This is a critique of an article by Professor Zbigniew Wiktor that appeared in the English edition of NSC in December 2008.
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| Dr. A. Paquin |
Since several of our readers are also readers of the English edition, I think it is important, to avoid certain confusion, to analyze some aspects of this article by the professor.
It is all the more important since the professor is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Council and enjoys great popularity among several members of our organization.
Zbigniew Wiktor writes, "China enjoys significant interest also because of the character and scope of the socialist modernisation and socio-economic reforms initiated 30 years ago by the CPC under Deng Xiaoping's leadership.”
What, therefore, are these principal reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping described by the professor? They are:
The opening to the outside world in favor of economic cooperation with foreign capital and using the flow of foreign capital but in a controlled way. “These investments ($1.8 billion) (according to the professor) have contributed not only to significant change in the Chinese economic structure and saturated it with modern technology and created dozens of millions of new jobs.”
Socialist modernization and reforms have caused huge economic growth and also realization of big social plans for the PRC’s citizens resulting from Marxist axiology”. One can wonder what is this “Marxist axiology”? The professor does not say.
“New categories, such as socialist market and socialist market economy were created.” According to Deng Xiaoping, “market socialism” consists of the following principles: “the state regulates the market and the market guides the enterprises.” Of course, Deng Xiaoping has invented nothing new: this slogan is one of all revisionists. It is the elimination of centralized planning.
“(In fact, what kind of “planned economy” can one speak of under conditions of market production, or of the crude intervention of state monopoly capitalism? One wonders how people calling themselves Marxists-Leninists see the “survivals of socialism” in China.) Vincent Gouhysse in his well-known book: Imperialism and anti-imperialism.
“There is one theory and a practice of scientific socialism” which are taught to us by Marx, Engels and Stalin whose basic principles and general laws are inescapable for all countries” (Enver Hoxha).
When Lenin stated that the young USSR, ruined and economically backward, possessed all that was necessary to build socialism, the level of production per capita of cement and coal was between 11 and 25 times lower than that of the USA.
In 2006, Chinese imperialism produced as much steel as its 6 most powerful imperialist competitors combined!
Shouldn’t the Chinese economy have everything it would need to develop immediately by relying exclusively on its own forces, if China was actually a socialist country? Wouldn’t this gigantic production be able to immediately provide the material and technical basis for the socialist mechanization of the countryside? Of course! Only the lackeys of Chinese imperialism can pass over this fact in silence! Only anti-Marxists can echo the theory of the Chinese imperialist bourgeoisie that “China is still in the initial stage of socialism,” “the building of socialism and the modernization of China show an economic and cultural backwardness. This phase will last more than a century. In building socialism in our country, we must start from the situation of our country; our way must be one of socialism with Chinese characteristics…” and “our productive forces, just like our science, technology and education again show backwardness, the industrialisation and modernization still have a long way to go…” (from the 11th Congress of the CPC).
What anti-Marxism! One can see clearly the subscription to the theory of the productive forces.
This strategy of the Chinese revisionists, and of Prof. Wiktor, is nothing new; it is derived directly from the Maoist conceptions on “new democracy” and the Trotskyite theory of the productive forces, taken up by all opportunists! A Marxist cannot accept these mystifications! This provides weapons to the international bourgeoisie to cover genuine socialism with mud: that is “to defend” the theoretical and practical gibberish of the revisionists.
China had all that was necessary to build socialism with its own forces... the pro-Chinese revisionists insist on “the necessary international socialist division of labor, erroneously considering the slogan “relying on their own forces.”
The direct foreign investments (DFI) in China were one of the big successes during the last 10 years. From less than $19 billion in 1990, the DFI in China increased to more than $300 billion at the end of 1999. The professor tells us that this was the realization of the great social plans for the citizens of the PRC. Of the “huge economic growth” there is no doubt, but for the realization of great social plans, let us see what they consist of:
Besides a big bourgeoisie with a very large income and consuming luxury goods, there is a “middle class” of about 150 million persons, with an annual income of between $3,000 and $6,000, while the net annual average income of the peasants is 4,140 yuan [about $620], against 24,932 [about $3,740] in the cities. There are 320,000 millionaires in China and in the year 2000, there were 30 million people living below the poverty line.
Tens of millions of Chinese have no land.
Chinese farming remains under mechanized.
There are millions unemployed.
The farmers emphasize that the protection of their rights is a crucial question today.
In the countryside the peasantry is burdened by taxes.
School is free only for the urban population.
