Hong Kong, Imperialism and China
Both right wing capitalist ideologues and sectors of the left that see the Chinese state as “socialist” (or a workers state) have come to a mutual agreement on the nature of the uprising in Hong Kong. For them, the uprising with its 5 demands (although they do not explicitly call for capitalist restoration) are portrayed as the drive to crush the communist or workers state. All these anti-worker tendencies see the actual mass movement as spearheaded by capitalist restorationists, Christians and adherents of the “color revolution,” all tied to the varied and numerous imperialist funded projects, be they evangelical capitalist/christianity or NGO projects for ‘democracy.’ These anti-worker ideologues do not want you to see the actual features of the mass movement. They seek to convince you to slander it, to give military support to Carrie Lam and the crushing of the youth, as they do. The real, obtaining situation is as follows:
Capitalist Restoration in China
Hong Kong is part of China as a ‘special administrative region’ (SAR) under the “One country two systems” framework due to lapse in 2047. Under this arrangement the Hong Kong economy is integrated into China yet retaining its autonomy vis a vis international capital.
A counter-revolutionary anti-socialist deal was cut between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher. This deal was cut over the heads of the masses without their consent or choice. Because the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had abandoned the basic characteristics of a workers’ state it had no ‘socialism’ to offer the mass of workers of Hong Kong and Macau. Unlike the Soviet’s advance across eastern Europe, the CCP’s rule of the SAR does not require an abolition of the capitalist mode of production and its replacement with another, the imposition of “socialism from above” or the advance of social revolution and the integration economically and politically of the SAR into the PRC was not essential.
By contrast the Soviets could not abide an accommodation with capitalism within its new borders–its economic sphere–such would undermine, erode and collide with the crucial structures of the Degenerated Workers State (the central planning, the monopoly of foreign trade, state ownership of the means of production and land (henceforth DWS.) It was these structures which afforded the people the much heralded social guarantees that came with “actually existing socialism”.
By the time the UK’s lease was up in HK, the social guarantees, the economic conquests of the Revolution, which attract the working masses to support the crucial socialist structures of the new mode of production were already diminished in China, chipped away at by mandate of the CCP. By 1997 the PRC had already allowed capitalism to penetrate deeply, eroding both the social gains and guarantees expected by the masses and the economic structures they depended upon.
In the 1980’s the CCP initiated Special Economic Zones (SEZs) where central planning and the monopoly of foreign trade were abandoned allowing foreign ventures to exploit local labor. SEZs began experimentally in four cities and within four years the policy spread “opening” fourteen. These areas grew as centers of small manufacturing and trade with foreign and domestic capital. They became ‘boom’ towns and attracted millions of workers whom the CCP sold into to wage slavery for foreign and local capitalist exploitation.
By 1989-the class war launched by the advance of capitalism-drove the working class’ vanguard elements to autonomous action against the erosion of the social gains alongside the student action at Tiananmen; this incipient workers political revolution was crushed militarily and its activists suppressed, clearing away workers’ and intellectual opposition to the capitalist restoration process. As the LCC wrote in Class Warrior, Volume 1, Number 1, “Restoration of Capitalism in China”:
“Following the blood bath at Tiananmen the restorationist wing was freed to carry its program forward. The property relations the state defends or strives to develop defines the class character of the state to paraphrase Trotsky. The project of the state had changed. When the masses and their uprising to advance workers rights and workers democracy was militarily defeated, just as embryonic workers self-defense guards and councils were prying open the road to political revolution, this road was snapped shut by the repression and another opened presenting an obstacle-free path for the restorationists. The state became nothing other than a vehicle for the building of capitalism, primitive capital accumulation and the building of a capitalist class from within the cadres, the technocratic layers, from expatriate capitalists, from capitalists who survived the red purges inside the party, and through nepotism, corruption, malfeasance, speculation and labor brokering. Stalinism understood the Law Of Value and restored its operation, exactly so some could ‘get rich first,’ as Deng put it”.
At the 14th Congress of the CCP in 1992 these experiments in “market-socialism” were codified and initiated in dozens more cities. As reported to the congress by Jiang Zemin:
“Third Plenary Session of the 12th Central Committee adopted a resolution on economic restructuring. It declared that our socialist economy was a planned commodity economy based on public ownership and rejected the traditional concept that a planned economy was in direct opposition to a commodity economy. This represented a new development of Marxist theory on political economy and provided a new theoretical guide for overall reform of the economic structure.”
