China to care for Quake Orphans

[Dermezel]

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/qinghai/2010-04/24/content_9769586.htm


BEIJING - The Chinese government is "trying its best" to look for families for orphans in the Qinghai quake zone while trying to give them special care, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.


"Among all people in the quake-hit areas, children whose parents were killed during the quake are in the most difficult situation and need special care," said an unnamed official with the ministry Friday.


Government organizations and social groups would work together to care for the orphans.


The ministry said it would seek adoptions for all orphans in the quake zone as soon as possible, and would "fully respect" the children's preferences and the traditions and habits of ethnic children.
Six children were reportedly injured in the quake when a four-story orphan school collapsed. A total of 220 students are living in tents.
The total number of orphans in the quake zone is not available.
According to the ministry, social welfare organizations in Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, have set aside more than 300 beds for orphans and children whose parents or other family members have not been contactable since a 7.1-magnitude quake hit Yushu, Qinghai, on April 14.


The ministry also planned to mobilize help from other regions if Qinghai had difficulty settling the orphans.


Previous reports said SOS Children's Villages in Chengdu, Urumqi, Beijing and Tianjin would contact with the civil affairs department in Yushu and prepare for the arrival of orphans.


The central government and Qinghai authorities would jointly provide each orphan with a monthly financial support of 1,000 yuan ($146) for three months from April.


In addition, figures from the ministry show that a total of 56,000 tents had reached the quake zone as of Friday evening, along with 117,000 coats and 208,000 quilts among other daily necessities and relief materials.


The quake in Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu has left 2,187 people dead and 80 missing. Among the 12,135 injured, 1,434 were in serious condition.The Workers State provides. Keep in mind all the people in New Orleans got was a debit card.


They've also restored water- http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/qinghai/2010-04/23/content_9769228.htm

And rebuilt houses: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-04/14/content_9728102.htm


BEIJING: Houses for accommodating more than 1.37 million quake survivor families in southwestern China have been built with donations from the Communist Party of China (CPC) members, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee said Tuesday.

The quake zone house rebuilding program, which was finished in late March, has benefited 1.31 million households in Sichuan province, 58,700 in Gansu, and 4,500 in Shaanxi, Chongqing and Yunnan combined, said the department in a statement. Keep in mind New Orleans is still not repaired: http://blog.amnestyusa.org/katrina/not-pretty-new-orleans-still-devastated-almost-5-years-after-katrina/

China has 3,600 GDP per capita.

The US has 56,000 GDP per capita.

Oh wait, Bush was generous enough to give Katrina victims a debit card: US government ‘abused rights’ of Hurricane Katrina victims (http://www.infowars.com/us-government-abused-rights-of-hurricane-katrina-victims/)


The US government and states have violated the human rights of victims of Hurricane Katrina, Amnesty International claimed today.

Its report Un-Natural Disaster says housing, health and policing policies have stopped poor communities rebuilding and returning to their homes since the 2005 hurricane, in which about 1,800 people died.

The White House denied the claims and Louisiana and Mississippi officials said they had gone to great lengths to help people recover from Katrina.

In the US a former New Orleans policeman faces eight years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice over a police cover-up during the hurricane.

Michael Hunter, 33, told federal authorities he saw a fellow officer shoot and kick unarmed, wounded civilians on a bridge in Katrina’s aftermath.

[Dermezel]

Oh keep in mind the US media then complained that offering Katrina Victims a Debit card was too generous: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11326973 (http://www.gaiaonline.com/gaia/redirect.php?r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msnbc.msn.com%2Fid %2F11326973)



WASHINGTON - In its rush to provide Katrina disaster aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasted millions of dollars and overpaid for hotel rooms, including $438-a-day lodging in New York City, government investigators said Monday.

....

Separately, the Justice Department said Monday that federal prosecutors have filed fraud, theft and other charges against 212 people accused of scams related to Gulf Coast hurricanes. Forty people have pleaded guilty so far, the latest report by the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force said. Many defendants were accused of trying to obtain emergency aid, typically a $2,000 debit card, issued to hurricane victims by FEMA and the American Red Cross.

Thousands of additional dollars appear to have been squandered on hotel rooms for evacuees that were paid at retail rather than the contractor’s lower estimated cost. They included $438 rooms in New York City and beachfront condominiums in Panama City, Fla., at $375 a night, according to the audits.


I also like it how they claim Washington "rushed" to provide for Katrina victims. Nevermind Bush took two weeks to send in any Federal aid or rescue. When a Hurricane hits Let the Market Decide.

