Feed_el_Castro [he/him, comrade/them]Had a 1v9 argument about China and Cuba being socialist at my org
queermunist she/herChina’s improving material conditions will do the heavy lifting for us. Life in the West will continue to get worse, life in China will continue to get better, and eventually people will shift their positions to align with that new material reality. Ironically, politically disengaged Westoids might be easier to convince than Western “”“socialists”“” because they’re not as ideological.
To a certain extent this is already the case. Tiktok has opened many peoples’ eyes to the realities of life in modern China, and people are exposed to a lot more coming from China than they were just 5 years ago.
I’d actually include xianxia and wuxia fandom in this too, Chinese pop culture is starting to penetrate the West.
Maybe we’ll see a cultivation blockbuster trilogy in the next decade.
ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]Imo you and your comrades are by the sound of it having issues where you confuse “socialist”, “dictatorship of the proletariat”, “anti-imperialist”, “nice to live in” and “progressive” for semisynonymous moral categories instead of seperate political-economic categories without moral weight.
Also by instead of respecting democratic centralism and party discipline going and posting about it in public online spaces you are sorta in the wrong here imo. Instead of posting about this online you should do further investigation and discuss it further with your comrades while engaged in the work of leafletting or postering where youre less likely to be dogpiled
Anyway, the capitalist mode of production is a different thing from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist mode of production is M-C-M`, it is the laws of value and the production and circulation of commodities. “‘Accumulate, accumulate’ this is Moses and the Prophets” as Marx put it. The chinese economy operates, including in the state sector, on M-C-M’ and on the law of value and production and circulation of commodities.
This is in contrast to the soviet union, whose plans followed M-C-M’, but did not allow things to circulate based on the laws of value but instead the needs of the economic plan (and this planning structure was itself a development of the war communism compromise, not what the bolsheviks had in mind in october 1917).
And both of these are very different from Cuba’s economy, which is much closer to the lower stage of communism (socialism) than any other socialist project: they have made strides towards the abolition of the urban-rural divide, the divison between manual and mental labour, the metabolic rift and the commodity form.
Whether china is a dictatorship of the proletariat or of the bourgeois is a seperate question from whether its economy is organised along capitalist lines, and this is an entirely seperate question from whether china’s interests are opposed to american imperialism and from the 4th question of their poverty reduction—which, you will note, is accompanied by increased investments of capital overseas, including to buy up land and resources to export food, minerals, etc to china. Bolivian and Ethiopian peasants arent much happier if their land is stolen or waters poisoned to supply china with cheaper food and lithium.
By tying these questions together in a nebulous “is china socialist” (by which you mean “good” rather than any marxist analysis) you confuse the matter and make discussion impossible. China has reduced poverty in China during one of the greatest increases in global poverty in world history—see for example the massive land grabs and dispossesions in Africa from the 00s on.
It remains to be seen whether China will dismantle the global systems of imperialist oppression (the institutions they joined in the 90s and 00s like the imf, wto, world bank etc) to allow the global population to also stop being fucked over, or take them over and merely reform them while BRICS becomes a new G20 or OECD. It remains to be seen whether they will return to supporting revolutionaries like the USSR and Cuba, or if they will continue to trade with Israel and the Phillipines and the USA while they commit genocides and snuff out revolutions. It remains to be seen if, as the USA collapses and oyher global south countries can increase their working and living conditions, China will accept these losses. But based on how China doesnt seem to do much about the industrial abuses their companies commit overseas (thinking especially of the big mining disaster in africa a while ago), my hopes are sadly at a record low atm.
Imperialism is a world system, any participation in the global economy as a winner (and china is increasingly a winner) is participation in imperialism. You are the one deviating from lenin’s theory by turning it into a set of policies a nation can choose or reject. Youve turned critical support agaisnt imperialism into uncritical support against criticism.
That said, your comrades are 100% wrong on Cuba imo, both bc of the supply situation and bc the USSR was much less helpful there than it could or should.have been (because, from Khrushchev on, the USSR also increasingly operates according to the laws of value and commodity circulation, or, as one of the leaders of the communist party of british guyana put it in the 60s when the soviets wouldnt give help developing their industry bc it wouldnt benefit soviet economy enough: “theyre just as businesslike on this [east] side of the iron curtain as the other”)
by instead of respecting democratic centralism and party discipline going and posting about it in public online spaces you are sorta in the wrong here imo.
