It’s just semantics at the end of the day, so not too important, but I’ll play along because I happen to be someone who will call the U.S capitalist, but doesn’t understand why people call China communist.
First, I’ll start off with some definitions. If you disagree on one, provide your own and we can use those for the sake of discussion.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
_
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
_
Communism is a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property, social classes, money and the state (or nation state).
So essentially the easiest way to determine if your society is capitalist or socialist is the existence of private property. If the society is devoid of private property, then the question remains what kind of socialism is it (is there money? Markets? Social classes? A state?).
China isn’t even socialist by this definition, but even if it was, it would still be miles away from communist.
This is a rather reductionist view of capitalism, socialism, and communism. To understand these systems, we need to take a look at the actual literature.
In 1776, Adam Smith published his work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” which defined the cornerstones of capital, money, and value theory in the context of the changing economies of the 18th century. Smith’s work is known for concepts such as “the invisible hand” and “competition prevents exploitation” through free market capitalism.
In 1867, Karl Marx published his work “Das Kapital,” which offered a critique on some of capitalism’s theories. This work provided the foundation for work on class theory, class struggle, and the notion of socialist/communist states. The key definitions being that capitalism separates the workers (who contribute labour) from the capitalist class (who contribute capital and thus machines and forces to improve productivity) and that socialist states place increasing control of these productive forces in the hands of the state (as opposed to the capitalist class). The other key work towards these notions is “The Communist Manifesto,” written with Friedrich Engels. The slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is perhaps the most representative.
Following Marx, Vladimir Lenin wrote critiques of capitalism and described how revolution could be used to achieve a socialist and (eventually) communist society. Mao Zedong’s writings discuss the ideas of revolution to achieve socialism and communism from a Chinese perspective, rather than the Russian one that Lenin had. Crucially, while Marx had written on the socialist transition as one for the advanced capitalist societies of Germany and England, Lenin and Mao approached it more from the perspective of how socialism could be realized from the predominantly agricultural economies of Russia and China.
In 1936, John Maynard Keynes published his work “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” which looked at savings and consumption in the context of the Great Depression. This work forms the foundation for much of modern fiscal and economic policy in the West. Keynes called for government intervention in support of the economy, deviating from Smith’s notions of a free market.
Perhaps the most relevant ideas on the topic today are from Deng Xiaoping Thought, which provided concrete ideas of developing Chinese socialism in the context of a capitalist global economy and in the context of China’s predominantly agricultural economy. This work was kick-started by “Putting into Effect the Socialist Principle of Distribution According to Work,” which described how China was unable to make progress from the primary stage of socialism due to the lack of productive forces which could be leveraged. Remember that Marx’ writings were written from observations of the great industrialized European powers, not the perceived agricultural backwaters of Russia and China.
The crucial concept of Deng Xiaoping Thought is the idea of a socialist market economy. Crucially, that socialism inherently involves the elimination of poverty (pulling people up) rather than the moderation of productivity (pulling people down). As per Keynes, a planned economy with government intervention does not preclude capitalism, and the lack of one does not preclude socialism. Indeed, per Keynes, public ownership of property did not preclude capitalism, and by extension Deng Xiaoping Thought argues that private ownership of property does not necessarily preclude socialism. Indeed, Engels work on the subject discusses that the abolishment of private property cannot happen immediately, and instead proposes alternatives (progressive taxation, inheritance taxes, development of state-owned enterprises) in the meantime for those countries struggling to get past the primary stage of socialism.
Just as a true Smithian free market capitalist economy does not exist, a true Marxist end-stage socialist economy does not exist. If you’ve any interest in this space, the works of Smith and Keynes on one side and Marx, Engels, and Deng on the other side provide pretty complementary coverage of things. In this framework, Smith, Marx, and Engels can be treated as one group (laying the foundations of the work) while Deng and Keynes can be treated as the ones building on top of those core ideas to adapt them to the realities of the situation (for Deng, China’s agriculturally-dependent economy, and for Keynes, the Great Depression).
In practice, we can see the obvious differences between the American and Chinese economies. Whereas the US economy is led by giant multinationals, China’s is led primarily by SOEs. Whereas US billionaires who hold productive forces are essentially invulnerable to government prosecution, Chinese billionaires are not. Whereas land in China is either owned by the state or by farmer collectives, land in the US is mostly privately held.