[Publius]

Move to China then.

[Bud Struggle]

Here's a good reason not to move to China. OUCH!

April 17, 2010


China tries to sterilise 10,000 parents over one-child rule

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.
The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7099417.ece

Seriously, this is a major human rights abuse.

[Dermezel]

Move to China then.

After you go to Saudi Arabia.

[Dermezel]

Here's a good reason not to move to China. OUCH!

April 17, 2010


China tries to sterilise 10,000 parents over one-child rule

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.
The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7099417.ece

Seriously, this is a major human rights abuse.




On April 10 The Southern Countryside Daily reported on about 100 people, mostly elderly, packed into a damp 200sq m (2,150sq ft) room at a township family planning centre.That's one hell of a source.

In any event, you do realize almost all claims of forced abortions, etc are from pro-life groups right?

[Nolan]

China



The Workers State provides.


Ah, so that's why you're restricted.

[Bud Struggle]

That's one hell of a source.

In any event, you do realize almost all claims of forced abortions, etc are from pro-life groups right?

That's the Nanfang Countryside Daily as mentioned in this report. It's the local "official" paper of that region of Southern China. I would take that for a reliable source.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7599440/Chinese-officials-launch-campaign-to-sterilise-10000.html

Besides you don't actually believe that China is still a Communist country do you? They've gone over to the dark side long ago. :)

[Dermezel]

Ah, so that's why you're restricted.

Yeah, the Cliffites under their "State Capitalism" ideology supported fighting against the Soviet Union during world war 2.

[Nolan]

Yeah, the Cliffites under their "State Capitalism" ideology supported fighting against the Soviet Union during world war 2.

Oh no, you misunderstood. The Soviet Union during world war 2 was a worker's state. China is not.

[Dermezel]

That's the Nanfang Countryside Daily as mentioned in this report. It's the local "official" paper of that region of Southern China. I would take that for a reliable source.

That's the first time I ever heard of it. Can you show me other reliable reports from this paper?


Besides you don't actually believe that China is still a Communist country do you? They've gone over to the dark side long ago.

They never were a Communist Country. They are a Workers' State.

[Dermezel]

Oh no, you misunderstood. The Soviet Union during world war 2 was a worker's state. China is not.

Well according to Cliffite Party position the USSR was State Capitalist under Stalin, and they called for fighting against the USSR during world war 2 and the Cold War, even to the point of supporting the CIA's operations in Afghanistan.


Throughout the 1980s as then-members of the Cliffite International Socialist Organisation (ISO), SAlt cadre tailed the anti-Soviet, union-busting Hawke/Keating Labor regimes. They sided with the woman-hating, CIA-funded mujahedin cutthroats against the liberating forces of the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan and championed the anti-semitic, anti-abortion and reactionary Solidarność—the chosen instrument of the Vatican, Wall Street and Western social democracy for capitalist counterrevolution in Poland. They cheered the Yeltsin/Bush capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union in 1991-92, which ushered in mass unemployment, starvation and nationalist fratricide.http://www.icl-fi.org/english/asp/201/socialist-alternative.html

So I guess people who sided with the mujahedin against the Soviet Union have a real right to criticize me on matters of socialism.



For many years the best known proponent of the ‘‘new class’’ theory was Max Shachtman, who split from the Trotskyist movement in 1940, and went on to claim that the Stalinists represented a ‘‘bureaucratic collectivist’’ class, neither bourgeois nor proletarian. Shachtman’s new class theory was so indeterminate, and his eventual defection to the imperialist camp so ignominious, that few leftists now lay claim to the doctrine of ‘‘bureaucratic collectivism’’ in its original form.



A variant of Shachtman’s theory is that of ‘‘state capitalism,’’ according to which the Stalinist bureaucracy has transformed itself into a new, collective, capitalist ruling class. The largest ‘‘state cap’’ tendency is headed by Tony Cliff, leader of the British Socialist Workers Party. Cliff’s grouping originally deserted the Trotskyist movement in the early 1950s, just as the Cold War was turning into a shooting war in Korea. In North America Cliff’s followers are known as the ‘‘International Socialists.’’ While the ‘‘theory’’ of state capitalism absolved Cliff and his co-thinkers from the uncomfortable task of defending the Soviet bloc against imperialism, and made them ‘‘respectable’’ in their social-democratic milieu, it could not explain the Cold War or the social revolutions led (and misled) by the Stalinists in the Third World. Nor could it explain why, if there was no fundamental antagonism between the two variants of ‘‘capitalism,’’ the imperialists fought so ferociously to contain and roll back ‘‘communism’’ from the Chinese revolution of the 1940s, to Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.
http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no8/no08east.html

[Bud Struggle]

They never were a Communist Country. They are a Workers' State.

