FOR a man who purveyed little more than warmed over supply side economics and a stress on the need for religiously-rooted morality, Irving Kristol – who has died aged 89 – was idolised on the transatlantic political right to an extent entirely out of proportion with any distinctive intellectual contribution to their cause.
Given that he remains little known to the public in this country, the extent of the coverage given to the passing of the godfather of neoconservatism over here comes as something of a surprise.
Thus the likes of Daniel Finkelstein can rhapsodise about ‘what made Irving Kristol great’, without providing any evidence of greatness, other than general misantrophic grumpiness harnessed behind the cause of reaction and somehow served up as profundity.
If anything, Kristol was more of an organiser than an ideas man, acting as publisher for the journals that first got the neocon message across. That’s no bad thing from the right’s point of view; all political currents need people together enough make things happen.
But what I suspect the right really likes about him is his backstory; while Kristol coined the soundbite that a neoconservative is ‘a liberal who has been mugged by reality’, he was in fact a Trot mugged by conservatism, and then brutally beaten out of all recognition.
What will be of most interest to Dave’s Part readers is Kristol’s journey from far left to far right. This man made opposition to Soviet totalitarianism the fulcrum of his political thought, thus evolving seamlessly from young anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialist to hardline anti-communist old man, while still retaining some level of consistency.
Back in the 1930s, of course, Kristol was a teenage member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, at a time when that organisation was in close contact with Trotsky himself in Mexico City.
In 1940, Kristol lined up with the breakaway minority opposition around Max Shactman, along with noted philosopher James Burnham and subsequently famous novelist Saul Bellow, both later to move to the right.
Shachtman himself supported the Bay of Pigs incursion in Cuba and the Vietnam war, and by 1972, implicitly endorsed Republican anti-communist Richard Nixon. A number of other big name neocons were associated with Shachtman in their youth, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.
When I first got involved in the labour movement, elderly East End tankies routinely offered admonition that such line of motion was nascent within the Trotskyist DNA. Any word of criticism of actually existing socialism was tantamount to the first step down the road to reactionary Toryism. I suspect some on the left believe something pretty like that, even today.
Yet it is always impossible to know exactly what drives any individual down the path from right to left. As the Brooklyn-born son of Jewish immigrant garment workers, Kristol’s life story was clearly not another instance the standard posh boy university flirtation with paper-selling.
Ultimately I think the answer lies in both generational and national factors. Radical politics in the US in the cold war years, especially the McCarthyite 1950s, was subject to specific pressures which the British left was not forced to endure. In the UK, careerists always had the option of social democracy. Under our system, pensioned off former Cliffites can easily end up in the House of Lords.
But in the final analysis, the right loves Kristol because he started out as one of ours, and ended up as one of them, taking numerous other clever individuals along with him for the trip.
Posted at 14:05, 22 September 2009
Comments (55)
"This man made opposition to Soviet totalitarianism the fulcrum of his political thought, thus evolving seamlessly from young anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialist to hardline anti-communist old man, while still retaining some level of consistency."
Is this the trajectory you are on Dave?
It might be the trajectory that some members of Workers' Liberty are on. On the other hand, maybe that rabid, obsessive, paranoid Stalinophobia can exist in its own right without developing into anti-socialist, anti-communist conservatism. As far as I'm concerned it's a mirror image of the "kitsch" Stalinism they complain about.
Are you suggesting that to be the case, Andy? You haven't been dubbed 'Andy NewMao' for nothing.
I prefer to turn around the tired phrase by describing a revolutionary as a reformist mugged by reality, but maybe that's just me.
I'm not sure that the parallel between Decents and the likes of Kristol stands up to much scrutiny, still less the trajectory of the AWL, if anything it's obsessive hatred of the SWP that seems to animate them more than anything.
There is one good thing about his career.
In the end "one of thiers" snuffed it, not "one of ours".
GW
Part of it is that true believers hardly ever end up in the middle, they just switch whatever their religion / ideology is.
I've read that neocons believed in and tried to emulate Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution.
There were of course plenty of people from the 'Shachtman' group who didn't move to the right, notably Hal Draper and the 'New Politics' people.
Bob,
Whatever you are reading, put it down.
Kristol was briefly a student Trotskyist but then moved to the neo liberal right. He must be a hero of Modernity or Denham.
