I already explained why China should be considered socialist: not because it is merely successful or wealthy, but because socialism is a transitional process full of contradiction, and the decisive question is which class holds political power. In China it is unambiguously the working class who hold the state, command the commanding heights, discipline capital, direct development, and subordinate private accumulation to national and social objectives.
You are also conflating socialism with communism. Communism requires the global abolition of capitalism. Socialism does not. Socialism can exist, has existed, and does exist under capitalist encirclement: the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, the DPRK. It cannot complete itself globally in one country, but the proletariat can seize and wield state power, build public ownership, suppress bourgeois political power, develop the productive forces, and carry out transition under hostile world conditions.
Your claim that capitalist concessions mean socialism was not established is not Marxism. As Lenin put it state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the same social relation as capitalism under bourgeois rule. The same economic form has different class content depending on which class commands the state. State capitalism under bourgeois rule strengthens the bourgeoisie. State capitalism under proletarian rule serves socialist construction.
So the serious question is not whether capitalist mechanisms exist. They obviously do. The question is whether they are sovereign. Do they command the party, state, army, land, finance, planning, courts, banks, currency, or national development strategy? In China, no. They do not.
You say I straw-manned you, but you explicitly said China was “transitioning out of socialism.” You now soften this into “China has a socialist sector and a capitalist sector,” then again treat the existence of the capitalist sector as proof that socialism’s basic principle has been lost. That is the same argument with padding.
A socialist transition is not defined by the absence of capitalist relations. It is defined by proletarian political supremacy and the subordination of capitalist relations to socialist development. If private property automatically means socialism has failed, then the NEP, New Democracy, Cuba, Vietnam, and every real revolutionary state operating under scarcity, siege, and uneven development vanish from socialist history. Your definition does not clarify socialism. It abolishes it.
Yes, workers in the private sector do not legally own those firms. That is a contradiction. I have never denied this. But you leap from “contradictions remain” to “therefore class struggle has been abandoned.” That is simply unserious to put it lightly. Class struggle has not been abandoned in China. Since around 2014, the birdcage has been tightening: finance restrained, platform capital checked, real estate capital forced into correction, anti-corruption intensified, party cells expanded in private firms, and strategic sectors reasserted under state direction. This is not capital digesting the socialist state. It is the socialist state reasserting command over capital.
Your treatment of corruption is equally crude. The existence of corruption does not prove degeneration. The toleration of corruption, or the inability to discipline it, would. Rooting it out from top to bottom, including at high levels, proves the opposite.
You also conflate financial assets with social power. Money is not power in itself. It is a token of command over labour, resources, and territory, mediated by law and the state. In a bourgeois state, money becomes political power because the bourgeoisie controls the institutions through which money commands society. In China, wealth does not automatically become sovereignty because the bourgeoisie does not own the state. The capitalist may have money; the state decides whether that money becomes command or becomes a liability.
This is why Chinese billionaires are not equivalent to Western billionaires. In the West, they buy elections, media, parties, universities, housing, legislation, think tanks, and foreign policy. In China, they have no pathways to purchasing meaningful power or influence. That is the difference between capital ruling the state and capital being subordinated by the state.
You say “controlled capitalism isn’t socialism.” Again, capitalist mechanisms controlled by a bourgeois state are capitalism. Capitalist mechanisms subordinated to a proletarian state are part of socialist transition.
This is the point of Chinese socialist political economy’s distinction between private capital and public capital. The argument is not that capital relations are harmless. The argument is that in the primary stage of socialism, market relations and capital cannot simply be wished away. The question is whether capital is privately sovereign or publicly commanded. Public capital in the commanding heights compels accumulation for social development rather than private domination.
You also misdescribe China’s relation to international business. China did not simply “allow privately owned international business on a large scale” in the liberal sense. It used foreign capital, technology, export markets, and capitalist greed for national development goals under conditions set by the Chinese state. Foreign capital wanted profit and market access. China extracted infrastructure, technology transfer, industrial capacity, employment, training, supply chains, and productive upgrading.
As Lenin put it, the capitalists will sell us the rope with which they will be hanged. Capital can and should be used against itself when operating under hostile class power.
You see private firms and conclude surrender. You see foreign capital and conclude dependence. You see billionaires and conclude bourgeois rule. But none of these categories can be understood apart from the state power containing them. In China, large capital does not dictate the national project. It is used, restricted, disciplined, and punished when it threatens the whole.
Yes, there is danger. If capital gained political command, if public ownership ceased to dominate the commanding heights, if finance disciplined the state, if the party became the administrative committee of the bourgeoisie, then China would be moving out of socialism. But that is not the present reality nor the present trend. The trend is a tightening birdcage, stronger state direction, common prosperity, anti-corruption, strategic self-reliance, party leadership over private firms, and discipline of capital.
Your argument is not grounded in China’s present conditions or trajectory, but in an abstract fear that because capital exists, capital must inevitably rule. That is not materialism. It is fatalism.
China remains socialist not because it is pure, but because the working class holds state power, public ownership controls the commanding heights, land and finance remain under state authority, planning governs accumulation, capital is subordinated to national development, and the bourgeoisie are still disciplined by the state.