Well then a lot of the workers are financiers and businessmen. :D

No. Those days of "Worker State" are over. China is for the most part a Capitalist/State Capitalist blend with a kind of totalitarian government.

You don't believe that any worker in any factory in China has some sort of "say" in the way either the government or the factory for that matter is run?

[Dermezel]

Well then a lot of the workers are financiers and businessmen. :D

No. Those days of "Worker State" are over. China is for the most part a Capitalist/State Capitalist blend with a kind of totalitarian government.

You don't believe that any worker in any factory in China has some sort of "say" in the way either the government or the factory for that matter is run?

Stalinist Bureaucracy: Caste Not Class

The Stalinists do not behave like a ruling class because they are not a ruling class. The main enemy of the workers of Eastern Europe today is not the various national bureaucracies, which are in an advanced stage of decomposition, but the capitalists of the U.S. and West Germany, who seek to reintegrate these economies into the imperialist world market.
In a particularly opaque piece in the February issue of Socialist Worker Review, the Cliffites’ monthly magazine, Chris Bambery claims that:

‘‘In reality, the choice for the bureaucracy is whether to cling to the old state capitalist methods of the past or to adopt policies similar to Thatcherite privatisation. Both Gorbachev and Thatcher are concerned with increasing exploitation.’’ Bambery’s notion that the impulse for the projected privatization of the economies of Eastern Europe originates in a conscious decision by the Stalinist rulers aimed at consolidating their rule by ‘‘increasing exploitation’’ is ludicrous. The drive toward capitalist restoration can only further disintegrate whatever social power the Stalinist apparatuses still possess. When and if the Comecon countries reintroduce capitalism, the Stalinist bureaucracies will be dismantled. The bulk of the nomenklatura is well aware that their replacement by the capitalist market as the regulator of economic activity will entail a loss of both material privileges and social status.
In the Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky anticipated that, ‘‘The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.’’ In State Capitalism in Russia, Cliff ruled out such a development: ‘‘The internal forces are not able to restore individual capitalism in Russia...’’ Cliff’s mistaken projection was not just an unlucky guess; it is a necessary corollary to the claim that the Soviet bureaucracy is a new ruling class rooted in a new form of class society, rather than a parasitic growth on working-class property forms.
The precipitate panic and desperate backpedalling of the Eastern European bureaucracies in the face of recent events has graphically revealed the profound instability of these bureaucratic castes. Those elements of the bureaucracy who can, are already scrambling to find places in the emerging capitalist order, not as members of a Stalinist ‘‘ruling class,’’ but as individual entrepreneurs. Those bureaucrats who see no place for themselves in a Western-dominated economy will be compelled, regardless of their motives, to throw in their lot with the sections of the working class disenchanted with the ‘‘market reforms.’’ This is not the behavior of a ruling class, but rather that of an unstable social layer torn between major contending forces in any decisive class confrontation.
The current crisis of Stalinism has revealed Tony Cliff’s doctrine as what it has always been: a smokescreen for political accommodation to anti-Soviet prejudice. The Cliffites’ inability to answer the most elementary questions posed by the class struggle in Eastern Europe or explain, much less predict, the behavior of the Stalinists, testifies to the complete lack of scientific merit of the theory of ‘‘state capitalism.’’ Worse, if followed by leftists in Eastern Europe, it could only mean abstention in the major class question posed today: whether or not to defend the system of collectivized property (which alone can provide the basis of democratic planning) against those who would restore private ownership in the means of production.

[Dermezel]

Cliff at least recognizes that the ‘‘informal network’’ that binds capitalist classes together, regardless of which political faction is in charge of the state, is nothing less than private property in the means of production. And if, as Cliff and Harman will readily concede, the absence of private property is a distinctive feature of the collectivized economies of the USSR and Eastern Europe, then the only way that the Stalinist ‘‘ruling class’’ can maintain its power is through an absolute monopoly on the state. Why then are the Stalinists relinquishing their political monopoly in one Eastern European country after another? Are they the first ruling class in history to abandon power without a fight? If so, isn’t Harman wrong to call Eastern European opposition leaders ‘‘reformists,’’ who are naive about the dangers of Stalinist retrenchment? The reformist strategy would appear to be working.

