China

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:50 pm

ISSUE: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006
“Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

Tienanmen Square: Chinese Counter-Revolution Crushed

In the August/September 1989 issue of Lalkar we wrote an article entitled ‘Chinese Counter-Revolution Crushed’. In this article, we exposed the lies of the imperialist media, and its flunkeys in the working-class movement – the Trotskyites, Revisionists and Social-Democrats – concerning the alleged “massacre” and “bloodbath” in Tienanmen Square, Beijing, on June 3-4 of 1989, by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the allegedly innocent students demanding no more than “democracy” and an end to corruption.

We proved, by reference to unimpeachably solid imperialist sources, which cannot be suspected of entertaining any but the most hostile views towards socialism, that the Tienanmen Square incidents were nothing short of an attempted counter-revolution aimed at overthrowing the socialist system in China and replacing it with a capitalist system and a capitalist regime. We proved too, again by reference to the most impeccable ‘imperialist’ sources, that this attempt at counter- revolution was well-planned and meticulously coordinated between the local Chinese counter-revolutionaries and their imperialist masters, with the latter rendering every technical, financial, political and ideological help to the former and facilitating a minute-by-minute transmission of every word every message, every communiqué, emanating from this counter-revolutionary rabble.

In concluding that article we asked the question: “How could this counter-revolutionary rebellion have arisen in the first place?” And to this question, we provided the following answer:

“In their effort to modernise China, the Chinese leadership has been trying for nearly a decade to break into the monopoly over technology held by Western and Japanese imperialism, by offering them special economic zones and joint ventures. This, accompanied by the loosening of the centralised economic planning, the dissolution of the communes, wider pay differentials between the masses and managers and intellectuals, have disrupted the socialist economy and led to inflation, unemployment and dislocation of vast numbers of workers and peasants. These economic factors have been accompanied by an ideological relaxation and a lessening of emphasis on the teachings of Marxism-Leninism at a time when an increasing number of Chinese students studying in America and other Western countries were not simply acquiring technical and scientific expertise, but also having their heads stuffed with bourgeois ideology (at present there are 73,000 Chinese students in America and another 250,000 visitors)”.

To this we added the plea: “The Communist Party of China (CPC) must take a hard look at these economic and ideological factors, which together contributed much to produce the counter-revolutionary rebellion. It must learn the necessary lessons and put an end to those practices – economic and ideological – which led to the present crisis. We wish the Chinese working class every success in tackling these problems”.

Cde Jiang Zemin’s speech in June 1992

Exactly three years after the suppression of the Tienanmen counter-revolutionary rebellion, Comrade Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the CPC, made a very important speech, which reveals clearly, if disturbingly, that the leadership of the CPC, far from learning correct lessons from the Tienanmen incidents, is, on the contrary, pressing full-steam ahead with the implementation of the very policies which led directly to the counter-revolutionary rebellion of June 1989 by the loosening of centralised planning and the unleashing of economic forces which lead in the direction of capitalism.

Speaking at the Central Party School, on June 9th this year, to a gathering of provincial and ministerial level cadres, who were attending a class for advanced studies, Jiang stressed that a major task for the Party committees, at both central and local levels, was “to grasp and implement in an all round way the essence of the important remarks by Deng Xiaoping and bring the enthusiasm, initiative and creativeness of all the cadres and people into full play so that they will become a great motivating force for the acceleration of the pace of reform and opening of economic development”.

The meeting, at which Jiang spoke, was presided over by Quiao Shi, who is a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC, as well as the President of the Party School, all of which adds to the importance, as well as the seriousness of Jiang’s remarks, some of which we reproduce here below.

Jiang stressed that the central idea running through Deng’s remarks is to unswervingly carry out the Party’s basic line of “making economic construction the central task and adhering to the four cardinal principles and to the reform and opening to the outside world”, in a comprehensive way, emancipate the mind, seek truth from facts, have a free hand and make bold experiments, remove various obstacles, seize the good opportunity to accelerate the pace of reform and opening, and concentrate on the promotion of economic construction. He continued that by so doing, the country will continuously and comprehensively push forward the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, adding that this has been Deng Xiaoping’s consistent idea since the Third Plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the Party in 1978.

This line of Deng, this “building of socialism with Chinese characteristics”, claimed Jiang, has guided China’s modernisation cause to advance along the right course of development and to achieve successes which have attracted worldwide attention. “This represents”, said Jiang “new historic contributions Deng has made to the Party, the country, the nation and the people. This is also the most important reason why China’s socialist cause can stand severe tests under the changing international situation and remain invincible. The creation of the road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and the formation of its theory, line and policies indicate that China’s socialist cause has entered a new stage of development and that the Party has taken an unprecedented new leap in the process of cognition of the science of socialism”.

‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’

But, what is this “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, what is the theory underpinning it, with the help of which the CPC has “taken an unprecedented new leap in the process of cognition of the science of socialism”? Jiang explains that the essence of this theory of building socialism lies in:

(a) Opening the Chinese economy to foreign capital and building a “foreign oriented economy, furthering active and effective use of foreign funds”;

(b) Reforming the economy by a further loosening of central economic planning – the very basis of socialist construction – on the plea “that reform is also a revolution and a liberalisation of the productive forces, … that for a long period in the past China implemented a system of over-centralised planned economy, which once played an important role”;

(c) Expanding commodity production and enhancing the role of the market, for, according to him a centrally planned economy “due to its defects of over-centralisation of powers and of ignoring and even rejecting of commodity economy and the role of market regulation, has become more and more unsuitable to the demands of the development of modern production. It has hampered the development of productive forces, and even rigidified the whole economy”.

Equating modernisation with the expansion of the market, Jiang goes on to say that “it is imperative to make a fundamental reform in this over-centralised planned economic system. Otherwise it will be impossible to realise the modernisation of the country”. Equating central economic planning with an obstacle to the development of productive forces, he calls for the liberation of the latter by removing the former.

In this regard, Jiang stressed the need to learn from, and follow, the experience of imperialist countries (“developed capitalist countries”) if you please, for to “accelerate the pace of reform and opening should include boldly drawing on all the achievement of the civilisation of mankind and advanced management methods of all countries including the developed capitalist countries” as if to say that the highest development of commodity products, i.e. capitalism, is also the highest achievement of “the civilisation of mankind”.

‘Attach More Importance to the Role of the Market’

Christening these reforms as the establishment of “a new socialist economic system”, and so as to not leave anyone in doubt, Jiang reveals the essence of this “socialism” in the following candid terms:

“…it is the basic task of speeding up the reform to establish a new socialist economic system as quickly as possible. The key task for establishing a new economic system is to correctly understand the question of planning and markets and the relations between them. This means attaching more importance to the role of the market in the development of resources and bringing it into fuller play under the state macro economic control”.

Referring, in language most oblique, to the fact that disputes within the CPC on the wisdom of following the bourgeois reformist path, advocated by Deng Xiaoping since the late 70s, have now been resolved in favour of Deng’s group, Jiang goes on to call for the speedy implementation of this “new socialist economic system”.

