Yes, comrades, China is an Imperialist Power. An Open Letter to South African Workers and Small Farmers
Comrades, we are writing this open letter to raise the important question of China’s influence in the world today, and specifically in Southern Africa. Without a clear understanding that China is imperialist and engaged in inter-imperialist rivalry with the US led block of imperialists, workers and poor farmers are disarmed in the class struggle leading to defeats which setback the revolution and make the catastrophic prospects of economic slump and ecological destruction much more likely. We need to fight the counter-revolutionary influence of all capitalist/imperialist powers, recognising the class enemy, and their treacherous agents in the labour movement, and organising independent workers organisations from unions, councils, self-defence militias to Workers and poor Farmers’ Governments.
Back in November of last year, a member of our tendency (International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency) was visiting South Africa. He had discussions with the Shaun Magmoed branch (SMB) of the RSWP (Revolutionary Socialist Worker Party) on the question of China’s influence in South Africa, especially its corrupting influence on the leadership of the NUMSA union and the SRWP. We were invited by one of its leading members, Cde Shaheed Mahomed, to write a response to the resolution (Reform vs Revolution) on the question being discussed in the branch. We wrote the letter quickly and got acknowledgement it had been received, but heard nothing more about it. We viewed the letter as part of an internal discussion, but in the light of events since then, we are obliged to publish it in this Open Letter. (See ‘For a Workers’ Government’).
First, the SMB took the threat of China seriously when evidence showed that the NUMSA leadership under Irvin Jim had been corrupted by a rich individual with clear links to the CPC. As we said in our letter China’s influence in the labour movement must be challenged and the unions rebuilt under the control of the rank and file. Despite assurances that our contribution would be discussed and answered, no further communication with us about their intervention in the SRWP took place. Nor was any comment forthcoming on the ILTT Report on South Africa written by our comrade on his visit which dealt at more length with China’s influence in the economy and the labour movement, and with the inadequate worker resistance to it.
In both documents we make clear our view that China’s influence in SA is as an imperialist power, that its corruption of the leadership of NUMSA is clear, but is not being effectively resisted by workers who are disarmed by confusion over China’s character. That confusion was evident in the SMB. Its resolution characterised China superficially as a capitalist semi-colony acting as the agent of imperialism.
“Today China is awash with many imperialist companies. Apple has its production facility in China and according to the Economist Newspaper only 2%of the value of its sales go back to China. This is not a Socialist state but a semi-colonial capitalist state under the thumb of imperialism. China today is the mass production facility for imperialism with very low wages and harsh conditions. It has helped imperialism spearhead the de-industrialisation of the rest of the world.” (Reform vs Revolution)
We stated that a correct understanding of China was urgently needed to build effective worker resistance in the unions and for building a revolutionary party to lead the vanguard against imperialism and its national comprador agents. This confusion over China’s imperialist character seems to have led to impotence in the SMB in its attempt to take on the union bureaucracy and its Maoist connections.
“To transform the SRWP (or any new party that becomes necessary) into a mass workers’ party independent of the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie we need a Marxist party to form the left wing of the SRWP, based on a Transitional Program (TP) for a Workers’ Government. That is, comrades, for a Workers’ Government! (See critique of SRWP in “Workers’ Unite”). Already, in the revolutionary period up to 1924, Trotsky’s report on the 4th Congress of the COMINTERN insisted that the party program must always be crowned with the comrades’ demand for a Workers’ Government.” (For a Workers’ Government)
Then, four months later, we saw an exchange of letters (Once Again on the China Question) between Cde. Shaheed of the WIVL (who as we noted above is a leading member of the SMB in Cape Town) and the FLTI. Cde. Shaheed wrote:
Dear FLTI Committee
Could you send us your latest analysis on China, as some of the local groups are starting to raise the question that it is imperialist?
Greetings comrades.
Shaheed Mohamed
WIVL (9 April)
So, it appears that the silence of Cde. Shaheed and the SMB in response to our intervention in November may have masked an ongoing discussion about China which remains unresolved. The fact that in April the Cde had to appeal to the FLTI to provide him with a reply to those questioning China’s role as imperialist we see as significant, first, because it indicates that no serious response to China’s influence in NUMSA was underway. Secondly, because the Cde as a member of the WIVL was affiliated to the FLTI when we (as HWRS and CWG – now in the ILTT) had a dispute over China which led to a split in 2010. While we do not want to waste time over an old dispute, the FLTI raises it again to convince Cde. Shaheed that its position has not changed. Since that position was always wrong, and counter-revolutionary in its consequences, we have to once again deal with the ‘China Question’ as a matter of urgency.
