Oh God, oh shit, I said I wasn't going to do it. I said I wasn't going to start a China struggle session. Already getting flashbacks to the Discord.
But something just doesn't sit right with me and wanted to get some clarification here...
My question is this: why does China ban labor organizing/unions?
Is this yikes/intentional/actually a good thing?
(Yeah, I do know that labor unions are not always unequivocally good and sometimes they act more like middle management than as representatives of the workers... but democratizing the workplace seems like a no-brainer for any socialist project.)
Thoughts?
Thanks! It does seem like China's approach to unions is heavily influenced by the USSR's.
Its honestly an interesting topic. Ie the marshal law in poland in the early 80s. Trade unions did a general strike to protest the communist government due to their bowing down to the US and IMF which lead to austerity and industries basically collapsing. It was an example of the communist state failing to block imperialism and an overall failure to maintain order. There was no good state actor in that situation and is an obvious sign of the late failings of the USSR, especially in regard to regional control outside of Russian boarders.
Good answer. Whether or not China is actually socialist, actual socialism has the best chance of emerging in a country with a massive working class where Marxism isn't demonized--and one that is able to resist imperialist incursion. There is absolutely a class struggle going on in China rn, one that might decide the future of the planet. (edited for grammar)
It's a literal dictatorship of the bourgeois.
historically capital will use any wedge it can to destroy a country that tries to defy their interests.
Which is not and never will be china.
China isn't defying capital's interests? That's new to me
They're super integrated in the global marketplace and their entire foreign policy is expansion into more markets m8
i will say that yes, china can be capitalist and they do have a powerful bourgeoisie, but remember the interests of capital is to prevent them from developing their own tech, diplomacy networks and the like, which is absolutely what they are doing
lol capital just wants to make money.
They do not give a shit about the espoused ideology of China as long as they are allowed unfettered access and the ability to exploit their way to billions. They are.
They couped keynesian capitalists in the third world a bunch of times
their enforcement arms like the CIA absolutely care about ideology, to the degree that they think it will be acted on. And their imaginations are pretty wild, you don’t get to work at a place like that if you’re not a paranoid anticommunist.
That's true, but I think they didn't do it because they know they would lose.
Doing a coup against Allende or Sakarto after you spent years making inroads with the army (and/or have the support of the wealthy elite) is a lot different than trying to displace a government that just won a civil war and has the backing of the people's army.
Plus in the end it's a lot easier to win by just sitting back once the revisionists take power.
Also, we’re not having this conversation about Vietnam, which has the same system? Only official US enemies?
Vietnam, famous historical ally of the US.
Capitalists in America flip their shit over and any regulation at all.
Do they not have access either?
That sounds as socialist as Elizabeth Warren.
edit: I mean the twitter thread, not the one big union thing which is troubling because it's connected to the party.
Well sure, but it's better than what we have now.
The difference is China already has the CCP in charge. These do sound like the sort of gentler capitalism warren was pushing, and that had a small segment of the PMC left so horny they accidentally got holocaust tattoos.
edit: Oh I meant the twitter thread before which talks about how workers get representation in companies. Not the union stuff.
You know why the ‘gentler capitalism’ bs from Warren is bs right?
It’s because capital runs America and there’s not a hope in hell they’ll let it happen. Why would they settle for gentler capitalism when they can have the real thing?
Yeah I am definitely not one of the people who think China is a DotP but this is correct. Although I would say that at this point it is more of an excuse.
Solidarity was a Polish trade union
It was funded by the Cia and mi6 as well as both providing arms, weaponry and intelligence to Solidarity.
https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2019/03/17/the-cia-and-solidarity/
Solidarity attacked Polish socialism from the left promising "Socialism with a human face" and were instrumental in destroying socialism
After Solidarity destroyed socialism in Poland: Lech Walesea, the leader of Solidarity and now the president, said "a gang of jews had gotten hold of Poland."
When asked to clarify later on on this appalling antisemitism he followed up with "i didnt mean all jews just the greedy jews".
Poland, right now, is essentislly a fascist country who is repressing Communists and is trying to ban the Communist party again
The history of Solidarity should be a good enough answer as to why independent trade unions cannot be tolerated whilst capitalist-imperialism is as strong as it is
The union movement in Poland in the 80s was co-opted by right wingers and foreign intelligence. Because of this failure, some alleged socialists think all unions are bad. I don't agree with everything here, but it's a decent summary.
Ctrl + f'd for "cia" in that article
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Oh you Jacobin and your state-dept-socialism, never change
Yeah the legit Socialists in it were basically forced out due to the martial law declaration, and it got coopted after that. The CIA AFAIK only funded some people in it after this had already happened, support tricked in starting in 1983, and nearly all funds were only dispersed starting in 1988, years after the ban and left factions had been forced out. In fact the CIA tried to hasten this by funding moderates in solidarity, excluding the far left factions.
Exaaaactly. Don't tell Joey, but any serious analysis of the failure of Solidarity is pretty much done before the CIA seriously engaged. The issues involved relate a lot more to internal politics and democracy. You're more likely to find an explanation for why Solidarity went bad in Union Democracy: The Inside Politics of the International Typographical Union or the trials and travails of the CIO than you are in the CIA archives.
