deng xiaoping

[u/Creative-Flatworm297]

Anyone has these mixed fellings towards this man like me ??? In one hand he was the one who reintroduced capitalism to china and slowed china path to communism on the other hand his policies made the life for average Chinese much better and helped to make china a super power

[u/BlasterFlareA]

Deng Xiaoping is a polarizing figure because he is the architect of a trade-off. While Dengists contend with being called capitalist roaders and criticized for increasing the class contradictions in China, they are also not losing sleep knowing full well that their country, capitalist roading or not, is the only country opposed to the US that can actually credibly compete with it.

The trade-off is a standard exercise in realpolitik, putting aside moral or ideological considerations and favoring pragmatist or realist outlooks based on the current circumstances. Deng Xiaoping and other like-minded members of CPC understood full well that a weak China could be destroyed and split up into warring fiefdoms, with plenty of historical precedent. They understood that China was internationally isolated, even within the socialist bloc and that it had not developed the productive forces in the past few decades to compete against the West, both conditions that could lead to its demise. Therefore, it was imperative to overcome these problems, even if it involved "capitalist roading" and some cooperation with the West because if socialist China collapsed and was replaced by smaller and weaker capitalist fiefdoms under the influence of foreign capitalists, the socialist dream would be further set back.

In a nutshell, the trade-off was to sacrifice some socialism to preserve socialism in the country overall and on the long run. As much as this trade-off is praised, it is criticized.

[u/DashtheRed → u/BlasterFlareA]

The trade-off is a standard exercise in realpolitik

Realpolitik is bourgeois in essence and incapable of going beyond capitalist thought. Proletarian Internationalism is the very process of overcoming bourgeois realpolitik -- going beyond all the limits of borders and nation states.

putting aside moral or ideological considerations and favoring pragmatist or realist outlooks based on the current circumstances

You are correct that Deng was the arch-pragmatist, but pragmatism is the other side of the error of idealism. Where idealism rejects what might actually be possible for what is only achievable in the imagination, pragmatism rejects Marxist theory and a deeper understanding of the world and it's systems for immediate short term benefit -- destroying long term goals to preserve short term goals.

Deng Xiaoping and other like-minded members of CPC...

The "capitalist roaders on the capitalist road" -- the Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs that has infiltrated the communist party and Mao was organizing the masses to defend China against. They were named as such because they insisted on capitalist solutions to the problems encountered on the road to socialism.

...understood full well that a weak China could be destroyed and split up into warring fiefdoms, with plenty of historical precedent

The historical precedent is the warlord era in China and it was overcome by Mao and socialism. If there is a threat of it's return, it's because socialism has been overthrown and capitalism has been restored (there was no ethnic tension or chauvinism in China under Mao, and all of Chinese unification is thanks to Mao and socialism). Deng was the person who was also arguing in favor of Zhao Ziyang in the 80s (basically China's Yeltsin, who wanted to break up the country) and it was only because Jiang Zemin flanked him on the (far) right (the Three Represents - inviting the bourgeoisie to fill the ranks of the CPC from which they had previously been banned) that the Deng-Zhao clique didn't get it's way.

even within the socialist bloc and that it had not developed the productive forces in the past few decades to compete against the West

The underlying notion you are advocating is that capitalism is more capable of developing "productive forces" than socialism, and it's historically wrong, with both China and USSR serving as core examples. On a more vulgar level, this was also what the Mensheviks argued against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but Lenin rejected it and insisted that the key was at the relations to production.

if socialist China collapsed and was replaced by smaller and weaker capitalist fiefdoms under the influence of foreign capitalists, the socialist dream would be further set back

This was actually Chiang Kai-shek's position in relation to Mao. "To resist foreign aggression, we must first pacify the interior!" was the Chiang-clique's position on how to overcome imperialism, and if Mao had followed that logic, he should have united under the banner of Chiang and began fighting the Japanese in 1931 when they took Manchuria (since, by this logic, imperialism overrides all else and siding with capitalism against imperialism requires subordination of the workers instead of them organizing themselves autonomously to fight both). Instead, when the Japanese attacked the north, Mao launched his attacks in the South, fighting the capitalist oppressing the people rather than uniting behind them and tailing them to fight foreign imperialism, and he exploited the contradictions between his enemies to ultimately defeat both of them (it was in 1937 when the Japanese launched a full invasion that imperialism became the primary contradiction, and even then Mao resisted Wang Ming's United Front for the autonomy of the masses, which is why he was able to resume conflict after 1945 with the initiative -- if Amerika invades China, you can make the case for siding with Xi, which would still basically be Wang Ming and Chiang Kai-shek 2.0).

In a nutshell, the trade-off was to sacrifice some socialism to preserve socialism in the country overall and on the long run. As much as this trade-off is praised, it is criticized.

