Economic reform in China
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Citizenoftheworld wrote: “Chinese capitalists have not done anything that the US and European capitalists have not done…“.
But that is not true of the last thirty years or so, as even the SPGB review, that I quoted, acknowledged.
By no means can the US and European capitalists, in that period, be called ‘broadly progressive’.
Citizenoftheworld wrote: “During the post-war boom, the USA had a much better standard of living within the framework of a capitalist society“.
That’s precisely what the Chinese acknowledged about the USA in 1960 (high taxes, high government spending, high profits, wealthy workers), and sought to reproduce those conditions.
Is China, and any who follow their economic model (the Tool Market), doomed to follow the West, from 1960s wealth to 1980s poverty?
Or, do ‘Men make history’, and can change their apparent ‘destiny’?
“…and sought to reproduce those conditions”?
The 1960s saw the very opposite in China, with both production and education stalled for years, as the young were turned loose on the elderly in a rampage of state-orchestrated violence and murder.
“…and sought to reproduce those conditions”?
The 1960s saw the very opposite in China, with both production and education stalled for years, as the young were turned loose on the elderly in a rampage of state-orchestrated violence and murder.
And the close of the 1950s saw the biggest deliberately inflicted famine, combined with kill quotas, aimed at decimating the rural population.
Those who have followed Chinese capitalism since the 1950s- 1960s know that it was the most difficult period for the Chinese workers and the Chinese students and youth
I don’t think L Bird followed that period during the controversy with Russia and Albania.
During that period, China went through a period of stagnation, which is the reason why the leaders looked for foreign investment.
The so-called Cultural Revolution was like following a Confucian religion; even more, Enver Hoxha said that Maoism was the modern Confucianism and brought China back to the old period.
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Citizenoftheworld wrote: “During the post-war boom, the USA had a much better standard of living within the framework of a capitalist society“.
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That’s precisely what the Chinese acknowledged about the USA in 1960 (high taxes, high government spending, high profits, wealthy workers), and sought to reproduce those conditions.———————————————————————————
Another distortion, the higher period of taxation in the US was during the administration of Roosevelt.
The Congress approved 85%, and there was great resistance from the capitalist class. And most of that surplus value was used to finance the war and to finance the superstructure, and to implement certain social democratic reforms like unemployment insurance, Social Security and workers’ compensation.
The Chinese should have known Marx’s conception of taxation, and you should know that too, and that the capitalist state is financed with surplus value.
There weren’t any wealthy workers; workers were able to buy certain home appliances, new cars, homes financed by the Veterans Administration, Federal Housing Administration and some neighbourhoods were built for war veterans. They were provided to pacify the workers. Many of those reforms have been reversed
Manufacturing production was expanded and applied to the war efforts. After that period, there was a small boom which lasted until 1970, and most factories were exported to China, India, Brazil and Vietnam, but workers were still wage slaves; they did not become wealthy.
That manufacturing expansion produced the importation of foreign workers for low-paying jobs and the creation of ethnic neighbourhoods, and part of that process was reversed through the so-called gentrification and the real estate boom
The expressions progressive and progressivism have different meanings, and the concept came from England, and it was also applicable to the USA by the so-called liberals thinkers, but it has nothing to do with socialism, as the leftists have applied it,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism.
Progressive means capitalist socialdemócrats reforms
It is like Lenin saying that state capitalism was beneficial for the working class. It was progressive for the Chinese in comparison with the despotic Asiatic mode of production, which Mao falsely called feudalism. ism
Thomas_More
Participant
“…and sought to reproduce those conditions”?The 1960s saw the very opposite in China, with both production and education stalled for years, as the young were turned loose on the elderly in a rampage of state-orchestrated violence and murder.
Thomas_More
Participant
And the close of the 1950s saw the biggest deliberately inflicted famine, combined with kill quotas, aimed at decimating the rural population.————————————————————————————-
That is totally correct. The Chinese capitalists need capital injections from Western and US investors, and it was part of the four modernisations after the coup against the Gang of Four.
