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And then the Western Left bursts onto the scene with a litany of harsh recriminations, determined to build up China into a villain worthy of war: “China has billionaires.” “China still has inequality.” “China still has wage labour.” “There’s no free speech there.” “Suicide nets.” “Free Tibet.” “Xinjiang is East Turkestan.” “Liberate Hong Kong.” “Neither Washington Nor Beijing.” Their indulgence in atrocity propaganda is unparalleled, and they’ll often outdo original sources and even the most vicious reactionaries in their preening paraphrases of Chinese horror.

In their “David vs. Goliath” worldview, heroism is characterized by evanescense or futility (Rosa Luxemburg, Anarchist Catalonia, Leon Trotsky, Rojava, CHAZ in Seattle, Bernie Sanders, the Communist Party of the Philippines), whereas victory and longevity are in themselves proof that principles were betrayed and sadism is the rule (Joseph Stalin, Kim Il-sung, Deng Xiaoping, Nicolás Maduro, Xi Jinping). Though socialist groups in the West tend to be secular, Christianity remains culturally hegemonic to such a degree that figures are appreciated in proportion to how well they fit a narrative template of martyrdom. [21]

Faced with the intellectually challenging task of defending projects that didn’t always live up to our a priori ideals, with the task of understanding why they didn’t live up to those ideals, many opt for the doctrine of betrayal:

In the period around 1968, a book was circulated fairly widely whose very title, Proletarians without Revolution, was thought to deliver the key to understanding universal history. Always inspired by the most noble Communist sentiments, the masses were regularly betrayed by their leaders and the bureaucrats. And this is also paradoxical because what was intended to be a complaint of the masses against the leaders and bureaucrats converts abruptly into an indictment against the masses. The analysis reveals the masses to be completely irredeemable simpletons who are entirely unable to comprehend their own interests at decisive moments. [22]

Indeed, this is exactly how the aforementioned spectacular Chinese public approval of the leadership of the Communist Party is explained away: “Brainwashing.” Enthusiasm is proof of credulity, cynicism is proof of enlightenment — a hipster credo as much in politics as it is in art.

For the sake of this analysis at least, let’s reject the doctrine of betrayal. We will accept the successes of the Chinese Revolution as empirically measurable socialist feats worth celebrating. We will study how Eastern socialists — Deng Xiaoping in particular — were real exemplars of the tradition of scientific socialism to which Marx and Engels belonged, contra aspersions cast by Western utopians.

Fantasies of abolishing hierarchy will give way to an interpretation of Marx that understands relations of production in terms of domination rather than mere subordination, and therefore of capital as an “automatic subject” that needs to be tamed, as opposed to a blight that can be eradicated. The transition from Feudalism to Capitalism will be re-examined so as to challenge idealistic notions that a clean break from Capitalism to Socialism is possible, which will in turn clearly illustrate why Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is not at all comparable to Social Democracy, particularly in regards to imperialism. And in lieu of the welfare-state checklist that currently passes for a definition of socialism, we will recover a much more practical and useful definition, one that centers work rather than leisure, and so better captures the spirit of the myriad tasks to be accomplished in the socialist stage: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their work.”

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Read the rest:

https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/#automatic-subject