So much ignorance on display here in this thread. People talking out of their ass with no clue or care why and how China has implemented economic reforms and development policy. No clue what communists even are much less the details of how they manage the economy of a developing socialist state within a capitalist global economy. Just thought-terminating clichés about billionaires and so-called “state capitalism”.
Fun fact: you can actually read the justifications for why socialist countries managed by proletariat governments have implemented limited market systems in their economies in China, Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, even Korea. Their thoughts are public!
I might go one further and suggest this is why the “Just tax the billionaires” line never actually delivers the goods. It’s a classic Belling-The-Cat problem, because its very easy to say “Tax the Billionaires” but its very difficult to move forward with a policy that does the actual thing, without billionaires pooling their resources to prevent you from accessing any of the levers of power.
You need a certain collectivist worldview to even attempt the problem of regulating and sanctioning a bourgeois class. And when you’re brainwashed by some combination of out-of-context Adam Smith quotes and reskinned Milton Friedman / Ayn Rand videos, good fucking luck.
Fun fact: you can actually read the justifications for why socialist countries managed by proletariat governments have implemented limited market systems in their economies in China, Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, even Korea. Their thoughts are public!
If you know where to look and you trust the source material and you’ve got the patience to work through the finer details, sure.
But that’s the sort of learning you typically need to tackle in grade school if you want it to stick. Open minds and lots of free time are necessary to get this kind of rigorous political education. By the time you’ve had your head crammed full of cable news fearmongering and employer-sponsored propaganda, you’ll be allergic to the very idea of taking a book like Fanshen or The Bolivian Diary at face value.
I think the billionaires are just a symptom of the capitalist global economy. China uses the wealth generated by the billionaires to further their goals of working towards communism.
Interesting, and I thought it was the workers who generated the wealth. Perhaps it should not belong to them after all then. Why tax the billionaires at all if they’re the ones generating the wealth?
You’re why I do this. I’ve never seen an easier group to ragebait than .ml users/lemmy communists. I don’t care even a tiny bit about China or their billionaires. The fact you’re viewing a shitpost through the lense of winning and loosing is the best thing I could have hoped for making this post. Look through every comment I’ve made here, are any even slightly high effort? Its all the easiest bullshit talking points to keep people unable to discern context riled up. I’m having a fantastic time.
Instead of using the term good, I think the standard here is asking, “Do the billionaires have more power than the some other group? In this cases CPC.” And if the CPC has more power, “What role does the CPC imagine using the billionaires to development of society and the party goals?”
It depends if you think capital circulation is a necessary step along the way to a more just world. For Marxists, they see it as just another step in the process to socialism. There are reasons, and I’m happy to describe the theory if you’d like, but that’s what they believe. They see it as a process they can control verse a process in which they become exploited.
I’m not really asking about capital circulation. I’m interested specifically in the billionaires. So why the billionaires?
I can understand the logic of having a market-based economy. It’s a very effective means of achieving compound economic growth. But a market economy does not require billionaires. There are numerous more equitable models that China could have built its system around. For example, they could have built their market economy based entirely around worker-owned co-ops. Co-ops can compete just fine in markets. Or, they could have gone with the current structure, but put in place a wealth cap. That’s been proposed before even in the US.
Why couldn’t China build a market economy, but just have a hard rule of “no one is allowed to amass more than X amount?” Even if people couldn’t hoard more than say, $100 million, that still gives people plenty of incentive to start new businesses, get an education, work hard, etc.
There are numerous more equitable models that China could have built its system around. For example, they could have built their market economy based entirely around worker-owned co-ops. Co-ops can compete just fine in markets
Well, you’ll be quite pleased to know that a significant part of China’s market reforms, has been the development of worker co-ops as a significant part of its economy.
Why couldn’t China build a market economy, but just have a hard rule of “no one is allowed to amass more than X amount?” Even if people couldn’t hoard more than say, $100 million, that still gives people plenty of incentive to start new businesses, get an education, work hard, etc.
Because they established markets to bring in foreign capital investment. Foreign companies, wanting comparatively cheap labor, were encouraged to partner with Chinese (usually state owned) firms, to access said cheap labor. Over the decades, the Chinese have taken this foriegny capital, invested it in its own domestic economic development, and encouraged the establishment of worker co-ops, in place of foreign firms. Huawei, for instance, is a worker co-op, and came out of the capital generated from partnerships foreign telecom companies.
Now, a private, national bourgeoise does exist, and people have gotten very rich. But China also puts those people on an INCREDIBLY tight leash. The reason they don’t limit the wealth you can amass, is because they wouldn’t want to limit the generation of capital that could be spent on economic development goals. Instead, they use the slightest steps out of line to seize those rich people’s wealth for thepublic good.
