Comparing China to the United States as if it were just another imperialist power normalizes an error stemming from an ideological wound rooted in the discourse of neocolonial power: the belief that any economy reaching a certain scale is automatically an invading force. This comparison, besides being misguided, obscures the fact that the Chinese process no longer fits within the neocolonial phase, simply because this would imply the Asian country's ambition to become a unipolar power. Unipolarity is no longer viable; therefore, China is leading essential processes in the opposite direction, such as dedollarization, the use of national currencies in a network, overcoming the monopolistic monetary system, and decarbonization. 

A few days ago—while participating in a panel on economics at the Zócalo International Book Fair—an attendee suggested that the United States is comparable to China, identifying them as equally imperialist countries. It's not the first time I've heard this idea, but it is the first time I felt it wasn't just a question, but an ideological wound embodying the impossibility of imagining a large economy without hegemonic ambitions. This column stems from that wound. Not as a defense of China, but to ask ourselves: what if the problem isn't who dominates, but rather that there's no longer room for just one king on the chessboard? 

In the previous installment, we discussed how Immanuel Wallerstein recovers the dimension of "discourse of power" to remind us that the global economy is not only about the exchange of products, but also about the collective construction of a horizon of meaning, a model of society to be achieved, the establishment of a vision from which all actions acquire a particular meaning. It is a paradigm from which certain actions are normalized and others become unacceptable. 

The identification of two historical phases within the capitalist system itself has also become clear: the first, of a colonial nature, unfolded from 1492 until the mid-20th century; and the second, of a neocolonial nature, evolving from 1945 to the current crisis. From an economic and political perspective, the financial phase effectively ended in 2008, as it was during this Wall Street crisis that the financial strategy of offshoring in the United States demonstrated its inability to maintain control over global production processes. Since then, the rise of the Chinese economy has consistently shown impressive levels of productive capacity, not only quantitatively, but especially in its qualitative core. 
When asked whether China is another imperialist country like the United States, it has become commonplace to assume that any economy that reaches a certain scale is immediately an invading force. However, this actually stems from the neocolonial "discourse of power" itself, which has normalized the idea that a country can only follow one path—that is, the one that leads it to assume the role of absolute ruler. This is the discourse of normalizing hegemonies. 

This allows us to obscure a fact that we must emphasize forcefully: the Chinese process no longer fits within the neocolonial phase simply because this would imply the Asian country's aspiration to become a unipolar power. But this is not the case. In fact, the Asian project, in practice, has already demonstrated the understanding that unipolarity is unfeasible, and therefore the goal is to transition to polycentric or multipolar forms. Such a network precisely inhibits, even if intended, the aspiration to become a unipolar force. The essential processes, therefore, are, dedollarization the use of national currencies within a network, overcoming the monopolistic monetary system, and decarbonization, that is, avoiding the massive transfer of human costs to the natural system. With just these two elements, we are already talking about a civilizational process with a radically different horizon of meaning. 

But this multipolar project is still under development; we could say we are just at the beginning of its metabolic renewal. This is why it is also necessary to become aware of a process of de-Westernization, that is, to undertake a profound critique of the horizon of meaning normalized under neocolonialism. It is natural that, currently in this period of transition, we still have reflections of the colonial world in our vision, in which we have accepted a series of imposed principles that operate against the liberation process of peoples. Often, the enemy lies deep within our own minds, so de-Westernization means the search for supposedly universal elements that are not; that is, it is about opening ourselves to other possible forms. There is no such thing as one version being right and another wrong. 

In other words, the new post-neocolonial period needs to acknowledge other universalities. Just as Orientalism, even with its significant limitations, signified the recognition of "others" as civilizations (albeit "incomplete" because they did not evolve into the Western form), this time it is necessary to reaffirm the recognition of other civilizations, but as complete, in their own right. Just as it is a matter of ensuring that each national currency can be exchanged on the world market, it is a matter of recognizing that each culture is, in itself, both unique and universal. This recognition of the "other" is what founds the new era. It is the horizon of meaning for the Global South. In this sense, China is leading the way; now let us consider, analogously, what is happening in Mexico.

Author
Óscar David Rojas Silva is a Professor of Political Economy at FES-Acatlán UNAM.

To win the debate against the KKE’s “neither Washington nor Beijing” camp, what we need to focus on is the role of finance capital. Specifically what purpose finance capital has in the system of imperialism, and why Marxist economic analysis shows that it has an indispensable role in the imperial superstructure. In this debate, the goal of the KKE and the Trotskyist forces the KKE aligns with is to obscure the essential part that finance plays within imperialism; and the purpose of this obfuscation is to depict the present global conflict as an “inter-imperialist” conflict, instead of as the anti-imperialist fight which it actually is.
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The deeper purpose behind this is to assist the reformist, opportunist, and wrecker forces that are tied to the KKE, such as the Trotskyist faction within Venezuela’s socialist movement. That this faction instigated a grievously damaging split in the Venezuelan workers movement proves this isn’t just a theoretical debate, it has very consequential implications. When the Trotskyists spun a false narrative about Maduro’s government having betrayed the workers, it greatly weakened the communist movement; and one of the core supporting ideas behind this narrative was that we must also take a “neither Washington nor Beijing” position. That all countries in the world have imperialist tendencies, as the KKE argues, and therefore we shouldn’t side with any countries resisting the U.S. hegemon.

It’s this notion that’s contained within all arguments which assert the USA is not today’s sole imperialist power. A recent example of this is the rebuttal that Greg Godels from Marxism-Leninism Today made towards Carlos Garrido’s article on why Russia and China are not imperialist. Within this piece, there’s a part where Godels challenges Garrido’s premise about imperialism having taken on a new form, yet in the process admits the imperial system has in fact become centralized within the United States:

The “transformation” that Garrido believes he sees is simply a reordering of the international system that existed before the war with New York now replacing London as the financial center of the capitalist universe. It is the replacement of the vast colonial world and the bloody rivalries and shifting alliances and hierarchies of the interwar world with the creation of a neo-colonial system dominated by the US and reinforced by its assumption of the role of guardian of capitalism in the Cold War. The monopoly capitalist base is qualitatively the same, but its superstructure changes with historical circumstances. The Bretton Woods system and the later discarding of the gold standard reflect those changing circumstances.

What I find interesting about this argument is that Godels does not try to find alleged examples of Russia or China engaging in imperialist actions. This is something that you consistently see liberals, anarchists, or right-wingers do when confronted with the question of whether we should align with these countries, but somebody can’t really do this when they have the theoretical knowledge that Godels shows he has. In the article, Godels explains why imperialism is not a policy but a system, so it would be contradictory for him to point towards this or that policy as proof of Washington’s rivals being imperialist. Therefore in order to win this debate from a Marxist perspective, the “neither Washington nor Beijing” camp needs to prove that finance—which as Godels concedes is centralized in the USA—isn’t synonymous with imperialism.

To make this argument, Godels attempts to refute Garrido’s statement that the bulk of imperialism’s profits come from finance:

Garrido’s misunderstanding of the international role of finance capital leads him to make the claim that “…the lion’s share of profits made by the imperialist system are accumulated through debt and interest.” At its peak before the great crash of 2007-2009, finance (broadly speaking, finance, insurance, real estate) accounted for maybe forty percent of US profits; today, with the NASDAQ techs, the percentage is likely less. But that is only US profits. With deindustrialization, industrial commodity production has shifted to the PRC, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe, and other low-wage areas and the US has become the center of world finance. If commodity production sneezes, the whole edifice of fictitious capital collapses, along with its fictitious profits.
As all three volumes of Capital explain in great detail, commodity production is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and wage-labor is the source of value, not the mystifying maneuvers of Wall Street grifters.

The notion this argument depends on is that because of the difference between the illusory speculative financial profits, and the materially tangible profits that come from labor, finance is not necessarily a prerequisite to imperialism. Why, then, does Godels recognize that the imperialist superstructure has been reordered to center around New York? Why is it evidently impossible to dispute that the capitalist universe has come to revolve around U.S. finance, even when one rejects Garrido’s idea that imperialism has transitioned into a new phase? (Which is also true; Garrido is referring to how finance has taken on such a big role that the U.S. can solely use it as a tool for leverage.)

To properly see the argument Garrido was making here, it’s best to include more of what he wrote about that “lion’s share” idea:

Today, the lion’s share of profits made by the imperialist system are accumulated through debt and interest. The U.S. can run perpetual deficits without the normal constraints other nations face, effectively getting the rest of the world to finance its military spending and overseas investments. Instead of weakening the U.S., the deficits tie other countries’ financial systems to the dollar, reinforcing its geopolitical and economic dominance.

​The U.S. could print in less than a second more money than any country could produce in a span of years of real investment in labor, resources, and time. This is what imperialism is today. Its skeletal body are the global financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, institutions that only the U.S. has – in the last instance – control over. Neither China nor Russia could leverage these global financial apparatuses to enforce their so-called “imperial” interests. On the contrary, these institutions are often utilized by the U.S. as a weapon against them and their allies.

This context is essential to understanding why imperialism is synonymous with U.S. hegemony, and why the imperial system can’t be separated from finance. Lenin clarified that “Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.” After this division was completed, and the United States took on the role of the banking hub for capital in all other countries, the task of the workers movement changed. In this era, one of our foremost missions is to defeat U.S. dominance in particular, which would thereby cause the imperial system as a whole to unravel.

For this to happen, there will need to be a workers revolution in the United States; which pertains to a certain contradiction within our movement, that being the difference between the class struggle and the anti-imperialist struggle. These struggles are overwhelmingly aligned in their goals, but they are not one and the same. This reality is something that cynical actors like the KKE seek to exploit when they depict the countries fighting imperialism as not being worthy of the workers’ support; they act as if defeating U.S. hegemony should be de-prioritized due to the class contradictions within these anti-imperialist countries. This comes from the crude economism that prevails within the communist parties which have fallen into dogmatic thinking.

It’s useful to point out these economistic errors, but to build a political force that’s truly effective at waging all fronts of the struggle, we will need to reckon with the contradictions regarding class and anti-imperialism. I readily admit that this reckoning needs to happen among those who support multipolarity; far too much “multipolarist” politics disregards the class struggle, and behaves as if multipolar institutions such as BRICS will do the work for us. It is necessary to warn against this idealism. The biggest problem with the position the KKE takes towards the BRICS countries is that due to its treating these countries like potential incubators of imperialism, it acts as if their local capitalist classes are independent. Which is a notion that actually obscures the real danger they pose.

The risk is not that the national bourgeoisie in Russia, Iran, or other places will launch upstart imperialist projects, because they lack the financial capacity to do this. The risk is that they’ll sell their peoples out to the hegemon. It’s this danger that we need to focus on, and the only way we can address it is by building the workers movement. A key thing, though, is to not do this in an economistic way, but rather reach a synthesis that accounts for the anti-imperialist struggle. This is the balance that can let us win the ideological battle with the KKE’s camp, and act as effective leaders for the workers.

As of now everyone has seen at least snippets of Charlie Kirk’s memorial. Most sane human beings have had the same response to that event – what the fuck was that? The internet, as usual, has done its job to spread a flurry of memes about the occasion, which resembled a WWE event more than a memorial.

We would be foolish to consider such events accidental. Capitalism shrinks from genuine memorialization. It is a system which produces an ever-present cycle of Neuralyzer flashes, readily available to try to wipe any semblance of memory.

When memories are allowed to linger it is in the form of a commodity, a real abstraction woven into the fabric of capital accumulation. It is not the memory of St. Nicholas which we keep but of Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus, a commodity we fill our homes with in December.

Likewise, irrespective of one’s thoughts on Kirk, what most substantially remains is not a real memory but a caricature, deified into a symbolic commodity whose purpose is not just accumulation, but an ideological social function used to unify people for the Zionist right’s political projects. While his persona has not died, he has neither remained alive in the form of genuine memorialization. He remains what Slavoj Žižek calls, “undead… neither alive nor dead, precisely the monstrous ‘living dead.’” He’s been turned into a zombie-like symbolic commodity for the Zionist right, an interesting appropriation considering his criticisms of Israel and AIPAC toward the end of his life.
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The erasure and commodification of memory breed a memoryless people of the surface, weak and without historical depth. Like the Eloi in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, we are conditioned to only seek immediate gratification, to shun anything that requires effort and sacrifice.

Capitalism seeks to strip us of any sense of a common historical past. It is through collective memory that a great deal of meaning is imbued to the current battles of our world – it is because our present struggles, as Walter Benjamin would say, redeem those who have fought before us that they are meaningful. It is this sense of fighting “in light” of a tradition which precedes us that sheds historical depth on our present struggles.

A people without a memory are politically paralyzed. They have the form of a people but are devoid of content. The shared identity rooted in a common tradition of struggle, its memorialization as a basic component of their being-in-the-world, is the background on which all emancipatory political projects are undertaken. This need not only take conceptual form; it is embodied in their practices, rituals, and basic ways of skillfully coping in the world.

​Capitalism seeks not only to destroy how memory exists in our conceptual understanding of the world, but also in our fundamental existence in it, in the pre-conceptual practices through which we skillfully navigate the world most of the time. It seeks to uproot us from the practices, rituals, and ways of being-in-the world through which memory is sustained.

This is a fundamental mechanism of capitalism’s reproduction. It isn’t an accident or an arbitrary policy; it is a systemic necessity to continuously reproduce the system. What is at stake here is people’s willingness to sacrifice. As Boris Groys writes, humans are willing to sacrifice themselves, but there must be some semblance of compensation for it. This need not be an immediate gratification, or even one that is in our lifetime. Groys writes that “in the Christian tradition this compensation is divine grace. In our time it is the collective memory of people sacrificing themselves for the common good.”

Sacrifice is often rewarded in the form of martyrdom, where the death itself becomes a testimony to the revolutionary cause. This can be seen in both Jesus and Che Guevara. Their deaths were transfigured into the collective memory of a people, their martyrdom inscribed meaning into the world from the moment of death itself. Their deaths are of the kind Chairman Mao said were “weightier than Mount Tai.” They died for the people and because of it they continued living through genuine memorialization in the people’s being-in-the-world.
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Not all lives of sacrifices end in martyrdom, where the death itself is marked as a revolutionary event – a staple in the memory of the cause itself. Almost all forms of sacrifice, however, seek to be remembered, that is, to not have occurred in vain.

“It was very characteristic of the Christian church,” Groys writes, “to create an archive for sacrifice, for martyrdom. Sacrifice is always connected to the process of archiving. Capitalism tends to negate archives; today physical archives are financially in a very bad position. This economic dissolution of archives creates a feeling that whatever we do, it all disappears—it is all for nothing. If people don’t have the feeling that their sacrifice is valued, then they just enjoy life. They think the only thing they have is life here and now, so they want their life to be a life of pleasure.”

It is precisely here where we see what is at stake in capitalism’s erasure of memory and genuine memorialization. It is the uprooting of the conditions for the possibility of sacrifice – an integral quality of any revolutionary struggle. If a people are unwilling to sacrifice themselves for a cause, if they consider all sacrifices to ultimately be in vain due to the fate befallen those who have sacrificed themselves in the past, there will ultimately be no impetus to fight. Political paralysis ensues and the masses are reduced to a cattle-like existence that merely continues life to satisfy cravings and ephemeral desires.
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While far from sufficient for revolutionary change, today memorialization is an essential revolutionary act. It reminds us of our forefathers who carried on the fight we wage today, in their own time. The men and women who sacrificed themselves to push things forward, even if it was not them who would reap the rewards of their struggles. Their memory must be kept alive so that their struggles don’t die in vain. So that our struggles don’t either. To remember the struggles of the past is to affirm – in the face of capitalism’s attempt to erase memory and make us into tabula rasas – that there is meaning in our sacrifices today. That our efforts will not be in vain. That however much capitalism will seek to expunge the memory of our plight from the annals of history, our descendants in the struggle will keep us alive, as we did to our forefathers. To remember is to resist a system that wants us to forget.

Author
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Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy professor. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the Secretary of Education of the American Communist Party. He has authored a few books, including The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Why We Need American Marxism (2024), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming On Losurdo’s Western Marxism (2025) and Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2025). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE. Carlos’ just made a public Instagram, which you can follow HERE.

Since the declaration of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the Chinese socialist project has evolved through three stages. (1) The period of “socialist revolution and reconstruction” from 1949 to 1978, led by Mao Zedong, was characterized by the consolidation of state power and the socialist transformation of agriculture and industry. (2) The period of “reform, opening, and socialist modernization” from 1978 to 2012, led by Deng Xiaoping, was characterized by an emphasis on productivity, the introduction of market strategies in state-owned enterprises, the expansion of space for private enterprise, and the expansion of foreign investment and foreign commerce, all developed under state direction in accordance with a long-term development plan. The Reform and Opening had enormous success in unleashing economic productivity. (3) The third stage, led by Xi Jinping, began with the 2012 National Congress of the Communist Party of China. It has focused on improving the development policy of the Reform and Opening and addressing its inherent negative consequences, such as inequality, poverty, environmental destruction, and corruption. During all three stages, the People’s Republic has implemented a process of people’s democracy, which includes a system of direct and indirect elections for positions in local and national governments, integrated with multiparty cooperation led by the Communist Party of China.

Xi Jinping has been the paramount leader of China since 2012. He was born on June 15, 1953, with a political pedigree as the son of a communist veteran, Xi Zhongxun. However, his father was expelled from the Party and sent to work in a factory in 1963, when Xi Jinping was ten years of age. During the Cultural Revolution, Xi Jinping’s father was paraded before a crowd as an enemy of the revolution, and he was sent to prison in 1968.

In 1969, at the age of sixteen, Xi Jinping relocated from Beijing to Liangjiahe Village in the impoverished rural zone of Yan'an. He subsequently worked for the Party in Liangjiahe, developing a strong rapport with the villagers and creating practical solutions to their problems. He was admitted to the Party in 1974, overcoming political persecution directed against his father, through the support of the local Party secretary.

Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing from 1975 to 1979. Following graduation, he worked for three years in the Central Military Commission of the Party as one of three secretaries to the Minister of Defense.

In 1982, Xi was named the deputy secretary of the Party for Zhengding County in Hebei. In that capacity, he was successful in persuading the central government to reduce burdensome requisitions on local small farmers, which resulted in the doubling of their income. He also initiated several local development projects. In 1984, his vision for the comprehensive development of Zhengding County was presented to the Central Organization Department of the Communist Party of China, which resulted in his assignment to the Standing Committee of the Party in Xiamen and his nomination by the Party to the position of vice-mayor of Xiamen. In said capacity, Xi drafted in 1985 the first comprehensive plan for the development of the city of Xiamen, and he oversaw various development projects.

In 1988, Xi Jinping was assigned to the position of Party Secretary in the city of Ningde in the province of Fujian, whose economy at that time was worse than that of Xiamen. As Party secretary in Ningde, Xi led the local poverty-eradicating efforts and local building projects, presenting his experiences in a book, Getting Out of Poverty.
In 1990, Xi was named Party Secretary of the Municipal Committee of Fuzhou City, the capital city of the province of Fujian. In 1999, he became Vice-Governor of Fujian, and Governor of the province in 2000. In that position, he oversaw the development of a master plan for economic growth as well as various development projects.

In 2002, Xi left Fujian to assume the highest positions in the government and the Party in the neighboring province of Zhejiang. In that same year, he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, marking his ascension to the national stage. During his stewardship from 2002 to 2006, the province of Zhejiang experienced a rate of growth averaging 14% per year, marked by a transition away from heavy industry. And Xi attracted national media attention for his tough stance against corrupt officials.

From February 2003 to March 2007, Xi Jinping wrote 232 commentaries to Party leaders and militants of the province of Zhejiang. They include guidelines with respect to the correct comportment of the Party cell leaders, spiced with citations of Confucius, poets of the Chinese empires, Mao, and Deng. And the commentaries formulate a theory of economic development rooted in the experiences of China, written on the basis of Xi’s extensive experience leading development projects in China, and written shortly prior to Xi’s ascent to the national and international stage.

In today’s commentary, I endeavor to explain Xi’s theory of development, put forth by Xi during his exercise of political leadership in the period 2003 to 2007. I have used the Spanish-language edition published jointly in 2019 by Editorial de Ciencias Sociales in Havana and Editorial del Pueblo de Zhejiang, entitled Zhejiang, China: Una nueva visión sobre el desarrollo [Zhejiang, China: A new vision on development].

In the initial commentaries, written from February 25 to July 21, 2003, Xi stresses the qualities that Party members ought to have, writing to the leaders of the local cells of the Party. He stresses that Party leaders ought to be realistic and pragmatic, establishing good relations with the workers, farmers, intellectuals, and personalities of the different social sectors. They ought to deepen analysis of the problems and know how to analyze existing contradictions, proposing viable solutions. They ought not aspire to higher posts, but should seek to defend the people through meritorious service. They should live an austere style of life, remembering Mao’s teaching that the Party leaders and militants cannot be separated from the masses.
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Our duty, Xi writes, is to govern the country for the good of the people, especially persons most in need. Our fundamental goal is to guarantee a minimum level of life to the urban and rural population. We ought to produce cultural products that approach reality and the daily life of the people, orienting the people toward the modernization of the economy and society. Therefore, the selection of Party cell leaders ought to be based on their moral qualities.

We are stronger, Xi stresses, with unity. The maximum chiefs ought to be models of conduct, uniting the comrades to work together. We deepen our understanding and knowledge through working together.

From November 11, 2003, to February 23, 2004, Xi wrote commentaries on the art of leadership. He wrote that the art of leadership involves being able to tolerate others and accept advice, sufficiently developing the internal democracy of the Party, and ensuring democratization and objectivity in the taking of decisions, seeking the unity of knowledge and action of the leading teams of the Party committees. The art of leadership involves understanding the essence of the problems and resolving them efficiently, taking precautions against possible disasters, neutralizing a crisis before it occurs, and harmonizing the different opinions with diplomacy.

Party leaders ought to understand how to attain unity. To wit, acting honestly in order to arrive to understanding of others, deepening mutual knowledge in cooperation and collective work, and forming the leadership teams well.
The Party and government, Xi wrote, ought to form an excellent duet. The maximum chiefs of the committees of the Party and the government are not normal persons, but the personification of their respective institutions. The relations among them are not simple personal relations, but to a considerable extent represent relations between the committees of the Party and the governments. The secretaries of the Party and the mayors of the local government are like brothers, and they should not be in conflict. The mayors ought to support the authority of the Party secretary and the development of a leading group of the Party in the government, asking instruction and informing the committee when confronting any serious problem. The maximum chiefs of the government and the Party ought to support and help each other, to complement each other, to row in the same direction, and to work together to form an excellent “duet” of government.

If the cell leaders desire that their image and voice are permanent in the heart of the people, they ought to concentrate on their work and make contributions to the people, and avoid being ostentatious or looking for easy applause. Cell leaders ought to have a high devotion to the cause and an elevated sense of responsibility.
Xi cautioned that if the small matters are not resolved in an efficient manner, it can affect the spirit and the productive life of the people. The trivial affairs that affect the people are important, because to the people, each one of the trivial affairs is large and real.

On February 3, 2004, Xi put forth an implicit practical epistemology. He maintained that truth is found in objective reality through pragmatic governing, which enables improvement of the theoretical legacy and the attainment of the truth. He therefore exhorted Party members to be realistic and pragmatic, and to persist in taking concrete measures for the benefit of the people. Realism and pragmatism, he reiterated on February 23, ought to guide the road toward the modernization of the province.

Xi’s first postings on economic development, emitted on August 11 and August 12, 2003, stressed the success of the Reform and Opening and the need to deepen its application. We ought to use private capital, he wrote, to increase investment in the infrastructure and the economy in the province, attracting funds to diversify investments. He cited as a good example the bridge over the bay of Hangzhou, which was constructed with 50.26% private capital. To stimulate economic growth, he wrote, we ought to make restrictions on investment more flexible, especially with respect to infrastructure projects. We ought to have greater opening to the world beyond China and to foreign capital and foreign technology. We ought to increase international integration and the degree of utilization of foreign capital, attracting international industries and establishing foreign companies in the province. At present, Xi noted on August 23, there is great enthusiasm in the province for accelerating development and producing great advances in the construction of cities, industrial parks, and infrastructure.

However, Xi stressed on March 19, 2004, the province has reached a new stage of growth. Guaranteeing the minimum conditions of life for the people is no longer the primary goal, but the acceleration of an integral development that is in harmony with nature and the protection of the environment. This commentary was consistent with his earlier post of August 8, 2003, in which he stressed that protecting the environment not only means protecting the environment in the local territory, but must be based in the understanding that ecological problems do not have borders, that we have only one planet that is our common home. In commentaries of May 8 and May 11, 2004, Xi stressed that, although there have been gains in ecological consciousness in the province in recent years, China is far from complying with the laws of ecological consciousness.

In a commentary posted on June 14, 2004, Xi declared that after twenty years of applying the policy of Reform and Opening, the province of Zhejiang has entered a new key period, in which it confronts difficulties in maintaining sustained development. Therefore, adjustments are necessary, deepening the reform and changing the modality of growth, elevating capacities with respect to scientific and technological development.

In four commentaries posted from January 10 to January 13, 2005, Xi put forth a concept of coordinated rural-urban development. In the first phase of modern industrial development, he noted, agriculture supports industry. But when industrialization attains a certain level, industry must repay agriculture for the support it received; the city must support the countryside, making real a coordinated development between industry and agriculture. Urban support elevates the global productive capacity of agriculture and promotes an increase of agricultural efficiency, thus increasing the income and wealth of the farmers, so that they become not only the principal force in the modernization of the countryside, but they also become participants and beneficiaries of industrialization and urbanization. In this way, the countryside becomes a new community, in which the farmers live and work in peace. The foundation is laid for integral development of the farmers as persons, protecting and developing their material interests and their democratic rights, and strengthening continually their capacity for self-development.
The coordination of the development of the rural and urban sectors, Xi maintained, is the base of the construction of a modern society, characterized by coordinated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors and the joint advance of the rural and urban zones.

Therefore, the continuous increase in the productivity of agricultural work is a necessary condition for increasing the level of industrialization. Industry and the cities will be the driving force of development only if the people and the workforce of the countryside are incorporated in a continuous and ordered form in the cities and in the industrial and service sectors. The coordinated development of the city and the country is the basis for the revitalization of the “three rural pillars” of agriculture, the countryside, and the farmer.

The Reform and Opening, Xi emphasizes, has been the fundamental driving force that has stimulated socialist modernization and has promoted the economic and social development of the countryside. The reform was initiated in the 1970s, he reminded, with the family contract with respect to production, liberating production and amply developing the productivity of the countryside. It stimulated the enthusiasm of the farming masses and promoted the reform of the entire economic system. However, macro-institutional reform has lagged behind micro-institutional reform, so that there has been a lack of coordination between the urban and rural reform, creating a dual structure and institutional arrangements that divide the city and the country, creating an obstacle for the development of the “three rural pillars.”
So, the reform now enters a new stage in the province, involving an acceleration of industrialization and urbanization and at the same time the stimulation of agriculture by industry and the support by the city to the country. We have to eliminate rural-urban institutional obstacles and undo barriers between the city and the country. We have to complete the rights of property and equal opportunities of development for farmers. We have to respect completely the pioneering spirit of the rural masses, seeking the development of agriculture, the satisfaction of the farmers, and the reduction of the distance between the city and the country. We must promote the “three rural pillars” by undoing the dual structure of the city-country.

On January 17, 2005, Xi put forth the concept of highly efficient ecological agriculture. Agricultural production in Zhejiang should be oriented toward the necessities of “green consumption” on the basis of the industrialization of agriculture and the ecological transition of the economy, centering on elevating the competitivity and sustainable development of the agricultural market. Highly efficient ecological agriculture is profitable and is an important means for elevating the income of the farmers and accelerating agricultural modernization. Highly efficient ecological agriculture is different from agriculture based in petroleum as well as from natural ecological agriculture, which emphasizes the protection of ecological equilibrium at the expense of the goals of high investment and production.

From February 18, 2005, to March 23, 2005, Xi emitted eight commentaries maintaining that the Reform and Opening must continue, but it must not follow the old road; it must be an integral development that transforms the model of growth. The new model of development must be focused on persons as the ultimate objective. It must be a development that is coordinated between the city and the country and among the various regions. It must be a sustainable development.

Xi observes that when problems are difficult to solve and become big problems, it becomes necessary to use the strong medicine of market macro-control. If we don’t put into practice a new form of development, we will never be able to disconnect ourselves from the strong medicine of the market. We will have a permanent state of the market economy. We need a new form of development that stimulates investment and consumption.
The construction of a society that conserves resources, Xi maintains, is a social revolution of great importance for attaining human harmony with nature. In the slightly more than 300 years since the beginning of the industrial revolution, an enormous increase in the productive forces has stimulated the modernization of a few Western countries, becoming a threat for the survival of humanity and for life on the planet. Prior to that time, the material development of humanity was not very developed, and ecological systems did not suffer great damage, and human society was able to evolve for thousands of years.

Xi points out that Western industrial civilization is based on the enrichment of a few countries and the impoverishment of the majority. The desire to live like the minority could produce the collapse of human civilization. It is not possible to attain industrialization in the Western style. We ought to find a road of sustainable development adequate for the times. It is urgent to construct a society that saves resources.
Xi maintains that accelerating the development of the service sector is an objective demand for adapting to the laws of economic development and stimulating the transformation of the model of growth. We must respect economic laws and to progressively make the service sector grow, so that the services sector becomes the principle driving force of economic growth.

In recent years, Xi notes, the service sector of the province of Zhejiang has shown a good growth tendency, but it is still relatively backward, in that its aggregate value is low and its internal structure is not sufficiently rational. We ought to stimulate the development of the service sector by reforming it, utilizing new information technologies and new forms of management of the circulation of merchandise and of promoting the modernization of the service sector. We ought to promote the development of modern services strictly tied to production, like logistical services, financial services, software and informatic services in order to serve the bases of production better.
A developed services sector, Xi emphasizes, contributes to the elevation of the level of industrial manufacturing. A developed transportation industry contributes to the entrance and departure of factors of production. A capital market and complete financial services contribute to the organic interaction of productive, commercial, and financial capital. The development of educational services and scientific research contribute to the formation of qualified workers for the manufacturing industry and strengthen technological innovation. Tourist, cultural, sport, and health care services contribute to the elevation of the quality of life of the people.

Xi stresses the importance of attracting foreign capital and business. In addition to persisting in supporting foreign investment by private companies and cooperation with Taiwan, the province ought to try to attract even companies on the list of the 500 most powerful in the world as well as projects of high technology, so that they invest in the province, promoting an active and secure opening beyond the borders of China to services in banking, insurance, tourism, education, health, etc. We ought to concentrate, Xi stresses, on the exploitation of capital resources and joint acquisitions outside China, carrying out all types of investment and establishing centers of research, networks of commercialization, production and processing in order to elevate the level of international management of China’s companies.

Light or heavy industry, Xi maintains, ought to be promoted according to the circumstances. He notes that in the case of Zhejiang, our economic structure and environmental capacity do not permit the province to assume very heavy industry. We possess evident advantages of seaport resources, and we have conditions to develop deep processing of heavy industry tied to port activities. We ought to take advantage of our industrial structure. The industry of our province is based in traditional manufacturing and processing, and we ought to elevate its international competitiveness.

Xi convokes the phrase, “Leave Zhejiang to develop Zhejiang”. The phrase refers to developing Zhejiang through investment outside the province by citizens of Zhejiang, a strategy that is unfolding in practice. We ought to stimulate this phenomenon in an ordered form, Xi maintains, investing in an orderly way in the companies of the province, thereby creating new spaces for development. In recent years, an important number of companies of the province have made investment in other parts of China. Nearly 90,000 companies of the province operate in the exterior with a total investment of 532 billion yuan, of which 80 billion are funds proceeding from Zhejiang. The funds are concentrated in the tertiary sector. With respect to the origin of said funds, between 50% and 70% are the fruit of business operations conducted outside the province by citizens of Zhejiang for years. The companies of Zhejiang outside the province have a strong relation with the economy of the province: more than 70% of their products are fabricated in Zhejiang.

Keynesian theory, Xi notes, stresses investment, consumption, and exportation as the drivers of economic growth. However, practical experience has shown that importations play an indispensable role in increasing the supply. For many years, our province has tended to export much and to import little, which has generated a commercial surplus, which contributed to the entire country. But at the same time, this makes evident that we have not utilized fully the resources and factors of international production. We ought to strengthen the role of imports in supplying resources and promoting technological progress and the updating of industry, utilizing our abundant reserves of foreign currency, taking advantage of the reduction of customs duties on importations, which is going to be applied in the coming year on a national level (writing in 2005). We ought to organize the importation of raw materials and equipment and explore methods for reducing the costs of importation.

On June 20, 2005, Xi wrote that the merchants of Zhejiang have “unique cultural genes” that have enabled them to overcome the system of centralized planning. They have a creative and innovative spirit and have attained the development of an important economy, going throughout the country persuading thousands of clients and overcoming many difficulties. The pioneering spirit of the popular masses supported them, as is made evident by the makeup of the previous provincial committees. Now, at the dawn of a new century, the economy of the province confronts difficulties, some due to congenital difficulties and others derived from growth. We need to update industry, optimize the structure, protect the environment, open greater space to the market, and radically transform the model of economic growth. We need to develop Zhejiang from Zhejiang and also to leave Zhejiang to develop Zhejiang, correctly managing the relation between leaving for the exterior and introducing from the exterior. We have available bridges to the exterior and also platforms for their return, the return of those who have attained success to their native land.

On December 12, 2005, Xi noted that the experience of the developed countries indicates that, when consumption is driven by housing or displacement, consumption can become a potent driving force of global economic growth, generating a situation of prosperity during a relatively long period of time. China could take advantage of this phenomenon by increasing the consumption capacity of the countryside and the less developed regions, using such strategies as fiscal transfer payments and improving structures of consumer credit.

Final considerations

Westen political cultures are ethnocentric, rooted in a need to be blind to the contradiction between the need for colonial domination and imperialism to drive economic growth and the clear violation by colonial domination of the moral standards and principles that the West was leading the world in proclaiming and developing. Today, as imperialism is in decadence, Western public discourse falls into the superficial claim that emerging political-economic systems are authoritarian. In doing so, they fail to observe and to discern their advanced political and moral character.

Author
​Charles McKelvey ​is influenced by black nationalism, the Catholic philosopher Lonergan, Marx, Wallerstein, anti-imperialism, and the Cuban Revolution. Since his retirement from college teaching in 2011, he has devoted himself to reading and writing on world affairs.

Greetings, please tell us about yourself!
 
My name is Peter Alekseevich Kovalsky, I graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute.
I’m a party Secretary for the Lyublino Branch of the KPRF, Moscow City Branch. I have been a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) since 2017. I do not consider myself left, but I consider myself red.
 
An interesting distinction! What is your political orientation, and could you tell us in more detail about the experience and events that influenced the formation of your current political views and worldview in modern Russia?
 
My political orientation is Marxism-Leninism, or, as we like to joke, orthodox Stalinism. My views were undoubtedly formed in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. When I joined it back in 2017, I was not a communist - rather a spontaneous leftist. Having become a member of the party, I began to get to know the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, other ideologies, as well as the various parties and movements of the modern Russian Federation. And, of course, I was significantly influenced by our Russian existence itself. After all, it is precisely this, as we know, that determines consciousness.
 
How do you evaluate the Soviet period of history, and how does its legacy influence your views on the past and present of Russia?
 
