China:Capitalism, Market-Socialism or Neither?

[BayCityProgressive]

We often discuss China on this website so I thought this was an interesting take on the current state of their economy.

http://www.solidarityeconomy.net/2006/11/01/china-market-socialism-or-capitalism/

[piedmont]

1. It's Boxer being sold to the slaughterhouse while the pigs live like the humans...

whatever you call that.

[otherlander]

7. A revolution betrayed.

[piedmont]

9. yep. The rural peasants are pretty much getting put through a meat grinder.

There's no opportunity to provide for a family in rural China, so the able-bodied people migrate to the cities. But the authorities have fixed the game. You need a work permit to live in the cities. So most of these workers are "illegal" in their own nation-- and get heavily exploited (low pay, being cheated out of pay, horrible work conditions, getting fired for being sick). And to top it off, the rural immigrants are housed in single-sex dorms-- no starting families in the city.
I think China's leadership sees the enormous population as an expendable resource, to be spent off building cities and infrastructure for the rich. Reducing population is a wise goal, but the way they're going about it is repugnant.

[dogman]

2. Fascism.

The m-i-c calls the shots. The military control the means of production and dictate policy.

[Ignacio Upton]

3. China is essentially Fascist now

The PRC regime is more akin to Mussolini or Pinochet than Mao (which is actually an inprovement, sadly, considering that Mao killed more people than either of those douchebags.)

[Boojatta]

4. Can you explain this?

Let me sketch very briefly the basic argument. In an important sense it follows from Marx’s profound and still fully-relevant critique of capitalism.

How do we know that it's profound and still fully relevant?

Recall, there are fundamentally two parts to Marx’s critique. Capitalism is based on alienated labor, which gives rise to anarchy of production

Recall? Is that just obeying the injunction "Men should be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown proposed as things forgot" or are readers expected to have already studied Marx as a prerequisite?

The first problem is rooted in the commodification of labor, the fact that workers must sell their ability to work on labor markets to those who own the means of production.

If a worker doesn't plan to sell some service directly to the general public and if a worker is not to be given the power to impose himself or herself on others, then surely some authority of some kind external to the worker must consent to the worker's request to work for a given organization. What does that have to do with capitalism?

The second has to do with the fact that the bulk of the surplus value exacted by the capitalism is not consumed, but must be reinvested if the system is to remain stable.

How do we know that is a fact? How much stability is required for a system to be "stable"?

But whether and how and where this reinvestment occurs is determined by profitability criteria, which engender irrational development and economic instability.

What are "profitability criteria"? Many investors might prefer lower risk rather than the possibility of higher returns. How much risk is rational? None? What kind of development would be rational?

[BayCityProgressive]

6. yeah

the link is from a socialist think tank...so I think they just assume everyone knows their beliefs on the issue.

[LostInAnomie]

8. It helps if you've read some of Marx's works.

Pretty much all of your quote boxes are rooted in basic Marxist thought. The problem with reading Marx is that it is almost better if you know what he is going to say before you read it. If you don't it's very hard to sort through his very dense language, and technical terms.

[sweetheart]

15. the surplus

How much profit is enough? 'stable' seems just a filler word for 'enough' and there appears no maximum.

'profitability criteria' depends on market structure, as if carbon taxes were applied to embedded energy amounts
in supply chains, profitability would -redefine-. If all corporate subsidies and tax breaks were eliminated,
profitability would 'redefine'. If all labour inputs are fairly compensated by law, then the redefiniition of
profitability includes those living wages too.

He's right to say that the issue is in the market microstructure. I would be interested to see his econometric
analysis of those markets and how they might be reskewed to better serve.

[Boojatta]

17. Thank you for attempting to answer some of the questions.

What's the answer to this one?

If a worker doesn't plan to sell directly to the general public and if a worker is not to be given the power to impose himself or herself on others, then surely some authority of some kind external to the worker must consent to the worker's request to work for a given organization. What does that have to do with capitalism?

[sweetheart]

18. by its relationship with 'political economy'

The worker is part of the body politic, a member of a social class, and by the attempt to restrict
the capitalist preference to segment society and keep elite workers well paid (new york doormen) and
the rest ununionized and socially broken (jamaican garmet workers) is unfettered in laizze faire capitalism
that the op-writer calls 'neo liberalism'. The ideal of a state supervised
labour market would prevent this allocation of favours.

If a corporation then sends its job-request/definition to the 'labour market', and it is filled with
democratic oversight, the occlusion and antidemocratic practices that prevent women and minorities, to
this day, from rising up in corporate management would be stymied.

