>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 04/17/00 05:44PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> CB: As important as the racist connotation of AFL-CIO criticism of China is the anti-communist connotation.
Perhaps, but I don't think you can fit that objection into a mass line either. One would have to append several pages explaining how criticism of an aggressively capitalizing nation could be anti-communist. I could do that in a conversation -- but I wouldn't want to do it in a leaflet or a manifesto. I have no more personal admiration for the present Chinese regime than Angela does -- I just think it silly and objectively racist politics to make a fuss about it.
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CB: No it wouldn't be hard at all to explain. Only a very tiny, tiny group of people criticize China as being an aggressively capitalizing nation. This is an sectarian and not widely held idea about China. Only a few, I mean tiny number of Americans think this. The vast majority of people in the U.S. have been thoroughly convinced that China is a Communist nation. The AFL is not speaking to that few thousand people who think China is not Communist. They are speaking to the larger numbers who think of China as Communist.
Raising this issue is no more difficult than raising the issue of national chauvinism and racism. There are complexities in persuading the American people on that issue too.
CB
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Of course it is anti-communist (and empirically and theoretically false) to express a criticism of contemporary China as a criticism of the Chinese Revolution as a whole. I still remain a strong admirer of Mao.
Carrol