If you have opinions about the subject matter of posts on this blog please share them. Do you have a story about how the system affects you at work school or home, or just in general? This is a place to share it.
Good interview with Frank Hammer here. Frank has been very supportive of this blog, Facts For Working People. Facts For Working People started a campaign in support of Frank's efforts to get the AFL-CIO to release the AIFLD files some time back.
After a resolution written by another retired UAW president calling for former AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka to release the files passed at a labor body in Duluth Minnesota, Facts For Working People called on other activists and socialists in the labor movement to take the resolution in to their locals and build the campaign. It was an important opportunity to explain to our co-workers and other union members the importance of international solidarity and the role of the US government and the AFL-CIO leadership in undermining it.
A few other resolutions were passed supporting the Duluth call, mostly by supporters of Facts For Working People Blog but regretfully there was almost no support coming from the wider labor movement. This is quite shameful given the many thousands of activists and lower level officials within organized labor who identify as socialists or anti-imperialist.
Not all relationships end in “happily ever after”, and birds are no exception. While more than 90% of bird species form monogamous couples, many of these will end in divorce.
The reasons for splitting up are as varied in birds as they are in humans, and often revolve around things like poor compatibility or slacking off by one partner. However, new research has found a surprising cause of divorce: climate change.
Like many seabirds, black-browed albatrosses form monogamous pairs that can last for the entirety of their 70-year lifespans. However, just under 4% of these couples will separate each year. Using data from 18 years of extensive observations, a team in the Falkland Islands have been digging into the reasons for divorce in birds of this species living there.
Environmental conditions profoundly affect animals’ survival and ability to breed successfully. As divorce often follows a bird couple’s failure to raise chicks, researchers imagined that in harsher environments – which could lead to lower breeding success – divorce might be more common.
The colony of albatrosses studied were in the Falkland Islands.Natasha Gillies, Author provided
The team focused on two environmental measurements. First, they looked at sea surface temperature anomalies, which occur when the annual temperature of the ocean’s surface changes significantly from a 30-year average value.
More anomalies indicate higher surface temperatures than normal. These increases in temperature make it difficult for organisms at the bottom of the food chain, like phytoplankton, to grow: meaning that less food is available for animals further up the food chain, like seabirds.
Second, the team examined wind speed. With their extraordinarily long wingspan that can reach up to 2.5 metres, albatrosses need strong winds to take flight and make their record-breaking migrations over the ocean. As a result, stronger wind currents benefit albatrosses, allowing them to fly long distances with relative ease.
Although the researchers found no effects to couples caused by wind, they did find that as temperature anomalies increase, so does the rate of divorce. In other words, the warmer the ocean, the less likely albatrosses were to stay with their mate.
Why do albatrosses separate?
Many animals that fail to breed in one year will divorce their partner in the next. Their logic is strategic: “I’ll stay with you if we’re successful in having children, and if not, I’ll try someone else”.
Failure to breed is a common reason for seabird divorces.Natasha Gillies, Author provided
Albatrosses seem to use this approach when deciding whether to split up. Females whose eggs didn’t hatch were five times more likely to divorce their partner than those who raised a chick to fledging at four months old, or whose chicks died later on.
This makes sense. Eggs that don’t hatch probably indicate infertility or incompatibility between partners, whereas losing a chick is usually due to predation – an unlucky event that often isn’t your partner’s fault.
However, this study found that increases in temperature anomalies led to higher divorce rates above and beyond previous breeding problems. That means a female in a previously successful relationship, who would therefore be expected to stay with her partner, was much more likely to divorce her partner when sea surface temperatures were higher than normal. So what’s going on?
Albatrosses form monogamous couples.Natasha Gillies, Author provided
There are lots of reasons that environmental conditions could lead to divorce. Outside of breeding season, animals often migrate to regions where more food is available. There, they can rest and feed themselves in preparation for breeding.
When environmental conditions are poor, animals might take longer to find food and end up returning to the breeding colony late. This could make partners return home at different times, which could lead to divorce. For example, if a male’s partner arrives to the colony long before him, she may end up taken by someone else before the two have the chance to reunite.
Also, warm ocean conditions might make the divorce decision-making process malfunction. In normal conditions, if your partner is a lazy parent, you might end up picking up their slack by spending more time at your nest incubating eggs or feeding and protecting chicks. This might mean you divorce them in the following year to try your luck with someone more generous.
Partners who don’t contribute to raising chicks risk getting divorced.Natasha Gillies, Author provided
In years with warm oceans, albatrosses have to work harder to find food, and may end up injured or in ill health. The birds might mistakenly blame their partner for their own hardships – assuming that they are suffering because their partner isn’t pulling their weight to take care of their chick, rather than because the environment is sub-par.
Divorce can be beneficial for many animals, but also comes with drawbacks. For some seabirds, newly-formed couples are less successful at raising their chicks. If climate change increases divorce rates, this could reduce the number of new albatrosses making their way into the world, reducing the entire population size over time.
This research suggests we need to look more closely at whether these kind of climate-driven patterns pop up in the lives of other species, giving us much-needed insight into the many ways climate change is affecting those with which we share our planet.
The rate of rapid destructive change of our entire climate and all the earth’s
distinct and interconnected ecosystems is as stunning as it is horrifyingly
frightening. The pace of these changes is quite difficult to come to and wrap
ones head around considering that what we’re witnessing has occurred in a
nanosecond when compared to geological or cosmological time.
I was born after World War 2 and grew up here in the greater Minneapolis area.
Even after moving to the West Coast in late summer 1981, Minnesota continued
experiencing relatively normal winters, which to you neophytes means sub-zero
temperatures and lots and lots of snow. Sometime in the late 90s Minnesota
started warming in the fall and throughout the winter although sporadically at
first.
