本帖最后由 連長 于 2009-9-14 03:34 编辑
Profits Plummeting? OK, Let Us Expand Production!
If “state capitalist” is an incorrect description of thePRC bureaucracy then it is an equally false portrayal of the PRC’sstate-owned enterprises. Although in the post-1978 period the statecorporations have been pushed to run according to “market principles,”at critical times especially, they are constrained to operate accordingto social needs. Following the devastating Sichuan earthquake last May,publicly owned enterprises mobilized big timefor the relief effort and put people’s needs ahead of profit. Forexample, the PRC’s largest insurance firm, state-owned China Life,organized to financially support every single child orphaned by thedisaster until he or she reached 18 years of age. This contrasts withthe scrimping attitude to Victorian bushfire victims that Australia’scapitalist-owned insurers have become notorious for.
Today, the response of the PRC’s state firms to the globaleconomic crisis has highlighted the socialistic aspects of theseenterprises. For example, the state firms have worked to protect theiremployees’ jobs, despite falling profits. In December, state-ownedcontainer production giant, China International Marine Containers(Group) Co. organized to put 22,000 employees on paid training for twomonths after orders for part of its product range dried up. No workerswere laid off. This is hardly the attitude that capitalist corporationslike BHP, Telstra, Qantas, Lend Lease and Pacific Brands are taking.
It is apparent that the PRC state-owned firms while swayed bymarket moods are not ultimately beholden to the cruel logic ofcapitalists. For example, everyone knows that when capitalists startseeing their profits dwindle by falling demand they cut back productionand slash investment in new plants. That is, after all, what arecession is all about. But in the PRC over the last year, the statefirms have been doing just the opposite. The effects of the globalcrisis meant that their profits fell by a whopping 30%. Yet theyrapidly stepped up production in this very same period– this isindicated by the fact that the total sales revenue of PRC stateenterprises (as opposed to profit) grew by 20 %.
The PRC’s state banks have also been behaving ratherdifferently to their capitalist counterparts abroad. One of the causesand effects of the global financial collapse is that the capitalistbanks have greatly curbed their lending. In the U.S. the banks haveshown little inclination to loosen their tight grip on credit evenafter Washington organized last October for $700 billion to be throwninto them. But in the PRC, the state-owned banks have been rapidlylending money. China’s largest bank, state-owned Industrial andCommercial Bank of China, spectacularly lent out last month over afifth of the total amount it lent in the whole of last year. Fifty ninepercent of the loans granted were to finance infrastructure projects.Such behaviour by this bank in the midst of a downturn would make nosense to profit-driven capitalists! But such a policy is good for theinterests of the Chinese masses as it helps to protect the overalleconomy during a downturn.
All this does not mean that the PRC’s state enterprises areanywhere near perfect. There is, indeed, a tendency among some stateenterprise executives to want to take their companies out of thecontrol of the workers state so that they can act like their greedyprivate sector counterparts. The struggle to constrain the stateenterprises to act in people’s interests is an important challenge forsocialist construction in China.
PRC – A Deformed Workers State
PRC state officials behave in some ways like the conservative officialsthat head most of our trade unions here. The more conservativeAustralian union officials as we know are reluctant to wage struggleagainst the capitalists. They would rather cut a deal over a nice lunchwith the bosses or pursue the purely legal means of the IndustrialRelations courts. When rank and file union militants and shop-floordelegates argue for industrial action, conservative officials oftenrespond by bureaucratically stopping the workers’ proposals from beingheard at union meetings. In certain cases, if they feel politicallythreatened by radical workers they have been known to organise for themilitants to be physically intimidated and threatened. The bureaucratshysterically argue that the militants are, by “provoking” the bosses,actually harming the workers’ interests.
