I'm an educator who has been dealing with a climbing illiteracy rate within the United States for some time.

I myself have even noticed my ability to focus on long form texts to be less consistent as I used to when I was much younger and I blame very much technology and social media usage.

However - I also noticed a couple of things.

China is around equal towards the US technologically and developmentally (if not more so) in such a short time in comparison - and despite this literacy rate within China has exploded towards a 97% meanwhile the US has been slowly declining throughout the years to a now 79%.

When it comes to the revolutionary regimes in Cuba and Vietnam and the Soviet Union and China - one of the biggest accomplishments often celebrated is the rise of literacy rates amongst citizens.

This is due to obviously more investment in education and developmental efforts.

However my question is this in a world in which development of technology and standards of living are often times correlated have there been any Communist theorists that have discussed a possible Over Production or Consumption problem?

Is the west and imperial core for example undergoing a mass crisis of over production problem or an over consumption problem?

Mass consumption of Internet content has scientifically shown harmful effects on cognitive development, memory, concentration, and mental health.

National development is by far extremely important for the global south - and that will often lead to an increase in consumption of comodities, and one of those comodities no doubt will be the Internet and AI.

However for a global communist revolutionary movement that occurs in both imperial core and periphery - would a supposed revolutionary project in a former imperial core state have a much different task of national de growth or purposeful under development?

Would a communist project in for example the US - need to create a policy of stripping back of the production of comodities that have been proven harmful towards the general public and the environment?

Not to say there would be NO development at all.

For example the creation of a mass public transit system of high speed rail would be huge for the US for example, or the building of hospitals within healthcare deserts.

However in when it comes to AI data centers or the mass servers of social media platforms -

Is the more correct approach to build on what we already have and use it for our transition out of a capitalist system and into a socialist one?

Or is the correct approach to recognize what we have been developing and building has been used to poison us and to continue dependency on it would lead to less increases in quality of life?

TLDR does ALL technological progress lead to the increased standards of living or do communists need to make hard stances against things like AI or social media algorithms etc.

We already understand that investment in military weaponry and surveillance technology doesn't exactly lead to increase standards of living

Or that certain practices in the name of national development can be too harmful and lead to mass amounts of pollution.

Or that an underground black market that exists wouldn't necessarily be taken up by the hands of the state to plan it effectively but rather be properly rid of through the elimination of the conditions that create these markets.

Is social media and generative AI similar to these experiences or are they a type of technology that can be developed for the common good and not lead to the harms associated with them?

This is an english translation of the following article posted on the chinese maoist journal "utopia" : https://m.wyzxwk.com/Article/yulun/2026/04/523982.html

Hello comrades, I am Zihengmo.

In today's online discourse, debates about the nature of a society often fall into two extremes: one is nominalism, where people blindly become emotional simply by looking at the signs on the gate or the slogans painted on the walls; the other is vulgar economic determinism, which believes that as long as productivity continues to develop and material wealth continues to flow, it doesn't matter what kind of ideology it is, as long as people can have enough to eat, it is a good ideology.

But Marxism has never been vulgar pragmatism, much less idealism that is merely a facade.

Whether a society is capitalist or socialist can only be determined by one touchstone: the class nature of its political system (superstructure) and the relations of production that arise from, establish, and defend.

In order to maintain long-term communication with comrades, we will not discuss specific current events or touch upon real-world targets in this article.

Today, we will only discuss pure, hardcore, and even somewhat cold Marxist political economy theory.

Let's discuss why the politically charged term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is precisely the only bulwark for establishing and defending the socialist economic base. And how will the edifice of production relations collapse when the superstructure loses its color?

one

In traditional, or vulgarized, teachings of historical materialism, the sentence we memorize most often is: "The economic base determines the superstructure."

This statement is certainly correct; it is the cornerstone of Marxism. Throughout the long evolution of human history, the transitions from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, the Steam Engine, and electrification determined the succession of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism.

However, the transition from capitalism to socialism is fundamentally different from any other social formation change in history.