I haven’t read all of these, but I have read a good deal of Marx/Engles, and am working through Das Kapital currently.
I have written similar comments to this, going over the history of thought. It’s important, and not something to be taken lightly (though there is a fine line between being thorough and gishgalloping, especially in the context of forums like lemmy/reddit/etc.)
Maybe you’re of the view that communism is such a loaded word that trying to define it in just a few dozen or hundred words is a pointless exercise. That’s fine, but if the word is so loaded and complicated, you probably shouldn’t be attaching it to nation-states to try to succinctly describe part of their economic system. The only people you’d be transmitting information to are the people who have the dozen or so required readings under their belt to truly grasp what you meant by communism. At this point, the word provides no value.
No economic system can actually be totally described by a single word, ever. However, a single word can be used to describe a part of a system, and it can be used in a reliable way. I pointed to very common definitions of the words, ones you seem to disagree with, and even in the ~thousand or so words you wrote you didn’t provide clear alternative definitions. That signals to me you probably need tens of thousands of words to properly define what you mean by the word “communism”, and at that point the utility of the word is just completely lost.
I mean, you’re precisely on the right track, which is why no country has ever claimed to be communist. They’ve all claimed to be at various stages of socialism with the end goal of achieving communism. Economic systems are extremely complex, as are the core differentiators between them. There’s rarely a way to cleanly claim “this is true of a capitalist economy but not of a socialist economy” and have that apply to the real world because most economies lie somewhere between free market capitalism and end-stage socialism. The words are horrendously overloaded and have no meaning in comparisons between actual countries. You’re mapping a binary statement onto a spectrum.
Having read Marx/Engels, I really do think Smith is a good place to go from there. Not necessarily because his ideas are great, but because it provides a lot of context for the world in which Marx and Engels were writing from.
Edit: perhaps the cleanest way to differentiate the systems is in their goals. Marx writes “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” implying some degree of central planning to improve the lives of people, while Smith writes “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” implying that people are “led by an invisible hand to promote an end [for the betterment of society].”
The goal of semantics, and words in general, are to convey ideas. It was true in the past that socialism was a very concrete, straightforward thing. If you believed in worker control of the means of production, you were a socialist. Now there are people who say they’re socialist, and they advocate for private tyrannies for the foreseeable future (decades or sometimes even a century+). They want entire generations of humans to be wage slaves, serve the interests of capital, pay their reduced wages to land leeches and banks, and then die without having ever seen a better system.
Those systems, systems by which entire generations of people are subjugated to the interests of capital under authoritarian rule, are now called socialist or sometimes communist. And I no longer have the word to describe a system where wage slavery is immediately abolished (much like chattel slavery was), and workers take immediate control over the means of production.
Those societies/institutions were often overthrown and overrun by either conservative Marxists (e.g Lenin) or fascists (e.g Catalonia).
The entire foundation of Marxist thought was that the economies in question were industrialized, productive, and developed. Those were, Marx argued, the circumstances for which the progression towards socialism would be natural.
Look now at when socialist revolutions occurred and the state of those countries at that time. It’s difficult to argue that those countries were industrialized, productive, or developed.
Lenin and Mao were running off script. According to Marx, every country must transform it’s peasants into proletarians. Historically, this had been done through a period of capitalist development. How do you pursue socialist ideals in a country of peasants?
Mercantilism and capitalism aren’t mutually exclusive, but the U.S is the opposite of mercantilist. Our imports vastly exceed our exports. China is more mercantilist, but still capitalist.
Unless of course you’re using a different definition. If you are, feel free to provide it and then I’ll address your claims on the basis of how you intended to use those words.
Another contributor to the high import are Mexico and Canada which off-paper are completely colonies. The US will import materials to them from the slave countries for assembly. Which lets them avoid the “made in China/Vietnam” sticker. The fact that only the US can but tariffs on trade between these three countries just further pushes that message
If we look at it that way then it can be seen as mercantilist. Moreover the point of calling it as such is to point out that even if you come up with a system to help workers and prevent generational wealth (like capitalism) the people with wealth get to decide how it works
The only metric that page uses to define India as socialist is “makes a constitutional reference to socialism”. That can mean socialism is some end goal, or they just have policy inspired by socialism.
