What about the fact that Chinese capitalism........

[Metacomet]

Has brought a record number of people out of poverty? Sure, I know it is having an effect, and sweatshop labor is not desirable, as is environmental devastation, but the fact remains that millions of Chinese are now better off then they were before.

Interested on some leftist views on this.

[Manic Impressive]

If you put lipstick on a pig it's still a pig. It's the same thing if you put a red flag on capitalism it's still capitalism.

[LevDavidovichBronstein]

If you put lipstick on a pig it's still a pig. It's the same thing if you put a red flag on capitalism it's still capitalism.

Did you even read his post? :laugh:

[Dogs On Acid]

If it wasn't for Mao's industrialization, China's Capitalism wouldn't of been able to take so many people out of poverty.

[RedMarxist]

define "better off". if you mean access to new goods and more money then yes. but ask yourself this:

what is being better off? do we really need more money, more goods? Combine that with the rampant destruction of the environment and sweat shop labor(both a result of capitalism) and I's say the Chinese people are "worse off".

This kind of shit wasn't going on under Mao. Tell me-off the top of your head, how much do you now about the PRC's history, its leaders? is this a blind question, not trying to sound rude but come one.

money + more consumer goods(read consumer as in we only exist to consume products to make the capitalist fat and lazy) !=(programming term means not equal to) happiness

[Thirsty Crow]

Well, first off, you'd have to show me some concrete empirical study which back up this claim, which can be frequently heard as one of the pro-capitalist talking points (alongside the one that states that all so called socialist states were poor and repressive hellholes).

Secondly, what about it? In which way is it even relevant as a discussion topic here at revleft? I'm asking because I'm presuming that we all know the joy that are the conditions of work, pertaining to hours, wages and workplace, in China. Also, I presume that we're all aware of the inherent antagonisms of the global capitalist mode of production and its consequences.

[Metacomet]

define "better off". if you mean access to new goods and more money then yes. but ask yourself this:

what is being better off? do we really need more money, more goods? Combine that with the rampant destruction of the environment and sweat shop labor(both a result of capitalism) and I's say the Chinese people are "worse off".

This kind of shit wasn't going on under Mao. Tell me-off the top of your head, how much do you now about the PRC's history, its leaders? is this a blind question, not trying to sound rude but come one.

money + more consumer goods(read consumer as in we only exist to consume products to make the capitalist fat and lazy) !=(programming term means not equal to) happiness

Most of my knowledge of China is classical/medieval China. Basically anything up until the Republic I know a good deal about. (studied pretty extensively in College)

[RichardAWilson]

Yes, you're correct. China's boom has been on the backs of the working classes in America and Western-Europe, where millions of high-paying jobs have been exported, relocated and outsourced to China's Free Enterprise Zones.

China is prospering due to much lower labor costs and a lack of unions (which are controlled and suppressed by the State). In certain cases, nominal wages are much lower and that provides them with comparative and absolute advantages. In other cases, relative wages are lower and attractive to multinationals (I.e. Chinese Yuan pegged to the American Dollar).The same trends hold true in India.

Meanwhile, Real Wages in America are lower than in 1978, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has been decimated and 20% of the working age population isn't working.

So I ask you: What was your question?

[A Marxist Historian]

Has brought a record number of people out of poverty? Sure, I know it is having an effect, and sweatshop labor is not desirable, as is environmental devastation, but the fact remains that millions of Chinese are now better off then they were before.

Interested on some leftist views on this.

The answer is quite simple. The dramatic improvement in the standard of living of the Chinese people, vastly higher than under Mao by the way, to say nothing of the horrors under Chiang Kai Shek and the Japanese, is because China is not a capitalist country.

There are a lot of capitalists, and they are doing very well for themselves, but ultimately it is the Chinese Communist Party in charge, not the Chinese capitalists. And the banking system and the most important industries are in the hands of the state, not of the capitalists, and take their orders from the Politburo, not the stock market.

What's more, this is the only really significant country on earth where this is true nowadays. Which is why working class standards of living are dropping like a rock everywhere else, and rising quite rapidly in China, which at this point probably has the most militant, rebellious, combative working class movement in the world outside of Greece. The workers are shoving big wage increases down the throats of the Stalinist bureaucrats, whether they like it or not.

Why? Because China is the only really important country on earth where the invisible hand of Adam Smith is not strangling the human race by the neck. Instead, you have the highly visible, obtrusive and dictatorial hand of the CCP, which maintains its power in China due to one reason and one reason only, namely that its economic policies have produced results. According to opinion polls, most people in China support the government. Probably the only country on earth that is true about right now.

On the day that is no longer true, the end will be near for the CCP.

-M.H.-

[RichardAWilson]

China is using the same State Capitalist Model that was used by Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

The People's Republic of China just happens to have a much larger population: One which has allowed Chinese wages to remain competitive for global capitalists and multinationals.

Wages have become too high in Japan, Korea and Taiwan and those economies are stagnating.

Some of China's Miracle has even been financed with cheap cash and the printing presses, much as was the case in Japan (1980s) and Korea and Taiwan (1990s) which has since led to 2 decades of stagnation in Japan and the 1997 Financial Crisis in Korea and Taiwan.

Consider this quote from the British Telegraph:



The economy is entering the ugly quadrant of cycle – stagflation – where credit-pumping leaks into price spirals and speculation, even as growth slows. It now takes a rise of ¥1.84 in the M2 money supply to generate just one yuan of GDP growth, up from ¥1.30 earlier this decade.


Here's another source on China's Bubble-Boom:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-10/china-credit-bubble-set-for-bust-on-trade-row-blackhorse-s-duncan-says.html



A more than 50 percent surge in China’s money supply since 2008 helped fuel economic growth




The expansion also saddled the country with factories that produce three times more goods than can be bought by China’s workers, 80 percent of whom make less than $5 a day.


Does that sound sustainable to you?

[Tommy4ever]

Development under non-socialist production is not necessarily a bad thing but often causes intense horror.

I'm sure I do not need to mention that mass starvation that was common in nearly every country during the period of industrialisation, the slave like living conditions and the treatment of labour in a manner more terrible than ever before.

Yet industrialisation opened up to world to living conditions vastly superioror to anything man had ever achieved before. It also created that industrial proletariat that has historically been so cruicial to the development of socialist movements.

No one should denounce China for going through a capitalist phase of development and industrialisation, except for the fact that this blatantly capitalist state bears the Red Flag.

[Apoi_Viitor]

what is being better off? do we really need more money, more goods?

I'd say so.


This kind of shit wasn't going on under Mao. Tell me-off the top of your head, how much do you now about the PRC's history, its leaders? is this a blind question, not trying to sound rude but come one.

Are you suggesting that there wasn't environmental degradation under Mao?


money + more consumer goods(read consumer as in we only exist to consume products to make the capitalist fat and lazy) !=(programming term means not equal to) happiness

Material well-being does not bring happiness? That seems quite un-Marxist...

[RedMarxist]

un-marxist? WTF. I mean do we really NEED 4 sports cars two pools and gold statues? No.

