Comment by vidarh
16 days ago
Whether you think it possible or not, this take misunderstands Marxism at a fundamental level.
For Marxists, automation is a good thing - in fact it is a core precondition of socialism.
Marx spent half the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto fanboying over capitalism for the productivity increases brought by capitalism.
So why do you think it was to the chagrin of Marxists? Marx spent decades cheering on the advancement of industrialisation, and specifically argued (in The German Ideology) that socialism would be impossible without these advances in productive forces.
Fair enough: the Chinese Marxists seem to love their robots, a lot.
But, also, they handle all that automation to the capitalists. Because capitalists are simply much better at doing it.
So it seems that, even when it succeeds, socialism can't really get rid of "the system", after all.
The CCP isn't Marxist and doesn't claim to be.
Deng basically copied parts of Lenins "New Economic Policy" of "limited capitalism" because he like Lenin realised they'd made a mistake in preempting dismantling of the market, in direct contradiction of the Marxist view that a socialist revolution requires a well developed capitalist economy, and Marx explicit warning against attempting socialism too soon. That's what I pointed to with the reference to the German Ideology. Because of course taking out profit enough to do meaningful redistribution will harm growth. That's not a "gotcha" - it's an inherent, core assumption of Marxist thinking that socialism only becomes possible because of capitalism.
> The CCP isn't Marxist and doesn't claim to be.
This is just adorable!
May I assume that the Cuban, North Korean, Laos and Vietnamese Communist parties aren't Marxist also? Naturally, same goes to former USSR, Khmer Rouge, etc
3 replies →
You are conflating Marxism with China, which is just a state-capitalist powerhouse using the exact same model of enclosure and rent-seeking we are arguing against. China doesn't "hand over" automation because capitalists are better at it; the state simply socializes the risk and R&D before letting private proxies handle the commercialization. Citing a state-backed monopoly system to prove "the market" is the only way to build tech is total nonsense.
China is Marxist, as much as South Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, USSR, Khmer Rouge, Laos, etc. This is objective history. These are the "objective conditions", as Marxists say. These are facts and nothing else exists besides that.
Your idealistic, romantic version of Marxism only exists in your head. In 140 years of history, Marxism only generated the Marxist states I listed above.