LBird
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So, twc, to put it in simple terms, your answer to my question is ‘No’.
That is ‘serious epistemology’. No knowledge is generated by your ideas.
We’re no further forward in our discussion about economic reform in China than your belief that ‘the end times will come eventually’.
twc wrote: “The actual capitalist system of markets, when put under stress, invariably turns true to its dominant capitalist-class interests, leaving your leftist, working-class beneficent, “Tool Market”, in its wake.” [my bold]
Could you give us any clue as to when this ‘invariably turns true‘ in China, twc?
I’m not asking for a particular year obviously, but just a decade, or even a century?
Surely you must have a finite idea about ‘invariable truth’?
Surely a ‘scientist’ like yourself would make measurable claims?
Surely a ‘materialist’ like yourself would be dealing with ‘reality itself’, and not the mere wishful thinking of ‘idealism’?
‘Bad-mouthing’, twc?
The only bad-mouthing on this thread has come from you.
Although, it always seems to be your response to being asked questions.
If you’re not interested in discussing ‘Economic reform in China’, why bother posting on a thread with that title?
twc, surely the point of a discussion titled ‘Economic Reform in China’ is to discuss economic reform in China?
Have there been reforms? What are the reforms? Who benefits from reforms? Have they been successful? Do they provide a model for others? Must reforms always hit the buffers – if so, when? What is the time frame for this failure?
Discussion is how workers persuade each other, twc.
Thomas More wrote: “How does one begin, given the mass ignorance …to explain…”
It requires organised workers to attempt to introduce a system of workers’ education, including Proletarian Universities, covering a syllabus from philosophy, maths, physics, biology, etc. to history, sociology, architecture, art, etc.
To my knowledge, this has only been tried once at a national level (leaving aside minor schools or individual teachers), and that was the Proletcult movement led by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, during the initial stage of the Soviet Union.
I’m minded to comment that the dominance of a ‘materialism’ of those supposed ‘Marxists’ who follow Engels, Kautsky and Plekhanov, which believes that ‘the material conditions’ will bring socialism/communism, rather than workers’ active consciousness, is the explanation for the continued failure to build a democratic workers’ education system built by workers themselves.
Even the SPGB won’t have workers democratically controlling ‘science’. As ‘materialists’, they believe that ‘science’ is a social product best left to an elite, and that democracy has no part to play in physics.
I’m not making any ‘allegations’, I’m asking questions.
Are the ‘backward conditions’ the same ‘backward conditions’ as 3-4 decades ago?
If so, you’re arguing that nothing has changed.
If not, can the changes continue to ‘progress’ (as the SPGB said, quoted earlier), and provide a model for other ‘backward’ economies?
If China has ‘fulfilled its mission’, does that mean further ‘progressive’ change can’t happen?
Again, from what I can tell from Citizenofthenewworld’s post, the answer to my question is ‘yes’, that the successful Chinese economic reforms will continue.
You both seem to want to answer a question that I’m not asking.
As for Marx’s views, we’ve had years of debating those, and youse still erroneously regard Marx as a passive 18th century ‘materialist’, no matter what evidence is produced to show that Marx argued for ‘theory and practice’ and ‘social production’, both requiring an active consciousness. There seems to be no point re-visiting those debates.
If you don’t think that China has changed its mid-20th century supposed ‘material destiny’, by its recent active social production, please explain its failure to do so.
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’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?
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’?
Unfortunately, twc, I didn’t ‘praise’ China, any more than the SPGB review did, by calling it ‘broadly progressive’.
You really should try discussing issues.
Citizenoftheworld wrote: “Regulated capitalism has existed for several decades, and free market capitalism has never existed. Capitalists have been imposing tariffs on themselves for several decades, too. Nationalization, which is a form of regulated capitalism, started in England many years ago. Engels, before Lenin, and Bukharin had already spoken about state capitalism”
But how does that statement help us to analyse the changes within China over the last several decades, and help us to predict what other changes might happen during the coming century, both in China and in the US/UK, which will clearly affect the world proletariat?
It’s not much of discussion to simply post old SPGB articles, reviews and commentary, as if nothing new happens in the world.
SPGB article wrote: ” “Let us”, President Sarkozy of France told the UN on 23 September, “rebuild together a regulated capitalism in which whole swathes of financial activity are not left to the sole judgment of market operators, in which banks do their job, which is to finance economic development rather than engage in speculation.”
This would normally be regarded as a position taken up by leftwing critics of what they call “neoliberalism”. Thus Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, when asked for her views on the global financial crisis by the Guardian (17 September), answered that “we are going to have to return finance to its role as servant rather than master of the global economy”. ”
Yes, this ‘regulated capitalism’ seems to be similar to China’s ‘Tool Market’.
But that article was from 2008, and the US/UK (nor any others in ‘The West’) have not been able to introduce ‘regulated capitalism’, nor has France, with or without Sarkozy. It has remained an idealistic dream.
Whereas China has implemented a ‘Tool Market’, based upon philosophical notions of ‘Light/Heavy’, dating back to ancient Chinese thought.
And it seems to have been successful, and continues to provide a model of economic reform for the ‘Global South’ as the 21st century proceeds.
The Belt and Road Initiative seems to be helping this replacement of ‘Free Market’ capitalism, and the continued economic weakening of the US/UK/West.
So, is it possible that workers can benefit from the ‘Tool Market’ in a way that they can’t from the ‘Free Market’?
According to the SPGB review that I quoted above, the answer to this seems to be ‘Yes’.
And if that is possible in China, can that provide a model to be followed elsewhere in the world?
Is the 21st century likely to prove that the Chinese model will replace the US/UK myth of the ‘Free Market’?
