As we have seen, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed in 1921 by Chinese intellectuals who had recently converted to Marxism (“The nationalist origins of Chinese Marxism” 12/18/2017).  They conceived their task as the organization of the Chinese working class for a socialist revolution.  They had successes, taking advantage of the inhumane living and working conditions of the workers.  Within a few years, Party members had organized labor organizations with a total of half a million members (Meisner, 1999:20-21).

      Conditions in China, as well as directions from the Communist International in Moscow, led to the establishment of a formal alliance between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party in January 1924, which required reconciliation to the nationalist agenda and less emphasis on the socialist goals of the Party.  The alliance enabled the CCP to grow rapidly; its membership expanded from 500 in 1924 to 58,000 in 1927 (Meisner, 1999:21-25).

     The CCP-Nationalist alliance was uneasy, because the Nationalists sought national unity and a form of independence that accommodated to Western interests, whereas the CCP sought full sovereignty that would permit a social transformation emancipating workers from factory owners and peasants from landlords.  Acting in accordance with this conflict over political goals, the Nationalist Army, led by Chiang Kai-shek, unleashed a bloody repression of the CCP and their affiliated workers’ organizations and peasant associations in 1927.  The membership of the CCP was reduced to 10,000, with its leaders and members scattered and disorganized (Meisner, 1999:25-27).

     Inasmuch as the CCP had been crushed by military force, surviving CCP leaders concluded that the revolution had to include a strategy of military struggle.  In October 1927, Mao Zedong, who had been a member of the Party from the beginning, led the remnants of a defeated military force to a remote mountain area, and a force led by Zhu De joined them in 1928.  Through the recruitment of local peasants on the basis of a proposed radical program of land redistribution, the Mao-Zhu army grew in numbers, such that by 1931 it had attained military predominance in the southern part of the Southern province of Jiangxi, where the Chinese Soviet Republic was proclaimed.  From 1931 to 1934, the Chinese Soviet Republic implemented a land reform program, and it successfully administered a territory of 15,000 square miles with a population of three million (Meisner, 1999:28, 31-33).

      The Chinese Soviet Republic was conquered by the Nationalist Army in the fall of 1934, forcing the Communists to abandon their base.  In October 1934, Mao led 80,000 men (and 35 women) in a trek to the North, in what later would be celebrated as “the Long March.”  Fewer than 10,000 survived the 6,000-mile, yearlong ordeal, which included regular battles with Nationalist troops and warlord armies.  But a remnant did reach the northern province of Shaanxi in October 1935, and other forces soon joined it, such that by late 1936 the Red Army numbered 30,000, which, however, was much smaller then Nationalist forces (Meisner, 1999:33-36).

     The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 greatly benefitted the communist cause.  The Nationalist Army was forced by the advancing Japanese army to abandon the major cities and retreat to the west; and in the countryside, the landlord gentry class, allied with the nationalist government, fled to the cities.  Meisner writes:

      The surge of popular support for the Chinese Communist Party during the war “was based on patriotic appeals for national resistance to the foreign invaders” (Meisner, 1999:38).  In addition, it was based on its agrarian reform program of rent and tax reductions for tenant farmers as well as partial land redistribution.  Meanwhile, the Nationalist government was discredited by its incapacity to effectively resist the Japanese invasion; and by its alliance with the landlord gentry class (Meisner, 1999:38-41).  

      The Sino-Japanese War of 1937 to 1945 established the basis for an uneasy truce between the CCP and the Nationalist government, based on common opposition to Japanese occupation.  When the Allied victory in World War II ended the occupation, civil war broke out in China.  The Nationalists had four times as many soldiers as the Communists, and the Nationalists possessed superiority in military technology, mostly supplied by the United States.  However, the Communists enjoyed much more popular support, as a result of its patriotic resistance to the Japanese occupation and its land reform program (Meisner, 1999:50).  

       Popular support facilitated a relatively rapid victory for the Communists.  On October 1, 1949, Mao Zadong arrived in Beijing to proclaim the People’s Republic of China.  So began a rapid transition to socialism, as we will see in the next post.
​

​Reference
 
Meisner, Maurice.  1999.  Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, Third Edition.  New York: The Free Press.
 
 

     In Mao’s China and After, Maurice Meisner makes clear that Chinese Marxism from the beginning was formulated in a context of an anti-imperialist nationalism.  This is consistent with the general pattern of Third World revolutions, which have been anti-colonial revolutions seeking national liberation as well as a social transformation that would end exploitation by a national bourgeoisie that colludes with foreign interests. 

     In China in the 1890s, responding to the inability of the traditional Confucian sociopolitical order to respond effectively to Western commercial and military penetration, there emerged an intellectual tendency among the youth of the dominant landlord-gentry class to reject Confucian values and institutions.  These defectors from their class were influenced by Western ideas, such as the notion that human progress, interpreted as economic development and the conquest of nature, occurs on a basis of individual initiative (Meisner, 1999:10-13).  However, their rejection of Confucianism was not without mixed feelings, for they “retained a deep emotional tie to traditional Confucian moral values” (1999:13).  

     In spite of their critique of traditional Chinese values and institutions, the disaffected intellectuals were highly nationalistic.  They were reacting to the imperialism of Japan and the European colonial powers, which were aggressively threatening China with territorial dismemberment.  Their writings and protest activities reflected “a new nationalist commitment to China as a nation-state in a world dominated by predatory imperialist nation-states.”  They hoped “to build a strong Chinese state and society that could survive and prosper in a hostile international arena” (Meisner, 1999:12).

