Rev Left Radio - Chinese Characteristics of Socialism: Civilizational Factors in CPC Governance

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

What does it really mean to speak of "socialism with Chinese characteristics"? Is it simply a matter of policy and political economy, or does it require grappling with thousands of years of civilizational history, philosophy, and culture? In this episode, Breht is joined by Zhao, the mind behind Goods for the People and author of Chinese Characteristics of Socialism: Civilizational Factors in CPC Governance to explore a bold and provocative argument: that while class struggle and material conditions must remain primary, China's socialist path cannot be understood without its deep Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist inheritance. From Yu the Great's flood control and the origins of infrastructural legitimacy, to the Mandate of Heaven, Da Tong, and the tributary system, we examine how ancient ideas of harmony, moral legitimacy, and collective responsibility continue to shape contemporary Chinese governance and foreign policy. This is a wide-ranging conversation for Marxists, socialists, and anti-imperialists interested in China beyond caricature, reductionism, and Cold War myths -- one that asks how history, philosophy, and material struggle converge in the making of a socialist future, and what China's trajectory might mean for the global path toward communism. Other episodes mentioned in this episode: Check out our 7 hour episode on the last 250 years of Chinese History HERE Check out our episode on Italy's Years of Lead HERE Check out our episode on the German Revolution HERE Check out our episode on the Spanish Civil War HERE   ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode we have on Zhao from Goods for the People and also the author of the essay will be discussing entitled Chinese Characteristics of Socialism, Civilizational Factors and CPC Governance. And the idea behind this episode is to kind of talk about some of the preexisting cultural traditions within China that perhaps give rise to inform, influence, and emerge. within its version of socialist experimentation, starting with the primary stage of socialist transition. And so we start off the conversation with a basic Marxist-Leninist perspective on China and how it meets the criteria laid out by Lenin and Mao of a legitimate socialist transitionary state. And then we go into the traditions of China, specifically Confucianism, but also to a lesser extent, Taoism and legalism.

We talk about ancient China, and as well as contemporary China. We talk about socialism with Chinese characteristics. We talk about what socialism, you know, might look like as it manifests in different cultures with different histories and historical patterns and traditions to draw from. We end the discussion on a broad, wide-ranging conversation about how every human culture has within it these emancipatory kernels deep in its history. that can be resurrected and put to use for the present and the future without escaping to a nostalgic romanticized past, right? Which is the reactionary move. And then we end the discussion, I think, fascinatingly and perfectly on a universalist and evolutionary note, tracing our lineage as homo sapiens back to the deeply social and communal nature of our species. And in fact, it is the decisive element that gave rise to human civilization, our ability to communicate and cooperate in increasingly sophisticated ways, arguing, of course, for the social and communal nature of our species.

So this is a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation. And I also just want to remind people up front, as well as on the back end of this episode, that you can go to Goods for the People, which we'll link to in the show notes. and we talk about their designs and their upgrade of fabric and the struggles they've been through as a small fashion company and where they're going in the future and so you can support them that way. And if you like what we do here at Rev Left Radio, of course, you can support us at patreon.com forward slash Rev Left Radio

or give a one-time donation at BuyMe a Coffee.com slash Fort Rev Left Radio. I'll link to both of those in the show notes. We could not do this show without the support of our audience. We are 100% listener funded. Always have been, always will be. We will never put in ads or take corporate money or anything like that. Not that they would even offer it to a show like ours. You know, it's explicitly socialist, Marxist, and communist.

So a show like ours will, by definition, mean that we have to be listener funded. And so huge shout out to everybody that supports the show. And if you can't afford to join us on Patreon or shoot us a one-time donation at Buy Me a Coffee, you can share this episode with your friends, with your family, with your comrades, and any organization. You can leave us a positive review. Those are all ways that you can support us in non-monetary ways that really do make a difference and help spread the word. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Zhao on the Chinese characteristics of socialism, civilizational factors, and CPC governance, and much, much more.

Enjoy. Hey, what's up, Brett? What's up, Rev. Left Radio? a super honor to be on this legendary podcast once again. After some years, yeah, time flies. Yeah, I'm an independent researcher. I did not go the way of academia, which is probably a blessing. I mean, contemporary academia is just so conformist

and absolutely a product of cultural Congress for cultural freedom. the Western CIA manufactured synthetic left. But yeah, I'm an independent researcher, and I'm actually a designer by trade and a DJ. So I work in music and cultural areas. And this is one part where I think my contribution might be unique. I have a niche of a cultural perspective and a civilizational perspective on contemporary,

politics, revolutionary politics, and geopolitics. Yeah, could you give a little bit of your biography with relation to where you live, where you come from, et cetera, so people can get a sense of the sort of cultures that produced you? Well, I was born and raised in China, and when we left for the United States, my quantum physicist parents brought me to the United States. and I asked my father, why are we going to the United States? You know what he told me?

He said, because China will always be a loser country. It will always be poor and it will always be a terrible country under the Communist Party. So that's what he told me when I was 12 years old. I mean, these are some of the most educated. and intelligent people like in the world, and they get the most important things absolutely wrong. Yeah, so that's how I came to the United States at a young age, 12, and where I, yeah, it took me years,

decades to undo the liberalism that I was inculturated with from my parents. I mean, not completely where none of us are completely free from liberalism, right? But it took me many, many years, decades to to crawl out of that hole because I had to make sense of my life, of my family and our history in relation to 20th century history. And why my parents left because of what they experienced during the the Cultural Revolution, blah, blah, blah. And so, yeah, it's been a pretty long process of graduating from anarchism to Marxist Leninism.

Yeah, well, absolutely. And yeah, you and I go way back and we'll talk about that a little bit more at the end, like the collab that we've done in the past and the collab that we're working on presently and into the future. But for today's conversation, the focus is going to be on An essay that you put out on goods media entitled Chinese characteristics of socialism, civilizational factors in CPC governance. So we'll get there. But before we get into the essay itself and its core arguments,

I was hoping that you can kind of orient the audience to your basic view of Chinese socialism from a Marxist-Leninist perspective and how you would argue that it is legitimate to say that China is engaged in the primary state. as they call it, of socialist transition from a Marxist-Leninist perspective? Well, from the inception of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the path has been very clear. And the path is a continuation of Leninism, of the Leninist conception of socialism as a path,

as a historical process towards communism, towards the abolition of class of the bourgeoisie, of capitalism. So the Leninist conception of socialism is something that I think a lot of Western Marxists are missing a little bit because of a preference for Trotskyism and a preference for ultra-leftism.

So let me just read a couple of quotes. First one from Lenin himself and another one from Mao Zedong about the socialist path. The first one from, can we go forward if we fear to advance towards socialism? For socialism is merely the next step forward from state capitalist monopoly. Or in other words, socialism is merely state capitalist monopoly, which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

The state capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the new economic policy, is under Soviet power a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments, in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie. but by the proletariat, who has triumphed with the full confidence of the peasantry. So that's Lenin about socialism being nothing but state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. And then another quote from Maldon. The present-day capitalist economy in China is a capitalist economy, which for the most part, is under the control.

of the people's government, and which is linked with the state-owned socialist economy in various forms and supervised by the workers. It is not an ordinary but a particular kind of capitalist economy, namely a state capitalist economy of a new type. It exists not chiefly to make profits for the capitalists, but to meet the needs of the people and the state. True, a share of the profits produced by the workers goes to the capitalists, but that is a small part, about one quarter of the total. The remaining three quarters are produced for the workers in the form of the welfare fund, for the state, in the form of income tax, and for expanding productive capacity, a small part of which produces profits for the capitalists. Therefore, the state capitalist

economy of a new type takes on a socialist character to a very great extent and benefits the workers and the state. So that's Maltzedon. So just to dispel, you know, the notion that state capitalism is characterizes contemporary China. And that state capitalism, I mean, it's correct to say that, but it is not capitalist state capitalism. It's socialist state capitalism. It's a socialist state, FAPS elizzi. Yeah, and I think from that perspective and, you know, from the content of those quotes, you can see how modern China falls perfectly in line with exactly that, that they've been able to, you know, have the Communist Party oversee the radically, you know, radical expansion

of the productive forces. We've seen millions and millions and millions of Chinese people lifted out of poverty. Just this month, I believe, the average lifespan of the average lifespan of the. average Chinese citizen has for the first time surpassed the average lifespan of the average American. And so there is this sense where there's, you know, there's still billionaires, there's still corporations, there's still class struggle, there's still class contradiction. But the whole economy is geared primarily to the benefit of China as a whole and to the whole Chinese people.

