By ELIAS JABBOUR*

The time has come to discuss China's exceptionality as a socialism with the characteristics of that historical formation that is imposing successive victories on its own people and defeats on imperialism.

The serious and respectable intellectual and activist Valerio Arcary recently gave us his personal analysis of the process underway in China. The text, called “Chinese exceptionalism”, published on the website the earth is round is further proof of Valerio's vast political and historical knowledge. In fact, he does not deal with a single Chinese exceptionality, but with several – and the line of each of these exceptionalities leads to the conclusion that the country has restored capitalism, often without having transformed the political regime; which in itself would already instigate a study.

The core of Valerio Arcary's argument is very clear and points to the risks of the global left embracing a new camp around China. We will exchange ideas here on some points raised in the text, not in order to criticize the assumptions of the text, but in order to demonstrate that the unfolding of the Chinese experience demands not only a complete reformulation of the political grammar regarding socialist experiences.

We must re-discuss socialism itself in light of the undeniable advances for the Chinese working class of a project that, above all, advocates socialism. And not another “ism” as Xi Jinping reminds us.

The real “camping”

I don’t believe in this risk right away. Valerio Arcary talks about “the best of the global left” and the risks of it aligning itself with the Chinese. First of all, what would this global left be? If it is a left based on a Marxism that has not freed itself from Europe and that is now hegemonic throughout the world where PCs do not occupy political power, the risk of campism does not exist. This left rejects socialist experiences and views China with the same worldview that Europeans view blacks, Indians, Latinos, etc.

What should happen, and is already happening, is the growing sympathy for the Chinese experience among revolutionary nationalist forces that are currently popping up in Africa and ousting pro-imperialist governments. People in Niger, Burkina Faso and elsewhere are waving Chinese flags as inspiration for their struggles. In this sense, the best of the global left is not in Brazil, Europe and the US, but in Africa, where this left that confronts and defeats French imperialism is not financed by foundations and/or NGOs of European social democratic parties, as we see in Brazil and Latin America, causing a political tragedy of great proportions.

Therefore, camping is between the left “Open Society” and the political forces that integrated Marxism into their national realities. Thus, by Africanizing Marxism, political forces that operate in the opposite field of “Open Society” gives us hope, not the nihilism of the left in the West and its fringe.

China is a political force with a broad and decisive positive role in strengthening the national and revolutionary consciousness of the African and Asian periphery of the system. Its “South-South” relations via the Belt and Road Initiative clearly demonstrate the differences between the financial globalization that “Africanized Africa” and the trends that Chinese development brings to the peoples of the world.

Basic misconceptions

Valerio Arcary makes basic mistakes in his text. For example, Deng Xiaoping was not arrested and tortured during the Cultural Revolution, nor is there an official formulation by the Chinese government of a “long-term NEP”, “transition to capitalism” and then “a new historical turn and restarting the transition to socialism.”

The official formulation is simple and objective: China is in the primary stage of socialism, a stage characterized by the coexistence of various forms of property under the dominance of public ownership. Another basic mistake is to place emphasis on the “economic model that deepens social inequality for an indefinite period cannot be considered socialist”.

In fact, I agree with Valerio Arcary on this, but the data says otherwise. A quick and easy search will show us that social and territorial inequalities in China have been on a downward curve for at least 20 years and that this same bourgeoisie, which, according to him, benefits from an unlimited accumulation of capital, has seen its wealth fall by a third in the last five years, the result of an operation in which the company's accounting is increasingly subject to social accounting. Here I will dispense with the sources, only suggesting that you research each statement I make here.

Valerio Arcary does not demonstrate knowledge of the policies implemented by the Chinese government aimed at controlling the expansion of private capital, the true alignment of its bourgeoisie with a political order that has shown itself to be increasingly hostile to it, and the lack of accounting elements of the firm in strategic investment decisions: capitalism is incapable, at any historical moment, of delivering 45000 km of high-speed trains in just twenty years.

Another point, which is not a mistake in itself, is the fact that the text does not contain any data that actually demonstrates that there was a capitalist restoration in China. Valerio Arcary contradicts himself by proposing a study capable of understanding the so-called “social counterrevolution” (sic) without regime change. What was the regime before 1978? We cannot treat his reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square “massacre” as a mistake either. It is somewhat naive not to notice or even not to bother reading the reports released by the CIA about those events.

