this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
293 points (95.6% liked)
The Democratic People's Republic of Tankiejerk
946 readers
221 users here now
Dunking on Tankies from a leftist, anti-capitalist perspective.
Rules:
- No bigotry of any kind.
- No tankies or right-wingers. Liberals are allowed so long as they are aware of this
- No genocide denial
We allow posts about tankie behavior even off fedi, shitposts, and rational, leftist discussion.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You might as well say democratic participation existed in the Soviet Union.
Yes, by [checks notes] adopting a capitalist economic regime in the 90s and creating massive and rapidly rising inequality.
Truly a stunning repudiation of capitalism.
let's just say there's way more nuance there, not every market economy is a capitalist market economy
Ah, the People's Stock Market, the People's Investors, and the People's Billionaires. Of course.
ancient Rome had a market and wasn't a capitalist economy but rather a slave economy, for example
'Market' is separate from 'Stock Market'. The Stock Market is a specifically capitalist financial instrument and innovation whose entire purpose is to facilitate private ownership of the means of production by an investor class - ie, capitalism.
'Slave economy' is not mutually exclusive with capitalism.
The economy of the early Roman Empire is a kind of proto-mercantilist proto-capitalist position wherein both advanced investor ownership (such as legalistic forms of corporate personhood, limited liability firms, and, by some arguments, joint-stock companies) and traditional economic forms co-existed, not unlike 18th century Russia.
as it is I can't tell you whether the Chinese economy is capitalist or not. public ownership dominates the economy, and a stock market does exist, but what it does I can't tell you. just knowing what it's called doesn't do much for me. I have yet to read a book about the Chinese economy that would explain it to me. the other aspect about china I was interested in though is that they do use Marxist contradiction analysis a lot, either to solve or create problems.
... the majority of China's GDP and employment is produced by private companies; many of the state enterprises in the remainder offer stock and dividends to private investors like private companies do.
... it trades in ownership of firms.
I do know that stock markets trade in the ownership of companies, but to what end it's being used or whether it has any interesting features I can't tell you. I didn't know about the GDP, but I was going from the top 100 Chinese company's public ownership share (the majority of top 100 companies are majority state owned, plus an additional ~15% that's classified as mixed ownership, between 10% to 50% state ownership). that's a bit misguided of me and I apologize.