For the second and third in our series of short communist responses to common questions about China, we split one common question into two. We are often asked: “Is China a capitalist or a socialist country?” This is possibly the most common and most complicated of the frequently asked questions about China, so we’ll cheat a little bit here and provide a longer answer by splitting it into its two component questions. The previous entry addressed the question: “Is China a capitalist country?” This entry addresses the question: “Is China a socialist country?”
As always, we encourage readers to reformat these answers for use across platforms. If you’ve designed pamphlets or infographics using these materials, please send them to us (e-mail: chuangcn@riseup.net) so that we can archive them here and repost on social media!
Socialism
The concept of “socialism” itself has always been murky. In the past, it was used by both revolutionaries and by those seeking to reform the existing order to make it more humane. In either case, socialism usually referred to the destruction of the property system[i] and was, at least in its early usages in the 18th and 19th centuries, basically synonymous with “communism,” “social revolution” and “anarchism” in its end goal. The distinction between revolutionary and reformist positions was simply a question of how to get there. In the course of the 20th century, socialism came to designate a “lower” stage of society preceding communism, within which the rule of property was in the process of being dismantled but had not yet been entirely abolished. Today, however, the word “socialism” seems to refer to nothing more than “capitalism with a human face.” It has lost any relationship to the destruction of capitalist society.
This is because terms that designate a living politics don’t take their meaning from history. They are instead defined by the current popular usage, especially among supporters of that politics, at least insofar as those supporters constitute a real force in society. Instead of trying to find some authoritative definition of the term in historical texts, we have to ask: what do the many hundreds of thousands of people around the world who call themselves “socialists” mean by the term? The same question can be posed for specific locations. In places like the US, for instance, “democratic socialism” refers to a growing number of progressives (likely tens of thousands of people, currently) who seek to emulate the policies of Northern European countries and/or re-implement certain features of government that existed in the postwar US, such as high taxes on the wealthy. A minority of these individuals see this as a necessary first step in the gradual direction of rebuilding a “mixed economy” where state-owned, cooperative and democratic institutions would grow to control larger shares of production, even while the property system is preserved.
In historical comparison, many point out that this is hardly “socialism.” In fact, mid-century liberals in Europe and the US easily implemented far more expansive public programs than are even proposed by “socialists” such as Bernie Sanders today. If we are tracking the historical transformation of the term, its current re-popularization in places like the US and Europe is a new low, with the meaning of the term more eroded than ever. But there are very few places in world where “socialism” is still a word used at a popular, colloquial level to designate the destruction or even the gradual erosion of the property system. In both the Latin American case, where elected socialists are buoyed by social movements, and in the Chinese case, where a special brand of socialism that looks almost exactly like capitalism is simply declared from above by the capitalists in power, no “socialist” or “communist” party has sought to challenge the property system in practice. At best, they disguise it as “state” ownership or allow the poorest areas a degree of “autonomy” in managing their own affairs, since autonomy without any resources is just another name for powerlessness. But even in these cases, socialist administrations have tended to entrench the property system, despite all rhetoric to the contrary.
Ultimately, all of this represents an historical bankruptcy of the term “socialism” itself. While it might be conceivable that, someday, the term could regain its revolutionary implications, this does not seem likely in the near future. In a practical sense, this means that it has become increasingly common for those who advocate for the revolutionary abolition of capitalist society to distinguish themselves against those calling themselves socialist. For the sake of accurately preserving our historical and theoretical heritage, many (including ourselves) use the term communist. In recent years, this term has regained its popularity among a politically active minority, accompanying the revival of interest in Marx that followed the Great Recession. Many of those calling themselves communists have been engaged in recent political upheavals. But, in contrast to last century, today communist politics has no widespread popular purchase in the world. While the name may come to designate a future politics borne of future struggles, it is just as likely that a new term might emerge to replace it, capturing the same meaning.
Development
In China, the confusion is even more complicated, since the state is controlled by a party that calls itself “communist,” even though it is ruled entirely by capitalists, and which has provided real developmental benefits for millions of Chinese people. Development is key here, since the capitalists who run the communist party argue that, despite the degree of market development, the country’s socialist character is evident in the fact that people are being lifted out of poverty.
There is an important historical dimension to this reasoning as well: In the 20th century the meaning of “socialism” became closely aligned with the idea of an alternate developmental model for poor countries that avoided the chaos of early capitalist development. This is because the only successful socialist revolutions in that century occurred in extremely poor, mostly agricultural regions like Russia and China. In such places, the victorious revolutionaries had to make basic developmental programs a priority. This was seen as both an immediate and a long-term necessity. In the immediate sense, it was clearly justified both by the risk of mass starvation and by the threat of a foreign invasion funded by the global capitalist class, who still wanted to see the revolutions crushed.