And so while there are still, you know, wage gaps and there's still capitalist social relations, there is clearly a successful and intentional push to plan the development of the unfolding of the Chinese economy in such a way that it brings China up as a nation. It builds out its military capacity to defend itself. It builds up its economic capacity to lift its own people out of poverty. And that, I think, is perfectly in line with a Marxist-Leninist understanding of the primary stage of socialist transformation, which has to come out of the real material conditions. of, you know, semi-futal capitalism that existed in China. And in every instance, and if you even go back and look at the development of capitalism out of feudalism, it was not this overnight shift, right?

It wasn't under the conscious leadership of some revolutionary bourgeois party that understood historical materialism. We didn't get that until Marx, but still it unfolded in such a way that feudalism began to give rise to a small merchant class. And then through that, you saw the development of mercantilism. and then capitalism and the industrial revolution eventually spill out of that, associated, of course, with colonialism and all these other things. So you have to understand these things as a process. And when you do understand that as such, you can see that the Chinese model is perfectly in line with a Marxist-Lenin misconception.

And it's uniquely Chinese, right? It's its own form of the experiment. Every time socialism gets tried, it manifests in slightly different ways. And there's, you know, different ideas about exactly how to go about. it. Nobody has 100% successfully, you know, shown how it can happen anywhere and everywhere. This is a historical process that must be experimented with. So it's not perfect. There's always contradictions to resolve and navigate. But to your point, I think that from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, we can absolutely see that this is a process out of capitalism, towards socialism through the,

you know, vanguard party of the Communist Party. Absolutely. And the phrase socialism with Chinese characteristics anticipates socialism with Congolese characteristics, with German characteristics, with Barbados characteristics. So it's about not, it's not about imposing

a economic model or a political ideology onto the world, but to create the material conditions in the global south to push back imperialism, to push back imperialist coercion and control and the imperialist empowerment of the Camperador bourgeoisie in poor countries, in post-colonial countries or neo-colonized countries. So it's an entirely different strategy, but we will get to that in more detail later

on. Absolutely. All right. Yeah, we're going to flesh this out as we go through because this whole conversation is going to be focused on different aspects of this. And I think what your essay does is it brings a really interesting cultural historical dimension to the analysis of the Chinese Communist Party and socialism with Chinese characteristics that I find very, very fascinating and interesting. And in the process of understanding this, you not only get a deeper understanding of Chinese culture throughout the millennia, really, but also how that pre-existing culture manifests in the socialist experiment, which again, points to, you know, alludes to your point about socialism manifesting slightly differently in every historical cultural context in which it blossoms. And China is obviously

no different. So let's go ahead and get into the essay itself. Again, the essay is entitled Chinese characteristics of socialism, civilizational factors in CPC governance. I will link to it in the show notes if you want to read it. And I highly recommend you do, but your essay argues that to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics, we must examine not only class relations and material conditions, though those are primary, but also China's long civilizational inheritance. So for an audience unfamiliar with the piece, could you briefly explain the core argument you're making about how China's deep historical traditions interact with contemporary socialist governance? Yeah, especially in this day and age, in the current

era, there's a lot of anxiety about the rise of China, a new superpower. Is it going to replace the hegemony of the West of the United States? Is it going to become a new colonial power? Is it going to be coercive and violent? And I think the examination of Chinese history, deep history, I think is very important because in Western education there's very much a lack of information

and understanding about the evolution of Chinese political philosophy over the millennia, over the last 4,000 years. There's a lot of misunderstandings in place of actual understanding about what China is which is not an empire in the Western sense. But just to start,

4,000 years ago, the first Chinese state was formed. And it was formed after this emperor U was able to consolidate power by building influence. infrastructure to solve the problem of repeated, regular, devastating floods in the Yellow River Valley, which destroyed settlements and agriculture. It was a repeating crisis that threatened the existence, the survival of the nascent civilization. And so after working tirelessly for 13 years and mobilizing a very large workforce of tens of thousands of

people to construct waterways to divert flood waters to the sea. The different groups of people that lived in that area came together. They transferred their loyalty to Emperor U and the first state, the Xia dynasty, circa 2070 BCE to 1600 BCE. was formed. That was the first centralized state. So from its inception, the idea that the Stats raison, to use a German word, the reason for the state to exist is rooted in its ability to organize large-scale projects for the benefits of the people, of the majority of people. So from this point on, the evolution of Chinese political philosophy went in several different directions.

After the first dynasty, there was a couple of other dynasties, and the contradictions of feudalism, of ancestral monarchism, was not well managed. and it resulted in a period of 300 years of warfare, which ended in 200 BC. And during this 300 years long, warring states period, three different strands of political philosophy emerged. And those are Taoism, legalism, and confusionism. and these sort of, you know, contended for dominance. Taoism, people probably have some understanding, is commonly referred to in the West as the grandfather of anarchism. And it's basically a very hippie philosophy in which pacifism

let the energy of the universe flow and that people should not go against the harmony of the universe and should be peaceful and align themselves to it. And do nothing. Non-action is the ideal or is the prescribed way towards a peaceful, successful society. But that's obviously not enough to manage the contradictions of monarchism. I mean, you have a ruler and you have a centralized bureaucracy, and you have landlords and you have peasants.

There's all these contradictions between, right? There's different interests of these different groups, of the traders, that they have their own interests, the peasants, and the landlords, and the ruler, the king, the emperor. So what ended the warring states period in 200 BC was legalism, which briefly had dominance in Chinese politics. in the Zhou dynasty. And legalism is the opposite, the dialectical opposite of Taoism.

It is about stringent laws and harsh punishments and using force to exert control, to keep society stable. Legalism argued that human nature is inherently selfish and violent, and that a system of absolute authority of the monarch was needed. And military violence was necessary to crush rival factions and rival philosophical tendencies. And I mean, the warriors at this time during the legalist period was, you know, warriors were rewarded based on the number of,

enemy severed heads that they brought back from battle. So this is a kind of like hardcore, violent, brutal system. But legalism produced very strong police and military, but also widespread resentment among the population. People did not like it. It's just, you know, brutal. And very quickly led to a series of large-scale rebellions, which overthrew the Qin dynasty,

after merely 17 years. So legalism only lasted 17 years as the ruling ideology of China. And what replaced the Xin Dynasty was the Han Dynasty, which rejected both Taoism and legalism as the formal state's ideology in preference of confusionism.