I have nothing but contempt for Kristol, and the other neo-cons, but they follow a rather predictable pattern, a brief period of radicalism, plenty of shouting then they become the pillars of the establishment, in one way or the other.
British politics is littered with them from Kate Hoey, one time IMGer to Orange lodge groupie, Peter Hitchens, ex-SWPer now homophobic right-wing bigot on the Mail, Roger Rosewell one time IS/SWP industrial organizer to bagman for the Tory, Lady Porter.
It is a middle class compulsion to rebel, for a moment, and then to conform and seek the bosom of power.
There's probably plenty more examples.
It is normally the shouty ones that you have to look out for, they find the ready made ideologies of the establishment easy to digest just as they did with their cheapo grasp of Leninism and vulgar Marxism, it saves them having to think too much.
On top of that, being middle class they bring with them a peculiarity to tell others what to do, a certain type of innate bossiness and an inability to relate to ordinary people, which makes them almost perfect political activists and also, in the end, failures.
Awww, c'mon Mod, where's your sense of humour?
There have been renegades ever since the start of the socialist movement. Doing an autopsy on them is a task that is necessary and unpleasant, yet strangely fascinating -- a bit like a biologist poking through the putrid remains of some formerly unknown animal.
The 'neocons were all youthful Trots' shtick is a bit hackneyed; not all the Shachtmanites who moved rightwards ended up as proto-neocons; not all proto-neocons had a Shachtmanite background. Practically none of the current neocons have a left-wing background of any brand. 'Lenin's Tomb' has a good piece on this.
About the only erstwhile left-winger in Britain who has become a neocon, as opposed to other forms of right-wingery, is the former Matgamnaite Alan Johnson (not the Home Secretary, he's another bloke). I did make the joke when the AWL adopted Shachtmanism, that we shouldn't be surprised if at least one of them would go the whole hog and end up a neocon, and, lo and behold, one of them has.
We have a very rightwing local Labour Party activist who is a former Soggie. Not sure if that proves anything.
Oh and modernity, Dave did go to the effort of pointing out that Kristol was NOT a middle class dilettante.
No, but then Hoey, Hitchens, Rosewell and many more are.....try to be not so literalistic when you read something :)
PS: here's more on him http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/us/politics/19kristol.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
"Irving William Kristol was born on Jan. 20, 1920, in Brooklyn into a family of low-income, nonobservant Jews. His father, Joseph, a middleman in the men’s clothing business, went bankrupt several times; his mother, Bessie, died of cancer when he was 16. “We were poor, but then everyone was poor, more or less,” Mr. Kristol recalled."
And Jane Ashworth of course, she was much better than Johnson and a real left activist.
Andy NewMao
Ho ho - see what you did there! stop my sides are splitting
No seriously dave, I like your blog, it is one of the few I keep coming back to, because you are an interesting writer.
Obvioulsy bloogers on the left have to pretend to hate one another, but in real life I have nothing against you.
Buit it does seem to me that you only ever say negative things about the left, perhaps that is because you think the situation is very pessimisitic, or perhaps it is becasue you are gradually moving away from sympathy with the left.
So it was a genuine question, perhaps posed in a bit too argumentative way by me. But hey, I yam wad i yam.
It is true that most Lefts move right.
I don't think there is anything particularly significant that many 30s US Trots did this; there is nothing in Trotskyism that makes people particularly succumb to such, there were just (relatively) a lot more of them then. US society moved right and took them with it.
If the wind blows that way, Lula's early companions will be rightist ideologues in a decade or two, Chavez's 15 years behind them. Britain's Greens will either ensure any Left elements are purged from their ranks or will become corporate Green decoration.
So if we don't win, we lose. Most don't stay the course but are eventually shaped by the prevailing ideas in society and the complete lack of support for communist politics amongst people at large.
So it's nothing to do with the class origins of people, or their own particular class position. Many a Left has gone from being a Trot teacher to becoming a Tory Head but that's not much of a class change, that movement is likely to have occurred even if they remained in the classroom as society goes right e.g. through the demise of union organisation.
It is very simple to show that both Newman (SWP to sort of CPBish) and Osler (IMG to LP Left) have moved right, along with British society. Maybe if their period hadn't been 80s to 00s, but say 60s to 80s, then their drift wouldn't have been so pronounced.
