No problem, take care!

China is still here, and still socialist, and it isn’t leaving. This is because of Democratic Centralism, a fast and cohesive way to adapt to changing conditions while retaining democratic input. For less urgent decisions, the PRC has slower, more comprehensive, bottom-up systems, while it focuses more on a top-down approach for system-wide changes and direction. It’s kinda like “top down, from the bottom up.”

I agree with pragmatism over idealism, that’s why I’m a communist and push for socialism. Socialism is immensely practical.

Gotcha, so some form of socialism at minimum. You should check out the link to how the PRC functions.

Pretty much exactly what I am trying to say, even down to explaining that if the imperialist countries collapsed overnight, the remaining capitalist countries would try to re-assert themselves as the new imperialists. Very well said!

Social Democracy is just capitalism with welfare, and as such either funds itself via imperialism like the Nordic Countries, or is ultimately going to see capital use its political power to erase the gains of workers. Markets can play a useful role in spurring development of small and medium firms, but the larger firms and key industries should be publicly owned and planned, as market mechanics begin to lose all benefit towards higher development.

Really, it sounds like you just want Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Not sure what you mean by “authoritarian,” all governments are instruments of class oppression, but no socialist state has been imperialist before. Further, “state capitalism” refers to a system of heavily planned but ultimately dominated by private property, such as Singapore, South Korea, and Bismark’s Germany, and as such I’m not sure what you’re referencing here either.

This is wrong on several accounts.

1. “Communism” the economic system has not been realized. Communist parties have led socialist countries, but communism as a mode of production is a product of the future.

2. Socialism works, the largest economy on the planet is the PRC, which is seeing rapid and comprehensive improvements in the living standards of its people. Even the USSR, now no longer here, achieved impressive economic growth, provided free healthcare and education, and much more.

3. Capitalism, by definition, requires that the capitalists be in charge and the workers exploited. It isn’t just the US.

The part that has been pointed out over and over is that you are misreading my stating that all capitalist nations trend towards imperialism as all capitalist nations will become imperialist. The imperialized countries cannot develop to this end, and neither can the nationalist countries, though the impetus to search for more profits that drives imperialism is still to be found in the imperialized and nationalist countries.

What keeps them distinct is the finite quantity of capital, resulting in a division of the world amongst the greater capitalist powers. If all of the imperialist countries in the world fell overnight, the most developed of the nationalist countries would be first in line, and the imperialized countries would race to become the new imperialists, if they didn’t already pivot to socialism.

This driving trend is universal to all capitalist nations, whether or not that trend can even be expressed in the first place, however, depends on the availability of capital to exploit. Capitalism necessarily works towards centralization and monopoly, and this drives towards internationalism, but just like a sea turtle with a plastic ring around its neck, it cannot outgrow the ring, it will choke and die, if it cannot expand and imperialize.

If you still don’t understand the point after this, then you’re deliberately ignorant, only in it for the masochistic desire to embarass yourself in online debate for an audience of a whopping 4ish people.

The argument you were making was based on a position you invented in your head and has never once been held hy me. You misread the original point, and when it has been explained to you over and over why you misread it, you double down. Is it impossible for you to admit that you’re mistaken, or is argument for the sake of argument your point? Neither is good, of course. You’re deeply unserious. Put the phone down and touch grass.

It’s penance for my sins as a libbed up “Marxist” on Reddit years ago, before I actually started taking theory seriously. The pain is the price.

Socialism is not “decrease wealth inequality.” Socialism is not “equalitarianism.” Marxist socialism is a scientific outlook on the course of development, and how to best use that knowledge to uplift the great majority of people. Socialism in China has been by far the most successful in this regard, and it is thanks to the methodical approach to socialism founded in Marxist economics, relying on central planning and public ownership of the large and key industries. If it “seems like” they are abandoning socialism to you, it is because you don’t actually know what socialists support, and why.

The US is not abandoning liberalism, lmao. The drives of private property are the dominant aspect of the economy and that won’t change until the contradictions get too severe to continue.