In an analogous way, the PRC official seeks not to organise thedefeat of world capitalism but hopes to strike a compromise with it andwith capitalistic forces within China. When more staunchly pro-workingclass forces push for a harder line against capitalists they riskrepression – in some cases in a violent way. Like the Western tradeunion official who argues that “senseless” industrial action will makethe union vulnerable to attack, the PRC government/CPC bureaucrat oftencontends that mass workers’ action against capitalists will causedisorder that would endanger the workers state. Some of the bureaucratsactually themselves believe this claim while others are self-seekerslooking for a platform from which to leap into the capitalist classwhen the masses are not looking. The way that some PRC officials havetried to become capitalists has similarities to the way that formerACTU head Bill Kelty became a director of Lindsay Fox’s trucking empireand the way that John Robertson, having sold out the struggle againstelectricity privatisation, is now a minister in the capitalist NSWgovernment (even currently being responsible for the partialprivatisation of the state’s prison system!)
However, there is another side to the PRC bureaucracy just asthere is another side to our union officialdom. We know that sometimeseven conservative union leaders organise workers’ action against thecapitalists. Even sellouts like Greg Combet and Bill Kelty, albeit verypartially, did so when the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) wasattacked in 1998. After all, to the extent that these officials werethinking about their union positions and not their future careers theirjobs depended on the continuing existence of unions. Similarly, the PRCofficial’s position is based on the ongoing existence of a workersorganisation, in this case not merely a workers’ union but a wholeactual workers’ state. Thus, the PRC bureaucracy does sometimes takeaction to defend the workers’ interests – like when they crack down oncapitalist exploiters or when they stop the looting of collectivisedproperty by corrupt individuals. Just as we defend conservativeAustralian union bureaucrats when they actually organise struggle todefend our unions, we defend the PRC bureaucracy when it takes actionto defend the PRC workers state. Our critique of the ACTU unionbureaucracy is that it is not consistent in mobilising workers’ actionand that its conservative program hinders the required class struggleneeded to build our unions. Similarly, the Trotskyist critique of thecurrent PRC officialdom is that it is not consistent enough in stoppingthe capitalists from burrowing into the PRC and that it does notpolitically advocate class struggle against capitalism outside ofChina.
The contradictory nature of the PRC bureaucracy is seen in itsresponse to private sector workers’ strikes over the last few years.Sometimes Chinese governments, especially at the lower levels of localadministration, crack down on these struggles. But this is not auniform response. Local governments and local police who come down onworkers’ actions are in many cases criticised by higher levelgovernments. The central PRC government sometimes tacitly encourageslocal workers’ struggles in order to bring to heel despotic regionalgovernment heads. At other times striking workers are even more openlysupported by the state or at least by a section of the governmentofficials. In certain cases, workers’ picket lines and occupations havefinished up with the private bosses and not the employees gettingfined.
Encouraged by the nod and the wink that they occasionally getfrom central authorities, Chinese workers have organised an ever risingnumber of industrial struggles. Even according to figures published bythe DSP’s Green Left Weekly (5 September 2007) in the 19 yearsto 2005 labour disputes in China grew at an average of 27.3% per year.In 2006 there were reportedly 447,000 labour disputes in the country.The last several months has seen a series of workers actions inresponse to layoffs by privately owned manufacturers in Southernprovinces. Last year the number of labour disputes was 95% higher thanthe previous year. One of the most militant recent struggles was wagedby workers at the large Kader toy factory in Zhongtang Township inDongguan City. After the Hong Kong-based capitalist owners laid offhundreds of employees and scrimped on redundacy payouts, 500 workerspicketed at the company’s gate. Angry workers trashed the factoryoffices and that night the factory managers fled. When local policewere called in to stop the picket, workers were infuriated andoverturned a police vehicle and smashed at least four policemotorbikes. But notably, PRC central state media responded not bywhipping up a campaign against the militant workers but by tacitlybacking the Kader employees and by voicing their concerns. The officialChinese media quoted the Zhongtang township head, Li Zhihui who endedup blaming the company for the protest saying that the employer hadviolated the new Labour Law. Li concluded that “We [i.e. the townshipgovernment] will strictly abide by the labour contract law and preventfurther problems arising” (Xinhua, 26 November 2008.) Partly asa result of this government pressure, the company ended up agreeing totake back some of the laid off employees and to increase redundancypayouts for others.
