PEN-L message, Socialist/Revolutionary Consciousness as a Material Force.

I posed the following question: If anyone here were sick, perhaps gravely ill, which kind of physician would you prefer to have: Would you prefer to have a capitalist minded/driven doctor or one like Pai Chu En? The implication of the question--and compound metaphor--was clear: Would you prefer to have a capitalist minded/driven doctor, who sees the patient and his/her disease as a mere commodity and instrument of profit and capital accumulation, who sees the patient in very narrow terms, doing only what it takes to avoid malpractice litigation, just enough to get the patient (customer) to "feel" satisfied enough to return when another problem (and perhaps related and not caught in the original examination as is common) develops (sales-->customers-->sales), doing what it takes to minimize costs relative to expected revenues or maximize revenues relative to expected costs, doing only what it takes to get the "customer" (not whole and precious human being) in and out in order to maximize the potential number of patients (customers or profit instruments) in and out per day? Or, would you prefer a doctor like Pai Chu En or Dr. Norman Bethune, not only highly skilled as a physician in narrow technical terms, but one with the type of socialist and revolutionary consciousness and values that leads him or her to view the patient not simply as a patient or customer--certainly never as a mere commodity--who does not view the particular disease-entity as a mere commodity, who view each and every "patient" as a whole and precious human being to be treated as one would want one's own loved ones--or oneself--to be treated, who sees the mind and body not as a duality but as conceptual or analytical parts of an integrated and inseparable unity, who sees "efficiency" not in terms of the narrow (capitalist) minimizing input (time and narrow costs) relative to "output" (relieving symptoms or "cure" in the narrow sense) but who sees and defines "efficiency" in broad, holistic and long-run terms (social not only private costs and social not only private benefits) and who does what he or she does not from motives of greed, selfishness, status needs or capitalist profit/competitive imperatives, but out of a sense of dedication to the transcendent cause and a genuine desire to "serve the people heart and soul."? Which type of doctor (or system) would you prefer to have and live under?

One of the speakers, an esteemed and rising professor from another university, not Tsinghua, obviously very "bright" and "educated" in narrow and formalistic terms, answered. With, what appeared to me to be a rather self-congratulatory and kind of "gotcha" smile, answered: "Well, if I were sick, and it would take me thirty years to find a doctor like Pai Chu En, I would prefer a capitalist doctor." Because of time and other constraints (there was never any censorship in any form at that conference except that which inevitably occurred as a result of time constraints, the number of people who were scheduled to speak and the need to be sensitive to others who also wanted to speak) I could not answer but my blood boiled--and is obviously still boiling--from his flippant and superficial answer that was even more rhetorical than my question. He was doing what the neoclassical/neo-liberal/capitalist ideologues typically do: controlling the microphone and debate (they typically only hire and promote their own kind and allow only their own ideologically-driven curricula in academia, politics, media and in other spheres) and summarily asserting (as axiomatic, self-evident and "proved" beyond any doubt) the core predicate of their argument: that in the competition (race) between capitalism and socialism, in terms of which more rapidly "develops" (quality and quantity) the material forces of production (and all the derivative "spread effects like jobs, incomes, consumer products and choice etc) capitalism wins over socialism every time. This is but one of the many tautologies and predicates--asserted and even engineered--as axiomatic and "proved" that which remains to be "proved" even in narrow neoclassical and capitalism terms. Of course, tautologically, capitalism becomes accepted as the most "efficient" and

"progressive"system when contrived capitalist definitions of "efficiency" and "progress" are asserted and accepted as the only possible "operational" and rhetorical definitions. Yet, as Marx, and so many others like Chairman Mao so aptly demonstrated, capitalism becomes inefficient and regressive even using capitalist concepts of "efficiency" (technological, economic, productive, consumer, exchange and allocative) and "progress" (the greatest economic welfare for the greatest number).