In the long-term sense, it was also recognized that many of the side-effects of capitalist development, such as basic education and healthcare, would be necessary to building a better society. Elsewhere, these things had only been enabled by capitalism’s drive to constantly revolutionize production in pursuit of larger and larger quantities of money. Initially, it was expected that revolutions in the wealthier countries would follow those in the poorer countries and that this would enable a form of cooperative integration between developed and undeveloped areas that would help to balance out this inequality. But the revolutions in the wealthy countries were crushed and the poor countries that had seen successful revolutions were left to develop on their own. Thus, “socialism” effectively came to describe any attempt to the emulate the developmental changes that had already occurred in the wealthier countries, but without also triggering an open transition to capitalism.
This also meant that the success of “socialism” began to be measured by developmental outcomes such as the extension of education and healthcare or rising per capita food consumption, all undergirded by increasing agricultural and industrial output. In places like Russia and Yugoslavia, there was a decisive end to this socialist experiment, marked by political collapse, fragmentation and the emergence of new capitalist oligarchs out of the old socialist enterprise system. In places like Cuba and North Korea, the demise of the Soviet Union resulted in new forms of survival through isolation, often intensifying local crises and spurring evolutions in the logic of development. Meanwhile, in China and Vietnam, political evolution in the wake of the Cold War transformed the old socialist bureaucracy into the spawning ground for the new capitalist class.
Driven by this logic of development, China was ultimately integrated into the global economy through a process that its political leaders called “reform and opening.” Even though the process meant that more and more of production and everyday life would be subject to the demands of the market, it was still understood to be “socialist” because it successfully produced developmental returns by rapidly increasing industrial output, even while it sacrificed some of the gains of the earlier socialist era (in public health, for example), saw certain regions (such as the Northeast) undergo widespread decline, and produced stark social inequality. At every stage, the party’s rhetoric has emphasized that, regardless of how extensive the market becomes, if it guarantees growth and development it is ultimately socialist—at least so long as the communist party retains control.
This represents a bankruptcy of the word “socialism” symmetrical to that visible in the US and Europe. But, whereas in these Western cases this bankruptcy was rooted in the defeat of the revolutionary movements of a previous generation, in the Chinese case, the bankruptcy of socialism has been the result of the party’s success in surviving the Cold War and achieving national development in the context of this same global defeat. This represents a much more lasting evisceration of socialism, since it is the fusion of socialism as an “alternative” mode of development with the very mode of development it was meant to stand against, seemingly calling into question the existence of any “alternative” in the first place.
Communism
This hints that the real question is not whether China is “socialist” or not, but instead whether “socialism,” however we define it, actually has any relationship to communism today. For now, let’s avoid some of the technicalities and reduce the meaning of communism to something approximating that older “socialist” ideal: the destruction of the property system and the abolition of money (technically “value”) in pursuit of the destruction of class society. So the question becomes: if we were to accept the narrative put forward by China’s leading capitalists (those who control the party), then what is the mechanism through which socialism with Chinese characteristics, as it actually exists today, enables or prepares for the global liquidation of the property system at the core of capitalist society?
Development alone no longer provides sufficient justification, since China today has the productive power and material wealth necessary to easily provide a comfortable life for all Chinese people and even to conduct cooperative development projects in the world’s poorest places—all possible if this wealth (including those forms of private property that are called “state” resources) were to be redistributed and subject to collective control for the benefit of all. It’s often an error to try and measure well-being using conventional business statistics, which fail to capture the depth and complexity of people’s livelihoods. But it is nonetheless significant that Chinese GDP per capita is today equivalent to the (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita of Western Europe in the 1960s—the decade when many communists in Europe first began to argue that the focus of any potential revolution should be to decrease economic activity in wealthy countries such as their own, since output was more than enough to serve the needs of everyone. In an era of mass extinction and cascading ecological crisis, this emphasis has only become more important to the communist critique of the present world.
This basic fact calls into question the claims made by the party that this process of development—which it calls “socialist modernization,” understood as the main task of the “primary stage of socialism”—would necessarily last at least a century.[ii] What, in this line of thinking, is the level of development necessary for communism? How, in other words, does one avoid perpetually deferring abolition of the property system into the future, since greater levels of development will always be possible? These are essential questions that have been given no clear answer by party officials in China. Instead, as more of the party leadership were transformed into capitalists, they have also tended to push the timeline for more “advanced” stages of socialism further and further into the future. At this point, communism itself has disappeared far beyond the horizon.