The Soviet period is hugely important, although it did not last that long by historical standards. If we take the history of the USSR before Gorbachev came to power, then in general I evaluate it extremely positively. I like the 1930s the most, and the era of recovery after the Great Patriotic War. In the 30s, people had great enthusiasm and creative impulse. This was the time of great construction projects of communism and faith in a bright future. And there was an absolutely correct policy of the party: an alliance of communists and non-party members. I have no doubt that, if not for the war, communism would have been built in a single country. The grandiose battle with fascism that conquered all of Europe physically knocked out of the ranks of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) most of the most ardent communists and Komsomol members, because they were the first to go on the attack.

​The catchphrase that circulated among non-party fighters during the Great Patriotic War is also famous in Russia: "If I die, consider me a communist." The post-war years were no less stormy and full of bright achievements: the restoration of the country, large-scale stances, new challenges. It is especially important to pay attention to Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature. This plan included combating desertification, forest shelterbelts around agricultural fields and arable lands, and the creation of new rivers and lakes. It was the implementation of this plan, although not complete, that allowed the USSR to be reliably protected from the threat of crop failure and famine, similar to those the country faced in the 1930s and in 1946.
 
Now China is implementing a similar plan in the Gobi Desert, and in the 2000s, Muammar Gaddafi tried to implement it in the Libyan Jamahiriya. Of course, it is also worth noting the conquest of space. This was a grandiose achievement, to which my family has a direct relation. My great-grandfather was one of those who led the USSR's space launch program until 1976, and my grandfather designed and assembled life support systems for astronauts. The era of space exploration was also a special period. New horizons were opening up for humanity. People dreamed, believed and worked fruitfully.
The Soviet Union was once again seized by a special creative impulse. The spirit of that era is well reflected in the song: "And on Mars apple trees will bloom". The great achievements of the USSR inspire us, modern Russian communists, to new achievements. It is necessary to use all the experience accumulated in the Soviet years in the modern Russian Federation. And on its basis to create a new and beautiful Soviet Socialist Russia of the future!
 
How did the turbulent and chaotic 1990s in Russia influence your personal experience, upbringing, and worldview? How did this period affect you or your family, their life circumstances, values, or prospects?
 
I was born in 1996 and was too young to talk about the full experience of the 90s. All I can do is study it from a historical point of view, learn information from the stories of older comrades. However, my relatives do not talk much about that era. One way or another, what I know is enough to understand: it was a monstrous catastrophe, arranged not without the help of the West, which had a heavy impact on all former citizens of the USSR and their descendants. Rampant crime, hyperinflation, delayed wages, the war in Chechnya, the lack of basic goods and even food in stores. They survived only thanks to the dachas that the Soviet government once generously handed out to the population. The collapse of the USSR was a terrible disaster for the entire country. I think that in many ways this happened because of servility towards the West. The older generation had and partly still has a special piety towards Western culture, life, and everyday life. Internal and external enemies of socialism took advantage of this, and the Soviet Union fell. Most modern Russian youth do not have such idolatry.
 
Do socialism and Marxism occupy an important place in shaping the future of Russia and how do you imagine their role in the political and social life of the country?
 
Yes, they do. In the 34 years that have passed since the disappearance of the USSR, the world has become a much more unstable and dangerous place. Terrorism, wars, the absolute inability of individual heads of state to negotiate on issues of global security. It has simply become very scary to live. You don't know what awaits you tonight. The USSR was the guardian of peace and stability on our planet floating in outer space. Fidel Castro's slogan: "Socialism or death!" is more relevant than ever. Either humanity will build communism, or perish from capitalism and imperialism.
 
For Russia, there is no other choice but socialism. Rosa Luxemburg's phrase "Socialism or barbarism" has become a fulfilled forecast for our Motherland. Degradation is occurring in almost all spheres of life: education, medicine, housing and communal services, industry. Even in those industries that we used to be especially proud of, for example, space exploration. If my memory serves me right, until 2020, the USSR and Russia held the record as the country that launched the largest number of satellites and automatic ground stations to Mars. Now this record has been broken by the United States. In the Soviet years, we launched stations that landed successfully and transmitted a panorama of the surface of Venus. Now it seems like something fantastic. Unfortunately, there is no point in even talking about the Moon program. Of course, there are exceptions. In modern Russia, the nuclear industry is still developed, and agriculture is progressing.
 
However, we will be able to achieve truly great heights and return to the vanguard of world progress only by radically rebuilding the existing system of social relations. In order to correct all the mistakes and shortcomings of both the USSR and modern Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation must come to power.
 
To what extent do the current generation of Russian youth share your ideological views and how do their views reflect your views or differ from them?
 
This is a very difficult question. Young people are disoriented and disorganized. Most of them are not interested in politics in principle. Everyone is primarily concerned with work, career, relationships, the pace of life is very high, especially in mega cities. Young people simply do not have time to think about their political preferences. This is even more understandable given the huge number of dummies and simulacra. People do not want to be deceived, and deep immersion in political issues takes a lot of time and effort. Those who are still interested in politics can be driven crazy by the variety of different parties, movements and groups. As I mentioned earlier, there are a great many Marxist circles in the country alone. Officially, there are as many as 28 parties in Russia whose names contain the word "communist" or "communism"! The Communist Party of the Russian Federation has a youth organization - the Leninist Young Communist League of the Russian Federation (LKSM RF). You can join it from the age of 14. Currently, there are about 70 thousand people there. On an all-Russian scale, this is, of course, not enough. But even within the LKSM, views on politics differ. There are different ideological currents: Stalinists, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, Zinovievists, Maoists, Jucheists and others... Not all of them are close to my personal ideological preferences. But I have to work with these people too.
 
Of course, there is an important problem of why young people do not participate in politics, and not only young people, but also older people. Political parties and movements do not have a vision of the future that these young people will follow. As soon as a more or less clear vision of the future appears, then progressive humanity will follow it.

​What specific actions or initiatives are you taking to promote your ideological ideals within the Russian social and political landscape?
 
The party activists are constantly working - it's simply impossible to remember everything here. And it would be wrong to overemphasize my own merits. I'll try to list the most important ones.
 
For example, I wrote bills: to study the experience of waste recycling in Western countries and the USSR and the possibility of using this experience now. I wrote a bill against private sobriety centers, which they even wanted to adopt, but in the end they cancelled. I also proposed amendments to the constitution, and 9 out of 10 of my proposals were included in the final program of the KPRF to change it. I also actively participate in the party's election campaigns as an agitator and observer at elections. I regularly attend meetings with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation deputies and round tables organized by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction in the State Duma and the Moscow City Duma on numerous topical issues. I participate in rallies and mass street actions.
The action "Two Carnations for Comrade Stalin" is also worth mentioning. It takes place twice a year: on December 21, the birthday of Joseph Vissarionovich, and on March 5, the day of his death.
 
An informal initiative group, which includes a variety of people, including even Stalin's great-grandson Yakov Dzhugashvili, collects funds and purchases bouquets of flowers to lay on the grave of the late Leader of the Peoples. Money for carnations is sent by a variety of people from all over Russia and the globe. On Stalin's 140th birthday, 14,000 red carnations were laid on his grave...
 
I take part in meetings of the Zinoviev Club (the club of philosopher Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev), in the Efremov Readings (science fiction writer Ivan Antonovich Efremov). I regularly visit the Palestinian embassy and express my support for the long-suffering Palestinian people in their fight against Israeli aggression. I take an active part in the formation of convoys with humanitarian aid sent by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to help Donbass. I believe that this is very important work. I began participating in it in 2018, that is, even before the SVO, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation as a whole began sending humanitarian aid to residents of the DPR and LPR in 2014.
 
I also take an active part in the Union of Organic Farming, where we discuss important agricultural issues, initiatives, and bills. My comrades and I do not forget about cultural life and education. I regularly go to art exhibitions, museums, and galleries, and visit book fairs. The people at all these events are completely different, with different political views. In conversations, discussions, and even at feasts, there is lively, direct agitation for communism and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
 
How do you assess the role of patriotism in the formation of the national identity of modern Russia, and what influenced your understanding of this?
 
First, you need to understand what patriotism is. In its classical meaning, it is love for the Motherland, pride in its achievements, culture, and science. Patriotism is often understood as love for the state and for the authorities. You cannot question any decisions of the authorities - you just need to accept them without complaint. And rejoice. This "patriotism" is unacceptable to me. We must love not those in power, but our people. Improve their well-being, increase their wealth, especially cultural. In Russia, there is even such a popular expression: "I love my homeland very much, but I hate the state." The homeland is your people. In this sense, as the famous song sang, our homeland is the Revolution, and we are loyal to it alone.
 
How do you think the legacy of the Soviet Union inspires or guides the aspirations of modern Russian youth?
 
Young people in Russia are different. Most people have no time to think about such things - as I have already noted, they simply do not have time for reflection. Their life is a constant squirrel spinning in a wheel: study, work, family, credit, mortgage. The topic of the Soviet past interests politicized youth: those who are interested in history, or are somehow connected with science. But this youth can also be divided into many groups. For some people who are fascinated by past eras, the Soviet era is not so interesting - they prefer another time, or even a country. Unfortunately, there are those who condemn and hate the USSR.
 
If we take left-oriented youth, the Soviet Union inspires them in different ways, depending on the field of activity. For example, there is an artistic environment - they are interested in examples of heroes of socialist realism, who amaze with their dedication and devotion to the goal. What high ideals were invested in Soviet cinema, music and even cartoons! They glorified and brought up the best qualities of people. Those who are somehow connected with politics and dream of a different, better future are inspired by the USSR as a real example of the possibility of building a just society.
Patriots-"statists" are inspired by the power of the Soviet Union, how our country fought for world leadership and was among the first states in many different spheres
 
Those who are engaged in science remember the famous Soviet scientists - pioneers and discoverers, who radically advanced science in their fields, received well-deserved wide recognition throughout the world. For me, among other things, the USSR is confidence in the future. Faith in a bright future, the richest cultural component. This is true stability and reliability in everything. Conviction: whatever task we undertake as a state and society, it will certainly be within our power.

Do you think that the revival of Soviet-style values ​​among Russian youth is a response to Western influence, and if so, in what way?
 
Young people are atomized now - and society as a whole is too. The spread of socialist values ​​(collectivism, patriotism, selfless mutual assistance, etc.) would be useful for the recovery of Russian society, which is currently being forced into a cult of consumption. Naturally, reliance on the Soviet ideological heritage should be carried out taking into account new realities: the strongest influence of the information and media sphere on minds, growing inequality, the "zombification" of society with the help of technologies for manipulating mass consciousness, and a decline in the level of education. We have lost a lot in the quality of human capital in the 90s and 00s. Unfortunately, this cannot be changed overnight.
 
Undoubtedly, it would be very good if tomorrow the broad masses came to the Soviet, socialist worldview. Of course, those who are involved in the discourse of the KPRF and left-patriotic forces, of course, have a set of values ​​close to the previous Soviet models.
 
What role do you think educational and cultural institutions play in shaping the Soviet or patriotic identity of young Russians, and how have these institutions influenced your own beliefs? Also, has education changed in Russia during the Yeltsin and Putin eras?
 
Education certainly plays a big role. For example, when I was in school and college, patriotic education was not yet mainstream and was not given the attention it deserved. Now there is an attempt to instill patriotism in the younger generation.
 
From my school years, I remember how we were enthusiastically told about the individualistic approach to life and the primacy of the individual. We carefully studied the works of Solzhenitsyn, and wild anti-communism was developed in us. If it was the eve of May 9 - a sacred holiday for our people, then there were always stories about how terrible the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Great Patriotic War was. Stalin was called so many things! He was a tyrant, an incompetent leader, and a sadistic murderer, and they say we won the Great Patriotic War not thanks to, but in spite of his leadership. Now the approach has changed. Of course, in the mouths of the officialdom, Stalin is still a tyrant, but they also acknowledge his positive sides. It is not for nothing that this year alone many monuments to Joseph Vissarionovich were unveiled. Particularly unexpected was the unveiling of the bas-relief on Taganskaya "Gratitude of the People to the Victorious Leader".
 
Understanding how popular he is among the people, the ruling class is trying to "privatize" and legally replace the true image of Stalin in the mass consciousness. The systemic media say that Joseph Vissarionovich was not a communist at all, not a successor to Lenin, but a red monarch who shot the entire so-called "Leninist guard" and pursued a nationalist policy. They are building an artificial illusion of some kind of "Stalinism without socialism" at great speed. But this is impossible! And most of the propaganda tricks of those in power are refuted by elementary logic. Similar features are observed in other aspects of historical politics. The people are told about the imaginary greatness of the Russian Empire under Nicholas II. They assure us that we were the first in everything, and if not for the revolution, we would almost rule the world.
 
Speaking about education in general, it is only getting worse from year to year.
Soviet personnel are leaving, and they are being replaced by young people who are overwhelmed with unnecessary bureaucracy, reports, and manuals. Teachers are paid a low salary. There is no respect for the profession from either parents or students. Students do not strive for knowledge, and teachers do not want to instill this knowledge in students. The system needs to be changed, and there's a party that can do it - the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Understanding too often comes too late

With the emergence and widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons, Western imperialist powers, under the domination of Washington, have been deprived of the ability to topple great civilizations of similar scale through invasions, overt military force, or other methods commonly described as facets of “hard power.” The US-led collective West has, therefore, relied primarily on the seductive influence of its cultural, economic, and technological prowess, i.e., “soft power,” to inspire regime change in countries hostile to its foreign policy goals.

​The issue of these anti-imperialist governments analyzing and drawing conclusions from both successful and failed regime change attempts only after they have taken place can be seen in virtually every case – from Ukraine to Georgia.

Therefore, the peoples of the anti-imperialist world must be armed with knowledge of the methods, tactics, approaches, and ideologies behind what has become the West’s greatest means of harming its enemies in the 21st Century, the color revolution, before it takes place in their own motherland.

Regime change through cultural exchange

Despite the Trump Administration’s rhetoric of de-funding organizations like USAID, resolving the Ukraine Conflict, and having a business-like relationship with Moscow, US sanctions remain, essentially no progress has been made in the Ukrainian peace process, and the US State Department’s foreign policy agenda remains more-or-less unchanged. Therefore, Russia is a logical starting point in analyzing Western color revolution strategies, as it represents one of the US government’s primary adversaries.

For nearly 30 years, the US Embassy in Moscow has conducted a comprehensive influence campaign through its proxy organization The American Center In Moscow (AMC) which focuses on appealing to Russians of all ages, propagating American culture in the form of films, art, history, language, and other ostensibly benign subjects.
The official AMC website describes its mission as, “providing free resources and opportunities for Russians who want to communicate better in English, study in the U.S., learn more about American history and culture, and participate in exchange programs...give Russians an opportunity to broaden their horizons in the U.S….and then bring what they’ve learned back to their own communities.” AMC events are all marketed as philanthropic attempts to provide free knowledge to Russians, as well as a sense of belonging to a community, appealing to everyone from children to seniors. In addition, political debate and English conversation clubs hold regular meetings, along with a special English lesson program aimed at children.

Although the content of these events almost always appears to be neutral, guest speakers and moderators are often invited who have backgrounds in advancing US foreign policy interests around the world. One supposedly culinary event held on May 13th called, “The Power of Food To Create Community,” featured American speakers with backgrounds that were not entirely focused around food. The AMC’s guest was Darra Goldstein, a Stanford-educated cookbook author who worked for United States Information Agency (USIA) in the 1970’s in the USSR. The USIA’s explicit focus was spreading pro-US propaganda through American embassies around the world between 1953-1999, before it was reorganized into another State Department controlled agency. Moderating the event was former U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Laura Kennedy, who spent the majority of her term spreading propaganda in support of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to the Turkmen people.

While the aforementioned event invited personas with overtly political backgrounds hostile to Russia’s foreign and domestic policy interests, other meetings employ a far more subtle propaganda effect. Events such as “AMC Movie Club: English Through Films” and “Learn English Through American Pop Culture,” for example, use both language and culture as tried and true weapons of influence. Through films and TV-series of high production value, Hollywood projects an idealized version of life in the United States to the Russian people. The full effect of this propaganda form was seen in the 1990’s, a period in which many Russians who were young at the time remember watching American cartoons and regarding anything and everything soviet as “колхозный” – a commonly employed term that describes something made or done in a soviet style and in a cringe way. This attitude towards the Soviet Union continues in Russia to this day, albeit to a lesser extent. Culture has, therefore, proven both its inconspicuous yet effective character when used as a propaganda weapon, warranting its continued employment by US influence operations around the world.
​

In Russia, however, because of tight government restrictions on the US’ diplomatic mission in response to economic sanctions and restrictions taken against Russian diplomats in the United States, State Department attempts at influencing Russian society have been reduced to minuscule, often comical, proportions. Most of the AMC’s event recordings on YouTube garner double-digit view counts, the events themselves suffer abysmal attendance, and most have been reduced an exclusive online presence.

Investigating the AMC

In order to give the reader an inside look into the AMC’s activities, an anonymous colleague of this article’s author attended one such online function called, “From Children’s Books To Graphic Novels: A Conversation With Artist Alina Gorban, Moderated By Ryan Montova.” Montova is a Harvard educated physician and self-styled artist who also received training from the US State Department, while Gorban is a relatively unknown illustrator with a single published graphic novel. The book titled Silence, Full Stop describes Gorban’s so-called ‘escape’ from Soviet Moldova to, ironically enough, Israel, before later relocating to the United States.

Gorban has since returned to and is now based in Tel Aviv, where, according to our inside source, she goes by the pen-name Karina Shor to “distance herself from her soviet past.” When asked by Montova about her supposedly horrible experience in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the event, Gorban simply replied, “I was six, but I guess I recall the disasters.” Our source goes on to report that Gorban criticized former soviet citizens who fondly remember the USSR throughout much of the rest of the meeting, using the commonly employed anti-soviet / anti-Russian tactic of boiling any and all positive recollections of Russia’s past down to foolish ‘nostalgia.’ For his part, Montova seemed clueless of basic historical facts regarding the post-soviet space, asking Gorban if she had “ever been back to the Moldova region.” The man is clearly oblivious to the fact of Moldova’s statehood.