I already explained why China should be considered socialist: not because it is merely successful or wealthy, but because socialism is a transitional process full of contradiction, and the decisive question is which class holds political power. In China it is unambiguously the working class who hold the state, command the commanding heights, discipline capital, direct development, and subordinate private accumulation to national and social objectives.
You are also conflating socialism with communism. Communism requires the global abolition of capitalism. Socialism does not. Socialism can exist, has existed, and does exist under capitalist encirclement: the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, the DPRK. It cannot complete itself globally in one country, but the proletariat can seize and wield state power, build public ownership, suppress bourgeois political power, develop the productive forces, and carry out transition under hostile world conditions.
Your claim that capitalist concessions mean socialism was not established is not Marxism. As Lenin put it state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the same social relation as capitalism under bourgeois rule. The same economic form has different class content depending on which class commands the state. State capitalism under bourgeois rule strengthens the bourgeoisie. State capitalism under proletarian rule serves socialist construction.
So the serious question is not whether capitalist mechanisms exist. They obviously do. The question is whether they are sovereign. Do they command the party, state, army, land, finance, planning, courts, banks, currency, or national development strategy? In China, no. They do not.
You say I straw-manned you, but you explicitly said China was “transitioning out of socialism.” You now soften this into “China has a socialist sector and a capitalist sector,” then again treat the existence of the capitalist sector as proof that socialism’s basic principle has been lost. That is the same argument with padding.
A socialist transition is not defined by the absence of capitalist relations. It is defined by proletarian political supremacy and the subordination of capitalist relations to socialist development. If private property automatically means socialism has failed, then the NEP, New Democracy, Cuba, Vietnam, and every real revolutionary state operating under scarcity, siege, and uneven development vanish from socialist history. Your definition does not clarify socialism. It abolishes it.
Yes, workers in the private sector do not legally own those firms. That is a contradiction. I have never denied this. But you leap from “contradictions remain” to “therefore class struggle has been abandoned.” That is simply unserious to put it lightly. Class struggle has not been abandoned in China. Since around 2014, the birdcage has been tightening: finance restrained, platform capital checked, real estate capital forced into correction, anti-corruption intensified, party cells expanded in private firms, and strategic sectors reasserted under state direction. This is not capital digesting the socialist state. It is the socialist state reasserting command over capital.
Your treatment of corruption is equally crude. The existence of corruption does not prove degeneration. The toleration of corruption, or the inability to discipline it, would. Rooting it out from top to bottom, including at high levels, proves the opposite.
You also conflate financial assets with social power. Money is not power in itself. It is a token of command over labour, resources, and territory, mediated by law and the state. In a bourgeois state, money becomes political power because the bourgeoisie controls the institutions through which money commands society. In China, wealth does not automatically become sovereignty because the bourgeoisie does not own the state. The capitalist may have money; the state decides whether that money becomes command or becomes a liability.
This is why Chinese billionaires are not equivalent to Western billionaires. In the West, they buy elections, media, parties, universities, housing, legislation, think tanks, and foreign policy. In China, they have no pathways to purchasing meaningful power or influence. That is the difference between capital ruling the state and capital being subordinated by the state.
You say “controlled capitalism isn’t socialism.” Again, capitalist mechanisms controlled by a bourgeois state are capitalism. Capitalist mechanisms subordinated to a proletarian state are part of socialist transition.
This is the point of Chinese socialist political economy’s distinction between private capital and public capital. The argument is not that capital relations are harmless. The argument is that in the primary stage of socialism, market relations and capital cannot simply be wished away. The question is whether capital is privately sovereign or publicly commanded. Public capital in the commanding heights compels accumulation for social development rather than private domination.
You also misdescribe China’s relation to international business. China did not simply “allow privately owned international business on a large scale” in the liberal sense. It used foreign capital, technology, export markets, and capitalist greed for national development goals under conditions set by the Chinese state. Foreign capital wanted profit and market access. China extracted infrastructure, technology transfer, industrial capacity, employment, training, supply chains, and productive upgrading.
As Lenin put it, the capitalists will sell us the rope with which they will be hanged. Capital can and should be used against itself when operating under hostile class power.
You see private firms and conclude surrender. You see foreign capital and conclude dependence. You see billionaires and conclude bourgeois rule. But none of these categories can be understood apart from the state power containing them. In China, large capital does not dictate the national project. It is used, restricted, disciplined, and punished when it threatens the whole.
Yes, there is danger. If capital gained political command, if public ownership ceased to dominate the commanding heights, if finance disciplined the state, if the party became the administrative committee of the bourgeoisie, then China would be moving out of socialism. But that is not the present reality nor the present trend. The trend is a tightening birdcage, stronger state direction, common prosperity, anti-corruption, strategic self-reliance, party leadership over private firms, and discipline of capital.
Your argument is not grounded in China’s present conditions or trajectory, but in an abstract fear that because capital exists, capital must inevitably rule. That is not materialism. It is fatalism.
China remains socialist not because it is pure, but because the working class holds state power, public ownership controls the commanding heights, land and finance remain under state authority, planning governs accumulation, capital is subordinated to national development, and the bourgeoisie are still disciplined by the state.