you can very easily find this yourself, if you can bring yourself to not make some excuse as to why it doesn’t fit into your ideology.

It's so easy, yet you won't give me even one example because you know I'll poke holes in it to demonstrate my point: the bourgeoisie only ever give concessions to the working class when they are forced to by external pressure from the working class. It's only the working class that can bring about material change in their own interests.

Ok then it’s not socialist then! It’s promising you socialism at some point in the future. …when no other bourgeois nation exists. More tautology from the ideology built on tautology.

It's socialism in development, and we're seeing it happen before our eyes. It's not just promising, it's delivering.

Compare this with our shithole capitalist countries where everything just enshittifies forever while we wait for the next economic crash.

You still have not answered the basic question: what, concretely, would count as workers controlling the means of production?

Not vibes. Not “not that.” Not “the CPC does not count because I dislike it.” What institutional form? What mechanism? What class power? What system of production, planning, administration, defence, logistics, and enforcement? How would it be built, how would it function, and how would it defend itself in a world still dominated by imperialist states, sanctions, finance capital, military blocs, colour revolution networks, and global supply chains?

Because so far your position is just “China is not socialist because I have defined socialism as whatever China is not.”

Calling my position tautological does not make it tautological. Engels on authority is not magic or scripture. It is simply a very simple point grounded in reality: modern production requires coordination, discipline, technical authority, administration, and binding decisions. If you think Engels is wrong, identify the flaw. Do not just sneer at “state socialists” and move on.

You also keep collapsing socialism and communism into the same thing. They are not the same thing. Communism is the higher stage, where class antagonisms have been abolished and the state, as an instrument of class rule, has withered away. Socialism is the transition toward that. It still contains contradictions inherited from capitalism. It still has law, administration, technical hierarchy, uneven development, wages, commodity forms, markets in certain forms, and class struggle. Pointing at a contradiction inside socialism and yelling “see, not communism” is not analysis. It is category confusion.

China is not “going to become socialist eventually.” China is socialist, and socialism is the transition toward communism.

You also use “CCP,” which already tells me how much of this is coming from Western discourse rather than actual engagement. It is the CPC. And no, worker control does not mean every individual worker at every individual workplace directly “calls the shots” in isolation. That is not social ownership. That is petty-producer fantasy projected onto modern industry. The working class controls production politically through its state, its party, its planning institutions, its mass organisations, its public ownership of the commanding heights, its land system, its development plans, its cadre system, and its ability to subordinate private capital to national and social goals.

In a capitalist state, capital rules. In China, capital exists but does not rule. Capitalists do not command the army. They do not own the land. They do not control the central bank. They do not dictate the five-year plans. They do not sit above the Party. They do not get to form an independent bourgeois political bloc and take state power. When they attempt to step above the socialist state, they are disciplined, investigated, broken up, disappeared from political life, or forced back into line. That is not bourgeois dictatorship. That is capital being contained inside a socialist transition.

Also the CPC is not an external clique floating above Chinese society. It is a proletarian vanguard party rooted in the organised working masses, built to concentrate their long-term political interests into state power. Through the mass line, it gathers the scattered ideas, needs, grievances, and experiences of the people, process them through revolutionary theory and practical investigation, then return them as policy, campaigns, planning, correction, and mobilisation. Whole-process people’s democracy is not liberal ballot worship where capital owns the media, funds the parties, writes the policy, and then lets you choose between its approved managers every few years. It is participation through congresses, consultative bodies, local elections, workplace and residential committees, mass organisations, party channels, cadre evaluation, public consultation, supervision, petitioning, anti-corruption discipline, and policy feedback across the entire governing process. Pretending it is simply “the party doing whatever it wants” is lazy. The point is that the working class does not rule as atomised individuals shouting orders inside each workplace. It rules through organised political power, through a party and state capable of planning, disciplining capital, defending sovereignty, and transforming society at scale.

You accuse me of not understanding anarchist, left-communist, Trotskyite, etc. arguments. I understand them. I just think most of them collapse into idealism the moment they are forced to explain actual production, actual defence, actual state power, actual imperialism, actual scarcity, actual uneven development, and actual social administration. It is very easy to denounce all existing socialist projects from the safety of abstraction. It is much harder to explain how your alternative would feed, house, defend, educate, electrify, industrialise, medically care for, and coordinate hundreds of millions or billions of people under real global conditions.

Your claim that I am repeating capitalist propaganda by saying authority is necessary is absurd. Capitalist propaganda says workers cannot rule. I am saying workers can rule, but rule is still rule. Administration is still administration. Production is still production. Authority does not become reactionary because it exists. It becomes reactionary when it serves exploiting classes. A planner’s authority in coordinating national infrastructure is not capitalism. A proletarian state suppressing bourgeois restoration is not capitalism. Your problem is that you treat authority itself as the enemy instead of asking which class it serves.

