Jack Smith on China and the WTO

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI.  Jack Smith was formerly an editor of the now-defunct U.S. radical
weekly "Guardian".

best,
jay
http://www.neravt.com/left/

**********

Jack A. Smith, Highland, NY, April 22
 jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

         This is a major political question in the United States:
Should the People's Republic of China obtain normal trading
status with the U.S. and also gain admission to the World
Trade Organization?
Of course it should, in my opinion, but for reasons that
go beyond some of the usual arguments.
        At this stage in the U.S.,  China-on-the-capitalist-road is
coming  under fire from the some of the same anti-socialist
forces which  excoriated China-on-the-revolutionary-road.
They don't see a difference. Marxists may differ on whether
China is even a socialist country at this stage, but they cannot
ignore that much of the anti-China trade campaign
is predicated on opposition to socialism, much more
than real or imagined perceptions of exploitation, as well as an
"us first" Fortress Americana approach to world trade.
        Despite its obvious shortcomings, I still happen to view China
as a socialist country, though just hanging on, and retain the
perspective that it remains at least possible for China to once
again reverse direction to the left-only this time on
the basis of a considerably more advanced economy and a
much larger proportion of the population in the working
class.  Such a reversal could re-ignite the world socialist project
(and probably cause the U.S. to launch Cold War II in time,
but that is another matter).
The Clinton administration and the U.S. capitalist class in
general support China's entry into the WTO because they are
transfixed by the prospect of enormous short-term profits
from bringing China ever closer to outright capitalism and being
better able to exploit China's markets and workers. They do
not think a move to the left is a serious danger.
The AFL-CIO wants to protect union jobs by keeping
Chinese goods out of the  U.S. market through protectionist
devices that cannot succeed in today's era of global capitalism.
"Globalization" is not a capitalist preference but an inevitable
consequence of levels of technology, transportation, markets,
competition and so on.  Monopoly capitalism cannot revert
to closed markets, decentralization or the spinning-wheel.
The AFL-CIO, while displaying a progressive stance in
certain areas, is quite backward in pushing the line that the enemy
of the U.S. working class is  communist China, not the American
corporations.  The union movement's campaign against normal
trade  and  WTO membership for China resembles the
old Yellow Peril racism,  rightist nationalism and reactionary
anti-communism wrapped into a new opportunist package of
jingoism and populism.  Unfortunately, this anti-China campaign
is gaining adherents  in the growing new movement in the U.S.
in opposition to the IMF, World Bank and WTO  and can
retard its progressive political development.  While revolutionary
Marxists must help to build this new movement, they must
likewise strongly oppose the trend to single-out and deny
China normal trade relations and defend China against imperialist
schemes in general because it still remains a workers state,
despite having taken many deplorable steps toward capitalism.
        In this regard, the February 2000 Monthly Review contains
an article worth reading, titled, "The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism:
Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China," by Nancy
Holmstrom and Richard Smith.  It's on the web  at
http://www.monthlyreview.org/200holm.htm.  The article goes into the
differences between Russia and China in their movement toward capitalism
and their respective methods of primitive accumulation (i.e., the
methods
used to accumulate capital for economic development and the creation
of a wealthy bourgeois ruling class, which is almost always based on
super-exploitation of propertyless workers and peasants).
        They write: "The emergence of gangster capitalism and wholesale
corruption in the former Soviet bloc and China should have been entirely
predictable to anyone familiar with the historical origins of
capitalism...and to anyone with a passing familiarity with Marx's
account of primitive accumulation."  As an aside,  the authors suggest
that Yeltsin's U.S. advisers blundered in their guidance, resulting in
the
de-modernization of a once advanced society, but I suspect that was
Washington's intention all along.  It no more wanted a capitalist rival
with Russia's potential than it did a communist rival of the USSR's
potential.  In general, their analysis of why the Russian economy
crumbled is quite good.
        The article declares that "China's increasingly restless and
combative labor force has yet to find its voice, but when it does, this
could throw a large wrench into the World Bank/comprador bureaucrat
plans for a transition to capitalism."  We may have seen a vision of the
future in the recent three-day street battle to protest the closing of
an "unprofitable" mine in Liaoning, in northeast China.   Clearly,
WTO  membership will undoubtedly accelerate Beijing's passage
along the  capitalist road, causing still further hardship for the
masses.
I oppose the theory that  "the worse it gets, the better it gets
[for our cause]," since this conveys the impression that the
increasing misery of the working class can ever be positive, which it
cannot.  But one must recognize the possibility that further
movement toward capitalism may finally result in a serious
radical upsurge from below that will strongly impact on the Chinese
Communist Party's left wing and lead to one more Great Reversal in the
direction of the Chinese revolution.  This could have world-shaking
consequences.  (end)