Says he: “… through more than a decade of grouping and summarising domestic and foreign experience our understanding of the establishment of a new socialist economic system has become comparatively ripe both in theory and practice, and a common understanding has further been reached inside the Chinese Communist Party. So, it is time to carry it out at fast speed”.

How is this new “socialism” to be implemented? In the following way:

(a) By separating “the functions of government from those of enterprises”;

(b) By granting “more decision-making power to enterprises”, i.e. independent of state planning bodies;

(c) By reforming “the concept of planning and transform[ing] the functions and modes of planning management” – an obscure way of calling for dismantling central economic planning (“liberating the productive forces” from “over- centralisation” if it pleases anyone); and

(d) By paying attention “to market construction and setting up a unified and complete socialist market”.

We have shown elsewhere, in our analysis of the collapse of revisionism in the former Soviet Union and in eastern Europe, that there is no such thing as socialist commodity production or a socialist market; that commodity production and communism are incompatible; that it is the historical aim and task of communism to eliminate commodity production, and hence the market; that the continued existence of commodity production in the countries which have hitherto experienced socialism had to be explained by the backwardness of the economies inherited by the revolution – in particular the existence, side by side with state property, of collective property in the form of collective farms, whereby the produce, although not the means of production, belong to the collective peasantry, and the unwillingness, at least for the time-being, of the latter to recognise any other relation with the town except the commodity relation. Only the revisionist political and economic theoreticians – the Khrushchevs, Libermans and Siks maintained otherwise. To them, only under the higher phase of communism could the market achieve its real flowering and commodity production expand to unprecedented proportions. Well, we know where that has led the once glorious USSR, namely, to the liquidation of socialism and the USSR alike.

But, Jiang assures us that “the reform in China is socialist reform and it means a revolution to the original political system which bears some shortcomings. It aims at improving and revitalising China’s socialist system. The political reform in China is not to take the road of the kind of democratic politics in western countries. Its orientation and aim are to build a kind of socialist democratic politics with Chinese characteristics, to improve the socialist legal system and to effectively guarantee the rights of the masses of people as masters of the country”.

Well, did we not get similar assurances, in language even more clear, from Mikhail Gorbachev, who wanted to “renew socialism” by “returning to Lenin, by expanding commodity production and establishing a “socialist market economy” as the only means of “liberating” the productive forces from the clutches of the “administrative command economy” instituted during the time of “Stalin’s personality cult”? And before that, did we not get coaxed by similar assurances from Nikita Khrushchev and his successors and the economic theoreticians of revisionism – Messrs Libermans, Gatovskys, Siks, et al?

Jiang urged leading cadres at all levels “to promote reform and opening to the outside world and, at the same time, crack down on criminal activity of all kinds”, forgetting that it is precisely the kind of reforms pursued by the CPC – reforms which seek to construct the market by dismantling central economic planning, reforms which unleash the forces of the capitalist market – which give rise to bourgeois corruption and criminal activity of all kinds.

It is clear, however, from Jiang’s concluding remarks, that there is opposition within the CPC to the implementation of these bourgeois reforms, this “new socialist economic system”, this “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, which is what causes him to say that “people must be on the alert for right tendencies, but mainly must guard against ‘left’ tendencies”.

He adds: “The reality of life shows that the ‘Left’ tendencies are manifested mainly by the fact that people still stick to their previous dogmatical understanding of certain Marxist principles and books, or to some unscientific and even totally distorted understanding of socialism, or to the wrong ideas and policies which overstep the primary stage of socialism and were prevailing prior to the period of reform and opening to the outside world. … Thus, they do not easily accept the correct policies of reform and opening … and they even doubt and negate reform and opening to the outside world. They hold the view that to carry out reform and opening to the outside world will lead to the capitalist road and they still use the concept of ‘taking class struggle as the key link’ to interfere with and even impair the central task of economic development”.

It is not a question of one’s wishes and good intentions. What one must do is to look at the policy of the CPC in the economic sphere, its trend and direction, its logic and the destination at which it must arrive. An honest Marxist analysis of the CPC’s economic reforms compels one to admit that, unless reversed, the implementation of this policy is bound to lead to the same kind of collapse as has already taken place in the former Soviet Union as a result of three-and-a-half decades of the pursuit of revisionist economic policy. While pursuing these policies in the economic sphere, which inexorably lead to bourgeois liberalisation and turmoil, it is pointless for Comrade Jiang to warn against right tendencies which, he quite correctly says, “are engaged in bourgeois liberalisation and even try to create political turmoil, attempting to change the socialist system and the correct orientation of reform and opening to the outside world”.

The economic reforms that the CPC has been putting into effect, at varying tempo, since the late 70s have been creating at an ever accelerated pace the economic basis for the emergence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements. And when this is combined with tirades against “left” tendencies “taking class struggle as the key link”, this cannot but become a potent weapon in the hands of the emerging bourgeois elements who want to lull the vigilance of the Chinese proletariat to the danger of capitalist restoration.

Yes, socialism must prove its superiority, not only in the political, but also in the economic field. Yes, the backward China of 1949 must be transformed into a modern and model industrial state, equipped with the most up-to-date technique and a skilled and cultured people. No one in their sane mind would denounce the CPC leadership for wanting to modernise China’s economy. However, this modernisation can be either along bourgeois or proletarian lines. And, to the Chinese working class and the vast masses of China, it is vital that it be along proletarian lines, for if it is not its consequences for the 1,200 million Chinese people would be too horrendous and horrible to contemplate. One has only to look at the plight of the working class of the former USSR and of the east European countries to realise that. These are the terms in which Cde Jiang himself described the consequences for China of departing from the socialist path:

“If China does not persist in socialism in the years to come but instead chooses, as some people advocate, to return to the capitalist road – and thus once more give rise to a capitalist class by fattening it with the sweat and toil of her labouring people – then with so huge a population, so low a level of productive forces, the majority of the people can only be reduced once more to an extremely impoverished status.

“This kind of capitalism can only be primitive capitalism of the comprador type [compradors were Chinese merchant intermediaries of Western interest from the end of the 19th century]. It can only reduce the Chinese people of all nationalities once more to dual enslavement by the foreign capitalists and China’s own exploiting classes”. (Speech on the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Peoples’ Republic of China).

We have made the above critical observation, not out of malice or hostility, or even an urge to criticise. We have done this guided by a spirit of proletarian internationalism and out of concern for the interests of the Chinese people. We end this article by yet again expressing the hope that the CPC will feel willing and able to put an end to its present economic reforms which go under the name of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, for denuded of its camouflage and verbiage it turns out to be another name for building a capitalist market economy, and calling it a “socialist market economy” does not change matters one whit. Once again we wish the Chinese working class every success in tackling these problems.

