June 30, 2010
China-Fetishism and the Usefulness of History
Via Dave Semple, I’m alerted to a recent bit of China-fetishism at the Socialist Unity blog. Actually, by the standards of China-adoration this piece isn’t particularly egregious. On the face of things you’d do well to distinguish this from a China People’s Daily article. Except that Chinese propaganda tends to shy away from explicit statements about the means of economic organisation, insofar as that might suggest there are working alternative systems.
It can seem mystifying that self-identified (hard) leftists turn to China as a laudable example of counter-capitalism. Because it’s astonishingly obvious that China’s massive economic development of the past 20 years has not been achieved via anything like communism or the collectivisation of the means of production.
Rather, it’s been achieved by the CCP deciding to allow a form of capitalist activity to take place within fairly controlled sections of the economy, where the state remains a key player with (part-)ownership of industries whilst a new class of western-style entrepreneurs and businessmen have been allowed to emulate (in particular) Anglophone capitalist practices.
The means of production have not been collectivised (or rather they were collectivised and that resulted in famines and a peasant-level economy), and the means of production are not in the hands of the proletariat. On the contrary, the enormous proletariat subsists with no labour rights, no rights to free speech, no rights to free press or association and no right to choose – or remove – the country’s leaders. As well as myriad human rights abuses, this also ensures no proper political accountability, allowing for the possibility of disasters such as this. Even the capitalist class walks on eggshells: a multi-billionaire today, but piss-off the wrong CCP official and your property can be seized in an instant tomorrow, appropriated by a state upholding no meaningful contract law or property rights.
China-fetishists usually reply that Chinese economic development has lifted millions out of poverty (which it has). But this is usually used as a fig-leaf to ignore the CCP’s systematic rights abuses such as forcibly relocating entire villages to provide cheap labour for new economic projects, or razing entire cities to the ground to facilitate 5-year plans regardless of who happens to be living there. And given that – as above – poverty reduction is not the result of socialism but of a hybrid of extreme American-style capitalism in the economy combined with top-down Stalinist authoritarianism in politics and society, it’s difficult to see how the “but there are fewer poor Chinese now” reply can be used as a socialist/Marxist defence. Oh, and it’s also inconsistent: western capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty, so if that’s the mark of a desirable economic-political system why fetishise China in particular?
What we’re seeing on the modern far left, of course, is the time-tested practice of ignoring inconvenient facts in order to adhere rigidly to a political ideology – namely some variant of Marxism – that is predicated upon condemning Western capitalism as the worst form of socio-political arrangement. Quite logically (at least, within the paradigm), “better” alternatives are sought out in existing world regimes…ironically going against the work of Marx himself, who argued that communism would develop (gradually or via revolution) out of mature capitalist regimes.
Such ignoring or inconvenient facts by the chaps at Socialist Unity – or for that matter Ken Livingstone, his former adviser John Ross, or pop economist Philippe Legrain – is in this day and age of no particular importance beyond intellectual frustration. But in other times and places the adherence to ideology over inconvenient fact has had altogether more sinister outcomes.
Being on the wrong side of such ideologists in the Russia of 1922, the Catalonia of 1937-8, or the Czechoslovakia of 1948 (to pick three examples from hundreds) would be as good as a death sentence. The 20th Century stands as a marked warning to the dangers of ideology unfettered by fact, and the terrible things this can induce individual human beings – of left and right – to do. As Anthony Beevor puts it at the end of his history of the Spanish Civil War:
“Ideological and religious invocations deliberately tried to make the violence abstarct. There was said to have been a sweet-natured youth among Moscardo’s defenders at Toledo, who was called the Angel of the Acazar because before firing his rifle he used to cry, ‘Kill without hate!’ This depersonalisation existed on the republican side as well. David Antona, a CNT leader, said that ‘the bullets which ended the lives of the officers at the Montana barracks did not kill men, they killed a whole social system’. People were encouraged to submerge their identity and individual responsibility into causes with either mystical or superhuman auras…It was this dehumanization of the enemy which made the war so terrible, along, of course, with the modern weapons and the tactics of terror aimed against civilian populations.”
