China

[blindpig]

Well, hell, it is the world's biggest communist party and if we question how 'communist China perhaps that is a matter of our perspective in the core of capitalism.

These days I'm thinking that what we see in China a NEP of epic proportion with all the dangers and drawbacks more than balanced by the diligence of the Party and an absolute faith in the working class.


********************************************

Communist party asserts control over China Inc

Push for cells in joint ventures follows moves to tighten grip on state-owned firms


China has sought greater control by the Communist party and state over the economy and civil society © EPA

OCTOBER 3, 2017 by Lucy Hornby in Beijing

China’s Communist party is making clear that it expects to dictate business decisions — not only at state-owned enterprises, but also at private companies and joint ventures with foreign partners. 

Under President Xi Jinping, the party has become more assertive, reclaiming functions that the civil government and industrial groups carved out during decades of liberalisation. Beijing has largely abandoned a list of promised economic liberalisation issued four years ago, opting instead for greater control by the party and state over the economy and civil society.

For businesses, that control takes the form of party cells, long a feature of SOEs but increasingly a part of corporate life at private companies and foreign joint ventures.

In the past week, the party has moved to define its role in business. A government statement laid out Beijing’s definition of “entrepreneurship”, saying it involves patriotism and professionalism, followed by observing discipline, obeying laws, innovation and serving society. Profits did not feature, although the statement did reassure entrepreneurs that their property would be protected.

Meanwhile, Xiao Yaqing, head of the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, told reporters last week that “excellent, well-managed, profitable companies have a good management team. That is surely because the party leadership plays an important role in team-building and corporate governance”. 

Mr Xiao’s organisation is overseeing forced mergers of indebted state-owned enterprises to mould them into internationally competitive national champions.

The document on entrepreneurship from the party’s Central Committee and the State Council, China’s capital, follows months in which regulators have reined in the country’s most aggressive and well-connected, and indebted, private dealmakers. It comes after five years of a corruption purge that has broken up patronage networks within the party, particularly in the state-run oil sector and the military.

More generally, the party is recapturing the large segments of the economy that developed outside its purview in the nearly 40 years since Deng Xiaoping tossed out classic Marxist recipes such as price controls and state ownership. 

It has set up cells in private companies and altered articles of association in SOEs’ Hong Kong-listed units to explicitly include the role of the party in management decisions. It has tracked down dues from lapsed members and established party-controlled unions in foreign multinationals’ Chinese operations. 

The latest front is a push into foreign-invested joint ventures, which at the best of times have to navigate cultural differences and divergent corporate goals. While not explicit or written, overtures have been made to some foreign businesses operating in China about formally establishing a party cell in their joint ventures. 

While foreign investors are generally aware their state-owned Chinese partner answers to the party, adding cells within the joint ventures makes relations more difficult than usual by adding opacity to day-to-day operations. 

It also potentially increases costs for which line managers are not accountable, if the joint venture has to foot the bill for party activities and dues, and raises the risk that people will be promoted based on party activities rather than workplace competence.

Meanwhile, the party has already made its enhanced presence felt. 

“It’s not so much the idea of party cells in their joint ventures, it’s the difficulty of dealing with the party decision makers within their state-owned partners,” said one adviser to foreign businesses in China. 

Purely business decisions that once might have been handled by division managers within an SOE are getting routed through the party hierarchy instead, leading to frustrating delays at the operational level.

European companies in China have found that the pressure to introduce a party cell varies considerably by region and by industry.

https://www.ft.com/content/29ee1750-a42 ... 5e6a7c98a2

Do I detect a tone of disapproval from the Financial Times? Hahahaha...

FT also getting prissy about copyright. Hoho

[Dhalgren]

I want to have confidence in China's commies. This report increases that confidence. HoHo, indeed

[blindpig]

It is reasonable to assume that US propaganda would wish to downplay the importance of the Party in contemporary China. "Communism has been defeated" doncha know? And 2/3 of the shit in your house came from there, they can't be commies! It seems they are playing a 'long' game, which does not manifest itself in the current information environment, and so we get snippets here and there, mostly from the finance press at that. And perhaps the Party has been low key at times, so as to encourage business/investment, and it has worked. China's material condition improves by the day and the time is coming when hegemony changes hands.

