China Still Claims To Be A Socialist Republic Which Safeguards Workers Rights

[Small Geezer]

I thought some of you might be interested in this.

The following is the contribution of the Marxist Institute – Academy of Social Sciences People’s Republic of China, Prepared by Enfu Cheng and Shuoying Chen, researchers at Marxism Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, P.R. China, to the nineteenth International Communist Seminar (http://icsbrussles.org/) on ”The consequences of the economic crisis and the intervention of communist parties,” Brussels, 14-16 May 2010.
Since the global financial crisis broke out, the Communist Party of China has let government and trade unions play their full role in safeguarding workers’ interests with regard to employment and social security, etc.

Ⅰ The measures CPC and its government have taken to safeguard workers’ interests
1. The All Federation of China Trade Unions (http://www.acftu.org.cn/template/10002/index.jsp) (AFCTU) has adopted three major measures:
http://marxistleninist.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/prc-china-flag.jpg?w=300&h=239 (http://marxistleninist.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/prc-china-flag.jpg)Initiate “co-operation agreement” on “no layoffs and fewer layoffs, no pay cuts and less pay cuts, and payment consultation”. Till the end of 2009, 631,000 enterprises have joined the initiative covering 84 million workers. Carry out “Migrant workers aid operations.”
In 2009 AFCTU put in 1.1 billion yuan for 13.93 million migrant workers [i.e., migrating between village and city] business guidance, rights safeguard service and life helping. AFCTU was involved in the formulation of rights safeguard regulations. For example, in August 2009, AFCTU issued a notice on “further strengthening the democratic management in enterprise closure, bankruptcy and restructuring” which stipulates that restructuring scheme is subject to scrutiny by trade unions before implementation.
2. Raise the level of the basic pension by 10% (120 yuan per month) for enterprise retirees. This is the fifth consecutive increase in corporate pensions since 2005.
3. Economically developed areas have increased the minimum wage. The minimum monthly wage in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province all increased by more than 10% in the first quarter of 2010, reaching 1,030, 960 and 1,100 yuan respectively.
Ⅱ Problems faced by China in safeguarding workers’ interests
Under the effect of various measures, China’s registered urban unemployment rate was controlled at 4.3% in 2009. The number of China’s trade union members grew to a new record high. By the end of 2009, the total reaches 226 million, with an increase of 14.173 million, of which 7.983 million are migrant workers.
Despite these achievements, China still faces many problems in safeguarding workers’ interests, as the global financial crisis will not be over in the foreseeable future and there’s long way ahead for China’s urbanization.
1. As workers’ wage remains low relative to other kinds of income, the percentage of total wages in national income keeps declining. Currently total wages accounts only 30% or so of national income.
2. Many employers do not sign labor contract with workers or refuse to abide the contract. 30% -40% of urban employment personnel are “disposable workers”. 60% migrant workers do not have labor contracts. Random dismiss and wage arrears phenomenon is prevalent.
3. The legitimate right to leave hasn’t been effectively implemented and compensation for working overtime is low. Among the 145 million migrant labors working outside their neighborhood in 2009, 89.8% worked more than 40 hours. Workers working overtime can only get 20% -30% of the statutory compensation.
4. The ratio of employees covered by social security insurance is low. Insurance premiums comprised of basic pension, medical and unemployment insurance account for an average 28% of total wages, with 11% paid by individual worker. The rate is too high for enterprises and workers to take part in the insurance scheme.
5. Corporate safety and health conditions do not meet national standards. As a result, workers are frequently injured and suffer from occupational diseases.
6. Coordination mechanisms of labor dispute have not been established or incomplete within most enterprises. Among 13 million companies in China, more than 10 million small and medium enterprises have not established collective bargaining mechanism for wages.
Ⅲ China’s strategy to safeguard and promote workers’ interests
It is proved by practice that, in a capitalist market economy based on private property, the government, as the representative of capitalists’ interests, will not stand in the position of the working class and actively participate in the protection of workers’ rights. As a result, workers’ interests can only be maintained and improved through improving the bargaining power of workers, ongoing strikes and other kinds of struggle initiated by trade unions.
In socialist China, the ruling party CPC, as the representative of the fundamental interests of the working people, should be conscious of standing in the position of the working people and take the initiative to safeguard and promote workers’ interests.
At the macro level, the Government should safeguard workers’ rights from the standpoint of legislation, economic structure upgrading, the establishment of the ownership structure conductive to labor, and so on.
1. Revise and improve relevant provisions of the Constitution and other important laws. Protection for worker’s survival and development rights should be written into the Constitution. Workers’ rights should not only be protected by the Labor Law, but should also be recognized by the Constitution, by company law, and by other important laws.
2. Adhere to the ownership structure dominated by public ownership. In China, the protection of workers’ interests in general, is better in public enterprises than in non-public enterprises. Adhering to the ownership structure dominated by public ownership lays the foundation for CPC and its government to safeguard worker’s rights.
3. To promote industrial upgrading to seek breakthrough of “comparative advantage trap” featured by low-cost labor force. The competitiveness gained by suppressing workers’ benefits is not sustainable. In contrast, it will only lead to a lack of upward mobility of labor and thereby into a “comparative advantage trap” where Chinese companies are locked in low-end of the global value chain.
At the micro level, it is urgent to build three-facets-workers-rights-protection-system which is led by the state (the People’s Congresses and governments at all levels) with active participation from trade unions and workers, and with cooperation from employers.
1. The Government should play a leading coordinating role.
2. Trade unions should be truly representative of the interests of workers and pursue better organization.
3. The Corporate social responsibility should be strengthened to regulate and guide the organization of enterprises. Trade union congress, worker director/ supervisor system and the employee stock ownership system need to be improved to ensure workers’ participation in decision-making and supervision and their share of the revenue.