[To be continued]

http://www.lalkar.org/article/1195/soci ... cteristics

These arguments are persuasive, but again it seems not to take into account that little problem of a socialist state in a capitalist world, only the strong might survive. Neither does this line of argument address the historical necessity for China to guarantee national sovereignty, and that might be prioritized over applying socialist economic practice. Not what we may like but it ain't our revolution. Will China return to a socialist economy at some point? Can we show indications of this?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 09, 2017 1:27 pm

CPC has nearly 89.5 mln members
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-30 18:05:01|Editor: Zhou Xin

BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) had a total of 89.447 million members at the end of 2016, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee announced Friday.
CPC membership increased by 688,000 from 2015, up 0.8 percent. Grassroots Party units increased by 105,000 to 4.518 million, up 2.4 percent, the department said in a communique published ahead of the 96th anniversary of CPC's founding on July 1.
Statistics showed the Party's vigor and vitality have been strengthened, the communique said.
The growth rate of CPC membership has dropped while the structure of its members has improved since 2013 when the Party implemented a recruitment rule which stresses the quality of members while limiting the quantity.
In 2016, the CPC recruited 1.911 million new members, 54,000 less than 2015, including 953,000 members working in frontline production roles, accounting for 49.9 percent of all new members.
A total of 1.571 million new members were under the age of 35, accounting for 82.2 percent of all new members in 2016, up 0.4 percentage points from 2015.
Among those new members, 785,000 hold junior college degrees or above, accounting for 41.1 percent, up 1.5 percentage points from 2015, the communique said.
The Party had 22.982 million female members at the end 2016, accounting for 25.7 percent of the total membership, while 6.3 million members are from ethnic minority groups, making up 7 percent of total membership.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017- ... 407371.htm

bolding added
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:26 pm

Discovering Chinese Socialism: A Personal Account

Despite my best intentions, I had first come to China some eleven years ago with a pile of preconceptions and ways of understanding socialism. One by one they have been challenged, undermined and then crumbled. Since then, I have been rebuilding my understanding virtually from scratch.

Some of these preconceptions were superficial, although I was not aware I held them until after arrival. For example, I had been warned that a paranoid communist party would send spies to watch my every move. Even though I found this somewhat ludicrous, I caught myself, despite my best intentions, wondering if I was indeed being tailed. Another was the oft-repeated comment that no-one in China ‘believes’ in Marxism anymore, indeed that Chinese people barely talk about it. This particular fib took about 24 hours to undo, since I found not only that people freely talk about Marxism and socialism as everyday matters, but that everyone has studied these subjects at school.

Other preconceptions were more deeply ingrained: the idea that socialism can be reduced to economic matters; that China had embraced capitalism somewhere between 1979 and 1989; that Mao Zedong was the good boy and Deng Xiaoping the bad boy; that ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ had little to do with socialism; indeed, that a ‘socialist market economy’ is a meaningless term; as for any form of democracy or ‘human rights’, forget it, since the communist party is not interested. I should add that I had a number of ways of understanding socialism that had developed during a long immersion in European Marxism, with its specific assumptions concerning philosophy and ways of looking at the world.

To have these assumptions dismantled has been a disconcerting process, to say the least. But it has also been exhilarating and full of new insights. By this time, more than a decade later, I hold none of the positions I have mentioned. However, the process has often involved constructing a new position that turned out to be a half-way house, a transitional point to something else. In short, I continue to dismantle nearly all of the categories that I had assumed as givens and have been working hard to construct new ones based on extensive exposure to Chinese Marxism.

Where to begin?

Human Rights
Perhaps ‘human rights’ was the easiest one to dismantle. I had always been suspicious of the very idea of human rights, given that it was first proposed by the Dutch philosopher and jurist, Hugo Grotius, in the sixteenth century. Grotius made a crucial shift, from a singular ‘Right’ characteristic of the Middle Ages (and inescapably connected with God) to plural ‘rights’. Already he saw these rights – such as life, freedom and so on – as commodities that could be acquired or sold. So I did not pay much attention to the routine use of ‘human rights’ in international efforts to denigrate China and its supposed ‘abuses’.

However, while filming for an online course (MOOC) on Chinese Marxism, I travelled to Ruijin, where the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet was established in the early 1930s. Here developed what may be called the ‘Ruijin ethos’: focus first on the people’s need for food, shelter, clothing and security, and then they will become communists. This opened the door to understanding a Chinese Marxist approach to human rights. Yes, such rights are universal, but they are rooted in specific situations and histories. Thus, the European tradition focuses on individual political and civil rights, but it neglects the crucial right to economic wellbeing (with significant consequences). It is precisely this right that emerged with the Ruijin ethos, with a distinctly collective focus. And it continues to be expressed in any number of government policies, ranging from the minority nationalities policy to the Belt and Road Initiative. So there is a Chinese Marxist tradition of human rights, arising in a very different situation, with different emphases. This is not to say that political and civil rights are neglected, but they must be understood in this broader framework.

Socialist Democracy
As for ‘democracy’, on this matter too I had earlier suspicions. I mean here suspicions about bourgeois democracy and the claim that this particular form of democracy is ‘democracy’ as such, without any qualifiers. I had experienced and studied enough to know the vacuousness of such claims, that bourgeois democracy based on parliamentary parties was only one historical manifestation of democracy, with its significant limitations. But I did have some idea of what an alternative might be, with direct participation by all, election and revocation, a search for a collective will – a little like Marx on the Paris commune. This is socialist democracy, I thought to myself. That my perception had significant doses of anti-statism goes without saying, for is not the state an alienated entity out of touch with the people? That it was also deeply informed by a (neo-)liberal framework was not so clear to me at the time, a situation that I now realise feeds into the popularity of anarchism in those parts of the world where liberalism is the dominant framework. With these preconceptions in mind, China was not going to manifest any form of socialist democracy.

The breakdown of this preconception began with the discovery that elections happen all the time in China. In local elections, whether in the countryside or city regions, one can elect the local government representatives. They can be communist party candidates or non-party candidates. What about the process of electing people for the two houses of parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)? The process begins in villages and in the local people’s assemblies, which may elect as many people as they wish. However, the number elected is usually no more than fifty percent over the number of places available. From there, elections continue through a number of layers until the provincial people’s assembly, from which the final number of delegates are elected. Once elected, a delegate serves for five years. In other words, the process is one of direct and indirect elections. A similar process applies for electing delegates to the Communist Party’s congress.

Clearly, this is a democratic exercise. But the question remains: what about the Communist Party itself? Can it be voted in or out of power? For many, this question is the test of ‘real democracy’. The problem is that the question itself betrays the hegemony of bourgeois democratic assumptions, in which multiple parties which look rather like one another vie for power, without questioning the overall framework. Obviously, this does not apply in China, which is not a bourgeois democracy. However, the role of the Communist Party in democracy took me a while longer to determine.