I’m posting it anonymously without mentioning my org. A violation of democratic centralism would be to publicly rant about it Trotsky style. The act of posting this here exposes me to other viewpoints and research such as yours, which contributes to my ideological growth.
Regarding your explanation of M-C-M’, China does operate to a certain extent according to the capitalist mode of production, this much is obvious, that doesn’t mean that they can be described a capitalist country anymore than you’d describe Lenin’s New Economic Policy as capitalist, or agriculture during the Stalin eras as capitalist (most farmers were organized in cooperatives which did reproduce the M-C-M’ cycle and operated under the profit motive, only with most grain being sold not on free markets but at fixed prices designated by the state).
Whether China is a socialist country goes beyond the dominant mode of production, and any analysis lumping together China with, say, Germany or the USA, is bad analysis. China being a dictatorship of the proletariat is a much more useful definition of it being a socialist country, note I said socialist and not communist. Nowhere in your comment do you mention that China developed in a world dominated by western capital. Failing to acknowledge the realities of siege socialism / actually existing socialism in the current world and focusing exclusively on the internal economic relations will lead to ultra-left analysis.
It does remain to see whether China will dismantle the global systems of imperialist oppression, but the fact that they are a dictatorship of the proletariat would lead one to think that this is their endgoal in the long term, which they themselves say is communism, and that their current geopolitical stance and economic relation with the rest of the world is a matter of strategy and not of ideology. It’s also lazy and selfish to expect other countries to do the work of revolution for you, and while I agree there should be criticism of China and even a degree of skepticism, it should primarily come from support of its project and not from rejection of their extremely successful model.
Imperialism is a world system, any participation in the global economy as a winner (and china is increasingly a winner) is participation in imperialism. You are the one deviating from lenin’s theory by turning it into a set of policies a nation can choose or reject. Youve turned critical support agaisnt imperialism into uncritical support against criticism.
As I said before: leaving aside the realities of siege socialism is bad analysis. Ask yourself this question: is China in a better position in 2026 to start a struggle against global imperialism than it was in 1980? Throwing oneself naked at the guns of capitalism may seem like a very honourable thing to do, but the fact is that China survives and western capitalism patently doesn’t want it to.
Your final bit on the USSR operating under the laws of value and commodity circulation in international exchange is simply wrong, btw, there is extended analysis of this in Albert Szymanski’s “Is the Red Flag Flying”, and the numbers are given proving that the USSR didn’t engage in the way whatever Guyanan official declared in 1960. The USSR actually mostly invested in foreign countries through direct industrialization schemes, where they would loan the necessary materials or industrial goods or even currency to put the industry there in the first place, and then they’d receive the payment back in kind in the industrially produced goods. This can be hardly described as “the Soviets wouldn’t give help developing their industry”. The USSR also put itself in the short end of the stick of unequal exchange by being a net exporter of raw materials and energy resources to the eastern block, and a net importer of industrially produced goods, which made possible the industrialization of the rest of countries of the Eastern Block, yes, also during and after Khruschyov.
Dont have much time so dont have time to edit
demcent
Fair, I shouldnt have assumed your org has the same rules as mine
that doesn’t mean that they can be described a capitalist country anymore than you’d describe Lenin’s New Economic Policy as capitalist, or agriculture during the Stalin eras as capitalist
I would describe both of those policies as still operating within the global capitalist mode of production, overseen by a dictatorship of the proletariat rebelling against that mode of production with the goal of building productive forces to defend against imperialism/counterrevolution and transition towards socialism. I try to avoid phrases like “capitalist country” or “socialist country” (or “imperialist country”) as I view such formulations as overly simplistic and anti-marxist. For me the gold standard of description of economic systems is the opening line’s of capital, describing “societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production”; I would describe all socialist projects such societies. A major goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to struggle against and dismantle the capitalist mode of production towards the goal of establishing a community of producers and eventually abolishing the commodity form.