The first reason my blood boiled when I heard this flippant and rhetorical answer from this esteemed professor is that I come from a people, Blackfoot, who like Indigenous Peoples everywhere, and indeed poor people everywhere in the U.S. and elsewhere, are surrounded by technically skilled--and no so skilled--physicians that exist, in the sense of physically existing at a certain time and space, but, for the poor, do not exist in any meaningful way. Since these doctors are driven by capitalist imperatives and associated/requisite mentalities, these doctors only exist for those with sufficient incomes to pay for their services and/or who do not live on isolated Reserves/Reservations or rural areas, with no transportation, and are unable to travel to see these doctors. If I am ill, and the most highly-skilled physician in the world is practicing down the street, what good is it to me that capitalism, capitalist "values" and capitalist imperatives produced a physician who will not see me and treat me because I am poor? Better that physician does not exist as his or her existence, in the physical sense, will only piss me off and perhaps even exacerbate my illness due to the mind-body unity. In the U.S., an estimated 44 million people have no health insurance, another 37 million have only marginal health insurance, and since the "right to life" itself (like the right to justice etc) is itself a commodity, for sale only to those that can afford it under capitalism, what good is the supposed rapid development of material forces or production of capitalism that produce commodities (and derivative spread effects) only for a relative few? Even in China, we find that with the spread of markets and market-based "medicine", those who formerly had access to at least basic health care are now losing it.

Next, Dr. Bethune, a product of the capitalist system in terms of his medical training, and by his own admission in terms of his early ideas of reformism, developed his technical skills not primarily because of capitalist-based education and medical practice, but in spite of them. Even in his own case, when he was ill with Tuberculosis, the conventional medical practice, highly risk-aversive to "guarantee success" in narrow capitalist terms, refused him the emerging and experimental technique of pneumo-thorax (collapsing the lung to rest the infected lung) such that he had to self-administer the technique--on himself while awake. Dr. Bethune's own inventions, of techniques and instruments still being used in thoracic surgery today, all came from his own humanitarianism and revolutionary consciousness without any regard as to the potential "profitability" or income/status-enhancing results of his inventions. It was the imperatives and "logic" of capitalist-based medicine in the days of Dr. Bethune, as is the case today in many areas, that caused the choking-off and even regression of the development of the material forces and techniques of production in medicine.

The second reason my blood boiled when I heard the answer to my question from this esteemed professor is that capitalism only develops certain productive forces more rapidly than socialism. Because capitalism is about profits for power and power for profits (like the slogan of the Medici family: "Money to Acquire Power; Power to Protect Money), and is about "effective" demand (purchasing power or "dollar votes" to back up tastes and preferences many of which are also created and conditioned for profit and not natural from basic subsistence needs), capitalism does a great job in developing forces of production in areas like superficial and soul-destroying forms of "entertainment", dope, pornography, rigging elections, allowing rich criminals to escape justice, narcissistic sports events, mansions and toys for the rich, placing clones in government, "quality education" for the few who can afford it, "quality" medicine for the few that can afford it, weapons of death and destruction, instruments of mind and soul control and manipulation (advertising), specialty foods, "high-fashion" clothing for the few, unevenly developed infrastructure, etc. In such areas as affordable housing for the many, basic health care available to all, universal access to education, basic medicines available to all, balanced development of infrastructure, minimizing social costs of private endeavors and maximizing social benefits of private endeavors, etc socialism beats capitalism--when real socialism is allowed to develop without aggression and subversion--outside and inside from imperialist machinations and the old weeds of capitalism threatening the full, free and fair development of socialism and competition of ideas and systems--capitalism versus socialism.

The third reason my blood boiled when I heard this answer from this esteemed professor is why does someone have to teach this "educated" and "bright" Chinese professor basic Chinese--and world--history as well as about some present-day realities and irrefutable facts? In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, in reference to China, and of course other places as well, noted that colonialism (and imperialism) is a force that 'batters down all Chinese walls', and is one that 'compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.' ( Marx and Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848) in "Selected Works", Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950, pp. 36-37; quoted in "Mao's China and After 3rd Edition, by Maurice Meisner, The Free Press, NY. 1999, p 5)

When has there ever been free, fair and open competition between socialist versus capitalist systems or ideas? From the very beginning of the People's Republic of China (actually long before), as was the case of Cuba and so many other examples of socialism, socialist societies, often inheriting horrible conditions and legacies of imperialism and colonialism, have been subject to imperialist embargos, outright threats of nuclear annihilation, social systems engineering and destabilization campaigns, covert operations, exacerbations of historical ethnic and religious rivalries, denials of critical technologies and resources, military aggression, cultural subversion, arrogant missionaries, forced importations of drugs and soul-destroying foreign "culture", denial of access to international organizations and the global community of nations, coup d'etats and overthrows of sovereign and freely-elected governments, assassination campaigns, etc etc etc. All of this was designed to destabilize, overthrow and never to allow to develop, socialist systems, values and ideas.

