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It's worth pointing out that today's China is communist in name only. They literally arrested the president of Peking University's Marxist society on ideologica

by _bxg1 7y ago

It's worth pointing out that today's China is communist in name only. They literally arrested the president of Peking University's Marxist society on ideological grounds: https://news.yahoo.com/china-arrests-marxist-student-leader-celebrating-maos-birthday-005941312.html https://news.yahoo.com/china-arrests-marxist-student-leader-... China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Edit: Fixed a broken link

loceng 7y ago
Broken link?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Fixed, sorry
newfangle 7y ago
Communists killing and imprisoning other communists has happened since the ideology was first conceived so you will need a better argument than that to say they are not communist. I really dont understand why so many people feel the need to post comments online distinguishing that China is not communist. Its a disgusting authoritarian regime just like every other self proclaimed communist country in history.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Historically communist countries have been pretty fascist, but communism itself (in theory) is about workers' rights and the elevation of the little people. I don't know how genuine Mao was about those ideals, but Xi is dropping all pretense by intentionally targeting labor movements. So he shouldn't even get to hide behind a flawed idealism. He has no idealism except power.
  - pvg 7y ago
    You're just ascribing the negative aspects of communism-as-realized to fascism but this seems trivially ahistorical. The internecine conflicts in communist states were much more pronounced than in the fascist ones, perhaps in part because communism was always a more complex and developed movement ideologically.
    - _bxg1 7y ago
      Sure; in my mind, fascist == authoritarian + nationalist. I realize that's extremely simplified - I'm not a historian - but that's what I meant by it.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        Communism as a political theory is anti-nationalist, and fascism as a political phenomenon arose in part as a reaction to Marxism. One of Payne's Fascist Negations is "anti-Communism". There are multiple species of authoritarian tyrannies; fascism is just one of them. I think people get in trouble trying to generalize and apply fascism to places it doesn't fit. "Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem.
        pvg 7y ago
        "Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem. Mildly amusing thingie - a Bulgarian dissident's dissidenting involved writing a book about fascism (titled, for clarity, Fascism) which was really an oblique critique of the communist regime. It got past the censors and was published and then fairly quickly recalled. He later became Bulgaria's first post-communist president.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  US foreign policy is a big reason why only authoritarian communist governments have been able to survive. Nicaragua is a great example of this. The Sadinistas lost power through free elections in which the US interferred. Now that the Sadinistas are back in power, the freedom of their elections has been rapidly decreasing. "Communist" as a lable has been so misused and unclearly defined for so long that it is mostly useless as a descriptive term.
pvg 7y ago
Communists have been arresting each other on ideological grounds for about as long as they've had the power to arrest people.
tossAfterUsing 7y ago
> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Maybe the community could help me to understand whether this is accurate?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  If you want to get technical it's a very advanced fascist dictatorship - the way it leverages elements of capitalism, for example. An innovative fascist dictatorship, even. But ideologically speaking, it's very simple.
- rodgerd 7y ago
  Consider Eco's writing on Ur-Facism: http://www.interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html http://www.interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_F... and note that the apologia for the Chinese government by the owner of an NBA team focused heavily on point 8 (for example). The CCP has long ago abandoned ideas of collective ownership; China has many very wealthy individuals whose wealth is private.
- pnako 7y ago
  Fascist is maybe not a good term, because fascism is actually quite specific and to some extent euro-centric (plus, nowadays it just means "bad people" without people necessarily understanding what fascism actually is). But China seems to be a country run on a totalitarian and ethnic nationalist ideology.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Only if words don't mean things, though you can see how the least charitable (which is not to say least accurate; who knows) reading of Chinese policy would lead you there. In particular, I think there's a trap where if you cherry pick from Maoist China and modern China, you can assembly a Frankenchina that meets some of the definitions. There are some pretty obvious elements of most common academic definitions of fascism that China flunks, no matter how you read them; for instance, Chinese society has not been mass-mobilized and militarized by any reasonable definition of those terms. Modern China not only doesn't reject modernism, it wholeheartedly embraces it. If there's a secular civic religion, with ceremony and liturgy, it isn't powerful enough to crowd out other faiths; there is a national patriotic spirit, but it isn't articulated through quasi-mystical symbols and rituals. Violence isn't employed for its own cathartic sake, and is largely "professionalized". People want to use fascism as a shorthand for "authoritarian nationalism", but it isn't; there are plenty of examples of authoritarian nationalist states that are demonstrably not fascist --- in fact, there are plenty of right-wing authoritarian nationalist states that aren't. Maybe a good acid test for this: if you were living in a fascist state, you'd know it, in much the same you'd know if you were living in an actual according-to-Hoyle theocracy. China is a huge country and millions of people there live with a relationship between themselves and the state that we would recognize in the west. I want also to acknowledge that it is kind of squicky to debate whether China is "fascist", in that it's an extremely loaded term that carries implications for ordinary Chinese people living their lives (that's part of the point of fascism). But a discussion about what fascism is or isn't is at least more in the spirit of HN than a lot of the other comments on these threads.
