The only danger with Bukharinism is his revisionist anti-dialectical equilibrium theory, which is the basis upon which some characterize the transition from capitalism to socialism as a more or less stable and peaceful process. The truth is: it is not. There is a constant struggle between those on the socialist road and those on the capitalist road and unless the Party remains vigilant in upholding proletarian dictatorship and socialist construction, the latter will eventually overthrow the former, which is what nearly happened in 1989. Keeping this in mind will help you understand why, despite the inordinate amount of trade the West conducts with China under an arrangement of peaceful coexistence, Western intelligence agencies and news outlets still castigate China as an authoritarian state.
It is an authoritarian state - for the bourgeoisie. They get their rewards, but must play by the rules. The thing that really bothers the West are the nationalized sectors of China's economy, perhaps especially banking!
Really good discussion! We learned NEP during middle school in China but I never realized the connection with Deng's reform. It's so obvious when you remind me the history of NEP. China has also learned and is still learning a lot from US. There's a Chinese saying which also became the slogan of opening up and reform: crossing the river by touching the stones. Nowadays Chinese netizens are joking USSR and US as these stones. But seriously speaking, the choice of the national policy is just so important. One wrong decision can bring disasters like famine. But sadly this is always the way history works: you can never know the path unless you try it.
As a Chinese person how do you see China's current status in the struggle of achieving Socialism and even Communism? I am very curious to see what you as a native think. Greetings from Transylvania!
@@ProjectMirai64 The “struggle” it currently bears is merely some complaints compared to the case merely 30 years ago. You can easily see this by looking at economic figures but let me give you another angle. Nowadays China is widely acknowledged as a safe country, but in the 90s there are thousands of robberies resulting in hundreds of deaths each year in even one province. Thirty years is not a long period but people are already forgetting the experience, and young people are simply ignorant to this if not interested in history. I personally think this struggle you mean here is more like the aftermath of the impact of pandemic and it’s worldwide. But I agree that China is having a lot of problems to solve/reform and these issues become more obvious with the slowdown of the growth of economy. However problems are simply solved and re-emerging along the history. And for superpowers like China and US, any problem can be unprecedented and it must find the answer on its own. China can’t dream of some elixirs like Marshall plan or changing the political systems. China is just so huge and sophisticated and it must stand on its own feet. I’m not very familiar with economics so I don’t have much thoughts about the solutions. But it seems clear what the government wants to achieve in this decade: to make deeper economic ties with developing countries, to maintain cooperation with western capitals, to keep the domestic economy growing. I just googled your hometown and it’s really a beautiful place. The scenery made my day.
@@ProjectMirai64 Another interesting and important question is: what is socialism, what does it mean to contemporary Chinese people/CCP. It used to be a huge problem in the 80s as people are shocked by the drastic change brought by Deng’s reforms. The answer CCP gave around 2000 is summarized as “three represents”, that CCP needs to represent the advanced productive forces, cultures and the interests of the majority people. This is a rather clever idea, and is relatively faithful to Marx’s philosophy. After all, the reason he promoted socialism is because he thought it’s more productive.
@@ProjectMirai64 as a guy born at a small town in China that nobody will ever know, And during the high of Mao period. We learn from the very first class that according to Marx thinking, Communist gonna arrive when there's advanced production capabilities. And the basic of Marxistim is historical materialism. After all these years I believe these are the best basic knowledge anyone should get if it's the only thing one would learn. who walks in the very front of socialism, have very big chance of making some terrible judgment of how to move forward. But has long as the teaching and the main aim do not change, the effort off thinking and improvements do not stop, There will still hope to make humanity better.
Great documentary! It makes sense that China's bourgeoisie see their position as ultimately unstable - hence their flocking in large numbers to Western countries to buy real estate and build up a nest egg, presumably in the event of a crackdown against them at home. Gorbachev's reformists made a partial effort to to return to NEP principles in the late 1980s and even officially rehabilitated Bukharin, but all these efforts ended up doing was destabilizing the planned economy and allowing the underground market speculators and outright criminal gangs to legalize their assets and become the fledgling future elite during the selloff of the 90s that was to come. China is very fortunate to have thought through their market reforms much more carefully than we did to prevent the full restoration of capitalism.