China being a dictatorship of the proletariat is a much more useful definition of it being a socialist country
As I’ve said, I don’t think the phrase “socialist country” or “socialism” is a synonym for “dictatorship of the proletariat”. The terms describe two different things imo.
Nowhere in your comment do you mention that China developed in a world dominated by western capital. Failing to acknowledge the realities of siege socialism / actually existing socialism in the current world and focusing exclusively on the internal economic relations will lead to ultra-left analysis.
China sided with the Americans against the USSR to get the west to lift its economic siege so it could abandon the economic aspects of siege socialism in favour of integration in the global economy. I have mentioned the current state of affairs of China, which, far from being under siege is at the centre of many of the global imperialist institutions. To my understanding, ultraleftism is a tactical rather than analytical error, i.e. forming a sect instead of participating in the mass movements. Lenin didn’t disagree with the dutch and italian ultraleft bc he thought their analysis of trade unions and parliament being reactionary was wrong, he criticised them because he believed their tactic of abstaining from participation in reactionary trade unions and parliament was wrong
It does remain to see whether China will dismantle the global systems of imperialist oppression, but the fact that they are a dictatorship of the proletariat would lead one to think that this is their endgoal in the long term, which they themselves say is communism, and that their current geopolitical stance and economic relation with the rest of the world is a matter of strategy and not of ideology.
And imo, the more powerful China gets, the more opportunities to weaken America it lets pass with mere strongly worded letters, the more they don’t discipline their companies as strongly for abuses internationally as domestically, the more in feels they’ve transitioned into exactly the sorta social imperialists Deng worried might emerge with his policies.
It’s also lazy and selfish to expect other countries to do the work of revolution for you, and while I agree there should be criticism of China and even a degree of skepticism, it should primarily come from support of its project and not from rejection of their extremely successful model.
I don’t expect them to do the work of revolution for me, I am disappointed that they no longer express much material solidarity with other revolutionary organisations and in fact trade with and supply reactionary regimes like Israel, the USA and the Phillipines. Criticial support in the context of the west means, imo, absolute support for China against western imperialism, in particular NATO’s current drive towards war, while internally among comrades acknowledging and analysing the current shortcomings.
As I said before: leaving aside the realities of siege socialism is bad analysis. Ask yourself this question: is China in a better position in 2026 to start a struggle against global imperialism than it was in 1980?
No, imo they’re in a much worse position considering their integration into the global economy (including their supply of US dollars!) has made them try to talk Iran down repeatedly from challenging global imperialism and disrupting China’s trade, as well as not pursuing de-dollarisation back in 2022. They might have sufficient resources to win a struggle against global imperialism, but their integration has made them increasingly unlikely to want to disrupt the status quo by starting a struggle against global imperialism.
Your final bit on the USSR operating under the laws of value and commodity circulation in international exchange is simply wrong, btw, there is extended analysis of this in Albert Szymanski’s “Is the Red Flag Flying”, and the numbers are given proving that the USSR didn’t engage in the way whatever Guyanan official declared in 1960. The USSR actually mostly invested in foreign countries through direct industrialization schemes, where they would loan the necessary materials or industrial goods or even currency to put the industry there in the first place, and then they’d receive the payment back in kind in the industrially produced goods.
The official in question is Janet Jagan, found the name, if you were curious. She asked the USSR for aid, and the USSR decided they wouldn’t be able to produce enough stuff in kind to make it economically worthwhile for the USSR. Loans and repayment of certain value of goods is exactly what I am talking about with the law of value still prevailing, not just the use of money.
No, imo they’re in a much worse position considering their integration into the global economy (including their supply of US dollars!)
You think China would be in a better position if they didn’t have a seat at the UN and the US still recognized the ROC as the representative of all of China? Interesting take.
A better position to challenge imperialism yeah. “A better position” by itself is abstract and means nothing
秦始皇帝You’ve already explained how if the siege had continued China might be in an ideologically more militant (better in your mind) position to challenge imperialism but that means nothing without the material means to back it up. Could you explain how China being less developed in every way through being cut off from the world would improve it’s ability to challenge imperialism?