In short, a Communist Party must be in power for socialist democracy to function. This may initially seem like a paradox, but it is not. Let me put it this way, using the category of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. When first used by Marx and Engels and then developed by Lenin and Stalin, the proletarian democracy was a centralised and repressive force, in which the majority – workers and peasants – made use of the machinery of state to absorb and crush their opponents, who had once constituted the ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’. The key here is the majority, which is able to express its will. Yet, this is only the beginning. In a Chinese situation, Mao Zedong transformed this category into ‘democratic dictatorship’, which he saw as ‘democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries’ (1949). Note the shift: the proletariat have become ‘the people [renmin]’ and they are the ones who rule. In fact, the Chinese minzhu reminds us of the core meaning of ‘democracy’, the people are in charge, are masters. All of this would be fully expressed by Deng Xiaoping in his four cardinal principles, of which the second is ‘upholding the people’s democratic dictatorship [renminminzhuzhuanzheng]’. But who are the people here? They are the workers, farmers and what may be called a socialist middle class, although ‘middle class’ is really not the best term here, since it evokes the specifics of the European history of the bourgeoisie. Instead, these are the people who have been lifted out of poverty and find the socialism has in fact improved their lives. The import of Deng Xiaoping’s formula is that the ‘people’ includes everyone. And who leads and represents them, through complex patterns of elections, public opinion, feedback from other political parties and policy? The next item in Deng’s principles provides the answer: leadership of the Communist Party.

Contradiction Analysis
Now I am digging into material that required and continues to require much more rethinking. So it is a good time to pause and identify a key experience. It concerns what may at first seem like a rather abstract idea: contradiction. But this idea has profound and very concrete implications.

The first moment of this experience was a discussion with a Chinese colleague over ‘utopia’. In a European context, utopia is of course both a non-place (utopia) and a good place (eutopia), but it entails some idea of perfection. Here tensions and conflicts are overcome, harmony and peace are achieved. Isn’t this the same as the Chinese datong, the ‘Great Harmony’? I asked. Well no, my colleague pointed out. This ancient Confucian idea, which has subsequently been reshaped in the tradition as a future state and then appropriated and reinterpreted by the communists (Mao was fond of it), actually does not mean ‘perfection’ as I had understood it. Instead, it means that opposites and indeed contradictions are still present, but they are not in conflict with one another. Think of yin-yang, she said: not only are the opposites entwined with one another, but if you look closely, you will see one side in the middle of the other.

The second moment was an extraordinary seminar, in which we read Mao’s ‘On Contradiction’ very carefully over six weeks. I had been struggling for some time concerning the presence of contradictions under socialism. According to a certain ‘Western’ approach, contradictions are supposed to disappear: swept away would be classes, economic exploitation, ideological conflict, if not the state itself. Through my work on the Soviet Union, especially in light of its achievement of socialism in the 1930s (my awareness of this reality also took time), I had begun to realise that contradictions do happen under socialism. So I was in the process of painstakingly tracking how Marxist thought came to terms with this reality.

Some of the other participants in the seminar were somewhat impatient with me. Of course, contradictions appear with socialism! Mao’s essay makes this very, very clear. But what sort of contradictions? Are not contradictions meant to indicate struggle and conflict? Many parts of the essay address the nature of contradictions and their relations to one another. But one of the most significant is the last part, concerning ‘non-antagonistic contradictions’. Here Mao picks up an idea that had begun to be explored in the Soviet Union, where classes were present under socialism, as well as tensions between the forces and relations of production. But Mao took it much further in light of Chinese philosophy. At one point, he quotes a four-character Chinese saying: xiangfan xiangcheng, ‘things that oppose each other also complement one another’. Thus, contradictions can always become antagonistic, leading to conflict, as one finds with events leading to a communist revolution. But they can also be non-antagonistic if they are handled properly. This is precisely Mao’s emphasis in an essay from 1957, in the early days of beginning to construct socialism. It is called ‘On Correctly Handling Contradictions Among the People’, in which he advises the party to focus on ensuring that the contradictions that exist should not become antagonistic.

The third moment made me realise how important this ‘contradiction analysis’ is in China today. I happened to be in Beijing during the nineteenth congress of the CPC in October 2017. The anticipation in China was palpable and more global attention was focused on this congress than any of the earlier ones. In a major speech of more than three hours, in which Xi Jinping outlined the shape of a whole new phase of Marxism in China, he identified a new primary contradiction: between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. Not only did this approach straight out of Mao’s approach, but it also invoked a traditional four-character saying, meihua shenghuo, a beautiful and good life. It was now being claimed from a long tradition and being reinterpreted in a Marxist framework. By now my sense of what contradiction means in a Chinese context had a little depth, especially in light of the aim to become a great modern socialist country by the middle of the twenty-first century.

Socialist Market Economy
Over the years that I have been discussing, thinking about and studying the question of contradiction, I have also found myself pondering economic questions.

I initially tried to bring the two together – contradiction and economics – once I realised that socialism does have a distinct place in China rather than some rampant and unbridled form of capitalism. Still I relied on European categories to try to understand this situation, especially the Marxist who has influenced me in so many ways – Ernst Bloch. I began to argue that the primary contradiction (under Mao’s influence) is in fact socialism and capitalism. I explored a number of ways in which this might work, ending with the suggestion that subsequent modes of production do not cancel out the preceding ones. Instead, they absorb the contradictions of the earlier ones and transform them in the new context. If you can see this with capitalism, you could also argue that this dialectical process also takes place with socialism. So you would expect to see all manner of mechanisms and forms of capitalism appearing under socialism, especially in terms of unleashing the forces of production, but they would be transformed in the new framework. I still think that this particular point about modes of production holds and that it is a very Marxist approach. In many ways, it makes sense of what happened in the Soviet Union and it assists in understanding the process through which China is going – well beyond the Soviet Union.

However, I still could not make sense of a ‘socialist market economy’. Why? I assumed that a market economy is the same as capitalism and that if China had some form of market economy it must have some form of capitalism. This assumption is so ingrained among so many people, specialists or not, that it is difficult to challenge. For me, the penny dropped very slowly. I realise now that this assumption is actually a manifestation of what is called ‘economics imperialism’. This means that neoclassical economics – a major tradition for understanding capitalism – managed to forget its history and its social location. It became individualised and universalised, making claims about human nature as such. Human beings, they assume, are rational and self-interested actors, who will always make the best economic decision for themselves. Armed with this universal doctrine, they set about describing everything from psychology to religion as manifestations of economic activity. In short, we are capitalists by our very nature. This ‘economics imperialism’ also meant that you could use universal terms: neoclassical economics became simply ‘economics’, and a capitalist market economy became a ‘market economy’. Thus, wherever and whenever you can espy a market economy, you have capitalism in some form. This is a pervasive assumption that is simply wrong.

It certainly took a while for me to realise why. The first real step was actually historical. I had been engaged in research on the ancient world, specifically ancient Southwest Asia (often called the Ancient Near East) and the Greco-Roman world. I was seeking to develop a new economic model for understanding some four and a half thousand years of economic history. On the way, I discovered that markets had spread significantly under the Persians in the first millennium BCE and then under the Greeks and Romans. What sort of markets? Debate rages among those who are interested in such matters. Many simply assumed that they were capitalist markets – a little crude and primitive, but still capitalist. In this club, you find assumptions concerning the primacy of profit, supply and demand, the independence of the market economy, and so on. Others argued against this approach, pointing out that states played a determining role, that prices were not determined by supply and demand, and that such markets were socially embedded.

