Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to one organizer, a scrappy former bank teller named Wu Lijuan, there are at least 70,000 people seeking to regain their old jobs or receive monetary compensation, a sizeable wedge of the 400,000 who were laid off during a decade-long purge. Like many other state-owned companies, the banks slashed payrolls and restructured to raise profitability and make themselves more attractive to outside investors. “They tossed us out like garbage,” Ms. Wu, 44, said before a recent protest, scanning fellow restaurant patrons for potential eavesdroppers. “All we’re asking for is justice and maybe to serve as a model for others who have been wronged.” For a government determined to maintain social harmony, the protests and petitioning are vexing. Compared with farmers angry over seized land or retired soldiers seeking fatter pensions, the bank workers — educated, organized and knowledgeable about the Internet — are better equipped to outsmart the public security agents constantly on their trail.

[Link.]

“Women demand men have houses and cars, why can’t men demand women be virgins?” asked one man on the Tianya site. “So, greedy women, remember, you have to protect your hymens, because those are big dowries for you to exchange for money.” Some men who were interviewed agreed about the importance of finding a virgin. “I really care about virginity,” said Xia Yang, product manager for a technology company. “If you go to buy a cellphone, of course you’d want to buy a new cellphone. Who would spend the same amount of money to buy an old cellphone that’s been used for two years?” The virginity debate also underscores a contradiction in modern China: As the nation becomes more freewheeling, there remains a deeply conservative core.

[Link.]

The report listed numerous areas in which China’s military is on the march. China is deploying a new class of nuclear-powered submarines equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is pouring money into space warfare systems and cyber-warfare capabilities. It is developing a “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missile. China has “the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile program in the world,” the report said. Beijing “now possesses one of the largest” forces of surface-to-air missiles in the world, it added. And it has the “largest force of principal combatants, submarines, and amphibious warfare ships in Asia.”

[Link.]

Voice From The Back: Stay At Your Desk, Slave (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the September 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stay At Your Desk, Slave

Now and then a wonderful product comes along that the owning class just love. This may be one of them. “The maker of a new product that combines a treadmill and computer workstation is banking on the notion that companies will invest in products like the “Walkstation” as a way of keeping health care costs down and improving overall fitness levels. The device allows people to work on their computers while walking on a treadmill at a slow speed of up to three kilometers (two miles) per hour, enabling small amounts of movement that supporters say have the potential to reap big health benefits.” (Yahoo News, 13 July) Now all we need is a “Feedstation” that shovels food into your mouth while you work. Oh, Charlie Chaplin already envisaged that in Modern Times didn’t he? How about the “Bedpanstation”? Too much perhaps?

What's ethics got to do with it?

“European and US defence companies will this week kick off talks on a joint code of ethics to cover arms sales. Representatives from the industry’s leading trade bodies will meet at the Farnborough Air Show  in the UK on Tuesday. European companies have recently developed an anti-corruption code in a bid to improve the industry’s reputation, which has suffered in the wake of allegations of bribery and corruption in connection with some of its biggest players.” (Financial Times, 13 July) As these guardians of morality meet to discuss whether it is more ethical to kill a child with poisonous gas, napalm bombs or good old fashioned high explosives we ask ourselves what do sellers of death know of ethics. They are money grubbing killers. 

Chinese Workers Wake Up

“Doing business in China is beginning to cost real money. Not that Chinese workers are buying second homes or anything like that: Their average wage is still a little short of a dollar an hour. But so many Chinese have now left their villages for the factories that the once bottomless pool of new young workers is beginning to run dry, and the wages of assembly-line employees are rising 10 percent a year.” (Yahoo News, 15 July) We should echo the sentiments of an old song, probably banned in China now. They occur in The Red Flag – “Arise like starvelings from your slumber” Let’s hope so!

Health And Hypocrisy

The following announcement caused a storm of controversy in the media. “Patients cannot rely on the NHS to save their lives if the cost of doing so is too great, the Government’s medicines watchdog has ruled for the first time. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) has said the natural impulse to go to the aid of individuals in trouble – as when vast resources are used to save a sailor lost at sea – should not apply to the NHS. The disclosure follows last week’s controversial decision by Nice to reject four new drugs for kidney cancer even though they have been shown to extend life by five to six months.” (Independent, 13 August) To socialists the announcement is far from shocking. That is how capitalism operates – if you are rich you have access to the best food, clothing, shelter, education and recreation. Why should it be so shocking to learn that if you are poor you cannot afford the best of medicine either.

The Perfect Worker

“A Ugandan official has suggested to MPs that funerals should be limited to Saturday afternoons to stop people taking time off work to attend them. Speciosa Kazibwe, a former vice-president who now heads a state development agency, noted that Uganda’s death rate was very high. (BBC News, 25 July) Socialists used to say that the capitalist’s idea of the perfect worker was one who left school at 15, worked 50 weeks a year for 50 years and dropped down dead the first day he went to collect his pension at the post office. We will have to amend this ideal blueprint in view of the Ugandan official’s view. Ideally he would die on the Thursday so that his family could attend his Saturday funeral without missing out on a day producing surplus value for the owning class.

Editorial: The Socialist View of the Situation in China. (1925)

Editorial from the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present disturbances in those of China occupied by foreign settlements may be said to have had their immediate origin in a strike which took place in February last. Chinese workers employed in Japanese textile factories in Shanghai protested against the ill-treatment of a girl who was seriously injured by a Japanese foreman. Her offence was that she was found asleep after a twelve-hour night shift. The strikers demanded that fines and personal violence of this kind be abolished, and a 10 per cent, increase of their wages. The strike appears to have been unsuccessful, but even so the employers failed to keep the terms of settlement.

In May this and many long-standing grievances led to a general strike movement in Shanghai, and feeling was quickly inflamed by the death of a striker at the hands of a Japanese factory official. On May 30th a number of Chinese students paraded in protest after having been forbidden to do so by the police. Some students were arrested and the remainder demanded their release. Shanghai police in the charge of a British inspector were then ordered by him to “shoot to kill” only 10 seconds after he had announced his intention to the few bystanders who were near enough to hear his words. The result was that 6 were killed and 40 wounded. Within 6 days the victims in the ensuing riots numbered 70 dead and 300 wounded —all Chinese.

The movement rapidly spread to Hong Kong, Canton and other industrial and commercial centres, being added to and made more complex by the race hatred of British, French, Japanese and other foreigners who have at different times occupied Chinese territory and maintained their occupation by force, in spite of the opposition of Chinese governments. It has been easy enough to induce the strikers to believe that their enemy is the “foreigner,” because the majority of the factories happen to be foreign owned. There is actually, of course, no question of the Chinese exploiter being any less brutal in his treatment of his employees than are his alien rivals. The abominable conditions which prevail in the foreign mills—as bad as those common in this country in the early days of the factory system—are equalled, if not surpassed, by those in Chinese establishments in and outside the foreign settlements.

