[Marxism] China, not so rich after all?

[Haines Brown]

What sounds at first like a reasonable criticism becomes problematic
on closer inspection.

> 2007/12/24, Paula <Paula_cerni at msn.com>:
> >
> > Bitter and bloody lessons of twentieth-century history: * When
> > 'Marxism' substitutes wishful thinking for sober analysis, it
> > becomes an ideology of fools.

Well said. But the disease of wishful thinking is more widespread than
just some Marxist circles, and may actually be less typical of the
representatives of working-class than of bourgeois ideology. So it is
important to specify just why this comment is true.

Working-class ideology looks at the real limits and potentials that
exist in a present situation; they are scientific realists. Policy is
based on these real limits and potentials rather than in response to
some ideal such as an imagined future. When Marxists forget this, they
are indeed being foolish. 

> > * When it backs undemocratic regimes, it becomes a weapon of
> > * oppressors.

Again, on the surface a sensible rule of thumb. But wait! What we have
here is an example of acting upon some abstract principle, and I
thought we agreed above that that was something to avoid.

What is there to counter the isolationist argument that if some other
country is inclined to be autocratic, monarchic, dictatorial, feudal,
etc. rather than democratic, that is their problem. No one has the
right to intervene, such as by lending support to a state, unless
these other countries are part of a higher unity such as provided by
the U.N.

But the U.N. is a universal institution representing states, not
peoples, and the OP had implied he was speaking of the working class,
not a state. So what social universal is there? Well, only one. The
only universal unity is the modern working class. It is a universal
class because the development of all workers depends on the extent of
their mutuality, their constructive causal relations with other
workers, on class solidarity, rather than develop thanks to exploitive
social relations.

As a universal class, the working class is certainly justified in
lending support to other sections of the working class. However, what if that
section of the working class finds it useful to put up for the time
being with a non-democratic state? Is that not their business? No, for
any lack of development they suffer as a result of their political
preferences limits the real potentials we all look upon for our
development. Their foolishness is indeed our business. So they must be
offered our advice and help, but any grounds for one brother to
constrain another must surely be very unusual. 

There are all kinds of practical reasons why a section of the working
class might tolerate a non-democratic state. Conditions might not be
ripe for a move toward democracy. For example, revolutionary war is
hardly a time to introduce Robert's Rules of Order. Revolutionary
victory elsewhere offers far greater potentials for my own development
than the limited development of the working class possible under a
bourgeois-democratic regime.  

Incidentally, the terms democracy and state are almost contradictory,
for there can be no real democracy in a society with class
contradictions. So the issue raised is somewhat artificial. We are
dealing today for the most part with societies that are democratic
only to the extent it serves capitalism. We reserve substantial
support only for "real" or "economic" democracy rather than for
"parliamentary cretinism".

What the OP is saying here is that an abstract principle of policy
(support for even bourgeois democracy) is more important than an
assessment of an actual situation, but that in effect was what he
criticized initially. The litmus test should be the development of
real potentials by the working class in some other state, not whether
that state to which they are subject happens to be bourgeois
democratic. Doing so substitutes form for substance.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM