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> Contradictions in Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
> By Sidney J. Gluck
> Presented at Philosophy Conference
> Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing China
> October 30 and 31, 2000
>
> At the outset it should be clear that a discussion of
> contradictions in Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is
> not a pejorative. On the contrary, it defines the struggle for
> a better life. Every society has its contradictions which are
> the levers of change. Understanding contradictions helps
> initiate actions and movements to affect the outcome of
> class interests. This is as true of China as it is for the USA
> and the rest of the world, North and South.
>
> There are two distinct categories of conflicts: one,
> contradictions in nature and two, contradictions in human
> society.
>
> Humankind versus nature is a constant challenge, always in
> flux. Technology sets the range of ability to use the
> elements and forces of nature at will for human survival. A
> major contradiction arises when destructive class interests
> or neglect cause ecological imbalances leading to
> significant changes in a natural phenomenon, i.e. global
> warming threatening society itself.
>
> The advent of private property opened the way to
> exploitation of man by man, culminating in capitalism's
> introduction of socialized production for individual profit,
> fraught with contradictions, and it remains dominant in
> the 21st century because two technological revolutions in
> the 20th century gave it new life and growth.
>
> Because of the contradiction between underdevelopment
> and the need to integrate rapidly into the world economy on
> a high technological plane, methods honed by capitalism
> must be adopted in China to achieve competitive
> status without sacrificing socially and collectively owned
> public enterprise. This follows a period in China when
> technology and management were de-emphasized though
> collectivity and social concerns were practices within
> low productivity and living standards. Modernization,
> therefore, has sharpened this threat.
>
> The ideological campaign launched in February has
> answered the growing contradiction between adaptation of
> capitalist economic mechanisms without its class content.
> Nonetheless, a growing disparity in income, while
> reflecting a socialist tenet, ("from each according to ability,
> to each according to contribution"), and financial incentives to
> stimulate productivity requires special
> regulation, fiscal policy, taxation, social propaganda and
> raising the level of the lower income sectors and shaming
> ostentation. The rate of share in the benefits of
> modernization in cities versus the countryside is a growing
> contradiction. Uneven geographic development,
> particularly in the West and Northwestern ethnically
> populated regions, lags in national development as a
> whole. The Chinese government and Party are to be
> commended as the first nation in history to plan the full
> integration of backward regions in order to achieve a
> balanced development. The introduction of high-tech,
> medium and small enterprises and a service sector in these
> areas counter the effects of underdevelopment, combined
> with the development of infrastructure to tie the region to
> the rest of the country.
>
> We do not look upon the misuse of freedom through
> economic crime, drugs, prostitution and other degrading
> elements that came with the opening as contradictions in
> and of themselves, but as reflections of the diminution of
> Socialist morality.
>
> A further consequence of opening is a set-back from the
> equal treatment of men and women under SOE
> employment and social benefits. The changed social
> contract within joint ventures and the private sector tends to
> employ men in better positions than women. This has
> affected family life and relations between the sexes. The
> ideological campaign is a welcome antidote.
>
> In foreign relations China faces western corporate
> domination of trade and investment as reflected in GATT
> and WTO, which stand in contradiction to
> independent choices by underdeveloped countries
> struggling to improve their own standards regardless of
> internal class formations. China stands as a champion of
> the underdeveloped. Hence, when China joins the WTO,
> we may expect and intensification of internal debate as a
> major feature and a battleground for humane world
> development within the WTO. China appears willing to
> accept this role.
>
> While friendly relations through trade and investment are
> major objectives of both the USA and China, there are
> fundamental differences in political and economic
> expectations. Friendship and understanding must be
> based on reality. China's chosen direction is Socialism.
>
> It allocates its national capital accumulation for public
> development, giving priority to investments fostering
> economic integration through development of
> infrastructure, power generation, public transportation,
> ecology, land improvement etc, etc, and to the stimulation
>
> of a rapid rise in living standards. China will champion the
> underdeveloped nations against imperialist remnants,
> support regionalism and the UN, oppose unilateralism,
> make efforts to maintain stability and avert war, all this, in
> contradiction to single power hegemony.
>
> President Clinton, on the other hand, clearly defines the
> underlying political motivation for working with China
> economically as the encouragement of private
> entrepreneurial ideology and formation of an "independent
> middle class that will divert China from Socialism".
>
> China is not blind to this contradiction. It is admirably
> steadfast in its modernization and opening to the West,
> confident that stability and peace are in the best interest of
> both countries.
>
> Ironically, the USA is the undoubted economic leader;
> but China leads the political direction.
>
> In the light of dealing with contradictions, I would like to
> share some random considerations.