And Confucianism is a philosophy that posits that human nature is essentially good, that with education, everyone can become virtuous, and the emperors should lead by example, by education. It involves a belief that people can become virtuous with education and with cultivation, individual cultivation of virtue. So Confucianism provided a concrete set of guidelines for preserving balance between the emperor and the people. In attempt to recreate approximately what Confucian scholars saw as a historical ideal,

a peaceful, prosperous, harmonious era of the Xia Dynasty, which was the first state in China, by then, by the time of the Han Dynasty, already 2,000 years prior. So it was kind of a, they wanted to recreate this harmonious era that existed in China 2000 years ago prior, 2,000 years earlier, before fall, before falling into chaos and disharmony. In classic Confucianism clearly states that. individual virtue is not possible with poverty. So the idea that the state is responsible for the eradication of poverty and well-being of citizens

was enshrined in Chinese politics 2,000 years ago from today by the time of the Hong Dynasty. This is a central idea that it was a responsibility of a state to ensure that people had enough to eat, that people were generally okay. And also equality has been important since this time. Early Confucianism, classic Confucianism, stressed that equality is a important goal of politics in creating a harmonious society. Maybe here I should emphasize that the Chinese idea of harmony

is somewhat different from the Western idea of harmony, which includes at least partially an idea of sameness of conformity, not so in the Chinese conception of harmony, which always includes difference, different opinions, different ideas, different ideologies. And a very important passage or quote from Confusion, texts, reads, translates to the noble man seeks harmony but not conformity. The petty man seeks conformity without harmony.

So this idea finds its contemporary reflection in that China, the People's Republic of China, is the only state that allows one country, two systems. this, you know, it does not call for conformity of Macau with this very different laws regarding gambling. Hong Kong for, you know, after reclamation in 1997, the socialist policies was not imposed onto Hong Kong, although some of the power of the bourgeoisie was, of course, repressed to the benefit of the majority. And also Taiwan, of course, is an inalienable part of China that was stolen by Japanese colonialism and then took over with U.S. American neo-imperialism, neocolonialism. But Taiwan is governed a part of China, but it's governed by a government that has no connection

to the CPC at all. So no other country allows this, different ideologies and different political economic systems within its own borders. So this idea, definitely, along with the other ones that it is the responsibility of the states to make sure of the well-being of the people and that this is the source of its legitimacy. Yeah, one thing I've always admired about Chinese culture and history is that from its very inception, it seemed, and through its core traditions, it seems to have an already existing dialectical worldview, not always materialist, but always dialectic. And I think that is fascinating. And it manifests in, I mean, many things. It manifests in a lot of ways within Taoism itself. It manifests with like the sort of synthesis between Taoism and legalism that you might think of as, you might think of as. Confucianism. Going back 3,000 years, there's that the old ancient text, the

E. Ching, which interestingly enough, I got introduced to through Dead Prez's album, Let's Get Free, because they're clearly, yeah, they're heavily influenced by it. In fact, Dead Prez's logo is a E Ching sort of symbol. And so I remember

buying the book and going into it, not knowing much about it, I was a teenager, I was like 19 at the time, and I'm an American, so I don't know much about, you know, deep, Chinese, culture and history at that point. But being into it, getting into Taoism, of course, you know, interested in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism and all these things. But it's interesting that the I Ching can be seeing as sort of a foundational work that predates Taoism and Confucianism and influences both. And it is always sort of emphasizing this dynamic of change in finding balance

and harmony. And while Taoism is much more geared toward like a, I think, you know, a personal philosophy for psychological well-being. Confucianism is like this collective-minded social balance between forces and society. And so I've always admired that about Chinese culture. And would you say that that is more or less correct or in line with your understanding? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a scholar of Taoism. I want to learn much more about it. It's fascinating. But yes, absolutely, this idea of reciprocity, this idea of, yeah, and Yang, this idea of dialectical opposites seeking a balance not to eradicate the opposite, the other, the difference, but to seek cooperation, to seek peaceful coexistence

between the opposing sides of social contradiction. Yeah. And the Yin Yang or Yin Yang symbol, I've always used it as like a shorthand visual for dialectics itself, right? Because you have the black and the white intermingling and then you have a little bit of the black in the white and a little bit of the white in the black. And, you know, if you're going to try to put the enormity of dialectics into a simple visual image, that's about as good as you could get, right? Yeah. And it's always moving, right? It's always moving. It's always revolving. Nothing stays the same. I think Heraclytus drew very heavily from Eastern philosophy. There's not

much record of direct from China, but from India, definitely, from Indian philosophy, this idea of constant change. But, yeah, so Confucianism, an important idea is the mandate of heaven. That is central to the idea. That is the central ideology. That is what justifies the rule of the emperors. And the concept. the mandate of heaven is that it is given by the supreme energy flow of the universe

to a just and fair ruler who rules with benevolence and peace-minded and takes care of the people. And the concept is that this

mandate can be withdrawn from the heavens, which means in practical terms, the support of the people. So embedded in the idea of the mandate of heaven is that if an emperor becomes corrupt and ineffective and allows society to become chaotic and conflicted and basically terrible, that social unrest and natural disasters will come and the emperor's downfall and replacement is necessary. So within this concept is a right to rebel,

that it is not only right, but it is righteous to rebel against injustice, to overthrow a corrupt emperor. the Zhou dynasty which replaced the gosh I always I also get these dynasties confused sometimes the founders of the Zhou dynasty justified their rebellion their overthrow their coup basically against the previous Shang dynasty was justified by this idea the right to rebel they argue that the Shang kings had become tyrannical, morally corrupt, and they neglected the rituals and oppressed the people, and they lost the mandate of heaven. So this is kind of a approximate proto or ancient version of

democracy. I mean, it is basically. It's an idea of democracy that if the people are not happy, they must overthrow the government. They must do revolution. Yeah. So that actually leads perfectly into this next question, which is precisely about that and then broadening that scope out a little bit. Before I get into that, I just want to point out quickly the irony, of course, of the way that China's talked about by so-called Western democracies, and I put democracies under heavy italics there. But, you know, the idea is like, you know, over here, we have bottom-up democracy. We have representative republics that are, you know, we have checks and balances that are, you know, they're susceptible to the people's will.

and if you don't like the system, you can go out and vote and change it. But the irony, of course, is that when you look over at China, who the Western democracies, quote unquote, call this authoritarian dictatorship, actually China enjoys, the Communist Party in China enjoys infinitely more popular support than almost every single parliamentary or capitalist democracy in the West all throughout Europe and the United States, which are, you know, have unfavorable ratings in the majority. So the majority of people in Western societies are unfavorable of their governments and their leaders.

And you look over at China, this supposed authoritarian dictatorship. And it enjoys genuine widespread support among the people. Does that mean that every single person supports every single thing? Of course not. That's never going to be the case, right? Especially in a country of a billion people. I mean, 350 million people, right? You're never going to get everybody on the same page.

But overall, it is astounding how much popular, legitimacy the Communist Party enjoys, especially when you compare it to the smug arrogance of these Western democracies, which everybody hates. Like, as an American, I don't care what the people's politics are. I talk to my coworkers, my family, my friends, you know, right, left, center, whatever their politics are. We are all united in one thing. We fucking hate our government.

And I think that's always a deep irony of the way it's talked about. Yeah, the Ash Center study, longest such. study ever conducted, published by Harvard, yeah, revealed that there's 96% 95.5% approval of the central governments in China. And, you know, there's a lot of protests in China, a lot of protests and, yeah, people voicing their discontents with policy, right? And almost all of them are calling for Beijing to step in, to resolve the corruption. And what usually happens is the central government steps in, reviews the situation, punishes the corrupt local government officials or CEOs of private enterprises, and punishes them, seizes their company, or imprisons them and, you know, steps in on the side of the workers.

So this is this is what happens. And, yeah, this is emerging from this history of the right to rebel, right? And just of interesting side note, after the, well, during the great famine, right, of 1962, all of the villages had guns. They all had guns and grenades and bombs because the Civil War had just ended 10 years prior. And there was not a single rebellion from any of the rural areas that were hit by the famine. because people knew, people saw that there were human mistakes made and that the central government immediately sent relief and did everything that they could.

