From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sun Nov 13 2005 - 17:46:42 EST
An article by Yiching Wu from the current issue of _Monthly Review_. On a related note, there is an article published at countdownnet entitled "The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy: Exploring Historical Possibilities in the 21st Century" by Minqui Lee: <http://www.countdownnet.info/archivio/analisi/China/360.pdf> In solidarity, Jerry ------------------------------------------------------------------ Monthly Review November 2005 Rethinking 'Capitalist Restoration' in China by Yiching Wu Over a quarter century after China ventured onto the market path, it is high time to take a hard look and ask some very tough questions. That is what Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett did in "China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle" (Monthly Review, July-August 2004) and they concluded that "market reforms" have fundamentally subverted Chinese socialism. The considerable costs of economic liberalization, they argued, reflect the inherent antagonisms of the capitalist system that is in the midst of being imposed. "Market socialism" is at best a contradiction in terms, an unstable formation that only awaits progressive degeneration: "the Chinese government's program of 'market reforms,' which was allegedly to reinvigorate socialism, has instead led the country down a slippery slope toward an increasingly capitalist, foreign-dominated development path."1 They also showed how market reforms generate their own dynamic-how each stage "generated new tensions and contradictions that were solved only through a further expansion of market power, leading to the growing consolidation of a capitalist political economy."2 Moreover, they insisted on a class-based critique, an admirable position in an ideological milieu that deems such emphasis unfashionable. Chinese reforms have produced such consequences as income polarization, increased poverty, and intensified exploitation, which are integral to processes of capitalist marketization. The vital issue of class antagonism is thus not to be glossed over by the neoliberal myth of "transition." Hart-Landsberg and Burkett have made an important and timely contribution to our understanding. However, the issues involved-history, class, and socialism-are of such magnitude and importance that they merit further discussion and development. Full: http://monthlyreview.org/1105wu.htm
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