China’s technological ascent over the West stems from a fundamental divergence in economic philosophies. Western capitalism, constrained by a theoretical framework that prioritizes ideological justifications for elite power over empirical analysis, has created a system divorced from material reality.
Marx famously argued that dominant class interests suppress truth in favor of false ideology. Today, Western economics is dominated by marginalist theories that mythologize the capitalist class as the engine of progress. By rebranding capitalists as "individual entrepreneurs" who supposedly balance markets and drive growth through sheer creativity, this narrative serves class interests at the expense of truth. The marginalist focus on supply-demand dynamics ignores the material forces behind real economic growth: socialized labor, circulating capital, and state-driven R&D. Empirical data confirms this disconnect. Total Factor Productivity, often cited as proof of "entrepreneurial creativity", accounts for a tiny percentage of growth in both advanced and developing economies. If individual entrepreneurship were the decisive force, TFP would dominate growth statistics. Instead, its minimal contribution reveals the marginalist framework’s failure to align with reality.
The West’s dogmatic reliance on markets and entrepreneurship has led to myopic decision-making that prioritizes corporate profits over sustainable development. The ongoing tariff war is a perfect example of this problem. Rather than fostering innovation or bringing back industries, these tariffs have instead harmed the working class paving the way to a recession.
Western economies are fixated on short-term profit maximization leading to underinvest in R&D and infrastructure. Private capitalists prioritize returns over foundational research, leaving critical innovations to market forces. By contrast, China’s model treats R&D as a collective, state-guided endeavor. China accelerates technological progress by channeling resources into strategic sectors and fostering public-private partnerships. For example, its National Laboratory system and Huawei’s state-backed R&D have outpaced Western firms in critical areas such as 5G tech, while US corporate R&D spending as a share of GDP has stagnated since the 1970s.
At its core, an economy should organize human effort to enhance societal well-being, reduce toil, and ensure equitable access to necessities. Yet under capitalism, economies are structured to prioritize the enrichment of an investor class whose wealth grows not through productive labor, but through financial speculation and rent-seeking. This systemic distortion, where money begets more money for those already holding capital, divorces economic activity from its original aim of improving human life.
Marx and Smith both identified the working class as the primary driver of productivity and growth. China’s system operationalizes this insight, recognizing that technological advancement depends on skilled labor, collective organization, and state coordination. Xi Jinping’s emphasis on "common prosperity" and "innovation-driven development" aligns with the material reality, ensuring that workers’ skills and state investments in education and infrastructure fuel progress. Western economies, by contrast, devalue labor through wage stagnation and anti-labour policies, eroding the very human capital needed for innovation.
The marginalist framework’s refusal to engage with class analysis or systemic factors has left Western economies ill-equipped to address crises like the 2008 financial crash or the economic disaster that's currently unfolding. By clinging to the myth of the entrepreneurial individual, they ignore the critical roles of state planning, collective investment, and structural equity. That's the key reason why China’s model, centered on material conditions and collective progress, is now visibly surging ahead of the West.
In the end, the West’s technological stagnation underscores the limits of an economic philosophy that privileges ideology over reality. China’s success lies in its ability to align policy with material forces, proving that growth and innovation thrive when economies serve the working majority.
First, I literally linked you a whole book that discusses the empirical failure of mainstream economics. In fact, the book references World Bank and IMF data to show precisely how western economics model fails time and again.
Having lived through the collapse of USSR, I can tell you that these things happen very suddenly. One day everything seems normal, and the next you’re fighting for bread so you have something to eat for the next week. Once an inflection point is reached, the unravelling happens at an incredible pace from there on out.
I get why denial runs deep. If your whole life, crises were ‘solved’ and things limped back to ‘normal,’ it’s easy to assume the system’s resilient. But each ‘recovery’ has been a wealth transfer to the top, leaving workers with thinner margins and less capacity to survive the next shock. Today, ever indicator shows that the economic situation in Europe is very bleak.
Ross rigorously references study after study which are peer reviewed. Nor is Ross the only economist to come to this confusion. Other well known economists such as Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff have been talking about these trends for literally decades now.
All you've done here is a lazy attempt at ad hominem.
That's a straw man that either intentionally or through thorough lack of reading comprehension misrepresents what I actually wrote. My argument was that the market dominates resource allocation within capitalist economies. It is investors who own capital who decide where to invest their capital, and which aspects of the economy are developed.
You don't have to take my word for it though. Jake Sullivan talk famously gave a talk where he admits that the whole free market bullshit they've been promoting can't actually compete with what China is doing. Sullivan plainly says that the American economy lacks public investment, as it did after World War II, and that private investment fails to produce growth in key sectors.
He also opined that the market is far from being able to regulate everything, and "in the name of overly simplified market efficiency, entire supply chains of strategic goods, along with the industries and jobs that produced them, were moved abroad."
Another problem he identified is the growth of the financial sector to the detriment of the industrial and infrastructure sectors, which is why many industries "atrophied" and industrial capacities "seriously suffered."
Finally, he admitted that colonization and westernization of countries through globalization has failed:
Sullivan cited China as an example:
In his opinion, all this has led to dangerous consequences for the US led hegemony:
So, here you go. A plain admission from a top US official that market driven capitalist economy is failing.
Nobody argued otherwise. However, countries obviously can adopt shared values and economic models. I see this is a concept you continue to grapple with.
I cited Ross in a very specific context.
Marx's theories continue to form the foundation of the world's largest economy by PPP measure that never suffered capitalist crashes that happen like clockwork in western economies.
Why would I wish to know more from the very same institutions that produced an economic model which led to the disaster that is unfolding in the western world. If I wanted to learn more about economics, I'd go to a university in China where there's an actual functional economy.