[A-List] No 1 Response to "China: Capitalist Accumulation and Labor"

[Omahkohkiaayo_ipoyi <omahkohkiaayo@xxxxxxxxx>]

First Installment:

Response to the article "China: Capitalist Accumulation, and Labor" in
Monthly Review, May 2007

By Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett 


Marty Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett write: 

Most economists continue to celebrate China as one of the most successful
developing countries in modern times. We, on the other hand, are highly
critical of the Chinese growth experience. China's growth has been driven
by the intensified exploitation of the country's farmers and workers, who
have been systematically dispossessed through the break-up of the communes,
the resultant collapse of health and education services, and massive
state-enterprise layoffs, to name just the most important reforms. With
resources increasingly being restructured in and by transnational
corporations largely for the purpose of satisfying external market demands,
China's foreign-driven, export-led growth strategy has undermined the
state's capacity to plan and direct economic activity. Moreover, in a world
of competitive struggle among countries for both foreign direct investment
and export markets, China's gains have been organically linked to
development setbacks in other countries. Finally, China's growth has become
increasingly dependent not only on foreign capital but also on the
unsustainable trade deficits of the United States. In short, the
accumulation dynamics underlying China's growth are generating serious
national and international imbalances that are bound to require correction
at considerable social cost for working people in China and the rest of the
world.[1] 

Response Jim Craven: 

Here we get what is so common in etherial neoclassical work but I am
surprised to find with these authors in this venue: a total absence of
history, context and operational definitions of key constructs in making
summary pronouncements/conclusions about, and characterizations of, the
nature of present-day China's overall social formation, state, Communist
Party, policies and trends. Did the present nation of China, along with its
present level of development, its myriad problems and crises to be
addressed with extremely limited resources, and its present standing/power
in the global economy, all just recently fall out of the sky from nowhere?
How much of what is going on in China, past and present, is due to the
protracted, untested, uncharted and even precarious nature of the unique
(as in each nation) road of socialist construction in China? How much is
due to China being surrounded, past and present, by hostile imperial powers
intent on sabotaging that socialist construction to "prove" the supposed
"superiority" of capitalism over any possible alternative system-especially
socialism? How much of what is going on is about tactical compromise for
the literal survival of millions of the poorest of the poor in order to
live to fight another day (socialism is built/protected with live people
not dead dogma)? How much of what is going on, mistakes and all, is about
the intended (by imperial powers) sabotaging effects of large volumes of
critical and scarce resources having to be diverted from development into
defense against imperial intrigues?  If China's farmers and workers have
been increasingly "exploited" (no operational definition by the authors of
"exploitation") by China's growth structures and accompanying "reforms",
how much of that undefined "exploitation" was due to the reforms themselves
versus how much has been due to the myriad contradictions, legacies of
history, present realities and threats that are perhaps necessitating those
reforms (tactical compromises like the NEP) for the strategic survival and
advancement of socialist construction in and of China? 

Further the authors claim that China has become deleteriously "dependent"
upon foreign direct investment (FDI) on the one hand, and yet, on the other
hand, in commanding relatively large shares/"gains" of FDI, China has
supposedly been "organically linked" to development "setbacks" in other
nations (ostensibly those nations not getting some of that deleterious FDI
which China should eschew); which is it? And further, the notion that China
is "dependent" upon (different than strategically or tactically utilizing)
U.S. FDI and trade deficits, can easily be seen, and is indeed seen by many
in the U.S. ruling circles, as the opposite: it is the U.S. that has become
increasingly "dependent" upon (and thus less able to sabotage or threaten)
China as an outlet for absorption of FDI and U.S. exports as well as a
source for relatively cheap imports keeping inflation rates and interest
rates in the U.S. relatively low. And finally, the notion that China is
taking U.S. FDI away from other countries implies, that, in many cases,
without China as an outlet for FDI absorption, the U.S. FDI would have
flowed to those other nations instead-a dicey proposition in many cases. 

Marty Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett write: 

Significantly, many on the left (including those who acknowledge that China
is now a capitalist country) find these criticisms of the Chinese
experience largely beside the point. They see China as a viable and
praiseworthy example of economic modernization.[2]  For them, the relevant
counterpoint to China's economic achievements is the long-run development
crises experienced by countries in Africa and Latin America.  These
countries have failed to develop the productive forces necessary to
generate significant long-term job opportunities in the "formal labor
market," with the result that the overwhelming majority of workers in
Africa and Latin America are forced to eke out an existence in the
relatively unregulated and non-institutionalized "informal sector" or in
subsistence (or below-subsistence) agriculture.  In contrast, China, with
its dynamic industrial development and manufacturing export activity, is
assumed to have made great strides toward overcoming such problems. 

