Capitalism, Socialism, and the 1949 Chinese
Revolution:
What Was the Cold War All About?
By Satya J. Gabriel
Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange
Island,
The Xiang flowing northward;
I see a thousand hills
crimsoned through
By their serried woods deep-dyed,
And a
hundred
barges vying
Over crystal blue waters.
Eagles cleave the
air,
Fish glide under the shallow water;
Under freezing skies
a
million creatures contend in freedom.
Brooding over this
immensity,
I ask, on this bondless land
Who rules over human
destiny?
-----Mao Zedong (1925)
The 1949 Chinese Revolution was a
transformative, epochal event, not only for the Chinese but for the rest
of humanity, as well. If the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
(that resulted in the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
or Soviet Union) inaugurated an international competition for the hearts
and minds of people all over the globe, the Chinese revolution raised the
stakes of that struggle. The popular media, academics, political leaders
and others in the "West" produced an understanding of this struggle as
between "capitalism" and "communism," although these terms are rarely defined in
more than loose and unusually flexible terms, and in spite of the fact
that the Chinese revolution was shaped by domestic struggles with a long
history within China, much more so than by global struggles between two
super-systems. Nevertheless, the intensity of the perceived
global struggle between super-systems was shaped, in part, by the fact
that communist ideology, as represented by certain statements of Vladimir
Lenin, the central intellectual and political figure of the Bolshevik
Revolution, was understood as grounded upon an idea of worldwide
revolution --- all nations would, according to the logic (teleology) of
this (orthodox) version of Marxism, ultimately succumb to communism. (The
Soviet leadership expressly supported the idea of "worldwide revolution"
and took steps to help achieve this objective, including organization and
leadership of the Communist International or Comintern, although C.L.R. James, among others, argued that Stalin's
political machinations sabotaged international solidarity within the
communist movement.) The threat to "spread the revolution" created, at the
least, the illusion of a mortal conflict (mortal from the standpoint of
the elites who stood to lose if the resolution went against them). In
other words, this idea of worldwide revolution and the efforts by Soviet
leaders and communists in other countries to make it a reality presented
little room for compromise between the opposing camps (on the one side,
the supporters of the existing social system in the Western nations and,
on the other side, the communist movement). Thus, the communist victory in
China (the most populous nation on Earth) created a stronger sense of
threat in one camp and of impending victory in the other. It also
contributed to the way this bipolar struggle came to overshadow all other
international relationships and many domestic conflicts within nations, as
well. The conflict was mystified by both sides: it took on the
dimensions and intensity of a religious crusade that permeates all aspects
of social life.[1] Indeed, if societies are really formations of
social and environmental processes, all interacting and shaping one
another, then the introduction of this polar conflict into the fiber of
existing social relationships could not help but impact virtually every
society (or social formation) and transform numerous cultural, economic,
and political processes within those societies. The mystified
(metaphysical) nature of the conflict served both sides: those who wanted
to defend the status quo (the moral, political, and economic arrangements
that predominated) in the "Western" nations were able to promote
anti-communist attitudes and actions by depicting the other side as
opponents of freedom, goodness, democracy, and light; while those who
supported the goals of the Comintern could rally greater support for
overturning the status quo by making use of the rhetoric of the Soviet or
Chinese versions of Marxism (which looked all the more prophetic and,
therefore, True, in the wake of the Chinese revolution). The existence of
the new "Chinese model" was particularly troubling to one side and
encouraging to the other precisely because it opened the door to a "domino
effect" of revolutionary change in the less industrialized world, creating
the possibility of accelerated social change that might threaten the
established order in the advanced capitalist nations. [2] Sometimes the effects of this conflict were quite
unexpected. For instance, many individuals have argued that the "Cold War" (particularly the post-1949 Chinese Revolution
version of the Cold War) may have been critical to the success of the
Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as U.S. political leaders
sought to win the hearts and minds of leaders in newly independent African
nations and intellectuals throughout the "Third World" by demonstrating the openness, flexibility,
and fairness of the American way of life (including the American economic
system, which was presumed to be the embodiment of capitalism and
diametrically opposed to the "communist" alternative). Ironically, the
Civil Rights Movement was also interpreted, within certain anti-communist
circles, as a subsidiary operation of the international communist
movement. Civil Rights leaders, such as Martin Luther
King, were often accused of being communists (or, at the least,
"fellow travelers"). Thus, the new language and logic of communism and
anti-communism (mostly in rhetorical and metaphysical form) transformed
the rules of social engagement over racism, as well as many other
issues.[3] In a larger sense, the conflict between these two
camps reshaped popular culture. New images and ways of thinking about the
self and society permeated the media, from literature to the motion
pictures. For the most part, the conflict was not waged in terms of social
theories or ideas about the proper organization of society. Instead, the
conflict took on a religious connotation. In the West, communism was
portrayed as "sinister," even "evil." Behavioral norms were changed,
influenced by images of impending threat from the communist menace,
whether from without or within. Anti-communism coalesced into a form of
paranoia. This paranoia was promoted in a wide range of films and books.