I'm not being un-marxist. I'm just saying tht in reality you buying this shit you dont need makes the capitalist richer.

[Zanthorus]

...ultimately it is the Chinese Communist Party in charge, not the Chinese capitalists.

Over here in Britain there was this one time where a bunch of red flag waving bureuacrats got into office and nationalised a few services. You going to claim that the Atlee government was also socialist? I mean the Labour Party is a 'bourgeois workers' party' right?

But sure thing. The political nature of society determines it's economic structure. So goes the wisdom of our resurrected and tenacious Proudhonists.


buying this shit you dont need makes the capitalist richer.

First of all, no. Capitalism is a mode of production, not consumption. Second of all, the last time I checked there was nothing Marxist about moralising about people's consumption choices, in fact I believe that may be the preserve of something called 'Malthusianism'.

[Thirsty Crow]

The answer is quite simple. The dramatic improvement in the standard of living of the Chinese people, vastly higher than under Mao by the way, to say nothing of the horrors under Chiang Kai Shek and the Japanese, is because China is not a capitalist country.

There are a lot of capitalists, and they are doing very well for themselves, but ultimately it is the Chinese Communist Party in charge, not the Chinese capitalists.

It's sad that any person self-identifying as "Marxist" might spew such unbelieavable rubbish.
I suggest brushing up on your notion of the capitalist mode of production.

[Metacomet]

un-marxist? WTF. I mean do we really NEED 4 sports cars two pools and gold statues? No.

I'm not being un-marxist. I'm just saying tht in reality you buying this shit you dont need makes the capitalist richer.


Would you consider the following unnecessary/don't improve quality of life.

Solid housing.
Refrigeration.
Air conditioning.
reliable heating.
Motorized transport.
Modern pharmaceuticals.
Computer/(unrestricted)internet access.

Some material well being can in fact, improve your life.

[Ocean Seal]

Has brought a record number of people out of poverty? Sure, I know it is having an effect, and sweatshop labor is not desirable, as is environmental devastation, but the fact remains that millions of Chinese are now better off then they were before.

Interested on some leftist views on this.
The growths under Deng were made possible by Mao's industrialization and occurred despite Deng not because of him. They were the natural growths that would stem from industrializing a feudal nation and under socialism and capitalism growth would occur. Had China continued under its current path its growths would have been even more spectacular without imperialism, sweatshop labor, and so on.

[Red Commissar]

The perception that China was brought out of poverty after the reforms is a common one and is usually more looking at the surface rather than what lies below it. To an observer, China's economy exploded in the 90s and onward, forming modern metropolises and generally a very "western" appearance in some parts.

The big difference is, and it's precisely this that made some observers cream themselves, is a "middle-class" was formed. We all know how venerable the "middle-class" is in many of these defenses of the economies we have in developed nations. These are the people that are advertised as being "brought out of poverty", though they are hardly representative of much of the population. Any more than the ideal "middle-class" here in the United States.

Of course on the flip side, it ignores the fact that the "poor" living in the countryside or working menial labor got far worse while a small group of people- emerging capitalists, foreign corporations, political bosses etc- benefited at their expense. Lot of those people at the bottom did not see the 'benefits' of the new reforms nor were brought out of 'poverty" because it was not directed at improving their livelihood.

[A Marxist Historian]

China is using the same State Capitalist Model that was used by Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

The People's Republic of China just happens to have a much larger population: One which has allowed Chinese wages to remain competitive for global capitalists and multinationals.

Wages have become too high in Japan, Korea and Taiwan and those economies are stagnating.

Some of China's Miracle has even been financed with cheap cash and the printing presses, much as was the case in Japan (1980s) and Korea and Taiwan (1990s) which has since led to 2 decades of stagnation in Japan and the 1997 Financial Crisis in Korea and Taiwan.

Consider this quote from the British Telegraph:



Here's another source on China's Bubble-Boom:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-10/china-credit-bubble-set-for-bust-on-trade-row-blackhorse-s-duncan-says.html





Does that sound sustainable to you?

What made the relative prosperity after WWII in China, Japan and South Korea possible were the dramatic land reforms that MacArthur and then the CIA (and in Taiwan Chiang Kai Shek) forced down the throats of the domestic ruling classes. They damaged the immediate interests of the ruling classes of course, but the US didn't care, they were the boss now.

In North Korea much of this was done during the brief North Korean occupation of the South, so the question is whether the CIA would let Syngman Rhee reverse them, to which the answer was no.

The motivation was to build them up as a counterweight to China. Plus large amounts of economic aid of course for SK and Taiwan, and even more importantly, letting all three export to the USA without any tariff barriers.

To some degree this applies to China as well, allowed to export to the US similarly after the China/US alliance vs. the Soviet Union was formed.

But the difference between China and Japan etc. is quite simply that Japan etc. are thoroughly capitalist countries, with industry and banking either in the hands of private capitalists, or only in the hands of the state on a transitional basis to build them up for later privatization.

In China, the state sector still dominates the domestic economy. Private capital only dominates export industries, which is from the standpoint of China, as opposed to the American viewpoint you see in Bloomberg or other capitalist sources, a sideshow.

The export model certainly is not sustainable over the long term. The Chinese should get away from it, as even the CCP recognizes. China certainly can, as was demonstrated by the quite minor economic difficulties China suffered while the whole rest of the world was going into economic collapse a couple years ago, and there was briefly little market for Chinese exports.

The main reason China still stays with the export model, spending huge quantities of money to keep down the value of the Chinese currency etc., is that any other policy would mean the bankrupting of a whole string of Chinese capitalists. Definitely not the ultra-Bukharinist right wing CCP policy.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

[QUOTE=Zanthorus;2176133]Over here in Britain there was this one time where a bunch of red flag waving bureuacrats got into office and nationalised a few services. You going to claim that the Atlee government was also socialist? I mean the Labour Party is a 'bourgeois workers' party' right?

But sure thing. The political nature of society determines it's economic structure. So goes the wisdom of our resurrected and tenacious Proudhonists....QUOTE]

When the Labor Party nationalized steel and what have you, the steel industry was going bankrupt, and huge, grossly inflated compensation was paid out. What it really was, under the red flags, was taxing the British workers for the benefit of the British capitalists.

In China, when you had the land revolution, the landlords were sent to re-education camps or killed. And this was done as much by peasant initiative as by Stalinist fiat.

Whatever one thinks of the methods used, from the standpoint of the capitalists and landlords there was a huge difference, so saying China was ruled by the capitalists under Mao at least is downright insane.

Does the political nature of society determine its economic structure? Ultimately no, that's why you can't build socialism in one country. Economics ultimately decides.

But yeah, politics is pretty damn important.

In determining the class nature of a state, politics is indeed exactly what determines that, because that is what politics is all about. Power. Whose interests are being served by the political structure.

In China, the state balances between the different classes of society, but ultimately rests on the consent and support of the working class and especially the peasantry, as the CCP came to power through a peasant revolution. Without that support, it would collapse. Quite abruptly in fact, as happened in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In America, you have a capitalist state, controlled by the capitalists in an extremely direct fashion, through the election process, given that you can't even run for office these days without millions of dollars and the capitalist media publicizing you.

