Joel Wendland wrote:
Is this particular story emblematic of the restoration of capitalism, though? Isn't it true that this kind of event took place in pre-reform China -- and not necessarily to benefit the working and toiling classes? We expect to see it in capitalist countries, of course.
The pre-reform, post-revolutionary state in China did not resort to organized violence in order secure land for industrial purposes. They had sufficient legitimacy and power so that violence was not necessary. The violence associated with land grabs is very much a recent problem, developing since the late 90s as far as I know.
In a socialist country, however, where the working class is the dominant social strata, one might expect it not to happen.
China's working class may be the majority in urban China, but I don't think anyone would consider them dominant.
My question is, to what extent is political repression in China the result of a one-party system that had/s(?) the tendency to disallow dissenting opinions and/or the insistence on a single path to socialism (if that kind of rhetoric is allowable), or a political culture (not meant in the anthropological sense) generated by a cultural-revolution-type atmosphere rather than a "restoration of capitalism"?
I don't think you can separate the current development/restoration of capitalism and repression in China. People living in non-capitalist social relations have to be drawn kicking and screaming into the loving embrace of the 'market.' Chinese farmers don't want to be locked cages and thrown back into the 19th century. The corrupt bureaucratic class of China's countryside is the underground pump for the sea of factories that produce an increasingly large chunk of social materiality on this planet. This can only be accomplished under the most ruthless of dictatorships, regardless of the appearence of the political system.
The current 'political culture' in China has been generated by the Cultural Revolution only in a negative way. Dengism was the conscious rejection of everything Maoist, particularly the Cultural Revolution. It emerged as the victorious ideology only after Mao's death, and the failure of the Cultural Revolution.
Cheers,
Jonathan
