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What Do You Mean China is Socialist?
by Satya J. Gabriel
What does it mean to say that China is a
socialist country? Is this some sort
of “feel good about China” sort of thing? I’m not being
facetious
here. I hear this term “socialist” bandied about quite
frequently
and most of the time I have no idea what people are talking about. I
don’t
know why China is socialist, unless it is socialist because China’s
political
leaders call it socialist. I’m serious about this. If tomorrow Hu
Jintao
announces that China is no longer socialist, without any other fundamental
change
in Chinese economic processes, then I have the impression that would end a
lot
of people calling it socialist. But if the only reason China is socialist
is because
the Communist Party of China (CPC) says so, then the term has absolutely
no utility
as a tool for social scientific analysis.
The term certainly has nothing to do with the class processes that
prevail
or have prevailed in China. In the immediate past, China was dominated
by class
processes that were hardly “liberating” to workers. I would,
in
fact, argue that CPC policies have been quite reactionary, meaning that
it has
recreated class processes that are associated with pre-revolutionary
Chinese
society. I know it will not sit well with a lot of social analysts,
particularly
my colleagues on the Left, but I would argue that the CPC instituted
feudalism
in two instances: first with the creation of the communes in the late
1950s
and second with the creation of a feudal employment system in the
pre-reform-era
state-run enterprise (SRE) sector.
Industrial feudalism’s rise in post-revolutionary China had as
one of
its conditions of existence a bureaucratic allocation and control labor
system:
workers were at the bottom of a hierarchy of feudal obligations; work
assignment
was not voluntary, as in capitalism, and permanent employment, and the
danwei
and hukou systems provided for both feudal dependence and immobility,
as well
as the sort of surplus labor problems common to feudalism and slavery,
where
the capitalist mechanism for throwing off excess labor is absent. In
this Chinese
variant of industrial feudalism, wages were used as a mechanism for
distributing
a small portion of the value of labor power to the workers, with most of
the
value of labor power provided in-kind, as part of the “ iron rice
bowl.
Sadly, my argument that this system is feudal is likely to be met with
derision,
rather than debate, in a lot of circles. Some will see use of the term
feudal
as only appropriate when examining “Europe” (which seems to
occasionally
include Japan) during certain historical epochs (after which the term
has no
presence). But if the labor system (and related “mode” of
appropriating
surplus value) fits the definition of feudal, then why not call it
that? We
can’t understand social formations unless we can define our terms
in such
a way that they can be used at any given historical moment or on any
geographically
defined social formation without prejudice. In other words, the term
“feudal”
is not proprietary to studies of Europe. So why is it so unacceptable,
for many
Leftists, to call the communes or the post-revolutionary, pre-reform
industrial system
feudal? Instead, even those who do not believe this system was socialist
go
to great lengths to make up new terms (to ignore the underlying class
process)
based on political aspects of Chinese society, such as calling it a
“state
command” system. Now I don't have any problem with the concept of
China as a "state command system," so long as we understand the term to
refer to the prevalent political organization of the state
bureaucracy. But this
does not tell us about the prevalent class processes in China,
since a wide range of class processes can be supported by a state command
political structure, including both capitalism and feudalism.
One of the other reasons (in addition to Eurocentrism), that
contemporary Chinese
feudalism escapes the view of many social analysts is that there is a
tendency
to think of feudal conditions as, necessarily, less attractive to
workers than
capitalist conditions. For this reason, many social analysts find it
difficult
to recognize the pre-reform labor system as feudal, given the perception
that
many workers preferred the iron rice bowl and permanent employment to
the insecurities
of capitalist employment. In fact, most of these analysts are content to
mimic
the Chinese authorities in calling the system
“socialist.” For many,
the iron rice bowl is somehow, by definition, socialist. In this sense,
many
Leftists share with Rightists the view that social welfare defines
socialism.[1]
But if socialism is social welfare (or vice versa), then what country
is not
socialist? Do you need a certain measurable degree of social welfare
to be socialist?
