User:RD/9k/The East Is Still Red (Q618)

Main entry

618. The East Is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century [1] (Martinez 2023)

Motifs or claims (book reviews)

618. When capital has risen above political authority you have a capitalist country (Martinez) [2] -> god this is a double-edged sword. in the Soviet Union this was actually kind of true, because a few capitalists could exist and at any given moment it was possible to restore Bolshevism per-se. but in China it isn't necessarily true because (admittedly much like the Soviet Union) the country is so big it could be not-capitalism and yet have capitalisms inside it. and the capitalisms inside it are capitalism. Marx says that sociophilosophies start at a mode of production so functionally China is actually this weird federation of multiple Chinas containing different sociophilosophies and some of the smaller Chinas are capitalist 'countries'. it's like how you can divide the United States into 50 capitalisms if you want to and say Hawaii is a capitalism and Texas is a capitalism, but perhaps try to claim that because you live in a hypothetical world where California, Nevada, and Arizona consist only of state businesses that the United States is socialist because California looks great right now, so it doesn't matter what Texas looks like. in reality, having a Texas full of capitalists would threaten to break the 'USS' into two countries just like in the United States Civil War, and 10 countries that are all still capitalist could team up with Texas to try to take the rest of the states back just like in West Germany. every capitalist is a potential threat to national borders. every single one. even the blue anarchists, and the orange anarchists that change countries on a whim because they don't like the current "culture". anarchists are capitalists by another name. they'll hate it when you say that. but every one of them that mentions "small businesses" deserves it. only the section of charcoal anarchists that genuinely want to burn down capitalism to build a tribal society might be exempt.
618. Cuba was socialism, so China is / Fidel Castro said that China and Vietnam were socialist countries in 1993, so they must be post-capitalist countries in an era of socialism; this is not to imply that Castro's word determines what socialism is; this is to imply that Castro was a Deng Xiaoping follower in 1993, but that he contributed to creating a socialist country anyway — because Cuba "was socialism", China is socialism [3] [4]
618. Only when the foundational principles of socialism are abandoned our system would no longer be socialist (Xi Jinping) [5] -> principles? when I listen to this Dengist video enough times that word "principles" really stands out, like it's implying that Deng Xiaoping Thought is partially Idealist or something, and they're using Idealism to decide when there is socialism and when there isn't.
     if this is true it makes that channel by professor Feng make a lot more sense because man, every video on there is just full of weird abstract lists of things. you get the impression from him that the CPC really loves lists of 3, 4, or 5 oddly-specific things which in terms of political policy are unfortunately still nowhere near specific enough.
     are there uniquely Dengist truth values? are there truth values used by Deng Xiaoping followers that they commonly use to decide whether something is 'not abandoning socialism'? this would certainly sound like it. I'm just not sure what the biggest ones have been. I guess you could use the 'capital above government' thing as one of them.

Ideologies, frameworks, or fields

• DX / Deng Xiaoping Thought