One of the classics of this era was the science fiction film, Invasion
of the Body Snatchers. In this and other films, the concept of threat
from infiltration of family and friends was supportive of notions
prevalent within the anti-communist movement that communism would capture
the hearts and minds of the innocent and turn them into obedient slaves of
the world communist movement. But this cultural battle begs the
question --- was the struggle really between capitalism and communism?
Does this notion capture the essence of the conflict in question? Or were
these words simply misused tools in a conflict over more mundane issues,
such as whether a relatively old and established elite would control the
resources and political machinery in certain countries or whether a new
elite would come to power and take their place. It would distort matters
to imply that this struggle between different political and economic
agencies, at a minimum it was a struggle between the governments and
corporations of the West versus the government and bureaucracy of the
newly formed USSR, could be reducible to either a conflict between
capitalism and communism (as two distinct, non-arbitrarily defined
economic systems) or a contest for control by two different sets of
elites. Similarly, it would be a distortion to imply that it is not
possible for the conflict to simultaneously satisfy both the capitalism
versus communism condition and the contest between elites. However, it is
no less distorting to begin with the assumption that either of these
conditions is correct. We need to know that the Bolsheviks were genuinely
interested in communism if we are to assume that the initial conflict ---
the USSR versus the West --- was ever between capitalism and communism, as
alternative, oppositional, and mutually negating social systems. This is
not proven by the simple statements of the Bolsheviks about their interest
in creating communism at some unspecified date in the future.[4] We must have a clear sense of what communism
is and whether or not the Bolsheviks were working to establish the
conditions for the existence of such a social formation. After all, if
a new slave master were to take control of a slave plantation and tell his
slaves, "My ultimate goal is to free you and to create a new form of
social arrangement in which you shall never be oppressed again," would the
slaves believe him? What would be necessary for them to believe him?
Does it matter in terms of defining the class structure of the society
whether or not they believe him? If a conflict breaks out between this
new slave master and the slave masters at other plantations then perhaps
this might reinforce the idea that something extraordinarily different
(and threatening to the old social order) was happening. But would
that conflict be sufficient to convince us, as social analysts, that this
conflict was between slavery and an alternative social system in the
making, much less already present, and not simply between two variant
forms of slavery? In other words, what would we need to know in
order to conclude that this new slave master was a "revolutionary" intent
upon ending slavery (or having already revolutionized class processes,
ending slavery on the plantation in question)? This question would
be further complicated if instead of a single slave master, the group
claiming to oppose slavery was a collective of leaders, each with a
different understanding of slavery and revolution, including a subset of
these leaders who understood that an immediate end to certain conditions
of slavery was utopian and dangerous to social cohesiveness (perhaps
arguing in favor of ending private ownership/private appropriation-based
slavery in favor of state ownership/state appropriation-based slavery as a
first stage in their new society, but not ending slavery
altogether). To imply that the conflict between the West and the
USSR (and the later expanded conflict between the West and the Communist
Bloc) was a struggle between capitalism and communism is to imply that the
"Communist Bloc" was genuinely interested in creating communism (and
ending or, at least, minimizing non-communist forms of surplus
appropriation and distribution, if not having already brought this
dramatic change in the operating system for surplus control into
effect). In the West, there is a tendency to speak of the USSR, China,
and other members of the "Communist Bloc" as already communist nations. If
we took this seriously, we would need to believe that the software of
communism, which is the control of surplus value by the workers
themselves, had been implemented in the USSR, China, and these other
so-called communist nations. However, this leap of faith is avoided
within the discourse by defining communism in purely polemical
(non-scientific) fashion as synonymous with the set of political,
economic, and cultural processes that developed in the USSR under the
dictatorship of Joseph Stalin (a definition of communism that is dependent
upon the post hoc rise to power of a specific dictator and the
implementation of his vision of society) . In other words, communism is
not defined based on the software of labor processes and the control over
surplus labor, as in Marx's definition (which did not presuppose a Josef
Stalin), but on the hardware of the physical social structures and
institutions without regard to the underlying software.
Thus, the discourse of the Cold War ignored the fact that the wage
labor/capital blueprint which Marx
defined as the capitalist mode of production (Marx's name for the
capitalist operating system)
was operative in both the "West" and the "East," but in the one case
implemented by state-owned firms within a bureaucratic structure (the
hardware of the so-called socialist bloc) and in the other case
implemented by public corporations with the support of state institutions
(the hardware of the Western bloc). This Cold War discourse ignored prior
discussions of communism
in philosophy and social science, including Marx's few references to this
system. Similarly, capitalism gets defined in simple terms as the commonly
recognized features of the economic and political system(s) prevalent in
the "Western" nations, particularly the presence of relatively unregulated
corporations operating in relatively "free" markets and popular voting
for certain governmental positions (in contested elections with at least
two
political parties). In the most simplistic version of this
polemic, capitalism is simply conflated with "free" markets. Indeed, there
is no need for the word "capitalism" since the phrase "free markets" would
capture the entire meaning for purposes of discourse and analysis. For
many social analysts and
commentators,
their definition of capitalism is
ad hoc, changing over time or occasion to meet polemical demands or simply
to reflect the present set of
idealized characteristics of particular high income societies, usually the
United
States suffices as the model. Unlike typological work in the
"hard" sciences, the typology upon which these ad hoc definitions rest are
almost never subjected to much scrutiny nor required to meet even minimal
standards of uniqueness (non-arbirariness) and clarity. It is as if an
animal could legitimately be
classified as a reptile based on the whims or polemical requirements of
the particular biologist who deploys the term in his scientific analysis
or policy statements, rather than based on non-arbitrary and easily
identified criteria with unambiguous scientific implications.
