The US economy grew 2.5% in 2023 over 2022, according to the first estimate of real GDP for Q4 released this week. This was greeted with rapture by Western mainstream economists – the US is motoring and the ‘recession forecasters’ have been proved badly wrong. Earlier in the week, it was announced that the Chinese economy grew 5.2% in 2023. In contrast to the US, this was condemned by Western mainstream economists as a total failure (with China using probably faked data anyway) and demonstrated that China is in deep trouble. So China grows at double the rate of the US, the best performing G7 economy by a long way, but it is China that is ‘failing’, while the US is ‘booming’.
Western economists continue to argue that the Chinese economy is heading down the drain. I have rejected this familiar refrain on numerous occasions on my blog. This is not because I have unquestioning support for the so-called ‘Communist’ party regime – on the contrary. It is because the Western critique is not factually correct – and also because the aim of that critique is to trash the predominant role of China’s state sector and its ability to sustain investment and production. The critique aims to distract attention from the reality that the Western capitalist economies (apart from the US it seems) are floundering in stagnation and near slump.
Take this as an example of the Western view of China: “the Chinese economic model has well and truly run out of juice and that a painful restructuring is required.” Actually, if we look at the growth rate of the US from 2020-23 and compare it with the average growth rate between 2010-19, even the US economy is underperforming. In the 2010s, the US average annual real GDP growth rate was 2.25%; in the 2020s so far, the average is 1.9% a year.
If we compare China’s 5.2% growth rate with the rest of the major economies, the gap is even greater than with the US. Japan grew 1.5% in 2023; France 0.6%, Canada 0.4%, the UK 0.3%, Italy 0.1%, and Germany fell -0.4%. Even compared to most of the large so-called emerging economies, China’s growth rate was much higher. Brazil’s growth rate is currently 2% yoy, Mexico 3.3%, Indonesia 4.9%, Taiwan 2.3% and Korea at 1.4%. Only India at 7.6% and the war economy of Russia at 5.5% is higher (of the large economies).
There is a continual attempt to trash the official statistics offered by the Chinese authorities, especially the growth figure. I have discussed the validity of this critique in posts before, but the current argument is that the Chinese GDP figures are faked and if you look at other ways of measuring economic activity like electricity or steel generation or traffic on the roads and ports, then we get a much lower growth figure. But even if you reduced the growth rate by say one-third, it would still mean a rate that is twice that of most advanced capitalist economies and above most others. And we are talking about an economic giant, not some tiny island like Hong Kong or Taiwan.
And India’s figures are to be disputed just as much as China’s are by Western economists. Back in 2015, India’s statistical office suddenly announced revised figures for GDP. That boosted GDP growth by over 2% pts a year overnight. Nominal growth in national output was being ‘deflated’ into real terms by a price deflator based on wholesale production prices and not on consumer prices in the shops, so that the real GDP figure rose by some way. Also the GDP figures were not ‘seasonally adjusted’ to take into account any changes in the number of days in a month or quarter or weather etc. Seasonal adjustment would have shown India’s real GDP growth well below the official figure. A better gauge of growth may be found in the industrial production data. And that is just 2.4% yoy in India, while China’s rate is 6.8%.
Indeed, the IMF reckons that China will grow by 4.6% this year, while the G7 capitalist economies will be lucky to manage 1.5%, with probably several going into outright recession. And if the IMF forecasts through to 2027 are accurate, the gap in growth will widen.
As John Ross has pointed out, if the Chinese economy continues to grow 4-5% a year over the next ten years, then it will double its GDP – and with a falling population, raise its GDP per person even more. “To achieve China’s target of doubling GDP between 2020 and 2035 it had to achieve a 4.7% annual average growth rate. So far since 2020 China has achieved an annual average 5.5% growth rate – with a per capita GDP annual average increase of 5.6%. To be on target for achieving its 2035 goal, China’s total GDP increase from 2020 had to be 15.5% and in fact it achieved 17.7%. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office, which makes the official economic projections for the U.S. government policy making, projects that the U.S. economy will grow at 1.8% a year until 2033 and 1.4% year from then onwards. Even if the higher rate of annual growth was achieved the U.S. economy would only grow by 39% between 2020 and 2035 whereas China would grow by 100%. That is China’s growth would be more than two and half times as fast as the US.”
But Western economists reckon that this target will not be met. First, they argue that China’s working population is falling fast and so there will not be enough cheap labour to boost output. But more output does not just depend on a rising labour force but even more on the increased productivity of that labour force. And as I have shown in previous posts, there is good reason to assume that China’s productivity of labour will rise enough to compensate for any decline in the number of workers.
Second, the Western consensus is that China is mired in huge debt, particularly in local governments and real estate developers. This will eventually lead to bankruptcies and a debt meltdown or, at best, force the central government to squeeze the savings of Chinese households to pay for these losses and thus destroy growth. A debt meltdown seems to be forecast every year by these economists, but there has been no systemic collapse in banking or in the non-financial sector.
Instead, the state-owned sector has increased investment and the government has expanded infrastructure to compensate for any downturn in the over-indebted property market. Indeed, it is China’s capitalist sector (based mostly in unproductive areas) that is in trouble, while China’s massive state sector takes the lead in economic recovery.
The reality is that China is continuing to lead the world’s productive sectors, like manufacturing. China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. It took the US the better part of a century to rise to the top; China took about 15 or 20 years.
In 1995 China had just 3% of world manufacturing exports, By 2020, its share had risen to 20%. Far from China being forced into a corner by the US ‘decoupling’ its investment into and demand for Chinese goods, the US is more dependent on Chinese exports than vice versa.
And China is closing the gap with the US in hi-tech products including semi-conductors and chips.
China has still some way to go to surpass the combined economic power of the imperialist economies, but it is closing the gap. This is what worries the US and its allies.
But you see, say the Western economists, China’s emphasis on manufacturing production and investment in infrastructure and technology over increasing household consumption is the wrong model for development. According to neoclassical (and Keynesian) theory, it’s consumption that leads growth, not investment. So China needs to break up its too large state sector, cut taxes for private enterprises and deregulate to allow the private sector to expand sales of consumer goods.
But has the large consumption share in the Western economies led to faster real GDP and productivity growth, or instead to real estate busts and banking crises? And is it not really the case that more productive investment boosts economic growth and employment, and thus wages and spending, not vice versa? That is the experience in China over the last 30 years, with high growth and investment delivering rising wages and consumer spending.
We shall see who is right about China during this year.
Michael Roberts Blog 
Was “China using probably faked data”? A careful analysis says, yes. The Rhodium Group has a track record of valid corrections to the numbers released by Beijing. For 2023 GDP, “As in previous years, our analysis builds from four expenditure-side GDP components: business investment (gross fixed capital formation), government spending, net exports, and household consumption.”
https://rhg.com/research/through-the-looking-glass-chinas-2023-gdp-and-the-year-ahead/
The result: the actual growth rate was 1.5 percent.
Unemployment of young adults rose so high last year that the government stopped issuing its measure of same. In the U.S. that would be like the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics refusing to break down unemployment tallies by age.
So Roberts’ post becomes an exercise in whataboutism: India manipulates its GDP data, too. The Western economies are anemic in comparison.
Fine, if you will accept some more whataboutism: the Japanese historical record of industrial development just about equals what the PRC has done since 1978.
Fine, so long as you don’t claim that China is a socialist country.
Fine, so long as you overlook the horrendous income inequality, the pitiful retirement plan for the poorest workers and farmers, the government now forcing middle-income people to put savings into mutual funds, stocks, and bonds for their retirement, etc.
This mess is what happen when one has a mindset of a division between a capitalist sector and a state sector. No, the private sector and the state-owned firms are all capitalist, all run for profit and the gain of the economic owners.
Charles says: “This mess is what happen when one has a mindset of a division between a capitalist sector and a state sector’
Wrong, the homelessness mess in the US is what happens when you have a dominant ‘invisible hand’ economy. In fact the currency-issuing government ought to place a prior claim on a portion of the nation’s rsources, to ensure houses and jobs for everyone, surely the first task of government, thus avoiding competition for resources between the public and private sectors, to avoid inflation. For a currency-issuer, inflation is the limit, not (lack of) money.