     After the fall of the monarchy in the Revolution of 1911, Confucianism was discredited further by its ties to the government of the republic, which was politically and socially conservative and corrupt.  In the period 1915 to 1919, the New Culture Movement emerged, characterized by a total rejection of Confucian values and institutions.  The movement had faith in Chinese youth, who were less corrupted by traditional values, and who were to be the bearers of a new Chinese culture.  In addition, the Movement believed in the power of ideas to change social reality, in spite of limitations established by social and economic conditions.  Its foremost proponent was Chen Duxiu, an ardent defender of French democracy and culture. The New Culture Movement, however, was socially isolated and politically powerless (Meisner, 1999:15-16).

     Political developments in 1919 enabled the intellectuals to overcome their social isolation and political impotence.  In that year, the Western powers decided at the Versailles peace conference to transfer the German concessions in the Chinese province of Shandong to Japan.  The decision provoked a demonstration on May 4 of more than 3,000 university students in Beijing.  Violent confrontations with police and arrests inflamed nationalist sentiments, such that an anti-imperialist movement by students, professors, workers, and merchants emerged.  During what came to be known as the May Fourth Movement, popular demonstrations, strikes, boycotts of foreign goods, and violent confrontations swept the cities of China (Meisner, 1999:17).  

     In the context of this political turmoil, many intellectuals experienced an intellectual conversion.  They no longer looked to the “democracies” of the West as the ideal model; they turned away from Western liberal ideologies, which sanctioned the existing imperialist world order.  They looked for guidance to Western socialist ideas and Marxism, which provided Chinese intellectuals with a perspective for rejecting both Confucianism and Western imperialism.  In addition, the intellectuals were transformed into militant and politically active nationalists, seeking to organize the people and lead them to effective political action.  Lenin’s thought and the example of the Russian Revolution empowered Chinese intellectuals, for they provided the basis for a concrete program of political action to propose to the people (Miesner, 1999:17-18).

    In late 1919, Chen Duxiu, the leading intellectual of the New Culture Movement, converted to Marxism.  In 1920, he and other Chinese Marxists organized small communist groups in the major cities of China.  They sought to become a political voice in defense of the needs and interests of peasants and workers and to lead them to new forms of political action.  In their conversion to Marxism, they continued to embrace many of the ideas of the disaffected and socially isolated intellectual class from which they emerged, including its anti-imperialist nationalism (Meisner, 1999:11-12, 15, 19-21).   

     In 1921, Chen and another professor at Peking University, Li Dazhao, established the Chinese Communist Party, with the assistance of a representative of the newly formed Third Communist International.  Initially, most of the Chinese Communist Party members were the student followers of Chen and Li.  Among the young revolutionary activists was Li Dazhao’s library assistant at Beijing University, Mao Zedong, who would become the principal leader and theoretician of Chinese Marxism (Meisner, 1999:15, 19).  

     Conditions in China were not favorable for a bourgeois revolution or a proletarian revolution as conceived by Marx.  Although a modern Chinese bourgeoisie had emerged in China as a consequence of Western imperialism, it was small and economically weak.  It was primarily a commercial and financial bourgeoisie, and not an industrial bourgeoisie.  It was dependent on foreign capitalism, in that it functioned as an intermediary between the Chinese market and foreign capitalist enterprises.  Similarly, the proletariat was small.  Most workers were employed in small shops, and they lacked proletarian class consciousness (Miesner, 1999:5-6)

     Therefore, Mao adapted Marx to Chinese conditions, and he conceived the peasantry as central to the socialist revolution.  Even though peasants constituted the great majority of the population, they were a politically weak class, unable to formulate their grievances and defend their interests.  With their experience largely limited to the local, peasants possessed a provincial outlook.  However, the peasantry possessed resentment at the exploitation and abuse of the landlord gentry proprietors.  Accordingly, Mao discerned that the peasants possessed a revolutionary spontaneity that could be channeled into effective political action, if they were organized and led by committed activists with revolutionary understanding and consciousness from other social classes (Meisner, 1999:8, 26, 31-33, 37-50).

     From 1921 to 1949, the Nationalist Party, first led by Sun Yat-sen and later by Chiang Kai-shek, was the principal competitor of the Chinese Communist Party in attaining the support of the people.  The two political forces to some extent shared the same goal of building a strong, modern state that would defend the nation in a hostile international environment dominated by colonialist and imperialist powers.  In given political situations, they were allied; and in others, they were in conflict.  Their conflict was rooted in the fact that the communists were committed not only to national unity and to national independence, but also to a social transformation that would emancipate the peasants from the landlord class and the workers from the comprador bourgeoisie.  During its period of rule of China from 1927 to 1949, the Nationalist Party discredited itself by its collusion with foreign powers; its complicity with a declining and increasingly parasitic landlord gentry; its incapacity to respond to Japanese occupation during World War II; its lack of administrative control over its territory; and its notorious levels of corruption.  Meanwhile, the Communists surged in popular support with effective administration of the countryside under its control and with guerrilla resistance to Japanese occupation.  These dynamics paved the way for the taking of national political power by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 (Meisner 1999:20-50).

   In subsequent posts, we will examine the Chinese Communist Party in power, reflecting on its achievements and its contradictions.  For the moment, let us reflect on its taking of power, which it accomplished twenty-eight years after its establishment.