[Die Rote Fahne]

I claim to be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler in a gay jewish man's body.

Doesn't mean it's true.

[Small Geezer]

No you're right. I never said it was.

Although I do recall having sex with this Rabbi with strange views on the holocaust.

[AK]

China safeguards workers' rights like the major unions.

[Adi Shankara]

"Still Be"? when was it ever a Socialist Republic? after all, didn't Mao Zedong claim in 1961 that the "great leap" from capitalism to communism (without the prerequisite socialist intermediary state needed for actual Communism) was a roaring success?

such anti-Marxist concepts like "the Great Leap Forward" and the "Down to the Countryside" movement should've been obvious red flags (no pun intended) that the PRC was never very serious about practicing communism.

this latest press release by the Chinese "Communist" Party would be amusing, if so many poor people didn't have to suffer at the hands of the new bourgeoisie that consist of party vanguard members and capitalist businessmen with close ties to the party.

[RadioRaheem84]

Damn I wish this was true. I wish china would stop with the neo liberalism and at least become a ussr to at least be a deterent against us globalization. But it's about as socialist as the Russian federation.

[Uppercut]

It really is a shame that much of the social, political, and economic progress made during the mao era have been reversed. How can china claim to represent workers' interests when the rural areas have almost no access to healthcare and workers die working such workable shifts. They claim to be using capitalism to build socialism, but the opposite is true: they're using "socialism" to enhance capitalism.

[pranabjyoti]

It's a capitalist economy and a very worst kind of "capitalist" society.

[Adi Shankara]

It's a capitalist economy and a very worst kind of "capitalist" society.

If you read what happens to poor factory workers and construction workers in the large "Special Economic Zones", you think you'd be reading a Chinese version of "Oliver Twist".

[Soviet dude]

Socialism is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat plus a centrally planned economy that works in the interest of the whole of society. China I would say, still has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat but lacks a real centrally planned economy. I think this is a pretty good article about it:



