Roland Boer's Blog, page 40

Countdown to the CPC 19th congress

Even if you were in total hibernation, you couldn’t miss the fact that the CPC’s 19th congress opens here in two days with a major speech from Xo Jinping.

Security is super-tight (another level of that extremely complex Chinese word, anquangan), with almost a million local people – often retirees – involved in keeping an eye on things, all party members in the city on roster at major sites, and of course extra internet security.

Along with the banners all over China and the shorthand ‘shijiud...

Ecosocialism in action, and further items on the CPC 19th congress

Some time ago (2001) Michael Löwy and Joel Kovel put together the first Ecosocialist Manifesto. Since then there have been subsequent revisions and versions. However, neither of them have much time for the Chinese Communist Party, which is a shame really. Even the corporate media has been forced to take notice of what can only be called ecosocialism in action, as can be found here. What interests me in all of this is that it is precisely a strong socialist state that can drive through such pr...

Myopia of Western Marxism: Trying to reinvent socialism without its history

A perverse piece by John Quiggin in The Guardian the other day, called ‘Socialism with a Spine‘. I cannot quite figure out if Quiggin is hitching his economics to Marxism at a convenient moment or whether some deeper affinity lurks somewhere. And I leave aside his strange effort to call European social democracy of the 1950s and 1960s ‘socialism’. Instead, what is striking is that he completely ignores a century of actual and complex efforts to construct socialism around the world – apart fro...

19th Congress of the CPC: Poverty Reduction

The 19th congress of the CPC will get underway in a few days here in Beijing. Security is super-tight at all levels, and a new website and wechat account will be available on Wednesday: http://19th.cpcnews.cn and cpcnews19th.

It will be an absolutely fascinating event of global significance, since China is now the most powerful socialist country in world history. But what will be on the agenda? Heaps, obviously, but the trend of news cycles is a good indication.

Let me begin with poverty redu...

CPC Nineteenth Congress

What a great time to be in Beijing. In about two weeks the most important Communist Party congress in history will take place here. It is the nineteenth congress of the CPC, which will assess developments over the last five years and lay out plans for the next five. Preparations have been underway for a year or more, not least being the long process of electing the 2,287 delegates. For more information on the election process, see Xinhua news.

Different ways to interpret the Marxist tradition

In recent discussion in China, I have become more aware of different ways the Marxist tradition can be interpreted. You can take any core feature, such as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the withering away of the state, the distinction between socialism and communism, the nature of the socialist state, and many more.

For example, Marx uses the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ 11 times, where he means a coercive force of the state that crushes class opponents. This is in tension with his...

A tendency among some foreign Marxists visiting China

I have commented on this one from time to time before, but every now and then I encounter foreign Marxist who come to China with a preset idea of what socialism should be. Inevitably, China today does not fit the definition, so it cannot – they think – be socialist. This assumption also applies to pretty much any other place in the world that has had a socialist revolution.

But then a question arises? What do you make of some of the categories of Chinese Marxism: Marxist political economy as...

Why do Chinese people like Angela Merkel?

This one came as a surprise to me, although it shouldn’t really. Many Chinese people are rather fond of Angela Merkel, whom they call Moke’er dama (dama being a term of respectful affection for an older woman, especially one’s father’s elder brother’s wife).

Why? As one person put it: ‘Merkel grew up in a socialist country. She looks and plans in a long-term way’. And another: ‘Among Western leaders, she understands the Chinese theory “seeking truth from facts” the best’.

Of course, it helps...

Enmeshment: An Effort to Understand Chinese Socialism

In the aftermath of workshop on the ‘Socialist State’, I have been thinking about the category of enmeshment in order to understand Chinese socialism. It came up at various points in the workshop.

For example, in a discussion over the issue of public and private ‘ownership’ in economic matters, one of the Chinese participants pointed out that the opposition does not make sense in a Chinese context. Instead, the reality of a ‘socialist market economy’ is one way to think about the situation di...

Socialism in Power Workshop

Renmin Workshop on Socialism in Power

23-24 September 2017

Paper Abstracts

Roger Markwick

(School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle)

Failures and Successes: Soviet and Chinese State-Socialist Reforms in the Face of Global Capitalism

Abstract: The demise of the Soviet Union and the seeming success of China’s reforms in the 1980s and 1990s is a study in contrasts. This paper will compare the approaches adopted by the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties to the reform of...