>Without the Chinese government's pragmatically repressive management toward
>capitalist development, wouldn't China be "Russia"? Chinese workers'
>option is a choice not between China and "Sweden" but between China and
>"Russia," it seems to me.
If you're saying that the Chinese government is acting like an effective developmentalist state along largely capitalist lines, I'd agree with you. But China is one of the few places in the world that could pursue noncapitalist developmental strategies - not that that's what the regime wants to do, of course.
Russia's fate wasn't carved in stone. Its ruling class decided to destroy the Soviet system and pursue the gangster-capitalist developmental path. Another revolution from above, to quote the title of Kotz/Weir's book.
Doug