With the army and the rest of the state apparatus in the background, deeply and thoroughly committed to capitalism through 200 years of its evolution, ready to step in if the voters ever vote the wrong way.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

The perception that China was brought out of poverty after the reforms is a common one and is usually more looking at the surface rather than what lies below it. To an observer, China's economy exploded in the 90s and onward, forming modern metropolises and generally a very "western" appearance in some parts.

The big difference is, and it's precisely this that made some observers cream themselves, is a "middle-class" was formed. We all know how venerable the "middle-class" is in many of these defenses of the economies we have in developed nations. These are the people that are advertised as being "brought out of poverty", though they are hardly representative of much of the population. Any more than the ideal "middle-class" here in the United States.

Of course on the flip side, it ignores the fact that the "poor" living in the countryside or working menial labor got far worse while a small group of people- emerging capitalists, foreign corporations, political bosses etc- benefited at their expense. Lot of those people at the bottom did not see the 'benefits' of the new reforms nor were brought out of 'poverty" because it was not directed at improving their livelihood.

A nice theory which has the difficulty of not matching the facts. The standard of living of both workers and peasants is far, far higher than under Mao. Which in turn was much better than the grotesquely awful situation under Chiang Kai-Shek and the Japanese.

In the last 7-8 years or so, the average wage of the average worker in a Chinese factory hasn't just risen a little bit. It has *doubled.* Meanwhile everywhere else in the world it is dropping, usually like a rock. Including in India by the way, often claimed to be similar to China.

Your description of what goes on in China is absolutely accurate for India, but totally wrong for China. Because these are, despite anti-Communist praise for alleged great economic progress in India, two totally different countries, where the situation of the lower classes is totally different.

-M.H.-

[RichardAWilson]

China is in a precarious situation. The Chinese boom, as I’ve said, is based on production for exportation. The problem with a production for exportation based economy is that it isn’t sustainable over the longer run.

The Asian Miracles need American and European consumers to continue underwriting their booms. American and European consumers are now too indebted to continue purchasing new automobiles from Japan, new computers from Korea and new Nike shoes and cell phones from China.

Furthermore, since 2008, China's economy has been based on a bubble-boom model that has been financed with the printing presses. Printing press based growth is, for obvious reasons, unsustainable. China is a disaster waiting to happen.

China's state-owned sector has been exploited to benefit the capitalists. Chinese banks are facing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of useless loans and defaults. Just because something is state owned and operated doesn't make it Socialistic. (I.e. Otherwise, Europe's Post-War Boom was Socialistic)

[Dogs On Acid]

Whatever one thinks of the methods used, from the standpoint of the capitalists and landlords there was a huge difference, so saying China was ruled by the capitalists under Mao at least is downright insane.

Bloc of Four Classes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democracy)

Ring any bells? :rolleyes:

New Democracy was Reformist anyway.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Has brought a record number of people out of poverty? Sure, I know it is having an effect, and sweatshop labor is not desirable, as is environmental devastation, but the fact remains that millions of Chinese are now better off then they were before.

Interested on some leftist views on this.

This is first off all based on accepting arbitrary poverty levels (set at something like 1 or 2 dollars a day or something to that effect), which is the sort of statistics that even simply thanks to inflation will show countless millions coming out of poverty even when their real spending power falls, it's the sort of nonsense claptrap that gets us news reports of "poverty level now at all time historical low".

It is also true that capitalist expansion, as in China, will sometimes improve general condition slowly even for those who are not well off to some extent by producing wealth that eventually will spread, but this is a slow and painful process that is frequently reversed and has as a consequence such economic waste and social suffering that it is inexcusable.

In addition to speak of "better off" is always something that can rarely be quantitatively asserted without going into shady territories.


In determining the class nature of a state, politics is indeed exactly what determines that, because that is what politics is all about. Power. Whose interests are being served by the political structure.

Indeed. And whose interests are being served by the political structure of China? Who benefits from the endless privatisations, deregulation and the compliance to IMF recommendation? Does the workers of China that are relieved of all their influence in society in favour of the political elite and the nouveau riche, the so-called growing "middle-class"?

Is it for the workers of China that an enormous housing bubble has been created, or is it for the capitalists, the investors? Is it for the workers that the gated communities of McMansions that now fill what was once farmland outside of the major cities are built, is it for them that the walls are put up, is it for the workers that the Chinese government has been responsible for a significant drop in real income pensions since the 1970's? Is it for the Chinese workers that former municipal hospitals are privatised and now run for profit, where many of them cannot even afford treatment? Is it for the Chinese workers that new motorways are built, or are they built to satisfy the demand for real estate development on which all local city governments today depend since the central government block grants were cut and self-financing reforms enacted? And are the developments which desperate and corrupt city governments are forced to accept simply to finance their own existence going to be in favour of the workers or the capitalist speculators, the investors, the abusers of the workers?

This can be no doubt that the Chinese economy is a capitalist one. The state is no different from that of a capitalist state with a fairly strong authoritarian leadership; say Singapore in the 1970's and 80's. It's primary concern is to pacify any threat to power by just barely and above the absolutely intolerable level provide for the people while propping up private companies and making sure that foreign and domestic investors are satisfied with its own prowess at maintaining the status quo. The difference between China and India is that the Indian state is weak and divided and corrupt in a different way; and has poor infrastructure: whereas the Chinese one is resolute and forceful in supporting the capitalists which seek to benefit from the workers of the land, and provides them with all that they demand.

[A Marxist Historian]

This is first off all based on accepting arbitrary poverty levels (set at something like 1 or 2 dollars a day or something to that effect), which is the sort of statistics that even simply thanks to inflation will show countless millions coming out of poverty even when their real spending power falls, it's the sort of nonsense claptrap that gets us news reports of "poverty level now at all time historical low".

It is also true that capitalist expansion, as in China, will sometimes improve general condition slowly even for those who are not well off to some extent by producing wealth that eventually will spread, but this is a slow and painful process that is frequently reversed and has as a consequence such economic waste and social suffering that it is inexcusable.

In addition to speak of "better off" is always something that can rarely be quantitatively asserted without going into shady territories.

Given the remarkable level by which living standards have risen since Mao's days, denying this is flat earthism, and it is you who should try to find some statistics to back you up. I can assure you you won't find any, from anybody. Hell, just Google the usual suspects on the web for standard of living levels over time. Plenty of them don't just give overall living standards but go into the income levels for different social classes and income groups.

In India, the poor stay poor. In China, they are much better off than in the past. Why? Because of the different class natures of these two very different Third World giants moving up in the world.


Indeed. And whose interests are being served by the political structure of China? Who benefits from the endless privatisations, deregulation and the compliance to IMF recommendation? Does the workers of China that are relieved of all their influence in society in favour of the political elite and the nouveau riche, the so-called growing "middle-class"?