On April 11 the FLTI replied to Cde. Shaheed,
Comrade Shaheed,
“We have read your note asking for our views on the current situation in China. Not only in Africa, but also internationally, very many left currents coming from the former Trotskyist movement, affirm that China has become a “new imperialist country”, while the old Stalinist currents, today again “in fashion”, continue to see it as a “market socialism” and, together with the Russia of the butcher Putin, a focus of “anti-imperialist struggle”. It is clear that all those who call themselves “Putin’s friends”, like those in the Communist Party and other Stalinists in South Africa and throughout Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, are well and truly servants of the IMF and the US imperialist transnational corporations. (Our emphasis)
Surely you remember that we together produced a pamphlet on China in polemics with the US HWRS and the New Zealand CWG which we jointly elaborated at an FLTI Congress in 2010. There we defined the key questions of what is still our position, also expressed in our assessment of the fall of the workers’ states in ’89: after the imposition of capitalist restoration, both China and Russia were left as relatively independent capitalist countries, which gave fresh blood to the imperialist capitalist world market. But that blood has now run out and imperialism, after successive crises and crashes, is looking for new markets to survive, as the old ones have shrunk, and new colonies and semi-colonies to throw its crisis at. (Our emphasis)
As the last decades have shown, imposing capitalist restoration in the former workers’ states was not enough for imperialism. Since the crash of 2008, there has been a brutal open offensive by the US in dispute with Maastricht Europe to take over these new markets, trying to recolonize China and Russia for good, while the European glacier nations, Georgia, the Caucasus, the former Soviet Muslim republics, Vietnam and lately also Cuba are already in the process of colonization.”
What is clear here is that the FLTI characterises Russia and China as ‘independent’ capitalist states coming out of the fall of the workers’ states which have since resisted colonization. This ‘independence’ allowed China to act as agents of imperialism without submitting to re-colonisation. We can agree to that point but not on its consequences. Independence was the legacy of the workers’ states, principally a centralised state and economic plan. However, for the FLTI, this legacy while useful to the imperialist powers, has only two possible outcomes, Russia and China either submit to colonisation (breaking up under imperialist dominance to get ‘fresh blood’) or are overthrown by a workers’ revolution to take power, smash the regime and create a workers’ state.
Let us assume that the ‘blood’ the FLTI is talking about is actually ‘value’, pumped out by workers’ labour power in Russia and China, and increasingly in the semi-colonies where they trade and export capital, all of which serves to restore the rate of profit in the imperialist countries. To understand the importance of flows of value we must return to Lenin’s definition of the definition of imperialism as the export of finance capital to colonies and semi-colonies to extract super-profits as a basic counter-tendency to the law of the tendency of the rate of profits to fall (LTRPF) in the imperialist countries.
But how have ‘independent’ countries like Russia and China survived attempts at recolonisation from 1992 to 2023? For the FLTI ‘independence’ means a country is neither imperialist nor a semi-colony. While ‘independence’ can resist colonisation it cannot create the conditions for capital accumulation on a scale that leads to imperialism. This scenario raises the question. What stopped the existing imperialist powers from completing the colonisation process dividing up Russia and China and stopping them from accumulating value in their own right and emerging as imperialist powers?
Our response is that ‘independence’ is not a static state that allows Russia and China to survive recolonisation for 30 years without undergoing a qualitative change leading to their emergence as imperialist powers. Resistance to colonisation was only possible if the restored capitalist state could manage the process of transition by increasing its share of value extracted and accumulated to strengthen its ‘independence’ and at the same time reduce ‘dependence’ on foreign ownership. As against the FLTIs abstract outcomes, colonisation or socialism, we argue that actual resistance to colonisation creates two real possibilities, imperialism or socialism, according to which class is in power and leading the resistance.
Thus, when the FLTI, and what is the ILTT today, split over China in 2010 it was because we argued that Russia and China were able to exert control over the extent to which their markets became owned or controlled by foreign interests. From 2000 this allowed these economies to accumulate capital in their own right sufficient to create surpluses requiring capital export. As we noted, the FLTI flatly rejected the view that any capitalist country could make the transition from semi-colony to imperialism, as since WW1 the world was already divided. We said this dogmatic position on China was the ‘Elephant in the room’.
We argued that the historical precedent of former workers’ states restoring capitalism and retaining sufficient political control of their economies to resist colonisation did not contradict Lenin’s view of a world already divided among the imperialist powers. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 had ‘re-partitioned’ the world between capitalist and ‘socialist’ worlds, and capitalist restoration in 1992 did not destroy the legacy of the former worker states. The strong centralised state apparatus overseeing relatively developed forces of production, was now instrumental in managing the process of restoration. By 2010 it was clear that Russia had largely restored political control of its economy against foreign domination and regulated the flow of value abroad. China in 2008 had already demonstrated that its rapidly expanding state capitalism was both capable of managing FDI (as is the case in all imperialist countries) and yet able to accumulate and export excess capital globally under its ‘going out’ policy.