All of this only demonstrates the widening divergence between socialism, in both theory and its alleged practice, and communism. Even if one were to accept last century’s orthodoxy and acknowledge that socialist development was a necessary precursor for communism where revolutions had succeeded in regions of extreme poverty, this justification no longer exists in China. At best, this would be nothing more than a tenuous argument that, were a revolution to occur in the poorest parts of the world today, it would need to prioritize a similar process of “socialist modernization.” But there are very few places remaining where potentially revolutionary “socialist” organizations exist. Elsewhere, it not only seems as if socialism has now been divorced from communism, but even that socialism is de facto among the most powerful forces opposing the emergence of a communist movement.
In Europe, “socialist” governments implement austerity, deploy armies of police to crush popular rebellions and siphon the energy out of potentially revolutionary social movements, rerouting it in perpetually failing electoral schemes. In the US, “socialism” has come to mean nothing more than slightly more liberal administration of the status quo. Every one of the policy proposals of today’s “democratic socialists” are based on a disavowed nationalism, rooted in the hope for some mythical revival of American industry—a new industry that will be “green” in name but blood-red in the imperial violence that such a revival would require.
Similarly, the “socialist” government of China has been the most active and successful force suppressing the emergence of any independent proletarian organizations in the world’s core industries and outlawing access to communist literature among the population at large, including the systematic dismantling of Marxist study groups across the country. Party leadership is substituted for proletarian organization, as striking workers are told to submit to their suffering for the sake of national rejuvenation. Reading the works of Marx directly is discouraged and texts like Capital: A Critique of Political Economy are substituted with required courses studying official articles on “socialist political economy,” written by professors in various Administration and Management departments.
Meanwhile, “socialist modernization” has, in reality, only led to the further entrenchment of the private property system. The party has overseen the destruction of essentially all remaining communal or semi-communal conventions in land and enterprise management, alongside all remaining forms of socialist welfare, systematically replacing them with conventions of private ownership modelled on the legal systems of the leading capitalist nations. This cultivation of commodification, combined with the repression of all potential for communist organizing to emerge among the population at large, seems to pose this Chinese “socialism” against all prospects for proletarian emancipation. Placed in global context, it is not an exaggeration to say that socialism, as it actually exists today, is largely anti-communist.
Put simply: if being a “socialist” means that you oppose all strikes, riots and insurrections in both the heart of capitalist industrial production (in places like China and Vietnam) and across almost all the world’s poorest countries (portraying such events as CIA-backed “color revolutions”), then this form of “socialism” seems to be very clearly opposed to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Deus ex Xi Jinping
Even if we reject the cynical view that “socialism” is nothing but an ideological smokescreen disguising capitalist oligarchy and instead earnestly believe the self-descriptions of any of today’s socialists in China, the reality remains that all of their actions seem designed to preserve capitalism and to prevent the emergence of communism, at least at the popular level. The only possible conclusion remaining is that they instead have a strategy for building communism through the dictate of the party, which will hinge on some major shift in policy at some point in the future, after which the private property system built through “socialist modernization,” which marks the “primary stage of socialism,” will begin to be dissolved in some “higher stage of socialism” that prefigures communism in some way but today remains largely unmentioned and untheorized.
In this view, an exoteric communism rooted in the activity of everyday people is replaced by an esoteric communism hidden the depths of the forbidden palace and in the hearts of leaders such as Xi Jinping. Accepting this position is equivalent to placing an extremely improbable bet that some of the world’s most powerful capitalists—those who compose the party leadership—are still communists at some deep, moral level and that they will somehow be able to effectively challenge and overturn the power of all the world’s capitalist powers. In other words, such a gamble essentially abandons all hope in communism as a popular politics that emerges out of the struggles of the proletariat and sees the only possibility of communism lying in a rebel faction of capitalists.
Were this true, it would completely eliminate the messy business of having to wage a revolution against the capitalist world, since that revolution already took place in China more than half a century ago. At most, it might involve the oppressed in wealthy countries rising up in support of the rebel bourgeoisie of the party, hastening the demise of the imperial American state. Strangely, though, many overseas supporters of this interpretation today don’t seem to be involved much in existing rebellions in places like the US and Europe. Even worse, when they are involved, they almost universally seem to ally themselves with other reformist “socialists” in coopting such movements and domesticating them into electoral campaigns.
There’s no use in pointing out that this conception of communist power is quite distant from that envisioned by Marx and all those who carried on his insurrectionary project. The more practical point is simply that this seems like a bad bet. It is very improbable that some of the richest and most powerful people in the world are secretly communists just waiting to make their move. Maybe we are wrong here. It is certainly possible that a large enough share of the remaining leaders of the party are genuinely communists, in some fashion.