Arguably then, it is a social innovation to include public transparency and political will in the workplace,
and as such has everything to do with the capitalist political economy. The author does point out that
china is not capitalist, nor is it socialist... its an emerging variant. His concept of a state-managed
hiring process has some real potential, as the state-as-lifetime-employer vs the corporation, is a more
honest allocation of risk. As well, the state is in a better bargaining position with employers than any
individual.... and no labour market, however small, would lose out on the power of a union. You would
only ever be employed by the state, and contracted to every 'job' for the salary negotiated.

Does it have to do with the concept of capitalism as selfish consumer individualism, yes it does, as it
re-introduces the concept that we are one-humankind that does not accept disenfranchisement or suffering
in unemployment... those fated capitalist outputs.

[Boojatta]

19. Perhaps I misunderstood, but I have a question.

Arguably then, it is a social innovation to include public transparency and political will in the workplace, and as such has everything to do with the capitalist political economy.

Are you suggesting that every social innovation must necessarily come from a country that either has a capitalist political economy or has some kind of semi-capitalist political economy? In other words, are you suggesting that no social innovation can have anything to do with a purely socialist system, but must be imported from outside of a purely socialist system?

[sweetheart]

20. the owners

Fact is, that the owners own everything, and these owners are not the workers. This is as true in china as in the USA.

In this sense, we're working with the western concept of a corporation as a for-profit organization with legal rights to
own property that is owned by central authority. There is always a tension between centrallization of authority and
control-order people, and the reality that life is constantly changing and in a flux. There is no pure capitalist or
socialst system... all economies are planned, some opaquely, some transparently, all cultures are cults of beliefs,
and there is no absolute truth.

Some people say they believe in socialism, yet live in an entirely capitalist system. Does this make them socialists?
At some point, politics is superrational as it is ultimately the art of theatre on stage,
acted of soul, no matter the bankruptcy of the playwright.
This be why, IMO, the op's author went to such lenghts to define capitalism/socialism
across the dimensions he did, to show them as contrasts from analytic and systems
approaches all the way towards the actors approach and the totality.

[Fovea]

5. Not quite free market totalitarianism

at this point, as signs of populist pressure on the environmental disaster that is China, and reaction against commercial partners such as Walmart.

I think that the global climate crisis is going to destabilize China in dramatic ways. We may see another three kingdoms period in China.

[Solon]

10. I could see a collapse of the government, similar to the Soviet Union...

However, beyond Tibet, I don't see any further splits, for while China does have its regionalisms, etc. they have been largely unified for over 2000 years, that cannot be swept away any time soon.

[Emit]

11. I have no clue, but did you catch this segment of this program on PBS, China from the Inside?

Fascinating stuff. If you haven't seen it, you might be interested in this part:

http://www.pbs.org/kqed/chinainside/power/index.html

[Bucky]

12. You know, it looks a hell of a lot like 19th Century American-style neo-mercantalism

Hoarding gold, buying little, importing nearly nothing, exporting like crazy, high protective tariffs, subtle xenophobia, encouraging foreign investment, and beating the shit out of the labor force.

They've learned from the best, it seems.

[LostInAnomie]

13. I was thinking Mercantilism also.

Only in China's case it would be more Mercantilist-Socialism. The only real difference would be that they aren't imperialist... at least not yet.

[Bucky]

14. If you think of urban, industrial eastern China separately from the rural west....

...then yes, they are imperialists. Tibet is a good example. Taiwan could be too, if we let 'em.

[piedmont]

16. I'd call them imperialist-- at least within their region.

Look at Tibet and Xinjiang, for ex. Within the last 70 years they have definitely been expansionist.

[HamdenRice]

21. As someone who worked in China, I would definitely say "market socialism"

I should preface this by explaining that I worked in China and with Chinese officials on a consulting basis for about three years. Much of the work actually was done in the US, but I would travel there for field research, conferences and working sessions, including work in several different cities.

Much of what you read in the mainstream media about China is lazy and simplistic reporting by people who don't know what socialism is, and if they do, are knee-jerk against it. They have a natural tendency to believe that any rational government would reject socialism and so China must "really" be capitalist even though they consider themselves socialist.

But frankly, China is overwhelmingly a market socialist system. That's how they self-identify, that's how they run it, that's how their policy system works.

China is a remarkable country and I really enjoyed working with them. I wish them well and am always disappointed by the China bashing I read on DU.