The foreign settlers, backed by their respective governments, are thus threatened by two quite different but at present associated movements—by their Chinese employes, who want better conditions, and by the propertied and educated Chinese, who burn with hatred of the foreign invaders and demand independence. They resent their position of political and social inferiority and (most intolerable of all the burdens a would-be ruling class can be made to bear) they have had to suffer the indignity of seeing the proceeds of the exploitation of Chinese workers pocketed by European and Japanese capitalists. The first principle of patriotism in China, as elsewhere, is that robbery, like charity, should begin—and end—at home.

For their part the foreigners are by no means more than superficially united. Great Britain arrived early and obtained the best ports and most extensive spheres of interest, and now in consequence has to face the hardly disguised hostility of the late arrivals who seek to gain commercial and financial advantage by other means than those adopted by Great Britain. Thus Russia and U.S.A. both go out of their way to pose as friends of China. Russia has already relinquished all special privileges in China, and America chooses this moment to announce that it foregoes the last instalments of the Boxer indemnity. American missionaries supported the policy of their Government by giving evidence on behalf of the arrested Chinese students, while British and others were defending and glorifyingf the brutality of the British controlled police.

As for the disturbances, we are familiar enough with the customary violent and hypocritical attitude of the European ruling classes towards their workers not to be surprised at the use of similar methods in Shanghai. All the blame was as a matter of course laid on the Chinese students and “agitators,” but little by little evidence has accumulated which badly damages the pretensions of the guardians of “law and order.”

In the demonstration the only casualties were Chinese; two out of three doctors stated at the trial that the wounds were nearly all in the back, which would be inexplicable if the crowd had been attacking the police; the third doctor said, “I am not sure whether the bullets were shot from the back or the front.” (Daily Herald, July 21st.) The judges found “that there was no violence or indication of violence, that most of the arrests took place before the shooting. …” The students were all acquitted. The Commission appointed by the diplomatic body blamed the police and recommended the dismissal of those responsible (Daily Herald, 22nd July). This finding has been overlooked or suppressed by most of the Press.

The recent movement is, however, only a symptom of a change which coming over China—the change from a static peasant system to an aggressive and progressive capitalism.

“China is passing through the first phases of the industrial revolution. … In the seven years from 1915 the number of spindles rose from one to two millions.”—” Manchester Guardian,” 19th June, 1925.

A propertyless industrial working class is massing and slowly learning to organise against vile factory conditions and low wages. Whether they will or no they are being brought into dependence on world capitalism, and they will in time take their part in the struggle for the overthrow of that system.

Unfortunately this critical phase finds them overwhelmed with interested parties offering them bad advice, anxious to divert them into various blind alleys.

The Chinese capitalists, the Communists and the Labour Party are all “friends” of the Chinese worker. If the Chinese workers are led to support the Chinese capitalist independence movement, experience will soon teach them that nationality means nothing whatever to the workers ; their lot will be no degree better if and when their exploiters are all Chinese.

The Communists’ willingness to deceive other people is only equalled by the ability to deceive themselves. They disregard the fact that at present only a small fraction of China is industrialised, they slur over the Capitalist aims of the independence movement and urge the workers to support anti-working class political groups to fight issues of no moment except to Chinese capitalists.

What they cannot or do not wish to see is plainly visible to others. The Chinese representative in London of the “Sin Po” (Batavia) writes as follows in “Foreign Affairs” (July, 1925):

“China, a land of conservatism and tradition, of peasant proprietorship, is the worst imaginable ground for the sowing of Marxian ideas. China being so vast, it is not surprising that in certain parts of the country the extreme Left wing of the Kuomintang is Communist ; but the body of the organisation is bourgeois and capitalistic with the mediaeval capitalism (“distributism”) of Mr. G. K. Chesterton. Let not Europeans be deceived by their newspapers: the present trouble in China, in so far as it is political, is a manifestation of nationalism in which merchants and bourgeois join with workers and students to resist foreign exploitation.”

The British Labour Party and Trades Union Congress have passed resolutions of sympathy protesting their solidarity with the Chinese workers. How little their socialist understanding and how little the value of their sympathy is shown by the fact that on 25th May the General Council sent a deputation to the President of the Board of Trade

“To protest against the continued employment of Chinese and cheap Asiatic labour on British steamers. The deputation asked the Government to introduce a Bill to make illegal such employment west of the Suez Canal.”—” Daily Herald,” 26th May.

The industrial workers of China are few at present. They should organise and work to defend their class interests on the economic field against capitalists irrespective of nationality, and prepare for the future when conditions will have been prepared making working class emancipation possible through Socialism.

Voice From The Back: “Modern” Britain (2010)

The Voice From The Back column from the July 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Modern” Britain

There is a notion about that because in Britain we have a new political situation of parliamentary sharing that something has changed about the class division of society. It is just not true. “At St. James’s club in London, a new toast is overheard: ‘To the Nineteen.’ This refers, as you no doubt spotted at once, to the 19 Old Etonians who have become prime ministers. Jolly good.” (Sunday Times, 16 May) “Almost four-fifths of the new cabinet are millionaires, according to an analysis by The Sunday Times. As the government prepares to wield the axe on public spending, research reveals that 18 of the 23 full-time cabinet members have seven-figure fortunes, collectively worth about £50 million.” (Sunday Times, 23 May) So modern Britain looks a lot like old Britain. The people who produce wealth – the working class are exploited by the owning class. Wake up fellow workers we need a new society.

The Chasm Of Class

At a time in the USA when many members of the working class find themselves unemployed and their homes re-possessed it is worthwhile looking at how the American capitalist class are dealing with the economic downturn. Time-share mogul David Siegel and his former beauty queen wife Jacqueline have had to sell their Florida mansion for a mere $50 million. The 30 bedroom house and estate, named and modelled on the palace of Versailles in France, includes a boat house, a ballroom, an Olympic-size pool, a theatre and a baseball field. “The 23-bathroom house may appeal to a buyer so wealthy they do not even move in, said local estate agent Kelly Price. ‘Versailles will probably be a house that will appeal to the uber-wealthy who don’t even think about the issue of money,’ she added. ‘It might be a second or third home. For all we know, it could be a seventh or eighth home.'” (Metro,27 May) Useful productive members of the working class are homeless while the useless parasite class have multiple mansions – that is capitalism for you.

Nice Suicides

“Steve Jobs has said the Chinese iPhone factory where 10 workers have killed themselves this year is actually ‘pretty nice’. Speaking at the All Things Digital conference in California, the Apple CEO also brushed aside questions about his relationship with Google … Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn makes Dell, Nokia and Apple products at its factory in Shenzhen, China. As reported by The First Post, the latest suicide came last week, when a 23-year-old worker jumped to his death from a building roof. Jobs denied Foxconn ran a sweatshop and told the conference that Apple was working with the company to get to the bottom of why so many people were killing themselves. ‘You go in this place and it’s a factory but, my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it’s pretty nice,’ said Jobs.” (First Post, 2 June) What millionaire Mr Jobs does not mention is that the workforce stand for a 12 hour work day under constant camera surveillance for the princely sum of £90 per month and live in factory-owned dormitories. The factory is considering improving conditions by introducing “soothing” music, dancing instructors and a suicide hotline! The mindless repetitious factory 12 hour slog may seem “pretty nice” to Mr Jobs as he counts the millions of dollars extracted from the exploitation of these Chinese workers, but at least one worker last week decided to end his “pretty nice” servitude.

Class Divide In China

The awful gap between the rich and the poor in modern China was illustrated by two recent news items. A series of industrial disputes leading to strikes has broken out in China. “They began at Honda’s car plant in the south near Hong Kong. Since then, disputes, demonstrations and picketing have broken out at electronic firms, vehicle parts makers and other factories as far away as Shanghai. Even the 8,000 workers who make the balls used in the Fifa world cup in South Africa are reported to have gone on strike after discovering that one football is sold for the equivalent of a fortnight’s salary.” (Sunday Times, 13 June) According to the chief executive of Rolls Royce Motor Cars “China is now our second largest market, with about 20 per cent of sales, and is doing very, very well.” …. “The Phantom model starts at £235,000 and the Ghost, the new baby Rolls launched this year, at £165,000. The Phantom is about presence, about making a statement. That is why it is so popular in China.” (Times, 7 June) This immense conspicuous consumption is only possible out of the sweated labour of the Chinese working class toiling for a fortnight for the pittance of the price of a football.

Class Collaboration in Communist China (1959)

From the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

[The Trade Union Law of the People's Republic of China makes strikes illegal.]

“New China” is not a Socialist country. Despite the claims of the Chinese Communists that the working-class of China has achieved political power: is the leading class in the country; and that “New China” is “a people’s democratic dictatorship” (whatever that is supposed to mean), a Socialist society does not obtain there.

The Chinese Communists in their struggle for power have—following the “revolution” of Sun Yat Sen in 1911—completed the destruction of Feudalism, overthrown the War Lords and have driven the so-called Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek from the mainland of China to the island of Formosa: and despite their claims to the contrary are building Capitalism—not Socialism—in the People’s Republic of China.

With this development of a bourgeois mode of production of a Capitalist industrial revolution; and with it a propertyless wage-earning class owning nothing but its labouring power; conflicts and disputes between Capital and Labour are bound to arise. And since the days of Sun Yet Sen, Chinese workers, often with the help of the Communists, have struggled to form Trade Unions in an attempt to improve their standards of living. Since coming to power in 1949 Mao Tse-tung’s Communist government has not abolished the Trade Unions; has not forbidden the workers to join them; but has, in fact, encouraged the “All-China Federation of Labour.” In fact, like all other “Communist” countries, the Trade Unions are now part of State apparatus—they are “company unions” writ large! This is borne out by The Trade Union Law of the People’s Republic of China; the Provisional Rules of Procedure for Settling Labour Disputes and Labour- Capital Consultative Councils in Private Enterprises (published by the Foreign Languages Press, Peking).

According to the Communists there are four classes in China today—the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie; but only wage workers may join Trade Unions. “All manual and non-manual wage workers in enterprises, institutions and schools in Chinese territory whose wages constitute their sole or main means of livelihood, and all wage workers in irregular employment shall have the right to organise trade unions.” (Article 1 of the Trade Union Law of the People’s Republic of China). At the present moment the majority of China’s 600 million or so people are not yet wage workers. But in the cities more than half the population constitute wage earners and their dependants. For example, in 1951, about 400,000 of Peking’s 2,000,000 people were wage workers, and with their dependents, exceeded 1,200,000. In Shanghai about 3,200,000 of the population of over 6,000,000 in 1951, were wage workers and their dependants.

All Chinese Trade Unions are bound by law to affiliate to the “All-China Federation of Labour” (Article 3) and any organization not belonging to the Federation of Labour “shall not be called a trade Union” (Article 4). Articles 5, 6, 7 and 8 state that:—

  “Trade Unions in enterprises operated by the State or by cooperatives shall have the right to represent the workers and staff in taking part in administering production and in concluding collective agreements with the management.'’ 

#    #    #    # 

  "Trade Unions in private enterprises shall have the right to represent and staff members in conducting negotiations with the employers, in taking part in the labour-capital consultative councils and in concluding collective agreements with the employers.” 

#    #    #    # 

 “It is the duty of Trade Unions to protect the interests of workers and staff members, to ensure that the managements or owners effectively carry out labour protection, labour insurance, wage standards, factory sanitation and safety measures as stipulated in the laws and decrees of the government, and other relevant regulations and directions, and to take measures for improving the material and cultural life of the workers and staff members."

#    #    #    # 

  "Trade Union organisations at all levels in enterprises operated by the State or by cooperatives shall have the right to ask the managements of the corresponding levels to submit reports on their work lo the trade union committees, to the general membership meetings or to representative conferences. They also have the right to represent the workers and staff members in taking part in administrative boards or administrative meetings at the corresponding levels.” 

#    #    #    #

But they do not have the right to go on strike if their claims are not satisfactorily met!

Where a dispute arises between management and labour, and where one side or the other considers that the other party has violated the collective agreement, they may take their complaint to the Government’s Labour Bureau. If the complaint is taken to a local government Labour Bureau it may set up an investigation and mediation committee. If agreement is then reached by both sides, through the activities of the investigation committee of the Bureau, it will be signed by the representatives of both parties for registration. If mediation should fail, then the Labour Bureau will set up its own arbitration committee. And, in the words of Article 8 of the Provisional Rules of Procedure for Settling Labour Disputes, “The award rendered by the arbitration committee shall be signed by the representative of the Labour Bureau who presides over the committee, and after the award is approved by the Director of the Labour Bureau it shall be notified to both parties to the dispute which it must carry out.” Both parties must abide by any agreement reached. If either party does not agree it must inform the Labour Bureau within five days, and must lodge an appeal with the “People’s Court” for a final verdict. This is as far as the Trade Unions can go. No worker in Communist China may withdraw his labour-power under any circumstances. Strikes are forbidden. Article 11 is quite clear on this point:—

  “After a dispute has broken out, both parties, during the period of consultation, mediation or arbitration, shall maintain the status quo in production. The management should not resort to a lock-out, suspend payment of wages, cease providing meals or take any other measures which lower workers' living conditions. Labour shall also maintain production and observe labour discipline. After arbitration by the Labour Bureau, even if one party disagrees and calls for settlement by the Court, the two parties shall nevertheless abide by the arbitration award pending the verdict of the Court.”