For all the people who still believe that the Chinese state is a revolutionary anti-capitalist force, I'll quote the statements made by the overwhelming majority of Chinese scholars at a state-sponsored conference in this article (shared by other ppl down below): https://people.umass.edu/dmkotz/articles/State_of_Official_Marxism_07_05.pdf
-- When an SOE is turned into a joint-stock corporation with many shareholders, it represents socialization of ownership as Marx and Engels described it, since ownership goes from a single owner to a large number of owners [among others this was stated by someone from the Central Party School].
-- If SOE's are turned into joint-stock corporations and the employees are given some shares of the stock, then this would achieve "Marx's objective of private ownership of property."
-- In dealing with the SOEs, we must follow "international norms" and establish a "modern property rights system." [As in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, the terms in quotes were euphemisms for capitalist norms and capitalist property rights.]
-- Enterprises can be efficient in our socialist market economy only if they are privately owned. [This statement, voiced by several people, comes from directly from Western "neoclassical" economic theory.]
-- SOE's exploit their workers and are state capitalist institutions, and SOEs often have a very high rate of exploitation. [The point was that privatizing SOE's will not introduce exploitation or capitalist relations since both are already present in SOEs.]
-- The nature of ownership of the enterprises has no bearing on whether a country is capitalist or socialist. Enterprises should be always be privately owned and operated for profit. What makes a country socialist is that the government taxes the surplus value and uses the proceeds to benefit the people through pensions and other social programs. [Along with justifying privatization, this implies that, as China's economy becomes much like those of the U.S. and Western Europe, that would not mean China is abandoning socialism since, by this definition, all of the industrialized capitalist countries are actually socialist.]
-- The USA has companies with millions of shareholders, which is a far more socialized form of ownership than anything that exists in China
-- "[After World War II] Capitalism not only gave up its fierce antagonism to labor, but even began combining with labor...Modern capitalism ... is gradually creating a new type of capitalism that is more like socialism."
-- The CCP followed the correct approach, in line with classical Marxism, during the period of New Democracy [i.e., the period directly following the 1949 liberation, when the party said it was completing the bourgeois democratic revolution but not yet trying to build socialism]. The change in policy after that period [when the party shifted its aim to building socialism] was an error, and instead the New Democracy policy should have been continued. [This was spookily similar to the widespread argument in Moscow in 1989-91 that the Soviet Communist Party should have stayed with the New Economic Policy of 1921-27, which called for a mixed economy with a significant role for private business and with market forces playing the main coordinating role]
-- Besides current labor and past labor [the latter the Marxist term for the labor required to produce the means of production], there is a third type of labor, namely "risk labor." Marxist theory should take account of this third type of labor, which is expended by those who take risks through entrepreneurship. [The obvious point was that "entrepreneurs" i.e., capitalists are a type of worker, and hence it is correct that they are allowed to join the Communist Party
HAHAHAHAHA
You’ve quoted the right leaning party members at a conference during the height of privatisation. Ofc there’s gonna be some dumb shit said.
If you’re assessing China, you need to look at its direction presently, under Xi Jingping, not it’s direction thirteen years ago under Hu Jintao, especially given that the Shanghai Clique of Jiang Zemin only started to lose power in 2006-2007.
Instead, let’s look at some of what Xi says.
Here’s a document distributed to all high level cadre outlining ideological trends to be wary of.
Neoliberalism advocates unrestrained economic liberalization, complete privatization, and total marketization and it opposes any kind of interference or regulation by the state. Western countries, led by the United States, carry out their Neoliberal agendas under the guise of “globalization,” visiting catastrophic consequences upon Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and have also dragged themselves into the international financial crisis from they have yet to recover.
This is mainly expressed in the following ways:
[Neoliberalism’s advocates] actively promote the “market omnipotence theory.” They claim our country’s macroeconomic control is strangling the market’s efficiency and vitality and they oppose public ownership, arguing that China’s state-owned enterprises are “national monopolies,” inefficient, and disruptive of the market economy, and should undergo “comprehensive privatization.” These arguments aim to change our country’s basic economic infrastructure and weaken the government’s control of the national economy.
Not to mention this hilarious headline: China’s Latest Crackdown Target Is Liberal Economists.
Alright, so there’s at least some ideological pushback. But what about reality? After all, didn’t they privatise a bunch of stuff like those economists wanted?
Well, the holding entity for state owned entities is the largest economic entity in the world at approximately 7.6 trillion USD, so whatever they’ve privatised, there’s clearly a hell of a lot they haven’t.
But what about the general trend? And what good are those entities if they’re just running according to market principles?
Well, let’s just check the news:
An agency led by President Xi Jinping to advance institutional changes in China has approved a new plan to make state-owned enterprises “stronger, better and bigger”. Monday’s decision by the Central Commission for Comprehensive Reforms to “optimise and restructure the state economy layout” – a euphemism that generally points to government-led mergers and the consolidation of various state-owned companies, with ornamental participation by private investors – came after Beijing found its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to be more reliable in answering the government’s calls during the coronavirus.