Our first winter back here was 2010/11 and it was the cold snowy weather of
old, but that’s no more. It is December 2nd. I just checked the time and it’s
1:17am, but outside it’s 48 degrees Fahrenheit when it should be 18. Still, the
local weather clown declared yesterday was a “top ten weather day”. I’m hoping
by this weekend that this extended episode of The Twilight Zone will end even
though the handwriting so to speak, is everywhere.
Other species on the planet have been responding to these alterations in the
climate now for decades. There’s multiple reports in a range of scientific
journals (look them up) that discuss how every insect species globally has
either been moving north or south away from the equator or to higher
elevations, which had been going on for at least the past 20 years and perhaps
longer. Many species have already gone extinct because they had no place to go
or were deemed unimportant to the global bloodsucking class. Similarly we can
no longer talk of invasive species as adaptation to adverse circumstances is a
natural process for survival.
I mentioned this before, but it’s well worth repeating. Almost every bird species is getting smaller.
This is an evolutionary adaptation caused exclusively by changes to the climate
system caused by capitalism choking Earth’s atmosphere with Greenhouse gases.
For many years we’ve been told that Polar Bears could go extinct due to
shrinking Arctic ice. Polar bears have been migrating South and mating with
other bear species to survive.
These changes, drastic as they are, still do not seem to be sufficient to move
the mass of humanity. Maybe the fact that we’re running out of what’s needed to
make all the crap we don’t need that just makes us feel emptier and those
things we really do need (nutritious food and clean water only two prime
examples) we can’t since it no longer exists or do you honestly believe that
every supermarket is in cahoots to only sell 5 kinds of wild fish while they
increase farm raised “fish”. which is actually accelerating the degradation of
the oceans the principal source of our oxygen.
Before I forget there’ll be more rain than snow in the Arctic where it’s been
warming twice as fast as anywhere on the planet meaning more intense and longer
lasting Polar Vortexes deep in the heart of Texas as well as melting permafrost
which is holding countless tons of methane which no species can breathe. Once
we believed we’d be dead before the worst of this nightmare came to pass. No
longer.
I am not alone on the left in being critical of the Jacobin Magazine as the author of this review points out. But like him I have also read a few, not too many, very good articles in the past and this is one of them. I recall two in particular that I posted to this blog and this is another one. I think I will republish them. Excellent material here. We share this commentary from The Multiracial Unity Blog. The author is Joseph G Ramsey.
Capitalism can't live without racism. We can't live with it.
Don’t Judge an Issue Just by Its Cover – 12 Important Points from Jacobin’s Latest Issue: “Reduce the Crime Rate”
by Joseph G. Ramsey
November 27, 2021
It’s not enough to judge a left journal by its cover. A recent case
in point: people in left social media circles of late have been taking
shots at the democratic socialist magazine Jacobin’s latest issue (https://jacobinmag.com/issue/lower-the-crime-rate),
with its provocative (and maybe confusing) cover bearing the slogan
“Lower the Crime Rate.” A range of radical voices online have reacted to
this cover as if it amounts to a kind of endorsement of police
repression in liberal guise. But actually the lead articles inside the
issue are, in this comrade’s view, quite good. From the Opening
Statement by Benjamin Fogel to the interview with Marie Gottschalk, the
contents here are valuable for the way they highlight major blindspots
structuring liberal and much “left” common sense and activism around
policing, prisons, and the carceral state these days. The issue deserves
wide engagement, as it can help us to see more clearly some of the real
challenges that lie before us in terms of radically changing the system
of “criminal justice” in the USA. One need not share Jacobin‘s
emphasis on electoral politics (or the specific organizational vehicle
of the Democratic Socialists of America) to find value in the magazine’s
pages.
Among the main takeaways:
1) That last year alone 21,570 people in the USA were murdered, a
significant surge from the years prior. It follows that the widespread
left talking point that the rise in crime is all an imaginary product of
right-wing hysteria and sensationalist mass media is false. The USA is
between 3 and 30 times more violent than its wealthy “peer nations”;
violent crime remains a reality structuring US working-class life. It
follows that would-be working-class organizers need to take it
seriously.
2) That a black person in the US is 35 times more likely to be killed
by another civilian than by a police officer. The US Black population’s
murder rate exceed that of all countries on earth, excepting Jamaica
and El Salvador. The 1000 or so people killed by police each year in the
USA remains a perpetual outrage, but we must not allow this outrageous
police violence to lead us to neglect the real problem of violent crime
in this country, a problem which disproportionately affects Black (and
poor, and Latin@ and Native) people.
3) That polling shows that a vast super-majority of Americans at
present (apparently 86%!?) want the police to spend as much or *more*
time in their neighborhoods as they do now, even as strong majorities
think that “policing requires major changes” (58%) and think that
“police violence is a serious problem” (79%). Such (contradictory)
numbers can certainly be read symptomatically–as reflecting dominant
media, politicians’ framings and general social fears–but, even so,
police abolitionists thus have, to put it mildly, a lot of *persuading*
to do if they are going to build a majority that can make such a change
viable in most parts of the country.
4) That while the Black incarceration rate in the USA is off the
charts compared to other countries (as is now well-known), being around 5
times that of the white incarceration rate in the US, even the
incarceration rate for white individuals alone is still 4-15 times the
incarceration rate of Japan and Western European countries. Thus, to
frame the expansion of imprisonment in the USA as simply a “New Jim
Crow” or an expression of anti-Black “systemic racism” is clearly
inadequate. Even if the US released every single Black prisoner
tomorrow, this country would still be imprisoning more people than any
other country on earth. Framing incarceration as primarily an
anti-“Black” problem risks blinding us to half the problem, and half of
the potential mass base for its transformation.