Tens of millions of rural migrants, whose income is insufficient, are forced to supplement their income with non-agricultural jobs, joining the waves of the rural exodus without being accompanied by their families. In the countryside, it is normal for the local potentate of the “communist” party to play the role of usurer. Here, one is largely beyond the persistence of the defects from the “old society.”
The media in China revealed that there were 67,000 small and medium-sized businesses that had closed in the first six months of this year. In the province of Guangdong alone, there were more than 25,000 bankruptcies. The problem worsened after June of 2008. The closing of factories in the deltas of the Pearl and Yangtze Rivers led to the loss of jobs for 10 million migrant workers.
This is the result of the elimination of planning and economic centralization in order to adopt the socialist market economy. That is the “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the new model of development specific to China.
This implementation of policies, reforms and opening in China were worth the praises and admiration of all the revisionists and many so-called Marxists-Leninists and Denguists such as Professor Wiktor.
According to Prof. Zbigniew Wiktor: “Modernization and Deng Xiaoping's reforms were based on the assumption that Mao Tse Tung's dogmatism must be given up. China is still in the initial stage of socialism when small economy dominates the countryside and plays a significant part in the cities and that it needs to be steered towards fast development under state and legal control and socialist state economy.”
What is most remarkable in this article of the professor is that not only the “market does not have to be the alien and hostile category and mechanism for the socialist economy but it can bring huge increase of production and contribute to dynamism and modernization in the socialist economy. This modernization had significant effects not only for practical activities but also influenced theoretical discussion on the basic thesis of Marxist political economy and theory of scientific socialism.”
In response, let us see what Enver Hoxha has to say: “this denial of the most basic theoretical and practical teachings of socialist construction, to the profit of the blooming of “market socialism,” is nothing more than bourgeois society dressed up by means of mystifying slogans.”
Contrary to the revisionists who speculate on the “creative development of Marxism Leninism” “in the conditions appropriate to each country” in order to “deny the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism,” “to cover their treason,” and to impose their “specific and national socialism,” to “divert us from the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism such as building socialism and the generalization of the Soviet experience,” Enver Hoxha insisted on the fact that Marxist-Leninists conceive "… the creative development of Marxism-Leninism not as the negation of its foundations, but as the enrichment of this theory by new conclusions derived from the experience of the working class struggle and the development of the sciences... Marxism-Leninism is a science and the objective laws that it has developed are absolute truths... They cannot grow old or become obsolete... The basic questions of the building of socialism are common to all countries; the laws of development of society do not know national borders.”
"How can we attach a “socialist” label to a country where the exploitation of the proletariat (urban and migrant) reaches an extreme degree, a country where the peasantry, burdened by massive fraudulent taxes (at the end of the 1980s, when 95 million hectares were said to be cultivated, an aerial census found 144 million hectares under cultivation).
How can one judge the “revolutionary” verbiage of the “right-wing” Maoists who even today continue to see survivals of “socialism” in China?
How can the professor stick the label “socialist” on such a country?
And here is his main item: "Socialist modernization and market economy are implemented according to certain rules:
Socialism has to be adhered to
The dictatorship of the people (proletariat) must be sustained
The leading role of the CPC must be adhered to
Marxist-Leninism, Mao Tse Tung's ideas, Deng Xiaoping's theory and theory of Three Representations must be adhered to
Socialism in China needs to be built according to Chinese specifics with Chinese characteristics, by paying attention to creating a harmonious, moderately wealthy society
In international relations the policy of peace, removing threats of war and opposing hegemony has to be promoted.”
What a lot of absurdities and contradictions in this text! Let us raise some of them:
How can the dictatorship of the people and that of the proletariat be identical?
How can one put in practice at the same time antagonistic views: Marxism-Leninism, the ideas of Mao Tse-Tung, the theory of Deng Xiaoping and the theory of the Three Representations, etc.
I think what has already been said is sufficient to show all the inconsistency and stupidity of these rules.
I will consider just the theory of the Three Representations which is a policy developed by Jiang Zemin for the Chinese Communist Party. This theory clarifies the three categories that the CCP is supposed to represent: the “progressive productive forces”, Chinese modern culture and the “basic interests of the majority of the Chinese population.” The three representations are interpreted as a means for the CCP to integrate the economic elite arising from the liberalization of 1978 into the apparatus of the CCP.
Jiang spoke about the theory of the Three Representations for the first time in February of 2000. In 2001, at the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the CCP, Jiang formulated the theory of the Three Representations:
“In a word, our Party must always represent the demands of the development of the Chinese progressive productive forces, must represent the orientation of the vanguard culture and the basic interests of the majority of the population of the country."