But people like them are dead to revolutionary politics. The next Left wave will wipe them into irrelevancy as a youthful and vibrant political organisation, that is not cowed by endless defeat or the sort of enforced good manners that is the done thing still - I recall CPGB and Militant members being outraged and trying to hush me as I, aged about 20, heckled the 90 odd year old Fenner Brockway (or The Right Honourable Archibald Fenner Brockway, The Baron Brockway to be accurate) as he attempted to rewrite the history of the ILP and the Spanish Civil War in the mid 80s.
The next generation will have about as much interest in Dave’s Part, Socialist Unity and other miserable Left reformist outlets as we do in the ILP now. Brockway having headed a party that once had 37 MPs, Left of Labour, cut no ice with me then; ‘our long fight to reclaim the Labour Party’ and other such bollocks will get much greater scorn from those who are to come.
Others live in different times. Carlos Marighella was previously a leader of the Brazilian communist party in the 50s, so I can only imagine his gradualist politics. But the military taking over in the 60s pushed Lefts Left and many guerrilla and other forms of illegal activity (it was all illegal in a dictatorship) started. Marighella was shot dead in 1969 by the cops heading a group responsible for armed robberies etc. He was 58 years old.
And I'm sorry but Jane Ashworth is the reincarnation of Medusa. It is important that is understood. When I was watching (under sufferance) one of the Harry Potter films I realised that JK Rowling must have met her as one of the evil characters was clearly Ashworth.
If the Left spent half the time it spends critiquing others in the Left or explaining why so and so's politics aren't actually Left wing etc, attacking the right, or rather, fighting for worker's emancipation, perhaps the movement would less resemble capitalism with ever more competition over ever shrinking resources.
There's a minimum platform of a fundamentally changed society. Whether that change comes in greater or lesser increments is of course important, but pales in comparison to the fact that society is actually going the wrong way. "The world is more right wing that it used to be" is not simply an inevitable fact, it's because the right has sold their ideas better than we have. Furthermore the largest body of voters isn't Labour or Conservatives, it's the indifferent, the non-voters. And a hell of a lot of these people would like higher taxes on the rich, more social housing, better schools in poorer areas, a more decent foreign policy. It's a case of making politics, and our politics, seem more, or at least as relevant to their lives as clubbing and reality TV.
Does Southpaw Punch realise that any revolutionary situation may result in an interruption to the postal service? Would he still support it under those circumstances?
Krazy Kristol was a leftist for an even shorter time than Peter Mandelson.
But, hey, why are we so negative?
Not everyone is.
Andy Newman's friends at the Morning Star aren't. Someone has had (this Monday) the good sense to list in a double-page spread leftists who *never* sold out.
Ortega, Milosovic...
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/morning-stars-hall-of-leftist-fame/
That would be the same Ortega who has made ALL abortion illegal, including where a woman's life is at risk ?
http://stroppyblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/nicuragua-denying-women-is-terrorism.html
Strop, why the carping comrade?
Ortega got off from the charge of abusing his Sepdaughter didn't he?
Okay, technically that was because of Parliamentary immunity and the county's statue of limitations. And Narváez maintains the charge. But he's not in gaol, eh?
He's Prez now, doing all kinda revolutionary things (somone remind us what, please.
The problem of the left is that it harps on about turn-coats and traitors, while failing to recognise the heroism of those who stick it out.
Look at Galloway. Still up for celebrating China's National Day with the Stalin Society and Chinese Ambassador.
I expect Andy Newman will have a special post on that day celebrating the progress of the same People's Republic.
Yeah Coatesey, silly me thinking women's rights , and lives, are important and should not be sold out !
I'll head back to make the tea shall I ?:-)
Lenin's Tomb on the neo-cons and the Trot connection (or absence of it):
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/09/alas-poor-trotsky.html
Seymours on rather good form at the moment incidently. The post on Enoch Powell is superb.
Just found this old piece on the post-war British Communist Party by Ian Birchall (as our AndyN seems to be aiming for a revival I thought it useful reading):
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/birchall/1972/01/cpgb.htm
btw. ... a similar development happened in the 1970ies with a large number of French maoists from groups like Gauche prolétarienne or VLR who became right-wing "Nouveaux Philosophes" like Glucksmann or Henri-Lévy ... not to mention Stéphane Courtois
johng,
I agree with your comments on Lenin's Tomb. Some brilliant articles of late, see the recent ones on Iran and Israel.
