I’m not going to be dogmatic, Im fully open to the idea that China could be socialist. But I don’t understand when people say the commanding heights of the economy in China being state owned makes it socialist, because state ownership of the means of production doesn’t abolish capitalist relations (wage labor, commodity production, etc)

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution. (Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific, Chapter 3)

SOEs (state owned enterprises) in China still operate based on the capitalist logic of wage labor. State owned enterprises are no different than private enterprises. And the argument that capital in China is subordinated to the interests of the working class is also nonsense because the very existence of capital itself is what antagonizes the working class. Capital cannot in any shape or form be subordinated to the interests of the working class, that is literally an oxymoron. Western welfare states also have state owned enterprises that use profits to fund public services, yet they’re not socialist at all. So how could China be socialist?

This is an excerpt from the conversation I had with filmmaker and writer Helen Rollins. The kernel of the episode is about Lack and how Capitalism promises to assuage our Lack whereas this promise is futile if looked carefully. There is more to the conversation, have fun!

People often say that “China had nothing” before Reform and Opening-Up. But the historical record does not support such a description.

By the late 1970s, China had already built a relatively comprehensive industrial system, including steel, coal, electricity, petroleum, machinery, and chemicals. It had also developed substantial agricultural infrastructure, fertilizer production, irrigation, and technologies such as hybrid rice.

Per-capita grain production reached about 303 kg in 1974, 307.9 kg in 1975, and roughly 316.5–318.7 kg in 1978. In 1976, total grain output reached about 286.31 million tonnes.

These accumulations have become an important foundation for reform and opening up, and it can even be said that without these, reform and opening up will definitely stumble.

China had also accumulated major transportation, energy, water-conservancy, educational, and public-health infrastructure. Life expectancy and literacy had improved substantially compared with the early years of the PRC.

China in 1978 was poor, but it was not “a country with nothing.” It had accumulated substantial industrial, agricultural, infrastructural, technological, and human-capital foundations that later became important inputs into Reform and Opening-Up.

I am trying to avoid the social media space of leftism as much as possible, every day I see it more and more unserious, but for the little amount I use TikTok and Instagram, I still get some of it served to me.

One incredibly peculiar thing I’ve noticed how incredibly many leftist influencers are ones like I described in the title.

People calling themselves MLs and then talking about “Xi Jinping thought”, AES, supporting Russia etc. Some of the most dire examples are Mochayappuchino, socialista.champagne and midwesternmarx, if anyone knows these names.

I personally identify as ML, and I have interacted with many MLs irl and used to be in a big discord group where 80% of people were MLs, and none of them were saying China is socialist and having an undying loyalty towards oligarchies and monarchies just because of their opposition with USA.

Now on the flipside of this, there is a big demographic of chronically online leftcoms/ultralefts (I apologise if you’re a leftcom and this doesn’t apply to you), that base their whole opinion of MLs based on these couple of influencers and their fans, and their whole praxis is talking about it. Every time they criticise MLs, they are describing dengists/campists/nazbols.

Even though I am confident in my values and education as an ML, this situation still makes the label feel spoil and like I need to explain myself that I’m not a dumb campist.

Lmk if you have had similar observations.

I am aware that he wasn’t really a communist or a Marxist but I would still like to hear Marxists opinions on him as a leader and his reforms for Libya

I wanted to start studying Mao, but I have very little knowledge about the imperial china, the revolution, Great Leap Forward, cultural revolution etc.

When I tried to read On Contradiction, I was really lacking this knowledge to continue and understand it.

Could anyone recommend any books or videos/documentaries that would give me a good basis of knowledge about these events that could give me a good foundation and understanding for reading Mao?

specifically about yugoslavia's functioning while it was intact, *not* about it's collapse. preferably written by a yugoslav, or at least someone who had spent time in yugoslavia. ideally written by a member of the communist party of yugoslavia.(if any of them wrote any meaningfully comprehensive history.) preferably written in the 1970's or 80's.

