Breaking news: China's capitalist!

[Crux]

The Rise of the Working Class & the Future of China’s Revolution (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/06/20/31139/)

[North Star]

An excellent article by an actual Chinese socialist to show these party-state fetishists in the West who think China is still socialist how wrong their entire line is.

[danyboy27]

holy shit man, you just blew my mind!!!!!!

[mykittyhasaboner]

Li's work is quite good. His website (http://www.econ.utah.edu/%7Emli/index.htm) contains some interesting interviews, among other reading.

Most importantly, it has his book manuscript, Capitalist Development and Class Struggle in China (http://www.econ.utah.edu/%7Emli/Capitalism%20in%20China/Index.htm), available for free.

Of course if your really interested, then buy his book, Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy (http://www.amazon.com/Rise-China-Demise-Capitalist-World-Economy/dp/0745327729). It is well worth it.

[Jose Gracchus]

It is quite difficult for me to take seriously a socialist who indulges the "capitalist roader" mythos; its a bit like trying to talk to an American liberal who thinks the Civil Rights Act was due to the benevolent leadership of their predecessors.

Addendum: That said, at least he isn't a totally clueless Brezhnevite or sub-Brezhnevite.

[S.Artesian]

I don't quite buy the "capitalist roader" "counterrevolutionary" "conspiracy" theory of transformation myself.

China has been, and still is circumscribed by 1) atomization of rural production-- with app 700 million tethered to the rural economy, and the average plot size being an estimated 1- 1.5 acres [IIRC] 2) poor labor productivity in industrial sectors. Estimates are that China's steel producers require at least 8X the labor time per ton of steel as is required in Japan.

The article takes no note of these factors, which I can't help thinking describe the present and past limitations of China's "socialism" as well as its current capitalism.

[DaringMehring]

Several posters criticize the article's interpretation of the 1949-1976 period, but, the author leads with "China remained part of the capitalist world economy and was forced to play by its rules," you'd think the posters would cut him some slack. The article gives a number of facts and statistics and a quite reasonable interpretation of today's politics, all of which were helpful to me at least in better understanding the situation in China.

[Queercommie Girl]

It is quite difficult for me to take seriously a socialist who indulges the "capitalist roader" mythos; its a bit like trying to talk to an American liberal who thinks the Civil Rights Act was due to the benevolent leadership of their predecessors.


Um. I think you misunderstand the concept of the "capitalist roader", if you make such a comparison.

[Jose Gracchus]

Maoists' concept of "capitalist roaders" is just a fantastical and unsupported by historical fact, so no, I know exactly what I was saying.

[mykittyhasaboner]

For the sake of this discussion, so that people aren't arguing against some strawman, Li's views on the question of China are summed up in the Introduction of Capitalist Development and Class Struggle in China:


While the Chinese socialist revolution failed to establish a genuine socialist society (for objective as well as subjective reasons), the revolution did bring about tremendous improvement of the material and spiritual conditions of life of Chinese working people.

In revolutionary China, which, in the opinion of the liberal intellectuals and bourgeois ideologues, was a “totalitarian society” in which people did not have any freedom and rights, working people were guaranteed extensive social rights (such as the right to employment-- “iron rice bowl,” to free health care, to cheap housing, and to other basic needs) that are unimaginable for the workers in capitalist societies.

The new society was thus faced with a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, since the revolution had overthrown the old oppressive and exploitative system, and guaranteed working people extensive social rights, it was no longer possible to develop productive forces in the way in which productive forces were developed in “normal” oppressive societies.

On the other hand, the revolution failed to establish a genuine socialist society in which working people had control over society and economy. Instead, a new ruling class gradually took shape. If this contradiction could not be solved, there was no way to secure the development of productive forces, and consequently, the survival of the new society.

This contradiction could be solved either by further developing the revolution, that is, by destroying the emerging new oppressor class and establishing working people’s control over society and economy, or by returning to the “normal” status of the oppressive society and depriving the working people of their extensive social rights that they won in the revolution.

