CleverOleg [he/him]

Just to add, the idea that western countries do not subsidize their exports is laughable. I don’t doubt that in many sectors, western governments - both now and in the past - have subsidized their industries to far greater degree than China ever has with theirs.

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Another great post! Some quick-hit thoughts:

It would actually contradict Marxism to nationalize all enterprises immediately

I was surprised when I read Engels’ Principles of Communism, to see him essentially advocate for this when he talks about what a socialist society would look like in the aftermath of the revolution.

A lot of communists become communist not solely because of economic arguments but also moral ones.

I’m in this picture and I don’t like it. It’s hard to see all the suffering in the world and not think immediately switching to an idealized socialist system where everything is centrally planned immediately and everyone earns the same for each hour worked would be better. But eventually read enough about all the challenges AES states have had to building towards an ideal. And from there, you can either become a bit disillusioned OR you can try and understand what mistakes may have been made and consider what other options may be out there, even if it doesn’t align with what you think socialism should be.

This culminated in the Gang of Four declaring that they didn’t even care about development, they it was “better to be poor under socialism than to be rich under capitalism”!

I’m currently reading Carlos Martinez’s The East is Still Red. In that book, Martinez takes a moment to point out that in the developed west, because our conditions are so relatively comfortable it’s natural for us to focus on the “socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production” aspect (socialism as a noun). But in the places where socialism has taken root - Tsarist Russia, pre-Revolutionary China, colonized Vietnam - the aspect of “developing the productive forces” has been more prevalent (socialism as a verb). That is understandable given the desperate poverty in those contexts.

If you nationalize, let’s say, a bouncy ball factory, this will give you less influence in the economy than if you nationalize, let’s say, a rubber factory. Why? Because the bouncy ball factory, as well as millions of other factories, depend on the rubber factory, but almost nothing depends on the bouncy ball factory.

This is a very helpful example, I have always wanted to read more Hilferding. IIRC 100% of the mining sector - where most “stuff” has to come from - is state-owned in China.

This is the kind of content I’m here for, thank you for sharing.

some way to build a socialist system with broad population support, where by definition only a subsection of the population even understandings the ideology the whole revolution is centered around.

A question that’s often brought here and elsewhere, how could people in the former GDR (East Germany) be so supportive of reactionary ideas and parties today? Or why didn’t more people in the USSR fight back against capitalist restoration when polls showed they actually liked socialism and the status quo? Personally, I believe part of the answer (not all) is that most people who grew up in AES states have little to no understanding of Marxism. They may be content with the system but it’s not really something they think about. Most people in most societies have no idea how “it” all works, whether they live under socialism or capitalism. They just want to get on with their lives. And the article is correct, Marxism is not easy to grasp. If you try and make everyone read Capital there’s only going to be a small fraction of people who will get it, most people will just do what they have to do to pass the test and forget it, just like this response indicates.

Creating a “simple” framework for understanding an ideology like Juche does makes sense, and afaik it seems effective in the DPRK. Likewise the focus on humanism in Cuba also seems to be effective in guiding people in supporting the revolutionary project. I do really like this understanding of Juche and in a sense it’s universal, but adopting this idea of adapting Marxism into an ideology people can easily grasp will depend on the local conditions.

But am 100% Juche-pilled now.