“In fact the currency-issuing government ought to place a prior claim on a portion of the nation’s rsources, to ensure houses and jobs for everyone, surely the first task of government, thus avoiding competition for resources between the public and private sectors, to avoid inflation. For a currency-issuer, inflation is the limit, not (lack of) money.”
Only if you subscribe to MMT vulgar economics, for Marxist economics(that is the only objective look at capitalist economy) money is a commodity, governments cannot just print money at will to guarantee “prosperity” to everyone:
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/modern-money/modern-money-pt-2/#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%98chartalist%E2%80%99%20theory%20of%20money%2C%20also%20known%20as%20Modern%20Monetary%20Theory
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/political-and-economic-crises/political-and-economic-crises-pt-2/#:~:text=How%20economists%20and%20the%20media%20represent%2C%20or%20rather%20misrepresent%2C%20the%20%E2%80%98critical%20point%E2%80%99
Boi98 Dtempo says MMT advocates reserving a portion of the nation’s resources in a plan to provide houses and jobs. Some MMT people do advocate a jobs program but none so far as I know recommend planning on such a scale. Regardless of how wrong MMT is, this charge is misplaced I think.
In addition to that problem, citing Sam Williams is not conclusive for me. Aside from the issue that there hasn’t been a free market in gold for decades, the proposition he seems to hold, that gold futures markets and gold mine stocks can serve to regulate the world economy seems vaguely like claiming the tail wags the dog. Gold isn’t even the only money material in history! The notion credit/debt are regulated ultimately by gold seems more like mercantilism than Marxism (indeed, bullionism.) Even in the most general sense, it is hard to see how a socialist mode of production, in which presumably gold won’t be money but merely gold, could possible emerge from a world in which gold is key to everything and irreplaceable to boot. So-called fiat money can be an incipient transitional form, just as the joint-stock company can be. Or so I think.
stevenjohnson Fiat “Money” of countries represents Gold in circulation, internationally the Dollar represents Gold in circulation between countries. Gold is not the only commodity that can be money, but it’s the one right now and it’s not a choice that can be regulate by the State, since capitalism is decentralized, the money commodity naturally arises from capitalism. He goes through on why Gold is such a good money commodity here:
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/from-money-as-universal-equivalent-to-money-as-currency/#:~:text=Over%20thousands%20of%20years%2C%20however%2C%20it%20is%20the%20precious%20metal%20gold%20that%20has%20emerged%20as%20the%20main%20money%20commodity.%20Why%20has%20gold%20proven%20over%20time%20to%20be%20such%20a%20good%20money%3F
Credit works under different laws but still limited by the money commodity, he goes into it here:
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/money-as-a-means-of-payment/
Mercantilism is closer to Marxism, while free trade or comparative advantage is pro imperialist and wrong:
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/comparative-advantage-monopoly-money-john-maynard-keynes-and-anwar-shaikh/
The whole point of this is that you can not reform capitalism, macroeconomics is contradictory and do more harm than good and crises of overproduction are inevitable, no matter how big the State sector is or how many regulations they put. We’re living through a overproduction crisis right now, the MMTers and liberals in general tell that the Fed is the problem, if they just didn’t raise the interest rates they say, well if they did what MMTers told them to do we would have a even bigger crises, possible hiperinflation or collapse of the dollar system, the only way to solve overproduction is by crises, it did not came yet but it will.
So the capitalist prosperity that MMTers hopes it comes from printing money is not going to happen.
The Chinese state will not solve its problems either, since it’s a capitalist economy, they’re under the same laws as every other capitalist economy, however, since China is a exporting powerhouse, it’s able to have a more loose fiscal policy, this make a illusion that China proves MMT works, but it does not, others countries that can not accumulate as much dollars through exports as China does can not have the same loose fiscal policies.
As a reminder, although destiny81538ddf32f sounds MMT when speaking of “currency issuer” the call for reserving sectors of economic production is not MMT as I understand it. But I tend to suspect a capital strike/boycott/lockout by owners of capital in response to such infringements by the state, currency issuer or not. That would be the ensuing economic problem, not inflation.
Boi98 Dtempo alleges money is circulation of gold and the dollar specifically is circulation of gold between countries. I still deny there is a free market in gold and consider this an empirical issue. Quoting Sam Williams will not convince me. Williams as I recall believes capitalism began because of gold from the Americas. But, if I remember the numbers correctly there was more silver and that was more important for European trade with points east, ultimately with China, with which Europe as a whole finally achieved a favorable trade balance. I’m not entirely convinced Williams has a sound grasp of economic history.
Boi98 Dtempo’s claim that capitalism invented money is entirely false. Money long predated capitalism, even feudalism. If it seems like Marx argued money was an invention of capitalism, then I can only regret a lapse in pedagogical technique at best….or deem this excursus in thought as doubtful as the Asiatic mode of production. I don’t believe because it’s Marxist, I approve Marxism because I think it is true, in a humanly fallible yet corrigible way.
If I understand it correctly, Adam Smith taught us above all else that it was the division of labor that was the wealth of nations, not piles of gold. (The Physiocrats said, agriculture, I think.) If anyone said it was gold, that was “the” mercantilists (not really a homogeneous group but close enough in this context,) and Sam Williams, but not Marx, nor Ricardo. This is true I think even though both men tended to presume gold money, being men who rooted their thinking in daily reality…which included gold money.
As I understand it, Marx’s projected Capital ended with the treatment of world trade. I too suspect that he would have rejected Ricardo’s innovative theory of comparative advantage, just as so many subsequent Marxists have. But imperialism was largely mercantilist, hence colonies, not Ricardian. (Imperialism before capitalism largely centered on conquest of land and its taxation? Though the Mongols were huge on free trade…) Defining imperialism as the theory of comparative advantage focuses too much on words, and even worse focuses on the words of a man who wasn’t typical of colonial policy!
And so far as Sam Williams’ lucubrations on how only gold rules, I don’t remember him treating the issues between the Banking School, the Currency School and the Free Banking School in depth (at all, so far as I know,) much less in light of economic history, even though these things were near-contemporaneous with Marx’s personal life and thought. And the contemporary status of such notions as real bills and the law of reflux, which would affect the alleged circulation of gold that rules the world economy, should be clarified, especially if they must be refuted.
stevenjohnson i didn’t meant to imply that capitalism created money, but that gold can be replaced by another commodity as the money commodity. Sam Williams itself said:
“Originally, the commodities that played the role of general equivalents were those that were the main form of wealth of the given society. For example, in the Homeric poems, wealth is measured in terms of cattle. Cattle were indeed an early form of what Marx called money material, the physical material of the use value of the commodity that acts as the universal measure of value. Some societies even measured the exchange value of commodities in terms of slaves. In this case, the enslaved workers not only produced the surplus product for the exploiting non-workers, they served as money material as well!”
The Money Commodity emerged as commodity exchanges became increasingly complex, it’s a quantitative-qualitative process, the exchange of commodities as quantitative, the emergence of the money commodity as the qualitative leap:
“As commodity exchange evolves from occasional accidental exchanges towards towards a broader system of commodity production and exchange, one commodity or at most a few emerge as the universal measure(s) of value. It becomes the special function of the money commodity to measure in terms of its own use value the exchange values of all other commodities. This indeed is the basic function of money.”
Without the money commodity, capitalists would need to measure the value each commodity against another to know the use value of its commodity or the other, that would be impossible in a complex economy, so one or a few commodities needs to serve as the universal equivalent:
“Suppose I represent the community—the independent individual commodity producer, which can just as well be a collective as an individual worker—that produces linen. I will measure the value of my commodity linen by the use value of the coat. Marx called the linen—the commodities whose value is to be measured—the relative form of value, and the coat that measures the value of the linen the equivalent form of value.
Value, then, must take the form of exchange value. The exchange value of 20 yards of linen, according to Marx’s example, is 1 coat. Notice that the exchange value of the linen is measured in terms of the use value of the coat.”
