China:capitalism or deformed workers state?

[Aurora]

It may seem like an obvious question but im interested in knowing the details about it and my knowledge of China is very limited.
I used to think it was pretty clear cut that China was capitalist but if thats the case it raises a couple important questions.
I think it's important to draw on previous situations to correctly analyze the situation so i'll start with what im more familiar with, the Soviet Union, it's my understanding that in the initial stages of the SU's dissolution the various federated republics became independent largely without great resistance from the central government and other nations which had been a part of Russia such as Chechnya also moved towards independence, following this the highest soviets of bureaucrats in each republic in turn disbanded or made illegal the lower soviets and themselves. I'm not quite sure how it developed, but next the market was reintroduced and the majority of state assets were privatized or personally grabbed by bureaucrats turned capitalists and the bourgeois Duma was reinstated.
So we see both a shift from socialised property into private property and a corresponding shift from a workers form of government(bureaucratised as it was) back to capitalist political institutions.

Firstly how much of the above is correct and what is missing?
Secondly is it appropriate to use the above as an archetype?

Now it's my understanding that their were some important diferences that may affect(have affected) the restoration of capitalism in China.
First that the PRC was born 'deformed' as such, it never had a functional workers democracy, second the Maoists never completly expropriated the bourgeoisie.

Are either of those incorrect? are there any other important differences?

The modern PRC certainly has a market and a bourgeoisie but it also has large state property and i believe (at least at the higher levels) the state form is analogous to the SU although of course without workers power.

So my main question is whether or not China is capitalist or a deformed workers state?

My current thinking leads me to believe it's a heavily deformed workers state on its way back towards capitalism but this view has a number problems,
1)With the high level of capitalist development within the PRC the bureaucracy in combination with the capitalists should have overthrown all remnants of social property and the workers state.
2)With a native capitalist class the task of communists is no longer political but social revolution.

So that brings me to capitalism, if China is capitalist it brings some problems too
1)When did the PRC become capitalist, im unaware of a qualitative transformation like 91 in the SU
2)Why hasn't the political form in the PRC caught up with the economic base


Thoughts?

p.s I apologise if this is rambling, obvious, irrelevant etc im really just thinking out loud here.

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm not in a position to answer the rest, but this one caught my eye:


2)Why hasn't the political form in the PRC caught up with the economic base

In which sense has is the political form not an expression of the economic base? Single-party states have never been incompatible with capitalism, least of all in China, where the CPC are in fact the second such party, succeeding the KMT after the civil war.

[Revolutionair]

You said that China never had workers' power. So this excludes a dictatorship of the proletariat or lower stage communism. It certainly never was in the higher stage of communism. So I'm going to answer: China switched from national-capitalism (as defined by Engels) to the authoritarian version of liberal market capitalism.

[graymouser]

China changed from a deformed workers' state to an authoritarian capitalist state. The "iron rice bowl" was a major progress from the prior state of China, but workers' democracy was always missing from China. Despite all this the Chinese revolution abolished capitalism and had major social gains that have mostly been eroded.

I think it's always an error to see deformed workers' states as having been basically the same before and after capitalist restoration; it's a major weakness of state-capitalist theories. There is no ability to explain why there was privatization or why the standard of living has collapsed if it's just a change from one form of capitalism to another. Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett wrote a book called China and Socialism that gives a really good look at how market changes led inexorably to the return of capitalism in China.

[Revolutionair]

China changed from a deformed workers' state to an authoritarian capitalist state. The "iron rice bowl" was a major progress from the prior state of China, but workers' democracy was always missing from China.

Then honestly, why call it a workers' state. I don't care whether it is deformed, upside down, inside out, but why call it a workers' state to begin with. The workers hold no power, they have got nothing to do with the people on top. If the state is a tool for one class to oppress another, and the workers are not the ones oppressing, then they are obviously being oppressed.