Conclusions

Neither Gorban’s allegedly horrible childhood in Soviet Moldova nor the fact that many former soviet citizens fondly remember the USSR have anything to do with art, children’s books, or graphic novels, despite the event’s advertised title. Furthermore, the event itself had attracted a grand total of 5 anonymous viewers.

Our source concludes that this event was clearly intended to communicate an anti-soviet / anti-Russian message through the attraction of children’s literature. However, its strange and indirect nature has led our source to conclude that it may also serve as one of a number of low-effort events organized by AMC staff to justify the center’s continued existence to the State Department, in the face of its overall ineffectiveness at conducting influence operations in Russia. With limited information at hand, it remains difficult to determine how many of these events represent attempts by subordinate to justify their work to superiors and what quantity of them could be categorized as genuine influence operations. But based on the cumulative information of the aforementioned events, it is clear that both manifestations are at play throughout US influence operations in Russia.
​
In terms of measures the Russian government could deploy to contain the threat of foreign influence in the country, the authorities’ current course of tightly controlling operations connected to the US Embassy on Russian territory have demonstrated their effectiveness. In the interest of national security, it would be advisable to extend the term of these restrictions even into the future period of inevitable detente – as history has shown that US soft power operations are actually most effective during times of free cultural exchange and relaxed government restrictions.

Author

Donald Courter is an American journalist and political analyst based in Moscow, offering a unique perspective from within the multipolar world.

The American Communist Party’s chairman Haz Al-Din has said that civil war is coming to the United States, but that this civil war will not look like a fight between conventional armies.[1] Instead, he concludes, it will look like a breakdown in governance, and a further normalization of violence throughout our society.

​This, observes Haz, is something that our ruling class has already made us used to: “the mistake people make is thinking the breakdown of Federal authority will be dramatic. The truth is that we have already gotten used to that breakdown. Lawlessness is already normal in many parts of this country. It won't take much for a constitutional crisis to lead to a divided consensus as far as who the president is.”[2]

As our elites engineer this great domestic conflict, an instrumental ally that they’ll need in order to carry out the violence is the “lumpenproletariat.”[3] This is the social class that’s unable to make a living off of doing work for the bourgeoisie, whether because of unemployment or wages which are too low, and has thereby been pushed into subsisting at least partially through illicit means. The parts of the lumpenproletariat that use violence to advance their material interests, such as gangs, are often actively cultivated by the capitalist state. So they are going to play a crucial role in this civil war that our divided rulers will wage against each other, and against the American people.

This does not mean, though, that the workers should necessarily treat the lumpenproletariat as their class enemies. In fact, when one investigates our conditions today, it becomes apparent that a growing number of American workers are themselves becoming incrementally more “lumpenized.” This is the outcome of the unemployment and inflation crises that our country is experiencing: more and more people are getting pushed into making a living at least partly through underground activities, or activities that should be illegal but have been elevated by the bourgeoisie.[4]

Perhaps the most shameful example of this trend is the rise of the sex industry that we’ve seen throughout the 2020s, which is a tragedy that illustrates what role communists must have in combating lumpenization.[5] The ACP takes the position that all aspects of the sex industry must be abolished, and such a policy would of course come with economic replacements for so-called “sex work.” Under the system that American Marxists are going to build, the sex industry and all other lumpen income outlets will no longer be things that people are incentivized to seek out, as our economy will be structured around ensuring limitless growth in our society’s collective prosperity.
Prior to when the workers have overthrown the capitalist state, there are ways that communists can show we offer the lumpenized masses a way out of their circumstances; namely programs to aid and restore our communities, which the party has already been engaging in. But to get a sense of what a long-term effort at organizing the masses looks like within a lumpenized country, we need to study Haiti, and the popular movement that’s been constructed there by Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.[6]

In terms of where its class struggle has gone, Haiti represents essentially the best-case scenario for a society that’s been de-proletarianized, and whose people desire to undo this economic destruction. In Haiti, the gangs have been successfully unified; which is a project that won’t necessarily be part of the USA’s revolution, but is required given Haiti’s level of lumpenization. Throughout the areas where Cherizier’s forces have taken control, the people have become able to govern themselves without the institutions of the neo-colonial mercenary regime, and the revolutionary movement has begun a program to educate the children.[7] Barbecue’s movement is a force that can catalyze new popular victories all across America, and this revolutionary wave started in a country that’s been de-proletarianized to an exceptional extent.

With this civil war that our ruling class is engineering, the different wings of the capitalist class are vying for control over imperial spoils which keep growing scarcer. And this rivalry among our class enemies has the potential to catalyze a revolutionary scenario, where the proletariat and their class allies unite to overthrow the exploiters.

During World War I, when the capitalists of the different imperialist countries were at odds with each other, Lenin observed how this kind of inter-bourgeois conflict “inevitably creates, on the basis of an objective revolutionary situation, revolutionary sentiments in the masses. Our duty is to help make these sentiments conscious, to deepen them and give them form. The only correct expression of this task is the slogan ‘Turn the imperialist war into civil war.’ All consistent class struggle in time of war, all ‘mass action’ earnestly conducted must inevitably lead to this.”[8]

This advice also applies to our conditions, but in a different way. Our task is to end the civil war that our ruling class has created, and thereby unify the American masses behind the effort at building socialism. This kind of civil war is today’s version of the old inter-imperialist wars; it’s another case of the capitalists fighting amongst themselves over imperialism’s super-profits. So when America’s people do the equivalent of “turning the imperialist war into civil war,” it will look like a project to bring the lumpenized masses out of their powerless state, and into a cohesive, organized revolutionary unit.
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Parts of the lumpen will be successfully recruited to fight our inter-capitalist civil war, but many other parts can and must be brought to the revolutionary side. Bringing in the lumpenproletariat does not mean that communists must make their organizing efforts lumpenized, i.e. instilled with the habits and attitudes of the lumpenproletariat; in fact it means the opposite.

Bringing in the lumpen means providing an opportunity for those who’ve been shoved out of the working-class to enter back into it. In the long term, this will look like an actual state program to eliminate unemployment, at least to the extent that work is still necessary as technology outmodes ever-more types of human labor. In the short term, this will look like a campaign to economically uplift our impoverished communities in the ways that a party can when it’s not yet in power; we must create more businesses, more opportunities for people to get resources via party aid, more sources of subsistence that don’t come from lumpenproletarian exploitation. It’s only by staying diligent about these efforts to assist the people that we’ll be able to lead the people, and give them the means to overcome the bourgeoisie’s manufactured chaos.

In Socialist Economic Development in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2022), Alberto Gabrielle and Elias Jabbour undertake a reconceptualization of fundamental categories originally formulated by Marx, taking into account developments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the emergence of real socialist projects in the global South. Gabriele is a Senior Researcher at Sbilanciamoci, Rome, Italy. Jabbour is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, Postgraduate Programs in Economic Sciences, and International Relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

For Gabrielle and Jabbour, socialism is characterized by, first, the elimination of capitalist exploitation; secondly, the distribution to each person according to work; and thirdly, the public appropriation of surplus, such that the surplus is allocated to various forms of investment and social consumption. Socialism can have centralized planning, as was the case with the Soviet Union; or it can have “socialist-oriented planned market-economies,” as in the cases of China and Vietnam in recent decades. In their definition, national economies are socialist-oriented if they officially and credibly claim to be engaged in a process aimed at establishing and developing a system characterized by the elimination of capitalist exploitation, fair distribution in accordance with one’s contribution to the society, and the use of the surplus generated by productive labor to develop the national economy and to provide for the needs of the people; and if they have advanced measurably toward these officially proclaimed goals.
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Gabrielle and Jabbour use the construct “socioeconomic formation” to refer to a social and economic system with a degree of internal consistency and stability, which historically prevails in a specific place and time, like a particular nation-state. In socioeconomic formations, a mode of production (hunting and gathering, feudal, capitalist, or socialist) is primary, and the primacy of a certain mode of production in a specific historical context can be absolute or relative. In some socioeconomic formations, the primacy of a single mode of production is overwhelming. In other socioeconomic formations, two or more modes of production coexist. This has been common in human history since the agricultural revolution; but generally, one of the modes of production is dominant.

Social movement organizations formed by exceptional leaders can attain systemic change by subverting the social and economic structures of a socioeconomic formation. Lenin and Mao, who conceived socialist-oriented socioeconomic formations, are important examples. However, Gabrielle and Jabbour maintain, visionaries and revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Mao could not fully implement their projects, giving rise to mixed socioeconomic formations. Accordingly, several national economies, including those of China and Vietnam, are characterized by mixed socioeconomic formations, in which capitalist and socialist modes of production coexist, in the framework of a socialist-oriented development strategy, in which the State exerts a high degree of direct and indirect control over the national economy.

Such mixed socioeconomic formations with socialist-oriented development strategies are obligated to construct their projects in a global context in which the capitalist mode of production, with market-based relations of production and exchange, is dominant. Even though no nation’s socioeconomic formation is fully contained, each is constrained by the larger prevailing worldwide and globally dominant socioeconomic formation, Gabrielle and Jabbour maintain. Each socioeconomic formation must adapt to the hegemonic interests of the strongest and most advanced countries of the world-system and the interests of the ruling class in said countries.

The worldwide socioeconomic formation itself has constraints placed on it by various historical, political, economic, and technological factors, which cannot be ignored. Therefore, any quixotic, subjective political action or proposal that ignores such constraints is futile and counterproductive.

However, Gabrielle and Jabbour maintain, the global socioeconomic formation is not immobile or eternal. Several alternative forms of socioeconomic systems can be developed, and some socialist oriented economies have been developed in the Global South.

Gabrielle and Jabbour maintain that socialism in the real world cannot escape the laws of economics. The law of value, for example, according to which prices of commodities tend toward the costs of production, applies to both capitalism and socialism. As does the classical distinction between productive and non-productive labor, and the necessity of funding non-productive labor (e.g., public health and public education) through the surplus generated by productive income-generating labor. To be sure, there is a major difference between capitalism and socialism, in that socialist economies are directed by the State, and a greater share of the surplus is channeled to social or development-oriented investment. Nevertheless, socialism cannot attain its goals if it ignores the laws of the science of economics.

Gabrielle and Jabbour stress that, although the dominance of the capitalist mode of production continues worldwide, it is weaker than it once was. The current weakness of the capitalist mode of production provides socialist-oriented economies with possibilities for economic integration with each other, which they are seizing.
In today’s commentary, I propose that we look at Gabrielle and Jabbour’s observations on the development of the new socialist model in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

This is the fourth in a series of commentaries commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the Vietnamese declaration of independence. The first three commentaries are open for visits:

1. Cuban President visits Vietnam
2. The long struggle of Vietnam
   
3. Vietnam’s heroic anti-imperialist wars​

Socialist-oriented socioeconomic formation in Vietnam

Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, the leaders of the Communist Party of Vietnam initially had been oriented to the conventional socialist centrally planned economy that had been implemented with success in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). However, Party leaders soon recognized that the centralized planning approach was not adequate for responding to the serious problems in the economy in the late 1970s, which to a considerable extent were related to challenges presented by the reunification and by the destruction of more than thirty years of war.

At the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (formerly the Indochinese Communist Party and the Vietnamese Workers’ Party), held on December 15-18, 1986, the various scattered economic reform initiatives of the 1980s were formulated into a coherent and radical reform strategy, which it called Đổi Mới (Innovation). The Congress called for a socialist-oriented market economy, in which state-owned economic enterprises would co-exist with private enterprises, both domestic and foreign, and in which state planning would utilize market forces. Đổi Mới would become the policy of the government, and it was successful not only in overcoming macroeconomic imbalances but also in creating exceptionally fast economic growth.

Đổi Mới was a radical reformulation of economic policy, a necessary response to concrete problems. It was, however, a reformulation that was fundamentally different from the neoliberal policies of the International Monetary Fund. Moreover, even though Vietnam and China arrived to similar systems of agricultural production and exchange, the Vietnamese reformulation was not a copy of the economic policies of China. It was a reformulation rooted in Vietnamese conditions and goals, independently formulated by the Communist Party of Vietnam, and embraced by the Vietnamese people.

Gabrielle and Jabbour emphasize that the market-oriented reforms in Vietnam, launched in the 1980s, were initially undertaken in “an ad hoc and experimental fashion, pressed by the urgency to avoid famine and economic collapse.” The reforms are best understood as an effort by the central government to control spontaneously emerging processes by legalizing them and setting formal limits.

The initials steps in the reform were taken in the countryside. Collectivized agriculture had been developed in North Vietnam in the 1950s, moving progressively from work-exchange teams to low-level cooperatives and ultimately high-level cooperatives. The development of cooperatives led to the adoption of upgraded rice varieties and modern technology. However, it ultimately led to insufficient incentive to work, provoking a decline in labor and productivity.

In the South during the 1950s (under American control), there was greater productivity than in the North, due to a more favorable farmer/land ratio and to a higher technological level, but land and income was unequally distributed among farmers. Following the reunification of 1975, collectivization was pushed in the South, but it was resisted by Mekong Delta farmers, and it made only partial inroads in other provinces. Resistance to the collectivization campaign led to a drop in rice production in the late 1970s.

In response to the decline in agricultural production in the North and the South, which occurred as noted for different reasons, the Party in April 1981 changed course. It launched the Contract System, in which farming households agreed by contract to deliver a fixed quota to the cooperative, which would be traded at a planned price. The contracts freed farmers to organize production on their plots and to use surplus production for sale or for self-consumption, thus incentivizing creativity and work at the level of the farming household.

The Contract System initially led to a significant increase in food production, but its gains slowed, as a result of the continuation of many aspects of centralized planning. Land use and crop decisions continued to be carried out by the State Planning Commission, which even failed sometimes to carry out the state’s side of the contract. In addition, the security of land tenure was insufficient to induce peasants to invest in the land.

Therefore, in 1988, ideologically and politically supported by the Party’s 1986 proclamation of the Đổi Mới, further reforms were introduced that increased the length of leasing tenure to farming households to up to 20 years; and that further liberalized and decentralized markets. Moreover, responding to conflicts that had emerged from the 1970s collectivization, the 1988 reform established that most farmers (but not landlords) would maintain rights on land they had owned before 1975.

The 1988 measures led to a new surge in productivity. Vietnam became a major rice exporter. The reform was intensified in 1993, with a new Land Law that further strengthened farmers’ tenure, security, and flexibility, granting rights to exchange, transfer, inherit, lease, and mortgage leased land.

Although the reform was developed initially as an ad hoc response to insufficient food production, without a clear plan, it evolved “to establish a consistent and sustainable market-based household-centered agricultural sector, which constituted a solid foundation underpinning the rapid (albeit uneven) industrialization and modernization process that followed,” as expressed by Gabrielle and Jabbour.
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Beyond reforms in agriculture, the Đổi Mới policy also included reforms in other sectors of the economy. These included price liberalization, currency devaluation, the opening of foreign investment, the increased autonomy of state-owned enterprises, and the limitation of the scope and authority of the state command chain.
In its efforts to reform the industrial sector, the government of Vietnam focused on restructuring, revitalizing, and strengthening major industrial state-owned enterprises. This process included more autonomy for state-owned companies to use surplus production beyond the contractual quota and, with some restrictions, to relocate assets to produce and sell new products.

The reform of the industrial sector also included consolidation and corporatization. In the 1990s, most state-owned enterprises were too small and weak to withstand international competition. The process of consolidation, seeking to strengthen the industrial sector through combination, cut the number of state-owned enterprises in half during the period 1994 to 1996. Consolidation was pushed further by the creation of General Corporations or state enterprise groups, which were given a very high degree of autonomy. “The ultimate goal was to nurture a small elite of strong national champions endowed with abundant assets and ample financial resources, that would be capable to achieve economies of scale and rapid technological upgrading, thereby achieving a high degree of international competitiveness,” in the words of Gabrielle and Jabbour.

Although initiated in the early 1990s, consolidation and corporatization have been evolving cautiously. There has been resistance from both management and workers, concerned that the consolidation might result in the loss of their positions. Accordingly, Gabrielle and Jabbour write that the process “did not bring about a thorough transformation of most state-owned enterprises into mixed enterprises with significant private participation.” However, “it was instrumental as a tool to consolidate the public industry into a reduced number of large enterprises and groups and to transform them into more modern and market-oriented organizations.”
The fundamental goal of the Đổi Mới policy is to increase productivity with respect to food, consumer goods, and export products. It seeks to support the development of a mixed economy, with effective state regulation of the activities of capitalists and traders.

The positive results of the Đổi Mới policy

Gabrielle and Jabbour maintain that the reforms enabled Vietnam to overcome serious economic difficulties and to resume growth. Moreover, the government has taken an egalitarian approach and has attempted to control the consequences of the market-driven concentration of wealth. Great strides have been made in combatting poverty and malnutrition and expanding public health and education. And the great majority of the people have been fully involved in the overall development project. In 2003, the World Bank described the dynamic in Vietnam as “pro-poor growth.”

Moreover, economic growth in Vietnam compares favorably with neighboring countries. “Since the 1990s, Vietnam has outperformed the most advanced semi-industrialized capitalist countries in Southeast Asia along many dynamic dimensions, including growth in GDP, GDP per capita, labor productivity, and wages – even if its overall level of development has remained lower.”

Gabrielle and Jabbour conclude that “the broad picture is that of a glass that is more full than empty. Key indicators such as growth in GDP, GDP per capita, labor productivity and wages has been faster in Vietnam than in other countries in Southeast Asia, which remains one of the best performing regions in the Global South.” Vietnam’s exceptional performance is even more evident when expressed in terms of the human development index and expansion of universal access to basic services. In addition, economic growth, led by state-owned enterprises in heavy industry and infrastructure, has enhanced the country’s human capital, creating a huge potential for future growth. “Vietnam’s human development achievements have been exceptional by international standards.”

