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Why do people like Deng but not Kruschev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, etc?

u/About60Platypi - originally from r/GenZhou
The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don’t know much about socialism with Chinese characteristics, or the USSR post-Stalin, but my question is pretty simple.

Kruschev, Brezhnev, etc etc did market liberalization and its universally condemned by Marxists, whereas when figures like Deng or Xi embrace market liberalization its socialism with Chinese characteristics. Why wasn’t post-Stalin USSR socialism with “USSR characteristics” or something?

I’m sorry if this sounds ignorant, but I don’t understand why liberalization is good for one but not the other. Anybody have a good answer for this? Any videos or articles would be helpful along with your all’s explanations!

14 comments
  • u/kittyabbygirl - originally from r/GenZhou
    Two things, one is about success and the other is about workers' governance.

    The first and simplest one- the USSR's liberalization was done in a way that collapsed the country and thus left the working people vulnerable to the capitalistic and reactionary attitudes of the nations that followed after it. Contrast with Deng, where, for lack of a fancier way of saying it, that didn't happen. We haven't seen the country become more unstable post-Deng, in fact, as a matter of opinion, I would say instability peaked with Deng and has been on the down swing. This is the pragmatic answer- whatever you have to do to help workers is in the working people's class interest, and collapse of the worker's socialist governance, no matter the theoretical reasons used to justify it, by definition has ostracized them from the political system and thus left them vulnerable.

    The second is the more theoretical answer, and it's the usage of SEZs. China's Special Economic Zones were designed such that capitalists would invest in areas where state enterprise did not exist, while leaving the state to handle what it wished to. This served to heavily reduce the role of black markets, since privately manufactured goods could be bought entirely legally. This dynamic combined with China's intellectual property laws is key, and is rather fundamental to their rapid progress. When a different country innovates, to save money, it is easier to operate manufacturing out of China. When they do so, China gains access to new technologies and can use their own R&D to improve upon these. This is how, despite only beginning the industrial revolution in the late 50s, China is leading the world in high tech fields even with national companies. While in the USSR private companies entered into the niches occupied by state industry and supplanted it, in China, private companies enter into niches occupied by black market trade, and are eventually themselves replaced by Chinese companies. Capitalists never occupy power held by the working class, instead, they replace crime and create research and build infrastructure that will later be used by the working class itself. Foundationally, Marxist theories of history have them build upon each other, and this dynamic is successful in a country that sort of shortcut into a workers' state before the means of production required were fully developed.

14 comments