Again stateless communism does not mean society without coordination. It means society without class rule. Government in the administrative sense remains: planning, coordination, allocation, infrastructure, health, education, production, logistics. What withers away is the state as a coercive instrument of one class suppressing another, because classes themselves have been abolished. That cannot happen in one isolated country while imperialism still exists globally. If a socialist state lays down its coercive power before the bourgeoisie is defeated, it does not become more communist. It gets destroyed.

So again: what is your concrete alternative?

How do workers control chip fabrication? How do they coordinate national rail? How do they run hospitals and nuclear plants? How do they defend against sanctions, invasion, sabotage, capital flight, and colour revolution? How do they supply insulin, dialysis machines, antibiotics, prosthetics, wheelchairs, public housing, flood control, food logistics, and power grids? How do they prevent the re-emergence of capital? How do they deal with hostile imperialist encirclement?

I have the answer and you're not going to like it. It's through their control of a proletarian state.

“I wish you would contend with material reality” is rich coming from someone whose entire argument is refusing to define socialism, refusing to define worker control, refusing to explain the transition, refusing to explain defence, refusing to explain complex production, and refusing to distinguish contradictions inside socialism from capitalist restoration.

You have not disproven that China is socialist. You have only shown that your standard for socialism is an imaginary society with no transition, no state power, no coercion, no authority, no contradictions, no hostile world system, and no actual mechanism for production at modern scale.

Nah I disagree, all I can see from you guys is that you contort any data to fit your belief system. It's quasi religious

You still have not answered the basic question: what, concretely, would count as workers controlling the means of production?

It's extremely obvious but you can't agree with it because it proves that China is definitely not that.

Because so far your position is just “China is not socialist because I have defined socialism as whatever China is not.”

Not even remotely true and a purposely poor understanding of what I've already said. Either way, if china is "socialist" according to your definition, I just don't give a shit about that fucking unprincipled version of socialism. I don't want it, I don't think it will lead to communism. It's just a bourgeois state with red aesthetics. Spare me the excuses, your doctrine is flawed and you can't contend with that.

So again: what is your concrete alternative?

I know you're aware of the alternatives, but I'm certain you're totally ignorant, willfully or from intellectual laziness/dishonesty. You've already somewhat proven this point by saying that having a stateless society is akin to people taking turns running the nuclear power plant. You don't believe in communism dude.

How do workers control chip fabrication? How do they coordinate national rail? How do they run hospitals and nuclear plants? How do they defend against sanctions, invasion, sabotage, ...

again, proving my point - you simply don't believe communism is possible. And once again you're repeating anti communist propaganda.

“I wish you would contend with material reality” is rich coming from someone whose entire argument is refusing to define socialism, refusing to define worker control, refusing to explain the transition, refusing to explain defence, ...

There are entire theories that describe exactly this, and it would be pointless to replicate them verbatim here. ML/MLMism isn't the only leftist theory that exists, you know that right?

You have not disproven that China is socialist. You have only shown that your standard for socialism is an imaginary society with no transition, no state power, ...

No, cnt-fai I would say was much closer to socialism than china ever has been. and no, but neither have you proven china is socialist, unless you contort everything to fit that definition. And again I must impress, you seem to believe that communism is actually impossible. Everything you're arguing against is actual communism. You're just making excuses.

It’s extremely obvious but you can’t agree with it because it proves that China is definitely not that.

Obvious to who? Can't agree with what? You still have not said what “that” is. You keep saying China is not worker control, but you refuse to define what worker control actually means in institutional, political, economic, and military terms. Not slogans. Not negation. What form of ownership? What organs of power? What planning mechanism? What enforcement mechanism? What defence against restoration, sanctions, invasion, sabotage, and capital flight? If it is so obvious, state it clearly.

If China is “socialist” according to your definition, I just don’t give a shit about that unprincipled version of socialism.

That is at least honest. You are not arguing that China fails the Marxist definition of socialism. You are saying you reject that definition because you prefer another one that you still will not explain. Fine, but then stop pretending this is a material analysis of China. It is not. It is you rejecting the socialist transition because it contains state power, authority, contradiction, uneven development, and the use of controlled markets.

You call China a bourgeois state with red aesthetics, so prove it. Which section of the bourgeoisie rules China? Through what institutions? How does it command the army? How does it control the land? How does it dictate the central bank, the five-year plans, the SOEs, the party-state, the courts, and national development strategy? How does it reproduce itself as a ruling class above the CPC? How does it turn private wealth into sovereign political power? Because in an actual bourgeois state, capital rules the state. In China, capital exists under the state and is disciplined when it steps outside the boundaries set by socialist construction.

