* During the rule of Mao Zedong, the People's Republic of China defined class conflict as the primary contradiction in Chinese society. While Mao Zedong made important contributions to Marxist theory and practice, as well as Dialectical Materialism, he made fundamental flaws in assumptions during periods of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. While early on Mao strongly emphasized the semi-feudal, semi-colonial backward nature of China, during some periods he ignored this factor with terrible results. Mao attempted to leap ahead and cause class relations to change at a pace more rapid than productive forces could handle. When Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping resumed power, they immediately made clear that Mao had been incorrect in assuming that class conflict was the dominant factor in Chinese society and instead focused on raising productive forces.
During the summer of 2006, I had an opportunity to study both the booming urban and poor rural regions of China. I saw both the positives and negatives of market reforms. While it is clear that productive forces have been increased rapidly, income inequality remains a dire problem. However China has manage to solve this problem by creating multilevel industry. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan all passed through early stages of industrialization in which they manufactured low end goods such as toys, they then preceded to higher industries such as automobiles, and today Japan is on the cutting edge of computer technology. Because China's population is so vast it is possible for millions of workers to progress across the entire spectrum of manufacturing from toys to automobiles to computers. At the same time millions more rural workers can be filtered into the low end manufacturing jobs. Thus Deng Xiaoping's strategy of concentrating on areas with the most economic potential will in the long run aid even the most backward regions.
* Marquit makes a strong point about the futility of holding China, which is my all economic standards still a developing nation, to first world standards. Most pundits who attempt to blow up China's economy and rank China as a first world economy, are not genuinely concerned about the workers of China, but instead ultra-right Neoconservatives who attempt to turn China into an enemy. Far-right forces also attempt to use China as a scapegoat in order to divide the working classes of America and China.
No nation in history has ever industrialized entirely on domestic resources. Even England, the firs industrial nation was largely financed by Dutch and continental bankers. American and Japanese industrialization in the nineteenth Century was heavily backed by British and Continental investment. French investment in Czarist Russia was so heavy, that the relationship was almost semi-colonial in nature with most of Russia's largest industries being owned by foreigners. The one exception to this is the Soviet Union. Lenin attempted to garner foreign capital and utilize market forces during the New Economic Policy. Stalin was forced to industrialize using solely domestic resources due to the hostility and aggression of the western powers. Consumption had to be brought to appallingly low levels in order to pay for the industrialization. While Stalin's Five Year Plans did ultimately succeed in the goal of turning the Soviet Union into a major industrial superpower able to defeat Hitler's Europe, the longterm affects proved devastating for Socialism in Eastern Europe. With Stalin's Republic as the only example of industrialization without foreign capital, it is quite natural that 21st Century Chinese leaders would want to avoid that path to socialism.
Some ultra leftists have seen developments like the one above as sign of capitalism being restored in China. Many of these critics, are quick to reference Mao Zedong. I would recommend Schram's excellent work Mao's Road to Power, in this work every scrap of paper Mao wrote between 1911 and 1942 is presented in English with footnotes. It is fair to speak of a "Young Mao", every bit as much as we speak of a "Young Hegel" or "Young Marx". Mao's early works are focused on the importance of labor unions and he even references Samuel Gompers! Mao's early works show the influence of philosophers as diverse as Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche, Kropotkin, Dewey and Darwin. Mao makes very clear that Marxists must seek "truth from facts" and many of his early works are devoted to simple investigations of working conditions in the farms or coal mining districts. Thus the policies of Deng Xiaoping which are so condemned by "Maoists" of the left are in fact a return to ideas of Mao himself. As late as 1946, Mao was willing to create a Parliamentary democracy with Chiang KaiChek and as early as 1964 Mao stated that he was willing to trade with all nations of the world regardless of politics, so long as trade was carried out on equitable terms. In 1975, less than a year before his death, Mao restored Deng Xiaoping to the premiership and basically turned over the entire economy to Deng and his allies. While labor abuses, and inequality have certainly been a price for Deng Xiaoping's reforms, the alternative of continuing 1970s style economic policy, would have been to reduce China to a third rate power. In the long run Market Socialism, has produced a powerful and vibrant China which has given new life to socialist movements in Africa and Latin America.
Marquit is absolutely correct in finding it disturbing that in a Marxist nation, economists are forced to hide their Marxist sympathies in order to advance. However one needs to keep in mind that, most economists are engaged in the day to day runnings of the market and not long term theory. So its not all together startling that a China so engaged in the globalized market economy would focus more academics on the nature of the capitalist system. Nevertheless hopefully Hu Jintao's new ideas of Scientific Development and Harmonious Society, will bring socialist question back into the center stage of China's economic development. In the long run political consciousness will prove more decisive than any short term economic policies.
There seems to be a general perception that Jiang Zemin's time in office was a relatively stagnant time for the development of socialism in China. I would argue that the development of productive forces, the transition into a post-Deng Xiaoping era, and the formalization of the theory of the Three Represents, represent important breakthroughs in Marxist thought. The Three Represents is a relatively complex theory and fairly attached to the unique Chinese experience. However I believe that a through study of the three Represents would prove fruitful to socialists of all nations. As of now I'm not aware of any study of the three Represents from a socialist perspective in the west. After I study some fo the founding documents of the Three Represents, I hope to produce my own commentary.
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