5) That the main driver of mass incarceration in the US has not been
non-violent drug offenses–and certainly not non-violent offenses linked
only to petty drugs like marijuana. (Such marijuana only offenses amount
to only around 1% of those in prison.) Even if ALL prisoners whose
primary charge is a drug offense were released tomorrow, that would
reduce the prison population by only 20%, still leaving the US by far
the main jailer in the world. Drug decriminalization then, however
correct (and this author mostly supports it), does not yet speak to the
heart of the problem: a growing punitiveness in US society and
government that is at once increasing the violence of this society,
while responding (and often compounding) high levels of real violence in
the society more generally. (The place of property crimes here deserves
more attention than the Jacobin issue provides.)
6) That there are more than 200,000 people in the US serving “life
sentences,” many of them without even the prospect of parole. This is
more than many countries incarcerate at any one time, for any amount of
time, and around the *total* number of prisoners held in the USA before
the prison boom and the “war on crime” launched in the late 70s. It
represents a startlingly state-sanctioned condemnation of our fellow
human beings, a mass policy of flushing people away without even the
hope of rehabilitation or redemption.
7) That in the USA today, more $$$ value is stolen by employers via
“wage theft” each year than the total $$$ of property stolen as a result
of “robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts.” Thus,
even without going deeper to the Marxist point that all wage-labor
involves a kind of theft through exploitation, the employer class is a
massive source of criminality, host to a massive amount of robbery.
8)That the hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars of
private and corporate wealth that is held (often “legally”) in tax
havens like the Caiman Islands or Panama is not only a massive social
theft of tax resources from the people, but also creates a swamp of
shadow banking and underground finance that attracts, feeds, and enables
organized crime the world over.
9) That crime among the masses can and should be viewed not as
right-wing (or liberal) invention to justify militarized policing, but
as a genuine “index of oppression,” “born out of poverty and the
miseries of capitalism.” As such, it requires action not just (and not
primarily) at the level of policing or public safety (though the reality
of these levels cannot be bypassed), but a deeper social transformation
of the entire economic system. The goal of bringing down the crime
rate, and thus the widely felt need for expansive policing, requires a
broader kind of *abolitionism*, one aimed at abolishing poverty,
abolishing homelessness, making quality health care (including mental
healthcare) as well as quality education available to all, providing
sustaining and meaningful employment to those who currently lack it, and
generally redistributing wealth and power downward to reduce the vast
inequalities in our midst.
10) That, within the current system, the kind of radical reforms
above are going to *cost much more* than the current state strategy of
intensive policing and punishment. Shifting the resources from existing
police institutions to social programs, public health, or prevention,
however well intended or symbolically powerful, will *not* be anywhere
near enough (by a factor of more than 10). Indeed, to the extent that a
focus on “defunding the police” takes our focus off of fighting to
expand the total federal and state revenues for things like universal
healthcare, public housing, jobs programs, as well as redistributive
progressive taxation, it risks becoming a self-defeating endeavor.
(Furthermore, some studies show that underfunded police departments may
in fact become *more* abusive, not less.) We need to keep our eyes on
the real prize.
11) That the current system response to the economic stagnation since
the 1970s has in many ways been a response based on not only social
control priorities of the elite, but controlling things on the *cheap,*
keeping taxes on the rich and corporations low, maintaining
profitability, etc. We should be honest about the massive social
investments–and the need to expropriate the social wealth controlled by
capital and the rich–that will be necessary for this kind of program of
radical reform. You can’t squeeze public health and social safety from
the bloody budget of a SWAT team or a Bearcat.
12) Reducing the glut of guns in the USA, shifting drug offenses from
the frame of “crime” to “public health” would all be good things, and
transferring the deadly militarized budget surpluses of US police to
social programs and community based crime prevention initiatives would
also (aka “Defund the Police” or even better “Demilitarize the Police”).
So would ending the CIA, whose criminal anti-communist crusades have
seeded the terrain for organized crime and drug trafficking for
generations. But without deeper transformations in Americans political
consciousness and society, reforms (radical or moderate) at the level of
policing are not only unlikely to accomplish the ends of harm
reduction, but may in fact play into the hands of far-right politicians
who love nothing more than to run on “law and order,” as if their
policies of increasing punishment, surveillance, militarization, and
racist profiling are the only way to keep communities “safe.” The left
cedes the ground of serious public safety to the right at its peril.
Joseph G. Ramsey teaches English and American Studies at UMass
Boston, where he is active in the Faculty Staff Union (FSU/MTA) and in
struggles to defend public higher education. He is presently working on
a book recuperating the critical communism of Richard Wright: <
I was at a comedy show a few nights ago and the first
comedian was an Irishman. And I mean a real Irishman as opposed to an Irish
American, who all too often, are unable to point to Ireland on a map. The
Irishman heard my English accent and that gave him ample material for his show talking
about 800 years of oppression from the English and so on. It was a good laugh.
I get that Irish Americans have heard all the horror stories
from their parents and/or grandparents about the English occupation of Ireland,
the banning of their language, culture and so on but to not delve more deeply
in to the causes of things in order to gain a deeper understanding of events is
a misfortune for them. I am also an English working class man with much Irish
ancestry, but to claim to be Irish would result in a real laugh (the craic)
from the Irish as I am culturally English, but of Irish ancestry as well, like
millions of English people.
One thing I do not feel is guilty or responsible for the
brutal history of British Colonial Power. I also, like most white workers, do
not feel guilty about my skin tone either, or that I was born a male. I enjoy
the “accent” privilege I have here in
the US and have used it to my advantage on occasion but not to as a tool of oppression.