It is at least certain that Xi Jinping (alongside many other prominent leaders in the party) thinks of himself as a socialist, and there is little doubt that his administration will, over the next decade, pursue apparently “socialistic” policies by building out state infrastructure, raising taxes on the wealthy, expanding social welfare programs and otherwise reducing inequality. But, again, equating such minimal programs with “socialism” does nothing more than demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of the term itself.
Even if we were to accept this idea of an esoteric communist vanguard disguised as extremely wealthy capitalist bureaucrats, however, it is not exactly clear how these individuals would be able to: first, successfully fend off all the true capitalists who had merely joined the party for power; and, second, if they did keep control of the party, how it would be possible for them to liquidate the private property system and redistribute wealth.
After all, Chinese productive power is deeply dependent on global capitalism.[iii] If these secret communists were to finally drop their masks and act, the global capitalist class, with its array of states commanding vast military might would certainly not be silent about the seizure of their wealth. Having completely abandoned the mission of an international communist movement based in popular proletarian organizations across the world, there would be no basis for a genuinely class-based revolutionary war against the imperial forces of global capitalism. Instead, the result would be a brutal conflict between state militaries, with its only popular base built through the cultivation of dangerous, xenophobic nationalism.
Summary
To conclude, let’s review the basic points: China is only a “socialist” country insofar as the meaning of the term “socialism” has become utterly bankrupt. This bankruptcy has mostly occurred through the false equivalence between “socialism” and “development.” While developmental programs were once at least conceivably justified insofar as they established the basic conditions necessary for communism, today even this tenuous argument no longer holds. China’s level of development is in all respects more than sufficient to proceed with the abolition of capitalist society. Moreover, development alone should not be conflated with socialism. Many other parts of the world have seen similarly rapid development, often under openly capitalist or even dictatorial regimes backed by the major imperialist powers. These governments also emphasized that they had lifted their populations out of poverty.
