pcalau12i

Maybe. In one Chinese textbook I read, the author routinely criticized the USSR’s policies in the way it enforced socialism in other countries, usually enforcing a vision of socialism of specifically Russian origin and oppressing local socialist movements who wanted to tailor socialism to their own material conditions. The Chinese did not like this kind of domination and were fearful of it because they did not want to become a Soviet puppet. I think the Soviets could have potentially made decisions to show it was less interested in domination, but I also do think it is fair to say the Chinese could have been less paranoid as well. It’s hard for me to specifically pick a side because both Mao and Khrushchev did/said some unhinged things at times.

Personally, I think people exaggerate the “revisionist” ideology involved in the sino-soviet split as the only major factor at play, and they miss the other huge factor at play. China just came out of its Century of Humiliation. There was naturally an incredibly strong paranoia that they would get imperialized again. The Soviets did not help assuage these fears when they started to become heavily influential in China’s direct bordering neighbors; Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and later Afghanistan.

If the sino-soviet split was purely about Mao trying to fight Soviet “revisionism,” why did it continue after Mao’s administration ended? It’s not like the Deng administration adhered to the Stalin Model at all, yet the split remained. Well, actually relations did start to finally normalize in the later 1980s culminating in the Sino-Soviet Summit. The reason was that Gorbachev had agreed to some of China’s long-standing demands: to withdraw troops from places like Afghanistan and Mongolia.

You see, Mongolia is on China’s northern border, Vietnam+Cambodia is on China’s southern border, and Afghanistan is on China’s western border. (The eastern border is just the sea.) In all those three land borders, there was huge Soviet presence, so they were basically surrounded by the Soviet military and given their history, they were naturally paranoid of any big country surrounding them and viewed it as an existential threat.

China has a very long history of constantly breaking apart and reforming again in new eras. This process is very messy, a lot of violence and, more importantly, border changes. Many times in history that his led to Vietnam being invaded by China. So, naturally, the Vietnamese also are a bit fearful of China and do not have the best relationship.

Vietnam sought very close relations with the Soviets as a way to offset this, to the point of having a Soviet military presence in Vietnam. The Chinese did not like a foreign country having a military presence in a bordering power that they have mixed relations with, so they, under Mao’s administration, tried to ally closely with Cambodia to offset this.

However, Cambodia decided to attack Vietnam and then lost the war they started. As the losers, the Vietnamese got to replace their government, and thus Cambodia became a borderline Vietnamese puppet state, which increased tensions between China and the Soviets even more since this meant by proxy more Soviet influence in the region also extended to Cambodia. Just look at what the Cambodia’s People Party did after the USSR fell apart. They immediately flip-flopped from a Marxist-Leninist party to a right-wing monarchist party basically overnight. Unlike the Vietnamese, the Cambodian leadership didn’t really actually embrace Marxism-Leninism and were largely just propped up by a foreign power.

That’s why the Deng administration attacked Vietnam, not with the intent of actually conquering it but as a show of force to say basically “we’re still the boss of this region” since the fall of Cambodia meant a fall of Chinese influence in Cambodia and its replacement by Vietnamese influence and, by proxy, Soviet influence.

A lot of the conflict was realpolitik of China very untrustworthy of any other big powers due to the Century of Humiliation and viewing the Soviets as an expansionist power and thus an existential threat to China, and so relations did not really start normalizing until the Soviets agreed to reduce their influence in the region. But by that point the USSR was already falling apart.

Ideology did play a role but it was moreso tangential and not the fundamental reason for the split. Given China’s history, they were already very uneasy about a major power like the Soviets having so much influence in the region, and Mao viewed de-Stalinization as a betrayal, and so ideology played a role as a tipping point. But you then have to ask the question, why were the relations so fragile in the first place that de-Stalinization was enough to cause friendly powers to suddenly become incredibly hostile towards each other? It’s because the relations were already built upon sand, given China’s historical situation combined with the Soviet’s desire to expand their influence.