     First, we should take note of the decisive role of political events in creating new possibilities for understanding.  Reflecting on the popular uprising provoked by the Versailles treaty, many intellectuals experienced what the philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1955) called an intellectual conversion, which occurs when a person seeking to understand discovers previously unasked questions that are relevant to the issue at hand.  In a situation of political turmoil, Chinese intellectuals in 1919 turned to previously unknown socialist, Marxist, and Leninist sources for guidance, transforming their understanding.

     Secondly, we should emphasize that two middle-aged university professors founded the Chinese Communist Party, and its initial members were mostly young students of the professors.  They immediately proceeded to organize the party in various cities, forming small groups.  In his writings, Mao taught that all party members should study political theory and history, and they should meet weekly for discussion in groups of three to five persons.  In accordance with this commitment to the popular education, Mao and several other party leaders collectively wrote in 1939 a 37-page textbook, The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, for the education of party members and the people (Mao, 2009:71-72, 111-48, & 174-75).

     Thirdly, we should note that the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party intelligently adapted Marxism and Leninism to Chinese conditions, avoiding a distortion of their understanding that would have occurred, if they had embraced literally concepts formulated by Marx and Lenin under different conditions.  Their adaptation was based on a study and analysis of Chinese historical, economic, political, and social conditions, including the class formations in China and the actual and possible levels of consciousness in each class. They called for a democratic revolution of a new type, required for the colonial and semi-colonial situation (Mao, 2009:111-48). 

     Fourthly, in spite of their wholesale rejection of Chinese values and institutions, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in no way presented an image of themselves as un-Chinese or as indifferent to Chinese interests.  To the contrary, they formulated a nationalist vision, as the basis for the formation of a modern nation-state that could defend Chinese interests against imperialist powers.  Their formulation was based on an understanding of the reasons for the decline of China since the early nineteenth century (see Mao, 2009:117-24).

      Fifthly, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party were nationalist but not ethnocentric.  They had studied Western political theories.  They had learned from the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions of the West, and they appropriated from them in the formulation of their vision for China.

     For intellectuals and activists in the United States, in the context of the relative decline of the USA and the structural crisis of the world-system, are there not lessons to be learned from the relatively rapid taking of power by the Chinese Communist Party?  Such lessons for U.S. intellectuals and activists perhaps include the following.  (1)  We need leaders who do intellectual work, which includes study of revolutions in other lands; and who have the creative insight to adapt the lessons of these experiences to U.S. conditions.  In our time and context, such study surely ought to include the national and social revolutions of China and the Third World during the last 100 years.  (2)  We need to formulate a nationalist project, based on historical and social scientific study of the nation and the world-system, which includes explanation of the sources of the U.S. decline, and which points to a more dignified road for the nation.  It is not enough to criticize the nation for its imperialist, exploitative, and oppressive policies; an alternative and more just and democratic road must be formulated.  (3)  We need to form an alternative political party, which organizes and educates the people with respect to its internationalist nationalist project, and which works on developing strategies for the taking of political power in twenty-five years or so.  Organizing protests enables the people to vent their frustrations and to voice their indignation.  But it is not enough, and revolutions in other lands demonstrate that more can be done, and that more is being done.  

     We will continue in subsequent posts with reflections on the Chinese Revolution.

References
 
Lonergan, Bernard.  1958.  Insight.  New York:  Philosophical Library.
 
Mao Zedong.  2009.  Collected Writings of Chairman Mao, Volume One: Politics and Tactics.  Edited by Shawn Conners,  Translated by Foreign Language Press, Peking.  El Paso, Texas: El Paso Norte Press, Special Edition Books.
 
Meisner, Maurice.  1999.  Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, Third Edition.  New York: The Free Press.
 
 

      In The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy, Minqi Li projects the immanent collapse of the capitalist world-economy.  Li is a Chinese intellectual who migrated to the United States in 1994 and now teaches economics at the University of Utah.  Li believes that China in the epoch of Mao had important gains with respect to the protection of the basic needs of the people (see “Does socialism work?” 12/4/2017).  He maintains, however, that with the death of Mao in 1976, there was a coup d’état that resulted in the triumph of a bureaucratic counterrevolution, which made possible a transition to capitalism in China, beginning in the 1980s and consolidated in the 1990s.  He further sustains that the rise of China since 1980 is intensifying the tendencies that are causing the disintegration of the capitalist world-economy (Li, 2008:55-65).

      With an understanding influenced by world-systems theory, Li has arrived to understand important facts with respect to the capitalist world-economy.  First, he understands that the capitalist world-economy historically has expanded economically through the conquest of new lands and peoples.  In the development of the capitalist world-economy, workers (converted peasants, artisans, and serfs) acquired the capacity to organize themselves in defense of their interests.  As a result, labor costs and taxes rose over time, thus reducing the rate of profit.  Capitalists responded to this problem by acquiring new territories and attaining control over cheaper labor resources.  However, this process of economic expansion through successive geographical expansions ended during the twentieth century, as the capitalist world-economy reached the geographical limits of the earth.  In addition, Li correctly understands that the superexploitation of labor, in which the laborers are paid less than what they need to live, limits the capacity of the global consumer market to expand (Li, 2008:12, 15).

