apropos to nothing posted:

do you think the majority of american workers see the us as an imperial power? theres chauvinism amongst the chinese workers just the same as there is in any nation. the US is the global superpower right now, but china is most assuredly an imperial power. the 1 thing imo that will completely alienate and destroy the american left is ignoring the actual movement of workers around the world. millions of people in HK are taking part in mass strikes and protests, with the primary demands being greater democratic control by the people, sparked mostly by the response to the extradition law which was repealed, and greater police accountability and control by the people.

there is the potential for a genuinely revolutionary movement to take shape and the basis for one is forming in HK right now. yes there are elements of reaction within it and some of the protesters and their leaders are funded by pro-US interests theres no denying that. but there are also militant workers, trade unionists and marxists involved and fighting for the same demands. do you think the average HK worker taking part in the movement is doing so because they are pro-US imperialism, or even pro-communist? they are doing it because they support the demands of the movement.

Kurnugia posted:

the potential is there and it is the same potential there was in occupy wallstreet and des gilets jaunes and every other protest movement of the past decade. and yet the problems remain the same as before, that the decentralised protest movement can be used, will be used, is currently being used, and was used and abused for ulterior movetives. from the very beginning the people who fanned up the peoples discontent into rage through their own anti-mainlander propaganda, those who sought to trigger these protests are getting exactly what they wanted. and there is nothing there for me as a socialist to... i dunno, connect with, connect to, something

the beijing gov has imho acted with some restraint in their reaction, and i think that they would want to give HK at least something they want, problem being they have no one to negotiate with, and their proide or something wont let them to retreat either. so here we are

apropos to nothing posted:

how can any mass movement exist that doesnt have a liberal character when the society we live in is a liberal capitalist one? like every anti-trump protest inevitably has organizers and at least 1 speaker but often times many more who support or encourage the russian collusion line for trumps impeachment and most of them have large elements that engage in red scare tactics against trump and russia. and yet these protests also contain individuals who view trump as a symptom of a systemic problem and can be won over to genuine marxist ideas. theres not a single marxist i know of who grew up as a marxist, they were all won over through the course of engaging in political struggle and seeing how class struggle really played out and having marxists talk to them and recruit them. if the marxists arent around then again, you just cede all those people and their movements to whatever reactionary or liberal ideas are dominant. politics is about winning people over.

and im not talking about subsuming socialist ideas within mass movements im talking about raising a clear and independent marxist flag and marxist demands within those movements. not as just a partner to liberal or social democratic ideas, but as an active part of the movement which supports the demands and aspirations of the workers drawn in to the movement, but which points to a clear class struggle approach to the methods for winning those demands and realizing their aspirations.

gradenko_2000 posted:

the left having to pick between supporting the HK protesters or not despite whatever portions of those folks are reactionaries is itself a reflection of the control exerted by capitalist media - there are class struggles going on right now in places like Ecuador and Haiti without any of the hair-splitting involved in having to relitigate "is China socialist???" over and over, and yet here we are having it out about China because because the BBC keeps running coverage of it for their own right-wing interests? it's frankly embarassing how much we've taken the bait

StashAugustine posted:

not like we can do anything other than an expression of solidarity

Goast posted:

we could argue about it endlessly instead

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It's important to defend China not because it's some ideal socialist state, but because the discourse around China by liberal media and the liberal left treats it as some sort of uniquely draconian or evil actor on the world stage - without recognizing that the first world operates in the exact same way if not worse. This discourse can only happen in the first place because of the unexamined assumption that the veneer of liberal democracy is a legitimizing totem, and without going through the motions of electoralism that automatically means you're authoritarian, whereas first world countries - who routinely have right wing and reactionary governments - somehow aren't.