It was not a single rebellion. And of course, this is against the racist notion that Chinese people are docile and incapable of independent critical thinking and that they're like worker ants and they just obey, obey the central government and, you know, they're brainwashed. This is the opposite of that. Chinese people are very quick to rebel. I mean, another anecdotes, the, you know, the COVID lockdown in Shanghai was really botched, was really fucked up by the local authorities. I mean, which is unsurprising because Shanghai is the most neoliberal city of all China. You know, it was the colonial favorites, and it retains some of those characteristics.

It's really more liberal bourgeois dominated than many, than all of the other cities. And but anyway, there was like a lot of protests about the lockdowns and how it was done. And within like days, or was it a week or two, the lockdowns were lifted. Because central government heard the voices of the people. people. And there's a very large, multi-layered apparatus for gauging people's opinions. For the central government, for the local government and the local and the central government to hear the voices of the people, to hear their discontents, what they're not happy about. And then the situation is remedy. It's fixed. The problem is fixed. There's countless examples of this, which

I won't go into. Yeah, I mean, the orientalist, racist view of Chinese people and Asian people more broadly of being docile, subordinate, hive-minded, lacking really a soul or any individual notion of expression is just completely at odds with the actual history of, in this context, the Chinese people and its history. We did an episode, a four-part series, actually, with Professor Ken Hammond on the last 250-some years of Chinese history, starting, you know, it's called Modern China. And part one is about the Taiping and boxer rebellions.

And once you start getting into that history, that orientalist, racist view is just completely exploded in every conceivable way. So I encourage people to check that out. And I'll link to it in the show notes that people want to do a deep dive on contemporary Chinese history. But going back to the mandate of heaven and Confucianism, your essay draws a compelling line from core Confucian concepts to contemporary CPC governance. and long-term socialist aspirations. So in your view, can you talk about other specific Confucian categories that are most actively and consciously being reappropriated or maybe naturally emerging within the party itself

and how Chinese Marxists might talk about or think about that process? Well, the domestic policies of the CPC as well as foreign policy draws very much from this history, from the roots of Chinese. political philosophy. Internal governance is guided by harmony, by this idea of coexistence and of working together for the benefit of all, collectively, and external policy is driven by this idea of non-interference. And this non-interference idea, which is totally strict, like China has a very strict policy of non-interference in the affairs of other states.

This is guided by a long history of sort of a maturation of statecraft. Since 2000 years ago, since the Han Dynasty, since the war between the Three Kingdoms period, more or less 2,000 years ago, China has been more or less stable. It was invaded by the Mongols, at, you know, 1,200s, or was it 900s, I'd forget, somewhere around there.

But besides a couple of things like that, Chinese statecraft was able to develop and mature to a level that is not really seen in many other parts of the world. So this idea of non-interference comes from the idea of empire in China, which is very different from Western notions of empire. Early on, the Chinese states figured out that it's much better to make friends than enemies, and that instead of constantly trying to conquer and control the territories around it or other nations, that it was much better to set up a system called the tributary system.

And this is largely misunderstood in the West. People think, you know, it's an oppressive system in which lesser states were forced to give tributes to the Chinese emperor who sits on top of this rigid hierarchy that that dominates the smaller states around it. But actually, you know, an important part is that the return gifts from China to the smaller states always had to be of greater value than the tributes themselves. And this comes from a core value that is very different. This idea of supremacy, right? What does supremacy mean in China?

It does not mean coercion. It does not mean violence. It means the opposite. It means that the greater nation, the superior people, right, has a responsibility to maintain peace and to take care of the smaller states around it. It has a greater responsibility. That is the source of its greatness. and if, you know, a country was to take more than it gives,

the legitimacy of the superiority would be lost. And the emperor responsible for such stupid stupidity would be punished, would face consequences, would be, his own legitimacy would be lost at home. Because people, people would be like, you know, would be like, you know, You know, that's not how a big man should act. You know, that's not greatness. That's the behavior of a child, of a weakling, to try to control and steal even and to coerce and to deceive and to intimidate

and to force your vision on other people, on other states, on other countries, on other people, on other cultures. Korea, Vietnam, all of these surrounding countries or peoples adopted Chinese culture not from coercion, any kind of coercion. So this is a core civilizational characteristic, I would say. And it's not exclusively Chinese. It's actually just Asian. I mean, you find this idea in the Arab countries as well. this idea of generosity. I mean, one very illuminating and very common things

that you often see people arguing in restaurants over who gets the privilege of paying the bill. Like I've seen uncles and like my family members like literally almost screaming at each other until they're red in the face. No, I'm paying. No, fuck you. I'm paying. I'm paying for this meal.

I'm paying for everyone. No, fuck you. It's this idea that to pay the bill means that you're a bigger man. You're a bigger person. And that you, you know, get more respect.

It's this whole very different idea of greatness, of supremacy. I mean, it is a form of supremacy. It is a form of, you know, I'm better than you. But being better, better and greater means you're more generous. Means that the central kingdom has the responsibility of preserving peace between the different

countries and promoting prosperity, promoting trade aid, and taking care of its smaller brothers and sisters. So non-interference comes from this. And the BRI also is directly related to this, that is responsibility. of a superpower to preserve peace, to solve conflicts through negotiation, bringing, you know, different factions of the Palestinian resistance together in Beijing to help them work together, to foster cooperation between them, and to broker the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, right? Things like this. This is what China.

does in terms of foreign policy. And this is rooted in this ancient idea of greatness of what a great country should be like. Which is the opposite of Western empires, right? Rome, Greece.

Of course, the Portuguese and the Dutch and the English is about conquering and theft and robbery. And of course, the monster

that Europe created, which is the United States of America. So with that in mind, and I'm going to come back to some of these other things, like everyday social practices and maybe another Confucian concept or two. But before we do, based on what you just said over the last several minutes, what is the basic Chinese view of the U.S. as a country and also as Trump as a leader? Because Trump flies in the face of all of those values. Well, you know, there's no hatred of the USA in China. China has always greatly admired European civilization, culture, philosophy, ideas, technology.

China always greatly admirers the United States. I mean, the translation of America in Chinese is very fortunate for America. It's May Guo. It means beautiful country. May. Like, it just so happens that May sounds like, you know, America. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. but there's a great respect for the United States,

and China has always been eager to learn from the Western traditions. For example, the empiricism, right, learning from evidence, that was Western influence in the Confucianism from a very early period. So elements of Western political thoughts absolutely enters China and it's absorbed and it is you know, becomes part of the Chinese way of thinking.

So as far as the view of the United States, I mean, in recent years it's become more negative. Definitely. Because of the trade wars and the yeah, and the diplomatic

wars and the propaganda war. I mean, Chinese people are very angry about the baseless accusation of Chinese oppression of Muslims and even genocide, like what the fuck? There's without a genocide with no refugees. Insane. With no corpses, with no dip in population.

Like, you know, and, you know, it's incredible because, you know, Like I was saying earlier, there's a lot of protests in China. In Xinjiang region, in the Uyghur majority region, there was an apartment fire during the COVID lockdowns. This apartment house was caught on fire and like six people or 12 people died. There was large protests in Xinjiang of, you know, people protesting like this building, the regulations were wrong and like safety and like. you know like and and these protests were broadcast all over people you know filmed it on their smartphones and it's all over the internet but not a single protest against the genocide like like do people think chinese people are like just inhuman have no emotion or what like

it's it's absolutely insane but anyway i don't want to get distracted that topic deserves its own episode maybe some other time sure but yeah i mean the orientalism even manifested in covid where there's huge strains of Western influencers or thought leaders and even politicians, including Trump himself, that would blame COVID as an intentional strategy on behalf of China to destroy the world or to upset the global order. Like it was like a bio act of war. And Trump is constantly talking down, you know, deriding China. And Trump is the perfect instantiating.

of this sort of belligerent behavior that is directly contrary to the ideas of what a true leader and somebody with a sense of responsibility that comes with power should behave like. So I'm wondering if the whites, because I know the Chinese people and every interaction I've had with Chinese people, they've always kind of, when we talk politics, have always stated, we have nothing against the American people, right? They always say that. But clearly they have something against the Trump administration and the belligerence of the U.S. imperial apparatus more broadly that is trying to strangle China, that is trying to isolate China,

that if it had its full way, would overthrow and conduct a regime change war in China. And I don't think they can do that. But if they could, they certainly would. So I'm kind of wondering about your thoughts on any of that. Well, just one quick, quick word about COVID. I think the truth is the opposite of what Trump says. That Fort D. Trick and, okay, I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go too far down that rabbit hole.