If China had not taken the path of development Cuba would have no solar infrastructure to help it withstand the imperialist blockade and would not have received over a hundred thousand tons of food aid, the DPRK would not have been able to leverage China for their own developmental miracle, most of Africa would not have alternative developmental pathways and would still be under the thumb of the IMF and world bank, Iran would not have the drone and missile architecture it has since it is built in large part on Chinese dual use components and rocket precursor.
Your ultraleftism sounds revolutionary and great from an ideological point of view but ideology removed from material reality holds no meaning. You also seem to lump all of the blame for the Sino-Soviet split on China with the nebulous idea of China jumping into opportunism simply wanting to escape sanctions but make no mention of Moscow’s wrongs of attempting to subordinate Beijing (which created the initial wedge).
I think your second paragraph us very good criticism, thanks for it. In particular i had no idea about irans missiles.
To answer the first paragraph I think without China’s supply of labour and resources imperialism probably wouldnt have been able to rebound like it did in the 80s and 90s
Re: ultraleftism, thats an issue of tactics not analysis. Ultraleftism is when you go around campaigning and shouting about how bad china is, helping NATO drive towards their war against China. Ultraleftism is not when you criticise china to other comrades.
Re: sinosoviet split, i dont “blame” china for splitting with the ussr, i “blame” them for joining ranks with the western imperialists against the ussr. I agree with most of chinas criticisms of the ussr (e.g.,revisionism, hegemonism and cancelling economic programmes); i dont think this justified throwing in with the western imperialists
To answer the first paragraph I think without China’s supply of labour and resources imperialism probably wouldnt have been able to rebound like it did in the 80s and 90s
I think this is clearly wrong as if China didn’t open it’s economy to take in this manufacturing (on great terms for china might I add as we’re seeing with the benefits of tech transfer etc) it would have been pushed onto the likes of India (as it has been in recent times anyway) without the benefits of building a real counter balance to present hegemony.
Re: ultraleftism, thats an issue of tactics not analysis. Ultraleftism is when you go around campaigning and shouting about how bad china is, helping NATO drive towards their war against China. Ultraleftism is not when you criticise china to other comrades.
Again I disagree, this is a reductive take on ultraleftism. Taking bordiga as an example the issue with his party line was not simply that they campaigned against existing socialism of the time but that their criticisms were sterile and negative stemming from poor analysis. In a similar vein the KKE and their pyramid of imperialism nonsense is ultra leftist analysis that obscures the material reality of what imperialism truly is and how it functions which is again not simply an issue of tactics but of poor analysis.
i dont think this justified throwing in with the western imperialists
I agree with this largely however it is important to look at matters from the perspective of the actors of the time. I simply felt in your previous comment you appeared to be simplifying what was a tragedy caused by serious missteps on both sides to a fantasy of China simply seeking sanctions relief and self gain in siding against Moscow with no mention of how Moscow created the initial wedge through their attempts to subordinate the Chinese project rather than seeing us as equal.
it would have been pushed onto the likes of India
Imo (as I’ve said elsewhere in the barrage of replies, sorry if i already said it to you) given the dictatorship of the bourgeois and what i’ve read about mao era china and the transition to markets (stuff like “From Commune to Capitalism” and “The Battle for China’s Past”) they’d end up more like Cuba than India if they’d held course
their criticisms were sterile and negative stemming from poor analysis
This disagreement is more semantics than substantial, but i’d call that a “poor analysis” and explain what the problems are rather than calling it “ultraleftist” and moving on
imperialist pyramid
unrelated to anything else, but i’m in an org that subscribes to the kke’s imperialist pyramid thingy and i still don’t understand what the difference is between it and imperial core / periphery lol
Imo (as I’ve said elsewhere in the barrage of replies, sorry if i already said it to you) given the dictatorship of the bourgeois and what i’ve read about mao era china and the transition to markets (stuff like “From Commune to Capitalism” and “The Battle for China’s Past”) they’d end up more like Cuba than India if they’d held course
I think you misread what I said. I wasn’t saying China would have become India I’m saying India would have been used as the cheap manufacturing hub “helping imperialism rebound in the 80s and 90s” without any of the benefits of industrialising a power that could act as a counter balance to the cure hegemony.