It is interesting that despite Marx's perceived role in shaping the
bi-polar communism-capitalism conflict (his name is often invoked by one
side or the other for polemical reasons), his multi-volume attempt at
producing new knowledge about the specificity of capitalist economic
processes (where the word capitalism is produced as a social concept
defining a unique set of social relationships (which can occur in a
variable historical context) by which certain individuals perform surplus
labor and a different set of individuals appropriate this surplus labor)
is ignored. Thus, it may be useless, in the context of this polemical
"debate" over capitalism and communism, to try to distinguish whether or
not the conflict between the West and the "Communist Bloc" was a conflict
between actual capitalism and actual communism, understood as strictly
defined and alternative economic systems. In the polemical debates, the
terms capitalism and communism lose all social scientific meaning. The
entire history of thought within which capitalism was defined as a unique
economic system formed around a distinct class process and communism was
defined as an alternative mode of producing and appropriating an economic
surplus is absent from the arena of these debates. Think of capitalism and
communism as alternative forms of software for shaping the creation and
distribution of surplus value (whether in product or monetary form). But
this is not the way capitalism and communism are discussed in popular
discourse. Instead, in the popular rhetoric, capitalism and communism
become simple proxies for two specific sets of contending social
formations (distinct in many ways but not necessarily in terms of
prevalent class processes). But we cannot play so fast
and loose with these concepts (or the underlying software or social codes
governing who performs labor and who receives the fruits of such labor
upon which the concepts are based) if we are to make sense of
the internal struggles and debates within the Chinese leadership that came
to power in 1949 (anymore than it would make sense to ignore the
historical definitions of capitalism and communism if one wanted to make
sense of the post revolutionary struggles and debates within the Bolshevik
leadership). In our survey of the Chinese economy, we will attempt to gain
a better understanding of what was at stake in the Chinese Revolution of
1949, of the contending visions within the leadership of the Communist Party
of China (Gong Chang Dang)
as to what constituted capitalism and communism, and whether
or not there is any "objective" way to determine if China underwent a revolution
as sweeping as the term communism implies (a revolution that implies a
complete change of the underlying software, or operating system, if you
will, shaping the relationship between direct producers and appropriators
of the fruits of labor of those direct producers). This will be
important as
we explore the current phase of "economic reform" in China and attempt to
make sense of where China is going in the future.
But first, let me be clear about something on this point. China's leadership
never claimed to have inaugurated communism with the 1949 Revolution. As
was the case with the Bolsheviks, China's leaders were members of a communist
party but never claimed to have instituted communism --- a society without
exploitation --- with their revolution. [5]
They claimed merely to have overthrown the political leadership of the
"bourgeois" state --- to have made a political revolution against a pro
capitalist state --- and by so doing to have cleared the way for the construction
of "socialism." Socialism was understood as an intermediate stage between
capitalism and communism. During this intermediate phase, the preconditions
for communism would be gradually put into place to allow for the eventual
attainment of communism, which some of the opponents of communism have
described as a form of utopian (and therefore unattainable) society. No
one ever said how long the society would have to be in this intermediate
"socialist" stage, nor was the stage itself or the preconditions for communism
that were to be instituted clearly defined. It was also anticipated that
worldwide revolution would result in rapid growth of communist party led
governments around the world and that these governments would develop socialism
in a coordinated effort. Socialist solidarity was understood as an inevitable
consequence of the movement of social forces that could be delayed but
not permanently forestalled. Thus, the Soviet leaders saw the Chinese revolution
as just another step along this road to the coordinated building of socialism.
Socialism was never conceived, within communist ideology, as a system that
would be developed sui generis in individual countries. There would not
be a Soviet form of socialism and a Chinese form, for instance. This way
of thinking not only caused tensions between Soviet intellectuals and political
leaders and their Chinese counterparts but also caused some rather serious
squabbling among leaders of the
Communist Party of China (CPC), which was
founded only four years after the Bolshevik Revolution, with some taking
the internationalist line and others arguing in favor of the idea of a
unique Chinese form of socialism.
To further complicate matters, the
Chinese Nationalist Party or Guomindang
--- the party that was overthrown by the Chinese Communist Party and subsequently
fled to the island of Taiwan --- did not view itself as an instrument of
a ruling capitalist class (which would be consistent with the notion of
a "bourgeois" party). To the contrary, the Guomindang, many of whose leaders
were openly supportive of and supported by the Soviet Union (and some,
such as Chiang Kai-shek, studied in the Soviet Union), was generally described
as nationalist and socialist.
