Roland Boer's Blog, page 30

Xinhua News interview

A few days before the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, I did an interview with a correspondent from Xinhua News – China’s major national news provider (comparable to Australia’s ABC or the UK’s BBC, but with far greater resources).

If you are interested, you can find the text on Xinhua News.

Xi Jinping is serious about Marx: Speech celebrating the 200th anniversary

Finally, it seems as though commentators in other parts of the world are noticing that Xi Jinping is serious indeed aboout Marx. He gave a major speech on Marx, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth and 170 years since the publication of the Communist Manifesto. While the translation of the speech is not yet available, you can find the Chinese version here at the CPC website. Newspaper reports can also be found, such as the one here and here.

And there is a video summary here:

Views from the Common People: Appreciating Xi Jinping

One of the problems of spending time in universities and research institutions is that you lose touch with everyday realities. Think of the nerd at school, who was always top of the class and a complete social misfit – all of them ended up in such places. I am no exception, but I also find the context alienating and weird. So to get a sense of what life is like for the vast majority, I travel on buses, metros, trains, I walk the streets in cities and the countryside, talking at length with wo...

Codes and Conspiracies, or, Trying to Understand the Infantile Disorder of ‘Left-Wing’ Communism

From time to time, I try to understand those who believe that China has made or is still making a transition from socialism to capitalism. Earlier, I explored the orientalist dimensions of this belief, as well as the reliance on a ‘betrayal narrative’, but here I would like to focus on the need to rely on codes. In brief: all of the statements by the CPC, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, function as a code. They say one thing but actually mean something else. So what one needs is the key to...

The best photos are from Rodong Sinmun

Of all the footage and photographs taken at the major summit held three days ago at Panmunjom, the best photos can be found on the DPRK news site, Rodong Sinmun. They capture far better the mood of the meeting.

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Text of joint declaration of inter-Korean summit

Here is the first (and unofficial) translation of the joint declaration signed by Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in. This is quite clearly an initiative taken by the two parts of Korea without outside interference – as has been the long-standing policy in the north. Indeed, it embodies all of the principles for reunification already stated by Kim Il Sung in 1972: a peaceful process; a bicameral system that accepts the other’s development; to be undertaken by Korea without outside interference. Of c...

Spin in overdrive: trying to credit Trump with Kim Jong Un’s initiative

Let us get the facts straight: the meeting just held between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in – with each leader setting foot on the ground of the other’s country – was the result of Kim Jong Un’s new year address, on which I commented earlier. Moon Jae-in, from South Korea, responded. After a series of interactions, the two have met, shaken hands and expressed a sincere desire to resolve the Korean issue once and for all – between the two of them.

But what do you expect? A concerted effort to cre...

A Marxist Trap? The Danger of Economics Imperialism, or, How to Understand a Socialist Market Economy

I am slowly thinking through a framework for understanding a socialist market economy. Earlier, I have outlined the results of historical work, especially relating to market economies in ancient Southwest Asia and the ancient Mediterranean. In these contexts there were market economies, but not capitalist market economies (or a capitalist mode of production, as Marx puts it). Instead, the Persians had what may be called a military market economy, while the Greeks and Romans had a slave market...

The Origins of the Belt and Road Initiative

A mountain cannot turn, but a road can (shan bu zhuan lu zhuan).

So goes an old Chinese saying.

And another: A friend made is a road paved; an enemy created is a wall built (jiaoge pengyou duo tiao lu, shuge diren duo du qiang)

I have begun with these sayings, since they indicate how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) arises from Chinese tradition and culture. But this is not all, for it also emerges from Chinese socialism. Both are relevant in a creative interaction.

Before explaining, it is...

Engels and the revolutionary potato

Every now and then you say or write something you may well come to regret. Engels was a mortal like the rest of us. As I have been rereading his flawed gem, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, I came across this gem:

Iron came to be utilised by man, the last and most important of all raw materials to play a revolutionary role in history, the last—if we exclude the potato (MECW 26: 262).

Of course, in the context of brutal British imperialism, especially in Ireland, the...