[Tim Finnegan]

I think it's always an error to see deformed workers' states as having been basically the same before and after capitalist restoration; it's a major weakness of state-capitalist theories. There is no ability to explain why there was privatization or why the standard of living has collapsed if it's just a change from one form of capitalism to another.
Wouldn't that suggest that the reverse process- increased nationalisations and the expansion of the welfare state- mark a move towards socialism, which is pretty much reformism par excellence? :confused:

[graymouser]

Then honestly, why call it a workers' state. I don't care whether it is deformed, upside down, inside out, but why call it a workers' state to begin with. The workers hold no power, they have got nothing to do with the people on top. If the state is a tool for one class to oppress another, and the workers are not the ones oppressing, then they are obviously being oppressed.
Because the property relations in the deformed workers' states were dramatically different. Effectively they were removed from capitalism's grip for several decades, and even though the workers were never in control, conditions improved tremendously. A theory of "state capitalism," as Ernest Mandel pointed out, would have to concede that the form has considerable advantages over private capitalism.

The deformed workers' states had laid the groundwork for socialist reconstruction of society, and Trotskyists responded by saying that these states should be seized by the very workers in whose name they were ruled. We saw the property forms as progressive but the rule by the bureaucracy as reactionary, and eventually undermining the very gains of the revolution. It's the only theory that really comprehends the complete evolution and degeneracy of these states.

[Blake's Baby]

Look Engels theorised the collective capitalist back in 1890, capitaliusm doesn't need a dude in a top hat with a cigar, it can be run by a corporation (whether pricvate or state it matters not); so Mandel was basically talking shit. State capitalsim isn't better than private capitalism which is one of the many points where Lenin (and Trotsky) were totally wrong. Therecan be no permanent 'workers' state'; the revolution was dead in Russia by 1921, and in the rest of the world by 1927 (I think, murdered in the streets of Shanghai, by goons of the KMT, that Moscow wanted to ally with - in fact, Trotsky analysed all of this didn't he?)

State control of the means of production is the most brutal (and one of the most inefficient, but not in a good way) forms of capitalism imaginable. Every single 'socialist' country has resembled a prison.

[graymouser]

Look Engels theorised the collective capitalist back in 1890, capitaliusm doesn't need a dude in a top hat with a cigar, it can be run by a corporation (whether pricvate or state it matters not); so Mandel was basically talking shit. State capitalsim isn't better than private capitalism which is one of the many points where Lenin (and Trotsky) were totally wrong. Therecan be no permanent 'workers' state'; the revolution was dead in Russia by 1921, and in the rest of the world by 1927 (I think, murdered in the streets of Shanghai, by goons of the KMT, that Moscow wanted to ally with - in fact, Trotsky analysed all of this didn't he?)

State control of the means of production is the most brutal (and one of the most inefficient, but not in a good way) forms of capitalism imaginable. Every single 'socialist' country has resembled a prison.
This is less argument and more rant, honestly - a society in which all private capital was expropriated, all markets suppressed in favor of central planning, all foreign commerce was transacted by the government, and state caps can't find any differences with capitalism as described by Marx. It's simply astounding.

No one argued that there could be a permanent version of a transitional form like a workers' state; Trotskyists worked under the assumption that, in the absence of a world socialist revolution, they would fall under the weight of the bureaucracy perched atop them. And while this didn't happen immediately, it did happen - in Russia and Eastern Europe very dramatically, and in China and Vietnam through a slower process. So that is irrelevant.

A revolution is a powerful thing. The French revolution had ended its main radical-democratic impulse when the Jacobins were overthrown; yet under Napoleon many of the tasks of that revolution still had to be carried out, even outside of France where he conquered. It was similar with the deformed workers states; while this was NOT socialism, many of the tasks of the revolution were carried out by the bureaucracy which needed to burnish its credentials to claim to rule in the name of the workers. This is a reflection of how powerful the revolution was still after World War II, and how thoroughly Stalin and his lackeys had usurped its mantle.