The same can be said about the comparison between Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev. They are antagonistic historical and political figures, and in Chinese political grammar the man who destroyed the USSR is treated as a traitor and an idiot (an adjective used by Deng Xiaoping). Chinese economic reforms have nothing to do with Perestroika and Glasnost. The first legitimized a Socialist State and the other two were functional to the destruction of the first socialist experience of our time.

The “bureaucracy”

One of the problems that I identify in the formulations of the political current to which Professor Valerio Arcary is affiliated is a certain universalism of notions pari passu with their aging. For example, what does not fit into a checklist can be considered “capitalist restoration”. The same applies to the concept widely used, and very seriously and competently used by Leon Trotsky, of “bureaucracy”.

It is inescapable in the works of Trotskyists to take refuge in these notions. Here I suggest replacing universalism (a clearly liberal deviation) with the category of socio-economic formation. This means that the bureaucracy described by Leon Trotsky, heir to czarism, has little to do with the bureaucracy inherited from the Asian mode of production.

It is clear that the tendency of bureaucratization is towards bourgeoisification and, more importantly, towards corruption. This phenomenon also occurs in China and is undeniable. I do not propose to ignore this contradiction, which has not become an “antagonistic contradiction” in China, but to observe that this bureaucracy simply accomplishes: it has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years, built 45000 km of high-speed trains in 20 years, and built an immense economy based on the public sector capable of rivaling the kneeling of American capitalism.

And it has delivered wage increases over the last ten years above inflation, GDP growth and labor productivity, it frames and sets limits on the bourgeoisie, expropriates its assets and deliberates on their distribution to the people, it builds a system of popular assemblies and neighborhood committees that were fundamental in mobilizing four million volunteer health professionals to face death in Wuhan, it plans Schumpeterian creative destruction to the point of moving 200 million Chinese from the countryside to the cities in ten years without the risk of slumming, etc., etc., etc.

This bureaucracy is the heir to the caste of bureaucrats who exercised state administration since before Christ, managing and executing immense public works. The loss of capacity of this bureaucracy to deliver large projects led peasant masses influenced by Laotse to overthrow dynasties.

Rather than engaging in abstract discussions about “social substitutionism,” it would be more interesting to understand the dialectic between the historical role of the Chinese peasant, his ability to pressure the bureaucracy, and the reasons why China did not succumb to the counterrevolution of 1989: the peasants were with socialism and not on the side of a pro-imperialist uprising. Today, these peasants are urban workers responsible for rebellions of various kinds, putting the heirs of Mao Zedong against the wall.

It is impossible to understand China without a deep understanding of its history. This means that if the old maxim that “the mandate of heaven is revocable by the people” is still valid, it is not difficult to conclude, knowing the details of how that society works, and the history of those details, that it is a country where we can give in to fragile notions of “closed country” and “authoritarianism” to describe a country and society where nihilism does not exist and where the future is breathed.

“Unconditional defense of achievements”?

In 1949, the life expectancy of the Chinese was 35 years. Today, it has surpassed that of the United States. Women were subjected to the process of binding their feet in order to create a sinister artistic form to please men, and today they occupy prominent positions in all areas of society. Tibet was a semi-colony of the British, subjected to a slave theocracy, and today its standard of living is improving faster than that seen in other regions of the country. China defeated imperialism in its civil war and in the Korean War, and today it is defeated again in the commercial and technological fields.

The undeniable social advances that have been made since 1978, not only in terms of eliminating extreme poverty, but also in terms of the possibility of a poor peasant being subjected to complex and free surgical interventions thousands of kilometers away by a doctor mediated by artificial intelligence schemes, should in itself be a refutation of the nonsense of pointing to a “social counterrevolution” in China when simply the opposite is happening and its realization is inseparable from the political power built up through a long revolutionary struggle.

No minimally informed Chinese citizen would agree with such an unrealistic and absurd statement, seeing poor peasants transforming themselves into scientists and a vibrant grassroots democracy sending more than 3000 amendments to the resolutions of the last National People's Assembly. The decadence of Western social science, which hits Marxism hard, is not in the failure to recognize the achievements of the Chinese revolution, but in the elaboration of notions with no connection to that reality and equating it with the complete extreme poverty that plagues a country, a country with dynamic capitalism like India. It is rock bottom.