     Clearly, the world-system needs to reform, inasmuch as the world-economy can no longer expand through territorial expansion, and given that the global dual-wage structure limits economic expansion.  Indeed, the popular movements of the world demand such reform.  In the core states, the movements call for a return to the pre-1980 protection of wages, worker’s rights, health care, and education.  In the Third World, the popular movements seek true sovereignty, so that states can act to protect the social and economic rights and needs of the people.  However, as Li discerns, the system is not able to reform.  Financially, it cannot afford to concede to the demands of the popular movements without reducing the rate of profit for capitalists.  A global new deal is not politically possible, given the power of global interests that would stand opposed to such a reformist project (Li, 2008:17, 121). 

     Inasmuch the system cannot reform itself, Li concludes that that a global socialist transformation is necessary.  He projects that by the year 2050 there will be various socialist governments, brought to power by the growing proletarianization of labor and by increasing working-class consciousness.  The future socialist governments will confront various serious problems that are the legacy of a world-system dedicated to the endless accumulation of profit rather than to providing human needs and conserving the ecological balance of the earth.  The socialist governments, accordingly, will have an interest in an alliance that creates a socialist world-government, thus creating an alternative socialist world-system that would replace the present capitalist world-economy, already showing clear signs of disintegration (Li, 2008:23, 139-73, 179-82, & 187-88).

    Li believes, however, that the socialist states that emerged during the twentieth century and that exist today have confronted a basic contradiction that results from the fact that they have had to survive in the context of a capitalist world-economy.  In order to protect themselves, the socialist states have had to compete militarily and economically with the global powers.  This requires them to adopt capitalist structures for the organization of labor, thereby giving greater political space and legitimacy to privileged bureaucrats and technicians that defend particular interests.  A new bureaucratic-technocratic elite forms that is able to take control of the socialist revolution, directing it to the defense of its particular interests and ignoring the needs of the workers.  Accordingly, in the context of the capitalist world-economy, socialist states have a tendency to fall to a bureaucratic counterrevolution, which subsequently invokes intellectuals to defend policy changes with justifications that are framed as an evolution of revolutionary socialist ideology in light of new conditions (Li, 2008:50-65).

     I concur with Li on basic points.  The capitalist world-economy has contradictions that the global elite is unable to resolve.  There are various possible scenarios, including neofascism, various regional world-systems, or chaos.  And possibly, there could emerge an alternative socialist world-system, which would be based on cooperation, solidarity, universal human values, and harmony with the earth; and which is the best hope for humanity.

       However, I am not convinced by Li’s claim that the current socialist states generally fall to bureaucratic counterrevolutions.  To be sure, I have been inclined to believe, since my reading of Trotsky and the British Trotskyite Ted Grant, that the Russian Revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution with the death of Lenin (see various posts in the category Russian Revolution).  However, if it is true that something similar has occurred in China, we should not conclude that the triumph of a bureaucratic counterrevolution is a pattern for the Third World.  We should keep in mind that Russia and China were both empires, and both were only partially peripheralized by the European powers during the rise of the European-centered world-economy.  In these fallen empires, the remnant industrial and agricultural bourgeoisie, petit bourgeoisie, and bureaucracy would constitute a powerful force, able to unify as a bureaucratic counterrevolution.  But the Third World has had a different historical experience.  The most advanced of the Third World kingdoms and empires were far more limited in territory and in structures of domination and exploitation than were the Russian and Chinese empires.  And the Third World peoples and societies were conquered, colonized, and peripheralized in a form more penetrating than the partial peripheralizations of Russia and China.  As a result, in the Third World colonial situation, the national bourgeoisie possessed interests in common with the majority of workers and peasants, and it often played a key role in the most radical struggles for national and social liberation.  In the context of the Third World revolution for national and social liberation, a counterrevolution by the petit bourgeoisie, the technocrats, and the bureaucrats is a phenomenon, but it has limitations, and it can be contained by the formulation and dissemination among the people of a socialist ideology.  In the Third World, when triumphant popular and socialist revolutions fell, it principally was a consequence of imperialist interventions.

      Moreover, in the case of China, I am not yet convinced that the revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution following the death of Mao.  I note, for example, that Li is persistently unclear in his description and definition of the “bureaucratic capitalists” who supposedly now rule China (see 2008:27, 106).  Moreover, he maintains that the transition to capitalism involved the opening of cheap Chinese labor as peripheral labor in the world-economy, thus generating new profits and facilitating the rise of China (2008:70-72, 109). However, in the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions of the world-economy, low-wage export manufacturing does not facilitate the rise of a nation.  Thus, questions emerge.  Did China’s incorporation in the world-economy in the 1980s and 1990s have characteristics different from the general phenomenon of peripheral low-wage export manufacturing?  If so, were these unique characteristics conceived by the Chinese Communist Party as part of a strategy for the long-term economic development of the nation?  Would not such a strategy be consistent with a project of national and social liberation?

     I will keep these questions in mind as I continue to study the Chinese Revolution, which stands as an important historic example in the current historic moment.  The peoples of the world, experiencing the negative effects of a world-system in terminal crisis, are increasingly arriving to consciousness of the need to construct socialist nations and a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.  Therefore, it is important for us to understand the gains and limitations of the historic socialist projects.  Moreover, China is especially important, because the renewed Third World popular movements tend to view China as playing a cooperative role in the emerging alternative project for a more just world.  They view China’s foreign policy as fundamentally different from that of the imperialist powers of the European-centered world-system.