This is where the Party declared commodity production part of the socialist path, overturning the work of Karl Marx on commodity production.
Central to concepts of the workers state that we find in Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed is the primacy of Central Planning. This definitional requirement was also swept away by the New ‘Marxist’ Dogma:
“Deng did not believe that the fundamental difference between the capitalist mode of production and the socialist mode of production was central planning versus free markets. He said, “A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity”.
The 1992 report argued that the PRC would use the one country two systems reintegration to take the PRC through a system of stages to build the material basis for socialism over the next hundred years:
“The development of socialism in stages. According to our scientific thesis, China is still in the primary stage of socialism, which will last for at least a hundred years. All principles and policies must be based on this fundamental reality. We must not divorce ourselves from it or try to skip this stage.” (Ibid Jiang Zemin)
How the Stalinist bureaucracy would restore capitalism was explored by Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed predicting much of what the CCP would go on to do with relish:
“The chief task of the new power would be to restore private property in the means of production. First of all, it would be necessary to create conditions for the development of strong farmers from the weak collective farms, and for converting the strong collectives into producers’ cooperatives of the bourgeois type into agricultural stock companies. In the sphere of industry, denationalization would begin with the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be converted for the transitional period into a series of compromises between state power and individual “corporations” – potential proprietors, that is, among the Soviet captains of industry, the émigré former proprietors and foreign capitalists.”
Lest there be any doubt about what Trotsky said, as suggested by those who wish to tell us what Trotskyist orthodoxy is, consider this simple lesson in method:
“Should a bourgeois counterrevolution succeed in the USSR, the new government for a lengthy period would have to base itself upon the nationalized economy. But what does such a type of temporary conflict between the economy and the state mean? It means a revolution or a counter-revolution. The victory of one class over another signifies that it will reconstruct the economy in the interests of the victors. “ – Leon Trotsky, “Not a Workers’ State and Not a Bourgeois State (1937)” (emphasis added ed.)
So by 1997 the concept of using autonomous zones where the structures of the DWS did not apply, where capitalist exploitation and private capital accumulation prevailed and where the PRC and foreign Capitals could act in their own and mutual interests was not new-it was the ‘Marxism” of the CCP in action. What was different between Hong Kong and the SEZs was that Hong Kong was already deeply integrated with the westen financial markets and its population had nominal expectations of UK style ‘democratic’ norms, mediated as they were, by colonialist methods of oppression.
Our opponents on the ‘left’ scarcely have any understanding of the significance of Jiang’s change of course. Where previously it had not been possible for a new imperialist power to emerge in a world divided up between imperialisms by wars and whose development of the forces of production was at all times conditioned by the destruction of peripheral sectors by wars and depressions, China escaped the operation of these manipulations by foreign powers during the 1949-92 era, permitting an escape from the anarchy of capitalist production. With the “slow road” restoration China was able to avoid putting the masses through the shocks experienced in Russia during the “shock therapy.” Thus Chinese leaders had prepared exceptional circumstances for their re-entry into the world market. Not long afterwards China began exporting surplus capital in search of surplus value. See “Why Russia and China Are Imperialist” in Class Warrior, vol.1, no.6 for an extensive examination of what is no longer a question.
The two main imperialist blocs are now colliding with ever-greater force and frequency. This is a path to world war and the steps the blocs take down it are as yet tentative as they test each other’s strength. Has U.S. imperialism concluded it wants to make Hong Kong the equivalent of Ukraine as a squeeze point and proxy of conflict? So far we see Trump preoccupied at home and far from directing the protests as Stalinophiles claim, he is even cheering on the police. Even so, make no mistake, Hong Kong figures in the collision. The declining powers of the U.S.-led bloc mean this bloc must eventually wage a victorious war at all costs and before the relationship of forces is too unfavorable. China’s rise as an imperialist power in the 21st century has become a threat to existing imperialist powers, and as a consequence put HK into a squeeze between the declining US led bloc and the rising China/Russia bloc.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong has relative autonomy that allows it to serve China but also serve foreign capital. That relative autonomy from the PRC is reflected in the HK government and the Basic Law.