China’s “adjustment” of its state sector is aimed at “serving national strategic goals and adapting to high-quality growth”, and state firms will dominate areas of “strategic security, industrial leadership … and public services”, according to an official statement released through the Xinhua news agency.
So what we see is that SOEs were better able to respond in a pandemic situation, where market allocation just wasn’t going to cut it, and use value needed to be pushed to the fore.
No one’s denying there are capitalists in China, or that they haven’t been allowed to flourish. What’s important is that they remain under the control of the Party, and that the Party retains its control over police, military, and the commanding heights of the economy. It says a lot that even at the height of their power, the capitalists had to couch their arguments for privatisation in Marxist terms.
This article is implying Chinese economists are politically dumber than an American economists which was currently the lowest bar. Someone please follow up on its sources just to confirm its not some wild disinfo.
It's not that they're dumb, it's that the political speech the state endorses must be Marxist, so anything these economists say, even if it is neoliberal, ends up getting couched in Marxist language as newspeak.
It is dumb, just saying that these economists are not just misinterpreting Marx somehow. They are are purposefully using Marxist language because it's essentially a newspeak inside the party, almost anything is fine to say as long as you can say it with Marxist words.
It's by a Marxist academic. He published it in Monthly Review, which is a well known socialist magazine. https://monthlyreview.org/2007/09/01/the-state-of-official-marxism-in-china-today/
It looks like they can no longer criticize Donald Trump then, since he did so much risk labor with his multiple failed enterprises held up only by the safety net of his parent's wealth & his connections to the rich and powerful, something that can never be compared to means of production that are privately owned. No. Never.
Yeah, but isn't "workers of the world unite" the whole point of being a Marxist? Decrying "independent" trade unions as foreign influence and prohibiting outright seems pretty disingenuous.
Because if you're arbitrarily dividing labor among national borders and don't recognize that it's really an international class struggle, that's bad for solidarity. Divide and conquer for the bourgeoisie since capital knows no borders.
China certainly doesn't have any qualms about "foreign influence" from foreign corporations... but foreign labor organizations on the other hand? :thonk:
But maybe if the state trade union starts kicking ass, I'd feel differently. End goal is abolition of class, after all and labor unions are just a key tool of that goal.
China certainly doesn’t have any qualms about “foreign influence” from foreign corporations…
R u off ur head?
Foreign corporations have previously had to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies to even enter in. It leverages the ACFTU to unionise within those foreign corporations to retain control. There are laws that require party cells within corporations of a certain size.
commodities & most forms of production are carried out within nation states
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/trade-union-fast-food-giants-violate-labor-law-china/
but it's the corporations, foreign & domestic, who are undermining the state of labor relations in China, and not necessarily the CPC
This brings up an interesting question: Can none Chinese workers join the State Union? If so, would they support worker action in other countries?
Almost certainly not at this juncture.
China ceased exporting socialism years ago. Maybe we’ll see it revive those roots later on, but right now its position internationally is peaceful co-development. The one saving grace is that it’s happy to assist countries otherwise frozen out by the USA.
. Any polity that collapses without a single person on top of it is not a well-structured polity.
Fucking tattoo this on the skin of the people that whine that the USSR was boned the second Stalin died
JASIC
Yeah, that one was a uni Marxist study group salting a factory and trying to form an independent union instead of joining the ACFTU. The ultimate goal was to create a new party and overthrow the CPC.
It’s leftist infighting, with western media fawning over the underdog.
"in part because of the political leanings of some union leaders. In fact, on the very day of the 4 August 1983 revolution, the CNR was repudiated by a congress of the main primary school teachers’ union, which had backed a previous military regime. In March 1984 security forces arrested several of the union’s leaders, prompting a three-day strike that was observed by many teachers around the country."
Sounds more like these fancy lad union bosses were getting kickbacks & special treatment from the previous Junta regime
I think in this case it was more about these trade unionists being unnecessarily resistant to the real social & institutional changes that were required for Burkinabe to lift themselves up
When meritocracy is threatened, it's usually the pampered & out-of-touch eggheads & powerful hierarchical social arrangements of the past that react in these ways
These positions illustrate the ways in which Marxist language and Marxist propositions, intermixed with ideas drawn from mainstream Western neoclassical economic theory, are used today in China to support the completion of China's shift to private property and a market economy
:shocked-pikachu:
These quote's are fucking insane
When an [state owned enterprise] is turned into a joint-stock corporation with many shareholders, it represents socialization of ownership as Marx and Engels described it, since ownership goes from a single owner to a large number of owners
Please someone, anyone, defend that bullshit.
Holy fuck how does anyone delude themselves into believing that China is anything but pure capitalist.
People fool themselves into thinking that all capitalism is late stage and that governments can't be at least somewhat functional while being capitalist. China isn't a completely failing late stage hellhole like America, but it will get there on this path.
Besides current labor and past labor [the latter the Marxist term for the labor required to produce the means of production], there is a third type of labor, namely "risk labor." Marxist theory should take account of this third type of labor, which is expended by those who take risks through entrepreneurship.
Le epic Marxism :this-is-fine:
Funny side note: the authors last name is the German word for to puke, which is kinda fitting.