​Reference
 
Li, Minqi.  2008.  The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.

     In his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 19, 2017, Donald Trump asserted:  “From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.  Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.”

     Standing in contrast to the assertions of Trump are the views of Minqi Li, a Chinese intellectual who migrated to the United States in 1994 and obtained a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts, and who now is Professor of Economics at the University of Utah.  In The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy, he notes that from the early nineteenth century to 1950, China experienced a significant economic decline.  He writes that China’s GDP accounted for one-third of the gross world product in the early nineteenth century, but it had fallen to less than five percent by 1950.  Similarly, the gap in per capita income between China and the leading states of Western Europe was 2:1 in the early nineteenth century, but it had widened to 20:1 by 1950.  “China was reduced to being one of the poorest populations in the world” (Li, 2008:24).

      But the triumph of socialism in China in 1949 established the political conditions for creating an alternative reality.  A transformation was accomplished through the nationalization of industry and the establishment of state ownership of industrial enterprises; and through an agrarian reform program that confiscated the property of landholders and distributed it to landless and poor peasants.  As a result, China’s long decline was reversed, and the basic human needs of the people were met.  In the Maoist period of 1950 to 1976, China’s growth rate surpassed that of the major Western powers and was significantly better than the world average.  Moreover, a system of centralized planning facilitated the development and diffusion of industrial and agricultural technologies that enabled the subsequent rise of China that began in the 1980s (Li, 2008:30-38).

      In Li’s view, the achievements of the Chinese Revolution during the Maoist period demonstrated the superiority of socialism over capitalism in providing for the basic human needs of the people in a social and economic situation defined by high levels of poverty. 

​     Li maintains that socialist states in general have demonstrated a capacity to provide for the basic human needs of their populations. 

​     Li quotes Vicente Navarro, who undertook a comparative study of the health conditions in capitalist and socialist countries:

     Located in Cuba, I can affirm the validity of the observations of Li and Navarro.  In socialist Cuba, as a consequence of the triumph of a popular socialist revolution in 1959, there has been developed an alternative political process of popular democracy, which ensures that the decision-making process in the political, economic, educational, cultural, and informational institutions are under the authority of the elected delegates of the people.  From this political reality other things follow: free and high-quality educational and health care systems; state support for needs with respect to nutrition, housing, and transportation; a public discourse that is free of distortions and manipulations; state support for culture and the arts; and safety in the streets.

     The opinion of Donald Trump is widely held in the United States and other nations of the North.  However, it is not necessarily a view that is based on empirical observation of the historical social-economic reality in which the political project of socialism has been forged.  Nor is it based on personal encounter with the social movements of the neocolonized peoples of the earth, whose insights into the global structures of domination and into the possibilities for their emancipatory transformation require the serious consideration of all who seek to understand.

      For more reflection on the Cuban Revolution and its meaning for the world-system, please see my book, The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The light in the darkness.

​References
 
Li, Minqi.  2008.  The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.
 
Navarro, Vicente.  1993.  “Has Socialism Failed?  An Analysis of Health Indicators under Capitalism and Socialism.”  Science & Society 57(1):6-30 (Spring).
 

Posted July 26, 2014

     At the Second Summit of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), held in Havana, Cuba in January (see “The Declaration of Havana 2014” 3/14/2014), the creation of a China-CELAC Forum was approved.  On July 17, hours after the conclusion of the Sixth Summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, the heads of state of China and the countries of Latin American and the Caribbean, meeting in Brasilia, formally established the China-CELAC Forum.  This is an important step in the strengthening of commercial and social relations between the Asian giant and the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean and in advancing South-South cooperation (see “The fall & rise of South-South cooperation” 7/24/2014). 

     China has a unique history.  In the pre-modern era, the Chinese Empires were the most advanced and the largest of the world-empires.  But during the nineteenth century, China was forced to make economic and commercial concessions to the expanding European powers, undermining its autonomy and reducing its power.  But on the other hand, it was sufficiently powerful to prevent European conquest, colonization, and peripheralization, as had occurred in the rest of the empires and societies of Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, except Japan.  All three of the twentieth century political currents in China (republicanism, nationalism, and communism) envisioned the restoration of Chinese power and prestige in the world.  The triumph of Chinese communism made possible the reconstruction of the political-economy in accordance with popular needs and interests and facilitated an autonomous, if isolated, development.  Since the 1980s, the “opening” has built on this socialist foundation to develop trade with all nations of the world and to facilitate commercial and productive advances.  Thus, in the fundamental global divide between colonizers and colonized, China pertains to neither: it was never colonized, and in the modern era, its development has not been built on a foundation of colonial domination and imperialist penetration of other lands. 

     In the present global reality, in which the modern world-system has reached the geographical limits of the earth, the possibilities for an emerging power to ascend through colonial domination and imperialism is far more limited than in the past.  The entire planet is under imperialist domination, and any effort by an emerging power to penetrate areas neocolonized by a global power would pose a threat to the interests of the global powers, which have demonstrated their ability to cooperate in defense of interests threatened by rising semi-peripheral nations.  These conditions favor an alternative strategy by an emerging semi-peripheral nation, involving cooperation with other semi-peripheral and peripheral nations, making an end run around the global powers and avoiding a direct confrontation, while invoking universal human values.  This alternative strategy contributes to the formation of an alternative world-system, based on respect for universal human values rather than on domination and exploitation (see “Universal human values” 4/16/2014).  The alternative world-system could have increasing viability as the best option for humanity as the global powers demonstrate their inability to resolve the global crisis and increasingly turn to militarism and new forms of fascism (see “The future of the world-system” 7/22/2014; “Imperialism, fascism, and democracy” 7/23/2014).    