All of this casts suspicion on the claim that some of the world’s most powerful capitalists, composing China’s party leadership, are secretly still communists. Founding any revolutionary strategy on this prospect seems like a bad bet. Regardless of their true beliefs, however, the fact remains that these leaders’ actions have only further entrenched the property system in China and bolstered the power of global capitalist society. This is most apparent in the fact that the party has engaged in continuous crackdowns against communist organizing in the core of capitalism’s global production network and censored access to communist theory, even disbanding university study groups devoted to Marx’s Capital. None of this suggests that the party remains an emancipatory force. But even greater evidence is given by the fact that the party has overseen the deep integration of Chinese production with global capital and systematically cultivated the property system in China itself, eliminating all the remaining communal or semi-communal institutions and converting all ownership to private ownership modelled on the property law of the leading capitalist nations.
中国是社会主义国家吗？——常见中国问题解答系列
这是我们对中国相关的常见问题给出的简短共产主义回答，第二和第三部分我们将其中一个问题一分为二。经常有人问我们：“中国是资本主义国家还是社会主义国家？”这可能是经常问到的中国相关的问题里最常见、最复杂的了，所以我们耍个花招，将问题分成两个紧密联系的问题，然后给出长回答。前篇已经回答了“中国是资本主义国家吗？”。这里将回答“中国是社会主义国家吗？”
和以往一样，我们鼓励读者用其他格式把这些回答转发到各个平台。如果您利用这些材料设计了小册子或者信息图表，请发送一份给我们（邮箱：chuangcn@riseup.net），这样我们就可以留个存档，并且在社交媒体转发！
社会主义
“社会主义”的概念本身从来都不太明了。过去，采用这个概念的人既有革命派，也有那些寻求改良现存秩序以使其更人性化的人。在这两种情况下，社会主义通常指财产系统的摧毁[iv]，至少在18和19世纪的早期用法中，它的最终目的基本上与“共产主义”、“社会革命”和“无政府主义”同义。革命与改良立场之间的区别只不过是达成目的的方法罢了。在20世纪前后，社会主义逐渐指代了共产主义来临前的一个“低级”社会阶段，财产制度此时处于瓦解的过程中，但是没有完全消灭。然而，如今“社会主义”一词指代的不过是“长着人脸的资本主义”。它与摧毁资本主义社会已经完全没有关系了。
这是因为指代活生生的政治的词语不从历史中获取含义。相反，它们被当下流行用法定义，尤其是在该政治的拥护者之中，至少在这些人构成一股真实的社会力量时是这样。与其试图在历史文献中寻找对这个词的某个权威定义，我们要问的是：全世界成千上万的自称“社会主义者”的人是怎样理解它的。同样的问题可以针对具体地点提出。例如，在美国这种地方，“民主社会主义”指的是数量日增中的进步主义者（目前应有数万人），他们致力于仿效北欧国家的政策和／或再次推行战后美国存在的某些政府特征，比如对富人的高税率。这些人中的少数认为这是逐渐迈向重建“混合经济”必要的一步，在这种经济下，各种国有、合作和民主机构将逐渐控制更大的生产份额，尽管财产系统得到保存。
许多人通过历史比较指出，这不是什么“社会主义”。实际上，上世纪中欧洲和美国的自由主义者轻易就推行了比今天伯尼·桑德斯等“社会主义者”的提议广泛得多的公共项目。如果我们追踪这个词的历史转变就能看到，它当下在美欧等地的再次流行是个新的低点，它的意义比以往任何时候更受侵蚀。但是世界上已经没几个地方，能够让“社会主义”仍然在流行的、口语的层面指代财产系统的摧毁甚至是逐渐销蚀。在拉丁美洲，当选的社会主义者受到社会运动的支持；在中国，一种看似与资本主义几乎无异的特别款社会主义被当权的资本家自上而下地宣布。在这两种情况下，“社会主义”或者“共产主义”党都没有试图在实践中撼动财产系统。它们充其量只不过将财产系统伪装为“国家”所有制，或者允许最穷困的地区在一定程度上“自主”管理自己的事务，因为没有任何资源的自主不过是无力的别名罢了。但即使在这些情况下，社会主义当局还是倾向于巩固财产系统，尽管所有的言辞都与之相反。
