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  • However, the dismissal of hierarchies is a reactionary position because their structural purpose facilitates scaling complexity

    They mean efficiency.... Not complexity. Inherent complexity scales with the problem and its optimal solution. Hierarchies actually make a trade to add complexity and increase fragility to ease difficulty. In horizontal structures you'd have to do something across all your units which is simple but scales in difficulty across how many units you have. In a hierarchy you'd have to interact with the abstraction in the applicable way if it exists, which is more complex to understand but may be more efficient and simpler in comparison.

    So instead of having to ask 50 people who have the same function in different regions, you could ask 1 person who has power over that function in 50 regions. At the same time, if something were to happen to that one person you've just lost functionality in 50 regions.

    Also how is the dismissal of hierarchies a reactionary position when reactionary politics is inherently hierarchical? There are no horizontalist reactionaries because horrizontalism has never been the status quo ante for millenia? Are we just writing big words for fun?

    Consider how we perceive other people: when we speak to someone, we don’t track the billions of cells in their body or the firing of individual neurons.

    What? LOL. Are you serious? is this a serious argument? Where's the camera? You think I have the option of sitting there with a microscope looking at cells? Telling all my friends, if you were really my friend you'd let me open up that cranium and peep those neurons firing.

    The middle of the article is making an argument more for syndicalist sectarianism rather than Marxist Leninism. You cannot really fault vanguardists for not saying red philosopher kings out loud.

    The end of this article is extremely hand wavy. They basically state that transparency and accountability are "hard" and then cite an example from CPC, which honestly begs more questions than it has answers. What is the CPC actually doing other than arbitrarily "choosing" these things? How do they prevent themselves from not choosing them? In hindsight how effective was the campaign vs how effective could the campaign have been? Were decisions that could have made it more effective made for the right reasons? How about the decisions that made it less effective were they made for the wrong reasons? How did they align their incentives? How does this system improve?

    It ignores the fact that the CPC is self described as a consequentialist entity -- meaning it won't prioritize transparency since its actions are not required to meet deonotological facets (like transparency) of right and wrong.

    Likewise the advocacy of Marxist Leninism specifically means that it tacitly endorses the practices of democratic centralism which tend to add occlusion rather than transparency this is not addressed anywhere.

    It ends with just a statement:

    When imbued with transparency, recursive feedback loops, and a mandate to self-correct, hierarchy becomes a bridge to collective awareness.

    Okay, so like why doesn't just every communist hierarchy do that? Why hasn't every communist hierarchy historically done that?

    Feels like this is just ChatGPT for the left.

    • Hierarchies actually make a trade to add complexity and increase fragility to ease difficulty

      This just isn't true. At least when it comes to software or circuit design, which I am familiar with, the employment of hierarchies drastically simplifies both the design and the designing process. Let me give you a simple example problem that is pretty general and one I had an actual assignment on.

      Say you have a system with M clients and N workers. The clients generate jobs which are given to workers who process the jobs and send back results to the client.

      If you want all the clients to directly interface with all the workers, then you need to at the bare minimum (for a single job)

      1. Broadcast the job to every single worker (so every job generates N messages)
      2. Every worker needs to send back to the client a confirmation if they can handle the job or not. This is M confirmation messages
      3. The client may receive a yes from multiple workers, so it needs to select a single worker and tell everyone who will perform the job. This is another N messages.
      4. The selected worker can now perform the job and sends back the result to the client

      This is a total of 2N + M + 1 messages for a single job, which can be serious processing overhead depending on the nature of the task.

      Now you could reduce this overhead by sacrificing reliability or by reducing the connectivity of the network, but there is a more efficient way.

      Add a single controller. Now the process becomes

      1. The client sends the job to the controller.
      2. The controller sends a job to some worker. The controller knows which workers have spare capacity because it has memory of how many jobs it gave to which worker and how many jobs have been returned.
      3. The worker sends back the result to the controller
      4. The controller sends back the result to the client

      All in all, 4 messages. All while not sacrificing connectivity in the network or reliability.

      Now you might argue that the controller itself is overhead, and it is, however, if you remove the controller you need additional overhead in the workers and clients to handle the logic that the controller is doing. In fact, it's even more overhead in that case because the workers and clients need to handle much more messages and a more complex logic. And this is multiplied over many workers and clients instead of being in just 1 controller.

      You might also argue that this is just a dumb college homework problem, but it is a very general type of problem because the workers and clients can represent a huge class of actors from humans in a company to robots on a factory.

      The only actual downside of this system is that there is just 1 failure point, that is, the controller. And this is true. The hierarchial version is more fragile against adversarial attacks. But it is also easier to defend a single failure point than defending an entire network of more autonomous actors. So this is a tradeoff rather than a true downside.

      • I generally agree with the scenario you've set up but there are some misunderstandings here.

        This is a total of 2N + M + 1 messages for a single job, which can be serious processing overhead depending on the nature of the task.

        This is a measure of difficulty not complexity. You're right that with a large network size this makes a lot of data that is more difficult to process, but it's actually simple not complex. The complexity of this is still fairly simple a linear O(n) because your messages grow linearly relative to the amount of jobs your process.

        A more complex scenario is that if your design had a flaw that generated 2N2 + M + 1 messages by adding a superfluous for loop somewhere, then your complexity would be O(n2) relative to the amount of your jobs your process.

        If you're digging a hole difficulty is based on how mechanized/big your shovel is relative to the size of the hole. If you're digging a 2x2 hole 6 feet down with a gardening trowel it's hard, it's easier with a full size shovel, it's incredibly easy with a backhoe.

        If you're digging a hole, complexity on the other hand is what you must do to prevent all the ways that the earth can collapse on you based on the dimensions of your hole, the type of soil you dig in, etc. A 2x2 6 foot hole straight down is a less complex than digging a 2x2 hole 6 feet horizontally into a mountain, because your hole can collapse not only based on the sides but from the cave-in above. Despite removing the same volume of earth you have a more complex task because you must scaffold to remove the risk of cave-in. There's also dimensions of soil composition etc.

        Complexity typically affects difficulty but difficulty never affects complexity. Sometimes complexity can also be fully detached from difficulty it depends on the actual problem.

        You are making the same mistake OP made.

        The controller sends a job to some worker. The controller knows which workers have spare capacity because it has memory of how many jobs it gave to which worker and how many jobs have been returned.

        This is where you hide the actual complexity in controller based designs. The complexity of offloading the state management from the individual node to a controller node is not simple in the general case. Hierarchical organization here only reduces the difficulty of processing by reducing the amount of data overhead. Reducing complexity here comes through standardization of nodes in the system not through hierarchical organization.