Hasn't a lot changed in the 13 years since this was published? I would think the 2008 collapse and COVID-19 would at the very least support wider approval of SOEs and central planning.
I don't know.
I've been going through https://www.bannedthought.net/China/Individuals/XiJinping/XiJinping-TheGovernanceOfChina.pdf
Some good some bad.
I don't believe the goal is socialism.
edit: not among everyone, but the people saying the stuff from the article (which is old and apparently the party has shifted left since)
and really it isn't, communism is. Maybe it legitimately is just a sacrifice. Just seems like capitalism is making inroads.
democratizing the workplace seems like a no-brainer for any socialist project.
Of course it is, workers controlling the means of production is the definition of socialism. The PRC is not a socialist project. Really is that simple.
Why do people say China is socialist? Some of them are idealists, for whom socialism is not defined by material conditions, but instead by the intentions they ascribe to leadership (Xi is going to make communism happen by 2080, trust me bro, they said so on CGTV). Others are anti-imperialists more than socialists--folks who believe that China's opposition to American imperialism is sufficient to make it a socialist state ("socialism is when surplus value is extracted by states that oppose the U.S., and the more surplus value extracted, the more socialist it is").
All this sound and fury is not very meaningful. Socialism is when workers control the means of production. Obviously Chinese workers do exert some local control over some areas of production, but they certain don't have as much control as, say, unionized and militant French railway workers. We certainly don't consider France socialist, and we shouldn't be saying China is either. It's pretty simple, but a lot of people need there to be a "good guy" in geopolitics, so they end up getting really into a state that doesn't even have basic union rights (i.e., the thing socialists have fought and died for since the begining of socialism).
“socialism is when surplus value is extracted by states that oppose the U.S., and the more surplus value extracted, the more socialist it is”).
Chinas anti-imperialism is enough to support it on its own and whilst I think China is currently revisionist (and revisionism is still better than pulling down the flag, disbanding the communist party as we've seen in Russia and Ex soviet states who have turned to war against each other in Georgia/Ukrain/Azerbaijan and Armenia) I don't think you understand the role of Surplus value.
If you think we can skip straight to the worker enjoying their full surplus value we have already achieved communism. Why not then join the anarchists and demand the abolition of the State and hierarchy overnight?
Previous socialist states have gotten rid of capital (and capitalism) by centralising and nationalising the means of production (so no market), enshrining the right to work in the constitution and allocating workers/raw materials/investment via a central plan. Capital is not created because "the means of production and subsistence" are not meeting "in a market with the free labourer selling their labour power". [1][2][3] If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production, and if consequently neither these means nor labor power function as commodities, then no survivals of “bourgeois right,” nor any amount of other inequities and injustices, can allow of such a society being properly termed capitalist.
Inversely, if the direct producers have been separated from the means of production, and consequently both labor power and means of production are exchanged as commodities, then no amount of social welfare benefits, no nationalizations, no statutory curbs on excess profiteering, no ameliorative measures whatever can conceal or modify the capitalist character of such a society.
In this society capital (and therefore capitalists and capitalism) no longer exists according to Marx and Lenin [1][2][3] and this is what Soviet Union and China created under Mao.
Value exists in commodity-producing societies but the existence of commodities and money does not presuppose capitalism.[1][2] Socialism seeks to abolish it and continually reduces its existence, or, it continually diminishes the sphere in which the law of value is valid. Communism is at the end of this process. It is a society in which value does not exist.
It would be at this stage of historical development that workers would receive the full value of their labour. The reason the Soviets then China industrialised as quickly as they did is because they did not need to allocate capital to capitalists who inefficiently used capital in investment and required profit. Surplus value returned either to the workers as increased wages or investment back into production (explaining both how wages and production just expanded like a balloon under Soviet then Chinese socialism)
And unlike capitalism where the worker has no say on what happens to their surplus value under socialism, the worker has very much of a say in what is done with surplus value. Cuba, for instance, is a very democratic state, so why do you think the workers necessarily have no control over the surplus value they produce under socialism?
And during the era of imperialism under socialism you would still be having a state allocate surplus value to such things as a military and counter intelligence units
[1].>“The historic conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It [capitalism] can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor power.”
Marx - (Capital, Vol. I, International ed., p. 170.)
[2.]>“In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances that center in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sums of values they possess, by buying other people’s labor power; on the other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor power and therefore the sellers of labor… With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale.”
Marx (Capital, p. 714.)
[3].> the separation of the direct producer from the means of production, i.e., his expropriation, [signified] the transition from simple commodity production to capitalist production (and [constituted] the necessary condition for this transition)… The home market… spreads with the extension of commodity production from products to labor power, and only in proportion as the latter is transformed into a commodity does capitalism embrace the entire production of the country, developing mainly on account of means of production…"
Lenin - (Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 68-69.)
Edit: also China is indisputably the good guy in geopolitics. In fact I don't know how leftists can say China isn't. China is un-interventionist in a way europeans and Americans could never imagine to be. Yanis Vaoufakis has a good segment on this when an American brings up "chinese imperialism" lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03l3Ra4bL_A
Why not then join the anarchists and demand the abolition of the State and hierarchy overnight?
