Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 23:43:14 -0700
From: Juan Rafael Fajardo <fajardos-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: M-G: 2/2 Incomplete reply on overthrow in China


Rolf Martens, David Welch, and I have been engaged in discussion 
--I won't call it debate, because in my view the point is to share 
information and learn from each other, not "winning"-- on China and the 
restoration of capitalism there.  In my post "Re: "M-G: To List " (Reply
to David W. and Rolf M. on China)" of 14/V/98, I suggested that some
inevstigation ought to be done as to when exactly that restoration took
place.  Rolf, on 19/V/98, correctly assessed that 

> Juan [i.e., myself - JRF], btw, doesn't see that this was when that
> took place but thinks it was as late as in the early 90s - some clear
> facts prove him wrong on that. 

But then incorrectly states that, 

> Juan,[...] however, strangely, seems ignorant of the fact that by 1989, 
> the bourgeoisie in China of course since long was in control of
> the state and the earlier proletarian party. 

And then seeks to correct my misconception of the situation in China by
citing the following:

> By way of a brief reply to Juan, who doesn't see that the over-
> trow of socialism in China took place as early as between (late)
> 1976 and 1978 approximately, I shall just quote from my "UNITE!
> Info #61en: Reply on Cultural Revolution" of 01.02.98 one brief
> passage with some figures which go to show how *the masses* in
> one country, namely the one where I live, Sweden, quite clearly
> saw, at the time, from 1977-78 on, what was actually taking
> place in China then:  
>
> " As just one small phenomenon on the outskirts of that large
> youth and student movement which arose in many "Western" coun-
> tries from 1967-68 on, and which to an important part was in-
> spired precisely by the Cultural Revolution in China, I shall
> show again here, since it's a thing that comes in figures:
> The development of the number of members of the Swedish-Chinese
> Friendship Association in the years 1962-1982. I had this too 
> in my first posting to M-G, 16.10.96; look:
> 
> 1962-1968: 500 members; 1969: 1000; 1970: 1500; 1971: 2000;
> 1972: 3000; 1973: 4000; 1974: 5000; 1975: 7500; 1976: 9500
> 
> "- a *19-folding* in 8 years, after the number had been on the 
> same low level during the preceding 7 years; then in 1977
> it remained constant and from 1978 fell almost as rocket-
> like as it had earlier risen; today that Association is gone:
> 
> 1977: 9500; 1978: 8500; 1979: 8000; 1980: 6500;
> 1981: 5000; 1982: 4000.
> 
> "That of course reflects the revisionist overthrow of socialism
> in China in 1976/78. The bourgeois media all lauded Deng Xiao-
> ping and his "sensible reforms" to the skies then, supporting to 
> the hilt precisely the regime which later perpetrated the 04.06.
> 1989 Tiananmen massacre, but many in Sweden saw through this."


To this I have to reply that I do not see how these figures demonstrate
that the overthrow of socialism in China actually took place in 1976-78
as opposed to the late 1980's-1990's.  They show what a segmentof the
Swedish population thought about the desiarbility of belonging to the
Swedish-Chinese Friendship Association.  From them, sure, we can
extrapolate about what they felt or thought about China post-Mao, but
they do not demosntrate that socialism was overthrown there at any given
time, if at all

Certainly, the first concrete steps for the overthrow of socialism in
China were laid with the assumption of power within the party of a
petty-bourgeois fraction within the party after Mao's death; but this
constituted no more than a change in what Trotsky called "party regime"
--the term may have had earlier use, I don't know, but he's who I got it
from.  Such a change, in and of itself, however, does not automatically
translate into the overthrow of socialism.   The party and the
government are different things, and governments --even, of course,
revolutionary ones-- can be composed by several parties at once (look at
the 1917 Soviets, for example); and the government and the state are
also not the same thing --which echoes an earlier discussion of ours;
nor is the government the same as the economic system, obviously.

All that is of course obvious, but those differentiations must be made,
I think, if we are to seriously answer the question at hand: when was
socialism in the PRC overthrown and capitalism restored?

Here's what we know:

1) In 1976-1978 a petty-bourgeois fraction gained control of the
Communist Party of China and instituted a new intra-party regime;

2) That petty-bourgeois fraction, representing a wider layer of
officials, bureaucrats, "helicopter cadres," hangers-on, and hold-overs
from the ancien regime, used their position in control of the CP to
instute a new political regime;

3) It used that leverage granted by control of party and government to
alter the Chinese economy, ushering in features characteristic of
capitalist economies;

4) By the 1990s China can no longer be considered socialist and
capitalism has been restored.

But, which of those events or precesses marks the transition point from
socialism to capitalism?  Rolf seems to argue that #1 in combination
with #2 mark that point.  I argue, on the other hand, that those
represent political changes only and that the real transition came with
the transformation of the economy which took far longer and cannot be
defined in terms of a moment or event but in terms of the cumulative
effect of many changes in employment policies, wage controls, work
conditions, social security, distribution, private ownership over
productive property, foreign investment, price controls, ration
guarantees, etc. 

These, the economics, lie at the root of the matter.  Thus, the change
had to come later.  It is one thing for Deng and Co. to have betrayed
the revolution, as they did in 1976-1978, it is another for them to have
overthrown it, which they did, but could not have accomplished in so
short a span of time. 


- Juan


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