While I am no Stalinist I think the progress of the 'peoples repulic' can be looked upon favourably when compared with our own.
"'peoples repulic' can be looked upon favourably"?
Who are these People's Republics? Name names!
Mod,
I was responding to Andrew Coates point on the email above re China.
Notice I did put Peoples republic in quotes.
Hang on, before we see a revival of Birchism, could someone please explain how you can look "upon favourably" the Chinese State?
Was there something favourable about China's take over of Tibet?
Is there something favourable about China's rape of Tibet for raw materials?
Is there something favourable about China's rule in Tibet which is only kept in place at the end of a bayonet and the use of massive State security apparatus?
Is there something favourable about the Bejing dictatorship's quest for wealth at any cost? Including lack of basic human and trade union rights?
Is there something favourable about China's ruling classes continued dispossession of peasants and theft of their land?
Is there anything favourable about the mass environmental damage caused by the drive for wealth?
Is there something favourable about China's integration to world capitalism?
Please do tell us, Reg Birch's ghost is waiting!
Mod,
I was being relative, not absolute. Do you know the difference?
Do you not regard China as say more progressive than the USA?
If not please explain why.
What yardstick do we use to decide between brutal ruling classes?
Firstly, I accept we are talking about brutal ruling classes in need of ‘overthrowing’ but for comparisons I would look at the state and how it is organised. The US is a bourgeois state, no doubt about it, China is often referred to as a Deformed Workers State in which the state plays a dominant economic role, and from this perspective they are a more advanced form of capitalism.
I also think their relationship with other nations is more progressive that the USA, I am not aware of Chinese troops occupying nations at the other side of the world.
I am being relative though, so Mod’s list of Is their something favourable…… is inappropriate.
China is often referred to as a Deformed Workers State in which the state plays a dominant economic role, and from this perspective they are a more advanced form of capitalism.
Do you seriously hold to that position, Dean? Even the World Trade Organisation classifies China as a market economy.
It is, if anything, a mixed economy with a large state sector of around 40%. But on the Marxist basis of the suspension of the law of value, it is difficult to regard it as non-capitalist. I'm open to persuasion if you have a counter-argument.
I also think their relationship with other nations is more progressive that the USA, I am not aware of Chinese troops occupying nations at the other side of the world.
They don't occupy nations on the other side of the world. They do occupy adjoining nations. Also, China's drive to exploit African natural resources is at least comparable to neocolonialism.
What yardstick do we use to decide between brutal ruling classes?
Needs a site called AM I POL POT OR WHAT? and then the people can decide.
Getting back to Kristol, I am reminded of the story of how he was chatting with a journalist about how when his son Bill needed to get into Harvard he picked up the phone and dialled a few contacts, and when Bill wanted to do postgrad work he did the same, and when Bill wanted to work for the Republican National Committee he did the same, and when Bill wanted to work for a neocon think tank he did the same, and when Bill fancied doing some journalism he did the same. The conversation then turned to affirmative action, and Irving revealed he was opposed to it because it was "damaging to meritocracy".
If you've got the President of Harvard on speed dial you must possess merit.
"I also think their relationship with other nations is more progressive that the USA,"
How so? Examples, please.
"In the area of aid, preferential loans, debt cancellation, market opening, support for agriculture, education (infrastructures and training), or health (infrastructures and anti-disease programmes), China (state and enterprises) has already shown in a very short time that it is resolved to do very much more than the western powers. Demonstration is thus made though agreements and exchanges with China that with a little will, it is possible in exchange of raw materials or at lower cost to give Africa certain infrastructures (railways social housing, bridges, roads, hospitals and so on) which it is cruelly deprived of, as well as to purchase African goods at prices which are considered equitable."
Jean Nanga, International Viewpoint, April 2007
(the article goes on to make criticism of China, but there can be no doubt that China's approach to Africa has been radically different from that of the Western powers in recent decades).
Re Kristol pulling strings for his son, he probably couldn't have worked the system like that as a Trotskyist - hence, no doubt, his short stay there.
Stinky,
Thanks for the example on China, exactly what I was going to say. (or words to that affect).
Modernity,
I asked you to say which in your opinion (if such a thing exists) is more progressive the USA or China. Yet again you dodged the question. Therefore only my shrink would know why the fuck I bother responding to you!
Anyway, I accept that this question could be viewed as subjective but one result of China’s more progressive state is its lack of compulsion to bomb the shit out of poor people and ‘rogue’ states.
