Thanks for making available this interesting perspective on Chinese social, political, and economic recent history.
For a while I’ve had the thought that Putin is espousing and performing ‘socialism with Russian characteristics’, so it is good to see you articulating it.
I take socialism (and the rhetorically disqualified term ‘communism’) to indicate that the paramount purpose, continuous project, of national, regional, and local governance is to ensure that all the people entrusted to it are provided with all they need to live well - the wherewithal to prosper. [IndoEuropean roots: spəros thriving; prō forwards]
Sovereign Mutualism: collaborate, work together, with all people, internally and externally.
Prime social injunction: ‘help each other out, don’t do each other down’.
Only compete in fair games of pretend whose rules and practices deliberately preclude harm.
Mutualist commissioning is when governance suggests a project of collaborative endeavour and provides the wherewithal to accomplish its purpose. Coercive commissioning is antimutual.
A market economy is a social institution which provides feedback and feedforward between producers and users. It matches what is required to what is available across time. What is required commissions its fulfilment; what is available commissions its delivery. Capitalist ownership is not necessary for a market of exchanges of goods to work effectively. The ‘Gum’ effect exemplifies a market’s ‘barbaric’ malfunctioning.
Capitalist productive enterprises are owned by aliens to them, not their participants and collective communal commissioners. So the alien directive is to extract and alienate currency from the enterprise and avoid responsibility for the harms this inevitably causes. They are parasitic on the efforts of ’their’ workers to the detriment of both participants and their social milieu. A community that hosts a productive enterprise benefits from it on behalf of whoever within it makes use of its products.
It is and has been possible for an entrepreneur to initiate and run an enterprise on the principle of currency homeostasis for the benefit of its community, ‘looking after’ its workers and providing for their health and safety while avoiding despoiling its ecological and social environment. In England, particularly within the Quaker community, Cadbury, Boots, Reckitts for example were run as public services with their owners extracting enough to live on. They all now have alien owners who have resiled from their communal responsibilities.
So as Deng Xiaoping avers “public ownership should occupy the main body”. Collectively owned public services are the means of providing for the needs of the people.
Incidentally, I have difficulty finding out what the “two worries” are. They are referred to but not specified.
I'd need to do some further searching to help with the "two worries" query. I'm sure we'll be provided with more examples of Russian/Putin Socialism with the events in Vladivostok.
Hi, from watching an interview with Tings Chak of the Tricontinental who wrote a paper studying China's poverty alleviation efforts, the two "worries" are food and clothing - so the government provides assurances that these do not need to be worried about. Perhaps something is lost in translation.
The 3 guarantees are access to basic medical services, quality housing (running water, structural integrity, electricity) and free compulsory education.
A very interesting and informative discussion - thank you, Karl as always. The participants were very diplomatic, especially with regard to Gorbachev. A good time to remember, perhaps Deng Xiaoping's reported remarks after he had met Gorbachev for the first time: "Here's a man who sounds very intelligent, but who is in fact very stupid."
Chinese generally don't smear the dead. It's enough to point to the great errors that were made and that an opportunity arose to learn from them and how the West exploited the situation. The program, "This is China," is a regular happening that I ought to translate more often. Deng and Putin both share the fact that they were the right leader for their nations at the right time.
As to his vaunted 'decision' to open up, Mao had personally written to three US presidents, inviting them to introduce capitalism and offering guarantees. Not until 2001, when the US was able to set trading rules for the entire world through the WTO, was China admitted–under conditions so humiliating that people rioted over 'unequal treaties'.
Deng Xiaoping was more responsible for the Great Leap Forward famine. He and Liu Shaoqi were made Politburo Standing Committee Member and Vice Chairman of CPC in 1956. Moreover, Deng after coming to power pretty much by coup in July 1977 after dismissal in April 1976 rehabilitated the party secretaries of the provinces worst hit during the Great Leap Forward, who were attacked during the Cultural Revolution for good reason. See for details https://gmachine1729.livejo...
Deng's decade was a disaster. Life expectancy fell for the first and only time, crime and prostitution returned, and 22% inflation triggered the Tiananmen demonstrations whose participants entered the square carrying signs reading, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, so long as the cat resigns”. Of their four demands, this was #1.
And his family was a nightmare, an affliction on China that only Xi, whose father was good friends with Deng, was able to corral. Ghastly people. Cruel and ruthless. Like their father.
Thanks, these are valuable contributions to my knowledge of the era, I was a student of modern asian studies in the late seventies and these topics were very active as it was early days post Mao, and the campus had several active factions arguing these topics, Gang of Four, etc.
I suspect that the 'two worries' have to do with the Chinese social insurance system - people being protected against unforeseen personal and communal disasters. Like the mutual insurance systems pioneered by the trade unions in nineteenth century England - Mutual Benefit Societies also dealing with housing and Wholesale Cooperatives. A member being unable to work through injury or sacking, having contributed a ha'penny a week into the fund which paid out until the member could work again. After the War the socialist government set up National Insurance contributions to fund the National Health Service and Old Age Pensions. Now it's just another tax on employees which disappears into the Treasury to 'balance the books'.
Thanks for making available this interesting perspective on Chinese social, political, and economic recent history.
For a while I’ve had the thought that Putin is espousing and performing ‘socialism with Russian characteristics’, so it is good to see you articulating it.
I take socialism (and the rhetorically disqualified term ‘communism’) to indicate that the paramount purpose, continuous project, of national, regional, and local governance is to ensure that all the people entrusted to it are provided with all they need to live well - the wherewithal to prosper. [IndoEuropean roots: spəros thriving; prō forwards]
Sovereign Mutualism: collaborate, work together, with all people, internally and externally.