But I'm with Jeffrey Sacks. Jeffrey Sacks just plainly says it out loud that COVID was a bio weapon from the United States in order to destabilize China. But anyway, I don't want to go down that road. About Trump, Chinese people like Trump. In fact, they call him. him the nation builder, meaning China, meaning that his embargoes on tech, that his tariff war have all backfired and that it has greatly boosted China's independent development of technology because the chips were not allowed to be sold to China.

And so China was forced to develop its own chips and its own digital. and other technological infrastructure. Like they try to squash, they try to crush Huawei. And Huawei has thrived partly because of the sanctions, partly because of the U.S. attempt to crush it. So there's a popular saying of Trump being a great nation builder, somewhat ironically. Yeah.

That's hilarious. That's a dialectical view of Trump, a dialectical embrace of Trump, because his actions ostensibly in favor of strengthening America and weakening China, do the exact opposite in every way. Yeah, it's pretty hilarious. Yeah, do you have any other, like, I think it's interesting the way that you talk about, like, everyday practices you mentioned earlier, arguing over a bill and general sense of

hospitality. Maybe you could talk about, like, food sharing or something, just like contemporary social habits in China that kind of embody this idea of socialism with Chinese characteristics in everyday life and act as a sort of social continuity of these traditions you're talking about. Yeah, the hierarchy, the strict hierarchy in Confucianism, a deeper understanding of that is that these hierarchies in the family, you know, etc., is not an end in itself, that it is in anticipation of a coming future era when all of these contradictions can be resolved and that these high,

hierarchies will be no longer necessary, that these are temporary measures. Like the current era is not ideal, that we have to manage our current contradictions the best way that we can through family hierarchies and social hierarchies, right? But always striving to make these hierarchies legitimate, to make these hierarchies make these hierarchies make sense for the people, right? I mean, this is something against contemporary Western anarchism. I mean, every indigenous society has had leaders, right? The chief, you know, of a people, whether the Coyson of South Africa or the Peruvian, Andean, indigenous people, they all have leaders. And the leader is chosen because he is wise. Or, or the European, Indian, Indian, indigenous people.

they all have leaders. And the leader is chosen because he is wise or she is wise. Is the best at conflict resolution, is best at, you know, arranging distribution of resources and being fair and being just, right? And so there's a striving to make hierarchies more legitimate during our current time before the

core contradictions of society can be resolved in what Chinese philosophy this concept of Da Tong is big Tong is difficult to translate but basically

unity is roughly translated as great unity and this idea is 4,000 years old since the beginning of Chinese politics of the Chinese states, this idea that there's some future time, there will be a great unity. And let me just read a couple of core tenets of this idea of Da Tong. The public spirit takes precedence over private interest. The most famous sentence from the original

texts, which is like 4,000 years old, says the world is shared by all. This is a phrase that is core to the idea of Datong. It opposes the idea that the world is for one family, is for, you know, an elite. It is for everyone. And meritocracy, the selection of the virtuous, leaders are chosen for their virtue and ability and not through her own. hereditary succession. The universal care and social welfare, the concept of the family and care extends beyond one's own blood relations in Da Tung. So the core idea is that first, we have harmony within the family, right? We respect the elders because they are more wise and they are more patients. And so we respect the elders. They have, you know, they eat first. In Chinese custom,

the older, the elders always get the food first. But they also have the responsibility of making sure the younger ones also have enough to eat before they themselves have enough. And the idea is that we first create harmony within the family unit and the extended family. And then this harmony expands to the neighborhood, to the village, to the province, to the city, to the province, and to the state, to the country, and to neighboring countries, to blocks of countries, and eventually the world. So this is kind of, I don't know, man, it sounds like communism to me. The ultimate ideal of society is the resolution of currently existing contradictions.

It's China's native classical vision of utopia, of a future time that we should all strive to create on Earth, a harmonious, egalitarian, and moral society. Yeah, this idea has been central in the political thoughts of China for over 4,000 years, that this is the ultimate goal of all politics is to create equality and to create harmony on earth. And that does contrast sharply with the, you know, hyper individualism in American society, at late stage capitalism more broadly. And the short-term viewing, the quarter-by-quarter profit thinking of capital and of the overall ruling apparatus in the U.S., There's a real disrespect and disregard for other people broadly, but for our children, for our elderly.

There's still the effects of the New Deal, which, you know, has Medicare and Social Security. Thank goodness for that. But there's forces within the ruling class that have been and are still trying to privatize and dismantle those things. A fourth or a fifth of American children live in abject poverty when under the Biden administration during a time of emergency during COVID, there were these checks that went out to families for children, right? If you had children, every child got something like $1,200 per child. And there was a couple iterations of this. And just a couple iterations of this child refund, basically, was

enough to cut child poverty in half, showing without a shadow of a doubt that if that was anything like a priority, it could easily be done. And the second they could, they stopped doing it. And that was under Biden, let alone under Republican administration that wouldn't, you know, hesitate to cut that and cut anything that existed before that. So that short termism, the view of capital, which is quarter to quarter, the hyper individualism, the lack of respect for the elderly for children, because there's a focus in capitalist society on production, right? And when are you least productive for the economy when you're a child and when you're elderly? And so those people naturally are not given certain levels of respect or honor that they

deserve. And of course, it's funding and arming a genocide, half of which the people in Gaza are children themselves. So the U.S. is slaughtering them at home. ISIS ripping families apart, another, you know, just devastation and violence imposed on families and thus on children. And so I really see that that contrast is incredibly sharp. And it's so clear that any culture that hopes to survive has to think in long term. And China does that in the form of these five and 10 year plans. And that leads perfectly into this next question, which is about the way in which China is able to build, right? Build infrastructure, build up public works in a way that Western countries and definitely in the United States.

States can't do. And in fact, much of what people see of China or the Western fascination or impressiveness with China as of late has been around these monumental public works that China has been able to construct during COVID, right, building hospitals within days. You know, things, things that Americans in particular look over at China with envy. Like, damn, I wish we could build things that we clearly fucking need. We can fund a genocide, right? We can, we can go around the world and start wars all the time. We can shuffle money from the middle and the bottom to the very top. That's what we're good at, but we can't do anything that helps the people at large while we look over at China, and it seems that they're doing that. And your essay draws this through line

from early hydraulic statecraft beginning, as you said earlier, with used flood control to CPC's modern legitimacy as an infrastructural and developmental state. So could you elaborate on how you see the continuity between ancient infrastructure as legitimacy and the socialist developmental model in China, specifically how material public works function as both a mode of production and a sort of, as you were saying earlier, civilizational value in the Chinese tradition. Yeah, I mean, it's based on this idea of political legitimacy is, rests on popular approval, rests on what the state can do for the people, right? The exact opposite of like not what you can do for.

It's what the state can do, not what you can do for the country. Or was that JFK quotes? But anyway, it's the opposite of that. It's what the state can do for its people. And as soon as Xi Jinping loses support of the central committee, of the top levels of government, he is out immediately. Like two weeks later, he is out. if he loses popular support.

