EVALUATING BOTH THE US AND CHINESE ECONOMIES MID-WAY THROUGH 2023.
July 22, 2023 6 Comments
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This WordPress.com site is dedicated to independent working class politics. Contact me at briangreen@theplanningmotive.com
July 22, 2023 6 Comments
THEPLANNINGMOTIVE.COM 
What in my opinion being somewhat ignored is the pushback against Chinese sanctions by at least part of the American bourgeoise.It is clear they do not yet have a replacement for China and certainly are not prepared for a total cutoff that military conflict would bring.I think the Americans are caught in a dilemma where they do not want competition from Chinese corporate entities but require the labor discipline which the “communist” govt. has put in place. Under these conditions I think that the possibility of actual armed conflict is not high since a not totally trivial section of the American bourgeoise would be opposed.On a more esoteric note I would be interested to know how you would classify the Mac era Chinese economy.You had an interesting post on describing the USSR economy as the Soviet mode of production and I was wondering if you thought the Mao era economy was similar.
David, you are right to talk about how divided the US capitalist class is over China as their prism is their own corporate profitability and sectoral interests. But it is in the general interest of US imperialism to prevent China destroying US hegemony by means of technical equivalence at all cost. This overarching goal trumps any short term turbulence it may cause. I am sure US military plans includes securing Taiwan.
As for Mao’s China, that would take month’s of research which alas is beyond my capacity at the moment, so alas I will have to pass on it.
I would not disagree with your assertions but would point out that TMSC is investing 2.9 billion dollars in its Taiwan facility and delaying construction in Phoenix until 2025.
The current estimate is that the Pheonix fab where even the cacti are keeling over from the heat, will produce chips costing 40% more than in Taiwan. Between the bullying from Apple and the Biden administration, TSMC feet are in the fire.
“To hold to such a position marks a betrayal of the Chinese working class
which has been so brutalised by successive Stalinists in pursuit of their market ambitions”
What the hell you talking about? the current CCP members are capitalist roaders proto-fascists, they have nothing to do with Stalin, who was very much against capitalism or markets. Plus working hours under Stalin era was between 7-8 hours a day:
https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-working-hours
Are you a trotskyist who constantly throws the meaningless term “stalinism” out nowhere for no reason? if so i have bad news for you, it was Trotsky who wanted Market ‘Socialism’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_calculation_debate#:~:text=Proponents%20of%20decentralized%20economic%20planning%20have%20also%20criticized%20central%20economic%20planning.%20Leon%20Trotsky%20believed%20that%20central%20planners%2C%20regardless
he would’ve loved modern China ‘Socialism’.
Stalin has to be seen in a two-fold sense not the single sense you describe. Yes, internally Stalin clamped down on the capitalist class as in the Kulaks in the second half of the 1920s as in Eastern Europe after the war. However, externally he made a devil’s pact with imperialism often called ‘socialism in one country’. In return for the imperialists recognising the territorial integrity of the the then USSR, he consciously and deliberately set out to sabotage the international workers movement. Hence the disarming of the coastal workers in China in 1928 which led to their massacre and the Long March by Mao, the fostering of a civil war in the German working class allowing Hitler to come to power, the death squads in the Spanish Civil War which handed victory to Franco and so on. Do you not think for a second that Britain and the USA would have entertained Stalin as an ally in WW2 had he not proved himself to them before hand. Apologists for Stalin say all he was doing was buying time for a vulnerable USSR. But by doing so, through betraying the international working class, he actually achieved the opposite of what he had set out to achieve, he created the very conditions for an invasion of the USSR as happened in 1941.
I am not a supporter of Trotsky, but against Stalin I have always supported Trotsky, as any other position means trashing history. I stand by the designation that the CCP is Stalinist. True it is of a special kind one that has formed a partnership with capital in which both are now locked. There is no way the CCP can abandon the dictatorship of the party without provoking revolution which is recognised by the Chinese Capitalist Class which is why they tolerate the party and the limitations it imposes on them, because the alternative is worse, giving a political voice to over 700 million Chinese workers.