More thoughts on Socialism in China

The following is a comment I posted at the Marxist-Leninist website in August 2008

I’m glad to find this tread. I haven’t seen much discussion of the political economy of China from a Marxist perspective on the web. As far as I can tell most socialists and communists of every imaginable stripe see modern China as nothing but the supreme example of class betrayal, a bureaucratically deformed anti-proletarian, autocratic, authoritarian, one-party state capitalist monstrosity. No one seems to be able to put China into its proper context.

The fall of the Soviet Union was due to many factors, too numerous to discuss in this comment. The subsequent implosion of the eastern bloc was due to many of the same factors plus the whole question of nationalism, which became of overriding concern. China’s revolution was not imposed or imported from abroad. It was a completely indigenous development and it freed China from bondage to the West. China became a free agent and could finally determine its own destiny. Like a geopolitical Rip Van Winkle China awoke to the mid-twentieth century “Cold War” and had to respond to that reality. It had to take sides and given the political tenor of the times Mao put out his famous tract, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship”, that called for leaning to one side, the Soviet side, in the contention between the capitalist and socialist blocs. This set the tone for the first decade of the PRC, but the contradictions between the Soviet Union’s attempt to impose its geopolitical control on the socialist bloc and the needs of China to reassert its national interests sharpened, particularly after the de-Stalinization initiated by Khrushchev.

Why was de-Stalinization anathema to the PRC? Primarily because Mao understood that in order for China to amass capital through the process of primitive accumulation, the harsh marshal, collectivist practices of Stalin were necessary. Mao mobilized the revolutionary ardor of the Chinese masses to remake China as quickly as possible. It was of course at times an extremely wasteful, if not brutal but heroic period. It can also be argued that it was absolutely essential for the eventual triumph of the Chinese revolution and revival of the Chinese nation.

Primitive communist accumulation could not however go on forever as it had served its historic purpose. In little more than two decades the basic infrastructure for China’s resurgence had been laid. How else could China have had its remarkable economic growth rate over the last three decades if it had not been for the selfless efforts of its workers and peasants during the period of initial reconstruction? If China had followed the lead of Khrushchev and renounced Stalin, it would have meant a capitulation to the Soviets and made China’s development subservient to the demands of Soviet leadership. It would have spelled doom for the independent action of the CPC, its transformation into an appendage of the Soviet state and party apparatus and its eventual demise as occurred throughout the Eastern bloc of nations.

With the changing balance of power that resulted from the Sino-Soviet split and the consolidation of the Chinese Revolution by Mao the stage was set for a rapprochement with the US. Why did Mao endorse it? Mao must have known that this rapprochement would lay the essential groundwork for the next stage of the Chinese Revolution, the transition from primitive communist accumulation of capital to all around capital construction and modernization under the aegis of the socialist market economy, allowing for the socialized extraction of super profits from the working classes.

This is a necessary stage for the rapid, all around development of the productive forces and an essential condition for the eventual transition to true socialist relations of production based on advanced capitalist production capacity. For this transitional period to succeed, without the reversion to thoroughgoing revanchist capitalism as in Russia, the CPC needs to retain its leading role as the guarantor of the people’s democratic dictatorship, which is an alliance of all patriotic classes including workers, peasants, the petite bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.

China at present is going through a period of capitalist development under the leadership of the CPC, not capitalist restoration as in Russia. This is an entirely new phenomenon and has led to a remarkably sustained growth rate. It has also led to all the contradictions of capitalist development, including the extraction of super profits from the peasantry and working class, but under the direction and aegis of the CPC. This is not to be condemned but commended.

Why do I say this? Because under unfettered capitalism this process of capital accumulation and construction was accomplished by hundreds of years of colonialism, genocide, slavery, and imperialist war that resulted in the death of untold millions upon millions of people and the impoverishment of hundreds of millions more. China has accomplished this process of accumulation and construction by using both foreign and domestic capitalism to develop the means of production at an unprecedented rate without the horrors that accompanied that process in the West..

The task for the CPC is to manage this transitional process in such a manner that it will lead to the full blown socialization of the advanced capitalist productive forces as envisioned by Marx . This must be accompanied by the growth of an advanced and democratized civil society founded on but superceding the bourgeoisie democracy of the West, again as envisioned by Marx. This will be the next stage in the development of socialism in China for only with the thorough democratization of society can true socialism be achieved, allowing the party and state to become superfluous.

This is not to say that class struggle is not occurring in China today. It is actually extremely acute. The question is will the CPC retain control and lead the nation to socialism based on advanced forces and relations of production or will the forces of capitalism so unleashed run amuck and lead to revanchist capitalist restoration as in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe?