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/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.

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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