Guilt is poison. It is poison not simply for the person
possessing it, but for the person(s) demanding it as some sort of payment, a
penance for historical events beyond one’s control. In the US, Guilt is common
among white liberals as a means of atonement for their privileges: Attending good
schools, the best universities, living in the best neighborhoods, their white
skin etc. The views expressed in that trashy book, White Fragility is a classic
example of this guilt, a worthless book indeed and the author has been paid
hundreds of thousands of dollars for writing it. Identity politics, which is so pervasive in
the US and has its roots in the petit bourgeois, is a means of obscuring the
class issue and very harmful to all working class people.
White liberal guilt is the most insidious, condescending form
of racism and I agree with Coleman Hughes’ in the video above. He has been
called a lot of names by some in the Black community for his views as he points
out; an Uncle Tom, just wanting to make white people feel good and advance his
own interests and so on. That is such a racist position really and nothing but
an attempt to silence ideas. Whether one agrees with him or not, it is clear he
is a serious thinker.
It is not 1958. The heroic struggles of the Black working class and youth in
the Post World War Two era, what has been called the Civil Rights movement or at
times the Black Revolt, forced the white racist ruling class in the US to open
some doors, to remove some of the racist barriers to the development of a black
middle class, a buffer zone between themselves and the Black working class and
the revolutionary potential that is inherent in this class. The Civil Rights movement
was an international embarrassment to US capitalism and its claim to be the “land of the free”. There has been a
significant growth of the black middle class as a result of the Civil Rights
movement as US capitalism needed to divert this movement from the streets and
direct action that they do not control to the electoral arena and the courts
that they do.
We are witnessing the same approach to the Black Lives Matter
movement as major corporations and billionaires that control them have thrown
or have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to Black colleges, Black owned
businesses and banks and other strata in order to strengthen this buffer zone
yet again. This class will be evidence that capitalism works, “look at me” will be their mantra, “I made it, so can you if you work hard and
make the right decisions”.
The white workers will not respond to this guilt strategy, I
know I don’t because as I say it’s a nasty form or racism, feeling sorry for
people whose history and very existence we should be inspired by as opposed to seeing
them as helpless victims. The history of millions of white workers in the US is
also one of poverty and abuse, of children working in mines and factories and
such. Taking this in to account does not equate to minimizing or ignoring the
horrors of slavery or the special oppression that Black folks, Native people
and all people of color have to face on top of their class oppression.
In my experience as a blue-collar worker that has worked alongside
many black workers, in a factory in NYC when I first came here to many years at
a public utility in the Oakland California area, I never experienced this guilt
pressure from black workers with one or two exceptions that were looking to
advance in to management. Their use of racism was that it was an obstacle to
their personal advancement. As for the black working class as a whole, they
wanted to get out of it and were not very good workers and quite willing to defend the bosses (of
which they were now a part) from accusations of racism. To be honest, the role
of most Affirmative Action departments in large companies is to defend the
company from accusations of racism. Our union was a much stronger vehicle for
fighting racism than the AA office.
Black workers like women I worked alongside as well, simply
wanted to be treated fairly, to have the same opportunities as anyone else. Working
class people have principles and are not lacking integrity.
I’ll end this here but need to make it clear for the left types,
many in the self-styled socialist organizations, who might call me a traitor for
praising a middle class academic, that I have some major disagreements with
this young man. Also, as Sean O'Torrain and I always stressed, we don't look over our shoulders at the left hoping we get recognition from them when we write. As far as I know Hughes is not a socialist. I understand that he appears
on panels with conservatives and other cheerleaders of the market and the capitalist
system. With some of these black academics in particular, they might be drawn to a genuine left current in the workers' movement if one existed with a working class orientation to racism, its roots in the US and how to fight it. I wonder if he has read Theodore Allen's The Invention of The White Race.
I assume he would not and I have not heard him identify with Malcom X
and his profound statement that “You can’t’
have capitalism without racism”. While Malcolm X never specifically called
for socialism he was clearly moving in this direction and his remarks certainly
place socialism on the table. If you can’t have capitalism without racism, then
capitalism has to go and only a united working class is capable of this and we
don’t unite the working class by using an approach the intention of which is to
divide them.
The Chinese Communist party’s central committee recently held its sixth plenum, to discuss “the major achievements and historical experience” of the party in its 100-year-history, as well as to consider policy “for the future.”
Just after this, Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive, joked
that the Wall Street Bank would outlast the Chinese Communist party. “I
made a joke the other day that the Communist party is celebrating its
100th year. So is JPMorgan. I’ll make a bet that we last longer,” he said, speaking at the Boston College Chief Executives Club, a business forum.
What is the experience and future for China and its Communist party
rule? It seems appropriate to consider a number of new books on China
that have been published that try to answer this question.
Let us start with Isabelle Weber’s, How China escaped shock therapy.
This has had a wide and significant impact in academic leftist circles,
endorsed as it is by Branco Milanovic, the leading global inequality
expert and also author of a recent book, Capitalism Alone,
in which he argues that socialism can never happen and the choice for
human social organisation for the foreseeable future is between ‘liberal
democratic’ capitalism (the US and the ‘West’) or ‘political
capitalism’ of an autocratic state (China, Russia).
Weber’s book is an account of how and why China did not go down the
road of restoring capitalism through the ‘shock therapy’ of
privatisation and the dismantling of state control as Russia did in the
early 1990s. Instead, according to Weber, China’s leaders under Deng in
the late 1970s debated what direction to take and opted for a gradual
opening-up of the planned state-owned economy to capitalism, partly
through privatisation but mainly through foreign investment.
Weber argues that the ‘gradual marketization’ of the Chinese economy
facilitated China’s economic ascent but without leading to ‘wholesale
assimilation’ to capitalism. The decision of the Chinese leaders for a
gradual move to capitalism was anything but a foregone conclusion or a
“natural” choice predetermined by Chinese exceptionalism, Weber claims.
In the first decade of “reform and opening up” under Deng Xiaoping
(1978– 1988), China’s mode of marketization was carved out in a fierce
debate. Some argued for shock therapy-style liberalization while others
preferred gradual marketization beginning at the margins of the economic
system. Indeed, on at least two occasions, Deng opted for a “big bang”
in price reform, but stepped back from the brink.
From the 1980s, the influence of the dominance of neoclassical
economics in the West, both in universities and in government set in
motion the process of China’s marketization. Those Chinese economists
who favoured a gradual dual economy development were replaced by
economists with neo-classical market zeal. But the neoclassical policy
of allowing the market to set prices led to increased inflation and
eventually the Tiananmen Square protests, the ensuing military crackdown
and the imprisonment of Zhao, then General Secretary of the CCP. Even
so, according the Weber, throughout the 1990s, the economics profession
in China continued to align with the international neoclassical
mainstream. Neoliberal reformers made deep inroads in the arenas of
ownership (selling or liquidating state enterprises), deregulating the
labour market and the healthcare system (partly privatised) – things
that I think have come back to haunt China’s leaders now, forcing them
to advocate under Xi a new turn towards ‘common prosperity’.
However, Weber reckons that the core of the Chinese economic system was never destroyed in one big bang. Instead, it was ‘fundamentally transformed’ (?) by
means of a dynamic of growth and globalization under the activist
guidance of the state. In October 1992, Deng Xiaoping made the formal
decision to establish a ‘Socialist Market Economy with Chinese
Characteristics.’ This formulation was a hybrid concoction which Jiang
Zemin, explained as “whether the emphasis was on planning or on
market regulation was not the essential distinction between socialism
and capitalism. This brilliant thesis has helped free us from the
restrictive notion that the planned economy and the market economy
belong to basically different social systems, thus bringing about a
great breakthrough in our understanding of the relation between planning
and market regulation.” Market socialism was born.
Under Zemin, China moved further towards a capitalist market economy. Weber says that the Chinese leadership of the 1990s “was willing to shatter all remaining boundaries to the operation of market forces, in the name of economic progress.”
Controls over essential consumer and producer goods were now dismantled
step-by-step. However, the impact of this “big bang” was far smaller
than it would have been a few years earlier. By 1992, “the
liberalization effort was akin to jumping off a low-standing rock at the
base of a mountain from which one has just descended” (Weber). Weber
argues that the state maintained its control over the “commanding
heights” of China’s economy as it switched from direct planning to
indirect regulation through the state’s participation in the market. “China grew into global capitalism without losing control over its domestic economy.”
Weber’s book is insightful in showing the debates on policy among the
CP leaders about what direction to go and the factors that dominated
their thoughts. However, Weber appears to do so from the viewpoint that
China was capitalist at least from the point of Deng’s leadership and
all the debates after were about how far to go – whether to go for
‘shock therapy’ or moderate moves towards ‘more capitalism’. Weber
appears ambiguous on the economic foundation of the Chinese state. For
her, China ‘grew into global capitalism’ but still “maintained its control over the commanding heights”. What does that mean for the future?
In sharp contrast, there is no ambiguity from John Ross, in his new book, China’s Great Road. Ross
is Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin
University of China and writes profusely in defence of China and its
economic model as he sees it. Ross provides the reader with a wealth of
data on China’s unprecedented economic success, taking over 900m out of
poverty (as defined by the World Bank) and outstripping every other
economy in output and wage growth over the last 30 years.
Ross’ view of the Chinese model of development, ‘socialism with
Chinese characteristics’, is in reality a ‘radical version’ of
Keynesianism. But it is different to Keynesian policies in the US and
Europe, where budget deficits have been utilised, low central bank
interest rates have been pursued and some forms of quantitative easing,
driving down long-term interest rates through central bank purchases of
debt have been applied. “In China, in contrast, relatively limited
budget deficits have been combined with low interest rates, a
state-owned banking system and a huge state investment programme. While
the West’s economic recovery programme has been timid, China has pursued
full blooded policies of the type recognisable from Keynes General
Theory as well as its own ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
Ross argues that it was Deng’s lack of ideology or commitment to
either a market or state-led economic model that was the reason for
China’s economic success. (Deng: “I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”). Ross says: “Because
in the US and Europe, of course, it is held that the colour of the cat
matters very much. Only the private sector coloured cat is good, the
state sector coloured cat is bad. Therefore, even if the private sector
cat is catching insufficient mice (ie the economy is in severe
recession), the state sector cat must not be used to catch them. In
China, both cats have been let loose – and therefore far more mice are
caught.” So Ross seems to accept Deng’s view that the planning
mechanism and public ownership were not vital to China’s success and the
market could and can do as well, if not better, in developing China’s
economy. Ross asserts: “A systematic comparison of Marx’s concepts
with those of the post-1929 Soviet Union makes it entirely clear that
post-Deng policies in China under reform and opening up were far more in
line with Marx’s than were the USSR’s”.
But is it really the case that opening up the economy to a capitalist
sector and foreign investment, while necessary for China’s economic
development from the 1980s, has no serious contradictions and
consequences for China’s ‘socialism’? That’s not how Lenin saw it when he reluctantly opted for the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921
in Russia in order to restore agricultural production after a world war
and a civil war. For Lenin, NEP was a necessary step back in the
transition to socialism forced on the Soviet Union by the wars and the
failure of other revolutions in Europe. Russia was on its own. With
NEP Lenin put it this way: “You will have capitalists beside you,
including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They
will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they
will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile
you will learn from them the business of running the economy, and only
when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic.”
