No problem. The paper is a wonderful read and has more than a few thought-provoking moments. One of the vital readings if one wishes to understand the Cultural Revolution; especially if one is looking for a good introduction to the era.
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Thank you comrade!
No problem. The paper is a wonderful read and has more than a few thought-provoking moments. One of the vital readings if one wishes to understand the Cultural Revolution; especially if one is looking for a good introduction to the era.
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I learnt recently that the Cultural Revolution was a great boon for the Chinese peasantry -- not because of any policy from Mao, but the fact that the Chinese state was paralyzed, and peasants did way better without state interference.
There was a a strong element of spontaneism and voluntarism in the Cultural revolution, which reached some rather bizarre and unhealthy peaks, but that also created some opportunities to rebuild a culture with mass action.
First of all, this implies that there was excessive state interference in the peasant economy when this was simply not the case. During the Mao era the local villages were organized into People's Communes which were owned and managed cooperatively by the local peasant's, not the state (There is a letter where Mao makes this very clear, Mobo Gao cites it in his Battle for China's Past, though I don't expect anyone to go searching for it since it is obscure.) After the failures of the Great Leap Foward Mao advocated the de-regulation of communes against the wishes of Deng and Liu Shaoqi and allowed them to distribute their salaries autonomously depending on their circumstances. (Prior to his reforms, 70% of an individual's salary was for his own use and the rest was returned to the commune, after his reforms some communes increased this to 85% and greater when it was thought that the local economy wasn't strong enough for the individual to contribute any more)
Secondly, during the cultural revolution the standard of living for the average peasant was increased greatly due to the effort to expand medical coverage to the rural eras. Additionally local schools were established to increase literacy and affirmative action was introduced for woman to equalize their position in society. Peasants were taught to read and write so they could contribute to culture, and during the cultural revolution the Bejing thethre had 7.6 million attendants with 74% of the plays being written by industrial workers and peasants.
The trick with china is that over half the economy is state owned meaning the capitaists are technically allowed to proit of the workers by the far more powerful (inside of china at least) bureaucracy. As we see there is a struggle to fully restore capitalism on the part of the ccp but the workers aren't too fond of that notion, which is why we see thousands of strikes a year in this so called "sociaist state." Its a deformed workers state for this reason.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
This just is not true. He only came out as a communist not a socialist, and polemicised against socialism. It is social democracy and Trotskyism that identify the two.
China is not a capitalist country. So there is a difference between, say defending Libya and China against imperialist aggression -- with Libya we would be defending the national rights of the country, with China we are defending the property relations. In a war between, say Russia and China, at this point in history, we would defend China against capitalist Russia.
And yes, China needs a political revolution to put Marxist Internationalists in power to advance the cause of the revolution in China, but most importantly internationally.
As for their being a some fundamental problem saying that on a basic level, a class level, the GDR in the 50s and the PRC today are equivalent, I don't see it. These are societies with a fundamental contradiction between their property forms and the politics of the leadership. In the GDR this was resolved by counterrevolution. I fear the same may happen to the PRC, but I am hoping that it does not. Great Britain was a capitalist country in need of a proletarian revolution in the 1860s and so is Spain today. Doesn't sound so crazy, does it?
Cool, "defending" one ( and the stronger one at that ) imperialist country against another imperialist country in a war that can only be a war of imperialist aggression.
Congratulations.
There has been no counterrevolution in China?
It's so sad, to me, to see intelligent comrades still upholding China as a degenerated workers state; I believe the theory has some merit (a proletariat dictatorship cannot vanish over night, it must slowly degenerate) however Trotsky, by the end of his life, was close to rejecting the label for the USSR, let alone what he'd think hearing others label China as a DWS in this day and age, as they're slowly overtaking the USA as the dominant capitalist state worldwide. The theory that Trotsky was close to abandoning near the end of his life, would become the cornerstone of the ideology to the post Trotsky Trotskyists.
It is much sadder still that some mislead comrades believe that China ever was a worker's state("degenerated" or not) at all.
China's political leadership is increasing more and more composed of private capitalists. CEOs, execs, finance majors, millionaires, billionaires etc, etc.
I'm just baffled by claims that China is not a capitalist country. This is a terribly stupid and misinformed position. The greatest Marxist economist of the 20th century was probably Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, who co-wrote the ABC of Communism with Bukharin, the popular explanation of the Bolshevik post-October new programme. In the ABC of Communism, the primary characteristic of economic life under capitalism is generalized commodity production, i.e production for sale on the market, i.e production for profit.
This is true of China. China's dominant form of production is commodity production. Production for profit.
But simple commodity production doesn't suffice. To turn simple commodity production into capitalist production, the a capitalist class must monopolize the means of production. The ownership of the means of production must be in the hands of capitalists, not proletarians.
This is also true in China. The workers own nothing, the capitalists own everything. You can say, "But l'Enferme! - the State owns some of the most important sectors of the Chinese economy! Does this not mean that the State have a more meaningful monopoly on the means of production in China?". But that is all misleading. All these State enterprises are managed by capitalists who make millions off of it - in fact, the last time I checked around a 3rd of China's millionaires are Party members, and high-ranking members at that.
Look at the list of top Chinese billionaires . Of the 12 on the list, 8 have English wikipedia articles. Let's check them out.
Liang Wengen, richest man in China. "tapped to join the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.".