Sun Yat-sen, the Guomindang's Lenin, was
one of the strongest supporters of the Soviet Union. And the Soviets provided
the Guomindang with financial support, armaments, and advisers. (If this
is not sufficient to make the ideological waters murky, then consider also
that the Chinese Communist Party made nationalism an important aspect of
its constitution, eliminating another potential ideological difference.)
On numerous occasions the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party were
allied, particularly in the anti-imperialist struggle against the Japanese
and there were even members of the Guomindang who simultaneously held membership
in the Chinese Communist Party (at least until Chiang Kai-shek began his
purge of communists from the Guomindang). The Communist Party officially
recognized the valuable role of the Guomindang in bringing about the transition
from the monarchist regime, embodied most recently in the form of the
Qing Dynasty, to a modern state. This, of course, begs the question
of who would control that state as the Chinese nation continued along a
path that both the Guomindang and the Communist Party called modernization.
When the Guomindang, under Chiang Kai-shek's leadership (after Sun Yat-sen's
death), turned against the Chinese Communist Party in 1927, assassinating
most of the communist leadership (leaving a void that would be filled by
the rural based
Mao Zedong), the motivation may have been less ideological
than part of an effort to eliminate any possible competition over control
of this "modern" state. Thus, the Chinese Communist Party, who won the
struggle against the Guomindang despite the aforementioned assassinations,
overthrew one version of socialism in favor of another version, at least
when viewed in purely polemical terms.
This leaves us with some perplexing questions. What exactly was/is socialism?
What did the Chinese Communist Party leadership mean by this term? What
do they mean when they use it today? Is there a narrow enough definition
of the term "socialism" as to allow us to test whether one society is or
is not socialist?
For that matter, in order to make sense of the aforementioned struggle
between communists (who are portrayed and portray themselves as opponents
of capitalism) and anti-communists, we will need to ask similar questions
of the concepts of capitalism and communism? Because these terms are frequently
used for polemical purposes, we often think we know what they mean and
can very easily end up like the
Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland (with
these words meaning whatever we want them to mean --- there being no test
for whether the conditions of the concept are or are not met). For our purposes, however,
we will need to both understand what political and intellectual leaders
in China (and elsewhere) meant by these terms and to attempt to find social
scientific definitions (very strictly defined and testable terms used in
a consistent manner within a consistently logical framework of argumentation)
that could be used to analyze the economic, political and cultural dynamics
driving change in Chinese society. These are two very different ways of
talking about the concepts of capitalism, socialism, and communism.
Let us begin with the latter problem---finding a social scientific
meaning of these terms. We need a social scientific definition of capitalism, socialism,
and communism that can be deployed in our analysis of the Chinese economy,
Chinese economic history, and the intellectual debates about China's "communist"
revolution and its current transition (from what to what?).
Since the concept of communism was/is largely understood as oppositional
to capitalism, then lets start with capitalism. What is this thing that
the communist party leaderships (in China, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere)
wanted to transcend and ultimately replace with communism? The term capitalism
began its life as an economic concept, although today it is often used
to describe political and cultural elements, as well. Nevertheless, a concept
of capitalism that is overly general or synonymous with other widely used
concepts --- such as the conflation of market economies with capitalism
--- becomes less useful as a device for categorizing and analyzing. What
we want is a concept of capitalism (and communism) that is narrow and unique
enough as to allow us to distinguish something profoundly different or
similar between the societies under analysis (and, in a more micro context,
between different social relationships within the economy).
Since
Marx is often implicated in the various debates over this and
related issues, it might help to get an idea of how Marx understood capitalism.
Marx, in his attempt to distinguish the different social processes that
shape people's lives, discussed a wide range of social relationships and
processes: property, exchange, and power relationships played an important
role in his analysis, for instance. However, Marx thought that many social
commentators had, over time, done a great deal to analyze, even criticize,
existing forms of property ownership, exchange relationships, and political
arrangements. Social analysts who opposed the existing social order, capitalism,
because they felt it was oppressive generally criticized these particular
aspects of the capitalist societies of the day. Marx believed that even
if these factors were changed --- property ownership, exchange relationships,
and political arrangements --- it was not guaranteed that one would get
to the heart of the problems created by capitalism. In particular, he believed
that there existed a form of oppression that was poorly understood, rarely
discussed, whose genesis had required dramatic changes in the living conditions
and social status of countless human beings, and which was critical to
understanding what it was that made capitalist society unique vis-a-vis
other unjust societies (Marx was clearly making some important value judgments
in his criticisms of capitalism, feudalism and slavery). This unique form
of oppression is what he called capitalist exploitation.
But capitalist exploitation, to be understood, had to be strictly defined
as distinct from other forms of exploitation. And exploitation, as an economic
concept, had to be strictly defined as distinct from other forms of oppression.
Marx defined exploitation as the product of a generalized social process,
called class. Since capitalism is the prevalence of a specific type of
class process, i.e. the capitalist class process, then we should begin
by understanding this generalized concept of class before moving to the
more specific instances. In other words, we want to be able to answer the
question of what is a class process before answering the more specific
question of what is the capitalist class process. Once we can answer both
of these questions, then we will be in a stronger position to test whether
or not the facts of the Chinese revolution and post revolutionary society
have, indeed, been anti-capitalist (as might be anticipated by the rhetoric
employed by many of those engaged in the communist/anti-communist debates
of the Cold War era).