#    #    #    #

From The Trade Union Law of the People’s Republic of China it can be seen that the workers of “New China” are unable to organise in genuine Trade Unions; that they are not allowed to call strikes whatever their grievances may be, and that the so-called Trade Unions affiliated to the “All-China Federation of Labour” are Unions mainly in name only, similar to Hitler’s “Labour Front” in pre-war Germany. China’s “Trade Unions” are allowed to negotiate. But that is all. Their main functions, according to Article 9, of The Trade Union Law of the People’s Republic of China, are to organise the workers to support the laws of the government, carry out the policies of the government; to get the workers to adopt a new attitude towards labour—that is, to observe “labour discipline,” to organise “labour emulation campaigns and increase production to ensure the fulfilment of the production plans: to protect public property; to oppose corruption and bureaucracy and to fight “saboteurs” in enterprises operated by the State". In privately-owned enterprises the Trade Unions must help in developing production, “benefitting both labour and capital" — in other words, increasing the exploitation and subjection of the Chinese working-class. The outlook for the masses of China is indeed bleak.

Peter E. Newell.

Will China Follow? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The momentous events of Eastern Europe have found little echo in China. Since its bloody suppression of the democracy movement a year ago this month, the government has carried out a widespread programme of arrest and repression. Anyone who played any kind of prominent role in the strikes and demonstrations is liable to summary imprisonment, torture or execution. Ordinary people have been pressurised into betraying their relatives or neighbours. The rulers' aim is to cow people into submission and apathy.

It should not be thought that the protests for democracy and against corruption were merely the work of a few thousand students, however much attention was centered on the events in Tiananmen Square. On 17 May last year, over a million workers marched through the streets of Peking to show their support. An important aspect of the movement was the demand for independent trade unions. After the 4 June massacre, the government bracketed the autonomous Workers Union with the autonomous Student Union as illegal organisations whose leaders must be brought to book. There were hunger-strikes and demonstrations in other parts of China too, for instance a demonstration of 300,000 in the provincial capital of Xian on 20 May. The government's response would not have been anywhere near so brutal had they just been dealing with a few students rather than a temporarily-united working population of Peking and elsewhere.

The army's actions were not just aimed at teaching ordinary workers a lesson, they were directed at “liberals" in the Communist Party who felt some sympathy with the protesters. It has been suggested that the first army firing on that fateful Saturday night, just before Tiananmen Square was cleared, was against workers and their barricades in the Muxidi area in west Peking, overlooked by the flats occupied by many middle-ranking Party officials. They, too.,were being shown that no concessions to popular demands would be countenanced.

In fact, since June, many Party members known, or suspected, to be sympathetic to Zhao Ziyang, the disgraced Party Secretary, have been purged and replaced by those loyal to the hardline leadership. In November, Deng Xiaoping, one of those with the blood of June on his hands, resigned his last official post as chair of the Central Military Commission, though he remains a power in the background. The new CP Secretary. Jiang Zemin, brought in to oversee the return to "normality ", took over Deng's post as well.

On 11 January martial law was finally lifted in Peking, showing that the government felt confident enough to take the troops off the streets. But, at the same time, the government and ruling class cannot be sure to count on the loyalty of the army if it is again called on to slaughter Chinese citizens. The events in Rumania, in particular, sent a shock-wave through China's ruling circles. It is hard to know how accurate they are, but there are reports that up to 1500 soldiers and officers face court martial for mutiny during last year's protests, and that many high-ranking military officials were opposed to the use of force last June. The top brass went to great lengths to ensure that the soldiers used in the massacre could be relied on. Now many officers are having their loyalty investigated, and ordinary soldiers are having the importance of unquestioning obedience drummed into them.

Economy in a mess

Economically, too, hard-line rhetoric is now the order of the day. The reforms of Deng and Zhao—decentralisation, promotion of private enterprise, special zones with privileges for overseas companies—are being partially withdrawn as the government reassumes economic authority. Wealthy private capitalists are attacked in the media and subjected to ever-higher taxes as the tentative steps towards private capitalism are put into reverse. But there are still government bonds and company shares to be traded, and a real-estate industry. buying and selling urban property, is growing fast. Joint enterprises still flourish, with over 47 billion US dollars invested so far from abroad, and in October the largest-yet solely overseas funded project was opened in Tianjin.

The economy, though, remains in a mess, despite the best efforts of the government to control the uncontrollable. Inflation was cut to 18 per cent last year, while urban living costs went up by 16 per cent. In September passenger fares on trains, ships and planes were virtually doubled overnight. Yet city dwellers' incomes increased by only 12 per cent in 1989, and over one-third of families saw a drop in their income. In the words of the State Statistical Bureau, "actual per capita income of low-income families fell". So in China, too. the poor get poorer.

A particular problem for many workers is that their factories have stopped paying bonuses, which often amount to as much as the basic wage. Industrial output has fallen as factories go on short time, unable to obtain raw materials. In the countryside, last year's harvest was better than previous years, but the government may again fail to pay in cash for the grain it has contracted to buy. Most workers employed by the state have been forced to buy government bonds, thus cutting their disposable income drastically. No wonder many workers (from 20 per cent in Tianjin to 70 per cent in Wenzhou) have taken to moonlighting. doing a second job in the evening or at weekends to supplement their incomes and make ends meet. Others vent their frustration by go-slows and sabotage.

In December the Chinese currency, the yuan, was devalued by 20 per cent, in an attempt to boost flagging exports. At the end of 1988. the foreign debt of China was 40 billion US dollars, and large repayments lie ahead. International capitalism has been wary of investing in China since last year's events (they are worried about the security of their profits, not about the slaughter of Chinese workers). But the president of the World Bank has recently been making conciliatory noises about resuming loans to China, declaring himself satisfied with the new economic plans. Tourism has begun to recover, too, though many of the luxury hotels gracing Chinese cities have empty rooms and empty coffers.

For the time being, then, the developments in Eastern Europe are unlikely to be repeated in China. The Chinese working class have shown both themselves and their rulers their potential, but have also seen the ferocity which is unleashed when the ruling class reply. Yet the economic problems which gave rise to the protests remain, and are even being exacerbated. Repression and tyranny have won the current battle, but the class war continues.

Paul Bennett

The Class Struggle in China (1927)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent events in the East have thrown once more into relief the economic and political forces operating there. Apropos of the subject there comes to hand a sixpenny pamphlet, “British Imperialism in China," from the Labour Research Department, 162, Buckingham Palace Road, S.W.l.

The pamphlet traces briefly the rise of the Chinese bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) as a result of the invasion of the country by traders, manufacturers and financiers of Europe and America. Previous to that invasion China (like India and Russia) consisted of a vast population of peasants exploited in the main by feudal and autocratic methods.