Today the FLTI continues to characterise both Russia and China as ‘independent’ but facing further ‘re-colonisation’. It doesn’t occur to its leadership that the concrete reality of increasing inter-imperialist rivalry is that value is now flowing away from the US imperialist bloc, towards the Russia-China bloc and its expanding BRICS+ trading partners which is now posing a threat to the US bloc. According to the FLTI:
“Our characterization of China today is that, like Russia, they inherited the old gains of the former workers’ states which are in the hands of strong native bourgeoisies, associated and totally imbricated with imperialism in their business, on which they depend in the world-economy. In the midst of the world crisis, imperialism is after them and they are resisting to be recolonized. The US in particular does not yet find the strength in its proletariat to go for higher offensives, although the campaign of demonization of China within the US gives it a certain basis for attacks, including military attacks. The encirclement of Russia with the NATO countries is the gun to the head that the US uses in order to surrender Moscow.
China and Russia, then, are capitalist countries in a state of transition. Either the struggle for socialist revolution and the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms returns there, or if they continue to be dependent on the world economy, as is happening now, they will be cornered, encircled by imperialism and in the future, colonized.”
Today we are looking at two scenarios, one where the former workers’ states restored capitalism and remained ‘independent’ despite mounting attempts at recolonisation in trade wars and military wars. The other, where the former workers’ states restored capitalism but whose ‘independence’ was integral to the transition to imperialism. To test these two propositions, we must continue to apply the value analysis of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, in the epoch of imperialism.
The FLTI scenario is based on an empiricist method which fits the facts to its preconceptions. These are that Russia and China are neither imperialist, nor semi-colonies but historical hybrids. It applies the abstract characterisation of ‘independent’ states that exploits on behalf of imperialism, but resists semi-colonisation. Lenin used the term ‘independent’ to refer to several states that were exploited by finance capital, such as Argentina and Turkey, but were otherwise sovereign states. Yet, despite appearances they never had ‘independence’ from imperialism. In the imperialist epoch there were only oppressor and oppressed states. The emergence of new oppressor states could only arise under special as yet unforeseen circumstances.
Such circumstances led to the unprecedented restoration of capitalism in the former workers states. Under these circumstances what does ‘independence’ mean for Russia and China? It can only mean independence from foreign finance capital. What changes have occurred in Russia and China since restoration in 1992 that might justify the claim of ‘independence’ from foreign finance capital? The FLTI argues that such real, concrete independence is not possible since they are trapped as servants of finance capital.
The FLTI argues that since 2000 Russia and China exploited their own workers and increasingly foreign workers, not to accumulate on their own behalf, but to provide cheap labour and raw materials for the US and other imperialist finance capital, on which they are wholly dependent. They are cast as throw-backs to the epoch of mercantile capitalism in the 21st century. Russia was a provider of oil and gas. China was a trading state profiting mainly from its trade in imports and exports. They did not invest significantly in raising labour productivity at home and abroad but relied on inefficient state-owned industries and heavy-handed control of the labour markets. Economic surpluses barely covered the external debts. They were exploited by getting less than the full value of the commodities traded or processed on behalf of the imperialist powers, but also exploiters of their own national and foreign labour forces.
In concrete reality, Russia and China for a decade after restoration underwent an historically unprecedented transition. They emerged from former workers’ states briefly as mercantile or comprador powers sourcing cheap raw materials, acting as agents of foreign investors, engaging in a form of primitive accumulation – a take-off stage in managing the transition to capitalism. That process was already being driven by independence from foreign finance capital as foreign investment was wholly subordinated to central state planning of the economy. Surplus value flows abroad were tolerated as trade-offs for the transfer of technology which enabled market reforms including the privatisation of state owned enterprises to increase labour productivity ‘up the chain’. Now the market was setting prices, albeit within the limits of the plan. Russia and China were able to escape re-colonisation and develop the forces of production, accumulating value and excess capital to be invested abroad, thus emerging as new imperialist powers and as rivals of the old.
Russia and China, understood as imperialist powers, can explain what cannot be explained when they are characterised as hybrid states. Their ‘independence’ was due to the legacy of the former workers states which allowed the new capitalist class to resist re-colonisation, create the conditions for capitalist take-off, and the inevitable emergence of imperialism. It is that growing ‘independence’ now backed by an alliance between Russia and China, and the rapidly rising BRICS+ that led the US bloc to provoke trade wars and military wars over Ukraine and Taiwan. This has backfired as the EU and Japan are refusing US dictates to cut off trade and investment with Russia and China. The US bloc is cracking as EU powers face economic ruin from economic sanctions. The Russia-China bloc is stepping into the vacuum left by the decline of the US bloc. There is no question that in the coming inter-imperialist war workers of the world must take a dual defeatist position and arm themselves to turn those wars into civil wars for the socialist revolution.
We trust this open letter will provoke more debate on the status of China in the world economy, including Southern Africa, and arm the workers and poor farmers of the semi-colonial world alongside those of the imperialist powers to reject any hopes attached to any capitalist regime and put all they energy and will to the task of overthrowing the rotten capitalist system.
For workers to live, capitalism must die!
ILTT May 1 2023