And if the Communist Party itself loses support of the majority of the population, it will be replaced immediately. So the legitimacy of the state is entirely dependent on popular approval since a long time in China. Since, I mean, this idea, of course, in practice, it's, you know, sometimes not well, practice. practically not well done and it leads to conflicts and uprisings. And so through the millennia, so many peasant revolts and like, you know, the Chinese feudal political system has managed to evolve and to adapt and to make its authority more and more legitimate based on popular approval. And just speaking on, on your point, just a little bit, we need to understand social democracy as a bribe of a bourgeois

ruling class in the West. I mean, basically it originates from FDR, from Franklin Roosevelt to manage the collapse of capitalism in the 1920s. In 1920s, capitalism collapsed. The great famine, famine and economic collapse. Funny, you know, merely 10 years after people were, you know, celebrating Ford, Henry Ford's assembly line as like, this is the, you know, end of, you know, contradiction. We have no more problems. We have the Henry Ford Assembly line and everything will be conchondory.

And 10 years later, we have the Great Depression. But anyway, Roosevelt, implemented this sort of socialistic policies of managing of curbing the excesses of private capital a little bit and to give the working class of some crumbs, right? Some a social safety net, welfare state, and to make sure that they're okay. And all of this is made especially necessary. I mean, first of all, to end the Great Depression, to get the U.S. economy back to a semi-healthy state,

which worked, even, you know, insincere socialistic policies work. They, you know, they revived the American economy, and it made people, you know, more or less okay after the 1930s. But it was also made. necessary by the existence of a socialist superpower in the East, which was the Soviet Union, right? When a great socialist superpower exists and people can just look, you know, you can see that Soviet citizens, you know, have never have to worry about paying rent. Like even by the time it collapsed, you know, by the time it was defeated in the 80s,

in the entire former Soviet bloc, average cost of rent was 5% of wages. Even, you know, even when the Soviet economy was bankrupted by the nuclear arms race initiated by the U.S. and, you know, under siege constantly during this existence and developing from a point 100 years behind, the colonial powers, England, the U.S., that developed industrialization and modernization off of the back of slave labor and colonial profits and opium profits.

So the Soviet Union, even under those circumstances, nobody had to worry about rent. Nobody had to worry about health care. Nobody had to strike. Imagine a society without stress about these basic things. So when this superpower existed, this made social democracy in the West, in the capitalist countries, a necessity to prevent revolution. They had to take care of the working class a little bit, make their lives comfortable a little bit so that they don't rebel, so that they don't overthrow the bourgeois ruling class. And we can see this very clearly that as soon as after 1991, after the defeat of the Soviet Union, all of these social democratic policies very quickly evaporated all over Europe, right?

After 1991, like 10 years later, and, you know, there's a slight delay. But, you know, we see public funding being cut all over Europe. We see rent and cost of living rising extremely, while wages stay the same. And, you know, of course, we see the acceleration of imperialist wars all over the world. But just to make strive a point home that social democracy was, was, could, could only exist off of the super profits of imperialism, of bleeding Africa dry, and also by the pressure from a socialist superpower, which was the Soviet Union. And that it collapsed. and Europeans and American people need to realize that it's not coming back.

Like social democracy is not coming back. This sort of 50 years of relative comfort, 70 years of relative comfort after World War II, you know, was created by this bribeing, bribery system in which the bourgeois ruling class, you know, sought to keep society together by giving them some crumbs. That is not coming back. Absolutely. And to build, to kind of restate that point, I've argued this for a long time. It's no accident that, you know, Reagan and Thatcher emerged in the 80s, right? As right at the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union and neoliberalism, what we call neoliberalism, really is in the United States' context in particular.

But more broadly than that, of course, throughout the West is a dismantling of that post-World War II social democratic era. And in the U.S., neoliberalism is the dismantling of the new. deal. The new deal, of course, riven with the racial compromise, right? So it was still a very, it was very racist in its application, right? It instantiated redlining and all these other things because it was fundamentally about creating a higher quality of life for white workers in particular. And so that was a contradiction at its heart and, of course, gave rise in some dialectical way to the civil rights movement, which emerged in the middle of the new deal. But really what happened after the formal collapse of the Soviet Union was that neoliberalism became a bipartisan

consensus. So Reagan and Thatcher, they had opposition still institutionally from the left in the U.S. and in the U.K. But after the fall of the Soviet Union in the U.S. with the rise of Clinton third wayism, we saw neoliberalism not become a right-wing projects of capital restoration, but a bipartisan consensus. And we are living. living now in the ruins of 40 years of neoliberalism. And we all know that something fundamentally has to change. And we're also seeing the rise of right-wing reactionary and fascist forces throughout the West, as well as, I think, a more radicalizing left.

Because when the center falls out of politics, when the status quo no longer serves the vast majority and is clearly only serving, the top 10% probably and the top 1% for sure, you're going to have radicalization on the left and the rest. And the only way to defeat right-wing fascist reactionary emergence is with, you know, socialist transformation of the economy that works for everybody. But in lieu of that material stability, you're going to get right-wing fascist reaction. And we've seen that time and time and time again throughout capitalism's history and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis came on the tail of the Great Depression and the military and then economic defeat of Germany. after World War I.

So these things are intimately, intimately connected and need to be understood as such. Absolutely. The rise of fascism in Europe, we need to see that it happened in the three countries where the communist movement

was strongest. And that is Spain, Italy, and Germany. In the 1920s and 30s, in reaction to the collapse of capitalism in the 1920s, the Great Depression, which was very much felt in Europe as well, communist movements were very strong in these three countries particularly. And the American capital and British royalty

had to make sure that these communist movements are suppressed, that they do not come to fruition, that they are destroyed. And fascism was greatly funded by, the likes of Henry Ford and all of these great capitalists. I mean, standard oil, today Chevron, funded or supplied upwards of 80% of the energy needs of the Nazi war machine. And upwards of 90% of the Japanese fascist war machine. Franco too. They supported the Franco regime. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The Franco regime and Mussolini in Italy. So these fascist movements were instrumentalized.

You know, in the classic or by now classic method of funding the right, of funding fascism. I mean, Islamic fascism in Afghanistan to destroy the socialist Afghan government and also to create a problem for the Soviet. Union, in exactly the same way. World War II, you know, a big part of it that's not talked about at all in the West is that fascism was a tool, was an instrument to crush European socialism and also to destroy the Soviet Union, which it was successful on both counts. Immediately, fascism destroyed the German communist movement and the Italian communist movement massacres and torture and imprisonment and I mean first they came for the communists right first they came for the socialists and then they came for the Jews and the homosexuals

so yeah so as like imperialist strategy I find this view very compelling and very important which sadly you know even German communists sometimes deny you know this kind of this kind of just it's kind of a narcissism. Like, you know, fascism was our fault. We produced it and it has nothing to do with the United States. Like, it's really a very limited view of fascism is always a tool for the rule for the bourgeois ruling class in order to crush socialism. In order to block progress of human society onto a better, more fair and more just. phase of development.

Yeah, and I always like to point out, you know where the Great Depression did not have massive impacts and where there were no fascist movements that rose to power in the Soviet Union, which is fun to point out. But also on the questions of Italy, Spain, and German fascism, I just want to remind listeners, we have recent episodes on the years of lead in Italy, the German Revolution, which talks about Rosa Luxembourg and the Communist Party and the, you know, the crushing of the communist movement by the Freikor and the Social Democrats, which was a prelude to the rise of the Nazis. And of course, we have a classic episode on the Spanish Civil War. So if you're

interested in any of those three particular histories, we do have stuff for you to go check out. And you can just easily search that. I'll try to remember to include those in the show notes as well. So people can deepen their knowledge on that front. But let's go ahead and and move here towards the end. I have a couple more questions for you. Near the end of your essay, you emphasize, and I really like this point, and I think it's worth lingering on, you emphasize that every people has deep, egalitarian, and communal roots and traditions that they can draw on for their own path to socialism. So if you were speaking to activists in, say, Latin America, Africa, the Arab world, or even Europe, how would you suggest they go about maybe rediscovering and

mobilizing those local traditions without romanticizing? them, wanting to go back to some romanticized past, or ignoring their own internal hierarchies and contradictions. Yeah, that's a great question. Different places around the world had different historical developments, different conditions and different trajectories. And so some places, the connection to our egalitarian roots was more cut off than others. through millennia of wars and conquering and empires and feudalism. But in places like Africa and South America and large parts of Asia, those roots are more intact. I mean, you can see it in the culture of the people.