StashAugustine posted:

yeah i think i'm much more negative about china than you but the discourse about it in america is absolutely loving terrible. oh no they're giving countries loans they can't pay back to use as leverage, clearly this wicked plot was invented in beijing c 2009 and is not the entire purpose of western diplomacy ever since it became less cool to just invade

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Getting real mad about Chinese land grabs in the south China seas. Oh our land grabs? Well all the first world countries got together and agreed that only the land grabs that happen after 1948 are illegitimate, and no takesies backsies.

apropos to nothing posted:

you bring up a good point, the potential is there just like it was in all those other protest movements. and yes the reason they failed is a lack of a working class party. the job of revolutionary socialists right now is to build the party which would be capable of taking these struggles forward to victory on a socialist basis. that party doesnt exist now so we have to build it. how do we build it? by winning over the active participants of the working class which are involved in these movements. by explaining our approach to how we can win these struggles and knowing that the best sections of the movements will recognize our correct assessment of the problems of those movements and why they were unable to win their demands or make transformative change. a revolutionary party isnt built by outside forces it arises from the working class in the course of class struggle. a lot of new socialists were created out of the occupy movement and they were made because they saw the failures of the movement firsthand but also saw socialists and marxists intervening with demands and ideas which in hindsight, they could now recognize as being correct and if applied would have led to victory.

cenotaph posted:

I was talking about China's expanding rail infrastructure while complaining about traffic on the highway on the way to the movies the other night. My friend's friend, who I don't really know, said they should stop killing children so I said that we should probably stop doing that too and they shut up.

I don't even know enough about China to uave firm opinions on it but the way Americans uncritically consume reporting about it without a hint of self awareness is ridiculous.

quote:

Of course the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aware of the problem – the so called “middle income trap” – which in reality occurs at the quite low income levels of high-end Third World countries like China, Mexico and Brazil. The CCP is attempting to overcome the roadblocks by upgrading China’s technological capacity, especially through the flagship Made in China 2025 policy framework. While the theory is very simple – nations must technically upgrade in order to continue to raise incomes – the practice is fraught.

It would be possible to move up the ranks of the global division of labour if China could develop a scientific base and internal social organisation equal or superior to that of US imperialism. This is of course possible in the abstract. However, the policy of the CCP cannot be abstract but must correspond to the realities of an imperialist world system. It has chosen to attempt to develop Chinese society via a path of capitalist development integrated into the imperialist world market. Therefore it is the concrete realities of this market and social production processes that underlie it that Chinese capital must navigate.

The polarisation of money income manifests the underlying social productive polarisation: the division of the world into spheres of high and low labour productivity, technology, scientific development and social organisation. The world division of labour is also divided between high-end, most sophisticated labour processes monopolised within the imperialist core and low-end or ordinary labour processes, which are distributed to the Third World. China is not an exception to this rule but the major example of it – the most successful developer of ordinary labour processes.

Technical polarisation of the global division of labour means that the overwhelming bulk of labour processes carried out in the low income countries, including China, consist of basic or ordinary labour. For this reason the social demands on most Chinese workers, technicians, scientific workers etc. do not involve systematic thinking and problem solving in the most advanced available manner. From this material-social base, the cultural development of the society can never be as advanced as that of imperialist societies, which monopolise humanity’s social and scientific advances for themselves.

The imperative of capitalist profitability ensures that no true assault on the commanding heights of world scientific development and the division of labour can be launched from a low material-social base. Storming the commanding heights would involve competition with the most advanced capital for the most advanced labour processes – a competition that a less developed or, as Che Guevara described it, ill formed capitalist social formation, is ill suited to carry out. This is why frontally challenging imperialism will not deliver the highest available profits to Chinese capital. Challenging imperialist monopoly at its margins is necessary to make profits. Yet a frontal challenge risks complete debacle.

For this reason, the interests of Chinese capital will never form the social basis for a full blooded assault on imperialist dominance (even ignoring the politically perilous level of working class social mobilisation that would be required for an underdeveloped society to wage such a serious campaign against imperialist supremacy). Chinese capitalism is not and can never become the revolutionary social force that can storm the heavens of US power.

