The point about the law of value is that it is a law. Capital tries
its best to accumulate by reducing the value of commodities. Nation
states get in the road of the perfect operation of the LOV, but they
cannot prevent it from operating including its crisis effects. The
former USSR and China in breaking with the world market suspended the
LOV except for imports (a relatively small part of their economy).
What the reintroduction of the market does is to reassert the
operation of the LOV. Zhu's role has been to open up to the LOV in
order to force the state sector to compete so that his bureaucratic
caste can convert themselves in a new bourgeoisie. His desperation
is shown in the concessions made by China to the US - half of
telecommunications opened up to the US and the US allowed to use
anti-dumping legislation against China for another 15 years (David
Sanger, NYT 16 Nov).
What is interesting about this is not that it sheds new light on Marx
- all this stuff is old hat - but what it says about the
counter-revolution in China. For those of us who belief that the
degenerated or deformed workers state in China was progressive
because it replaced the LOV with state planning, it looks as if China
has reached the point of no return in the counter-revolution at
which the banking, insurance and communications industries will be
opened up to the global market. Joining the WTO symbolises this,
but what it symbolises is that the Chinese currency becomes
convertable and the LOV can then act upon the whole economy with
little state hindrance. The basis of workers' property, the
mechanism of planning and adminstered prices, is replaced by the
market. At this point we would have to say that the Chinese state is
now controlled by functionaries who serve the class interests of a
bourgeoisie, and that it is no longer even the vestige of a
degenerated workers' state. Now that the workers of the former USSR
have seen the effects of the LOV, maybe Chinese workers will stop the
restoration process at the 11th hour.
Dave.
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