§
The state continues to direct
Gabrielle and Jabbour maintain that even though the number of state-owned enterprises has been shrinking over time, the level of state dominance over the core component of the Vietnamese economy has changed little during the four-decades-long process of liberalization, market opening, and legalization of private enterprises. “The ultimate control is still exercised indirectly by the state.”
Nor has the entrance of Vietnam into the World Trade Organization undermined the commanding role of the state. With respect to the banking and finance sector, Gabrielle and Jabbour write that “in the specific context of Vietnam’s socialist-oriented development strategy, the partial and selective financial liberalization taking place after the World Trade Organization accession has not undermined the commanding role of the state.” It is a partial and selective liberalization, guided by the economic plan and the development strategy of the State.

§
The gains continue
A recent article by Tien Phong in VietNamNet Global, entitled “Vietnam’s 80-year economic evolution: From hardship to high growth,” confirms the continued economic growth of socialist Vietnam. The article quotes economist Ngo Tri Long, who reiterates that in the period 1945 to 1975, North Vietnam stressed the formation of agricultural cooperatives, state-owned enterprises, and centralized distribution systems, and this approach was effective in building an economy devastated by war and social dislocations. However, following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, the government’s application of the centralized planning economic model, intended to stimulate rapid industrialization, provoked hyperinflation, stagnation in production, and widespread shortage. So the Đổi Mới reform was introduced, which stressed market-oriented reforms under socialist orientation, with very positive results. From 1990 to 2000, GDP grew an average of 7.6% per year, as exports grew from USD 789 million in 1985 to USD 14.4 billion by 2000. During this period, Vietnam joined ASEAN and normalized relations with the USA. The growth continued in the twenty-first century, as per capita income reached USD 2,750 in 2020, as against USD 130 in 1990. Vietnam emerged as Asia’s new manufacturing powerhouse, and poverty fell from over 58% in 1993 to under 3% by 2020.
The article also cites Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngo Tri Long, who stressed the importance of macroeconomic stability. He noted that from 2014 to 2024, the average inflation rate was only 2.9% annually, as a result of effective monetary policy and prudent macroeconomic management. Ngo notes that by 2024, the structure of the national economy had shifted toward industry and construction (37.64%) and services (50.5%) as key drivers of the economy, with agriculture-forestry-fisheries reduced to 11.86%. Exports soared to USD 405.5 billion in 2024, compared to USD 789 million in 1986, a 500-fold increase. The gains are evident in social indicators, as life expectancy reached 74.5 years in 2023, and health insurance now covers 93% of the population.
Ngo Tri Long observed that Vietnam intends to continue its leap forward through investment in science and technology, especially artificial intelligence, semi-conductors, and green technologies.

Conclusion

Socialist projects in the real world since 1945 have been developing socialism that has characteristics different from the socialism of the Soviet Union of the 1930s and is fundamentally different from the caricature of socialism and the ignorance with respect to socialism that pervade the public discourse of Western nations. The key component of the post-1945 socialism of the Global South is state direction of the economy, with a focus on increasing productive capacity in industry and agriculture. In the attainment of this goal, guidelines are established for the participation in the economy of private enterprises, small and large, domestic and foreign. But the state remains in control, and it acts decisively to adjust to consequences that contradict the socialist orientation of the nation.

In the experience of attempting to construct socialism, nations with a socialist orientation learned that there was truth to the maxim that individuals must have incentives to work, and that private ownership in general provides incentives for work and creativity. But capitalist ideology expressed this maxim as a justification for no state involvement in the economy, thus permitting the economy to be ruled by profit and by large corporations, regardless of the consequences for human beings, nature, and the long-term development of national economies. But when the nations constructing socialism discovered in their experience the human need for work incentives, they decided to let that need express itself, but at the same time, to maintain state direction of the economy.

​We thus can see the significance of socialist projects in the real world for humanity. Nations constructing socialism have discovered through experience the need to develop structures that incentivize work and creativity, but that also are designed to address the long-term needs of the people, the nation, and humanity as a whole. At the same time, although not addressed in today’s commentary, nations constructing socialism have developed structures of people’s democracy, characterized by direct and indirect elections of people’s councils and people’s assemblies, with function to keep the interests of the wealthy at bay. Socialist projects in the real world are constructing the most advanced political-economic systems of our times.

Author
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Charles McKelvey ​is influenced by black nationalism, the Catholic philosopher Lonergan, Marx, Wallerstein, anti-imperialism, and the Cuban Revolution. Since his retirement from college teaching in 2011, he has devoted himself to reading and writing on world affairs.

There are today many sectors of the Western “left” – from Trotskyites, to Western “Marxists,” to Dogmatic Marxist-Leninists – who classify Russia and China as imperialist based on criteria they abstract from Lenin’s famous 1917 text, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. At the root of this classification – which I consider to be not only erroneous, but topsy-turvy – is a dogmatic understanding of Lenin’s views on imperialism, as I will explore below.
The way the title itself has been translated is misleading, for it suggests a teleological tone which depicts the stage of capitalism Lenin is writing about as the final form the mode of life will take. However, the original Russian, Новейший, suggests instead of the final or last stage, the latest stage, as in, the most advanced stage – so far – of capitalism. While Lenin understood imperialism to be moribund capitalism and corresponded to the age of working class and anti-colonial revolution, there is nothing in his work suggesting that imperialism itself is not capable of evolving.

In Lenin’s time imperialism was characterized as monopoly capitalism, where the dominance of finance capital emerges, where export of capital – instead of commodities (as with the British Empire) – becomes primary, and where the world is partitioned amongst great imperialist powers struggling to expand their spheres of influence. This predicament produced fertile ground for inter-imperialist conflicts, where different great powers would clash with each other over how their imperial spoils – i.e., their colonization of the global south – would be divided. The carnage of the First World War was the immediate example Lenin had before him, as bullets were still flying at the time of his writing of Imperialism.

For his time, Lenin could not have been more correct. Imperialism was not simply a political policy (as the Kautskyites held), but an integral development of the capitalist mode of life itself. It was not leading towards peace between an international cartel of great imperialist powers, neatly collaborating as they dominated and looted the whole world. Spoils were still up for grabs, and while capitalism had entered its monopoly stage, in its most embryonic form it still contained within it the remnants of competition, that is, the competition of great powers over the partition of the world.

War, therefore, was not only a possibility but a necessary outcome of this deadlock. It took two forms: 1) wars of national liberation, which would include wars of colonized peoples against imperialism, but also, after the Bolshevik Revolution, wars between the Socialist and Capitalist blocs, and 2) wars between great imperialist powers, given that the “winner” in the global partition of the colonized world had not yet been settled. When Lenin speaks of inter-imperialist conflicts and of the corresponding positions workers should take in the face of these, he is speaking within a specific context that cannot be forgotten.

As with all things in Marxism, the Marxist analysis of imperialism has its life sucked out of it if it is reduced to the conclusions Lenin arrived at in his specific context. The heart and soul of Marxism are not these conclusions, but the method, the worldview, through which all affairs come to be understood. For Marxism, the world is in a constant state of change propelled by immanent contradictions. All things in that world are interconnected and interdependent to all other things. Nothing, for Marxism, could be accurately understood if abstracted from its context, from the dynamic environment it is embedded in, and from how that environment changes and is changed by the intercourse of the contradictions that make up entities-in-processes and those that situate their setting.

In other words, dogmatism is, by its very essence, contrary to Marxism. To hold as sacrosanct contextual statements made by Marx, Engels, or Lenin, and then to foist those onto contexts which are sustained by new, more refined contradictions and relations, is to participate in the most un-Marxist form of thinking – it is to think through what I have called the purity fetish, i.e., through the idealization of an abstract pure ideal which you disconnect from the context it was developed in and hold superior to reality itself.

This is precisely what the Western “leftists” do when they classify contemporary Russia or China as “imperialist.” Hence, something like the special military operation – which in reality is anti-imperialist through and through – comes to be considered as an “inter-imperialist” conflict. How is such an inversion of the world accomplished?

Through dogmatism, that is, through abstracting the famous five “characteristics” that Lenin articulated about the imperialism of his time, and foisting these onto Russia or China. This is fetishistic thinking through and through, since it treats these characteristics in a reified manner which gives them qualities of their own suspended from the relations they are premised on, and the larger system that establishes these relations. Lenin was not “defining” imperialism through these characteristics, but analyzing – through an ascension from the abstract to the concrete – the imperialist system which constituted the latest stage of capitalism he was able to observe, and wherein these characteristics obtained specific functions to reproduce the system as a whole. It is not those five characteristics which constitute what imperialism is, it is the system as a whole which constitutes the meaning those characteristics will have for its reproduction.

When Western “Leftists” try to checklist characteristics in Russia or China’s international relations to map it onto Lenin’s five characteristics, the relation of effectivity, or the indices of effectivity (as Althusser called it), which Lenin operated with is inversed. Instead of the system as a whole having primacy over certain characteristics it comes to employ for its reproduction, the characteristics themselves are considered as primary, that is, as that which comes to determine what the system is. This is the same problem of abstract universal thinking which individuals who consider markets to be the same as capitalism perform. Instead of seeing markets as a universal institutional form that functions differently in accordance with the particular social system it is embedded in (i.e., an understanding of them as concrete or rooted universal), it abstracts an institutional form from a larger social system, and then sophistically turns the one into the other. This is little different than saying a monastery is a nightclub just because it has music.

The real question which is never posed by the dogmatist of the Western “Left” is the question every actual Marxist-Leninist must continuously ask themselves: how has the world evolved, and therefore, how must our theoretical apparatus for understanding it correspondingly develop.

It appears to me that the imperialist stage Lenin correctly assessed in 1917 undergoes a partially qualitative development in the post-war years with the development of the Bretton Woods system. This does not make Lenin “wrong,” it simply means that his object of study – which he correctly assessed at his time of writing – has undertaken developments which force any person committed to the same Marxist worldview to correspondingly refine their understanding of imperialism. Bretton Woods transforms imperialism from an international to a global phenomenon, embodied no longer through imperialist great powers, but through global financial institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) controlled by the U.S. and structured with dollar hegemony at its core.

With Bretton Woods, and then with Nixon’s 1971 move away from the gold-standard, imperialism becomes synonymous with U.S. unipolarity and hegemonism. This means that the dominance of finance which Lenin wrote about, had intensified into a U.S. dominated global financial system. Whether we want to call this transition super imperialism – as Michael Hudson does – or something else is largely irrelevant. What matters is that capitalism has developed into a higher stage, that the imperialism Lenin wrote of is no longer the “latest” stage of capitalism, that it has given way – through its immanent dialectical development – to a new form marked by a deepening of its characteristic foundation in finance capital. We are finally in the era of capitalist-imperialism Marx predicted in Volume Three of Capital, where the dominant logic of accumulation has fully transformed from M-C-M’ to M-M’, that is, from productive capital to interest-bearing, parasitic finance capital.

Today, the lion’s share of profits made by the imperialist system are accumulated through debt and interest. The U.S. can run perpetual deficits without the normal constraints other nations face, effectively getting the rest of the world to finance its military spending and overseas investments. Instead of weakening the U.S., the deficits tie other countries’ financial systems to the dollar, reinforcing its geopolitical and economic dominance.

​The U.S. could print in less than a second more money than any country could produce in a span of years of real investment in labor, resources, and time. This is what imperialism is today. Its skeletal body are the global financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, institutions that only the U.S. has – in the last instance – control over. Neither China nor Russia could leverage these global financial apparatuses to enforce their so-called “imperial” interests. On the contrary, these institutions are often utilized by the U.S. as a weapon against them and their allies.

With such an understanding of how capitalism has developed into a higher stage of super imperialism, and consequently, of what imperialism actually looks like today, it is absurd to speak about Russian, Chinese, or any other type of imperialism that is not U.S. imperialism (which includes, of course, its puppets in Europe and the Zionist entity). Imperialism today is nothing more than U.S. hegemonism and unipolar power. There is no longer any possibility of “inter-imperialist” conflict. War today is between the U.S. empire and its lackeys, and the anti-imperialist bloc – which is ideologically, politically, and economically heterogeneous.

The U.S. dominated capitalist-imperialist global system situates Russia and China not as imperialist powers, but as anti-imperialist great powers (a category Hugo Chavez long ago developed). The Russian SMO, China’s unwillingness to fold under U.S. imperial pressure, the axis of resistance in West Asia, all of these (and many more) are coordinate points where the contradictions in the world – between the U.S. imperial bloc and the heterogeneous anti-imperialist states of the global south – work themselves out. Today the planet as a whole develops on the basis of the unfolding of the contradictions present in the struggle between U.S. imperialism and global anti-imperialism.

Therefore, far from Russia and China being imperialist, they are, on the contrary, the cutting edge of anti-imperialist struggles. Just as we cannot stay neutral to the form the class struggle takes within the nation between capitalists and workers, that is, just as we must all reckon with Florence Reece’s question (popularized by Pete Seeger): “which side are you on?” – globally we are faced with the same question, “which side are you on… are you with U.S. imperialism, or with the heterogenous and impure collection of states struggling against it?” There is no third alternative, just as the petty-bourgeois position of rejecting the class struggle between the workers and capitalists is an indirect way of supporting the principal aspect of that contradiction, i.e., the capitalists. Today the Western “Leftist” discourse of Russian and Chinese imperialism is simply another form of objectively supporting the greatest evil on this planet, the dominant world system – U.S. hegemonic imperialism.

Author
Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy professor. He is the Director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the Secretary of Education of the American Communist Party. He has authored many books, including The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Why We Need American Marxism (2024), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming On Losurdo’s Western Marxism (2025) and Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2025). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. Subscribe to his Substack: Philosophy in Crisis.

Introduction

Communists have always been at the forefront of mass movements built upon the popular grievances which the proletariat hold. These grievances should be carefully analyzed through the framework of Marxism-Leninism. Successful revolutions were built on this model, applying the lessons of their great predecessors without falling into dogmatism. From Mao’s China to Fidel’s Cuba, the Bolshevik Revolution served as an inspiration.

When the Bolsheviks rose to power in 1917, they did so for a very specific reason. It was, in fact, quite simple: they channeled the popular grievances of the people of the Russian Empire. While it was important that the vanguard of the revolution was highly educated in Marxist theory, their success ultimately depended on analyzing the material realities of their time.

Russia’s participation in the First World War was notoriously disastrous, both at the front and at home. The Bolsheviks demanded an immediate end to the war, which the February Revolution failed to deliver. Instead, it brought forth a government that bent the knee to bourgeois interests, both foreign and domestic. Everything changed when Lenin demanded an immediate end to the war, aligning with the popular grievances of the masses. He did not rely on dogma or flowery phrases – he took meaningful, pragmatic action. As Lenin wrote in 1917, “the government is tottering. It must be given the death blow at all costs. To delay action is fatal.”

The same iron-willed mentality could be felt throughout the Bolshevik ranks and was evident in their decision-making, as well as in the way they built revolutionary institutions. In contrast, many contemporary Marxists in the West rely on rigid value systems that have inevitably led to the disunity of the working-class movement. Today, leftist organizations in the West are as common as corner cafés, each with their own flavor and list of grievances. Such behavior, however, is unbefitting of a truly proletarian movement – one that should, by definition, be dedicated to the grievances of the working-class.

Below we will analyze three examples where leading Bolsheviks built proletarian institutions on the basis of dialectical materialism. We will delve into three major issues: the creation of the Red Army, Dzerzhinsky’s management of the Cheka, and Stalin’s attitude towards the National Question.

The Creation of the Red Army

​Lenin galvanized the popular will of the masses, channeling proletarian class interests into the creation of a Red Army of workers and peasants. The army is always intimately bound to the ruling power. As the Prussian military theorist Clausewitz noted, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” The army is the instrument of war, and it must therefore correspond to politics. If the proletariat control the state machinery, they must also dictate the army—not only in its social composition but at every level.

Under the pressure of foreign intervention, the Bolsheviks set out to create a healthy and competent army, organized on principles of military science and rooted in proletarian characteristics. From May 1918 to March 1919, the old Red Guard was completely reorganized into an army based on compulsory military service. Only workers and peasants—non-exploiters of labor—were admitted. In a country embroiled in civil war, in class war, organizing the army along class lines was the dialectical approach. It was not merely Marxist dogma but a dialectical application to the conditions of the time.

But what do we see in the modern Western left? Do we see firm mass organization? Do we see revolution on the horizon? Revolutionary potential is indeed ripe among segments of the Western working class. Yet instead of channeling the popular grievances of the masses, much of the left has resorted to moral value judgments – relying on a monolith of “goodness” and branding anyone who does not conform as deplorable. Such is the nature of dogma, and it is not how the Bolsheviks viewed society. Let us return to the Bolsheviks’ organization of the Red Army and consider how it contrasts with the character of the contemporary left.

The Red Army was also organized in accordance with military science, and it required experienced specialists. While liquidating counter-revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks filled the command structure with the most reliable elements of the old officer corps, such as Aleksey Brusilov and Mikhail Tukhachevsky. They permitted former Tsarist officers to shed their imperial cloak and don the red banner on their sleeve, allowing them to prove themselves to the revolution. But what if the Bolsheviks had relied on rigid, monolithic values? Admitting Tsarist officers into the ranks would have been unthinkable under liberal dogma. The revolution would have been lost, and the red banner reduced to nothing but a glimpse of what might have been. Instead, they relied on a pragmatic dialectical approach.

From October 1918 to March 1919, the Bolsheviks reconquered vast swaths of Soviet territory. No less than 700,000 square kilometers were reclaimed from foreign intervention and the White Tsarist yoke – a territory with a population of some 42 million people. This included 16 oblasts and 16 major cities, where the workers continued their energetic struggle in unison with the Red Army.

In every regiment, the moral tone was set by the Soviet soldier, by the proletarian – showing through their example how to fight and die for socialism. “Communists are always at the front” was not just a popular credo; in the Russian Civil War, it was a reality. The vast majority of the army fought for their class interests. Having just shaken off the shackles of Tsarism, they now fought to preserve their hard-earned freedom.