        You can make really simple assumptions about capacity if your network is made of nodes that are all the same (and your workload domain is well bounded and understood), however as soon as you vary the specifications of the nodes and the workload requirements this becomes an incredibly complex calculation to figure out where a job can go based on available memory, compute, storage and other needs.

        This becomes even more complex if you need to handle specialized functions that exist only on certain nodes and not others, such as availability of NPUs for AI tasks, availability of hardware enabled transcoding for media management tasks, availability of randomization hardware for crytpographic tasks, etc.

        Ultimately this is why horizontal job runners based on messaging middle-ware patterns (0mq, rabbitmq, Kafka) still exist and are used in highly complex environments.

        Moving on to the social implications of this approach, reducing complexity this way is quite literally not applicable to human systems. You cannot ensure fungible nodes for humans where each node has the human equivalent of 32 GB RAM, 4 VCPUs at 3.2 GHZ and 100 GB storage. If we did that to humans that would be called eugenics.

        You cannot make the complexity from non-uniformity in human systems superfluous like you can in computer systems. It's immoral. Humans are not computers.

        I can program a system to work any way that I want sure. If I want local durability I can make a mesh. If I want to lower the communications overhead I can centralize decision making in a controller structure.

        I cannot program humans in the same way and nor should I think about it as such because:

        1. Humans are not computational machines, they have their own motivations, biases and needs
        2. Programming humans this way is not just impossible but at best is just paternalism by another name warts and all.

        To apply system design to humans a system has conceive at minimum of the dimensions of power and faith to be durable against:

        1. Humans with powerful roles in the system who are acting in bad faith causing harm for personal benefit
        2. Humans with weak roles in the system that are acting in good faith against a resilient system that is effectively harming them
        3. Humans with powerful roles in the system who are acting in good faith but are making mistakes that lead to harm that they do not recognize/dismiss
        4. Humans with weak roles in the system that are acting in bad faith against the system
        5. Humans with powerful roles in the system that are acting in bad faith against the system.

        This is a level of complexity that is much harder than designing a job runner with specific properties for your use-case.

        Socialist theory-crafting in 2025 at the level of typical systems design maps is not helpful or insightful. It's the equivalent of physics research in 2025 using the Bohr model. In tech terms, your base of concern should start at things like durable consensus algorithms and Byzantine faults. If you start there you are ensuring that the technology you apply to your social organization explicitly protects in priority order the values or outcomes you specify. I think this is a viable method for human organization especially because it encodes the typical outcomes and injustices that are part of the system's function explicitly. Everything is a trade off.

        However concerning yourself with communications overhead is a 20th century problem. We have technological solutions that minimize those concerns, we simply haven't developed political systems matching our level of technology. Building durable cybernetic systems like Project Cybersyn or OGAS are the pathways to ensuring a systemic socialism when these systems are open, transparent to average citizens and developed in partnership with their needs.

        TL;DR, my criticism here is that we are talking about aspects of systems design that are only important historically and the conversations focus ultimately misleads us in how we build these systems, leading to worse outcomes. We are mainly talking about the difficulty of human communication between horizontal and vertical structure, but not about the complexity of human relations those systems apply to.

        • The complexity of this is still linear O(n) because your messages grow linearly relative to the size of your network.

          In terms of big O complexity you are correct that it is linear growth. However, the other solution has constant messaging complexity. So there was still an improvement in complexity.

          Although, I should also clarify that we were not exactly discussing big O complexity to begin with, and the use of the word "complexity" was a bit more colloquial.

          The complexity of offloading the state management from the individual node to a controller node is not simple in the general case.

          This is true. I should have been more clear about this. Most likely with more complex and less standardized actors there will need to be periodic re-synchronization with the controller since the controller will only be estimating the state of the workers based on memory (which will become more inaccurate over time).

          On a per job basis, there is still more or less the constant overhead instead of linear overhead. It is just that overall for the organization there will be linear overhead. However, in the purely horizontal case, the organization overall will have a quadratic overhead (since the total number of links is O(n^2))

          Hierarchical organization here only reduces the difficulty of processing by reducing the amount of data overhead. Reducing complexity here comes through standardization of nodes in the system not through hierarchical organization.

          On the contrary, I think it is the other way around. Standardized nodes need to share less information to each other because the nodes can make more assumptions about other nodes. This reduces data overhead. However, the architecture of the network itself determines the node complexity.

          Ultimately this is why horizontal job runners based on messaging middle-ware patterns (0mq, rabbitmq, Kafka) still exist and are used in highly complex environments.

          I cannot comment on this, as my knowledge of computer science comes largely from random electives I took for fun.

          You cannot ensure fungible nodes for humans

          This is a given, however, nowhere in my example was the internal nature of the nodes themselves assumed to be uniform. The messaging schemes I have described, for instance, could be used with actual humans, with some modifications, namely that some of the "messages" would likely be more like "meetings", and the workers would have to periodically meet with the project planner and discuss things.

          I cannot program humans

          I am not talking about programming humans, but the schemes they use to coordinate with each other. Those are 2 entirely different things.

          To apply system design to humans a system has conceive at minimum of the dimensions of power and faith to be durable against:

          1. Democratic centralist systems always stress accountability for people in powerful positions. This is the reason why ML states often get slandered as being "corrupt", because in ML countries, such corruption is constantly being exposed by design whereas in capitalist countries, corruption is simply the norm and goes unnoticed.
          2. A horizontal system could also harm you. The free market is a relatively horizontal system, and it keeps harming us. The very decentralized nature of the free market makes it so that you often have no recourse or no one to hold accountable when things go wrong, because the actions of the entire group/ dynamic of the system is the problem.

          This is a level of complexity that is much harder than designing a job runner with specific properties for your use-case.

          The example of the job-runner is not meant to be one that you can build a society on. It is simply the comparison of some of the simplest possible schemes for communication for a project. It exists to illustrate the complexity reduction that can be achieved with a hierarchical design for a specific problem class.

          It’s the equivalent of physics research in 2025 using the Bohr model.

          But this is not research, this is simply an internet forum. I appreciate the things you are telling me, but I did not come here knowing these things. I am also not saying that the communications overhead problem is a problem that needs to be solved on the theoretical level.

          Building durable cybernetic systems like Project Cybersyn or OGAS are the pathways to ensuring a systemic socialism when these systems are open, transparent to average citizens and developed in partnership with their needs.

          I doubt you will find many MLs opposed to this.

