Workers World line on PRC and PNTR and world revolution. Jack Smith, wrote for the late, lamented, NY Guardian.
My only letter to the Guardian was to dispute John Trinkl's characterization of the New American Movement as "social democratic." Huh! DSOC and DSA, sure, NAM, never. Oh well, esp. in the 70's, they covered the movement, esp. all those M-L, "new communist" "anti-revisionist, right opportunist" groups quite well. This socdem misses the Guardian.
Michael Pugliese ...........................................................................
Jack A. Smith, Highland, NY, April 22
This is a major political question in the United States: Should the People's Republic of China obtain normal trading status with the U.S. and also gain admission to the World Trade Organization? Of course it should, in my opinion, but for reasons that go beyond some of the usual arguments.
At this stage in the U.S., China-on-the-capitalist-road is coming under fire from the some of the same anti-socialist forces which excoriated China-on-the-revolutionary-road. They don't see a difference. Marxists may differ on whether China is even a socialist country at this stage, but they cannot ignore that much of the anti-China trade campaign is predicated on opposition to socialism, much more than real or imagined perceptions of exploitation, as well as an "us first" Fortress Americana approach to world trade.
Despite its obvious shortcomings, I still happen to view China as a socialist country, though just hanging on, and retain the perspective that it remains at least possible for China to once again reverse direction to the left-only this time on the basis of a considerably more advanced economy and a much larger proportion of the population in the working class. Such a reversal could re-ignite the world socialist project (and probably cause the U.S. to launch Cold War II in time, but that is another matter). The Clinton administration and the U.S. capitalist class in general support China's entry into the WTO because they are transfixed by the prospect of enormous short-term profits from bringing China ever closer to outright capitalism and being better able to exploit China's markets and workers. They do not think a move to the left is a serious danger. The AFL-CIO wants to protect union jobs by keeping Chinese goods out of the U.S. market through protectionist devices that cannot succeed in today's era of global capitalism. "Globalization" is not a capitalist preference but an inevitable consequence of levels of technology, transportation, markets, competition and so on. Monopoly capitalism cannot revert to closed markets, decentralization or the spinning-wheel. The AFL-CIO, while displaying a progressive stance in certain areas, is quite backward in pushing the line that the enemy of the U.S. working class is communist China, not the American corporations. The union movement's campaign against normal trade and WTO membership for China resembles the old Yellow Peril racism, rightist nationalism and reactionary anti-communism wrapped into a new opportunist package of jingoism and populism. Unfortunately, this anti-China campaign is gaining adherents in the growing new movement in the U.S. in opposition to the IMF, World Bank and WTO and can retard its progressive political development. While revolutionary Marxists must help to build this new movement, they must likewise strongly oppose the trend to single-out and deny China normal trade relations and defend China against imperialist schemes in general because it still remains a workers state, despite having taken many deplorable steps toward capitalism.
In this regard, the February 2000 Monthly Review contains an article worth reading, titled, "The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China," by Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Smith. It's on the web at http://www.monthlyreview.org/200holm.htm. The article goes into the differences between Russia and China in their movement toward capitalism and their respective methods of primitive accumulation (i.e., the methods used to accumulate capital for economic development and the creation of a wealthy bourgeois ruling class, which is almost always based on super-exploitation of propertyless workers and peasants).
They write: "The emergence of gangster capitalism and wholesale corruption in the former Soviet bloc and China should have been entirely predictable to anyone familiar with the historical origins of capitalism...and to anyone with a passing familiarity with Marx's account of primitive accumulation." As an aside, the authors suggest that Yeltsin's U.S. advisers blundered in their guidance, resulting in the de-modernization of a once advanced society, but I suspect that was Washington's intention all along. It no more wanted a capitalist rival with Russia's potential than it did a communist rival of the USSR's potential. In general, their analysis of why the Russian economy crumbled is quite good.
The article declares that "China's increasingly restless and combative labor force has yet to find its voice, but when it does, this could throw a large wrench into the World Bank/comprador bureaucrat plans for a transition to capitalism." We may have seen a vision of the future in the recent three-day street battle to protest the closing of an "unprofitable" mine in Liaoning, in northeast China. Clearly, WTO membership will undoubtedly accelerate Beijing's passage along the capitalist road, causing still further hardship for the masses. I oppose the theory that "the worse it gets, the better it gets [for our cause]," since this conveys the impression that the increasing misery of the working class can ever be positive, which it cannot. But one must recognize the possibility that further movement toward capitalism may finally result in a serious radical upsurge from below that will strongly impact on the Chinese Communist Party's left wing and lead to one more Great Reversal in the direction of the Chinese revolution. This could have world-shaking consequences. (end)
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