Hang Seng remains over 10,000

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Mon Nov 2 00:13:01 PST 1998


I am not sure when the Hong Kong Stock Exchange closes, but this morning GMT, after the weekend, there was no massive fall in the Hang Seng. Only light profit taking, down 16 points with the index at 10,139.

Certainly helped by global stabilisation and the reduction in dollar interest rates, this is nevertheless a level 50% above the August low.

Point made, comrade?

(Note that I have never said that there is not a severe recession in Hong Kong, nor that Hong Kong capitalism is particularly gentle and beneficent).

The point, or points, being, that a resilient capitalist economy can survive without private ownership in land and without a financier capitalist class clipping coupons from a large national debt. And that free-market fundamentalism, "neo-liberalism", for the benefit of Louis Proyect, can be defeated under certain tactical and global conditions.

And, for the benefit of Mark Jones, a word from Lenin:

"To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complicated than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to refuse beforehand to manoeuvre, to utilise the conflict of interests (even though temporary) among one's enemies, to refuse to temporize and compromise with possible (even though temporary, unstable, vacillating and conditional) allies - is not this ridiculous in the extreme? "

And Lenin continues, "if youth were the explanation it would not be so bad ..." ??

Chris Burford

London.



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