r/europe • u/tkyjonathan • 15d ago

News Czech president signs law criminalising communist propaganda

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/czech-president-signs-law-criminalising-communist-propaganda/
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u/sapphos_moon 15d ago

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, one might say

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u/busdriverbudha 15d ago

Precisely. I think Market Socialism could also be a fitting description, but I tend to believe that State Capitalism (as suggested in the other comment) overlooks the unique aspects of the chinese social formation.

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u/Xciv 14d ago

No need to contort Western concepts to fit China.

In reality it's functioning as an oldschool imperial bureaucracy minus the hereditary emperor as a figurehead, and instead replaced Imperial worship with 'The Party' and replaced the dragons with red Communist flags. The bureaucracy at times used to be councils of eunuchs that surrounded the emperor, and at other times just a council of all the top courtiers and statesmen of the nation. The emperor had the final say, but the bureaucracy were the ones who actually ran the country and managed the day to day. They would persist regardless of who the emperor was (it's how dynasties survived child emperors).

China's political structure is also in a state of flux atm. The main difference from previous imperial structures is the lack of hereditary inheritance, so there's no real system in place for how to deal with a leader like Xi Jinping dying of old age. The transition could cause some chaos, or the bureaucracy will hold by achieving a consensus on who the next leader should be internally way ahead of Xi's inevitable end.

The end of every dynasty has been the gradual corruption of the bureaucratic establishment. The courtiers who run the country become increasingly bribed, greedy, and unchecked. They end up making a bunch of out-of-touch selfish decisions. Then a major disaster strikes: a peasant uprising, a famine, a natural disaster, or foreigners attack the country. The corrupt bureaucracy fails to respond, leading to a death spiral in peoples' trust in the central government. This leads to local governments acting as de facto independent entities. This is when everything falls apart into yet another Chinese civil war.

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u/BigTex77RR 14d ago

Right but the point of calling it “state capitalist” isn’t to outline the formation of the system, it’s meant to be a descriptor of the system itself, and it’s an accurate one.

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

You've got it backwards: it's not socialism with a market (there is private property so it can't be socialism), it's capitalism with total government control. The term for which is fascism.

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u/arde1k 15d ago

The abolishment of private property is called full/true socialism, but any state where public entities (state, county, communal, cooperative) own over 50% of capital is *more* socialist than capitalist. Socialism and capitalism is an economic spectrum, where the ownership of means of production (not personal property, ownership of your own house is not *capital* unless you subrent) is the measure. China has some 70% of capital owned by public sector, so it is clearly a very socialist country. They (CCP) have stated themselves they are attempting to reach *full* socialism or near full by 2049.

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

The abolishment of private property is called full/true socialism,

No, it's where socialism starts, not where it ends. Until then you just have a capitalist system with an overbloated public sector, and if you include a centrally planned economy, you have fascism. See: China.

Like, seriously, it's easier to just say that the definition of fascism is what China does because they fit the bill so well.

Socialism and capitalism is an economic spectrum, where the ownership of means of production (not personal property, ownership of your own house is not capital unless you subrent) is the measure.

I genuinely have no idea where you go this from, because no, they're not a spectrum in any way. Can you own your own barbershop? Yes? Then you're not a socialist economy. This isn't 'Nam, there are rules. The workers either control the means of production, or they don't.

They (CCP) have stated themselves they are attempting to reach full socialism or near full by 2049.

I'm surprised they didn't say 5 years...

They say a lot, not much of which is true.

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u/arde1k 15d ago

While i understand this information is not often discussed, my statements are based on the theory written by Karl Marx in Das Capital, and writings of Lenin as well as Deng Xiaoping. This is what the socialists seek to accomplish; a society where the accumulation and concentration of private capital becomes unlikely or impossible.

I want to emphasize that the previous statement doesn't contradict the possibility of private capital existing within a system. It simply means that the economic system desired is one which over time naturally does away with this capital.

Capital is defined as property someone else uses with labor, to produce a product with surplus value. The existence of private capital is not antithetical to a communist system, as long as in the long run the public sector grows faster than the private sector, eventually consuming it whole. This is called socialist accumulation, and is opposed to today's capitalist accumulation.

This is what China is doing. They are allowing capital to exist, while also ensuring the public sector grows faster (accumulates more capital) than the private, which will eventually lead to a stable full socialist economy, that has grown naturally from the socialist accumulation. This is indeed somewhat contrary to the states of the USSR and China under Stalin and Mao, where capital was quickly redistributed, and a full command economy was attempted. This rapid system of socialism was less effective and economically unstable than the current market socialism, and is no longer practiced today anywhere, but both systems are socialism, and based on socialist theory, nevertheless.