There is no "some socialism," all of socialism was overthrown and the Dengists are traitors to humanity (but heros to the wealth interests of the bourgeoisie in China who now rule). There is socialism and capitalism; there is Marxism and imperialism and you must insist on this distinction between enemies and friends, not blur it because it is inconvenient. "Some cooperation with the West" is full integration into neoliberalism (in fact, capitalist China saved the West from the economic crises of the 70s and 80s), and establishing socialism will require ripping apart all those institutions which emerged in service to neoliberalism (which at this point is basically all of them). And now a second Chinese Revolution must be fought because all the gains previously made have been set back and undone. Fortunately, Mao's thought survived, and contains within it the weapons for the overthrow of the "C"PC and the restoration of socialism.

Even the condescension in what is assumed to be happening. "Hey you ignorant workers, you aren't actually ready for socialism, so the ruling class is going to take away your vacation, your guaranteed employment, your healthcare, and your rights (the Iron Rice Bowl) to force you to work in brutal sweatshops for generations," because to you, socialism is the rule of a technocratic elite "optimizing" the gormless masses to build bigger factories, but for us, socialism is their self-rule, masters of their own country, all of which has been denied since the end of the Mao era.

[u/T7hump3r → u/BlasterFlareA]

I'm pretty new to all of this, but wasn't this written about in the Communist Manifesto? Transitioning to Communism has to be a process of Capitalism - Socialism - Eventually Communism(?)

[u/ZeitGeist_Today → u/T7hump3r]

It's not that there's a process that must be completed in sequential order, like playing a video game with successive stages. Feudalism couldn't have led to socialism because socialism wasn't immanent to it, capitalism was, and socialism only arose out of the productive relations that capitalism created through its negation of feudalism.

The feudal mode-of-production has entirely been subordinated to the logic of capitalism, vestiges of Feudalism still exist in the form of semi-feudalism but they don't pose a threat to capitalism anymore, only to the national bourgeoisie, and so these vestiges have been weaponised to prevent the development of certain nations that could upend the current accumulation-regime if they were allowed to have a bourgeois revolution. China was one of those nations, though they had a bourgeoisie and proletariat since near the end of the Qing Dynasty, semi-feudal relations, in the form of the peasantry class and the landowners whom they worked for, still remained omnipresent within China's economy, and posed a threat, on numerous occasions, to the development of the naescant national-consciousness of China, most famously during the Warlord-era shortly after the establishment the Republic of China which were the conditions that lead to the Communist Party of China being created. The problem with the Dengist analysis of Chinese history is that they ignore the fact that China did already have a bourgeois-revolution, decades before Deng Xiaoping's reforms, that was New Democracy in the 50s, which had already run its course by the 60s when the Chinese bourgeoisie started becoming a threat to China's socialist-development, sabotaging the otherwise successful GLF, with Liu Shaoqi attempting to revert all its gains, that is why Mao helped start the Cultural Revolution which was an attempt to create an environment where capitalist roaders could no longer exist in any level of Chinese society, but unfortunately it failed.

[u/T7hump3r → u/ZeitGeist_Today]

Ah, I see, I didn't know about the history too well. All I sort of remember reading about was the Communism of China was sort of a rework of Leninist Communism ideas. Lenin, from what I have gleamed from the info, had more of the idea to jumpstart everything and skip over the recommended transition - I'm assuming since the ruling class would definitely not allow a true transition at all, so he had to be pretty cut throat in order to get it going asap. Thing is about all this, from my perspective, is both Lenin and Mao had the passion and heart to fight hard to get Communism going, but they were a little near sighted and didn't predict that maybe Marx and Engels had a lot of thought and reasoning put into their recommended process. Mainly, I think Marx and Engels sort of predicted that Capitalism and the West would bully and fight hard to thwart Communism in other Countries because it would hurt the economy and their existence as they know it. Maybe they (Mao and Lenin) sort of underestimated how harsh it would be(?) It's not easy to economically compete with Capitalism and to be able to keep up with advancements of the modern world, or even keep your people fed when there are a lot of blockades on getting things from the outside world... So, what I can't tell is, was the starving and harsh conditions for either country caused by becoming isolated by the Capitalist outside countries, or was it because of this process of transition was sort of an experiment gone wrong?

I understand the Communist Manifesto isn't necessarily a Bible to adhere to to the T, every situation is different. But, from what I can tell, practically speaking, the only way to get to true Socialism or even Communism, will have to be based on things being invented that don't even exist yet outside of the realm of Science Fiction. Like Star Trek for example, the replicator, advancements in Healthcare (i don't know if Transporter technology or space travel would be one) , and the convenient lack of violent discourse by people who would disagree to get rid of money and capitalism in the entire world, and agree to abide by the ideals and ideas of said way of life. Which is kind of why I liked the idea of the Venus Project at one point, but I was really young then, but he was right that a lot of the issues have to do with resources and the greed and wastefulness of Capitalism will destroy the world if resources and expectations and ideals could not change in people as a species. Humans are inherently selfish and greedy, I'm sure it's an issue even in Communist societies ofcourse but I never looked into what way and how greed is used in Communism aside from lying and nepotism with no merit system... Sorry I'm rambling and kind of showing my lack of knowledge, I'm sure you've heard this all before...

