> From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Is there a shadow of socialism or social democracy left in China?
Ian answered: > One party rule and the penal code....... Of course, it depends what one means by the word "socialism." When referring to a socio-economic system (mode of production), there are two main meanings here (which could be elaborated more, but I won't, given time constraints): 1) state ownership of the means of production. (This is a general meaning.) 2) state ownership of the means of production combined with popular and democratic ownership of the state by the working classes. (This is the traditional Western European meaning in the leftist movements.) The first, more general definition, includes the second as a special case. It also includes state or bureaucratic socialism. The first fits with Ian's usage above. The "socialism" of the People's Republic of China was based on a non-capitalist system of property, in which the means of production were owned by the state. The state was then controlled -- and effectively "owned" -- by the group that had a political monopoly, the Communist Party of China. The penal system (though horrible), however, is more a product of China's underdevelopment at the time than it was a matter of its state socialism: after all, most poor capitalist countries have similar systems, if not worse. The penal system also fits well with China's new capitalist face. The CPC's political monopoly (and the penal system) are the basis for many of the leftist critiques of the old "socialist" China both in the "West" and in China itself. However, if you see that system not as part of the Western European socialist tradition as much as part of a nationalist effort to promote independent economic development, it fits with economic historian Alexander Gershenkron's observation that the more "backward" a country is when starting its industrialization drive the more statist is likely to be (at least if the drive is to be successful). That is, from a Chinese nationalist perspective, the old Chinese "socialism" wasn't that bad (even though it fails the democratic and libertarian standards of the Western European socialist tradition). It should be mentioned also that the PRC's industrialization drive was (as far as I can tell, being a non-expert who can't read Chinese) more egalitarian than most poor-country efforts. This seems a result of the fact that the peasantry was so important to the process of putting the CPC into power. The urban working class resistance that Marty refers to may have also played a role. Mike Ballard wrote: > Neither wage-labour nor state ownership will ever lead > to anything but capitalism. I think that this is simplistic. State ownership of the means of production seems necessary to the rise of socialism and the eventual abolition of classes. But it isn't sufficient. In the USSR, there was state ownership, but the CPSU eventually decided to try to "modernize," to turn many of its members into capitalists. But that isn't inevitable. Working class resistance could have prevented the re-establishment of capitalism (the conversion of bureaucratic socialism into capitalism) under Gorbachev and Yeltsin and could have pushed the system in the direction of socialism (definition #2). BTW, David Kotz has argued that Russia isn't currently capitalism. I think it's more accurate to say that it's not a capitalism that works well as a system. It's got wage labor, privatized ownership of the means of produciton, and other characteristics of capitalism, but is still quite f*cked up. Jim Devine