I mean, not the westernized, you know, urban, but the rural and the indigenous. I mean, this point is super important, but it's not easy to see sometimes for people. But I just give one anecdote. You know, the Nawa people, the Nawa people of present-day El Salvador and Guatemala, in the 1930s, embraced Marxism. the indigenous Nawa people of South America and the Caribbean. Because they automatically, they read Marxism, like Soviet propaganda, and they were like, hey, this is how we, our ancestors lived.

We share, we cooperate. Nobody owns, you know, anything. Like, it's not individual. It's for the collective. And we take care of each other. and, you know, like, it just instinctively, not instinctively, but like very naturally resonated with indigenous people. And I think this is everywhere around the world. The ideas of Marx, of socialism, just absolutely is congruent, is parallel to primordial ancient traditions all over the earth.

And of course, in 1930s, the NāWA people were genocided. U.S. backed death squads under fascist dictators that the U.S. supported. The CIA trained death squads killed around 30,000 Nawa people, not because they're indigenous, but because they had all joined the Communist Party of, I forget which country I think, El Salvador. I don't remember. But, I mean, I know this only because I know this history because I met a activist leader of the Nawa people. And he was telling me all of this history of his people and what happened in 1930s. And that today, the surviving Nawa people, you know, are so indoctrinated that they blame that massacre on the communists.

It's absolutely tragic. But anyway, I think I think this is a good example. I mean, every people around the world has this tradition, no matter has this sensibility that is inherited from their ancestors, no matter how buried, no matter how cut off from it they are. And I would say to activists to learn and to draw from indigenous tradition and knowledge. I mean, not in a, like you say, romanticized way, but absolutely in a concrete way to, show them that the ancestral knowledge and understanding

is absolutely in many ways the same as the core of socialism. And, you know, even in Europe, Europe is probably the most cut off from those ancient traditions. It still exists, you know,

and there's strands around. I mean, it's probably probably should not be the primary a mode of activism of building working class movements, but it's absolutely, I think, importance. And I think it can be an important part of building class consciousness. Yeah, I mean, you know, Europe is an interesting case here because Europe is the epicenter of capitalism and modern colonialism. And there is a very reactionary trend in Europe and in the United States of what we're

wanting to go back to some golden age. I mean, there's even fascist attempts to restore paganism, right? Like in Europe, for example. And so that territory in particular, I think, is fraught with a certain sort of reactionary nostalgic, you know, desire to return. And that is also deeply intertwined with an anti-immigrant sentiment, right? Like France for the French, Britain for the British, and it comes with racism and a whole bunch of shit. So you definitely want to avoid that. But the dialectical, progressive, Marxist version of that is going into your own traditions, finding the progressive kernels, the communal kernels, and then developing them forward in the present into the future with a universalist and liberatory mindset, not a reactionary nativist, ravenchist mindset.

So that's, I mean, that's essential. But if you look at the birthplace of modern capitalism, the UK, you saw peasant rebellions against the enclosure process, which was, you know, for. of primitive accumulation. The ruling class, the burgeoning bourgeoisie in the UK had to first disenfranchise its own working class, then go over into Ireland and begin its prototypical experiment and imperialism to then create the British Empire, which gave bloody birth to the American Empire. So those things are all connected, and there is that history to draw on.

But again, it is fraught in a unique way that's worth being very critical of. for sure. And then... Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then this last point that I want to make is a lead into this last question I have about Confucianism, which is religions, right? I believe, and I've long argued, that every religious tradition from Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, whatever, you know, whatever religious tradition you want to talk about, those religious traditions go back oftentimes millennia. they have obviously reactionary right wing status quo preserving strains and elements within them look at the modern instantiation of Christianity and megachurch conservative America

it is this radical deviation from the core teachings of Jesus Christ but it presents itself as you know very pious and Christian even as it is it is enormously cruel and violent So all these religions have obviously a reactionary in a right wing, a centrist status quo preserving element, but they all also have liberatory elements. I've done episodes on Islam, on Christianity, and all of these major religions. And I'm always trying to highlight the progressive left-wing, liberatory-minded versions of these religions. And everywhere on earth there are religious traditions. So this is one easy way where you can look back at your own tradition, you know, maybe your own religion,

and not necessarily disregard it because it had those reactionary strains, which is easy to do with something like Christianity, but rather to find and resurrect, if you will, the dialectically progressive kernels and emphasize those going forward. And that leads into this next question, which I'll hand over to you and then let you take it in any direction. But it's a slightly, in a friendly way, a critical question, maybe anticipating some criticism here. Confucianism is presented here largely through its utopian and proto-socialist strands, I think justifiably, right? But historically, like all religions, as I was just mentioning, it also functioned as the ideological cement of landlord rule in rigid patriarchy. So how do you think contemporary Chinese socialism can selectively inherit those emancipatory elements without re-legitimizing the needless or, you know, brutal or unjustified hierarchical and sometimes very consistent? conservative aspects of that Confucianism historically. Yeah. Like you were saying, all of these religions and ancient traditions have an emancipatory

core. I would say it's the main core. And they were defeated by the right, you know, with their entanglements with feudal, feudal aristocracy, with a power based on the ownership of land and slaves, their entanglement with feudal power structure has corrupted them to various extents. The Communist Party initially suppressed Confucianism. It saw in the revolutionary period in the 1930s to the 50s or, no, actually up to the present era, it was seen, Confucianism was seen as a decadent. corrupt, like you say,

ideology which justified the unjust rule of the feudal monarchies. But I think the Communist Party has since then, in the current era of socialist construction, found many uses of Confucianism in its building of the productive forces, and it's building a harmonious society at home and in its hierarchy, you know, in its striving for more and more legitimate hierarchies to manage society in this transitional period of socialists on the socialist path towards communism or datum.

Yeah, I mean, the communist parties has always suppressed feudal attitudes like you know, sexism and all these feudal forms under Confucianism that are reactionary. And it has emphasized the progressive social harmony, the justice under a legitimate ruler, under legitimate political power. Yeah, I think in this way. But to speak a little bit more about the egalitarian roots of all of these things, you know, Buddhism also began as a rebellion against the caste system, right, in India. Yeah, all of these religions came from emancipatory roots.

I would say it's the core of these systems, but then were later corrupted and deviated from its original. And if I can just indulge a little bit, for people who are not convinced of our egalitarian past, of, or maybe accuse me or us of romanticizing or fetishizing the indigenous or whatever. Let me just say that the biological evolution of human beings in becoming what we are. The Homo sapiens sapiens became what we are with these very large brains, like bigger than the other primates, bigger than the other monkeys was only made possible by a sort of revolutionary egalitarianism that our ancient, ancient, like, you know, 500,000, a million, two million years ago, of overturning the alpha male ruled society of the other great apes, of most of the other great apes,

are ruled by an alpha male, right? and not the right wing, like, fucking, you know, whatever, like, contemporary use of alpha male. But it is a biological reality that gorillas, right, the top gorilla, the biggest, strongest gorilla rules with violence. And he, you know, beats up the smaller males and he gets most of the food, most of the sex. and like our ancestors, right, evolved a social organization that is a overthrow of that system, of that organization, into a matri-central, not matriarchal, but centered around in the cooperation of women. Taking care of children together, right, as a community. Like the mothers protect the baby chimps from other males because they might hurt it.