Some Maoist groups said that the Chinese Revolution was given by Mao on a red carpet when Richard Nixon visited China
During the 1950=60 there was a great peasant resistance, and many peasants were killed and suffered famine
I wouldn’t equate Maoism with Confucius under any circumstances. Mao doesn’t even count when it comes to centuries of Chinese history and civilisation. Like the ancient Legalists he admired, he was a destroyer first and foremost and an enemy to literature and art and to anything progressive in human society.
I am just repeating the phrase used by Enver Hoxha, who was trying to say that the so-called Mao Tse Tung thought was not materialistic, it was metaphysical and backward, and the so-called Mao Tse Tung thought became a religion to worship one individual like a god
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm
Confucianism isn’t really concerned with metaphysics. The Confucian rites are similar to the definition of rites in ancient Rome: about performance and the cementing of social cohesion.
Real tyranny came with the Imperial absolutism of Mao’s hero Ch’in Shih-huang, who burned the books of Confucius and his disciples.
Similarly, Mao set out to destroy Chinese literature, art and all history. Anything which did not glorify Mao. Libraries were emptied and all books failing to name Mao at least once on every page – in a footnote at the very least – were burned.Confucianism isn’t really concerned with metaphysics. The Confucian rites are similar to the definition of rites in ancient Rome: about performance and the cementing of social cohesion.
Metaphysics and idealism are interconnected. Modern Materialism was born in England and Germany, but it started in Greece, and in some way, it influenced the Romans. It is out of the main topic
I’m not sure why there have been replies concerning China in the 1960s, because I’ve been asking questions about ‘economic reform in China’ in the last three decades.
The only mention I made was about the USA in 1960, which (some of) the Chinese economic reformers saw as the model to be followed (as opposed to those who saw the Soviet reforms of the ’90s as the model to follow, ie. the ‘Free Market’ model).
The real question is can the Chinese reformers keep reforming capitalism, as they seem to have successfully done since the 1980s in China?
Confucianism is about behaviour and material matters. Hierarchical matters, yes, but material ones, not idealism.
The real question is can the Chinese reformers keep reforming capitalism, as they seem to have successfully done since the 1980s in China?
If Marx’s Capital has scientific content, the answer relating to ‘alleviating poverty’ in LBird’s reformist sense of ‘benefitting the workers’, is twofold:
- Yes — Chinese reform will continue to ‘alleviate poverty’, in LBird’s reformist sense, so long as Chinese accumulation (capitalist growth) continues apace.
- No — The “real question”, as a century of capitalist development proves, is that ‘alleviating poverty’, in LBird’s reformist sense, is not only compatible with capitalism, it is essential to it.
A capitalist class must ‘alleviate poverty’, in LBird’s reformist sense, to keep its working class in an economic position to perform capital-expanding living-labour (v + s) for it, and to be able to buy back an increasing portion of its product.
If not, commodity-circulation (the market, whether ‘free’ or otherwise) dries up; production grinds to a halt for lack of a prospective surplus (s), and capitalist society plunges into depression.
LBird’s ruminations on archaic “philosophical notions of ‘Light/Heavy’, dating back to ancient Chinese thought” to compel Chinese economic sages to ‘alleviate poverty’, in LBird’s reformist sense, are vapid before the inexorable compuslion of everyday modern capitalism.
LBird has yet to honour us with a coherent (rather than arm-waving) account of his neologist ‘tool market’ which, in his usage, is not a market at all, but at most another capitalist-reform policy.
From what I can tell from twc’s post, the answer to my question is ‘yes’, that the successful Chinese economic reforms will continue.
I do not think you understood the TWC message.
You are just taking one part where TWC is saying yes, that capitalism will alleviate poverty, in your own reformist point of view.
TWC said no based on the logic of capitalism, which is the logic or the coherent point of view of the socialist party.
Chinese capitalism will continue benefiting the Chinese capitalist class, which it has been doing for several decades, and will continue exploiting the Chinese capitalist class. Wage slavery is poverty, too
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