In order to understand class, we will use the conceptual language that
has been developed by Stephen A. Resnick and
Richard D. Wolff, two noted
economists from the University of Massachusetts and the founders of the
journal Rethinking
Marxism. Resnick and Wolff's reading of Marx leads them to avoid
defining class as a noun, as is common practice. For Resnick and
Wolff, the issue that Marx focused upon in his major theoretical works
(
Capital,
Theories of Surplus Value, and
Grundrisse)
was not a struggle between classes but a struggle over class as a social
process (the term process implies a continually changing phenomenon ---
a phenomenon that only exists in motion --- a verb). For this and other reasons they use
the term class process in describing the unique type of social interaction
that Marx was concerned about in his social scientific work.
What is
class process? Firstly, Marx understood that society depended,
among other processes, upon human beings physically transforming raw materials
and other material inputs (machinery and other products of past labor)
into new and useful products. Food has to be grown and prepared. Cloth
has to be created and clothing made. Construction materials and housing
have to be made. And so on. For Marx this productive effort was general
to all societies, irrespective of the existence and/or type of class process.
All human beings do not, however, engage in activities resulting in such
useful products. And even for those who are so engaged, they may, under
certain conditions, consume such products in excess of the value
of what they produce. Thus, under certain social conditions it is
necessary for some workers to produce output in excess of the output they
take as compensation for their efforts. This extra work has been defined
by Marx and others as surplus labor. The extra product created by
surplus labor was defined as surplus product. And the social value
of the surplus product (as typically determined in market exchange
relationships) was defined as surplus value. Now we have all
of the ingredients necessary to a relatively strict definition of class
process. Class process is the social process that results in i) human
beings performing surplus labor, ii) the surplus products (of this labor)
being appropriated and iii) the distribution of the surplus value (in
surplus product form or in monetary form) to other human beings. What
distinguishes one class process from another? In other words, how can we
distinguish capitalism from feudalism or feudalism from communism? All
these are class processes in so far as they involve the production,
appropriation and distribution of surplus products. The difference between
the various class processes is the particular social arrangement that
results in the worker performing the surplus labor and the appropriator
taking possession of the fruits (the product or value) of that surplus
labor. And these social arrangements have been variable over time and
place. Marx spent a great many pages attempting to specify the historical
process that brought into being the social arrangement that is peculiar to
capitalism. It was the primary purpose behind the writing of the three
volumes of Capital, his best known social scientific work (although
less well known than his shorter more polemical Communist
Manifesto). In a nutshell, the social arrangement that distinguishes
the capitalist class process from other class processes is the existence
of a free market in labor power (the capacity to work) under conditions
where it is possible for someone other than the actual laborers/direct
producers to take possession of the fruits of their labor. This definition
tells us that capitalism, if it is to exist and be reproduced over time,
requires a particular type of market, a free market in the buying and
selling of labor power, and a particular type of ownership, the ownership
of the fruits of the labor of an employed wage laborer by someone other
than that employed wage laborer. However, capitalism is not reducible
to either markets or ownership. There must be a free market in labor
power, meaning that potential laborers must have the freedom to seek
employment (for a wage) in an environment where, under normal conditions,
there are choices about possible employers. There must be a political and
cultural environment within which it is possible for someone other than
the worker who created a product to take ownership of that product. The
worker is paid a wage, embodying a certain amount of economic value, in
exchange for her giving up the right to own the fruits of her labor. She
accepts this contract willingly and retains the right (the freedom) to
quit her employment and seek employment elsewhere. That's it. That is
capitalism. This simple but powerful definition provides all that is
necessary to determine if the capitalist class process exists under
concrete social conditions. We do not need to know who rules the state or
whether voting plays a role in determining the composition of an existing
legislative body. We do not need to know if there are flexible exchange
rates. We do not need to know if there are gun laws. We do not need to
know whether people in the country speak Putonghua or English. Of course
all of these topics might be useful in any attempt to tell the story of
how capitalism came to exist or not or the particular context within which
it exists. If the capitalist class process is the appropriation of the
surplus value of free wage laborers (laborers who seek employment for a
wage in a free market in labor power) by human beings other than the free
laborers themselves, then we can easily see where some of the confusion
has originated. Instead of seeing free markets in labor power as a
condition of existence of capitalism, it has become a commonplace to think
that free markets in general are a condition of existence of capitalism.