I hadn’t read it in awhile, but one thing I do recall that I found rather interesting is that Mao’s acknowledgement of an ambiguity in Stalin’s proposals, and personally I see it as an ambiguity in Marxism generally which still hasn’t been fully fleshed out, and personally I think it is underdiscussed.

Socialism’s material foundations is the socialization of labor, which upon it socialism is built through the socialization of appropriation. You cannot socialization appropriation unless labor is socialized, but the socialization of labor is something that arises naturally as a result of the development of the forces of production.

It is clear from many Marxists such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hilferding, Bukharin, etc, that this suggests the immediate abolition of all commodity production is not possible, because small producers cannot be “abolished” as small production (of which commodity production is inevitable) is a result of underdeveloped productive forces, and so you can only encourage the small producers to develop instead.

This is ultimately why socialist countries have always allowed for some level of commodity production. To demand the immediate abolition of all small producers is anti-Marxist and idealist. Even in the Manifesto Marx and Engels do not call for this but only an extension of industries owned by the state, alongside with an encouragement of the development of the forces of production, as this would encourage small producers to develop into large producers (or go bankrupt).

The ambiguity is that, in the transition from small producer to large producer, i.e. from private labor to socialized labor, at some point the socialist state will have to absorb that large producer into the public sector. To my knowledge, Marx or Engels did not write much on how this would actually work. This was also, from what I recall, was one of Mao’s criticisms of Stalin. He did not nationalize part of the agricultural sector (the kolkhoz) viewing it as too underdeveloped, and so that sector of the economy still engaged in commodity production, but never presented a plan on how the kolkhoz sector would eventually be incorporated into the public sector as it developed.

Indeed, it is a bit ambiguous as to how developed a sector of the economy, or even a single enterprise, needs to be prior to it being nationalized, so Mao found it problematic that there wasn’t much of an answer to this question. Stalin’s work almost seems to suggest that the kolkhoz sector would develop and become part of the public sector automatically, but Mao argued that clearly at some point there needs to be a political decision made, and so it cannot just be automatic. I think he’s right, the socialization of labor is in some sense “automatic” as it occurs naturally, even in capitalist societies, as industry develops. But the socialization of appropriation is not, that is an active political decision.

I recall Mao complaining about this in a couple areas as well, not just that work.

It reminds me of Che Guevara’s book on political economy where he also has some loosely related comments. He argued that all forms of production inevitably promote a particular superstructure, and so the public sector and collective kolkhoz sector, since they operated differently, must promote competing and contradictory superstructures. He warned that if the Soviets did not take this seriously, if they did not have some sort of active political plan to combat this, then the kolkhoz will promote a superstructure that is detrimental to the socialist state, because they will benefit from encouraging the weakening of the socialist state by reducing public control and selling off assets to the collective farms.

Interestingly, Che used Khruschev’s closing down of the machine tractor stations and selling off of state-owned means of production to the kolkhoz as evidence that this was occurring. Meanwhile, I got the impression from Mao’s works that he viewed Khrushchev’s actions here positively. He believed that not allowing the collective farms to own their own means of production was only serving to sow distrust among the peasantry which would only make it more difficult to later integrate them into the public sector later down the line.

Communist parties are meant to be organizations of action rather than simply representing an ideology. They are supposed to do stuff. When there is a natural disaster in China for example, they often send out the CPC members to help with disaster relief. You are actually expected to participate in things so naturally you have to be a bit picky.

A person does not have to be a member of the party to view it positively. People generally view their fire department positively despite not being firefighters themselves. As long as the party is doing good work people will view it positively even if they are not themselves a member of it. In fact, letting in people willy-nilly can hurt the party’s reputation if it negatively impacts their work.

My gaming PC has a Samsung 990 EVO and a couple SK hynix Platinum P41. Both have worked great for me without any issues.

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Zionazis believe Israel has developed a kind of bomb that if you drop it on a house full of people, the blast will wrap itself around all Israelis leaving them unaffected. The explosion is able to check people’s citizenship status in real time to decide whether or not to incinerate them.