Some great responses to a question on Libertarian Socialism, China, and “Socialist Market Economies”
“Comrades, I was wondering what your views are towards libertarian socialism and socialist market economies like China ? These two are different things but I am interested in your views towards them.”
[quick response by another comrade] “Socialist Market" economies don’t exist. It is more realistic to China as a national corporation.”
Comrade Ming of Marxist-Feminists on Nation states answers:
“China can’t be a national corporation as there is too much private capital involved - state capitalism, where the state has heavy regulation (and in many cases part ownership through shares) over private capitalist enterprises.
China’s economy differs from Vietnam’s in the sense that it is much more loose with regulations. Vietnam’s economy in many ways is still for the most part a socialist economy and geared toward the further development of socialism. While the Chinese state that this is true in their case as well its a little more believable in Vietnam.
Kinh te thi truong theo dinh huong xa hoi chu nghia as its called in Vietnam still has many socialist characteristics including universal healthcare and education (post secondary included if you have the grades). Private property is still illegal in Vietnam also however foreign capital can apply for a “land use right” (LUR) which is basically private leasing or renting the land. Only foreign companies can do this and there’s a ton of bureaucracy involved. In China only about 45% of the economy is state owned and many advances towards socialism have been reversed, healthcare and education for example - and private property has been legal in China since 2004.
Personally I’m rather sympathetic to the reintroduction of capitalist policies in the East. Private capital is needed to develop light industry and consumer goods based sectors and this has been the transition away from heavy industry and infrastructure spending that is important for nation building in early periods and is a specialty of the socialist economy. This development of private capital serves to increase the people’s living standards as well as further develop the economy towards a ‘better’ possible socialism in the future.
These are countries that were pillaged for centuries by the imperialists, enslaved by the west. It is only natural to expect them to take whatever means necessary for further advancement and development in all areas, even if it means temporary setbacks for socialism.
Cuba and the DPRK are perhaps the very last of the 20th century socialist states where there’s been very little wandering from the socialist economy. Vietnam while still socialist for the most part, undergoes constant changes and development sometimes adding more socialist policies sometimes reversing them.
I think it’s important to question the motives and character of the Asiatic economies, capitalism for capitalism’s sake isn’t welcome from any country run by a communist party and I think it’s important not to just lay criticism’s but read their responses as well;”
“Some parties, due to lack of knowledge about the national conditions of China, think that China has given up Marxism and has deviated from the socialist path, and some even call China’s system "authoritarian capitalism”. But these accuses are not true. As you all know, China is a large oriental country with relatively backward economy and culture. China is and will be for a long time to come remain at the primary stage of socialism.
There are no references in the classics on how to carry forward Marxism and develop socialism with our special national conditions. The CPC has always upheld Marxism as our fundamental guiding ideology, insisted in adapting the basic tenets of Marxism to Chinese conditions and the features of the times and tried to explore a new road for building socialism. CPC leaders of successive generations have pooled wisdom of the whole party, drawn upon the experiences and lessons of other countries and established a system of theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
In the way of exploration, the CPC as the ruling party must learn from all the excellent achievements of human civilization including means and management systems which can reflect the laws governing modern social production such as the capitalist market economic system. However, this doesn’t mean that we are pursuing capitalism, let alone changing into it. On the contrary, our purpose is to improve, consolidate and develop socialism. I am convinced that the unremitting exploration of the Chinese communists, their success in building a stronger China can not only help enrich and develop Marxism, but also encourage and inspire communists across the world to stick to socialism.“
- CP China, Speech on the Eleventh International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, 2009
http://solidnet.org/china-communist-party-of-china/11-imcwp-intervention-by-cp-of-china
“Libertarian socialism is a broad category, it’s difficult to generalize them. Our region is very supportive of the YPG/YPJ so I don’t think it’s appropriate to say we outright reject libsocs. I’ve been influenced by many like Proudhon, Bakunin, and Bookchin and have a lot of respect for several historical libsocs like Durruti. I’ve had a great time working with anarchist groups in real life and was pretty much introduced to leftism through anarchism, so suffice to say I dislike sectarians, Marxist and anarchist alike, that focus on dividing us or bringing up tired and irrelevant mistakes we’ve both made as representative of each other.
That said, there are some libsocs I don’t like. Older American individualist anarchists were tainted with liberalism and their few innovations were generally terrible ideas that in some instances legitimize the revolting joke we call "anarcho”-capitalism. In particular I hold a lot of contempt for post-left anarchists and anarcho-primitivists. Many of the most prominent folks in these tendencies are scum regardless of their politics; for example, Bob Black is an anti-Semitic police informant who’s been published in Holocaust denying journals, and Hakim Bey is a supporter of pedophilia. Primitivists in Green Anarchy back in the 90’s advocated poisoning water supplies to kill millions, a frankly cartoonish level of villainy, and some of the largest primitivist groups like Deep Green Resistance are openly transphobic and should be regarded as reactionaries.
Speaking in a general sense, aside from the obvious ideological differences, my pet peeves with anarchists/libsocs are:
Fetishizing decentralization to absurd levels (certain vulgar models of decentralized communes as the basis of production, support for Bitcoin)
Knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism (uncritically repeating bourgeois propaganda against socialist states, joining/supporting anti-government protests regardless of the political character of the protests in question like Euromaidan or anti-government protests in Brazil)
Lack of introspection (within Marxism we have rich traditions dedicated to critiquing and opposing one another, when anarchist groups like Love and Rage had members write serious, sober looks at anarchism’s history and failures their organization collapsed; also, the whitewashing or flat-out ignorance towards the darker sides of anarchism in practice)
To be clear, these are just some things I’ve observed over time and by no means true for all libsocs. I remember reading an Brazilian anarchist group self-criticize for their participation in protests after seeing a strong fascist presence there, undermining both of my last two points.
On market socialism, there’s a couple things to address here.
First, I would not consider contemporary China “socialist” despite a still significant amount of state-owned property (not that that alone makes an economy socialist). Xi’s leadership in particular has been marked by a contradictory character, with him gesturing towards Maoist principles in certain areas while going forth and liberalizing China’s economy even more (ex: recent layoffs in state sectors). There is still small pockets of actual leftists in the CPC (obviously Xi’s not putting Mao-ish rhetoric out there for no reason) but these people are unfortunately not in many positions of power. The suppression of groups like the Maoist Communist Party of China should be evidence enough current character of the Chinese state.
On Dengist embraces of the market in socialist states (China, Vietnam, the DPRK, and now potentially Cuba), I think these are ultimately right-opportunist turns that we should condemn but put in perspective. All of these societies have been under intense pressure, both direct and indirect, from international capital since day one and with the collapse of the USSR have lost the only balancing power against the West. In some instances, particularly the DPRK, productive forces were nearly completely annihilated from war and they’ve been forced by circumstance to focus their efforts into militaries rather than developing a healthy socialist economy. Socialist revolutions have sadly not spread elsewhere fast enough, and to borrow a Trotskyist phrase, they have been deformed under all this pressure. Not that academics make the world spin, but it’s also very sad that there hasn’t been much academic work in planned economies since the 70’s and I think this contributes to many in these states who are otherwise ideologically socialist defaulting to capitalistic economic measures.
Regarding market socialism itself, I’ll be hypocritically sectarian and say I outright do not consider it socialist. I think the idea is absurd, that workers will throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie but not that invisible iron fist we call the market. A system that will necessarily devolve into workers exploiting themselves is not a stable system and will collapse into socialism proper or back into capitalism. We shouldn’t embrace the law of value, rather, we should smash it as soon as possible. I only tolerate market socialism as a transitional system, a step towards actual socialism.”