Is it for the workers of China that an enormous housing bubble has been created, or is it for the capitalists, the investors? Is it for the workers that the gated communities of McMansions that now fill what was once farmland outside of the major cities are built, is it for them that the walls are put up, is it for the workers that the Chinese government has been responsible for a significant drop in real income pensions since the 1970's? Is it for the Chinese workers that former municipal hospitals are privatised and now run for profit, where many of them cannot even afford treatment? Is it for the Chinese workers that new motorways are built, or are they built to satisfy the demand for real estate development on which all local city governments today depend since the central government block grants were cut and self-financing reforms enacted? And are the developments which desperate and corrupt city governments are forced to accept simply to finance their own existence going to be in favour of the workers or the capitalist speculators, the investors, the abusers of the workers?

Much of what you say is perfectly correct but besides the point. Yes, the CCP has a Bukharinist capitalist restorationist outlook, indeed Bukharinism on steroids, and needs to be gotten rid of.

The Chinese bureaucracy balances between the different classes of society, and many of them would like to go full blown capitalist. But they can't, because they know this would be their doom, especially having seen the horrible example of the USSR next door. And in addition, they function under fear of the highly rebellious Chinese working class and peasantry, who they have to keep content or the regime will collapse.

Due more to dumb luck than anything else really, their economic policies have been hugely successful, while the rest of the world is going downhill. What makes this *possible* is that China is ultimately a non-capitalist country.

It would be simply impossible for a capitalist country in this period to make the kind of huge economic gains China has. India has made some gains, but the Indian countryside, where the vast majority of the people live, is on the verge of explosion, with Naxalite Maoist peasant insurgencies spreading rapidly. Why? Because the Indian people, unlike the Chinese people, have not benefitted from the Indian boom.

And in China, unlike in India, this overwhelmingly peasant country is on the verge of being majority urban, which is huge social progress in and of itself, since this is real urbanization like in Europe or America, not the hideous pseudo-urban nightmare of so many Third World cities. With many of the bad features of Western urbanization too.

Capitalism just plain doesn't work over the long term, only in special circumstances and temporarily. If China were really capitalist, then maybe capitalism would have some economic merit. It doesn't, for the reasons Marx explained a century ago and now are being proven right before our eyes.

-M.H.-


This can be no doubt that the Chinese economy is a capitalist one. The state is no different from that of a capitalist state with a fairly strong authoritarian leadership; say Singapore in the 1970's and 80's. It's primary concern is to pacify any threat to power by just barely and above the absolutely intolerable level provide for the people while propping up private companies and making sure that foreign and domestic investors are satisfied with its own prowess at maintaining the status quo. The difference between China and India is that the Indian state is weak and divided and corrupt in a different way; and has poor infrastructure: whereas the Chinese one is resolute and forceful in supporting the capitalists which seek to benefit from the workers of the land, and provides them with all that they demand.

[Jose Gracchus]

The CPC did not come to power via a peasant revolution, "surrounding the cities" as in Maoist mythologies. Rather, the CPC campaigned politically to be a better KMT, even offering a coalition government and promising to keep private capitalists around, so long as they were suitably 'patriotic'. The fact is the CPC came to power only via the fact that the USSR allowed them to take control of Manchuria under their occupation and with finally a base of meaningful industry, population, and war materiel, were able to fight off Chaing's troops on a conventional level. Subsequently, large groups of Chiang's troops defected, enabling the PLA to finally field conventional field forces with artillery and armor, which allowed them to carry out a meaningful conventional campaign capable of toppling the tottering KMT regime. While this may have been accomplished with some support of the peasantry and other classes, it was certainly not a 'peasant revolution' (in fact the CPC's reforms were very limited prior to 1949, with a view toward not antagonizing landlords, who were to be involved in the CPC's class-collaborationist program).

As for Chinese "growth", an enormous percentage of this remains due to foreign direct investment. The fact that the state is able to use the scale of the Chinese labor and consumer markets as enough leverage to maintain a better slice of the pie than most of the West's warehouse and petty factory states does not change this reality.

[RichardAWilson]

It would be simply impossible for a capitalist country in this period to make the kind of huge economic gains China has.


Are you so sure? How about Japan? Korea? Singapore? Taiwan? What about the Irish economic miracle? Korea's growth rate during the Miracle-Boom was comparable to the Chinese growth rate.

China is a state capitalist nation because the Chinese boom has been based on private companies that are producing for exportation. Indeed, exported goods accounted for over 25% of the nation's GDP in 2010.

The so-called state owned sector is being used and abused to the benefit of China's capitalists. (I.e. the state-owned banks making bad loans to businesses and homeowners).

According to your stance on this matter, one could claim that Post-War Britain was practicing non-capitalism. After all: The hospitals and clinics were nationalized, the coal mines were state-owned, British Telecom was nationalized, the steel mills were state-owned and British Petroleum served as a state-owned and managed enterprise. The state-owned sector came to be as large as Britain's private owned sector.

Furthermore, in a bid to maintain high growth rates during the global financial crisis, China created their own American, Irish and Spanish style housing bubble.

As I've mentioned, Central-Bankers in China have pushed the printing presses into overdrive.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6754



Housing investment accounts for 10% of GDP


Even during the American housing bubble (2003 - 2006), housing investments weren't accounting for 10% of our national GDP. It would seem that China's bubble, if allowed to continue, will grow to be much larger than our own. (It'll be more along the lines of the Spanish bubble).

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

The Chinese bureaucracy balances between the different classes of society, and many of them would like to go full blown capitalist. But they can't, because they know this would be their doom, especially having seen the horrible example of the USSR next door. And in addition, they function under fear of the highly rebellious Chinese working class and peasantry, who they have to keep content or the regime will collapse.


By the time of the Soviet Union's collapse, the Chinese were already marching quickly towards where we are today.

And what sort of doom is it we are talking about? A doom of the corrupt capitalist government, which would be replaced with another corrupt capitalist government, possibly more intent on pleasing western government interests insofar as goes pretences to recognising "human rights", but all in all, little practical change, apart from that the current leadership stratum would be partially replaced, which is exactly why they are so keen on preventing it by-- that's right, juggling competing interests delicately, so as to let no group be powerful enough to challenge this rule. Does this sound compatible with workers state or workers rule? Is the ruling class, if the Chinese government balances the interests of different classes in society, as opposed to upholding the interests of the working class?


Due more to dumb luck than anything else really, their economic policies have been hugely successful, while the rest of the world is going downhill. What makes this *possible* is that China is ultimately a non-capitalist country.

Simply generating growth in terms of GDP and overall industrial production is not hard with a strong government bent on relentlessly propping it up and providing a secure environment for capitalist investment, this has been shown to work many times throughout history. Angola has massive growth. Angola is socialist economics at work.


In India, the poor stay poor. In China, they are much better off than in the past. Why? Because of the different class natures of these two very different Third World giants moving up in the world.

Even in India, millions have "risen out of poverty" and "joined the middle-classes". The development has not gone as far as in China, yes, but China has an advance of 20 years and a stronger centralised government which is more beneficial to capitalist investment than is India.


It would be simply impossible for a capitalist country in this period to make the kind of huge economic gains China has.