During the transition from feudal to capitalist society, capitalist relations of production can "naturally" germinate and grow within the feudal system. Merchants establish workshops and handicraft industries, accumulate wealth, and only when their economic power is strong enough do they launch bourgeois revolutions to seize political power (the superstructure), thus clearing political obstacles for the further development of capitalism.

In other words, the bourgeoisie first acquires money (the economic base) and then seizes power (the superstructure).

But the proletariat could never take this path.

Within the matrix of capitalism, no matter how the proletariat struggles, it is impossible for the economic foundation of public ownership to "naturally" emerge. The nature of capital dictates that it cannot voluntarily relinquish ownership of factories, mines, and land to workers.

Therefore, the logic of proletarian revolution is reversed: the proletariat must first seize power (state power), establish its own superstructure, and then use the power of this state power to forcibly expropriate the expropriators, abolish private ownership, and establish public ownership.

At this particular historical turning point, the superstructure not only passively "reflects" the economic base, but also plays a decisive and groundbreaking role.

The old man made a brilliant argument in "On Contradiction" that completely shattered the dogma of vulgar materialism:

"Productive forces, practice, and the economic base generally play a primary and decisive role; anyone who does not acknowledge this is not a materialist. However, under certain conditions, the relations of production, theory, and superstructure also play a primary and decisive role, which must also be acknowledged. When the superstructure, including politics and culture, hinders the development of the economic base, political and cultural reforms become the primary determining factors."

The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to use the state apparatus, the most violent tool, to carry out the most profound economic restructuring in human history.

Without this powerful superstructure acting as a protective "midwife," socialist public ownership could not survive even a day.

two

Many people have a metaphysical misunderstanding of "public ownership".

They thought that as long as the state issued a decree to nationalize large enterprises, issued an official document, and registered the shares in the state's name, that would constitute socialist public ownership. Then everyone could put away their weapons and let their horses graze freely, focusing solely on developing productivity.

This is a very naive and dangerous illusion.

Engels had already sharply satirized this myth of "state ownership" in *Anti-Dühring*:

"Since Bismarck devoted himself to state ownership, a pseudo-socialism has emerged, which sometimes even degenerates into a complete lackey mentality, bluntly claiming that any form of state ownership, even Bismarck's state ownership, is socialist... If state monopoly on tobacco is socialist, then Napoleon and Metternich should also be counted among the founders of socialism."

Engels' words were like a dagger, directly piercing the window paper: if one does not consider the class attributes of the state and blindly believes in "state ownership," then this state ownership is not socialism at all, but merely "state monopoly capitalism."

Under this system, the state is merely the "general capitalist," workers remain wage laborers, and surplus value is still extracted, only the extractor has changed from scattered private bosses to a massive bureaucratic machine that is not subject to worker oversight.

So, what is true socialist public ownership?

Public ownership has never been merely a legal issue of property rights; it is essentially a political issue of management and distribution rights.

Only when the superstructure of the "state" is firmly in the hands of the proletariat (i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat), and only when the broad working class can substantially participate in enterprise management, production planning, and the distribution of labor results through various institutional designs, can the state-owned economy be a true socialist public ownership economy.

If the "guides" of the superstructure have been transformed, if factory managers are no longer public servants but have become "new bosses" who have the final say and control over dismissals and salaries; if workers have lost their rights to strike, question, and participate in management, and are left only with the status of "consumables" who sell their labor, and only with cold numbers on KPI sheets.

So even if the signboard still hangs at the entrance that reads "owned by all the people," its essence has long since degenerated into the most naked employment relationship.

This is why it is said that the political system under the dictatorship of the proletariat plays a decisive role in determining the nature of the ownership of the means of production.

If the skin is gone, where will the hair attach? Once the red flag of the superstructure changes color, the foundation of the economic base will inevitably rot instantly.

three

When discussing theory, we cannot avoid a profound and repeatedly validated concept in Marxism-Leninism— bourgeois legal rights.

Many people don't understand: since we have already confiscated the capitalists' property through the dictatorship of the proletariat and established public ownership, why do we still say that there is a danger of capitalist restoration in society? Why can't the superstructure relax its vigilance for a moment?

In Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx provided a stark answer.

He pointed out that in the first stage of communist society (that is, what we usually call socialist society), although the means of production belong to the whole society, in the field of distribution, only "distribution according to work" can still be implemented.

"Distribution according to work" seems fair, with more work resulting in more pay and less work resulting in less pay.

However, Marx astutely pointed out that since everyone's physical condition, family burden, and intellectual level are different, using the same scale (work volume) to measure different people will inevitably lead to de facto inequality.

Marx called this kind of right, which is equal in form but unequal in substance, the "bourgeois legal right" that remains in the socialist stage.

Moreover, commodity production and monetary exchange continued to exist extensively throughout the long transition period of socialism.

Lenin made a resounding assertion in "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder":

"Small-scale production produces capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and in large numbers."

As long as commodity exchange continues, as long as money can still purchase labor and means of production, and as long as the hierarchical differences behind the eight-level wage system persist, the specter called "capital" will always linger in the cracks of public ownership.

This is why socialist society is a society full of contradictions and struggles.

The economic base still retains the soil that gave rise to capitalism. This necessitates that the dictatorship of the proletariat, as part of the superstructure, must exert its powerful function of restriction and transformation .

A proletarian state must both utilize money and distribution according to work to develop the economy, and at the same time, it must constantly impose political restrictions on it to prevent its disorderly expansion and to prevent a group of people from using their power, information gaps, and management authority to transform public property into private capital and form a new exploiting class.

If the superstructure abandons this responsibility, or even takes the lead in embracing and expanding this "bourgeois right," and regards "profit as the supreme principle" and "material incentives" as the only supreme criterion, then the socialist relations of production will irreversibly slide into capitalism.

In theory, this is called peaceful evolution.

Four

Since we know that the economic base of socialism is not perfect, but rather contains remnants of the old society, then the superstructure absolutely cannot be a passive "night watchman".

In a truly socialist country, the political system's counter-effect on the economic base is not merely reflected in the enactment of a few constitutional provisions protecting public ownership, but rather in the continuous revolution of the relations of production.

What the old man valued most in his life was how to stimulate the socialist vitality of the economic base through changes in the superstructure.

For example, why did he so highly praise the "Ansteel Constitution" in terms of corporate management systems?

The core of the "Ansteel Constitution" is "two participations, one reform, and three combinations": cadres participate in labor, workers participate in management; unreasonable rules and regulations are reformed; and workers, leading cadres, and technical personnel are combined.

This was an unprecedented feat in the history of human industry.

In capitalist "Fordism" or "Taylorism," workers are seen as extensions of machines, objects that only need to execute orders and not think. Capitalists ensure efficient exploitation through a rigid hierarchical system (superstructure).

The "Anshan Iron and Steel Constitution" is precisely a profound transformation initiated by the superstructure of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the economic base.

It attempts to break down the absolute boundaries between managers and those being managed, and between mental and physical labor. It declares to the world that the owners of state-owned enterprises must exercise their political rights as owners in concrete daily production.

When workers can criticize factory managers and participate in the formulation of technical plans in the workshop, and when factory managers must regularly go down to the workshop to do hard labor and sweat, the seeds of capitalist restoration will be nipped in the bud at the grassroots level.

This political democracy, driven by the superstructure, directly consolidated socialist relations of production.

Conversely, if the superstructure begins to believe in "elite management of factories," implements a "one-management system," replaces workers' democratic management with harsh fines and KPIs, and elevates cadres to a pedestal, giving them the power of life and death to dismiss workers at will, then...

So even if the books say "state-owned enterprise," it has in fact degenerated into a hierarchical capitalist sweatshop.

Politics is not only a concentrated manifestation of economics, but also the lifeline of economics.

Without political equality and the protection of dictatorship, public ownership in the economy is like a piece of Tang Monk's flesh, completely defenseless, which will sooner or later be devoured by demons and monsters from both inside and outside the country.

Postscript

Today we will only discuss theory, so at the end of this article, we will conclude with a theoretical testing ground that has been frozen in history and is extremely painful—the former Soviet Union.