“Suppose all commodities could function as equivalents—in effect, all commodities would be money. I assume “price” is simply the exchange value of a commodity measured in terms of the use value of an equivalent commodity. I go into a coffee shop and ask the owner for my morning coffee. Naturally, I need to know what is the “price” of coffee today? The owner then says that in terms of linen it such and such a length, while in terms of coats it is a fraction of a coat of a given quality and another fraction of a coat of another quality, and so forth, while in terms of shoes, it such and such fraction of a shoe, while in terms of laptop computers it is …
..If linen and coats were the only types of commodities, this would work, but in a system of complex commodity exchange, not to speak of capitalism, where virtually everything is a commodity, this simply won’t do”
So why can’t fiat “money” be money(the universal measure of value)? because fiat “money” embodies no abstract human labor into it, it has no use value, it just represents the money commodity, today “variable weights of gold”.
As for the Currency School and Banking School, he criticizes it all the time throughout his writings:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22banking+School%22+site%3Acritiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com&sca_esv=602336012&sxsrf=ACQVn0-sgK77WgV3S7gBdqAKZL7eNkrmGg%3A1706534274473&ei=gqW3ZYG4HLLX1sQPh9S_mAI&udm=&ved=0ahUKEwiBgejJ14KEAxWyq5UCHQfqDyMQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=%22banking+School%22+site%3Acritiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiOiJiYW5raW5nIFNjaG9vbCIgc2l0ZTpjcml0aXF1ZW9mY3Jpc2lzdGhlb3J5LndvcmRwcmVzcy5jb21I-RhQ6wlY-BdwBHgAkAEAmAGrAaABwweqAQMwLji4AQPIAQD4AQHiAwQYASBBiAYB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/analyzing-currency-circulation/#:~:text=a%20commercial%20crisis.-,The%20Currency%20School,-The%20school%20of
As for Capitalism not being just commodity production, i would say again that it’s a quantitative-qualitative process, commodities are much older than Capitalism but Capitalism is the highest stage of commodity production, where almost everything becomes a commodity and the Law of Value regulates the economy.
It is perhaps shockingly unselfaware of me but I really do think none of my comments are trolling or contrarian or spam. It’s up to others to decide is there are any insights or usefully concise formulations or potentially rewarding questions for investigation. They are more apt to find terrible proofreading, awkward grammar and a dismaying lack of control of length. Again though I really do think there aren’t petty meanness, even when passions of the moment provoke.
Despite all this I would like to improve my commenting style, because not being a troll is a pretty low standard. So I would like to ask, how was I so offensive in the comment Jan 29 at 3:40 pm? The only thing I can think of is that it was all too stupid to bear and that even worse it was moronic about a person not present? You can respond direct to email if you wish or simply bid farewell if you don’t.
Well said! Michael robert thinks State companies = Socialist, Private companies = Capitalism, this is wrong! Engels already debunked this hundred years ago:
“I say “have to”. For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the state has become economically inevitable, only then — even if it is the state of today that effects this — is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the state the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, [116] the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions.”
Capitalism is a mode of production based on commodity production. It doesn’t matter if it’s the State or private capitalist entities producing the commodities, If the economy is governed by the law of value, then it’s Capitalism, even if all companies are owned by the State. The idea that the State is a ‘Socialist sector’ is revisionism garbage aimed at downplaying class struggles and undermining workers’ confidence in a fully planned proletarian economy, claiming that workers needs the capitalist sector for a properly functioning economy, straight up Hitler/Mussolini talking points.
China is capitalist, not only capitalist but it’s Social Fascist as well, that is, Socialism in words, Fascism in practice. As China persecutes even slightly left leaning people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Xilai
“Capitalism is a mode of production based on commodity production.” Then capitalism really is a facet of human nature, like Adam Smith thought? Commodity production has been around for centuries. Even if you surreptitiously concede that “commodity production” includes a propertyless wage laboring class that lives only by sale of labor power, capitalism still includes prices set by the market (not by guilds or custom or the state) *and* a free market in capital (private banking) *and* a state that defends bourgeois property, a national market and a natinal currency *and* the resolution of capitalist crises by capitalist methods that leave capitalist property relatively untouched. But there is a problem in finding capitalism in the PRC, given the prolonged absence of capitalist crises, unless of course you believe capitalism is the Final Society. (Potentially at least, given the right reforms?)
The Rhodium Group cited so hopefully by the approved commenter Charles1848 above does see the chance for capitalist restoration in the PRC in the face of the burgeoning world capitalist crisis but such appetites strikes me more as counterrevolutionary than plausible. I fear that a capitalist restoration in the PRC, due to the different circumstances historically, would be even more violent and destructive to the people of China than capitalist restoration in the USSR and central Europe. Think Yugoslavia, except much worse.
There is an irony in this comment, which is aimed at Michael Roberts, in that, it is Michael Roberts who advocates planning. Almost everyone else who wants the PRC overthrown abhors planning and anything else that smacks of egalitarianism. In that Michael Roberts is fairly unique among academically trained analysts, so far as I can tell.
Given the poor discussion of capitalism, I don’t want to even guess what “Social Fascism” can possibly mean.
One of the overlooked issues in the Bo Xilai case was the open intervention of imperialist powers into domestic PRC politics. It benefited Xi Jinping in the end, but more to the point, it continued that foundational principle that nothing, nothing, nothing was worse than the Cultural Revolution, not the Korean War nor the Vietnam War nor the massacres in Indonesia….
stevenjohnson “But there is a problem in finding capitalism in the PRC, given the prolonged absence of capitalist crises, unless of course you believe capitalism is the Final Society”
China is just going thorugh a Real State crisis right now and high young unemployment.
“I fear that a capitalist restoration in the PRC, due to the different circumstances historically, would be even more violent and destructive to the people of China than capitalist restoration in the USSR and central Europe. Think Yugoslavia, except much worse.”
What you mean by restoration? private property, unemployment, and the market is already restored, the reason why the Soviet Union was such a mess is that the economy operated on profit motive(on producing commodities) while all companies were under state ownership, you either have a planned economy or capitalism, can not have both, this article goes through it:
https://theplanningmotivedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/profit-ussr-neyt-final.pdf
“Almost everyone else who wants the PRC overthrown abhors planning and anything else that smacks of egalitarianism”
i don’t really care what liberals think, they don’t understand anything about marxism and all believe that State = socialism, so why bother? and China is not a planned economy, having some State owned enterprises does not equal planning.
“nothing, nothing, nothing was worse than the Cultural Revolution, not the Korean War nor the Vietnam War nor the massacres in Indonesia….”
Nothing was worse than the workers defending its revolution from the counter revolutionaries capitalist roaders led by Deng Xiaoping right? you’re just showing your anti-communism, and before you bring what the Fascist CCP thinks of the Cultural Revolution, of course they do! they were the target! they were the bourgeois counter revolutionaries.
Boi98 Dtempo continues the attack on Michael Roberts, along with Charles 1848, in guise of rebutting my comment critical of the the solidarity with Charles 1848’s arguments against Michael Roberts.
“What you mean by restoration? private property, unemployment, and the market is already restored, the reason why the Soviet Union was such a mess is that the economy operated on profit motive(on producing commodities) while all companies were under state ownership, you either have a planned economy or capitalism, can not have both, this article goes through it:” link to planningmotive omitted (I do not understand the concept of legacy value and don’t really follow the argument from the importance of turnover, which I think is a correct premise, to the conclusions offered insofar as I understand whatever program is implied.)
Again, the capitalist mode of production is not just commodity production, or even commodity production with a proletariat, but a system of prices set by the market, a free capital market (and oh, yes, that implies private banking too—it’s the central bank that is not essential to a capitalist mode of production,) a bourgeois state that structures a national market with a national currency and defends property against other states and the workers, and responds to economic crises in ways that preserve bourgeois property, which means, attacking the living standards of the workers. Preserving the industrial reserve army of labor means poverty as a goal. The World Bank standard by which the PRC has brought a good fraction of humanity out of absolute poverty is derisory. But even this achievement is beyond capitalism/imperialism in its decline. That’s what I mean by a restoration of capitalism. A state that engages in this task is no more established by simple political reforms (*deforms* if you must,) than a socialist society can be built by simple reforms of the old state.