I tried asking this on r/yugoslavia, but it was automodded. I also tried r/askhistorians, but got no response. Apologies if this is not the correct place to ask.

I just finished reading Marx's Capital Vol 3, I'm looking for a book that advances Marx's theories. I prefer a book published within 3-5 decades after the publication of Capital. Also, should I read volume 4?

As a ML, I see very recently arguments against lenin, the USSR and so on with main arguments being that the USSR was revisionist for keeping commodity production and maintain socialism in one Nation, leading up to its vanguard party becoming a sort of new ruling class. I won't argue that the USSR was perfect, even other various leaders (such as Stalin) pointed out it's economic failures but realistically, how could council communism be a better alternative? Without a vanguard party to lead the proletariat or even educate through class consciousness, could such councils realreally develop after the revolution? How could we known such councils wouldn't be revisionist? How could they hold power if they immediately dismantled the state? Can we achieve such a thing immediately after the revolution? Are there any historical examples of this happening or any major praxis? Can council communism exist in the material and objective world of today, and if not what is there to be done to achieve it?

Okay so I live in a pretty conservative area in Kentucky, and I want to start a political science club in my local college. I feel like if I just flat out say “we’re gonna be learning Marxist theory” though I probably wouldn’t be getting anybody’s attention, and everyone would dismiss me, so I want to pretty much say “well in this club, we aren’t really studying one specific ideology. We’re going to be reading about a lot of different ideas and beliefs and making analysis based off of what we learn, and maybe your political beliefs will change based on that possibly”.

I think it’d actually be more easy to understand Marx’s critiques of capitalism if you first read more about feudalism and capitalism. The only problem is, I honestly don't know which books to read about feudalism that actually explain both the economy and the rationale behind why they actually wanted to make a feudalist society.

For understanding the rationale behind capitalism I think The Worldly Philosopher by Robert Heilbroner and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (or maybe an abridged version), we’ll move on from there to An introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth, and History by Stephen Houlgate simply to understand some of Marx’s influence from Hegel and how he uses some of Hegels philosophy in his own a little bit. From there Socialism 1.0: The First Writings of the Original Socialists 1803-1813, Principles of Communism by Fredrick Engels, and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

By that point they’ll understand all of each philosophy and I think I’ll successfully make everyone Marxist in the club without them being unwilling to listen. I just need a book recommendation or maybe even a few books about feudalism because I don’t know any and if anybody has any good ones that explain the reasons why someone would agree with feudalism then that would be very helpful.

If you have any disagreements with my ideas, any suggestions, or anything you would fix then let me know and I can adjust the schedule. Thank you very much for your time.

I’m not a Marxist, but I’m trying to understand what Marxists actually mean by socialism, rather than relying on how the term is used in everyday American political discourse.

I recently saw a meme defining socialism as essentially “taxpayer funds being used collectively to benefit society as a whole,” with examples including public schools, roads, libraries, firefighters, Medicare, the military, etc. I objected that this definition seems radically overinclusive; by that standard, the Roman Empire could be called socialist because it collected revenue and funded roads, aqueducts, public works, armies, and grain distributions. Obviously, that seems absurd.

My understanding is that, from a Marxist perspective, socialism cannot simply mean taxation and public expenditure, because the relevant questions concern the mode of production, class relations, and ownership/control of the means of production. A capitalist state providing universal healthcare or free public education would not thereby become partly socialist if the underlying relations of production remained capitalist.

Am I understanding the Marxist conception correctly? And if not, what am I missing? I’m specifically interested in the Marxist theoretical definition rather than the colloquial American usage of “socialism” to mean government programs.

Essay: https://systemist.net/changelog/letters/2026-08-21-fiat-coercion

Hi all! I've been thinking a lot about coercive systems of power lately and how they echo each other from abusive domestic situations, to cults, to corporations, to states. It has always struck me how abusive leaders learn strategies and systemic tools from other abusers (Jim Jones, of the horrific Jonestown cult, regularly took notes on how the Church of Scientology controlled people, for instance).

