by Nat Winn
Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of the analysis by economists Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson on the decline of the United States and the rise of China. Wolff is one of the most well known Marxist economists in the United States and his analysis along with his counterpart Hudson is worth listening to and learning from.
A main theme of the analysis of Wolff and Hudson is that China is using a well tested model of economic development and growth borrowed from the 19th century examples of the United States and Germany. This model has to do with the development of internal markets and the transition from a rural to urban dominated economy. Hudson in particular argues that China has returned to an economic model of classical industrial capitalism, a capitalism focused on industrial development without rentier and landlord domination. Hudson argues that this model of development can pave the way to socialism, while Wolff sometimes emphasizes the role of the Chinese government in launching large infrastructure projects that private capital will not take on, such as high speed rail, thus allowing for competition between the public and private sector in ways that develop the country overall.
It seems there is a conflict in different areas of analysis then, between a western capitalist imperialist bloc in crisis and that some would argue is taking on more rent driven feudalistic characteristics and a China rising in global economic prestige along a classical capitalist trajectory.
Is capitalism as we know it then ending? Or is a new capitalist hegemon rising to challenge the U.S. dominated imperialist bloc? Or is China indeed, developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, basically developing a model of industrial capitalist growth to then transition in a socialist economy?
Of the questions posed above, all three scenarios have been argued by one or another various political tendency.
But what if anything, has China or its BRICS allies done to indicate that they are developing a liberating alternative to the imperialist world system? I would argue that they have done very little. China may have brought many millions of peasants into the world economy and in the process developed a typical capitalist middle class. The fact remains that there continues to be tremendous wealth inequality in China and little has changed in the social relations that dominate the industrial workplace.
China is prone to continuous eruptions of worker revolt and these are repressed by the Chinese government. It is hardly the picture of a state that is working on some future transition to a socialist economy, in particular a socialist economy that would be seen liberating to its own workers or workers around the world.
One of the things that stands out in the analysis of Wolff and Hudson, is that they both state that China’s development has been similar to the development paths taken by many of the capitalist powers we have known historically. There is not much talk of new relations of worker to management or rural to urban or even mental to manual labor. There is capitalist growth that brought many people into the global capitalist economy that previously may have worked not for wages but may have subsisted on independent farming. Such former farmers now may earn wages that bring up the level of income statistically in China, but it is questionable whether their actual quality of life has improved. There is the growth of the middle class, as is typical in a developing capitalist state. There is growing inequality that had been mitigated fro the period 1949-1976. In short, yes China has grown more wealthy and has established its sovereignty. But it has done so along capitalist relations of production since 1976. This is not much different than the prosperity accomplished by the Dutch, the British, or the United States in earlier periods. Any allusion to a future Chinese socialist development is mere conjecture and stands on very shaky ground to begin with.
This begs a new question. Is development and national sovereignty in and of itself liberatory? I would argue that it is not. If development and national sovereignty are established along capitalist lines, then the majority of the people within a sovereign state are still left out both economically and politically. A middle strata may be established within a growing capitalist state, and the country may grow more wealthy, however, the majority of the people will remain poor and their quality of life may become worse and more isolated.
It is necessary that development and sovereignty take root along socialist lines with fundamental changes both in the system of ownership of the means of production (land, resources, technology, factories) and the relations of production (between workers and management, rural and urban, mental and manual labor). Without development and sovereignty emerging along specifically socialist lines, the majority of people are still left behind. The world at this stage cannot afford this. Revolutionaries need to develop the means to step onto the world stage and guide things along new liberatory socialist trajectories and not tail capitalist development projects that challenge one bloc of capital with a new bloc of capital.