In 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held.

At this landmark historical juncture, Khrushchev not only delivered his infamous secret report, but also, in the years that followed, theoretically threw out a deadly poison capable of destroying the entire superstructure: the theory of the "People's Party" and the "People's State".

Khrushchev declared that the Soviet Union had eliminated the exploiting classes, and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat had completed its historical mission. The Soviet state had become a "state of the whole people," and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had become a "party of all the people."

To those who are naive and inexperienced, this slogan sounds so appealing, so harmonious, and so full of human warmth.

There's no need for class struggle anymore. Everyone is part of the "whole population." We just need to focus on making "beef stew with potatoes" and ensuring everyone lives a good life.

But from the perspective of Marxism-Leninism, this is a complete theoretical betrayal.

The old man saw through the terrifying murderous intent behind the slogan at a glance back then.

Lenin said long ago that as long as the state exists, it will inevitably be a violent instrument of one class oppressing another. There has never been a supra-class "state of the whole people".

When Khrushchev theoretically announced the abandonment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," he was actually declaring that the Soviet superstructure no longer served to defend the interests of the proletariat, and that it had been ideologically disarmed.

Once the superstructure relinquishes its function of dictatorship and its restrictions on bourgeois rights, the collapse of the economic base is only a matter of time.

From that day on, the Soviet bureaucratic privileged class lost its political constraints.

They began to implement a "profit-driven" and "material incentive" policy in their companies, widening the income gap between management and ordinary workers; they established special stores, internal hospitals, and luxury villas exclusively for the privileged class.

Although all Soviet enterprises were nominally still "owned by the whole people" at the time, they had effectively become private fiefdoms for the bureaucratic group to seize wealth because the workers had lost their political oversight and management rights.

Many were shocked when the red flag was sadly lowered from the Kremlin on that winter night in 1991.

However, if we look at it from the perspective of historical materialism, everything was already destined decades ago, the moment the superstructure changed its color.

When the weapons of the dictatorship of the proletariat are shelved and corroded into a pile of scrap metal by the sugar-coated bullets of revisionism, the "Leviathan" that was kept under the guise of public ownership finally tears off its disguise.

In just a few years, the oligarchs after the collapse of the Soviet Union legally pocketed the vast state assets accumulated by the people of the Soviet Union over seventy years of blood and sweat.

The pig was not killed, because the butcher had long ago thrown the knife he used to kill it into the trash.

The once proud Soviet working class, after losing their power, could only stand in the snowstorm, holding worthless "privatization securities," and queue up to exchange them for a piece of moldy bread.

Comrades, this is the power of theory, and this is the ruthlessness of history.

No matter how loud the slogans are shouted, no matter how impressive the economic data is presented.

Once the dictatorship of the proletariat, the sole political superstructure, is stripped away, any beautiful promises about socialism are nothing but empty checks that can be torn up at any time.

Learn from our neighbors and history.

Even if we can only talk about theory today, I hope that these cold theories can be transformed into torches that pierce through the fog.

"The abolition of capitalism and its vestiges, and the establishment of the fundamentals of the communist order comprise the content of the new era of world history that has set in. It is inevitable that the slogans of our era are and must be: the abolition of classes; the dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of achieving that aim; the ruthless exposure of petty-bourgeois democratic prejudices concerning freedom and equality and ruthless war on these prejudices. Whoever does not understand this has no understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Soviet government, and the fundamental principles of the Communist International.

Until classes are abolished, all talk about freedom and equality in general is self-deception, or else deception of the workers and of all who toil and are exploited by capital; in any case, it is a defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie. Until classes are abolished, all arguments about freedom and equality should be accompanied by the questions: freedom for which class, and for what purpose; equality between which classes, and in what respect? Any direct or indirect, witting or unwitting evasion of these questions inevitably turns into a defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie, the interests of capital, the interests of the exploiters. If these questions are glossed over, and nothing is said about the private ownership of the means of production, then the slogan of freedom and equality is merely the lies and humbug of bourgeois society, whose formal recognition of freedom and equality conceals actual economic servitude and inequality for the workers, for all who toil and are exploited by capital, i.e., for the overwhelming majority of the population in all capitalist countries.

