Abstract
Capitalist farming based on the rich peasant economy is restored alongside the rehabilitation of authoritarian forms of management and the development of state capitalism in industry. The internal economic reforms interact with the development of trade and foreign investment ‘along capitalist lines’ characterised by the penetration of the Chinese economy by international corporate capital and its concurrent reintegration into the logic and structure of the world capitalist economy. The ‘open door’ policy in turn modifies the structure of corporate ownership as well as the unfolding of social class relations after Mao. The existence of foreign ownership in the form of joint ventures and fully-owned subsidiaries of transnational corporations legitimises the restoration of property rights to members of both the national and expatriate bourgeoisie, thereby contributing to the development of a property-owning class within ‘socialist China’.
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References
J. V. Stalin, Leninism (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940), p. 561, quoted in Bettelheim, Class Struggles in the USSR, First Period: 1917–1923 p. 21.
Mao Zedong, ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People’, Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 384–419.
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Ibid., p. 35. Mandel’s characterisation of individual conditions (with reference to the Soviet Union) focusing on the establishment of so-called ‘general laws for the existing societies in transition between capitalism and socialism’ is, in our opinion, based on a narrow typification of Marxian economic categories, that is, the so-called ‘laws of motion of the Soviet economy’ are arrived at from the observation of economic phenomena in separation from the social class relations which underly these phenomena.
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See L. Trotsky’s Aanalysis of this question in the 1919 preface to the reissue of The Permanent Revolution ( New York: Merit Publishers, third edition, 1969 ).
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Ibid.
In 1984, municipalities could sign contracts with foreign capital (without higher level provincial approval) for amounts not exceeding one million yuan (500 000 dollars). Provincial government bodies required central government approval for contracts in excess of one million dollars. In practice, municipal and provincial authorities are often in a position to bypass these ceilings.
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Ibid., p. 257.
Ibid., p. 257.
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See Chavance’s analysis in ‘On the Relations of Production in the USSR’, Monthly Review XIX:1 (1977), p. 2.
In Jerome Chen, Mao’s Papers ( London: Oxford University Press, 1970 ), p. 139.
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© 1986 Michel Chossudovsky
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Chossudovsky, M. (1986). Towards the Restoration of Capitalism?. In: Towards Capitalist Restoration?. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18415-6_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18415-6_12
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