GenZhouArchive

u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhou

There’s some elements of state planning

Lenin's NEP did not even have Five-Year plans. Five-Year plans were introduced after the state capitalist system was abolished.

free market economics

What separates between "free" market economics and "non-free" market economics? The word "free" seems to be an amorphous term that people just use whenever is convenient.

Even the USSR had markets which Stalin said were useful because for reasons of economic calculation since the Soviet planners were "inexperienced" at the time.

Even Mao was in favor of developing "free markets".

Many people avoid talking about commodities and commerce, as if it were not communism otherwise. The people's communes must produce socialist commodities suitable for exchange in order to gradually raise the wages of each individual. In terms of means of subsistence, socialist commerce must be developed; and, in the form of the law of value, as a tool of economic accounting during the transition period, in order to facilitate the gradual transition to communism. Now our economists don't like economics, and the Soviet Union is also like that, who thinks that whoever talks about the law of value is discredited, as shown in a letter written by Yaroshenko. These people disapprove of commodity production, thinking that the Soviet Union is already communism, when in fact it is far from it. We have only been engaged in socialism for a few years, and it is even worse.

Lenin once vigorously advocated the development of commerce, because the circulation of commodities in urban and rural areas in the Soviet Union was in danger of being cut off. We too had this danger in 1950. Now the transportation situation is not good, and there is a semi-cut state. I think it needs to develop in two aspects: one is to expand allocation, and the other is to expand commodity production. Without this, wages cannot be paid, and living standards cannot be improved.

--- Mao, On the problem of socialist commodity production

You need something more to distinguish between socialism and state capitalism than vague terms like "free markets".

In recent years there have been a few commentators—both at home and abroad—that have asked if what modern China is doing can really be called socialism. Some have said we have engaged in a sort of “capital socialism;” others have been more straightforward, calling it “state capitalism” or “bureaucratic capitalism.” These labels are completely wrong. We say that socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism. No matter how we reform and open up, we should always adhere to the socialist road with Chinese characteristics, the theoretical systems of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the structure of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the basic requirements put forward by the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China for a new victory of socialism.

These include: the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of China...putting economic construction at the center, adhering to the “Four Cardinal Principles” and to the program of reform and opening up, liberating and developing productive social forces, building a socialist market economy...gradually realizing the common prosperity of all the people...and an economic system in which publicly owned enterprises are the principle part, which develop side by side with diverse forms of ownership. These features embody the basic principles of scientific socialism under our new historical conditions. If we lose these, we lose socialism.

--- Xi Jinping