Whether the contradiction was solved in the first way or the second way, depended upon real historical struggles between different classes. In China, the struggle was concentratedly expressed by the Cultural Revolution.

In the official economics, this contradiction was reflected in the controversy on “planning” and “market.” According to the official economics, market is the only rational and viable economic system under the modern conditions and the “market-oriented reform” provides the only solution to the economic contradictions of late Maoism. However, there is not an economic system that operates without being under any social relations.

Thus, it makes no sense if we talk about the rationality and viability of an economic system without considering the context of social relations. For example, given the capitalist social relations, productive forces can be developed only if the capitalists are allowed to exploit the workers, and consequently only the economic system that allows the capitalists to exploit the workers can be “rational and viable.”

This certainly does not suggest that what is “rational and viable” for capitalism is also “rational and viable” for any other society. On the contrary, capitalist exploitation, by repressing the creativity of working people, is a great obstacle to the development of productive forces.


It was only after the failure of the Cultural Revolution, with the revolutionary socialist political and intellectual force defeated, and the rule of the bureaucratic ruling class consolidated, that the “market-oriented reform” became the only politically and socially viable solution to China’s economic problems.

While the official economics keeps silence on the issue of social relations, they have implicitly taken for granted the existing social relations, that is, taken for granted the rule of the oppressor class over the oppressed people.

Nonetheless, the class struggle between the ruling class and the oppressed people did not end with the failure of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, it was impossible for the ruling class to impose the capitalist oppressive and exploitative system on working people without serious struggles. These struggles reached one climax in the 1989 revolution.

[El Oso Rojo]

An excellent article by an actual Chinese socialist to show these party-state fetishists in the West who think China is still socialist how wrong their entire line is.

We don't but we are not black and white about it like you, though.

[DaringMehring]

Maoists' concept of "capitalist roaders" is just a fantastical and unsupported by historical fact, so no, I know exactly what I was saying.

What he outlines in the article is Party officials developing separate interests based on their power and privilege, which they then consolidated via taking the capitalist road.

While that isn't 100% accurate or exhaustive, that's not hugely objectionable, either.

Yes, it is problematic because it does not fully explain how the so-called vanguard Party developed this tendency; it is not self-critical, and appears to cling to the myth that China actually was socialist (it is worth noting the author says China was socialist not based on it having classic socialist features, but simply because it was "nicer for proletarians than the capitalist countries") and also says nothing about workers' democracy. But -- how relevant is that to the meat of what the author is presenting, and how much does it taint that meat?

I'd say definitely to some degree, but not to a large and certainly not fatal degree. The article gives a lot of good information on where China is and where it is going.

Some people will dismiss a whole turkey just because a few feathers are out of place!

[S.Artesian]

Some people will dismiss a whole turkey just because a few feathers are out of place!

Or because, it isn't really a turkey. It's a pigeon.

We need to come to grips with a real materialist analysis of the changes in China, and that materialist analysis locates the cause of those changes in China's own relations of production, not as a consequence of "bad bureaucrats" "capitalist roaders.." etc.

[DaringMehring]

Or because, it isn't really a turkey. It's a pigeon.

We need to come to grips with a real materialist analysis of the changes in China, and that materialist analysis locates the cause of those changes in China's own relations of production, not as a consequence of "bad bureaucrats" "capitalist roaders.." etc.

Yes.

But the article makes at least a token attempt, to derive the "bad bureaucrats," "capitalist roaders," etc. from China's relations of production:



Despite historic Maoist achievements, China remained a part of the capitalist world system and was compelled to operate under the basic laws of motion of the system. The economic surplus was concentrated in the hands of the state to promote capital accumulation and industrialization. This in turn created the material conditions that favored the new bureaucratic-technocratic elites who demanded ever increasing material privileges and political power.


Of course this could be expanded, deepened, and made a more penetrating critical analysis. But this is just the preamble to the main meat of the article, so it seems unreasonable to demand an in-depth exposition, as does it seem unreasonable to disqualify the whole article on because of it. I stand by the turkey-feather analogy. The article is no pigeon.

[Jose Gracchus]

I guess I'm highly skeptical of this in particular:


Mao Zedong and his revolutionary comrades attempted to reverse the trend toward capitalist restoration by directly appealing to and mobilizing the masses of workers, peasants, and students. Politically inexperienced and confused, the workers and peasants were not yet ready directly to exercise economic and political power. After Mao’s death in 1976, the capitalist roaders led by Deng Xiaoping staged a counterrevolutionary coup and arrested the radical Maoist leaders. In a few years, Deng Xiaoping consolidated his political power and China was on the path of capitalist transition.Needless to say, the above passage is an almost unrecognizable mutilation of Chinese history, and therefore I question the general conceptual premises by which the author approaches the modern state of class struggle in China.

And:


Massive privatization was undertaken in the 1990s. Virtually all of the small and medium-sized state-owned enterprises and some big state-owned enterprises were privatized. Almost all of these were sold at artificially low prices or simply given away. The beneficiaries included government officials, former state-owned enterprise managers, private capitalists with connections in the government, and transnational corporations. In effect, a massive “primitive accumulation” was completed and a new capitalist class was formed, based on the massive theft of state and collective assets. Meanwhile, tens of millions of state- and collective-sector workers were laid off and left impoverished."Theft of state and collective assets", combined with the article's origination in that bed of opportunist left-Keynesianism, Monthly Review, leaves me with a lot of misgivings. One gets the impression that, despite the author's own admission of decades of "capitalist roaders" and "bureaucratic-technocratic elites" with a thirst for "privilege" by this point, somehow the very "on paper" statement that assets are "state" or "collective" somehow gave them a mystical popular quality that was negated by the "theft". This is absurd. It was just a fictitious sale that was in fact just a self-transformation by the selfsame elites to a more malleable and useful form.

One gets the impression that a solution would just be ahistorically rolling back the clock to like the old social democratic nationalization programs offered in the 30s and earlier, and ultimately derived from Kautskyist bilge. I think this shows why the modern "left" really has no answers 95% of the time: they only complain about the past gains being broken down, without any credible program that addresses the material content of the 21st c. class struggle.



The legitimacy of this new capitalist class was recognized by the Communist Party leadership. At the Sixteenth Party Congress (in 2002), the Party Charter was revised. Under the old Charter, the Communist Party considered itself to be the vanguard of the working class, representing the interests of the proletariat. Under the new Charter, the Communist Party declared itself a representative of the interests of both the “broadest masses of people” and the “most advanced productive forces.” The term “most advanced productive forces” is widely viewed as a euphemism for the new capitalist class.
And this wasn't presaged in the Bloc of Four Classes, including the "progressive bourgeoisie"?

[North Star]

We don't but we are not black and white about it like you, though.

I'm a little confused on your comment here. There are M-L'ers out there that believe China is socialist. Most Maoists do not buy it. If however you would like to argue that China is in some sort of flux given the substantial role the state plays in the economy that's fair. It certainly does not behave like many other capitalist countries, it seems to be willing to look at things in the long term while the West no longer can. That being said it's still capitalist oriented in my opinion at the end of the day and the working class has no formal power maybe a few bureaucrats who are willing to sympathize with them but that's about it.

[Ocean Seal]

Obviously the working class is a counter-revolutionary element working for the Western Imperialists to overthrow the genuine communist party leading China towards communism.

[S.Artesian]

What we have in this article and what makes it a pigeon is exactly what TIC points to: the present is used as an ideological weapon to glorify, and obscure, the past. Mao and his comrades tried to reverse the trend to capitalist restoration... but the masses, the workers weren't capable?

Well, then how the fuck did you ever overthrow capitalism in the first place? How did you ever get socialism to begin with? Those are the critical questions that will give us the critical answers about China today that our so-called critic of present-day China will not dare engage.