What could conceivably happen is that more areas of the labour process that are presently dominated by the imperialist societies and hence subject to monopoly pricing, could be wrested from them and become the domain of Third World production – the same thing that has already happened, for example, in low grade steel production and other industrial processes. The same may be true several years from now for the production of basic automobiles. If the proportion of necessary world labour coming under the control of non-monopoly capitalists increases, or the degree of imperialist technical superiority in high-end labour is reduced (and thereby the degree of imperialist monopoly in these is reduced), then the gap between Third World and First World income could conceivably narrow relatively – even as the overall polarisation remains robust. However, a narrowing gap between the two camps is the opposite result to the overall outcome of neoliberal period (1980–2015) and far from inevitable.

quote:

Nothing in Trump’s policy indicates China is some kind of existential threat to US hegemony. To China boosters, the very existence of economic conflict between the US and China seems to prove their view of China’s rise. However, this is not the case any more than the existence of conflict between workers and their boss proves they stand on an equal footing, or are just the same thing.

Imperialist core capital has historically driven extremely hard bargains against even the weakest Third World capital. The “trade war”, which is really an economic attack on China by US imperialism, is about the distribution of the value brought into the world economy by Chinese labour. No Marxist (besides Harvey) argues that Chinese capital is a net appropriator of value created by US, British or other First World workers.

The battle being waged between US and Chinese capital is over the degree to which value created by Chinese labour (and therefore Chinese capital) is appropriated by First World capital and US capital in particular. Sections of US capital evidently believe they can achieve better terms, i.e. extract a greater proportion of Chinese value, by embarking on an economic war against China – even if there are different ideas about the best method of war, or how much of a war is desirable before accepting a truce.

Yet, not all aspects of Trump’s policy reflect US capitalists’ specifically economic interests. Some aspects reflect their broader political interests and also the political interests of the Trump White House. After all, Trump can hardly sell a trade war to US workers purely on the basis of benefit to US corporations. He must talk mostly about jobs, and hence emphasise the trade balance and currency levels – even if these are not the key issues for the most powerful sections of US capital.

Since China joined the World Trade Organisation two decades ago, compared to other Third World states, it has enjoyed considerable advantages in negotiating the terms of its own exploitation: the size of its cheap, trained and educated labour force; its relatively well-developed and centralised state apparatus (a historical product of the Chinese masses’ defeat of imperialist political power in China after World War Two); and the size of its domestic market.

As seen, the primary beneficiaries of Chinese workers’ gigantic contribution to world labour have been the US and other imperialist countries. Yet these relative strengths of the Chinese state also coincided and combined with the runaway profits bonanza of cheap labour globalisation during the neoliberal period. In this historical context, Chinese capital was able to use its unique position as the centre of world labour to technically upgrade relatively rapidly compared with other Third World states. The degree of its success is reflected in China’s “rise” from about the income level of India in 1980, to a level today on a par with Mexico and Brazil.

However, since around 2011 cheap labour globalisation has ceased to be principal driving force of above average profits in the world economy. While many companies still rely on cheap Third World labour, and new instances of offshoring will continue (as was already the case prior to the neoliberal period) this is no longer the characteristic driver of economic expansion that it was.xlii In 2019 a greater portion of imperialism’s cheap labour needs can be provided by other Third World societies, giving imperialism a stronger hand to play off the various non-monopoly producing countries against each other.

Of course the Chinese domestic market is still crucial for imperialism to dominate, but it is no longer so rapidly expanding. Unless a radical technological upgrade is successful, the Chinese market will decline in relative importance to the same extent that China’s labour contribution falls as a proportion of total world labour. These weaknesses are counterbalanced by the considerable upgrading that sections of Chinese capital have achieved.

In the new situation, US capital today, or sections of it, are looking to reconfigure the terms of its engagement (exploitation) of China to better reflect its new strengths, weaknesses and needs. It’s not that the major US capitalists face competitors in China capable of defeating them. Rather, they face competitors more able to squeeze certain aspects of the monopolies’ overall dominance and reduce their profits for certain, particularly low-end, less profitable operations and take some market share at the margins.

