You having the audacity to label someone else's analysis as "non-dialectical-materialist," yet not understanding that economic power, especially that of billionaires and millionaires, does translate to political power is the reason I'm not taking you seriously.
"Having a lot of money doesn’t necessarily translate into having a lot of political power,"
I'm not going to listen to someone who won't even acknowledge how economic power translates to political power. This is the dumbest, non-Marxist take I've ever heard, more like something a Social-Democrat would say, which seems to be how many "Marxists" who support modern-day China tend to sound.
The Chinese state doesn't own all of the means of production, and capitalists (particularly rich capitalists) still have plenty of economic power, so it's not like the capitalist class in China is completely without power.
I already explained to you what state capitalism is: "state capitalism, where the private ownership of the means of production still exists but under state control and regulations,..."
Private ownership of the means of production is what has to end for a system to be socialist. In China, there's plenty of private ownership of the means of production, so it isn't socialist.
This copy and pasted response doesn't relate exactly to anything I said. I never said that socialism is only when the public directly owns the means of production. I said that state capitalism, where the private ownership of the means of production still exists but under state control and regulations, is still capitalism and must be abolished for socialism. This is a sentiment that Engels expressed in "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," so I'm not pulling this out of thin air.
Also, just to add, state capitalism is still capitalism. State ownership alone doesn't do away with capitalism or the exploitation it entails. It is essentially the final stage of capitalism that must be abolished for the establishment of socialism. 2/2 #socialism#capitalism
"...capital accumulation by private individuals is absent in this model."
There are billionaires in China and capitalists in general who accumulate capital. If state capitalism is when the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production, then it would be more accurate to call China a mixture of state-capitalism with private-capitalism. 1/2 #socialism#capitalism
@Cowbee
I'm not able to take anything you say seriously. First, you claim that individuals having authority over others isn't an accumulation of power even though a person with authority would have to have power over others to have authority over them, and then you claim that communism is compatible with inequality, which is the most absurd thing I've ever heard a communist claim. You sound like a revisionist.
@Cowbee
Hierarchy is the accumulation of power in the hands of a select minority of people. Even if there are safeguards to prevent too much power going to the top there will still always be an accumulation of power at the top of the hierarchy, thereby creating an inequality of power amongst the population. The only way to not have inequality of any kind is to get rid of hierarchy.
@Cowbee
Hierarchy is a bad thing as it perpetuates inequality and oppression by allowing certain people to have more power than others. Not only would a system where power is decentralized be better in terms of eliminating inequality and oppression, but such a system would be more in line with communism's goal of creating a classless society.
@Cowbee
I never said ideas create reality, however, I do believe that ideas can shape reality through the actions of those who hold those ideas, and I completely agree with the concept of unity through organization, again, never stating the contrary.
@Cowbee
I haven't based a single thing on idealism or "vibes". I examined the historical events and inferred a logical conclusion based on the facts, and the facts are that ideological unity was indeed lacking and necessary among the Spanish Revolutionaries, but nothing suggests that their unity had to be based on hierarchy and centralized planning, nor does anything suggest that the CNT-FIA's methods of the organization were inferior simply because they lost because other traditionally...
@Cowbee
...disagreements over issues such as the militarization of the militias and the centralization of power. It is completely possible that had the organization of the military been unified in a decentralized way they would not have been defeated.
@davel
I'm not dealing with your pro-Chinese-capitalism revisionist garbage.