The Chinese state had been in a position where, if the workers had seized power from the bureaucracy in 1976 after Mao's death, it could have been transformed into a powerful, democratic, socialist society without wide-scale expropriation. The social tasks of the revolution were quite far advanced, only the political tasks - the seizure of power - remained. Today it's quite different: you would have to carry out mass expropriations, remove whole layers of bankers and capitalists as well as the Chinese Communist Party itself. This is a difference that does actually matter, and for Trotskyists the gains of the Chinese revolution were worth defending. Now there's even further to go after the second Chinese revolution.

[Dave B]

It is worth bearing in mind that Mao set out on a programme of state capitalism, thus;



THE ONLY ROAD FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF CAPITALIST INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE, September 7, 1953




The transformation of capitalism into socialism is to be accomplished through state capitalism.

1. In the last three years or so we have done some work on this, but as we were otherwise occupied, we didn't exert ourselves enough. From now on we should make a bigger effort.

2. With more than three years of experience behind us, we can say with certainty that accomplishing the socialist transformation of private industry and commerce by means of state capitalism is a relatively sound policy and method.

3. The policy laid down in Article 31 of the Common Programme should now be clearly understood and concretely applied step by step. "Clearly understood" means that people in positions of leadership at the central and local levels should first of all have the firm conviction that state capitalism is the only road for the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce and for the gradual completion of the transition to socialism. So far this has not been the case either with members of the Communist Party or with democratic personages. The present meeting is being held to achieve that end.

4. Make steady progress and avoid being too hasty. It will take at least three to five years to lead the country's private industry and commerce basically onto the path of state capitalism, so there should be no cause for alarm or uneasiness.




http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/TC53.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/TC53.html)

This followed theoretically from the Marxist theory of stageism where socialism or communism could only follow on from or be based on the prior full development of capitalism and thus the accumulation of the means of production.

And that was understood by Lenin in 1914, thus;

Narodism and Marxism, Published: Trudovaya Pravda No. 19, June 19, 1914




Pipe-dreaming about a "different" way to socialism other than that which leads, through the further development of capitalism, through large-scale, machine, capitalist production, is, in Russia, characteristic either of the liberal gentlemen, or of the backward, petty proprietors (the petty bourgeoisie). These dreams, which still clog the brains of the Left Narodniks, merely reflect the backwardness (reactionary nature) and feebleness of the petty bourgeoisie.

…….When Put Pravdy reaffirmed the well-known Marxist axiom that capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism, and that the idea of checking the development of capitalism is a utopia, most absurd, reactionary, and harmful to the working people, Mr. N. Rakitnikov, the Left Narodnik (in Smelaya Mysl No. 7), accused Put Pravdy of having undertaken the "not very honourable task of putting a gloss upon the capitalist noose".

Anyone interested in Marxism and in the experience of the international working-class movement would do well to pander over this! One rarely meets with such amazing ignorance of Marxism as that displayed by Mr. N. Rakitnikov and the Left Narodniks, except perhaps among bourgeois economists.

Can it be that Mr. Rakitnikov has not read Capital, or The Poverty of Philosophy, or The Communist Manifesto? If he has not, then it is pointless to talk about socialism. That will be a ridiculous waste of time.
If he has read them, then he ought to know that the fundamental idea running through all Marx’s works, an idea which since Marx has been confirmed in all countries, is that capitalism is progressive as compared with feudalism……….


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm)

Lenin applied same basic argument to china in 1912;

Democracy and Narodism in China





But the Chinese Narodnik combines this ideology of militant democracy, firstly, with socialist dreams, with hopes of China avoiding the capitalist path, of preventing capitalism, and, secondly, with a plan for, and advocacy of, radical agrarian reform. It is these two last ideological and political trends that constitute the element which forms Narodism—Narodism in the specific sense of that term, i.e., as distinct from democracy, as a supplement to democracy.

………For the idea that capitalism can be "prevented" in China and that a "social revolution" there will be made easier by the country’s backwardness, and so on, is altogether reactionary.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/jul/15.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/jul/15.htm)

What was novel in 1917-8 and in 1953 i suppose was the idea that the introduction and ‘building’ of the necessary pre requisite of socialism ie (state) capitalism could be carried on 'under communism'.