Capitalism was already fully restored in China back in the 1980s. There are no Socialism in China, it's a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, of the most reactionary type.
I disagree on the Gorbachev part. Gorbachev was anti-socialist, a revisionist and pro-west Bukharin and Deng were the opposite they were socialist a great theorists and patriotic. The Chinese counterpart of Gorbachev would be Zhao Ziyang as he wanted to implement a process of full transition in china to a liberal capitalist regime.
I really liked the first half of this documentary. However, once talking about China, I saw many problems with it. For example, the notion that Mao was not a good leader of China and that his allies romanticized poverty is just wrong. They actually sought to develop the productive forces, just on a socialist basis similar to what the USSR did. Asserting that this socialism "failed" is just plainly wrong since the Mao era set up the industrial foundations for Deng's policies to even succeed; under Mao, life expectancy doubled, caloric intake nearly tripled, China was lifted out of debt, and inflation was kept nearly zero, among many other achievements. The promotion of "being poor under socialism" did not mean that Mao and co. enjoyed poverty; in fact they were the real reason the Chinese people were fed, clothed, employed, given health care, educated, and most importantly politically active. What they really meant was that socialism in poverty *had the capacity to lift the country out of poverty* in a way that really benefited the masses. And in fact, they were right: "Even in the area most closely identified with the achievements of the post-Maoist regime-improving the material well-being of the Chinese people-Mao’s record, as I have noted, was good. From 1953 until 1977, Chinese industry grew at an average rate of 13.134 percent (even including the disastrous Great Leap Forward years) while from 1978 to 1995 Chinese industry grew at a rate of only 12.4 percent. If the period is extended to include the steep rise in Chinee industrial production that occurred from 1949 to 1953, years that were certainly under Mao’s watch, the comparative rate of increase of Chinese industry realized under Mao becomes truly spectacular. Industrial growth is the area in which Mao’s comparative economic record shines the most, but in most other areas the overall economic growth under Mao was also impressive.” Lee Feigon, Mao: a Reinterpretation Conflating Mao's proletarian worldview with the petty-bourgeois idealist "poverty is glorious" line or the ultra-"left" Trotskyite line is simply wrong. Also, to assert that Khrushchev lightened the state's burdens is false. Under Stalin, the workers controlled the state and frequently purged the bureaucracy; under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the bourgeois elements became a bourgeoisie within the state, and the bureaucracy bloated as a result. In fact, it was the market reforms that ruined the USSR, just as they ruined east Europe overall!
I mostly agree. I don’t think I referred to the Mao era as a “failure” however Deng specifically called the Great Leap Forward a “disaster”. The Gang of Four made light of poverty when attempts to revolutionize the productive forces ended with famine.
@@redpen1917 You are right that the Leap Forward was disastrous. Tremendous progress made in the first ten years of socialist construction was undone in those three bad years. However, I think post-Mao China exaggerates the role of Mao in the famine; the worst weather conditions in a hundred years plagued China, and the policies that Mao implemented really prevented future famines. None of this is to say Mao did no wrong, but it does mean that Mao's flaws have been overemphasized to justify Deng's reforms, reforms that would've brought China under imperialist dominion if not for Mao's policies Even if the gang itself claimed the poverty of China was not an issue, most Chinese institutions of the time took a different approach. They showed how historically, once the productive forces developed to a certain degree, it was possible to advance the relations of production, leading to a bigger development in the productive forces. That was why Mao and co. maintained socialist development: it had the capacity to develop China's productive forces rapidly, just like Deng's reforms.
A very deep mini-documentary... I hope you do a documentary (or better still, a series of documentaries) on the soviet industrialization between 1918-1941.
@@redpen1917 Its on my listening list... What I'm looking for is the actual process of industrialization, not the ideology of industrialızation. By this, I roughly mean the list of factories and power plants that are constructed via 5 year plans and the vision behind them. Most books and videos on soviet industrialization speak about these in very general terms and never go into detail. Instead, they just give the numbers (steel production increased this much, oil production that much etc).
