Re: [Marxism] Chinese peasant land ownership

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marvin quoting the Economist:
> Even so, China's Communist Party has shown that it will take big risks if
> economic development demands them. Hence the widespread closure and
> privatisation of state-owned enterprises in the past decade, with the loss
> of millions of jobs. The leadership knows that China's history has been one
> of recurring bloody upheavals by landless peasants; it is caught between
> wanting to retain control and wanting to avoid another upheaval. This is the
> moment to complete the unfinished business of rural reform.

Does the Economist believe its own propaganda? The formula for privatizing
land as a spur to development is obviously based on the Western European
experience which they understand in a unidimensionally positive fashion.
Because you had Enclosure Acts in Great Britain, the argument goes, wage
labor became available for the new burgeoning manufacturing system. (Of
course, you get the same analysis, more or less, from Brenner.)

What this fails to take into account is the role of the New World and
Australia in absorbing excess unemployed population. If Great Britain (and
Italy, etc.) could not export landless peasants to the colonies, the lid
would have blown off the capitalist system in its early phase. So where is
China supposed to export its excess population? To the USA, which is poised
to close the borders using Draconian new laws backed by the liberal Ted
Kennedy and John McCain?

The assumption here is that the capitalist system is like some sort of
well-engineered Swiss Watch, when in fact it has more in common with an
infernal machine that blows up in the face of its creator.


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