Even to-day by far the greater part of the people are still peasants. To quote the pamphlet, 

  “As yet only the fringe of China has been industrialised. The population directly dependent on agriculture is estimated at over three hundred millions. . . . Their economic position is appalling. The small size of most of the peasant holdings would make it difficult enough to maintain a family; but when out of the scanty proceeds a substantial proportion goes in land tax and innumerable other taxes and military levies, the balance is hopelessly insufficient. The tenants pay enormous rents in produce . . . while their general poverty is such that they have to borrow frequently from merchants and usurers to pay initial charges or to carry on until the harvest.”

It is the old story of the peasant everywhere. The landlord, tax gatherer and moneylender form a holy trinity of parasites who by degrees drain the vitality from the very source of their own existence. The inevitable result is the collapse of their system and its replacement by one based upon more economical methods of exploitation, i.e., capitalism.

From among the peasants whose holdings cannot keep them there develops a class of hired workers who drift to the coast and along the rivers, there to become wage-slaves of Chinese and foreign employers in the factories, warehouses, ships and railways. Among these workers, during the last ten years, trade unions have made their appearance and as a result the political arena in China presents a confused spectacle to those who lack the key to the situation, i.e., Socialist knowledge.

The pamphlet sketches the various stages by which the foreign master class acquired the influence in China which now appears in danger. How the exclusiveness of Chinese society was broken down by force, the ports thrown open to trade, indemnities imposed and the Chinese Governments forced to accept loans—all this is a long story. The point which requires notice is that the Powers have been unable to obtain undisputed sway over the exploited masses. Competition between them has allowed a native class of capitalists to assert themselves and make a bid for political power. This class needs all the support it can get and so makes promises to the very workers and peasants whom it wishes to exploit to greater advantage. Hence we hear of Bolshevism in China. Lacking the necessary experience and knowledge the workers there swallow the promises of their masters and give them aid just as in Poland and Ireland and other places where nationalism has triumphed with dire results for the workers.

Concessions granted by a master class struggling for power are taken back again when it has become firmly fixed in the saddle.

Some rather rash claims are made in the pamphlet. On Page 61 we are told that “At the national conference of the Kuomintang held in February, 1924, a sharp divergence appeared between the right wing representing native merchants and capitalists, and the left wing based on the trade unions and led by Sun Yat Sen. The right wing stood for a nationalist party which should include all classes; the left wing for a revolutionary party . . . with a programme which clearly aimed at destroying the capitalist system. (Italics the present writer’s). The left was victorious."

On Page 59, however, we are told that “The new programme of the Kuomintang ” contains among other items the following! Under the heading of “Economic" “To establish a National Bank for issuing loans at the lowest rate of interest to develop agriculture, industry and commerce." Under the heading "Workers," "To enact labour laws safeguarding the right of labourers to organise and to strike. To limit working hours to fifty-four per week and to establish health and unemployment insurance. To support the workers in the organisation of Consumers' Co-operative Stores." Experience in this and other countries shows that capitalism is quite capable of surviving such "revolutionary" shocks.

In this connection a column of the Manchester Guardian of December 30th, 1926, contains items of interest. It is headed, "Sun Yat Sen’s Gospel,’’ and gives a digest of a book by the late leader of the Chinese Nationalists. Under the heading “Nationalism" (one of the “ three principles of the people "), we are told that “In order to save our country we must first recover the nationalistic spirit!" Under the heading “Democracy," "Our people have had too much personal freedom." "All we can do is to give our people political equality." Finally under "Socialism" (the third principle) we are told that "Before using Socialism as a means to solve our social problems we must first find out the focus of all our problems. Many people in the West have taken material problems as the central point in human history. We must reject that false idea." "None of the forms of Socialism developed in the West are fitted for our country." "Our commerce and industry have not yet been developed. All we need now is to prevent rather than to remedy the evils arising from modern industry and commerce." “Our great and immediate problem is not a fight against capitalists but the prevention of the rise of capitalists in the future. Our method of solving this problem is to develop State industry. Since we do not have enough experience and capital to develop that, it would be wise for us to employ foreign specialists and to borrow foreign capital to help us."

From the above extracts it is fairly clear that the situation is not so simple as our facile pamphleteers would have us believe. On their own showing the economic position in China is such as to make any destruction of capitalism and establishment of Socialism out of the question. That the peasants and small property owners will endeavour to free themselves from the grip of the money-lenders and resist the growth of large capitalists is only to be expected. That, however, is mere reaction, not revolution, while in order to achieve this end they appear to look to the foreign capitalists to assist them ! A case of out of the frying pan into the fire.

In any event it is clear that the workers of China and elsewhere have nothing to gain by supporting either party in this capitalist and property-owners' struggle. The business of the Socialist is to destroy, not to build up the faith of the workers in .Nationalism and the promises of political leaders.

The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

Eric Boden

A Chinese capitalist (1989)

From the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese state capitalism is permitting an ever-growing role to private companies which employ workers and compete for sales with state businesses and each other. There are now over two hundred thousand private entrepreneurs, as they are called, running such companies. A recent issue of Beijing Review (1989. no.9) carried an article by one such employer, Zhang Baoning, containing an account of how he gave up his job in a state-owned factory, became a self-employed printer and then was able to hire employees and set up his own factory and shops. But let Zhang speak for himself:

   Although I have succeeded in business in the past few years, I have never felt relaxed I've always wanted to develop, but have also always worried that the government would change its policy towards private enterprises and label me a "capitalist". However, this fear was finally removed by the Party's decision at its 13th National Congress in 1987 that China needs a multi-ownership economic structure with public ownership predominant at the primary stage of socialism. Therefore, the development of individual businesses and the private economy was to be encouraged . . .
   At present. I have to pay 11 kinds of taxes and duties, such as business tax, income tax, and taxes for education, construction, real estate, land use as well as industrial and commercial consolidated duties.
   To be frank. I am taxed too much . . .
   As everyone knows, relations between a Chinese boss and his employees are delicate in China. For a while they get along quite well, and then suddenly a dispute erupts. Accustomed to the old way of "eating from the same big pot" regardless of how hard they worked, some of my employees lacked a sense of responsibility and tended to take things easy . . .
   However, my employees and I treat each other as equals. I am always ready to discuss problems with any of them Sometimes we shout at each other, but mainly we remain on good terms
    I offer my employees the same fringe benefits as workers enjoy in state-owned enterprises, such as food and housing subsidies, welfare insurance, various leaves and recreational amenities. In addition, they can come and go any time they like.
   However, we don't always see eye to eye, especially over income distribution They think I must have made big money by exploiting them. They never feel satisfied even though they are much better paid than their counterparts in state-owned factories. I am going to try out the joint-stock system with my workforce with dividends distributed according to the stock they hold.