It would? It mirrors quite a bit the development of the early capitalist powers like Britain in the 1800's.


And in China, unlike in India, this overwhelmingly peasant country is on the verge of being majority urban, which is huge social progress in and of itself, since this is real urbanization like in Europe or America, not the hideous pseudo-urban nightmare of so many Third World cities.

There is little difference in how cities urbanise. As in "third world countries", the early capitalist countries too saw their population swell as immigrants from the countryside who sought the advances of the city and were made redundant on farms and country and moved in to fill the needs of industry. It is true that in some cases there is rarely more jobs in the city than on the country-side, but at the same time, the living standards for someone in the slums of Mumbai are generally higher than those of the rural poor, which is why there is such an influx to the major cities. In this case, too, China benefits from a stronger government which allows it to more efficiently counter the potential friction that appears here, in the name not of socialism, but of social peace, social peace because this is what benefits capitalist development.


What makes this *possible* is that China is ultimately a non-capitalist country.

Please elaborate what sort of economic realities tells you that China is not capitalist, please. Planning? What planning, it's a joke, an little piece of paper which lists what developments they hope to complete with no real legal force or direct economic implication, a statement of intent more than anything else; and state ownership? What state-ownership, and even those few state-owned companies are really just capitalist enterprises like any other, firing, effectivising, investing overseas, resource grabbing in other countries? Please, do tell of China's non-capitalist economy. Is it he black market?


If China were really capitalist, then maybe capitalism would have some economic merit.

I see, you're a capitalist. Makes sense now why you hold China's economy in such a high regard.

[A Marxist Historian]

Bloc of Four Classes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democracy)

Ring any bells? :rolleyes:

New Democracy was Reformist anyway.

Quite true. But the Chinese capitalists just didn't participate and all fled to Taiwan, just like their US masters told them to do. If any serious section of the capitalist class had been willing to cooperate with Mao, who knows what would have happened. Instead, Mao shrugged his shoulders and copied the Soviet model. Given total free choice as to what sort of regime he preferred, he followed his natural inclinations and unleashed the peasants on the landlords.

-M.H.-

[Jose Gracchus]

There were definitely a lot more Chinese capitalists and old state bureaucrats and managers who were co-opted into the People's Republic than had been the case from the pre-1917 capitalist and landlord and nobility classes to the Soviet state.

[A Marxist Historian]

By the time of the Soviet Union's collapse, the Chinese were already marching quickly towards where we are today.

That's right, up till then a lot of Chinese bureaucrats were indeed thinking of going the Eastern European route. What stopped that?

Firstly, Tienanmen Square, which was *not* just a student revolt for democracy, but much more importantly a working class and general popular revolt against Deng and his corrupt capitalist roadism. Put the fear of the people into the CCP's hearts, so they cracked down, but also slowed down the move to capitalism, finally bringing it pretty much to a halt after the 1998 East Asia financial disaster convinced them that capitalism wasn't what it was cracked up to be.

And secondly, the horrible example of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and not least of course the fact that so few of the old regime bureaucrats found a place for themselves in the new capitalist order.


And what sort of doom is it we are talking about? A doom of the corrupt capitalist government, which would be replaced with another corrupt capitalist government, possibly more intent on pleasing western government interests insofar as goes pretences to recognising "human rights", but all in all, little practical change, apart from that the current leadership stratum would be partially replaced, which is exactly why they are so keen on preventing it by-- that's right, juggling competing interests delicately, so as to let no group be powerful enough to challenge this rule. Does this sound compatible with workers state or workers rule? Is the ruling class, if the Chinese government balances the interests of different classes in society, as opposed to upholding the interests of the working class?

Little change, maybe more democracy? Uh uh.

Thirty years ago, half the left thought that Yugoslavia, which also had gone pretty far down the road to capitalism under Tito and his successors, was already a capitalist country, and knocking the CP out of power and replacing them with something else would be no big deal.

Boy, were they all wrong.

Capitalist restoration in China would make Yugoslavia look like paradise. At best, the country instantly would become exactly the caricature of
China that anti-communists spread, as one giant Bangla Desh style sweatshop where the workers are worked like slaves and paid almost nothing. More likely, it would break down into warlordism, chaos and civil war like in Yugoslavia.

The workers do not directly rule in China any more than they did in the Soviet Union under Stalin. It is what Trotsky called a Bonapartist regime, balancing between the interests of the different classes in China, and balancing between the foreign imperialists and the Chinese people.

But Bonapartism is not just a balance act, it has class roots like any other social phenomenon. The rule of Napoleon and Louis Bonaparte, and all the military dictators all over the world that have emulated them since, whether "right wing" like Pinochet or "left wing" like Hugo Chavez, is based in the state, and is therefore bourgeois in a bourgeois state.

In a state like People's China, born of a popular peasant revolution *against* the old Chinese ruling class, who all fled to Taiwan, it is a different story.


Simply generating growth in terms of GDP and overall industrial production is not hard with a strong government bent on relentlessly propping it up and providing a secure environment for capitalist investment, this has been shown to work many times throughout history. Angola has massive growth. Angola is socialist economics at work.

Nonsense. And you call me a capitalist! Wake up and smell the coffee, capitalism is in big trouble all around the world, it just don't work and is headed to a giant crash.

Angola has nice GNP percentage increases? No doubt. But what do they mean for the Angolese people? Absolutely nothing. Angola is still a dirt poor country mired in thousands of years of poverty and degradation. China is escaping all that, as everybody knows.


Even in India, millions have "risen out of poverty" and "joined the middle-classes". The development has not gone as far as in China, yes, but China has an advance of 20 years and a stronger centralised government which is more beneficial to capitalist investment than is India.

Millions? There are over a billion people in India, a few million yuppies is a tiny drop in the bucket. The vast majority of the Indian population is as bad off now as they were fifty years ago. Only difference is they no longer starve to death, due to the Green Revolution making food cheaper.

In China there has been a huge increase of the standard of living of the working class and peasantry.


It would? It mirrors quite a bit the development of the early capitalist powers like Britain in the 1800's.

Yeah? Read Engels's book about that, and think again.

Working a sixty hour week in a garment sweatshop in Canton and living in stark boring barracks is no fun, but it is a big improvement over being a pig farmer and being stuck in pigshit all your life, even if your parents own the farm and are not slaves to a landlord like in the old days.

And now all those workers are unionizing and striking, and the government is trying to seek compromise settlements rather than just cracking down at capitalist behest, and trying to get the workers to join the government unions instead of going independent.

Not exactly like Industrial Revolution England!


There is little difference in how cities urbanise. As in "third world countries", the early capitalist countries too saw their population swell as immigrants from the countryside who sought the advances of the city and were made redundant on farms and country and moved in to fill the needs of industry. It is true that in some cases there is rarely more jobs in the city than on the country-side, but at the same time, the living standards for someone in the slums of Mumbai are generally higher than those of the rural poor, which is why there is such an influx to the major cities. In this case, too, China benefits from a stronger government which allows it to more efficiently counter the potential friction that appears here, in the name not of socialism, but of social peace, social peace because this is what benefits capitalist development.