I’m interested specifically in the billionaires. So why the billionaires?
Essentially, the TL;DR is that billionaires in China are a byproduct of market reforms designed to generate domestic capital, and development. While they’re there, and their presence creates contradictions, they don’t have the ability to impact politics the way they can in the west.
The Chinese state, being a socialist state, seeks to manage the contradictions of market reforms, and funnel the gains from them for socialist ends. Those ends being the development of the productive forces (domestic industry, ending poverty, etc.), while also developing the relations of production, via state ownership of major industries, and encouraging the growth of cooperatives in the consumer goods market, and workers Congresses and party committees in nominally private businesses, to give workers a greater say in firm management.
I can’t actually answer why they don’t set a hard limit of how much they will let some one accumulate or as for why they didn’t use coops. Both of these are counterfactuals that would be difficult even if I knew all the internal discussions. For example, you’d have to look closely at Deng’s policies and the subsequent three represents during the early 2000s to see what the discussion around coops was. Hard to say what the thinking was that precluded coops from the discussion.
It’s easier to say what they are doing and the policies they are enacting. I believe they have a goal of reducing inequality with a goal of a Gini index of .35 by 2035. They are focusing on a common prosperity goal. This has led to increased donations and contributions from the wealthy to social causes. With the common prosperity project, they hope to increase the middle class and reduce the rural-urban divide as well. I think there are several other goals.
I don’t see setting a hard limit on whether or not one is a billionaire contributing to these goals and then runs the risk of creating resentment of a particular class that the party needs to grow their level of prosperity.
Edit: Prior to the 90s, there government supported state-owned and collective enterprises. But they weren’t growing quick enough to meet the needs of the CPC.
Meanwhile, the growing number of entrepreneurs were gaining power, but no access to representation. So the CPC decided to bring them in to the party. This would reduce the likeliness of a counter revolution.
Theoretically, coops struggled with massive, capital-intensive investments. They can’t scale or absorb risk because their capital is in the form of worker’s equity.
When coops fail, it can be doubly devastating. Workers lose their jobs and equity when the firm goes bankrupt. Just as bad, though, there can be a prolonged declined as the coops would go under they would slash their pay to keep the dying firm alive.
Coops seem great when the economic engine is humming along, but if you are looking for rapid growth, you need large capital investments and the ability to fail quickly or massively succeed.
So much ignorance on display here in this thread. People talking out of their ass with no clue or care why and how China has implemented economic reforms and development policy. No clue what communists even are much less the details of how they manage the economy of a developing socialist state within a capitalist global economy. Just thought-terminating clichés about billionaires and so-called “state capitalism”.
Fun fact: you can actually read the justifications for why socialist countries managed by proletariat governments have implemented limited market systems in their economies in China, Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, even Korea. Their thoughts are public!
I might go one further and suggest this is why the “Just tax the billionaires” line never actually delivers the goods. It’s a classic Belling-The-Cat problem, because its very easy to say “Tax the Billionaires” but its very difficult to move forward with a policy that does the actual thing, without billionaires pooling their resources to prevent you from accessing any of the levers of power.
You need a certain collectivist worldview to even attempt the problem of regulating and sanctioning a bourgeois class. And when you’re brainwashed by some combination of out-of-context Adam Smith quotes and reskinned Milton Friedman / Ayn Rand videos, good fucking luck.
If you know where to look and you trust the source material and you’ve got the patience to work through the finer details, sure.
But that’s the sort of learning you typically need to tackle in grade school if you want it to stick. Open minds and lots of free time are necessary to get this kind of rigorous political education. By the time you’ve had your head crammed full of cable news fearmongering and employer-sponsored propaganda, you’ll be allergic to the very idea of taking a book like Fanshen or The Bolivian Diary at face value.
What do you mean? Are the Chinese billionaires a good thing?
I think the billionaires are just a symptom of the capitalist global economy. China uses the wealth generated by the billionaires to further their goals of working towards communism.
Interesting, and I thought it was the workers who generated the wealth. Perhaps it should not belong to them after all then. Why tax the billionaires at all if they’re the ones generating the wealth?
Are you an actual child? Serious answers only please
What do you mean?
I mean that if you have a valid excuse for being this painfully naive then I would like to know in advance before I hurt your feelings about it
You’re why I do this. I’ve never seen an easier group to ragebait than .ml users/lemmy communists. I don’t care even a tiny bit about China or their billionaires. The fact you’re viewing a shitpost through the lense of winning and loosing is the best thing I could have hoped for making this post. Look through every comment I’ve made here, are any even slightly high effort? Its all the easiest bullshit talking points to keep people unable to discern context riled up. I’m having a fantastic time.