I mean, I definitely agree more with anarchists than I do with you, Joey. I found your weird anti-BLM rants to reveal (at best) serious ignorance of American race relations or (at worst) just straight-up racism, I think your argument that "independent trade unions cannot be tolerated" is essentially reactionary, I think your takes on "labor aristocracy" are nihilist, demobilizing third-worldist claptrap, and I don't share your unwavering loyalty to Chinese capitalism. More to the point, I have read my Lenin, and come to the conclusion that he was wrong about a lot, as aptly pointed out by contemporary critics like (my fav) Rosa Luxemburg and others like Alexandra Kollontai, Emma Goldman, and even (though he was also wrong about a lot) Trotsky. If Lenin himself could not convince me that state capitalism is a justifiable part of a socialist project, JoeySteel of chapo.chat doesn't stand a chance, sorry bro.
Feels to me like comrade Fear_and_loading pegged you right when they said that a lot of Chapo China stans are contrarians who are acting out to dramatically distance themselves from prevailing liberal norms in their community and engaging in reddit-atheist-style second opinion bias. I'm toward the older end of users here per the surveys we did on the subreddit, and a red diaper baby of red diaper babies. Being a leftist was never a cool, edgy position in my milieu. I come at these issues from a real-world activist angle, where denouncing BLM as "social fascists", or declaring all unions to be "intolerable" (as you have done) is aggressively counterproductive. I encourage you to get out there and engage with the proletariat in the real world--I think this would improve both your politics, and the wall-of-text way in which you present them online.
You can write a wall of text insulting me as you wish it doesn't change the nature of Surplus-value under Socialism. Would you rather have kept your full Surplus value of your labour in Russia in 1927 at the beginning of the five year plan and be sat with effectively the same "full value" of your labour essentially priced at 1927 wages in 1932? Or receive an exponential growth in your wage every year?
First came surplus value from agricultural export, some of which was used to finance the national electrification plan and naturally to provide all citizens with livable wages, and the rest going to purchasing technology licenses and imports, which were then employed to build industrial enterprises, which drew people to the cities, creating surplus value that was then employed to develop urban infrastructure and mechanized agriculture/machine tractor stations, etc, and so forth. As the costs of reinvestment reduced, worker's standard of living rose as surplus value was reallocated more to the workers.
Because I gotta tell you.....I'd rather be sat in a electrified house in an industrial city with wage growth which was almost exponential in 1932 rather than receive the full value of my labour in 1927
Not to mention the first 5 year plan was essential in defeating the nazis but I digress ( Stone, David R. (2006). "The First Five-Year Plan and the Geography of Soviet Defence Industry". Europe-Asia Studies. 57 )
I think your argument that “independent trade unions cannot be tolerated” is essentially reactionary
Why did Thomas Sankara do exactly the same in Burkino Faso then? Was he a reactionary also? Listen maybe if US-EU is hit by a meteor we can get our crabs out and no one has to do violent revolution anymore or have a level of authority needed to retain the revolution and everyone and their grandad can start a trade union in "fully automated luxury communism" without fear of CIA infiltration like exactly what happened to Solidarinosc which literally overthrow socialism in poland
your unwavering loyalty to Chinese capitalism
In the coming decade the only thing between nations being absolutely destroyed ala Iraq/Afghanistan/Iraq again/Venezuela/Honduras/Ukraine/Syria/Libya/Yemen is going to be Russia and China. They're forced by geopolitical necessity into anti-Imperialist positions. I'm happy for you that this doesn't concern you and your politics can stay pure as snow. I may consider moving my politics to "Push the Communism button and full surplus value now" button
I think your takes on “labor aristocracy” are nihilist, demobilizing third-worldist claptrap
To be honest I think boht Engels who first articulated the labour aristocracy (with the "English are creating a bourgeois state with a bourgeois class and a bourgeois proletariat") and then Lenin with the betrayal of Socialist parties to national chauvinism at World war 1 would be shocked at how deep the labour aristocracy could become. There's a scientific reason for why there is no communist movement in US capable of threatening capitalism but so many shades of opportunism. (and I might be wrong! I'm willing to hear reasons why the US effectively has zero opposition to imperialism and majority support in polls for its imperialist wars of aggression)
If communists came to power in US and say "we're ending imperialism" no more fruit picked by Mexican slave labour, no more chocloate farmed by children in the Ivory Coast, no more prawns fished by burmese slaves, clothes sewn by children in haiti/Bangladesh, fruit picked for pennies in S.America, or coffee from Africa etc.
Instead you're going to earn $200 doing hard labour instead of your cushy office job where you move money from one corp to another. i think most Americans would spit in your face then lynch you. It's why they're so fervently anti communist. The average Amercian knows this. Obviously this can change as US proletarianises its labour aristocracy and there can be solidarity between the blacks who are seeking to enter the labour aristocracy whilst whites are being pushed out of it. But the post you refer to I was giving a class character of BLM as it stands. I wasn't saying this is etched in stone for eternity
I'm sorry that you feel insulted, I don't mean to hurt your feelings. I think I've been pretty clear, though--we just don't agree. There are irreconcilable differences in our views of the world, both ideologically and as it concerns the facts. That's not a problem as far as I'm concerned. I don't expect you or anyone else on the internet to agree with me.
the nature of Surplus-value under Socialism
You think the Five Year plan was the best way for the USSR to industrialize. I think the undemocratic and incompetent leadership of Stalinist bureaucrats slowed industrialization and made what should have been an easy victory over Germany a long slog. You cite David R. Stone, I've cited John Erickson. (I also have a deep skepticism of all military historians for reasons I've described here.)
