Members of the Democratic Socialists of America are eating up Chinese propaganda like candy, insisting only state control of private business can save workers from the “oligarchy.”
To meet a rising interest in the Chinese Communist Party, a new DSA monthly seminar about “modern China and lessons for US socialists” was held Thursday evening.
The DSA and its poster boy, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, routinely insist they’re socialists, not communists — socialism seeks to reform capitalism while communism seeks to eliminate it — but these CCP-themed seminars cast that distinction in a far murkier light.
The DSA introduced its new monthly seminar “modern China and lessons for US socialists.” AP
The seminars “started last year with an internal series, and it went well enough, that’s why we wanted to take it public,” announced Anlin Wang, a member of the DSA’s International Committee.
The session, part of the DSA’s “political education” offerings – made wild claims – like boasting about the communist country’s “strong democracy.”
“This is of course a controversial issue in the West,” said speaker Ben Norton, an American studying Marxism in Beijing, who founded the conspiracy website Geopolitical Economy Report, as he presented findings from the Democracy Perception Index.
“China has some of the highest levels of government approval on earth. Some people look at this and say this is crazy propaganda. . . . They have a different way of understanding how democracy works.”
Norton made no mention of China’s tight restrictions on freedom of expression that would have heavily tilted its citizens’ responses.
He also called for the US government to follow Beijing’s lead and take control of private companies, from big banks to tech, saying it’ll rein in the billionaire class and benefit workers.
The DSA brought Ben Norton as speaker for the first seminar in the series, who’s currently studying Marxism in China. Ben Norton/ Facebook
The DSA’s Anlin Wang from Philly hosted the Thursday night session. Obtained by the New York Post
It’s because of government intervention, he claimed, that “China is now the largest economy on Earth” – a false claim as China has the world’s second biggest GDP after the US.
“There’s no comparison to the level of output coming from China right now. And this was not just because of private market forces,” claimed Norton.
“Reducing inequality is literally the number one goal of the Chinese Communist Party,” he claimed. “People just make up so much nonsense about China.”
Much of the session was spent discussing state control of companies. Obtained by the New York Post
His claims were disputed by a China expert, who says the country’s economic boom came only after the party relaxed its iron grip on businesses in the late 1970s, opening state enterprises to market incentives after overly tight state controls led 45 million to die of famine under Mao Zedong.
“The allowance of market forces is directly responsible for China’s rise as a contemporary, modernized economy,” said Jack Bernam, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Bernam argued China’s economy slipped from prosperity to deflation and stagnation in the last five years due to government control.
Mamdani and his DSA comrades have repeatedly called themselves proud socialist, not communists. Instagram/nycdsa
“That recent record of poor performance I would argue is directly the fault of the Chinese Communist Party, particularly on the clamping down on private enterprise, and the ramping up of more centralized, more aggressive centralized economic planning,” he added.
The two-hour long virtual session, which was marked by constant technical glitches, went into overtime as Norton fielded some 40 questions from eager DSA members wanting to learn about their Chinese comrades.
This wasn’t the DSA’s first time showing its admiration for the Chinese Communist Party.
In September, a five-person DSA delegation, including Wang, flew to Beijing to celebrate China’s 80th anniversary of the victory against Japan.
“It was an impressive display of ‘unity in multi-polarity’ featuring Russian President Putin and Indian Prime Minister Modi, as well as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un,” wrote NYC DSA member Dee Knight. “Beijing buzzed with excitement.”