Comment by flomble | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flomble | Hacker News Reader

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This is a very thorough and informative post, and there's nothing in it which I would outright disagree with.

I was under the impression that Mao's unorthodox approach to revolution built on peasants rather than the industrial proletariat was and is seen, by the CCP itself, to be vindicated by their accession to power, and that that particular Maoist tenet was never really overturned.

I've never studied Marxism itself in depth, only come into contact with it in studying history, and it seems that you have a more in-depth understanding, but I thought that what Historical Materialism held about the necessity of capitalism as a precursor to communism was that in concentrating property and the means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, it oppressed the proletariat, giving them an incentive to revolt if they ever developed class consciousness, and caused conflict between different bourgeois groups (e.g. governments), causing capitalism to be completely unstable and necessarily bringing about its demise.

That is a very different chain of events to a communist government deliberately allowing a capitalist economy to flourish under its aegis. Capitalism leads to exploitation and thus unrest, but the most unwavering ideological pillar of the CCP is that the Party fosters social harmony and that it has an absolute mandate to rule and should not cede power. Deng himself made that clear when he decided to crush the Tiananmen protests, and the modern CCP has not budged on that front either.

Did Marx ever consider what a communist government who came to power before the full development of productive forces should do? Given that the reality Deng found himself in was at odds with the orthodox prediction of historical development, was his dialectical approach actually in line with Marxist orthodoxy?

> I thought that what Historical Materialism held about the necessity of capitalism as a precursor to communism was that in concentrating property and the means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, it oppressed the proletariat, giving them an incentive to revolt if they ever developed class consciousness, and caused conflict between different bourgeois groups (e.g. governments), causing capitalism to be completely unstable and necessarily bringing about its demise.

That's the most important part of capitalism's role in the dialectical framework, but the theory of productive forces is also very important.

Communists were not oblivious to the fact that capitalism is by far the most powerful engine of wealth creation and technological innovation in history. They recognized that fairly early on, which is why Marx believed that it was important to have a transitional stage between pure capitalism and pure communism, which he outlined in Gotha. I believe he discussed industrial automation as a way to free the majority of people from work. When Lenin needed to rebuild the Soviet economy after WWI, he turned to capitalism as the right tool for the job, and openly referred to it as capitalism.

I think Deng's approach was fairly well in line with Marxist orthodoxy in terms of the necessity of the development of productive forces, but he was more permissive of private ownership of capital and property than Marx would have been. Marx advocated a society with socialized ownership and management of the economy during this period, but Deng embraced a market economy instead. Both Marx and Deng believed that during this period, people would be rewarded proportionally to their contribution, not their need.

Deng's famous cat quote was an attempt to reconcile his use of the market with Marx's theory, by asserting that it didn't really matter by which method one developed the productive forces, as long as the method was effective. After all, it's only a transitional stage, and it's over when the productive forces can generate the wealth and goods necessary to support communism, so if a market economy gets you there fastest, why not use it? It's difficult to know how long Marx thought that would take, but I suspect he had a faster time scale in mind than Deng had.

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