this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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It's funny how this reads like a typical "China bad" comment but goes on to show how economic inequality ruins society.
Not doubting or criticising you at all, just observing that "communist China" has very capitalist problems. If only they were more communist
As someone working adjacent to highschools in the West, there's not a single difference in my experience to theirs. It's not an issue of their economic system, it's an issue of people around the entire world. Seems like entitlement has never been higher amongst parents.
Yes where privilege and inequality run amok, which is amplified by the economic system
There’s a lot of criticism of Chinese capitalist tendencies from the left. Yeah they do some things with communist values and everything but Dengism runs deep. The fact is that in the people’s republic of China the workers lack the power to exert their will on the means of production and the wealthy have the ability to exert outsized power over society and those around them.
China is not communist. It has never claimed to be communist. (Nor had the USSR made such a claim.)
"Communist" countries are, properly termed, "socialist" states because in Marxist theory (grossly simplified) the development is Capitalist->Socialist->Communist. In a socialist state the Communist Party is intended to shepherd people along the path to communism. Once communism is achieved, there is no need for a government. As such, the very term "communist government" is an oxymoron.
So China is a "socialist state". And socialist states, in communist theory, are not about "free medical care" or whatnot, like the "social democracies" of the west (like, say, Sweden) are about. Socialism, in Marxist terminology, is a very specific thing that has nothing to do with free state services (though those may be a desirable byproduct of them). And, get this, socialist states may use capitalist tools to accomplish their ends. It's just that capitalism in a socialist state is a tool used by the state, and is also under its thumb (which is why billionaires in China fear government; government in the USA, by contrast, fears billionaires).
That being said, yes, there's huge swaths of inequality in China, and education in particular is currently being massacred by it. The government attacks inequality fitfully here and there, but there does need to be a more concerted and forceful effort for it to actually work.
(Of course, with my more anarchistic leanings, I'm pretty certain that the socialist phase is a regressive concept that will never end because the people who run socialist governments really like this feeling of being in power so won't be giving it up anytime soon.)
Just to add on to this that IIRC while Marx believed that the transition from socialism to communism would happen, the idea of a communist party guiding the people on the way is essentially the crux of Leninism.
The best parts of Actually Existing Socialism are commodity production and a centralized state!