crude formalism.
Your labor argument has the same problem. Yes, there are labor contradictions in China. Yes, overwork exists. Yes, private firms and even some state-linked entities can impose harsh conditions. But you bring up “996” as if you have discovered a permanent legal principle of Chinese socialism rather than a contested labor abuse that was concentrated in ~40 firms in the tech sector during the 2016-2019 tech boom that was explicitly ruled illegal by the Supreme People’s Court in 2021. The state’s direction has been toward limiting unlawful overtime, strengthening enforcement, expanding protections, and tying consumption policy to rest, paid leave, and work-life balance.
Your statement about “independent unions” is also shallow. The mere existence of formally independent unions does not prove workers’ power. Many Western unions are independent in form and politically domesticated in substance. They bargain over the terms of exploitation while the dictatorship of capital remains untouched. China’s system places unions within the broader political structure of the workers’ state, not outside it as separate civil-society pressure groups modeled on liberal pluralism. There are weaknesses in that model, especially where enterprise-level unions can become passive or bureaucratic.
On inequality, you again confuse socialism with the final goal of communism. China has serious inequalities: coastal and interior, urban and rural, skilled and unskilled, property owners and non-owners. These are real contradictions produced by uneven development and the use of market mechanisms. But to discuss inequality without discussing the starting point is intellectually dishonest. China was not a wealthy egalitarian society that market reform ruined. It was a poor, devastated, semi-feudal, semi-colonized country emerging from invasion, civil war, famine, blockade, and underdevelopment. The historical question is not whether Shenzhen developed faster than a mountain village. The question is whether the overall movement of society lifted the masses, expanded capacity, and created the basis for a higher stage of equality.
As someone from rural minority China, I have very little patience for Western lectures about what development means in our regions. Villages like mine did not experience socialism as an abstract slogan. We experienced roads, electricity, plumbing, schools, clinics, public transport links, poverty alleviation, subsidies, communications infrastructure, and the ability to participate in national life rather than remain trapped as picturesque poverty for foreign observers. No, this is not luxury communism. No, every problem is not solved. But the transformation from isolation and destitution to modern infrastructure and rising social provision is not a minor footnote. It is the material content of socialist legitimacy.
Your point about integration into the global market is equally mechanical. China exists in a capitalist world-system. It cannot develop by pretending the world market does not exist. Revolutionary purity that preserves poverty is not socialism; it is moral vanity. China used the world market, foreign investment, export manufacturing, and WTO accession tactically to develop productive forces, acquire technology, build industrial capacity, and strengthen national sovereignty. The question is not whether China touched the world market. The question is whether it was absorbed and politically subordinated by it. The answer is plainly no. Western capital entered China dreaming that markets would dissolve socialism. Instead China used that opening to become the central industrial power of the world while retaining Communist Party rule and state direction over the commanding heights. That historical outcome is precisely why Western states are now panicking.
Nope, I am not confusing correlation with causation. Industrialization and development is what drives the increase in life expectancy, as this is directly related to access to medical equipment, food, housing, and more. The west achieved this by exploiting the global south, which is why the global south did not see the same leaps in life expectancy. The Soviets achieved this via pro-social policies and central planning, on their own labor. The soviets were anti imperialist and de-colonial.
As for the disollution of the USSR, it’s complicated. In any case, it was the adoption of capitalism and the ensuing plunder by the imperialist west that created the economic devastation that caused the skyrocketing prostitution. Socialism did not cause it, capitalism did.
As for the PRC, no, it is not “hybrid state capitalism.” By “most economists,” you mean purely western liberal and neoliberal economists. Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state. This is true of the PRC, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and former USSR. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production, and has not yet existed. Rather than being behind China, communism is in the future.
As for Marx, his predictions are coming to pass, and he has not been “debunked.” I’ve seen the nonsense neoliberals and liberals allege against him plenty, I’ve been a Marxist for years. It has not been capitalism that has uplifted the proletariat, but instead capitalism that has systematically underdeveloped the global south, swelling the welfare states in the imperialist west, while socialist countries like China have been lifting billions from poverty.