As to the notion that the PRC is in in a great economic crisis and in peril of collapse at this moment, this is Rhodium Group politics, not analysis. Michael Roberts’ post China versus the US is partly about how such allegations of crisis are overblown at best, political ideology falsifying reality at worst. I think his case is persuasive and Rhodium Group’s non-existent. The difficulties in the PRC are real, but unless the capitalist roaders resort to capitalist methods to salvage the capitalists who they have cultivated from the follies of hitching their wagons to the falling star of capitalism, they can be resolved without impairing the society as a whole. That is also to say, I think a capitalist restoration in the PRC will require a similar Yeltsinite/Putinite attack on the people at large, in defense of private property in the means of production.
As to the notion the USSR was a mess, I am still not convinced empirically that the USSR didn’t succeed far better than conceded at meeting human needs in general, even if the highly educated Soviet felt like their international travel and living standards and high-toned social life was suffering. And I believe the real absolute decline was due to dismantling central planning under Gorbachev. Yeltsin’s attack on the workers of the USSR, later Russia, were the opposite of the failure of socialism, they were capitalism made manifest. Brian Green may think socialism failed, but this is a commonplace right-wing criticism. But I do not understand planningmotive so a more subtle approach to the alleged failure of socialism may have escaped me?
As to the notion I endorse the current leadership’s attitude toward the Cultural Revolution, Mao, Maoism, the notion there is such a thing as imperialism and so forth, that is a misreading. vk knows that, despite much common ground, there are significant difference between us, especially on the nature of the current leadership and its approaches to reform and opening up. Perhaps you are confusing us? I believe following the capitalist road will lead to a fork, an insoluble systemic crisis. I will explain fully on my blog.
“… our analysis builds from four expenditure-side GDP components…”
Well, there you go. Your source answered itself, like Hegel’s World Spirit.
GDP is just an accountancy device. One can play with the methodology and choose the variables however one pleases. What matters is the materially objective reality, and that reality states the capitalist world fears China on an existential level.
It is not at all clear how Charles1848 “knows” Rhodium Group has a good track record in correcting PRC economic statistics. It is striking that the same Rhodium Group would hail as the reliable analysts disagrees with Charles1848 about the PRC’s capitalism. “Though almost everyone inside and outside China is skeptical that China’s leadership and especially Xi Jinping would turn back to reform, we stand by our view that if economic activity gets bad enough, the Party would re-embrace market reform and opening rather than live without growth. While official data do not remotely suggest that conditions are bad enough to compel such a reversal, the state of the economy as described in this note probably is bad enough to justify real soul-searching. A big bang of economic policy change is not the base case for 2024, but it is a possible scenario that deserves attention.” I’m sorry but turning back to market reform implies that the capitalist PRC has moved away from it.
Additionally, along the way to this conclusion, Rhodium Group observed “Beijing is dealing with local government financial stress by forcing banks to absorb non-performing LGFV debt. Banks’ profitability and their ability to lend to productive firms will suffer.” I say that a capitalist government is one that forced states to cut their spending or raise taxes or both rather than impair the profitability of private banks.
And of course the general perspective, that private banks losing profits is a Bad Thing because it impairs growth is very much a sound capitalist perspective. Unlike Rhodium Group and Charles1848 I do not think that capitalism is the world’s road to growth any more (nor even that capitalist governments are even capable of measuring growth in terms of meeting human needs!)
The Census Bureau does annual unemployment rates? At any rate, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics most certainly does play games with unemployment figures, if only to assist in denying unemployment claims. In another vein, I suggest it plays games to minimize child labor employment. In the long run, the PRC government refusing to issue statistics is a failed strategy, but it is not at all comparable to the US. The US political structure always blames the unemployed for their situation but in the PRC it is regarded as a government failure.
My experience has been that those who profess “whataboutism” really is a thing are engaging in pre-emptive rhetoric against anyone who is so gauche as to attempt to use a single standard. It’s like confessing to…well, not just holding double standards but claiming that without double standards there are no moral standards at all!
The claim Japanese historical record of industrial development “just about equal what China has done since 1978…” is extraordinary. Charles 1848 has found Japan’s Lost Decade? I haven’t heard anything so bizarrely wrong since someone suggested comparing North and South Korea to decide the efficiency of capitalism against the failures of socialism. (Alec Nove? Hope it wasn’t him, he’s supposed to be competent.)
Charles1848 sarcastically says it is fine to defend the PRC’s capitalist economic performance so long as you don’t say it’s a socialist country. Michael Roberts agrees that the CPC is not communist so I don’t want to insult the host. I will observe that capitalist dictatorships operate more like Porfirio Diaz or Mobutu Sese Seko or Narendra Modi than Xi Jinping, leaving the question of how such a distinction obtains. If people seeing capitalism in the PRC can find hope for capitalism’s future because of the performance of the capitalist PRC, why can’t they find hope for new forms of government from the success of the CPC in saving capitalism? And conclude that the old forms in the declining West are insufficient, too committed to hegemony or such?
Income inequality in the US is not so different (to indulge in more disgusting use of comparison by a single standard,) except that in the US, billionaires never get arrested. But to confess, my index card platform for socialism includes one plank reading, Kill all the billionaires.*
*Technically, this can be done by taking away their billions. But this is a dangerously utopian proposal, apt to get people killed by the billionaires.
Thanks for a very informative article. Isn’t a significant portion of US GDP growth actually growth of debt, financial services, etc., all of which doesn’t really expand real social wealth or production?
Indeed, Productive GDP sectors are much larger in China.
I remember there was a quarter during Trump’s reign where US industry fell by some gargantuan 6% or so and the US economy as a whole actually grew by some 1.5%.
A very illustrative case of the relative insignificance of US industrial sector against the overall economy & the pace of growth and relative grandeur of its services and financial sectors.
After declining by 6% in 1Q2020 and 28% in 2Q2020, GDP grew Q-Q by 38% in the 3Q putting GDP back at about about its 1Q mark.
Real industrial output by private industry declined (Q-Q) by 1.5% and 10% then recovering 11% in the 3Q putting it almost back to the 1Q mark.
“Productive activities”–manufacturing, mining, utilities, medical services, transportation, wholesale trade, entertainment etc. make up about 50 percent of industrial output’s contribution to GDP in the US
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“百闻不如一见” (“A picture is worth a thousand words” ) -> https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/0*Wq-ZDRPPbRcZSBky.png
What should this picture be indicative of, in your opinion?
The world is material, and in the well-documented and relevant records of recent decades, you cannot find a single country that has been able to achieve actual economic prosperity and manufacturing development while its energy consumption has continued to decline.
The current economic woes in Europe and the US have proven that when a country completely abandons based manufacturing in favour of relying on the service sector to provide employment, then ultimately it can’t even sustain advanced manufacturing because of the soaring costs.
Monopolies and technical barriers can slow down this process to a certain extent, but ultimately these countries have to face the corruption of their own working class: and as long as the manufacturing industry has not achieved complete automation, then the quality of the working class will continue to be positively correlated with the efficiency of the manufacturing industry itself.
In my unwanted opinion, it is indicative of how NIPA can be deceiving. And very misleading in material terms. The claims socialism in the PRC is failing seem to rely on fetishizing those numbers.
Youtian Zhou’s observation that increasing electricity is a material indicator of successful development of the PRC is correct and thus the graph is a refutation of trickery with NIPA. But I am not so sure that manufacturing has been so completely abandoned in Europe and the US, even if you don’t consider plants basically owned by imperialists sited in other countries (including other developed ones, by the way.) I think of it as more neocolonialism than the poor countries pwning the decadent lazy etc. of US and EU.
But “… the corruption of their own working class: and as long as the manufacturing industry has not achieved complete automation, then the quality of the working class will continue to be positively correlated with the efficiency of the manufacturing industry itself…” strikes me as questionable indeed. Hopefully there are second language issues here. I have no idea how the US working class is responsible for the US bourgeoisie’s investment decisions. And I don’t think the laziness of US workers is responsible for the failure of the US, especially given the nature of a failure where standard of living in the US is still higher *in general* than in oppressed countries *in general.*
On China being “so-called” communist. I likely share many of your reservations, drawing on the work of Zak Cope and others I see China as on an imperialist trajectory; and whatever the development gains/level of state ownership, its workplaces and goods distribution are organised along capitalist lines.