In charge! Workers at the capitalist-owned Kader toy factoryin Dongguan City take over the factory office in November 2008 afterthe company announced redundancies. Workers trashed the offices andsent the managers fleeing. After government sympathy for the strikers,the company reversed some of the job cuts.
Alongside the increase in workplace claims against employers hascome a rapid development in the level of workplace organization ofChinese workers. PRC trade unions have spectacularly increased theirmembership from 123 million in 2003 to 209 million by June last year.Until a few years ago, China’s state sector was heavily unionized butin the private sector there was scarce union presence. But this ischanging. By last October 82% of companies run by major foreigninterests in China had been unionized.
This union recruitment drive has been encouraged by the CPCgovernment. Union strength is promoted by the 2008 Labour Law. The newlaw states that if a labour union objects to a revision of workplaceconditions in matters such as wages, leave, training etc the newregulation “shall be improved” by the employer. Meanwhile, the latestwave of union organizing in corporate giants such as Wal-Mart, IKEA,TNT, Kodak and Canon came after President Hu Jintao called in March2006 for unions to do a better job of building organizations inforeign-invested firms.
Now, anti-PRC leftists dismiss this state-sponsored union recruitmentcampaign as simply a case of Beijing trying to head off militancy bycorralling workers into the pro-CPC All China Federation of TradeUnions (ACFTU.) They say that the union building campaign, like theLabour Law, is simply another “concession” to workers struggle. Thereis some truth to this claim. But it is not the whole story. Even if onewas to argue that the ACFTU is a completely placid, monolithic,pro-regime beast the assembly of previously unorganised workers intoits collective organisations necessarily increases the class pride andsolidarity amongst workers. Thus, building up organizations like theACFTU is not a smart way of dousing the flames of labour demands. IfChina’s “rulers” were indeed “capitalists” they must really be the moststupid ones around. When real capitalists are forced into concessionsthey seek to divide workers by tactically buying off some - they don’t actively try and unite workers!
The PRC’s union-building campaign has automatically spurredself-activity by workers. Most notably, a grassroots campaign by theACFTU saw Wal-Mart workers at the Jinjiang Store in Quanzhou City,Fujian province become on 29 July 2006 the first workers in the worldto set up a trade union committee at a Walmart store. The U.S. ownedWal-Mart is the largest corporation in the world by revenue and isnotorious for its anti-union stance. A report by Australian labour lawresearcher Chris White (The Chinese Unionise Walmart, 2006) details how the set up of the first Wal-Mart union branch was prepared:
“In front of Wal-Mart exits, [ACFTU] organisers were active handing outflyers and leaflets urging joining. Union pamphlets showed the benefitsof joining with special offers for services. Local cadres met workersin restaurants and in their dormitories and homes at night. Reportscame in that young women were too scared to join, as management wouldsack or discriminate against them. Trade union cadres complained tomanagement pointing out the law allowing workers to join. Managementsaid their workers did not want to join. The union locally discussedhow to go forward. Wal-Mart’s rude and arrogant attitude was put in thenewspapers. Journalists reported the contest, leading to public outcry.”
An important factor in the efforts to build unions and crack down onhardline bosses has been the support of PRC state media. This was thecase with Wal-Mart. But other corporate giants like Microsoft, 3M andPwC have also been brought to task by PRC state media for resistingunionisation. As an article in the finance pages of The Australian(11 April 2008) lamented when quoting a Western lawyer who advisescapitalist companies in China: “Patti Walsh tells her clients in Chinathat if a union comes knocking, they should accept that they aredealing with the government”! At the recent ACFTU congress, unionchairman Wang Zhaoguo, who is also a member of the CPC Politburo,called for “giving more play to the role of the working class as themain force” in society (ACFTU website, 31 October 2008.)