Why did Thomas Sankara do exactly the same in Burkino Faso then?
This was a big mistake on Sankara's part that weakened the labor movement and came back to bite him in the ass when capital struck back. Don't understand why you think Thomas Sankara, a guy who was in charge for less than five years, was incapable of mistakes.
In the coming decade the only thing between nations being absolutely destroyed ala Iraq/Afghanistan/Iraq again/Venezuela/Honduras/Ukraine/Syria/Libya/Yemen is going to be Russia and China. They’re forced by geopolitical necessity into anti-Imperialist positions.
At the root of this is the bizarre idea there can only be one empire in the world, likely the result of consuming post-Cold War American pop culture which flattens the Cold War into a simplistic Manichean conflict. People writing during the Cold War well understood that the idea of two superpowers was essentially propaganda that ignored the many regional powers that existed throughout the period--US-USSR combined GDP as a percent of world GDP only briefly hit 40% in 1950, and went down precipitously from there. In my view, Russia is currently a minor imperialist power, China is working on it, and capitalist multipolarity will simply mean a bunch of smaller empires.
US effectively has zero opposition to imperialism and majority support in polls for its imperialist wars of aggression
A take that reveals deep ignorance of U.S. history. The current wars in the middle east have polled under water for at least 15 years. The Vietnam war spawned a massive anti-war movement. The U.S. joined both world wars years after every other capitalist empire, against the will of warmongering executives, because of popular anti-interventionism. The geographic security of the U.S. has always made it harder for capital to convince the U.S. public to spill American blood, though they usually overcome opposition at least for a time.
i think most Americans would spit in your face then lynch you.
[Citation needed] A strange fantasy, where do you come up with this BS? You clearly have no exposure to the American left or its long and storied history. A socialist economy won't involve anyone earning $200 (a day? a week? a month?) to do hard labor, and if you look around at our current world economy and think that's impossible, you really don't understand how inefficient and wasteful capitalism is.
BLM as it stands. I wasn’t saying this is etched in stone for eternity
We all saw the posts man, I think they speak for themselves.
You think the Five Year plan was the best way for the USSR to industrialize.
This is so bizarre... Most trotsyists admit to the resounding success of the first 5 year plan and point to it being the reason the USSR was able to win world war 2?
Here's Isaac Deutscher, beloved and doting admirer of Trotsky who wrote a trilogy worshipping Trotsky:
The truth was the war could not have been won without the intensive industrialisation of Russia, and of her eastern provinces in particular. Nor could it have been won without the collectivisation of large numbers of farms. The muzhik of 1930, who had never handled a tractor or any other machine would have been of little use in modern war. Collectivised farming, with its machine-tractor statiosn scattered all over the country, had been the peasants 'preparatory school' for mechanised warfare. The rapid raising of the average standard of education had also enabled the Red Army to draw on its considerable reserve of intelligent officers and men. "We are fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in 10 years. Either we do it, or they crush us." - So Stalin had spoken exactly ten years before Hitler set out to conquer Russia. His words, when they were recalled now, could not but impress people as a prophecy brilliantly fulfilled, as a most timely call to action. And indeed, a few years delay in the modernisation of Russia might have made all the difference between victory and defeat .
- Isac Deutscher, Stalin biography
made what should have been an easy victory over Germany a long slog.
Good god why do you think that?
I’ve cited John Erickson
That explains it. Soviet histiography in the 1980s is worst than useless. Since the Soviet archives as well as German histiography have been opened historians have a much more rounded picture of World war 2 and low and behold it's nothing close to what the Nazis officers or Soviet military officers suddenly discovering themselves as geniuses after the wars end in their memoirs and them being hampered by an overzealous Hitler/Stalin sabotaging their work
What does World war 2 and soviet history look like in the last 15 years (let alone the 1980s)?
