[Marxism] China Drafts Law to Boost Unions and End Labor Abuse (NYT)

[Louis Proyect]

Walter Lippman wrote:
>Are the Chinese Communists "real" Communists?

This is a bogus question. The real question is whether China is 
capitalist or not. In order to answer a question like this, Walter 
would have to roll up his sleeves and read some serious Marxist 
literature rather than cherry pick through the WSJ, Prensa Latina and 
all his favorite venues. I myself strongly recommend Paul Burkett and 
Marty Hart-Landsberg's MR book on China that I reviewed here:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/SocialismChina.htm

>It is essential to keep in mind that most of us living in the United 
>States, in Canada,
>in the UK, and in other so-called "advanced capitalist countries" 
>live in a political and
>cultural environment so thoroughly steeped in anti-Communism that it 
>more or less
>pervades everything. We've been told for going on a century how bad Communists
>and Communism are that some of that inevitably seems to seep in and 
>to rub off.

What patronizing slop.

>While it is obvious to me that the Chinese have gone much, much 
>further than the Cubans have, there is no
>difference in principle between the two. That is why, after all, the 
>leaderships of the two countries feel and practice such an active 
>kinship with one another.

This formulation is a slap in the face to the Marxist method. When 
people like Joe Hansen tried to figure out what was going on in 
Eastern Europe after WWII, it took them 3 long years to evaluate the 
evidence and come to the conclusion that capitalism had been 
abolished through the agency of the Red Army. Walter comes to the 
conclusion that China is still a workers state (to use Trotskyist 
lingo) without bothering to conduct a scrupulous economic analysis. 
One has to wonder if he ever understood the Marxist method when he 
was in the Trotskyist movement or has decided to toss it overboard as 
just another sectarian obstacle.

>If China's leaders were really as capitalistic as most Trotskyists 
>argue that they are,
>why would they, leading the most populous country on Earth, with the 
>world's most
>rapidly-increasing economic growth figures, see anything in common 
>with a place
>like Cuba, where private business is carefully monitored and has 
>little influence on
>national policy?

How can we explain this to our Cuban flag-waving comrade? Walter, it 
is nonsensical to apply the adjective "capitalistic" to a government 
leader. The term capitalism is more useful and is applied to a 
*society*. Chinese society rests on the capitalist mode of 
production. If you need a refresher course on how that system 
operates, I can recommend "Wage Labor and Capital" by Karl Marx at:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm