On the photo is Jack Ma, one of the richest capitalists in China, the owner of Alibaba, the Chinese billionaire who said the working hours of the workers should be extended to 12 hours a day.
Many leftists and even people who call themselves marxists say China is still socialist, while other leftists/marxists say it has nothing to do with a socialist country today. Some people also argue that the reinstauration of capitalism in China, after Mao Zedong, was a treason against the revolution and socialism and there is now a lot of rhetorics to justify this opportunism.
If China is still socialist, as some people advocate, how to explain about the billionaires, capitalists, supposed explotation of workers etc.?
Within the concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the capitalist mode of development has been allowed some space to advance the productive forces of the Chinese nation.
There is a critical difference between capitalist production in China and capitalist production in bourgeois nations such as the US or UK. In China the capitalists are allowed to be of limited and temporary use to the Chinese people, the limits of which are set and can be changed at any time by the Chinese people. Whereas in bourgeois nations the capitalists themselves control the state, and the people which reside within those borders are simply tools to generate capital.
When a Chinese capitalist steps out of bounds, they are held accountable - up to and including seizure of property and execution. When an American capitalist steps out of bounds they are either ignored or rewarded with adoration and publicly funded contracts.
If that guy did for real say that “workers should work 12hrs”, then it seems like it might be time to knock him down quite a bit. That is some Bezos shit, and means workers have no time to do stuff they both need and want to do in their own time. Just like the US CEOs that miss the point that even if they are willing to spend every waking moment doing company business. The masses don’t function that way. It is terrifying to let that kind of shit become normal and the bare minimum. No time to even consider having a family, and no time to actually spend time with one if you do. It (to me from a non-Chinese perspective) is like all the wrong habits are being normalized from the capitalist system.
I agree, that’s some Bezos shit. The difference is that MA is being held accountable, whereas American billionaires do whatever the fuck they want. China is trying to reduce working time. China is controlled by the people. The people don’t want to work twelve hours a day. There’s no need for it. Of course Ma says some stupid shit, he’s a billionaire, they’re all clueless about how life is for working people. That doesn’t mean his stupid greedy ideas are taken seriously.
Remember early last year or so when western media were going crazy about how Jack Ma had “disappeared”? He was consolidating too much power and influence and his Ali conglomerate was reaching in to too many industries, so the government reigned him in. He came back in to the public spotlight a few months later, his planned Ant Group IPO was canceled, he’s probably been sanctioned and limited in other ways as well. China has a larger plan to socialize all private business in the coming few decades, as they know that the time for limited capitalist production is coming to and end; the productive forces of China will soon be strong enough to stand on their own.
Thanks! One thing that is both a simple reason and oddly weird to just understand is the tactic they are trying. Without at least some better understanding of China from a non-US viewpoint, it all sounds like a capitalist state with lots of socialist iconography. But I have been trying to see things with a more good-faith lens so I could first get past the knee-jerk reactions so deeply ingrained from years of being told “China is evil and lies about everything” type stuff. I still find plenty of things I don’t agree with/support of course. However along with the above efforts learning more about the general flow of stages of reaching socialism/communism has aided in this starting to click. Both USSR (mainly the initial Russian/Ukraine starting points) and China kind of skipped the bourgeoisie revolution which has been seen as crucial for inspiring the proletariat revolution to take over. So understanding the rational of backing off a little in order to build-up the infrastructures that would’ve been seized from the capitalists makes sense. Like trying to jump straight to running a marathon without first building up to it with shorter distances. I hope they do start to get to the end goal soon, as the workers must start to see the promised liberation to have true time to enjoy living life (which I hope the US and other nations will finally see what we could have too). At the current rate, the greed of our capitalists to outsource everything (especially manufacturing) we won’t have the working internal infrastructures to make the transition to socialism without our own “training” to build shit back up first. Which sucks given how badly we need to get past the current worker and societal oppression from the ruling class. Though I would be fine if we at least started to execute our own corrupt elites for their actions for the moment. lol