Re: [Marxism] China Drafts Law to Boost Unions and End Labor Abuse (NYT)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Walter wrote:
> I'm not sure how long ago Louis Proyect discovered that
> capitalism had come into existence, replacing the previous one
> of a bureaucratically-deformed workers state.

I'd have to say that I began to come around to that point of view 
around the time I set up Marxmail in 1998. A series of articles in 
the NY Times had persuaded me that a new ruling class had 
consolidated itself in China and was blasting ahead at overturning 
socialized property relations.

There were also a number of articles in New Left Review and the 
Monthly Review that I have read in the same period that make a 
convincing case that a capitalist counter-revolution has taken place. 
I would recommend them to Walter but I don't get the impression that 
Marxist literature of this sort is his cup of tea. Oh well, it's a 
free country.

In fact, it may be that the only people in the world who still think 
that China is some kind of "socialist" country are Walter Lippmann 
and some of the batty rightwing radio talk show hosts who routinely 
conflate Hillary Clinton with Osama bin Laden.

Here's just the latest take on China from Peter Kwong, a NYC 
professor who knows what he is talking about:

In 1980, I was a visiting professor at the People's University in 
Beijing, which was at the time the elite party cadre training school. 
In October of that year, the chair of my Scientific Socialism 
Department informed me that I was given the unique honor, as a 
China-born foreign expert teaching social sciences, to attend a 
lecture at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference 
that was to be given by the Nobel Laureate and America's best selling 
author of Free to Choose, Milton Friedman. When I arrived at the 
majestic conference hall, Friedman was already sitting at the dais, 
flanked by top Communist Party leaders and ministerial-level 
officials. His lecture focused on the inflationary crisis in the 
West, but his message to the Chinese was clear: inflation and slow 
growth are the results of intrusive government policies that hinder 
the functioning of a free market economy. To turn their economies 
around, countries had to cut taxes, shrink the size of the 
governments, and reduce labor costs. Friedman predicted that in 
November of that year his friend Ronald Reagan would be elected U.S. 
president and that he would enact policies according to that vision. 
He also prophesied that Ronald Reagan and Great Britain's Margaret 
Thatcher would lead the rest of the world into the promised land of 
growth and prosperity.

To me, Milton Friedman was a far-right neo-liberal economist who 
favored the opening of markets in developing countries by political 
means or military intervention, if necessary. It was his students 
from Chicago University that General Pinochet had invited to 
transform Chile's economy after he overthrew the legally elected 
president Allende with CIA help in 1973.

The "Chicago Boys" ordered a "shock treatment," which called for 
drastic reduction in the money supply and government spending. It 
also called for the privatization of state enterprises, abolished 
taxes on corporate profits, and welcomed foreign investment to 
exploit the country's natural resources. Under the gunpoint of the 
military junta, labor laws were suspended and political dissent was 
silenced. The "shock treatment" of the 1970s pushed Chile's 
unemployment rate to 22 per cent; real wages dropped by 40 per cent , 
and the country's industrial output fell by 12.9 per cent --making it 
Chile's worst depression since the 1930s.

But my Chinese hosts were not troubled by such facts. They wanted 
Friedman to show them how to jump-start their economy. It is 
intriguing how early the Chinese had searched out Friedman for 
guidance --only one year after Thatcher began her brutal "there is no 
other alternative" reforms. So just as Ronald Reagan started his 
"revolution" in America by stripping away social and welfare safety 
nets that had been in place since the FDR era, Deng and his 
supporters followed Friedman's recipe to "get the government off the 
people's back," ushering China into the neo-liberal universe.

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/kwong10072006.html


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