The State Capitalist theory is just wrong, and like mentioned, nothing more then being too afraid to back the USSR, People's Republic or Workers States.

[Bud Struggle]

OK, I'm not following this at all.

Dermezel, would you mind just stating your Communist/Socialist/Worker beliefs in a nutshell? Maoist? Stalinist? Leninist? I'm just not sure where you are comming from.

Thanks. (I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass--I really am confused.)

[Dermezel]

OK, I'm not following his at all.

Dermezel, would you mind just stating your Communist/Socialist/Worker beliefs in a nutshell? Maoist? Stalinist? Leninist? I'm just not sure where you care comming from.

Thanks. (I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass--I really am a bit confused.)

Maoist-Trotskyist. I agree with Mao's Guerilla Strategies and Trotky's Permanent Revolution. I also believe in the JCP's "Market Socialist" strategy.

[Hit The North]

Dermezel, why are you writing as if you are living in the 1980s?

[Dermezel]

Dermezel, why are you writing as if you are living in the 1980s?

Bob, why can't you refute my arguments?

Again: The current crisis of Stalinism has revealed Tony Cliff’s doctrine as what it has always been: a smokescreen for political accommodation to anti-Soviet prejudice. The Cliffites’ inability to answer the most elementary questions posed by the class struggle in Eastern Europe or explain, much less predict, the behavior of the Stalinists, testifies to the complete lack of scientific merit of the theory of ‘‘state capitalism.’’

[Hit The North]

Bob, why can't you refute my arguments?

Given that you keep referring to the "present crisis of Stalinism" I doubt they are your arguments.

[Hit The North]

Yeah, the Cliffites under their "State Capitalism" ideology supported fighting against the Soviet Union during world war 2.

And this is just bullshit as there was no such thing as Cliffites during the time of the 2nd World War and those Trotskyists which were around supported the USSR against the Nazis.

[Dermezel]

And this is just bullshit as there was no such thing as Cliffites during the time of the 2nd World War and those Trotskyists which were around supported the USSR against the Nazis.

The Cliffites supported the "Neither Washington or Moscow" argument, this means they considered the USSR and Nazi Germany equally "State Capitalist".

This is why they were also neutral on Korea:

http://www.fifthinternational.info/content/neither-washington-nor-moscow-view-third-camp



Neutral in the Korean war
The formation of the SRG coincided with the onset of the Korean War. The programmatic conclusions that logically flow from state capitalist theory meant that the SRG inevitably adopted a position in that conflict that failed to distinguish between Stalinist-led struggles for national liberation against imperialism and the forces of imperialism itself. The Communist Parties were seen as agents of Kremlin imperialism--or as SR No 2 (January 1951) called them "Moscow’s Foreign Legion".
At the end of the Second World War Soviet and US forces occupied Korea. At the same time "Committees of Preparation for National Independence" mushroomed throughout Korea predominantly under Stalinist leadership. An all-Korean People’s Republic government was declared on 6 September 1945. The USA refused to recognise this government and created its own under the much despised emigre rightist Syngman Rhee. The ensuing conflict between the Northern, Soviet backed and Southern, US backed governments was therefore a form of civil war in Korea within which the northern Stalinist regime had the leadership of those forces fighting imperialism and its agents.
When direct military hostilities broke out between the two regimes and the Northern armies overran the South in June, it should not have been difficult for revolutionaries to see which side they were on. They would have been for a victory of the North against the Rhee puppet regime and its US backers. And when--under the cloak of a UN peace keeping force--the USA poured troops into Korea and provoked a direct military conflict with China, it should have been even easier for any socialist not blinded by cold war anti-communist hysteria to know what side to take.
Revolutionary socialists should have unconditionally defended the North Koreans and their Kremlin allies on the recognition that a defeat inflicted upon the really expansionist USA would have been a massive blow to its plans. Unlike the SRG it was necessary to draw a distinction between the Stalinist leadership (which eventually sold the struggle short) and the popular mass forces involved, striving to overthrow a hated regime. Defending North Korea and seeking to win the leadership of the Korean masses were complementary not contradictory tasks.
The SRG, however, proceeded to demonstrate quite how reactionary the programmatic conclusions of the theory of state capitalism really are. SR took a predictable and logical view of the conflict. In an article entitled "The struggle of the powers" R Tennant declared that, "The war in Korea serves the great powers as a rehearsal for their intended struggle for the redivision of the globe." (SR Vol 1, No 2, January 1950) and in an attack on Socialist Outlook’s (a paper run by Gerry Healy) support for North Korea Bill Ainsworth talked of "our opinion . . . that Russia no less than the USA, is imperialist and bent on world domination". (ibid) It followed that:
"We can, therefore, give no support to either camp since the war will not achieve, the declared aims of either side. Further, so long as the two governments are what they are, viz, puppets of the two big powers, the Korean socialists can give no support to their respective puppet governments." (SR Vol 1, No 2, January 1951)
The Korean position was not a blunder inadvertently committed by an innocent, fledgling organisation. It flowed logically from the theory of state capitalism. The SRG drew exactly the same conclusion from a similar conflict in Vietnam between Stalinist led anti-imperialist forces under Ho Chi Minh and imperialism’s puppet Bao-Dai. In February 1952 they printed and entirely endorsed a statement of the French La Lutte that declared:
"In Korea, the war continues in spite of the parties for an armistice in which, of course, the Korean people have no say. In Vietnam, likewise, the war continues and the people vomit with disgust at both Bao-Dai, the tool of the colonialists, and at Ho Chi Minh, the agent of Stalin." (SR Vol 1, No 7)