At a crucial point, I realised that this debate is futile, or rather, that it misses the mark. The reason: they were certainly market economies, but they were different beasts from capitalist market economies. Thus, the one fostered by the Persians can be called a logistical market economy, or perhaps a tax market economy. The Persians developed their particular market economy to deal with a logistical problem: how to provision armies. At some point, they hit on the idea of paying soldiers in coin (newly invented) and demanding taxes in coin. But how could the people get hold of the coins to pay taxes? Sell food, clothing and what have you to the soldiers on the move. If someone made a little profit on the side, then that was a secondary benefit.

The Greeks and then the Romans developed a different market economy. When ‘classical’ Greece emerged from the centuries-long period of so-called economic ‘collapse’ (if one assumes a ruling class perspective), they had developed a slave economy. Surplus for the ruling class was primarily generated through slaves, which every respectable Greek male citizen owned. But they had to get hold of slaves, which were sources in all manner of ways. For this purpose, slave markets developed, with massive market concentrations in the eastern Mediterranean. The Romans ‘perfected’ – if I can use such a term – this system so that we can speak of a slave market economy. The whole market economy was geared and shaped for the purpose of finding, transporting and selling slaves.

Here were two types of market economy that were clearly not capitalist, because profit was not the main driver and the whole capitalist surplus value certainly did not apply. This awareness led me to realise that most market economies throughout history have been anything but capitalist. Indeed, a capitalist market economy as we know it first began with the Dutch Empire in the sixteenth century.

By now the implications should be obvious for a socialist market economy. It too can develop in a way that is not capitalist, even in a global framework that can be seen as largely capitalist. How so? My thoughts on this are at the beginning stage, but I can indicate a number of features beyond my earlier musings.

To begin with, the old opposition between public (or state) and private ownership does not apply. This opposition has become a leitmotiv of those who try to determine whether an economy is more or less ‘socialistic’, so much so that a ‘socialist’ turn involves ‘nationalising’ key industries. This model is simply unusable in China, of not misleading. Thus, the percentage of public or private ownership is not a marker of whether a national economy is more or less socialistic. It takes some effort to get beyond this opposition, but let us try. In China, the fabled state-owned enterprises – the backbone of the economy – are undergoing a process of eradicating old inefficiencies by learning from ‘private’ enterprises and even entering into partnerships with those enterprises. At the same time, every enterprise, whether ‘private’ or ‘public’ – or rather the many enterprises with are part ‘private’ and ‘public’, village or local government owned enterprises, ‘new economic organisations’, start-ups and so on – with more than three CPC members must have a party organisation with an elected party secretary. This means that every enterprise with more than 100 employees must have a core CPC unit within it, exercising a managerial role. Even more, every foreign enterprise or multinational must also have a CPC unit at its core. If I add that the CEOs of China’s biggest companies are also members of the CPC, then we are beginning to understand what may be called ‘enmeshment’ – as is showing up significantly with the Belt and Road Initiative. Much more could be said on this topic (and it needs further research), but it is leading to creative efforts to rethink the situation in terms of a ‘commons’ that is far from any notion of a bourgeois civil society, or indeed the very idea of a socialist market economy itself that moves well beyond the bourgeois distinction of public and private ownership.[1]

Further, the capitalist ‘law’ of value does not apply to a socialist market economy.[2] The production of surplus value is not the determining feature of this market economy, or – if one wishes to put it in other terms – profit for the sake of profit, based on the autonomous dynamic of a ‘market, is not primary by any means (even with foreign influence since China has to deal with capitalist market economies). We might put it this way: under the law of value, ‘unprofitable’ industries would be shut down in favour of ‘profitable’ ones. But this is not the best way of putting it. Instead, the very idea of profitability is transformed. Instead of short-term analyses of whether a particular venture will return a profit, a longer view prevails in which a project is assessed in terms of its larger and long-term benefit – or ‘social surplus’. Again and again, I have been told by Chinese people involved in all manner of businesses that they must meet a whole series of criteria for business reporting. Of these, profit is only secondary. Of course, they must viable in terms of efficiency, paying employees and having resources for future activity, but the whole aim in not based on returns to shareholders. Instead, they are assessed in terms social benefit, environmental improvement, education, contribution to socialism with Chinese characteristics, among others.

The test-case here is the Belt and Road Initiative. This initiative is really an extension of the Chinese focus on infrastructure. As many know, China has been constructing new roads, bridges, schools, universities, accommodation, the world’s best rail network (including but not limited to the massive high-speed network), world-class internet, share economy, and so on. The Belt and Road Initiative is the global manifestation of this drive. It contrasts sharply with the ‘neoliberal’ emphasis on trying the produce money out of money through speculation. Anyone who visits the USA today can see the contrast, where infrastructure is literally crumbling. As one wit put it to me recently: North Korea has recently built a new international airport in Pyongyang, while the USA has not built a new one for a long time. Indeed, a neo-liberal assessment of infrastructure investment argues that it does produce ‘returns’ on investment in perhaps a ten-year period. This kind of analysis completely misses the point of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is long term and focused not merely on China’s benefits, but all those involved.[3]

A final note on what will no doubt be a much longer analysis. Much has been made in some quarters of the Chinese billionaires and the relatively high Gini coefficient (although it has been falling for a decade). This is one of the new contradictions – among others – that has arisen in the process of the reform and opening up. Chinese economists tell me that the approach followed is that the reform and opening up by no means complete, so this tension should be resolved with further reform. Three recent signs are telling. The first is the directive to Chinese companies investing abroad to shift their focus to the BRI, which they are now doing. This may be coupled with the fact that it is simply expected in Chinese culture that those who have benefitted will contribute to the wider social good, so we see a massive scale of contributions and systemic investment in education, medicine and so on. The second is the identification of the new contradiction at the nineteenth congress. The initial part of the contradiction speaks of ‘unbalanced and uneven development’. While this includes problems between city and country, and between east and west, part of this situation is relative wealth disparity. Finally, the renewed focus on the poverty alleviation program, which has been ongoing for forty years, is another signal of a concentration of attention on this problem.

Socialism is More Than Economics
I have spent quite some time with the socialist market economy. In doing so, I have fallen into the trap of economism. By this I mean that so many Marxists assume that the definition of socialism turns on economic matters. Or to use the base-superstructure model, the base is all that counts. This is simply vulgar Marxism.

By contrast, I have learned that socialism is far more than economics.

It includes culture, which has a long history indeed in China. Is Marxism simply a political ideology in China that has little bearing on people’s day-to-day lives? Not at all. This reality came home to me when speaking with some students about contradiction (yes, contradiction once again). They told me how they had been taught about contradiction analysis, implicitly in primary school and then explicitly in middle and high schools. But they also said that they lived their lives according to contradiction. This is how they understand the world, how they comprehend and interpret what happens in their lives. This was one manifestation of the away socialism has entered into the fabric of Chinese culture, so much so that the claim that ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ has a 2,000-year history gains some meaning. In other words, the CPC and the socialism it fosters is the nurturer and bearer of Chinese culture today.