unrelated to anything else, but i’m in an org that subscribes to the kke’s imperialist pyramid thingy and i still don’t understand what the difference is between it and imperial core / periphery lol
The KKE’s “imperialist pyramid” model argues that all non-communist states form part of a single imperialist hierarchy. The problem is that this framework blurs the decisive distinction between imperialist and imperialised nations. Taken to its logical conclusion, it can lead to absurd conclusions such as: because the Democratic Republic of the Congo participates in commodity production and the world capitalist market, it is a part of the imperialist system in a politically meaningful sense. But this plainly contradicts material reality. The Congo is not an imperialist power; it is an imperialised nation. Its labour, land, minerals, and strategic resources are subordinated to foreign capital, unequal exchange, debt, comprador relations, and imperialist intervention. A country whose wealth is systematically extracted by external monopolies and global supply chains cannot be placed in the same analytical category as the powers that dominate and profit from that extraction.
The standard Marxist-Leninist position, and the more materially correct one in my view, is that the world is currently divided into three broad zones: the imperial core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery. The imperial core is the ruling bloc of imperialist nations, centred mainly in North America, Western Europe, and their allied advanced capitalist states. These countries dominate global finance, military alliances, technology, trade institutions, currency systems, and multinational capital. The periphery refers to the oppressed and imperialised nations. These countries are often rich in labour, land, minerals, agricultural products, and strategic resources, but they are structurally subordinated within the world economy, as seen clearly in the Congo. The semi-periphery sits between the two. These countries are not simply helpless colonies or fully dependent peripheral states, but they are also not dominant imperialist powers. This category can include anti-imperialist minor powers like Iran, modern socialist states, and states such as Russia, which have regional power and independent state capacity but remain outside the dominant imperialist bloc and thus take the side of anti imperialist struggle as a means to compete in a meaningful sense with the entrenched core.
The core issue with the KKE’s model is that it mistakes the existence of capitalist relations for imperialism itself. But imperialism is not merely the existence of commodity production, a bourgeois state, or integration into the world market. It is a concrete relation of domination, monopoly capital, finance capital, unequal exchange, military pressure, and the extraction of value from oppressed nations. By flattening these distinctions into a pyramid where every non-communist country is “imperialist” to some degree, the KKE replaces concrete material analysis with abstract formalism.
This is a common ultra-left error: prioritising ideological purity and hypothetical future development over present material reality. Yes, a dependent capitalist country could theoretically develop into an imperialist power under different historical conditions. But Marxists analyse the actual balance of forces as it exists now, not abstract possibilities. To call, for example, the Congo imperialist because it is capitalist is to erase the distinction between exploiter and exploited nations, weaken anti-imperialist analysis, and ultimately obscure the real structure of global capitalism.
Awoo [she/her]I always default to “capitalism requires the capitalists to be the ones in charge, if they’re not in charge and the working class party is repressing them then it’s clearly a socialist transitionary state, whatever measures they are taking to succeed and survive during that transition are a product of the conditions that exist”.
Socialism begins at the revolution creating a dotp and does not end until that dotp ends. Everything from the moment of its creation is transitionary socialism, whether they’re implementing markets or other measures is all part of surviving the existing global conditions during that transition.
If they won’t even accept Cuba is socialist then to these people there is literally no socialism anywhere in the world. It is the easiest socialist state to support.
If they won’t even accept Cuba is socialist then to these people there is literally no socialism anywhere in the world
This is exactly European Marxism: the only real socialist in the world is my tiny organization without the slightest political power.
Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]Which always raises a question for me: If they think that, why are they even socialists? If every real world example of socialism is either completely impotent or collapses into “revisionism” then Marxism demonstrably doesn’t work and is an incorrect theory. But they aren’t scientific socialists, they’re either weekend communists just cosplaying for fun, or ideologues who treat Marxism like a religion, not a science. I have to deal with this same sort of thing in my local orgs too.