For the proper organization of the army, and particularly for the effective use of specialists, revolutionary discipline was essential. This was introduced with determination from the top, and with equal vigor it was reinforced from below, instilling a sense of responsibility among the masses. When the people realized that discipline was not being imposed to defend the wealth of the bourgeoisie or to restore land to the landlords, but rather to consolidate and defend the conquests of the revolution, they came to support even the strictest measures aimed at establishing discipline.

The Bolsheviks organized the Red Army along class lines, drawing on the proletariat’s position in their shared struggle against the capitalist class – just as Lenin had organized the revolution around the popular anti-war sentiment.

Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka

The Cheka was officially established by V. I. Lenin in December 1917, appointing Felix Dzerzhinsky as its director. Like the Red Army, the Extraordinary Commission – known as the Cheka – was born of a strictly proletarian character. Its task was to safeguard the revolution and to fight those who sought to drag the country back into the dark, stagnant imperial nightmare that had ruled for a millennium. The obligations of this revolutionary institution were clear: the complete liquidation of counter-revolutionary elements and of all who deliberately took part in the sabotage of the revolution.

Revolutionary tribunals were common place, the judicial hearings of the Cheka’s investigations were observed by the masses. These practices guaranteed the longevity of the revolution, and thus guaranteed the future implementation of socialist principles. No section of the society were out of bounds, even the mighty Red Army and the Bolshevik Party were subject to routine investigations. 

To maintain the proletarian character of the rank and file and to root out suspected agents of the bourgeoisie, some of the original members of the Cheka were replaced on December 8, 1917. Averin, Ordzhonikidze, and Trifonov were removed and replaced by V. V. Fomin, S. E. Shchukin, and Ilyin. At the same meeting, the issues of corruption and profiteering—such as black market grain selling – were raised. On December 11, Fomin was ordered to organize a section to suppress speculation, while Shchukin was tasked with carrying out arrests of counterfeiters.

In January 1918, a subsection of the anti-counterrevolutionary effort was created to police bank officials. By 1921, the organization was restructured once again, forming the following sections: Directorate of Affairs, Administrative-Organizational, Secret-Operative, Economic, and Foreign Affairs. Additional units were also created, including Secret-Operative, Investigatory, Transportation, Military (Special), Operative, and Instructional.

The activities of the Cheka demonstrate the honest proletarian character of its leadership and their dialectical style of management. Such practices were lost in its successor organizations, such as the later years of the KGB, when the institution became merely a tool of state management – protecting party assets and repressing dissent rather than organizing along class lines. In contrast to the Cheka, for modern-day leftists such decisive action is unthinkable. The so-called modern left clings to humanism and pacifism in the face of bourgeois aggression. The “Red Terror” was indeed terrible – but only for the enemies of the working class. The reorganization of society could not have been completed without the Cheka, and the Cheka itself would not have succeeded had it relied merely on dogmatic thinking and orthodox interpretations of Marxism. As Dzerzhinsky explained, “We stand for organized terror – this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life.” 

Stalin and The National Question

Comrade Stalin explained it eloquently: dogmatic and orthodox beliefs are not a pragmatic way to advance the cause of the working class. This was the case during the organization and foundation of the USSR, particularly in the formation of the National Republics and their entry into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
From the very first days of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the revolutionary tide spread across the entire former Russian Empire, sweeping through every so-called border region of Imperial Russia. In some cases, however, the revolution ran into a reactionary barrier in the form of National Councils and regional governments organized along national lines. Such obstacles appeared in the European territories – Ukraine, Belarus – and in smaller regions such as the Don and the Kuban. These national governments refused to hear of a socialist revolution.

Bourgeois by nature, these governments had no desire to destroy the old order. On the contrary, they saw it as their duty to preserve and consolidate it by every means at their disposal. Essentially imperialist, they had no intention of breaking with imperialism; on the contrary, they were always eager to seize and subjugate fragments of foreign territories whenever the opportunity arose. It is no wonder, then, that the national governments in the border regions declared war on the socialist government in the center. Once they had done so, they naturally became hotbeds of reaction, attracting everything counter-revolutionary in Russia. All the counter-revolutionaries expelled from the country rushed to these centers, forming White Guard national regiments around them.

The plight of these so-called governments is often depicted as a struggle for national liberation against the “soulless centralism” of the emerging Bolshevik state. But this is a fallacy. No government in human history had permitted such extensive decentralization, and none had ever granted its citizens such complete national freedom as Soviet power in Russia. The struggle of the border governments was, and remains, a bourgeois counter-revolution against socialism. The national flag of these oppressed nations was merely tacked on to deceive the masses, to draw on their proletarian energy in service of the national bourgeoisie, conveniently concealing the counter-revolutionary designs of these regimes. Such deceptive struggles can still be seen in our own time.

Recall the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, when colonial-era banners were hoisted in Libya and Syria. Or consider the “color revolutions” in Georgia in 2003, in Ukraine in 2004, and again in 2013. These struggles were not grassroots, but rather stimulated and cultivated by outside forces. At the same time, Occupy Wall Street unfolded concurrently with the Arab Spring, yet many of its own protesters openly cheered the destruction of Libya in 2011 and called for the collapse of the Syrian Arab Republic. The same leftists applauded the Euromaidan movement of 2013, despite Ukraine effectively forfeiting its sovereignty to foreign powers. We can see that these so-called revolutions succeeded in regime change, but why? Simply because they were built on genuine grievances of the masses: demands for better economic conditions and improved governance. Strikingly, it seems their cultivators copied the very tactics of Bolshevism.

The October Revolution was the first in world history to break the slumber of the eastern laboring masses, drawing them out from the shadow of imperialism and into the struggle for a bright and vibrant future. The formation of Soviets in Persia, China, and India testified to this fact. A red star had risen over the East, inspiring the working class to undertake proletarian deeds. And in the aftermath of the great revolution, red flags were raised in the West as well.

The uprisings of workers and soldiers in Austria-Hungary and Germany, the formation of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and the revolutionary struggles of the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary against national oppression all provide eloquent evidence of this.

The Soviet government understood that only on the basis of mutual confidence could mutual understanding arise, and only on the basis of mutual understanding could a firm and indestructible union of peoples be built – a voluntary union of the working people of all the independent Soviet republics. This was precisely the course the Soviet government consistently advocated for uniting the peoples. Thus, out of the collapse of the old imperialist unity, through the creation of independent Soviet republics, the peoples of Russia advanced toward a new, voluntary, and fraternal unity.

This path was by no means easy, but it was the only one leading to a firm and indestructible socialist union of the laboring masses of Russia’s many nationalities. Such was the rhetoric– the dogma – to which the Bolsheviks aspired. Yet the material reality of the time was far different. Stalin himself recognized this and understood that the approach to the national question could not be so rigid. As the Civil War raged across Russia, it revealed the necessity of unity among the peoples of the former empire. The “jailhouse of nations” had at last been broken open, and the task of building a new, united motherland now lay before them. Stalin saw the Russian heartland as the hearth of the revolution, the central cog around which the many peoples would gather and prosper. The survival of the revolution depended not only on unity, but also on respecting the genuine national aspirations of the peoples—as was the case with Finland and Poland.

The border regions of Russia were rich in raw materials, energy, and agricultural land. Yet their very abundance, combined with their underdeveloped sovereignty, left them vulnerable to imperialism. It therefore became the task of Soviet Russia to protect these nations from foreign imperialism and colonization. Without the political, military, and organizational support of the more developed Russian heartland, the border regions would have been inevitably doomed to imperialist bondage.

Stalin rejected the proposal to grant the border regions the right of secession, arguing that it ran contrary to the proletarian aspirations of the nationalities at the time. A material analysis showed that these nations would either join in the construction of socialism or inevitably become vassals of imperialism.

One must study the cases of Georgia, Armenia, Poland, and Finland at the time of the USSR’s formation. These nations had seceded from Russia but retained only the semblance of independence, having in reality been transformed into unconditional vassals of the West. Recall as well the more recent examples of Georgia and Ukraine: though built on genuine popular grievances, their so-called revolutions were aimed at shifting the bloc alignment of the nation, ushering in a new era of neo-colonialism in the region. Tsarism had already implanted among the native nationalities a deep distrust – at times even open hostility – toward everything Russian.
If the union between central Russia and the border regions was to be consolidated, this distrust had to be overcome and replaced with an atmosphere of mutual understanding and fraternal confidence. To achieve this, the Bolsheviks first had to help the masses of the border regions emancipate themselves from the remnants of feudal-patriarchal oppression.

It was necessary that all Soviet organs in the border regions—the courts, the administration, the economic bodies, the organs of direct authority, and even the Party itself – be recruited as far as possible from local people familiar with the life, habits, customs, and language of the native population. The best elements of the local masses had to be drawn into these institutions, and the laboring people had to participate in every sphere of administration, including the formation of military units, so that they could see Soviet power as the product of their own efforts, the embodiment of their own aspirations. For that very reason, it would have been unwise and harmful to alienate the small number of native intellectuals, who may have wished to serve the masses but were unable to do so—perhaps because, not being Communists, they felt themselves surrounded by mistrust and feared possible repressive measures.

It was necessary that all Soviet organs in the border regions – the courts, the administration, the economic bodies, the organs of direct authority, and even the Party itself – be staffed, as far as possible, with local people familiar with the life, habits, customs, and language of the native population. The best elements of the local masses had to be drawn into these institutions, and the laboring people had to participate in every sphere of administration, including the formation of military units. Only in this way could the masses recognize that Soviet power and its organs were the product of their own efforts – the embodiment of their aspirations. For this reason, it would have been unwise and harmful to alienate the small number of native intellectuals who may have wished to serve the people but were unable to do so – perhaps because, not being Communists, they felt surrounded by mistrust and feared possible repression.
​
The approach of Stalin to the National Question is owed to dialectical thinking. Just as Lenin galvanized the popular will of the masses, Stalin sought to organize the National Republics on the basis of their own material interests and enjoyment of national sovereignty. He did so without relying on monolithic values, but through a rigorous application of the dialectic.

Conclusion

It would be unwise to treat these examples as dogma, for that would run contrary to the very point being made. Instead, they should be understood as examples of the dialectic – the application of Marxist thought to the material reality of the age. Communists were never afraid to innovate, to translate their ideology into practical terms. In some cases, this even meant deviating from the orthodox line of Marxism-Leninism – for instance, in Mao’s China, where the peasantry was seen as the most revolutionary class, whereas in Russia it was the working class. Yet we must distinguish between deviation and revisionism. During the revisionist period of the USSR, mistakes were made as Marxism was reduced to pure dogma, stripped of its innovative character. The same formulas applied in Soviet Russia could not simply be transplanted onto Mao’s China, Hoxha’s Albania, or Kim Il-Sung’s Korea. Rather, these helmsmen followed the example of the Bolsheviks, using the dialectic to analyze and act upon the material realities of their own time.

With the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy, the People’s Republic of China entered a new historical period in its development. Starting in 1978, the country began to prioritize a development model with characteristics quite distinct from those prevailing during the previous period (1949–78). From then on, China began to emphasize the growth of the private economy and gradually dismantled the system of people’s communes, which had been established during the first thirty years of socialist construction (1949–76).

A new economic structure soon took shape, in which the state and public sector progressively lost their dominant position, especially in quantitative terms, while “multiple forms of ownership” were promoted and encouraged. This new political orientation led to the emergence of private capitalist property and the formation of a market economy under the control of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a situation that contributed to intensifying class contradictions, the loss of social status for workers, and a range of problems characteristic of capitalist societies. The Chinese then began to theorize about “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Even in this context, some local experiences of development and strengthening of public and collective economy survived—and many even prospered to the point of becoming genuine models that significantly influence the national debate on building new socialist rural areas. In an era where much is said about achieving “common prosperity,” it is of utmost importance to pay attention to these experiences. Among the collective villages still existing in China, the most emblematic and relevant example is that of Nanjie.

The Historical Context of the Economic Construction of Nanjie Village

Launched in 1978, the reform and opening-up policy had its initial landmark in rural areas. Officially, the CPC considers that these rural reforms began in Xiaogang village, located in Anhui province. At the time, a group of eighteen peasants signed a “secret agreement” in which they agreed to violate the existing laws, clandestinely implementing a model of production and distribution based on the division of land into family plots, which could be cultivated individually by peasant households. This model was later implemented elsewhere, becoming the basic model for rural reforms in the early phase of the new policy. This episode illustrates the difficulties and challenges in establishing socialist relations of production in the face of the spontaneous petty-bourgeois tendencies of peasants in a large rural country like China.

Nanjie is a village located in Luohe City, Henan Province. It houses about 3,000 permanent residents, with a total population of around 13,000 (including migrant workers and employees of local enterprises). It is one of the rare cases of rural development that followed a path diametrically opposed to Xiaogang. Nanjie’s experience is often portrayed by the bourgeois press as the “last Maoist village in China.” This is due to the fact that Nanjie preserved and promoted rural collective ownership and centered its development on the defense and advancement of public ownership.

It is a fact that in present-day China, as the private economy gains ever more strength and influence, examples like Nanjie represent exceptions to the rule, although it is not the only village that still adopts a model based on collective economy.

At the beginning of the reform period, Nanjie also sought to adopt the household responsibility system, following the example then being implemented throughout China. Especially after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Nanjie also began to encourage the growth of individual and private property.[1] However, such incentives and measures soon showed concerning results: a drop in production indices, deterioration of living conditions, and the emergence of social polarization.

Living in a village located near the city, Nanjie’s peasants had historically developed a certain commercial tradition. With the dismantling of the old collective system of people’s communes, the peasants quickly abandoned their rural activities to engage in various commercial activities. At that time, after these changes began, street vendors, food and cigarette merchants, migrant workers, and individuals eager to open private factories reemerged. Many peasants also began leasing land to relatives and friends; in some cases, they even completely abandoned their land. According to data provided by the Party committee in Nanjie, in 1985, annual grain production dropped to just over 3.75 tons per hectare, with agriculture “entering a general decline.”[2]

In response to these problems, the village and the people of Nanjie reacted quite differently from what common sense might suggest. Rather than deepening reforms in favor of private property, the local Party committee chose to resume collectivization. In 1986, the Communist Party committee in Nanjie published a document addressed to the population that expressed the following:

1. Those capable of farming their land must, above all, take good care of their fields. Only then may they engage in trade or outside work. Otherwise, the village would have the right to intervene. It was forbidden to lease contracted land to outsiders or abandon it.

2. Those who, for special reasons, could no longer take care of their land could submit a formal request to the village committee. Upon evaluation and approval, their land would be returned to the collective, and the village mill would ensure the supply of flour for these families.[3]

After publishing the notice, three hundred residents requested the return of their land, which once again came under the collective administration of Nanjie village.

During the brief period when Nanjie experimented with the “Xiaogang path,” in addition to decollectivization, the village also handed over its two small factories (brick and flour) to private management, which resulted in intensified class contradictions and the deterioration of the Party’s leadership position. As revealed in the book The Light of the Ideal, prepared under the supervision of the CPC committee in Nanjie:

The result of the experience was the opposite of what residents had expected: instead of benefits, what came was a hard lesson. Workers were deceived. Besides not receiving regular wages, many went the entire year without any payment, working in vain. Meanwhile, individual contractors visibly enriched themselves, with food, clothing, housing, and possessions far superior to those of ordinary residents. The Party’s authority in the village plummeted; complaints spread. Letters of denunciation reached the Provincial Party Committee and the municipal government, protest posters were placed from the county office to the door of Secretary Wang Hongbin. Leaders at all levels also expressed dissatisfaction with the village’s cadres.[4]

The eventual positive results that reforms brought to Xiaogang and other rural areas did not occur in Nanjie. This shows in practice that, for a reform to succeed, it must consider not only top-down orders or successful experiences from other places, but above all the concrete conditions of each region.

Collectivization as a Prerequisite for the Development of the Productive Forces

The peasants of Nanjie felt firsthand the negative effects of returning to individual production. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, they gradually found a new path to development. Wang Hongbin, secretary of the Communist Party in Nanjie, played a central role in this new endeavor in the small village in Henan. Elected secretary of the Communist Party committee in 1977, Wang Hongbin began to stand out in village politics during the final years of the Mao Zedong era. At the time, he received honorary titles such as “promoter of the limitation of bourgeois right” and “promoter of the reduction of the three great inequalities.”[5] According to his own reflections, the main reason for the political and economic deterioration in Nanjie was that the Party, instead of properly using its leading role to mobilize the masses in their struggle to overcome poverty, had adopted the path of private individual economy, which ended up “hurting the residents’ feelings and tarnishing the reputation of Party organizations.”[6]

With Wang Hongbin at the helm, the Communist Party committee in Nanjie mobilized to find an answer to the village’s new problems. By holding mass meetings with the residents of Nanjie, the decision was made to resume the collective economy, undertaking economic and ideological construction simultaneously, putting “politics in command.” Successfully carrying out both economic and ideological work was what the Communist Party of China historically called “acting with both hands and with equal strength.”[7]

After resuming the path of collectivization, Nanjie once again recorded high levels of economic growth. From 1984,the year it returned to the collective economy—until 1998, the village’s collective enterprises grew from two to twenty-six, including four joint ventures. Fixed assets increased from just over 500,000 yuan to 460 million yuan. The total output value of the village’s collective enterprises jumped from 700,000 to 802 million yuan, and taxes paid gradually rose to over 17 million yuan.[8] These are figures that completely refute the entrenched view that equates collective economy with backwardness and stagnation.

The Communist Party established a method of ideological education based on “red culture” and Mao Zedong Thought. Contrary to what happened in the rest of China after the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy—where Mao Zedong Thought was often declared “outdated”—in Nanjie, the Communist Party committee placed the ideological formation of Party cadres and members, as well as villagers, at the center of its agenda, based on the principles of communist ideology. The classical works of Marxism-Leninism and the writings of Mao Zedong were widely printed and made available to villagers. In terms of Party propaganda, references to China’s revolutionary history, Marxism-Leninism, political speeches, orientations, and revolutionary songs became part of daily life in Nanjie.