Is it the type of social welfare that defines socialism? Is it
the decline in infant mortality from 1949 onwards that defines the
Chinese social structure as socialist? Is it the family planning
policies? Is it the increase in caloric intake of the poor? Is it the
extensive development of infrastructure during the Maoist era? Where
is the recipe
book for this definition of socialism? And what is to stop us from
labeling every OECD country, including the U.S.A., as
socialist, using similar criteria? I think the problem is that
socialism means
too many things and sometimes nothing at all, depending on who is using
it.
It certainly doesn’t seem to have anything to do with class
processes
for most of those who deploy the word in their arguments.
As I understand it, there have been five class processes
identified: the slave,
feudal, capitalist, ancient, and communal (or communist) class
processes. Each of these class
processes is defined on the basis of a unique form of surplus value
appropriation.
In the slave class process surplus value is appropriated on the basis of
the
chattel slavery relationship: a human being is treated as a piece of
property
(capital) whose laboring potential is therefore owned in total. In the
feudal
class process surplus value is appropriated on the basis of obligation
of the
worker to perform surplus labor for a specific employer. In the
capitalist class
process surplus value is appropriated on the basis of the voluntary wage
labor
contract (where the worker has choice of employment). In the ancient
class process
surplus value is appropriated by the individual producer who produces
it. In
other words, it is based on complete self-employment/self-appropriation
on an
individualized basis. Finally, in the communal class process surplus
value is
appropriated by the collective of workers who created that value.
Now some people, in particular a number of Marxists, have defined
socialism
as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism (a society
where the
communal class process prevails). I don’t know exactly how one is
supposed
to know that a society is in transition to communism, unless one can
observe
an increase in the number of workers involved in the communal class
process
over time. Any other criteria for arguing that such a transition is
taking place
seems far too open to interpretation to be of much use. When I observe
China
I see absolutely no evidence of any increase in the incidence of
communal appropriation.
Thus, I am not sympathetic to the argument that China is socialist.
Maybe this desire to make China socialist (at least in our rhetoric) is
all
about wishful thinking. Leftists want China to be socialist. China has
one-quarter
of the human population living within its borders. It would be nice to
think
that the government of China has high ideals for the liberation of
humanity
from exploitation and other oppressions. But wishing for this
doesn’t make it so.
In fact, there is a good
deal of
evidence that something else is going on. For example, in addition to
the absence
of any serious efforts to grow communal appropriation in China, the
tossing
away of the iron rice bowl in favor of dog-eat-dog certainly does not
constitute a movement towards communal appropriation, China has
broken contemporary speed records for growth in income inequality.
Add to that leading the world in executions (Texas on steroids?), and a
rising tide of corruption and you just do not come up with a nice
“socialist”
picture. It looks a good deal more mundane.
Okay, so I won’t win friends and influence people in the Leftist
community
by such arguments. I guess that’s the cost of telling it like I
see it.
I’d like to say “sure I think China is socialist and
here’s
why” but I can’t. I can’t muster up any
evidence. I’m
not satisfied to use the ad hoc approach that seems so popular on both
the Left
and the Right (lots of people on the Right called Martin Luther King,
Jr. communist when he was still alive and for some time thereafter).
China is, indeed, going through
a transition, but it is
not a
transition from capitalism to communism. The evidence supports a
conclusion
that feudal appropriation has prevailed in both agriculture (during the
commune-era)
and industry (during the SRE-era) in the recent past and is now being
displaced
by capitalism in industry and increasingly in agriculture. In other
words, China
is going through a transition from feudalism to capitalism. I just
don’t
see calling such a transition socialism.
NOTES
[1] One would expect individuals who take the
social welfare = socialism approach to argue that China is abandoning
socialism as the level of social welfare is drastically reduced. This is,
indeed, the case for many leftists, although not quite so consistently the
view of rightists who use the same definitional framework. In any event,
the quantity of social welfare approach is quite problematic. It does not
provide the basis for consistent categorization, nor is it clear that this
approach to defining socialism has much utility in analysis.