So all this criticism does is amount to a recuperation-- of the very same distortions and anti-materialism that surrounded the uncritical homages to "Chinese socialism" so popular 40 years ago.

[Jose Gracchus]

Chomsky compared the recent wave of neo-Maoist populism in China to Tea Partyism and other co-temporal outbreaks of loopy populism (gold kooks, truthers, ad nauseum) in the U.S. as crude responses to the era of crisis and austerity. Despite some misgivings, I think it is apt: both are resurrections of historically bankrupt mythologies of "good guys" and "bad guys" subverting the old settled established narrative of the ruling class (Dengism and New Dealism, respectively) in some vision of national renewal. And both are tools of fractions of the current ruling class.

[RadioRaheem84]

And Chomsky knows Marxists so well. :rolleyes:

[syndicat]

Despite historic Maoist achievements, China remained a part of the capitalist world system and was compelled to operate under the basic laws of motion of the system. The economic surplus was concentrated in the hands of the state to promote capital accumulation and industrialization. This in turn created the material conditions that favored the new bureaucratic-technocratic elites who demanded ever increasing material privileges and political power.

this is a poor explanation. what it leaves out is that the party-state regime was a class society from the very beginning and throughout the period since 1949. the bureaucratic class was in power and it was in their interests to make a deal with foreign capital towards developing the country, and to allow the development of a capitalist class...because many of them saw the opportunity to move into this class, and as members of a dominating/expoiting class, their class position was not inconsistent with the exploitation of chinese labor but was based on it.

the revolution, being a mass event, required substantial popular support for the CCP to consolidate its hold. to do this required various concessions to the popular classes (workers and peasants). the benefits to the people from the revolution are explained this way.

[Jose Gracchus]

this is a poor explanation. what it leaves out is that the party-state regime was a class society from the very beginning and throughout the period since 1949. the bureaucratic class was in power and it was in their interests to make a deal with foreign capital towards developing the country, and to allow the development of a capitalist class...because many of them saw the opportunity to move into this class, and as members of a dominating/expoiting class, their class position was not inconsistent with the exploitation of chinese labor but was based on it.

the revolution, being a mass event, required substantial popular support for the CCP to consolidate its hold. to do this required various concessions to the popular classes (workers and peasants). the benefits to the people from the revolution are explained this way.

This.

But to be honest, the CCP and its military won by pretty conventional means, and more in political terms by just promising to be a...better and more authentic version of the KMT, not by organizing mass drives for socialist revolution. There were mass mobilizations and social change, but to be honest it was more like a modernizing revolution from above by a developmentalist state elite than anything like an authentic social revolution of any kind.


And Chomsky knows Marxists so well. :rolleyes:

You're right, I'm wrong because I cited the origin of a remark I agreed with, rather than pretending it was on my own authority. Riveting logic. It doesn't take a weatherman to tell which way the wind's blowing in China, and its only a cursory look at bullshitting populist "Maoists" who are actually quietly married to businesswomen, to tell how full of shit that noise is.

Why don't you make an argument if you have it? Oh I forgot, everytime someone mentions Chomsky, you tear your hernia. Wah wah wah.

[Queercommie Girl]

Chomsky compared the recent wave of neo-Maoist populism in China to Tea Partyism and other co-temporal outbreaks of loopy populism (gold kooks, truthers, ad nauseum) in the U.S. as crude responses to the era of crisis and austerity. Despite some misgivings, I think it is apt: both are resurrections of historically bankrupt mythologies of "good guys" and "bad guys" subverting the old settled established narrative of the ruling class (Dengism and New Dealism, respectively) in some vision of national renewal. And both are tools of fractions of the current ruling class.

Two things:

1) Firstly, this kind of comparison is very shallow. It's ignoring among other things the difference between left-wing and right-wing ideologies to say the least.

2) Secondly, I'm not saying Maoism cannot be criticised on valid socialist ideological grounds, but it should be pointed out that the existence of "nostalgia about the past" does not automatically make an ideology reactionary. In principle it is potentially possible to have a generally progressive ideology that does in fact contain elements of "nostalgia". As I've said elsewhere, generally speaking cultural or aesthetic critique is useless in socialist politics.

