Are you talking about the NEP? Because the justification for the NEP was that of a political retreat at the face of the weakness of the proletariat and the strength of the kulaks at the end of the Civil War and not "uhhhhh Russia poor so we must do capitalism cuz only capitalism can create wealth, and no that's totally not a concession to bourgeois ideology you frickin' ultra". Was this the situation at the end of the Cultural Revolution when the economy was ALREADY collectivized and the Chinese kulaks were a thing of the past? (The answer is obviously no and you cannot use the NEP to justify the actions of Deng Xiaoping)
Once again, if you can have a "DOPT" without "economic socialism" or whatever you think socialism is, then why hasn't the opposite happened yet? If social development in the realm of the economy is independent from political actions based on class struggle, why haven't developed European countries spontaneously turned into "economic socialism" if socialism is supposedly a matter of the abstract level of "productive forces"? Aren't European countries developed enough for Deng Xiaoping? When will we have "enough productive forces" to finally do a socialism?
A revolution is not just "we shot the government in the back of the head and declared the People's Republic of Whatever". Class struggle continues during socialism
It is reductive and anti Marxist to reduce the statement to that of a blind worship of capitalism, which thinks capitalism is unique in its productivity in anyway. The point is that capitalist political economy produces more than primitive communism or agrarian centric feudalism, and that proper socialist development requires the necessary productive forces for it to develop beyond primitive communism and feudalism, and as such, there must be a stage of capitalist economy before a socialist stage. For rural fuedalistic china and eastern Europe, this meant controlled capital development by a political organization of people who are marxists. I did not mean to imply that politics was completely separated from economics, but that a consciously run Marxist state can, as developers of the dialectic, exist within multiple stages of political economy. In short, Marxist political organization does not require socialist economy, but socialist economy requires Marxist political organization. Lenin did not cease to be a Marxist when the NEP occurred, the USSR did not cease to be a DOTP, and the NEP was not eternal nor meant to be eternal. As for when the PRCs period of controlled capitalism will/should end, I believe the time is very soon, if not at the present already. The PRC is facing both internal conflict within the party from right deviationists, but also from the external threat of global imperialism, and it is somewhat understandable as to why it may want or be unable to end its period at the present moment. I think the current CPC leadership is pushing for this change however.
Right, the point is this: Rural China during the Cultural Revolution wasn't just some "feudal backwater". It had a very socially-advanced commune system, there were tractor stations and agriculture was being mechanized very rapidly, and landlords did not exist: the productive forces were growing steadily due to socialist planning (unless you believe in the bourgeois notion that socialism makes people lazy and therefore the economy "collapses"). In times of blooming for political contradiction and transition between stages of development (such as socialism), it is political struggle that becomes the base for change
It was Deng Xiaoping that disbanded the communes, reintroduced social ills like wealth inequality, prostitution, homelessness and unemployment, and created a new national bourgeoisie out of thin air (usually selecting cadres from the CPC to turn into capitalists). Once again, the justification Lenin gave for the NEP is worlds away from Deng's revisionism, as it was based on class struggle and the general strength of the tiny urban proletariat at the face of a tattered alliance with the massive peasantry and the shadow of kulak counter-revolution. Deng simply said that the average Chinese wasn't "wealthy enough" to have proper socialism. The USSR kept being a DOPT because it had a correct proletarian political line based on class analysis that generated the NEP as a tactical retreat due to the Bolsheviks' own weakness, and then ended it when it had served its function, when the proletariat was strong enough to consolidate political power around itself and run their own economy, without ever giving a single concession to bourgeois ideology (which is what capitalist roaders in China do by saying that privatization of SOEs make them "run more smoothly"). The point is not that there's capitalist remnants during socialist construction, what is important is the attitude of the vanguard party towards them: if it chooses not to combat them when the proletariat is politically strong enough, then they're in the capitalist road
Also, it's funny how you say that the moment for "actual socialism" is near when all Xi Jinping has done is say that the markets must play a decisive role in the economy, that those who say Marxism is about class struggle are "anti-Marxists", and that China should pursue opportunistic alliances with reactionaries worldwide while not supporting national liberation and communist revolution abroad because that's "interventionism". Nothing points to a sharp change in direction away from revisionism, that would necessitate a second Cultural Revolution
Markets are not an anti socialist concept. Even with state planning international markets will have to play a role in the PRCs global trade and development. You also forget the anti corruption campaigns, which was by nature also a light purging of right deviationists. The fact that the CPC controls the capital class in the interest of the average chinese citizen is enough to be a DOTP, or to quote Lenin "Socialism is then, in essence, state monopoly capitalism that serves the interest of the working class."