说到底，所有这些代表了“社会主义”一词史无前例的破产。尽管或许将来有一天，这个词可以重拾革命意味，不过这在不远的未来里似乎不太可能。现实意义上，这意味着那些主张革命性消灭资本主义社会的人，他们越来越普遍地与自称社会主义者的人划清界线。为了准确地保存我们的历史和理论遗产，许多人（包括我们）转用共产主义者一称。伴随着大萧条后对马克思兴趣的重燃，这个词近年来在政治活跃的少数派之中再度流行。许多用这个词的人参与了近期的政治动荡。但是和上个世纪不同，今天的共产主义政治在世界范围内没有广泛的支持。尽管这个词或许会被用来指代脱胎于未来斗争中的一种未来政治，但是同样可能出现一个能捕捉同样意义的新词，将共产主义取而代之。
发展
在中国，这种混淆就更复杂了，因为国家被一个自称“共产”的党掌控，尽管它完全被资本家所统治，他们也为上亿中国人提供了真正的发展成果。发展是这里的关键，因为管理共产党的资本家称，尽管市场发展程度之深，国家的社会主义性质依然在人民脱离贫困的事实之中得到彰显。
这种思路还有个重要的历史维度：“社会主义” 在二十世纪的意义逐渐与贫困国家一种另类的发展模式的观念靠拢，这种模式规避了早期资本主义发展的混乱。这是因为在那个世纪，成功的社会主义革命全都发生在像中国、俄国一样极度贫困、农业为主的地区。在这样的地方，革命者在胜利之后不得不以基本的发展规划为先。这在当时被认为既是当下又是长期的必要之举。就当下而言，这样做原因很明显，既有大饥荒的危险，也有谋图粉碎革命的全球资本家阶级资助外国入侵的威胁。
就长期而言，当时也承认资本主义发展有许多副产物，比如基本教育和医疗，对于建设一个更好的社会是必需的。在其他地方，这些东西已通过资本主义不断革新生产以追求更多金钱的推动力实现。最初，人们预想较富裕国家里的革命会追随较贫困国家的脚步，这样能促成某种发达和不发达地区之间的合作性整合，从而有利于制衡这个不平等。但是富裕国家的革命被摧毁了，而革命成功的贫困国家只得自行发展。因此，“社会主义”实际上用来描述任何试图模仿较富裕国家已完成的发展性变化，但是又不会公开过渡到资本主义的做法。
这也意味着，“社会主义”开始以发展成果来衡量成功，如教育和医疗保健的扩大或人均粮食消费的增加，所有这些都以农业和工业产出的增长为基础。在俄罗斯和南斯拉夫等地，这种社会主义试验出现了决定性的终结，其标志是政治崩溃、领土破碎和从旧社会主义企业系统中出现的新资本主义寡头。在古巴和朝鲜等地，苏联消亡导致了以孤立求生存的新形式，这样往往加剧了当地的危机并刺激了发展逻辑的演变。同时，在中国和越南，冷战以来的政治演变将旧的社会主义官僚制转变为新的资本家阶级的摇篮。
在这种发展逻辑的推动下，中国最终通过其政治领导人称为“改革开放”的进程融入了全球经济。尽管这个过程意味着生产和日常生活将越发受制于市场的需求，但它仍然被理解为“社会主义”，因为它通过迅速增加工业产出而成功产生了发展回报，尽管它同时牺牲了早期社会主义时期的一些成果（例如在公共卫生方面），见证了某些地区（如东北）的广泛衰退，并造成了严重的社会不平等。自始至终，党的言辞都强调无论市场变得多么广大，如果它能保证增长和发展，说到底就是社会主义的——至少在共产党掌权时是这样。
这代表着“社会主义”一词的破产，与美欧显示的情况一致。但是，这些西方案例中的破产，其根源在于上一代革命运动的失败，而在中国，社会主义的破产是党在冷战中幸存并实现国家发展的结果，其背景是同一场全球溃败。这代表了社会主义遭遇更持久的变质，因为此时作为“另类”发展模式的社会主义与它自身所反对的发展模式居然熔合了，似乎所谓“另类”模式本就不存在一样。
共产主义
这提示了我们，真正的问题不在于中国是不是“社会主义国家”，而在于“社会主义”，无论我们怎样定义它，在当今是否真的与共产主义有任何关系。我们暂且回避一些小细节，把共产主义的意义还原为类似那个旧的“社会主义”理想：摧毁财产系统与消灭货币（准确地说是“价值”），以摧毁阶级社会为追求。那么问题就成了：如果我们要接受中国首要资产家（控制党的那些）提出的叙事，那么当下实际存在的中国特色社会主义，是通过什么机制去促使资本主义社会之为核心的财产系统在全球范围内的终结，或者为之做好准备？
单靠发展已经不能提供足够的依据，因为中国当今的生产力和物质财富，早就足以为全体中国人民提供舒适生活，甚至足以在世界最贫困的地区开展合作性发展项目——假如这笔财富（包括那些叫做“国家”资源的私有财产形式）能够再分配，归于集体控制以造福所有人的话。试图用传统的商业统计数据衡量福祉往往不可取，这些数据无法捕捉到人们生活的深度与复杂度。尽管如此，中国今天的人均国民生产总值与（通胀调整后的）1960年代的西欧国家相当，这一点依旧相当重要，因为1960年代见证了许多欧洲共产主义者首次提出，既然产出足以满足所有人的需求，那么任何潜在革命的重点应当是减少他们本国等富裕国家的经济活动。在一个大规模灭绝与生态危机层出不穷的时代，这一重点在对当今世界的共产主义批判那里只会变得更加重要。
这一基本事实对党的主张提出质疑，即这个它称为“社会主义现代化”并理解为“社会主义初级阶段”主要任务的发展过程，必将持续至少一个世纪[v]。用这个思路的话，什么样的发展水平才足以实现共产主义呢？换句话说，既然发展水平的提高是没有尽头的，怎样才能规避把消灭财产系统的目标永远向未来推迟呢？这些本质性问题，党的官员从未给过清楚的答案。相反，当越来越多的党的领导层被转变成资本家，他们同样倾向于将更“高级”的社会主义阶段不断向未来推移。事到如今，共产主义本身已经在地平线后远远地消失了。
所有这些诠释的只是社会主义在理论与所谓的实践中与共产主义愈发背道而驰。就算接受上个世纪的正统观念，承认在革命成功发生的极端贫困地区，社会主义发展是共产主义必要的前身，这一理由在中国也不复存在，最多也就变成这么一个牵强论点，声称要是革命在今天发生在世界最贫穷的地方，就需要以一个类似的“社会主义现代化”过程为先。但是已经剩存没几个地方存在着有革命潜质的“社会主义”组织。在其它地方，似乎社会主义不仅已经与共产主义分道扬镳，那种社会主义实际上还成了抵制共产主义运动兴起的最强力量之一。
