Tesla on Thursday agreed to promote “core socialist values” with over a dozen Chinese car manufacturers who also vowed to do so, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Tesla is incompatible with socialism. Also this usually just means the government wants the company to tow the party line.
You have to play by China’s rules if you want to do business there as a westerner. Apple does basically whatever the Chinese government asks for — as a result they’re the top selling phone in that country, even beating out Chinese made phones. For a country that’s been so nationalized and isolated that’s a huge deal.
Dengism is authoritarian crap, but at least that part has been consistent.
If you believe you need a massive amount of internal development to achieve socialism, and you believe Marx that the capitalist class cannot help but constantly revolutionize production, then letting corporations in on a leash, using them for development, and then eventually kicking them out is a pretty smart play. You slow down the capitalist world’s desire to burn down any country with a red flag AND you get development.
Unfortunately, of course, what this leads to in practice is pushing hundreds of millions of citizens into sweatshops and building an unaccountable class of capitalists and corrupt, self-interested, state-approved union bosses. It leads to suppressing striking workers and college Marxist reading groups. In other words, a type of capitalism just as ruthless as private capitalism, but without even the very limited protections you see in a lot of capitalist republics.
Yeah, I mean the whole idea with the Chinese revolution was to build on the Russian revolution’s model, but the model developed in the Soviet Union was explicitly the horrible backup plan if the revolution in Germany failed and there was not going to be a highly-developed socialist European power to help Russia develop on a socialist basis. That was actually the original plan for the Russian revolution, and if the revolutionary wave of 1917-1919 or so hadn’t been crushed, it might actually have worked, or at least opened up a different developmental path than the one developed by the Soviets.
And the Soviet model they developed was full of problems, to say the least.
So in a sense, it kind of makes sense that if you don’t have a super-functional model for developing an economy, you can hack it by bringing back capitalism, but of course, now you have billionaires in the party and it’s politically extremely awkward to even try to talk about abandoning the market system in China even if you’re not advocating a return to the old planning system.
This may reveal my own ignorance, but where could I read more about original plans for the October Revolution to coincide with or depend on a German socialist revolution?
The Chapo Traphouse podcast had a series on this called Hinge Points. I suspect it was on the Patreon feed. I remember listening while visiting family in late 2021 if you want to look it up on a feed’s timeline.
It’s been too long since I did my reading on this to know where exactly to send you anymore (sorry) but I could clarify there was no actual plan for the German and Russian revolution to “coincide” (didn’t use that word, you’ll notice), because how would you even extract a promise to revolt in different countries at the same time, but the hope was that the Russian revolution would inspire revolutions in other countries. Which did very literally happen, although they grossly overestimated how easy it would be to unseat the governments of imperial Germany, UK, etc and the revolutions in Europe failed, at least in the places the Bolsheviks needed them to succeed. Ireland got its independence in this wave though, so that’s something!
And to be clear, there was no specific backup plan. Loose phrasing on my part. What happened after that was that Lenin, who had generally managed to hold the Bolshevik party together, died, or was assassinated, who knows, and then they fell into power squabbles, and the USSR sort of cobbled together a social system out of the wreckage after the faction Stalin wound up leading won. Then we got everything that came after.
Anyways, this is all crazy far afield of the original topic.
Dengism is pretty much just red corporatism, so Tesla does belong there.
Tesla is incompatible with socialism
What does China have to do with socialism?
Do you think North Korea is a democracy too because their government’s name is “Democratic Republic of North Korea”?
In fact most countries with names starting with “Democratic” or “People’s” are not democratic at all…a true democratic country does not need to advertise it in its name.
Same goes for human titles like “Honorable” for instance.
China is more socialist than the States, and it advertises itself as such too. They have to stick to that branding because it’s popular.
Lol okay let me try again
“Tesla is incompatible with whatever the Chinese government thinks the Chinese government is.”
Do you feel better now?
No, because Musk has been saying for years that he envies China because of how they can treat their workers.
Musk and therefore Tesla aren’t just compatible with China’s leadership styles, Musk would love for them to be exactly the same.
Tesla is incompatible with socialism
So is the CCP so they’re a pretty good match.
At this point those are just empty words.
China’s version of socialism is pretty much authoritarian capitalism while Musk is keen on promoting capitalist authoritarism. So it’s really a match made in heaven…
Indeed. It’s Red Fascism. I.e. communism-flavored dictatorship.
It’s not even communism flavored
It’s an authoritarian dictatorship.
I wouldn’t contrast the two too much.“Red Facism” is something more akin to Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. Contemporary China is way more interconnected with capitalism and global trade than those system ever were (or even wanted to be). Today’s China is like capitalism on steroids (steroids being the ordinary people that collectively fed to system in order to keep it afloat). So it’s not really a historical parallel with what’s described in the Wikipedia article.
Same as it ever was
The first part of the sentence I was “oh wow” and the second part I was “oh no”.
Musk is really winning the supervillain speed run challenge.
So all the OEMs in China signed a pledge to maintain ‘normal’ pricing. They’re openly colluding to fix car prices when they were dropping quickly as a result of supply and demand renormalizing.
This headline is very misleading, but it’s Fox News, so what do you expect…. I don’t like Musk, but the article says:
The four-point pledge reportedly involved agreeing not to engage in “abnormal” pricing, to prioritize quality and not use false publicity. The plege promises to “take on the heavy responsibility of maintaining steady growth, strengthening confidence and preventing risk,” according to the outlet.
Likely only rules for China. Sounds like a regular business agreement. Nothing overly “socialist” about it.
It’s a refer and earn bullshit thing. Increase you national score by referring friends or something akin. Such a socialist program from China and a failing billionaire…
I don’t like Elon either, but I’m afraid once you become a billionaire you win at everything.
