On Mon, May 20, 2024 at 08:47 AM, Charlie wrote: > > Michael Roberts is full of positive features in his "explanation" of > China's success at monopoly capitalism.
Charlie and most others on the list insist China is capitalist, so I must consider it as well. If so, it is indisputably the most advanced form of the system yet - one in which the key industries are mostly state-owned, private corporations are subordinate to the ruling party rather than the other way round as in Western capitalism, and one moreover which has developed the productive forces and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty at an historically unprecedented pace since the 1949 revolution, particularly since the Dengist turn to private markets. If China is capitalist, it is proof positive that global capitalism has not yet exhausted its capacity to overcome repeated crises and to resume its advance despite forecasts in the mid-19th century of its imminent collapse by Marx and Engels, since repeated by generations of their followers. In that context, those like Michael Roberts, John Ross, and Vijay Prashad who try to mask this reality by arguing that China is socialist or perhaps uncertainly moving towards it represent the latest Marxist wishful thinking, only slightly less fanciful than longings by Charlie and other Marxist idealists for the Chinese working class to return to the system which prevailed for a relatively brief historical period under Mao and in the Soviet Union. That system has since been widely discredited, ostensibly replaced by a new Chinese form of capitalism which explains its appeal to many policy- and decision-makers in the global South, and increasingly to those in the West dismayed by the poor economic performance and political dysfunction of the older private ownership model. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30427): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30427 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106146595/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
