Deng famously said "white cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice it's a good cat". His policy choices were not driven by 'embracing' of any principles but pure pragmatism.
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
It is the Communists who are flexible and pragmatic. It is the Communists who can free the market. It is capitalists who shoot themselves in the foot over pride in 'principles' and 'ideals', a great irony when no country on this earth today is 'purely' capitalist. They misunderstand Marxism, which is the doctrine that capitalism itself is revolutionary as it develops into its own opposite, that communism and capitalism are two stages of the same course of development.
He can say whatever he likes, but in reality, what he did is literally throw in the garbage the complete intellectual baggage of the European socialist/communist movement and basically copied what Western allied South East Asian nations were already doing.
If it makes him feel good not to call that 'capitalism' then that's fine. I guess it wouldn't have played well with the base back then.
But in reality and operations, its is how capitalism has worked in practice.
The state that one-sidedly 'threw away' the baggage of communism was the USSR, and we all know how that went. Any China scholar could tell you that China was already implementing market reforms before Deng, and that their controlled transition, managed by a strong party-state, is the grounds for their success. China is still a country operated on the basis of five-year plans. China is still a country governed by a Communist party adhering to democratic centralism. China is still a country where the state owns all land. China is still a country where capital is not allowed to usurp the public interest. And the judge of that is not any logical syllogism of 'definitions' of capitalism or socialism that exist in your head but do not premise the actual world. It is outcomes, observations of material reality. In this, the reforms of Deng and the continued path of Xi are simply the highest synthesis of communism, in the Chinese context. They are the most faithful to Marxism, which has never preached any kind of static dogma, especially as it relates to economic policy.
> The state that one-sidedly 'threw away' the baggage of communism was the USSR, and we all know how that went.
That's not actually what happened, you should look up some history.
The USSR didn't throw away, communism, the member states just simply left.
And many of those states were then free of the communist party actually did quite well. Russia didn't, Ukraine didn't, but that's the reality when a country splits apart, some parts do well others don't.
> Any China scholar could tell you that China was already implementing market reforms before Deng
Part of it wasn't even voluntary on the party front, they simply accepted what was already happening instead of reversing it again.
> China is still a country operated on the basis of five-year plans.
hose plans are mostly projects of what they hope they can encourage private business to do and some public investment. Guess what many countries do, planning and public investment.
Lots of things they plan don't happen, lots of things that happen aren't planned. The planning is constantly adjust to what actually happens in the economy, including the global context.
> China is still a country where the state owns all land.
Legally maybe, but if you hand out control for 100 years the relevance of that isn't all that great. And that land can be freely traded between people. So in practical terms it works far more like private land ownership then anything the socialist thinkers of the late 19 and early 20th century.
> China is still a country where capital is not allowed to usurp the public interest.
That is just factually false, large companies in China regularly do things that hurt public interest. Unless you mean 'interest of the party leadership' and even then its only mostly true.
> In this, the reforms of Deng and the continued path of Xi are simply the highest synthesis of communism
Lol, they literally copied other East Asian economic models almost 1 to 1. They are just a log bigger and have more people. But I guess copying other successful clearly capitalist countries can be resold as 'highest synthesis of communism' to people who have irrational hate for capitalism.
And China economic growth or wealth isn't all that magically, its simply that China is much bigger then most others who have done it.
> They are the most faithful to Marxism, which has never preached any kind of static dogma, especially as it relates to economic policy.
I love Marxism, since he didn't actually define any outcome beyond maybe 'stateless and moneyless' you can just make up whatever the fuck you want as long as you are claiming to 'get there'. And China doesn't seem to go into a stateless moneyless direction.
Marx's "Historical materialism" is wrong for Western Europe and laudably false for China.
His critic of capitalism seems to be mostly ignored in China. As is his theory of class struggle as in China there is an ever growing Bourgeoisie.
But I guess copying what Taiwan and friends did and calling it 'Marxism' is one way to go.
"Capitalism" is a very confusing word that should be avoided in a serious discussion one way or the other, society is a lot more complex than that. For instance "crony capitalism" is also seemingly capitalism but is directly opposed to the broad principles of a market economy that people think of as good.
"Crony Capitalism" is just a term socialists came up with to shit on capitalism. The reality is every society is going to have some amount of corruption and cronyism. But "Crony Capitalism" isn't an actual coherent concepts, it doesn't have 'principles', its just highlighting something negative that happens in countries, including capitalist ones.
Socialists love to add some negative word 'X' to capitalism to highlight that all bad things in the world are connected to capitalism, and if they could finally defeat capitalism, then the world would be perfect. Instead of actually trying to fix 'X' they will tell you that what we really need to change is 'capitalism'. Surveillance Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Disaster Capitalism and so on.
Trying to fix corruption, to hard, lets just destroy property rights and money instead. Great idea!
Let me give you a tool for your mental toolkit. When you find yourself saying this:
> <some group> loves to
...it's a smell. What follows may be perfectly reasonable, but in my experience it's more commonly unexamined twaddle.
If you happen to be American, see where you get with these:
- many Americans fetishise America
- J Edgar Hoover spent 20 years programming Americans to consider socialism to be "un-American"
In this case, I think a little reflection would reveal a J Edgar Hoover homonculus in your head, pulling your levers.
I'm all for emotional arguments. Ultimately, we all have core values, and I like to lead an argument by stating mine.
But hating socialism isn't a core value, it's _at best_ a reaction. Which is to say, if you're from, ooh, Bulgaria or Cuba, then I can indulge you. You may not be logical but you do have cause.
If you merely have a little J Edgar Hoover homonculus in your head, pulling your levers, then refrain from posting, because a J Edgar Hoover homonculus is not an interesting conversationalist.
Just like anything else that can't be back up with solid empirical research in a discussion forum. With is 99% of what we are dissing. (And most books written by intellectuals of both the socialist and capitalist variety).
Communism is originally a utopian social movement, and there is a strong tendency and a very well document intellectual history of communism that asserts that pretty much most problems at its root are an issue with capitalism and that they can only be solved in the absence of capitalism. So much so that it was pretty normal for communist to oppose working with social democrats on any reform of existing systems.
> Americans to consider socialism to be "un-American"
I'm not american and I couldn't care less if something is 'American' or not. And I have no idea what 'americanness' has to do with our discussion. So far as I can tell, nothing what so ever. And I don't hate 'socialism' either.
> But hating socialism isn't a core value, it's _at best_ a reaction. Which is to say, if you're from, ooh, Bulgaria or Cuba, then I can indulge you. You may not be logical but you do have cause.
So unless you are the victim of rape, being against rapist isn't a 'core value'? That's a outright crazy line of argument.
P.S: I really think you are waste overestimate the importance of Hoover.