You are not more principled because you reject every existing socialist project for failing to be the finished form of communism. That is not principle. That is purity politics detached from the problem of transition. To quote Jones Manoel : According to Perry Anderson there is a separation between Western and Eastern Marxism, and Western Marxism is basically a kind of Marxism which has, as a key characteristic, never exercised political power. It is a Marxism that has, more and more frequently, concerned itself with philosophical and aesthetic issues. It has pulled back, for example, from criticism of political economy and the problem of the conquest of political power. More and more it has taken a historic distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba and so forth. This western Marxism considers itself to be superior to eastern Marxism because it hasn’t tarnished Marxism by transforming it into an ideology of the State like, for example, Soviet Marxism, and it has never been authoritarian, totalitarian or violent. This Marxism preserves the purity of theory to the detriment of the fact that it has never produced a revolution anywhere on the face of the Earth — this is a very important point. Wherever a victorious socialist revolution has taken place in the West, like Cuba, it is much more closely associated with the so-called eastern Marxism than with this western Marxism produced in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of South America. This Marxism is proud of its purity, and this is the first elemental characteristic that derives from Christianity.

I know you’re aware of the alternatives.

Name the alternative and explain it. This vague hand-waving is useless. “There are theories” is not an argument. I have read anarchist, left-communist, Trotskyist, syndicalist, council communist, and autonomist arguments. I reject most of them because they collapse the moment they are forced to deal with actual state power, actual imperialism, actual war, actual scarcity, actual uneven development, actual logistics, and actual complex production. If your alternative is better, explain how it works.

And stop twisting my point about stateless communism. I did not say communism means people take turns running a nuclear plant. I said your treatment of authority collapses into that nonsense if you cannot distinguish class rule from technical and administrative authority. The state and government are not identical. The state is the coercive instrument of class rule. It withers away when class antagonisms are abolished. Government in the administrative sense remains: planning, coordination, production, logistics, health, education, infrastructure, allocation, safety, and public administration. Communism is not the abolition of coordination. It is the abolition of class rule.

I believe in communism. I just do not believe it can be wished into existence by pretending the transition is unnecessary.

Again, proving my point, you simply don’t believe communism is possible.

No, I believe communism is possible when capitalism is overcome globally and the material basis for class society has been abolished. Until then, socialism is the transition. That transition requires proletarian state power because the bourgeoisie does not disappear when you declare it abolished. Imperialism does not stop being violent because you announce stateless communism. Sanctions, invasion, sabotage, comprador forces, separatism, capital flight, technological dependency, and military encirclement do not vanish because you find authority distasteful.

This is where your politics becomes fantasy. You treat the means necessary to defend and develop the revolution as proof that the revolution is fake. By that logic, any revolution that survives reality has already betrayed itself.

ML/MLMism isn’t the only leftist theory that exists.

I know. The issue is not whether other theories exist. The issue is whether they work. So stop gesturing vaguely at “entire theories” and state your actual position. What is the superior model? How does it seize power? How does it defend itself? How does it organise production? How does it prevent bourgeois restoration? How does it coordinate chip fabrication, rail, ports, energy, hospitals, agriculture, housing, medicine, disability care, and military defence? How does it function at the scale of hundreds of millions or billions of people? How does it survive imperialist encirclement?

If your answer is “go read theory,” then you have no argument here. I am not asking whether books exist. I am asking what your politics can actually do in the world.

CNT-FAI was much closer to socialism than China ever has been.

The CNT-FAI is a perfect example of what I mean. It may appeal to you aesthetically because it looks closer to your ideal form (which you have yet to elaborate on in any meaningful way), but what did it actually achieve historically? a durable socialist transition? It did not consolidate state power. It did not defeat fascism. It did not survive imperialist and reactionary pressure. It did not industrialise a poor country. It did not lift hundreds of millions from poverty. It did not build a sovereign development model. It did not construct an enduring workers’ state capable of defending revolutionary gains over generations. It was heroic in places, but heroism is not the same as a viable path to communism.

A form that briefly looks purer but cannot survive is not “closer to socialism” in any serious historical sense. It is closer to your preference. That is different.

Communism is the end goal. Socialism is the transition toward it. You cannot skip the transition by denouncing every actual attempt to carry it out as “red capitalism.” If you want to learn Chinese, you do not start at HSK6. If someone is not yet at HSK6, that does not mean they are not learning Chinese. It means there is a process between the starting point and the goal. Society is no different. You do not get from semi-colonial poverty, imperialist domination, underdevelopment, and class society to communism by pressing a magic button.

China is socialist because the proletarian-led state holds political power, commands the strategic economy, controls the commanding heights, subordinates capital to national development, maintains public ownership of land, plans development, disciplines the bourgeoisie, defends sovereignty, and works through the contradictions inherited from capitalism under global imperialist pressure.

Also if you have figured out how to go from the present reality of global capitalism, imperialist violence, scarcity, uneven development, technological dependency, sanctions, militarised borders, and class struggle straight into pure end-stage communism, then by all means, press the communism button. The reason you have not is obvious: there is no button. There is only transition, struggle, state power, production, defence, planning, contradiction, and the hard work of building communism out of the world capitalism leaves behind. Pretending otherwise is not revolutionary. It is contrarian wrecker politics.