>
> 1. There is much confusion about the nature of Socialism
> among Marxists. Socialism is not a fixed economic
> system established in a cataclysmic qualitative change
> from capitalism. For Marx, the central concept of historical
> materialism is that "Communism is something that
> develops out of capitalism". Socialism is not scholastically
> invented, but involves a process of economic maturity to an
> ultimately "fully developed Communism". Between
> this beginning and end (capitalism and Communism), there
> is incompletely developed Communism with concessions
> to elements of capitalism, "bourgeois rights". Marx called
> this the lower of two levels of Communism. The lower
> level begins in struggle for economic and political
> democracy within capitalism, emerging victorious after
> prolonged birth pangs from the capitalist controlled society.
> A dialectical approach recognizes Socialism as a
> developmental process shaped by particularities of the
> class struggle in each nation, arriving to Communism each
> on its own unique path while taking strength from each
> other against the common enemy- capitalist reaction.
> Socialism, therefore, as we know it, is a most complex,
> most contradiction riddled moment in a society in flux,
> especially in a developing country with lagging feudal
> strains seeking modernization in a high-tech world.
>
> 2. For Marxists, the very question of public socialist
> accumulation posits a new idea. Capital itself now has
> more than one character (as distinct from Marx' seminal
> work); privately accumulated and allocated or socially
> accumulated and allocated - private capital and socialist
> capital. This is a major threat to corporate capitalism
> because it establishes economic independence from the
> dominant system.
>
> 3. There is a contradiction between interdependence of
> national economies in world economic integration (the true
> process of globalization) and the independence of each
> nation to develop its own economy in the context of its
> own history and culture.
>
> 4. In the 20th century, accepted Marxian dialectic assumed
> that every qualitative change in a serial negation of the
> negation was a forward movement in history, failing to
> anticipate that a negation could be retrogressive. The
> Soviet Union began the historic process of Socialist
> Transformation in the 20th century, but failed. The
> Chinese are on a new path to the same goal in the 21st
> century.
>
> 5. It is significant that the Soviet Union, with all its
> technological development, was never integrated into world
> economy, though it traded. There was no dependence of the
> Western world on Russian production as there is on
> China's ability to produce and compete and its willingness
> to face the tensions of economic integration. China's
> success as in independent economic and cultural entity is
> the measuring rod of 21st century progress. It is no
> accident that there are elements in the USA unhappy with
> stable US-China relations which reflect archaic 20th
> century Cold War attitudes. We hope that China's efforts to
> shape the direction of the outcome of manifold
> contradictions will in the end prove that Socialism with its
> national characteristics is the road to Communism.
>
> 6. It is heartening to witness the intensity of the ideological
> campaign within the Communist Party of China and
> ultimately its interaction with the people. This movement,
> undertaken out of necessity because of the intensification of
> contradictions and the ramifications of China's integration
> into world economy, is a guarantee of independent
> socialist construction. Zhang Jemin's emphasis on the three
> diversifications: technology, the economy and Chinese
> culture, points the way to independent development and
> success for the Chinese people. It stands as a model of
> Socialism with national characteristics, taking into account
> a people's history, culture, economy and development. The
> three diversifications are a beacon illuminating that road to
> Socialism in the 21st century.
>
> Postscript:
>
> Underlying much of the frustration in economic unification
> of China are the impediments to political coordination
> between the central government and the relatively
> independence leaders of provinces and local
> administrations. This is probably the most sensitive
> contradiction in China. Failure of coordination is
> evidenced in the handling of allocations for development
> and social needs transferred by the central government and
> administered by provincial governments that do not carry
> out policies as directed by Beijing.
>
> Having had to bail out two provincial international
> investment trusts in the past two years, Beijing has reason
> to anticipate provincial disregard for trade agreements with
> the US and others to pave the way for entry into the
> World Trade Organization. Local leaders are prone to
> nepotism and personal power in carrying out government
> allocations of social funds, distorting directives and
> retarding the tempo of economic development.
>
> The USA system of delineating federal and states' rights is
> erroneously held as an example. The relationship between
> state and federal governments in the USA was codified in
> the establishment of a strong federal government of the
> original 13 colonies as their center, subordinating state
> constitution to that of the federal constitution. States that
> joined the Union subsequently had to accept the primacy of
> central government over their own laws.
>
> In China, political unification was established through
> concessions by the central government to feudal leaders in
> the provinces which in many instances even retained
> control of their armed forces. Traditionally, therefore,
> there emerged a different relationship between the
> provincial and central governments in China than that of
> the federal and state governments of the USA.
>
> This political contradiction has necessitated the retraining
> program now taking place as a central process in the
> ideological campaign. 2000 local and provincial Party
> leaders are now undergoing six months of reeducation at
> a special school built this year for that very purpose.
> During the next few years, every six months, another 2000
> cadre will go through retraining. It is hoped that the
> results will be a more consistent political and economic
> unification that will enhance and speed up modernization.
>
> Sidney J. Gluck
> Beijing, November 1, 2000
>
>
>
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