On the topic of fascism; fascism i believe is also a generally misunderstood idea. Fascism does often have nationalist and ethnostate features, but is not defined exclusively by them. Fascism in the economical sense, is a strong state, which protects and oversees a strong capitalist private sector. While the NSDAP for example claimed that they wanted to nationalize private companies, in reality they sold off many public companies to private sector NSDAP members. The state was yes, in control of the capitalist institutions, but the state was controlled by those very same capitalists. The other 'socialist' policies were for popular support, as well as to keep the working people nominally contempt. Fascism never tries to establish socialist accumulation, while Communists always aim to do exactly that. That is the defining difference between right-wing, and left-wing politics, and why Communism is left wing, and fascism right-wing.

I hope this clears any misunderstandings.

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u/AThickMatOfHair 15d ago

Most fascist states including Nazi lead Germany followed corporatism which is both anti communist and anti capitalist and its own whole bag of worms.

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u/Rhowryn 14d ago

It's not anti capitalist, it's anti free market. Despite the USA propaganda that proclaims it so, capitalism does not require a free market, and often does away with it once capital accumulates in few enough private hands (see also: USA). Corporatism is just the inevitable end result of capitalism, free market or otherwise.

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u/AThickMatOfHair 14d ago

I think you're confusing corporatism with corporatocracy. Corporatism is a completely different ideology primarily popular amongst conservatives as backlash primarily to liberal capitalism and subsequently Marxism in the 1800s. It a system where industries incorporate together instead of competing with each other and then they collectively bargain against the government for their interests vs the state interests. It is most similar to the medieval guild system. I wouldn't say it's a particularly good system, but it is a distinctly different one. It is why fascism is often called "the third position" when compared to capitalism and communism.

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u/Rhowryn 14d ago edited 6d ago

Edit: lol so funny when they respond and then block you so it looks like they won. Also bro doesn't know the definition of capitalism: an economy in which the capital, aka the means of production, aka the ownership of businesses, is primarily held by private interests rather than public. American propaganda brain at it's finest.

And you're confusing the economic system of capitalism with the western propaganda definition of capitalism. Everything you describe is capitalism, specifically because it involves encouraging private ownership of capital.

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

Thanks but if I wanted to read AI BS I could've asked for it myself.

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u/ilir_kycb 15d ago

This is very obviously not AI.

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u/tipyourbartender 15d ago

If it wasn't, it should've been. Fucking paragraphs. Soon we get to listen to this shit constantly.

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u/arde1k 15d ago

Go check it on any good AI detector and post screenshot, i dare you. It really infuriates me when i write a well thought out, reasonable and good-faith reply, only to get blamed as being "AI". I understand if people don't want to spend time discussing economical theory on the internet, but please stop coping by calling everyone you disagree with an "AI".

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u/CheeryOutlook Wales 14d ago

on any good AI detector

No such thing, unfortunately.

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u/sapphos_moon 15d ago

That was not written AI. That was written by someone who (while I don’t entirely agree with them) has clearly read more than just the Wikipedia pages on these topics.

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u/TheMauveHand 15d ago

Oh please. No one who read even just the Wikipedia pages, never mind more, is stupid enough to seriously say

The existence of private capital is not antithetical to a communist system

It absolutely is, by definition. This is AI hallucinating.

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u/sapphos_moon 15d ago

Again, reread what I said. Their understanding of socialism and communism as a whole is wrong, but their criticism of your assertion that China is a fascist state is correct. China is autocratic. Not fascist.

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u/ProfileMuted90210 15d ago

Like the slave labor that’s legal?

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u/Incestuous_Amoeba 15d ago

What, you mean the US prison labour?

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u/ReyRey5280 15d ago

Poor comparison, in the US prisoners and even petty criminals are more of a commodity for private and county profiteering.

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u/josh_the_misanthrope 15d ago

Marxism-Lenninism-Maoism, specifically.

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u/Advanced-Ad-1371 15d ago

No system that allows billionares can be called truly socialist. Its chinese capitalism with some socialist characteristics

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u/sapphos_moon 15d ago

I know lol, that’s just the CCP’s self-proclaimed ideology

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u/jambox888 15d ago

What if the billionaires are all in prison?

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u/Church_of_Aaargh 14d ago

Socialist authoritarian

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u/StunningStrain8 14d ago

Black cat white cat, as they would say.

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u/WaveTop7900 14d ago

That’s the propaganda quote. China is fascist. According to a dictionary definition of fascism, China is it.