A top economist has joined the growing list of China’s elite to have disappeared from public life after criticizing Xi Jinping, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Zhu Hengpeng served as deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for around a decade.
CASS is a state research think tank that reports directly to China’s cabinet. Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, described it as a “body to formulate party ideology to support the leadership.”
According to the Journal, the 55-year-old disappeared shortly after remarking on China’s sluggish economy and criticizing Xi’s leadership in a private group on WeChat.
I’m not myself trying to make the assertion that china is communism or that it will achieve communism, I’m saying that what you consider “ludicrous”, has been a hotly debated topic for the past 100 years with many proponents on both sides, many of them with much more knowledge of socialism and revolutions than you or I possess.
Yes. I stand by my statement that it is ludicrous to go from no private property to private property and still call yourself communist.
No, no, you see, people who Read Theory™ have taken a side, therefore, the position is valid. Like how the value of the holsum Khmer Rouge is debatable instead of gruesomely apparent!
And I’m saying that you have clearly not dedicated much time to thinking about or studying the issue. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, so I’m not very supportive of Dengism, but if you listen to Dengists and Mensheviks they will tell you that China still has a communist party in power (as does Vietnam and as does Laos) whereas the former USSR has a capitalist proto-fascist in government. Only time will tell who’s really right, and whether china shifts to a less market-socialism society and more towards a democratic centrally planned economy in the hands of the workers and the state.
Do show me where Marx said that the path to communism is eliminating private property and the ability to accrue capital and then bringing it back again.
Don’t worry, ML theorists like Stalin take precedence over Marx, like how the New Testament takes precedence over the Old. It’s basic theology.
Oh believe me, I know. They don’t care about what Marx actually said.
Frankly, Marx strikes me more as an anarchist than a communist, at least insofar as those labels are used today. I suspect he’d find tankies repellent.
The end goal of Marxism is Communism, which is anarchist by a strict definition. There are quibbles between traditional Marxists and anarchists on how to get there - with Marxists typically taking a “We need to take over the state first” approach and anarchists going for “Dismantling/bypassing the state is literally step 1” approach. Tankies, of course, mock ‘anarkiddies’ without the slightest hint of what the end state of Communism is, because they love slobbering on authoritarian boots.
From Wikipedia article on Mensheviks: (you’ve been talking to someone else in the comments)
So yes, mate, there are literal historical figures of communism debating this exact same issue that you find so laughable, it’s literally the raison d’etre of the word Bolshevism. There is no specific “Marx passage” as if it was the bible, where it says “in case some fella called Mao organizes a socialist revolution in a peasant agrarian society, pls pull it back to capitalism first, and then go to socialism once it’s capitalist, ok?” If you generally read Marx, you can see how he puts socialism as the necessary and logical end of capitalism, as something inevitable that will happen because capitalism will bring forward the material conditions for the revolution. But despite that, Marx also was a highly politically involved individual, who pushed forward momentously the socialist movement in Europe together with Engels.
Marx isn’t a gospel that you’re supposed to be able to chant and have undying faith for, it’s an analysis of reality that you can agree or disagree with, which explains the existence of different flavours of communism such as menshevism and bolshevism or such as Maoism and Dengism, which can be explained by the material and historical conditions leading up to those moments. Marx himself said that Marxism has to be constantly interpreting the reality of the moment and critically adapting everything. So if you’re looking for a direct quote from Marx about Dengism or Menshevism, I’m not here to provide that, I’m here to tell you that the definition you consider stupid has been hotly debated for a hundred fucking years, so maybe it’s not so stupid.
And yet they never said you would go from a position of socialism where the earning of capital was eliminated to a pretty much entirely capitalist country and then somehow reach communism.
Because that makes no sense.
And you and everyone else arguing for this are ignoring that.
Socialism with Chinese characteristics is just taking cues from the popular sport of ping-pong.
I’m honestly waiting for something like that. It’s so fucking weird to think that dawn has to keep getting darker for the sun to rise.
A few more rounds of Great Leaps Forward followed by ultracapitalism will definitely result in our dictatorship of the proletariat almost being ready to dissolve. We just need to run the cycle a few times until our noble and selfless elites decide it’s time to surrender power.
My brother in Christ, Mensheviks and Dengists were against the consolidation of centralised socialist economy before the historical consolidation of capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the difference being that Menshevism died off and Dengism ended up taking the lead after Maoism. The restoration of capital is simply a consequence of Dengism taking over AFTER Maoism, not because Dengists believed there should be first Maoism and then Dengism.
Cool. How many billionaires does China get to have before they get rid of them and go to communism? Because it currently stands at over 800 according to my searching. When will their billions be distributed to the masses rather than to their children?
For the last time, I’m not the ultimate supporter of themselves Chinese model of Communism, now that I’ve shown you that your position stems from being uneducated about socialism, its meaning, and its history, you resort to “how many gazillionaires” because you’re not trying to have a civilised discussion. You have a preconceived notion that “China isn’t communism”, which is fine, so do I, but when confronted with the discrepancies within the communist movement and how there are legitimate arguments to call it socialist and on the way to communism, you just spout your initial position again with stronger words. I’ll tell you what I said at the beginning: I don’t care whether it’s communist or not, but you saying “hurr durr no socialism if billionaires” is a shitty argument from ignorance.
I’m not saying China isn’t a country, I’m just saying it’s hotly debated whether or not it should be called west Taiwan. Only time will tell whether the CCP admits defeat and hands over control in line with their one China policy.
Man, making shit up is fun.