     This alternative strategy of development through cooperation has been followed by China in recent years, as is indicated by the growing Chinese relations with Latin America.  China has become the first trading partner of Brazil and the second of Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba, nations that pursue equitable trading relations.  The development by China of accords with Latin America and the Caribbean, which are based on the assumption that the participants are equal partners, puts the process of Latin American and Caribbean unity and integration on more solid ground, and it strengthens the movement toward South-South cooperation.

     Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, recently traveled to Brazil for the BRICS Summit and for the meeting, establishing the China-CELAC Forum, with the heads of state of the nations of CELAC, including Raúl Castro of Cuba, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.  And he subsequently visited Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba.  Prior to his trip to Latin America, the Chinese President responded to questions by journalists from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba.  He describes China as a large nation, not a global power, and in a phase of development similar to Latin America and the Caribbean nations.  He maintains that China is seeking to develop through trade based on cooperation and win-win relations of mutual benefit.  He advocates the promotion of South-South cooperation in order that underdeveloped nations can attain autonomous and sustainable development, and he considers the expanding economic and social relation between China and CELAC to be an example of South-South cooperation.  He affirms that China is committed to a more just and reasonable international economic and political order (Xi 2014).  An English translation of the interview can be found at: Xi Jinping, Long distance does not weaken close friendship.


References

Xi Jinping.  2014.  “Cooperación entre China y América Latina y el Caribe: La larga distancia no borra la íntima amistad,” Granma: Órgano Oficial del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba, La Habana, 15 de julio, Págs. 3-5.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, South-South cooperation, China, CELAC

Posted July 29, 2014

     On July 25, an article on the China-CELAC Forum by Cuban journalists Yaima Puig Meneses and Leticia Martínez Hernández appeared in Granma , the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, which also functions as the daily newspaper in Cuba.  Granma is an excellent source of news on international events.  It differs from the major international news media both in the items that it selects for news coverage as well as the perspective taken.  It represents the current perspective of the Cuban Revolution on world affairs.

     The article by Puig and Martínez describes the formal establishment of the China-CELAC Forum (see “China-CELAC cooperation” 7/25/2014) as “an historic milestone for the nations that compose it. Our region, historically plundered and beaten by foreign powers, now receives respectful treatment and gratitude from the Asian giant” (2014:9).

     Puig and Martínez summarize the major points of the Joint Declaration emitted by China and CELAC on July 17.  In addition to confirming that the First Ministerial Meeting of the China-CELAC Forum will be held in Beijing, the document emphasizes the need to strengthen capacity for the flow of goods and information among the participating nations, and to this end to develop the infrastructure of transportation and communication, including railroads, roads, ports, airports, and telecommunications, and it affirms that the participating nations seek to establish an  association based on equality, mutual benefit, reciprocal cooperation, and common development.  Here it should be noted that in the core-peripheral relation, the core powers financed the construction of an infrastructure designed to facilitate the flow of raw materials from the periphery to the core and of manufactured goods from the core to the periphery.  But what is envisioned in the Declaration is the development of an infrastructure to facilitate commerce among the nations of the South, the lack of which was a significant obstacle to putting into practice the historic Third World vision of non-alignment (see “The fall & rise of South-South cooperation” 7/24/2014).   

      The Cuban journalists describe the project that China proposes as a program for the integral development of cooperation, driven by three engines: commerce, investment, and financial cooperation.  The commercial accords should be designed to increase the economic growth of both parties.  Investment should be reciprocal, and oriented toward the productive sectors and the diversification of production. This will require financial cooperation between the central banks, which will liquidate the commercial exchanges in national currencies.  With respect to Latin America, the priorities of cooperation fall into six areas: energy and natural resources, infrastructure construction, agriculture, manufacturing, technical innovations, and computer technology.  As an initial concrete step, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the establishment of a Special Credit for Chinese and Latin American and Caribbean infrastructure, which will provide lines of credit under preferential conditions to Latin American and Caribbean nations.  (See an interview with Xi Jinping, in which the Chinese president describes China’s program for integral development on an international scale).

     The China-CELAC Forum envisions not only commercial relations of mutual benefit but also the establishment of space for dialogue between CELAC and China with respect to global political issues of common interest, such as the democratic reform of the United Nations.  As the Chinese President expressed in his address to the China-CELAC meeting,

     Puig and Martínez conclude that

References

Puig Meneses, Yaima y Leticia Martínez Hernández.  1914.  “Foro China-CELAC: Una plataforma para el diálogo y la cooperación,” Granma: Órgano Oficial del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba, La Habana, 25 de julio, Págs. 4-5.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, South-South cooperation, China, CELAC

Posted July 18, 2014

​     In response to my post and announcement that mentioned the participation of China in the development of alternative international structures by the governments of the South, Alan Spector, Past President of the Association for Humanist Sociology, posted the following message to the Progressive and  Critical Sociologist Network discussion list.