At least some of the capitalists/managers gotta see this coming and we know there is loose talk of future hostilities, particularly in military circles. It has been pointed out to me that Lenin never said that thing about 'rope' and some will tell ya that the bosses ain't that stupid. Well, mebbe, sometimes. But that toxic cocktail of arrogance and cupidity(with a dash of ignorance) is catnip to junkies who've never been burnt for putting their hands in the cookie jar and the next quarter is just over the horizon.

Another impediment to our understanding of China is the shroud of Trotskyist thought which blankets what passes for the American Left. No revolution is good enough. This works so well because it is of a piece with petty bourgeois idealism. Trotskyism is petty bourgeois 'Marxism', a bulwark of the ruling class.

I don't pretend to know what the CCP is up to, I am not privy. It is apparent that they've chosen to ride the capitalist tiger. Their people and land have had to suffer some of the indiginties of rapid capitalist development(many of those ills are now being seriously addressed). But the Party still rules. I think they are trying to do an 'NEP' 'right', without the complication of impending war. How they will 'dismount the tiger' is a big question. Can they? What will it take? A massive military crackdown? A second revolution? I dunno. But I think I'll take them at their word. It's that or Trotish defeatism.

How they will deal with a bourgeiose and it's millions of petty suckfish? I hope I'm alive to see it.

[kidoftheblackhole]

Consider the Capitalism Revolution for a moment and the (requisite) differences between their Revolution and the next (which is ours). The capitalists were united along a narrow ideological line (CLASS) while being simultaneously at each other's throats internally. They worked to codify and cement their rule through a gigantic matrix of laws that are ultimately backed and enforced by armed men in their employ. While they offered hosanas and paens to "creating a better world" any ennobling sentiment toward lofty ends was quickly sacrificed at the altar of the "means" (profit motive) used to get there. They survived this dichotomy simply because capitalism DID materially elevate society at the point in history.

Their political+economic science was advanced only to the self-serving point that it provided various justifications and rationales for the society forged in their hideous visage.

So the question is: how does the blueprint for socialist revolution change the above paradigm?

[blindpig]

Is it a paradigm? The thought that those wankers who poured through the Berlin Wall in pursuit of 'Iphones & silk panties' were achieving a materially elevated society makes me want to jump into a wood chipper.

Yeah, yeah, I get it as per the material improvement of society being the basis of social advancement. And obviously capital no longer elevates society, quite the opposite. Socialist revolution changes the game by changing the objective of economic activity from profit and accumulation to meeting human need. But what is 'human need' these days? Perhaps age and parsimony cloud my judgement in this but I think I'm more right than wrong in thinking that capitalism, not so much through genuine material improvement but rather through a flood of distractions, has clouded the line between want and need. Does socialism win by producing mo'/better distractions in a capitalist manner? Not that I'm criticizing China for doing what needs to be done but I for one pine for the day when the Party 'steps up' and we're all wearing 'Mao' jackets.

[kidoftheblackhole]

The thing is if you look at world poverty rates, almost the entire improvement in the last two generations is attributable to China. This actually obscures to a degree how horribly the capitalist system has failed. On top of this, the MASS of impoverished has increased even as the poverty rate has declined.

China seems to be an in between stage -- not reformism of capitalism but also not possessed of the same straightforward proletarian revolutionary spirit

[blindpig]

Recall someone pointing out that during WWII there were capitalist in the Party, some even in positions of responsibility. National liberation will have it's way and is a first priority, can't have socialism without it. As in the significant entry of petty booj into the CPSU so this necessity spawns it's own problems, but what ya gonna do? Wait until conditions are ideal?