When the UK left administration of Hong Kong, the UK’s capital holdings were not expropriated. The PRC did not ‘kick imperialism out’ of HK to advance the national, let alone the world socialist revolution. Rather an alliance against the interests of the Asian working classes and a tug of war over ‘shares of the spoils’ kicked off with HK acting as the middleman for world capitals. Hong Kong is one of the largest recipients of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in the world in large part due to the PRC and its Stock Exchange, the sixth largest in the world (and third largest by turnover, in China). The PRC makes use of the Hang Seng (HSI) to reach world markets.
But HK’s stock market’s unique position is changing as reported in Time, “… At the end of 2018, 1,146 mainland companies were listed in Hong Kong, with market capitalization of $2.6 trillion. Shanghai doesn’t compare. Although the Chinese government set a 2020 deadline to make Shanghai a global financial center, capital controls and over-regulation have stymied its appeal.”
HK’s manufacturing sector declined as a majority of mainland production was reformed or ‘spun-out of’ the centrally planned sector and into the market sector. Making the mainland an ideal target for manufacturing capital from Hong Kong to expand to. Think of Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound…” in reverse. “Between 1977 and 1997, real GDP per capita grew at an average annual rate of 5.1%…..In the period of 1997-2017, annual real GDP per capita growth slowed to an average of 2.6%.” (Income inequality in Hong Kong and Singapore Cheuk Ting Hung.) As the manufacturing sector in Hong Kong experienced terminal decline the working class in its majority is employed in the public service, import/export /re-export, transportation and tourism industries.
Whether in the decades prior to or since 1997 neither the workers in Hong Kong nor the workers on the mainland were organized into, or protected by militant communist unions and they had no revolutionary vanguard party to advance their historic aims. Official unions mediated timidly on behalf of the class knowing that they (both individually and severally) were subordinated to the party, the bureaucracy and ultimately to the constraints of capital’s drive to acquire larger and larger shares of surplus value. What was called ‘neo-liberal austerity’ in the west was imposed on the Chinese working class at the behest of the Party, with the help of the unions with double the cruelty felt in the west.
The working class so weakened became easy prey and joint targets of the CCP, its SOEs and JVs and the multitude of state initiated and protected private sector Capitals on the one side and Hong Kong mediated Capitals, western imperialist and regional Capitals on the other.
In 2016 the financial sector in HK employed a quarter million people and accounted for 17.7 % of the GDP, acting as the financial hub and pipeline in & out of the mainland, mediating business relations between the PRC and the global economy. Having adopted a mutually beneficial strategy of suppressing socialist revolution and enabling capital flow in and out of the mainland, the PRC and western imperialism cut the deal that provides relative and limited autonomy and limited democracy though a legislative council with a Pro-Beijing popular front majority.
The dispute in essence is about HK’s role in the global economy. Will it be more closely integrated (especially in government and law) to China or open to intervention by Western imperialist powers, specifically USA and UK? The growing tensions between China and other imperialist powers in the last decade are expressed in the protests in defence of bourgeois democracy in HK and specifically against the new law of repatriation to China. Hidden behind the apparent struggle over ‘democracy’ is the material essence. The repatriation of bodies is a metaphor for the repatriation of profits.
Movement in the Streets and the Trade Unions
While media focuses on the massive street demonstrations, police riots, and black bloc tactics, little has been made of the four way divide in the trade union movement. Two Pro-Beijing labor federations back away from the strike actions and demonstrations. The pro-ROC federation is small and hardly noticeable while the third, the HKCTU (being the second largest union federation) called for the general strike. This pitted the dockers, the teachers, social workers and airline workers participating in the mass protests against the pro-Beijing (HKFTU) railway workers.
The ideologically fractured trade union movement with its pro-west and pro-Beijing federations have little to offer the membership and ideological hegemony is at its breaking point. The HKFTU following the leadership of the CCP acts politically in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LEGCO) through the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong. And although they led the anti-imperialist general strike 52 years ago (1967) they have lost their militancy, are a transmission belt for the CCP line, are patriotic to the PRC and oppose the protests.