You are erasing imperialism from the equation because it immediately causes your argument to fall apart. Many countries around the world have gone through revolution, as Marx correctly predicted, and billions now live in socialism.
As for Russia, it was imperialist under the Tsar. The Soviets abolished the Russian Empire, and the Russian Federation has no colonies nor neo colonies. The Russo-Ukrainian war is not imperialist in nature, it’s resolving the conflict between the Donbass region and Kiev as sparked by the Banderite coup in 2014, backed by the west.
As for China and Russia, they have great relations and mutually benefit.
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I am a Marxist-Leninist, and my analysis of the soviet union and imperialism in general is aligned with the overwhelming majority of Marxists. Whether or not you want to call me a “tankie” is irrelevant to the conversation, there is no cognitive dissonance on my part. The Soviet economic model worked tremendously well, as I already proved earlier, and as I also proved earlier the majority of those who lived in former Soviet socialism regret the fall of the USSR. The Soviets did not imperialize anyone.
As for socialism being the cause of soviet disollution, no, this is incorrect. The Soviet economy had slowed down a bit towards the end, but it was never in danger of collapsing. This is backed up by data I already linked and you promptly ignored. The largest reasons for Soviet disollution were the coup by Yeltsin, and the policies from people like Gorbachev that weakened internationalist unity within the Soviet Union, leading to a rise in nationalist movements. After the disollition, the west took advantage of the shock doctrine, buying up tremendous parts of the former Soviet economy, and then in Russia a nationalist movement took place, leading to the west getting kicked out and the modern Russian nationalist bourgeoisie taking power.
As for China, the backbone of the economy is in the public sector, in huge State Owned Enterprises. The large firms and key industries in China are overwhelmingly publicly owned, while private ownership is relegated to small industry and highly competitive industries. As for working hours, the average is between 40 and 48 hours, usually hovering around 44-46. 996 is illegal, was largely in big tech firms, and is overall rare.
The PRC is a socialist state, not a state capitalist state like the Republic of Korea, US Empire, or Singapore. China being socialist has nothing to do with the name of the party in control, and everything to do with the mode of production and distribution in China. Rather than a neoliberal paradise, it’s closer to a nightmare for neoliberals. This editorial from The Guardian explains it quite well, actually:
How then, does China’s economy work? Public ownership is the principal aspect of China’s economy. This means that public ownership governs the large firms and key industries, and is what is rising in China, as private ownership is kept to small and medium non-essential industries. No system is static, meaning identifying the nature of a system depends on identifying what is rising and what is dying away. Cpitalists are held on a tight leash, and are prevented from gaining political power as a class. The reason private ownership is allowed at all is because China has very uneven development due to their rapid industrialization, and private ownership does help with filling in gaps left by the primary aspects of the economy like SOEs.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
China does have billionaires, as you might then protest. China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principal aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes and the state, run along the lines of a common plan, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:
The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.
Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.
In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized.
Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
To dogmatically collectivize the entire economy would actually be a move undesirable by Marxist standards. Certain economies like the DPRK and USSR have had to do so in order to develop military deterrence, China managed to negotiate itself into the global economy and take advantage of the utility of markets in socializing the small industries, making them ripe for central planning. Your understanding of Marxism is painfully shallow. You erase historical materialism from Marxism, reverting it from scientific socialism back to the very utopianism Marx and Engels criticized of their predecessors!
I don’t know why you think the revolution has been “disappointing,” Marxists understand that the progress to socialism and communism is long and protracted, winding and uneven, with temporary setbacks and strategic retreats. The fact that Marxists correctly predicted this is the opposite of Marx being wrong!
As for social democracies “redistributing wealth,” this is purely from the global south to the global north. Framing imperialism, where the west plunders the global south and shares the spoils among its people, as “wealth redistribution” is an utterly tortured use of the English language.
You’ve proven nothing, only that you don’t understand imperialism or Marxism. Russia and China are allies, and the Russo-Ukrainian war is not a matter of imperialism on Russia’s part, but instead the west using Ukraine as they use Israel.
You don’t really know what imperialism means, do you?
Hint: imperialism doesn’t mean “when military does stuff”