People's Republic of China

Hi, I am a Trotskyist in Japan.

I am very interested in the Luxemburgist views on the class nature of the PRC. Is it capitalist? or not?

fraternally

I'm not a Luxemburgist in the economic sense but am a socialist like her and am replying because nobody else has yet done and you don't feel ignored. I would have thought that it was obvious that the so-called "Peoples Republic" of China has a capitalist economy with a priviled class composed of Party/State bureaucrats and a newly emerging private capitalist class. Even under Mao China was capitalist -- more state capitalist than it is now -- with a working class excluded from owning and controlling the means of production and so forced to sell its mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. There was of course also a huge peasant class whose labour was also exploited by the Party/State bureaucrats whose policy was to drive more and more of them off the land to provide the wage-labour to boost capital accumulation. Which is still the policy.

Hi, Companions.
There was here a debate on the question of the state-capitalism. I put the link:
https://luxemburgism.forumotion.com/economics-economia-economie-f2/state-capitalism-t32.htm?highlight=state+capitalism

I think that China was a state-capitalism. But today is in transition to a "normal" capitalism system. And I think that this question must be examined in the context of the world capitalism system.

If you understand spanish, you can see one text: CHINA: ¿del Capitalismo de Estado al Capitalismo “Normal”?
SALUD

Yes, to us the PRC is and always has been capitalist.

I also agree with mondialiste & luxemburguista.

There's an english translation of a luxemburgist text about Tibet and China :
http://socialist-blogs-news.blogspot.com/2008/04/repression-in-tibet-and-china.html

China by any definition is now a capitalist economy. While the state sector is much larger than in other capitalist countries (which is important in understanding its economy), the private sector now is much larger by any measure—such as employment, output-- than the state sector. With the economic crisis, the Chinese capitalists—who run the CCP—will try to accelerate the contraction of the state sector, but workers are resisting them. Three strikes against privatization have been successful in the last month.

Does this mean, Eric, that when the state sector was larger and more important than the private sector as it was under Mao that China wasn't capitalist (which sounds like a Trotskyist argumernt to me)? If so, what was it (and why should workers want to defend it) ?
PS Are you sure that the private sector is more important than the state sector? In any event I would have thought that political power was still in the hands of those who control the state sector.

China was capitalist with Mao (State Capitalism), and now, althogh private sector is very significative. Two stages are equaly anti-proletarian. But even now, state is essential in function of national capital, like EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, even in "liberal" countries state is a central institution, nevertheless the "neoliberal" mistification.
Could we support fights against "privatization", only when privatization is an excuse to increase explotation, to licence workers, etc. But by this concret reivindications. We can`t defend in general state sector as more progresive than private one.

Glad to see you in the forum, you are the 100th member.

To me as well China was and still is a capitalist society. If you look at the debate Luxemburguista pointed out, the core is not whether we should support "communist" countries or not (Trotskysts tend to think we should have a "critical" support but we all oppose such societies), but as to is it a capitalist system or something else.

To me it is capitalist because capitalism implies the exploitation of wage earners with the possesion of capital. Whether that capital is mainly owned by bureaucrats or private bourgeois, the point is that workers are exploited. But what is exploitation? Exploitation is making workers while you steal part of the wealth they produced. That wealth should normally be used to increase the accumulation of capital. Did China accumulate capital before the reforms? That is the core of the debate presented by Luxemburguista.

I think it did, so did USSR and Cuba for example. We can not support these states because they exploit workers while claiming to represent them. I am Cuban, I know well what is hidden under the word "Castrism" : bourgeois reformism and authoritarian practices to impose the exploitation on the average Cuban. The government forces all Cubans to work for them, it does everything it can to stop them to work for themselves... officialy to fight a (inexisting) private sector.

The Cuban private sector is in reality creating companies with the Cuban state. It pays very little a qualified workers. I know many people that had long studies and that today end up doing "low level" chores for foreigners... If s/he works, the wage is below his or her needs to live. And guess what, unions are all owned by the government and the CCP. Their unique cocern is improving productivity (in other words profit and accumulation).