The Cuban revolution demonstrated the reactionary logic of state capitalism as once again the Cliffites turned their face against those struggling to defeat imperialism. In the face of a US economic and military blockade the Castro regime proceeded to expropriate US holdings and reorganise the Cuban economy on the basis of bureaucratically planned property relations modelled on those of the USSR. At the same time Castro adopted the Stalinist model of state and party.
The Soviet bureaucracy moved to support the Castroite regime with the threat to place Soviet missiles in Cuba which would have served both to extend the international bargaining position of the Soviet bureaucracy and defend the Cuban revolution against imperialist counter-revolution. Cold War warriors and pacifists alike raised a hue and cry against Castro’s "undemocratic regime" and against the shipment of Soviet arms to Cuba. So too did Cliff’s renamed International Socialism group (IS).
The Cliffites took Soviet economic aid to the blockaded Castro regime as evidence that dynamic Soviet capitalism was now ready to do battle for the markets of US imperialism. Doubtless hoping that the USSR was about to indulge in some real capitalist competition. An IS editorial, entitled "From Cold War to price war" took increased Soviet trade with India and the shipping of Russian oil to Havana to indicate that:
"Russian oil exports look to be the harbinger of mighty economic conflicts between the giants of capital on either side of the Iron Curtain." (IS No 3, Autumn 1960)
Mirroring Khruschev’s pompous fantasies about the USSR being poised to outstrip the west economically, the editors continued:
"There seems to be a growing realisation that Russia is beginning to present an economic challenge to western capitalism potentially far more persuasive and threatening than the politico-military challenge of recent years." (ibid)
As long as the Castroites steered clear of Russian aid the editorial offices of International Socialism were prepared to support them. IS No 6 (NB. there were two number sixes) argued that:
"The pressure on Cuba towards integration into the Soviet bloc will exert pressure towards bureaucratisation of the revolution. But this, so all the evidence seems to show has not yet happened . . . The Cubans only turn to Russian power because there is no power of the international working class for them to turn to. Our defence of the Cuban revolution could itself be a step, even a small one, towards creating such a power."
Cliff’s "Third Campism" could not deliver oil or guns. Neither could it break an American blockade. As soon as the Castroites looked to Soviet aid in order to defend themselves the Cliffites deserted the Cuban revolution.
To cover their retreat a series of articles were printed by Sergio Junco pushing the view that Cuba had none of the features of a workers' state and thus deserved no support against the USA. Following in Shachtman’s footsteps Junco very soon decided that because Castro’s internal regime was repressive, it represented a form of society lower than that achieved in the bourgeois democracies.
He spelt out his position in the pages of Young Guard (IS Youth Paper in LPYS):
"Given the fact that there has never been any popular control of revolutionary institutions in Cuba, it makes no sense to say that this is a socialist or even a progressive society. Nationalism is conducive to socialism only when there exists a state which is owned and controlled by the majority of the people. Otherwise, we get a type of state and society which is less progressive than say, liberal democracy, since in the latter the popular forces are able to organise and actively work for the earliest possible substitution of the system." ("Cuba and socialism", Young Guard No 4, December 1961, emphasis in original)
It was IS members, most notably Paul Foot, who sprang to Junco’s support in the face of criticism in the pages of the paper.
If the political forms adopted by the Castroites had already turned the Cliffites off the Cuban revolution, the dispatch of Soviet atomic weapons completed the retreat of the IS into their neutralist corner. While being perfectly aware that the Soviet Union assists anti-imperialist struggles only to the extent that it can safeguard its own privileges and security, we would defend the right of anti-imperialist struggles to defend themselves by any means--including Soviet weapons.
In the face of US imperialism’s military might the Castroites really had little choice but to seek Soviet aid. In this situation the IS fulminated with liberal pacifist rage. Once again the conflict was seen as simply a conflict between two imperialist superpowers:
"The terrible fact was that the Cuban people and the rest of us were held to ransom from both sides of the Iron Curtain. If that has not laid the myth that rocketry on one side of the curtain is somehow more humane and defensible than it is on the other, nothing short of war?" ("Cuban lessons", IS 10, Winter 62-63)
Once again, therefore, the third campists declared themselves against both the USA and the USSR. Young Guard raised the slogan: "All hands off Cuba, no war over Cuba." (Young Guard No 13, November 1962) The pacifist Paul Foot denied any legitimacy to Soviet nuclear backing for Cuba. Instead he begged his readers:
"Socialists must ask the question: Why did Russia establish nuclear bases on Cuba and more important what political justification was there for doing it?" (Young Guard No 15)
In one sense he was right, his problem was that he could not answer his own set questions. In order to defend itself the Soviet bureaucracy was - in certain circumstances - prepared to extend that portion of the globe that is not directly open to imperialist exploitation. It does not do so because it is a revolutionary force but because the very property relations upon which it rests are in permanent antagonism with the interests and nature of world imperialism.