I know how degrading these lines are for workers even in the core from personal experience, so the kind of breathless praise China’s leaders get from some revolutionary quarters sticks in my craw. It’s beneath the dignity of workers and oppressed.
I don’t think that means China isn’t communist in the sense of being part of the movement though, Marxism still influences the state and it’s still run by a communist party. The same could be said of the USSR when it still existed.
We need to move past excommunications, past the “no true communist” idea that our movement is not capable of oppression and exploitation. We should own our evils and seek to address them. Yes our populations are propagandised with anticommunism, but that doesn’t mean all their concerns are baseless. We must be truthful about the world.
In the core, we must put forward an abolitionist and democratic (in the sense outlined in texts like “The State and Revolution”) socialism, while being annoyingly persistent in drawing attention to our countries’ imperialism – including their aggression toward China. We should ask our own populations to uncompromisingly take responsibility for their own country’s actions first and foremost, without asking them to deny the wrongs of others.
Of course China is not and cannot be communist.
Communism is an hypothetical stage of humanity development where it exists without any form of state (statelessness). Since China is a nation-State, it cannot be communist by definition.
P.S.: China’s system is (or was), officially, “market socialism with Chinese characteristics”. I said “was” because, recently (see the Qiushi journal), they have been dropping the term “market” from their texts and speeches, including Xi Jinping himself. I don’t know if this was always the case or not, but, if there is a systemic change going on in China, then it is distancing itself from capitalism, because the term “Chinese socialism” or “socialism with Chinese characteristics” are being much more used recently. And, in the speeches where “Chinese characteristics” is talked about, they are referring clearly to cultural aspects, not structural: there was a speech from Xi Jinping recently published by Qiushi where he talked about culture; he stated, as clear as day, that Chinese culture is important because without Chinese culture, there could not have been the [socialism with] Chinese characteristics.
P.P.S.: the Soviet Union never claimed to be communist, but socialist, with the exception of the short period of 1919-1923, when it called its system “War Communism”. The use of the term “communist” to describe the system of the USSR (and all of its descendants, including China) is actually a Western fabrication from the Cold War. The Soviets used the term “socialism” and, after Brezhnev, the term “advanced socialism” to describe their own mode of production. My guess is the West used the term “communism” because of pressure from their endogenous social-democrat parties, which were still strong during the postwar: up to this day, the EU refuses to call China “socialist”, instead using the term “state capitalism” (probably because of pressure in the EP from the European Left, which fondly gatekeeps the term “socialism”).
Before the BRICS rising imperialist bloc can realize its goal of becoming the main imperialist bloc and exploit poorer nations as the West did, they must first defeat the Euro-Amerikan imperialist bloc. And by ‘defeating,’ I don’t mean through economic means because that is impossible, i mean a full-scale war that would inevitably result in a nuclear war. This is what revisionists like yourself fail to realize: communism is not an option but a necessity! as long as capitalism exists, inter-imperialist wars, crisis of overproduction, and climate destruction are inevitable. Your reformist idea of abandoning the struggle for Socialism in favor of embracing a vague ‘anti-imperialist’ Social Democracy is incompatible with reality. The West had anti-war anti-imperialist protests for decades, but it made no difference. Similarly, the protests against Israel’s war against Palestine are also making no difference, the same with Iraq War. There is no such thing as humane capitalism; every trade is exploitative, every investment is robbery, peace and diplomatic ties are temporary.
Also, your “I don’t think that means China isn’t communist in the sense of being part of the movement though” is straight up Bernstein “To me that which is generally called the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything” revisionism nonsense!
I see this is aimed against vk, but the idea shared by both vk and Boi98 Dtempo that BRICS is really a thing is in my opinion wrong. BRICS is a string of letters and as it expands, it means less and less. It’s a PR gimmick hoping to make money, somehow, some time, maybe. In particular the notion that Brazil is fighting the US or that Modi’s India is somehow allied with the PRC strike me as, well, kind of nuts, sorry to be blunt.
But since I was driven to explain that Something On The Internet Is Wrong (a bad habit of mine I must make insincere apologies since I can’t seem to help myself,) I have to add that the blockiness of the US and EU is exaggerated and must be, since interimperialist rivalry is a structure consequence of imperialism. Capital must be a multiplicity and so must its states. The primary instance of solidity in this alleged bloc, which somehow includes the UK so far as I can tell, is the war against Russia. But Russia is not imperialist while Ukraine is fascist. (My apologies to Michael Roberts who I think finds my anger on this offensive. But in my defense, shouldn’t it be more offensive if I was blase about fascism in Ukraine? Of course I am convinced that seeing Ukraine as fascist is a reasonable position, at least if you hold to a Marxist, Leninist conception of the state.)
It is a little foolish to think that the masses determine foreign policy because they are the masters of democracy. I think that gives democracy far too much credit. But more to the point here, most of the wars have either been against socialism, or against weak countries, not clashes between empires. Personally I think hybrid WWIII has already begun but it won’t look like WWI or WWII and expecting a repeat of the tropes is like defining fascism as insisting the only fascists are those sporting the swastika…and the wolfsangel and the sonnraad don’t count!
I’ve recently bought two books by Zak Cope, but if their analysis is the foundation for this comment, then I’ve wasted my money?
“Yes our populations are propagandised with anticommunism, but that doesn’t mean all their concerns are baseless.” I do not think respectful dialogue with anticommunist prejudices are very helpful in practice. This tactic or strategy or rhetoric or what have you has been the norm for decades but hasn’t been very effective. At this point, one has to wonder whether the futility isn’t one of the attractions.
“…we must put forward an abolitionist and democratic socialism, while being annoyingly persistent in drawing attention to our countries’ imperialism…” I elided a reference to Lenin’s State and Revolution as misleading. Soviets were revolutionary, dual power, which had nothing to do with democracy in any widely accepted form. The same goes for the Paris Commune, much less the Shanghai Commune (which most people don’t even know about it seems.) Democracy does not necessarily accept majority rule. Democracy is often committed to the principle that security of property *is* freedom. At a guess, the “abolitionism” in the phrase refers to abolition of the state, substituting anarchism for Marxism, rather than the abolition of bureaucracy? But even if you put the most favorable reading on this possible, the notion that we should be an annoyance is a weak recommendation. Revolutionary defeatism read solely as a call for immediate uprising is merely adventurist Blanquism, but the more sensible interpretation to fight in every possible way to defeat imperialist projects as a strategy or tactic or step or phase in, ultimately overthrowing our own state, rather than being annoying seems to be the desideratum.
“We should ask our own populations to uncompromisingly take responsibility for their own country’s actions first and foremost, without asking them to deny the wrongs of others.” I do not share this faith in democracy! I do not think the people run things, thus I do not think they need to be condemned as sinners. I also don’t see how wailing about the government’s actions as if it was our government is very helpful. That’s not the same thing as refusing to criticize the government. But to confess all, I don’t understand how the people of the oppressed countries get any benefit from blaming, fighting, hating the whole population of imperialist countries. It may help them feel solidarity with their own bourgeoisie and bourgeois state I suppose?
Many semantic concerns about my comment it seems!
There is a willful misreading of what I mean by democracy going on here (and in other replies to me), given I explicitly use the form outlined in state and revolution as a guide. That form can be described as democratic in the vernacular and most common sense of the word (you know, the sense of the term our actual working class has), it suggests a single legislature elected via a general vote annually, with all members subject to recall at any time.
It insists it’s representatives are working representatives carrying out actual government work. And it projects this structure down toward local government too. It also abolishes secret diplomacy. Lenin argues that this cannot be achieved without the revolutionary overthrow of the current state, which I agree with.
Democracy, like dictatorship, is a government form that can be used for a range of different systems.
So to be clear, I don’t think voting in our current system can end western imperialism. I think we (those of us in the core) should emphasise that we need to take responsibility for our own countries’ action via revolution.
Rejecting responsibility for our own country is a critical error. I suggest studying works like Nadine El-Enany’s “Bordering Britain” for a exploration of how popular (democratic!) forces have been implicated in the reactionary activity of core states.
As for abolition, I do not call for the abolition of the state, I do not think that is possible which is part of why I don’t call myself an anarchist – I guess that’s a disagreement I have with Leninism even though that’s where I stand: I don’t think there will be a meaningful “withering away”. I specifically mean the abolition of the prison system – including in health settings – and border. This is my call for my own country (Britain) not a denunciation of other countries’ systems.