natechols 7y ago
How about we just use more specific terms? China remains very much Leninist, and to a lesser extent Maoist; it has however mostly ceased to be Marxist. They kept the basic political forms but moved to a relatively liberal economic model.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  I'm curious as to how China is "Leninist" at all. The fact of rule by one party that claims to represent the working class does not a Leninist state make.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Perhaps Leninist in a historical sense of "thought violence to gain control in a type of region Marx himself thought wouldn't be viable". Putting aside his philosophy's flaws he expected a feudalism to capitalism to communism progression more or less. Lenin was not only part of ousting the czar but establishment of the party as a nominally proletariat peasant dictatorship. That attempted teological speedrunning to try to "skip to the end" is classic Lenin. Even if the system later reforms there is still a legacy in the how. France and England are both parliamentary representative democracies who were once under monarchies but the UK has far more monarchist vestiges than France. While technically accurate to call France as monarchist legacied they would have far more grounds to object to the labeling given the purge of nobility and subsequent traditions - even when they fell into dictatorships again they certainly weren't kings. To be pedantic we could describe these aspect vestiges as "x legacied". That the West uses latin as it does for mottos and species names is a Roman legacy for instance for it is a trace of their power as lasting influence even though it does not exist today. It does not imply current control any more than Byzantium had control over western Europe. China may be better described amongst many other attributes as Leninist legacied, oligarchy legacied, Capitalist dictatorship until Xinjiang's inevitable demise. The fact he consolidated control over Oligarchic and has no clear explicit succession line makes him dictatorial as opposed to mere Oligarchic "the remaining few interests will pick after him". If as the whispered snark of "Emperor Xi" holds and he successfully transmits power to offspring he will have founded an empire (if it dies quickly it wouldn't be the first Chinese dynasty to do so).
dragontamer 7y ago
> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I guess "Fascism" is a decent analogy, but its probably more accurate to just call it Legalism. Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism (while Fascism would be associated with WW2 Germany or Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy)
- morningseagulls 7y ago
  >The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I agree, but "legalism" has its own meaning in Western philosophy, so "fascism" is the more appropriate terminology to avoid confusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Western_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Western_philosophy) >Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism This is something that most people won't know without a detailed study of Chinese history. Legalism in China won the day against Confucianism a long time ago in 221 BC, when the First Emperor of China came to power, and has never quite lost its place in Chinese political thought since.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    Hmm, perhaps the best approach is to use the official translated word from Chinese: Fajia, to represent the concept and minimize confusion. Ex: We could translate "Samurai" into "Knight", except a Samurai code of feudalism was completely different than a Knight's code of feudalism (even if both were forms of feudalism). There are also major differences in how the aristocracy worked between Japan and Europe. At some point, its best to just stick with the native tongue.
    - morningseagulls 7y ago
      >perhaps the best approach is to use the official translated word from Chinese Sadly, the "best approach" has a good track record of being the approach that is usually not taken.
ddtaylor 7y ago
Like most communist places there is either an infinite black market or eventually they give up on that whole "no private property" thing, at which point you're effectively just left with a shitty excuse for a corrupt government.
whiddershins 7y ago
This is commonly said. Can you help me understand how Communism is distinct from Fascism? It is my understanding Fascism was invented by disaffected Socialists and Marxists who felt the revolution was taking too long. What is an example of a Communist country, or does every country that calls itself Communist fail the test? And if every country fails the test, what precisely would be different about a true Communist country versus these pretend-Communist countries?
- Tehdasi 7y ago
  You need to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union Contrast how the current Chinese economy is far closer to an average OECD economy to the USSRs economy.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  > or does every country that calls itself Communist fail the test That's how I look at it, though I'm no expert. > what precisely would be different about a true Communist country versus these pretend-Communist countries True collective ownership/Marxism. It's unclear whether it's even possible to create this kind of society without it regressing to brutal authoritarianism, but that's the idea at least.
- tptacek 7y ago
  It is my understanding Fascism was invented by disaffected Socialists and Marxists who felt the revolution was taking too long. The opposite statement is closer to the truth: fascism as a reactionary response to Marxism and progressivism.

by _bxg1 7y ago

loceng 7y ago

Broken link?