Can you do a video on how the CPC came to be? How it fought off foreign imperialism to create its own style of government. I love how pragmatic China is. They are fine with adapting to what the people need in that time and place, even if it pisses off those who only care about hardcore ideology. China remembers the GOAL - prosperity for the people. Communism is just a tool/guide on HOW to get there.
When you talked about proponents of war communism you didn't mentioned Alexandra Kolontai. She was a supporter of war communism from a feminist POV because women were getting proletarianized at an unheard of rate making them more independent and breaking the traiditional gender roles.
Bukharin flip-flopped on issues. NEP to him was undesirable when it was introduced by Lenin because it was beneficial to USSR and then he was defending NEP later because going away from NEP was even worse to his platform. In 1920s, he supported immediate collectivization because it would prompt a revolt by the kulaks against the Soviets, and in 1930s he was against collectivization because it would destroy the kulaks economically. There are similar stances of his all over the place, from industries to national question. If bolsheviks saw national autonomies as largely cultural things, and promoted Russian language in national republics, Bukharin however supported as much independence from the center as possible because nationalists were his allies. Bukharin and Trotsky are the prime examples of democrats trying to argue with enemies of the people masquerading as honest critics - there's always a pretext for them to be in opposition to the majority because those pretexts are only pretexts and not real opinions. In fact, the only uniting issue of Bukharin's bloc in the end was the opposition to Stalin and nothing else, and principled opposition people simply refused to participate in such a bloc (from their own words)
I’m baffled at how you have such little subscribers even amongst the socialist/left RU-vidrs. Every piece of content is packed with great effort and information
I too really enjoy and appreciate this excellent channel and wonder why it’s not growing more quickly. Probably because the approach the creator takes is not sufficiently inflammatory or hysterical. It doesn’t try hard to engage directly with topics in the news on any given day. It’s not making any predictions of doom or disaster or immanent threat, like so many socialist interest channels do. No one gets interviewed to create cross- community interest. I don’t think it helps when the creator is Canadian, for a number of reasons. Lots of reasons might be behind this, but none of them have to do with the professionalism, thoughtful balanced opinions, superb writing, rigorous argumentation, production value excellence, consistency and just plain value to the intelligent viewer. I’ve seen few channels of the same or better quality and what’s more there’s no other channel that I have returned to rewatch / re-listen as many times to as many of the videos as this channel. Thanks for the outstanding work. I understand you’ve taken down some of the videos from this channel recently after changing your mind about some of the content in them or the sources you used for them? That is certainly your prerogative. I’ve watched almost all of them since I first was suggested your channel a few months ago. I’m not sure I can say which videos I don’t recall seeing anymore (I seem to remember there was something up about Canada’s recent unfortunate Nazi in Parliament problem) but you might consider moving these kind of videos to a special place on Patreon maybe, only available to people really interested in seeing them again, since there is so much detail and information in all your videos, and most of the detail in them is so overwhelmingly excellent and useful and worth referring to many times … even if there are parts you now disagree with or have significantly changed your mind about. A disclaimer card screen could be attached as an introduction to them. Or a running disclaimer added as a news-ticker style footer to the troublesome sections… or the whole video? I just know that … for example … if the History of Art and Communism video were to disappear for some reason I’d certainly count that as a huge loss since I’ve listened to it several times and know I’ll be back again until the argument and details it contains is firmly lodged forever in my brain!!! If not Patreon as a repository then maybe make a new “response” or “reaction” video to your own old video (with the same kind of explanatory disclaimer title card added to the front about the problem you now have with it) where you discuss briefly and maybe a little more informally what happened and what caused you to change your mind and about what specific parts in particular of the previous video, if there are any watching along with the old video and adding your new comments to it? Or just some general comments as an introduction? Something. This is such a great channel it’s worrying to think any of the great videos can just disappear anytime without a trace or comment, leaving me with only the troubling concern about the state of my memory! When I am left trying to remember where I saw or heard a fact, a turn of phrase, a line of argument, if I’m at the right place and it’s gone, or if I’m at the wrong place and just misremembered and need to keep looking, or if I might have been imagining the whole thing, or thinking of something from months or even years ago in some other context. As I get older and have so much more information from years of “old files”, videos from almost three decades of internet now, experiences, movies, film clips, magazines books and articles to remember I rely on things being where I think I remember I left them. When they’re not there at all and there’s no trace of the thing where I’m pretty sure I remember it was … it makes me worry a bit now! 🙁 Thanks for the outstanding channel!