Dave -Totaly disagree on Africa -see Stinky's comments. I would argue the nature of the Chinese state means it will not pursue the same disasterous foreign policy as the USA.
On China being a deformed workers state I think when compared to the Bourgeois USA then you could still make the case and certainly make a contrast. The state still dominates the economy and the actions of the 'private' sector. The key strategic industries are still state run and planning is much more coordinated.
But the state doesn't just mean the 'real economy', it aslo includes the Education system, housing, health etc etc.
And, a 'market economy' doesn't preclude any of this.
Disclaimer: I don't regard China as the highest development possible, I am only contrasting it with the USA and only then as a response to Coates comments. In fact I don't regard China as the highest form of develpoment right now, Mondragon would take that prize.
"I expect Andy Newman will have a special post on that day celebrating the progress of the same People's Republic. "
1st October - 60-th anniveresry of the founding of the peoples republic.
Already planning exactly that article.
Dean wrote: "I asked you to say which in your opinion (if such a thing exists) is more progressive the USA or China"
So you actually need to ask me which is more "progressive"? A dictatorship with the worst human rights record in the world versus the pre-eminent superpower, with a flawed bourgeois democracy, but free trade unions, relatively free access to media, high indicators of human development, etc
You need to ask me which is preferable ? A dictatorship or a very flawed bourgeois democracy? Is that right?
Surely, as a socialist or would-be Marxist it should be a simple answer? The state and circumstances which allows greater freedoms to the working classes and opportunities for struggle, and that isn't the Beijing dictatorship.
As for Jean Nanga's 2007 piece, it contains doubtful assertions, politically motivated arguments and a desire to seemingly paint the Chinese ruling classes as somehow more benevolent than their Western equivalent.
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1191
Which is all rather questionable, it comes from a standard Trotskyist perspective, and the debates concerning workers states, deformed or otherwise.
Such a view wasn't much use in 1938 and certainly isn't of any use in the 21st century.
As no workers actually control anything in China, they are subject to the most brutal treatments, kicked off their land, no welfare state, subject to coercive migration, no workers rights to speak of, brutal 19th century industrialisation, etc etc
However, if you wish to believe because you wish to believe, that somehow China is more progressive then no amount of argumentation will persuade you, but I would ask this of the remaining Marxists here:
China are desperately short of raw materials, so they will agree almost any agreement in Africa if they can get their hands on raw materials, but the wider consequences of these agreements is often ignored or glossed over by pro-Bejing propogandists.
One example, and you remaining Marxists should think if you consider this progressive?
China has defended the Sudanese dictatorship's policies in Darfur for years. China used her considerable muscle to stop any condemnation of the Sudanese brutal campaign of murder in Darfur. China did that for purely material reasons, Sudan supplies significant raw materials to China and until recently was spared even moderate criticism. All of that is excluding the 2+ million refugees and 300,000 deaths caused by the Sudanese ruling classes policies, that's what China used to defend.
So I would ask, you, few remaining Marxists, who are so cynical about the motives of your interlocutors to apply those critical skills and natural cynicism to the actions of the Chinese ruling classes, and then if you are being rational you will conclude that in no way can they be considered. "progressive".
Again, shorter version, no state is a "worker's state" of any kind, when workers don't actually control anything.
If this article had been written thirty years ago it may well have been about how there were quite a few now 60ish former American Trots prominent in the liberal end of the Democrats – and is there thus some continuity? I am sure there were then and they would have been more noticeable simply because that particular political grouping was more prominent then.
It’s just the way that things went that made Kristol a known name in the 90s; far more of his one time peers probably ended as Left teachers or Personnel managers etc. If you want to do a scientific analysis, instead of just an impressionistic view, you would chose a representative sample, not just a few famous names.
-
On China, the International Communist League, the Spartacists, maintain that China remains a deformed workers state, as set out in this 2003 article - http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/archives/oldsite/2003/China-814-5.htm The article makes interesting reading, if ultimately unconvincing.