Words have definitions, so just saying “this country is socialist” is not enough evidence to declare that country is socialist, unless your definition of socialism is “a system which people call socialist”.
By that definition, America is socialist so long as I call it socialist. It becomes tautological and useless.
Well I didn’t create that Wiki page, so I’m only just reiterating what it says on there.
According to that page it is, in whatever way you want to interpret that page as.
The only metric that page uses to define India as socialist is “makes a constitutional reference to socialism”. That can mean socialism is some end goal, or they just have policy inspired by socialism.
Having said all that, they are actually declaring they are socialists in their constitution, so even if they don’t get to it to a point where you think it’s socialist, they think they’re are already, or are going towards socialism.
People say things for reasons, and those reasons aren’t always to express the true state of things. For example, it’s powerful to capture positive social sentiment around socialism without having to actually relinquish any power to the working class. It effectively destroys workers’ ability to communicate effectively about what we want to see in the world.
Back in the day, you could simply say “I’m a socialist” and that meant that you advocated for a system where workers owned the means of production, and private property didn’t exist. Now you can say the same thing, and what does it mean? Literally nothing, it’s an incoherent thing to say because it has too many contradictory meanings.
I still identify as a libertarian socialist, but every other person I talk to doesn’t understand what I mean by this (pro-China? pro-Bernie? interested in dismantling private ownership? want to slightly increase taxes on corporations and implement universal healthcare?). Most people that use the label libertarian socialist align with the original definition of socialism, and I find value in that. However for the purposes of communicating to people who don’t agree with the position, it’s effectively useless.
Destroying that avenue to communicate was definitely intentional, it subverts actual organizational efforts. The same thing has happened with unions. Essentially the entire 19th century socialist movement has been systematically destroyed through propaganda and language manipulation.
Well truly, I don’t mean to discredit what you are saying (especially since its being said well), but I gotta just point out again that they think they are socialists, enough so that they put it into their constitution.
“Boots on the ground” reality I agree with you that they are not (though I am an outsider, not a citizen of the nation, so my view is from the external), they seem very capitalistic to me. But again, their stated goals as per their constitution (and that wiki page while we’re at it) says otherwise.
It’s just semantics at the end of the day, so not too important, but I’ll play along because I happen to be someone who will call the U.S capitalist, but doesn’t understand why people call China communist.
First, I’ll start off with some definitions. If you disagree on one, provide your own and we can use those for the sake of discussion.
_
_
So essentially the easiest way to determine if your society is capitalist or socialist is the existence of private property. If the society is devoid of private property, then the question remains what kind of socialism is it (is there money? Markets? Social classes? A state?).
China isn’t even socialist by this definition, but even if it was, it would still be miles away from communist.
This is a rather reductionist view of capitalism, socialism, and communism. To understand these systems, we need to take a look at the actual literature.
In 1776, Adam Smith published his work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” which defined the cornerstones of capital, money, and value theory in the context of the changing economies of the 18th century. Smith’s work is known for concepts such as “the invisible hand” and “competition prevents exploitation” through free market capitalism.
In 1867, Karl Marx published his work “Das Kapital,” which offered a critique on some of capitalism’s theories. This work provided the foundation for work on class theory, class struggle, and the notion of socialist/communist states. The key definitions being that capitalism separates the workers (who contribute labour) from the capitalist class (who contribute capital and thus machines and forces to improve productivity) and that socialist states place increasing control of these productive forces in the hands of the state (as opposed to the capitalist class). The other key work towards these notions is “The Communist Manifesto,” written with Friedrich Engels. The slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is perhaps the most representative.
Following Marx, Vladimir Lenin wrote critiques of capitalism and described how revolution could be used to achieve a socialist and (eventually) communist society. Mao Zedong’s writings discuss the ideas of revolution to achieve socialism and communism from a Chinese perspective, rather than the Russian one that Lenin had. Crucially, while Marx had written on the socialist transition as one for the advanced capitalist societies of Germany and England, Lenin and Mao approached it more from the perspective of how socialism could be realized from the predominantly agricultural economies of Russia and China.
In 1936, John Maynard Keynes published his work “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” which looked at savings and consumption in the context of the Great Depression. This work forms the foundation for much of modern fiscal and economic policy in the West. Keynes called for government intervention in support of the economy, deviating from Smith’s notions of a free market.
