So I’ve been putting off writing this for a long time and it’ll probably need to be a series, but I’ve had a difficult time answering challenges from my friends who assert that China is either a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie or of the Bureaucracy (i.e. state capitalists), and that it’s a competing imperialist power along with America (and they also say Russia but I can answer that one being stupid on my own).
The problem with China Discourse is that there is a serious paucity of sources dealing with nuanced critiques rather than just “debt trap!” bullshit or whatever, since the objections of liberals and the objections of smarter ultras are very different. At the very least, the sources dealing with this Discourse are less accessible to me.
But now I’m extremely bored and also recently saw Comrade Queermmunist’s excellent rebuttal against the claim of China doing imperialism in the DRC, which gave me some hope that Hexbear would be able to answer some of these claims with something at least plausible.
The main objects of concern are the for-profit national businesses causing bureacratic class antagonism, foreign policy in the form of UN peacekeeping contributions, and straightforward imperialism at the base of its supply chain, along with miscellany like this:
https://newworker.us/international/chinas-stock-market-a-lesson-on-what-socialism-is-not/
I don’t know, it’s all a mess and putting off ideological work causes problems. If nothing else, let this be a practical lesson to you:
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
It catches up with you and makes things worse in the end.
I think it takes a very special kind of hubris to believe that the dozens of powerless, historically ineffective “Marxist” reading groups in the imperial core are the only ones that have the right ideas about how to do socialism correctly, while the hundred million members of the ruling communist party of the largest socialist state in the world all have it wrong.
It’s totally plausible that there are things about China that could be improved, but it’s wild to me that a bunch of people that don’t know the language and can’t take a city council in their own country think they’re the ones to do it.
In a way, I understand what you’re saying, but ultimately this feels like standpoint epistemology in the worse sense of the term. You don’t need to be a successful revolutionary to say that Gonzalites and Khmer Rouge were weirdo revisionists. Marxism is “the ruthless criticism of all that exists,” and that should especially include projects that claim to be Marxist.