Re: [PEN-L] China Drafts Law to Boost Unions and End Labor Abuse

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> But by the 1980's, when the old Maoist model had given way to economic restructuring and the beginning of an emphasis on market forces, China began eliminating many of those protections — giving rise to mass layoffs, unemployment, huge gaps in income and pervasive labor abuse. The worst off have been migrant workers, most of them exiles from the poorest provinces who travel far from home to live in cramped company dormitories while working long hours under poor conditions. Migrant workers in virtually every city complain about abuses like having their pay withheld or being forced to work without a contract.<   Comment   Apparently, this reform in labor law in China is driven by the social unrest of "the bottom," and specifically the circumstances of the most poverty stricken and destitute workers from the poorest provinces who venture from their homes to secure employment in the city.      The modern proletariat in China is roughly the population size of our entire country (America).  There still remains controversy over how the proletariat is defined, but that is all right.   China has leaped to a stage of industrial and post industrial development, corresponding to the main currents of evolution in America. This means that an era has opened where we American communists and socialists - (of all people), can actually carry on sensible dialogue with a narrow section of Chinese society seeking to better understand class configuration and stratification characteristic of advance and post industrial societies.   Under communist governments and as an attribute of socialist economic relations, trade unions are voluntary organizations, protected not by the party - (CPC), but the state authority. The party is not the state, although there is overlap, not totally unsimilar to what we see as the current Republican and Democratic Party and the American State on the national level and at the "state level." The issue of the recasting or strengthening of labor law towards trade unions in China is much more complex than rather or not this is a reform from the "top" or "bottom," although it must be both in the critical meaning of "top" and "bottom."   For instance, labor reform in America during the Roosevelt administration was a response by "the top" to deep social discontent of "the bottom." From the standpoint of economic relations or value production there is no top and bottom as such, but rather the unity and strife of labor and capital in the production of commodities, and within this production process, stratification and then distribution of the social product. The political superstructure - "the top" protects these various forms of production relations and as such is fully subject to human political will.     The increased internationalization of the labor market(s) means that Unionizing Walmart in China, is a victory for labor rights in all countries no matter where this unionization first takes place.   The outcome of this increased drive for unionization in China is predicable on many levels. One level is value production and the law system governing commodity exchange. When workers win higher wages they tend to consume more. If the migrant workers in China - the lowest paid strata of the proletariat, win no more than the absolute right to be paid, it is a higher wage versus not being paid. Greater consumption broadens the market in general. When this is not true, greater consumption deepens the existing market, when there is not an absolute increase in the proletariat as proletariat. In China today there is an increase in the proletariat as proletariat, although evidence has surface over the past few years that this expanison is slowing down.    Broadening the market means fiercer competition for that market. This competition may be between value producing (capitalist) production entities or between state entities and capitalist entities or a combination of both. This brings about the further rationalization of labor and the rationalization of production. This creates the conditions to restrict the market, and areas of the market driven solely by the value relations, as fewer and fewer workers are hired and those working feel the push and pull of technological advance. More and more means of production come on line that are cost effective of embody less human labor.   Improving the living standards of the workers of China and modernizing China, is not a tactic of the leaders of China but their historical and immediate responsibility. How this takes place is generally called "the class struggle."     We American economists, socialist, communists and radicals can today speak to a sliver of Chinese society that exists as our equals in the sense of this moment in the evolution of the industrial infrastructure. I do not mean speaking to "the state" - "the top," or its leaders in China or addressing the CPC, which is not just ridiculous, but an insult given the fact that most of us are not communists and tend to describe events on the basis of our own specific bourgeois democracy.   For instance, advocating that the Communists in China "fight the bureaucracy" translates into fight the state in China and overthrow the existing political regime and obviously no communists in China can accept such a proposition from people in America. The reason is that from within China, such a call as "fight the bureaucracy" cannot be distinguished between the most rabid and imperialist anti-China elements of our own bourgeoisie. The view that speak of the "top" versus "the bottom" in relations to this wave of labor reform, is translated into the very same thing in China when spoken by us.   What is required in my opinion is the most exacting description of the concrete class formations and stratification typical of a society leaping - in transition, from industrial relations of production to post industrial relations, and the forms of struggle we encounter in America. Why? Because China has entered this same stage of development in expanding segments of its economy. Might the folks in China face the very same phenomenon we have faced for the last few decades?   In this sense a push is taking place in China that we have been unable to sustain in America. That push is to protect and fight on behalf of the most poverty stricken workers as the lens to further reconstruct their society.  Unionizing Walmart in China is a very big thing. And the bourgeoisie is pushing back. How come China made the headway the fastest in unionizing Walmart?   Melvin P.