          • Although, I should also clarify that we were not exactly discussing big O complexity to begin with, and the use of the word “complexity” was a bit more colloquial.

            Which is why my original post offered the term efficiency that OP rejected and insisted on using complexity.

            I am not talking about programming humans, but the schemes they use to coordinate with each other. Those are 2 entirely different things.

            These are not "simply" coordination schemes since they are created entirely to administer the distribution of resources in the real world. They are social meta programming. You are arguing beyond aspects of coordination/communication you are arguing about real world stakes.

            This is a given, however, nowhere in my example was the internal nature of the nodes themselves assumed to be uniform. The messaging schemes I have described, for instance, could be used with actual humans, with some modifications, namely that some of the “messages” would likely be more like “meetings”, and the workers would have to periodically meet with the project planner and discuss things.

            Again you are abstracting away the purpose of such a system in order to prove its specifications in a vacuum rather than using the actual intent. What are the meetings about? Production? Great we're back at node fungibility due to distribution of labor and individual human ability.

            Democratic centralist systems always stress accountability for people in powerful positions. This is the reason why ML states often get slandered as being “corrupt”, because in ML countries, such corruption is constantly being exposed by design whereas in capitalist countries, corruption is simply the norm and goes unnoticed.

            Sure. I agree. However:

            1. Your argument here is based on a hypothetical demcen system full of good faith actors.
            2. The reason that in capitalist countries corruption becomes legalized and normalized is because "corruption" in the general case boils down to perception. We're back at interpreting good faith vs bad faith. Capitalist propaganda works overtime to manage the perception of the legalized corruption in capitalist countries to at best normal expressions of rights and at worst good faith mistakes.

            A horizontal system could also harm you. The free market is a relatively horizontal system, and it keeps harming us. The very decentralized nature of the free market makes it so that you often have no recourse or no one to hold accountable when things go wrong, because the actions of the entire group/ dynamic of the system is the problem.

            It's entirely arguable if the market is in practice horizontal or hierarchical. Regardless my arguments here aren't about proving horrizontalism as "better than", it's about the complex trade offs happen socially when choosing these broad structural archetypes to organize around. I never said horrizontal systems cannot be harmful. My point is that the difficulty of horizontal systems can be a form protection.

            But this is not research, this is simply an internet forum. I appreciate the things you are telling me, but I did not come here knowing these things. I am also not saying that the communications overhead problem is a problem that needs to be solved on the theoretical level.

            My point is based on OPs original submission and my understanding that your position was a defense of it. OP submitted OP's own essay from OP's own substack with a pro-heirarchy case. I criticized the essay as generally lacking depth on the subject. OP got mad at me and started berating me based on OP's socialist bona fides.

            I could have been gentler with my criticism because I did not understand that OP posted OP's own substack because the names don't match. I understand that not everybody knows these things, my line of criticism while admittedly harsh and teetering on unproductive, is honestly meant to raise the conversation from simplistic defenses of hierarchy using typical bromides of the immortal science to a more holistic evaluation of these systems and their implementation and conception of socialism.

            • Your argument here is based on a hypothetical demcen system full of good faith actors.

              Part of the point of the DemCen system is to increase the prevalence of good-faith actors and decrease the prevalence of bad faith ones. It is not as if MLs have historically just ignored education of the youth or the cultivation of good faith actors.

              Regardless my arguments here aren’t about proving horizontalism as “better than”

              Then what are we even arguing about?

              • Part of the point of the DemCen system is to increase the prevalence of good-faith actors and decrease the prevalence of bad faith ones. It is not as if MLs have historically just ignored education of the youth or the cultivation of good faith actors.

                This doesn't practically explain the how. You're talking about building patronage networks. That effectively means that those networks themselves can be evaluated as good or bad faith. This just moves the question to another area of the political structure typical of DemCen systems.

                Then what are we even arguing about?

                When reading theory I don't see us as being on "teams". What's the purpose of writing this stuff if we're evaluating this solely through the lens of "teams"? At that point any article might as well say "Right Marxist Leninism is the best". It's a bad argument it could be better. I'm not even settled on what the "ultimate system" here is, I don't think there is one, especially not as simple as just do "hierarchy". If we want to converse about this stuff in good faith we should generally have a complex conversation about it in reality, that often means there's a lot of grey areas and not a lot of practically right answers if we're being honest with ourselves.

                Like I've said elsewhere in this thread: CPC's done a really good job, but they're not in the business of exporting socialist thought. I linked this

                The CPC's own words are:

                Second, while continuing to learn from and absorb ideas from other countries, we have made our own explorations and innovations to avoid blindly copying the system or democratic model of any other country

                While leading the people through the periods of revolution, construction, and reform, the CPC always held fast to the belief that no two political systems in the world are the same and that no universal political model exists.

                This is a very adult way of speaking about socialism compared to other sets of thinkers who argue implicitly about universal contexts, and universalize ML concepts without explaining their application to their context or even explaining what their context is. If you believe in whatever theory and whatever individual practices, the onus is on you to explain why those practices work in the contexts you're referring to. OP has not done this vis-a-vis hierarchy. They have created a very abstract rationale.

    • They mean efficiency… Not complexity. Inherent complexity scales with the problem and its optimal solution.

      No, I meant complexity and I even gave concrete examples throughout the article.

      In horizontal structures you’d have to do something across all your units which is simple but scales in difficulty across how many units you have.

      Maybe read up on the concept of division of labour.

      So instead of having to ask 50 people who have the same function in different regions, you could ask 1 person who has power over that function in 50 regions. At the same time, if something were to happen to that one person you’ve just lost functionality in 50 regions.

      No, you have a delegate for the 50 people. Why you'd claim that delegates have power over people the represent is beyond me. I guess people growing up under capitalism naturally have slave mentality.

      Also how is the dismissal of hierarchies a reactionary position when reactionary politics is inherently hierarchical? There are no horizontalist reactionaries because horrizontalism has never been the status quo ante for millenia? Are we just writing big words for fun?

      Did ChatGPT write this?

      What? LOL. Are you serious? is this a serious argument?

      Yes it's a serious argument.

      You think I have the option of sitting there with a microscope looking at cells?

      You should put a bit more work into your trolling. At least try to engage with the point being made.

      The middle of the article is making an argument more for syndicalist sectarianism rather than Marxist Leninism. You cannot really fault vanguardists for not saying red philosopher kings out loud.

      Syndicalists literally advocate the same thing as Marxists in terms of organization. You'd know that if you spent any time learning about the subject you're attempting to opine on.

      The end of this article is extremely hand wavy.

      I literally give concrete examples, but sure bud.