On August 5th the HKCTU (the smaller of the two major federations, advocates of Solidarity, Justice, “Rice Bowl”, democracy and universal suffrage) including the Dockers who in 2013 struck hard for 40 days against the HK International Terminals owned by HKs richest man Li Ka-Shing, joined the general strike bringing thousands of members of their 96 affiliated unions to the streets for the day.
Both wings of the Trade Union movement support the LEGCO and find themselves defending it from the protests. No class-political independence is to be expected from these servile “leaderships.” But neither is it guaranteed that the memberships will not enter the fray with their own, much less abstract demands. In fact, they have begun to do so. For western middle class socialists we have to point out that the struggle over the surplus value is ipso facto a struggle against repatriation of profits, be it to London, Beijing, or Tokyo or Taipei, etc.
The differences in the four Trade Union federations are long standing and historically reflected the international class divide between workers organizations loyal to imperialism and those loyal to the CCP version of communism.
Since the restoration of capitalism in China these organizations have maintained their separate identities and national loyalties, finding no common ground and dividing the HK working class against itself. Today none are part of a revolutionary socialist movement and the class contradictions between unions loyal to the capitalist restoration in China face off against those whose program come out of their anti-communist origins.
While these divisions are historic and at one time (during the life span of the Deformed Workers State 1949-1992) divided the workers movement between adherents to western imperialism and adherents to Maoist style “communism”, they continue to divide the class but none today fight for communism or socialist revolution.
The “left” formally Maoist unions under the leadership of the CCP today support the existing “one nation two systems” demagoguery that hides the actual capitalist restoration imposed by the CCP following the crushing of the students and workers at Tiananmen in 1989.
While the “right” wing pro-democracy unions hold their annual memorial commemorations of Tiananmen and are at the front of (or at least in the ranks of) both the 2014 Umbrella movement and the current uprising, they are neither the leadership, nor contesting for it, nor an especially important component of the mass movement, despite oversize western media attention. Some have carried American flags just to twit Carrie Lam. Others are the U.S. and Taipei agents one would expect to be there. It is a cheap Pabloist shot to denounce the youth who protest the October 1st celebrations of 70 years of Stalinist rule in China. Pablo was a leader within the Fourth International who foresaw centuries of degenerated/deformed workers states. Denouncing the youth protest as pro-U.S. is acquiescence in the 100 years plan of “stages” of preparation of socialism! This is exactly akin to accepting “centuries of deformed workers’ states”!!!
The mass movement with all its real contradictions is not what is desired by either of the imperialist projects. But Trotskyists and those who aspire to be have to ask themselves do we forswear the mass movement in all its contradictions because it is not the mass revolutionary vanguard party?…Does this party drop from the sky fully formed like something from Greek mythology? And when the party is not there but the mass movement is, do we concede the loss of the movement to the heterogeneous forces and ideologues? Or the handful of western agents? We don’t. We are revolutionary internationalists and sectarian abstentionism is not our method or political heritage.
Hong Kong and Inter-Imperialist Rivalry
The current protests reflect the rising inter-imperialist tension between pro-CCP and pro-Western supporters now manifest in trade and currency wars which risk open military engagements. The whole world market is being subjected to the U.S./China trade war at the moment of falling profits and trade contraction. Sanctions imposed by Trump directly affect Chinese goods exported from Hong Kong. In his light minded way, Trump suggests Xi can solve the whole problem by sitting down with the protestors, but this is only serious as provocation. Trump knows the American flag-waving protesters are a minority and that the broader movement is not controlled by them or any other faction. Who would Xi meet with? So far that would be police commanders.
The U.S. policy of encirclement of China is being broken through by Chinese imperialist investment but also by military construction and overseas basing agreements. China has its equivalents of the Pentagon war gamers and their weapons development programs reflect this, as does the economic share devoted to military “modernization.” Hence, man-made islands and aircraft carriers. These are made for showdowns, not just for show, and our confused “left”, which sees the remnants of state ownership as socialism, sees defense of the rule of the CCP and its prerogatives as “anti-imperialism.” Some bother to cover this with the fig leaf call for “political revolution” across all of China. Others don’t, and in any event neither intervene in the HK mass movement with any Marxist program.