Some people are fine with fighting for communism, even if we havent succeeded so far. Not everyone falls to despair and defeatism if they arent currently winning. Starting from the premise “i’d feel sad if there were no socialist projects” and reasoning backwards from there to declare that XYZ country must be socialist or “there would be no socialist countries [and this would make me sad and defeatist]” is dogshit reasoning, regardless of one’s opinion on past and present socialist projects. Marxism is a science, and that means rigorous definitions and analysis, not changing definitions to make ourselves feel better.
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Some people are fine with pointless philosophizing and not actually changing the world, but that’s not scientific, and that’s not Marxist. If Marxism can’t actually build any real socialist projects, if every revolution ends in failure and there’s literally no socialism anywhere in the world, then it’s pointless. If we analyze past and present socialist projects and conclude they are all failures, then scientifically, why be a Marxist? When every experiment ends in failure a good scientist must conclude that Marxism demonstrably doesn’t work and is an incorrect theory.
Some people are fine with being dogmatic martyrs for ideology, but again: that’s not scientific, and that’s not Marxist.
A project failing means you figure out what went wrong and try again, not give up and go home. Marx didnt give up in '49 when the streets of paris ran with workers blood. He didnt shrug his shoulders and give up when the commune was crushed in '71. He analysed those failures for lessons to use in the future. Lenin read those analyses. He didnt surrender when the revolution of 1905 was stamped out. Mao didn’t cry it was impossible when the kmt turned on the cpc. They used those failures to figure out how to reach the goal, which, unless we are not both communists, is to end the rule of markets over the world, not just to provide bandaid solutions that will be removed when the rate of profit falls too far).
The point isnt to be a matyr, it is to have a full understanding of what the problem is, how to fix it, and not to give up and move the goalposts from “end exploitation” to “make wage-labourers slightly less exploited”
This isn’t a project failing. This is every single project that has ever been attempted failing over and over again for 150 years. If we’re scientists, then we should learn from repeated test results and conclude that Marxism is incorrect theory. Why be a Marxist?
There are two scientific ways to approach a historical analysis of Marxism. Either AES countries are examples of Marxism working in practice, or Marxism hasn’t worked in practice and there’s no reason to be a Marxist. There isn’t some third option where you refuse to give up on a failure ideology that never works, simply because you have faith. That’s not scientific, that’s religious.
Which brings us back to the question: why be a Marxist? If this failure ideology collapses every time it is tried, it’s pointless. Lenin tried, and failed. Mao tried, and failed. Everyone that has ever tried has failed. Eventually, it doesn’t make sense to keep trying. This isn’t about feeling bad and crying because we lost faith in our religion, as good scientists we should be doing something different.
The USSR was working tho. It started suffering economic problems because it moved away from the Stalin-era model. It did so according to Molotov (Molotov Remembers, interviews from the 70s and 80s with him) in large part because of the failure of the partys leadership (including himself at the time) to understand the importance of this struggle against the commodities. The combination of economic issues and lack of a theoretical basis for proactive leadership by the party is what caused the ussr to fall, not
China was also working fine before Deng’s economic reforms (much less the more drastic ones under Jiang or Hu). China’s economy was growing, the people were educated and increasingly politicised. If China had stayed on its path, it might look something like Cuba or Iran today (i.e. a revolutionary state under siege) it wouldnt have just evaporated from existence for lack of american capital or engineers.
And Cuba still exists today and has made more progress towards overcome the urban-rural divide, healing the ecosystems and abolishing commodities than any other project. Idk why youre acting like it has failed, and like if it failed it would be for any reason at this point besides the imperialist encirclement—they have done literally everything right.
But even if Cuba were invaded and the revolution crushed or if Xi announced tomorrow that China is abandoning marxism this wouldnt be cause to give up. We dont have the luxury of giving up because the market rules the world and will kill us all if its not stopped. We cant just move the goalposts from abolish exploitation to reduce exploitation.
This comment chain began with:
If they won’t even accept Cuba is socialist then to these people there is literally no socialism anywhere in the world.
And everything I’ve said so far has been under the assumption that we were still talking about the same thing i.e. you defending supposed “Marxists” who believe that every real world example of socialism is either completely impotent or collapses into revisionism. Including Cuba. If that’s not what you’re defending, then you aren’t even having the same conversation as the rest of us in this comment chain. Do you sort by /Chat and not pay attention to parents?