Do the Chinese believe their own bullshit...

Do the Chinese believe their own bullshit? Is the CPC truly fooling itself into believing that they're still pursuing socialism, or are there just total cynics who use it as propaganda?

Redpill me on China, isn't it operating under hyper capitalism masquerading as ""communism""

The current party platform says that right now they're in "the primary stage of socialism" with the objective of building communism within an 80 year timeframe or something like that.

But it's just state capitalism, or "state" capitalism. It utilizes state ownership in some areas while allowing private industry in others. Of course that depends on the nature of the industry as well as the region its operating in, special economic zones, etc.

But yeah, with the Dengist reforms in the early 80s China integrated itself into foreign capital and has been exploiting the revenue in order to modernize. If you look at the CPC officials though (and certain family members…) they aren't shy about their posh lifestyles or the wealth that goes with handing out contracts and business ownership etc.

So either the CPC are rusemasters whose skill is so unreal we can't even conceive it, and they were only just pretending to be capitalist this whole time, or they are a nationalist bureaucracy clinging to the imagery of 20th century communism in order to maintain governmental authority while lining their pockets.

Why are avowed socialists so utterly incompetent at putting their principles into practice when they achieve power, Holla Forums?

Or fuck, even making a society that's slightly better than its capitalist peers

This is what I choose to believe in order to have any faith in the future whatsoever.

Dude incorruptible vanguard lmao

Probably some combination of:


and true believers who think they're developing the forces of production to the point where socialism can be achieved.

Many like Castro only became "socialist" when it was politically convenient. Fidel's rebellion started out as a nationalist effort, but when it turned out the Americans didn't like him kicking out all the mobsters and taking control of the oil refineries and sugar plantations, it was either cozy up to the SU or get ready to be "liberated." So, voila! I declare this people's revolution a success!

There are plenty of examples of this not being the case. Since I assume we're talking about the "socialist" states of the 20th century, Cuba and the USSR all made tremendous strides in human and economic development.

I'd like to believe that too, that there's some core Marxist old guard that are just playing along only to finally purge the bourgeois from their midst when the time is right.

But I think that's an awfully, awfully long shot.

Yeah but to be fair it wasn't exactly hard to improve on Batista's Cuba or Nicholas II's Russia

Because they were all silly Leninists who kept trying to abolish capitalism from above in just a single country instead of waiting for the system to fail and be abolished by a widespread popular uprising from below.

Yep. I'm going with option 2 though

Sure, they were already shitholes when the socialists came into power, but to go from a feudal backwater ruined by the first world war in 1917 to becoming the first nation to launch a satellite in 1953, with another, even worse world war in between, is a pretty substantial achievement, and though Cuba's achievements are more modest, they've made big strides as well despite having their main economic partner just collapse and being under blockade by the world's premier imperialist power which lies less than 100 miles off its coast.

I speculate they're like SocDems in the sense that a ton of them would agree that socialism would be a good thing, but none of them would ever think to actually seriously work towards implementing it because their capitalism is more "pragmatic" or "realistic" or whatever.

smh tbh famalam

Sputnik was in 1957

Your primitive lifestyle-based ideology is showing.

produce results any time now

What results did you ever produce other than failed states which have since collapsed and mass murder? Leninism did nothing but discredit the name of socialism to the point where the Left has been entirely subsumed into liberalism.

After the cultural revolution, maos death, the locking up of the gang of four, and the "convenient" death of Lin Biao, the Tienanmen square protests, deng xiaoping came into power and pretty much turned china into a state capitalist country.
So you fast forward to 2016 and you have the premier of china hanging around in davos with the other lizard people singing the praises of globalism and free markets.

Probably the most pathetic communist state on the planet really.

What about Laos?

Reminder that they doxed like every government worker in the US a few years back and everyone just swept it under the rug. They've been up to some ill shit and have been brazenly triggering Trump on twitter.

reminder that trump is a highly manipulative sociopath that wears 1000 masks and intentionally acts erratic to test people.
Reminder that trump grew up in new york during the bad days when there were porno theaters in time square and pimps on every corner.
Reminder that he destroyed both the clinton and bush dynasties.
Reminder he has been known to hang around members of the Italian mafia.
Reminder he once set up a press conference telling the media he was going to speak about obamas birth certificate but actually it was just a commercial for a hotel he was opening.
Reminder he has the media wrapped around his finger and can make them do whatever he wants even if they dont know it.

Also worth remembering is that as long as you cover your country with communist symbolism and have a ruling communist party all it takes is for someone to make a power play and purge.

Didn't Marx support free trade and free markets as a way to accelerate the social revolution?

China does what works. They tried going full communist before and it failed, so now they have this weird free market / state capitalism / socialism mix where convenient. Say what you will of how bad it is, but the fact is they're not starving anymore.

It's impossible to tell if the upper echelon of the party really wants to change things. The top dogs have a lot of wealth, so moving from capitalism would weaken their position. Take a guess how likely it is they'd be willing to do that. That's a problem not unique to them, however, unless it's a Monarchy where the ruler passes everything on to his son it's very hard for someone not to put themselves before the country.

Why do I need to be reminded of this? Just checking in with some of the other players.

Stalinist freudian slip.

Reminder that the current upper crust of the CCP survived the Cultural Revolution and the crackdown that followed. Underestimate anything you want, but not their guile and ruthlessness.