V. I. Lenin Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.) March 27-April 2, 1922




But in those old books you will not find what we are discussing; they deal with the state capitalism that exists under capitalism. Not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism. It did not occur even to Marx to write a word on this subject;


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm)

[El Burro]

I don't really think that what's referred to as a "deformed worker's state" and capitalism are necessarily mutually exclusive. It seems that all "worker's states", deformed or otherwise, never got beyond capitalist social arrangements... in fact they played an enormous role in establishing them.

[Aurora]

Thanks for all the replies :)


In which sense has is the political form not an expression of the economic base? Single-party states have never been incompatible with capitalism, least of all in China, where the CPC are in fact the second such party, succeeding the KMT after the civil war.
Well i wasn't talking particularly about the single party system which as you quite correctly say is compatible with capitalism, i was refering to the existence of the State Council, National People's Congress and the lower councils which i believe are analogous to the Sovnarkom, All Russian Congress of Soviets and the lower soviets in the SU. These organs lay the basis for workers rule in the PRC rather than say a capitalist parliament which cannot be used by the workers to run society.

You said that China never had workers' power. So this excludes a dictatorship of the proletariat or lower stage communism. It certainly never was in the higher stage of communism.
I would never claim that the PRC was the lower or higher phase of communism, i'll leave that to the Stalinists ;) . But the problem arises when we try to analyze the SU and PRC with terminology like DOTP because while the economic tasks of the DOTP had been completed in both, the political task of workers power wasn't, so it's technically incorrect to refer to either as the DOTP(workers rule) it becomes necessary to employ a new term, i believe this is the reason Trotsky refers to the SU as a 'workers state' and a 'dictatorship of the bureaucracy'.

China changed from a deformed workers' state to an authoritarian capitalist state.
When? Maoists usually say 79 as that's when the first market reforms were introduced and theres been a gradual increase of capitalist development since then, but i can't see where this increase in quantity lead to a change in quality.

Look Engels theorised the collective capitalist back in 1890
I dont believe he ever used the term 'collective capitalist'. I presume your refering to Socialism:utopian and scientific when Engels writes about the (capitalist)state taking over industries and becoming more and more the national capitalist. I think your reading your own state-capitalism theory into Engels as he never says that the (capitalist)state can take over all industry as the SU did and rightly so theoretically it's possible to imagine such a society but as Trotsky notes it would become too tempting a target for revolution.

Dave B, i'll try to go over your post soon.

A general question, why has the economy of the PRC grown faster and faster since the market reforms?

Im still not sure what to categorize the PRC as yet, it may be that the practical questions can decide it,
Is it possible for the Chinese workers to overthrow the bureaucracy and use the state apparatus to expropriate the bourgeoisie?

[SacRedMan]

Does anyone know if Slavoj Zizek has an opinion about North-Korea, Cuba and China?

Thanks.

[graymouser]

When? Maoists usually say 79 as that's when the first market reforms were introduced and theres been a gradual increase of capitalist development since then, but i can't see where this increase in quantity lead to a change in quality.
I see it as having been a prolonged period of change - a series of quantitative changes that led to qualitative change between 1979 and the 1990s. Certainly by the end of the '90s the character of the economy was different.

The Hart-Landsberg/Burkett book is a really good look at this process, taking a very balanced look at the way the reforms dragged China into a fully market economy.

[El Burro]

Does anyone know if Slavoj Zizek has an opinion about North-Korea, Cuba and China?

Thanks.

He refers to China as an authoritarian capitalist state that "does capitalism better than the west". What he means by this is that all the liberal values(free speech, parliamentary democracy, etc.) which are seen in the west as inseparable from capitalism are demonstrated to be superflous by the enormous growth of China.

