Contributed to the 2011 conference of the IBT

Thoughts on China

 

“No regime withdraws from the stage of history until it has exhausted all its possibilities.”—Marx, re-quoted from ‘The History of Russian Revolution’

Has Chinese deformed workers’ state exhausted all its possibilities?

Almost, but not ALL yet.

The capitalist sectors in China has reached to the extent that it is about to swallow the fruit of social revolution after 1949, but it has NOT swallowed those yet. If we do not see China in diachronic way (do not see China as a regime from 1949 on the basis of Russian revolution), we would see it a kind of state driving capitalism (motivated to capitalism by imperialists through their proxies) as like quite many colonies. But we should historically examine society.

1.    The degenerated and deformed workers’ states have established in the states where the productive forces are very low.

2.    Those deformed workers’ states in the underdeveloped (even feudalist) countries have founded workers dictatorship after the abolishment of private property form. Since the productivities are very low, however, there have emerged new kinds of social conflict between the relationship of production and productive power: socialist productive relationship and pro-capitalist productive power.

3.    Therefore, these deformed workers states desperately need the permanent and supplement revolutions from the advanced countries to avoid to be perished as Bolsheviks had predicted.

4.    But those revolutions have not happened. So, in this conditions, it has been the crucial task to develop their low productivity to survive in the world economic chain.

5.    In the condition that the subsequent revolutions in the advanced countries have been delayed, the Stalinist bureaucracies which have the idea ‘socialism in one country’ have two options to increase the productivity. One is to collect the available labor forces and resources. The other is to attract advanced capitals to level up the productivity by open the market.

6.    The first have expressed as forms of Stakhanovism in Russia, Great Leap Forward in China and Chollima (a very swift horse) movement in North Korea.

7.    It might have increased some extent of the productivity by the first option. And of course the soviet economic network had propped up the economies of the deformed workers’ states. Especially, it might be more helpful to China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. But the productivity which is mainly based on the scientific technique is not easily overcome in short time. It is needed the revolutions in the advanced countries to prop up the economies of the deformed workers’ states.

8.    The latter is another option. When the degenerated or deformed workers’ states face with the economical difficulty, those would (I think ‘have to’) adopt the compromise economical measures. Such compromise policies have expressed in various forms: NEP, Bukharinite policy, Gorvachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika and Chinese etc.

9.    Chinese bureaucracy had adopted this line after the conflict with the Soviet network which would mean the deepening of the economical difficulties. And the other deformed workers countries, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba have moved and wanted the ‘market reform’ to survive after the collapse of the Soviet. (North Korean regime desperately wants it but the U.S. imperialism does not allow it for its own purpose. So the reason why North Korea kept more ‘socialist’ system than China is not on the choice of the NK bureaucracy.)

10.  As we, even Lenin in the period of NEP and maybe the Stalinist bureaucracies know and are worried of, this course is very dangerous. It has spontaneously promoted and increased the capitalist relationships in almost all parts of the society.

11.  In China, after more than 30 years reforms, there has increased (been sharpened) the contradiction between non-bourgeois’ political form and increasing capitalist economy (‘contradiction between form and matter’), capitalist property form and socialist’ one and capitalist allied with imperialists and working class which have to ally with internationalist. Those contradictions have reached to the extent that one factor can’t concede anymore to the other.

12.  The Bureaucracy could adopt the ‘market reform’ to the extent that they can be the top of the system. But that’s the limit. The bureaucracy cannot suffocate their neck up to death by their own HANDS. They cannot disarm them by themselves. The job to suffocate up to death, abolish and disarm the bureaucracy should only be from the outside of the bureaucracy (not CCP itself), even though it might be former CCP members and whether it is working class or capitalist.

13.  The showdown might be erupted from the point of the contradiction between non-bourgeois’ political form and increasing capitalist economy (form and matter). Even bourgeoisie before the bourgeois revolution, which had already occupied lots of important social positions, finally needed the political power as a whole to exert fully their social power and complete the bourgeois property form and totally change the society.

14.  In conclusion, Chinese workers state regime has not “exhausted all its possibilities” yet. The withdrawal of Chinese deformed workers’ state from the stage of the history has not happened yet, although it might come soon.

17th April 2011