Like the title says, I’m new to Marxism and have only read a couple works relating to socialism. I don’t think I know enough about Marxism to firmly define myself into any “type” (although council communism sounds pretty interesting.) Second Thought and Yugopnik are what got me into Marxism, but more recently I’ve been listening to Socialism For All’s audiobooks and reaction videos while driving. In his reaction video to The Deprogram’s China Episode, he makes some interesting points about how China could become “social imperialist” and succeed the US/NATO as the new imperialist global hegemon, among some other things. From an outsider’s perspective, I don’t consider the current China socialist because of the fact that private property and many other capitalist elements still exist within it, but I do appreciate how much it has been able to develop over the past few decades, like poverty reduction and massive infrastructure projects that wouldn’t be possible with typical liberal democracies. People excuse the private property and “restricted” capitalism as necessary evils until China has the conditions to create socialism, but I have doubts about whether China’s still even working towards socialism or whether the Chinese proletariat actually hold power over the bourgousie. China doesn’t support communist movements internationally, and the liberalized economy has gone on far longer than the NEP in the soviet union despite both being created for the same reason, and I can’t seem to find a good reason why it’s lasted this long. (I also have concerns about privacy and the fact that access to the outside internet is restricted, although that’s not really related to this topic.) I’d stumbled across this reddit thread a while ago, and while I know reddit isn’t the best place for serious discussion, I think that the person in the video does make good points, as do the people in both the r/TankieTheDeprogram and r/ultraleft threads and I honestly don’t know what to think or who to take seriously in that discussion. I would appreciate if anyone could give me a genuine response to these concerns, thanks.
Edit: Thank you all so much for the responses! I’ve learned quite a bit reading them, although I haven’t had a chance to check out the links people have sent yet. I’ll try to update this post with any new questions and respond to comments whenever I have time.
For me flipping it on its head helped me understand this. In many capitalist states, especially in europe, the bourgeoisie had to make concessions to the proletariat in order to not have them flee to the USSR. Or use them as counterrevolutionary propaganda “see how good our workers have it, just as good as you plus bananas and modern cars, dont you want that as well??”.
This is why a lot of european nations, even though they have never had a socialist mode of production, have rather good worker rights, comparatively good healthcare (compared with other capitalist nations e.g. USA), access to kindergardens, rent assistance programs etc. There even are housing cooperatives here in Germany, these are socialist policies under capitalism! This was the ruling class making concessions out of necessity in order to keep their position and pacify the workers. And it worked really really well, to this day workers in Germany for instance think that this is just how their country is because their system works better than the others and will defend it. But the main means of production remain firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie and no one will claim that these nations are anything but capitalist. They can at any point start strangling the working class and indeed we are currently moving in this direction.
Now in China the dominant class is the proletariat, but for various reasons that others can explain better they still need a bourgeoisie. Stuff like pacifying their bourgeoisie so they don’t revolt, or flee or destroy the MoP they possess. Or allowing for more consumer goods and having a free market under state supervision rather than a black market working illegally. However the main modes of production (logistics network for instance) remain under the control of the worker controlled state and therefore the proletariat. That is, at any point the proletariat can start strangling the owning class and indeed we can also see a movement in this direction, for instance mandating worker councils and harsh sentences for billionaires and corrupt officials when they start to work against the common interest.