[black magick hustla]

I don't really think that what's referred to as a "deformed worker's state" and capitalism are necessarily mutually exclusive. It seems that all "worker's states", deformed or otherwise, never got beyond capitalist social arrangements... in fact they played an enormous role in establishing them.

i think the point is that "workers' state" was a construct used to justify state defencism. today a buncha of sparts writing "defend the dprk deformed workers state" is as relevant as me slamming forties and listening to dubstep with other communists but in world war ii it was used to tie the fourth internationale to the defense of the allies in WWII.

[RedSunRising]

i think the point is that "workers' state" was a construct used to justify state defencism. today a buncha of sparts writing "defend the dprk deformed workers state" is as relevant as me slamming forties and listening to dubstep with other communists but in world war ii it was used to tie the fourth internationale to the defense of the allies in WWII.

Which outside of maybe Sri Lanka was as relevant as the Sparts today.

[black magick hustla]

Which outside of maybe Sri Lanka was as relevant as the Sparts today.

not really

[RedSunRising]

not really

Why not really?

Though I would have more time for the Sparts now than for the "4th International" than.

[Tim Finnegan]

Does anyone know if Slavoj Zizek has an opinion about North-Korea, Cuba and China?

Thanks.
He is very much of the opinion that China is capitalsitic, I know that much. In fact, he goes so far as to point to the authoritarian model of capitalism practised in China as the possible future of Western capitalism, if the blows laid to traditional liberal democracy by the events of the last decade or so turn out to have rendered it untenable. (I can't dig up a source right now, I'm afraid, but he discusses it his book First As Tragedy, Then As Farce- which is all about his hypothesised breakdown of liberalism- if you're interested in looking into it further.)


Well i wasn't talking particularly about the single party system which as you quite correctly say is compatible with capitalism, i was refering to the existence of the State Council, National People's Congress and the lower councils which i believe are analogous to the Sovnarkom, All Russian Congress of Soviets and the lower soviets in the SU. These organs lay the basis for workers rule in the PRC rather than say a capitalist parliament which cannot be used by the workers to run society.
It's not a Soviet Republic just because it departs from the Westminster, Paris or Washington archetypes. China is still ruled from a centralised single-party Politburo that is, in practical terms, the sole sovereign entity, which, as I said, is characteristic of bourgeois party-dictatorship moreso than anything that deserves the titles "workers", whatever labels it opts to give the committees to which it delegates administrative affairs.

[Dr Mindbender]

An all powerful state where the will of big business trumps all.

Seems closer to fascism than anything else.

[caramelpence]

Which outside of maybe Sri Lanka was as relevant as the Sparts today.

...but seemingly still relevant enough for Stalinist parties to repress Trotskyists in all the countries where they emerged, sometimes cooperating with colonial governments in order to do so, e.g. in Vietnam. In any case, relevance doesn't only mean numerical strength or how much of an impact political forces make on events, it also means the relevance of ideas, and in that sense I would argue that Trotskyists during WW2, despite all their mistakes and contradictions, were much more relevant than Stalinist parties when it came to the capacity of their ideas to stop imperialist war and liberate working humanity.

[CynicalIdealist]

China changed from a deformed workers' state to an authoritarian capitalist state. The "iron rice bowl" was a major progress from the prior state of China, but workers' democracy was always missing from China. Despite all this the Chinese revolution abolished capitalism and had major social gains that have mostly been eroded.

I think it's always an error to see deformed workers' states as having been basically the same before and after capitalist restoration; it's a major weakness of state-capitalist theories. There is no ability to explain why there was privatization or why the standard of living has collapsed if it's just a change from one form of capitalism to another. Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett wrote a book called China and Socialism that gives a really good look at how market changes led inexorably to the return of capitalism in China.

Martin Hart-Landsberg was my econ professor at Lewis and Clark College. =)

[Old Mole]

I think that the development in PRC in later years has been caused by the differing needs of the national bourgeoisie. Before they wanted to build a strong capitalist economy, so they became protectionist ("anti-imperialist") and needed independence from Moscow in order to not having to be a satellite state ("anti-revisionism"). Nowadays they no longer have these needs because they have already created a strong economy hence PRC is a common capitalist country with neoliberal policies in many issues.