Introductory Note: This document, a letter written by HWRS comrade Dave Winter, represents the position of a minority within the IFLT, consisting of HWRS and the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (CWG). The July 2009 FLTI Congress agreed to continue the debate on China publically, before the global workers’ movement, pending further discussion at a future congress. We are publishing this document as a contribution to that discussion. It was generated as an internal document, and has not been edited for grammar and style.
Update (February 2010): Click here for an overall introduction to the China debate, and links to other related documents.
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China’s Role Is Not Progressive
What is written below I wrote at the heat of the discussion on China in the middle of the Congress in July [2009] (I cut out few parts of it and make some English corrections). It was not released before. It answers the majority argument that China can become an imperialist country only by developing the productive forces, and that this is what minority is really saying. This argument came up by the majority again recently. So I feel that the letter below is still a good answer to the majority on this question and should be part of my contribution to the pre-Congress discussion.
Dear Comrades,
By claiming that China is an imperialist country, the majority claims that the logic of our position is that capitalism is still progressive and it is still capable to develop the productive forces. In other words, we are revising the basic line of Trotsky and Lenin on capitalism in the imperialist epoch.
Neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever said that no new imperialist country can emerge in the imperialist epoch. Nor did Lenin or Trotsky say that that a new imperialist country, if it emerged from a state of being a relatively independent semi-colony, must develop the productive forces and therefore make capitalism "progressive".
First we need to clarify what do we mean that in the imperialist epoch capitalism cannot develop the productive forces. I hope that you do not mean that capitalism cannot develop technology. It is obviously not true. The factories today are not the same factories (technologically speaking) that existed before first world war. Today many of the new factories are run by sophisticated computers. In 1914, capitalist technology could not send a person to the moon, and it took 40 years for the technology to develop before this took place. Before the epoch of imperialism there was no TV, computers and internet. Does their existence today prove that capitalism can develop the productive forces in the imperialist epoch? The answer is negative. The TV, for example, is not used in capitalism for the education of the workers and for the enhancement of humanity, but for the exact opposite reasons. It is used by the ruling class to dull the mind of the workers and cripple their ability to think and engage in the class struggle. This is true for the rest of the media of news and "entertainment" despite the fact that technologically they are much more developed than they used to be in the past. And in general the advancement in technology in the imperialist epoch only increases killing (better war machines, the atomic bomb that did not exist before the imperialist epoch), oppression and exploitation. For example, faster and more efficient "productive" machines in the factories means more mass unemployment, and overproductions that caused eventually wars and the destructions of the productive forces. In sum: Technology in the imperialist epoch is characterized by intense drive for profit as the rate of profit continues to decline, hence the workers, the great majority of human beings and the well being of the planet are expendable. Therefore, we see mass death from injury and health problems (cancer for example was not a big health threat in the 19st century) as technology "advanced". And lastly technological advancement in the period of imperialist decay leads only to environmental disasters. And unless this is corrected soon by socialism and international planned economy greedy capitalism/imperialism, despite the advancement in technology, is likely to destroy the entire planet, since it does not care to develop technology for the well being of the masses or the planet, but only for one reason: profit. Without the socialist revolution this will cause the destruction of civilization via the advanced military means of the imperialist countries, or disasters from climate changes.
Any development of a new imperialist country will only contribute to the destruction not the advancement of the productive forces and the well being of the working class and humanity. China is not an exception. Since the development of capitalism in China, China has become one of the great releasers of greenhouse gases that cause climate change that can endanger civilization. And since its drive to become an imperialist country in the 21st Century, China is replacing the US as the Number 1 polluter. Along the yellow river, tens of thousands of factories have erupted in the last 15 years, and the yellow river has become truly yellow, polluted to the point that the water that flows in it has been transformed into deadly poison. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of workers who work in these factories died from cancer and other causes. One area (I forgot the name, but I can get it if demanded) is being deserted, because the majority of the workers died from cancers. This is what behind the drive of China to become an imperialist country, which is the only way it can be done in the imperialist epoch of fast and terrible decay, and I don't see anything progressive about it. And yes, we should not forget that Chinese workers suffer from one of the worst conditions for workers in the planet, regardless if they work for Western or Chinese companies. Many of them live in places that only can be characterized as cages not homes. What is progressive about this? Of course, this is only the manifestation of life under imperialism in its last stage of decay.
Comrades, you are not trying to seriously tell us, that Chinese export of capital overseas along with the attempts to develop the Chinese sphere of influence manifest the "progressiveness" of Chinese imperialism. In Chad China delivered mass weapons (including soldiers and workers) to inflame the genocidal war so that China can control the area and plunder the oil there. What is progressive about this? In Congo they build mines for their electronics factories in China and like the rest of the imperialists they muddle in the country affairs. The results: The intensification of the civil wars over the mines that kill millions and created huge areas with refugees. And in Iran the Chinese, who of course interested in the oil there, have a special connection and influence on the reactionary regime, a regime that as we know just killed hundreds and is torturing (many time to death) the protests' prisoners. Should we go on with the list?
Since we live in an era of dramatic increase of imperialist decay on the international scale, a new imperialist country can only function as the rest of the imperialist countries: increase the rate of exploitation and oppression wherever it set its foot prints. In the current imperialist epoch of crisis China cannot become an imperialist country by progressing the standard of living of the Chinese workers and masses in China and the rest of the world. Quite the opposite, it is driving the masses into living hellish conditions. This is so, because in the current state of imperialist decay, this is the only way that a country can become an imperialist country and try to compete with the rest of the imperialist gangs. It is easier for a person to jump to the moon, than it is for a new imperialist country to build its "empire" by elevating the well being of the masses in the current unstoppable decay of the international imperialist epoch.