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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2195 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026

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At some point you gotta stop blaming outside actors for internal failures, right? The Soviets were large enough to stand their own and engaged in international trade. Still ended up collapsing.

First of all I never said it wasn't a failure. It obviously was. Friction is the deciding factor in the success of ideologies because it's where the rubber meets the road. Russia's particular implementation of communism via Marxist-Leninism didn't work, but...

Even China had to adapt to capitalism in the end.

China is a socialist market economy with strong Leninist leanings. So what does that prove? It proves that there are good and bad ways of implementing the program.

Worker control of the means of production simply doesn't work if you get rid of the market signals that influence the means of production -- and if you're adopting a market economy then you're not doing classical socialism anymore anyways.

WSDE's don't "get rid of" market signals and expressing a preference.

China is a socialist market economy with strong Leninist leanings

What are the defining features of the Chinese economy that get you to call it "socialist"? Given the state of the Chinese labor market and the bargaining power that Chinese workers have, it does not strike me at all as "worker control over the means of production."

WSDE's don't "get rid of" market signals and expressing a preference.

Likewise, I don't see any actual real-life implementations of that that don't seem like they'd be better described by the term "capitalism."

To begin with, China defines themselves along the way I described. This isn't something I just made up. Literally entire textbooks have been written on it. To give it concisely I very much have to abbreviate and abridge the economic and political logic at play here but basically it's a bureaucratic authoritarian system. So some of what I'm going to be misleading for the sake of concision.

In China, once a firm starts making a certain amount of money, the CCP comes in and nationalizes the entire business and takes it over. "Taking it over" in this context means that the business owner becomes a de facto member of the CCP and works in tandem with other actors in a similar position he is in, and with direct CCP officials to "harmonize" business incentives across enterprises to achieve broad political objectives set by the Politburo Standing Committee.

... it does not strike me at all as "worker control over the means of production."

You have to see it the way socialists see it. "Workers control," can mean it's "controlled" by them in a number of different ways. It can be controlled directly by them. It can be controlled by a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (though we've seen how that goes), it can be controlled by the government, it depends on what thread of socialism you subscribe too. Most socialists today that I "know" of somewhat, reject state socialism outright. They see examples like Russia as a God that failed and China as an example of one that works. Plus all the worker co-op's scattered throughout the world.

Likewise, I don't see any actual real-life implementations of that that don't seem like they'd be better described by the term "capitalism."

Call it what you want. Just as there are different flavors and varieties of capitalism, there are different flavors and varieties of socialism.

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