With this message that they are the “main force in society”repeatedly emphasised, it is little surprise that toilers’ socialprotests in the PRC often quickly head towards a workers “takeover” ofwhole areas. In China, striking workers often occupy factories, blockpublic highways and take over the streets. A most famous example ofsuch a struggle occurred in Nanchong in Sichuan province in 1997. Therethe state-run Jianlihua silk factory (as part of rightist reforms thatforced many public enterprises to operate more according to marketdiscipline) had laid off employees and cut workers’ pay. Workers wereoutraged and especially furious at extravagance from the management inthese hard times (Living With Reform, Timothy Cheek). So as thegeneral manager prepared for a dubious official ‘inspection tour’ ofThailand with his wife, the workers took him hostage:
“They loaded Huang [the manager] into theback of a flatbed truck and forced him into the painful and demeaning‘airplane position’ – bent at the waist, arms straight out at thesides. Then they … paraded him though the streets [of Nanchong] justlike the Cultural revolution … Workers from other factories joined thespontaneous demonstration … 20,000 people took part.”Living With Reform, Timothy Cheek, 2006
The demonstration ended peacefully after 30 hours with thegovernment ordering that back pay be given to the workers through loansfrom the state-run bank.
Many Chinese workers understand that for all the problems inthe PRC it is still their society and they will ultimately decidethings. True, there are major forces, both internal and external withinthe administration and outside it that are trying to subvert workers’rule in China. The danger is very, very serious. But the Chineseworking class has not had its final say.
People gather at a square under the statue of Mao Zedong atShaoshan, the hometown of Mao in central China’s Hunan Province on Dec.26, 2008, to mark the 115th birthday of the former PRC leader.
Strengthen The Workers State!
The issue of whether the PRC is a capitalist state or a workers stateis the key question that determines what program socialists in Chinashould struggle for. The understanding that the PRC is a workers state,albeit one with serious deformations, means that pro-working classforces should not seek to undermine the PRC police, army, courts andcivic bodies but rather should seek to perfect these organs. The PRC’sstate institutions should be seen like a wayward friend – they are inneed of serious correction but we still support them. We should helpstrengthen these bodies by purging them of corruption and privilege andimproving them so that they will consistently serve the masses. Russianrevolutionary leader, V.I. Lenin explained the point precisely in a1921 article addressing the role of trade unions in the then youngSoviet workers state:“… it is obvious that under capitalism theultimate object of the strike struggle is to break up the state machineand to overthrow the given class state power. Under the transitionaltype of proletarian state, as ours is, however, the ultimate object ofevery action taken by the working class can be only to fortify theproletarian state and the proletarian class state power by combatingthe bureaucratic distortions, mistakes and flaws in this state, and bycurbing the class appetites of the capitalists who try to evade itscontrol, etc.”
Role and Functions of Trade Unions Under NEP, V.I. Lenin Collected Works
The fact that the PRC remains a workers state also determines theattitude that should be taken to those forces that call for “democracy”in China. In capitalist countries, communists support demands forgreater political freedoms as such liberties make it much easier forthe masses to organize resistance to the exploiting class. But in aworkers state the stance required is more complex. In workers states,Trotskyists call for honest and free discussion among pro-workers stateforces because such workers democracy is a key tool for buildingsocialism. However, we do not support giving greater political “rights”to pro-capitalist forces. In a world where most of the biggest powersremain under capitalist rule, “freely” operating pro-capitalist groupsin countries like Cuba and China would be able to ride a wave ofpolitical and financial resources from overseas backers. Furthermore,if the state institutions in these countries were turned fromexplicitly pro-communist, pro-working class ones to politically“neutral” institutions, then the “neutral” institutions would soon comeunder the sway of capitalists and would-be capitalists since it is theywho have the greatest wealth and most powerful overseas connections.Understanding all this, Russian, Polish, Czech etc anti-communists andtheir Western backers made the call for “democracy” (and the associateddemand for “separating state institutions” from communistorganizations) their main slogan in their 1980s-early 1990s drive todestroy the Soviet and East European workers states. Today, those whopush counterrevolution in China sing the same tune.
