Rob,
Here's what someone else said on China today.
Charles
>>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/18/00 11:34AM >>>
Sigh, we're back to disagreeing again, Charles ...
>Only a very tiny, tiny group of people criticize China as being an
>aggressively >capitalizing nation. This is an sectarian and not widely
>held idea about China. >Only a few, I mean tiny number of Americans think
>this. The vast majority of >people in the U.S. have been thoroughly
>convinced that China is a Communist >nation.
It was a pleasure to read Mao*s tribute to Dr. Bethune and some of the
recent positive comments about the Chinese revolution on this list,
particularly at a time when China-on-the-capitalist-road is coming under
fire from the some of the same anti-communist forces which excoriated
China-on-the-revolutionary-road.
Despite its obvious shortcomings, I still happen to view China as a
socialist country, though just hanging on, and retain the perspective
that it remains possible for China to once again reverse direction to
the left*only this time on the basis of a considerably more advanced
economy and a much larger proportion of the population in the working
class.
The current AFL-CIO campaign against normal trade relations and WTO
membership for China resembles the old Yellow Peril racism, modern
nationalism and reactionary anti-communism wrapped into a new
opportunist political package. Unfortunately, this campaign is gaining
adherents in the developing new movement in the U.S. in opposition to
the IMF, World Bank and WTO and can retard its progressive political
development. While revolutionary Marxists must help to build this new
movement, they must likewise strongly oppose the trend to deny China
entry into the WTO and defend China against imperialist schemes in
general because it remains a workers state. As Mao argued, it is
reprehensible to "hear incorrect views without rebutting them..., but
instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened."
In a related regard, the February 2000 Monthly Review contains an
article worth reading, titled, *The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism:
Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China,* by Nancy Holmstrom and
Richard Smith. It*s on the web at
http://www.monthlyreview.org/200holm.htm. The article goes into the
differences between Russia and China in their movement toward capitalism
and their respective methods of primitive accumulation.
They write: *The emergence of gangster capitalism and wholesale
corruption in the former Soviet bloc and China should have been entirely
predictable to anyone familiar with the historical origins of
capitalism...and to anyone with a passing familiarity with Marx*s
account of primitive accumulation.* The authors suggest that Yeltsin*s
U.S. advisers blundered in their guidance, resulting in the
de-modernization of that once advanced society, but I suspect that was
Washington*s intention all along. It no more wanted a capitalist rival
with Russia*s potential than it did a communist rival of the USSR*s
potential. In general, their analysis of why the Russian economy
crumbled is quite good.
The article declares that *China*s increasingly restless and
combative labor force has yet to find its voice, but when it does, this
could throw a large wrench into the World Bank-comprador bureaucrat
plans for a transition to capitalism.* We may have seen a vision of the
future in the recent three-day street battle to protest the closing of
an *unprofitable* mine in Liaoning. Clearly, WTO membership (as much
of the U.S. ruling class understands) will undoubtedly accelerate
Beijing*s passage down the capitalist road, causing still further
hardship for the masses. I oppose the theory that *the worse it gets,
the better it gets,* since this conveys the impression that the
increasing misery of the working class can ever be positive*but one must
recognize the possibility that further movement toward capitalism may
finally result in a serious radical turn from below that will strongly
impact on the CCP*s left wing and lead to one more great reversal in the
direction of the Chinese revolution.
(end)
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