Soviet military backing for Cuba was not a nuclear umbrella for a capitalist price war. It was a means of increasing the strength of the Soviet bureaucracy through military advantage by underwriting the defence of another (degenerate) workers' state.
From Korea to Vietnam
The theory of state capitalism logically led the SRG and the IS to argue against support for anti-imperialist struggles that were led by Stalinists. On the surface therefore, the IS group’s support for the Vietnamese NLF’s struggle against US imperialism may seem either inconsistent or even a healthy break with the positions adopted on Korea and Cuba. This seeming inconsistency is easily explained by other consistent elements in the tradition and method of the Cliffites.
As a political tendency they have accommodated to every prevailing wind on the British left. Their position on Korea reflected and adapted to, the fierce climate of Cold War anti-communism of the early 1950s. The Cuban missile crisis coincided with the growth of CND first time round. The IS group’s denunciation of the nuclear arms race, their rejection of any legitimate role for nuclear weapons as a defence against imperialism reflects its accommodation to the CND milieu in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Things had changed quite drastically by the late 1960s however. The Vietnam war had become an inspiration to thousands of youth. To have called for opposition to both North and South, and for a plague on the Stalinist-led Vietcong, would have been programmatically consistent for the IS. But with theoretical consistency threatening to isolate the IS the Cliffites threw themselves in behind "support for the NLF and a North Vietnamese victory". (IS 32)
They declared the Vietnam War to be unlike previous Cold War conflicts:
"The Vietnam war does not fit neatly into the pattern of belligerent incidents between east and west since the war. Such incidents were often the result of direct confrontation between the major powers, each jostling for military or strategic advantage along the undemarcated border between their respective empires--the raw wound that ran through Central Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and South East Asia." (IS 32)
The small scale of Soviet and Chinese backing at this time was sufficient for the IS group to salve their consciences and decide that China and the USSR were not involved. As a result of this view of Indo-China it was not difficult for the IS to immerse itself in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign as supporters of the Vietnamese Stalinists they had refused to support in the early 1950s.
In defending their decision to back the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong against the USA, the IS had to plumb the depths of state capitalist logic. The IS journal declared that it was giving support:
"In the same way, socialists were required in the nineteenth century to support bourgeois liberal movements against feudal or absolutist regimes." (IS 32)
Only bourgeois tasks were on the agenda of the Vietnamese revolution:
"Of course, when the issue of American power is settled, we know what kind of regime and policies the NLF will choose--and be forced to choose by the logic of their situation. But that is, for the moment, another fight, the real fight for socialism." (ibid, emphasis in original)
For the state capitalist theorists then, the fight against capitalism was relegated as a later stage of the Vietnamese revolution.
The Vietnam episode brings to light another essential programmatic ingredient of state capitalist theory--its Menshevik position on the possibilities for socialist advance in the under-developed and “backward” countries. For the Mensheviks every underdeveloped country had to experience a stage of bourgeois capitalist development.
The 1950s and 1960s saw important nationalist movements against imperialism in Egypt and Algeria as well as in Indo-China. Large sections of the centrist and reformist left presumed that this signified a decisive shift in the terrain of the class struggle to a struggle between the “first” and “third” worlds. Against this impressionistic and defeatist "third worldism" the IS constructed their own, no less one-sided, metropolitan centred view of the world. The positions developed by the Cliff grouping in the 1950s and 1960s effectively deny the possibility of the struggle for socialism, for workers' revolution in the semi-colonial world.
In his initial work on Russia Cliff had declared that state capitalism in Russia was inevitable given the revolution’s isolation and the need to industrialise in order to survive in a hostile environment. In his analysis explicitly states that the only two realistic economic programmes open for Russia in the 1920s were private capitalism or state capitalism.
This is how he explains it:
"One solution to the conflict between state industry and individualist agriculture would have been to make the development of industry depend on the rate at which agricultural surpluses developed. It would have inevitably led to a victory of private capitalism throughout the economy. Alternatively the conflict between industry and agriculture might have been resolved by rapid industrialisation based on 'primitive accumulation' by expropriating the peasants and forcing them into large mechanised farms thus releasing labour power for industry and making agricultural surpluses available for the urban population." (T Cliff, Russia: A Marxist Analysis, p97)
They also sided with the Bourgeoisie on Afghanistan:



