Re: [A-List] China not transitional to capitalism: experts

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 10/29/03 12:36:40 AM Pacific Standard Time,
hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

China is moving towards whatever works to feed its people and to
increase wealth across the board.  This article reports developments
among Chinese economists to seek a new economics that is more than a
mere transition to capitalism, as Western mainstream economists claim.
I suspect your trouble is that you do not like to tone of the
translation.  To understand the real message of the report, you need to
replace your Western mentality and put yourself inside the minds of
Chinese intellectuals and try to see when they are going, rather than
criticising them for "the notion

> that properly comprehending China's development performance is a
> function of whether one is endowed with the appropriate cultural
> epistemology or not seems to be part of the CCP's larger project to
> secure legitimacy strictly on the basis of nationalist criteria, rather
> than the socialist and nationalist criteria of times gone by."

The struggle is more complex.

Henry C.K. Liu<


Comment - two cents: value is falling that fast.

I have in the past - not often, referred to the economic content - property
relations, of China's system of commerce as becoming increasing bourgeois. This
is a premature statement - in the economic sense, because the fact of China's
transition is taking place on several levels at the same time. From 1949 to
the present China has not simply passed from an agricultural society to an
industrial society but also to a post industrial society - infrastructure.

My premature statement runs counter to what I in fact advocate: public
property relations governing socially necessary means of production, with emphasis
on determining at each phase of development, that which is socially necessary
and how it is understood under concrete specific conditions. The military is
"socially necessary" given the reality of economic, political and military
forces existing on earth at this time in history. A Chinese Embassy has already
been deliberately bombed by the US government.

"Cultural epistemology" is merely the external manifestation or
representation of something else. "Nationalist criteria" simply means how does one perceive
and enact policy to protect ones "national existence" as a people and
distinct state structure on the third planet from the sun.

Cultural epistemology and nationalist criteria has to be penetrated by the
Western mind on the basis of the Western minds own standards of logic - in order
to be a "little honest." That is to say if one proceeded from the standpoint
of the theory grid of Marx, the challenge is to outline the specific evolution
of the Chinese economy as a value producing system. And how is capital
brought increasing under control of society to increase the public well being as
opposed to the private accumulation needs of individual capitals. Since one
cannot destroy an economic law by political fiat, how is the law of value - as it
operates more than less freely on the basis of individual capitals in
competition, blunted to service the overall development of China.

Calling for world proletarian revolution and "uninterrupted revolution" means
nothing if the world - people, are not in motion to achieve world revolution.
One may as well demand than an infant of six months drive a sixteen wheel
truck.

"Nationalist criteria" is a code word without substance, especially when
applied to economic formations and economic policy aimed at feeding and clothing
people. The structure of the economic world for the last century is such that
no country can feed itself, cloth or house its people and continued the
cultural and intellectual development of any country on earth without entry into the
value producing system. One cannot develop a military counter force and
reasonably secure ones national existence without military weapon and technological
transfer.

The reason for this is the imperial nature of the more advanced multinational
states that through force of arms impose unequal treaties and economic
policies on those who cannot military resist and possible defeat such impositions.
The history of Hong Kong is a case in point, as is two opium wars imposed on
China by the "Western mind."  To not understand this and its profound impact on
the "Cultural epistemology" that buttress the "Nationalist criteria" of
economic policy is to be hopelessly lost in a world of metaphysical abstractions. In
other words the people of China were humiliated in a manner that is only
belittled by those inflicting the humiliation in the first place.

Public property relations over socially necessary means of production and
existence can only be guaranteed by the state - organized violence. China is most
certainly in transition as is America. That which connects these two distinct
social, political and economic entities is that both are in transition to a
post industrial economy. If China possessed a fundamental military deterrent
and superiority over America her monetary policy and economic evolution would
shift. I cannot say in what direction because I do not know. No matter what
China's economic policy it must have Chinese characteristics. After all we are
talking about the longest existing continuous written culture on earth.

