On Nov 18, 2014, at 9:09 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> With the disappearance of the "Iron Rice Bowl" China began to
> 'produce' an
> industrial reserve army. The absence of such an 'army' is not in
> itself
> evidence of a "socialist economy," but it _is_ evidence (the _best_
> evidence) of a non-capitalist society.
Carrol could not be more wrong. From the outset Maoist state
capitalism had a huge industrial reserve army--it was called the
peasantry. To force it into the filthy and polluting factories
collectivization ("peoples' communes") and intentional famine ("great
leap forward") were Mao's chosen techniques. For peasants to eat rice
from an iron bowl in a distant coal mine was at least an alternative
to starvation. That was China's "primitive accumulation of capital."
Today, now that capital accumulation has reached "Western" levels
(with all the concomitant ecological disaster), the industrial reserve
army is approaching exhaustion so that workers can, as in any other
modern capitalist country, exert their bargaining power to get modest
wage increases--until the capitalists find new slave-like labor
conditions in less advanced capitalist states (for the Chinese mainly
in Africa and SE Asia).
Shane Mage
"L'après-vie, c'est une auberge espagnole. L'on n'y trouve que ce
qu'on a apporté."
Bardo Thodol
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