As for academic style quibbling about the exact use of words like “communism” etc, I have no time for it. You all can clearly interpret what I mean, you use semantic concerns as a crutch rather than engaging with the substance of what I say. You will not be able to convince ordinary workers and oppressed if you conduct yourselves in this way.
As someone who has actually engaged with the public as part of a communist party (putting my money where my mouth is unlike most here I’d wager) I can assure you of that. People are ready to hear us out, if we actually listen and respond. If we adopt a dogmatic approach and refuse to discuss genuine problems with actually existing socialist states, people will not be drawn to the banner of revolution.
But maybe I’m wrong, maybe we should sit on the sidelines cheerleading and accusing randos of revisionism, whatever the hell that means in 2024. I’m sure one day, some great helmsmen will press the communism button after having grown strong via capitalism, we just need to wait a few decades or centuries, speaking among ourselves in a way that sounds militant. Turns out all really is for the best in the best of all possible worlds!
There is no willful misreading, there is only reading.
To accuse the people as a whole of imperialist oppression, to blame them, you are saying they had the power to do otherwise and thus they are responsible for their choices. But they don’t and that is not semantics.
At this point, explaining that making revolution is the true international solidarity is moralizing, dogmatic and still adventurist. The real objection to revolution is that it is terrifying and authoritarian and violent (rely on the ruling class for that!) And the real objection to socialism is that it requires revolution.
The notion that the bestial masses will be converted to socialism if they understand that “we” are not going to do any actually existing socialism but “we” possess the pure idea and “we” will Do It Right! strikes me as nonsense. For better or worse, people in a country will embrace revolution because they can’t go on the way it’s going on now. It’s not like buying a car because it looks more attractive. So far as the culpability of the mob? Maybe it’s unduly cynical of me, but since democracy doesn’t give them real power, then why should they think much about things like foreign affairs and world economy? How do they even know about them? Much of the reason for the peculiar discussions in comments here are due to the self-education by the committed. Most people aren’t autodidacts (thank God?) and thus they tend to accept the authorities and conform (from a multitude of compulsions and sanctions both negative and positive.) In particular, there is fear mongering. Maybe in practice the masses tend to be happy enough to accept national wars *if* they are quick, short, cheap and profitable. But that’s a high bar.
“To accuse the people as a whole of imperialist oppression, to blame them, you are saying they had the power to do otherwise and thus they are responsible for their choices. But they don’t and that is not semantics.”
The people do have the power to do otherwise and are responsible for their choices. The attitude you adopt here treats your fellows as children, they can tell when you do this and resent it!
I mentioned “Bordering Britain”. The book discusses the role of the British trade union movement in pushing border controls from their inception in the early 20th century. Often as the leading and first voice to call for them. This tradition continues today – with the union movement playing an active role in pulling the Corbyn leadership right on immigration, particularly outfits like Unite.
There is a block of the population that is concious of the benefit of imperialism, even if not using that direct language. There is another block that is concious but in denial because of the moral implications. Both often use the “this is just the way the world is” argument to justify it. The latter block can be brought over if challenged, and presented with a solution. It is also in their own interest, as I discuss below.
The people are not ideologically inert, we are all in fact “auto-didakts”. What you are doing here is tailism, you underestimate people’s conciousness and therefore refuse to call them to action or challenge them.
“At this point, explaining that making revolution is the true international solidarity is moralizing, dogmatic and still adventurist. The real objection to revolution is that it is terrifying and authoritarian and violent (rely on the ruling class for that!) And the real objection to socialism is that it requires revolution.”
Revolution is not only the only true international solidarity, it is the only effective one. Or at least confrontation with the state that the response from the state will be the same: we can rely on the ruling class for that as you say. We should not lie to workers and oppressed in the core and pretend that this endless procession of A -> B marches is achieving anything. At the moment, advanced layers are getting ready to fall in under Corbyn again – I have witnessed this on mass at demos – we have to say something!
Further, the argument for revolution now is much stronger than you imply. 100’000s have been killed by austerity and a negligent/corrupt/eugenicist response to COVID in Britain domestically the past decade and a half. Services are being destroyed. My rent increases endlessly, alongside other costs and well in advance of pay rises. Fascist attacks on oppressed groups advance and multiply continuously. The time to make the argument is now. There is no prospect of a reversal, British imperialism is too weak relative to it’s competitors (friends and enemies).
“The notion that the bestial masses will be converted to socialism if they understand that “we” are not going to do any actually existing socialism but “we” possess the pure idea and “we” will Do It Right! strikes me as nonsense. For better or worse, people in a country will embrace revolution because they can’t go on the way it’s going on now. It’s not like buying a car because it looks more attractive.”
I would argue that you’re the one painting the masses as bestial, given you belittle their concerns, see them as totally uniterested in the world and politics, and ridicule the idea of making moral agruments, or even reasoned arguments for revolution!
People are not wrong to fear revolution may end in catastrophy, and that even victory may be catastrophic. The argument to be made is that we still must try, that we recognise these issues and need to struggle against them. That’s not the same as saying we won’t run into the same problems: that would be arrogant and a lie. Just try and respond to people like a human who gives a damn about other people. While pointing out that if “authoritarian violence” concerns them than they have a duty to bring down their own state.
If communists all take your position and approach, there will be no revolution to embrace! Relying purely on the masses being driven by neccessity also seems foolish for those in core states, surely solidarity with their ruling classes in global competition will be the line that drives people toward? It’s certainly a less risky and more straightforward approach then revolution. There has to be a moral, and ideological argument. Loyalty to each other domestically and internationally.
Probably at this point it’s deemed to be a matter of giving me rope to hang myself, but current events have me so upset somehow it’s consoling to not put up with any more nonsense. So, briefly: Alex asks “Relying purely on the masses being driven by necessity also seems foolish for those in core states, surely solidarity with their ruling classes in global competition will be the line that drives people toward?” The touching democratic faith in the ability of imperialism to deliver the goods to the masses extraordinarily tedious. I didn’t want to argue with Michael Roberts in the comments about superexploitation in the comments about the last post. But to my mind, the low population “growth” rates in so-called advanced countries are not an argument that imperialism is providing so many material benefits to the people at large. The question is whether imperialism is providing enough material benefits for the so-called native working class to reproduce itself? [I suppose technically some Greens might say, the question is, is this preliminary sign of ecological stress, even collapse, as “humanity” runs up against the limits to the folly of industrial civilization? Or some such.]
On the other side, I don’t think the masses will “surely” solidarize with their masters’ drive for profit. Insofar as they do solidarize, it’s because they believe in the nation or God or the horrors of revolution aka communism/socialism/Marxism/woke, not because they’re doing bank balances. I think more highly of the masses than, they’re greedy!
Alex ventures an answer to this rhetorical question (as it is meant,) “It’s certainly a less risky and more straightforward approach then revolution. There has to be a moral, and ideological argument. Loyalty to each other domestically and internationally.” As to the risk, there is much more risk to fighting imperialism on its own home ground than in some far away country at the end of a long supply chain. I don’t think hatred and contempt for the mass of people cowed (and I think many, many are but can’t bring themselves to admit the truth even to a mirror) is the answer. But no, I don’t moral and ideological motives arise from acts of will, or even by the exalted nobility of such proponents as yourself. Ideals are not motor forces, the experience of class struggle. Unfortunately defeats are demoralizing and there has been a surfeit of defeats in the imperialist heartlands. Also, I don’t think, your children will be poor but morally pure is the winning argument you seem to think.
But enough, the overwhelming mass of the rebuttal is more semantic games. There’s always a way to spin things, isn’t there? Some way to posture as the moral one?
The book Bordering Britain is bandied about. I am very far behind in reading and as much as I waste money on books and as few as my other wants are, I am not apt to rush to read it. As is, it seems like another petty-bourgeois academic has generated another “radical” critique of trade unions.
Steven, at no point have I claimed imperialism can deliver the goods, relative to what it has delivered before at any rate. That’s an entirely seperate argument to what political strategies sections of the masses will be drawn to.
“But to my mind, the low population “growth” rates in so-called advanced countries are not an argument that imperialism is providing so many material benefits to the people at large. The question is whether imperialism is providing enough material benefits for the so-called native working class to reproduce itself?”
This is frankly detached from reality, I presume you live in a core country so know well large amonts of “benefits” are still provided. The blows I mentioned above are distributed unevenly, a large minority of the population is impacted most heavily.
As to your other points, I really touched a nerve by saying semantic disagreements didn’t I?! The vision you outline is a totally mechanical social world, there is no need for communists to ever do anything it seems. Emotionally it must be comforting.
“The masses” are monsters, heroes, and everything in between as you know. You need to actually talk to them as a communist. Or maybe you personally shouldn’t…
Your willingness to dismiss historical fact around the complicitly of the trade union movement in core reaction indicates to me this is posturing, you do not have skin in the game beyond arguing online as a hobby. So I’ll leave it there.
Alex wrote ““Relying purely on the masses being driven by necessity also seems foolish for those in core states, surely solidarity with their ruling classes in global competition will be the line that drives people toward?” This only makes sense if major, even vital, economic benefit for the masses comes from solidarity with the domestic ruling class against other nations. Then and only then is it “surely” the case the masses will be driven (“lured” would have been a better word choice for the intent?) to support their ruling classes. The declaration Alex did not claim imperialism could deliver the goods is entirely false. As I said, reading, not misreading, not even accidentally, much less willfully. If Alex simply wants to punish the vile leeches, the costs of revolution will do the job. Nobody makes revolution to make money (despite the occasional Danton!) There is always a moral and ideal content to solidarity, by the way. But preaching that the people are parasites is not even working for solidarity, it’s working to divide.
Another false statement was “The people do have the power to do otherwise and are responsible for their choices.” And this is a declaration that democracy in the imperialist countries really is democracy, that there is no dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. I suppose opposing the dictatorship of the proletariat is something like a conjoined twin? Look, handwaving an unread copy of State and Revolution may be simple, but the reality simply is that democracy here and now is a form of the bourgeois state, of capitalism, of imperialism. The policy of condemning any actually existing socialism *and* the working class generally and the trade unions specifically has been the prevailing policy for decades. At this point, advocating a failed policy becomes hard to distinguish from a preference for failure. I’m only guessing, but there’s a good chance that I have a vastly higher opinion of bourgeois democracy than Alex does (which is why I find the indifference to Ukrainian fascism so dismaying.) I just don’t hold with Alex-style apologetics for democracy as it is, which is exactly what most people will very sensibly understand Alex to mean.
Alex’ certainty that the workers of imperialist countries of course can have as many children as they want unconstrained by a perceived inability to give more children a fair start in life as it is, is very flattering to democracy. I think this is detached from reality, but I can see Alex is shocked and dismayed at such an attack on imperialist society, as opposed to insulting the masses. It is customary to view the decline in birth rates in general in wealthy countries as an unalloyed testament to the success of capitalism. But so far as being detached from reality goes? What is this “Corbyn” leadership? Isn’t it Sir Keir Starmer?
Alex seems to think moralizing gives one the power to decree what people feel. Thus, disagreeing with Alex means I like the comfort of doing nothing. So far as I can tell, the vanguard party never makes the revolution, the masses do. Educating the ones with the ultimate power and interest to change things is all they do, no more but, no less. Then it plays a role in actually winning the revolution, making real lasting changes. My feeling is not comfortable satisfaction, but a fear of common ruin. And people like Alex who miseducate in the end are working for catastrophe.
Not that market capitalization necessarily correlates with shares of economic output, but the chart Michael provides shows non-public and mixed ownership from (about) 22% of capitalization in 2010 to a peak above 60% before falling back to about 50% while the state sector moves from about 78% to a low below 40% and settles at 50%— and Michael thinks the state sector is the source of growth and investment, not the trillions in FDI?
Michael Roberts generally does not engage with comments directly, always a risky proposition with dubious rewards on the internet after all. But FDI under Deng’s Great Leap Forward On IOUs didn’t cause an enormous boom, merely a relatively modest uptick in growth. The biggest relative increase in GDP took place, albeit with much more FDI subsequent to the PRC joining the WTO, from the later Nineties, early 2000s, after the local competition from the Tigers/Japan declined (a causal correlation?) If the state sector was a drag, how was FDI so high and so effective? After the world crash of 2008, the state sector kept trade afloat and FDI didn’t have so many other growth areas to invest in (another causal correlation?) But the slowdown in economic growth rates coincides with the rise in non-state sectors after 2010. How does this support the contention—which is implied in the question—that the state sector is the drag on the economy? If it’s all FDI, the supposed retrogression of the autocrat Xi (yes, that’s sarcasm about simplistic propaganda,) has lowered the FDI? But that formulation treats FDI and state sector as themselves correlated, confounding factors making the implied cause, FDI–> higher economic growth vs state sector<—-slower economic growth, questionable.
Michael Roberts generally does not engage with comments directly, always a risky proposition with dubious rewards on the internet after all
Risky indeed, particularly when dealing with someone so eager to infer what is not implied as is Mr. Johnson, and/or use those mistaken inferences to subtly make unsupported accusations, like this:
There is an irony in this comment, which is aimed at Michael Roberts, in that, it is Michael Roberts who advocates planning. Almost everyone else who wants the PRC overthrown abhors planning and anything else that smacks of egalitarianism. In that Michael Roberts is fairly unique among academically trained analysts, so far as I can tell
Notice that? Michael gets lumped in with all those wanting the PRC overthrown. Brilliant. To the best of my recollection, Michael has never called for the overthrow of the PRC. Maybe I missed. Maybe not. For this flight of fancy, Mr. Johnson captures the Breitbart/Yezhov memorial prize to be presented by Kellyanne Conway at the anti-Oscars. Just to be clear, I’ve never called for the overthrow of the PRC either.
But FDI under Deng’s Great Leap Forward On IOUs didn’t cause an enormous boom, merely a relatively modest uptick in growth.
I agree. That’s why the specific period involved is the one used in Michael’s chart, which starts in 2010, 13 years after Deng passed away. More than a technical detail.
The biggest relative increase in GDP took place, albeit with much more FDI subsequent to the PRC joining the WTO, from the later Nineties, early 2000s, after the local competition from the Tigers/Japan declined (a causal correlation?)
Agreed, but irrelevant.
If the state sector was a drag, how was FDI so high and so effective
Who said anything about the “state sector being a drag”? Certainly not me. There is no implication of that in my brief post, pointing the massive FDI during; the period Michael sites.
But the slowdown in economic growth rates coincides with the rise in non-state sectors after 2010. How does this support the contention—which is implied in the question—that the state sector is the drag on the economy?
Where is that implied? What is stated is that the private/mixed sector sector recorded rapid growth, and a plateauing in the economic expansion of China as the government’s share has retreated/advanced./retreated/advanced
As for the slowdown in economic growth in China, that is directly attributable to the repercussions of 2008-2009, the persistent slowing of growth in world trade, particularly in 2016 when trade value dropped some 16% from 2014 barely getting back to the 2014 mark by 2019. China’s export sector has experienced almost steadily falling rates of growth since 2007. Is that the “states’ ” fault? Of course it isn’t. It’s a manifestation of persistent overproduction and the tendency of the ROP to decline.
Why haven’t the recent large quantities of FDI offset the slow growth? 1. See above comment on overproduction and the TROP to decline. 2. I would think since 2012 or 14 a smaller section of the FDI is directed towards productive sectors given the slowdown in trade.
But that formulation treats FDI and state sector as themselves correlated, confounding factors making the implied cause, FDI–> higher economic growth vs state sector<—-slower economic growth, questionable.
Only in your world, Mr. Johnson.
You are right: market capitalization is not a good metric for (real) economic output.
I know Americans are obsessed with market capitalization, but, unfortunately, they are not the center of the universe.
“…and Michael thinks the state sector is the source of growth and investment, not the trillions in FDI?”
This is where it is implied the real cause of growth is FDI, not the state sector. There is no other reason than the arch surprise that Michael Roberts thinks the state sector is the source of growth and investment. That’s why the general economic history of the PRC under Deng et al. is in fact relevant.
