i just downvoted you but i’m commenting to let you know so that i’m not a coward, i’ll let my comrades handle it, im not in the mood. you’re about to get schooled

The US Constitution seemed to have this idea in mind with its intent, though it’s evolved into the same old concentration of power over time. Doesn’t matter which party either. The reality is power is so concentrated now that there are no true parties anymore. This is a mafia that transcends both sides.

So no China is no proof of anything except improper concentration of power. Mostly capitalist by the way.

If your opinion is that power is concentrated in the hands of the few in both the USA and China, how do you explain the difference between how bad it’s going for America rn vs. how good it’s going for China rn? Sure, both have their problems, no country is perfect, but it really looks like the USA is completely falling apart while China is having technological breakthrough after technological breakthrough.

Thanks for your response btw, the original commenter is right that people who downvote and leave don’t contribute anything to the conversation, unlike you.

Your entire argument rests on idealism. You treat ideas like communism and capitalism as abstract moral propositions to be judged in a vacuum. This is precisely the error historical materialism was developed to correct. Systems do not emerge from the minds of philosophers. They arise from the material conditions of production, from the way human societies organize labor to meet their needs. To ask which system you would “put your life in the hands of” as if choosing from a menu ignores that history is not a matter of choice but of struggle grounded in concrete reality.

Let’s begin with the base and superstructure. The economic base, the mode of production, determines the political and ideological superstructure. You claim the issue is concentration of power, as if power floats freely above society. But power is not an independent variable. It is rooted in ownership and control of the means of production. Under capitalism, private ownership necessarily concentrates power in the hands of those who own capital. This is the logical outcome of a system where production is organized for profit rather than human need. You cannot have capitalism without class antagonism because the extraction of surplus value requires a class that owns and a class that sells its labor. To wish for capitalism without exploitation is to wish for a square circle.

China’s path must be understood through the dialectic of productive forces and relations of production. Socialism presupposes a high development of productive forces. A society emerging from semi-feudalism, shattered by colonialism and war, cannot leap directly into advanced communism. The socialist transitionary period is a scientific recognition that the relations of production must correspond to the level of productive forces. China develops its economy under the leadership of a proletarian state. This allows for the accumulation of social wealth under public direction. Market mechanisms are employed, but they are subordinated to strategic planning and social goals.

Your characterization of capitalism as a “true ideal” if only it were built on human rights reveals a profound misunderstanding of the system’s inner logic. Capital is not a neutral tool. It is a social relation that compels accumulation. The imperative of endless expansion is not optional. A capitalist firm that does not maximize profit is eliminated by competition. This structural compulsion drives the exploitation of labor, the plunder of nature, and the imperialist domination of the global south. Human rights discourse, while valuable, cannot tame a system whose very metabolism requires inequality. The “immovable foundation” you imagine is impossible because capital constantly revolutionizes production, uproots communities, and commodifies every aspect of life to survive.

On the question of China’s policies, a materialist analysis refuses moralistic abstraction. The one child policy was a response to a specific historical conjuncture. In the late 1970s, China faced the real prospect that rapid population growth would outstrip agricultural and industrial capacity, undermining the very basis for development. This was not an arbitrary choice. It was a harsh measure taken under conditions of scarcity. A proper approach acknowledges the genuine harms while understanding the pressures that produced the policy. It also recognizes that the policy was adjusted as conditions changed. This is materialism in practice. Ideas are evaluated by their correspondence to reality, not by their conformity to an external moral standard.

Your claims about illiteracy and COVID are not just inaccurate. They serve an ideological function. China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and achieved near universal literacy through massive public investment in education. This is a historical achievement without parallel. Zero COVID was a public health strategy that prioritized the preservation of life, particularly the lives of the elderly and vulnerable. The outcome was among the lowest per capita death rates in the world. You dismiss this as tyranny while accepting a Western approach that sacrificed the vulnerable to maintain market “normalcy”. The long term disability caused by long COVID is a social catastrophe you ignore because it does not fit your narrative. A society that protects its weakest members is not tyrannical. It is humane.

The orientalism in your comment is also unmistakable. The image of “piles of discarded fetuses reaching skyscraper height” is not analysis. It is a trope drawn from a long tradition of Western propaganda that depicts Asian societies as inherently cruel, irrational, and disposable. This rhetoric dehumanizes an entire population to justify hostility. You speak of free thought, sex, and religion as if these are abstract rights detached from material conditions. But for the majority of humanity, freedom is first and foremost freedom from want, from disease, from premature death. China has delivered these substantive freedoms on a scale the West has not matched. Your focus on formal liberties while ignoring material outcomes reflects a privileged position that takes survival for granted.

Finally, your conclusion that distributed power is the only answer is correct in principle but empty without class analysis. Power is not distributed by wishing it so. It is redistributed through struggle against the structures that concentrate it. The US Constitution, for all its rhetorical brilliance, was designed to protect property interests. Its evolution into a system of concentrated corporate power is not an accident. It is the logical result of a state that serves capital. True democracy requires social ownership of the economy. It requires that the producers control what they produce and how it is distributed. This is not a utopian dream. It is the necessary next step in human development, visible in the experiments and advances of socialist construction around the world.

To judge China by the standards of liberal idealism is to miss the point entirely. History moves through contradiction. Socialism in the primary stage contains contradictions. It utilizes market forms while building the foundations for their eventual transcendence. This is dialectics. The task should not be to condemn an actually existing socialist project for not yet being perfect. The task should be to understand its trajectory, learn from its successes and errors, and advance the struggle for a world where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. That world will not arrive by wishing. It will be built through the material practice of millions, guided by the science of socialism, rooted in the concrete conditions of their time and place.

This is entirely vibes-based. Capitalism, socialism, and communism are modes of production and distribution, not ideals or ideas. Capitalism is characterized by private ownership as the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes in charge of the state, socialism is public ownership as the principle aspect and the working classes in charge of the state, and communism is a post-socialist mode of production where all production and distribution has been collectivized.

China is a socialist country governed by a communist party. Public ownership is the principle aspect of its economy, and the working classes control the state. The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.

I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.

The US Constitution was written to protect slave owners, capitalists, and landlords. It is not written to protect the many. China, on the other hand, puts the working classes first and manages to use this system to uplift the working classes year over year.