Introductory Note:There was a debate within the FLTI regarding China, between a minority consisting of HWRS and the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (CWG), and a majority consisting of the Latin American sections of the FLTI and the WIVL in South Africa. 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. This document, a letter written by HWRS comrade CR to WIVL comrade SM in February 2010, responds to the majority’s contention that the minority’s analysis is faulty because it is based on data taken from the bourgeois press. It was generated as an internal document, and has not been edited for grammar and style. For subsequent correspondence related to this letter, see Letter from a Metal Worker and Response to Letter from a Metal Worker.
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USA Being Replaced by China: Just the Facts
Comrade [SM],
Why is a report pointing directly to Chinese role on the board of Aussi corporations with specific detail about the impact of China's investments on places like Perth just a bourgeois rumour but your article bases itself on a Foreign Affairs article 6 years out of date without footnotes the kind of of bourgeois analysis which the SCI bases its theory on.
Please explain why this out of date article (The Myth Behind China’s Miracle) with old data which is being daily supplanted (in the Asia Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post and the Economist) is the source that the majority depends on? Could it be as comrade CM stated that your tendency starts from your subjectively dependent program instead of objective facts which can be cross checked in real time?
Indeed your flippant response does not answer to the minority anything that has been asked:
1) Why is the majority statement distributed on the streets of Buenas Aires as a Marxist Education Bulletin instead of being distributed to the minority first?
2) Why does the majority refuse the invitation to present their thesis to the minority via Skype, phone or other method of real time transmission?
3) Does the majority plan on sharing its master work with the minority. We presume you must have a readable version as we both speak the same language.
4) Could you please explain why you think the daily reports coming from the bourgeois press of record (the same press the bourgeoisie use to make their billion dollar decisions) are just so much rumor, compared to the outdated citations you wave around as proof positive that a wing of the bourgeoisie agreed with the position you hold today way back in 2003-4?
Now I am not an academic but did get some training over the years. My understanding is that if you are looking at a dynamic situation such as the changing relationships of economic power you seek data to back your argument up that is as current as possible. The data presented for examination in the minority document was dated as late as the document itself (being included just days before final edit, indeed the evidence for our position is so voluminous that daily reading of the papers gives us much more than is needed). But from what I have read of the the few pages released by the majority you dismiss all this data as insignificant (internet searches) and mark the minority for capitulation to bourgeois rumor.
Please explain, from your superior sociological methodology, where the data your current analysis comes from and why it is more valid than the daily reports from the journals and press we regularly review?
Revolutionary Greetings,
[CR]