Contribution to the International Symposium held in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, 13 - 15 October
Friedrich Engels and scientific socialism in contemporary China
It is 110 years since Friedrich Engels, the man who along with his companion Karl Marx laid the foundations of scientific socialism, passed away. To commemorate his death, an international symposium was held in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The organisers were the University of Wuhan, the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau of the CC of the Communist Party of China and the Academy of Social Sciences of China. 32 Chinese speakers made contributions, as well as 13 foreigners. At the request of the organisers, Peter Franssen, journalist with the Belgian weekly Solidaire and researcher at the Institute for Marxist Studies, wrote a contribution, which you can read in full below.
Peter Franssen
17-11-2005
Mister chairman,
Friends and comrades,
Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure and honour for me to have the opportunity of saying a few words here about Friedrich Engels and his merits in the construction of socialism in China.
What the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people have achieved since the revolution of 1949 is unprecedented in the history of mankind. There has never before been such a huge advance in the economic, social, cultural and political fields. Only the construction of the USSR, after the October Revolution of 1917, bears comparison with it. Practice has brilliantly and unequivocally proved that the general line of the Chinese Communist Party is correct. The achievements of the Chinese Communist Party have only been possible because the Party took as its guide scientific socialism, the dictatorship of people’s democracy, the leadership pf the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism. Friedrich Engels is, along with Karl Marx, the man who laid the fundamental basis of Chinese Communist Party thought. 110 years after Engels’ death, his ideas are nowhere more alive than in China.
Historical and Dialectical Materialism
Engels was only 23 when he wrote Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie. He was thus the first to apply the method of dialectical and historical materialism to the analysis of economic relations in bourgeois society. He researched economic phenomena in their entirety, their interaction and their development. Bourgeois political economy proclaimed then - as now, 161 years later – that capitalist private economy was the highest possible economic form and that capitalism was only capable of improvement in its distribution mechanisms. However, Engels showed that private ownership of the means of production under capitalist relations is characterised by a number of laws which bear within them the death of private property. The most important are the law of constant competition and the law of the constant relative or even absolute impoverishment of the masses.
Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie draws a sharp dividing line between the petty bourgeois, who reject capitalism on moral grounds, and scientific socialism, which shows the necessity and the historical limitations of private property and concludes that a socialist revolution is necessary to destroy the private ownership of the means of production and to allow society to move up to a higher stage, where the liberation of the productive forces is the main object.
The dividing line traced by Engels in 1844 today still forms the boundary between Marxism and « left-wing » petty bourgeois currents in China and elsewhere in the world. On the one hand there is scientific socialism. On the other there is a hotchpotch of moral, ethic and religious considerations, in other words idealism, which, as Engels caustically remarked, “seems to have a previously prepared recipe for achieving heaven on earth”. With the Utopians, scientific analysis must make give way to morals. Engels tales aim at Karl Heinzen, a representative of the Utopians, and writes: “Mr Heinzen imagines that property relations and heritage rights can change at will. He cannot understand that the property relations of each epoch are the necessary result of the modes of production and the way trade is carried on in that period. ” 1 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote1)
That same year 1844 Engels wrote with Marx The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. It was their first work in common. It is a devastating criticism of Utopianism and contains the fundamental ideas of the materialist conception of history, which proclaims that material production plays a decisive role in the development of society.
In 1844-1845 Engels and Marx wrote The German Ideology in which they show the dialectical relation between productive forces and relations of production. The historical role of capitalism and of its bearer, the bourgeoisie, was to concentrate the means of production and thereby to revolutionise society at every level. However, to the extent that the bourgeoisie accomplishes this feat, it approaches its limit, determined by the economic and social contradictions it itself has created. The ever-recurring crises of overproduction since then and the ever-recurring wars between capitalist countries and against developing countries for the capture or redistribution of raw materials and markets, show how correct the analysis of Engels and Marx was.
In the space of barely two years, Engels and Marx had worked out the foundations of dialectical and historical materialism. Lenin later wrote : « Historical materialism was a great achievement in scientific thinking.. » 2 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote2)
Utopianism today
All that teaches us that socialism is a transition system containing characteristics of the feudal and capitalist past and of the communist future. Socialism is no static situation but a movement from low to high, from primary to developed. Socialism will itself come to an end and pass into communism, as soon as all the economic, political, social, religious, moral and cultural vestiges of feudal and capitalist production relations in social structures are a thing of the past, and as soon as the members of society have left these vestiges in their behaviour and thought behind. Socialist transition society will necessarily last for a very long historical period and will, like all previous societies, constantly change its structure.
Some observers, Marxists or not, have not understood this basic idea of Engels and Marx and get very upset when they hear the words « socialist construction in China ».
One of the texts circulating in Western Europe and the United States is the book « China and Socialism » by two American professors, Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett. There one can read the following: « Beginning in 1978, the Chinese Communist Party embarked on a market-based reform process that, while allegedly designed to reinvigorate the effort to build socialism, has actually led in the opposite direction and at great cost to the Chinese people. » 3 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote3) A few pages further is this: « Despite the hopes of many on the left, it is our argument that China's market reform process has led the country not toward a new form of socialism, but rather an increasingly hierarchical and brutal form of capitalism. » 4 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote4) The objective reader will be flummoxed by this bold conclusion: what we’re talking about is “a brutal form of capitalism” with a ”great cost to the Chinese people”. Professor Minqi Li from York University comments as follows: “Hart-Landsberg and Burkett present an insightful analysis of the internal and external contradictions of Chinese capitalism. They convincingly argue that the Chinese experiment of market socialism has led to nothing less than full-fledged capitalism. China and Socialism will prove to be one of the most important contributions to the Marxist literature on contemporary China”.
We can point to another piece of writing that is being diligently studied: From Situational Dialectics to Pseudo-Dialectics: Mao, Jiang and Capitalist Transition by the American professor Barbara Foley. Ms Foley writes: “There are a number of indications that the People's Republic of China has become for all practical purposes a capitalist country, and that even the residual features of the socialist iron bowl are rapidly being eroded. ” 5 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote5)
Martin Hart-Landsberg, Paul Burkett and Barbara Foley give identical reasons to prove that the Chinese Communist Party has exchanged socialism for capitalism. These reasons are: income disparities have widened at one of the most rapid paces in the world; the official unemployment rate is nearly 5 percent but many investigators in the West think that unemployment is at a much higher rate; corruption is the rule of the day; the economic transformation with its option of everything through the market, of privatisation and increasing foreign domination has created an economy that has little to do with socialism; forced overtime, illegal working hours, unpaid wages, and dreadful health and safety conditions are commonplace.
What is their conclusion? Barbara Foley formulates it as follows: “Supporters of Chinese socialism who believe that the die has not yet been cast - that leftist forces within the CCP can eventually win out, and that workers and peasants can once again travel the road to communist egalitarianism - are, I believe, fooling themselves if they think that these things will happen without another revolution. ” 6 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote6)