This is very misleading, of course, since it is possible to have free
markets in everything except labor power and not have capitalism. (Indeed,
the presence of free markets in labor (power) is a necessary but not
sufficient condition to define a society as capitalist. Simply because the
capitalist class process may exist in a society does not imply that this
type of class process prevails over all others, in terms of numbers of
workers involved, total output generated, or any number of other possible
criteria. Similarly, the existence of instances of slavery would not
define an entire society as a slave society, if this economic arrangement
were not typical.) China has been the site of numerous debates over and
experiments with free markets, dating as far back as the Han Dynasty (202
B.C.E. to 220 C.E., when debates over state intervention versus free
markets are documented) and the well field system of the Tang Dynasty (618
C.E. to 755 C.E., or thereabouts) where output
generated on that
subset of peasant plots not allocated to producing in-kind rents for the
aristocracy could be
consumed by the peasant household or sold in village markets, but free
markets in labor power have been very rare, indeed. In the ante-bellum
South of the United States, where there was even a free market in the
buying and selling of human beings, the market in the buying and selling
of human labor (power) was relatively underdeveloped. Most direct
producers in the ante-bellum South were either slaves or self-employed
producers, not capitalist wage laborers. Under the system of slavery, a
large number of productive laborers in the southern states of the United
States existed in a condition of servitude, living out their lives in work
camps as the owned property of other human beings, despite the presence of
free markets in most goods and services. Indeed, most of the products
created by these slave laborers were sold in markets, where buyers and
sellers were relatively free to interact and engage in exchange. And the
ideology of free markets was also very strong in the ante-bellum South.
For slavery based entrepreneurs the freedom to engage in the buying and
selling of human chattel and the concomitant freedom to put those human
beings to productive use was no minor matter. Indeed, it was the
pro-slavery forces in the U.S. Congress who led the fight for free trade
and other policies that presage "neo-liberalism."
Thus, there can be no doubt that markets played a critical role in the
economic life of the southern states. Nevertheless, the predominant class
process of the South, typically assumed to have been the slave class
process (whereby the performance of surplus labor depended upon the
existence of a human chattel arrangement) was clearly distinct from the
capitalist class process (which is understood to have prevailed in the
northeastern states of the United States), whereby workers could seek and
quit employment according to their own volition. We can also see why it
might have been possible to expand the role of ownership as a condition of
existence of capitalism beyond the simple condition whereby it must be
possible for someone other than the free wage laborer to take ownership of
the surplus value created by that laborer (and then to distribute this
surplus value so as to secure the conditions for further appropriations in
the future). It is commonplace to believe that private ownership in
general is a defining characteristic of capitalism. But again, slavery
provided wide scale private ownership and yet is an economic arrangement
profoundly different from capitalism. Similarly, feudalism and
self-employment (the ancient class process) often exist in the presence of
wide scale private ownership. Thus, neither private ownership nor the
existence of free markets in commodities other than labor power is, in
these general terms, a sufficient condition for the existence of the
capitalist class process. And since we call a society capitalist if and
only if the capitalist class process prevails (is the predominant source
of the social surplus), then the existence of such free markets and/or
private property is not sufficient for a society to be labeled capitalist.
It is also the case that the absence of wide scale free markets and
private property are not sufficient to determine that a society is not
capitalist. As for the more ambiguous term, socialism, the intellectual
and political leader of the Bolsheviks in Russia recognized that
capitalism and socialism were not incompatible. On the eve of the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote that "Socialism is
nothing but a state-capitalist monopoly used for the benefit of the
entire nation and thus ceasing to be a capitalist monopoly." Thus, it
appears that Lenin is defining socialism as a variant form of capitalism,
rather than a different type of society from capitalism. In support of
Lenin's argument, the existence of a command economy, wherein the
allocation of goods and services is largely controlled by agencies of the
government, does not preclude the presence of a free market in labor power
per se and, therefore, does not preclude the continued prevalence of
capitalist relations in the economy. But was this the case in practice? In
particular, was it the case in China that the creation of a command
economy was coincident with the establishment and/or reproduction of free
labor (power) markets? Were Chinese workers free to choose their place of
employment or, at least, to choose where they would seek employment?
In thinking about these questions, you should give some thought to the
definition of capitalism developed in this brief essay. In particular, you
might want to think about how a command economy could also be capitalist.
In other words, as an exercise in deploying this strict definition of
capitalism, you might define a capitalist command economy as one variant
form of capitalism.
On the other hand, what if workers, like generations of peasant farmers
and artisans during the various dynastic periods in Chinese history,
were not
free to choose where they would seek employment? If workers were assigned
by the government to a particular work site (danwei or commune) and did
not have the
freedom to quit, then what sort of economic system, in class terms, would
have prevailed in China? This question is of no minor importance to our
investigation of the ongoing transformation of the Chinese economy and the
implications of that transformation. Finally, you may ask why any of
this matters. It's been asked before. Oddly, it is often asked by U.S.
conservatives who normally would have considered the question of whether
or not a particular entity is "communist" or "capitalist" to be very
consequential but somehow lose interest in the question when challenged to
think more carefully about the social scientific meaning of these terms.
In any event, it matters because it goes directly to the heart of whether
or not there is some fundamental difference between China and the Chinese
economy and the "West" and "Western" economies, including the United
States of America or between the various post-revolutionary states of the
Chinese social formation and states during the aforementioned dynastic
periods. What is similar and what is different? What has changed and
what has been reproduced? If it turns out that China's communist party is
engineering capitalism, rather than something opposed to capitalism, then
it will certainly make some difference in how the United States and China
interact. And it will also make a significant difference in the lives of
the people of China.
