Re: [Marxism] Mao Tse-Tung ...etc

[Marv Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Now Marvin says that the Chinese revolution accomplished the tasks of the
> national democratic revolution.  While this sort of bastardization of
> Trotsky's analysis of the permanent revolution is quite popular with some,
> it doesn't stand up to rigorous Marxist analysis.  What, first and
> foremost,
> constitutes the first and foremost task of the national democratic
> revolution?  Well, IMO, it is the emancipation of agricultural production
> from the limits of small scale "subsistence +" agriculture, the
> emancipation
> of the population from the tethers of agricultural production, so that
> agricultural productivity is of a degree and depth to support the
> movement,
> and exploitation, of surplus labor into industrial production.   Look at
> China's agricultural productivity, its proportion of the population
> employed, and under-employed in agriculture, and tell me what part of that
> task has been accomplished.  It was NOT accomplished in China.  It was NOT
> accomplished even in the USSR, where at the time of the collapse, up to
> 1/3
> of the work force was engaged in agricultural production.
>
> The industrialization of the economy was NOT accomplished by the Chinese
> revolution.  While industrial production certainly expanded under the CCP
> after the revolution, China could not in any way shape or form be
> considered
> an industrial country prior to 1983,  and certainly the specific weight of
> industrial production in the economy was less than that of some other
> emerging economies.  Would we call China an industrial country today?  I
> know I'm in the minority here, but proportionally, based on population
> size-- I wouldn't.
>
> I find it pretty funny that Marvin in one breath talks about China's "very
> gradual introduction" of capitalist norms that might undermine the
> authority
> of the CCP and at the same time refers to the difference between the
> durations of the Russian and Chinese revolutions as insignifcant in
> historical terms.  Well, the introduction of capitalist norms, and
> capitalist economic relations, has hardly been gradual or insignificant.
> It
> has made incredible inroads in a briefer than brief, on the historical
> clock, time.
>
>
> There's more than philosophical, ideological, theoretical differences at
> work here.   Expropriation of a weak, fragmented, bourgeoisie; expulsion
> of
> isolated enclaves of international capital; introduction of the property
> form and relations that mark the retreat of the workers revolution after
> 1928; forms that are extended after the greatest slaughter of workers,
> ever
> means that all the "tasks" historically unfulfilled by the bourgeoise,
> will
> remain unfulfilled.  Trotsky's analysis , IMO, clearly inherits the
> momentum, the logical impulse of Marx's in that Trotsky clearly recognizes
> that those historical tasks would befall the proletariat, but could not be
> resolved without the completion of the revolution in the advanced
> countries-- that the resolution of "national democratic tasks" required
> the
> application of a social property form that engaged, injected, advanced
> technologies free from the reproduction of capitalist value relations.
> The
> revolutions of Russia, and China became the vehicles for introducing
> technologies not free of the value relations.
=======================================
Do you still consider the Chinese and Russian revolutions to have been
"historically progressive"?






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