But if Anti-Capital chooses to deny this implied claim, it would be helpful if Anti-Capital did rephrase the point that was supposed to be made? Simply dismissing me personally as unacceptable isn’t good enough. Now Anti-Capital chooses to talk about the stagnation of world economy dragging down the PRC’s growth rates but it is entirely unclear to me how this merits surprise at Michael Roberts’ overestimation of the importance of the state sector, as the question says. If this question was meant to agree with Michael Roberts, that implication was rather hard to read.
It is mildly funny to see you fume about being lumped in with Michael Roberts, then immediately lump yourself in with him, claiming neither of you wish to see the PRC overthrown. But there are millions of people in the CPC and their Party cards do not read “Class enemy of the Proletariat #….”‘Getting rid of the CPC in toto, or root and branch, or top to bottom will not be a democratic enterprise. Chinese democracy is already here, in Taiwan and calling for Taiwan to conquer the mainland seems wrong to me. Chinese democracy was already here in Hong Kong, which to my benighted eyes seems to be the most rapacious capitalists in China. Spreading its restored British-style democratic system across the mainland, freed from national oppression by the CPC, also seems wrong to me. There is another kind of democratic precedent in the PRC, but I see no indication I am being unfair in thinking both you and Michael Roberts absolutely reject with particular vehemence the Cultural Revolution. (To me the Great Leap Forward was for one thing about repudiating central planning in favor of local initiative and that was one key reason for its failures. At first glance Michael Roberts proponent of central planning would criticize and reject that, but the Great Leap was also about strengthening the PRC and I’m not sure whether this is a desirable goal for everyone here.)
The point is that while the state sector accounts for more than half of market capitalizations, it accounts for about 40% of GDP. The private-mixed sector accounts for the other portion as well as the overwhelming portion of urban employment, some 80% IIRC.
Now do I think the expansion of the private sector is a “good” thing–if good is a characterization that can or should be applied here? No I do not. I think it has been and is still a growing threat to the welfare of the proletariat, the small rural producers, and the very egalitarian impulse of the revolution. Nurturing a emerging bourgeoisie is not a revolutionary strategy even if it’s called “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The careful reader will not how and that Mr. Johnson again infers what is not implied and then confuses whose own inference with analysis– to wit, Mr. Johnson, confronted with the fact that neither MR nor I have ever called for the “overthrow of the PRC” now invents a proxy–support for the cultural revolution–as a litmus test.
The two are distinct as so many members of the CPC have shown and requires a deep analysis of the material, economic roots of the struggle.
“…and Michael thinks the state sector is the source of growth and investment, not the trillions in FDI?” This is the rhetorical or gotcha question that was aimed by Anti-Capital, which I have objected to. This sub-thread in the comments now reveals that Anti-Capital’s “point is that while the state sector accounts for more than half of market capitalizations, it accounts for about 40% of GDP. The private-mixed sector accounts for the other portion as well as the overwhelming portion of urban employment, some 80% IIRC.” This was not obvious, though perhaps if it was creative in my inferences I might have figured it out?
Reform and opening up have indeed fostered a bourgeoisie and it has made inroads into the CPC to boot. This does nurture a bourgeoisie even if it is called socialism with Chinese characteristics. Anti-Capital here seems to have creatively inferred that vk and I think alike, though. vk does not hold with my approach there is a capitalist road, much less that the capitalist road will so to speak run out, leaving the stark choice between outright capitalist restoration across China, destroying the CPC and the PRC, or painfully, dramatically reversing course. The latter will probably if it occurs be condemned as the horror of the Cultural Revolution come again. But does anyone truly think the People’s Republic of China will somehow be more of a people’s republic after restoration? Again, I don’t see how any socialist wants to see democracy replace socialism. No, by the way, imaginary ideals of democracy don’t count, democracy is what the US and EU and UK and so on are.
Yet…Despite my boldly reminding everyone there is a Chinese bourgeoisie in Taiwan and Hong Kong (and other SEZs, or neocolonies,) Again, the CPC is so large, so intertwined with the working class it’s destruction will also destroy the PRC . Indeed attacks on the CPC will inevitably include attacks on the workers, though no doubt this will be a feature not a bug of the democratic revolution. Democracy in Taiwan and the old but cherished democracy in Hong Kong will rise, supported by imperialism. And imperialism after all will “win” if it leaves China a smoking ruin. It’s not like imperialism/capitalist world economy can achieve any progressive material goals on a large scale any more. The bourgeois state is an indispensable weapon/tool for defense of property against the working class, which is why the true triumph of the bourgeoisie comes after the bourgeois revolution (sorry, Prof. Comninel.) If that happens, as is threatened, then the bourgeoisie really will be nurtured.
But taking such possibilities seriously obviously raises problems that are not problems for Anti-Capital.
It is very clear why the West has adopted this stance on the 2023 GDP figures of China and the USA. Here is my line of reasoning:
Here is my counter-reasoning, my explanation why the Western (capitalist) line of reasoning is fundamentally wrong:
And we might add that it is the false consciousness of history that underlies the religious belief in the immortality of the commodity, which rambles on and on without being able to grasp that it is only the ultimate ideological product of that particular conditioning by which commodity fetishism postulates the generalised expropriation of men from their own historical becoming and therefore from all consciousness in the movement of truth.
Amen to that!
I’m approaching the subject in a global and, I modestly admit, rather subjectivist way, but the question I’m asking is this: in what way is a nationalist system, based on exchange value, a new model of accumulation? In what way is it socialist? Perhaps because of the CCP’s imprint.
The mixed private/public model is the one that prevailed in the West during the Thirty Glorious Years, with the nationalisation of transport, energy, communications and health companies, social advances and so on.
And if the Toyoist, Fordist model collapsed, it was because of the increase in competition and productivity gains (3rd industrial revolution), the deregulation of markets, “because there was no other alternative“, and the automaton and impersonal capitalist production system,
The Chinese system depends on exports and is not yet a self-sustaining model.
The public sector is heavily over-indebted as a result of the property crisis (its method of financing land).
During containment (the fallowing of capital), measures were extremely severe and theatrical, and only ended when a building burnt down and a popular revolt broke out,
To sum up the hypothesis, if the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, there will be no other. The end of the dollar will be the end of globalisation, and of de-globalisation, from the formal crisis of capital to the real crisis.
” I’m asking is this: in what way is a nationalist system, based on exchange value, a new model of accumulation? In what way is it socialist? Perhaps because of the CCP’s imprint.
The mixed private/public model is the one that prevailed in the West during the Thirty Glorious Years, with the nationalisation of transport, energy, communications and health companies, social advances and so on.”
I think there’s a straightforward answer: 1. the organization of the economic systems of the fSU, China, and Cuba were not based on exchange value. 2. the “public sector” is fundamentally different in those revolutionary regimes in that the sector is based on the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and private property and not the relief of the bourgeoisie from the decline in profitability.
GDP is a fictitious measure of production. If we remove from the GDP of the United States half of its overbilled health care costs, then the “wealth produced” by the activity of its lawyers, by the most overcrowded prisons in the world, and then by a whole economy of ill-defined services, including the “production” of its 15 to 20 thousand economists with an average salary of $120,000, we realize that an important part of this GDP is water vapor.
It has finally happened. The theorized silver bullet against China has been shot:
“HK court orders liquidation of Evergrande; ‘impact on general market will be limited’” – https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202401/1306294.shtml
Thanks to steven johnson for his paragraph, namely”
“As a reminder, although destiny81538ddf32f sounds MMT when speaking of “currency issuer” the call for reserving sectors of economic production is not MMT as I understand it. But I tend to suspect a capital strike/boycott/lockout by owners of capital in response to such infringements by the state, currency issuer or not. That would be the ensuing economic problem, not inflation.”
Exactly. MMTers have lately been discussing why MMT is not mainstream yet; one conclusion is the threat MMT presents to current institutionalized power arrangements (“owners of capital”).
Mainstream economists say MMT is inflationary; I have attempted to neutralize that assertion with my concept of a prior claim by the state on a portion of the nation’ resources. Obviously MMTers who are free marketeers will object, so they must deal with the inflation claims of the mainstream; they claim taxation can release the necessary resources the state needs….but no-one likes paying tax. Catch-22…..