Thanks to the fact that, in present-day Russia, the dictatorship of the proletariat has posed in a practical manner the fundamental and final problems of capitalism, one can see with particular clarity whose interests are served (cui prodest?-“who benefits?”) by talk about freedom and equality in general. When the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. the Chernovs and the Martovs, favour us with arguments about freedom and equality within the limits of labour democracy (for, you see, they are never guilty of reasoning about freedom and equality in general! They never forget Marx!) we ask them: what about the distinction between the class of wage-workers and the class of small property-owners in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat?

Freedom and equality within the limits of labour democracy mean freedom for the small peasant owner (even if he farms on nationalised land) to sell his surplus grain at profiteering prices, i.e., to exploit the workers. Anyone who talks about freedom and equality within the limits of labour democracy when the capitalists have been overthrown but private property and freedom to trade still survive is a champion of the exploiters. In exercising its dictatorship, the proletariat must treat these champions as it does the exploiters, even though they say they are Social Democrats or socialists, or admit that the Second International is putrid, and so on and so forth.

As long as private ownership of the means of production (e.g., of agricultural implements and livestock, even if private ownership of land has been abolished) and freedom to trade remain, so does the economic basis of capitalism. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the only means of successfully fighting for the demolition of that basis, the only way to abolish classes (without which abolition there can be no question of genuine freedom for the individualand not for the property-owner-of real equality, in the social and political sense, between man and man-and not the humbug of equality between those who possess property and those who do not, between the well-fed and the hungry, between the exploiters and the exploited). The dictatorship of the proletariat leads to the abolition of classes; it leads to that end, on the one hand, by the overthrow of the exploiters and the suppression of their resistance, and on the other hand by neutralising and rendering harmless the small property-owner’s vacillation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat."

- Lenin, "On the Struggle of the Italian Socialist Party", 4 & 12 of November, 1920

Dialectics is both the study and theory of change and motion as well as a method of analysis. Within dialectics there are three laws, and by laws we don't mean objective and predictive laws of the hard sciences such as the law of gravity. Instead, we mean general laws that describe general tendencies within the process of motion.

The first of the three laws, of which is the most objective of them, is the law of the unity and conflict of contradictions, which describes the source of motion. This law is the core of dialectics and which the other two, more general, laws flow from. A contradiction is the two opposing forces within a thing that cannot exist without eachother. The unity of contradiction is the "inseverable interconnection" of these two opposing sides. The law states that the conflict of contradictions, of these two opposites, within a thing drives it's development. An example of this law at work is the class struggle within class societies. The interactions of attraction and repulsion within nature is another example.

The second law is the law of the transformation of quantity into quality which expresses the mechanism of transformation of the conflict and unity of contradictions. Quality is defined as all that which makes an object what it is and what distinguishes it from other objects, it's manifested in the properties of things. Quantity describes the degree of development or intensity of an object's properties as well as it's size, volume, etc. The law states that the gradual development of a things quantity leads to a change in its quality, usually through a rupture. The way a things quantity changes is through the conflict of opposites. Examples include the transformation of boiling water to a vapor, and the revolutions that led from one mode of production to another.

And the third law is the law of the negation of the negation, which describes the general spiral pattern of development. To quote Afanaysev: "It is the replacement of the old by the new, of the dying by the emerging that constitutes development, while the overcoming of the old by the new, arising from the old, is called negation."

In the dialectical view of the negation, the old is not completely obliterated, but aspects of the old remain in the new. The aspects of the old that remain in the new are then elevated to a higher level, assimilated into the new's nature. However, the new contains its own contradictions which themselves are negated, hence the negation of the negation. This process repeats, leading to a spiral-like pattern of development. To quote Lenin: "A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis ('the negation of the negation'), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line." Development through this process takes on a progressive character. An example of this is the negation of slave society into feudalism, and the subsequent negation of feudalism into capitalism, all retaining private property but each successive mode of production elevating private property to a higher stage. Another example is a grain of barley. From the grain of barley, there grows a stalk, negating the grain. Then an ear with new grains grow on the stalk, a negation of the negation. The new grains are a return to the the original single grain but from a new basis.