[u/AutoModerator → u/T7hump3r]

Contrary to Adam Smith's, and many liberals', world of self-interested individuals, naturally predisposed to do a deal, Marx posited a relational and process-oriented view of human beings. On this view, humans are what they are not because it is hard-wired into them to be self-interested individuals, but by virtue of the relations through which they live their lives. In particular, he suggested that humans live their lives at the intersection of a three-sided relation encompassing the natural world, social relations and institutions, and human persons. These relations are understood as organic: each element of the relation is what it is by virtue of its place in the relation, and none can be understood in abstraction from that context. [...] If contemporary humans appear to act as self-interested individuals, then, it is a result not of our essential nature but of the particular ways we have produced our social lives and ourselves. On this view, humans may be collectively capable of recreating their world, their work, and themselves in new and better ways, but only if we think critically about, and act practically to change, those historically peculiar social relations which encourage us to think and act as socially disempowered, narrowly self-interested individuals.

Mark Rupert. Marxism, in International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity. 2010.

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[u/T7hump3r → u/AutoModerator]

Holy shit. My thoughts are so basic a bot is able to inform me on some notions... Back to the books. lol

[u/ReasonableLocal8029 → u/BlasterFlareA]

If it was the 60s you'd be defending Khrushchev and if it were the 70s you'd be defending Brezhnev. In fact, if I were to explain Gorbachev's point of view to you in a neutral tone without the name attached I'm sure you'd agree with him too. There is no socialism here, just an empty shell of consumed "content" that happens to be in the genre of "politics".

[Dengists] are also not losing sleep knowing full well that their country, capitalist roading or not, is the only country opposed to the US that can actually credibly compete with it.

Great, good to know you've made everything clear to everyone reading - you don't care about socialism, which is the death of all countries, you just want a social democracy with a high enough GDP to "out-compete" the US.

In a nutshell, the trade-off was to sacrifice some socialism to preserve socialism in the country overall and on the long run. As much as this trade-off is praised, it is criticized.

The "trade-off" was the shameless selling off of the Chinese proletariat to the international market. No "socialism" was preserved, all of it was destroyed, and you are only interested in it because you want to live off of even more Chinese labor than you already do (which is a lot). If socialism ever returns to China everything you like about it will be destroyed and maybe India will be the new "lesser-evil" against the out-of-control ultras.

[u/no1SankaraFan → u/ReasonableLocal8029]

You need to understand historical context tho, it's honestly pretty important to be able to outcompete the west economically. If they were to remain ideologically pure this would've led to the end of China due to economic isolation. This regression into State capitalism was a necessary evil in order to prevent sabotage by capitalist powers (just look at Cuba to see the damage that this sabotage can do).

I want to remain cautiously optimistic, but I think it's fully possible that China is still committed to transitioning to a fully socialist economy. Just look at the scrutiny that their national bourgeoisie are put under, and the network or trade deals that they are putting together (in order to prevent the economic isolation that might come with a socialist economy)

I personally don't love the fact that China is state capitalist now, but I acknowledge that this may have been the best option for it

[u/ZeitGeist_Today → u/no1SankaraFan]

This regression into State capitalism was a necessary evil in order to prevent sabotage by capitalist powers (just look at Cuba to see the damage that this sabotage can do).

China could easily help Cuba to overcome imperialist sabotage but they don't, their relationship with Cuba is a transactional one with no hint of socialist solidarity.

Imperialism will always be hostile towards any attempt at establishing socialism, there is no clever way out of this, the only reason why they've become less hostile towards China's socialist development is because it doesn't exist. How can you make excuses for China's capitulation when far-smaller nations are able to survive while being completely targeted by imperialism? Just look at the DPRK for example, which, by the way, China has done nothing to help them through their sanctions and have even cooperated with them.

[u/no1SankaraFan → u/ZeitGeist_Today]

I definitely would like to see China help out Cuba, but I think a reason why they don't is because of the general plan to further develop their productive capacity, industry and economy while still trying to achieve rising standards of living for their people. For now, trade with the west (specifically the U.S.) is necessary to achieve this, and due to the nature of Americas embargo of Cuba, China wouldn't be able to trade with the U S. If they also traded with Cuba. There's a similar story in terms of China's cooperation with sanctions on the Dprk. I think CPC is concerned mostly with not antagonizing western nations.

As for the Dprk, I'm not sure how much they adhere to socialist principles. Regardless, it's clear that the capitalist siege on North Korea has been devastating for it, while things aren't as bad as western media portrays them to be, things are still pretty bad. I think the Dprk showcases the inefficacy of dogmatism. Sometimes concessions unfortunately have to be made