Catgirl Horsegirl

The capitalist class [in China] is not a politically well-organized force which can challenge the state power of the proletariat, but the expansion of private property and the accompanying mentality, in the form of norms and values in society—the “bourgeois liberalization”—remains a challenge. When Xi talks about ideological “struggles,” it is not “class struggle” in the traditional sense. Xi warns against “money worship, hedonism, ultra individualism, and historical nihilism.” He states that: “the formation of firm ideals and beliefs is neither achieved overnight nor once and for all but must be constantly tempered and tested in concrete struggle.” He says that:

It will be no easy task like a walk in the park; it will not happen overnight, or through sheer fanfare. We must always keep a long-term perspective, remain mindful of potential risks, maintain strategic focus and determination, and ‘attain to the broad and great while addressing the delicate and minute.

After forty years of “opening up” towards neoliberal globalization it would be a mistake to diminish the role of class struggle in China. Given the expansion of capitalist relations of production in the past decades, it is obvious that class contradictions would intensify.

The problems facing China today are different from the 1970s, when the main contradiction was between the low level of development of the productive forces, and the growing demands of the masses. However, according to Xi, this development was characterized by an unbalanced capitalist growth deepening inequality, rural/urban divisions and creating an unsustainable relationship to the environment. The values and norms of neoliberalism have also left their mark. Individualism, a competition mentality, and greed have made their inroads at the expense of solidarity and community. Xi now redefined the main contradiction as the unbalanced and inadequate development and the growing needs of the people for a better life.

To ease contradictions, Xi emphasizes the policy of “Common Prosperity” instead of Deng’s “some get rich first.” New tax laws to redistribute wealth, a huge campaign to eliminate rural poverty, new laws to regulate the working condition, and rules to reduce speculation in the real estate sector were all introduced. However, at the same time, Xi Jinping stressed the need to promote the unity and struggle of the Chinese people and to promote harmonious class relations. The Governance of China is also the title of the four-volume collection of Xi Jinping speeches and writings.

Xi, as a member of the communist party since his youth, is a schooled Marxist, and knows all about class struggle as the driver for change. He often affirms the party’s adherence to Marxism, but seldom discusses the specific class struggle in China and the future of the national capitalist sector, national and transnational. Xi is also president of the People’s Republic of China, which needs class harmony to continue the economic development to fulfill the needs of the people.

This blend of understanding the transformative role of class struggle, and promoting class harmony, is not schizophrenic or revisionist. It reflects the real dilemma—or balancing exercise—between the need for the development of the productive forces in a transitionary state within a world still dominated by the capitalist mode of production on the one side and on the other side, the need of proletarian class struggle to maintain state power and push towards a socialist mode of production. This takes into account the concrete reality that class struggle in China between labor and capital, and the ideological struggle between bourgeois ideas, norms and values and socialist values is a long-lasting struggle, which will go on as long as capitalist relations of production plays a major role in China.

It is important to understand and differentiate between the phases in the transformation process. We have to distinguish between when we are talking about the development of the productive forces–in a transitionary state–in a world system still dominated by the capitalist mode of production, or when we are talking about the final transformation of the mode of production, from capitalist to socialist.

In the first case we can use capitalist management and the market to move towards socialism. In the second case we have to eliminate residual elements of the capitalist mode of production as they no longer play a progressive role in the development of the productive forces, but are blocking and even destroying human development.

This is the tipping point, when it is time to move from taking advantage of the capitalist mode of production to eliminating it, and to release the socialist mode of production from the constricting residual bind of capitalism. We are approaching the point where the need for another mode of production becomes more and more pressing as the destruction of global ecology and climate accelerates under capitalism.

-Torkil Lauesen, The Long Transition Towards Socialism And The End Of Capitalism Pgs. 309-311