Please elaborate what sort of economic realities tells you that China is not capitalist, please. Planning? What planning, it's a joke, an little piece of paper which lists what developments they hope to complete with no real legal force or direct economic implication, a statement of intent more than anything else; and state ownership? What state-ownership, and even those few state-owned companies are really just capitalist enterprises like any other, firing, effectivising, investing overseas, resource grabbing in other countries? Please, do tell of China's non-capitalist economy. Is it he black market?

The state and banking sectors of course. Planning? There was little or no economic planning in the Soviet Union until 1928. But what you do have is the CCP, not the stock market or the rising Chinese capitalists, controlling what gets built and who the banks lend money to.

Do state owned companies fire people and seek efficiency and profitability? They did under Lenin during the NEP period too, was that capitalism?

As for foreign investment, that is interesting. Foreign investment by private Chinese companies is famously vicious and exploitative, and sometimes Chinese diplomats try to get them to behave themselves a bit. Foreign investment by state owned companies, as in the Sudan where it fits Chinese foreign policy, is another story, with workers being paid twice as much as by any other foreign investors.

Why? Because the Chinese bureaucrats are nice guys? No.

It is because foreign investment by state owned companies is intended to serve the needs of the state, not capitalist profit. So paying better is good Chinese PR.

There are probably exceptions to this rule, with some state owned Chinese companies treating foreign workers as bad as the private capitalists, but that is just another form of the "corruption" that the Chinese government leadership is currently campaigning against rather futilely.


I see, you're a capitalist. Makes sense now why you hold China's economy in such a high regard.

Hey, you're the one claiming capitalism actually works, so look in the mirror.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

There were definitely a lot more Chinese capitalists and old state bureaucrats and managers who were co-opted into the People's Republic than had been the case from the pre-1917 capitalist and landlord and nobility classes to the Soviet state.

True, and not surprising, being as that the Chinese revolution was a peasant not a workers revolution. Without the Soviet example, it could not have led to the birth of a Soviet type bureaucratically-deformed workers state.

But they were totally subordinate to the CCP. And we all know what happened to just about every last one of them in the Cultural Revolution.

And absolutely none of them got out of their re-education camps and resurfaced in government positions under Deng. The current ruling elite is the Chinese Communist Party, with direct continuity right back to Mao's peasant guerilla regime in the hills in the 1930s in every way.

-M.H.-

[RichardAWilson]

I don't think the Marxist-Historian comprehends the Chinese Economic Model.

I wouldn't claim that he's embracing capitalism: He just seems to believe that China has a "third-way" model that allows it to benefit from capitalism and planning. If I'm right, then he is also right. China maintains a "State Capitalist" Model: Which is still capitalism, but with greater influence by the State in strengthening capitalism.

Once again:

According to your stance on this matter, one could claim that Post-War Britain was practicing non-capitalism.

After all: The hospitals and clinics were nationalized, the coal mines were state-owned, British Telecom was nationalized, the steel mills were state-owned and British Petroleum served as a state-owned and managed enterprise. The state-owned sector came to be as large as Britain's private owned sector.

[A Marxist Historian]

Are you so sure? How about Japan? Korea? Singapore? Taiwan? What about the Irish economic miracle? Korea's growth rate during the Miracle-Boom was comparable to the Chinese growth rate.

Japan, Taiwan and South Korea's growth was due, ultimately, to the Chinese Revolution and the US willingness to spend a lot of money, enforce a lot of social reforms on reluctant ruling classes, and allow a whole lot of tariff-free foreign export into the US market, to encircle China with images of capitalist prosperity.

In fact, were it not for the Chinese Revolution, Korea and Taiwan would still be dirt poor Third World poverty holes, and Japan would likely never have escaped its extreme economic collapse of the late '40s. And now that things have changed and there no longer is a reason for the US to prop up Japan, the Japanese aren't doing too well any more, are they?

As for Ireland, the Irish "economic miracle" was a smoke and mirrors con job that has now evaporated. Ask anybody from Ireland and they'll explain it to you. Same goes for Spain, Portugal and Greece, the other '80s and '90s "economic miracles" in Europe. The PIGS, whose economic growth was based on the giant economic fraud called the EU, which is now collapsing, and the PIGS are paying the price.

Britain I've already discussed, see my other posting.

-M.H.-


China is a state capitalist nation because the Chinese boom has been based on private companies that are producing for exportation. Indeed, exported goods accounted for over 25% of the nation's GDP in 2010.

The so-called state owned sector is being used and abused to the benefit of China's capitalists. (I.e. the state-owned banks making bad loans to businesses and homeowners).

According to your stance on this matter, one could claim that Post-War Britain was practicing non-capitalism. After all: The hospitals and clinics were nationalized, the coal mines were state-owned, British Telecom was nationalized, the steel mills were state-owned and British Petroleum served as a state-owned and managed enterprise. The state-owned sector came to be as large as Britain's private owned sector.

Furthermore, in a bid to maintain high growth rates during the global financial crisis, China created their own American, Irish and Spanish style housing bubble.

As I've mentioned, Central-Bankers in China have pushed the printing presses into overdrive.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6754



Even during the American housing bubble (2003 - 2006), housing investments weren't accounting for 10% of our national GDP. It would seem that China's bubble, if allowed to continue, will grow to be much larger than our own. (It'll be more along the lines of the Spanish bubble).

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't think the Marxist-Historian comprehends the Chinese Economic Model.

I wouldn't claim that he's embracing capitalism: He just seems to believe that China has a "third-way" model that allows it to benefit from capitalism and planning. If I'm right, then he is also right. China maintains a "State Capitalist" Model: Which is still capitalism, but with greater influence by the State in strengthening capitalism.

Once again:

According to your stance on this matter, one could claim that Post-War Britain was practicing non-capitalism.

After all: The hospitals and clinics were nationalized, the coal mines were state-owned, British Telecom was nationalized, the steel mills were state-owned and British Petroleum served as a state-owned and managed enterprise. The state-owned sector came to be as large as Britain's private owned sector.

Well, see, that *was* state capitalism. Proof? The huge compensation payments the owners of the nationalized industries received. They were crying all the way to the bank, having escaped having to run money-losing enterprises. The nationalizations benefitted the English capitalist class enormously, enabling them to shift to more profitable fields of investment.

The Chinese state sector is in competition with the private sector, private capitalists are always complaining about the preference it gets. Of course there is a lot of corruption, indeed that's the big campaign in China these days, against government corruption by the private capitalists.

I think it was about fifteen years ago that the richest man in China was taken out and shot for bribing a government official. Not a usual happening in a capitalist state. And everybody's heard about the continual prosecutions and sometimes shootings of capitalists responsible for poison in food and so forth.

That's a funny sort of capitalist state. It certainly doesn't look like one to the capitalists.

