The thing they have in common aren’t left/right things—that’s most people in most nations. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism. And governments, like people, can be left/right socially and the opposite, economically.
They’re not economically left wing though: State capitalism is still capitalism. Bourgeois don’t cease to be bourgeois when they control everything, nobody else can control anything, and you have to call them comrade.
Where I’ll grant some left-wing tendencies is in things like raising literacy rates, but even when it comes to healthcare it’s a hit and miss – Cuba is quite excellent, China is as bad as the US.
Maybe! It looks like state capitalism imo, but I’d really need to have this discussion with people who are well versed in economics, and not USA style economics, since we’ve basically messed up the meanings of everything. I’m wondering what Picketty might say?
It’s actually more sociology I’d say as we’re talking more about class and class relations than how the economy upholds them: MLs don’t have state power upholding economic relations to uphold class relations they hold up class relations by direct state power.
Anyway “state capitalism” is the term Lenin coined to describe what he did, precisely because the Bolsheviks didn’t move to a classless society but replaced nobility and bourgeois with the nomenklatura: Still a ruling class in control of everything. Say what you want about the man but he wasn’t dishonest. The whole thing was done under Marx’ theory that capitalism first has to bring about productivity enhancements etc. before actual communism is possible which is bullshit in general but was probably accurate in its historical and geographic context, question of course being a) did you really need to replace an authoritarian hellhole with another authoritarian hellhole, in that regard Russia has only made a modicum of progress in the last, what, 800 years and b) why would centrally-planned capitalism be more, or even just as, effective at technological and productivity progress than at least some semblance of a market and competition. They took the worst aspect of historical capitalism and removed all the parts which actually bring about progress.
Ah yeah that fits way better haha
The thing they have in common aren’t left/right things—that’s most people in most nations. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism. And governments, like people, can be left/right socially and the opposite, economically.
They’re not economically left wing though: State capitalism is still capitalism. Bourgeois don’t cease to be bourgeois when they control everything, nobody else can control anything, and you have to call them comrade.
Where I’ll grant some left-wing tendencies is in things like raising literacy rates, but even when it comes to healthcare it’s a hit and miss – Cuba is quite excellent, China is as bad as the US.
Maybe! It looks like state capitalism imo, but I’d really need to have this discussion with people who are well versed in economics, and not USA style economics, since we’ve basically messed up the meanings of everything. I’m wondering what Picketty might say?
It’s actually more sociology I’d say as we’re talking more about class and class relations than how the economy upholds them: MLs don’t have state power upholding economic relations to uphold class relations they hold up class relations by direct state power.
Anyway “state capitalism” is the term Lenin coined to describe what he did, precisely because the Bolsheviks didn’t move to a classless society but replaced nobility and bourgeois with the nomenklatura: Still a ruling class in control of everything. Say what you want about the man but he wasn’t dishonest. The whole thing was done under Marx’ theory that capitalism first has to bring about productivity enhancements etc. before actual communism is possible which is bullshit in general but was probably accurate in its historical and geographic context, question of course being a) did you really need to replace an authoritarian hellhole with another authoritarian hellhole, in that regard Russia has only made a modicum of progress in the last, what, 800 years and b) why would centrally-planned capitalism be more, or even just as, effective at technological and productivity progress than at least some semblance of a market and competition. They took the worst aspect of historical capitalism and removed all the parts which actually bring about progress.
It’s odd to me that we can even pretend to separate sociology and economics.