Would an essay about the “Long March” be a good idea, or do you prefer broader approaches? I’m interested in Mao’s rise to power, but don’t have access to resources at the moment. Anyway, thanks for giving these perspectives of the movement. I appreciate it.
Extremely correct and documented work comrade. This video will be underwatched compared to its quality and I will make my best to share it. Just for a matter of tribute, it shall be remembered that the workers paid a heavy price in the reform and opening up. Many of their social gains were dropped and they suffered a quick reduction their standards of living. This is path was and is still the only way forward. But we shall remember that the revolution has its sacrifices. The reformists don't even want to pay the bloody price of revolution, and the left-wing deviationists don't want to pay the price of temporary treason to your beliefs and the human toll it may bring. But these are prices that have to be made to preserve the revolution. Now that the PRC is the greatest threat to US hegemony through the uplifting of the global neocolonial system, probably even a greater threat than the SU was at its peak, we have the final proof that these sacrifices were not in vain.
Also remember in a speech for the 40th celebration of the reform in China in 2018, (among the participants there was a person who looked like Klaus Schwab), Xi framed Deng's rejection of class struggle as the primary contradiction in society in a favorable way. In fact, Xi Jinping even goes on to say that the primary contradiction in Chinese society is "What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life", however, we all know it is class struggle that is the primary contradiction that determines the outcome of this contradiction. This is how liquidationism begins
This was very well done, it does frustrate and sadden me that China collaborates with Capitalist nations, but I get it. I just hope that they see when the time comes to end that relationship and are ready to do what is necessary.
Bukharin was a traitor who conspired against USSR. After Stalin has died and Khrushev let out of prisons peoples repressed by Stalin - including bukharinites, and reinstated them in the Party and economy, we immediately see the rise of russophobia and nationalist policies sprouting up in all the republics, with those republics going as far as fighting against unified planned economy. Say, Lithuania fought against industrialization of Lithuania under the pretext of "if we build heavy industry, we will need industrial workers, and since there are no industrial workers in Lithuania, those workers will come from Russia and be Russians". Also, Bukharin protested against investigation and detainment of his allies' with hunger strike, but then he got caught snacking, and was the butt of the joke in VKP(B) sessions until his own arrest
@@KissatenYoba If you look at the original central committee under Lenin, Stalin oversaw the majority of their executions. Were they all “traitors” or is it more likely that Stalin was a bonapartist who hijacked the revolution for his own political ends?
where did you get that 'idealisation of poverty' idea from? i didn't encounter even once such characterisation of internal parties' struggles. and how did you come to the conclusion, that Bolsheviks were forced to revise Marxism in order to apply it to their agrarian, semifeudal society? I don't like labels - but if i were to use them - your view on history of Soviets seems eclectic in comparison to popular divisions among marxists. That is very interesting for me, as I'm learning the theory and history of marxism. However, watching your videos, it's hard for me to get some things straight. Do you believe the peasantry to be inherently reactionary?
The Gang of Four said that “its better to be poor under socialism than rich u under capitalism.” Read Losurdo’s essay on China and the Deng reforms. Lenin revised Marx, Mao revised Lenin, and by the time we get to Deng’s he basically creates a theory that recognizes this trend and accounts for change. Much if this reading is based on EH Carr’s history of the Soviet union which I would say is the most orthodox and historically accurate (objective?) account available in the English speaking world.