Stephen Kotkin - The German histiography of the last 15 years has now confirmed the following: The "failed Soviet Counter offensives" were in someway successful. The things Stalin is blamed for at the beginning of the war and then he learned... The counter offensives that looked like suicide missions that ended in catastrophe time after time. The German documents now available now shows that this lunatic counter offensives massively degraded the German Werhmacht army fighting capabilities. All the lost battles and encirclements and this lunatic counter-offensive stuff massively degraded the Werhmacht German fighting capabilities and so all of these lost battles and all of these you must be kidding counter-offensives were critical in slowing the German advance but especially degrading its offensive capability even more quickly. Whenever an army moves it loses a great deal of its offensive capability in winning - it doesn't have the same offensive capability it had at the start - but the Soviets degraded the Germans even more than we understood previously. So what Stalin is blamed for in much of the literature which then gives him credit for learning now on the German side he's actually being given a kind of grudging credit for the way they fought the war. The consequences for the German army of the failed counter offenses by the Soviet Union were very far-reaching in fact much of the Werhmacht as I said earlier was destroyed in the Soviet Union during the first year of fighting
https://youtu.be/1NV-hq2akCQ?t=1725
SK: the lunacy of Stalin's early war command which was shared by his upper officer corps might actually have been crucial for blunting the germans and ultimately for the soviet victory overall https://youtu.be/1NV-hq2akCQ?t=1861
SK - Stalin was correct in not moving troops to the front even though his 2 top commanders Zhukov and Timoshenko urged him to do so. That's because they were idiots that didn't understand blitzkreig. -https://youtu.be/1NV-hq2akCQ?t=744
You should pick up Kotkin. He retains the anticommunism and the anti-stalinism but history looks a lot more like what the Soviets said it did during and just after the war (before Soviet military officers began to discover themselves as geniuses in their memoirs after Stalins death)
At the root of this is the bizarre idea there can only be one empire in the world
The fact I mentioned 2 countries playing a progressive anti-imperialist role is bizarre for you to respond with this. China plays a progressive role in providing loans to 3rd world countries that eats into imperialisms ability to actually debt trap countries. This is fact. "Both sides'ing" China against US or EU imperialism is some real "neither Moscow nor Washington" hours.
Russia is currently a minor imperialist power
It is but that doesn't change the progressive nature of Russian capitalism in the current era when it comes to anti-imperialism. Russia has literally gone to war to defend Syria, the Donetsk Peoples Republic and the Luhansk Peoples Republic from the fascists planted into power in Kiev and the social-fascists in the EU - putting them in the direct cross hairs of Imperialisms scope
The current wars in the middle east have polled under water for at least 15 years.
Long after the wars are all launched and they have become background noise to the US public. They all supported them by overwhelming majorities at the start
We all saw the posts man, I think they speak for themselves.
And I 100% stand by everything I wrote in the full context of my post (not the hackneyed creative cropping of my post that some trot uploaded).
I might be wrong - I doubt it though and tbh I dont particularly care it doesn't concern me. I'm not American. I don't have to organise amongst this. And even though I consider the BLM movement be liberal in character I fully support them burning down US cities and looting places which are both good and cool. Here's hoping the content becomes more Marxist and they can start presenting the UN with documents like We Charge Genocide again and demanding territory to secede from the US
https://www.bannedthought.net/China/Individuals/XiJinping/XiJinping-TheGovernanceOfChina.pdf
The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee changed the market’s role in allocating resources from “basic” to “decisive.” Although only one word was altered, the market’s role was redefined. “Decisive role” is a continuation and extension of “basic role.”
I guess the precious free market doesn't like unions.
We should remain committed to the reform to establish and improve the socialist market economy and bring the reform to a deeper and wider level. We should reduce the government’s direct involvement in resource allocation and its direct interference in micro-economic activities. We should step up efforts to develop a uniform market system characterized by openness and orderly competition, and set fair, open and transparent market rules. The government should refrain from getting involved in the economic activities that the market can regulate effectively, and let the market do what the government is not supposed to do, so that the market can play its role of maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of resource allocation, and enterprises and individuals can have more room to develop the economy and create wealth with vigor and vitality.
We have to get the government out of the market so that it can self-regulate and bring prosperity!
edit: Other people have pointed out that they didn't allow unions before in favor of government sanctioned representation, but the government is willing to bend to capital (bend if not break). So how can you allow that without allowing some sort of worker representation? That's at best a really dangerous idea for any country that honestly wants to progress towards socialism, IMO.
Oh shit oh fuck oh shit he said it he really said it he said the thing we're not supposed to say!
China already embraced capitalism and the further it liberalizes the more that the singular state labour union will serve as a means for corrupt government officials to extract wealth from workers while separating them from the means of production and reward their efficient free-market-cronies. See also: Ba'athist Syria
Xi uses the mantra of "fighting corruption" in the same way that Modi does, to garner public support while eliminating political opponents. Not to say that Xi doesn't remove plenty of corrupt officials, but there's plenty of corruption he accepts among his allies. I don't criticize the PRC out of disdain, I criticize it because as an anti-imperialist force it has so much potential if it would stop liberalizing its economy and giving in to global capitalism.
Xi uses the mantra of “fighting corruption” in the same way that Modi does, to garner public support while eliminating political opponents.
The better of the Washington Thinktanks disagree with you.
If you actually look into it, Xi’s anti-corruption campaign is creating governance structures for rooting out corruption, and it has demonstrable effect.
Those particularly close to Xi seem to be somewhat isolated, but it’s far from just a populist excuse to purge rivals. It’s institutional change, to counteract the very kinds of problems you’ve highlighted.
I don’t criticize the PRC out of disdain, I criticize it because as an anti-imperialist force it has so much potential if it would stop liberalizing its economy and giving in to global capitalism.
oh china/the CCP is absolutely still our best hope by far. Just the revisionists are too powerful in my ill informed shitposter opinion.
Come on, quote the rest of it, coward. Pages 95-99 for those of you who want to follow along.
