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apnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Communism, President Donald Trump says, is the greatest threat the U.S. has ever faced.

This summer, citing similarly grave concerns, he took the rare step of delivering a primetime address to the nation, accusing China of “sinister election meddling” in 2020 and reviving his yearslong push to dispute his loss in that year’s election.

Even as Trump seeks to decry Democrats as communists ahead of November’s midterm elections, he is rolling out the red carpet this week for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s most powerful communist country.

The state visit comes as the president himself has increasingly directed his administration to take large stakes in private companies to try to stimulate the economy — something even some Republicans decry as corporate socialism.

  • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
    24·
    3 days ago

    They’re authoritarian state capitalist imperialists with a stong dose of Han nationalism.

    They’re not socialist since workers neither own nor control the means of production. Though it might be arguable that, as Marx strongly implied, socialism is a phenomenon that emerges from the contradictions of capitalism, so China has to go through all that bullshit as part of the journey, since the country was almost entirely feudal when the CCP took over.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      34·
      3 days ago

      All states are “authoritarian,” in Marxist analysis, as the state itself is a monopoly on violence in service of the ruling class. China is not state capitalist, because the bourgeoisie has no political power, and the commanding heights of the economy are both publicly owned and run to service societal need. China is also not imperialist, neither in the colloquial sense nor the Leninist analysis, as it is not super exploiting the global south for super profits. Finally, minority ethnicities in China all have strong minority Protections and over representation in bodies like the NPC.

      China is socialist because the state is run by the proletariat, and the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned. The principal aspect of the economy, ie rising and dominant factor, is public, collective ownership. The job of the CPC is to facilitate the process of developing into higher levels of socialism, and the method of marketizing secondary industries is the most rapid way to create the basis of socialized production.

      I’d really like to see a Marxist analysis, not just a declaration with no backing.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          32·
          3 days ago

          Yes, the class background of the CPC is generally salaried workers. The bourgeoisie in China are prevented from attaining political power and prevented from forming a coherent class by which they can overturn the state. This editorial from The Guardian explains it quite well, actually:

          But Xi’s support for mixing private and public ownership structures was purely pragmatic. It had value, he said in another forum, because it would “improve the socialist market economic structure.” Xi’s assessment is echoed by Michael Collins, one of the CIA’s most senior officials for Asia. “The fundamental end of the Communist party of China under Xi Jinping is all the more to control that society politically and economically,” Collins argued earlier this year. “The economy is being viewed, affected and controlled to achieve a political end.”

          …

          The party’s overarching aim, though, has remained consistent: to ensure that the private sector, and individual entrepreneurs, do not become rival players in the political system. The party wants economic growth, but not at the expense of tolerating any organised alternative centres of power.

          …

          “[Capitalists] act as if they are being chased by a bear,” wrote Zhang Lin, a Beijing political commentator, in response to these comments. “They are powerless to control the bear, so they are competing to outrun each other to escape the animal.”

          What other class could rule China, if not capitalists or workers? In Marxist analysis, in any society where there is class struggle, there are two broad classes that form the principal contradiction. It certainly isn’t the peasantry, who no longer exist, nor is it the petite bourgeoisie, who largely exist in sole proprietorships, nor is it the aristocracy, who again no longer exist. The classes at struggle in China are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, with the proletariat at the top, settled by the revolution.

          I keep seeing sarcastic remarks that don’t actually present a coherent Marxist analysis, as though snark is a suitable counter to verifiable material reality. Is it really so hard to present an argument on who you believe is the class ruling China, and grounding that with Marxist analysis?