Not even a little believable, you’re either some sort of deeply incompetent fed or profoundly lonely, maybe both lol
If you love capitalism and are just being a silly goose say “I know”.
I know
Instead of using the term good, I think the standard here is asking, “Do the billionaires have more power than the some other group? In this cases CPC.” And if the CPC has more power, “What role does the CPC imagine using the billionaires to development of society and the party goals?”
“The ends justify the means.”
Surely that’s never caused any problems…
It depends if you think capital circulation is a necessary step along the way to a more just world. For Marxists, they see it as just another step in the process to socialism. There are reasons, and I’m happy to describe the theory if you’d like, but that’s what they believe. They see it as a process they can control verse a process in which they become exploited.
I’m not really asking about capital circulation. I’m interested specifically in the billionaires. So why the billionaires?
I can understand the logic of having a market-based economy. It’s a very effective means of achieving compound economic growth. But a market economy does not require billionaires. There are numerous more equitable models that China could have built its system around. For example, they could have built their market economy based entirely around worker-owned co-ops. Co-ops can compete just fine in markets. Or, they could have gone with the current structure, but put in place a wealth cap. That’s been proposed before even in the US.
Why couldn’t China build a market economy, but just have a hard rule of “no one is allowed to amass more than X amount?” Even if people couldn’t hoard more than say, $100 million, that still gives people plenty of incentive to start new businesses, get an education, work hard, etc.
Well, you’ll be quite pleased to know that a significant part of China’s market reforms, has been the development of worker co-ops as a significant part of its economy.
Because they established markets to bring in foreign capital investment. Foreign companies, wanting comparatively cheap labor, were encouraged to partner with Chinese (usually state owned) firms, to access said cheap labor. Over the decades, the Chinese have taken this foriegny capital, invested it in its own domestic economic development, and encouraged the establishment of worker co-ops, in place of foreign firms. Huawei, for instance, is a worker co-op, and came out of the capital generated from partnerships foreign telecom companies.
Now, a private, national bourgeoise does exist, and people have gotten very rich. But China also puts those people on an INCREDIBLY tight leash. The reason they don’t limit the wealth you can amass, is because they wouldn’t want to limit the generation of capital that could be spent on economic development goals. Instead, they use the slightest steps out of line to seize those rich people’s wealth for thepublic good.
Essentially, the TL;DR is that billionaires in China are a byproduct of market reforms designed to generate domestic capital, and development. While they’re there, and their presence creates contradictions, they don’t have the ability to impact politics the way they can in the west.
The Chinese state, being a socialist state, seeks to manage the contradictions of market reforms, and funnel the gains from them for socialist ends. Those ends being the development of the productive forces (domestic industry, ending poverty, etc.), while also developing the relations of production, via state ownership of major industries, and encouraging the growth of cooperatives in the consumer goods market, and workers Congresses and party committees in nominally private businesses, to give workers a greater say in firm management.
I can’t actually answer why they don’t set a hard limit of how much they will let some one accumulate or as for why they didn’t use coops. Both of these are counterfactuals that would be difficult even if I knew all the internal discussions. For example, you’d have to look closely at Deng’s policies and the subsequent three represents during the early 2000s to see what the discussion around coops was. Hard to say what the thinking was that precluded coops from the discussion.
It’s easier to say what they are doing and the policies they are enacting. I believe they have a goal of reducing inequality with a goal of a Gini index of .35 by 2035. They are focusing on a common prosperity goal. This has led to increased donations and contributions from the wealthy to social causes. With the common prosperity project, they hope to increase the middle class and reduce the rural-urban divide as well. I think there are several other goals.
I don’t see setting a hard limit on whether or not one is a billionaire contributing to these goals and then runs the risk of creating resentment of a particular class that the party needs to grow their level of prosperity.
Edit: Prior to the 90s, there government supported state-owned and collective enterprises. But they weren’t growing quick enough to meet the needs of the CPC.
Meanwhile, the growing number of entrepreneurs were gaining power, but no access to representation. So the CPC decided to bring them in to the party. This would reduce the likeliness of a counter revolution.
Theoretically, coops struggled with massive, capital-intensive investments. They can’t scale or absorb risk because their capital is in the form of worker’s equity.
When coops fail, it can be doubly devastating. Workers lose their jobs and equity when the firm goes bankrupt. Just as bad, though, there can be a prolonged declined as the coops would go under they would slash their pay to keep the dying firm alive.
Coops seem great when the economic engine is humming along, but if you are looking for rapid growth, you need large capital investments and the ability to fail quickly or massively succeed.