Pretty good interview, except for the transphobic nonsense which is just vulgar materialism

(where does “trans ideology” come from if there don't exist people who identify as trans* to base
this idea on?), and frankly unresolved discussion on the heightening contradictions between the
large Chinese bourgeoisie and the working class. The Party doesn't suppress the bourgeoisie, the
bourgeoisie are literally in the party (something Maoist-era CCP strongly advocated against,
even with its own right-deviations in M-L theory), and the Party represents them.

There have been no reduction of average working hours since 1970s reforms (as we saw in the
USSR, as the CPSU actively used planning to take advantage of its highly developed productive
forces, meaning you could legitimately lower working hours without experiencing a trade-off in
labour productivity as neoclassical economists assume). Relative poverty in China has increased,
and Chinese labour shares less in the portion of new value created, year-on-year (increasingly
shared by Capital).

Nominal wages in China have increased year-on-year, but relative, real wages don't keep pace
with productivity increases.

To say that post-Dengist CCP has “lifted millions out of poverty” is straight out of the neoliberal
World Bank, and isn't an argument a Marxist should ever use in good faith to defend socialism. It
remains cloaked in bourgeois deceptions, namely using GDP as a total measure of value-
producing labour.

GDP only roughly tracks with the production of exchange-values in a national economy, not
production of all use-values, which includes unpaid, unproductive work (in the Marxist sense)
like childcare and unproductive labour in public sector services (not reflected in GDP).
Bourgeois economists measure the United Nations so-called “poverty line” in dollar terms. If I
raise your (nominal) wages to $2.00/day from $1.50/day, but then cut your access to resources by
a quarter, break the ‘Iron Rice Bowl’, etc. then I have still technically “lifted you from poverty”,
according to the World Bank. Cutting access to valuable public services and privatization of
same (which also factors into your standard of living) notwithstanding.

The World Bank praises China for its “lifting tens of millions out of poverty” because it counts
the conversion of subsistence farmers into wage labourers as “bringing someone out of poverty”,
even if it ends with a reduction in their standard of living. And Capital is compelled to convert
the production of all use-values (e.g. subsistence farming) into exchange-values (e.g.
commodification of labour power), so...not exactly the basis for an argument advocating
socialism.

The World Bank isn't praising China because it's eliminating poverty (did it ever praise Cuba, or
the DPRK, or the USSR for much more effectively doing what it claims China's doing?)...it's
loudly pointing to China as an example that neoliberal capitalism “works”, on its own
myopic, bourgeois terms. That China is nominally “eliminating poverty” (in fact, while relative
poverty has increased and relative wages haven't) will only justify Western policymakers'
imposition of neoliberal austerity in their own countries, in service of their own ruling class.
That's all.

Marx never denied that Capitalism under certain conditions, could increase general prosperity
for a time before falling into crisis. Was 1920 – 1929 America “socialist”? Britain lifted millions
out of poverty in the post-war period because the destructive devaluation of capital restored the
process of capital accumulation. Did that make Britain from 1945 – 1971 “socialist”?

The working classes in the advanced capitalist countries were the most powerful they had ever
been during that time, thanks to the mass destruction of over-accumulated Capital, the opening of
new markets in Western Europe and Japan that were non-competitive with US labour, and the
cheap reconstruction of constant capital in Western Europe which allowed for industrial
capitalists to extract super-profits, thanks to great levels of currency devaluation during the war
and the fascist suppression of labour movements in Japan and Germany.

The cheap reconstruction of constant capital and demand for skilled labour, meant that industrial
capitalists – for a time – could afford to pay good wages out of the super-profits which tracked
with increases in labour productivity. The best year in relative terms for the US working class
was 1968 – 1969.

The post-war boom was quickly exhausted in the five year span following this, with the rising
organic composition of Capital leading to a falling general rate of profit and Nixon ending the
US dollar’s convertibility to gold (the true end of Keynesian-ism, even if Nixon continued to pay
lip service) meaning Keynesian policies (which were materially possible in the post-war
conditions) could no longer manage the crisis inherent in capitalist production, once the
contradictions between an ascendant working class and a capitalist class which seeks ever-
greater returns of profit intensified. The extraction of super-profits was no longer possible, Japan
and Germany's markets had become competitive with US labour again, and Capital had to move
manufacturing overseas because first-world labour became too expensive for the industrial
capitalists to profitably sustain.

Anyway, all of this to say that, no, nominal wage increases year-on-year do not mean China is
socialist; China is experiencing slower growth and falling consumption-to-GDP which indicates
an ever increasing over-accumulation of Capital. And “transgender ideology = trans* idealist =
bad” is vulgar materialism, no different from claiming that homosexuality emerges from
bourgeois decadence, that was bandied about in the early 20th century.