In his latest book, which I just purchased but have not yet read, Smith analyzes China as “police-state capitalism.” (China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse).
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2020 5:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [marxmail] Why China Isn’t Capitalist On 9/6/20 5:01 PM, Richard Modiano wrote: "China’s state-owned 'corporations' are not profit maximizers per se like, say, Singapore’s state-capitalist Temasek and similar sovereign wealth funds. They’re happy to make money when they can. But they’re not obliged to. Many have been effectively bankrupt for decades but the government won’t let its 'zombies' fail so rolls over their loans in perpetuity. In forty years of market reform, not a single significant SOE has been permitted to go bankrupt. Their existence and purpose is dictated by the Plan not the market. Thus when the head of a major state-owned conglomerate was removed for embracing market economics a bit too enthusiastically, a Beijing University expert on China’s state enterprises remarked: There’s a system in place, not just one person. The party’s appointee draws his position from patronage… and the task is to engage with state leaders and safeguard government assets, not to maximize profits." https://spectrejournal.com/why-china-isnt-capitalist-despite-the-pink-ferraris/ I've been in touch with Richard Smith on these questions. When I commented on his FB page that his article was a reversal of earlier positions put forward in NLR, he said that he never thought that China was capitalist, only bureaucratic collectivist. He must have been influenced by Shachtman. Who knows? All I can say is that if you read his 1993 NLR article, it would be easy to conclude that if it was not capitalist, it was going full speed ahead in that direction. Smith: "As we shall see, it was precisely the failure of market reform to transform the ‘socialist’ state sector that forced the reform leadership—desperate to create jobs, to raise tax revenues, and to avoid the fate of the regimes in East Europe and the Soviet Union—to tolerate the growth of an initially small but rapidly growing private capitalist sector. Today, this dynamic and increasingly powerful capitalist economy within the economy is threatening to bring down the entire bureaucratic social order and restore capitalism in China. How did this happen?" For Pete's sake, if looked like this in 1993, how could you not see him as predicting capitalism's imminent return? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1229): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1229 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76674603/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