The Road Ahead (added Nov. 11,
2003) What do we intend to accomplish with this lecture series? We
begin with an historical exploration of the institutional creations and
alterations that lead from the 1949 Revolution in China up to what we know
as contemporary China. Historical processes are necessarily always
relevant to the political, cultural, environmental, and economic processes
of the present. The past is always articulated with the present.
Nevertheless, our main objective is to understand the China of the current
period, to be in a position to make sense of the multiple possible paths
that society may take from yesterday to tomorrow. In the process, we will
need to debunk some myths about China. That means necessarily stepping on
some toes. For example, we will critically analyze the meaning of the
terms market economy, socialism (with or without Chinese characteristics
[6]), communism, capitalism, ancientism, feudalism,
exploitation, vanguard party and dictatorship of the proletariat, among
others. How are these terms defined within and what role do they play in
the versions of Marxian theory prevalent within the Communist Party of
China and in the strategies and concrete policies of that ruling party?
What is the relationship between these terms and the actual functioning of
the Chinese economy, which can be understood as a complex and changing set
of algorithms: an algorithm is a process that follows some sort of logic
--- this logic can change according to certain rules, which are, in turn,
the result of other algorithms. Face it, we humans love rules. We need
them. Some animals have their algorithms hard wired into their brains
(and maybe to a certain extent so do we), but more so than any other
creature on this planet we sentient beings seem to constantly and
creatively order our lives (for better or worse) with our own consciously
constructed algorithms. We sometimes produce beautiful algorithms of
behavior and interaction that serve to make life better and other times,
well, we do the opposite. The possibilities for human interaction (and
therefore human society) are far greater than any individual's
imagination. Let us keep that in mind as we explore the specific
dimensions of the Chinese social formation.
Is the transformation taking place in China likely to alter the social
relations on the planet in such a dramatic fashion as to inaugurate a
distinctly new epoch in human history? If so, what are the dimensions of
this seachange? What new algorithms will arise in the human family?
And is it inevitable or are there possible obstacles that
could block this transition and lead global civilization down
alternative paths?
And there is that sticky question that underlies this entire first
essay in the series: Is the change in China a transition to capitalism,
as many have now come to believe (even if operating from very different
conceptions of the meaning of the word capitalism)? Does this
matter? If it is such a transition, what is it a transition from? And
does this matter?
Most of the analyses of China, including those originating within
China, operate from an explicit or implicit teleology: the belief that
the changes in China are following some form of Hegelian logic that leads
from one stage in human social development to a higher, more advanced, and
logically necessary next stage. This is a common way of thinking within
the social sciences. It was not only the province of Hegel, but also of
the German Historical School, end-of-history neoconservatives, and most
Marxists. People are often quite passionate about their teleologies.
For the sake of full disclosure, let me say up front that I am not a
believer in such teleologies. Indeed, my use of the term "ancient class
process" to refer to productive self-employment is, in part, a stab at the
heart of teleology. By making the adjective "ancient" into an ahistorical
term I hope to make clear that one can identify distinct economic (as well
as cultural, political, and environmental) processes that can be located
at various moments in temporal space, that are not wedded to a specific
interval in that temporal space (in class terms, ancient Greece was
not unique, nor was the class ancient-ness of Greece a one-to-one
function of temporal location), but are rather temporally autonomous, so
to speak, influencing other processes at various moments in both temporal
and geographic space. Ancient producers can exist in the New York City of
2003, for example, as well as in the India of 1203. Ancient production
(productive self-employment) can prevail in societies of the future, as
well as having prevailed in societies of the past. There is no law of
social evolution that says that ancient societies (in these terms) must be
a thing of the past only. In other words, there are a large variety of
social conditions that may foster ancientism, just as there are a large
variety of social conditions that may foster capitalism or feudalism or
slavery and the temporal dimension is in no way a restriction on the
potential existence of some variant form of these social formations (or
the underlying class processes). I'm not saying "stuff happens" as if it
is in some way random, but that there are multiple paths to any type of
social formation based on the known five fundamental class processes
(ancientism, communism, capitalism, feudalism, and slavery).
This is an attempt to get us to stop thinking of the world in
non-thinking ways: such as separating human social evolution into an
ancient world and a modern world and therefore missing certain fundamental
similarities, as well as unexpected differences. We need to do the
analysis. I guess that is the theme of these lectures/essays. In other
words, in addition to trying to understand China, I want us to do so with
an aggressive use of the conceptual framework and, as much as possible, to
avoid prejudging prior to the theoretical work having been done.
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NOTES
[1] Indeed, the polarity of the conflict was itself part
of the mystification. The heterogeneity of struggles between and within
the multifarious nations of the global community were reduced to a singular
bipolar conflict. All struggles were understood as reflections of this
bipolar conflict between good and evil.
The economics subfield of comparative economic systems was constructed
as an academic mirror of the contours of the Cold
War. As such, the early work in comparative economic systems ignored the
social scientific and philosophical literature on
communism and socialism in favor of the conflation of these terms
with certain specific characteristics (read
overgeneralizations) of the so-called Soviet bloc.
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[2] As we now know from history, the 1949 Chinese revolution
and the creation of the ever-changing "Chinese model" proved to be a real
pain in the theoretical edifice of the Stalinists ruling the Soviet Union.