-M.H.-

[RichardAWilson]

China does maintain a State Capital Model:

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2010/03/22/communism-is-dead-but-state-capitalism-thrives/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_by_net_worth

China has more billionaires than Britain, France and Germany (combined)!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_billionaires



China's 400 Richest were worth a record $314 billion in 2009.


http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/04/china-richest-billionaires-buffett-baidu-china-billionaires-09-wealth_intro.html

If this isn't State Capitalism: I'll be damned to hell.

MEANWHILE: Over 100 million Chinese men, women and children suffer from malnutrition.

http://www.ccap.org.cn/uploadfile/2011/0401/20110401115613167.pdf

http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/al390e/al390e00.pdf

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Little change, maybe more democracy? Uh uh.


Wouldn't call it that, but whatever.


but also slowed down the move to capitalism, finally bringing it pretty much to a halt after the 1998 East Asia financial disaster convinced them that capitalism wasn't what it was cracked up to be.

Please elaborate on what actual "slow-downs" there was in the move to capitalism, details please. That the state resorted to protectionist moves to stabilise the economic health is not an indication that any "move" to capitalism is slowed down (not to mention, there's no move to complete, it's already complete, what remains is for the state to continue to support the domestic capitalist development. The early financial crisis only strengthened the factions which sought to moderate the liberalisation and wanted more power for the state to manage capitalism to avoid any threats to the rule.


And secondly, the horrible example of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and not least of course the fact that so few of the old regime bureaucrats found a place for themselves in the new capitalist order.

Apart from in the immediate leadership, many of the former bureaucrats did rather well in the chaos.


Capitalist restoration in China would make Yugoslavia look like paradise. At best, the country instantly would become exactly the caricature of
China that anti-communists spread, as one giant Bangla Desh style sweatshop where the workers are worked like slaves and paid almost nothing. More likely, it would break down into warlordism, chaos and civil war like in Yugoslavia.

Doubtful. Internal strife cannot be entirely excluded, but that there'd be a regression as deep as to the level of Bangladesh is simply not possible with the current level of infrastructure. It would take natural disasters to converge to affect that. Workers are essentially property of the employers at is, with the good clean conscience of the state, paid not much and working in poor conditions for sometimes 14-16 hours a day (even the Soviet Union had an 8 hour day).


The workers do not directly rule in China any more than they did in the Soviet Union under Stalin. It is what Trotsky called a Bonapartist regime, balancing between the interests of the different classes in China, and balancing between the foreign imperialists and the Chinese people.

Where did this Stalin start coming from? And Trotsky? The Chinese state is itself imperialist and battles like any other on the global market place; foreign imperialists are threats insofar as they are competitors.


In a state like People's China, born of a popular peasant revolution *against* the old Chinese ruling class, who all fled to Taiwan, it is a different story.

What support to do you have for the claim that they did all flee? I also agree with The Informed Candidate vis a vis the actual revolutionary character of uprisings and struggles.



Nonsense. And you call me a capitalist! Wake up and smell the coffee, capitalism is in big trouble all around the world, it just don't work and is headed to a giant crash.

Angola has nice GNP percentage increases? No doubt. But what do they mean for the Angolese people? Absolutely nothing. Angola is still a dirt poor country mired in thousands of years of poverty and degradation. China is escaping all that, as everybody knows.

Do you fancy I was seriously suggesting Angola is socialist? I was merely pointing out the absurdity of obsessing about GDP growth. North Korea had a GDP growth during one year in the late 40's of almost 50%, if we want to be yearly growth rates obsessed.

The point is that there is a growing segment of the population in Angola that is benefiting from the oil export (much of which is to China, funnily enough) and this is leading to a growing "upper" and "middle-class", which is increasing the median incomes and creating a speculation boom in Luanda, with office complexes and luxury condominium tower blocks - like in China. Given enough time, what is happening in China could happen there to, if it were to keep up - which is unlikely with such a thing as oil dependency, but nevertheless. And the rift between the new rich, the new capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and the people who saw little improvement, like the farmers, the slum dwellers, just like their counterparts in China who lag so badly after the wealthy urban "middle-class" that the media loves, will be stuck in a place that has seen only slight and slow improvements.


Millions? There are over a billion people in India, a few million yuppies is a tiny drop in the bucket. The vast majority of the Indian population is as bad off now as they were fifty years ago. Only difference is they no longer starve to death, due to the Green Revolution making food cheaper.


News report speaks of a "middle-class" approaching the size of that in China, "400 million", "600 million", with equally vague definitions as of the Chinese. A significant part of the Indian population is better off than they were 50 years ago. That they don't starve helps this. There are more wealthy, as in China. India's development has been slower and more volatile, because of the weak government, but nevertheless it follows a similar pattern.


Working a sixty hour week in a garment sweatshop in Canton and living in stark boring barracks is no fun, but it is a big improvement over being a pig farmer and being stuck in pigshit all your life, even if your parents own the farm and are not slaves to a landlord like in the old days.

So you are concurring then that the Chinese revolution was really a bourgeoisie revolution that sought to prepare for capitalist relations, rather than socialism? And yes, capitalism is an improvement over feudalism, but it is no excuse for socialism.


And now all those workers are unionizing and striking, and the government is trying to seek compromise settlements rather than just cracking down at capitalist behest, and trying to get the workers to join the government unions instead of going independent.

It's all to control and pacify and avert the threat of real socialist revolution and any other threat that the capitalist rulers of China might see.


The state and banking sectors of course. Planning? There was little or no economic planning in the Soviet Union until 1928. But what you do have is the CCP, not the stock market or the rising Chinese capitalists, controlling what gets built and who the banks lend money to.

One point though, not even Stalin suggested that there was socialism by 1928, and the NEP was well recognised to be a more or less capitalist stop-gap solution.

What we have is the Capitalist Party of China, which is the head of the capitalist ruling class. Millionaires can be members now, did you know? What gets built? Local government committees approve almost anything. Why? They are limited in how much tax income they can get, and thus have to depend on leasing the public land for sometimes pointless speculative ventures, very generously and with almost no reservations. Does the CPC control the markets? It does not. It is at the behest of the capitalists because it is a part of the global market, and a part of capitalism it remains, imperialist and capitalist. The Stock market concern the Chinese leadership very much, don't you think?


Do state owned companies fire people and seek efficiency and profitability? They did under Lenin during the NEP period too, was that capitalism?


Uh... yes?


As for foreign investment, that is interesting. Foreign investment by private Chinese companies is famously vicious and exploitative, and sometimes Chinese diplomats try to get them to behave themselves a bit. Foreign investment by state owned companies, as in the Sudan where it fits Chinese foreign policy, is another story, with workers being paid twice as much as by any other foreign investors.

Ah, yes, the lovely affairs in Sudan, nothing like some intra-imperialist struggle for resources, right? Marvellous.



It is because foreign investment by state owned companies is intended to serve the needs of the state, not capitalist profit. So paying better is good Chinese PR.

Chinese PR and the state play a role in capitalist profit. Paying better looks better and thus results in more business, therefore more profit. It's like when a company wants to get a better image and it gives token gestures to the employees to win a favourable public opinion. It's nothing that proves your point.


Hey, you're the one claiming capitalism actually works, so look in the mirror.