Recognizing the achievements of socialist revolutions is an act of humanism in a world where poverty, hunger and war have become the norm. It is denying the tendency towards skepticism and nihilism and a near adherence to racism; because it is racism that we are dealing with when we read the verdicts of intellectuals with no commitment to political power and influenced by the decadence of Western Marxism. This is not the case with Valerio Arcary, obviously. Humanity can win and any Chinese social indicator shows us that.

Would acknowledging these achievements be “campism”? No. It would be a demonstration of faith in the future. This does not mean closing one’s eyes to the immense contradictions that affect Chinese society. Corruption, luxury, the (increasingly diminishing) number of billionaires and millionaires, the environmental crisis, and the social divide created by the immense mistakes made in the policies implemented in the second phase of reforms.

All this is pointed out in my books e Articles about China. But contradictions are only created where the Communist Party proposes to be the driving force of development. Nothing that happened after 1978 was planned down to the last detail. No, what came was a gigantic development process and its contradictions proportional to this process, in addition to the extremely high price of this development.

The “proof of the pudding” of a Communist Party in power lies in the absolute exercise of its power over all spheres of production and finance, and in imposing its own rhythm and objectives on the bourgeoisie. In addition, this test also extends to demonstrating the Communist Party’s ability to perceive contradictions and indicate paths to overcome them.

I challenge anyone to show me that the Chinese Communist Party is not facing, and is overcoming and pointing the way to, all the contradictions created by its development process.

Discussing Socialism in Our Time as Adults

The Chinese experience, immersed in both contradictions and political and institutional tools to face its contradictions, should force us not to fear “campism” or to take refuge in notions created in the 1930s to understand the limits of the USSR from the perspective of a defeated political current with no practical experience of political power since 1917. We should surrender to more abstractions (a vision of the historical process) and less imprisonment in the abstract (an ideological vision immersed in apriorisms).

The time has come to discuss China's exceptionality as a socialism with the characteristics of that historical formation that is imposing successive victories on its own people and defeats on imperialism seen only in World War II.

It is necessary to face the object and penetrate it; to discover its regularities and internal coherence. Observing it as adults would be to place all the contradictions of that process in perspective of real movement in the same way as we observe its developments resulting in a strangely capitalist country that has never experienced a crisis. The property structures based on public ownership and the increasing participation of workers' councils in investment decisions, the broad control of the Communist Party over the private sector.

It is to discover how, after 75 years of political power exercised in the then poorest country in the world, we now see this historical form leading to solutions to the three central issues of our time: development, peace and the climate crisis. It is essential to emphasize, again, that the basis of these achievements is the political power itself, which aims to revolutionize its society in qualitative leaps and by making science penetrate the pores of its social fabric.

In detail, it is about delving deep into the investigation of how that experience manages to give beginning, middle and end to all the projects it proposes. Here, we realize that the science of design created by Ignacio Rangel is implemented in China in various forms. For example, the success of a large project depends on the equalization of the cost and benefit structures of all the production chains involved, for example, in the poverty eradication project.

The practice of building socialism in the world for over a hundred years provides us with empirical evidence that only socialism is capable of achieving this equalization and that even under capitalism today it is impossible and when it was possible (Keynesian consensus) it occurred at the cost of an immense waste of resources.

Socialism is still at the beginning of its historical trajectory, and therefore its regularities are still under construction. In our time, the Chinese experience can provide us with a definition of socialism that relates it to the transformation of science into an instrument of government.

Delving deeper into the experience, we realize that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is distinguished from developmental states, in addition to the nature of political power and the property structure, by the fact that it gives form to a Socialist State that absorbs the nature of the Developmental State and overcomes it in such a way that it proves capable of introducing contradiction into the heart of the economic organism, generating movement and a rush of society committed to the exercise of observing “just in time” the input-output matrix and deliver institutional solutions to promote the intersectoral transfer of resources.

Therein lies the Chinese exceptionality. The opposite would be to admit that capitalism – given the achievements of the Chinese experience – still has a long way to go in terms of civilization. We need to leave the kindergarten that still dominates the debate on socialism.

*Elias Jabbour is a professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at UERJ. Author, among other books, together with Alberto Gabriele, of China: Socialism in the XNUMXst Century (Boitempo) [https://amzn.to/46yHsMp]

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