In 1994 the Cliffites published a major article by Chris Harman titled “The Prophet and the Proletariat” in their International Socialism journal. Their previous record includes capitulating to the reactionary mullahs who came to power in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1970s, running laudatory headlines like “The Form — Religious, The Spirit — Revolution!” and howling along with their own “democratic” bourgeoisie over the Soviet army presence in Afghanistan.
http://www.workersvanguard.org/print/english/wh/201/Respect.html


The new line is "Neither Washington or Beijing."

[Dermezel]

They also sided with Boris Yeltsin:


Same thing with the Soviet Union. The people who claimed that the USSR was “state capitalist” like the anti-Trotskyist renegade Tony Cliff eventually ended up on the barricades with Boris Yeltsin, George Bush the Elder’s “man in Moscow,” in August 1991. These same social democrats, like the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the U.S., also backed the TDU and others who dragged the unions into the bosses’ courts. So the Cliffites hailed the triumph of counterrevolutionary forces in the USSR proclaiming a “New Russian Revolution.” In Latin America, the followers of Nahuel Moreno, many of whom have now openly embraced “state capitalism,” headlined “Revolution Overthrows Stalinist Dictatorship” and “Great Revolutionary Victory in the USSR.” Well, Russian workers have had to pay the price, through massive impoverishment. The life expectancy for Russian men has fallen sharply as a result, to 59 years, and women have been largely driven out of social labor, denied the right to abortion, and thrown into poverty.
Today, even the Cliffites are forced to admit that the demise of the Soviet Union, which according to them was just a shift from one kind of capitalism to another, is widely seen as a bitter defeat for socialism around the world. It’s interesting to see the gyrations they go through to justify their betrayal with this anti-Marxist, self-contradictory line. An ideologue of the ISO, Anthony Arnove, wrote an article on “The Fall of Stalinism: Ten Years On” (International Socialist Review, Winter 2000) where he starts out saying that the Stalinist regimes were overthrown in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and the USSR, and declaring “This was a tremendous victory for genuine socialism.” “But,” he adds immediately, “almost universally the opposite conclusion was drawn.” Why so? “For the right, this was obviously a fact to be celebrated,” Arnove writes. Why is that so obvious if it was a “victory for genuine socialism”? Then he goes through various Stalinist-influenced leftists who claim the Soviet bloc states were socialist. While dishonestly claiming that Tony Cliff was “developing the ideas of Leon Trotsky” in declaring in 1948 that the USSR was “bureaucratic state capitalism,” Arnove never mentions that Trotsky called the Soviet Union a bureaucratically degenerated workers state, that Trotsky defended the USSR against imperialism, and that Trotsky fought a faction fight against Max Shachtman over precisely this question.

http://www.internationalist.org/90yearsoctoberrevolution0711.html

[Publius]

Here's a good reason not to move to China. OUCH!

April 17, 2010


China tries to sterilise 10,000 parents over one-child rule

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.
The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7099417.ece

Seriously, this is a major human rights abuse.


Yeah, but didn't you know America sterilized people too!

80 years ago.

[Publius]

After you go to Saudi Arabia.

If China is a better country than America (presuming you live in America), then why would you not move there?