Can it be that the HK population looks at the conditions of exploitation on the mainland and feel they can do better without being further integrated and subordinated to a police state on top of the capitalist exploitation they already suffer? Let’s remember it was only a generation ago that the Hong Kong workers could not afford apartments at all and had to live in sampans in the harbor. These are conditions they will not accept.
The current trade, currency and military posturing by the imperialist rivals has directly inflamed HK’s economic contradictions for the life of the masses, and the world press does not hide this.
Daniele Palumbo and Ana Nicolaci da Costa at the BBC reported in May 2019, that the trade war, initiated by Trump over the $419 bn trade deficit and China’s trade policy which “unfairly favors its domestic companies though subsidies”, has resulted in big drops in the Hang Seng and other world markets. Since this May report the Hang Seng has stagnated and dropped 1200 points as of 9/11/19.
David Ho at Al Jazeera reports from the Hong Kong summit on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in September, where Slovakia’s Secretary of State Dana Meager commented on the negative impact of the US-China trade war on global trade, “The US-China trade war has impacted Slovakia and other countries in the region it is in. One of the spillover effects is weakened business confidence.” China and the Asian Development Bank project $1.73 trillion a year in infrastructure projects and HK wants to be the two way conduit for this funding. China sees BRI as its path around a global trade economy dominated by the US whose major trade partners in the region Japan and ROK are feeling the heat. China is coaxing Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Phillipines and even the autarkic Myanmar into its web despite their legitimate concerns with globalisation and ‘liberalisation’ which come with the BRI.
The Observer (Sissi Cao) reports Hong Kong’s unique position as gateway to foreign Capitals is a vulnerability that China will not abide. China seeks ‘work arounds’ to the Trump Tariffs to its advantage in dealing with Tesla, and so is “…experimenting with a dozen free trade zones along its coast…special economic districts will likely replace Hong Kong, which used to be the only free trade port…” in the PRC.
Time reports that the centrality of HK has declined, “…in the mid 1990’s Hong Kong’s economy accounted for just under a third of China’s GDP compared to less than 3% today–but a huge portion of the FDI is still funneled through Hong Kong.”
Edward Yiu considers the impact of the currency war on Hong Kong’s economy:
“China’s current action is contrary to economic theory. Even in the existence of a large and expanding surplus, not only did it increase the exchange rate and increase the purchase of US goods, but instead as a gesture of retaliating against US tariffs, China ordered the suspension of buying US agricultural products and pushed down the exchange rate of the RMB currency… .”
“…The last round of trade tariffs has caused Hong Kong to experience negative growth of imports and exports for eight consecutive months. The latest Hong Kong export value in June 2019 has fallen -9%, …. It is estimated that the new round of tariffs will increase the decline of Hong Kong’s imports and exports by about 3% more.”
The volatility associated with currency depreciation as a monetary policy drives up import and export costs, impacting the powerful re-export sector, driving traders to seek better harbor and for those who are cash liquid-the working classes, the lower and middle professional managerial white collar workers-safe harbor means moving RMB into anti-depreciation assets-which themselves are risky.
All social layers feel the crunch of currency war but none more than those who live from hand to mouth. Think of the 4% of the population doing domestic work…
China and the Socialist Left
The pro-CCP (and their fake left apologists which we have critiqued elsewhere…see Class Warrior Vol.1, No.1 and Class Warrior Vol.1, No.6) objectively defend Chinese capitalism/imperialism while subjectively adopting various theories as to why China is still a DWS or ‘socialist’ state. They see the fight for bourgeois democracy in HK as counter-revolutionary. The pro-Western subjective defence of HK ‘democracy’ against CCP dictatorship objectively defends HK’s autonomy from China in the name of bourgeois democracy in the service of global finance capital. Both the pro-CCP left who see the protests as counter-revolutionary and the pro-western advocates of a liberal capitalist ‘democracy’ whose project is an independent Hong Kong deny the working class and youth in the streets their own agency. These would-be leaderships are counterrevolutionary, aiming for neither socialism nor democracy but the dictatorship of their group of Capitals. Actual revolutionaries call for socialism across all of China. In the present, and not after a 100 year “stage” (!) of imperialist partnership!
