Ask Lemmygrad

..Why is anti-China marxism so big?..

If you were a CIA operative, working out the details of, say, COINTELPRO, and knowing there is a substantial amount of Marxists and communist-leaning people out there... AND one of your goals was to demonize the AES states... Wouldn't you want to tear off a chunk of potential revolutionaries and defang them, turning them into armchair communists who never achieved anything and who always criticize everyone who did?

Bear in mind that a lot of those are in the West. Parenti spoke ostensibly about leftcoms/ultras (and left-anticommunism). This gets a few people off your mind, making the situation safer for the capitalist state machine at home.

"Neither Washington nor ~~Moscow~~ Beijing" shit

Western leftists do the work of the CIA for free

It's generally an Ultraleft position that is convenient to take for Western "Leftists." The Dengist reforms were a return to Marxism as opposed to the later end of the Maoist era, where they tried to implement Communism more by decree than degree. Establishing Communism based on fiat goes against Historical Materialism.

The reason it's convenient for Western "Leftists" is because it supports US Imperial Hegemony, so these views aren't as heavily combatted by Western media. It's idealist, not materialist. It's what happens when you remove Historical Materialism from Marxism and re-insert idealism and utopianism. A good article on the concept is Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the "Worker's Paradise?" They think, through chauvanist analysis, that any AES state that isn't the immediate pinnacle of civilization is a betrayal of Socialism, not realizing their own betrayal of the Global South in defending Imperialism side by side with neocons.

because whites think they know best. it's laughable, you don't even need to entertain their arguments. tell them to shut up and point at what china has accomplished for its people in the last 30 years then ask them to pick those accomplishments apart. watch them fail. firstly, they're going to expose themselves as the reactionaries they are, completely disregarding any sort of marxist analysis if they're even capable of making it in the first place, and they'll say everything good in china is thanks to capitalism (false), and secondly they'll show that they're nothing but baby brained libs and start talking about some theoretical utopian socialism that should exist and would be the only legitimate form of government that china could have if they want to call themselves socialist, meanwhile they will likely make the "um you hate socialism?? guess u dont like the military" argument to chuds or they'll act like social democracy in scandinavia is "the type of socialism ''''we''''' want". scandinavian social democracy of course being european extraction capitalism in africa and the middle east and asia.

I think it is mostly because of heavily ingrained western chauvinism and white supremacy. If you are normal, decent human being in the imperial core and if you have a sober view of the collective atrocities committed by the colonial, settler and imperial powers, I find it hard to see how you are not so consumed by tangible disdain of the foundation of your civilisation that you have the time and energy to stand shoulder to shoulder with neocons in criticising global south countries for their perceived flaws. I think it's because of racism more often than not.

Often referred to as the "Compatible Left", like others have described, the ruling class in the west cannot simply suppress Marxist thought outright, that would pierce the veil to some degree and cause a much harsher backlash. Instead, the goal is to remove the fangs of Marxist thought by demonizing AES countries, and silencing true radicals and revolutionaries. Leaving only what the CIA calls the "Compatible Left" behind.

This could either be a designed outcome, or it simply is how Marxism has developed under the harsh pressures of the Red Scare and the Cold War. Most of the revolutionary voices within America have either been assassinated or run out of the country, leaving only the more "compatible" thinkers within the country.

Another problem that likely contributes to this is literacy rates. 54% of adults in America have a literacy below a 6th-grade level, with 20% being below a 5th-grade level. The US ranks 36th in the world for literacy rates. I think many people might subscribe to the ideas of Marxism, without actually having read much if anything from the vast trove of Marxist literature. The Manifesto might be the only thing they've read, and it's hard to say they really understood its ideas. This leads to misconceptions and false conclusions by those who are under educated on the topic.

There is a reason why one of the first things that happens in almost any socialist revolution is the institution of reading programs, attempting to make the population more literate. Not only does higher literacy increase productive output, but it also ensures that people have the opportunity to read theory and become more educated on the ideas that the revolution was built on.

Anticommunist sentiment still lingering.

"anti-revisionist" marxists are the most revisionist mf'ers out there. Can't revision any harder than by throwing materialism out of the window.

As someone who used to be one of those people, there is an emotional appeal to thinking that Deng betrayed socialism.

For us in the west who have little hope for socialism succeeding here, we have to look outwards for positive examples. As it turns out, all examples of actually existing bolshievism are dead, even if you aknowledge that dengist reforms were necessary to modernise china and survive in a post-soviet world. This is a bitter pill to swallow.

What it took for me to get out of thinking was to understand that Chinese socialism does not exist to satisfy my dreams of utopia. Once the emotional aspect faded away, I could analyse the situation in china properly. Learning materialism by actually reading Engels and listening to lectures from a Chinese professor allowed me to finally have a sensible base level understanding of China.

First of all, even Dengists agree to there being a lot of revisionism in the Soviet Union for the majority of its existence, so we can hardly throw the "anti-revisionist" title out just like that. Second, there were and are a lot of Marxists who believed in some approximation of what Mao was doing even towards the end of his life, who see Deng being reinstated from the exile Mao put him in, and seizing power by banishing all the Maoists as being essentially a coup. This was followed by a massive reversal of many different policies, seizing collectively owned land from the people and selling it off, re-establishing the bourgeoisie, and ostensibly abandoning class struggle which you can hopefully forgive them for perceiving as being not very Marxist.

Even if you end up supporting what he did, most SWCC-ers do not deny that he was a right-deviationist, which is a subcategory of revisionism, they just also accuse Mao of being a revisionist to the left in equal measure. How they can both be "70% good" when they were so fundamentally opposed to each other is, uh, difficult math to swing.

For the record, I do think China remains a historically progressive force and should be completely supported over the US, so I guess I haven't explained what would be the literal meaning of "Anti-China marxism", but a lot of people use that phrase to ask about Maoists rather than Trots (people who totally oppose China, usually), so I chose that interpretation.

Western propaganda is really really good at what it does

It's a way for people in the west to maintain their defense of the status quo and western chauvinism while still pretending to oppose capitalism.

it isn't. "anti-China" everything is only big in the Anglophone world because the Anglosphere is is made up of colonial powers.

China had given a lot of ground to domestic capitalists, and foreign capitalists used it to try to repeat Sino-Soviet split with China in place of USSR this time.

Is it big? I don't know how big it is exactly, but the west sure loves to demonize China, like they did the Soviet Union, like they do with Russia still now (even though Russia is not even remotely communist anymore). They tell lies about Tiananmen, about treatment of an ethnic minority they could find to use as a wedge (one that they themselves would be more prone to do in reality what they fakely claim China is doing - remember: every accusation is a confession), they say "at what cost?" about things that will improve the lives of regular people. They have a robust media machine of duplicitous lying horseshit. And if someone believes that and they haven't yet made the connection that imperialism and colonialism is a bigger monster than local capitalism, then they may implicitly still trust in western media portrayal of other countries. Breaking people out of this is, I think, more important than getting them to be communist. Not that you necessarily have to pick only one, but overall, imperialism is the bigger threat and so I'd say it's more important somebody understands that for what it is and opposes it but is a bit liberal otherwise than them being a western chauvinist who believes in fighting for the working class.