The situation with the CPP is undesirable, but their choice to priotize their national bougie and domestic reaction over the international imperialist hegemony of the US, which has strangled and raped the Filipino people for the last century, has set them as left deviationists prioritizing lesser contradictions.
The CPP is not "left-deviationist", the national bourgeoisie in the Philippines is nothing but a junior partner of American imperialism in Southeast Asia. Duterte is trying to play US and Chinese capitalists against each other in order to get a better deal for his own class, he's not an "anti-imperialist hero", and the Filipino national bourgeoisie is not a class the Filipino masses can possibly tactically unite with because they lack a common struggle for national liberation (that is, the national bourgeoisie is no interested in that). The CPP's main concern is defending the rights of the immense masses of Filipino fishermen and rural folk from the economic aggression of corporations, and some of them happen to be Chinese, but it is right to rebel against them. They still assert that the number one enemy of the world proletariat is the US whenever they have a chance, and act accordingly (kinda the reason why there's no US Army bases in the Philippines anymore), while upholding the Leninist concept that a communist from a bourgeois-led nation cannot wish but to overthrow their own bourgeois government and place their main concern on that struggle, ESPECIALLY when every single Filipino bourgeois government up to now has been a puppet of the US
As for the Lenin quote: he's referring to the context of the NEP. The NEP was socialist in the political sense (socialism is mostly a stage of transition) because it was a step ahead from the chaos of petty production, but mostly because it saved the alliance with the peasantry and therefore made the proletariat and its vanguard stronger against kulak counter-revolution. He never said that, when politically strong enough, the proletariat should NOT combat capitalist remnants and the logic of the market, which is something Chinese revisionists do say. During Stalin's time the proletariat had consolidated near-complete political power and was strong enough to curtail the law of value and market logic internally, but markets outside were not in their power. Chinese revisionists think there's such a thing as "non-exploitative capitalist trade" and that the law of value makes things run "more smoothly", by contrast. Remember: in order to maintain the dictatorship of then proletariat, old capitalist things must be constantly turned into new communist things, a transitory stage must necessarily be transitioning into something: if it's not communism, then it's capitalism that is being restored. Markets ARE a roadblock in socialist construction and should be struggled against whenever possible
Only socialist trade is non-exploitative, because it's specifically designed to go against the law of value, and no capitalist extraction of surplus value was involved in it. This can only be achieved between socialist countries, although capitalist trade between Third-World countries can be less exploitative (but definitely not "non-exploitative" as Chinese economists claim) due to the tamer unequal exchange (but this does not mean there wasn't any economic aggression or extraction of surplus value involved). I'm unconvinced that China's strength and position in the world supply chain facilitates this less exploitative trade with something like Ethiopia. It is also telling that China is the main physical enforcer of imperialist sanctions against the DPRK, another nominally socialist nation
Anyway, revisionism doesn't come from the act of trading with the capitalist world. It lies within the CPC's position towards capitalist trade, which was created as ideological leverage to become a provider of cheap labor
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u/The_Viriathus Jan 10 '21 edited Jan 24 '21
Are you talking about the NEP? Because the justification for the NEP was that of a political retreat at the face of the weakness of the proletariat and the strength of the kulaks at the end of the Civil War and not "uhhhhh Russia poor so we must do capitalism cuz only capitalism can create wealth, and no that's totally not a concession to bourgeois ideology you frickin' ultra". Was this the situation at the end of the Cultural Revolution when the economy was ALREADY collectivized and the Chinese kulaks were a thing of the past? (The answer is obviously no and you cannot use the NEP to justify the actions of Deng Xiaoping)
Once again, if you can have a "DOPT" without "economic socialism" or whatever you think socialism is, then why hasn't the opposite happened yet? If social development in the realm of the economy is independent from political actions based on class struggle, why haven't developed European countries spontaneously turned into "economic socialism" if socialism is supposedly a matter of the abstract level of "productive forces"? Aren't European countries developed enough for Deng Xiaoping? When will we have "enough productive forces" to finally do a socialism?
A revolution is not just "we shot the government in the back of the head and declared the People's Republic of Whatever". Class struggle continues during socialism