China's leaders were intent upon interpreting Marx for themselves, which
often meant rejecting the Stalinist (orthodox Marxist-Leninist) interpretation
of Marxism, producing their own alternative epistemologies and ontologies.
These differences in theory led to different strategies. The Soviet leadership
believed there should be only one strategy (which they would teach to the
leaders of the other socialist nations). Soviet dogmatism would inevitably
lead to a split with the Chinese and a great deal of hostility (rather
than solidarity) between the two socialist giants. Ironically, this split
seems to have been an important influence upon the the closer relationship
between the leaders of China and the United States (after Nixon's famous
visit). It turned out that "communist solidarity" was a mountain of sand.
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[3] The displacement of social scientific definitions
of capitalism and communism by metaphysical notions was, indeed, compatible
with racism in a larger sense. Racism depends upon the displacement of
scientific notions of genetics (which clearly indicates the nonexistence
of "races") with a supernatural notion of races: phenotype has been mystified,
given a supernatural meaning by which humans may see and understand themselves
and others. The metaphysical nature of racism is such that it can exist
only in a climate wherein agents accept the existence of phenotype as supernatural
sign. The rhetoric of anti-communism contributes to such a climate by the
signification of certain words and actions such that supernatural meaning
could be assigned: civil rights marches as sign of communism and communism
as embodiment of evil or the USA flag as sign of anti-communism and anti-communism
as embodiment of purity and goodness (of course, among the most fundamentalist
racists, the USA flag was insufficient as a signifier -- it could also
represent the coherence of American society wherein all people are equal
citizens before the law -- and for these fundamentalist racists a better
symbol was, and still is, the confederate battle flag, which was resurrected
in the 1950s as sign of white supremacy and white supremacy was understood
as embodiment of goodness and purity). The mystification process is self-reinforcing.
It creates a religious coherence to both racism and anti-communism.
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[4] The official party line in China parallels that of
the Bolsheviks. The Chinese Communist Party is understood as the vanguard
leading the people to realization of communism. The Party's role in this
regard is understood in religious terms, as fulfillment of a sacred mission.
Similarly, in religious terms, communism is understood teleologically as
the necessary next stage of human development after the necessary demise
of capitalism. Communism has no successor stage and, therefore, represents
a sort of Hegelian "end of history." As for the definition of communist
society, the official line is that it will be a society within which class
exploitation will cease to exist and, therefore, the state will cease to
act as a ruling tool for certain social classes. A key precondition for
this non-exploitative social arrangement is the development of the productive
forces, i.e. a high level of technological development. If this condition
for the existence of communism sounds vague, it is. The Communist Party,
presumably, gets to decide how to get to communism and when the proper
conditions for communism have been met. It is simply understood that communism
can be attained only after a "long historical process."
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[5] The attachment of the appellation "communist" to the
USSR and post-1949 revolution China seems to have been a purely ideological
phenomenon: an attempt to taint the concept of communism with the particular
problems of these two societies. I would challenge any reader to find even
a single reference to having created a "communist" society by the leadership
of either of these countries. All of their statements about the nature
of the societies created by the 1917 and 1949 revolutions used the term
"socialism" for the immediate state of being of the society. Using the
term "socialism" in this way was completely consistent with the body of
Marxian thought that existed at the time and since. On the other hand,
misusing the term "communism" seems to be one of those little polemical
tricks used by anti-communists {not unlike mispronouncing the name of a
political leader hated by the "Western" establishment (e.g. Ayatollah Khomeini)
or, in the USA context, even mis-stating the name of one's political foes,
as in Republicans (who, at the national level, have had hours of media
training on the use of language to alter public perception) calling their
opposition party the Democrat Party, rather than more properly the Democratic
Party, because market research indicated that "Democrat Party" leaves a
negative impression on voters}.
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[6] (note added December 23, 2003) The text of the
proposed constitutional amendment put before the Third Plenary of the
National People's Congress includes a revision of the line that reads
""along the path of building socialism that has Chinese
characteristics" (yan zhe jian she you zhong guo te se she hui zhu yi dao
lu) to read "along the path of building socialism with Chinese
characteristics" (yan zhe jian she zhong guo te se she hui zhu yi dao
lu). The text goes on to state: "The basic task before the nation is
to concentrate its efforts on
socialist modernization along the path of building socialism with Chinese
characteristics. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and
the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping
Theory, and the important thinking of the 'Three Represents,' . . ." The
addition of "the important thinking of the 'Three Represents'" is a
victory for Jiang Zemin, who coined the phrase "three represents," as an
embodiment of the changes he promoted in the composition of the Communist
Party of China (expanding the membership to include top level managers in
capitalist enterprises, both state and privately owned, and professionals,
and giving these "entrepreneurial" credentials equal or even more than
equal weighting with "peasant" and "worker" credentials in determining
upward mobility within the Party). The constitutional amendment also
provides new protections for private property, placing private property on
an equal footing with public property under the law. These changes are
indicative of the meaning of "socialism with Chinese
characteristics."
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Copyright © 1999, 2003 Satya J. Gabriel, Mount Holyoke
College. All Rights Reserved.
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