Re: Jiang Zemin / William Clinton Dialog Challenge

[John Gelles <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	In part, subject challenge (to imagine what the current
	Summit was all about), involved obtaining a PKT-left
	perspective on what China means in Marxist thinking
	today.  Seeing none here, I went to the PEN-L List
	to find some thought in the matter there. Shawgi
	Tell, who may be their most outspoken Marxist,
	(and who may not represent any opinion other
	than his own), nevertheless obliges.  This is some
	of what his message of today includes: (Any
	PKT member of both Lists is free to post this
	message there with or without added comment.)


COPIED FROM:
Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
tell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

                 [Extract from:]  TML WEEKLY, 10/97
                 [Original paragraphs broken into several.]

"The demand for the return of Taiwan to China remains on the
agenda as an important consideration in geo-politics and as a
further example in the upholding of the important democratic
principle of the rights of nations and sovereignty in the world.

"With the collapse of the USSR and other pseudo-socialist
countries in eastern Europe, the U.S. imperialists tried to
arrogate to themselves the position of sole arbiter in a unipolar
world. Apart from the rivalry of other imperialist powers, the
position of China as a country to determine its own social system
has helped as a block to imperialist ambitions of hegemony.

"Worldwide, China has friends who would like to see it
march on to socialism and communism through revolution.

"Commentators have been speculating since the end of the
1970s and the accession of Deng Xiaoping to power in China,
that the course of reforms to the Chinese economy favoring
foreign investment were leading inevitably to the restoration of
capitalism and China coming back under the imperialist system.

"However, the direction which China will take has not as yet been
settled. The recent convening of the IMF in Hong Kong is evidence
of the concern of the world bourgeoisie, on one hand their having
to respect the sheer size of China as an economy today ...[and on
the other] their desire to bring her closer under their wing.

"It also revealed the important role China plays to stand up for
national sovereignty.

"Today's situation is one where there is one Workers and
Communist Movement in the world. Revolutionary forces are
gathering strength for the coming revolutionary storms which are
bound to follow the current period of retreat of revolution.

"So it is a time when it is mandatory that the word and deed of
each political party is studied with an open mind, including that of
the Communist Party of China. What is crucial is to analyze the
position each political party occupies in the modern-day
developments and to openly study and sum up the experience of
all countries and the world as a whole.

"If such a thing is not done, the Workers and Communist
Movement will suffer from the same blindness which the bipolar
division of the world tried to impose on it.

"The serious study of the stands and views of China and the
Communist Part of China is essential as part of the summation of
world developments and to prepare to make revolutionary advance.

"China and the Communist Party of China are bound to be one of
the determining factors in the turning point which has opened up for
the world at this century's end."

                ----- end Tell's writing -----



	I do not think any left-of-me PKTr would have
	written the same analysis.  Do any, for instance,
	have faith that:

	     "Today's situation is one where there is one
	      Workers and Communist Movement in the
	      world. Revolutionary forces are gathering
	      strength for the coming revolutionary storms
	      which are bound to follow the current period
              of retreat of revolution."?

	Yet the analysis is not hostile to China.  Shawgi Tell's
	opinion -- that the bipolar division of the world, (when
	the US and USSR faced off ),  tried to impose on
	the workers revolution a blindness to real events;  and
	that the USSR along with its vassal nations in eastern
	Europe were only pseudo-socialist regimes,  not the
	real thing, --  is a  part of the analysis that seems to
	me to be excuse making, not understanding.

	Much of the rest might have been captured in the
	dialog challenge, had the challenge been posted to PEN-L.

	Where does that leave our view?  Is all the emphasis
	in popular media on the authoritarian abuse of human
	rights in China and its murders inside its territory
	and Tibet deserving of so much attention?  Does Jiang
	Zemin earn due respect because keeping China from
 	from internal war or outright imperial mania is too
	great a task to be accomplished by more humane
	behavior?  That is the tack I took in my challenge
	entry -- the tack that freedom comes behind habit
	and authority, not ahead of both.

	I put myself in each President's shoes, and saw their
	lack of absolute power as key to acceptance by each
	of forces that tend to impose order in each country
	at the expense of the poor and the powerless.

	A great many people are treated like ants on a soccer
	field. The earth is treated like the grass.  The
	players focus on winning a well defined game that is
	disconnected from millions of people looking to them
	for support, now, and into the future of the species.

	Order is imposed with money and guns.  Each must
	be used with skill and scientific knowledge.  The men
	at the Summit know what they want for that future --
	the best of all possible worlds.  But they don't know
	how to achieve it;  and if they knew they could not
	impose their will on the institutions of power below
	them.

	So, in their minds, they tick off Taiwan, Korea,
	Tibet, money, resources, markets, a balance of power,
	internal security, and global economic war -- where
	does it lead, can it be bent to our use or has it a will
	of its own?

	The CIA and State may have furnished President Clinton
	papers to put PKT and PEN-L to shame.  They have
	the time and money to buy the skills to do this.  But
	did they get it right?  Have their Chinese rivals done
	as well or better.  The Chinese play GO -- supposedly
	deeper than chess.  I would like to see their estimates
	and those of the Russians, Japanese, and others, that
	cover this whole matter.

	Do they all put the Summit down as show, and feeling
	each other out -- as nothing of substance now with
	everything left to brew on its own, in time?

	Is there no political science?  Questions. Questions.
	All the answers are what you read in your PKT mail
	-- on subjects other than this one.

               John Gelles        email to:    myturn@xxxxxxxx
               http://www.myturn.org   ;   http://www.rain.org/~jjgelles/
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