    The position taken by most Cuban scholars is that China has exploitative commercial relations to the extent that the commercial partner accepts it, as had occurred with respect to Chinese relations with some African nations, but that China accepts more equitable terms of exchange, if required by the partner nation, as has occurred with respect to progressive Latin American governments.  The latter tendency has been more prominent in the last ten years, as an increasing number of nations are beginning to search for mechanisms of autonomous development.  Thus, Chinese foreign policy is fundamentally different from US policy, which seeks to overthrow governments that insist upon exchange that is more equitable.

      An analogy between the United States 100 years ago and China today is interesting.  Certainly, both the USA then and China today can be seen as in the early stages of a project of ascent.  But the historical and global context is different.  The United States had begun its ascent in the eighteenth century on the basis of geographical expansionism, super-exploitation of slave labor in the Caribbean and the US South, and the beginnings of US imperialist penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean (see “Slavery, development, and US ascent” 8/30/2013; “Cotton” 9/9/2013; “The origin of US imperialist policies” 9/18/2013; “US Imperialism, 1903-1932” 9/19/2013).  At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States could envision its continuing ascent through the deepening of imperialist penetration in colonized and neocolonized regions, and thus imperialism emerged as the foundation for US foreign policy during the twentieth century.

       But the possibilities for ascent through imperialist penetration are much more limited today, as a result of the fact that the world-system has reached its geographical limits, and thus is itself facing a structural and possibly terminal crisis (see “The terminal crisis of the world-system” 3/28/2014).  As a result, China sees a different road to ascent:  relations with semi-peripheral nations that also are seeking ascent, on the basis of the more equitable relations upon which all insist.  China, although a larger and more powerful nation that has never been colonized, has in common with other semi-peripheral nations the persistent struggle for autonomy in the face of European expansionism.  For China, the most practical strategy in the present global context is to cast its lot with other semi-peripheral nations seeking ascent, who see the defense of their national interests as requiring the democratic transformation of the world-system. Recognizing that there is strength in unity, the semi-peripheral nations also are inviting the poorer peripheralized countries to participate, nations that also have been victimized by the same process of Western colonialism and imperialism. 

     In following a different road, the emerging semi-peripheral nations are redefining the meaning of ascent.  Rather than pursuing national interests through superexploitation of labor in other lands and at the expense of other nations, the emerging nations seek national development through cooperation with other nations, seeking to identify forms of economic, commercial, and cultural exchange that are mutually beneficial, and to develop political alliances on this basis. They are following a logic of national development that is integral to a process of change that seeks a more just and democratic world, recognizing that the neocolonial world-system has reached the geographical limits of the earth and has surpassed its ecological limits, and appreciating that the utilization of structures of neocolonial exploitation as a basis of ascent is no longer possible.  In the present historic moment, advances in development for any nation have to occur on a foundation of cooperation with other nations.  Not recognizing this fundamental fact of our time, the established global powers continue to aggressively pursue interests through super-exploitation of the peoples of the earth, and in the process, they are establishing the foundation for a new form of fascism or an era of chaos.

     So there is emerging a global project from the South that seeks to develop an alternative to the North American-European-centered neocolonial world-system.   China, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and others are among the principal actors in the creation of alternative international structures (see “A change of epoch?” 3/18/2014; “Is Marx today fulfilled?” 3/20/2014; and “The alternative world-system from below” 4/15/2014).

     Alan is not necessarily among them, but many people believe that “power corrupts,” and to believe that every powerful nation will be imperialist is perhaps a social application of this maxim. The notion that persons with power and governments of powerful nations invariably ignore universal human values is a cynical and pernicious belief, for it implies that a more just and democratic world cannot be created. Against this notion, I maintain that the Third World revolution of the last 200 years shows that there are persons who possess power in the form of charismatic authority who are committed to universal values, and that there have emerged governments controlled by popular social movements that have acted in accordance with international norms and democratic values.  And I maintain that the structural and possible terminal crisis of the world-system is establishing conditions that favor this possibility.  Today, as the neocolonized peoples of the earth are in movement, proclaiming that a more just and democratic world is possible and necessary, we intellectuals of the North have the duty to recognize and support this process, helping our peoples to cast aside cynicism and to embrace hope.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, China, ascent

July 21, 2014

​     In response to my post of July 18 (“China and the alternative world-system”), Alan Spector has posted the following message in the Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network discussion list.

     In using the phrase “commercial partner,” I was referring to the government of a nation that signed a commercial agreement with China.  Most of the governments of Africa and Asia do not represent superexploited workers; rather, they represent the national bourgeoisie or a sector of it, such as the landed estate bourgeoisie, and they often represent the interests of international capital.  This reality, inherent in the neocolonial situation, is being challenged by the Third World popular revolution that has emerged with a renewed force since 1995.

     China does not use coercive measures, the threat of force or sanctions to induce governments to accept commercial agreements, and for this reason, Cuban scholars tend not to view China as an emerging imperialist power, even though some of these agreements, particularly with respect to Africa, are in opposition to the interests of workers and to the autonomy of the nation.  Certainly, neocolonized nations are not truly independent, and the neocolonial situation is itself coercive; but China takes no particular aggressive action, and in this respect, it departs from the conduct of the global powers, which also have historic responsibility for the establishment of the neocolonial world-system.  At the same time, China has increasingly moved toward the signing of agreements with progressive governments in Latin America that are controlled by popular sectors or a coalition of forces that include the popular sectors, agreements which have positive consequence for the people and for national development.  Such cooperation by China with progressive and Left governments contrasts sharply with the hostility of the United States and Western Europe toward these governments, and for this reason, China is held in high regard by the popular movement in Latin America.

