A Conversation about 'Communism'
Ignorance is simply ignorance
Two highly knowledgeable friends, Amarynth at GlobalSouth and intellectual gadfly, TP Wilkinson are currently discussing our extraordinary lack of understanding of China’s political system. They gave me permission to share this excerpt with you. Formatting and editing errors are entirely mine:
"On this day 48 years ago, Mao Zedong died at the age of 82. Mao brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in one of the most extraordinary moments in Chinese history. The peasant turned revolutionary led the Chinese revolution, transforming the country from a poverty-stricken feudal nation into a socialist society. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping led a coup that started the restoration of capitalism in China. Modern day China now continues this legacy of revisionism by using communist ideas to disguise capitalist exploitation."
Amarynth: The quote above came to me from a channel and I was amazed. People do not understand that China is a socialist country building on becoming a full-on communist country and that this is a process.
TP Wilkinson: I have argued elsewhere that
Nowhere does divine writ prescribe what “communism“ should look like. There is a tendency to turn it into a substitute for religious salvation. It is not, although there have always been secular redemptionists among the Left who treat political economy as a sphere of transcendental faith rather than a praxis. This is also the legacy of the Latin Church in Western culture.
Quantity becomes quality: there are absolutely no classical Western theorists of any shade who have ever had to imagine the organization and governance of anything bigger than a village or joint stock company. No theories available to these closet utopians (utopia means “nowhere”) have ever addressed the scale of China as a polity. Never mind that the theories hardly are applied in their countries of origin.
The meaning of “Chinese characteristics” is precisely that: the governance of China interpreted through the rhetorical-theoretical scheme of Chinese communism. That is why, unlike with Western theories, there are no Chinese proselytizers.
It is worth asking perhaps, with which other “communist” country should one compare China to measure how “communist” it is?
Now as to the question of exploitation of labor (or the environment), there is nothing in the prevailing economic practice anywhere to even suggest the absence of exploitation. Supposedly “free” people are notorious for exploiting themselves.
The process
What does it mean to say that the Chinese (or another social formation) is engaged in a process? Here a bit of basic science would help. All human perception is based on simplification or the creation of patterns. That means it is impossible to react to the world as a whole. Daily life comprises simplification to create any kind of routine so that events (in the broadest sense) can be predicted. In other words so that the response to what are inevitably different days can be simplified lots of detail (the differences) have to be ignored. As long as a person or persons judge that routine to be adequate the simplification may prevail. But it remains a fiction.
Like all fictions it can just as easily be abandoned in favor of another. The process is the selection of what is perceived and response to that perception. It is ongoing (until death) and unstable because there is nothing immanent (or holy) in the world to tell us what the “right perceptions” are. Of course redemptionists and other religiously oriented people will dispute this.
China is not the holy land.
It is some 1.3 billion people under the government of a historically developed cultural product precipitated as the Chinese Communist Party. It is a unique organisation in a unique country. It has not and cannot produce the salvation that far too many expect when they hear or see „socialism“ or „communism“.
It can be measured by the results- especially by the perception of those results among the inhabitants/citizens. The measurements by China‘s inhabitants will obviously (for the majority) be in li, not in miles, so to speak.
China has always been part of the world economy. For most of recorded history it has been the core of that system. The two centuries in which it was marginalized are an exceptional period that is clearly at an end.
It seems to me wholly inadequate to judge the center of the world by the standards of peripheral (ephemeral) theories by whatever name. Rather “communism” is better defined by what China makes of it.
Dr. T. P. Wilkinson. 魏三唐
"Practice with the impossible is preparation for the necessary."
Communism--from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs--is a goal. It is frankly utopian, but it is nonetheless to be striven for, just as perfection--which can't be achieved--is a worthy aspiration. Socialism is the period of transition between Capitalism and this far-off goal. It is struggle, it is contradictions, it is experimentation. It is two steps forward and one step back, it is mistakes and it is triumphs. The notion of Communism may be utopian, but the way toward it-- socialism--is not. Marxism is scientific socialism--it's figuring out what works best for the maximum development of the gifts, talents and aspirations of the people. It is finding a practical path forward through historical and contemporary circumstances, context, and contradictions. That's what China understands, and that's what China is doing. Das Capital is a critique of Capitalism. It explains how it works and what it does. But finding our way to a better world on the other side of Capitalism is up to us. And without the discipline, solidarity, and leadership of a flexible, practical, clear-thinking Communist Party--which is loyal to lifting up the great mass of people--chances of achieving that better world are very slim.