[blindpig]

Backgrounder: What does it mean to be a Party member?
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-17 21:13:38|Editor: An
BEIJING, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) has about 89 million members, roughly 6.8 percent of the population. Membership of the CPC entails certain rights and responsibilities.
According to the Party's Constitution, members should be a vanguard fighting for the Chinese working class. They should serve the people wholeheartedly.
The Party's admission process usually begins with a handwritten application. To be admitted a member must be 18 years old, accept the Party's program and Constitution, and pay membership dues.
Party members have many rights, including to discuss, vote (in Party elections) and criticize. They are expected to study and implement the Party line, principles and resolutions. They must observe Party discipline and carry out the Party's decisions.
China implements strict governance of the Party. In the past five years, the CPC made and revised 80 intra-party regulations. Discipline for CPC members is even stricter than law.
According to CPC norms on clean conduct and self-discipline, CPC members must separate public and private interests, put the public interests first and work selflessly. It also demands members to champion simplicity, thriftiness and guard against extravagance.
The CPC regulation on disciplinary sanctions lists extravagant eating and drinking as violations. It also demands members not to form intra-party cliques, defy principles, hide personal issues, or use their political powers to seek profit for relatives or staff.
CPC members in leading positions need to report their marriage status and overseas travel plans.
During the past five years, some 176,000 violations have been investigated, and nearly 240,000 CPC officials have been punished, according to the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.



http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017- ... 686859.htm

[blindpig]

Στενή Αυτοάμυνα‏
@Obscureobjet

A few further notes on China and western Marxism, this time from the perspective of philosophies of history. In western Marxism, the idea is

the following: capitalism was the inevitable overcoming of feudalism, and socialism is the inevitable overcoming of capitalism.

The outbreak of the October Revolution means entry into a stage of struggle to the death between two systems that are mutually incompatible

and that will end with the triumph of the more ethically advanced system, socialism. A particularly troubling spot in this context is a

tendency to conflate the abstract ethical superiority of socialism with a concrete evolutionary advantage. After this schema was belied by

the events of 1989-91 and what followed, a tendency that develop was to say that the schema and theory behind it are absolutely correct,

but they fell prey to either betrayal from within or pressure from without, or a combination of the two. The result of this response is

to posit the future as "a repetition of the past, only better", i.e "without betrayal". The philosophy of history implied is that we must

simply repeat October 1917 and the USSR but somehow avoid "their mistakes" (mostly left vague). As to the thesis that there are two systems

and that they are mutually incompatible, it produces a consistent evaluative privileging of the (defeated) past over the present, for the

past is perceived as "pure" whereas the present is impure and degenerate. If this sounds like Platonism, it's because it is.

It has nothing to do with Marx's view of history, for instance in the afterword to Capital 1.



Marx doesn't say the dialectical method regards ONLY capitalism as a fluid and transient form. He says it regards EVERY historically
developed form as such, and it lets nothing impose itself on its grasp of movement.

Now, contemporary China's response is the following: capitalism is simply a determinate form of market society, a very powerful one, but

not some kind of historical telos; historical socialism was the determinate negation of that form, and China considers, in my view not

unjustly, that it traversed the path of this negation (through collectivization policies, etc). What China therefore thinks of the reforms

especially after the collapse of Soviet socialism, is not at all that they constitute a retreat from socialism to capitalism, as our schema

naturally leads us to assume. No, for China capitalism was irreversibly overcome in a properly dialectical fashion, i.e, preserved-in-

its suspension, and now, with the reforms, its NEGATION (early socialism) WAS ALSO OVERCOME. So, from the Chinese perspective, it is absurd

to dwell on whether China is capitalist or socialist in the received historical sense these terms had in the 20th century. China is for them

the product of the negation of capitalism and then the negation of that negation, which has nothing to do with a "return" to capitalism.

Nor is it a "mixed economy", because this presupposes that the materials for this "mix" are substantively present within a society.

Rather, it is simply the economy that emerges when both capitalism and the determinate socialist negation of it have been negated in turn.

More specifically, what has been negated in capitalism is its ability to absolutely subjugate the role of the state and of politics to its

logic of accumulation. What has been negated in socialism is its effort to constrict the market mechanism as a mechanism the state could

hold into control. Central planning, a central feature of socialist economics, has reached its apotheosis in China, the most advanced and

sophisticated state planning apparatus in human history (far superior to what the USSR achieved); but preserved is also the market, money

property and accumulation, which, however, have to now operate without the transcendental framework of inalienable individual rights

which quickly transform into permanent and unchallengeable rights to exploit other individuals and to control the state.