Recently, the Western media got all excited when Chineseanti-communist academics, lawyers and retired officials signed a“Charter 08,” program for counterrevolution in China. The Charter ismodeled on the Charter 77 formed by pro-NATO Czech politician VaclavHavel, the man who went on to lead the counterrrevolution thatdestroyed the Czechoslovakian workers state. As is typical, Charter 08is couched in calls for “democracy” and “human rights.” Democracy has,of course, from its inception in Ancient Athens been contingent on thetype of state wherein it is instituted: Athens was controlled by aruling class of slave-owners and true to form only male, slave-owninglandholders were given the right to vote there. Indeed, the end resultof the type of “democracy” that is envisaged by thecounterrevolutionaries of Charter 08 is given away in a section in thecharter titled, “Protection of Private Property.” The section calls forprivatizing China’s state-owned industrial and banking enterprises andfor privatizing the PRC’s collectively-owned land:
“We should establish and protect the rightto private property and promote an economic system of free and fairmarkets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce andindustry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We shouldestablish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to thenational legislature, that will monitor the transfer of state-ownedenterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderlymanner. We should institute a land reform that promotes privateownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, andallows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected inthe market.”
China’s Charter 08, The New York Review of Books Vol. 56, No. 1
Chinese leftists should organize protest demonstrations outside theoffices of prominent Charter 08 signatories. By condemning these opencounterrevolutionaries, such mass protests would also push the moremainstream rightists on to the back foot while putting the centrists onnotice that their accommodations to the right are not appreciated.Simultaneously, there need to be campaigns to directly curb thepolitical influence of the mainstream right. Capitalist entrepreneurswho are seated in China’s parliaments are getting too cheeky. That iswhy communists should call for all private bosses – that is, allexploiters of labour – to be banned from seats in the PRC’s nationaland local parliaments.
To curb capitalist political incursions, the economic power of thecapitalists must also be curtailed. No watering down of the pro-workerprovisions of the Labour Law should be permitted. Workers andunemployed workers should form action committees to investigate privateemployers so as to ensure the strict implementation of the Labour Lawand to expose any government officials that corruptly collaborate withprivate bosses. Such workers committees would welcome into their ranksthose members of the Chinese police forces, army and labour authoritieswho want to be involved. To ensure that such grassroots organisationsdo not get hijacked by counterrevolutionaries seeking to simply disruptthe socialistic order, the committees would make clear from the outsetthat their goal is to strengthen the workers state.
The way to put more teeth into pro-worker laws is to call forall private bosses that violate the Labour Law to be severely punishedby having their enterprises nationalised without compensation. Workersshould be organised to occupy the factories of offending enterprises inorder to spur on such nationalisations. Nationalisation of parts of theprivate sector is a key way of ensuring stable employment for workersin this time of uncertainty. PRC state-owned enterprises, unlikeprivate ones, can be more easily controlled to meet social needs likethe urgent goal of full employment. Chinese workers should agitate forsome of the private firms that close down during the crisis to havetheir plants taken over by the state, consolidated together and thenreopened as state-owned enterprises.
Simultaneously, existingstate-owned workplaces must take on more staff, including throughshortening the workweek of existing employees. All these measures will,of course, require the expenditure of state financial resources. Thatis why the pressure to make further tax concessions for ailing privatefirms should be strongly resisted. Instead, taxation of the rich shouldbe increased including through the introduction of a steep capitalgains tax on real estate and share market trading.
To mobilize toward all these goals will require a workingclass with a high degree of class consciousness. The Chinese workingclass is deeply egalitarian. However, its understanding of the need toorganize completely separately from the capitalists has been sapped bydecades of the CPC pushing the idea that some “good capitalists” can beallies in the fight for socialism. The way the CPC has posed the issuemuddles things up. Exploitation and capitalism are not simply a matterof evil, selfish motives. Rather, they are physical facts based on astructure of production where private individuals own the means ofproduction and make profit from other people: their employees, labour.A private boss may personally be either a nice person or a dirt bag(although the nature of what they to do heavily leans them towardsbecoming the latter.) Regardless, the private employer’s interest inextracting profit from workers’ labour is counterposed to the interests of the working class which is to retain the fruits of its own work.