Higher Forms of Cadre-Mass Relations: The ‘Spirit of 250’

Once the collectivization of the village’s basic means of production was consolidated, the Communist Party in Nanjie began developing new forms of relations between cadres and the masses. One of the major problems and challenges brought about by the reform and opening-up policy was the loss of prestige of Party organizations. With the reintroduction of the market economy at the national level, the idea that the Communist Party could serve as a springboard for social ascent became widespread. As a result, bureaucratism across China became an extremely serious issue, contributing to the growing public discontent that would culminate in the protests of the 1980s. This had negative consequences for the cause of socialism and communism in China. Nanjie was not immune to this phenomenon.

In the early period of the reforms, when Nanjie also decided to follow the “Xiaogang path,” relations between cadres and the masses quickly deteriorated. According to Marxism-Leninism, cadres play a decisive role in the construction of socialism. The way they perform their duties and relate to the people is a factor that can determine the success or failure of a given endeavor. If cadres engage in economic activities for personal profit and gain, the masses will inevitably begin to view the Party and its representatives with distrust. If such behavior is allowed to flourish, the character of the Party is diluted, and it runs the risk of degenerating into something hostile to the people. Considering these issues, Wang Hongbin correctly observed that the policy initiated by the CPC Central Committee—encouraging people to become rich (remember the slogan “to get rich is glorious”)—should not mean that “Party members should be the first to get rich.” The Party in Nanjie gradually established a cadre management system that took the principle of “serving the people” seriously, implementing the mass line in practice and promoting the so-called “250 spirit” (èr bǎi wǔ, 二百五).

Wang Hongbin, secretary of the Communist Party committee in Nanjie, was the main advocate of adopting the so-called “250 spirit.” In Chinese, the term “250” carries a derogatory connotation, often used to describe someone as a “fool,” “idiot,” or “naive.” However, in Nanjie, this expression took on a completely different meaning, representing “courage,” “boldness,” and a spirit of dedication to the collective. The initiative to use the term “250” as a political and ideological slogan came from Wang Hongbin himself, based on his personal experiences. In the late 1970s, before being elected Party secretary in Nanjie, Wang was offered a transfer to work in a city factory, where he would serve in the warehouse department. Given China’s conditions at the time, working in the city was seen as a real opportunity for social advancement for a peasant. However, Wang Hongbin did not adapt to the new position, feeling that the work he was doing lacked meaning. For him, life alongside his comrades in the countryside was far more valuable—that was where he wanted to be, contributing to the collective construction of socialism.

Upon returning to Nanjie, he was criticized by relatives and ridiculed by friends. Many called him a “250,” that is, a fool. But to Wang, it was precisely this kind of spirit that communists should cultivate and promote. After all, in class societies—and under socialism there are still classes and class struggle—aren’t those who devote themselves to a common cause often labeled as “naïve”? By giving new meaning to the term “250,” the Party began promoting the “250 spirit,” encouraging and fostering the spirit of sacrifice and dedication to the collective cause. Doing “foolish” things became a requirement and a model for Party members.[9]

Among the “foolish” things done by the Party leadership in Nanjie was the establishment of a salary regime for local Party officials that did not exceed 250 yuan per month—a rule that also applied to Wang Hongbin. The justification for such a measure lies not only in the Party’s own experience in Nanjie but also in the historical experience of the workers’ movement and socialist construction on an international scale. Some Chinese commentators and scholars even compare this measure with the example of the Paris Commune. As we know, during the short-lived Paris Commune in 1871, one of the adopted measures was to equalize the salaries of Commune officials with those of workers. As Marx pointed out: “First, it [the Commune] filled all positions—administrative, judicial, and educational—by election, with the right of recall at any time by the voters. Second, it paid all functionaries, high or low, only the wages of other workers. The highest salary was 6,000 francs.”[10]

The comparison between this measure applied in Nanjiecun and the example of the Paris Commune is quite valid—with the difference that in Nanjiecun’s case, the Communist Party leadership receives not the same salary as workers, but a lower one.[11] Evidently, this measure is frequently ridiculed and discredited by many analysts, both inside and outside China, but it helps explain, to some extent, the high degree of influence, prestige, and trust the Party leadership enjoys among Nanjiecun residents. It is one of the ways the Communist Party found to keep its top cadres “grounded” and strengthen their integration with the masses.

Strengthening the Collective Economy and the Socialist Distribution Model at the Village Level

In 1986, Nanjie established a new type of distribution system based on the collective provision of basic benefits to the population. Even with a weak economic base at the time, the village began to guarantee a wide range of social services to its residents: “From 1986 to 1994, the welfare items expanded from the free provision of water and electricity to 14 items, including gas, cooking oil, flour, special holiday foods, free education through university, collectively funded cultural activities, personal insurance, vaccinations, medical expenses, family planning, agricultural taxes, etc.”[12]

These measures were also very important in consolidating the prestige of the Party leadership in Nanjie among the local population. They represented enormous progress compared to what was happening in other regions of China, where the implementation of reforms was often accompanied by cuts or reductions in benefits previously provided by the State and work units. The Party leadership in Nanjie viewed the distribution system based on collective provision as an effective measure to combat inequality and poverty, as well as a means of alleviating social tensions and conflicts. As the village developed its productive forces, the Party sought to strengthen the supply-based distribution mechanism, expanding its scope of action. From 1993 onward, Nanjie began to build modern residential buildings, with apartments and houses of up to 92 square meters, fully furnished (sofa, bed, wardrobe, air conditioner, television, etc.), distributed free of charge to the local population. In the area of food, the village also began to provide it for free through its collective restaurants, where village residents can take their daily meals, although use of these facilities is not mandatory.[13]

This distribution model applied in Nanjie has only grown stronger over the years. Today, in addition to all the benefits listed above, the village also provides free healthcare and education. The hospital and local health clinics provide basic health services to the population; when specialized treatment is required in more advanced facilities—regardless of which city in China—the expenses are fully covered by Nanjiecun, even for surgeries or expensive procedures. In education, residents who are accepted into Chinese universities can study with all expenses paid by the village, along with a monthly subsidy. The same applies if they need to study abroad.

It is important to note that the current distribution system in the village does not reject the wage system. The Party leadership in Nanjie understands that, because the village’s productive forces are not yet highly developed, it is still necessary to maintain wages, applying the distribution method based on the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” In this regard, the village established a system that combines wage payments with the collective provision of services and social benefits by the State, placing greater emphasis on the latter, in a 30 percent to 70 percent ratio.[14]

According to Secretary Wang Hongbin, the adoption of the “wage + collective provision” system stems from two main factors:

1. Because China is in the socialist stage, residents’ ideological awareness still has many limitations. Therefore, it is important to establish a social environment that rewards those who contribute more to the collective through the principle of “those who work more, earn more,” while also exerting pressure on ideologically backward elements;

2. Through collective provision, people have the opportunity to experience concretely what the communist mode of distribution would look like (even if only in embryonic form), which has an important ideological impact and encourages workers to dedicate themselves more actively to the collective cause, reducing the influence of selfish ideas. This greatly aids the work of building the “socialist spiritual civilization.”

In this sense, the existence of wages corresponds to the fact that Chinese society—including Nanjiecun itself—is still in the primary stage of socialism; the collective provision system, then, aligns with the communist character of society, pointing to the direction in which economic and social development should move. The success of the distribution model based on “wage + collective provision” is one of the distinctive features of Nanjiecun. Its success, even in a small village, demonstrates to all of China the feasibility and superiority of a distribution model based on public ownership of the means of production, as well as presenting a creative way of applying the principle of “limiting bourgeois right” in the new era. It can serve as an important reference for achieving common prosperity.

Nanjie and the Reform and Opening-Up Policy: Building a ‘Communist Community’ in the New Era

It is quite evident that the path taken by Nanjie in its economic development process has characteristics that are very distinct from those applied in the rest of China since 1978. While in other areas the trend of decollectivization prevailed, Nanjie opted to promote its development through the strengthening of the collective economy and, consequently, the public sector. The Party committee in Nanjie set out on a mission to build what they call a “communist community”: a small rural community that lays the foundations of socialism and communism at the local level.

In the early 1990s, China’s political and economic debate was in full swing. The international context was marked by the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries; in China, following the protests of the late 1980s, the debate over which path the reforms should take deepened, while neoliberal ideology gained increasing influence within society. In 1992, with Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, the political conditions were created for a new wave of reforms, which led to the interruption of the debate about the “nature of the reforms”—whether they were capitalist or socialist—a debate that had been largely promoted by what many considered the “left” within the Communist Party of China at the time.[15] Nationally, the Communist Party of China set as its main goal the creation of a “socialist market economy” and allowed the private sector to expand more rapidly.

In the opposite direction, the Communist Party committee in Nanjie—without denying the reality of the market economy—openly defends the need to build a village with an economic base rooted in public ownership of the means of production.

As Wang Hongbin stated:

Especially today, upholding and defending the line of public ownership has become a central point and focus of attention for all of society. Public ownership is the core of socialism, the direction and lifeline of socialist society’s development. It expresses the essence of the socialist system and is the principal economic form in the victorious march of socialist society. If we do not understand the superiority of public ownership, if we do not understand its origin and development, nor its distinction from private ownership, we will not be able to recognize the correctness and value of the path followed by Nanjie.[16]

In September 1997, the Communist Party in Nanjie launched the “great debate on public ownership,” a major political mobilization process that involved not only Party cadres but also workers and village residents. In August of that same year, during a leadership meeting in Nanjie, Wang Hongbin read a letter written by a young researcher from Beijing who had visited the village to conduct fieldwork. In the letter, the young researcher stated that the principal contradiction in Nanjie was the struggle between capitalism and socialism; between collectivist and selfish worldviews; between the idea of serving the people and the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, and fame. The letter also pointed out some political and social problems emerging in the village as it overcame its condition of poverty.

​Among them: bureaucratism; resistance among youth to revolutionary ideological education; criticisms of the existing distribution system in the village; individualism, etc. All these manifestations demanded that the village better systematize a correct ideological line, which would help solidify among Party cadres a clear understanding of the superiority of public ownership. It also concretely showed that building a “communist village” must not rely solely on economic development.

The defense of public ownership of the means of production is considered a basic premise for the ideological construction of Nanjie. The Communist Party committee in Nanjie actively promotes the study of the works of Mao Zedong, texts by Deng Xiaoping, and Party documents in which the defense of public ownership is explicitly mentioned. Deng Xiaoping, on several occasions, also pointed out that the socialist system is based on public ownership of the means of production, meaning that Nanjie never needed to “deviate” from the Party’s official line to defend its project of building a “communist village.” Even so, the Communist Party in Nanjie openly criticizes the pro-privatization tendencies seen in other regions, as well as the cadres and intellectuals who promote the demonization of public ownership.

According to Wang Hongbin:

Currently, there are people in our village who still have a vague understanding of public ownership, showing mistaken attitudes. They do not perceive its superiority nor understand the dangers of private property. We said years ago that ‘privatization’ is the source of all evils. When selfish desires grow and individualism acts, phenomena such as ‘eating, drinking, prostitution, gambling, smoking, extortion, deceit, kidnapping, fraud, and theft’ emerge—and such situations in society are alarming. Those who do not understand the superiority of public ownership end up losing faith in it.[17]

Nanjie began promoting ideological campaigns aimed at clarifying the superiority of the public and collective economy, exposing the evils produced by private ownership. In the context of the “great debate” taking place in the village, Professor Xing Guosen, a veteran cadre and member of the Party committee in the village, gave a public lecture in which he explained to residents the essence of private property:

In all societies based on exploitation—whether in slavery, feudalism, or capitalism—the majority of wealth belongs to individuals who hold economic power. In slave society, even the life and death of slaves were completely controlled by the masters. During feudalism, the State itself was considered the property of a dynasty, concentrating power and resources in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy. In capitalism, the political system is manipulated by the bourgeoisie, which defends private ownership, while most social wealth remains concentrated in the hands of capitalists. Workers’ wages barely guarantee the minimum for survival—and sometimes not even that. The relationship between capitalists and workers remains one of exploitation. To transform this reality and achieve the true liberation of the working masses, private property must be eliminated.[18]

In terms of property relations, with the re-collectivization and the development of local enterprises controlled by the Party committee, the individual economy gradually lost its economic influence, so that the ownership of the means of production and commerce quickly returned to State control. The issue of eliminating private property was placed by the village committee as a present task, not something for a distant, unreachable future. In this way, socialist relations of production were preserved and consolidated, which brought enormous benefits to the village.

Nanjie’s leaders are aware that they cannot deny the reality that today the village is a “small island” of public economy surrounded by a vast sea of market economy. Therefore, Nanjie was forced to develop a commercial and entrepreneurial vision as a means of advancing its local enterprises, adopting a policy known as “externally flexible, internally strict.” This policy aligns with the measures of reform and opening-up, but introduces them in a highly original way.

On the “external” level, Nanjie’s economy needs to operate in accordance with the practice of the “socialist market economy,” following market competition laws and the national and international standards established therein. For instance, regarding foreign investment and partnerships with foreign enterprises, Nanjie established a few companies with foreign capital participation, which helped modernize local production.[19]

On the “internal” level, however, Nanjie’s policies must align with the socialist and communist character of the village, ensuring that business management obeys socialist principles and remains under the firm control of the Party committee. Even in joint ventures, this guarantees that the negative aspects of dealing with capitalist firms and actors do not contaminate or negatively influence the village’s internal development. Nanjie is not immune to the “entry of mosquitoes”—hence the Party committee’s constant emphasis on “placing politics in command” and persisting in the construction of “socialist spiritual civilization.” All profits generated by the village’s enterprises are funneled into a collective social fund, which is later reinvested in infrastructure projects and expansion of social benefits. The path taken by Nanjie allowed the village, already in the 1990s, to become a “billionaire village.” According to available data, between 1984 and 1997, the village’s economy grew more than 2,200 times, with output value rising from 700,000 to 1.6 billion yuan.[20]

Conclusion

The existence of Nanjie is not without controversy. In China, openly right-wing intellectuals view the village’s successful experience with suspicion and proclaim that sooner or later the path it has chosen will fail. Among the Chinese left, opinions are also divided. Some enthusiastically support the village’s experience, arguing that it can serve as a viable model for rural revitalization and the resumption of socialist construction in the country. There are also those who argue that what exists in Nanjie is a kind of “collective capitalism,” making comparisons with the socialist period of Mao Zedong’s era impossible. The fact that the village still accepts foreign capital participation for financing, and that it employs peasant labor from other regions (in which case the workers do not enjoy all the benefits granted to original villagers—although it must be acknowledged that even in these cases, working and living conditions are generally much better than those of most Chinese peasants and migrant workers), seems to support this argument.

However, while it is correct to take into account all the concrete limitations imposed on Nanjie’s development and its project of building a “communist village,” it is equally mistaken to underestimate its existence or to fail to recognize the highly positive value this experience holds in demonstrating the feasibility and superiority of development centered on public ownership of the means of production—even while acknowledging the inherent contradictions of having to adapt and integrate into the broader context of the market economy. The existence of a village with Nanjie’s characteristics demonstrates in practice that the collective economy can play a positive role in China’s overall economic development, and that its strengthening is a necessary condition for achieving “common prosperity” and expanding socialist relations of production on a national level.

From the perspective of Party “governance” within the village, the “Nanjie model” can also serve as a reference for more concretely visualizing the Communist Party of China’s role as an active force in socialist construction at its best. In Nanjie, the Party’s role as educator and organizer of the masses is evident—but it is more than that. The Party acts in a manner consistent with its proletarian character, placing Marxism-Leninism at the forefront and seeking to educate and mobilize the masses in the spirit of that ideology.

Author

Gabriel Gonçalves Martinez holds a master’s degree in Marxist Philosophy from Beijing Normal University.

Notes

[1] The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held from December 18 to 22, 1978. It was at this session that the CPC officially announced the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy, focusing on the promotion of “socialist modernization.”
[2] Nanjiecun Bianxiezu 南街村编写组, 理想之光 (The Light of the Ideal), vol. 1 (Beijing: Central Party School Press, 1998), 3.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 4.
[5] In Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx presented the idea that in the lower phase of communism (socialism), the principle of distribution based on the amount of labor contributed prevails. However, Marx noted that this labor-based distribution was still a form of “bourgeois right,” as it presupposes real differences between individuals. In China, Mao Zedong warned that under socialism, bourgeois right still exists and is a major source of revisionism and capitalist restoration. Therefore, its influence must be restricted by proletarian power, through mass mobilization and popular political measures. See Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. The information that Wang Hongbin was named a model promoter of “limiting bourgeois right” can be found in: 王宏斌. 南街村党委书记王宏斌汇报材料 (Report by the Secretary of the Communist Party of China in Nanjiecun), 2004. Video available at: https://www.szhgh.com/Article/red-china/redman/513.html
[6] Nanjiecun, 理想之光 (The Light of the Ideal), vol. 1, p. 4.
[7] The term “act with both hands and with equal strength” (两手抓，两手都要硬) was coined by 邓小平 (Deng Xiaoping) and refers to the idea that in order to successfully modernize socialism, it is necessary to simultaneously promote the development of material civilization (productive forces) and spiritual civilization.
[8] Nanjiecun, 理想之光 (The Light of the Ideal), vol. 1, 2.
[9] 陈先义 (Chen Xianyi), “南街村的党员干部为什么都甘愿做“二百五”？” [“Why Are All the Party Cadres in Nanjiecun Willing to Be ‘250’?”], 红色文化网 (Red Culture Net), June 11, 2024. https://www.hswh.org.cn/wzzx/sdjl/nm/2024-06-11/88465.html
[10] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.
[11] In Nanjiecun, the salaries of Party cadres and leaders do not exceed 250 yuan—a symbolic reference to the “250 spirit” (二百五精神). Nanjiecun, 理想之光 (The Light of the Ideal), vol. 1, p. 35.
[12] Ibid., 12.
[13] Ibid.
[14] “南街村体质” [The Nanjiecun System], 南街村村委办公室 (Nanjiecun Village Committee Office). Accessed at: http://www.nanjiecun.cn/about.asp?id=5
[15] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a significant faction within the Communist Party of China promoted a discussion about the nature of the reforms. Without denying the need for changes to the economic system, the debate aimed to systematize the problems arising in the early phase of reform, emphasizing that reform and opening-up should be understood as a way to “self-perfect” socialism’s political and economic system. During his “Southern Tour” (南巡讲话), 邓小平 (Deng Xiaoping) criticized the debate on the nature of reforms, saying it was useless to discuss whether something was “socialist” or “capitalist.” He also stated that the CPC should primarily guard against “leftist deviations,” which he considered more dangerous than rightist ones. See Deng Xiaoping, “Excerpts From Talks Given in Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai,” in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 3 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1994), 37–387.
[16] Nanjiecun Bianxiezu (南街村编写组), 理想之光 (The Light of the Ideal), vol. 3 (Beijing: Central Party School Press, 1998), 1.
[17] Ibid., 3.
[18] Ibid., 26–27.
[19] With the development and modernization of the village, Nanjie established a corporate group named “河南南街村集团有限公司” (Henan Nanjiecun Group Co., LTD). This is a large collective conglomerate that currently includes twenty-eight subsidiary companies. Of these, eight are joint ventures—five with foreign capital and three through domestic cooperation. All companies are managed by the Party committee, and all profits go into the village’s collective social fund, which finances the continuous development and expanded reproduction of the collective economy.
[20] Ibid., summarized.