Our market economy is socialist, of course. We need to give leverage to the superiority of our socialist system, and let the Party and government perform their positive functions. The market plays a decisive role in allocating resources, but is not the sole actor in this regard.
To develop the socialist market economy, leverage should be given to both the market and the government, with differentiated functions. The Decision put forth clear requirements for improving the functions of the government, emphasizing that scientific macro control and effective governance are the intrinsic requirements for giving more leverage to the advantages of the socialist market economy. The Decision also makes plans for improving macro control, correctly performing government functions in all areas, and improving the organization of government. It stresses that the main responsibility and role of the government is to maintain the stability of the macro economy, strengthen and improve public services, ensure fair competition, strengthen market oversight, maintain market order, promote sustainable development and common prosperity, and intervene in situations where market failure occurs.
Second, adhering to and improving the basic economic system. The basic economic system with public ownership playing a leading role and all forms of ownership growing side by side is an important pillar of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.
Since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978 the structure of ownership has undergone gradual adjustment, with the weights of the public and non-public sectors changing in their contribution to the economy and employment. The economy and society have grown more vigorous during this process. In such conditions, how to better recognize the leading role of public ownership and stick to this position and how to further explore the effective forms for materializing the basic economic system have become major topics for us.
It is emphasized in the Decision that we must unswervingly consolidate and develop the public economy, persist in the leading role of public ownership, give full play to the leading role of the state-owned economy, and incessantly increase its vitality, leveraging power and impact.
It then goes on to discuss the role of public ownership, and how it is to deal with the conflicts that occur between public ownership and public regulation. (Eg you have a state factory that wants to pollute a river. How do you ensure the state regulator doesn’t just shrug and let it?)
Actually it was 134 and on, but call me a coward for reading a totally different part.
Is their one big union supposed to take the place of an org like IWW but for all workers?
The union that you're referring to is the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). As far as I know, it does not have a good track record with siding with workers (see the Jasic and Yue Yuen strikes, for example).
This isn't a bad faith question, but more searching Jasic on this forum and seeing some other posts about it. Is it true that the Jasic strikes were done with a possible outcome of creating an organ that could potentially challenge CPC?
I haven't heard about that (maybe I'm not as well-read as the others), I do know that the workers there wanted to establish an independent union. But also I just want to add something else (not really directed at you) and it's that when there are protests at China (and there are many), the absolute, vast majority of them aren't anti-government. Even with wage issues, issues with landlords etc., most people are still supportive of the government. The only time I can think of where there is anti-government sentiment is when corruption in the CPC was at its peak.
The JASIC strikes were, as @ComradeSankara alludes to, an attempt by some students to salt a factory to create an independent union, as a jumping off point for their party.
Ironically, the JASIC strikes prove why the approach is a reasonable one.
China has the largest trade union in the world, the ACFTU.
Now, there are some tensions, given it’s a tool of the party. It’s part of the Party’s control over industry, and has a stabilising role for labour disputes. It means it isn’t as strong of an advocate for individual workers as it could be, but it also serves other functions.
This paper seems to have some fair analysis.
Now, if we’re doing comparisons we need to consider what the role of unions in the west has been: to keep wage growth in line with productivity growth. That’s the big victory the militant unions had in the Keynesian era.
I’ve only been able to find this graph going to 2012, but we can see the two have stayed relatively close, albeit with some divergence recently. That suggests that the combo of the CPC and ACFTU is achieving similar to what the unions of the 20th century did, at least on a macro level.
They don't ban unions?
Also, what is this discord I keep hearing about?
Also, what is this discord I keep hearing about?
Just before r/CTH was banned from r*ddit, there were (correct) rumors that reddit was about to ban the subreddit, so the admins made a discord as an arc in case it would happen. That's where the initial population of this site came from.
Also, what is this discord I keep hearing about?
Chat app for gamers, which by inference means it's the source of 97% of racial slurs on the internet.
Invite me please. I'm trying to work from home and need comrades to talk to occasionally.
Cool thread. Read a bunch of comments and felt like I learned very little, other than hearing about Solidarity in Poland for the first time. Still have no idea what to think. China threads make my incredibly tiny and weak brain hurt real bad.
Because organising threatens stability; it's the same reason why they censor stuff like terrorist attacks for the Han population. There are enough examples in Chinese history where organising can get out of hand and the CPC is extremely keen to stop that from happening. In the COVID-19 response, there was popular mobilisation and people were alarmed to see community volunteers wearing red armbands like those worn by the Red Guards.
lol, Jesus what a broken dystopian nightmare society you just described.
People in social media were complaining that some of the actions of community volunteers were going too far. I had a video example from Weibo of one such volunteer harassing another dude just for wearing shorts. Unfortunately, I just checked and it seems that the account associated with it has gone private.
Very well could've been chengguan or people LARPing as chengguan. They're known assholes in every city.
So in other words, there's no actual institutional opposition to these community organizations.
or they organized some community organizations to help deal with the epidemic and someone went too far.
Adrian, it's time to log off. Your work is done, we don't need your services anymore. Come join us at the dinner table, I made your favorite pâté!
why doesn't the prc allow the cia to organize terrorist cells in its borders?
til not wanting to work 14 hour shifts with no overtime is terrorism