A revolution is necessary to overthrow this monstrous regime, according to these “left-wing” critics of the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s Achievements
So it is time to take a look at the horrors the Chinese Communist Party has brought about throughout the country.
In the first phase of the construction of socialism, from 1950 to 1978, the growth rate of the Chinese economy was 6,2 % a year. This first phase was characterised by the organisation of the state and the building of industry, both as good as non-existent. China was a backward agricultural country. In such circumstances, there is no better method than centralised planning. Primitive accumulation of capital has still to begin and industry must go from its embryonic stage to a fully-fledged apparatus. The capital gained must be reinvested straightaway in order to realise this objective. In spite of which the consumption of the average Chinese rose by 2,2 % a year. 7 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote7) Between 1950 and 1978 the Chinese population doubled, but the number of poor people nonetheless dropped from 300 to 250 millions. 8 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote8)
In the sixties, the industrial infrastructure had outgrown its infant clothes. However, the state subsidies received by firms went on rising, year after year. The bank credits of many firms reached record heights. In the middle of the sixties 60 % of firms were running at a loss. State subsidies to industry accounted for a third of total government spending. 9 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote9) Industrial reform was the key to the following phase in the construction of socialism in China.
In this phase, which began in 1978, the economy grew on average by 9.5 % a year. That is eight times the figure for Germany and three times more than in the United States. Consumption and thus the standard of living of the average Chinese rose by 7.5 % a year.
Chinese society as a whole at present enjoys moderate welfare. Between 1978 and 2004, the number of people living in dire poverty dropped from 250 million to 26 million. In 1949 a Chinese could hope to live on average until he was 40. Today, life expectancy is 71 years and in Beijing even 80. In 1949 90 % of the population could neither read nor write. The figure is now less that 10 %.
The mode of production and the structure of the economy have in the last 25 years taken big steps towards the level where social ownership of all important means of production will once again become necessary. When the revolution took place in 1949 agriculture and individual craft industry made up 90 % of the economy. There were scarcely 3 million industrial workers, 0.6 % of the population. Agriculture has since dropped to less than 20 % and will according to plan make up only 10 % in 2010. The proportion for industry will then be 50 % and for the tertiary sector 40 %. 10 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote10)
What do the masters say?
We have seen how Engels and Marx sketch the dialectical relationship between mode of production and production relations and how the Utopians set themselves outside this reality and daydream about a perfect society. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong, all these masters of the working class, have pointed out how mistaken the Utopians were.
Friedrich Engels treated the Utopians of the beginning of the 19th century such as Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen mildly. Engels wrote: “The utopians, we saw, were utopians because they could be nothing else at a time when capitalist production was as yet so little developed. They necessarily had to construct the elements of a new society out of their own heads, because within the old society the elements of the new were not as yet generally apparent; for the basic plan of the new edifice they could only appeal to reason, just because they could not as yet appeal to contemporary history. ” 11 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote11)
However, the Utopians who lived in Engels’ day and those of today, Martin Hart-Landsberg, Paul Burkett and Barbara Foley no longer have that excuse. They can read what Engels says: “Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. ” 12 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote12)
After the revolution of 1949, Mao Zedong invoked these same economic conditions to plead for good relations and a united front with the national bourgeoisie. He declared: “The view held by certain people that it is possible to eliminate capitalism and realise socialism at an early date is wrong, it does not tally with our national conditions. ” 13 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote13)
In 1921 Lenin made a self-criticism concerning the period of the three previous years. He wrote: “We expected… to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. ” 14 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote14) This mistake had led, said Lenin, to a serious defeat: “In attempting to go over straight to communism we, in the spring of 1921, sustained a more serious defeat on the economic front than any defeat inflicted upon us by Kolchak, Denikin or Pilsudski. This defeat was much more serious, significant and dangerous. It was expressed in the isolation of the higher administrators of our economic policy from the lower and their failure to produce that development of the productive forces which the Programme of our Party regards as vital and urgent. ” 15 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote15) Hence the New Economic Policy with among others this directive of Lenin: “ We shall lease the enterprises that are not absolutely essential for us to lessees, including private capitalists and foreign concessionaires. ” 16 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote16) Lenin added that this period could last a long time: “But it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the co-operatives through NEP. At best we can achieve this in one or two decades. ” 17 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote17)
And naturally, just as nowadays, the critics howled: “ The Bolsheviks have reverted to capitalism! ” 18 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote18) Lenin scolded them: “They are not assisting but hindering economic development; … they are not assisting but hindering the proletarian revolution; … they are pursuing not proletarian, but petty-bourgeois aims. ” 19 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote19)
The Rise of Social Democratic ideas
Friedrich Engels has taught us that the birth of a new class is inevitable when new production relations arise. Private ownership of some means of production created a new capitalist class in China opposite the class the latter created itself, the working class. The working class has the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist state as its two most important weapons. The capitalist class seeks ways and means to realise its own programme. In China that occurs today in the first place through the expression of social democratic ideas, which, as Marx wrote “want to take the teeth out of socialism. ” 20 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote20)
With some, that happens by pointing out the “convergence between capitalism and Chinese-style socialism, comparing Marx’s Communist Manifesto to the practice of western societies and finding much of Marx’s social program realised in the West. ” 21 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote21)Others add that: “Since the end of World War II, all major capitalist countries have taken varied and energetic measures for social welfare so as to alleviate the labour-capital contradictions. ” 22 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote22) In Western Europe since the second half of the 19th century, social democracy preaches a third way between capitalism and communism, both of which it calls “inhuman systems”. Some people in China copy this humbug literally and write: “ Today China is caught between the two extremes of misguided socialism and crony capitalism, and suffering from the worst of both systems. We have to find an alternate way. This is the great mission of our generation. I am generally in favour of orienting the country toward market reforms, but China's development must be more equal, more balanced. The European idea of social-democracy like in Germany can be a model for China's new left. ” 23 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote23)
The criticism Friedrich Engels made of professor Dühring can be applied here, where he says: “Dühringian economics comes down to the following proposition: the capitalist mode of production is quite good, and can remain in existence, but the capitalist mode of distribution is of evil, and must disappear. ” 24 (http://www.archivesolidaire.org/scripts/article.phtml?section=A3AAABBOBB&obid=29091#footnote24) The economic laws and contradictions of capitalism are to be found in its production relations, so Engels teaches us. Private ownership of some means of production inevitably brings into being capitalist production relations whose fundamental contradictions cannot be prevented by any socialist state or any social democrat looking for the third way. The original need for private ownership of some means of production also turns into its opposite in modern China, to the extent that private ownership completes its mission and becomes a brake on further development of the productive forces.
No one can foretell when this process will be so far advanced that the abolition of private ownership will become a necessity. What we can now say, however, with positive certainty, is that at that moment the political and ideological steadfastness of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese working class will be of paramount importance.
Thank you very much indeed.
Footnotes


