[PEN-L:9384] Re: China debate

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 07/20/99 01:16PM >>Crucially, I don't see why any country should be _a priori_ exempt from the
application of the materialist principles for understanding the world.

BTW, reading the history of many countries around the world, I find that
(as often as not) countries have constitutions that conflict with their
political economies. In that case, either the constitution is regularly
changed or it is simply ignored.

Materialists shouldn't ignore constitutions entirely, since they do help
structure actual government practice, but I don't think the most important
Marxist questions of class power can be answered by examining constitutions.

((((((((((((

Charles: Without disagreeing with Jim D.'s generally couselling critical thinking and a grain of salt in reading official statements and constitutions, it struck me that he is pointing to the lack of correspondence between superstructure and infrastructure here; whereas, historical materialism tends to look for correspondence between base and superstructure. In a way, he is saying that the U.S. Constitution , part of the superstructure, is AHEAD of the actual relations of production on the ground, the actual practice in the U.S.   This is sort of the opposite of what historical materialism suggests. No, criticism of Jim intended, because I agree with his larger position. I'm just trying to think of this in historical materialists terms. Of course, there are parts of the Constitution and other laws that correspond to capitalist relations of production. Perhaps the point is that capitalism is so obsolete, in the sense that it has staid past its time, that it comes into conflict !
with its own flashes of revolutionary youth as expressed in the Constitution.

On the more general issues on this thread, I would suggest that a class analysis of China or any other country must include analysis of the country within the balance of class forces in the whole world, as well as the class relations within the country. The governments of countries like China or the Soviet Union have a responsibility to the world working class movement to survive politically and economically, as well as build socialist relations of production. Sometimes these two mandates are in conflict. The governments can be wrong and misuse their responsibility to survive , but it has not been proven that the Soviet and Chinese governments have always been wrong in opposing internal opposition, whether from labor activists or other protestors. An autopsy of the Soviet Union shows that the Communist Party's often expressed concerns about capitalist propaganda, espionage and provocation within socialist countries was not at all overstated. You can be sure that the Chinese Co!
mmunists have learned this lesson much more thoroughly and seriously than I state it here.

Although this theoretical position does not address the calls on this thread for evidence on what is actually happening in this particular case in China, a socialist and historical materialist class approach recognizes that sometimes it is necessary to delay one aspect of socialist development (unrestricted trade union rights, full panoply of "bourgeois" rights, etc.) to retain control of the state power against the ever present threat of imperialist revenchism. This lesson is especially cogent in the context of the relatively recent fall of the Soviet Union.

It is coupled with a very contradictory opposite: the Soviet Union also fell in part because it was too isolated from the economic developments of the other main industrial countries. China is trying to avoid this error too, but it contradicts with avoiding the first, because it means they must open themselves up to some capitalist penetration.


In the current dispute, there is mixed evidence, but I haven't seen (maybe I missed it) Jim taking account of the survival of a government committed to socialism in his class analysis.

There are many indications that the overall strategy of the Chinese Communists is to humbly accept that a Great Leap forward to socialism bypassing capitalism totally by the "feudal" Chinese society was impossible and that a real experience with capitalism, including such horrors as abuse of trade union rights as part of the process of labor discipline at a level preparing for socialism, was impossible to avoid.

It can be asked properly, well who will play the role of capitalist in such an approach, and wouldn't Party members be enriching themselves personally in such a process ? From what I have read, it seems that the CCP recognizes this risk and the greater risk of corruption of the whole Party; and that it has structured itself such that the Party overall remains separate from the "interim" capitalists, with some people breaking the rules as in any giant project, but not an overall breakdown in the plan. The Chinese probably also considered that if they were going to have to have some capitalism, better to have some Chinese "capitalists" than all Western capitalists.

The delay in guranteeing full trade union and other civil rights and liberties is a consequence of applying the contradictory twin lessons from Soviet failure. You must open up to the capitalists some ( especially in an era when European socialism has collapsed)  but not enough to allow them to take power. This is the larger class context, historically and geopolitically.


Charles Brown


In another missive, Henry writes: >Devine attacks China for opposing
capitalist unions.<

This is not true. I was simply defending union _rights_ (what I consider to
be a basic socialist principle), since I think that workers and peasants
are better at making their own decisions -- and are much better at learning
from their own mistakes -- than are their employers. (What's that quote
from Luxemburg?) Workers' and peasants' efforts to control their own lives
are the basis for socialism much more than is the state ownership of the
means of production. (Both are necessary, however.)

I did not "attack" China, though obviously what I said can be interpreted
as criticism. BTW, I support China when it is _actually_ attacked by
imperialism, since the right of nations to self-determination is an
important democratic right.

Rather than "attacking" China, I asked all sorts of _questions_ about the
kinds of unions that the Chinese government suppresses. Henry told me that
they had been labelled "capitalist," but never explained what that means
except that they were independent of the Chinese state's control.

The unions are allegedly guilty of narrow-minded economism, an accusation
I'm willing to accept if given evidence. But Henry never explained or even
pointed to the mechanisms that might exist in China that make sure that the
efforts to prevent economism on the part of the unions aren't complemented
by efforts by the government elite's to solidify their own power. State
elites are subject to their own brand of economism: power corrupts.

>He defends Harry Wu, even after he has been given some basic facts.<

This is absolutely not true. Since when is labelling someone a "nutcase"
defending him?

>He wants to promote Western democracy in socialist China.<

Taking this at face value suggests that Henry doesn't know anything about
my political views.

>He buys into all the propaganda slandering about China without any effort
to verify any facts.<

See above.

