[Marxism] The New Left in China

[Jay Andrew Allen]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> wrote:

> Jay: Just to be clear, you're saying most of the leadership of the
> Tiananmen Square democracy type of movement were mostly connected to
> this neoliberal economic reform movement.
>
> Li: Yeah, I would say probably all of them.  And by the mid-1990s things
> started to change.
>

Interesting. Naomi Klein gives a different depiction in THE SHOCK DOCTRINE,
painting the protesters as opponents of Deng Xiaoping's neoliberal reforms,
which Deng was then free to enact in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square
crackdown. Her primary reference is Wang Hui's book CHINA'S NEW ORDER (
http://www.amazon.com/Chinas-New-Order-Politics-Transition/dp/0674021118/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219438482&sr=8-1).


Here's what Klein says. Note: there are no direct citations for this
specific passage. So either Klein is embellishing, or this is a case of a
disconnect between the intellectuals in the universities and the people in
the streets:

"The demonstrators...demanded democracy, but many opposed the government's
moves toward unregulated capitalism, a fact largely left out of the coverage
of the movement in the Western press. In China, democracy and Chicago School
economics were not proceeding hand in hand; they were on opposite sides of
the barricades surrounding Tiananmen Square." (p. 184)

The Mises Institute, of all places, seems to back this up (
http://mises.org/story/2071), though with some idiotic Western patronizing
thrown in for good measure. I've been unable to find more direct evidence,
but from what I can gather, the protest seems a central rallying point for a
melting plot of complaints and grievances, including accusations that the
Communist Party was abandoning its ideals in the name of economic
liberalization.

-J-

-- 
Jay Andrew Allen
http://www.jayandrewallen.net/blog/ - Out-Loud Brainwaves

"In any case, the revolution will be drowned in the ballot boxes - which is
not surprising, since they were made for that purpose." - Jean-Paul Sartre