(Next two paragraphs added 6 February 2004.) Another popular, though
usually just as ad hoc, approach to defining socialism is to view any government
with substantial ownership of industrial, extractive, agricultural, and/or
financial enterprises as "socialist" and the nation is given that
appellation as well. Given that it is possible to find governments
with no ownership (or some equivalent) of productive or financial
enterprises (exempting service enterprises), then it is possible to create
a bi-polar categorization of socialist and non-socialist
nation-states. Nevertheless, most nations would be classified as
socialist if a strict rule of non-socialist = no state ownership of such
enterprises is applied, including the United States. If this strict
rule is not applied then we are back in the realm of trying to quantify
how much ownership results in socialism. All the same, those who
hold this view, and many conservative Marxists are among those using the
term socialism in this way, must view China's gradual post-1990s
privatization with some dismay (or joy, depending upon how one
essentializes the normative meaning of "socialism").
For those who want to see socialism as a stagnant economic system, there
has been a concerted effort to argue that forms of state (or
public) ownership are necessarily inefficient and growth retarding.
Jean C. Oi, in her text Rural China Takes Off (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1999), makes a point of the fact that China's rapid
economic growth was initiated and carried out during a period of sustained
state/collective ownership and that privatization is a more recent
phenomenon. Oi and others (including yours truly) have argued that
the driving force behind much of the earlier growth has been the
township-village enterprises, which are, for the most part, local
government owned and, by the definition we are discussing here, socialist
institutions. This would imply that socialism can create vibrant
economic growth and development. While I don't believe the
government ownership = socialism approach is any better than the social
welfare = socialism approach (nor do I agree that a hybrid of the two
would solve the problems inherent in these crude and typically ad hoc
strategies for categorizing social formations), I do agree with the
conclusion that there is no one-to-one correlation between type of
ownership and economic efficiency or economic growth or economic
development. The question of whether or not a social formation
transforms in the direction of greater material capability and more
immediate income is more complex than these reductionist approaches
imply. China has been demonstrating this for the past twenty plus
years and one can only hope that eventually the facts on the ground in
China will begin to influence economic theory, rather than proponents of
mainstream economic theory
trying to force the facts into pre-existing reductionist fallacies (and/or
ignoring facts that can't be squeezed into these "mainstream" theoretical
frameworks). We shall see.
(Added 7 February 2004) This is turning into more of a blog than a
note. In any event, I wanted to add that Jean Oi has a completely different take on
China (from those who see it as "socialist"). She describes China as
"corporatist" and argues in Rural China Takes Off
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) that one can understand
the dynamics of post-reform China in terms of a corporate relationship
between different levels of the Chinese government and between the Chinese
government and firms, both those who are government owned (including the
ones described as "collectively" owned, meaning owned by local
governments, rather than provincial governments or the central
government) and those that are in the burgeoning private sector. Oi does,
however, describe the reform period as bringing about a "new form of
redistributive corporatism" that does not signify the "end of
redistributive socialism." This seems to indicate that Oi sees the reform
era as continuing "redistributive socialism" (which one can understand as
an example of the social welfare = socialism definition). This blending of
the notion of "corporatism" with "socialism" is interesting for a number
of reasons, not the least of which is the way that political processes
(in the one case, the idea of a corporate power hierarchy linking different
levels of government and the "entrepreneurial" nature of decision-making
by agents of the government, especially (for Oi) local officials, and in
the other case, the use of political authority to redistribute value in a
manner that increases the equality of access to resources) are placed at
the essential core of defining the social formation. The way that Oi
defines socialism, economic processes are epiphenomena of the political
and class processes are irrelevant altogether. The fact that the mode of
appropriating and distributing surplus value has changed does not seem
relevant to the use of the term "socialism." If you have
a different take on this, send me an e-mail at sgabriel at mtholyoke.edu.
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