27:00 Great discussion but one correction, under Dang Xiaoping, China also supported Pol Pot and invaded Vietnam, somewhat under the pressure of the US but also on her own decision
just wondering, when will the productive forces be enough for higher level socialism to be formed? and how would the bourgeoisie lose it's power once the time comes? I doubt it would be willingly considering the inherent contradiction between the proleteriat and the bourgeoisie
You mentioned that Bukharin was executed but glossed over the specifics and did not mention that he was later rehabbed as part of Khruschevite/modern revisionism. When Deng Xiaoping took up a rightist, Bukharinite plan in the 1970s, everyone knew it was revisionist. You then go on to give cover for this revisionist position in the video. Around 27:00, when you talk about China's pulling out of supporting liberation movements, you confirm that China is now collaborating more with imperialist countries and imperialist law than with proletarians around the world in our struggle against capitalism. This means that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is not socialism but social-democracy, and it's for China only. This is what Marxists mean when they call it social-imperialist: socialist in name, imperialist in deed.
@@SocialismForAll agree or disagree with China as “real socialism”, i’m simply presenting the rationale for what China is doing, as stated by the CPC itself.
@@redpen1917 Your channel name is "RedPen1917," yet you made this video the way you made it, and now, are here in the comments, normalizing revisionist-friendly euphamisms like "preferring stable relations with [imperialist] nations" instead of calling it what it is and criticizing it. Shame.
The thing that I don't understand is your assertion that in China there is not a Capitalistas Class? I think there is a Capitalistas Class but is not the Dominant class
Great observation. I was cautious with the concept of class because Deng uses the term “bourgeois elements” and there is no bourgeois class politically FOR itself. Arguably you are correct that this is because the capitalist class is not the dominant class, but China sees it as a class nonetheless (as symbolized by the PRC flag) .
Both Stalin and Deng Xiaoping chose development over communism. They had no choice, but the cost is the re-emergence of a bourgeoisie instead of a proletarian run society. China today believes it can continue to control its new privileged class even though the lesson of the Soviet Union is that it will not. When growth stalls - which it must - China will return to instability and social conflict.
@@redpen1917 The USSR didn't disintegrate because of a "mistake". If you are a Marxist you must believe that it is historically determined. Marxism was not designed for undeveloped countries and nor is it compatible with unending centralised authoritarianism. Mao understood this which is why he attempted to escape it via the Cultural Revolution - which inevitably failed.
Stalin didn't choose development over communism; rather, he ruthlessly expropriated all the capitalists and kulaks, as it should have been. The NEP was a complete failure in terms of economic development. After the transition from the NEP to a planned economy, the economy grew much faster. However, revisionists like Red Pen took over the USSR after Stalin's death and messed everything up. Do not listen to this channel; Red Pen is an agent of Chinese social imperialism!
@@kubhlaikhan2015you forgot one important thing, and thats AI, artificial intelligence will change the 21st century and everything you know. It will be more impactful than the Industrial Revolution, Read Iain m banks “the culture “ series,
Now on a more serious note, according to the Chinese government, 96,4% of business entities in China belong to the private sector with around 126 self-employed businesses, of course if we are to disregard the types of petit-bourg like street vendors and the like that's still a great amount of small appropriators. Lenin has said that small appropriation engenders capitalism, because the nature of how people conduct work in such organizations necessarily fosters entrepreneurship (capital accumulation) and individualism, all of that are reflected in the superstructure which in turn maintain the economic base. Just imagine if there's a leftist revolution in america, the petit-bourgeois private appropriators, the 40 percent of the American GDP will totally join the side of reaction. And if you are talking about the productive forces aint developed enough, China is an export-oriented country and as of late the Americans have registered another export surplus from China in the backdrop of extremely low consumption from the Chinese people due to the real estate crisis, you would think the government would release all of that stuff for the people to at least cheapen the price of domestic products due to huge supply but no they just export it. China is lucky because it is an export-oriented country, if not it would face the huge supply-but-under-consuming crisis induction problem that all Marxists are critical about. Why was there a real estate crisis to begin with? Because of the rampant speculation by big estate giants that leads to increasingly riskier borrowings. The results of that has been extremely high property price pre-Evergrande-liquidation and an all out economic depression for everone that hits the hardest for the comm9n people whose most valuable holdings are in real estates and also a lot of half-finished housing project everywhere. For a supposedly proletarian-led government this is absolutely unacceptable when the anarchy of production under capitalism is brought into the forefront. If you think capitalism can magically bring you to socialism on its own, just remember that in the State and Revolution, state-monopoly capitalism is still capitalism, is not socialism, and as it is still confined in capitalist framework cannot eliminate the anarchy of production, the development of state-monopoly capitalism can only serve as a basis for the assessment of whether a revolution must be done or the advancement towards socialism is possible.