What about society? I could mention the development of a whole new dimension of Chinese society that has benefitted from the poverty alleviation program of the last forty years (700 million lifted out of poverty and counting). Some might call this a ‘middle class’, but this is really a place-holder until we find a better term. I could also mention the new problems that have arisen in terms of city and countryside, with a massive and controlled movement of people to the cities (some 250 million country people work regularly in the cities). But I will focus here on what are called ‘core socialist values’. This shows up particularly in the intersection between traditional Chinese ethics and socialist ethics, or rather, in the transformation of the former in light of the latter. Thus, a communist party member, or indeed anyone in a responsible role in society, has a higher ethical expectation. One must focus on the good of others rather than seek personal gain, be scrupulously honest and direct, living a simple life. This is what ‘communist’ means in China. No wonder that the problem with corruption not five years ago was such a deep problem, until the thorough and ongoing anti-corruption campaign that has restored the standing of the CPC among the people. No wonder that the fall for someone who does meet these expectations is so great. And no wonder that the expectations of the CPC are so high.

Ideology is also crucial, but since the term can have negative connotations for some, perhaps I should speak of theory. On this score, the last five years have been particularly important. Compulsory education for all students in schools and universities is undergoing a complete overhaul so that the courses on Marxism and socialism with Chinese characteristics are relevant to the daily lives of students. I must admit that I am intrigued by the fact that even when they are taught badly they still influence the lives of students in ways that even they do not expect (see above on contradiction) But if they are taught well, as in increasingly the case, the impact is even greater. You also find that all party members (dangyuan) must meet monthly to study an essay from Xi Jinping. The purpose is obvious: to raise the theoretical knowledge of party members. They also need to undertake regular refresher courses in the party schools dotted about the country. On this matter my colours come out more clearly (if they are not already clear). I think this is a fantastic development, especially in light of the old communist saying: without theory we are dead.

Political matters are also important, but this should be obvious. The CPC is the ruling party of the country. But it now has a radically increased theoretical level, a strict disciplinary emphasis, and a distinct confidence and strength that was not so evident five or more years ago.

These many dimensions of socialism, of which I have gradually become aware in China, indicate that one needs to be more comprehensive in assessing socialism itself. Recently, I was asked by China’s leading political economist whether I think the Soviet Union was a socialist society. I pondered the question and mentioned that one needs to assess the many facets I have outlined – economics, culture, society, ideology, politics. If we weigh these factors up, then yes, the Soviet Union was socialist. The implication: China today is socialist, far more than I ever anticipated.

The New Era
Not a few weeks before writing this piece (November 2017), the nineteenth congress of the CPC took place in Beijing. I was in China at the time and followed the congress very closely. Among its many features, ranging from Xi Jinping Thought becoming part of the constitution of the CPC, through identifying a new primary contradiction, to setting a target for becoming a great modern socialist country by 2050, I was struck by the way Marxism was front and centre of Xi Jinping’s presentation. This was simply not a problem for Chinese people. Chinese socialism was identified as entering a new era, so people set about discussing what this means.

Perhaps it is best to go back to Deng Xiaoping’s insight. To be sure, the designation of Xi Jinping Thought evokes Mao Zedong Thought – sixiang, thought, only attaches to two of China’s communist leaders. But the genius of Deng lies behind it. He was the one who picked up the threads after Mao’s deviation and the great forgetting during the Cultural Revolution. What is socialism? For Deng it is not some liberal notion of equality – what Engels’s calls gleichheitskommunismus, or egalitarian communism – in which everyone is equally poor. Instead, socialism is about the unleashing of the forces of production so that everyone’s lives improves. Improvement not merely in economic terms, but also culturally, spiritually, socially, ideologically and politically. This is the meaning of socialism with Chinese characteristics (zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi), of Marxism transformed in a Chinese situation (Makesizhuyi zhongguohua), and the desire for a better life (meihua shenghuo).

Of course, the problem with writing a piece such as this is that I may be seen as a mouthpiece of the CPC. But then people who work for Confucius Institutes are also called such names. That aside, it is clear that an immense amount of effort and research on these questions continues in China. And it is clear that the CPC is absolutely serious about its project.

[1] There is much debate about how a socialist market economy has come about. Proposals include: distinct planning by the CPC; clear distinction from Yugoslav ‘market socialism’; shifting policies in response to new developments; and – intriguingly – happenstance as the by-product of other policies.

[2] A useful starting point for the law of value under socialism is Stalin’s ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’ from 1952. He has a brief discussion of value, although China’s situation has developed well beyond the Soviet Union and is much more complex.

[3] As Michael Roberts puts it: ‘This also lends the lie to the common idea among some Marxist economists that China’s export of capital to invest in projects abroad is the product of the need to absorb ‘surplus capital’ at home, similar to the export of capital by the capitalist economies before 1914 that Lenin presented as key feature of imperialism. China is not investing abroad through its state companies because of ‘excess capital’ or even because the rate of profit in state and capitalist enterprises has been falling’.

https://stalinsmoustache.org/2017/11/17 ... l-account/
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Re: China

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:25 am

Contradiction Analysis
Now I am digging into material that required and continues to require much more rethinking. So it is a good time to pause and identify a key experience. It concerns what may at first seem like a rather abstract idea: contradiction. But this idea has profound and very concrete implications.

The first moment of this experience was a discussion with a Chinese colleague over ‘utopia’. In a European context, utopia is of course both a non-place (utopia) and a good place (eutopia), but it entails some idea of perfection. Here tensions and conflicts are overcome, harmony and peace are achieved. Isn’t this the same as the Chinese datong, the ‘Great Harmony’? I asked. Well no, my colleague pointed out. This ancient Confucian idea, which has subsequently been reshaped in the tradition as a future state and then appropriated and reinterpreted by the communists (Mao was fond of it), actually does not mean ‘perfection’ as I had understood it. Instead, it means that opposites and indeed contradictions are still present, but they are not in conflict with one another. Think of yin-yang, she said: not only are the opposites entwined with one another, but if you look closely, you will see one side in the middle of the other.
Let me say that I tend to like Roland (=Stalin's Moustache) even though he sometimes veers far afield/off track (religion..) and most of his takes are a bit "loose" (in the sense of dispensing with formal terminology, theory, etc).

Here, in particular, he hits on something that we can make even more concrete. Zigedy's latest essay about Contradiction fails to mention ANTAGONISM directly even though it alludes to the concept in many places. The primary trouble being that ZZ conflates contradiction and antagonism. Antagonisms are defined as those insoluble contradictions that (by definition) drive conflict to its breaking point (ie crises or "breaks").

In this way contradiction is fundamental, but antagonism is the manifestation (and the latter is not merely appearance or a veil over the former).

