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If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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What no theory does to you.
No seriously, you need to read on this, you clearly have at best a very simplistic understanding of the subject.
Private property and markets can't just be abolished immediately after a revolution, it's not magic. Young socialist systems have to go through a transitional phase during which private property and markets are still allowed under strict oversight of the state.
His does not make them capitalist as the proletariat still has control over this private sector via the socialist state, such as in China where all of the essential industry that is necessary for every other, known as the commanding heights, are fully state owned and the enterprises that are private are required by law to have a party member on their board as well as a "golden share" owned by the state that allow it unchallenged veto power over the board's decisions among other means of authority over the private sector.
Yeah, if you're operating within Stalinist ML bubble. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's inherently "true", and it can be healthy to read other communist sides/perspectives. Some recommendations would be Marx's writings, Lenin, Bordiga if you want a lesser known but still respected Leninist who's critical of ML's/Stalinism.
No one claims magic here, and it's true - a transitional DOTP period must happen, but it's not a license to preserve the capitalist relations indefinitely. The fundamental relations of production that I've mentioned must be consciously dismantled over time as a precondition for socialism, that's what the proletarian dictatorship is literally for. If not, then it's only a matter of time until the state reverts to bourgeois control disguised as "socialist".
Nationalizing capital while leaving value production intact leaves capitalism functionally preserved, read Critique of the Gotha Programme by Marx where he makes this explicit - converting private to state property without abolishing wage labor/value mediation and calling it Socialism is literally Lassallean nonsense.
Capitalist production is not magically nullified by the presence of a party member or state shareholding either: workers still sell their labor-power, surplus value is still extracted, production is for market sale or in other words, capitalist mode of production prevails at full force. Legal oversight is a managerial form, not an abolition of class relations.
Stalin died 70 years ago, there is no Stalinist ML bubble.
Bordiga lmao
I don't do shit but hate on communists, and that's the truly revolutionary stance.
At least his critique is clear and coherent.
If validity of theory was based on what its writers had done, then Marx would be worthless and Urban Guerilla doctrine would be invaluable.
Validity of theory isn't based on what its writers do, but on what its students do. It's a social science and without practical application it is absolutely worthless.
Marx, Engels and Lenin have been proven right by the practice of Marxist-Leninists, it isn't the rule that the best theorists are also revolutionary leaders, but revolutionary leaders by their success prove the worth of the theory they applied to their circumstances.
I've never met a Bordiga follower whose achievements amount to more than writing in opposition to AES. You didn't need to read leftcoms for that.
That makes sense
Okay... but when will this "transitionary period" finish.
If a "transitionary period" takes more than a decade at what point do we say "they aren't transitioning" and call it what it is, state owned capitalism.
I mean, how could we know how much time is needed for the transition? It has never happened yet, we're still experimenting.
Capitalism spent centuries being the secondary mode of production under feudalism before the bourgeoisie had developed the productive forces enough to transition away from feudalism. The USSR, Albania and others attempted to force a socialist mode or production before the productive forces were sufficiently developed and it didn't work. China's strategy of development of the productive forces has had very little downside and I think it's unreasonable and kind of suspect to want them to turn back (to policies that ultras would also condemn for one reason or another, as they always do). Poverty fetishism isn't Marxist and isn't scientific.
Or you could just read The State and Revolution where Lenin goes into it for about a hundred pages. It's been out for over a century.
The fact that the transition takes a very long time isn't proof that it isn't transitioning. What even is this assumption that transitional periods must last less than a decade? Seriously, where the heck does that even come from?
To answer your question, this transitional state is necessary as long as capitalism remains the overwhelmingly dominant mode of production on the planet because in a mainly capitalist world, transfer of technology and resources mostly happen between businesses doing business.
If you try to go to a higher stage of socialism while the world is still almost only capitalist you'll end up with all the problems that plagued the soviet union, with the capitalist countries able to very easily sanction and isolate you since they can't get access to your markets even if they don't anyway and with you having to re-invent every new technology the rest of the capitalist world create just to keep up since there is no way the capitalists would give you the blueprints among other problems.
Okay, what proof is there China has been making progress on the transition?
That's approximately the time Xi has been president. Since 2012. I'm not going to place blame on him for regimes before him.
When Lenin attempted to implement this transition he eventually fell ill and was unable to prevent Stalin's authoritarian takeover.
It seems as though there needs to be some time limit on having full state power consolidated in one place because every regime change risks the goals being changed.
If a leader gets in who realizes that having a board seat on powerful companies can benefit them personally, and they decide not to transition, what can be done at that point?
China was the second-largest supplier of the US in 2024, with goods valued at $462.62 billion.
Capitalism will remain the dominant mode of production as long as China continues to play a key role in funding of the American economy and continuing to loan them increasingly more money.
There are several. The private sector has never dominated the economy, the public sector always kept a firm hold on banking, raw materials, energy production and infrastructure that the private sector is dependent on to make and deliver what they sell, in other word, a massive leverage the state can use to pressure the private sector.
They can literally starve private companies of financing if they want, which they did when they let real estate speculators go bankrupt after the state voluntarily burst the real estate bubble. Something a bourgeois ruled capitalist country would have never done.
Moreover since a few years ago, the proportion of the economy that is privately owned has been decreasing while the state's control over them has increased.
Here is a video explaining China's socialist system in which some such evidences are presented.
That's still very arbitrary.
I'll let answering this one to someone with more more knowledge on 1922-1925 period. I'll only say that Lenin never tried to prevent Stalin from taking power. The Lenin testament, assuming you are at least partially referring to that, is most likely forged. We know from Lenin's numerous letters and other writing that Lenin had an extremely poor opinion of Trotsky and his politics, and as such would have never recommended Trotsky as a potential general secretary of the party. Furthermore, Lenin and Stalin were close friends.
They can be voted out of their position. Literally.
The political system in China, to put it very simply, is a bottom up elected council system. The peoples vote for local administrators like mayors and such, these local administrator vote to elect the rank above them, who themselves vote in the ranks above them and so on all the way up to the congress general secretary (side note: Xi is both the president and the general secretary, but the president is a largely ceremonial role and doesn't have that much power, Xi's real political power comes from him being the general secretary, no from him being the president).
And for each rank, the elected officials can be un-elected by the ranks bellow. Even Xi could be un-elected, he won't because he is very popular among both the peoples and the party members, but he could be. This is one of the rational behind why they removed the terms limit by the way, why have a time limit that automatically end the general secretary's term when he can be un-elected at any time?
Yes, as I said, in a capitalist world exchanges between countries are done mostly through businesses. So in order to have exchanges of resources and technology and not be cut of and starved like the USSR was, having businesses selling to other countries and businesses coming to sell in yours is a necessary evil.
Although, China has been reducing their exchanges with the US for almost a decade now, and it is only accelerating with Trump's lunacy. Right now, Chinese money is overall leaving the US, not entering it. China is now a net seller of US treasury bonds instead of a net buyer like it still was until relatively recently. China also banned the export of a lot of dual use metals, especially rare earths, to the US. And since China controls between 30 to 90% of production depending on the specific mineral, the US can't really get those from anywhere else.
What do you think the transition from Socialism to Communism looks like? Especially when Communism must be global.