The power of capital accumulation may lord it over individuals, but it not over the collective entity of the state, of state reason, of

state purposes and planning. State capitalism? Not by a long shot, if such a beast ever existed. But certainly not state socialism of any

historically recognizable type. From the Chinese perspective, China is a 21st century society in the substantive, not the chronological,

sense. It has *traversed* and gone beyond the 20th century. Europe and the USA have not. They are caught in it and in its schemas.

From that perspective, our societies and ways of thinking, in whatever camp we belong ideologically, are trapped in the past & have failed

to evolve. That's the form of the Chinese challenge, imo, and it doesn't take at all the invitation to "imitate China". That is explicitly

denied by the Chinese philosophy of history, which doesn't posit ANY universal path and telos. The challenge China poses is simply a

challenge to think and to evolve in our own terms, the terms of our own societies.

For the time being, China has proven the following:
a) the superiority of central planning, given criteria of efficiency, competence control

equity and transparency in state apparatus appointments to all liberal capitalist methods of economic planning.
b) that it is possible,under

a number of conditions among which is the abolition of private property in land and of the multiparty system, for the state to control the

pace and direction of the development of market relations and to introduce appropriate correctives whenever necessary
c) That "trickle down"

works (!) but NOT in liberal capitalism.
d) that liberal capitalism is neither natural, nor inevitable, nor the end of economic history.

e) That provided strict maintenance of criteria of competence, equity and transparency, state rule is by no means confined to either

"pluralism" of political competitors nor overreliance on repression.
f) That state power over capital is the sine qua non precondition of

any sustainable ability of the state to arbitrate between classes instead of merely serving one.
g) that the state form is far from dead.

This isn't socialism, it's not communism, and it's also not anything we have known in the past. It's also THE world historical force of the

21st century, the new that this century has so far borne. Whether we like it or not, that is where things are at. The rest is impotent

and futile repetition and will simply not do as an alternative to the world China will shape.

Στενή Αυτοάμυνα‏ @Obscureobjet 45m45 minutes ago

Well, food for thought....

[blindpig]

Lorsudo seems to agree with the previous post

First, we can cite Lenin, who with a very clear vision made the distinction between classic colonialism and neocolonialism. He said, at the start of the Twentieth Century, that colonialism, in the classic sense of the term, is political annexation; in other words, that a country or people don’t have political independence, that it isn’t considered worthy to be independent. That is classical colonialism, with the political annexation of a country or a people by an imperialist, colonialist and capitalist power.

However, Lenin said as well that there’s another type of annexation, that is, economic annexation. That is neocolonialism. We have today an example of classic colonialism, that is the situation of Palestine. There we see classic colonialism. It’s clear, we see Israel expanding its settlements, expanding Israeli territory, and we see the Palestinian people like the natives of the American west: they are expropriated, deported and sometimes killed. This is classical colonialism.

But there exists another form of colonialism: neocolonialism. And these days I like to make two references. Mao [Tse-Tung], after taking power, said: “If we, the Chinese, continue on dependent on American flour for our bread, we will be a semi-colony of the U.S.”; that is, political independence will be only formal, without substance. And I cite another classic of anti-colonial revolution, Frantz Fanon, who was a great champion of the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, and he said something very important: “When a colonial and imperialist power is forced to give independence to a people, this imperialist power says: ‘you want independence? Then take it and die of hunger.” Because the imperialists continue to have economic power, they can condemn a people to hunger, by means of blockades, embargoes, or underdevelopment.

Mao and Fanon are very different personalities, but both understood that the anti-colonial revolution has two stages; the first, the stage of military rebellion, the military revolution. The second; economic development. The so-called “left” that didn’t understand this second stage is in no condition to understand the anti-colonial revolution. What we see now is the development of the third world, and that development isn’t only an economic event but also a major political event. The attempt by China, today, to break the West’s monopoly on high technology is the continuation of the anti-colonial revolution.

And I believe, in this sense I completely agree with you, that the left that was able to understand the anti-colonial revolution when the United States bombarded Vietnam, but cannot understand imperialism's pretension to exercise economic power worldwide—that left can’t understand the second stage of the anti-colonial revolution, which is conducted through economic and technologic development.

https://konkret.la/the-new-colonial-counter-revolution/

Does all of this make us 'romantics'?