ALB
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Chairman Mao may have promoted TCM (for others) because it was cheap but the present Chinese government promotes it because it is also a profitable export item. As an article in the September/October 2019 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer explained:
“Outside the WHO domain, the Chinese government is pursuing a similar agenda—TCM as an export product—by attempts to have an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification for, for example, TCM herbs and sterilization procedures for acupuncture needles (Dorlo and Timmerman 2009). These attempts fit the overall goal of the Chinese government to enlarge China’s herbal exports and to gain recognition for Chinese herbs, given that the Chinese herbs will never be able to receive a formal medical product registration for European or U.S. markets due to the “strict” requirements to demonstrate efficacy and safety. At this moment, ISO standards provide a false aura of reliability to thirty-three TCM products and “activities” of planting, from the sowing of ginseng seeds to an infrared moxibustion device, and another forty-three standards are in the making (International Organization for Standardization 2019). In a direct meeting between then WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and President Xi Jinping, the latter said straightforwardly that he counted on a good collaboration between China and WHO and that he expected the WHO would help with “promoting TCM and Chinese herbs to foreign countries.” The Chinese government lobbied Chan repeatedly while attempting to increase TCM’s acceptancy and suitability for export. This culminated, among other things, in the publication of purely commercial paid advertising supplements in Nature in 2011 and Science in 2014, in which the pseudoscientific articles received an approval in a preface written by then WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. (See David Gorski, “Science Sells Out: Advertising Traditional Chinese Medicine in Three Supplements,” Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2015.) In 2017, the value of the growing Chinese export of medicinal herbs had peaked to $295 million (Cyranoski 2018).”
Chan, though not a Chinese subject, was a Chinese appointee and having someone who believed in TCM at the head of the World Health Organisation, for 10 years from 2007-2017, was like having a representative of Saudi Arabia as the head of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Another article here, Alan?
This article from 1998, by a member of the World Socialist Party (India), deals with the question of whether the workers of one country exploit the workers of another and why wages are different in different countries:
I didn’t think they were going to be so stupid but apparently the Chinese authorities are promoting the unproven quack remedies of “Traditional Chinese Medicine” (Mumbo jumbo inherited from the pre-scientific past of medicine when virus were unknown) as a way to combat this new variety of the coronavirus;
They are using it as a complement to scientific medicine which of course will allow them to claim that any improvement is due at least in part to TCM whereas it will be due entirely to scientific medicine.
No wonder other countries want to get their citizens out of China. If I was there I would want to too.
I think you are right, Robbo, to point out that the concept of exploitation can be separated from that of producing surplus value. As you say, all previous class societies have been based on exploitation but without producing surplus “value”, only a surplus product directly appropriated by their exploiters.
This recalls the trick question in our Speaker’s Test: Do peasants produce surplus value? (not that you failed if you got the answer wrong ). The answer, if I remember, is that under feudalism as serfs they don’t and under capitalism, as peasant proprietors whose products are sold as commodities, they produce value but not surplus value. On the other hand, the slaves in the plantations of the southern USA produced surplus value because what they produced was sold on a market with a view to profit.
Be careful, comrade, you are running the risk of them accusing you of “left accommodationism” ! This is what they went on to say in that pamphlet of theirs Resisting Trumpist Reaction (and Left Accommodation):
“Other destructive politics arose from a single-minded, narrow anti-neoliberal “leftism” which insisted that neoliberalism is a greater threat to humanity than proto-fascism. In an interview with WGBH during the election season, Stein went so far as to declare that “[t]he answer to neofascism is stopping neoliberalism. Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan the flames of this right-wing extremism.” As one commentator shrewdly noted, her plan was to stop Trump by electing him president! Yet, despite the horrors of Trumpism we have experienced thus far, not to mention those that lie in wait, the notion that neoliberalism is a greater danger than Trumpism doggedly hangs on. ”
Hence their view that you should vote for “neo-liberalism” , i.e the status quo, as the lesser danger.
Here’s the MHI’s criticism of those who in the 2016 presidential elections either abstained or voted for the Greens:
”Varieties of “Leftist” Accommodation to Trumpism, and the Marxist-Humanist Alternative
A great many factors combined to hand Trump the presidency. A relatively small one, but one that may have been decisive in the election and may be decisive in the future, was accommodation to Trumpism among parts of the “left.”
One variant of soft-on-Trump “leftism” stems from the attitude that one should practice politics that make one feel good, without regard to its effect. Such people “righteously” refused to vote in a way that would have maximized the likelihood of Trump’s defeat, even in swing states that can—and did—decide the presidency. The number of votes cast for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in each of the three states that proved to be pivotal to Trump’s Electoral- College victory (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) exceeded his margin of victory. In addition, an unknown number of people chose not to vote at all, taking to heart the message–– emanating from Stein and many supporters of Bernie Sanders––that Hillary Clinton was as bad as or worse than Trump.”There is no reason to think they would take a different attitude in the event of Sanders standing as an independent.
If the line-up is going to be Bloomberg v Trump I wonder what Chomsky, the MHI and the others will say. Silly question, they’ll say vote for Bloomberg, vote for cholera rather than the plague.
I am sure we have had this discussion before, haven’t we?
“Unproductive” (but “non-productive” might be a better description) workers, as those whose labour does not produce surplus value, can still be said to be exploited, only not for surplus value but in the sense of carrying out surplus labour.
The non-productive work that individual capitalist firms or the capitalist class as a whole has to have done to keep their system going, as to circulate commodities or for national and local government, costs them money, which they seek to minimise. One way to do this is for them to get those they employ in these tasks to work longer than is needed to replace the value of their labour power; which means that some of the work these workers do will be unpaid and reduce the cost of the work. These workers are being exploited for this unpaid, cost-saving labour.