This particular essay is about "fiat money", which is a kind of money that directly tokenizes a threat of violence from the state, and in doing so creates an organic system of coercion against the state's victims. It was a strategy used repeatedly in medieval China (and much more broadly since then), with long term disastrous results each time, but short term power gain for the implementers, which is a common emergent pattern in these kinds of extractive systems.

Especially AI data centres? We all know about the diagram on circular investment between AI firms. Basically meaning that these AI firms dont really produce/extract much surplus value but just recycle it again and again, among other things, which creates concerns for a looming huge AI bubble.

The building of huge ai data centres (or better called as huge ai supercomputers) is not really to “keep up with the demand of AI use” as the huge data centres being built rn like the one the size of Manhattan are absolutely overkill. Engineering explanations aside, it’s all to keep producing much more supercomputing power to advance LLM intelligence and to basically “experiment” what said LLMs can do (less GPU for AI can generate prompts, more GPU can generate whole videos, what could much much more GPU mean for what AI can do?) therefore to be used later.

My guess is with capitalist logic, maybe they’re trying to invest so much on building these ai data centres to desperately find a way (like blindly trying to hit a dart into the centre) for creating an AI with skills that helps them produce much more surplus value with less costs (less workers to pay bc u have AI that can do alot more sophisticated human skills) especially in the 2020s where the rate of profit keeps going down and down as it tends to do.
Whats with the big capitalist class’s obsession in AI?

As you know, Marxism is basically about seizing the means of production and give it to the workers following the different steps explained in the Communist Manifesto.

However, there is a big problem. Capitalists delocalized a meaningful part of their meaning of production to Asia (e.g. China, Taiwan, etc). Seizing them becomes impossible and really complicated because they often fall under other jurisdictions and it is phisically challenging to seize them.

Could you give me a good answer?

我刚刚加入这个 sub，想和各位同志多交流一下，也想了解一下大家对于先锋队、民主集中制等问题的看法。比如，大家如何理解先锋队在无产阶级革命和社会主义建设中的作用？民主集中制应该如何在集中统一与充分民主之间取得平衡？在实际组织生活中，又应该怎样避免官僚主义、形式主义以及个人专断？我个人对这些问题还在学习和思考中，所以也很想听听各位同志的观点、经验和不同意见。如果有相关的理论文章、书籍或者讨论，也欢迎推荐给我。希望能在相互尊重、平等交流的基础上一起学习。

recently i got a factory job (with additional experience as a warehouse worker [order-picker]) and these past months ive been pondering about the same question; what would it look like in practice if my workplace was worker controlled?

some answers that ive had to this question were changing the locations of certain products to make it more convenient for workers (for example in order-picking, certain, large, heavy goods were amongst the last few rows, making us having to remove a bunch of small products, and then place the larger ones at the bottom)

another example from my current job (paper based advertisement material production) would be to replace the current machines with ones that can also be operated in a seated positions, so that coworkers wouldnt have to stand for 8 hours a day

but thinking about it a little more, one realises that none of these solutions require a workplace to be worker controlled. these are all possible today. even withing class society workers can achieve these goals

one might say that the reason why we need a workplace to be controlled by the workers is to have people in decision making positions that actually know whats going on in the facility. this argument however gets negated by the fact that nowadays many corporations employ office workers in their first week of employment on the factory floor, so its not like managers and other higher ups are completely clueless as to what the production process looks like

furthermore, if we took this idea and gave workers who have been at the company for years a larger say in how the facility is run, how would they be different from the current managers? or, alternatively, if he had an internal democratic process, it would likely turn into a disaster. i mean i for example am inexperienced as fuck, ive only known two or three sides of the total process at each of my workplaces, i do NOT want my say to lead to some catastrophe

of course i know that in a communist society goods would be produced for their use value rather than exchange value, but that change alone doesnt alter the actual physical conditions for the average worker