What determines if a system is capitalist or socialist is not whether there is any private property at all, but which class controls the commanding heights of the economy and the state. Publicly owned industry in systems dominated by capitalists is not socialism, as it services the continued profit of capitalists and the accumulation of capital, be it through securing imperialism, preventing revolution, etc. Likewise, private ownership under socialism is not capitalism, as in China the marketized sector is the underdeveloped portion of the economy, and is used to take advantage of capital’s ability to stitch together disparate productive forces into what can better be used in planned economy.

Marxism is not a moral dogma.

Private property outlives its historical utility when it develops to national scale, and at this point it becomes beneficial to fold it into the public sector to expedite development. To fold in underdeveloped and disparate production to the planned economy is to strain the economic system by trying to account for all of the tiny producers. Marxists see the basis of markets as disparate, decentralized production, and the basis of planned economy in large, centralized production. Socialism is not a moral virtue to be implemented by decree, but instead a transitional status where markets are transformed gradually into planned economy as the productive forces develop.

The people you decry as “Dengists” are just Marxist-Leninists. Deng Xiaoping did not invent this interpretation of Marx, it originated with Marx and was held by Lenin. The Stalin economy was progressive, and worked very well, but it was not an “ideal” economy from a Marxist perspective, and instead mostly resembled a siege economy. The enormous gains they made despite a siege economy shows how superior socialism is to capitalism, and how enormously flexible it is. The incredible and rapid transformation of China from a semi-feudal backwater to the indisputable world leader today in less than a century is a testement to what socialism in a more traditional sense can accomplish.

Please study Marx and Engels. I will never drag Stalin through the mud, nor the Soviet Union, but you are not a materialist with this analysis. At best, you’re a moralist. You need to re-study the basis of scientific socialism and what it actually means to develop the productive forces. There’s also a great deal of chauvanism at play, with the idea that “the people are falling for the DotB,” rather than fully aware of their own situations and supporting the DotP as it actually exists.