Henry wrote:
> The importance of this development is that the youths of China have finally
> rediscover the right path, unlike the misguided students in Tiananmen
> Square in
> 1989.
This sounds like hyperbole to me. None of the Marxists I know in China in
their correspondences with me are seeing a major trend of students
rediscovering the right path. There *is* a segment of students who,
especially since the bombing* of the Chinese embassy last year are
questioning more and more the link that Chinese leaders make between
liberalization and making China stronger. So the importance of the
development might be that *some* students are less enamoured of US
capitalism than was the case in the past.
In 1989, the students, who were already a privileged elite enjoying the
> unequally distributed fruits of China's new experiment with market economy,
> were agitating for a still better deal for themselves and for the right to
> indulge in bourgeois liberalism, and US style "democracy and individual
> "freedom", much of the poison fed to them blind by US journalists.
However, left students from China are also quite cynical about how the
Party uses its monopoly on political power to keep activists on the left
from engaging in organizing activities that come naturally to leftists,
i.e. supporting laid off workers, helping workers understand the law in
factories that have been subjected to blatant corruption...This kind of
activity, is generally eschewed by left students/professors in China
because of the obvious risks involved. The NYT recently published an
article on a left cadre who was jailed for his involvement in organizing
laid off workers in Shenyang. That article was also posted to the China
Bulletin, which is the leading journal of the new left students in China
and overseas. One can be critical of the effects of a politica party's
monopoly of power without being bourgeois.
The
> Tiananmen protestors, in their ignorance of the West, mistook US prosperity as
> proof of the correctness of the capitalist/democratic system, not realizing
> that that very prosperity had been achieved through oppression both internally
> and globally. The New Left are students who have lived in the West for a
> decade and have first-hand knowledge of the reality of capitalism.
>
I would agree with that, although the reason why students in China often
don't believe that capitalism can be oppressive is closely tied to their
not believing much of what they read about socialist development in China.
> The New Left among Chinese youths is significant because it can play a timely
> role in the ideological and policy struggle within the CPC that is expected to
> come to a climax within the next two years. The CPC is committed to a
> jeunvenization program and is seeking a balance between the development of a
> modern economy without total surender to US globalization. The left has two
> favorable conditions at its disposal against overwhelming odds. The odds are
> that to fight globalized finance capitalism is easier said than done. The
> odds
> are made more high because many leftists reject serious studies of finance out
> of ideological distaste.
Well, many delight in focusing on purely economic formulas or 'laws' at
the expense of focusing on how power is organized. If the left in China
wants to exert influence on the CCP, it's going to have to develop a base,
which is going to require more than developing fine arguments or backroom
horse trading skills. This idea btw is not coming from my brain alone, it
is one that has been expressed to me by a number of Marxists I know in
China and who work at chinabulletin.com .
Steve
