My god, even the best chance for socialism is hopeless because of the dollar. “it’s not doomer because the party could do something different” idgaf day after day it’s more dollars and less long term hope. Nothing China does can matter because all the green energy, all the bnr, all the poverty elimination, all of it is paid for with imperial currency and little to no interest in changing this arrangement from within. The party will talk about win-win arrangements and mutually-beneficial cooperation until the fucking nukes are flying.
I want to push back on this kind of thinking cuz I see it a lot when people are trying to defend China against, what is imo, valid criticism of an inactive, excessively “pragmatic” policy by appealing to some kind of grand plan
The USSR did many of these things that people say China can’t do while they won’t do it. Dedollarization? The USSR had an almost entirely separate economic bloc where, when trade was conducted with currency it was done in the ruble, not the dollar. Ofc it wasn’t free from trade in the dollar and countries still had to retain dollar reserves (if they could get them) but this arrangement, while definitely not being perfect, allowed countries like Cuba or Vietnam and others to survive, even thrive sometimes, while being strangled by the US-led imperialist economic order despite the USSR never having the kind of technically advanced, massive economy like China does now
It didn’t result in nuclear war, even though it did get close sometime cuz this is what confronting imperialism on a world scale entails, cuz nuclear war is suicide for everyone involved. It’s not GOOD but it is better than doing nothing but selling solar panels (quite compatible with capitalism btw, also doesn’t solve climate change) while the oceans boil and a negative “peace” reigns. While an alternative economic system that actually exists is extremely threatening to capitalism, the ruling class of the West aren’t “dumb” or suicidal and I think it’s harmful to think of them that way cuz they are very “rational” considered from their perspective
Also, even if the CPC refuses to meet it right now, confrontation is inevitable and the ongoing provocations will continue to increase and increase no matter how much “reassuring” they do cuz the US cannot permit another country to surpass it in economic power or the entire structure that keeps the third-world locked into US-led imperialism falls apart and they will not let that happen passively so either China will have to submit to the US or confront them
The reason the USSR and their bloc collapsed so relatively peacefully is cuz it was self-destruction. In the end, they mostly gave up power willingly. In the CPSU, so rotted internally by revisionism, most of them watched Gorbachev destroy the country for years and then they gave in to Yeltsin (I’m oversimplifying but yeah lol) and let him finish it and the most of the rest actively helped this process, which visibly began with Krushchev, along. Not to say there was no fighting but yeh
When the US starts to go, I can’t even imagine how violent it will be cuz the ruling class of the West are quite willing to fight to keep their privileges, even if that means the state has to intervene in a collapsing economy directly against the whining of many
and traditional neoliberal ideology if it’s necessary to protect capitalism (fascism is also on the table for them ofc), where the CPSU was unwilling to protect the power of the working class in the USSR (cuz many of them just wanted to restore capitalism anyway lol) and the masses had long been demobilized