LBird
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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’?
Link to SPGB review of ‘Wild Ride’ wrote: “She sees the ‘ride’, even if in many ways smoke and mirrors, as broadly progressive in the sense of bringing alleviation to poverty in China and, while the system remains politically authoritarian, of being less nakedly repressive than the previous era.” [my bold]
Perhaps this displays the difference between the utilisation of the ‘Tool market’ (alleviation of poverty) and the utilisation of the ‘Free market’ (increasing of poverty).
I think that the answers in this thread to my comparison of ‘Tool’ versus ‘Free’ have confirmed my opinion that this is a useful way of explaining to workers the developments within China over the last three/four decades.
Using explanations that capture the essence of an issue is the way forward for developing workers’ understanding of their world.
That is the purpose of the ‘Tool Market’ / ‘Free Market’ model.
Thomas More wrote: “This new order still pays lip service to Mao and is a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism.”
But surely it was also ‘a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism’ after 1949? And indeed before?
So, what’s changed?
Thomas More wrote: “China has changed, but within capitalism, just as European countries have changed since the 1950s.”
Now, there’s a basis for a discussion. Thank you, Thomas.
So, what sort of ‘capitalism’ did China have, before the ‘change’, and what sort of ‘capitalism’ does it have now, after the ‘change’?
Or, is the ‘change’ superficial, and it hasn’t really ‘changed’? [perhaps twc’s position?]
Isn’t a good way of capturing this ‘change’, to use the notion of ‘Tool Market’? As opposed to ‘Free Market’, or non-Capitalist Maoism, or ‘Socialism with non-Chinese characteristics’ (take your pick of ‘pre-change’ notion)?
twc wrote: “No. It’s the same old capitalist market with the same old best-laid social plans, everywhere and always, governed by the same old rules.”
And yet, to quote one thinker, “Men make history”.
Ahistorical certainty is of no use to workers wanting to discuss issues and develop their own understanding.
Whatever happened to the notion of ‘change’?
China has certainly changed in the last few decades.
And please, let’s not get into an exchange based upon clownish “Oh, no, it hasn’t!”, because I, for one, am not interested.
The best way of conceptualising the difference between US/UK and China, is by examining the meaning of ‘market’.
The US/UK try to utilise a ‘Free Market’, but China utilises a ‘Tool Market’.
The purpose of the former is ‘profit’ for an exploiting class, whereas the purpose of the latter is ‘growth’ for a nation.
Of course, any Marxist communist knows that ‘nation’ is also a tool for an exploiting class, but it raises the issue of whether political control of an economy can be maintained to benefit all classes within a nation (differentially, of course), or whether political ‘interference’ in ‘the market’ must eventually collapse capitalism.
Can the Chinese ruling class succeed with their version of ‘Communism with Chinese Characteristics’, or is it simply a doomed ‘State Capitalism’?
The ‘Tool Market’ appears to be overtaking the ‘Free Market’ as the ideological basis of the 21st century.
In answer to the thread title:
No, the sole criterion for testing truth is, according to Marx, theory and practice.
McDonald wrote “Democracy needs centralised organisation…”
Yes, but are you opposing ‘democracy’ to ‘centralised’? ie. the ‘centre’ is free from democratic control?
Surely any body with power under socialism/communism would be not only elected, but those elected would be ‘delegates’, not ‘representatives’?
So, the ‘centralised organisation’ would do as it is told by the electors. If the decisions of the ‘centralised organisation’ were opposed by the majority, the delegates would be removed.
Thus, ‘centralised organisation needs democracy’, to re-work your statement.
I think that we actually agree, McDonald, rather than disagree.
That is, we DEFINE ‘effective’ to mean ‘effective for the working class population and society’.
Ditto for ‘efficient’.
There is no elite minority who can determine ‘effective for us’ or ‘efficient for us’.
We are the democratic determiners.
This is as true in politics as in physics.
McDonald wrote: “efficiency … over … effectiveness”
Both of these concepts are socially (and therefore politically) constructed entities.
Especially, given our current scientific ideology regarding the mathematisation of physics, ‘efficiency’ is not a number, or a process ‘in-itself’, that can be simply ‘read’ as a ‘truth’ by an elite minority, but something of which we must ask ‘efficient for whom?’.
Only democratic debate can determine what is ‘efficient for whom’. Ditto for ‘effective for whom’.
No group of elite physicists can determine these issues for us.
Socialism/Communism means the democratic production of our world, of a ‘world for us’.