I believe that you are missing some points. 1. NEP wasnt the means of the using the organisational powers of kulaks. No. Thats the thing: landlords were overtrown and there were no kulaks at all! Capitalism rapidly created same landlords/kulaks in 4-5 years or so. Not because of skills or whatnot. Market randomness and accumulation of wealth does that. 2. Bukharins plan was a long termed. That meant it would get 2-3 regular famines. That evaluates 15 million deaths plus 20 mil pauperised. Very cannibalistic plan.
@@redpen1917so there were kulaks pre NEP? Like when October happened who was the land taken from? And there were no debates and evaluations of Bukharin plan versus two others?
@@pauldruhg2992 kulaks is a rich peasant who exploits the labor. Landowners are a different beast entirely, think of hereditary nobility who were granted land with peasants. Kulaks back in czarist times came out of peasantry and usually were landowners' allies, and in return they were granted better land as tenants compared to other villagers. In Soviet times, kulaks got rid of nobility lording over them, and they supported Soviets against the old regime, even. Then communists took away all the peasant labor from under kulaks first through "poor committees" (kombeds), then through collectivization. Kulaks were driven through extinction as a class because they couldn't compete with their medieval agrarian techniques against modern science and technology and organization of collective farms. Even when they tried to blackmail USSR by threatening to starve the cities, in the end collective farms managed to quickly take over kulaks' share of the market (and millions dead from the famine is just an incorrect reading of statistics stemming from Soviet national rearrangement such as Ukrainian cossacks becoming Russians between two censuses, and this statistical decrease in Ukrainians being presented as deaths)
@@KissatenYoba you ain't getting it in a process. There can't be any kulaks if everyone just got a free land from landowners. There are no need to get the loans. And even if the village had no kulaks, after 4 years one of the villagers accumulated more than other, and could loan to others. Loaning meaning that he had muscle to get back the loan. Social muscle and physical too. What you describe is the reality of the end of the becoming. Video and you forgets that at the beginning there were no kulaks.
Question: how could the NEP be a retreat to capitalism if capitalism had never existed in Russia before? Would this not be an advance out of feudalism into capitalism, with the communist party guiding the economy?
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"Mao was a great philosopher, political thinker, military strategist [...] However, when it came to governing from above, Mao struggled to fulfill the role of a statesman and his directives often came with disastrous consequences" (@16:36) So not all that great then, eh? You are to be commended for your attempt to be truthful, comrade, though your convictions seem to force you to lavish compliments on one undeserving of any such.
I don't understand how anyone in the west could be scared of xi, he's literally the cutest kind grandpa ever, whenever i hear him speak it just gives the vibe of safety and warmth even though i don't understand Chinese lol
I agree with that and add that revisionism restores capitalism. It's a matter of time before China is fully a capitalist state. Socialism for All has a playlist on revisionism on his RU-vid channel.
It seems like the fact that political theory could travel from the most industrially advanced countries to the least industrialized created a situation where certain places became too politically advanced in relation to their level of industrial development. Maybe most of the socialist revolutions that have happened so far were premature. At the same time, I'm aware that monopoly capitalism requires there to be less industrialized countries in order to maintain and further their own industrial development. It created a dynamic where we can almost always expect the neo-colonies to be too politically advanced for their level of industrial development. That might be even more the case today with the existence of the internet, allowing for even quicker and more efficient circulation of political theory on an international scale. I think that dynamic which started manifesting itself in the late 19th century up to this day might be the reason why it is essential that socialist revolutions also occur in (at least) one of the most industrially advanced countries in the world, in order to secure the safety of an international socialist bloc.