The economic, social and political failures of 20th Century communist systems were enormous (whatever the real, but ultimately far lesser, faults of capitalism). The persistent refusal to acknowledged this – and to act towards China as Soviet apologists did towards Russia 70 years ago – rather implies that contemporary China apologists should be taken outside, lined up against the wall…and forced to read some bloody histoy.
Pun intended.
Tim Worstall said,
June 30, 2010 at 9:08 am
“Rather, it’s been achieved by the CCP deciding to allow a form of capitalist activity to take place within fairly controlled sections of the economy,”
One description of how it’s happened (Tim Harford I think) has been that the State owned sector is still there, still being directed. But the restrictions were taken off the non State sector: this has then grown fabulously (and not without the pain and grief you mention) leaving the State sector still there, still about the size it was, with 5 year plans and all the rest. But just a much smaller part of a much larger economy.
As an analogy, in hte same way the UK’s manufacturing sector is still there, just that services have grown much faster, leaving manufacturing as large as it was (just about in the UK’s sense) but a very much smaller part of a larger economy.
Paul Sagar said,
June 30, 2010 at 9:22 am
Tim,
That’s a fairly reasonable description, I suppose. But it just reinforces my point: growth in China is being achieved by capitalism, so it’s bizarre that the loony left should laud it as an example of socialism. It’s depressing that they do so in the face of the myriad human rights abuses that the remaining authoritarianism guarantees and sustains.
In Western capitalist societies, the transition to capitalism was gradual and went hand-in-hand (I think for necessary reasons) with greater freedoms for individuals. There’s just no reason why the story will repeat in China: the CCP is reaping the benefits of capitalism without having to relinquish its grip on social control. Singapore never went demoratic after going (quasi?) capitalist – I see no reason to lazily assume China will.
Clifford Singer said,
June 30, 2010 at 12:33 pm
But isn’t John Ross’s key point that this is a crisis of investment – and that China has avoided this by making its state-owned banks invest (rather than ineffectually pleading with them)? So China isn’t growing in spite of its state sector but because of it. I think that narrower economic argument is worth engaging with even while rightly attacking China-fetishism and the disregard of human rights abuses.
Paul Sagar said,
June 30, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Clifford,
Yes, I recall John Ross saying such things at the “Progressive London” event last January. He seemed to think it was the end of an argument. My thought was “yes John, in China the banks lend when they are told to because otherwise the bank managers are shot. Personally, I’d rather live in a world where banks can refuse to lend than one in which the state uses violence to secure whatever means it desires”.
However, the argument that “China isn’t growing in spite of its state sector but because of it” is fair enough, in the narrow sense that JR is targetting, but it doesn’t really touch my point above: which is that this “state-driven” growth is not socialism or anything like it. It’s a horrible hybrid of capitalism (inc. all the vast inequalities and concentrations of wealth) plus the authoritarianism of stalinist command economics (albeit targetted in very specific ways, unlike what happened in the USSR) plus totalitarian politics for ordinary people. Which raises the question: why are so-called socialists so keen to sing China’s praises?
On a further note: we know that the state/state sector can secure growth under circumstances – c.f. the New Deal in 1930s America. What’s so special about China that Ross is so keen to overlook the way it secures its state-driven growth? Apart, of course, from the horrors of the way it does things. And to recur to my initial point: I really don’t want to live in a country in which banks lend because otherwise their CEOs die. So I have a fairly fundamental objection with Ross pointing to China and saying “oh look they do it better because they get the banks to lend!” Yes, we are angry with bankers here in Britain right now. But let’s be careful where we go looking for answers…
Grace said,
July 1, 2010 at 12:33 am
“On a further note: we know that the state/state sector can secure growth under circumstances – c.f. the New Deal in 1930s America.”
A fair few proper economists disagree – eg see this paper by Christina Romer, Chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=226730
She doesn’t think the fiscal stimulus was very important at all – instead recovery was secured by monetary expansion. eg this graph http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/wp-content/uploads/romer.jpg
So that isn’t an undisputed, standard fact.