If international recognition by the imperialist powers and the international organizations they control is some kind of test of the reality, existence and legitimacy of any nation or nation state, then the People's Republic of China (portions of which still remain occupied by foreign powers--e.g. Taiwan) did not "exist" for almost thirty years after its existence in reality (and under international law). The same apples to Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and other nation states summarily and arrogantly not "recognized" by some imperialist powers. This has caused large-scale diversions of precious resources from socialist growth and development into necessary defense against imperialist machinations. Indeed this was the object of imperial social systems engineering and aggression all along: engineering, to make "axiomatic" and self-evident, the basic tautologies, predicates and syllogisms of imperialism. IF, A=B; and IF, B=C; THEN/THEREFORE, A=C. IF, Country A (say China or Cuba for example) = System B (Socialism or Communism); IF, System B (Socialism or Communism) = C (Backwardness, Inefficiency, Repression, Terrorism, Dictatorship...), THEN, A=C..... The answer? For China or Cuba or other socialist systems to become "Developing", "Efficient", "non-Repressive", "non-Terrorist" etc the only answer is to become like the U.S. or some other imperialist power asserted to be the opposites in the above-mentioned syllogism of imperialist repression and legitimation. Just imagine, for but one example, even before World War II was over, the Class-A War Criminals of the infamous Japanese fascist Unit 731 were all shielded from prosecution by the U.S. and its allies (in return for using the fruits of their barbaric "research") and one of them even became a Prime Minister of Japan, and the same was done with shielding German Nazi war criminals before the end of World War II, while the nominal allies of the U.S. who had saved many U.S. lives (Communists in China and Soviets in Europe) were being attacked by the U.S. and its allies using wanted war criminals from the formal enemies of the U.S. and its allies.

Finally, we have the reality, demonstrable and provable, that capitalism, even in capitalist terms of "efficiency" (technological, economic, productive, consumer, exchange and allocative) and "progress" (greatest economic welfare for the greatest number) is self-contradictory and self-negating. For example, the imperative to minimize total costs relative to expected revenues (economic efficiency) or the imperative to minimize input relative to expected output (technological) can lead, and does lead--along with the basic "values" of Homo Oeconomicus--to inefficiency in terms of so-called "exchange efficiency" (P=MSC=MSB). As firms pollute the environment, or free-riding increases, less and less are true costs (marginal private costs plus marginal costs of negative externalities) assessed and paid by those who receive the benefits and revenues received and less and less are true benefits (marginal private benefits plus marginal benefits of positive externalities) received by those who pay the true costs. This is but one example of the "logic" of capitalism resulting in self-negation of "efficiency" and "progress" even in narrow and contrived capitalist terms.

Then there is the issue of how, by whom, on what basis and in whose interest such terms and concepts of "efficiency" and "progress" are defined and implemented. For example, according to the neoclassicals, the consumer--or producer--is sovereign, rational, competitive, egoistic, calculating, competitive, atomistic etc with GIVEN incomes, tastes, time, information and expectations on the demand side or GIVEN technology, resources, time, information, expectations and profit/competitive imperatives on the supply side. The consumer, assumed to be rational, has tastes and preferences, that, if not illegal (and no inquiry is made by the neoclassicals as to who, on what basis and in whose interests defines what is illegal), may be assumed as GIVEN and not subject to inquiry. So, if pornography is not illegal, according to the neoclassicals, "efficiency" is simply defined as producing more porn with given inputs or per dollar of total cost, or producing a given amount of porn with least inputs or at lowest possible total cost. What is being produced is not a subject for inquiry and not part of the concept and definition of "efficiency" in neoclassical terms.