Friedrich Engels, Die Kommunisten und Karl Heinzen, Marx-Engels, Werke, Dietz-Verlag, Berlin, 1980, Band 4, p. 314.
Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism , Collected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1963, vol.19, p. 25
Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, China & Socialism, Market Reforms and Class Struggle, Monthly Review, New York, July-August 2004, p. 8.
Ibidem, blz. 26.
Barbara Foley, From Situational Dialectics to Pseudo-Dialectics: Mao, Jiang and Capitalist Transition, Cultural Logic, Volume 5, 2002. Foley’s text can be found on: http://eserver.org/clogic/2002/foley.html.
Ibidem, point 5.
Justin Yifu Lin, Fang Cai and Zhou Li, The Miracle: Development Strategy and Economic Reform, University Press, Hong Kong, 1995.
Liu Wenpu, Poverty and the Poverty Policy in China, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, 1999.
Zhu Huayou and Liu Changhui, The Development of China's Nongovernmentally and Privately Operated Economy, in: Gao Shangquan and Chi Fulin, Studies on the Chinese Market Economy, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1996, pp. 1-38.
Li Jingwen and Zhang Xiao, China's Environmental Policies in the 21st Century, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, 1999.
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, Marx & Engels, Collected Works, Volume 25 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch23.htm
Ibidem, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm.
Mao Zedong, Fight for a Fundamental Turn for the Better in the Nation’s Financial and Economic Situation, Selected Works, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1977, Volume V, p.30.
Lenin, Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, p.58
Lenin, The New Economic Policy and the Tasks of the Political Education Departments, , Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, p.63.
Lenin, New Times and Old Mistakes in a New Guise, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, p.28
Lenin, On Co-operation, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, p.470.
Lenin, New Times and Old Mistakes, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pp.21 and 24.
Ibidem, p.27
Karl Marx, To F.-A. Sorge, 19 September 1879, in: Marx & Engels, Selected Correspondence, Lawrence and Wishart, London, p.396
Sen Jiru, Zhongguo Du Dang 'Bu Xiansheng', Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe, Beijing, 1998, pp. 36-42.
Su Shaozhi, Developing Marxism under Contemporary Conditions, in: Su Shaozi and others, Marxism in China, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1983, p. 29.
Wang Hui, China's New Order: Society, Politics and Economy in Transition, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2003; Wang Hui, China: Unequal Shares – how Tiananmen Protests led to the New Market Economy, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2002. This last text can also be found on http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/hui-4-02.html.
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, Marx & Engels, Collected Works, volume 25 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm

[LC89]

I'm from Hong Kong. I'm at least happy with China didn't fallen like Hong Kong does... became a church state and in love with being colonize. I hope the keep it that way. There are lots of thing you can't learn about a culture unless you experience it first handed

[Nolan]

I don't see a DOTP, I see a capitalist system like every other one on the planet. And this isn't even the infamous "state-capitalism" that ultralefts like to whine about, this is outright capitalism.

edit: I was too vague on this. I believe in state capitalism too, i was just mocking ultraleftism. Stop repping me!

[Soviet dude]

I don't see a DOTP, I see a capitalist system like every other one on the planet. And this isn't even the infamous "state-capitalism" that ultralefts like to whine about, this is outright capitalism.

Russia in 1917 and during the NEP definitely didn't have a socialist economy either, but that doesn't mean Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not a revolutionary party moving the USSR into the direction of socialism. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is, in its concrete historical forms, a set of political institutions that exist to put the working class in charge and to repress the bourgeoisie's ability to exercise political power. The DOTP is not itself socialism, though it is a necessary prerequisite for building socialism.

Certainly the concrete historical forms of the what the DOTP is exist in China today, and I don't think there would be a lot of debate about that. I think the proper point of debate is the nature of the CCP today. Based on what I have read, the most accurate description would be that the majority leadership of the party is in the hands of Rightists of the Bukharin variety, who are also revisionists of the Khrushchev type. Indeed, I think the USSR would have developed economically much like China did after Mao had the Rightist won against Stalin.

While this is not an optimal state of affairs, China is still a country worth supporting. There is indeed a Left-wing tendency in China in the party that would prefer to roll-back market reforms, and with the contradictions of the world capitalist system coming to ahead, I expect those forces will gain more and more power in the coming years, and China will be as Red as ever. If and when this happens, people who have an incorrect line will not understand the developments taking place, and will probably be duped by Western propaganda about the political nature of China's turn back toward the Left.

[Saorsa]

didn't Mao Zedong claim in 1961 that the "great leap" from capitalism to communism (without the prerequisite socialist intermediary state needed for actual Communism) was a roaring success?

No. He didn't.

[Delenda Carthago]

Socialfascist China is the worst imperialist monster of the curent decade.Every democratic person should be against it.

[mosfeld]

Socialfascist China is the worst imperialist monster of the curent decade.Every democratic person should be against it.

That price would go to the United States, not China...

[Raúl Duke]

Certainly the concrete historical forms of the what the DOTP is exist in China today, and I don't think there would be a lot of debate about that. But there is, considering that people have brought up the doubts that China is a DOTP.

I don't get it why people have to defend China's now non-existent DOTP (anyone who thinks "the working class are ultimately in control" in China is outright delusional/ignoring the bitter truth. I'm willing to bet if you tell a common Chinese person that "the working class are in control" in China they'll perhaps think you are crazy), the revisionists won in China. Get over it, what China really needs is not reform of the corrupt CPC but a whole 'nother working-class revolution.

[death_by_semicolon]

Get over it, what China really needs is not reform of the corrupt CPC but a whole 'nother working-class revolution.

++

Their government sold out the revolution decades ago.

[Soviet dude]

But there is, considering that people have brought up the doubts that China is a DOTP.

But what I said was, I don't think there is much debate that the institutions that constitute what the DOTP concretely means actually exist in China. That is, a Communist Party rules China, and this party has upper and lower bodies, the lower bodies stretching all the way down to the masses, of which there are 78 million active cadre. The masses in turn directly elect the lower bodies of the National People's Congress, which elect the higher bodies and so forth. This institutional form is seen basically in all socialist countries. I am unaware of anyone who describes the institutions of the political system in any different way.


I don't get it why people have to defend China's now non-existent DOTP (anyone who thinks "the working class are ultimately in control" in China is outright delusional/ignoring the bitter truth. I'm willing to bet if you tell a common Chinese person that "the working class are in control" in China they'll perhaps think you are crazy), the revisionists won in China.

Rule by a class is an abstraction. I'm sure you could possibly even go up to Bill Gates and tell him that America is ruled by the interests of the capitalist class, and he might laugh in your face as well. It still wouldn't change the truth about who American bourgeois democracy serves.


Get over it, what China really needs is not reform of the corrupt CPC but a whole 'nother working-class revolution

This is what I mean by failing to understand what China is leading to a practical alliance with Western imperialism. Much like a great deal of the Left in 1989, who cheered the Tiananmen Square uprising, it would lead to under disaster as the country would be split up into tiny right-wing states completely under the domination of foreign capital.