      It ignores the fact that the CPC is self described as a consequentialist entity – meaning it won’t prioritize transparency since its actions are not required to meet deonotological facets (like transparency) of right and wrong.

      LMFAO what are you even talking about?

      Okay, so like why doesn’t just every communist hierarchy do that? Why hasn’t every communist hierarchy historically done that?

      They have and continue to do so.

      Feels like this is just ChatGPT for the left.

      I'd be so insulted by that if you weren't such an obvious troll.

      • No, I meant complexity and I even gave concrete examples throughout the article.

        Yeah but you're not disentangling complexity as an independent factor. You squish it into difficulty and other factors, and you ignore those other factors when they're against your argument.

        Beyond that scaling complexity typically means that the larger your problem size is the less complex it is per size unit. e.g. A country of 500 people is more complex to govern per capita than a country of 500,000 people. You don't make it clear by providing actual data to that or against that effect. You have a couple of fuzzy examples in disparate dimensions but not a clear measure of what you mean.

        Maybe read up on the concept of division of labour.

        Division of labor does not mean that you must inherently create hierarchies and cannot do horizontal decision making. Hierarchy simply creates higher order functions, these functions don't need to be higher order if they are spread out across distinct units.

        Likewise as a Marxist you're doing yourself a disservice basing any argument on the division of labor when Marx identified it as one of the primary causes of alienation and a method of control in his theory of the social division of labor. Furthermore Marx advocated for the dissolution of the division of labor under socialism because division of labor is quite literally the basis of classism.

        No, you have a delegate for the 50 people. Why you’d claim that delegates have power over people the represent is beyond me. I guess people growing up under capitalism naturally have slave mentality.

        What are you even talking about? I'm literally saying horrizontalism vs hierachy is, you have a Department of Energy in every region or you have 1 national Department of Energy that controls energy in all regions. Of course the hierarchical Department of Energy has power over all the regions energy. Other wise what's the point?

        Syndicalists literally advocate the same thing as Marxists in terms of organization. You’d know that if you spent any time learning about the subject you’re attempting to opine on.

        Very funny because traditionally syndicalism has always had problems with sectarianism based on labor function, and even the largest and best syndicalist orgs in history have had horrible stances on women in the workplace compared to even just the Bolsheviks. The IWW historically was the only good one in that they accepted women and heard them out, but they were still fairly chauvanist in their gender relations.

        Did ChatGPT write this?

        You wrote "this is reactionary" without actually explaining how it's reactionary. That's not my fault.

        You should put a bit more work into your trolling. At least try to engage with the point being made.

        The point being made is just naturalism. There's no logical connection to be made between the reason that humans communicate human to human (rather than cell group to cell group) and hierarchical organization. This again just begs more questions for what the actual criteria is here. I have cells in my body that are designed to be expendable, so it naturally follows that some people in the hierarchy are expendable right? If that's right then on it's face it's gross, if that's wrong then why even create a naturalist argument? You don't engage with the trade offs especially the moral trade offs of following biological models in one instance and not the other.

        It's not even a good example because your argument rephrased is "Humans are an abstraction for a collection of cells", which is morally and factually wrong. Morally because humans shouldn't be an abstraction, and factually because there are aspects of human minds and bodies that are effectively not mapped/mappable to basal cell functions. E.g. why is a heart shaped like that is a question that cannot be answered by the collection of cells being abstracted, but why does TCP/IP use a 3 way handshake can be answered by the properties of network communication that are being abstracted.

        I literally give concrete examples, but sure bud.

        No you don't you say things like:

        Under democratic centralism, representatives remain recallable by their electors, policies undergo open debate before finalization, and all authority ultimately derives from and answers to the collective will of the working class.

        This is not an example, this is School House Rock USSR Edition. You're giving me the "United States has 3 branches of government that are governed by a system of checks and balances ensuring democratic representation that respects the rights of the people while enacting the will of the people." You don't actually engage with how democratic centralism worked in practice, nor do you ask any contra-positives regarding if demcen prevented the things you claim it supported.

        LMFAO what are you even talking about?

        Whole process people's democracy is literally a consequential model. It doesn't prioritize liberal deontological expressions of rights, it instead collects input from various strata and it prioritizes the analyzing the consequences of governance in hindsight. It's worked fairly well for China but as a consequential hierarchical model it is highly subjective to the whims of elites, meaning it's not possible to be replicated systemically. Taking the CPC at their word there is nothing technical about their process that creates systemic durability. It is simply that they choose to grade themselves in a particular way. They choose to be good people. An obvious example of this is that Xi notes that voting rights are important. In China people can only vote for the 2 lowest national congresses, every congress votes for delegates in the congress above it. So the question is what purpose does this actually serve? If the argument is that we choose to evaluate ourselves this way, we reflect the will of the people, why not directly elect national congresses? Why risk breeding patronage networks? Why not have deontological democracy instead of consequentialist democracy if the argument boils down to we choose to be good? It's not like the system is even set up so that the CPC can practically be defeated only rebuked.

        Likewise the Chinese congress system is incredibly complex, not very simple and creates an extremely large class of legislators. There's something like 100,000 legislators among all congresses, spread out on 5 levels and across multiple districts. It doesn't "scale complexity" at all.

        They have and continue to do so.

        This is quite literally not true. Easy example is voting in the USSR required ballot spoilage to vote against official candidates. There have been plenty of historical examples of creating ineffective feedback loops and lack of transparency.

        I’d be so insulted by that if you weren’t such an obvious troll.

        I'm sorry you feel this way.

        • Yeah but you’re not disentangling complexity as an independent factor. You squish it into difficulty and other factors, and you ignore those other factors when they’re against your argument.

          I'm identifying complexity as a major factor, and I give numerous examples of how abstractions facilitated by hierarchical models help manage complexity. You never provide any counterpoint to anything I say.

          Beyond that scaling complexity typically means that the larger your problem size is the less complex it is per size unit. e.g. A country of 500 people is more complex to govern per capita than a country of 500,000 people. You don’t make it clear by providing actual data to that or against that effect. You have a couple of fuzzy examples in disparate dimensions but not a clear measure of what you mean.

          I do make it clear, but I can use your example as well. There is a reason why governance in pretty much every existing functional state is hierarchical. You have town councils that deal problems at city level, then you have provincial governments that coordinate between cities, you have federal governments to coordinate between provinces. Each one is a level of abstraction. The provincial government does not care about inner workings of a city, they care about inputs and outputs. Similarly, federal governments let provinces manage their internal affairs, while coordinating between provinces. Hierarchies facilitate encapsulation of concerns.