This is reflected in Trump’s repeated refrains about China “stealing” US “intellectual property” and demands for a Chinese crackdown. What US capital seeks is not legal protection to artificially (politically) forestall the collapse of its tottering dominance over the labour process – although that is likely the case for marginal, individual capitals or sectors. Rather, the dominant sections of US capital seek legal protections that will increase the projection of their technological dominance. Greater legal protection extends the period of time that above average profits can be secured for a given new labour process, product, etc. by slowing competitors’ adoption of it.

Even the complete removal of legal protections would not end the ability of US capitalists to make above average profits on the basis of technological innovation simply because US capital is more technically advanced. If China were in fact developing its own world-beating technologies – the US state would not be demanding strict intellectual property laws; it would be busy trying to copy Chinese innovation.

The other principal aim of the Trump administration is winding back Chinese state subsidies for large state-owned enterprises (SOEs – many of which also have a large degree of private ownership). This reflects another advantage China does possess (at least compared to other Third World societies). As the largest Third World state, and one with a relatively strong state apparatus developed during the Chinese revolution, state subsidies for otherwise uneconomic producers are a key way that Chinese capital is able to compete globally. In doing so it undermines imperialist profitability in competing sectors by undercutting them on price. Yet Chinese state subsidies also increase the profitability of other branches of the imperialist economy, and potentially its overall profitability.

By subsidising and cheapening products, the Chinese state (and ultimately workers) in effect subsidise cheap inputs to the businesses that purchase these commodities. To the extent subsidised products are utilised by First World capital, this is essentially another form of offering Chinese labour cheaply on the world market. Chinese state organisation of subsidies allows China’s cheap labour advantage to be concentrated and shifted from the most labour intensive industries like textiles to higher rungs of manufacturing.

Once we remove the perception that China’s current technological level is a temporary phase in some sort of long march of inevitable transition to dominance, it becomes clear how devastatingly imperialism is plundering China, East Asia and the Third World. All of the burdens taken on by Chinese workers, all of the terrible environmental devastation, dispossession of farmers, separation of working parents from their children and many other injustices and crimes, are not sacrifices in aid of Chinese capitalism’s coming global triumph. They are the sacrifices of China’s success as Third World capitalism par excellence, as the number one provider of good, cheap products to the imperialist economies.

The sooner imperialist exploitation of China is recognised by Marxists and others on the left, the sooner it will be possible to start working towards building international solidarity with China and other Third World struggles. The surest way to break any possibility of Chinese workers trusting and looking for unity with working people in the United States and the other imperialist countries is to swallow the propaganda that China is fast becoming an imperialist power. The Chinese working class knows that it is not. The imperialist world’s workers, so far, do not.

https://rupturemagazine.org/2019/08/04/why-china-cannot-win-a-trade-war-against-the-usa
-samuel-t-king/

apropos to nothing posted:

do you think the majority of american workers see the us as an imperial power? theres chauvinism amongst the chinese workers just the same as there is in any nation. the US is the global superpower right now, but china is most assuredly an imperial power. the 1 thing imo that will completely alienate and destroy the american left is ignoring the actual movement of workers around the world. millions of people in HK are taking part in mass strikes and protests, with the primary demands being greater democratic control by the people, sparked mostly by the response to the extradition law which was repealed, and greater police accountability and control by the people.

apropos to nothing posted:

there is the potential for a genuinely revolutionary movement to take shape and the basis for one is forming in HK right now. yes there are elements of reaction within it and some of the protesters and their leaders are funded by pro-US interests theres no denying that. but there are also militant workers, trade unionists and marxists involved and fighting for the same demands. do you think the average HK worker taking part in the movement is doing so because they are pro-US imperialism, or even pro-communist? they are doing it because they support the demands of the movement. socialists should be supporting this movement and raising our demands within it precisely so that we can win support for our demands within the movement and defeat the reactionary forces within it. if you dismiss the protests as reactionary and a US state dept ploy, then invariably the only sympathy and support the protesters will find is among those reactionary forces and so it will become a strictly reactionary movement. marxists fight for our ideas within mass movements we dont cede them over to our enemies because they dont have a fully formed program. a socialist program isnt formed before class struggle occurs, it develops through the course of the class struggle. now is a time where marxists can be winning support among the working class in china and thankfully all the genuine marxist forces I know of there are doing just that. my worry is that too many marxists in the US will fail to learn this lesson and continue to dismiss mass movements which have a liberal character instead of genuinely engaging with them and trying to win people to marxist ideas and to a class struggle approach.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