Lenin called the NEP ‘state capitalism’, not ‘socialism with any
special characteristics’. China’s ‘long NEP’ as described by Weber is
not a fulfilment of Marx’s teachings, as Ross claims, taking China
gradually towards ‘socialism’; but in reality, it was a forced step back
to capitalism. Lenin in 1921 posed the contradiction for Russia that
Ross ignores for China now: “We must face this issue squarely—who
will come out on top? Either the capitalists succeed in organising
first—in which case they will drive out the Communists and that will be
the end of it. Or the proletarian state power, with the support of the
peasantry, will prove capable of keeping a proper rein on those
gentlemen, the capitalists, so as to direct capitalism along state
channels and to create a capitalism that will be subordinate to the
state and serve the state.”
Combining public ownership of the commanding heights, indicative
planning and a large capitalist sector with market prices has taken
China forward, but it has also increased the contradiction between the
law of value and the market and planning for social need. In my view,
this is the key contradiction in all ‘transitional’ economies and also
within the Chinese economy. But Ross seems to argue that the
combination of markets and planning as the way forward to a ‘socialist
China’ has no contradictions. He quotes Xi: ‘we need to make good
use of both the invisible hand and the visible hand’. China can and
will, because of its economic structure, use both the ‘invisible hand’
of the market and ‘visible hand’ of the state.” But can Deng’s
private sector cat and the state sector cat live together in harmony for
the foreseeable future or will the contradictions inherent in this
combination increase and intensify? – the current crisis in the post-COVID Chinese economy suggests the latter.
Ross recognises that “inequality in China, as is admitted domestically, has risen to levels which are excessive, and need to be corrected,”
but he does not explain why there is such inequality and how it may be
reduced. Yes, there have been periodic crackdowns on corrupt party
functionaries and the excesses of private capitalists (Jack Ma, for
example). But the Chinese leaders continue to oppose any sort of
independent action by workers and strikes remain illegal, although in
many cases, this prohibition is not strictly enforced.
Ross reckons China’s economic success is based on ‘socialism’ Keynesian-style: “reform and opening up, and socialism with Chinese characteristics, can be easily understood within the framework of Keynes.”, referring to Keynes concept of the ‘socialisation of investment’.
“China’s economy is not being regulated via administrative means but by
general macro-economic control of investment—as Keynes advocated.”
But this is a distortion of both Keynes and China. Keynes’
socialisation of investment’ never involved massive public ownership of
the commanding heights of an economy – he was strongly opposed to that.
And China’s economic success is based primarily on state-owned and led
investment not on Keynesian ‘macro management’ of credit and fiscal
measures as in capitalist economies. Ross’ explanation of China’s
economic success implies that capitalist ‘macro management’ can work –
when it has clearly failed in the advanced capitalist economies.
This is not a Marxist view of China. A Marxist model of China’s
economy should not start by looking at the rate of savings or investment
in an economy. Marxist theory starts from the law of value. China’s
success is because the law of value which operates in capitalist
markets, foreign trade and investment was at first totally blocked and
later controlled by a large state-owned sector, central planning and
macro policy, as well as by restricted foreign ownership of new
industries and controls on the flow of capital in and out of the
country. The Keynesian analysis misses a key ingredient and
contradiction of economic development, the productivity of labour versus
the profitability of capital.
The Marxist model
argues that the level of productivity will decide economic growth
because it reduces the cost of production and enables a developing
nation to compete in world markets. But in a capitalist economy where
the law of value and markets operate, there is a contradiction:
profitability. In the Marxist model, there is a long-term inverse
relationship between productivity and profitability. Profitability comes
into conflict with productivity growth in a capitalist economy and so
will result in regular occurrences of crises in production. A developing
economy needs to restrict this conflict to a minimum.
In so far as China’s private capitalist sector increases its
contribution to the overall economy and the public sector’s role is
reduced, then the profitability in the overall economy becomes
relatively more important and the contradiction between productivity
growth and profitability intensifies. Both the neoclassical and
Keynesian models of development ignore this contradiction.
Richard Smith is his new book definitely
does not miss the contradictions in a transitional economy with the
contradictory forces of planning and the market in play. He considers
China is a “bureaucratic hybrid”, neither capitalist nor a
‘command’ economy. China’s rulers preside over the largest and most
dynamic economy in the world, a powerhouse of international trade whose
state-owned conglomerates count among the largest companies in the
world. They profit immensely from their state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
market returns. But they’re not capitalists, at least not with respect
to the state-owned economy. Communist Party members don’t own individual
SOEs or shares in state companies like private investors. They
collectively own the state which owns most of the economy. They’re
bureaucratic collectivists who run a largely state-planned economy that
also produces extensively for market. But producing for the market is
not the same thing as capitalism.
Smith argues that there is just no way that Xi can “peak China’s emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060” while also maximizing growth. He can “pursue
development at the expense of protection” or he can “transition to
green and low-carbon development… [and] take the minimum steps to
protect the Earth, our shared homeland.” He can’t do both.
Actually, what Smith shows is that no one country can deliver on
controlling emissions and avoiding climate disaster – by definition this
is a global existential threat.
The countries of the global south are not the historical polluters of the world. That honour falls to the imperialist countries that industrialised from the 19th
century onwards and continue to shift the generation of emissions to
the periphery by consuming the manufacturing and resource commodities
produced in the likes of China, East Asia, India, Latin America and
Russia. These countries need help to reduce emissions and stop
destroying nature as they seek to ‘catch up’ with the global North.
That help won’t come as long as imperialism continues. Rather than
coordinate with China to deal with climate change, the ‘international
community’ is aiming to ‘contain’ and isolate China globally.
