The China debate
FROM THE (almost shockingly) frank and concise
title, China’s capitalist counter-revolution, through to the in-depth
analysis, the article in the China Debate series in issue No.114 of
Socialism Today was a great example of using Marxist methods to get
to the very core of a country’s development and the attitude of
socialists towards it.
I was reading Trotsky’s book, In Defence of Marxism,
when the magazine came out and it was instantly apparent to me that the
article picked up the historical baton of scientific socialism and class
perspectives.
In the late 1930s and regarding an almost opposite
situation, Trotsky was defending his analysis of the USSR as a deformed
worker’s state. With the expulsion of landlordism and capitalism and a
planned economy, the gains of the October Revolution were gains that
socialists should defend unconditionally against imperialism in the
coming war (WWII) despite the monstrous bureaucracy. It is not
incidental that using Marxism, Trotsky was able to predict WWII because
of the failure of the working class to defeat capitalism, and the growth
of fascism.
It was this fundamental class analysis that meant
that he was able to approach complicated developments, such as the
USSR’s invasion of Finland and Poland, with clarity and was able to
argue against those with a middle-class outlook who called such actions
‘imperialist’ and used them to deny unconditional defence.
Using the correct terminology is vital, as clear
descriptions help towards clear attitudes and policies. Just as when the
bureaucratically deformed USSR (in the 1930s when it was a relative
brake on society) invades a country doesn’t make it imperialist in the
true sense, neither does a country with a one-party state ruled by a
‘Communist Party’ mean that the country itself is communist.
The Chinese Communist Party’s abandonment of the
planned economy has aided worldwide capitalism for the past period and
has plunged millions of people into poverty and exploitation. The new
capitalist class of China have good reason to rely on the CCP to keep
order, as the growth of a huge, concentrated working class with no
right-wing labour bureaucracy or reformist traditions reminds me of the
situation in Russia before 1917, but on a much larger scale.
With the current and future worldwide economic
convulsions, China’s influence will still be felt around the world, but
this time around it won’t benefit capitalism.
Richard Wheeldon
Nottingham
|