The China Parallax Gap & Marxist Denial, Bargaining & Anger | China in the Marxist Psyche, Ep. 2

China in the Marxist Psyche, Episode 2: Mind the gap!

Most Marxist–Leninists believe that “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” represents the living—or “actually existing”—continuation of Marxism. This belief persists, and in many cases intensifies, even as evidence accumulates that the Marxist content of CCP policy and practice has been receding for decades. The thumbnail represents the coincidence—the interpenetration—of apparent opposites in contemporary China: Maoism, Marketization and Neo-Confucianism.

What if “with Chinese characteristics” is neither socialism in transition nor capitalism in disguise, but something else altogether? An emergent social formation that escapes inherited Marxist and bourgeois categories alike? And what if Marxist–Leninists resist reckoning with this not because their “scientific socialism” knows best, but because their political subjectivity—their entire programming—depends on not seeing it?

The episode begins by clarifying three basic concepts that are often taken for granted: capital and capitalism, or quietly redefined beyond material recognition: socialism. Drawing on Marx (and on the work of David Harvey & Nancy Fraser) the discussion emphasises that socialism is not defined by party form, state ownership, planning, or national development, but by a transformation of the social relations that govern production and that structure the boundaries between economy and polity, nature and culture, and productive and reproductive labour.

This framework is then applied to China to support the claim that Chinese society is governed by the same set of abstractions Marx identified in his critique of political economy, albeit abstractions mediated or administered through a Leninist Party-State rather than through liberal democracy.

In the final segment, the episode turns to the denial, bargaining, and anger this parallax gap provokes among Marxist–Leninists.

The episode closes with a question: will popular, influencer Marxism remain a critical method—or collapse into an identity and media brand?

34:00 Intro
40:00 What Is Capital?
52:00 What Is Capitalism?
1:06:00 Is China Ruled by Capital’s Abstractions?
1:18:00 What Socialism Is Not
1:32:00 China as a One-Party Developmental State
1:46:00 Where’s the Marxism in China Today and What’s Its Legitimating Function?
1:59:00 The China Parallax Gap & Marxist Denial, Bargaining, and Anger
2:12:00 So What? Marxism as Method or Brand?
2:22:00 Calling Things What They Are and What’s Next

Article: https://morbidsymptom.substack.com/p/china-parallax-socialism-and-capitalism