Prime social injunction: ‘help each other out, don’t do each other down’.
Only compete in fair games of pretend whose rules and practices deliberately preclude harm.
Mutualist commissioning is when governance suggests a project of collaborative endeavour and provides the wherewithal to accomplish its purpose. Coercive commissioning is antimutual.
A market economy is a social institution which provides feedback and feedforward between producers and users. It matches what is required to what is available across time. What is required commissions its fulfilment; what is available commissions its delivery. Capitalist ownership is not necessary for a market of exchanges of goods to work effectively. The ‘Gum’ effect exemplifies a market’s ‘barbaric’ malfunctioning.
Capitalist productive enterprises are owned by aliens to them, not their participants and collective communal commissioners. So the alien directive is to extract and alienate currency from the enterprise and avoid responsibility for the harms this inevitably causes. They are parasitic on the efforts of ’their’ workers to the detriment of both participants and their social milieu. A community that hosts a productive enterprise benefits from it on behalf of whoever within it makes use of its products.
It is and has been possible for an entrepreneur to initiate and run an enterprise on the principle of currency homeostasis for the benefit of its community, ‘looking after’ its workers and providing for their health and safety while avoiding despoiling its ecological and social environment. In England, particularly within the Quaker community, Cadbury, Boots, Reckitts for example were run as public services with their owners extracting enough to live on. They all now have alien owners who have resiled from their communal responsibilities.
So as Deng Xiaoping avers “public ownership should occupy the main body”. Collectively owned public services are the means of providing for the needs of the people.
Incidentally, I have difficulty finding out what the “two worries” are. They are referred to but not specified.
I'd need to do some further searching to help with the "two worries" query. I'm sure we'll be provided with more examples of Russian/Putin Socialism with the events in Vladivostok.
Hi, from watching an interview with Tings Chak of the Tricontinental who wrote a paper studying China's poverty alleviation efforts, the two "worries" are food and clothing - so the government provides assurances that these do not need to be worried about. Perhaps something is lost in translation.
The 3 guarantees are access to basic medical services, quality housing (running water, structural integrity, electricity) and free compulsory education.
Thanks Nathan. Is there a link to that paper?
Hi, I think the full report is here: https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/20210719_Study-Alleviation-of-poverty_EN_Web-2.pdf
A related article (shorter) is here: https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2023-2-targeted-poverty-alleviation-rural-governance/
Thanks! It will be interesting to compare it with China's White Paper on the topic.
Look forward to your analysis. Really appreciate your work.
A very interesting and informative discussion - thank you, Karl as always. The participants were very diplomatic, especially with regard to Gorbachev. A good time to remember, perhaps Deng Xiaoping's reported remarks after he had met Gorbachev for the first time: "Here's a man who sounds very intelligent, but who is in fact very stupid."
Chinese generally don't smear the dead. It's enough to point to the great errors that were made and that an opportunity arose to learn from them and how the West exploited the situation. The program, "This is China," is a regular happening that I ought to translate more often. Deng and Putin both share the fact that they were the right leader for their nations at the right time.
As to his vaunted 'decision' to open up, Mao had personally written to three US presidents, inviting them to introduce capitalism and offering guarantees. Not until 2001, when the US was able to set trading rules for the entire world through the WTO, was China admitted–under conditions so humiliating that people rioted over 'unequal treaties'.
Deng Xiaoping was more responsible for the Great Leap Forward famine. He and Liu Shaoqi were made Politburo Standing Committee Member and Vice Chairman of CPC in 1956. Moreover, Deng after coming to power pretty much by coup in July 1977 after dismissal in April 1976 rehabilitated the party secretaries of the provinces worst hit during the Great Leap Forward, who were attacked during the Cultural Revolution for good reason. See for details https://gmachine1729.livejo...
Deng's decade was a disaster. Life expectancy fell for the first and only time, crime and prostitution returned, and 22% inflation triggered the Tiananmen demonstrations whose participants entered the square carrying signs reading, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, so long as the cat resigns”. Of their four demands, this was #1.
And his family was a nightmare, an affliction on China that only Xi, whose father was good friends with Deng, was able to corral. Ghastly people. Cruel and ruthless. Like their father.
Something's amiss with your link.
I found the author. For reference, if you need.
https://www.livejournal.com/rsearch?q=%D0%94%D1%8D%D0%BD%20%D0%A1%D1%8F%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D0%BD&sort=_score&journal=gmachine1729&journalId=85364227&searchArea=post
https://www.livejournal.com/rsearch?q=Deng%20Xiaoping&sort=_score&journal=gmachine1729&journalId=85364227&searchArea=post&es=1
https://www.livejournal.com/rsearch?q=%E9%82%93%E5%B0%8F%E5%B9%B3&sort=_score&journal=gmachine1729&journalId=85364227&searchArea=post
Thanks much!
Thanks, these are valuable contributions to my knowledge of the era, I was a student of modern asian studies in the late seventies and these topics were very active as it was early days post Mao, and the campus had several active factions arguing these topics, Gang of Four, etc.
I suspect that the 'two worries' have to do with the Chinese social insurance system - people being protected against unforeseen personal and communal disasters. Like the mutual insurance systems pioneered by the trade unions in nineteenth century England - Mutual Benefit Societies also dealing with housing and Wholesale Cooperatives. A member being unable to work through injury or sacking, having contributed a ha'penny a week into the fund which paid out until the member could work again. After the War the socialist government set up National Insurance contributions to fund the National Health Service and Old Age Pensions. Now it's just another tax on employees which disappears into the Treasury to 'balance the books'.