this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
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Sorry, edited my reply before noticing this.
Totally mistyped when I said the "influence" idea was dominant in the global south, China, etc. In the global south, China, etc, understanding imperialism as a form of international extraction is the dominant understanding. I corrected the comment.
OK, no problem. But then is it extraction or "capital export"? If it were extraction we'd arrive at the very point that started this discussion, where I stated this is exactly what is happening.
Extraction happens via export of capital. Think outsourcing, where factories are built overseas to take advantage of cheap labor, and millitant force is used to keep wages low.
You do know, that Slavic (and so also Muscovian) history is mostly based on self exploitation; literally slave trade with own people, holding serfs/peasantry as slaves tied to land and so on?
Why would a country bother exporting factories, when it has unlimited land, and impoverished and underdeveloped "republics" with freely exploitable ethnic minorities? Would say Chechnya (their Luhansk/Donetsk style right to self-determination aside) be a place of expensive labour and lack of militant force to keep it in check? But then again, it's not like the USA owns factories in China, the same factories that produce for the west produce for Russia.
China has soveriegnty over their own factories, China's large firms and key industries are publicly owned and the working class is in control, rather than a comprador regime selling out the people.
Ultimately, the problem is that you're trying to have an in-depth conversation about a subject you haven't studied and have already made up your mind about.
Yeah, we both did made up our minds about this clearly. I did watching how stuff is produced in Chinese factories as a hired translator for a small time capitalist making deals there, you did from ideological texts. And yet you are the one defending private ownership and market economy, while my problem is that it's been nearly a hundred years and they have less public ownership then they had say 40 years ago. Also this is not an issue I'm trying to have an in depth conversation about, this is only a side note.
China had a larger portion of public ownership under the Gang of Four, and they were poor. They tried to collectivize production before the level of development actually suited publiv ownership, at the expense of growth and prosperity. The market reforms were a return to Marxist understandings of economics, and stableized growth. I read Marxist-Leninist theory, and I study China's growth and metrics over time. Being a translator while remaining entirely disengaged from Marxist theory and Chinese economics doesn't give you a leg up, I can find people that believe Trump is a communist unironically.
In the People's Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn't steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing's faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized:
Deng's plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
China's rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a "love/hate" relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.
Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC's gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.
Yeah and its not like these firms grow on extracting the value added of the workers, because its socialism and its totally different. They just get horrible job conditions for a pay allowing at best sustaining themselves, but its their country because the irreplacable goverment says so.
As for the rest I could actually agree in most points, China clearly played USA, it did manage to pull a lot of people from extream poverty. That being said it is not communist in everyday life of normal people it could be hardly considered socialist. What I've seen is just another totalitarian capitalist state on it neverending path toward better times and I just don't belive there's socialism comming out of that. It already developed a new sort of owners class, same as other socialist republics you join the party to conduct your buisnesses, not much different from a american country club or scientologists. Never ending ideological BS and in the end its always the workers paying with their loves.
Id say only time will tell who's right, but then your cheerleading for a clearly corrupt capitalist state of Russia so no point in arguing on that further.