Yugoslavia and Romania were also once friends of the West, until the collapse of the USSR made such 'friendships' no longer necessary. The Western imperialists powers do not like China, as it is most definitely not a state where foreign capital has unfettered access. They do not own the resources of the country, they don't own the major infrastructure, and they don't own the banks. Changing this in definitely in the interests of imperialism, and they will continue to employ all the leverage behind the scenes to make it happen. The change the imperialists want will only come through the destruction of the CCP, while a shift back toward the Left will only occur from within the CCP and it's 78 million cadre.

[Robocommie]

That is, a Communist Party rules China, and this party has upper and lower bodies, the lower bodies stretching all the way down to the masses, of which there are 78 million active cadre. The masses in turn directly elect the lower bodies of the National People's Congress, which elect the higher bodies and so forth. This institutional form is seen basically in all socialist countries.

This is interesting to me. How much of a choice of candidates do the 78 million active lower members have?

[Tatarin]

I have the same question as Robocommie. It seem strange that the vast working class, as well as peasants, are enjoying the "reforms" of the past 30 years. I'd even put an "okay, I get it" if China went social democratic, but capitalism has come in a very violent way, if not a quiet (yet slower) collapse.

[RadioRaheem84]

If china were to turn around and become social democratic in the least and began supporting national liberation struggles around the world, would you guys support it despite the road it took? What if the CPC was actually serious about using capitalism as a road to socialism? Fat chance but eh.

[scarletghoul]

What if the CPC was actually serious about using capitalism as a road to socialism? Fat chance but eh.
I'd be like "you bastards.. i love you... bastards"
Like what it must feel like to have a surprise birthday party after everyone ignores you for your whole birthday.

[scarletghoul]

Without doubt, in the future, China will travel towards Socialism and Communism, because the outcome of the industrialisation of China will either lead China to Socialism, or turn her into an imperialist country. The latter alternative will not be allowed by the Chinese people and the peoples of the world. Liu Shaoqi, 1949


country like ours can still move towards its opposite. Even to move towards its opposite would not matter too much because there would still be the negation of the negation, and afterwards we might move towards our opposite yet again. If our children’s generation go in for revisionism and move towards their opposite, so that although they still nominally have socialism it is in fact capitalism, then our grandsons will certainly rise up in revolt and overthrow their fathers, because the masses will not be satisfied. Mao Zedong, 1962 (emphasis mine)

[Robocommie]

If china were to turn around and become social democratic in the least and began supporting national liberation struggles around the world, would you guys support it despite the road it took? What if the CPC was actually serious about using capitalism as a road to socialism? Fat chance but eh.

It is my fervent, FERVENT hope that this is what Vietnam is doing. Why not the same for China? Hell yes, I'd be thrilled.

[Robocommie]

Liu Shaoqi, 1949

Mao Zedong, 1962 (emphasis mine)

These are both incredibly profound quotes, when read in a modern context. Here's my question though, why Liu Shaoqi's certainty about the Chinese people not allowing China to become an imperialist state? Imperialism oftentimes results in minor benefits to the standard of living of even the workers of the imperial nation.

[bailey_187]

If china were to turn around and become social democratic in the least and began supporting national liberation struggles around the world, would you guys support it despite the road it took? What if the CPC was actually serious about using capitalism as a road to socialism? Fat chance but eh.

If by Social Democratic you mean state ownership of large industries and government intervention in the economy; it is.

China is capitalist, but it is not "neo-liberal", except maybe in some of the SEZ. The CPC does not allow the "invisible hand" to sort the economy out or even pretend it does.

[RadioRaheem84]

If by Social Democratic you mean state ownership of large industries and government intervention in the economy; it is.

China is capitalist, but it is not "neo-liberal", except maybe in some of the SEZ. The CPC does not allow the "invisible hand" to sort the economy out or even pretend it does.

Excellent. Yes, I forgot about this. But if it ended the SEZ and decided to shift more toward socialism and stopped the reforms and aided national liberation struggles, would you support it? Would you forgive the damage it did to a whole generation of the Chinese working class to have another detterent against the neo-liberal order the US is trying to establish?

[bailey_187]

Excellent. Yes, I forgot about this. But if it ended the SEZ and decided to shift more toward socialism and stopped the reforms and aided national liberation struggles, would you support it? Would you forgive the damage it did to a whole generation of the Chinese working class to have another detterent against the neo-liberal order the US is trying to establish?

Yeah. Even now, they are more deserving of support than Iran, Zimbabwe etc.