_bxg1 7y ago
Fixed, sorry

newfangle 7y ago

Communists killing and imprisoning other communists has happened since the ideology was first conceived so you will need a better argument than that to say they are not communist. I really dont understand why so many people feel the need to post comments online distinguishing that China is not communist. Its a disgusting authoritarian regime just like every other self proclaimed communist country in history.

_bxg1 7y ago
Historically communist countries have been pretty fascist, but communism itself (in theory) is about workers' rights and the elevation of the little people. I don't know how genuine Mao was about those ideals, but Xi is dropping all pretense by intentionally targeting labor movements. So he shouldn't even get to hide behind a flawed idealism. He has no idealism except power.
- pvg 7y ago
  You're just ascribing the negative aspects of communism-as-realized to fascism but this seems trivially ahistorical. The internecine conflicts in communist states were much more pronounced than in the fascist ones, perhaps in part because communism was always a more complex and developed movement ideologically.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Sure; in my mind, fascist == authoritarian + nationalist. I realize that's extremely simplified - I'm not a historian - but that's what I meant by it.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Communism as a political theory is anti-nationalist, and fascism as a political phenomenon arose in part as a reaction to Marxism. One of Payne's Fascist Negations is "anti-Communism". There are multiple species of authoritarian tyrannies; fascism is just one of them. I think people get in trouble trying to generalize and apply fascism to places it doesn't fit. "Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem.
      - pvg 7y ago
        "Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem. Mildly amusing thingie - a Bulgarian dissident's dissidenting involved writing a book about fascism (titled, for clarity, Fascism) which was really an oblique critique of the communist regime. It got past the censors and was published and then fairly quickly recalled. He later became Bulgaria's first post-communist president.
shkkmo 7y ago
US foreign policy is a big reason why only authoritarian communist governments have been able to survive. Nicaragua is a great example of this. The Sadinistas lost power through free elections in which the US interferred. Now that the Sadinistas are back in power, the freedom of their elections has been rapidly decreasing. "Communist" as a lable has been so misused and unclearly defined for so long that it is mostly useless as a descriptive term.

pvg 7y ago

Communists have been arresting each other on ideological grounds for about as long as they've had the power to arrest people.

tossAfterUsing 7y ago

> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Maybe the community could help me to understand whether this is accurate?

_bxg1 7y ago
If you want to get technical it's a very advanced fascist dictatorship - the way it leverages elements of capitalism, for example. An innovative fascist dictatorship, even. But ideologically speaking, it's very simple.
rodgerd 7y ago
Consider Eco's writing on Ur-Facism: http://www.interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html http://www.interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_F... and note that the apologia for the Chinese government by the owner of an NBA team focused heavily on point 8 (for example). The CCP has long ago abandoned ideas of collective ownership; China has many very wealthy individuals whose wealth is private.
pnako 7y ago
Fascist is maybe not a good term, because fascism is actually quite specific and to some extent euro-centric (plus, nowadays it just means "bad people" without people necessarily understanding what fascism actually is). But China seems to be a country run on a totalitarian and ethnic nationalist ideology.
tptacek 7y ago
Only if words don't mean things, though you can see how the least charitable (which is not to say least accurate; who knows) reading of Chinese policy would lead you there. In particular, I think there's a trap where if you cherry pick from Maoist China and modern China, you can assembly a Frankenchina that meets some of the definitions. There are some pretty obvious elements of most common academic definitions of fascism that China flunks, no matter how you read them; for instance, Chinese society has not been mass-mobilized and militarized by any reasonable definition of those terms. Modern China not only doesn't reject modernism, it wholeheartedly embraces it. If there's a secular civic religion, with ceremony and liturgy, it isn't powerful enough to crowd out other faiths; there is a national patriotic spirit, but it isn't articulated through quasi-mystical symbols and rituals. Violence isn't employed for its own cathartic sake, and is largely "professionalized". People want to use fascism as a shorthand for "authoritarian nationalism", but it isn't; there are plenty of examples of authoritarian nationalist states that are demonstrably not fascist --- in fact, there are plenty of right-wing authoritarian nationalist states that aren't. Maybe a good acid test for this: if you were living in a fascist state, you'd know it, in much the same you'd know if you were living in an actual according-to-Hoyle theocracy. China is a huge country and millions of people there live with a relationship between themselves and the state that we would recognize in the west. I want also to acknowledge that it is kind of squicky to debate whether China is "fascist", in that it's an extremely loaded term that carries implications for ordinary Chinese people living their lives (that's part of the point of fascism). But a discussion about what fascism is or isn't is at least more in the spirit of HN than a lot of the other comments on these threads.