          In fact, this works the same way in nature as well. The human body can be seen as an ecosystem of many different organisms coexisting and forming hierarchical structures. You have cells that organize into specific organs, and this results in division of labour with each organ handling a specific function. The organs don't need to concern themselves with the internal workings of other organs to operate. Meanwhile, the nervous system and the brain acts as a top level coordination mechanism that manages the affairs of the body as a whole and mediates interaction with the external world. You don't consciously think about the workings of your kidneys, the beating of your heart, or every single muscle contraction that your body does. You think of it in abstract terms such as your limbs that you see as tools for accomplishing tasks you want to do. This is the exact same use of abstraction. It's a similar type of solution that evolved under selection pressures to solve a similar type of problem.

          Likewise as a Marxist you’re doing yourself a disservice basing any argument on the division of labor when Marx identified it as one of the primary causes of alienation and a method of control in his theory of the social division of labor. Furthermore Marx advocated for the dissolution of the division of labor under socialism because division of labor is quite literally the basis of classism.

          As a Marxist who actually read Marx, I know for a fact that Marx identified capitalist relations as the actual problem that causes alienation. Marx understood the necessity of the division of labour and he referred to it as socialized labour later in his works to highlight the difference between division of labour under capitalism and socialism. Maybe try actually reading Marx, especially past volume 1 of Das Kapial.

          What are you even talking about? I’m literally saying horrizontalism vs hierachy is, you have a Department of Energy in every region or you have 1 national Department of Energy that controls energy in all regions. Of course the hierarchical Department of Energy has power over all the regions energy. Other wise what’s the point?

          The point is coordination as I explained in detail in the original article. The fact that you can only see hierarchies in terms of dominance shows incredible amounts of myopia.

          Very funny because traditionally syndicalism has always had problems with sectarianism based on labor function, and even the largest and best syndicalist orgs in history have had horrible stances on women in the workplace compared to even just the Bolsheviks. The IWW historically was the only good one in that they accepted women and heard them out, but they were still fairly chauvanist in their gender relations.

          Meanwhile, here's what the reality of flat organization looks like https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

          You wrote “this is reactionary” without actually explaining how it’s reactionary. That’s not my fault.

          Yeah, it is your fault for being a reactionary and not even realizing it.

          The point being made is just naturalism.

          No, the point being made is not just naturalism. That's just a lazy straw man you're building. I've expanded on the point above, try reading and actually comprehending what is being said to you so you can respond to it meaningfully.

          It’s not even a good example because your argument rephrased is “Humans are an abstraction for a collection of cells”, which is morally and factually wrong.

          That's once again just a straw man you're building. What's actually being said to you is that we don't car about every single detail of how our bodies are structured, nor are these details meaningful to us day to day. The level of abstraction we operate on allows us to avoid worrying about details that are not relevant. This is the problem that hierarchical reasoning solves that's present within flat structures. I can think of a body that has limbs, that have muscles tissues and bones, that have cells, and so on. It is possible to focus on a particular aspect of this incredibly complex structure and reason about it at the level of its operation that's relevant in a particular context. It's a fundamental aspect of how our minds manage the complexity of the world.

          E.g. why is a heart shaped like that is a question that cannot be answered by the collection of cells being abstracted, but why does TCP/IP use a 3 way handshake can be answered by the properties of network communication that are being abstracted.

          Completely tangential to the point I'm making which is that you don't even have to think about why or how your heart functions in order to benefit from its operation. Your mind operates at a level of abstraction in relation to your body where the internal function of the heart is entirely opaque to you.

          This is not an example, this is School House Rock USSR Edition. You’re giving me the “United States has 3 branches of government that are governed by a system of checks and balances ensuring democratic representation that respects the rights of the people while enacting the will of the people.” You don’t actually engage with how democratic centralism worked in practice, nor do you ask any contra-positives regarding if demcen prevented the things you claim it supported.

          The US has been structured as an oligarchy from the start, and the system is explicitly designed to serve the interests of the rich. Entire books have been written on this subject.

          https://archive.org/details/DemocracyForTheFew16147062951821

          On the other hand, we have a concrete example of how democratic centralism is working in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Loas improving lives of the people each and every day. Again, whole books are available discussing this subject. Yet, here you are pretending that I said something controversial that needs extraordinary proof. If you're genuinely ignorant on the subject and want to educate yourself, which I doubt, then here are a couple of books you can get started with:

          Whole process people’s democracy is literally a consequential model. It doesn’t prioritize liberal deontological expressions of rights, it instead collects input from various strata and it prioritizes the analyzing the consequences of governance in hindsight.

          LMFAO liberal rights literally exist to justify capitalism. Liberalism is an ideology with two primary facets: political liberalism and economic liberalism. Political liberalism emphasizes individual freedoms, democracy, and human rights, while economic liberalism is essentially capitalism, focused on free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects are inherently incompatible. While political liberalism may appear to champion the people’s cause against oppressive regimes, once in power, it inevitably prioritizes economic liberalism, protecting the interests of the wealthy elite at the expense of the majority.

          Private property rights are central to liberal ideology, serving as the foundation of individual freedom. However, liberalism’s defence of private property amounts to the protection of minority wealth at the expense of the communal good. Liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property, which it enshrines as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing it from political debate. Thus liberalism perpetuates a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many while presenting itself as a champion of freedom and democracy.

          https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/

          Taking the CPC at their word there is nothing technical about their process that creates systemic durability.

          This shows profound ignorance of how CPC actually works. Here's a western article explaining in detail how CPC uses decentralized and local decision making at grassroots level, and that feeds into the central planning system.

          https://www.noemamag.com/what-the-west-misunderstands-about-power-in-china/

          It’s not like the system is even set up so that the CPC can practically be defeated only rebuked.

          That's right, that's what class dictatorship is. The system is explicitly set up to prevent a bourgeoisie counter revolution. You're so close to getting it!

          • Likewise the Chinese congress system is incredibly complex, not very simple and creates an extremely large class of legislators. There’s something like 100,000 legislators among all congresses, spread out on 5 levels and across multiple districts. It doesn’t “scale complexity” at all.

            Oh jeez, I wonder how many people actually live in China... oh right!

            This is quite literally not true. Easy example is voting in the USSR required ballot spoilage to vote against official candidates. There have been plenty of historical examples of creating ineffective feedback loops and lack of transparency.

            Anybody who thinks that any system is going to be free of problems and lead to some sort of an utopia is naive beyond belief. Yes, USSR had problems just as every human society has problems. Does that invalidate the way the system worked overall? Obviously not.

