S. Artesian (sartes...@earthlink.net) wrote on 2009-09-03 at 13:50:21 in about Re: [Marxism] China's high speed rail plans: > > > Anyway, in going off the track you duplicate the error of LW, confusing > "growth" with "development," "development" with "capitalist development," > the means of production with the conditions, relations of production, and > ultimately, use value with the production of exchange value. You are confusing all that. You talk a gobble-de-gook of rrrrrevolutionary rethoric, when real, material questions are thrown up.
> Talk about useless, abstractions, LW's "what would a real workers' and > farmers' govt. do" is about as useless as you can get. No, this is very concrete and very real. Would a worker's and farmers government build up the railway network, or would a Sartesian rrrrrevolutionary party in the central sovjet (we are in China, so the name must be red as red can be) vote for a programme of building 20'000 km of new railway lines, or would it vote against? And that is the same concrete issue if such a question is raised in the bourgeois parliament of a Third World country, like e.g. Argentina or Brazil. Or Taiwan or Korea. Would you -- as you do in the Chinese case -- agitate against building up the national infrastructure, or would you argue and vote for it? That is the question. Up to now, you have only thrown up rrrrevolutionary rethoric, and voted against the Chinese programme to build more railway lines, high-speed passenger lines, heavy-haul freight lines, mixed lines, etc. Sitting e.g. in the parliament of Argentina, one would be confronted with such questions: should the high-speed line from Buenos Aires to Rosario and Cordoba be built? Should Argentina import used locomotives and wagons from Spain? Should the country enhance the line from BA to Mar del Plata? I might have my opinions and maybe disagreements about priorities of various single projects, but I would vote for the every sensible step to build up the national infrastructure with both hands, and would even raise my feet if that helps. > First, why would a revolutionary struggle in China result > in a "real workers'" government it wouldn't. It would result in a workers and farmers government. In a political coalition of classes. > in what is already claimed to be a "workers and peasants state"? claims are your territory. > Such a government is purely an abstraction, as the struggle in China will > inevitably require the expropriation of property-- what's left of the state > owned property, and expropriation of the growing private sector. Well, if anything like that is to happen, it has to be done by a political power, and that is the power of our class (OK, the working class, which is maybe not yours) organised as state power. That is the first result of a revolution, or there is no revolution. Abstractions are your rrrrrevolutionary chats about "expropriation of property", about social relations etc etc. Everything nothing but emtpy talk, if you reject the political power of the working class which alone can bring it about. Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