I would say that if one wants to seriously criticise Maoism, at least do it from a solid ideological and class angle, rather than just throwing around vague analogies like how bourgeois liberals often like to do.

[Queercommie Girl]

Needless to say, the above passage is an almost unrecognizable mutilation of Chinese history, and therefore I question the general conceptual premises by which the author approaches the modern state of class struggle in China.


Unless you have a completely cynical view of Mao's role during the Cultural Revolution, namely that it was nothing more than an excuse for Mao to grab onto more political power, I certainly wouldn't write off that piece of analysis at all.



"Theft of state and collective assets", combined with the article's origination in that bed of opportunist left-Keynesianism, Monthly Review, leaves me with a lot of misgivings.


Um. Plenty of Trotskyists refer to mainstream sources like the Financial Times for reference too. Just because you quote from something doesn't mean you agree with its ideology.



One gets the impression that, despite the author's own admission of decades of "capitalist roaders" and "bureaucratic-technocratic elites" with a thirst for "privilege" by this point, somehow the very "on paper" statement that assets are "state" or "collective" somehow gave them a mystical popular quality that was negated by the "theft". This is absurd. It was just a fictitious sale that was in fact just a self-transformation by the selfsame elites to a more malleable and useful form.


But the author was defending state and collective property in general, not the elites who were controlling them.

I don't see anything "mystical" here. Even from an orthodox Trotskyist perspective, "Stalinist"-style state property is still relatively progressive compared with explicit neoliberal-style privatisation.



One gets the impression that a solution would just be ahistorically rolling back the clock to like the old social democratic nationalization programs offered in the 30s and earlier, and ultimately derived from Kautskyist bilge.


This comparison strikes me as somewhat vague. Just because in both cases there is some "nostalgia" for the past doesn't imply in the concrete practical sense they are the same kind of politics at all. It's almost like a form of "argument by aesthetic affinity", which is frankly a logical fallacy.

(It's like saying since the Nazis liked artistic style X, so everyone who likes artistic style X must be a Nazi or Nazi sympathiser)

I don't think serious Maoists in China literally advocate "rolling back the clock" in the concrete political sense. "Maoist nostalgia" in China today is more of a cultural and aesthetic thing.



I think this shows why the modern "left" really has no answers 95% of the time: they only complain about the past gains being broken down, without any credible program that addresses the material content of the 21st c. class struggle.


How did you jump from a critique of Maoism to writing-off 95% of the left camp generally?



And this wasn't presaged in the Bloc of Four Classes, including the "progressive bourgeoisie"?

No, because capitalists couldn't actually join the CCP back in the Maoist era. Ex-capitalists who have given up their capitalist socio-economic role could join, and there were some limited co-operation with a few capitalists who are outside the party, similar to Lenin's NEP policies to some extent, but CCP members can't literally be capitalists. So it's fundamentally different to the situation today.

[RadioRaheem84]

You're right, I'm wrong because I cited the origin of a remark I agreed with, rather than pretending it was on my own authority. Riveting logic. It doesn't take a weatherman to tell which way the wind's blowing in China, and its only a cursory look at bullshitting populist "Maoists" who are actually quietly married to businesswomen, to tell how full of shit that noise is.


I am sure there are many using Maoism to tow a populist line with the growing masses of disenchanted workers. I don't deny this, but Li is certainly not one of them.


Why don't you make an argument if you have it? Oh I forgot, everytime someone mentions Chomsky, you tear your hernia. Wah wah wah.

I like Chomsky. I've actually defended him a lot on this board. I just think he becomes borderline intellectually dishonest when discussing Marxism or Marxists, etc.

[Jose Gracchus]

Two things:

1) Firstly, this kind of comparison is very shallow. It's ignoring among other things the difference between left-wing and right-wing ideologies to say the least.

