> We do indeed support the government of China -against- US imperialism and
> against bourgeois counterrevolution of the sort that we saw in the USSR in
> 1991. That doesn't mean that we support everything it does. If you want
to
> take issue with us, and support US imperialism and/or bourgeois
> counterrevolution against the government of China, and you believe this is
> consistent with your "anarchist" principles (one set of scare quotes
> deserves another), that's your affair.
I believe in freedom, not one-party rule. The problem with sectarians like yourself is that you define "socialism" and "workers rights" in such narrow, self-serving ways that any challenge to the regimes you support is automatically called "CIA-backed" or "bourgeois counterrevolution," whether this is the case or not. You seem to favor a strong, autocratic state that alone defines what is just and proper for the masses. What the masses think, individually or collectively, is not important, so long as they obey their "progressive" masters.
> If
> you believe it is consistent with your anarchist principles to support a
> CIA-trained military force and/or theocratic feudalism against a socialist
> government, that is also your affair.
Again, you simply parrot the Chinese state line. I don't deny that there was feudalism and serfdom in old Tibet, but they were not Buddhist Taliban, and the Chinese, who violated international law by invading, were hardly any better. Yes, I know, they built roads and hospitals. But they also built labor camps and killed over a million Tibetans in the name of a monotheist sect called "Maoism" which, for some reason, you confuse with socialism.
> They have been. In fact, we wrote a whole series of articles on "The
> Suppression of the Left" in China in the 1970's, which we later published
as
> a pamphlet. When they are rough on the left, the poor, the workers, we do
> not support it. When they are rough on counterrevolution, we do support
it
> against the lying "freedom" propaganda of the US.
And you get to determine which is which? It must be nice to be free of all ambiguity.
> They are. But global capital would like the Chinese government to
"assist"
> them still further, by disbanding itself, and giving place to "freedom"
for
> global capital to establish its own dictatorship, exploit without limit,
> pillage without mercy, loot without restraint.
Oh I doubt this. The current situation seems ideal for global capital. A thuggish elite that controls the military, keeps the population in check and allows corporations access to cheap labor -- just like Latin America, only here the rulers call themselves "socialists."
> My feelings are mixed. When I see the inequality, the apologetics for
> capitalism, the bureaucracy, and the many shortcomings of this society of
> over 1 billion people, I am indeed by turns repelled and saddened and
> frustrated and gravely anxious. On the other hand, I am buoyed and
> heartened when I think about the distance that China has come toward
> development, literacy, and prosperity since the revolution of 1949
liberated
> it from feudalism and from imperialist domination. It has been a mammoth
> undertaking. If that revolution had never taken place, if the Chinese
> Communist Party had never taken power through civil war and held onto it,
> the people of China today would be a hundred times worse off. And if in
> some future crisis they are unable to hold off the bourgeois political
> offensive, it will be a vast catastrophe.
The Chinese revolution was inevitable and obviously necessary, and many good things came out of it. But it morphed into a theocratic state of its own, with an Earth God, Mao, as leader and provider of all things, a holy patriarch against whom no dissent was allowed, lest one be hauled into a labor camp or simply shot. And then there was the touching support your pals showed to Pol Pot, who did his Earth God bit with results we need not go into.
Your feelings may be "mixed," but your sympathies are clearly with those who believe in authoritarian rule, so long as what is being enforced conforms with your "thinking." And you are free to do so, just as I am free to reject your odious political stance, which I wholeheartedly do.
DP