Whatever the Chinese government may or may not call him, Zhang clearly is a capitalist, even if a small-scale one by Western standards. He has the same concerns as capitalists everywhere: taxes, government policies, and of course those fractious workers. Who now will say that China is a different kind of social system?

Paul Bennett

Trade Unions in China (1972)

From the November 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some of those most vocal in their opposition to the Tory Government’s Industrial Relations Act have been the various Maoist groups in Britain. One wonders, however, how many of them have bothered to examine the situation of trade unions in their “own” country.

The Chinese Communist Party’s concept of the role to be played by the trade unions was derived from Lenin: the unions were to be “transmission belts”, one of a number of organisations through which the vanguard exercised the alleged dictatorship of the proletariat. But at the same time, since the transmission belts were supposed to work in both directions, the Party was to learn from the masses via the unions. In practice, the first of these concepts meant a close relationship between Party and unions, with the latter’s role reduced to one of helping to maintain labour discipline and to increase production. At various times since 1949, what one might call “traditional union functions” have reasserted themselves, and the unions have found themselves accused of “economism”, i.e. concentrating on the immediate interests and material welfare of the workers rather than on furthering the interests of the State as a whole.

Two instances will suffice to demonstrate the legal position regarding trade unions and the general spirit of labour laws in China:

After a dispute has broken out, both parties, during the period of consultation, mediation or arbitration, shall maintain the status quo in production. The management should not resort to a lockout, suspend payment of wages, cease providing meals or take any other measures which lower the workers’ living conditions. Labour shall also maintain production and observe labour discipline. After arbitration by the Labour Bureau [a government organ], even if one party disagrees and calls for settlement by the court, the two parties shall nevertheless abide by the arbitration award pending the verdict of the court. [1]

In other words, from the start in 1950 (despite some measures designed to protect the workers’ interests), arbitration was to be compulsory, and strikes and go-slows were outlawed. Then in 1958:

The distribution of income shall be based on the principle of ensuring high speed in expanded reproduction. With the development of production, wages shall be increased every year, but the rate of increase must be slower than the rate of increase in production. When the average wages (including grain supply) of members of the commune rise to a level that guarantees a living standard equivalent to that of the well-to-do middle peasant, the rate of increase in wages should be reduced to ensure the rapid growth of industry, the mechanisation of farming and electrification of the rural areas in the shortest possible time. [2]  

Comment would be superflous.

Detailed information as to the exact way in which trade unions carried out their functions is rather harder to come by. Some interesting sidelights are shed by Edgar Snow’s report of his interview with Li Chi-po, Vice-Chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (Chinese equivalent of the TUC), in 1960. Snow asked what would happen if a union of shoemakers wanted to strike for higher wages; as answer, he was told that the unions’ main task was educational, with auxiliary tasks being the maintenance of labour morale and the improvement of the workers’ living conditions. Eventually Li replied to the question as follows:

Strikes for higher wages cannot occur if workers have been properly educated to understand that wages are based on fair standards of values of production set by the state, which makes no profit for itself but merely acts for “the whole people” to reinvest national savings for the future enrichment of all.

(“The Other Side of the River, Red China Today”, 1963) 

During the Cultural Revolution, however, the unions were found to have been under the influence of Liu Shao-ch’i and his particular faction of the Communist Party. Liu was accused of attempting to emasculate the revolutionary nature of the trade unions and so pave the way for the restoration of capitalism (Peking Review, June 28, 1968). By October 1970, it seems, trade unions had ceased to exist in China. A British union official who visited China in that month was told by a Peking factory worker:

Before the Cultural Revolution . . . instead of carrying forward revolution the unions concerned themselves with welfare and material incentives to the neglect of politics and state affairs.

Among the organisations set up to replace the unions were Workers’ Representative Conferences “under the direct guidance of the Party”:

Their main activity at the moment is organising the study of Chairman Mao’s philosophical works. (“China Policy Study Group Broadsheet”, June 1971.)

In short, the attitude taken by those who control the means of production in China towards so-called workers’ organisations has been to use them as a means of raising production and thereby increasing the amount of surplus value available for reinvestment. Any attempts by the trade unions to gain a larger part of this increased production for their members have eventually met with determined resistance from these same rulers. Which, to say the least, makes the Maoists’ protests about the situation in Britain a little hypocritical!

Paul Bennett

Notes.

[1] Provisional Rules of Procedure for Settling Labour Disputes (1950), Article 11. In Albert P. Blaustein (ed.): "Fundamental Legal Documents of Communist China”, New Jersey 1962, p. 505.

[2] Tentative Regulations (Draft) of the Weihsing (Sputnik) People’s Commune (1958), Article 22. In Blaustein, pp. 464-5. Emphasis added.

China’s working class drives capitalist development (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The heroic and inspiring struggles of China’s working class will only lay the ground for new and improved exploitation methods – unless, that is, the struggle turns political – and socialist.

“I do the same thing every day,” said one employee at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where more than ten workers have committed suicide. “I have no future.” Many, perhaps most, workers will know exactly how he feels. But to the bourgeois mind, it’s all an impenetrable puzzle. There was something criminally stupid and sickeningly idiotic about the reaction to the suicides of Terry Gou, the billionaire founder and chairman of the company, which makes electronic parts for the likes of Apple and Dell. According to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek (7 June), Gou said that he had no idea why the suicides were happening. “From a logical, scientific standpoint, I don’t have a grasp on that,” said Gou. “No matter how you force me, I don’t know.” Another worker interviewed at the factory might have given the hapless Gou a few clues: conversation and human interaction on the production line is forbidden, bathroom breaks are kept to ten minutes every two hours, and workers are yelled at frequently and fined for breaking the rules. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph (27 May), the pace of work in China is so intense that 50,000 workers a month burn out. When the workers go home at night, their hands continue to twitch and mimic the motion of the production line. Overtime last year was an average of 120 hours per month per worker, bringing their weekly hours up to 70. And yet Gou continues to apply his mind in vain to the intricacies of science and logic in search of an answer to the mystery of the suicides. While the search goes on, the company installed netting around outdoor stairwells of dormitory buildings to prevent people from jumping. It’s nice to hear that they care so much. The desperate measures taken by the poor souls at Foxconn have succeeded, however, in making things slightly better for the workers they left behind. Foxconn has since boosted wage levels by 30 percent and promised further 66 percent rises from October – conditional, of course, on worker performance.

A slightly happier story of worker revolt comes from the Denso car parts plant in China’s southern province of Guandong. A 21-year-old worker, who had never been on strike before, told the Observer’s Jonathan Watts (4 July) that she was worried, yet excited and determined when the action began. “We started our shift at the normal time, but instead of working we just walked around and around the workshop for eight hours. The managers asked us to return to our jobs, but nobody did.” The next day this was repeated, the corporate union begging the workers to return to work. Again they refused. There was no chanting, no speeches, no violence. Nervous of a crackdown from the ruling ‘Communist’ Party, the workers have acted very cleverly. Nobody is named as a leader or organiser, leaflets are used to make demands instead of computers or mobile phones, which can be traced to individuals, and, on the day of the strike, the frustrated management had to push for the official union to organise a vote so that there was someone to negotiate with. But a quiet and dignified determination not to work until the demands for improved pay were met won the day.