I don’t have much time for the Sparts but I do recognise their seriousness (can you imagine that the average SWP knows this formulation – indeed I remember some SWP cadre patronising me, in their ignorance, when I said why I thought the USSR was a deformed workers state - and with no mention of ‘socialist’ – ‘but Southpaw, socialists don’t think that Russia is socialist, there was this bloke called Stalin who…’)
The Sparts still, as far as I know, consider Cuba, N Korea and, I think, Vietnam to be deformed workers states but I wonder why they don’t also think Belarus, Moldova (until 2008) and possibly other places like Trans-Dniester (flag still with a hammer and sickle) as degenerated (not deformed ) workers states; as I understand the ‘communist’ party has remained in power continuously since the end of the USSR in these places and I don’t think the economic structure has changed much either (well, less than I think Vietnam has probably changed). I also was surprised to see that Laos is still under the single party rule of the ‘communist’ party that took control there in 1975.
I’d be really interested to watch a party cadre session of the Chinese Communist Party when they go through some Marx or Lenin and see whether they either a) completely twist it, b) think they are following it or c) are just a little embarrassed and disinterested and wonder what the hell is this crap? Or d) is it never discussed?
Does anyone know?
Bet you#d be shot in China if you lost a parcel in the post.
Punchie
Well, the Moonies are probably more 'serious' than the CoE. But to be a Christian, you really have to join a denomination. Know what I'm sayin'?
Modernity,
thanks for actually providing an answer.
I was being relative!!! Not absolute!!!!
Go back to my first comment and look.
The potential for development and advancing humanity forward is greater in China than in the USA in my opinion. This is due to the differences in the state structures.
China's overall state control of the economy and more integrated planning make it a more advanced form of capitalist business than the USA.
As for the deformed workers argument, I am not certain to what extent the Bourgeois in China have control over the state. Nowhere near the control they enjoy over the USA I would suspect.
So I think you can make an argument for calling China, or Cuba or Vietnam deformed workers states with the emphasis on deformed.
China behaves very differently in Africa to how the old colonial regimes behaved, this is due to the lack of Bourgeois control over the state. if you can't see the differences then you are the hopeless bourgeois apologist I take you for.
SueR -I will take you up on that bet, how about £1 million pounds?
Disclaimer: I don't doubt China's appalling Human rights record and state again that Mondragon is more progressive than China.
"China behaves very differently in Africa to how the old colonial regimes behaved, this is due to the lack of Bourgeois control over the state. if you can't see the differences then you are the hopeless bourgeois apologist I take you for."
Dean's answer is yet another example of why socialists, even Marxists, are often conspicuously disregarded by the British working-class, because of the inability to engage with history, evidence and more importantly, the application of critical thinking.
So instead of viewing the Chinese state's actions dispassionately, tallying them up and making an objective assessment what comes out is a subjective pronouncement, which is already preordained.
Instead of dealing with the evidence of the Chinese ruling classes' actions, a pile of assertions are made, along with wishful thinking as in "The potential for development and advancing humanity forward is greater in China than in the USA in my opinion. "
The idea that these Stalinist/dictatorial regimes can be classified as "workers states", deformed or otherwise is a remnant of Trotskyist dogma, which was clearly rejected by the working classes as spurious nonsense, and eventually even trotskyists got sick of this hogwash and left. The decline of Trotskyist groups in the past 40 years is evidence of that.
But returning to the nature of the Chinese state, they act as a capitalist state by virtue of economic imperatives, their historical development is obviously strikingly different from the West but that does not change the material conditions nor power relationships.
The Chinese state will not allow the development of any opposition, killing it with extreme brutality, and their actions in the past 60 plus years are evidence of that.
So when would-be socialists make the case that China is somehow progressive they have to ditch and deliberately ignore masses of contrary evidence.
They have to don rose tinted glasses and hunt around for examples when the Chinese ruling class is not brutal and savage, but unless you live inside an intellectual bubble those arguments are not very convincing.
They haven't proven convincing in the past 40 years and are unlikely with the increased integration of China into world capitalism to be any more decisive.
Those arguments that China and its ruling class are "progressive" are intellectual and evidential nonsense.
But worse, the weak apologists for the Beijing dictatorship, such as Dean, ignore the treatment of the Chinese working classes and the actions of the Chinese state, and so are profoundly non-socialist in their thinking and it is another indicator of how faux "anti-imperialist" has adversely influence political analysis.
Unless you can apply the same criteria to China, as you do any other capitalist state, then your analysis will eventually be proven to be so much detritus.
So Modernity have the working class deemed Bourgeois democracy to be the highest form of humanity, is that your opinion? How does this revelation influence your politics?