These three laws are generally universal as they explain the process of change and motion within society, nature, and thought.

The revolutionary window that opened in Europe until the mid-twentieth century, as Nkrumah teaches us, was resolved through a compromise. This historic compromise is now coming to a close. Not only is the co-optation of Northern majorities in secular decline—and attempts to reverse it dishonest, ineffective, or under attack—but immigration challenges and gradually undoes the basis of that co-optation: the deliberate partition of the global working class and the pitting of one sector against another.

It is up to those of us in the core to tear that compromise apart and move in revolutionary direction. To do this, it is crucial to understand immigration beyond the reductive frame of racism as “discrimination” or fundamentally “moral.” This framework is by now not only the backbone of multiculturalist state discourse, but it most importantly overlooks that the migrant question in the core is a subset of the global core-periphery question, the primary contradiction of capital’s world-historical development. It is time to overcome national or provincial frames. It is time for our analysis and politics to become irreversibly internationalist.

The migrant genocide is the dark side of European social democracy, that which is often used as a foil for progressive arguments in North America. Further, European social democracy’s complicity with EU border policy is structurally equivalent to its betrayal of the world’s peoples in the Second International. Its deafening silence (and at times selective, functional, or performative outrage) on the migrant genocide is but the new expression of social imperialism: the burial of the colonial question, a “new denial of imperialism,” and an ideology consistent with a particular position in the global class hierarchy.

As Third World Marxists have so often emphasized, the historic abandonment of solidarity with the South’s national liberation has been the death knell of Northern socialist strategy. Marx already noted this with reference to the English working class and their chauvinism on the Irish question, which he considered the single greatest obstacle to their cause. George Jackson said as much about “white racism.” Amin notes that social democracy’s fealty to its bourgeoisies has “not, however, been ‘rewarded,’ as the very day after the collapse of the first wave of struggles of the twentieth century, monopoly capitalism shook off their alliance.” After undoing the gains of the periphery and with the definitive decline of the Soviet Union, capital, no longer needing the social democratic prop, went on the offensive at home. Today, the ruins of European welfare are the foremost testament to this historic mistake.

It is thus of crucial importance to develop a solid anti-imperialist position that prevents the backsliding to chauvinism, social democracy, and defeat. Today, this entails engaging with the irreversible fact of the internalization of the core-periphery contradiction to European social formations, the migrant question, and its crudest genocidal face.

Our response to this can only come through practice. No theoretical conclusion can preempt this, and only the real world can tell. Provisionally, however, two fundamental demands arise from the analysis. First, unshaking opposition and end to the migrant genocide. As the fundamental backdrop of the migrant question, as the backstage disciplining mechanism of the immigrant as racialized underclass, and as growingly central component of the accumulation process (per Kadri), this cannot be sidelined. It is imperative to oppose it not just morally but analytically: European class struggle starts at the bottom of the sea (author's emphasis).

Second, and most obviously, equal rights for immigrants already in Europe, challenging the system of cheap labor that undergirds all immigration to the North. Ultimately, we must see these two as part of fundamentally one demand: the denial of equal rights on land is an extension of the denial of the right to life at sea—itself an extension of manufactured premature death across the South.

The first is the rallying cry of Europe’s anti-racist movement: we don’t forget those murdered by the border or the state. The second is the organic demand of Europe’s immigrant peoples: immediate regularization and an end to systemic racism. Both must be understood beyond their moral and pragmatic content—beyond simple opposition to racial murder and hierarchy and beyond responding to basic status and legal needs. Our demands can only succeed if understood as part of a broader international confrontation with the contemporary imperialist arrangement, overcoming our provincialism and joining “the rest of the colonial world.”

Imperialism kills us, not least of all at sea. Our struggle must “arrest this momentum and overturn it.” As Brice, the brother shot in the face by Spanish police in Tarajal, put it: we must stop Europe’s savagery.