A patron of Economic Update asks: "How should we see the CCP? Is this a Socialist project that is in the process of achieving communism? Or is China just another example of a state-capitalism that leans more authoritarian? How should we approach socialist states that do things that contradict our values without helping the reactionaries in our own country."
This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.
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Showing 2 comments
Socialism is contrary to capitalism. Socialism is created by developing and expanding working class ownership and control of the means of production. That is what makes it socialism. Private ownership and profiteering can be neither valued nor advanced under socialism by definition.
In the Critique of the Gotha Programme and elsewhere, Lenin stated that “state capitalism” may be needed for a while in Russia in order to develop productive capacity and other economic capabilities that capitalism is so good at developing, but would then probably require a second revolution later to complete the transition to socialism.
China has incentivized private ownership of business and private profit which results. That is not state capitalism, but neither is it socialism.
Mao warned about the “capitalist roaders” and for good reason as we now see. China today with its ultra-wealthy class built since 1950 has no relevance to socialism and “liberation of the working class from exploitation” that I can see. They are a failed attempt to create socialism in my estimation but I remain open to counter-argument.