在欧洲，“社会主义”政府推行紧缩政策，部署警察师团镇压民众叛乱，从有革命潜质的社会运动当中抽取能量，然后将之改道，转向永远失败的选举计划。在美国，“社会主义”的含义不过是对现状稍许偏左的管理罢了。今天的“民主社会主义者”的每一个政策提案都基于一种狡赖的民族主义，它的根源是对美国工业的某种一厢情愿的复兴——一种全新的、名义上是“绿色”的工业，但它的本色和这种复兴所需的帝国暴力一般血红。
同样，中国的“社会主义”政府镇压任何独立无产阶级组织在世界核心产业的兴起，并禁止普罗大众接触共产主义文献，包括全国范围内对马克思主义学习小组的系统性解散。在这些方面，它是最积极、最成功的力量。党的领导代替了无产阶级组织，而罢工工人被要求为了民族复兴安心受难。政府不鼓励直接阅读马克思的作品，《资本论：政治经济学批判》这样的文本也被替代为研读关于“社会主义政治经济学”的官方文章必选课，而那些文章的作者是各大行政管理学系的教授。
与此同时，“社会主义现代化”实际上却导致了私有财产系统的进一步巩固。在党的监督下，残存的公有或半公有的土地和企业管理惯例基本上全被摧毁。党还摧毁了所有残存的社会主义福利形式，并且将其系统性替换为模仿首要资本主义国家的法律系统所建立的私有制惯例。这种对商品化的培养，加上对普罗大众中共产主义组织行动兴起潜力的压制，似乎将这种中国“社会主义”完全放在了无产阶级解放的对立面。在全球语境下，说当下实际存在的社会主义大体上是反共产主义的，并不夸张。
简言之：如果成为一个“社会主义者”意味着反对所有在资本主义工业生产的腹地（中国、越南等地）和世界上几乎所有最穷困国家发生的罢工、暴动和叛乱（把这些事件解释为美国中情局支持的“颜色革命”），那么这种“社会主义”看来是明确反对通过革命推翻资本主义。
习近平大救星
即使我们拒绝那种悲观的观念，否认“社会主义”不过是一种掩护资本家寡头的意识形态障眼法，转之热切相信中国当下任何社会主义者的自我描述，现实仍然是，他们的所有行动似乎都是为了保留资本主义并防止共产主义的兴起，至少是在大众层面防止。唯一剩下的可能结论就是，他们建设共产主义的策略实际上就是听党的指令，这种策略依托于未来某某时刻政策出现某某剧变，自此之后，通过“社会主义现代化”这个“社会主义初级阶段”的特征而建立起来的私有财产系统，将会开始瓦解成某种预兆着共产主义的“社会主义高级阶段”，不过当下这个高级阶段大体上没人提起，也未加以理论化。
依这种观念看，植根于普通人活动之中的通俗的共产主义被一种晦涩的、深藏在紫禁城和习近平等领导人心里的共产主义所取代。接受这一立场相当于下了一个极不可能的赌注，认为一些世界上最强大的资本家——那些组成党领导层的——在某种深不可测的道德的层面仍然是共产主义者，并且他们居然能够有效地撼动并推翻全世界资本家的权力。换句话说，这种赌赛基本上放弃了作为大众政治的、从无产阶级斗争中诞生的共产主义的一切希望，转之将共产主义唯一的可能寄望于资本家的反叛派。
如果真是这样，就没有必要劳师动众对资本主义世界发动革命了，因为革命在半个多世纪前就在中国发生了。真要革命，最多不过涉及富裕国家里被压迫的人起义支持党内叛变的资产阶级，这样能加速美帝的消亡。但是奇怪的是，许多在海外支持这种解读的人似乎并不常参与在美国和欧洲等地正在发生的反叛。更甚者，他们参与的时候几乎无一例外，与其它改良派“社会主义者”一道把这些运动收编驯化成竞选活动。
这种对共产主义力量的理解与马克思以及所有传承了他的反叛计划的人所设想的相距甚远，但是指出这一点来也是枉然。更实际的重点在于，这个赌注看起来行险徼幸。某些世界上最有钱、最有权的人居然是秘密共产主义者，这可能性太小了。又或许我们想错了，党内当然还有可能剩存足够多的领导人，在某种意义上着实是共产主义者。
至少可以肯定的是，习近平（以及党里许多地位显赫的领导人）自认是社会主义者，而且毫无疑问，他的政府将在未来十年内建设国家基础设施、提高富人税收、扩大社会福利项目以及用其它方式减少不平等，以此推行表面是“社会主义式”政策。但是再次申明，把这些最低限度的项目等同于“社会主义”只不过体现了这个词本身的完全破产。
就算我们接受这种观念，认为晦涩的共产主义先锋队乔装打扮成富得流油的资本主义官僚，这些人在两个问题上有什么能耐还是不甚了了：第一，如何成功地击败所有入党只为权的真正的资本主义者；第二，如果他们真的维持对党的控制，又怎样能够粉碎私有财产系统并实现财产再分配。
说到底，中国的生产力深深依赖于全球资本主义。[vi]如果那些秘密共产主义者有一天终于露出真面目并采取行动，那在星罗棋布的国家里坐拥浩荡军力的全球资本家阶级决然不会在他们的财产被夺取时默不作声。在完全抛弃了依托全世界范围内民众无产阶级组织的国际共产主义运动后，就没有了对全球资本主义帝国势力进行依托阶级的革命战争的基础。相反，结果会是国家军队之间的血腥冲突，而冲突的唯一群众基础将建立在危险、排外的民族主义的滋长之上。
总结
最后，让我们回顾一下基本论点：要说中国是“社会主义”国家，相当于证明“社会主义”一词的内涵完全破产。这一破产大体是通过将“社会主义”错误等同于“发展”而发生的。虽然至少曾经可以为发展计划想出合理的理由，因为它能为共产主义建立必要的基本条件，但如今即便是这一牵强的论点也站不住脚了。中国的发展水平在任何方面看来都足以着手消灭资本主义社会。此外，不应将发展本身混淆为社会主义。世界许多其它地方都见证了类似的快速发展，它们往往发生在主要帝国主义势力支持下公开的资本主义甚至独裁政权之下。这些政府同样强调自己让本国人口摆脱了贫困。
所有这些都令人怀疑这一断言：世界上最强大的、组成中共领导层的那一些资本家，暗地里仍然是共产主义者。把任何革命策略寄望于这一前景之上看来是行险徼幸。然而，无论他们的真实信仰如何，这些领导人的行为只是进一步地巩固了中国的财产系统，加强了全球资产主义社会的力量，这一事实不会变。最能体现这一点的，是党持续打击资本主义全球生产网络核心内部的共产主义组织活动，并严控接触共产主义理论的渠道，甚至解散研究马克思《资本论》的大学学习小组。这一切都不能体现党仍然是解放的力量。但是更确凿的证据在于，党监督了中国生产与全球资本的深层熔合，系统培育了中国内的财产系统，铲除了所有残余的公有或半公有建制，并将一切所有制转化成模仿首要资本主义国家的产权法而建立的私有制。
