Socialism
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The legacy of Deng Xiaoping comes directly from Mao Zedong. There is no contradiction between the 2 eras as socialism is constantly in flux attuned to the current material conditions and current contradictions at hand. This legacy continues today with Xi Jinping Thought.

“Zhou said he hoped that a coalition government would come into being if Chiang admitted the CPC as an equal partner. ‘The United States will find us more cooperative than the Guomindang. China must industrialise. This can only be done by free enterprise and with the aid of foreign capital. Chinese and American interests are correlated. The two countries fit well together.’ Mao went further, hinting that, although dedicated to socialism, the CPC would delay drastic social reforms for ‘twenty years or more… should American help be forthcoming.’ He and Zhou envisaged for China something akin to the Marshall Plan that later put Western Europe back on its feet. ‘The U.S.S.R has suffered greatly from the war… It will be far too busy with its own reconstruction. We are quite willing to make concessions.’ ‘Revolution is a very gradual process, and we shall have to go through a comparatively long new-democratic stage,’ asserted Zhou Enlai. This long-term policy, advocating a mixed economy, would be the one that Zhou would endeavor to pursue through the following decades. And even though at times contrary winds blew, and schemes utterly different took hold for a while, the ‘opening of China,’ attributed to Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, goes right back to those concepts forged by Zhou Enlai and Mao in 1944 in Yenan” - (Biography of Zhou Enlai)

“We want to do business. Quite right, business will be done. We are against no one except the domestic and foreign reactionaries who hinder us from doing business. Everybody should know that it is none other than the imperialists and their running dogs, the Chiang Kai-shek reactionaries, who hinder us from doing business and also from establishing diplomatic relations with foreign countries. When we have beaten the internal and external reactionaries by uniting all domestic and international forces, we shall be able to do business and establish diplomatic relations with all foreign countries on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty” - Mao Zedong

“In 1954 the Chinese Government initiated the celebrated Five Principles of peaceful coexistence. They are mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Together with other Asian and African countries, we formulated the Ten Principles on the basis of the Five Principles at the Bandung Conference of 1955” - Mao Zedong

“Mao being interviewed in 1938 by Haldore Hanson, a foreign correspondent: ‘You mean to say,’ I commented, ‘that the Chinese Communist party is willing to support a democratic government after this war and does not intend to renew its struggle against the landlords?’ Mao nodded. ‘How then, I asked, do you hope to achieve Communism? How can you build a socialist republic?’ Mao said he hoped that the change from Democracy to Socialism would be ‘evolutionary, not revolutionary. The chief weapon would be education, not an execution ax.’ ‘But there is no historical precedent for a peaceful introduction of Socialism,’ I protested. Mao smiled and added, ‘We are trying to make history, not to imitate it’” - (Hanson, Humane Endeavour: The Story of the China War, 1939, p. 310)

“Our policy toward the national bourgeoisie has been to redeem their property; on the contrary, in that period our policy should still have been to protect the national bourgeoisie and win it over so as to enable us to concentrate our efforts on fighting the chief enemies” - Mao Zedong

“In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie comes under the category of contradictions among the people. By and large, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticising and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours” - Mao Zedong

  • This is socialism, the theory being put into practice

  • Explanation of this from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin:

“No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society…” - Karl Marx

“The idea held by some socialists that we need capital but not the capitalists is altogether wrong. It is posited within the concept of capital that the objective conditions of labour - and these are its own product - take on a personality towards it, or, what is the same, that they are posited as the property of a personality alien to the worker. The concept of capital contains the capitalist” - Karl Marx

“Development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced” - Karl Marx

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call Communism the real movement which sublates the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence” - Karl Marx

“‘Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?’ - No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity” - Friedrich Engels

“In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able abolish private property only when the means of production are in sufficient quantity” - Friedrich Engels

“So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all all. With more left over for expanding social capital and extending the forces of production… there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society’s productive forces, and a poor oppressed class” - Friedrich Engels

“It means that, to a certain extent, we are re-creating capitalism. We are doing this quite openly. It is state capitalism. But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit ofthe bourgeoisie, and to the detriment the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and offighting it. It goes without saying that we must grant concessions to the foreign bourgeoisie, to foreign capital. Without the slightest denationalisation, we shall lease mines, forests and oilfields to foreign capitalists, and receive exchange manufactured goods, machinery etc., and thus restore our own industry” - V.I. Lenin

“Get down to business, all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build a Communist republic. Since we must necessarily learn quickly, any slackness in this respect is a serious crime. And we must undergo this training, because we have no other way out. You must remember that our land is impoverished after man years of trial and suffering, and has no socialist France or socialist England as neighbours which could help us with their highly developed technology and their highly developed industry. Bear that in mind! We must remember that at present all their highly developed technology and highly developed industry belong to the capitalists, who are fighting us” - V.I. Lenin

  • enigma@lemmygrad.mlOP
    4·
    2 years ago

    “These defects are inevitable in the first phase of Communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. In a higher phase of Communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased and with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners; From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” - Karl Marx

    “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby” - Karl Marx

    “Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity” - Karl Marx

    “Socialised production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organisation, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master - free” - Friedrich Engels

    “The so-called ‘socialist society’ is not anything immutable. Like all other social formations, it should be conceived in a state of constant flux and change. Its crucial difference from the present order consists naturally in production organised on the basis of common ownership by the nature of all means of production” - Friedrich Engels

    [Do you intend to replace the existing social order by community of property at one stroke?] “We have no such intention. The development of the masses cannot be ordered by decree. It is determined by the development of the conditions in which these masses live, and therefore proceeds gradually” - Friedrich Engels

    [How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of property is to be effected?] “The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution” - Friedrich Engels

    “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country” - V.I. Lenin

    “You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state - monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism! For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest? Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy - and then it is a step towards socialism. For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly” - V.I. Lenin

    “In any socialist revolution. After the proletariat seizes power and basically finishes the task of depriving exploiters and supressing their revolt. It is bound to give priority to the fundamental task of creating a social structure higher than that of the capitalists and improving labor productivity” - V.I. Lenin

    “No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, had denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic implies the determination of Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic system is recognised as a socialist order” - V.I. Lenin

    “Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not understand even this (anarchists and a good half of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries)” - V.I. Lenin

    “State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic… I can imagine with what noble indignation some people will recoil from these words. What! The transition to state capitalism in the Soviet Socialist Republic would be a step forward? Isn’t this the betrayal of socialism? We must deal with this point in detail. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry. On the contrary. The development of capitalism. Controlled and regulated by the proletarian state (i.e… ‘state’ capitalism in this sense of the term). is advantageous and necessary in an extremely devastated and backward small-peasant country…” - V.I. Lenin

    “The concessionaire is a capitalist. He conducts his business on capitalist lines, for profit, and is willing to enter into an agreement with the proletarian government in order to obtain superprofits or raw materials which he cannot otherwise obtain, or can obtain only with great difficulty” - V.I. Lenin

    “If you want to seek answers for everything in Marx you will get nowhere. You have in front of you a laboratory such as the U.S.S.R. which has existed now for more than 20 years but you think that Marx ought to be knowing more than you about socialism. Do you not understand that in the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx was not in a position to foresee!” - J.V. Stalin