Perhaps the most relevant ideas on the topic today are from Deng Xiaoping Thought, which provided concrete ideas of developing Chinese socialism in the context of a capitalist global economy and in the context of China’s predominantly agricultural economy. This work was kick-started by “Putting into Effect the Socialist Principle of Distribution According to Work,” which described how China was unable to make progress from the primary stage of socialism due to the lack of productive forces which could be leveraged. Remember that Marx’ writings were written from observations of the great industrialized European powers, not the perceived agricultural backwaters of Russia and China.
The crucial concept of Deng Xiaoping Thought is the idea of a socialist market economy. Crucially, that socialism inherently involves the elimination of poverty (pulling people up) rather than the moderation of productivity (pulling people down). As per Keynes, a planned economy with government intervention does not preclude capitalism, and the lack of one does not preclude socialism. Indeed, per Keynes, public ownership of property did not preclude capitalism, and by extension Deng Xiaoping Thought argues that private ownership of property does not necessarily preclude socialism. Indeed, Engels work on the subject discusses that the abolishment of private property cannot happen immediately, and instead proposes alternatives (progressive taxation, inheritance taxes, development of state-owned enterprises) in the meantime for those countries struggling to get past the primary stage of socialism.
Just as a true Smithian free market capitalist economy does not exist, a true Marxist end-stage socialist economy does not exist. If you’ve any interest in this space, the works of Smith and Keynes on one side and Marx, Engels, and Deng on the other side provide pretty complementary coverage of things. In this framework, Smith, Marx, and Engels can be treated as one group (laying the foundations of the work) while Deng and Keynes can be treated as the ones building on top of those core ideas to adapt them to the realities of the situation (for Deng, China’s agriculturally-dependent economy, and for Keynes, the Great Depression).
In practice, we can see the obvious differences between the American and Chinese economies. Whereas the US economy is led by giant multinationals, China’s is led primarily by SOEs. Whereas US billionaires who hold productive forces are essentially invulnerable to government prosecution, Chinese billionaires are not. Whereas land in China is either owned by the state or by farmer collectives, land in the US is mostly privately held.
I haven’t read all of these, but I have read a good deal of Marx/Engles, and am working through Das Kapital currently.
I have written similar comments to this, going over the history of thought. It’s important, and not something to be taken lightly (though there is a fine line between being thorough and gishgalloping, especially in the context of forums like lemmy/reddit/etc.)
Maybe you’re of the view that communism is such a loaded word that trying to define it in just a few dozen or hundred words is a pointless exercise. That’s fine, but if the word is so loaded and complicated, you probably shouldn’t be attaching it to nation-states to try to succinctly describe part of their economic system. The only people you’d be transmitting information to are the people who have the dozen or so required readings under their belt to truly grasp what you meant by communism. At this point, the word provides no value.
No economic system can actually be totally described by a single word, ever. However, a single word can be used to describe a part of a system, and it can be used in a reliable way. I pointed to very common definitions of the words, ones you seem to disagree with, and even in the ~thousand or so words you wrote you didn’t provide clear alternative definitions. That signals to me you probably need tens of thousands of words to properly define what you mean by the word “communism”, and at that point the utility of the word is just completely lost.
I mean, you’re precisely on the right track, which is why no country has ever claimed to be communist. They’ve all claimed to be at various stages of socialism with the end goal of achieving communism. Economic systems are extremely complex, as are the core differentiators between them. There’s rarely a way to cleanly claim “this is true of a capitalist economy but not of a socialist economy” and have that apply to the real world because most economies lie somewhere between free market capitalism and end-stage socialism. The words are horrendously overloaded and have no meaning in comparisons between actual countries. You’re mapping a binary statement onto a spectrum.
Having read Marx/Engels, I really do think Smith is a good place to go from there. Not necessarily because his ideas are great, but because it provides a lot of context for the world in which Marx and Engels were writing from.
Edit: perhaps the cleanest way to differentiate the systems is in their goals. Marx writes “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” implying some degree of central planning to improve the lives of people, while Smith writes “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” implying that people are “led by an invisible hand to promote an end [for the betterment of society].”