Response Jim Craven: 

The phrase "including those who 'acknowledge' that China is now a
capitalist country"? asserts/assumes the predicate to be defined and
proved: that China has abandoned socialism and is now a full-blown
capitalist social formation. Instead of saying those who believe, or
assume, or charge, that China is a capitalist country, the word
"acknowledge", summarily asserts and assumes or implies, as an established
fact, that which supposedly "proved" and is only yet to be discovered and
"acknowledged" as such (that China has restored capitalism). 

What is socialism? What is critical in distinguishing socialism from
capitalism? If China has abandoned socialist construction, when did that
occur and under what circumstances and contexts? If socialism were a matter
of no capitalist relations and institutions existing, or a matter of
progressively diminishing capitalist institutions and relations
(irrespective of conditions, constraints and contexts), then where has
there ever been or where could there ever be socialism? How would summarily
and immediately wiping out all vestiges of historical capitalism and
history even be possible? If socialism is about only planning versus
market-based mechanisms for determining the basic questions of production
and distribution of the means of subsistence faced by all systems (what?;
how?; for whom?; when?; where?; why?; and who--are the players and their
roles?) then when and where has there been socialism (free of all markets
and market relations) anywhere anytime? And if what distinguishes socialism
from capitalism, fundamentally, is the class nature of the state and which
class effectively holds state power, then when, and under what conditions,
did the Communist Party of China cease being a real communist party and
when did the workers and peasants and their allies cease to have effective
representation and effectively hold state power through the Communist Party
of China? How do the authors KNOW that what is going on in China is not
simply necessary tactical and short-run compromises, after years of
isolation and imperialist encirclements and embargos, for purposes of
necessary access to and integration into a global economy that has always
been run on capitalist principles, relations and institutions? What are the
implications, and who really is served, if the authors are simply wrong
and/or precipitous in their assessments/pronouncements of the real nature
of the social formation of China? What is real socialism and what does it
really take to build and protect socialist construction against and in the
context of, very hostile, very powerful and very determined encircling
imperial forces? 

Further, if socialism is really about "dictatorship OF [and not FOR or IN
THE NAME OF] the proletariat", then what happens when the masses,
desperately deprived of even basics of life, yet quite aware of say
bourgeois advertising and some of the commodities being advertised, lag in
terms of consciousness and in terms of understanding how, for example,
commodities are also intended carriers of capitalist relations, values and
institutions and thus are potential instruments of sabotage of socialist
consciousness and construction? Does the Party then simply exercise
dictatorship OVER or FOR the proletariat in the name of dictatorship OF the
proletariat and the objective interests of that proletariat, and thus
carefully prescribe and impose, the "proper" baskets or structures of
effective demand? Further, no Communist Party is free of mistakes or
opportunists; the real question vis-à-vis the de facto versus de jure class
nature of the state, has more to do with what are the real motives, powers,
capabilities and mechanisms of accountability to/effective representation
of the masses as exercised by the dominant elements of the state. Are the
authors asserting that the leadership of the Communist Party of China are
simply misguided and are objectively promoting capitalism, or, are they
communists but outnumbered and outpowered by capitalists roaders inside and
outside of the Party, or, are they outright capitalist roaders themselves? 
And whatever they are asserting about the leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party, on what basis and with what evidence do they make any
assertions about the intentions and agenda of the leadership of the Party?

Immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Imperialist
powers immediately began their encirclement and destabilization (social
systems engineering) campaigns along with outright invasions designed to
overthrow Soviet socialism and to engineer the conditions to "prove" the
supposed "superiority" of capitalism over socialism. When faced with
literal life-and-death struggles for survival, the USSR went into alliances
against Axis fascism with some of the very same imperialist powers bent on
the overthrow of Soviet socialism and likely to continue their activities
after the war. They had no illusions about the tactical compromises they
were forced by circumstances and threats to their very survival to make,
but they simply had to survive to fight another day. These types of
tactical compromises are often necessary as socialism does not develop in a
vacuum, the legacies of history do not simply disappear with the assumption
of state power by the proletariat and its allies, many enemies inside and
outside of the Party wear "mian zhao" (masks), imperialism is able to offer
many "tang yi pao dan" (sugar-coated bullets) and imperialism becomes
increasingly dangerous when threatened by the weight of its own internal
contradictions. 

In a speech to the National Conference on Propaganda Work of the Chinese
Communist Party, March 12, 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong noted: 

"In China, the struggle to consolidate the socialist system, the struggle
to decide whether socialism or capitalism will prevail, will take a long
historical period. But we should all realize that the new system of
socialism will unquestionably be consolidated." 

Mao Zedong noted in 1949, that the first stage of socialist construction in
China would likely last until 2049 given the legacies of history that had
to be addressed and the myriad threats-present and likely in the future-to
which China would have to respond with scarce resources diverted from
development into defense (the intention of imperial social systems
engineering designed to destabilize socialism to engineer the "proof" of
supposed "inefficiencies", "barbarism" and "backwardness" of socialism
relative to the supposed "superiority" and triumphalism of capitalism. 

To be continued?

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