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. The letter below, written by Comrade DB of the CWG, is a response to a letter from a metal worker in Argentina in February 2010, which in turn was a response to a letter from Comrade CR of HWRS. Names have been abbreviated to protect privacy.
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Response to Letter from a Metal Worker, February 2010
Dear Comrades,
The letter from the metalworker Cde [J] raises many issues.
First, we agree with Cde DW [of HWRS] that referring to Cde [C] as “Mr” is uncomradely as are are many of the other terms. The Cde was posing a fair question: why do you believe some bourgeois data and not other data?
Second, everybody uses ‘bourgeois data’ including Marx writing ‘Capital’ and Lenin writing ‘Imperialism...’. This is quite different from its use. For example even Cde [J] does this despite what he tells his metal worker comrades. Why does he believe the ‘bourgeois’ exposure that Goldman Sachs made a secret deal with the Greek Government? This is a bourgeois exposure of a bourgeois secret deal.
Third, there is a remarkable secret deal “of the 7 keys” in 1975 that Cde [J] bases his view of China on. This is the first time that we have heard that the Majority bases its position on China today on its knowledge of this secret deal of the 7 keys. We quote from the comrades letter:
“ In your letter you are very interested in “the latest data, the latest data”. The one who is concerned for “the latest data, the latest data” wants that the Chinese working class does not find out where did the bourgeoisie that is exploiting them today came from. You want “the latest data, the latest data”. That is what Hu Jintao and all the Chinese mandarins want. They want the Chinese workers and the workers of the world not to know a secret, which is kept locked with 7 keys. I’ll tell it to you, but keep it well, because it does not appears in the bourgeois press of the last years. But we, the Marxist workers with class consciousness, we do know it. Because sometimes the strings of history get cut, but the Marxists re-join them (as in Kienthal and Zimmerwald) as this time, where a fraction with historical consciousness has emerged in the FLTI.
I will tell it to the workers, even if you do not like it. The Stalinist bureaucracy, Mr. [C], in 1975 made Joint Ventures in South Eastern China with 150,000 imperialist companies. That happened a lot of years ago. Those are very very old data.
The new generation of the continuity of those old Stalinist bureaucrats, who with Deng Xiao Ping made a deal for the restoration with Nixon, is eager for hiding this:
In those joint ventures, the old Stalinist bureaucracy sent all their children to the directive boards, as directors of the joint ventures. In those boards, the banks of the damned Wall Street four blocks have “forbidden” to have majority. Like this, “guised in red”, the Stalinist bureaucrats and their children, which were giving away the Chinese labour force as slave to the transnationals, entered in the boards of the imperialist companies. The shameless of Wall Street were hiding appearing as a “minority”, for making this process of transforming the bureaucracy into bourgeoisie not to reveal before the eyes of the Chinese and world working class.
Let’s say the truth about these “old events”, which you do not care about. In those Joint Ventures, the old Stalinist bureaucracy could make their children to become directors of the companies, front-men of the transnationals and like that they could OWN A PRIVATE PROPERTY AS A FRONT MEN OF THE WALL STREET BANKS AND INHERIT!!!!, which could never be done by the bureaucracy in a workers’ state. But, to do this, they all had to hide the Morgan Bank and the HSBC, which invested capital in 150,000 companies located in South East China. The finance capital gave the bureaucrat the right to inherit and acquire property, and the chance to ‘camouflage’ before the “equalitarian” consciousness of the Chinese workers. For that, they have to hide in financial paradise in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
That Money that you and the minority say that spins as a carousel in Hong Kong and Taiwan is the money from the Chinese directors that has to be put in Wall Street as it happened in Greece with the hidden business of the bosses of the banks of your country.
For that reason, we, the Marxists with memory and historical continuity of the fight against Stalinism, even before 1975, we will tell you another big truth that your imperialist press hides it very well: “Made in China” is where the profits and falsifications of the balance sheets of the companies of your country are hidden.
Our question is: why does Cde [J] believe this secret of the 7 keys when it is just as bourgeois as the exposure of Goldman Sachs in Greece? Surely nothing that the bourgeois say can be believed? Or is it that only some things the bourgeois say are believed? Why does Cde [J] think that the secret deals in Greece tell us anything about secret deals in China? For one thing Goldman Sachs was ‘bailed-out’ when in November it tried to ‘bail-out’ a bankrupt Greece. China is not only not bankrupt but has giant surpluses and massive capital accumulation and in no need of a ‘bail-out’. How do you explain the bankruptcy of Wall St if at the same time its biggest “semi-colony” from which it pumps out surplus value is booming? Except of course to point to the secret fact that Wall St cannot be bankrupt because it owns China.
What we choose to believe about what the bourgeoisie says takes us straight back to Cde [C] question. Why does the majority believe bourgeois ‘facts’ that say China has been ruled by Wall St since 1975, against those facts that say that Wall St doesnt control China since after 1975 many things have changed with the restoration of capitalism and the Chinese ruling class has maintained its independence of Wall St, and the last year China invested more FDI in the US than the US invested in China?
Clearly, Cde [J] thinks that this FDI in the US is coming from the secret Wall St., bankers in Hong Kong and Taiwan who are now investing their capital openly in the US. He thinks this because he made up his mind that in 1975 Wall St and Nixon took secret control of China. This is a conspiracy by Wall St to blame its bankrupcy on China and mobilise US workers to go to war to ‘take back’ China it already owns secretly. The Minority is blamed for not exposing this Wall St conspiracy.
The Minority however, sees reality differently. The Special Export zones gave US and other imperialists access to China, but their ‘minority’ shares were actually contained. The bureaucracy was able to limit the control of Wall St., allowing US imperialism to superexploit Chinese workers and create a manufacturing export industry, and at the same time create a newly restored Chinese bourgeoisie that against Wall St plans retained its independence, quarantined Wall St. behind a regulatory wall, transferred technology and over-accumulated capital to become a ‘born again’ imperialist rival. Wall St. faced the nightmare on Elm St.
Comrade [J] says that the Minority is hiding the ‘truth’ that Wall St owns and controls China from Chinese workers. He does not understand that because China is imperialist the US will go to war against China, not as the ‘semi-colony’ which Wall St owns, but because it does not control China and because it is being confronted by a potential global rival.
We say that to hide that truth from Chinese workers is to risk disarming them in the same way that Chiang Kai Chek and Stalin disarmed the workers in 1927 inside the popular front with the Chinese national bourgeoisie. The Bolivarian/Maoist/Castroist left today plays the same role as Stalin in 1927. The role of Trotskyists today is not to counter-pose a military bloc between Chinese workers and the Chinese ruling class against the Stalinist popular front, but to turn workers’ guns against their own ruling class!
We suggest that Cde [J] tell that to his metal worker comrades.
Revolutionary Greetings,
[DB].