>I have already explained in a previous post that my use of the term "you"
is meant to designate typical US positions which Devine repeated in his
posts on the thread.<

Larding one's posts with the equation of his views with those of
imperialism is hardly a basis for a rational or friendly conversation.
(BTW, defensiveness and counter-accusations are hardly the best ways to
defend one's cause.)

>He uses bogus democracy as a weapon in support of imperialistic propaganda.<

See above.

In a third missive, Henry writes:> Jim Devine called the following ["China
is to establish a tripartite mechanism, formed of representatives from the
government, enterprises and trade unions, to deal with important
labor issues in a coordinated way."] a "fascist" development.<

No, I asked a _question_ that might be _interpreted_ as suggesting that
this is a "fascist" development. Again, since I am far from being an expert
on China, I ask _questions_. I didn't know that asking questions was a
wrong thing to do and that simple crude theories are better.

Tripartite -- corporatist -- organizations linking business, government,
and labor organizations have different implications depending on the
balance of class forces. In the US, they've been set up as means of social
control, as with those during World War I where the AFL joined as a "junior
partner" in clamping down on society (including the independent IWW) to
make sure that there was unified support for the imperialist war. It was
even worse for labor in Mussolini's Italy.

Now if the labor movement is really strong in China, complete with labor
unions and political parties that are democratically controlled by workers
and peasants, such tripartite organizations might be a springboard for
developing more workers' and peasants' power.

In a different case, in Spain, the Communist Party used Franco's
corporatist organizations to actually strengthen workers' power. (Part of
the CP's ability to do so arose because Franco was unable to keep a crisis
atmosphere and its accompanying repression going for decades.)

What's crucial is the class situation, the balance of class forces. It
should be noted that with democratic socialism in place, tripartite
organizations would either not exist or would be very different, since
workers would control (elect, have the power to recall, etc.) the
government officials and the factory managers.

In a fourth missive, Henry first quotes me: >>Concerning issues of fact, I
started and ended with the view that China opposes the democratic right of
Chinese workers to form independent trade unions. In fact, Henry convinced
me of the fact that the self-appointed Chinese government leaders feel that
they know much better than Chinese workers about what's good for Chinese
workers, a classic case of paternalism. Combined with increasing commercial
alliances with capitalism, paternalism is bad news for Chinese workers.<<

> This after I repeated pointed out the China opposed capitalist unions,
not socialist unions.<

again this begs the question of who decides what a "socialist" union is.

>Paternalism?  Read the Chinese Constitution I posted and the post on Labor
opinion survey and my on China looks to guarantee income, which Devine
called a fascist development.<

Again, I did not call it a "fascist development." Again, I'd like to see
how income guarantees work in practice.

>Louis posted an article:

>The mainland prison population has been drastically overestimated,
according to a Columbia University researcher. ...

>Professor Seymour estimated that 80 per cent of mainland prisoners were
serving time for drug-related crimes.<

to which I responded: >>this sounds like the US, with its execrable war on
drugs!<<

Henry responds: >Well, in China, the prison population is not 80% Black.
It is not concentrated on the poor.<

True, since there are few Blacks in China. Since Henry has more information
on the subject than I do (or ever will have), I'll trust him when he says
that the drug-related prisoners aren't poor and if he says that these
prisoners aren't disproportionately of non-Han stock. It's against these
non-Han folks that some people see racism in China. Not being an expert on
China, I don't know if these accusations are true or not.

But this brings up another crucial question, one that was in my mind but I
should have made explicit: since when is incarceration a solution to the
drug problem? It's not a solution in the US or any other country I know of.
In the US, the incarceration of drug addicts and drug dealers is part of an
effort to legislate a narrowly-defined morality with an iron-toed boot. In
other words, the trouble with the "war on drugs" is not just its racism but
its authoritarianism.

I wrote: >>a lot of imperialists find Helms' policies too "hard line" to be
good for imperialism, blocking funds and appointments to the UN, pushing
for laws that prevent foreign "aid" from going to countries that persecute
Christians, etc. It's almost as if Helms were some kind of police agent,
undermining imperialism by being too extreme. I don't think so. Rather,
there are a variety of forces within imperialism (political scientists call
it "pluralism") pushing for different [political] positions. Helms is just
one of these.<<

I should note that the point of the above comment was not only to to avoid
demonizing the justly-hated Helms (after all, the Democrat Party cadres use
the demonization of Helms for their own purposes) but also to try to get
away from the feel I got from Henry's missive that Wu is just a hireling of
some grand imperialist conspiracy, a puppet. I don't find that kind of
thinking to be useful. Instead, I see imperialism's executive committee as
akin to a "coalition government," complete with competing ideologies and
forces.

>From there Devine moves to adopting the "moderate" imperialist line to
salvage Harry Wu's crusade by pointing out just because Wu is a nut, does
not mean his is wrong.<

"adopting the 'moderate' imperialist line"? Again, insults are a poor
substitute for rational argumentation. I also reflects a complete
misunderstanding of what I said.

"salvage Harry Wu's crusade"? Louis' post was pretty convincing that Wu is
a nutcase and should be dismissed. But those articles also indicated that
prison labor camps do exist -- or at least some really bad prisons. (If we
reject the existence of these prisons on the basis of the source of the
information, that suggests that we reject the evidence for Wu's insanity.)
So Wu, despite his nuttiness, has a kernal of truth in his rantings.

People have to remember that the most successful nuts have an itty-bitty
element of truth in their rantings. Sure, I think it's a waste of my time
to listen to Wu (and I thank Louis for making that clear). But just because
he says something doesn't mean it's _a priori_ false.

That's enough for today. No more contributions to pen-l until Wednesday.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html