I don't really care; what I care about is workers being drawn into tailing this or that wing of capital.


2) Secondly, I'm not saying Maoism cannot be criticised on valid socialist ideological grounds, but it should be pointed out that the existence of "nostalgia about the past" does not automatically make an ideology reactionary. In principle it is potentially possible to have a generally progressive ideology that does in fact contain elements of "nostalgia". As I've said elsewhere, generally speaking cultural or aesthetic critique is useless in socialist politics.

Uh, we're talking about workers being drawn into tailing a wing of capital here.


I would say that if one wants to seriously criticise Maoism, at least do it from a solid ideological and class angle, rather than just throwing around vague analogies like how bourgeois liberals often like to do.

Uh, we're talking about workers being drawn into tailing a wing of capital here.


Unless you have a completely cynical view of Mao's role during the Cultural Revolution, namely that it was nothing more than an excuse for Mao to grab onto more political power, I certainly wouldn't write off that piece of analysis at all.

Maybe you should follow your analysis of "ideological and class" analysis, rather than stories of romantic struggle by Mao and his real comrades. I don't think Mao was in any position in 1966 to fight for the workers, he was an unaccountable chieftan atop a pyramid of domination and exploitation upon the working class and poor peasantry. His rhetoric is vacuous and the economic and social 'achievements' of the GPCR were nil. When it did move in directions toward real revolutionary socialism, it was crushed by the PLA with Mao's blessing, who subsequently rehabilitated those demon-like "roaders".

So yes, I have no use for that bilge.


Um. Plenty of Trotskyists refer to mainstream sources like the Financial Times for reference too. Just because you quote from something doesn't mean you agree with its ideology.

The editorial and political lines of the socialist journal you choose to publish in is quite pertinent, actually.


But the author was defending state and collective property in general, not the elites who were controlling them.

What mystical qualities are embodied in "property forms" in the abstract? In Marxism one contends with realities of social relations, not an abstraction of ideal forms.


I don't see anything "mystical" here. Even from an orthodox Trotskyist perspective, "Stalinist"-style state property is still relatively progressive compared with explicit neoliberal-style privatisation.

I think that's idiotic and obviously not supported by history. Ask the workers who struggles against that system, and called their enemies the "Sovburgs": Soviet bourgeoisie or Red bourgeoisie, that. Trotsky just didn't want to look like what he was associated with from 1921-1928 was non-progressive. I don't give a fuck about Trotsky's limitless ego.


This comparison strikes me as somewhat vague. Just because in both cases there is some "nostalgia" for the past doesn't imply in the concrete practical sense they are the same kind of politics at all. It's almost like a form of "argument by aesthetic affinity", which is frankly a logical fallacy.

In fact, the politics today are worse, since its almost overtly a vehicle under purely aesthetic bilge to get workers to tail this or that wing of privilege CCP bureaucrats and bourgeoisie.


(It's like saying since the Nazis liked artistic style X, so everyone who likes artistic style X must be a Nazi or Nazi sympathiser)

And I'm the one with puerile comparisons?


I don't think serious Maoists in China literally advocate "rolling back the clock" in the concrete political sense. "Maoist nostalgia" in China today is more of a cultural and aesthetic thing.

Do they have a program for today? Are they misrepresenting history still? Why should I care or consider them anywhere forward for workers?


How did you jump from a critique of Maoism to writing-off 95% of the left camp generally?

I don't even know what "95% of the left camp" means.


No, because capitalists couldn't actually join the CCP back in the Maoist era. Ex-capitalists who have given up their capitalist socio-economic role could join, and there were some limited co-operation with a few capitalists who are outside the party, similar to Lenin's NEP policies to some extent, but CCP members can't literally be capitalists. So it's fundamentally different to the situation today.

Sure didn't make any difference as to the CCP's ability to nurture and develop capitalism, so why should I care about this purely symbolic distinction?

In short, I think Li is part of a tradition of what amounts to the substitute bourgeois revolution in China.