the HK protests are a reaction to the end of china as an export-oriented industrial power in which HK has functioned as a spigot for the flow of capital while totally integrated into the world system. the HK protesters meanwhile have no interest in unity with the chinese working classes *on a class basis* as that would mean a reduction in real wages for HKers -- hence the anti-migrant attitude and support for immigration controls, and its overall reactionary shape with pepe frogs, colonial flags and funding from CIA cutouts such as the NED. it's a curious thing where analysis of the situation isn't judged on a material or class basis but on abstractions like "democracy" or "socialism" (used in abstract form and divorced from any real social relations: more "what i want out of socialism") where china is considered to have less socialist potential than HK as if we can reach that conclusion by moving sliders back and forth in a grand strategy game. rather, i'd look at china as an exploited, third-world / second-world country with very little room to maneuver in a world of U.S. imperialism. and while there are a lot of problems here there's not much talk about possible solutions on the U.S. left other than beating up on china for not living up to our own standards for what a socialist country should be like and raising a fist in solidarity with a mass-reactionary movement that wants to preserve its own position over a super-exploited chinese proletariat as wages gradually normalize

Larry Parrish posted:

it's just so loving frustrating that no matter how hosed up and evil our country is revealed to be (and always was, if you read even a single history book that's not a loving high school text book), theres a certain kind of middle class person that will insist that we're still better than Them, and we're more just and more free, and they definetly arent rich ha ha, I mean I still have house payments folks, somehow without ever realizing that most people cant afford to even get a mortgage in the first place

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

uncop posted:

The truth, the whole truth and only the truth. I appreciate the jab at David Harvey, who's an expert at stripping the parts of marxism that enable it to lead to the most critical correct conclusions and giving the resulting wrong conclusions a shell of erudition and radicalism. It's a travesty that he's probably the most popular Capital explainer in the anglosphere.

CGI Stardust posted:

is there a good comparison of an orthodox approach to value and Harvey's approach anywhere - heard he's pretty unorthodox to the point of being actively wrong?

my understand of value is pretty weak, and i'd like to go through Capital at some point, so is there a better explainer of value / Capital than Harvey, or is it better to go in dry?

Pablo Nergigante posted:

I bought Harvey's companion to Capital to read alongside, was that a bad idea. Is there someone else who has a more orthodox interpretation I can read along with.

Finicums Wake posted:

re: soviet tech

i'm aware of the technological breakthroughs that the soviets achieved in the space race. the other example raised was with the electronics/computing stuff, and even there the gap between the soviets and the west can be accounted for by contingent political decisions rather than something intrinsic to soviet-style central planning.

these examples still accord with my general understanding of soviet techonological development tho. it was either focused on catching up to the west, or it was spurred onwards by competition with the capitalist powers.

i don't bring this up to denigrate what the soviets achieved or to repeat some meme about the soviet economy. but if you have a model of domestic technological innovation that either 1) relies on imports to catch up to more advanced powers, or 2) is dependent upon competition with more advanced capitalist powers (mainly in the military sector), then idk if there's anything applicable to a how technological development in an already advanced capitalist-turned-socialist country should proceed.

idk if that makes sense. if it does, i'm getting the underlying information from michael ellman's books. i'll look back over what he said about the subject and follow up some other stuff re: this topic. but if anyone can recommend me reading, or just make a point that's more in-depth than "but the space race," i'd appreciate it. thanks