          • This is incredibly tiring because you seem to be willfully misrepresenting what I'm saying. By linking Freeman you link a writer that actually explains their point with examples and systems rather than cribbing a Lenin style of writing and using thought terminating cliches like reactionary, you seem to be willfully talking past my points.

            You're also misreading Freeman because the Tyranny of Sturcturlessness isn't anti-horrizontalist it actually explains via contrapostiives and trade offs issues inherent to horizontal organization, how to overcome them, and the effects of bad horizontal organization. You are stanning hierarchy, but you do not explain it's difficulties. Sturcturelesness is quite literally a standard in anarchist libraries because it talks about practical issues and how to overcome them. You do not do this in your piece. You make snide comments about other "lesser" systems while shallowly describing your preference.

            You also do not account for the fact that the issues explained in the Tyranny of Structurelessness quite literally apply to hierarchical systems. Hierarchical systems become star systems as well, except the hierarchies tend to reinforce the selection of the stardom. In fact stardom is much more dangerous in hierarchical systems because it often leads to explicit schisms and outright warfare between the party leadership. Stardom in hierarchical systems allows stars to wield explicit top down power which leads to extreme infighting that has been common in almost every ML* government and between ML* governments when the USSR didn't like things. That's why the USSR had succession crises.

            You don't even talk about how Dengist reforms allowed China to overcome the typical succession crisis issues found in ML* governments. Quite literally China has had 3 successful peaceful and stable transitions of paramount leaders after Deng. You never ask why or how, despite this being a crucial development compared to other socialist countries and their succession crises.

            This is exactly why I am criticizing your piece as shallow and thought terminating.

            I'm pretty tired of being misrepresented especially with lulzy things like:

            That’s right, that’s what class dictatorship is. The system is explicitly set up to prevent a bourgeoisie counter revolution. You’re so close to getting it!

            Because you're willfully misinterpreting me in bad faith, because the whole problem I'm trying to explain is that you're not actually providing a systemic explanation for this. I've said this many times and using many examples.

            China is a DOTP until it isn't, that's the problem. You don't even explain how China's structure has maintained the DOTP, because if you did you'd sound too lib for your own liking. In reality the Dengist reforms that allowed China to stabilize and keep itself on the rails were in large part term limits.

            Deng also did some fucking magic, but it's because he was magic just like Mao was magic and Lenin was magic. Cat theory analogues have literally wrecked plenty of socialist countries. If you care about the DOTP so much you'd be asking why cat theory was successful under Deng, but Kadars' NEM which was ideologically the same process put HPR under the heel of foreign investment debt leading to outright liberalism.

            I don't subscribe to great man theories. Durable socialism isn't going to be built by cribbing the "hard times" cliche but making it red and saying "good men create good times who create good men who create good times let the good times roll". That's what liberals think, quite literally, that all everyone has to do is just "be good". I'm interested in talking about building durable socialist systems because I understand that revolutions are betrayed over time piece by piece.

            Nobody should buy this on faith. The Marxist tradition isn't supposed to be scripture, this is supposed to be scientific. You are proselytizing, you are not analyzing or building systems.

            China has managed to pull this off in a very unique way, and that's great for them. That doesn't mean it's a replicable example, nor do they actually present their system as such.

            I am to blame for some of this because I set the tone. I am sorry for that. I didn't know you were linking your own writing, I thought you were linking some guy, so I could have been nicer with my criticisms. It was not obvious to me that you were actually the writer.

            • This is incredibly tiring because you seem to be willfully misrepresenting what I’m saying. By linking Freeman you link a writer that actually explains their point with examples and systems rather than cribbing a Lenin style of writing and using thought terminating cliches like reactionary, you seem to be willfully talking past my points.

              I'm not misrepresenting anything you're saying. What Freeman shows is that power structures form in ad hoc fashion within flat organization, and it's often narcissists, psychopaths, and other types of manipulators who end up in charge of these structures. I'm directly addressing your points, and pointing out the fallacy of your argument.

              The reality is that power structures organically form within flat organization, and the reason this happens are explained in detail in my original article. The difference is that when these structures form in ad hoc fashion, there is far less accountability than when they're created with intention.

              You also do not account for the fact that the issues explained in the Tyranny of Structurelessness quite literally apply to hierarchical systems.

              Literally the whole point of having explicit hierarchies is precisely to address the problems discussed in Tyranny of Structurelessness. When hierarchies are created consciously, then you can implement things like recall of delegates, elections, and other levers of accountability.

              Stardom in hierarchical systems allows stars to wield explicit top down power which leads to extreme infighting that has been common in almost every ML* government and between ML* governments when the USSR didn’t like things. That’s why the USSR had succession crises.

              Either you're intentionally misrepresenting the way USSR, or any other ML government functions, or you're not qualified to discuss the subject you're attempting to debate here.

              You don’t even talk about how Dengist reforms allowed China to overcome the typical succession crisis issues found in ML* governments. Quite literally China has had 3 successful peaceful and stable transitions of paramount leaders after Deng. You never ask why or how, despite this being a crucial development compared to other socialist countries and their succession crises.

              You set up a false premise and then proceed to build a straw man on top of it. Your 'critique' is shallow and thought terminating. It fails to engage with the mechanics of Deng deforms, the history, and the material conditions that set the stage for them. It's reductive to the point of being meaningless.

              Because you’re willfully misinterpreting me in bad faith, because the whole problem I’m trying to explain is that you’re not actually providing a systemic explanation for this. I’ve said this many times and using many examples.

              Except that I did provide a systemic explanation for this with numerous examples which you either ignored or misrepresented because you're incapable of having a discussion in good faith it seems.

              n reality the Dengist reforms that allowed China to stabilize and keep itself on the rails were in large part term limits.

              This is pure and utter nonsense, and the books I linked in the prior comment explain in great detail why. This is precisely why it's so exhausting to have discussion with people who hold strong opinions on subjects they have superficial understanding of.

              Deng also did some fucking magic, but it’s because he was magic just like Mao was magic and Lenin was magic.

              Deng didn't do any magic, he built directly on the work that was started before him. Again, refer to the books I linked above for details if you genuinely want to understand the subject you're attempting to debate. Deng reforms follow directly from the conditions that were created during Mao period.

              I don’t subscribe to great man theories.

              Quite hilarious of you to say that without a hint of irony after peddling great man theory claiming that Deng did some magic, instead of recognizing the material and historical basis for Deng reforms.