[RadioRaheem84]

Yeah I am hopeful too, even though I have yet to see any evidence that this is the path they're pursuing. Mostly talk. Yet, at the same time, how can they prove that they mean what they say if their road to socialism through capitalism, has all the pitfalls and contradictions that come with a market economy? So it's literally taking them at their word? No? :confused:

[bailey_187]

Even if they arent going to try and build socialism again (assuming there is not workers revolution in the meantime), they have been able to break out of, and stay out of, imperialist underdevelopment.

[Tatarin]

But if it ended the SEZ and decided to shift more toward socialism and stopped the reforms and aided national liberation struggles, would you support it?

It's a pretty relative question. Personally, sure, as long as it did the right thing (which means that it indeed does the right thing, not just say it), then what is the problem? However, this means that the economic situation in the world must look drastically different, in where China can develop towards socialism, and if that is indeed what it really wants. To be picky; supporting national liberation movements doesn't necessarily mean supporting socialism, and "more towards socialism" doesn't necessarily mean that socialism is the end goal.


Would you forgive the damage it did to a whole generation of the Chinese working class to have another detterent against the neo-liberal order the US is trying to establish?

That, on the other hand, can most likely only be answered by our children, or their children. Again, it all depends on how things turn out. Did they deliberately go with capitalism this far, or was it a part of the plan? Did it help in the long run? And don't forget that if they once went with capitalism - what is there to stop them from doing so again?

As a detterent against US neo-liberalism? That is once again all relative. Is China helping the whole global working class, or only itself? What happens if China becomes the most powerful global hegemon? Would it spread socialism to all of us, or would it enslave us?

[Serge's Fist]

I think there are four important issues here:

Firstly the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DOTP) and socialism. The socialist revolution that puts in power the working class and erects its own centres of public authority after destroying the capitalist state does not sit on a socialist economy. You can not abolish the law of value overnight and you cannot end capitalist relations for years. This is a process of expropriation by the working class, that does take a massive step forward in taking power but still has the task of reorganising the economy on socialist lines. So it is perfectly reasonable that there have been and will be in the future DOTP's that maintain capitalist relations for a certain time. In the Russian Revolution this was the case, capitalism survived in a limited way throughout the revolutionary period. The working class are not in power in China and never have been. The Chinese revolution did not install the DOTP it installed a dictatorship of a party and its leadership.

Secondly on democracy, the elections in China like the Soviet Union are a farce, there is no democracy in China, workers control of production does not exist and whilst bureaucratic planning exists in large areas of the economy, China is part of the world capitalist metabolism that the Soviet Union never was.

Thirdly, the workers of China are rising up against every aspect of Chinese society and the intensification of capitalist reforms. We are now seeing strikes of thousands of workers in every key industry within China, there have been millions of strikers over the last few years coming out and clashing with the state and the bosses. I would post links but I am not at the posts required yet, but there are many articles online documenting the strikes and working class struggle in China.

Fourthly, China is an imperialist power. It is involved in Africa, South America and Central Asia in a massive way not simply supplying arms or aid to this or that state or taking part in "peace keeping" missions (Lebanon, Congo, Sudan, Ivory Coast) but also China is engaged in the massive export of capital, opening up third-world markets in the same ruthless fashion as the USA.

China and the gang of thieves that call themselves the Communist Party of China do not deserve our support or defense, it is a rising capitalist power fully integrated into the imperialist world order.

[scarletghoul]

These are both incredibly profound quotes, when read in a modern context. Here's my question though, why Liu Shaoqi's certainty about the Chinese people not allowing China to become an imperialist state? Imperialism oftentimes results in minor benefits to the standard of living of even the workers of the imperial nation.
Hmm, not sure. My guess is that he was just relying on the old-fashioned Marxist conviction that capitalism will inevitably turn into socialism one day. Maybe he says imperialism because its the highest stage of capitalism. Probably he thought a revolutionary consciousness would remain in the Chinese people, which is certainly true so far.

But China would require a huge amount of imperialism to benefit every one of its workers. 1.3 billion is an expensive labour aristocracy to maintain. So I don't think we would ever see a China able to buy off all its workers with imperialist wealth.. More likely the current trend will just continue with the urban middleclass living off the labour of the workers including rural peoples.. No need for imperialism except to get resources

[RadioRaheem84]

We talk a lot about china but what does the Chinese working class think? Are they still for socialism? I know that a lot of the young urban youth that are upwardly mobile are enjoying the ride. Also did they not think that a rich class would form that would be against a transition to socialism?

[REDSOX]

Socialism in China died a long time ago sadly and even then it was a top down bureacratic socialism

[KC]

Even if they arent going to try and build socialism again (assuming there is not workers revolution in the meantime), they have been able to break out of, and stay out of, imperialist underdevelopment.

They weren't a victim of "imperialist underdevelopment" they were a victim of Maoist stagnation. Capitalism is "break[ing them] out" of that.