The working class in China owns the large majority of the media through the state, which itself is proletarian in character. Simple.

“Kiddo” coming from a debatelord trying to “liberal-splain” socialism to me is comedy gold. There’s no hypocrisy or uncomfortable facts I need to reconcile, you need to put the phone or keyboard down, take a breather, maybe touch some grass, and then try to understand what others have been telling you.

No, you’re wrong about socialism. Marxism is precisely against the idea that you can eliminate all private property immediately. It is a gradual process of sublimation, as firms get large enough they become economically compelled to become centrally planned. Investors in the PRC is not a failure. Investors running the CPC and PRC would be, but that’s not the case. Your understanding of socialism is incredibly off-base, and as such you’re in no position to argue. Leftists aren’t “ignoring reality,” you’re just making up claims to argue with.

And, again, I stated that the development of capitalism necessarily means those developed countries become imperialist. Those in the global south cannot become developed unless they become nationalist, and even then they don’t become developed, they stay constrained, and those that are socialist do not have the same mechanisms at play that drive imperialism. The lack of available capital to imperialize for nationalist countries in the global south prevents them from reaching the same levels of development of the global north.

You are utterly incapable of making a coherent argument, you have to invent the positions of not just me, but other socialists, in order to maintain your fragile debatelord worldview.

Liberalism isn’t just a button that says “privatize.” A fully liberal society isn’t one that has 100% of production private, it’s one where private property is the driving factor of the economy.

Chinese workers do control the means of production through public ownership being the principle aspect of the economy, the large firms and key industries are firmly in the public sector. Socialism isn’t limited to a narrow conception of cooperative production, but large, centralized production, in the Marxist conception. Wealth inequality is under control, and is gradually being worked downwards as the economy becomes more and more centralized. You have a deep chauvanism about you, not only do you presume to know socialism better than the socialists, but you do so without actually engaging with socialist theory, otherwise you wouldn’t make such an error.

Further, I absolutely know what “all” means. As others have pointed out, you’ve been arguing against a position you invented, not my own. You’re just a debatelord, you have no desire to come to a greater understanding.

Can you name a developed capitalist nation that doesn’t practice imperialism? The global south cannot become imperialist because there’s nowhere else to imperialize, either they become nationalist, socialist, or remain imperialized.

Systems aren’t decided by how “serious” the people in charge are. Iran is still a liberal nationalist country.

Further, the PRC is absolutely serious about socialism, the lives of the working class are dramatically improving and the number of billionaires is shrinking. The large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly controlled. Having a stock market is a contradiction, but one that is limited to medium and small firms, which cannot simply be siezed and planned but are allowed to develop to the point that they can be planned better.

You really shouldn’t be speaking as though you understand China if you still don’t understand Iran, liberalism, and socialism.

No, I submitted a claim based on what happens as capitalism develops, with the requirement that there be capital left to imperialize. You invented a nonsensical viewpoint and substituted it for my own as a gotcha, and rather than accepting that you misread.

You are fundamentally inventing a flaw in my argument because you didn’t understand my initual claim, hence why others have bolded my original claim in response to you in order to get you to see where you went wrong.

You’re fundamentally misunderstanding the point. If there’s capital left to be imperialized and a country develops to the monopoly stage, it will imperialize the capital. Countries in the global south cannot develop to such a stage unless the pivot to a nationalist or socialist position, and in the former case the presense of imperialist countries means the capital to be imperialized is dried up except through war, which opens up new markets.

This is a law of capitalist development. If a country develops to the monopoly stage and there’s capital to be imperialized, it will imperialize it. There has never been a case where this isn’t true. The fact that countries in the global south are underdeveloped and over exploited only further proves this point.

Because that is the status quo. Leftism is about progressing onto the next mode of production, not stagnating or regressing, which is right-wing.

What?

Being slow is not at odds with liberalism, nor is government intervention. Again, this is like saying the US isn’t liberal because of the millitary industrial complex. Further, Iran is nationalist as well as liberal, it isn’t really imperialized but it isn’t socialist either.