The paragraphs following the one I've quoted are dodgy, both because you have to be very careful with Mao Thought and because Roalnd has not processed the main idea on a deeper/more disciplined level ("loose"). It is not really correct to say that opposition exists without conflict -- that implies some kind of homeostasis and, especially, the lack of a mechanism for resolution. Conflict IS the mechanism -- but it is not the case that all conflicts, or even very many, lead to a decisive break.

The argument/distinction I'm making seems subtle to the point of being picayune but it is wildly important. First because it is imperative to understand why antagonisms cannot end in 'compromise', the watchword of all social democracy. Second because it is also important to recognize that conflict cannot be permanently suppressed (especially not by "majority rule"). Third because it also helps to recast conflict away from being exclusively negative (whence the goal becomes "harmony" -- at any cost. Although, as Roland mentions, "harmony" means something different in Mao; but I don't want to go there).

To say anymore would require a highly disciplined commitment to terminology and thinking (for instance, are there non-conflicting contradictions? The answer depends on how you construe binaries such as night/day, male/female, and etc. "Unity of opposites"..).

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Re: China

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:35 am

When ‘classical’ Greece emerged from the centuries-long period of so-called economic ‘collapse’ (if one assumes a ruling class perspective), they had developed a slave economy. Surplus for the ruling class was primarily generated through slaves, which every respectable Greek male citizen owned.
NOT true. Social surplus (not the category surplus value which exists specifically under capitalism) was generated by the direct producers on the land. Slaves were not an exploited class; indeed, they were not a class at all.
The whole market economy was geared and shaped for the purpose of finding, transporting and selling slaves.
PROFOUNDLY true. And this is the "contradiction" in antique society -- because slaves were NOT the engine of social production. As we know, everything starts with the question of "Who feeds you?" In the antique world, the answer wasn't "slaves".

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Re: China

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:44 am

To begin with, the old opposition between public (or state) and private ownership does not apply. This opposition has become a leitmotiv of those who try to determine whether an economy is more or less ‘socialistic’, so much so that a ‘socialist’ turn involves ‘nationalising’ key industries. This model is simply unusable in China, of not misleading. Thus, the percentage of public or private ownership is not a marker of whether a national economy is more or less socialistic. It takes some effort to get beyond this opposition, but let us try. In China, the fabled state-owned enterprises – the backbone of the economy – are undergoing a process of eradicating old inefficiencies by learning from ‘private’ enterprises and even entering into partnerships with those enterprises. At the same time, every enterprise, whether ‘private’ or ‘public’ – or rather the many enterprises with are part ‘private’ and ‘public’, village or local government owned enterprises, ‘new economic organisations’, start-ups and so on – with more than three CPC members must have a party organisation with an elected party secretary. This means that every enterprise with more than 100 employees must have a core CPC unit within it, exercising a managerial role. Even more, every foreign enterprise or multinational must also have a CPC unit at its core. If I add that the CEOs of China’s biggest companies are also members of the CPC, then we are beginning to understand what may be called ‘enmeshment’ – as is showing up significantly with the Belt and Road Initiative. Much more could be said on this topic (and it needs further research), but it is leading to creative efforts to rethink the situation in terms of a ‘commons’ that is far from any notion of a bourgeois civil society, or indeed the very idea of a socialist market economy itself that moves well beyond the bourgeois distinction of public and private ownership.[1]
To this I say, "yes, but don't overthink it". Who controls key industries is most definitely a barometer to measure whether a socialist turn is taking place (or in place).

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Re: China

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:59 am

These many dimensions of socialism, of which I have gradually become aware in China, indicate that one needs to be more comprehensive in assessing socialism itself. Recently, I was asked by China’s leading political economist whether I think the Soviet Union was a socialist society. I pondered the question and mentioned that one needs to assess the many facets I have outlined – economics, culture, society, ideology, politics. If we weigh these factors up, then yes, the Soviet Union was socialist. The implication: China today is socialist, far more than I ever anticipated.
In a sense, it doesn't matter whether a country is deemed "socialist" or not (as opposed to state capitalism or market socialism or whatever else one can concoct) -- or, at least, the question suggests the answer in the form of a couple metrics:

Who controls the means of production (key industries/commanding heights)?

Who wields political power?

Detractors and ideologues are forced to try and undermine those primary indicators with conspiracy theories about putsches, coups, betrayals, etc (bureaucratic takeover..). Roland is right that in China the answers aren't crystal clear from a traditional or academic standpoint -- but answers are almost never crystal clear in the thick of things and Roland is also right that the answers are quickly resolving into focus before our eyes in real time (in a way this is retrospect since nothing comes into being without definitive antecedents).

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 18, 2017 12:47 pm

kidoftheblackhole wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:35 am
When ‘classical’ Greece emerged from the centuries-long period of so-called economic ‘collapse’ (if one assumes a ruling class perspective), they had developed a slave economy. Surplus for the ruling class was primarily generated through slaves, which every respectable Greek male citizen owned.
NOT true. Social surplus (not the category surplus value which exists specifically under capitalism) was generated by the direct producers on the land. Slaves were not an exploited class; indeed, they were not a class at all.
The whole market economy was geared and shaped for the purpose of finding, transporting and selling slaves.
PROFOUNDLY true. And this is the "contradiction" in antique society -- because slaves were NOT the engine of social production. As we know, everything starts with the question of "Who feeds you?" In the antique world, the answer wasn't "slaves".
It should be noted that slaves were also the primary producers of commodities, mining, agriculture, 'manufactures'. Slaves were obtained through various channels, conquest, judicial, debt, reproduction. Only the first source provided numbers great enough to push down the cost and Rome's economic heyday coincided with it's period of expansion. Allowing for some lead time for the huge glut of slaves provided by the conquest of Trajan and for a final 'plume' of reproduction by the victims of said glut, the economic(and thus everything else) decline begins then.
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:08 pm

kidoftheblackhole wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:59 am
These many dimensions of socialism, of which I have gradually become aware in China, indicate that one needs to be more comprehensive in assessing socialism itself. Recently, I was asked by China’s leading political economist whether I think the Soviet Union was a socialist society. I pondered the question and mentioned that one needs to assess the many facets I have outlined – economics, culture, society, ideology, politics. If we weigh these factors up, then yes, the Soviet Union was socialist. The implication: China today is socialist, far more than I ever anticipated.
In a sense, it doesn't matter whether a country is deemed "socialist" or not (as opposed to state capitalism or market socialism or whatever else one can concoct) -- or, at least, the question suggests the answer in the form of a couple metrics:

Who controls the means of production (key industries/commanding heights)?

Who wields political power?

Detractors and ideologues are forced to try and undermine those primary indicators with conspiracy theories about putsches, coups, betrayals, etc (bureaucratic takeover..). Roland is right that in China the answers aren't crystal clear from a traditional or academic standpoint -- but answers are almost never crystal clear in the thick of things and Roland is also right that the answers are quickly resolving into focus before our eyes in real time (in a way this is retrospect since nothing comes into being without definitive antecedents).
More than a little Western chauvinism in that criticism, even from western Maoist tendencies. And a bit of idealism too, a refusal to understand the nationalist emphasis of Chinese communism. But yes, recent developments which Roland mentioned are very encouraging. They ain't doing this just to bamboozle a bunch of goofy Western Marxists.
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:31 pm

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR SOCIALISM IN CHINA?