Likewise, calls for ‘political revolution’ that do not recognize Chinese imperialism are not calls for workers’ power but uphold the fiction of an existing ‘workers state.’ For decades the Robertson tendency have declared China as “on-the-brink” of capitalist restoration, while the Stalinist capitalist CCP dismantles what remains of the working masses’ Mao-era gains and they ratchet up capitalist exploitation at home and abroad. These calls do nothing to advance the fight for socialist revolution. Are we really supposed to believe that the CCP, which eliminated the Iron Rice Bowl and which has for decades been privatizing the state property, is going to “expropriate the Hong Kong bourgeoisie” today? How about the party-leading millionaires and billionaires? Are they the incipient Reiss faction? Where is the dialectical contradiction of a parasitic bureaucratic caste? Is the Beijing system what these “revolutionaries” believe the Hong Kong masses should voluntarily subordinate themselves to? Is the struggle for democratic rights supposed to wait upon the conquest of mass consciousness by the transitional program? And meanwhile these “revolutionists” praise the Hong Kong police, just like shopkeepers do everywhere.
It is material that the Hong Kong protests involve millions. There can be no argument made that these are not the masses. For the ICL and Robertsonists generally these are counterrevolutionaries by virtue of their opposition to subordination to Beijing. We maintain their (the ICL’s) calls for “Political revolution” are not Trotskyism at all and would not defend any workers’ state. Trotsky’s battle with the petty-bourgeois opposition came to a head exactly over why and how to defend the U.S.S.R. against counterrevolution. His answer and ours is that historical processes are motion. Either they are towards socialism or reaction, and thus defence of the workers’ state depends upon political revolution. The fate of the revolution DEPENDS upon the overthrow of the Stalinist parasites; in China this means the last thing a revolutionist wants to do is defend their rule!
Because only socialist democracy can effectively defend and advance the gains of the revolution and only the self-rule of the working class–not the bureaucracy’s control of the state–can reach the consciousness of workers across borders (HK,Taiwan…) for whom democracy in the workplace and “socialism” are as yet mutually exclusive, and authoritarian political controls are anathema.
Were the PRC still a DWS our program would guide us to defend China from all restorationist threats be they mass movements of bourgeois democrats or the onslaught of imperialist militarism. That defense would begin-not end with the political revolution against the CCP rule.
However capitalism is restored in China and the struggle there is not for political revolution but for socialist revolution. Socialist revolution will by necessity base itself on the establishment of democratic factory committees and workers representative organs in the tradition of workers councils. All power would have to be taken by the workers councils to dislodge the capitalists both foreign and domestic; and establish state power and institute an economic plan that serves the working class, including a revolutionary foreign policy that recognizes the permanent revolution.
Socialist reunification in China will be possible when the Socialist Revolution is made on the Mainland and in Hong Kong and Formosa Island. Across China where workers fight for democracy in the workplace and on the political stage they come directly into confrontation with finance capital which is squeezing surplus value out of their lifeblood. When the state is challenged by the masses either in HK or on the Mainland they face brutal tactical squads trained and directed by the state and thus the CCP to defend the interests of the global capitalism.
Are these mobiliations heterogeneous, posing the opportunity for the advance of socialism or are they the proxy of the imperialists as the ‘tankies’ and sycophants of the CCP, particularly in the U.S. claim? Or is this how class struggle unfolds in every corner of a world where workers of every strata from the sweatshops and street vendors to the skilled and intellectual workers know their exploiters and oppressors by their actual material daily life struggle? Is HK really only about extradition, freedom of speech, democratic elections or are these minimal demands for democracy in the face of an authoritarian capitalist Stalinist party dictatorship which has dismantled the Iron Rice Bowl and expanded the excessive rates of exploitation imposed on the workers at the point of production, in the private industries and in the State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and Joint Ventures (JVs), which all must answer to the Law of Value and balance their books in favor of profits for private expropriation?
Should the masses be subject to the CCP Stalinist courts? Do these courts in some vestigial way still remain superior to the bourgeois courts to get the masses grievances addressed? We think the answers are no.