The following book review was originally published in the Eco-Socialist website, Climate and Capitalism. Visit Climate and Capitalism for important articles and information about climate change and the catastrophic damage that the so-called free market is inflicting on nature. Most importantly, rather than simply report on the looming environmental crisis, Climate and Capitalism will offer real solutions.Facts For Working People Admin.
How often are we told that the market must be part of the solution to
the climate crisis? The efficiency, the focus, the discipline embedded
in the pursuit of profit, the refinement of responding to consumer
demands, each of us maximizing our individual utility, those are the
values that will get us all pulling in the same, sustainable direction.
We’re told the collaboration of business and society will be win-win:
companies will make loads of money; we, the people, will get a planet
to live on. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England,
said “there will be great fortunes made” when businesses start doing “what society wants”.
Bloomberg admits that capitalism caused climate change,
but says because vast sums of money will be needed to fund the
transition to a sustainable global society, harnessing the power of the
market is our best hope.
There’s just one problem with this narrative: experience, time after
time, shows us another reality. Companies regularly lie to protect their
profits. They conceal important information to protect their
reputations. The dodge and weave to avoid following rules of propriety.
They produce goods that are dangerous. There are countless examples.
Let’s look at two: Boeing, and Exxon.
Boeing makes aircraft. Perhaps the most important feature of an
aircraft, apart from its ability to leave the ground, is its ability to
not fall out of the sky. But Boeing was so keen to sell its new 737 Max
that it repeatedly overlooked
this feature. A recent report from the US House of Representatives
transport and infrastructure committee found that Boeing knew that a
faulty sensor would cause on-board software to force the plane’s nose
down. To save money, the company rejected efforts to make extra training
compulsory for Max 737 pilots.
A Boeing test pilot discovered the fatal sensor flaw in a 737
simulator, describing the problem as ‘catastrophic’. Boeing concealed
the information from the Federal Aviation Authority, from customers, and
from 737 pilots. Workers at the Boeing plant were routinely overworked,
to the point where safety was compromised. All this, in the pursuit of
profit. When two Max 737s crashed, in 2018 and 2019, Boeing concealed
all it knew, and tried to blame the crashes on pilot error.
Is this the kind of behavior that will enable a transition to a sustainable future for global society?
Then there’s Big Oil. In September 2020, a lawsuit was filed against ExxonMobil, for deliberately deceiving the public about the connection between fossil fuels and the climate crisis.
Like the other major oil companies, Exxon has known for decades that
hydrocarbon combustion is causing climate change. Not only did they
conceal that knowledge, they also funded a powerful campaign of climate denial, which continues to confuse action of climate change today, lending credence to climate deniers at the highest levels.
Are these the values that will help a transition to a sustainable, carbon-free future?
Bloomberg’s argument that the bottomless money pit of capitalism is
the only logical way to fund the transition to decarbonize the global
economy ignores where the money comes from.
Money is made from extracting resources without paying for the damage caused to nature or future generations.
Money comes from processing and transforming resources (using cheap fossil energy) into goods that can be sold.
Money comes from speculating on commodities, driving land-use change.
Money comes from tech companies, making silicone chips using vast
amounts of water and energy, which go into computers and cell phones,
which are designed to become obsolete within a few months, so they can
be replaced with new models.
None of the vast sums of money Bloomberg assumes will fund a carbon
transition, are themselves carbon-free. And why would hedge funds,
mining companies and tech firms spend their profits on sterilizing their
golden goose?
The pursuit of profit certainly made these companies efficient, but
not in the way global society needs. Pursuit of profit is the reason
hundreds of people died, needlessly, in those jets. Pursuit of profit is
the reason oil companies have lied about climate science for decades,
continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere. The free market cannot be
part of the solution: it is the problem.
Workers, the poor, the marginalized, will never get justice
from the rich people’s courts (the capitalist justice system).Every inch of progress, every right, every
freedom workers and all those victims of class society have achieved, whether
it be women, black folks, gays, the disabled you name it, has been obtained
through mass action, through strikes, protests, preventing the system from
working. In other words, direct action and not the courts. Many have died and
many have suffered but it’s not for nought. Progress takes sacrifice.
This does not mean that we never use the capitalist
courts. We just cannot rely on them. For three decades I was a workplace lawyer
of some sort. This is what a shop steward is, or any union official not sitting
in an office in Washington rubbing shoulders with the politicians of capital.
My history as a rank and file union worker, and the history of the US from a
workers’ perspective, is that our movement was built by and maintained by
genuine working class people who fought day in day out for the rights of the
worker.
There were a couple of times when a lawyer, a good union
lawyer saved my ass. There were other times when I had to argue at my union
meetings that we should not place too much credibility on a lawyer’s advice,
not because they are bad people, but because we cannot substitute the capitalist
courts for the potential power that we and all workers have that can, if necessary,
change the world.
I respected our union lawyer and lawyers have a role to
play in the labor and workers’ movement.
But watching this, I love this prosecutor and it brings
back memories of those cases we won even if it was only the argument that we won
but due to the balance of power between the class forces that we lost the case.
Sometimes, the legal route can only best be used to help the worker or union member
see the bias in it and strengthen our argument that independent working class
power and relying on our own strength through direct action is the only
solution.
So it’s still great to watch her undermine the argument
that these racist scum use to defend their actions with regard to their murder
of Ahmed Arbery. I don’t care that they never used the “N” word or used racial slurs.
I know what they are and so the hell do black folks.
Another part of the pleasure for me is that this prosecutor
is a woman. She is not the type of woman that the mass media and Hollywood say we
are supposed to admire and cherish. But neither were our mothers or our sisters, but we know
how beautiful they really were. I wish her the best of luck.
I am involved in a court case right now; a fairly
substantial one involving billions of dollars. I was on a webinar discussing the case (as a
listener). There were four male attorneys and a woman who presented the details
of the case. She was very efficient.
