Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from PENL- Louis on China and socialism

[Ralph Dumain]

This shows you the despicable consequences and delusions of 
Stalinism.  Monthly Review would like to get itself off the hook but one 
must recall its despicable support for Maoism.  The very wording of this 
article implies that nothing was really wrong in the beginning except 
excessive centralization, and then the corruption of market socialism 
messed up the society.  Who in their right mind would ever make allowances 
for China, from Deng Xiaoping onward, or before, during the execrable 
Cultural Revolution?  How stupid, how naive can people be?  The answer of 
course, is that "socialism" is a hobby in the West of the middle class with 
time on its hands.  Slumming in the third world is all these people 
know.  Of course they will delude themselves and then pat themselves on the 
back for seeing the obvious when it finally becomes convenient to do so.

At 06:38 AM 8/2/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote:
In the next part, Marty and Paul take a close look at the economic
transformation of China in terms of the underlying logic of "market
socialism" rather than as a function of the greed or bad faith of people
at the top. In other words, once China committed itself to market solutions
to long-standing economic problems, all "the same old crap" was destined to
reappear.
At the close of the Mao era, China faced serious problems that stemmed
from
an overly centralized planning apparatus. There was underproduction in
one
sector and overproduction in the other. There were also investment
imbalances. Deng proposed that the country solve these problems by using
market mechanisms. This restructuring of the economy took several stages
to
implement.
..............................
Quoting from their conclusion, Marty and Paul make a point that is
crucial
for understanding the drawbacks of seeing China as some kind of
model--either socialist or as a nationalist development schema:

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