Does it make you support the Bourgeois as the final, ultimate fate of Humanity? The answer is yes it does!
Please describe the economic imperatives that force China towards bourgeois run capitalism. Is this imperative an historical , pre ordained one. Is it a permanent imperative?
You said,
“Those arguments that China and its ruling class are "progressive" are intellectual and evidential nonsense.”
So when China overtakes the US economy you will still be peddling this crap will you.
China’s growth is remarkably even and consistent compared to the Bourgeois dominated states, this is because the state dominates the economy.
But I am no apologist for China, I just objectively see they will progress beyond the USA and then amazingly these workers you are in close contact with, will be singing a different tune.
Please describe the economic imperatives that force China towards bourgeois run capitalism.M/em>
A bourgeoisie - private owners of the means of production - exist as a class in China.
These people are 'personification of capital', as Marx puts it, and are the social force that have effectively restored capitalism in china.
Dean,
You just highlighted why so few people engage in prolonged debate with you, it is a thankless task with no obvious end result.
Your inability to factor in the working-class into your analysis, or take account of the power structures within the Beijing dictatorship mean that your poor analysis renders nothing of intellectual merit, as it is perfectly possible to attribute other reasons for China's actions in Africa rather than your charitable ones.
When you argue a bit more like an objective student of politics, or even a Marxist, on the topic of China, I'll take you more seriously, but to date, you have managed to make assertion after assertion, bereft of any evidence or fact, you continue to make assertions which have little reason or logic behind them, thus it is pointless to continue to discuss this topic with you.
It is as if all the lessons concerning the Stalinist states in Eastern Europe have been ignored and dismissed, such is your historical illiteracy.
Modernity.
But many of the left in Africa are broadly supportive of China's role in that continent.
There is a genuine debate about it in Africa. Check out the Pambazuka website, they have a special section of China in Africa that includes a variety of views.
But certainly there is a significant section of progressive opinion in Africa that sees China as providing a much more suitable partner for developing countries than the West.
China provides loans without IMF strings, (and no requirements for deregualtion and privatisation); respect for the soveriegnty of their trading partners, and no Chinese troops on African soil.
Incidently, while there is a capitalist class in China now, they do not control the state, and their role in the economy is subordinate to the state sector.
Mod: "It is as if all the lessons concerning the Stalinist states in Eastern Europe have been ignored and dismissed,"
Well those lessons have certainly not been ignored nor dismissed by the Communist Party of China, who have no intention of repeating history.
Modernity,
Where have you factored in the working class, what do the Chinese workers tell you? Please enlighten me.
I do believe socialism can only come from the self emancipation of the working class, which is why I said Mondragon represents the most progressive economic community in the world today!!!!!! (which you have conveniently ignored)
But this isn’t because the workers in Britain are telling me that this is the case, most people in the UK haven’t even heard of Mondragon! I arrive at this opinion because I evaluate that the development of cooperative production, housing etc is the best way for the historically more progressive proletariat to gain economic supremacy over the bourgeois.
The fact that workers are not screaming this at me in any way alters my perception.
Your analysis or method, namely that we arrive at our ideas based on whether the workers said this or the workers said that is a poverty of objective thought. You can only ever imagine the society that you currently live in as the most advanced because hey the workers in that society seem to like it or go along with it. You obviously totally reject the idea that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. You obviously totally reject the idea of workers class self emancipation. You just accept the status quo until somehow it changes, and then you accept the new status quo. Your method can offer no solutions or advice to the workers. Your method can never put forward any form of socialism, you are the ultimate philistine.
On China, tell us please about the power structures within China and how they compare with the power structures in the USA. Please tell us the extent to Bourgeois control of both states.
On Africa I never said China was being charitable just conducting trade differently to the Bourgeois controlled states. Again you inability to make any contrast shows your historical illiteracy.
Anon : I have never said China wasn’t a capitalist country (you are paying too much attention to Modernity, and that is a very slippery slope), in fact my argument is that they are a more advanced capitalism than the USA!!!
The question is are the bourgeois a dominant class in China? I would say not.
Andy Newman: 'Well those lessons have certainly not been ignored nor dismissed by the Communist Party of China, who have no intention of repeating history.'
Too right; they are making a success of the transition from Stalinism to capitalism, unlike the unfortunate blokes in the Kremlin.
RYXOdc I want to say - thank you for this!