Socialism With a Chinese Characteristics

491 Pages·107.923 MB·English

by  Harpal Brar

Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics
Marketisation of the Chinese Economy
Harpal Brar
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Socialism with Chinese
characteristics
The marketisation of the Chinese
economy
Harpal Brar
SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
Socialism with Chinese characteristics -
the marketisation of the Chinese economy
First published in Great Britain by Harpal Brar, London
2020
Copyright Harpal Brar 2020
ISBN 978-1-874613-30-5 (pbk]
Printed at: Shakti Printers, Shahdara, Delhi-95. India
Books by Harpal Brar
PERESTROIKA - The Complete Collapse of Revisionism
ISBN 1-874613-01-X [pbk] ISBN 1-874613-00-1 [hbk]
TROTSKYISM or LENINISM?
ISBN 1-874613-02-8 [pbk] ISBN 1-874613-03-6 [hbk]
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY - The Enemy Within
ISBN 1-874613-04-4 (pbk] ISBN 1-874513-05-2 [hbk]
BOURGEOIS NATIONALISM or PROLETARIAN
INTERNATIONALISM?
ISBN 1-874613-08-7 [pbk] ISBN 1-874613-09-5 [hbk]
IMPERIALISM - Decadent, Parasitic, Moribund Capitalism
ISBN 1-874613-07-9 [pbk] ISBN 1-874613-06-0 [hbk]
IMPERIALISM - The Eve of the Social Revolution of the
-
Proletariat
ISBN 1-874613-14-1 [pbk]
IMPERIALISM AND WAR
ISBN 1-874613-15-X [pbk]
CHIMURENGA! The liberation struggle in Zimbabwe
ISBN 1-874613-13-3 (pbk]
60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VICTORY OVER FASCISM
[a Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) publication]
Books by Harpal Brar and Ella Rule
IMPERIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST - With specific reference to the
-
struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination
ISBN 1-874613-12-5 (pbk]
IMPERIALISM AND THE PRESENT WORST-EVER CRISIS
OF OVERPRODUCTION
ISBN 1-874613-14-1 (pbk]
Book by Ella Rule (Editor)
MARXISM and the EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN
ISBN 1-874613-10-9 [pbk] ISBN 1-874613-11-7 [hbk]
All publications are available from CPGB-ML shop:
https://shop.thecommunists.org/
Dedicated to
To Comrade Mao Zedong
The greatest ever Chinese person, under whose
leadership of the CPC the Chinese people
achieved liberation, ended imperialist domination,
unified China, abolished feudalism, expropriated
the bourgeoisie, and laid the basis for socialist
development through centrally-planned
industrialisation and collectivisation of
agriculture.
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Preface i
PART I - Synopsis of modern Chinese history
Chapter 1
From the Opium Wars to the Cultural Revolution 1
PART II - The Cultural Revolution
-
Chapter 2
The Cultural Revolution 25
Chapter 3
The official evaluation of the Cultural Revolution 57
Chapter 4
The counter-narrative 81
PART III – Marketisation of the economy
-
Chapter 5
De-collectivisation 105
Chapter 6
Reform and opening up? 117
Chapter 7
139
More on marketisation of the economy
PART IV – The dark side of 'reform'
Chapter 8
157
Health and education
SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
Chapter 9
163
"One child policy
Chapter 10
169
Growth of private wealth
Chapter 11
189
The construction industry and the property development
market
Chapter 12
195
A mountain of debt
Chapter 13
207
Foreign currency reserves
Chapter 14
217
Opposition to 'reforms'
PART V - Has the West lost its bet on China?
Chapter 15
245
Creating global champions
Chapter 16
273
State and private ownership
Chapter 17
Made in China, Belt and Road Initiative, and trade war
301
Chapter 18
China-Africa relations 313
PART VI – War and peace
Chapter 19
War and peace
327
CONTENTS
Conclusion
Chapter 20
Is China's rise solely attributable to the market? 351
APPENDICES
I Some questions of political economy and theory 387
II The 4 June 1989 counter-revolutionary rebellion 427
III In defence of Jiang Qing 443
POSTSCRIPT - Coronavirus and the 2020 crisis 447
Bibliography 473
481
Index
PREFACE
I was most reluctant to write on the topic which is the subject matter of this
book. And this for the following two main reasons:
First, motivated by an instinct of self-preservation, I felt now was not the
me to make new enemies since I am already blessed with plenty of them.
Second, I felt there was paucity of information about the intense struggles
that took place among the top leadership of the CPC. Unlike the ideological
and political struggles that took place in the CPSU(B) during the times of
Lenin and Stalin, when one could read chapter and verse of what each side
of the divide stood for, in the case of the CPC much was away from the
public eye and whatever did appear in public was provided in allegorical
form, often verging on obscurity. One constantly had to read between the
lines. That, however, did not mean that the controversy between Mao and
his supporters, on the one hand, and Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping and
their supporters, on the other hand, was unreal and lacking in substance.
All the same, I was persuaded, nay coerced, into writing by my close
comrades. Thus it can be seen that this work, to use Engels' expression, “is
by no means the fruit of any ‘inner urge'.”]
“The chief endeavour of the bourgeoisie of all countries and of its reformist
hangers-on”, said Stalin, “is to kill in the working class faith in its own
strength, faith in the possibility and inevitability of its victory, and thus to
1 Anti-Dühring, p.9.
is
SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
the right to dispose of all consumer goods produced
circulation, with its 'money economy commodity
would have disappeared “as being
an unnecessary element in the national economy”.}
Precisely for this reason, Stalin was firmly of the view that "the
disappearance of this essential distinction between agriculture and industry
must be a matter of paramount importance”..4
This is precisely why he was in favour of introducing measures, such as
products exchange, which would step by step have the effect of shrinking
the sphere of commodity circulation and enlarging the sphere of products
exchange.
The Marxist-Leninist position is that commodity production and circulation,
the existence of the market, is incompatible with communism, and that,
therefore, it is the function of socialism to abolish the market.
Revisionism, on the contrary, following in the steps of bourgeois
economists, believes in ‘market socialism', according to which the
continued existence of commodity-money relations under socialism, far
from being merely a heritage of capitalism, is but an inherent need of the
socialist economy, which requires not only the continuation of the market
but also its expansion.
A commodity is a product which may be sold to any purchaser, and when
its owner sells it he loses ownership of it and the purchaser becomes the
owner of the commodity, which he may re-sell, pledge or allow to rot.
Commodities are “objects which, within a society composed of private
producers, are produced and exchanged against each other by these private
producers for their private account” (Engels, Anti-Dühring).
Again, says Engels, “What are commodities? Products made in a society
of more or less private producers, and therefore in the first place private
products. These private products, however, become commodities only
when they are made, not for consumption by their producers, but for
consumption by others, that is, for social consumption; they enter into social
consumption through exchange”.S
“Direct social production and direct distribution preclude all exchange of
commodities, therefore also the transformation of products into
3 Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, p.15-16.
4 Ibid., p.27.
Anti-Dühring, p.425.