The people in the street are right to understand that being subordinated to the Stalinist courts instead of their local courts is not likely to be good for them. Moreover the Stalinist courts will send you to hard labor rehabilitation if you oppose the party leadership, even while you see members of the leadership cliques becoming millionaires. Carrie Lam is not their only opponent in the struggle…they need class independence from the Bosses’ strike. Workers need to be in control of their own struggle. They need independence from and opposition to the CCP and do not need illusions in any Reiss faction, something we have never seen and do NOT believe is an inevitable historical product in the Chinese case. The Reiss faction was a revolution defense grouping that existed momentarily in the pre-WW2 period in the USSR. Reiss defected to the Fourth International. We call for socialist revolution in China. And for socialist revolution in Hong Kong. Socialist revolution in Hong Kong would have to confront the rule of the CCP and its partners, the compradore and international capitalist class (and the Queen of England too)…who do not want to turn HK socialist…And the wicked witch Queen of England can dissolve by herself!
We await the twists and turns of the CCP defenders, who while claiming they call for “political revolution” see all the HK masses in the streets as counterrevolutionary, capitalist-restorationists, food for the treads of the tanks. Their call is a fig leaf on their naked Pabloism. They prefer a non-existent Reiss Faction splinter of the CCP bureaucracy to the real mass movement. This is where once again their method is petty-bourgeois.
A Trotskyist Political Program for China
The revolutionary Trotskyist position is to recognise these objective divisions and intervene in support of democracy while challenging the false consciousness of HK and mainland Chinese workers in the state under CCP bourgeois rule and its partner HK bourgeois rule.
How do we apply the United Front tactic without being seduced into a popular front? We defend bourgeois democracy critically, as in this pressure cooker inter-imperialist situation it advances our strategy to open the revolution, but at the same time raise our program for socialist revolution.
In the mass movement we advance transitional demands that go beyond the five democratic demands. We call for an all workers congress of workers deputies to unite the workers of HK and the mainland. We call for united action against foreign and domestic capitalist exploitation. We call for building class struggle unions that fight for a workers government. We fight Han chauvinism and support the democratic rights of Tibetans and Uighurs. We fight the erosion of womens’ rights by the state and fight for women’s liberation. We call for the equality of sexes within working class organizations and throughout society. We call for full democratic rights for gay and non-conforming sexuality persons. We call for international solidarity for class struggle and democratic rights fighters and workers’ self-organization rights. Over the last ten months there have been over 600 reported strikes for unpaid wages in the PRC. Free and rehire the jailed strikers! Restore the wage arrears! For mass rent strikes! For workers’ independent wage and price committees! Guarantee free child care and medical services as a basic social right. Get the bankers out of the education business! Free education through post-graduate, with stipends for student living expenses determined by COLAs.
We call on workers in HK and mainland China to adopt the transitional program and the theory/practice of the Permanent Revolution. To reclaim and extend the gains of October ‘49, the CCP of the billionaires must be driven from power by the masses’ self-organization, and not some day over 100 years from now but today! We call for workers’ councils, a workers’ militia, and the workers democracy of a workers state based in and on them.
We call for expropriation of the capitalists, so that democracy ceases to be a fictional, legalists’ equality. The only way workers can defend democracy in HK and the mainland (given the state forces’ attacks) is to bring their consciousness into line with the objective reality and unite to overthrow the bourgeois state by making socialist revolution in all of China, as part of the world revolution.
Imperialism and War
In the event of war between the imperialist powers over HK, while we defend HK workers against Chinese repression, we take a dual defeatist position on war between China and its imperialist rivals. In the last analysis it is rival imperialists that contest control of HK. Only the united working classes of HK and those of the imperialist powers can realise ‘democracy’ in HK as part of a union of socialist republics of East Asia.
Our anti-war program seeks to unite the workers of the world in political strike action against the warring imperialist powers. We strike the docks, factories, farms, schools and roads and airports to stop the war machine. We call on workers in uniform to turn their guns against their officers not the workers across the front lines. The socialist revolution is on the agenda whenever war is the capitalists’ only solution because war and peace is the ultimate class question. In our unions and community organizations we explain that the crisis of capitalism has left no room for peaceful accommodation between the declining US imperialism and the rising China /Russia bloc. Currency and trade wars lead to hot wars that workers pay for in misery and blood. The international working class needs its own revolutionary international that guides united workers action across borders to advance socialist revolution against imperialist wars and climate catastrophe.
To succeed in accomplishing and defending the revolution we need a new Leninist-Trotskyist world party of socialist revolution, a new revolutionary international, which the LCC commits itself to help build before Capital dooms our species.