The other way out of the dilemma is to argue that, as the costs of circulation and of government, are necessary from a capitalist point of view to keep the whole system going, the whole capitalist class is exploiting the whole working class without distinguishing between those who actually create surplus value and those who don’t. In other words, the work of the whole working class is necessary for the capitalist class to extract and share out surplus value.
Perhaps “socialism” isn’t that popular in the US if it’s a vote loser. Clearly it is popular amongst quite a wide section of the population but nowhere near a majority. Not that it is socialism in the proper sense of course, rather it is dissatisfaction with the private enterprise and so-called free market capitalism that used to be the unchallenged model of capitalism there. Not that’s necessarily a bad thing but it it would just be a beginning.
I don’t think there is a contradiction between the two statements. People hold religious views as individuals, ie on a personal basis. That so many people do literally “believe” without reference to the facts in one sort of religion or another is a social matter, a social problem.
Socialists oppose it because all religions are wrong in their assumptions just as, for instance, reformism and nationalism are and this impedes people coming to realise what they need to do to make this life (the only one we have) as good as possible.
“Irish PR” , ie the single transferable vote, also applies for local elections in Scotland. I don’t think the party has contested an election under this system as when we contested elections in Northern Ireland that was before the system was introduced there. It would be interesting— but might turnout to be embarrassing — to see to which other parties our second, third and other preference votes would go since I wouldn’t have thought many would strictly follow our advice to just “plump” for our candidate.
Revealing reaction of business and the media to Johnson’s bluster and bombast in his opening shot in the negotiations with the EU on a future trade deal.
He made a faux pas when he said that he would rather have tariffs than have to follow trading rules decided in Brussels. At the very mention of the word “tariffs” the pound sterling immediately fell against both the dollar and the euro.
It was just rhetoric as the EU is not demanding that the UK should simply follow rules it sets. It is demanding a “level playing field” to prevent unfair competition from UK goods whether through state subsidies or lower regulatory standards. But there are other ways in which this can be achieved eg by the two sides mutually recognising each other’s standards as being equivalent or by the UK unilaterally adopting the same or equivalent standards. As the Times put it on 3 February in its editorial,
“Mr Johnson’s objections to following EU rules have less to do with what these rules are and more to do with whose rules they are.
It is hard to believe that his government really believes that two birds in the bush are worth more than one in the hand and would be so irresponsible from a capitalist point of view to release the one they have got to go after two (or more) in the bush. But then there is the cock-up theory of history.
Interesting but essentially scaremongering on the part of the sectional capitalist interests involved.
What you have pointed out in the case of Sanders applies equally to Warren:
”On various US progressive websites I have argued that a Sanders presidency would face a united opposition of Republicans and Democratic parties in Congress – he would be an orphan president.”
The President does have fairly wide powers but passing laws is not one of them. That’s up to the House of Representatives and the Senate. So to implement their vote-catching programmes (at the moment only aimed at Democratic Party supporters) Sanders and/or Warren would need majorities for them there too. As of course would a mass movement in the US for real socialism as a stateless, wageless, moneyless society, at least in the House.
A contributor to the Socialist Standard has drawn attention to what the Indian government is recommending to deal with this:
As the article says:
“If it weren’t for the Dalai Lama recently telling his followers to chant a mantra as protection, India’s purported tips to fend off the coronavirus might be the least effective advice offered yet. Now, the two will have to battle for that top spot”
At least the Chinese government isn’t relying on “traditional Chinese medicine” which they have been known to promote in general. They are not so stupid when things are serious.
Looks as if we should take a look in more detail at their pamphlet on workers cooperatives mentioned in the thread on that. So here’s some extracts:
“In order for Irish society to have a fair, functioning economy which works for workers and our communities, ownership must be shared. Sinn Féin is serious about addressing inequality in our society, and we are therefore serious about dealing with the inequality of ownership which exists in our economy. That is why Sinn Féin is committed to developing an economy in which workers have a greater share of ownership through Worker Co-operatives (WCOP’s). These are businesses in which the workers of the enterprise own at least 51% of the shares. (…)
An economy that works for workers
Today, Ireland has an economy which does not work for its workers. Despite experiencing high levels of GDP growth (World Economic Forum, 2018) as well as increased levels of productivity (WEF, 2018), gross levels of inequality continue to rise (CSO 2016, TASC, 2019, Social Justice, 2019). (….)
Sinn Féin believes that this wealth inequality is a result of our economy being detrimentally ‘short-termist’ in its outlook – with private firms, through financial intermediaries, weighing near-term profit outcomes too heavily at the expense of longer-term sustainability. This has become the hegemonic strategy for private enterprise. The reality is that ownership shapes purpose. If we allow our economy to be owned and controlled by a small group of elites whose objective is that of profit, then that will be the purpose of our economy. If, however, we agree as a society that our preference is to establish an economy based upon productivity, sustainability and equality then ownership of our economy must be equitably spread across society. This new economy can be achieved through alternative models of business ownership. Sinn Féin believes that the Worker Co-operative Model offers an exciting and innovative alternative.”
Empty electoralist promises or self-delusion? To be fair probably the latter, but it doesn’t matter as it wouldn’t work and won’t even be tried on any large scale.
In any event, the increased support for SF would seem to be more a vote against the previously established parties (which also have names derived from the Irish Civil War, i.e Tribe of the Gaels and Soldiers of Destiny) than for what it says it stands for.