Zong Qinghou, member of the NPC, China's highest state body since 2002.
Wu Yajun, another member of the NPC.
Wang Jianlin, member of the party since 1996. "He served as deputy to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.[4][5] He now serves as the Vice-Chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, and has been a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference since 2008"
And so on.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...cle2947009.ece
The third main characteristic of capitalism according to Preobrazhensky and Bukharin is that under capitalism, labour-poweritself becomes a commodity and wage-labour becomes the norm.
I have never seen anyone argue that wage-labour is not the norm in China.
Not only is China not "state-capitalist", an alleged form of capitalism where the state takes over the function of capitalists, it's just straight-up capitalism.
You don't pick sides in a military conflict based on which country is "stronger" -- you do it on class relations. Since you consider China to be a capitalist country, your position is consistent. Since I do not, my position is also consistent.
When did the counterrevolution occur? When were property relations fundamentally changed? Mao tried very hard to have some kind of coalition government with the KMT -- he would have, if given a chance, probably made the same mistakes that the CCP made in the twenties. But Chaing would not play ball, and Mao had to follow through with eradicating the KMT. The Chinese bourgeoisie have remained in Taiwan ever since. Do sections of the CCP aspire to be the new bourgeoisie? Of course they do. Have they looted the workers and peasants of China? Again, yes. But they are a privileged bureaucratic strata, not a new ruling class and not bourgeois (at least not yet). It is still quite likely that if there is a counterrevolution that the entire CCP apparat will end up in prisons, not mansions. Let us hope that does not come to pass as it would be no less a catastrophe for the workers of the world (and particularly to the proletariat of the affected nation) than the collapse of the USSR.
It's also stupid.
The only war that can someday break out between China and Russia is a war of Chinese imperialist aggression. That is obvious to anyone.
Chinese irredentism is already claiming the Russian Far East.
Also l'Enferme already pointed out the facts.
Your "facts" are redolent of moralism, not Marxism. No doubt you would have sided with "poor little Finland," in 1939, against the USSR, which was the "aggressor" in that battle. One picks sides based on class analysis and since yours is sorely lacking you wind up no better than some benighted bourgeois historian. Your uncomradely remarks are neither appreciated nor illuminating.
You have made the case for viewing modern China as a capitalist state, but I don't see how this applies to Mao's China, since the industries of the People's Communes were cooperatively owned. (I cite Mobo Gao's work on Mao Era China as my source in this)
Comrade, can you show me the figures of private enterprise vs. state owned production? And while you are at it, can you break it down by industry. Is steel and energy production primarily private? How about transportation? It matters that key industries are nationalized. It doesn't mean that there is workers control or workers democracy. But it ain't capitalism -- or if it is it is a new type of capitalism
As for Preobrazhensky, I agree he was a great economist, and the ABCs of Communism is still a worthwhile read. There was a lot of confusion among the Bolsheviks as to what was going to happen after the revolution regarding organizing the economy. But I don't think anyone said that since we have wages, this is capitalism. In the transition to socialism after capitalism is defeated, there will probably be wage labor for a period of time.
But to clarify, you never thought that China was anything but capitalist -- so all this stuff about millionaires must be beside the point, right?
And I have no disagreement that the party is rife with bureaucratic leeches that are pro-capitalist. But a counterrevolution in China will be bloody and you will see the kind of falling off a cliff of the living standards of the population. You look at it and have a moralistic response. Hey Napoleon played a pretty negative role in the French Revolution. His armies were the aggressors against some of the old monarchies in Europe. Quick, which side represented progress?
I don't see how there can be a "falling off a cliff of the living standards" for most people in China, since many are already living at subsistence levels. This itself is a form of moralism trying to defend capitalist China. It certainly is not a workers' state of any kind, nor is a "Stalinist bureaucracy" in charge politically. All of the bureaucrats in charge of the higher posts of government are simultaneously capitalists, just like here in the West. The bureaucrats aren't merely "pro-capitalist" they are capitalists themselves. CEOs and the like that actually have ownership in the companies they administrate.
This is more than a little dishonest. It was revolutionary social-democracy, not contemporary social-democracy. I should not need to remind you that Engels himself played a large role in the development of the former.
Okay, I'm game. What is this ostensible "abandonment" based on? Trotsky's last big political fight in the FI was precisely about defending the USSR as a degenerated worker's state. There was a split in the US section with Burnham, Shachtman, and Abern abandoning Soviet defensism. The excellent book, In Defense of Marxism came out of this fight. I recommend it.
Also, I think you have the point of this theory a bit inverted. A proletarian revolution can vanish over night if it is overthrown by a counterrevolution. The idea that it can evaporate because the leadership, without fundamentally changing the economic system, has bad policies is pure idealism.
I guess the facts that China is much more powerful than Russia in every way probably don't have much to do with Marxism. Facts are facts.
The USSR was undoubtedly the aggressor. Does anyone still question that?
And that aggression more than anything severely harmed the revolution in Finland. See: "Spirit of the Winter War"
Both China and Russia are imperialist countries. Hence there is no reason to support any of them, until the war takes places inside the national boundaries of one, and results in occupation of its lands by the other. Our main duty would be to call for the proletariat of both the countries to convert the imperialist war into revolutionary civil wars.
Of course.
That's what I said, but Russia cannot attack China, so such hypothetical war can only be a war of aggression by China.
Naturally.