As I watched this I thought to myself. Here we go again
just like the unions of old where the recording secretary is always the woman
and the top folks are men. There was some questions asked and some of the men
answered them. When it ended there was a phone number to call the law firm for
further questions. I had some further questions so I called it. I got an
answering machine so I left a message expecting one of the guys to call me
back.
When the call came it was the woman that did the
presentation, not only that, it is her law firm. I was surprised the top dog
called me back but also very grateful and also told her my misconceptions that
I thought she was the clerk and wished her the best of luck in her field.
I might get some backlash for praising a lawyer in this
way from some quarters, but it’s ok.
Check out the video and I hope these guys get what they
deserve.
Just going through some old material and came across this piece. I think it is still relevant today and not just for women in China but here at home and throughout the world. I wrote this is December 2005. RM
“Beautiful faces have
beautiful dreams,” says Wang Yaoyao, a contestant in the Miss Artificial
Beauty contest held in China’s Hubei province.Ms Wang is special, a product of the new China, and a product of the
free market.Ms Wang is a representative
of the plastic surgery business that is sponsoring the contest.In a
country of 1.3bn people, despite some 800 million of them living in poverty,
global corporations and the budding Chinese bourgeois are wringing their hands
at the potential for moneymaking.
Ms Wang is free you see; free to make herself beautiful,
beautiful for Proctor and Gamble, Hollywood, and the men and women that will
use her new found looks to sell soap or perfume. But for Ms Wang it is more
than that, it is her ticket to the good life in the new China.The 21 year-old Wang, (not long an adult)
received free plastic surgery on the condition that she promote the hospital
that did the procedure.The plastic
surgeon was generous, giving her, according to the Financial Times, “a nose job, double eyelids, a smaller chin,
thicker lips and a tummy tuck”.Ahh!
sweet commerce.Can the old regime be
blamed for wanting to isolate itself from the west?After all, it was not really the west they
were protecting themselves against, but bourgeois culture that turns everything
in to a commodity.
Ms. Wang, an advertising executive tells the Financial Times, “Even if your smart and good at what you
do, nobody will listen to what you have to say if you’re ugly.But if you’re beautiful, people want to be
close to you immediately. Then you can talk to them and get your message
across.” How sad is this?It is not confined to China of course.Women in the US who do not fit the standard
of beauty determined by bourgeois culture and the men who dominate it face the
same barriers.
Could you imagine the response were clinics here in the U.S.
operating on American women, especially ones of European descent, making them
look more Chinese.There’d be racist
attacks on Asian Americans. The capitalist press would be whipping up
nationalism and fear of being taken over by the “Yellow Peril”.Chinese,
Japanese, South East Asian doctors offices would be firebombed.Asian teachers would be victimized in the
schools.
But in China the beauty pageant is a moneymaker and they are
flourishing.It is not just the plastic
surgery business that sees dollar signs.The perfume industry, clothing, makeup, and let’s not forget the auto
industry, all see a bright future in the disfigurement of human beings.After all gentlemen, you’ll need the right
car, the right watch, the right suit to capture one of these beauties.The beauty pageant market, like any other, is
facing saturation point according to the Times.But as the market ebbs and flows, the damage to millions of young girls,
and the young men who expect this beauty of them will be devastating, both
psychologically and physically, not just the surgery, but suicides and sickness
as the reality sets in and women become slaves to this idea which fails to
produce results, fails to make them “happy”.
Admittedly, there are millions of Chinese women,
particularly in the rural areas, whose dreams are far more basic than Ms.
Wang’s; food, shelter and a job. And I am not able to judge the impact of the
phenomenon from afar, but the pace of change in Chinese society is considerable
by most accounts.The economic potential
is significant as global corporations like P&G, Volvo, Clark’s shoes and
Malaysia Airlines (religious condemnation of capitalism doesn’t seem to be an
obstacle here) invest in these pageants.In 2003, Chinese women bought $9bn worth of beauty products and this is
only the tip of the iceberg from global capitalism’s point of view.The more they convince women they are ugly
and that this is why they cannot achieve success, the greater the investment
potential.
Like all aspects of the roaring Chinese economy it is quite
likely this bourgeois consciousness and the economic basis for it will be cut
across by the increasing frustration of the Chinese masses.Incidents of social unrest in China have
increased 600% over the last decade.Massive wealth alongside extreme poverty does not go unnoticed and each
small release of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s boot off the necks of the Chinese
workers increases their confidence.There is no doubt that there is no reversal for the Chinese bureaucracy,
not without major social upheaval.The
capitalist road has been traveled too far.But the future is unsure.The
massive reserves held by China may give a certain leeway to the bureaucracy,
maybe they can make some considerable concessions in the face of an
increasingly restless population; no one can be sure what the future holds
except that it is a volatile situation.
Despite the propaganda of the western press, bourgeois
individualism and selfishness cannot exist alone in the consciousness of the
Chinese workers.In the last analysis,
consciousness has a material base and in the case of China, it has had 50 years
without the market.But it has had its
effect.“When I ask my male students what they dream of, they say owning a car
and being with a beautiful woman.They
never used to talk like that.” One university professor tells the
Times.That’s progress.(1)
As I read this article that spurred me to write this commentary,
I was reminded of Marx and Engels’ comments on the global nature of the
market.I am adding them as a reminder
of their genius.
“The need of a
constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the
entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie
has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character
to production and consumption in every country........ In place of the old local and
national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also
in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations
become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become
more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures,
there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid
improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated
means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into
civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with
which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’
intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations,
on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels
them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become
bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
You
can’t beat that.
Karl
Marx/Frederich Engel’s The Communist Manifesto 1848
(1) The article from which these details were taken is, The
China Doll Revolution