       I take the notion of states as central actors in the modern world-system from the world-systems perspective of Immanuel Wallerstein, which was formulated in the 1970s on the basis of Wallerstein’s personal encounter with the African nationalist movements of the 1960s (see “Immanuel Wallerstein” 7/30/2013; “Wallerstein: A Critique” 7/31/0213; “Wallerstein and world-systems analysis” 3/25/2014). The idea makes a great deal of sense from the Third World perspective, inasmuch as states were the principal actors in the imposition of colonialism and neocolonialism; and to the extent that Third World movements have been able to reduce the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism, or to transform the colonial reality into a more democratic situation, it was accomplished by national liberation movements that took control of governments and implemented alternative policies.  So in the modern world-system, states have been central actors in domination and liberation.

       When we take the modern world-system as our unit of analysis and seek to understand its origin and development, we arrive at the understanding not only that nation-states are the principal actors in the world-system, but also that there is a fundamental division between colonizing and colonized nation-states (see “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013; and “Dialectic of domination and development” 10/30/2013).  And we see that this colonial divide effects the character of exploitation.  In the colonial situation, the workers are not only exploited in Marx’s sense, receiving wages that are less than the value of the products that they produce; but they also are “superexploited,” receiving less than what is necessary for life (“Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013).  In contrast, in the core region of the world economy, where colonizing nations are located, workers were superexploited during an earlier phase, but as the capitalist world-economy developed, the capitalist class was able to utilize profits from the exploitation of the colonies to make concessions to workers’ movements in the core, thus creating a situation in which core workers, for the most part, are exploited but not superexploited (see “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013).  The colonial divide also created a difference with respect to the characteristics of social movements.  In the core, the first movements to emerge were formed by workers, artisans, and intellectuals tied to them, leading Marx to formulate the concept of the proletarian vanguard (“Marx on the revolutionary proletariat” 1/14/14).  But in the colonies, the movements from the outset were formed by multiple classes seeking independence from colonial rule in addition to the protection of the social and economic rights of the people, as was illustrated in the Vietnamese Revolution (see ““Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014).  These national liberation movements were able to attain political independence, but the economic function of labor in providing superexploited labor was preserved in most of the newly independent nations, creating a global neocolonial situation (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013). 

      Recognizing the role of the nation-state as the principal actor of the modern world-system in no sense involves overlooking class division in the colony or the neocolonized nation.  Class divisions are central to the dynamics of colonies and neocolonies, and they are the principal factor in shaping the action of states.  The national bourgeoisie typically is composed of an estate bourgeoisie dedicated to the export of agricultural products to the core; and an emerging national industrial bourgeoisie tied to the domestic market.  Mining and banking are generally under foreign ownership, but national ownership also exists in these sectors.  The popular classes include the petit bourgeoisie, industrial workers, artisans, agricultural workers, peasants, and the lumpenproletariat.  During the independence struggle, the popular classes and the national bourgeoisie are allies; but when political independence is attained, their opposed interests become manifest. As the Cuban scholar Jesús Arboleya has noted, during the struggle for independence, the national bourgeoisie represents the interests of the emerging nation before the colonial power; but once independence is attained, the national bourgeoisie represents the interests of the former colonial power within the newly independent nation.  In most cases, the national bourgeoisie controls the “independent” government of the neocolony, and it governs in accordance with its interests and the imperialist interests of the global powers. 

     These social dynamics are generally understood by Third World intellectuals tied to popular social movements.  Knowledge of social dynamics is rooted in social position, and what Third World intellectuals are teaching us is the possibility of combining the vantage point of the worker and the vantage point of the colonized.

     Popular revolutions in the Third World reached an earlier zenith in the 1960s, and since 1995, they have experienced renewal and have reached their most advanced stage.  They seek to take control of governments and to govern in defense of the popular classes and sectors.  When popular revolutions have succeeded in taking control of the state, they typically have engaged in an ideological attack against the national bourgeoisie, accusing it of betraying the nation by virtue of its complicity with imperialism.  As Hugo Chávez would say of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie after the triumph of the popular revolution in Venezuela, “They were on their knees, there is no other way to say it, they were on their knees before the imperial power.” 

     The Third World popular revolutions are anti-imperialist revolutions, seeking to abolish neocolonialism; and they are class revolutions, seeking to dislodge the national bourgeoisie from power and to place the state under the control of delegates of the people, who are charged to govern in defense of the interests and the needs of the people.  The Third World popular revolutions are at the vanguard of the global socialist revolution; they are redefining the meaning of socialism, and they are making significant contributions to the evolution of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. 

      Recognizing the important role of Third World popular revolutions in constructing an alternative to the neocolonial world-system does not imply support for repressive Third World governments.  Repression is normal in the neocolonial situation, for in representing the interests of the national bourgeoisie and international capital, Third World governments must repress popular movements.  The great majority of repressive Third World governments have been allies of imperialism. The Third World popular revolution seeks to displace them with governments that defend popular interests and needs, and that therefore do not have need of repression.  When in power, Third World popular revolutions have developed structures of popular democracy and/or representative democracy, and have succeeded in ending repression and establishing citizen participation.  The global Third World popular revolution does not support Third World governments that repress popular movements, even when such governments have anti-imperialist dimensions.

Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, China, world-systems perspective