              Nobody should buy this on faith. The Marxist tradition isn’t supposed to be scripture, this is supposed to be scientific. You are proselytizing, you are not analyzing or building systems.

              What I actually did was explain the problem hierarchies solve and the reasons they emerge in many different contexts. The only one proselytizing here is you with your dogmatic peddling of flat organization.

              China has managed to pull this off in a very unique way, and that’s great for them. That doesn’t mean it’s a replicable example, nor do they actually present their system as such.

              Yes, China managed to adapt to their material conditions the same way Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, and Laos all adapted to their own conditions. The details of each systems are specific to their conditions, but the core methodology is the same.

              I am to blame for some of this because I set the tone.

              That does not excuse engaging in bad faith arguments that you've continued to make throughout this discussion.

              • I’m not misrepresenting anything you’re saying. What Freeman shows is that power structures form in ad hoc fashion within flat organization, and it’s often narcissists, psychopaths, and other types of manipulators who end up in charge of these structures. I’m directly addressing your points, and pointing out the fallacy of your argument.

                The reality is that power structures organically form within flat organization, and the reason this happens are explained in detail in my original article. The difference is that when these structures form in ad hoc fashion, there is far less accountability than when they’re created with intention.

                You're doing the exact same thing. Again.

                You're axiomatically saying flat systems allow bad actors but hierarchies are resistant to bad actors because hierarchies are created by good guys with good intentions. You offer no proof, there are glaring contradictions. This is going nowhere.

                • You’re axiomatically saying flat systems allow bad actors but hierarchies are resistant to bad actors because hierarchies are created by good guys with good intentions. You offer no proof, there are glaring contradictions. This is going nowhere.

                  I'm saying that once you understand the problems hierarchies solve and the reasons they form within different contexts, human and otherwise, then it becomes obvious that they necessarily will form within flat structures as they attempt to scale.

                  You keep bleating about "glaring contradictions" but you have yet to articulate any. What you've done through this whole discussion is to studiously ignore the actual points being made while making demonstrably false claims. This is indeed going nowhere.

    • syndicalist sectarianism

      Isn't this the boutique shop ideology created literally for some video game whose name I cannot remember?

      You cannot really fault vanguardists for not saying red philosopher kings out loud.

      I'm glad you understand. After all, it would be embarrassing to start talking about "philosopher kings" after having placed so much effort into developing the mass line and democratic centralisation precisely to give the people more power.

      What is the CPC actually doing other than arbitrarily “choosing” these things?

      https://thetricontinental.org/studies-1-socialist-construction/

      • Isn’t this the boutique shop ideology created literally for some video game whose name I cannot remember?

        ??? This is literally the observation that hard line Leninists make about syndicalism, that it fractures the proletariat around shop lines creating sectarianism based on labor function.

        I’m glad you understand. After all, it would be embarrassing to start talking about “philosopher kings” after having placed so much effort into developing the mass line and democratic centralisation precisely to give the people more power.

        Mass-lines and dem cen never actually transcended the supremacy of vanguard power when the original vanguard was alive. Dem cen specifically entrenched vanguardists and political opportunists.

         
                 https://thetricontinental.org/studies-1-socialist-construction/

        You don't get the point. You know how "systemic racism" describes a system that is durably racist that does not need to be occupied by good faith racist operators to make racist outcomes? Socialists need systemic socialism, a system that is durably socialist that does not need to be occupied by good faith socialist operators for socialist outcomes.

        You're not answering the question of how do we move from a system that is based primarily on elite choice. Xi Jinping explicitly set the agenda to prioritize poverty alleviation more than Hu Jintao or Jiang Zemin. Fifth generation thought places an emphasis on this via the 8th Commitment and the 1st Must:

        • "Improving people's livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development".
        • Must put the people first

        This begs the questions:

        • Why was this not centered in Third or Fourth Generation thought?
        • How do we ensure that 6th generation thought does even better with these types of commitments?

        Your article is focused on poverty alleviation that has mainly happened within the last 10-15 years, and the elimination of "extreme poverty". The reality is that "extreme poverty" is not a static measure, it's a relative economic measure. China has eliminated extreme poverty which is an amazing feat in it's own right. But the extermination of extreme poverty is a point in time redistribution.

        The more salient question for building socialism is: How to keep the system of redistribution up to date and politically durable over time such that extreme poverty is not recreated in another name? How do we push this system to eliminate poverty? How do we keep this system up to date and politically durable to ensure that poverty is not recreated in another name?

        The CPC itself does not believe that its system can be copied and applied in other places, it is not interested in that. It's interested in building socialism with Chinese characteristics. There is much to learn from the CPC, but there is an explicit disclaimer here that it works for China at the current point in time.

        • You don’t get the point. You know how “systemic racism” describes a system that is durably racist that does not need to be occupied by good faith racist operators to make racist outcomes? Socialists need systemic socialism, a system that is durably socialist that does not need to be occupied by good faith socialist operators for socialist outcomes.

          The reproduction of a system from generation to generation can be durable without getting rid of the human element. In fact, the attempt of getting rid of the human element itself is idealistic. Socialism will always be a movement (not system) composed of humans. And it is certainly the case that socialism is not simply a system, but rather the movement of those who aim to abolish the present state of affairs. There will necessarily be many types of systems produced by socialists, and many disagreements in the socialist camp, and even reactionary brain-worms stuck in the minds of socialists young or old. Thus a "durable" socialism of the type you seek cannot really exist, because just as "scientific racism" evolved, waned, and waxed over time, so will socialism. The durably socialist system you create today could also simply become obsolete tomorrow.

          Why was this not centered in Third or Fourth Generation thought?

          Because conditions in China were different at the time.

          How do we ensure that 6th generation thought does even better with these types of commitments?

          Through ideological struggle, for which there is no substitute.

          Your article is focused on poverty alleviation that has mainly happened within the last 10-15 years, and the elimination of “extreme poverty”.

          I more so aimed to give you more details for how the CPC operates, which you thought there was a lack of in Yog's substack article.

          How to keep the system of redistribution up to date and politically durable over time such that extreme poverty is not recreated in another name?

          Through educating the future generations and continuing development and reforms. Through adapting the existing system to changing geopolitical and technological conditions.

          • The reproduction of a system from generation to generation can be durable without getting rid of the human element. In fact, the attempt of getting rid of the human element itself is idealistic. Socialism will always be a movement (not system) composed of humans. And it is certainly the case that socialism is not simply a system, but rather the movement of those who aim to abolish the present state of affairs. There will necessarily be many types of systems produced by socialists, and many disagreements in the socialist camp, and even reactionary brain-worms stuck in the minds of socialists young or old. Thus a “durable” socialism of the type you seek cannot really exist, because just as “scientific racism” evolved, waned, and waxed over time, so will socialism. The durably socialist system you create today could also simply become obsolete tomorrow.

