• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      All states are authoritarian, in that they are instruments by which one class oppresses the others. What this doesn’t say anything about alone, though, is which class is in power. In the US Empire, the capitalists are in power, and use the authority of the state to crush workers when workers rise up. In the PRC, the working class is in power, and the state keeps capitalists in check and appropriates their capital gradually.

      The only way out of authoritarian control by any class is to get rid of classes entirely, which requires full collectivization of production. China is actively building towards that, the US Empire is opposing it. Until we get to a classless society, it’s better for the working class to be in charge.

      In other words, class struggle will continue to exist even after the proletariat takes control. All of the tensions from class struggle continue to exist, only they are resolved in favor of the working class. This is what “authoritarianism” looks like, class conflict expressed in state response.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          Yes. Democracy isn’t about choosing between parties, but having substantive input on direction that results in the will of the people being carried out. This is true of China, policy is typically driven from the bottom-up, a process called “whole process people’s democracy.” This is expressed, as an example, through Five Year Plans that are the result of mass polling and suggestions among the populace. The CPC has over 100 million members in a country of 1.4 billion.

          The state isn’t a class in and of itself, it can only serve as representative of a class. In the PRC, that class is the working class. The communists beat the nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, and from that point on the working class has been in control.