The goal of semantics, and words in general, are to convey ideas. It was true in the past that socialism was a very concrete, straightforward thing. If you believed in worker control of the means of production, you were a socialist. Now there are people who say they’re socialist, and they advocate for private tyrannies for the foreseeable future (decades or sometimes even a century+). They want entire generations of humans to be wage slaves, serve the interests of capital, pay their reduced wages to land leeches and banks, and then die without having ever seen a better system.
Those systems, systems by which entire generations of people are subjugated to the interests of capital under authoritarian rule, are now called socialist or sometimes communist. And I no longer have the word to describe a system where wage slavery is immediately abolished (much like chattel slavery was), and workers take immediate control over the means of production.
Those societies/institutions were often overthrown and overrun by either conservative Marxists (e.g Lenin) or fascists (e.g Catalonia).
The entire foundation of Marxist thought was that the economies in question were industrialized, productive, and developed. Those were, Marx argued, the circumstances for which the progression towards socialism would be natural.
Look now at when socialist revolutions occurred and the state of those countries at that time. It’s difficult to argue that those countries were industrialized, productive, or developed.
Lenin and Mao were running off script. According to Marx, every country must transform it’s peasants into proletarians. Historically, this had been done through a period of capitalist development. How do you pursue socialist ideals in a country of peasants?
US is more mercantilist than capitalist
Mercantilism and capitalism aren’t mutually exclusive, but the U.S is the opposite of mercantilist. Our imports vastly exceed our exports. China is more mercantilist, but still capitalist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
Unless of course you’re using a different definition. If you are, feel free to provide it and then I’ll address your claims on the basis of how you intended to use those words.
We replaced colonies with slave labour countries
Another contributor to the high import are Mexico and Canada which off-paper are completely colonies. The US will import materials to them from the slave countries for assembly. Which lets them avoid the “made in China/Vietnam” sticker. The fact that only the US can but tariffs on trade between these three countries just further pushes that message
If we look at it that way then it can be seen as mercantilist. Moreover the point of calling it as such is to point out that even if you come up with a system to help workers and prevent generational wealth (like capitalism) the people with wealth get to decide how it works
India is considered socialist, even though it has private property.
The only metric that page uses to define India as socialist is “makes a constitutional reference to socialism”. That can mean socialism is some end goal, or they just have policy inspired by socialism.
Words have definitions, so just saying “this country is socialist” is not enough evidence to declare that country is socialist, unless your definition of socialism is “a system which people call socialist”.
By that definition, America is socialist so long as I call it socialist. It becomes tautological and useless.
Well I didn’t create that Wiki page, so I’m only just reiterating what it says on there.
According to that page it is, in whatever way you want to interpret that page as.
Having said all that, they are actually declaring they are socialists in their constitution, so even if they don’t get to it to a point where you think it’s socialist, they think they’re are already, or are going towards socialism.
People say things for reasons, and those reasons aren’t always to express the true state of things. For example, it’s powerful to capture positive social sentiment around socialism without having to actually relinquish any power to the working class. It effectively destroys workers’ ability to communicate effectively about what we want to see in the world.
Back in the day, you could simply say “I’m a socialist” and that meant that you advocated for a system where workers owned the means of production, and private property didn’t exist. Now you can say the same thing, and what does it mean? Literally nothing, it’s an incoherent thing to say because it has too many contradictory meanings.
I still identify as a libertarian socialist, but every other person I talk to doesn’t understand what I mean by this (pro-China? pro-Bernie? interested in dismantling private ownership? want to slightly increase taxes on corporations and implement universal healthcare?). Most people that use the label libertarian socialist align with the original definition of socialism, and I find value in that. However for the purposes of communicating to people who don’t agree with the position, it’s effectively useless.
Destroying that avenue to communicate was definitely intentional, it subverts actual organizational efforts. The same thing has happened with unions. Essentially the entire 19th century socialist movement has been systematically destroyed through propaganda and language manipulation.
Well truly, I don’t mean to discredit what you are saying (especially since its being said well), but I gotta just point out again that they think they are socialists, enough so that they put it into their constitution.
“Boots on the ground” reality I agree with you that they are not (though I am an outsider, not a citizen of the nation, so my view is from the external), they seem very capitalistic to me. But again, their stated goals as per their constitution (and that wiki page while we’re at it) says otherwise.
Anyway, good discussion. :)