“A child’s gotta eat their share of dirt” — Old southern saying
​
Famines and periods of mass starvation have been manufactured for as long as civilization has existed. To starve one’s enemy or even one’s own populace is a powerful strategy, despite its revolting nature. Gaza’s imposed famine however, is unique. Images of starving children have been almost literally uploaded into our collective consciousness. Malnourished bodies, already ravaged by years of bullets, bombs, fire, and sickness, creep into our insular worlds on various social medias. One year ago The Lancet, a respected independent medical journal, estimated that 186,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza at that stage of the genocide. It is a year later and there are estimations that 434,000 Gazans have likely been killed now. For four months we have seen day in and day out “hunger games”, mass shooting executions at supposed food aid sites run by the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”, a stooge organization for the U.S and Israel. These executions of food starved concentration camp prisoners, along with the mounting globalized images of bony Palestinian corpses, has led many to start applying the term “famine” to the Gaza genocide. Given the increased use of this term, which I may add is correctly applied, I think it is important to put this term in context historically, not only by comparing the Gaza famine to its precedents, but in exploring this brief history of famines elucidate what a famine is definitionally.

Victorian Famines

Mike Davis’ book Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World explores this definitional and historical issue with the term famine. Davis’ case study of famines in 19th century India, Brazil, and China reveals that although climate events primarily caused by ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) had significant impacts on agriculture, food distribution, and general living conditions; it was the colonial administrations that ruled over these areas that caused the famine and mass starvations. In India, the ENSO related droughts were devastating, especially in the interior Deccan Plateau region, but not nearly as devastating as the colonial British and their many sick machinations. Machinations ranging from diverting life saving grain from the exterior regions of India to England rather than the Deccan, to enslaving famine stricken Indians in work death camps with pitiful food subsistence. In Brazil, this was mirrored with the Portuguese decision to divert and withhold food aid to the Sertanejos fleeing from intense droughts in the Sertão, killing around 500,000 in what the Brazilians call the Grande Seca or “Great Drought”. In Northern China, Davis exposes once more how the British left millions hungry and without food aid of any kind. The famine was so horrifying that many turned to eating dirt, the hay and grass thatching of their house roofs, and eventually other people.

Famously the British also imposed famine onto the Irish, killing one million and forcing two million more to flee, representing a 1/3 population decrease in only a decade. Somehow, the memory of this starvation has grown to rightfully blame the British for their murderous policy. Yet the baggage laden word famine still remains when discussing the “Great Famine”. Besides the brutality of the British and the Portuguese, other European powers committed their share of manufactured food massacres. Numerically, the Spanish conquests of the New World are the greatest of these food deprivations.

“The main islands were thickly populated with a peaceful folk when Christ-over found them. But the orgy of blood which followed, no man has written. We are the slaughterers. It is the tortured soul of our world.” — William Carlos Williams

In David Stannard’s book American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World, he gives a conservative estimate that 75,000,000 indigenous people’s of the Americas were exterminated primarily by the Spanish. Nearly every tribe, civilization, people’s lost 95+ percent of their populations within just a few hundred years. Mass murder, hangings, shootings, stabbings, immolations, live burials, and death by dogs were all commonly used by the Spanish. Introduced diseases that natives had no immunity to killed most, but starvation tactics were often used too. Native crops were destroyed, food reserves plundered, and hunting grounds hunted to extinction.

Further, many were pushed onto barren reservations completely removed from their ancestral homelands. This undoubtedly caused millions to die of starvation and millions more who were already weakened by sickness and injury to die also. The crime of starving all these innocent peoples is doubled given the known history that nearly all New World peoples were extremely hospitable to the European colonizers and on many occasions fed them and taught them how to live and navigate about the land. The famine catastrophe the Spanish created was continued by the British and eventually the Americans, both of whom waged ecological war against the remnants of Native Americans.

​Modern Massacres

The New World murderous conquests, the Victorian era starvations of Malthusian calculation, and the exodus of the Irish may lead one to believe that famines are not only clearly defined as periods of mass starvation enforced deliberately as an act of policy, but also have ceased to exist to the same degree. After all, there have been significant technological improvements in agriculture, weather prediction, and the ability to distribute goods of all manner. This is a disastrous assumption. If anything the 20th and 21st centuries have revealed that famines not only continue to exist, but also that our new found technological advancements enable new sickening methods to carry out genocide by hunger.

In Guatemala, for nearly 40 years the U.S government backed right wing death squads that not only “disappeared” hundreds of thousands of primarily indigenous Mayans, but also carried out a scorched earth doctrine that left thousands more starving and destitute. Internationally Illegal bombing and blockades in Yemen for nearly a decade now have been carried out by Saudi Arabia with the backing of the United States. Prior to Gaza’s unfolding genocide, Yemen was the worlds greatest humanitarian famine crises, a crises deliberately made.

​Tragically, Gaza is just the latest (albeit one of the most sickening) in a long and continuing history of state imposed starvations and imposed colonial famines. Understanding that famines are inherently created purposely by genocidal colonial projects is a crucial step in exposing the underlying framework that makes these famines possible in the first place.

​On July 27, Fox News aired a national segment attacking my party, the American Communist Party (ACP), my speech, and the Subversion Summer Camp that hosted it in Bridgeport, Chicago.

I was asked for a press release a couple of days prior, but no part of the statement that I gave was featured on the segment, nor was any of the actual speech I gave, which was titled after my recent book, Why We Need American Marxism.

Instead, Fox News decided to clip a segment from my lecture at our Party’s national convention in October 2024, where I discussed, as Secretary of Education, the importance of free, creative, and critical thinking.

By mocking a clip where I emphasize these themes, the Fox News anchors, as political analyst Eddie Smith argued, are admitting that they do not want people to think critically and beyond the boundaries of the established political horizon. They want people to think what the mainstream media, 95% of which is owned by a handful of major media monopolies, tells them to think. Anything which encourages a form of thinking that breaks through the dogmatic narratives they craft to justify war, poverty, and our people’s debt-enslavement must be ridiculed, attacked, and censored.  

Most interesting was their sophistical intertwining of my speech and the ACP with the activities done by the rest of the ten-day camp, failing, of course, to note that we had no control over the rest of it. We were simply guests, graciously allowed to speak in an environment foreign to us, a context of liberal activism we have notoriously been at odds with. This is the activism that they ridiculed and tried to link to our party, an activism that says that we fight fascism with “pool noodles” and “queer magic".

In fact, my speech was introduced as being “controversial” precisely because we are communists, people whose patriotism is second to none. Our organization does not seek to impose liberal wokeism on an American working class that is overwhelmingly socially conservative.

But alas, the narrative-spinners at the Rupert Murdoch-owned cesspool, which is Fox News, had to ignore all the facts to connect us to a Congress for Cultural Freedom style compatible “left” that is completely alienating to working-class Americans.
​

This fact alone forces me to ask the following question: what are they afraid of? Why must they distort the facts to craft their narratives? Could it be, perhaps, that somewhere deep down they know that had their viewers listened to what I said, they would’ve found someone expressing sentiments which they agree with? A political line that comprehends the everyday grievances they live with, those which the political class ignores?

Ridicule is the tribute paid by those threatened to admit the truth of that which becomes the object of scorn. In such a predicament, constructing a caricature vulgar enough to knock down is the only resort. The paradox is that even the spectacle they spun made them, not those promoting critical, free, and creative thinking, look bad.
​
Had they shown the American people the actual speech, or even the statement they omitted, they wouldn’t have been able to otherize and mock us as quickly as they did. The essence of my talk, which is available online, is that the most fundamental values the American people hold are intimately tied to a conception of government of, by, and for the people. But this notion, first uttered by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, is fundamentally incompatible with the society we have today in America, where we have a government of, by, and for big business, banks, and the military-industrial complex.

By identifying with the notion of government of, by, and for the people, Americans are identifying with socialism, whose fundamental essence is nothing more than a society that has as its ultimate principle serving the people, not the interests of capital. As the legendary American communist Fred Hampton said, “Socialism is the people, if you’re afraid of socialism, you are afraid of yourself.”

Based on the ideals of 1776 and those of the refined democratic creed, the American people already align with a socialist social vision; they just do not know it yet. Their anti-communism, artificially inscribed through McCarthyite propaganda, is nothing more than a form of self-estrangement, a fear of facing the predicament of themselves in the mirror and realizing that how they think society should work is already communist, in essence.
It is like when in old cartoons the roadrunner runs off a cliff but only falls when they notice they are hanging in midair, likewise, the American people are already socialists, in a freefall away from the parasitic capitalist system they live under, they just do not know it yet.

Had Fox aired the segment and not ridiculed it by highlighting the antics of US “leftism", its audience would’ve received the truth, namely, that there is nothing fundamentally at odds between being a patriotic American and a communist. In fact, they would’ve found a scholarly, elaborated account of why you could only be a consistent and genuine American patriot through being a communist.

They would’ve been able to see that we could only escape the crisis we are in, where Americans are poorer, more indebted, and more desperate than past generations, by fighting, as our ancestors did in 1776, for a government that is truly of, by, and for the American people. Such a fight is already being waged, in an organized manner, by the American Communist Party that they sought to ridicule.

Had Fox aired my statement in the segment, the viewers would’ve been able to see that our ideas and struggle are rooted not in “queer magic", but in faithfully developing the ideals of 1776 to their logical and practical conclusion – socialism! It is only under American socialism that Americans could have a government that actually upholds the interests of the people, instead of one that sends our taxes abroad to fund genocide and imperialist plunder.

Sankarist politics have returned to the Sahel, bringing with it the wrath of empire. Burkina Faso, a country led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré and formerly known as the Land of Upright People in a statement of moral independence, is currently at the epicenter of a geopolitical storm. In addition to a domestic reordering, what is happening in Ouagadougou is a clear rejection of the disciplinary framework that Western powers have used to police the postcolonial world for many years.
 
It is no coincidence that as soon as Traoré nationalized gold mines, drove out French troops, and made an anti-imperialist agreement with Mali and Niger, the wheels of discredit started turning: think-tank briefings portraying him as "Russia's proxy in Africa," campaigns highlighting human rights issues in Western media, and reports characterizing his government as "military authoritarianism." These observations are not made out of disinterest. From a Marxian perspective, they are the ideological arm of imperialism, creating support for the notion that sovereignty that deviates from Western norms is inherently illegitimate.
 
 
The Political Economy of Anti-Colonialism
 
Burkina Faso's recent shift can best be interpreted from a Marxian standpoint as a rejection of its historically assigned place in the global division of labour. The postcolonial state was expected to import finished goods and export raw materials (such as gold, cotton, and manganese) as part of an imperialist extraction-based global economy. This system drained surplus value overseas, promoted dependency, and gave foreign capital precedence over domestic accumulation.
 
The operational logic of that dependency is undermined by Traoré's policies, which include nationalizing gold mines, building a refinery domestically, driving out French troops, and strengthening ties within the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). He opposes the "comprador" model of African political economy, in which local elites mediate the dominance of foreign capital in exchange for rents, by claiming state ownership over primary resources. Here, Ouagadougou attempts to reroute surplus value toward domestic social investment by wresting the means of production, or at least their most lucrative sectors, from the hands of transnational capital.
 
In the age of financialization, when capital is not only found in mines and plantations but also flows through debt instruments, exchange rates, and trade imbalances, this is no easy task. Traoré's position is Sankarist in spirit here as well: debt cancellation, fiscal sovereignty, and opposition to austerity measures imposed by the outside world are all components of a larger fight for independence within an imperialist global order.
 
Delegitimization as an anti-insurgency tactic
 
Traoré encounters epistemic as well as material hostility from Western capitals. The narrative framing, "cult of personality," "populist strongman," and "authoritarian nationalist" is a tool of power rather than a neutral description. It portrays any departure from neoliberal orthodoxy as a step toward tyranny and frames African self-determination as inherently dangerous.
 
Delegitimizing anti-imperialist initiatives before they have a chance to solidify, splintering their internal base of support, and making them ideologically poisonous for possible allies overseas are all part of the hegemonic role of the global media and policy discourse. The same strategy was used against Sankara in the 1980s, against Nkrumah before him, and against all leaders who have attempted to change the unfair conditions of the global political economy.
 
 
Pan-Africanism in Opposition to the Core
 
ECOWAS, the long-favored regional tool of Western economic governance in West Africa, has been directly insulted by the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a compact of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The AES is a break from the regional circuits of security supervision and policy discipline that link African economies to Western strategic priorities, but it is not yet a socialist bloc.
 
In this context, pan-Africanism serves as an alternative form of class conflict. Traoré's Burkina Faso aims to increase its bargaining power not only against former colonial powers but also against the entire capitalist core by allying with nations that face comparable security threats and economic limitations. It is a bet that regional independence will protect the periphery from the punitive tactics used by metropoles to subdue rebellious states, such as sanctions, aid suspensions, and currency destabilization.
 
 
The Sovereignty and Survival Dialectics
 
Critics cite the consolidation of executive power, the arrest of journalists, and the postponement of elections until 2029 as evidence of authoritarian drift. These are significant and actual developments. However, the Marxian perspective demands that they be historicized: sovereignty in the periphery is never exercised in a vacuum but rather under siege, both economically and discursively as well as militarily. The revolutionary state frequently turns inward during such a siege, consolidating power to protect itself from external dismantling.
 
This dialectic is dangerous. It is easy for extraordinary actions taken to defend revolution to solidify into long-lasting systems of dominance. Making military centralization a transitional rather than a final state is the difficulty facing Traoré and any anti-imperialist state. While the revolutionary project resists from the outside, it runs the risk of being eroded from the inside if public participation is not increased in tandem.
 
 
The War of Position in the Global South
 
The current conflict in Burkina Faso is a part of a larger struggle for dominance that is taking place throughout the Global South. The neoliberal consensus is increasingly being rejected, as seen in the Pink Tide governments of Latin America. However, the core of capitalism still has a great deal of ideological and coercive power. Fiscal autonomy can be stifled by financial markets. Leaders may be stigmatized by media conglomerates before their initiatives gain traction. Aid programs have the potential to be weaponized into compliance tools.
 
Traoré's Sankarist renaissance is brave and vulnerable in this context. Though it must also innovate beyond the weaknesses that made those previous revolutions vulnerable to both internal and external sabotage, it finds strength in its symbolic continuity with an uninterrupted lineage of African resistance, from Nkrumah to Sankara.
 
 
The Moral Geography of the Struggle
 
The West portrays Traoré's Burkina Faso as an issue that needs to be handled, deviating from the "rules-based order." The moral geometry is reversed from Ouagadougou: the accused is the so-called order itself, with its enforced underdevelopment, debt peonage, and military interventions. In this story, the "upright man" is not one who acquiesces to imperial respectability but rather one who defies kneeling, even if it means becoming isolated.
 
Here, the deep conflict is not between democracy and authoritarianism in the abstract, but rather between two opposing conceptions of sovereignty: one that seeks to restructure the global order so that the Land of the Upright People can stand upright in reality rather than just in name, and one that accepts the subordination of the periphery as the price of "stability."
 
 
Conclusion
 
The imperial core's eyes are on Ouagadougou, waiting for Traoré to falter, fail, and be reintegrated into the system of obedient government. In this way, the global political economy is not a neutral arena but rather a dynamic arena of conflict, where narrative, legitimacy, and reputation serve as just as many weapons as trade restrictions and sanctions.
 
Whether Traoré accurately captures Sankara's fleeting but brilliant revolution is not the crucial question. It is whether he can make room for a truly emancipatory order to emerge on an ideological, political, and economic level despite the tremendous pressure of imperial disapproval. The prospect that the Land of the Upright People might encourage others to stand upright as well is ultimately what the West fears most, not a captain who is "authoritarian" in a tiny Sahelian state.
 

Author 
Harsh Yadav is from India and has just recently graduated from Banaras Hindu University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. Harsh is a Marxist Leninist who is intrigued by different Marxist Schools of Thought, Political Philosophies, Feminism, Foreign Policy and International Relations, and History. He also maintains a bookstagram account (https://www.instagram.com/epigrammatic_bibliophile/) where he posts book reviews, writes about historical impact, socialism, and social and political issues. ​​