I don't remember saying this... unless you mean the stuff about Angola, which was sarcasm so exaggerated I can't think anyone failed to grasp it. You're the one defending capitalist China and capitalist expansion.

South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Northern Europe, etc, are further examples of where capitalism with state intervention have produced remarkable increases in living conditions, far more impressive than what we see in China today, and far faster, too; but we know that whenever possible, when the pressure against the capitalist drop, they will take back what they can, and they will in China too, whenever they can. We know that it is not a lasting solution that capitalism remain.

[S.Artesian]

Has brought a record number of people out of poverty? Sure, I know it is having an effect, and sweatshop labor is not desirable, as is environmental devastation, but the fact remains that millions of Chinese are now better off then they were before.

Interested on some leftist views on this.

Which perhaps only shows how impoverished China's "socialism" really was.

Are millions of Chinese "better off"? No doubt, and millions more are marginalized as millions are made "better off." There are about 100-125 million migrant workers in China, who effectively have less than second-class citizenship.

There is a high level of sexual predation, and exploitation of women, and not just in the sex trade, but on the shop floor, or in the ship dormitories.

The "iron rice bowl" has been scrapped, and more than scrapped, melted down.

Yes, China has received about $1 trillion in direct foreign investment. Prior to the 2008 recession, 30-40% of the GDP was export dependent, and 80% of the earnings from hi-tech exports belong to foreign based enterprises.

But the anchor, and the dead weight, of the Chinese economy is, and has been for centuries its agricultural sector. Almost half the population is tied to the rural economy with an annual edit: per-capita income of $700/year [2007 figure]. Average plot size is about 1.5 acres. It's real hard to build a productive agricultural base to support domestic production, the domestic market, when your agricultural is so atomized, and so labor dependent.

At the same time, dispossessing that rural population to create larger farming units will unleash even greater migration to the cities, and social conflict and struggle of revolutionary proportions.

[S.Artesian]

If it wasn't for Mao's industrialization, China's Capitalism wouldn't of been able to take so many people out of poverty.

What industrialization? Agriculture was the dominant economic sector under Mao. Industrial productivity was far behind levels in Taiwan, Japan, Korea.



There are a lot of capitalists, and they are doing very well for themselves, but ultimately it is the Chinese Communist Party in charge, not the Chinese capitalists. And the banking system and the most important industries are in the hands of the state, not of the capitalists, and take their orders from the Politburo, not the stock market.

Yeah there a lot of capitalists, foreign and domestic, doing very well for themselves. Many are in the CCP, many are the sons and daughters of government and party officials.

The [specious] distinction between the CCP and the Chinese capitalists only has meaning if one believes that the CCP is a working class organization and retains the ability to reverse the process of capitalization inaugurated with Dengs 4 reforms.

Does anyone think the CCP is capable of that? Without unleashing forces that will, necessarily, abolish the CCP itself? Without there being an international revolution?

No doubt there is a "left" in the CCP; no doubt the policies of the CCP are debated and criticized by those in the left.-- So what? That does not qualify the CCP as distinct from the capitalism it has nurtured in China.

Saying the state controls the most important industries means exactly what? What are the most important industries? Armaments? Steel? Well, as a matter of fact the state doesn't exactly control the steel industry. It has constituted various enterprises that were formerly state enterprises as "stand alone" for profit operations.

Coal? Is that a most important industry? You'll see the same thing going on in coal production.

Banks? The state controls the banks? Sure it does.... on paper. But as we say when it comes to playing baseball, you don't play this game on paper. Market forces will prove far stronger than central bank edicts when the tripling in outstanding loans over the past 3 years comes up a cropper.


Which is why working class standards of living are dropping like a rock everywhere else, and rising quite rapidly in China, which at this point probably has the most militant, rebellious, combative working class movement in the world outside of Greece. The workers are shoving big wage increases down the throats of the Stalinist bureaucrats, whether they like it or not.


Uhhh.....no, Brazil's working class has also seen a rise in living standards, so get out your thunder sticks and start beating an ovation for Lula-- another hero in the socialist pantheon.

As for the workers shoving big wage increases down the throats of the Stalinist bureaucrats........uhhhh no again, as the CCP has explicitly promoted a "higher" wage policy in an attempt to concentrate and centralize production, driving out marginal producers and reducing the pressure of overproduction.


Why? Because China is the only really important country on earth where the invisible hand of Adam Smith is not strangling the human race by the neck. Instead, you have the highly visible, obtrusive and dictatorial hand of the CCP, which maintains its power in China due to one reason and one reason only, namely that its economic policies have produced results. According to opinion polls, most people in China support the government. Probably the only country on earth that is true about right now.


Well if the opinion polls say it's true then it must be true, and just fuck the economic organization of society, the conflict between means and relations of production-- because that shit isn't relevant. It's what we "think" that counts. Got that?

When the world economy tanked in 2008, you know what happened in the Guangdong? Well, the invisible hand of Adam Smith just packed up thousands, literally tens of thousands of factories and left. How about that. Estimates were that 1/5 of the entire migrant labor work force lost its employment... Oh, as is frequently the case under the "obtrusive and dictatorial hand of the CCP" wages due the workers in those thousands of plants were not paid. Hah hah hah, how's that for a workers' state, controlling the most important industries? I'm laughing so hard I'm starting to cry;.




The growths under Deng were made possible by Mao's industrialization and occurred despite Deng not because of him. They were the natural growths that would stem from industrializing a feudal nation and under socialism and capitalism growth would occur. Had China continued under its current path its growths would have been even more spectacular without imperialism, sweatshop labor, and so on.

Again what industrialization. What portion of the economy was industrial production vs. agriculture?

It's growth would have been more without imperialism? You think so? So where would the capital have come from? Where would the technology have come from? How would China have modernized its agricultural sector, something still not accomplished?


What made the relative prosperity after WWII in China, Japan and South Korea possible were the dramatic land reforms that MacArthur and then the CIA (and in Taiwan Chiang Kai Shek) forced down the throats of the domestic ruling classes. They damaged the immediate interests of the ruling classes of course, but the US didn't care, they were the boss now.

In North Korea much of this was done during the brief North Korean occupation of the South, so the question is whether the CIA would let Syngman Rhee reverse them, to which the answer was no.

The motivation was to build them up as a counterweight to China. Plus large amounts of economic aid of course for SK and Taiwan, and even more importantly, letting all three export to the USA without any tariff barriers.

Well that proves it. Capitalism cannot produce economic development because it did so in SK, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore only to protect itself from the threat of revolution.



In China, the state sector still dominates the domestic economy. Private capital only dominates export industries, which is from the standpoint of China, as opposed to the American viewpoint you see in Bloomberg or other capitalist sources, a sideshow.


Bullshit. The private sector began contributing more to the overall economy than the "state sector" around 2006 I think. Foreign capital certainly does dominate export industries, but the stipulations of FDI have required Chinese private partners, not solely state partners, and transfers of technology. Now the Chinese state may take "positions" in some enterprises but to think that amounts to being able to override market forces is just... well ignorant.