"Properly comprehending China's development performance," on the one hand
means illuminating this performance from the standpoint of the law of value and
the evolution of the commodity form in China, as she exist in conflict, contact
and "call back" within the world economy. One might even pursue this line of
reasoning from the standpoint of the mathematical equations of the insurance
industry - the law governing large numbers. China is most certainly dealing
with large numbers of shoes and toilets.

In layperson terms, has China reached a point where on the basis of the
internal dynamics of its economy, it can sustain its rate of expansion and
development of industrial and post industrial infrastructure? Experts are deployed to
answer this question, which shapes policy - including monetary policy, in the
real world. Those who answer this basic question "yes" are also suggesting a
shift in military policy. Resisting the Western pressure to alter its monetary
policy also military implications.

Ideology will never help one unravel a material category. I am utterly
baffled concerning monetary policy as a conduit/expression of value and its exchange
in a world where money has in fact lost its role as a medium or expression of
value. However, I am less baffled than I was a year ago. I submit that we are
in transition to a valueless world of production and the existence of fiat
money is its signature. In the past my emphasis was probably to much on the
accumulation side in the form of money or speculation at the expense of the
material property of production as a continuum going back to handicraft and then
manufacture. In other words I tend to be a "techno-communist."

Beneath what appears to me as "bourgeois like policy" and statements from
economic thinkers in China is not "Nationalist criteria," but an attempt to
grapple with the reality of a world different from that of Marx Capital. Actually,
the world of Marx's Capital is beyond the articulation of Capital by the
ideologues and this is apparent to anyone that reads his writings on the evolution
of the credit system - how and why the category called capitalist is actually
destroyed as the "anti-dialectic" of capital itself, while preserving the
functional logic of commodity exchange as it is driven by the bourgeois property
relations over socially necessary means of production. This does not mean on
the basis of Marx I can be a wise investor.

"Cultural epistemology and Nationalist criteria" is actually an insult to the
people of China because no one is compelled to speak in the conceptual
categories of the West.

There is a line that one crosses at their own peril and apparently some of us
do not mind crossing this "line."


>But I suppose that none of this should come as a surprise, given that in the
last years of his life Deng Xiaoping expressed admiration for Lee Kuan Yew
and his crackpot views on Confucian exceptionalism.<

A Chinese leader - Deng Xiaoping, has "crackpot views on Confucian
exceptionalism."

How positively insightful.

An attempt at unraveling economic phenomena on the basis of the logic of the
Western mind and the theory grid of say - Marx, or the actual character of
property relations in the sector of the infrastructure that constitutes the axis
of what is socially necessary for the economic life of a country is tossed out
the window. Also tossed out the window is any attempt to try and understand
monetary policy within China and its interactivity in a world of fiat money.
Also ignored is this stage in the evolution of the value system or the commodity
form and the basis of exchange of labor in the world grid.

China could of course close its borders and undergo intense isolation and
purification of itself in the ideological sphere and jail all the capitalist
elements, beef up its military and prepare for the proletarian assertion. This
would probably signal American imperialist to launch a military strike against
her in the immediate sense of the word. If it was me at the leadership of
responsibility I would have my eye on military capacity and a slow systematic build
up because the barbarians are in fact at the gates. I would fold a series of
winning hands in order to survive the game and emerge as winner.

In other words I would deploy "crackpot views on Confucian exceptionalism"
while waiting on my esteemed proletarian comrades in the West. I would call on
the people of the country to sustain a superhuman effort to preserve our
heritage, culture and life.

Then again, I have a western mind and still trying to work through the code
words of economic "Cultural epistemology and nationalist criteria," which
obviously is to shield ones self from prying eyes.  And this tactic is working very
well. It took me a while to understand that what was being discussed was the
internal dynamics and rate of development as it exists in interactivity with
aggressive world imperialism. It took longer to understand how this approach is
expressed as monetary policy and its direction for China.


Melvin P.