Yall need to be educated on what communism is. Strictly speaking it is a society without state (anarchic), social classes, and money. Goods and services are distributed from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. You can ask yourself if China fits these definitions and the answer is no. There exists a state, there are still capital and working classes (among others), and money is used facilitate the exchange of goods and services.
It will be many decades or even a century before we see anything close to a communist society as it requires global communist revolution to finally end the threat from capitalist states. Discussing the details of communism is pure science fiction at this point. Political parties that call themselves communist have an eventual goal of reaching communism and they implement socialist economic systems to transition there.
Why do we want to transition away from capitalism to communism? This is a complex topic and you can begin to get an idea of why through reading
. In it, Marx uses the economic theories and assumptions of the great capitalist economists (Smith, Ricardo, Mill, etc.) to identify destabilizing tendencies in capitalism which he calls "internal contradictions" and reasons that the contradictions will lead to crisis. These contradictions arise as a result of individual capitalists behaving optimally to improve their own profit. It turns out that what is good for the profit of individual capitalists is harmful for the capitalist system as a whole. Note that Marx is not creating a different theory of economics, rather he takes the economic theories of the great economists of his time and discovers deep problems with the capitalism that these economists champion. Marx provided us with an account of the problems caused by capitalism but finding a solution is up to us.
You can learn more about Marxian theory with David Harvey's
or by listening to his
. Of course there are many other scholars to learn from as well though I find that Harvey explains Marx's analysis well and he also has very relevant interpretation of socialism. He advocates for an end to economic growth for the sake of growth and profit (Marx says this is required by capitalism, an end of growth means the end of capitalism). Instead, growth should be aimed at serving the needs of people and further more, we should be prepared to have the "ungrowth" of excessive and wasteful economic activities (definitions of excessive and wasteful vary from person to person).
I find Harvey's ideas of socialism to both applicable to China's situation and more innovative that the socialism that is publicly promoted by the CPC. The CPC states that China is in an early stage of socialist development and needs accumulation of means of production (whether by state or by private capitalists) to increase living standards of the Chinese people. This is a noble goal but if we look closely at the development since the economic crises in 2008, it was partially motivated by the capitalist compulsion to protect ever increasing profits and the theoretical basis for China's economic planning in these past few years was based on Keynes, not Marx. For example the excess steel and concrete production capacity of China was focused into infrastructure and property development both domestically and abroad. Workers who lost their jobs in the factories found employment in the construction industry.
The infrastructure development is good as it serves the people's needs but it also serves a capitalist need by facilitating transportation between coast and inland areas. Was the government thinking about the people when it built the high speed rails or was it thinking about the profits of private and state enterprises?
The property development was less good. Regardless of how many people were able to find new homes in the building boom, it is indisputable that the property prices in most Chinese cities increased. Why does increasing the supply of housing also increase the price of housing? Economics tells us that increasing supply should drive down demand and reduce prices. It is clear that financial speculators have turned an effort to give more people homes to live in into a money making game.
What we can learn from the economic policy of China in the years since 2008 is that China has adopted a Keynesian capitalist approach to managing its growth. Today, China is trapped by the "growth compulsion" of the capitalist system just as much the European nations, Japan, USA, etc. The state must find new ways of achieving ever increasing growth for the nation and ever increasing profits for the capitalist sector as that is the very definition of growth in capitalism.
I am certain that SDF members know that you cannot have ever increasing growth in a world of finite resources. Therein lies the answer to why we should transition away from capitalism. Now whether or not we transition to communism is another question.
Returning to the question of China. China's current policies while misguided, are improving the lives of ordinary people. However, these policies cannot go on forever. There is a vast amount of over capacity in all sorts of production in China (steel, concrete, consumer goods of all types). China does not need all this capacity, nor does the world. We only have this capacity because the current economic system requires us to create more and more things every year so naturally the capacity increases. Eventually we will need to undergo "ungrowth" which means find new jobs for the workers and repurpose all those means of production to do something socially good and sustainable. The largest threat to the eventual transition away from a growing capitalist economy is the increasing power of capitalism in China. We see that capitalism is already driving national economic policy. The government will need more power than it has now to tell the various industries (including State Owned Enterprises) to stop making all that crap and that China has "grown enough" and that the Chinese people are "enjoying a sufficient standard of living". The only place the government can get this power is from the people. This means that increased democratic control is necessary in the future.
I think currently the Chinese people (at least the urban populations) are insufficiently socialist to decide on the correct course of action for the China. If they were allowed to vote, they are more likely to vote away all their power and give it to a handful of capitalists. That would be a true undoing of the communist revolution setting back progress by 50-100 years and would require another protracted struggle by the Chinese people to free themselves again. Chinese people and people of all nations need to have a comprehensive understanding of what capitalism is and why it is in the long run, unstable and unsustainable. Hopefully with that understanding, they will make the correct decision when the time comes.
peaked in 1981 at