natechols 7y ago

How about we just use more specific terms? China remains very much Leninist, and to a lesser extent Maoist; it has however mostly ceased to be Marxist. They kept the basic political forms but moved to a relatively liberal economic model.

claudiawerner 7y ago
I'm curious as to how China is "Leninist" at all. The fact of rule by one party that claims to represent the working class does not a Leninist state make.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Perhaps Leninist in a historical sense of "thought violence to gain control in a type of region Marx himself thought wouldn't be viable". Putting aside his philosophy's flaws he expected a feudalism to capitalism to communism progression more or less. Lenin was not only part of ousting the czar but establishment of the party as a nominally proletariat peasant dictatorship. That attempted teological speedrunning to try to "skip to the end" is classic Lenin. Even if the system later reforms there is still a legacy in the how. France and England are both parliamentary representative democracies who were once under monarchies but the UK has far more monarchist vestiges than France. While technically accurate to call France as monarchist legacied they would have far more grounds to object to the labeling given the purge of nobility and subsequent traditions - even when they fell into dictatorships again they certainly weren't kings. To be pedantic we could describe these aspect vestiges as "x legacied". That the West uses latin as it does for mottos and species names is a Roman legacy for instance for it is a trace of their power as lasting influence even though it does not exist today. It does not imply current control any more than Byzantium had control over western Europe. China may be better described amongst many other attributes as Leninist legacied, oligarchy legacied, Capitalist dictatorship until Xinjiang's inevitable demise. The fact he consolidated control over Oligarchic and has no clear explicit succession line makes him dictatorial as opposed to mere Oligarchic "the remaining few interests will pick after him". If as the whispered snark of "Emperor Xi" holds and he successfully transmits power to offspring he will have founded an empire (if it dies quickly it wouldn't be the first Chinese dynasty to do so).

dragontamer 7y ago

> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I guess "Fascism" is a decent analogy, but its probably more accurate to just call it Legalism. Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism (while Fascism would be associated with WW2 Germany or Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy)

morningseagulls 7y ago
>The discussions I've seen point more towards Legalism, a Chinese theory of governance that's similar to fascism. I agree, but "legalism" has its own meaning in Western philosophy, so "fascism" is the more appropriate terminology to avoid confusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Western_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Western_philosophy) >Especially because China has a long, cultural history with Legalism This is something that most people won't know without a detailed study of Chinese history. Legalism in China won the day against Confucianism a long time ago in 221 BC, when the First Emperor of China came to power, and has never quite lost its place in Chinese political thought since.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  Hmm, perhaps the best approach is to use the official translated word from Chinese: Fajia, to represent the concept and minimize confusion. Ex: We could translate "Samurai" into "Knight", except a Samurai code of feudalism was completely different than a Knight's code of feudalism (even if both were forms of feudalism). There are also major differences in how the aristocracy worked between Japan and Europe. At some point, its best to just stick with the native tongue.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >perhaps the best approach is to use the official translated word from Chinese Sadly, the "best approach" has a good track record of being the approach that is usually not taken.

ddtaylor 7y ago

Like most communist places there is either an infinite black market or eventually they give up on that whole "no private property" thing, at which point you're effectively just left with a shitty excuse for a corrupt government.

whiddershins 7y ago

This is commonly said. Can you help me understand how Communism is distinct from Fascism? It is my understanding Fascism was invented by disaffected Socialists and Marxists who felt the revolution was taking too long. What is an example of a Communist country, or does every country that calls itself Communist fail the test? And if every country fails the test, what precisely would be different about a true Communist country versus these pretend-Communist countries?

Tehdasi 7y ago
You need to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union Contrast how the current Chinese economy is far closer to an average OECD economy to the USSRs economy.
_bxg1 7y ago
> or does every country that calls itself Communist fail the test That's how I look at it, though I'm no expert. > what precisely would be different about a true Communist country versus these pretend-Communist countries True collective ownership/Marxism. It's unclear whether it's even possible to create this kind of society without it regressing to brutal authoritarianism, but that's the idea at least.
tptacek 7y ago
It is my understanding Fascism was invented by disaffected Socialists and Marxists who felt the revolution was taking too long. The opposite statement is closer to the truth: fascism as a reactionary response to Marxism and progressivism.