RE: Re: Re: reform and rev

["michael pugliese" <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

  "China and Independent Working Class Politics, " by Paul Hampton,
in the newest issue of Workers Liberty, Vol. 2, #1,  (http://www.workersliberty.org
) has a good bibliography (besides being a good look/analysis
of the contemporary PRC).
   WL, is the journal of the Alliance for Workers Liberty, one
of the constituent orgs of the Socialist Alliances in the UK.
   BTW, other pieces in this issue are of interest to the thread
that erupts now and then on catatrophism.
   Copies for $8 at Borders or your local lefty bookstore.
   And Carrol, it is Tienamen. I may be off on my spelling but,
I'm closer, I betcha! Cf. "The Tienamen Papers, " edited by Andrew
Nathan.
Michael "Running Dog" Pugliese, Woof, Woof!


>--- Original Message ---
>From: Greg Schofield <g_schofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Date: 1/18/02 7:30:01 PM
>

>--- Message Received ---
>From: Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>
>To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 19:54:53 -0600
>Subject: [PEN-L:21620] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: reform and rev
>
>Carrol I like your thinking here but you probably will not like
my addition to it.
>
>Carrol:
>"If I had to guess, I would say that the bulk of the support
for the
>revolution was not socialist but that aspect of it expressed
in Mao's
>first speech on Tenyan (w?) Square: China has stood up. There
was a
>socialist streak there, and I still regard Mao as a major Marxist
>thinker that we can learn from if we abstract correctly, but
the
>essential drive was Chinese patriotism."
>
>Not only the nature of the support but also the whole nature
of what was in fact historically possible.
>
>
>I rate the Chinese revolution a great success, but not for the
socialism that it achieved, but for the very situation that China
now finds itself (oddly enough).
>
>My superficial understanding of the history of China does not
give this important place a lot of choice in what needed to be
done. No Chinese revolution would have been inconcievable, China
would have developed into warring states, mass never-ending famine,
and the people into virtual slaves of capital and the most reactionary
landlords.
>
>Whatever troubles now beset it, China has stood up and a significant
proportion of humankind have a better basis for a real future
then they would have had under any other imagined circumstances.
>
>In this both the "mistakes" of the past (recent and further
back) at least take place within a country with a significant
working class and a modern infrastructure which however ill developed
is at least present.
>
>The proletarianisation of China (still with a large peasant
population) despite all that has happened is a mark of its historical
success as a revolution.
>
>The socialist road of China could never have been and in my
understand is not presently anything other then state-capitalism
taking on a rather impossible task and achieving much of it.
The character of the state, derived from Chinese history has
also developed because of this.
>
>At this point of time the very process of China standing up
has exhausted the possiblities of its birth. The problems it
is now faced with exceed the ability of this country to continue
down the path which got it to this point in the first place.
Where is the future of China, well to put no gloss on this questioin
at all, it is in its integration with world capitalism where
new contradictions will arise and a new struggles emerge.
>
>At least China now is able to participate in this as a viable
state, this would have been denied them if history had not taken
the course it did. The Chinese revolution was a necessity, but
if the good things about are not to be washed away altogether
it is up to us outside China to wrought those changes that can
produce a better world.
>
>China's CP, state and society in general, does not have at this
moment the resources to do otherwise than it is, its position
is peculiar and derives from the particular role the state has
played in the past and is quite incapable of playing any longer.
>
>If the state and all that this presently entails collapses China
will be a mess, however the state in order to maintain itself
is also caught up in the contradictions of capital (from which
it never was free), meanwhile the working class finds itself
in struggle against the state and capital and is all too aware
of the peculiar position China is in at the moment.
>
>If international state to state relations could become more
"civilisied" the Chinese state would have more room for development,
if the world economy could be forced to encounter the world working
class as an emerging power, the workers of China would find more
room to move.
>
>It is not that China is socialist that is the question, but
how China typifies the condition of the world as a whole (as
it should seeing one third of humanity lies within its borders).
China is not a question which calls for any singular views on
what should and can be done, rather it points to the criticial
importance of internationalism as a focus of struggle and the
role that states and the working class must play in this.
>
>The disintegration of China (real possiblity) would make the
dissolution of the USSR look like a minor hiccup. If one third
of human kind is faced with barbarianism, the rest may not be
too far behind. China is our barometer of world social health,
and it is a contradictory one.
>
>
>Greg Schofield
>Perth Australia
>
>