Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 07:53:21 +0000
Subject: M-G: Is China socialist? 


Is  China socialist or capitalist?

Doug says that China is no longer socialist. John says that the 
majority of the means of production is still state owned, therefore 
it is still socialist.  Kevin says that state ownership is not the 
test otherwise Korea or Taiwan etc might be considered `socialist'.
China does not have workers management therefore it is not socialist.

Kevin then  asks:
"Equally important practically,  is it useful for socialists, who claim to be 
for democracy and worker-management, to prosthletize on behalf of 
China's 'socialism?' Doesn't it just put another shell in a falling 
duck to do that?"							
								-
Prothletize a lame duck I would say.  Calling China socialist by 
whatever criteria is to  drag the name of socialism in the mud.  
Wouldnt Marx, Engels and the rest be spitting tacks to think that the 
name "socialism" was attached to "Communist China".   They were 
clear that state ownership was not enough to create socialism. There 
would be no need to overthrow capitalism if that were the case. 
Kevin is right to say that workers'  ownership, and workers control are 
the two keys to defining socialism.

But if China is not socialist is it capitalist?  Kevin needs to say 
if China ever was socialist  If yes, then when did workers control lapse?
If not, he has a choice  of state capitalism or some intermediary,
transitional society - a degenerate workers state perhaps?

For those who think that state ownership is the definition of 
socialism, obviously the quantitative amount of state ownership is 
the deciding factor. While this analysis is extremely important in 
order to fight the class struggle in all of its aspects, the point remains, 
though, the amount of  state ownership is not sufficient to settle 
the question of whether China is socialist or not. 

Louis P, is impressed by the discussion on China and weighs in:

"These questions are really tough and I took a shot at them by writing
about Algeria and Cuba in *detail*. If you want to answer them in a
few hundreds or less, you are just kidding yourself... it takes an extended 
analysis rich in a mastery of dialectics to provide an answer to these sorts 
of questions."

It would help Louis if he did not try to start from scratch and went 
back to the best source on these "questions" - Trotsky.  Trotsky had 
to address the problem of whether the USSR was a "capitalist or 
workers state" in the 1930's. His dialectical analysis gives us a method 
which we can apply to China today.  First, lets be clear,  by 
"workers state" Trotsky is not talking of a healthy workers state, 
let alone a socialist state.  A workers state is one where the means 
of production have been expropriated from the bourgeoisie, and are 
administered by the state on behalf of workers. A healthy workers state
is one where workers exercise direct control and  administration of 
nationalised property.  However, in the case of the USSR a bureaucracy 
had usurped workers control of the means of production. Did this 
mean that the USSR was no longer a workers state? No said Trotsky, 
the means of production still remained as workers property, and the state, 
despite its bureaucratic repression of workers,  continued to reproduce workers 
property.  Hence it remains a workers',  but a  degenerate or bureaucratised,  
post-capitalist state.

By using this same method it is possible to understand the Chinese 
revolution as an extension of the USSR as a degenerate or 
bureaucratised workers' state. The Chinese stalinist bureaucracy led a 
peasant army in the overthrow of bourgeois property which was nationalised. 
Socialism? No. Capitalism? No. Something in between .  Like the USSR under 
Stalin, China was a workers state, but degenerate from its birth. It could go 
in two directions - towards socialism, which would require a 
political revolution to oust the bureaucracy and establish workers 
control.  Or it could go back towards capitalism which would mean 
the end of state planning and the restoration of the market.

The restoration of the market in the former USSR and Eastern Europe 
points the way China, Cuba, N Korea and Vietnam are going, even if 
the route is not quite the same.  The basic criterion of restoration 
is not % state property vs private property. Trotsky expected that 
restoration would take the form of state capitalism which has been 
proven correct.  Therefore the form state property will remain, but its class 
content will undergo a counter-revolution.  

