Has China Turned to Capitalism?—Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

ABSTRACT

If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see three social experiments. The first experiment, based on the equal distribution of poverty, suggests the “universal asceticism” and “rough egalitarianism” criticised by the Communist Manifesto. We can now understand the decision to move to Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which was often interpreted as a return to capitalism. The increasing threat of war pushed Stalin into sweeping economic collectivisation. The third experiment produced a very advanced welfare state but ended in failure: in the last years of the Soviet Union, it was characterised by mass absenteeism and disengagement in the workplace; this stalled productivity, and it became hard to find any application of the principle that Marx said should preside over socialism—remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered. The history of China is different: Mao believed that, unlike “political capital,” the economic capital of the bourgeoisie should not be subject to total expropriation, at least until it can serve the development of the national economy. After the tragedy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it took Deng Xiaoping to emphasise that socialism implies the development of the productive forces. Chinese market socialism has achieved extraordinary success.

KEYWORDS:

• Class struggle
• inequality
• socialism
• populism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Domenico Losurdo is Professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Urbino, Italy. He is the author of many books, some of which have been translated into many languages. The following have been published in English: Heidegger and the Ideology of War (New York: Humanity Books, 2001); Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004); Liberalism: A Counter-History (London: Verso, 2011); War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 2015); Non-violence: A History beyond the Myth (New York and London: Lexington, 2015).

Notes

1 On Benjamin and Roth, see Losurdo (2013, chapter VII, § 3); in my book I am referring to a deepening of the problems discussed in this essay.