This struggle, and many more like them, along with a fall in the numbers in the reserve army of labour, have improved the bargaining position of workers in China, and wage levels are now predicted to be on an unstoppable upward trend. The “spate of strikes has thrown a spanner into the workshop of the world,” says The Economist. There are lessons here for all workers, and other groups in southeast Asia and the rest of China have not been slow to learn them. If the factory down the road or just across the border has won 50-odd percent or more pay rises, and improved conditions, why not us? Labour disputes in China were 30 percent higher in 2009 than a year earlier, and Guangdong alone saw at least 36 strikes between 25 May and 12 July, according to the Economist. Several cities have raised the minimum wage by up to 20 percent. Chinese labour costs have tripled in the decade after 1995 (although this was offset, for the capitalists, by a fivefold increase in productivity). And the example is beginning to spread, not only throughout China, but throughout the rest of the southeast Asian region too, especially in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos – regions with reserves of cheap labour, and which capitalists have been eyeing up, along with inland areas in China, as possible alternative locations for their businesses if the Chinese workers get too ‘bolshy’.

But, interestingly, this is not generally seen in the bourgeois press, including the papers so far quoted, as a bad thing. This might surprise those who are used to seeing wage demands and union organising closer to home ritually denounced as silly, greedy, selfish, and so on. This is the standard liberal line of being against all wars, and in favour of all progressive movements for change, as long as they took place in the past, or are happening in another country. But there are also sound, pro-capitalist reasons for welcoming the strikes and the pay rises. The capitalists and their representatives in the press will probably have been led to these reasons more by their practical involvement in the world and their nose for profit than any deep understanding of theory. But for those of us familiar with Marxian theory, their pronouncements were entirely predictable. Look at the history of China through Marxian lenses, and the motivation behind Western capitalists’ cautious welcoming of Chinese wage struggles will become clear.

China’s textbook development

The standard view portrayed in the capitalist media is that, once upon a time, China experimented with communism. When it realised what a ghastly mistake that was, the country came to its senses and converted, at least partially, to the standard, Western, free-market system – the only system that works, as all right-thinking people know as a matter of common sense. So much for the fairy tale. The truth is somewhat different. In fact, the story of China is pretty textbook – if the ‘textbook’ we take is Karl Marx’s Capital.

Looking at China today is very much like looking back in time. The capitalism currently flourishing there is pretty much indistinguishable from the capitalism of Victorian England that Marx and Engels spent so much of their lives analysing. The historian Tristram Hunt, in his entertaining biography of Engels, compares a passage from Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England, written in 1844, with the testimony of a Chinese migrant worker in Shenzhen in 2000. They are indistinguishable from each other, and the story is the same as in the relevant sections of Marx’s Capital: 12-hour days, overtime with shifts sometimes going on for 40 hours at rush times, ‘accidents’ and loss of limbs due to the pace of work and inadequate provision for human need, no breaks for meals, low wages, the exhaustion and crippling of the human body as a sacrifice to the altar of profit-making. How did China get to this depressing state of affairs? And where is it heading in the near future? Well, let’s turn to the textbook. In abstract, Marxian terms, the recent history of China’s development goes something like this.

China’s period of state-led primitive accumulation and capitalist industrial development began under Mao (a period falsely called ‘communism’ in mainstream accounts, but differing in particulars, not in substance, from what has happened historically in all the advanced capitalist nations). This development was, in capitalist if not human terms, an enormous success. However, like all capitalist development, sooner or later it ran into barriers to its further expansion. It needed, in particular, to increase labour productivity, reform and improve the productivity of agriculture, and attract foreign capital. Reforms under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, culminating in the massacre at Tiananmen Square, aimed to move the state-capitalist economy to a more market-based system, while at the same time destroying many of the working class’s (and peasantry’s) customary entitlements to the means of living (the destruction of the Chinese working class’s moral economy, perhaps we could call this, following the process described in EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class). This created a free labour force – free in the double sense of free to choose an employer, and free from the ownership of, or any entitlements to, the means of production or living, and hence free to starve or live in grinding poverty if you choose not to enter the labour market on capital’s terms. Further reforms in the 1990s then sought to integrate Chinese capitalism into the world market, opening China, and particularly its vast reserves of cheap labour-power, to exploitation by foreign capital.

With the creation of and access to the this free working class, global capital could then embark in earnest on the strategy of extracting ‘absolute surplus value’ – this means, in the absence of any customary or legal or moral limits to the working day, the capitalist class sweats the working class to produce as much profit as possible. The workers are made to work more and more for less and less. This was successful in China for a while – and was indeed hailed as an economic miracle by Western apologists for slavery. And a miracle it was – not only were there bumper profits to be made for the owners of capital, but the influx of cheap goods into Western economies helped to keep a lid on the value of labour power, and hence Western wage demands.

But again, the limitless drive to accumulate capital always hits up against real-world limits in the end. In the case of the extraction of absolute surplus value, the limits are real and obvious enough. There are only so many workers on the labour market, and those that are working can only work so many hours in the day without collapsing or dying. Capital, dead labour, can live vampire-like only by sucking the blood of the living. By sucking the workers dry, it destroys the basis of its own life – yet still it can’t help itself. Even if it wanted to, or began to feel moral pangs about its own behaviour, the external force of competition drives it on regardless. Enter into this picture, then, the working class itself. Unless these human beings are to meekly put up with being crippled and tortured for ever, with being beaten down into a position worse than that of slaves, worse than that of the most maltreated beast of burden, then working-class resistance is inevitable. The working class itself, then, begins to demand a limit to its own exploitation – a shortening of the working day, an increase in wages, an improvement in working conditions, and so on. Although this will, in the short term, eat into the profits of capital, and hence be bitterly resisted, in the long term, this is in the interests not just of the workers, but of the sustainability of capitalist development itself.

In fact, more than that, it drives capitalist development forward. As working-class gains are generalised, the capitalist again opens up an offensive, this time not in the direction of open, naked, unashamed, brutal exploitation, but with the more subtle and veiled technique of ‘relative surplus value’ extraction. This means that, with wages rising and profits slipping, it becomes economic for the capitalists to invest more in machinery and technology. This enables them to extract more profits not from sweating, but from improved productivity – producing more stuff in less time with fewer workers. Technological development, then, hailed by the capitalists as the fruit of their own genius, is driven by the struggles of the working class. And what should be an advance and a benefit for humanity and a cause for celebration becomes little more than a tawdry counter-attack in the class war. And the working class’s own heroic and inspiring efforts to carve out a life worth living merely lays the ground for their future, more sophisticated, exploitation.

