Counter-revolution in China vs. Socialist advances in Italy

["Charlotte S. Wellen" <cwellen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Counter-revolution in China vs. Socialist advances in Italy

Gina poses the following questions concerning assertions made
about the development of communism in China

"Exactly what are you describing as the "capitalist road of
national development"?  What processes?  What development
projects? What policies?  How were these on the capitalist
road?"

Chinese politics and social developments were the subject of my
doctoral dissertation, which was written from the
Marxist-Leninist Maoist ideological perspective.  I examined
the history of China, and especially 20th century events from a
point of view which embraced the Cultural Revolution's Stance.

I most recently lived in China during the period 1993-1994.

Over time I have modified my views.  The current regime in
China appears to me to combine the worst features of Stalinist
totalitarianism with the worst features of 19th century
European capitalism.  My impression is that almost no one who
is a citizen of China takes Marx, Lenin or Communism
seriously.  Mao is taken seriously, but not as a communist,
more as a nationalist liberator.  To the average Chinese his
historical legacy is not much different from Bolivar's in Latin
America, or Ataturk's in the Republic of Turkey.  Students who
are well educated in history and culture speak of communism as
something which "used to exist."

The cultural revolution, because of the atrocities associated
with it almost is universally abhorred.  I have heard it
praised for one reason:  People who were sent from the city to
work in the country did say that they learned a great deal
about rural life; and although the transitions were difficult,
the lessons were worth learning.  But the arbitrary arrests,
the denigration of science, the persecution of the educated (to
the detriment of society), the torture and expulsions from the
hospitals of Western-educated doctors, the destruction of
culture, the chaos and social dislocation--all these are
deplored both by Communist Party of China and by ordinary
citizens.

The phrase "To get rich is glorious" is still the mot d'ordre,
since Deng came to power.  In Beijing there are five or six TV
channels, all state-run, but commercials are ubiquitous.
Billboards are everywhere.

The prospects for Western-style bourgeois democracy or for
Cuban style (or any type of) socialism as Marx envisioned are
remote.  Surplus value is mercilessly extracted from the
workers at a far greater rate than in the West.  Worker's
control of the means of production is virtually unthinkable.
The means of production are all controlled by either
capitalists or the nomenklatura, whose interests are
interlocked.  Workers who strike or attempt to organize are
punished, imprisoned, sometimes tortured.

Should one draw the conclusion that Marx was right?  He argued
that world socialism would be impossible before the periphery
(the third world) went through a period of bourgeois
development.  In his later years he held that socialism was
more likely to be successful in countries like Holland, Britain
and France, before it spread to other parts of the world.  He
specifically spoke about a bourgeois Chinese upheaval on the
model of the French Revolution of 1789, with "the words
liberte, egalite, and fraternite inscribed on the Great Wall,"
a spectacle which would astonish the Western colonialists.

Should we not look with anticipation toward the recent
elections in Italy as heralding in an important new chapter in
the development of European socialism?  Why has no one on this
discussion list mentioned this election and attempted to
analyze its historic significance.  The victory, for the first
time in Italian history (for the first time in the history of
any G-7 country) of a party to the LEFT of Craxi's Socialist
party DESERVES comment.

Perhaps Marx would have found it the most encouraging event of
the day.

A man called Wei En Lin


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