[gorillafuck]

The Cliffites supported the "Neither Washington or Moscow" argument, this means they considered the USSR and Nazi Germany equally "State Capitalist".
I'm fairly sure that Washington isn't in Germany.

[Dermezel]

Yeah, but didn't you know America sterilized people too!

80 years ago.

Try 30: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/02/virginia-eugenics.htm


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Gov. Mark R. Warner issued a formal apology Thursday for the state's decision to forcibly sterilize thousands of Virginians from 1924 to 1979.

[Dermezel]

If China is a better country than America (presuming you live in America), then why would you not move there?

Cause I don't have to. =P

In any case, I'd prefer Cuba.

[Invincible Summer]

Maoist-Trotskyist. I agree with Mao's Guerilla Strategies and Trotky's Permanent Revolution. I also believe in the JCP's "Market Socialist" strategy.

You're an interesting fellow. But Maoism stretches beyond just guerrilla warfare, I hope you know.

[Dermezel]

You're an interesting fellow. But Maoism stretches beyond just guerrilla warfare, I hope you know.

Okay, only a nut accepts 100% of everything another person says.

[#FF0000]

Okay, only a nut accepts 100% of everything another person says.

Welp, not accepting 100% of everything another person says doesn't make you not a nut, either. Just to, uh, put that out there.

[Dermezel]

Welp, not accepting 100% of everything another person says doesn't make you not a nut, either. Just to, uh, put that out there.

Dood that's obvious.

[Invincible Summer]

Okay, only a nut accepts 100% of everything another person says.

I'm not saying that anyone who calls himself/herself a ____ist means they have to accept and agree with 100% of what ____ says.

But really, I think to call yourself a "Maoist Trotskyist" and only acknowledge guerrilla warfare (I'm assuming you mean PPW) and Permanent Revolution is sort of strange. These tendencies have a huge wealth (or lack thereof, depending on your view :lol:) of other theory and tactics that are all wound up with each other.

[Dermezel]

But really, I think to call yourself a "Maoist Trotskyist" and only acknowledge guerrilla warfare (I'm assuming you mean PPW) and Permanent Revolution is sort of strange. These tendencies have a huge wealth (or lack thereof, depending on your view :lol:) of other theory and tactics that are all wound up with each other.


Those aren't the only things they write which I accept. I also think Mao's ideas on New Democracy, and Trotsky's analysis of Fascism are useful (and even then, I don't accept those fully. ) But Mao's concepts on Guerilla War, and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution are their primary theoretical contributions.

[Comrade Anarchist]

Oh ya definitely the worker states provides for its people by building shitty buildings that collapse whenever the fucking wind blows. Collectivism and communal property has been proved to not be productive since Aristotle. Everything that communism builds is gray and lacks all sense of individuality and the fact that these governments are so shitty and care only about arrogating more power they are willing to build shitty buildings that kill thousands as long as their the higher up asses are in fucking palaces.

[Conquer or Die]

The worker state compares almost favorably with the western welfare states.

Smash revisionism.

[gorillafuck]

Oh ya definitely the worker states provides for its people by building shitty buildings that collapse whenever the fucking wind blows. Collectivism and communal property has been proved to not be productive since Aristotle. Everything that communism builds is gray and lacks all sense of individuality and the fact that these governments are so shitty and care only about arrogating more power they are willing to build shitty buildings that kill thousands as long as their the higher up asses are in fucking palaces.
Many buildings are in absolutely horrible, horrible condition in much of the "third world".

If we applied your logic that would make capitalism be a bad thing. By your logic.

[Sir Comradical]

A lot of countries respond to natural disasters a lot better than the United States.

s8ajwHvmcgA

[anticap]

Everything that communism builds is gray and lacks all sense of individuality

:lol: Strip away the twinkling veneer of advertising from the jewels of capitalism and they'd look the same. The lack of such a manipulative facade is a credit to a social system, not a debit.

But ooh, look at that neon glow! Look at how prosperous we are! Look at all that capitalism has given to us! :rolleyes:

[Nolan]

:lol: Strip away the twinkling veneer of advertising from the jewels of capitalism and they'd look the same. The lack of such a manipulative facade is a credit to a social system, not a debit.

But ooh, look at that neon glow! Look at how prosperous we are! Look at all that capitalism has given to us! :rolleyes:

But look at all the pretty lights and shiny buildings! :crying:

http://nicoleqatsi.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/322152193_f1ab23b927_o_tokyo.jpg

[anticap]

:lol: Don't you know that waste = progress? Only a primitivist would be concerned that their children will grow up having never seen the stars at night!