In the early years of this century, previous Chinese leaderJiang Zemin formally allowed capitalists to become members of the CPC.This was as part of his theory of the “Three Represents.” Jiang saidthat some capitalists were also contributing to China’s socialistconstruction. Now, certainly a workers state may need to use individualcapitalists for economic reasons during the period of transition tosocialism. But the nature of how capitalists derive their incomemeans that even these capitalists necessarily have an interest in theperpetuation of production for private profit. Thus, regardless ofwhether we may have to temporarily cooperate with them in economicwork, all private bosses cannot but be political opponents inthe long-term fight for socialism. They have no place in a party thatis meant to politically lead the struggle for socialism.
It is good that even after the emergence of the ”ThreeRepresents” policy, only a tiny minority of the CPC are indeedcapitalists. But the embrace of even a small number of capitalistsmuddies the class struggle consciousness of working class CPC members.After all, the Communist Party is meant to help guide the working classon its long march away from the degradations of capitalism throughsocialism and ever onwards towards the great goal of a classless,stateless communist society. So how, then, is a working person meant toview the presence of even one capitalist in the echelons of the Partywhere that capitalist can conspire to stray the people away from thispath for the sake of his filthy profits or, even worse, capitalistrestoration itself. That is why all private bosses should be removedfrom membership of the CPC. On the other hand, professionals and theself-employed should continue to be welcomed into the CPC, providedthat they decisively junk any ambitions they may have had of becomingfuture capitalists and on condition that they commit themselves tofighting for a wholly working-class oriented program. The Chinesetoilers need a party that is based on the uncompromising class struggleprinciples and glorious internationalism of the CPC when it was firstfounded in 1921.
Tibetanvillagers dance to celebrate the announcement of the annual SerfsEmancipation Day and little wonder! In the days of the old order underthe Dalai Lama, the majority of the rural population were serfs, littlebetter than slaves & without schooling or medical care. In thosedays, Drepung monastery was one of the world’s biggest landowners withits 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures & 16,000 herdsmen.The Dalai Lama himself lived richly in his 1000-room, 14-story PotalaPalace. Tashì-Tsering, a victim of repeated rape beginning at age nine,reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexuallymistreated in the monasteries. (Goldstein, Siebenschuh Tashì-Tsering,The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering,1997.) In 1959, the year Tibetan serfs were finally liberated, anexhibition was held to demonstrate the torture equipment that had beenused by the Tibetan overlords: handcuffs of all sizes including smallones for children, instruments for cutting off noses & ears,gouging out eyes, breaking off hands & hamstringing legs, hotbrands, whips & special implements for disemboweling. (A.L. Strong,Tibetan Interviews, 1959.)
The Most Important Political Issue in the World
Of course, it is all well and good for Marxists living inthe West to advocate what they think the Chinese masses should do butwhat really counts is what stance we take with respect to PRC relatedmatters in our own countries. And our stance here actually matters alot. The main pressure for capitalist counterrevolution that bears uponthe PRC comes from the outside. It comes from Western officialsdemanding that China privatize its key industries, from internationalanti-communist condemnations about “human rights,” from things like theattempts to sabotage the Beijing Olympic torch relay and from theanti-China military build up of the U.S and her allies. It is the dutyof socialists in the West to relieve this counterrevolutionarypressure.
Unfortunately, at the moment, most Western far-left groups areactually adding their weight behind the anti-PRC forces. Last April,the DSP actively mobilised for the anti-PRC so-called “Free Tibet”protests that accompanied the Beijing Olympics torch relay in Canberra.In doing so, they were indistinguishable from anti-communist liberalsthat naively want to bestow upon the Tibetan people the overthrownDalai Lama-led slave/serf owning nobility. Worse still, the DSP endedup standing in the anti-PRC rallies on the same side as large numbersof die-hard Vietnamese anti-communists. The latter were bearing flagsof the defeated U.S.-puppet regime in South Vietnam as a symbol oftheir hatred for pro-communist rule in both China and Vietnam. Alsothere as part of the anti-PRC bloc was the right-wing Falun Gong groupwho made a point of burning the communist hammer and sickle red flag.