But in human society, in Homo sapiens society, there evolved a conviviality, a not conviviality, a communal taking care of the children together, which allowed the bigger brain offspring to survive. Because the bigger brain offspring requires more time to mature. A baby chimp needs three months. six months to be self-reliant. And a offspring with bigger brain takes much longer. So it needs 10 years, 15 years of constant protection, sustenance, food, care in order to survive. And so the bigger brain offspring can only survive with communal taking care of the children together and sharing food and all of this. This may be

a little bit too far, but too far back into prehistory. But this is the revolutionary, I would say, communist roots of our species. Yes. You know, the

great genocide theory of why Neanderthals, when extinct, has been increasingly debunked in recent scholarship. in anthropology and biology, that it was not genocide,

that it was our social traits, the Homo sapiens social traits of sharing food with kin and non-kin alike, which was unique, which the Nandathals did not have, and the other early hominids did not have, which was an advantage for homo sapiens to survive and to thrive. But anyway, that may be a little bit too far.

No, it's not too far, and it speaks my language and gets me amped up because it's the perfect argumentative move to make here, as well as just a biologically and historically true fact about our species. It goes back to historical materialism, the dialectics of nature. But throughout this conversation, we've talked about specifically Chinese cultural traditions that have elements to them, which are supportive of and emerge within modern attempts to construct socialism. And then from that one point, we then expand. and we talked about different traditions throughout the world, all major religions having this emancipatory core

in which you just did there, I think, is the next logical move, which is to go beyond even those human cultural traditions before culture as such and talk about our universal evolutionary ancestry and background as social creatures. And the one thing I always emphasize very much in line with your argument right there is that the only way homo sapiens were able to survive is precisely because of our cooperative social natures.

That if you think about gorillas, they're big and strong and can impose their will on creatures, right? Tigers have claws and teeth. You know, snakes have venom. Throughout nature, we see that different species survive based on often various forms of brute strength, power, venom, whatever. Humans don't have big claws. We have these shitty little fingernails that snag all the time. You know, our teeth are square.

We can't really bite me. It wouldn't be nice to bite somebody, but it really is not going to be a super threat, like a tiger ripping into you. What do we have? We have our social natures that are facilitated by, as you were just saying, our big brains and our very nature as linguistic creatures, the development of spoken language is, in fact, a direct result of our need for hyper-sophisticated communication. that grunts and hand signals are not sufficient to cooperate at the level human beings need to cooperate. And so we developed evolutionarily this ability to speak and articulate in incredibly sophisticated ways through language. And what do we do with language? Our entire culture is built on language.

Reading and writing, thinking to ourselves, working through a problem in our own heads, is all done through the prism of language, which itself is a problem. product of our incredibly social natures. And so I think that is the best way to end a conversation like this, which is to go back to our evolutionary roots and show that despite our different traditions, we all ultimately come from the same evolutionary lineage and share this deeply social nature that socialism and communism is both our past and our future, right? Absolutely.

We are the weakest and slowest of all the great. Of all the great apes on the plains of Africa. And why do we survive and thrive? It's from this evolved social organization of egalitarianism, of sharing and cooperation. Absolutely. All right. And I think that is the perfect place to end on coming full circle into our shared humanity, a beautiful way to land this episode.

Again, the title of this essay is Chinese characteristics of socialism, Civilizational factors in CPC governance. Again, I'll link to that in the show notes. But you also are the founder of Goods for the People. We've collaborated in the past. We're working on a collaboration in the present and into the future. Can you talk a little bit about that? And just let people know where they can find you and your work online more broadly.

Yeah, my professional career has been in design. And I worked for a lot of advertising agencies and Hollywood. but I was always looking for a way with my political consciousness to lend my skills to spreading class consciousness, to spreading Marxism and socialism. So I started this clothing brand called Goods for the People, Goods for the People.com. And it's been a struggle.

Many, many things went wrong, but we just set up distribution from China and manufacturing with very high quality, better than before, improved quality of fabric and better cuts of the garments and silk screen printing. And yeah, it's been a really great collaboration with you. I really enjoyed making the first Reveleth radio design.

And I'm working on the second one, working on the second one to dialectically, I'm hoping to do something positive because the first one was featured in the image of the White House burning. I still love it. I love it so much. But I'm trying to,

I'm still working on it, trying to do a positive one. But I will share something with you. We can do back and forth on the design, on the design of it. But our first products with a new manufacturing system that we set up is a design dedicated to freedom in West Asia. Not only Palestine, but all of West Asia. It features the Arabic words that mean struggle and freedom. And that is our first product. And as soon as we sell enough of those,

we can move on, we can include more designs from our back catalog as well as new designs like the new ones coming for Rev Left Radio. Hell yeah. I wonder, is the first version still available or have you shut down those earlier designs? Well, right now, you know, because we don't have capital. And so all we can afford right now is to offer this one new product. And as soon as those sell out, we can. began to bring back some of the older designs as well as include new new designs so so yeah and this

you know it's a much better system it much better for us I mean for various reasons we had to stop our earlier setup and our first setup and then going to print on demand which is terrible because we get like we get like we get like like 2% of a profit. The print on demand company takes everything. I mean, they make it easy for people, but they take everything. So this new setup is much better for us that we can grow much faster. So the more we spread the word, the sooner we can bring back many of the other designs

and bring new designs and new products. Like I want to do jackets. I want to do, you know, like really cool. for example a bomber jacket with a hammer sickle on the back and many many other things so yeah that's what we're at so I'll definitely link to that

people should go buy the shirt you sent me of the shirt and I love it it's beautiful it shows solidarity with you know West Asia as you said broadly and of course Palestine in particular the quality of the fabric is really great you can tell it's a it's a genuine step up from earlier iterations, which themselves were good.

I have a shirt that is like from your early days that still holds up perfectly well. So those were still well-made products. And I know during COVID, it was very difficult when supply chains around the globe collapsed. It put a heavy burden on you and almost broke goods for the people. But you've come back. You've learned those lessons. And you're trying to move forward in a good way. So I encourage people, go support this, buy this shirt, show solidarity, support.

goods for the people and by doing so you help create the possibility for a second iteration of a Rev. Left design and just an expansion of these designs more broadly, which is a great thing. So I encourage people to do that. Is there anything else you'd want to say? Anything else you want to plug before we let you go, my friend? I mean, I can say something about, you know, what happens to fashion design has become a pure sphere of the bourgeois of liberalism and consumerism. but there's no reason that it has to be that way. You know, everything is corrupted by capitalism, and so is fashion design.

But it's as a vehicle in the marketplace of ideas, as a vehicle to spread class consciousness and awareness of revolutionary history, I think it can be a very effective vehicle. It can be a great tool for our purposes, not for some corporations to make money. But yeah. Absolutely.

All right. Well, again, I'll link to that in the show notes. Thank you again for coming on. The essay is great. I hope you continue to put out more work on goods media. I think it's really cool mixing your fashion design with these sort of intellectual forays into analysis and history. So keep up the amazing work. You always have a megaphone here.

Also, glitz for the people on substack. Because my medium account, which had a lot of followers, was just shut down, was deleted without explanation. They told me that I got a message that your medium account goes against our community standards. I think I, because I talked about, like, I don't know, I talked about Russia or I talked about China or something. Or did you talk about Palestine? No. Oh, wow. Okay.

Interesting. I think particularly Russia and Ukraine that God. my account shut down by this, by medium. Wow. I mean, there's, there's the freedom of speech for you. The bourgeois democracies. Yeah, exactly. Pathetic.

So, yeah. Goods for the people at on Substack and Goods for the People.com. Sweet. I'll link to those both. So thank you again and let's talk again soon. Thanks a lot and look forward to next time.