this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (16 children)

What the fuck? Why are we endorsing fascist state capitalists?

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 years ago (15 children)

They're obviously not fascist, and you'd know that if you were being honest about it and bothered educating yourself both on what fascism is, and on the realities of the PRC.

Also, it's not "state capitalism". They do use a market economy in addition to a planned economy, as part of the overall socialist economic system. It's not a binary either-or; using a market economy doesn't mean it's capitalism, and planned economy (intervention) doesn't mean it's socialism. They're structural terms, and relate to purpose: capitalism's purpose is to maximally extract profit and concentrate wealth; socialism's purpose is to better the lives (materially and culturally) of its people. China, as a socialist system, takes advantage of the benefits that a market economy can offer (efficiency, competition, resource allocation, demand and pricing signals) but doesn't use it to extract and concentrate wealth: instead, it uses the net benefits of the market economy to benefit the people. Similarly, a purely planned economy can be very stable and fair but is prone to stagnation and slow progress. By using both systems simultaneously, taking the relative advantages of each, China is able to benefit from efficiency and stability. There's also no pure free market economy: every capitalist economy has degrees of government intervention (another name for planned economy), especially in times of crises.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (13 children)

Tell me this, does this supposed "socialist system" have workers owning the means of production? How are factory conditions again? Hell you can't even particularly call them a social democracy, they don't have complete universal healthcare like Europe yet, and they have less than half the paid leave! Socialist system with billionaires, LMFAO (I don't care if the rules are stricter and they're held more accountable, the fact they exist in the first place is pure capitalism).

And I'm calling them fascist because of how they treat political dissidents and minorities.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago

In contrast to many others coming over from my instance, I'd say the outright "support" of the PRC is not really my thing, to say the least. My comrades won't admit this directly, but a lot of that energy is indeed contrarian-posting for funsies, although several are genuine.

That said, it is incredibly important to carefully analyze the country as a socialist, because for a minute there they were successful in overthrowing capitalism (kinda what we all want)!

Many good and bad things have happened since then under the leadership of the Communist Party. We should carefully analyze these decisions, particularly after analyzing the historical context in which they occurred. We also need to critically evaluate our sources of information, since I hope that we can acknowledge that Western powers have a vested interest in seeing the continuation of the capitalist system. If most of your sources are in English, they will generally be heavily slanted against the anti-capitalist movements.

I think that your way of calling the country "fascist" exposes that your analysis is incomplete. The Chinese government is, in fact, flawed, but why? Fascism means something very specific, and the flaws in the PRC are not the same as what you see in 1930s Italy and Germany. The historical contexts, and economic structures under which they operate are very different.

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