The RSP which for completely different reasons split from theDSP soon after the torch relay has not, in any of the voluminousdocuments arising from the split, distanced itself in the slightestfrom the DSP’s prominent anti-PRC stance. Through this silence the RSPhas essentially consented to the anti-communist campaign that theirformer group was part of. RSP and DSP members ought to consider theincisive comments on the question of the anti-PRC torch relay proteststhat were made by their mutual idol, Cuban Revolution leader FidelCastro. In a 31 March 2008 statement titled “The Chinese Victory,”Castro wrote:
“Until the Second World War, the UnitedStates considered it [Tibet] a part of China and even brought pressuresto bear on England in this connection. Following the war, however, theysaw it as a religious stronghold that could be used against communism.
”When the People’s Republic of China implemented the agrarian reform onTibetan soil, the elite saw its properties and interests undermined andopposed the measures. This led to an armed uprising in 1959. Tibet’sarmed rebellion —as opposed to those in Guatemala, Cuba and othernations, where fighting took place under truly harsh conditions— wasprepared for years by US secret services….
” The Dalai Lama, bestowed with the US Congress’ Gold Medal, praisedGeorge W. Bush for his efforts in defense of freedom, democracy andhuman rights....
“Why is imperialism so intent on forcing China, directly or indirectly, to lose its international significance?…
“The campaign orchestrated against China is like a bugle call aimed atunleashing an attack on the country’s well-earned success and againstits people, who will host the next Olympic Games.
“The Cuban government issued a declaration categorically expressing itssupport of China in connection with the campaign undertaken against iton the issue of Tibet. This was the right stance to assume.”
“I respect the Dalai Lama’s right to believe, but I am not obliged to believe in the Dalai Lama.
“I do have many reasons to believe in China’s victory.”
Leftists in the West need to go through apainful reorientation of their stance on the PRC. Trotskyist Platform(TP) is willing and ready to be a part of this clarification process.In late 2006 we organized a demonstration outside the Sydneyheadquarters of the Carlyle Group in solidarity with the (ultimatelysuccessful) campaign by Chinese leftists to stop the Carlyle-ledprivatisation of state-owned Xugong Construction Machinery. Then lastyear, TP actively stood against the anti-PRC mobilizations thatpreceded the Beijing Olympics. Today, TP calls for the building ofunited front campaigns to oppose Western demands for China toliberalise its economy, to expose anti-communist, anti-PRC propagandaand to support particular pro-working class measures taken by the PRClike its new Labour Law. Such a united-front, pro-Red China movementshould seek to include the CPA, Trotskyist Platform and pro-communistimmigrant groups but must then actively broaden out to win a section ofthe Cuba solidarity movement as well as Marxist activists within theunion movement.
The question of the PRC is the globe’s biggest politicalissue. In part this is because China has 20% of the planet’s people aswell as the world’s fastest growing economy. But most importantly, nomatter how skewed and uncertain its construction of socialism, thedevelopment of the pro-communist PRC brings to the fore the issue ofcommunism versus capitalism. Those in the West that call themselvescommunist must take the communist side on the question of the PRC. Theoutcome of events in the PRC will heavily weigh, on one side oranother, the balance of forces between exploiters and exploited inevery country. Here, it will shape the struggle for workers rights, thefight to oppose Western imperialism in the Middle East and the strugglefor Aboriginal rights. That is part of the reason why it is so urgentthat Marxists here in Australia stand for the defence of the PRCagainst capitalist counterrevolutionary forces and imperialist militarypressure.
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发表于 2009-9-13 16:51
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发表于 2009-9-14 19:51