And that’s why capitalists, even those who haven’t read their Marx, can come to welcome the demand for higher wages.

Disastrous consequences

What the mainstream press misses or downplays is the potentially disastrous consequences of this development for humanity. The first is that, as well as exhausting the worker, the development of capitalism also threatens to destroy the environment. China is facing a serious environmental crisis, including pollution and the exhaustion of its soil, which are a threat to itself, but also the emission of evermore greenhouse gases, which is a threat to us all. Rising wages also give rise to a consumer market, which in turns drives further capital accumulation, urbanisation, and pointless and wasteful and environmentally damaging consumerism. There is also the prospect of another devastating world war. This is pointed out in a very good and prescient series of articles in issues 14 and 16 of the libertarian Marxist journal Aufheben (see here). As the development of an internal consumer market and urbanisation proceed, a possible outcome is that China will move from its current position as a mere workshop at the service of global capital accumulation, to a centre of accumulation in its own right, and hence a competitor to the United States and Europe. This would of course mean that Chinese capital would develop needs and interests of its own, which in turn could easily lead to inter-imperialist conflicts over oil and other raw materials. Indeed, some argue that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were pre-emptive moves on the part of the US to win strategic control over such things from China from the start.

There is an alternative, of course, to such doomsday scenarios, and it’s one that the ruling elites are very well aware of, in China as elsewhere. This is how The Economist put it:

“As students of Karl Marx and of history, China’s party leaders will know that labour movements can begin with economic grievances and end in political revolt. By concentrating people in one place, Marx argued, factories turn a crowd of strangers into a ‘class’: conscious of its interests, united with each other and against the boss.”

And a working class organised politically could take the initiative out of capital’s hands and develop instead in a socialist direction. The Economist doesn’t mention such a possibility and probably wouldn’t take the prospect that seriously anyway. Perhaps it will be proved right to do so. But it’s where socialists place their hopes nonetheless. As a 20-year-old strike leader at a Honda plant in Foshan, Li Xiaojuan, quoted in the Guardian (30 June), says, "we must not let the representatives of capital divide us”. Workers in this country could do worse than follow developments in China very closely, and imitate their very fine example. The struggles must, however, turn not only political but socialist if our efforts are to do more than merely lay the ground for a new round of capitalist exploitation – or worse.

Stuart Watkins

Pieces Together: Workers Waking Up (2010)

From the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

WORKERS WAKING UP

"Zhongshan, China – Striking workers at a auto parts plant here are demanding the right to form their own labor union, something officially forbidden in China, and held a protest march Friday morning. Meanwhile, other scattered strikes have begun to ripple into Chinese provinces previously untouched by the labor unrest. A near doubling of wages is the primary goal of the approximately 1,700 Honda workers on strike here in this southeastern China city, at the third Honda auto parts factory to face a work stoppage in the last two weeks." (New York Times, 10 June)

A LOST TRIBE INDEED

"Northern Ireland's born-again Christian culture minister has called on the Ulster Museum to put on exhibits reflecting the view that the world was made by God only several thousand years ago. Nelson McCausland, who believes that Ulster Protestants are one of the lost tribes of Israel, has written to the museum's board of trustees urging them to reflect creationist and intelligent design theories of the universe's origins. The Democratic Unionist minister said the inclusion of anti-Darwinian theories in the museum was ‘a human rights issue’. McCausland defended a letter he wrote to the trustees calling for anti-evolution exhibitions at the museum. He claimed that around one third of Northern Ireland's population believed either in intelligent design or the creationist view that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago." (Guardian, 26 May)

PROFITABLE CARNAGE

"Russia has exported $5.3 billion worth of weapons-related production in the first six months of 2010, the head of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) said on Wednesday. ‘With a plan for $9.5 billion, we have delivered $5.3 billion in [weapons-related] production in the first six months [of 2010], which constitutes 56% of the plan,’ Mikhail Dmitriyev told the Engineering Technologies International Forum 2010 in the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow. In 2009, the figure was $8.5 billion." (Ria Novosti, 30 June)

CAPITALISM IN ACTION

"A boy aged seven has been found working 98 hours a week to produce decorative Christmas goods for the British high street. He is employed from 9am to 11pm, seven days a week, earning 7p an hour for his widowed mother. The boy, known only as Ravi, not only works but sleeps in a Delhi sweatshop that produces items for Poundland, the cut-price chain store." (Sunday Times,11 July)

China: primitive accumulation of capital (2007)

From the May 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is not able to develop until, in addition to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few people, there were also vast numbers of men and women free to sell their mental and physical energies, their labour power, for wages, and "free" from other means of obtaining a living such as the ownership of land. This, according to Karl Marx, was — and is — the primitive accumulation of capital. Peasants in England, Scotland, in continental Europe and, later, elsewhere were forced off the land and herded into factories. Today, we witness a similar situation in China and its so-called autonomous province of Tibet. Feudalism, even pre-feudalism and compradore capitalism, is being replaced by full-blooded capitalism known to the West for a century.

Until the 1980s, 80 percent of the Chinese labour force worked on the land. They were an enormous source of exploitable labour. During the last quarter of a century, however, millions of peasants have, by force, harassment or the promise (bait) of a better life, migrated to the ever-expanding cities of the People's Republic of China. For a few, life has indeed improved, even if they have become exploited wage slaves. But for most?

According to Amnesty International (reported in the West Australian, 3 March), millions of Chinese workers who have moved from the countryside to serve the country's expansion are "overworked, underpaid, denied access to health care, education for their children, and even the right to live permanently in the cities which use their labour," and are treated as an underclass. Continues the Amnesty report:

"They are forced to work long stretches of overtime, often denied time off when sick, and labour under hazardous conditions for paltry wages. As well as being exploited by employers, migrant families face discriminatory government regulations in almost every area of daily life."

They are, says the West Australian, easily exploited by unscrupulous bosses, many of whom withhold their wages, knowing, in the end, the workers will simply be forced to return home. Indeed, conditions in China today often parallel those chronicled by Marx and Engels in 19th century Britain. Conditions in the coal mines are particularly bad, with as many as 5,000 miners dying, and thousands more injured, every year in the cities, workers are herded into "shanty towns" or squalid apartments. According to the report, most workers in China "lack free trade union representation in their factories and restaurants, often working 14-hour days, 30 days a month . . ."

Strikes are illegal. But, as we know, they, as well as riots and even mass revolts, have occurred throughout the history of the People's Republic of China. The class struggle is alive and well! Meanwhile, a very rich minority of capitalists, of whom many are or were Communist Party functionaries, and factory managers, have emerged in China during the last 20 years or so. One such capitalist Yan Jiehe, is said to be worth more than £850 million.

Peter E Newell