CNN described it as “China’s ‘Game of Thrones’” and warned about “the Cult of Xi.”Bloomberg fretted that there was “a great centralization of power in one man.” The Guardian cried of China’s “increasingly assertive – domineering, some say – foreign policy.” The Globe and Mail howled that “the Chinese system of authoritarian capitalism is seeking to undermine Western democracy.”

Far be it from us to question the assessments and characterizations of the mainstream bourgeois media – bastions of truth and democracy that they are – but it does seem that they have taken great pains to depict China’s 19th Communist Party Congress as a singularly threatening event. After all, such characterizations do directly support and facilitate imperialist plans to demonize, encircle and isolate China.



Clearly, something was astir at the 19th Congress, that caught the attention of these spokespeople for global capitalism and planted the seeds of panic. While there is a lot to be analyzed in this situation, the opening speech from Chinese President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping is a good place to start. The following is based on excerpts from that speech:

“The CPC’s 19th Congress is held in this key period, on the eve of the victory of attaining an Affluent Society, of achieving “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SCC).” This is a key meeting.

“The 5 years since the 18th Congress have been extraordinary years for the CPC and country. Facing a world with weak growth, uncertain conditions, worsening global problems, and changing economic conditions, we remain steady to face our difficulties head on, to advance toward the historic outcome of modernising socialism.

“The poverty rate has dropped from 12.2 percent to 4 percent. The comprehensive development of education, the central and western regions and rural education has been significantly strengthened. Growth of urban and rural incomes exceeds economic growth, and middle-income groups continue to expand.

“Significant ecological protection and restoration projects are progressing smoothly, and forest cover continues to improve. Ecological environment management has been significantly strengthened, and the environmental situation has been improved. We have become a global leader, guiding international cooperation in response to climate change.

“At the same time, we must clearly see that our work still has many deficiencies and we face many difficulties and challenges. The development of quality and efficiency is not high, innovation is not strong enough, the real economic level needs to be improved, ecological and environmental protection has a long way to go. The contradiction between the urban and rural areas and the income distribution gap is still large. There are many problems in the areas of employment, education, health care, housing, and pensions. These problems must be addressed.

“We must speed up the improvement of the socialist market economic system. We should improve all kinds of state-owned assets management system, reform the state-owned capital authorized management system, speed up the optimization of state-owned economy layout, promote the preservation and appreciation of state-owned assets, enable state-owned capital to do better and effectively prevent the loss of state-owned assets.

“Our country is a socialist country under the leadership of the working class and a people’s democratic dictatorship based on the alliance of workers and peasants. All the power of the state belongs to the people. China’s socialist democracy is the most extensive, the most real and the most effective democracy to safeguard the fundamental interests of the people. The development of socialist democratic politics must reflect the will of the people, protect the rights and interests of the people, and stimulate the people to create vitality.

“We must develop quality education, promote education fairness, and cultivate the socialist constructors and successors of moral, intellectual and aesthetic development. We must promote the integration of urban and rural compulsory education; run pre-school education, special education and online education; popularize high school education; and strive to make every child enjoy fair and quality education. We must improve the student subsidy system, so that the vast majority of the urban and rural labor force receives high school education, and more receive higher education.

“We must improve the quality of employment and people’s income level. We must adhere to the employment priority strategy and active employment policy, to achieve higher quality and full employment. We must provide a full range of public employment services, and promote college graduates and other youth groups, and provide migrant workers with multi-channel employment opportunities. We will adhere to the principle of distribution according to work, improve the institutional mechanisms for distribution, and promote the distribution of income in a more reasonable and orderly fashion. To fulfill the redistribution function of the government, we must speed up the equalization of basic public services and narrow the income distribution gap.

“We must strengthen the social security system to cover the whole people, urban and rural areas. We must fully implement the national insurance program, improve the basic old-age insurance, and improve the unified basic medical insurance system. We must adhere to the basic national policy of equality between men and women, to protect the legitimate rights and interests of women and children. We will improve social assistance, social welfare, charity, the special care and resettlement system, and the elderly care service system. We will speed up the construction of housing supply, so that all people are housed, either through rental or purchase.

“We must resolutely win the fight against poverty. It is our party’s solemn promise to ensure the poor and the poor areas join the whole country into a comprehensive well-off society.

“We will implement a healthy China strategy. We will build the high quality and efficient medical and health service system, improve the modern hospital management system, strengthen the primary health care service system, promote a healthy and civilized way of life, and work for prevention and control of major diseases. We will implement a food safety strategy, so that people eat at ease. We will adhere to both Chinese and Western medicine, and support community-run medicine.

“The modernization that we want to build is the modernization of the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature. It is necessary to create more material wealth and spiritual wealth to meet the growing needs of the people and to provide more quality ecological products to meet growing environmental needs. We must adhere to the principle of conservation priority, protection priority, natural recovery, the formation of conservation of resources and the protection of the environment.

“To promote green development, we will build market-oriented green technology innovation systems; develop green finance; strengthen energy-saving environmental protection industry, clean production industry, and clean energy industry. We will promote comprehensive conservation and recycling of resources, the implementation of national water-saving action, and reduce energy consumption and material consumption, to achieve a link between production systems and living system cycle.

“We advocate simple and moderate, green low-carbon lifestyle, against luxury waste and unreasonable consumption. We will carry out the creation of conservation-oriented organs, green homes, green schools, green communities and green travel and other actions.

“Comrades! We must firmly establish the socialist ecological civilization concept and promote a harmonious development of humanity and nature, a new pattern of modernization, in order to protect the ecological environment!

“China will hold high the banner of peace, development, and cooperation. The world is in a period of great changes. Peace and development are still the theme of the times – at the same time, the uncertainties of instability in the world are prominent, the world economic growth is not enough, the polarization between the rich and the poor is becoming more and more serious, and the regional hotspot problems continue to spread through non-traditional security threats such as terrorism, cyber security, major infectious diseases and climate change. Humanity faces many common challenges.

“The world we live in is full of hope and full of challenges. We cannot give up the dream because of the complexity of reality. No country can respond to the challenges of humanity alone, and no country can turn into a self-enclosed island.

“Comrades! The Chinese people are great people who are industrious and courageous and self-reliant. The Chinese Communist Party is a great political party who dares to fight and dares to win. History will only favor the firm, who forge ahead fighting, and it will not wait for hesitators, slackers, or the fearful. The whole party must consciously safeguard the unity of the party, keep the party’s flesh and blood ties with the masses of the people, consolidate the unity of the people of all ethnic groups throughout the country, and strengthen the unity of the Chinese people at home and abroad. We must unite all the forces that can be united, and work together towards the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation – the bright future!”

http://peoplesvoice.ca/2017/11/18/new-d ... -in-china/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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