The theory was later inscribed in the statutes of the CCP at the 16th Congress in November of 2002 and in the national constitution in March of 2003.
The foundation of this theory is two-fold. It legitimates the inclusion of capitalism and private businessmen within the Communist Party. This is an attempt to link the historic heritage of Jiang Zemin to Marxist theory at the same level as that of Mao Zedong or of Deng Xiaoping for socialism with Chinese characteristics.
There are many difficulties in interpreting this theory. Even many Chinese, and even members of the party, find it incomprehensible. One of the main goals of the Three Representations was to change the CCP into a more democratic government party. It opened the party to the “great majority of the people of China” including businessmen and leaders of enterprises.
It was, in the manner of Khrushchev, the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the abandonment of the class struggle and the introduction of all the elements that contribute to making China a big imperialist power.
We must not forget that the total betrayal of socialism and Marxism-Leninism began with the adoption of the theories of the state and the party of the whole people and the peaceful transition to socialism.
There is a very important thesis that Prof. Wiktor forgot to mention: that of the export of capital and commodities which nevertheless form, as Lenin said, “the essential traits of imperialism.”
One can note that nowadays the main traits of imperialism are always the same. Imperialism is always the commercial and financial hegemony of some powerful bourgeois States which, by means of the export of capital and today equally by means of a new international division of labor, live on the exploitation of the dependent countries.
Imperialism is also the export of commodities and of services.
One must also emphasize that the export of capitals can cover the form of DFI (direct foreign investments), but not only. In fact, for certain imperialist countries (such as Japan, Germany and China) that have bought massive loans and state bonds issued by declining imperialist countries (such as the USA and the United Kingdom), in order to finance the deficit of current accounts in their balances of payments, the DFI represent a small part of the total income from investments. Since 2005, the positive balance of revenue from this type of investments is greater than the negative balance of revenue from the DFI, making China a powerful imperialist country on the commercial plane, but also on the financial one.
Chinese exports should record a growth of 15% in volume in 2009 despite the impact of the financial crisis and the decline of the global economy, an expert of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (CMC) stated.
China’s volume of foreign trade has reached $2,189 billion in the first 10 months of this year, an increase of 24.4% compared to the same period in 2007, according to the General Customs Administration.
Chinese hard currency reserves had reached $1,330 billion at the end of June.
Chinese exports amounted to $546.7 billion in the first half of the year, a growth of 27.6% compared with the same period last year, establishing the Chinese trade surplus of 83% at $112.5 billion.
China is the third largest trading power in the world, behind the United States and Germany.
According to these facts, it is still necessary to seize the favorable occasions, accelerate the economic reforms and concentrate all energy on economic development. All this with the goal of continually improving Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
This is why the professor said “the main contradictions in China are not the class related ones. They can aggravate only temporarily. The main contradictions are related to the growing needs of Chinese society and the ability to satisfy them with a still backward production base.”
What characterized the former capitalism, in which free competition ruled, was the export of commodities. What characterizes present-day capitalism, where the monopolies rule, is the export of capital.
A huge “surplus of capital” builds up in the advanced countries.
As long the capitalism remains the capitalism, the surplus of capital is used, not to raise the living standard of the masses in a given country, since it would result in a decrease of profits for the capitalists, but to increase these profits by the export of capital abroad, to underdeveloped countries. There, profits are generally high, since capital is not very large, the price of land is comparatively low, salaries are low and raw material is cheap. The need to export capital is due to the “excessive maturity” of capitalism in certain countries, where (farming being backwards and the masses miserable) “advantageous” placements for capital are lacking.
The possibilities for the export of capital are due to the fact that a number of backward countries are already caught up in the gears of world capitalism, that the great railroad lines have been built or are being built, that the elementary conditions for industrial development have been put together, etc.
Dear readers, I think that it is not necessary to go further in the criticism of Prof. Wiktor’ article. One should note how he confuses and assimilates (in the crudest and shameless manner) the Marxist-Leninists and revisionists in order to pose as a revolutionary Marxist.
My criticisms are not a personal attack, but we must be “advocates of a frank criticism between comrades, favoring self-criticism.” For us, unity is not the absence of debate; such a unity would not serve the rapid expansion of the class struggle. On the contrary we must intensify the debate, of course on the basis of dialectical materialism.
We must not lose our perspective. We must not forget that the activities of our organization unfold in the framework of a class struggle that is becoming more and more fierce.
Hence the importance of our ideological and educational work. Hence the importance of the editions of NSC.
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