----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Bedggood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 11:45 PM
Subject: M-TH: China and law of value.
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.
George: You miss the very point I have been making. My point is that the WTO is
evidence
that the LOV does not operate in a free and unadulterated form under capitalism.You
seem
to suggest the opposite. The WTO is evidence that there is no free trade. If there was
free trade then China would not be seeking membership of it. The WTO is designed to
advance the interests of imperialist countries at the expense of underdeveloped 3rd
world
countries by introducing discrimatory trading relations. My point is that the LOV never
operated freely for any enduring length of time. To attempt to analyse the world
economy
purelyt on the basis of these laws merely leads to the proliferation of abstraction
Warm regards
George Pennefather
Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~beprepared/
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