[i] This is a slight oversimplification, but necessary for two reasons. First, it is more accurate to say that the goal is the total destruction of “the capitalist system” or “capitalist society” (and this terminology is used interchangeably), but misunderstandings of the nature of capitalism (especially the tendency to equate capitalism with “the market” and socialism with “the state”) make this prone to misreading. Even a seemingly state-run economy can be capitalist, so long as it has preserved the property system necessary to the production of value. Second, it is more accurate to say that the core of capitalist production is the “value form” or “form of value,” rather than the “property system,” even though the terms are loosely synonymous. We don’t use this terminology here because it is needlessly technical. If you’re looking for a more detailed understanding of how capitalism works, however, you will see the term “value form” used in this fashion today. In older literature, you might also find the term “bourgeois right” used in a similar fashion.
[ii] This was claimed by Zhao Ziyang at the 13th Party Congress in 1987, and is expressed more vaguely in the Chinese constitution, which states that the country “will be in the primary stage of socialism for a long time to come.”
[iii] It is essential to remember here that all the largest “state-owned” enterprises are shareholder corporations with their shares sold on global capital markets. Even though their status as “state-owned” enterprises means that the party-state has ownership of, at minimum a 50 percent share, the other half is held by private investors located all over the world. If these enterprises were to reject the profit motive entirely or liquidate their vast private assets by converting them to public ownership, it would effectively be a seizure of the assets of these international investors.
[iv] 这里有点过度简化，但是有必要，原因有二：第一，更准确的说法是以完全摧毁“资本主义系统”或者“资本主义社会”（这两个术语可以互用）为目的，但是对资本主义性质的错误理解（尤其是将资本主义等同于“市场”和将社会主义等同于“国家”的趋势）容易造成对这个目的的误读。即使表面上是国营的经济，只要保留了生产价值所必需的财产系统，也可以是资本主义。第二，说资本主义生产的核心是“价值形式”而不是“财产系统”会更准确，虽然这二者大致上是同义的。在此我们不用这一术语是因为没必要太技术性。然而，如果你想更细致地理解资本主义的运转，你会碰到“价值形式”一词在今天以这种方式使用。在较早的文献中，你或许还会发现“资产阶级权利”以相似的方式使用。
[v] 这是赵紫阳1987年在党的十三大上的提法，中国宪法对此的表述更加含糊，称之为“我国将长期处于社会主义初级阶段”。
[vi] 要记住这个重点：所有最大的“国有”企业全是在全球资本市场上市的股份制公司。就算它们的“国有”身份意味着党国持股至少50％，另一半股份还是被全球各地的私有投资者持有。如果这些企业要完全抗拒利润动机，或者要将巨量的私有资产重组为全民所有，实际上就是在没收这些国际投资者的资产。
