u/ThePoopOutWest - originally from r/GenZhou
I know there are differences between Deng’s China and, say, Gorbachev’s USSR or post 1986 Vietnam, but I’m not sure what they are. I suspect it has to do with control by a principled party but I could be off. Can someone help?
Edit: to clarify, I’m not one of those who will say “China and America??? Basically the same!!!” or that Deng is revisionist. Was just more curious about what the reforms were in both examples and how they fall in a Marxist analysis
u/cfgaussian - originally from r/GenZhouMarkets have some inherent properties that make them undesirable for a socialist project though. One of those is accumulation and the unequal distribution of resources, the tendency to create first a petty bourgeoisie and then a strata of bourgeois elites. Market commerce creates bourgeois individualist mentality in the people which is bad for social cohesion. Furthermore market systems are inherently unstable and prone to periodic crises, they obey the economic laws that Marx discovered including falling rates of profit and crises of overproduction.
Not saying these problems can’t be kept in check by a strong socialist state, obviously China proves that the negatives can be suppressed or controlled while using markets to develop the entire economy, and i do believe China made a difficult but necessary compromise which is not comparable to what the Soviet revisionists did who outright renounced socialism, but this state of affairs is not one that should be allowed to dominate for any longer than absolutely necessary. Planned economies are superior in terms of their stability, their efficiency and their compatibility with a classless society (or one in which the bourgeois class is to be slowly liquidated and not be allowed to keep growing). Yes, the economy must have a certain level of development in order for a planned economy to be viable, China in the 60s and 70s was not yet at that point, but today…
I know this goes against the dominant thought in SWCC that so long as development and prosperity is achieved it doesn’t matter which economic mechanism is used. Imo markets are inherently un-socialist and lead to a buildup of harmful contradictions in a socialist society that the party needs to devote increasingly high amounts of effort to managing. So far the CPC has done a very good job, but it’s reaching a point where things have to slowly start to shift back into the direction of socialist planning.
u/Green_Plant57 - originally from r/GenZhouAbsolutely. Uncontrolled markets are bad. In China, they have been able to control the markets with SOE’s and market regulation, but there are still inequalities and inefficiencies. As 2050 approaches though, we are going to see a gradual shift to combat this. A good book recommendation is “2050 China” which outlines the development strategy they have. The markets will not be completely eliminated for a while, but in what they call the second half of the primary stage of socialism, they will start to focus on “common prosperity,” or in other words, going harder against these market forces causing inequality. There will be increased interference to combat this, but the markets and investment will remain for quite some time. The Beijing stock exchange just opened yesterday and with only 83 companies on it traded over $1 billion opening day. The Chinese economy also has the most new patents in almost every tech field and is developing at a rapid pace. Foreign investment is still going to be able to help with this, giving them access to even more capital than they would. However, with the size of the Chinese economy, they are no longer dependent on foreign investment. It helps, but isn’t required.
Going forward, sometime in the future we’ll see the next plan published that will go to 2100 or 2075 perhaps, and this plan will be the first to feature development strategies not in the primary stage of socialism, but socialism socialism. This will be the plan featuring a true shift. Could they do it sooner? Probably, but they aren’t risk takers. As Deng said, they will keep their head low and work hard until we can be completely confident. 2050 is ~30 years away and by then, the Chinese economy is estimated to be $58 trillion USD, more than twice the size of the current us economy and ~1.7x the size the US economy is predicted to be in 2050. This is a massive industrial foundation and then China will end the second half and begin the development of socialism outside the primary stage.