[lbo-talk] Mao: the Unknown Story

Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Sat May 28 14:36:06 PDT 2005


Doug: Where is China Going? http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrpress.htm

China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett

Hart-Landsberg and Burkett's China and Socialism argues that market reforms in China are leading inexorably toward a capitalist and foreign-dominated development path, with enormous social and political costs, both domestically and internationally. The rapid economic growth that accompanied these market reforms have not been due to efficiency gains, but rather to deliberate erosion of the infrastructure that made possible a remarkable degree of equality. The transition to the market has been based on rising unemployment, intensified exploitation, declining health and education services, exploding government debt, and unstable prices.

To CD: Oh, in real life politics, Olof Palme, Berlinguer, (though I like to play the neo-Trotskyist, I've long viewed most Trots (at least in the USA) as formulaic and metaphysical idealists, Platonists [?] who split into ever tinier sects over the minutest of differences) if I was a European in the 70's I'd have voted for the Eurocommunist PCI, now Democratic Party of the Left, in Germany, the PDS or SPD, maybe Green but the "realos" vs. "fundie" squabbles are off putting.For all practical purposes I'm a left-wing social democrat. In American terms, that is now far, far left. But, the noisiest sectors of the American Left over the period of our decline from the strength we had in the late 60's, have made going to too many demos these days, painful, to see the abundent kookery and demogogy and sloppy non-thinking, from the stages and tablers.



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