            This is not a Marxist viewpoint. Marxism is a modernist philosophy based on the dialectic of historical materialism. That means that Marxism states that the development of communism is inevitable and represents an ultimate state of human social organization that is classless and stateless. IMO a durable socialism is ultimately required for the modernist communist apotheosis because modernist communism would need to be systemic as well. The inherent nature of the transition between socialism and communism requires socialism to become durable so the state can wither away. A socialist state's main goal under such an ideology is to replace itself with a social organization that supplants the need for itself.

            Because conditions in China were different at the time.

            This is a hindsight apologetic argument that doesn't explain it's own claims. Plenty of critics inside and outside China noted that China made the choice to develop cities at the expense of the country-side. We've seen similar choices in the prioritization of distribution play out in other socialist countries to worse effect such as the USSR. This doesn't actually answer the question of what made it work or if it was necessary or if it could be improved by future states.

            I'm not asking you to answer this question in full mind you. I'm merely saying that this answer is defensive and reflexive rather than explanatory. "The conditions were different at the time and we had no other choice" is always used to explain away and shut down criticism even in good faith. Yet that same argument isn't made when someone seriously proposes to follow a historical example -- which is quite literally entirely appropriate because the successes of those examples were based in historical material conditions that do not match our current reality.

            In context the whole point is that OP's post feels simplistic and incomplete and obviously favors their favorite flavor of leftism and even Marxism.

            Through educating the future generations and continuing development and reforms. Through adapting the existing system to changing geopolitical and technological conditions.

            This is a similar kind of thing where we can talk about these kind of "no duh" vagaries, but the moment we look at what this practically means everyone gets knives out sectarian.

            • That means that Marxism states that the development of communism is inevitable

              This is a fatalistic argument and borders on a prophecy. The annihilation of humanity from nuclear war or climate collapse is also a possibility. At best, a few scattered survivors might practice a type of primitive communism in such a scenario.

              And yes, while under "normal" conditions a communist society is what present day capitalist societies will be forced towards, the details of what such a society look like cannot be predicted so far in advance. Nor can such a society be proclaimed as the "ultimate" form of society unless one is to proclaim that communist societies are to simply stay frozen in time. A period of what we call communism lasting, say 10,000 years in the future would, from the perspective of these communists, most likely be split into countless epochs, likely distinguished by factors and processes and systems that are simply alien to us.

              IMO a durable socialism is ultimately required for the modernist communist apotheosis because modernist communism would need to be systemic as well.

              Something can be a systemic phenomena without being durable. Capitalist-imperialism for instance is world-systemic and yet it has a chronological progression that takes it inevitably to the next stage of history.

              This doesn’t actually answer the question of what made it work or if it was necessary or if it could be improved by future states.

              As far as I can answer the question, there were many things going on at the time

              1. The collapse of the socialist bloc meant that the Chinese feared being encircled by the west, in terms of military, geo-politics, economics and technology. The survival of the revolution was given a high priority.
              2. Chinese economic development during the planned economy period was a mixed bag. It kept getting hit from periodic recessions and chaos.
              3. Chinese industry and agriculture were too underdeveloped to maintain the material living standards for everybody that the socialists were aiming for. So there was an upper limit to how many people could truly be lifted out of poverty in China until relatively recently. The Chinese country side especially is vast and difficult to physically access. The number of people, thus the requirement of energy for a modern lifestyle is massive. There is also the need to earn money from the west so you can gain access to oil markets and crucial technology.

              It took herculean effort for the Chinese state to build its world famous HSR and solar power industry. And even then, China is still not energy independent and I believe it still has to import significant amounts of food, although the latter might be the result of too much animal agriculture and neglecting the countryside until the poverty alleviation campaign.

              When you talk about durable socialism, that quote from Marx comes to mind

              Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse

              In so far as China is building "durable" socialism, they really are following this theory from Marx that they need to develop new technologies of the future that can surpass the capitalist countries.

              This is a similar kind of thing where we can talk about these kind of “no duh” vagaries, but the moment we look at what this practically means everyone gets knives out sectarian.

              Yeah cause that's the hard part 😅

              • This is a fatalistic argument and borders on a prophecy. The annihilation of humanity from nuclear war or climate collapse is also a possibility. At best, a few scattered survivors might practice a type of primitive communism in such a scenario.

                Yeah but it's quite literally the ideology.

                Marx

                The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

                Engels

                The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.

                Engels

                The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away.

                And also you're quite right as to what this means in the grand scheme of things. We might make our own Marxism, but not as we please. If I know anything about prophecy from reading the classics is that if it's right, it's ironically not right in the way you think it is.

                Chinese industry and agriculture were too underdeveloped to maintain the material living standards for everybody that the socialists were aiming for. So there was an upper limit to how many people could truly be lifted out of poverty in China until relatively recently. The Chinese country side especially is vast and difficult to physically access. The number of people, thus the requirement of energy for a modern lifestyle is massive. There is also the need to earn money from the west so you can gain access to oil markets and crucial technology.

                Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse

                In so far as China is building “durable” socialism, they really are following this theory from Marx that they need to develop new technologies of the future that can surpass the capitalist countries.

                There's often an irony in seeing this line of reasoning together that's a core irony in Marxist thought. You can sum it up as socialism or barbarism if you wish. But Marx is absolutely right that liberation is a historical act, however in your own evaluation liberation (in various material forms) was denied to one group and not the other an active political choice by an entity whose goal was total liberation. And again this isn't something I'm expecting you to "answer", but what I do not see a lot of people doing is sitting with that irony, evaluating it and it's consequences.

                Liberation as a historical act comes in material stages, and as a factor of the economy making the deeper question is "Did China do everything it could for the people whose liberation they deferred?". If the answer is no that doesn't mean they're secretly evil or not socialists or whatever. Thinking out the answer to such questions merely gives movements that come later more data about possibilities which prevents them from over-indexing on security based concerns which has consistently been a defensive meme.

                Historically speaking both the USSR and China over-indexed on security in these decisions. While China was making these decisions, the West was too busy carving up the USSR during a critical moment for Chinese development -- IMO they could have done both. I don't blame them for their decisions, but I'd personally rather accept the risks of more liberation.

                In practice, despite Marxism being an ideology that understands exploitation and vulnerability, it's very peculiar that often liberation is often denied to the most vulnerable and exploited.

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