What is decisive are the  social relations the state defends and reproduces. 
If a workers state is defined as one which defends and reproduces 
state property expropriated from the bourgeoisie, what criteria do we 
use to say when it is no longer a workers state?  In the former USSR 
and EE I would say that this occurred when the respective regimes 
stopped planning, and introduced measures designed specifically to 
restore private property and the operation of the law of value 
[market].  If you look at the advice offered by the IMF and people 
like Sachs, it is clear that as soon as the state abandons its monopoly 
of foreign trade,  and backs a convertible currency,  goods and 
services produced in state owned enterprises become "valued" by the 
international market [law of value].  At this point a bourgeois 
regime has replaced the workers state, and we can characterise the 
whole economy, society and state as state capitalist.  

Applied to China, this method would mean answering  the 
question: is China still a bureaurcratised workers state?  The 
personnel in the state are not decisive; the amount of state property 
is not decisive; conversely the amount of small capitalist,  or even 
large capitalist enterprises in the SEZs is not decisive. While 
confined to these zones and so long as the workers state still  
monopolises trade inland, this would be like if Stalin had succeeded 
in colonising Eastern Europe as captive capitalist states after WW2. 

What would be decisive, would be abandoning the monopoly of trade 
with the zones and the establishment of a convertible currency. This 
would mean that, the content of state property outside the zones 
would now be determined not by allocated prices, but by world market
prices.  Even if the state continued to subsidise prices for social 
reasons, this would be no different from the state capitalist 
`interference' with the law of  value that the neo-liberals have been 
attacking in Western capitalism. 
   
To come back to Kevin's second point.  It is wrong to defend `Communist 
China' as socialist because that denies the role of the working class in 
socialism. Equally it is wrong to characterise 'Communist China' as 
state capitalist because that refuses to recognise the successful 
anti-capitalist struggle that expropriated bourgeois property.  
Trotsky's concept of a degenerate or bureaucratised workers state 
best fits the reality of this post-capitalist society. Until China 
has definitively passed over into capitalism;  when the regime 
abandons the plan for the law of value, then it is necessary to 
defend China as a workers state against capitalist restoration. This 
is what I mean by "prothletize a lame duck".  This means defend it 
and give it some real wings at the same time.

Does this mean that  our new duck  is  `market socialism'?  No. The market 
is in contradiction with workers control. 

Louis Godena,  writing about what will happen to the central Asian 
republics of the former USSR:

" I believe what will evolve, finally,  will be "socialist" governments more 
or less on the Chinese model-- promoting a nascent entrepreneurship in certain 
sectors (agriculture, telecommunications) while continuing to direct the economy 
in the vital areas (defense,  energy,  some manufacturing).     A central Asian 
variation on the theme of a "planned market" referred to by the propaganda 
department of the Chinese Communist Party in the mid-1980s?    Perhaps.

Perhaps?  The point is that "market socialism" is a compromise with 
capitalism on capitalisms terms. Unless it is reversed and replaced 
by the plan, it will lead inexorably to the restoration of 
capitalism.   There is nothing to be gained by dressing up "market 
socialism" as a realistic `option' other than to blind workers to 
this reality.   Just as in Russia, and EE, where there was no 
stopping at a half-way house,  so in China, and ex Soviet central 
Asia there can be no half-way houses. The only reason that socialists 
should have  anything to do with the market is if they cannot replace it 
immediately with a workers plan.  But this would be on the basis of 
workers states subordinating the market to workers property. For 
example, the NEP was a retreat in the face of Russia's backwardness 
and isolation, but until Stalin took over, it was under the control of a 
healthy workers state.  

We must fight today against the soft-sell of `market 
socialism' as the fall-back option, now that "communism" has 
apparently failed. In reality it was not "communism" that failed but 
"market socialism" that prevailed on the road back to capitalism. 
We must fight today for workers revolution to overthrow the 
bureaucrats/bourgeoisie and to introduce a workers' plan under 
workers'  democratic control to eliminate the market.  
Dave


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