Economic warfare, dressed up by US President Donald Trump as a defence of ‘American’ jobs and industry against unfair competition, is now central to the ...
You argue that workers in China have no need for independent unions because the state already represents them. But this assumes that the state and the working class are in perfect harmony an assumption that Marx, Lenin, and especially Trotsky warned against.
In a workers’ state, the possibility of class differentiation, degeneration, and bureaucracy always exists. Trotsky emphasized that unless workers maintain the right to independently organize even against the state they have no way of resisting the rise of a bureaucratic caste.
The very fact that strikes in China are not protected, not organized by independent unions, and are often met with suppression proves that the state does not welcome autonomous working-class activity.
If the state truly embodied proletarian power, it would welcome strikes as expressions of workers’ will not repress them. Instead, it treats independent organizing as a threat, much like how Stalin treated dissent in the 1930s. You’re mistaken on one point: if this republic were truly a workers’ republic organized by workers and governed by them then imperialists wouldn’t be able to intervene in the first place. That argument is just an excuse, and we all know it from Soviet experience. Perhaps all so-called workers’ states collapsed precisely because of this because they suppressed free workers’ action and independent movements.
As for the Lenin quote: Yes, there was a debate in 1920, but you leave out the context. Lenin pushed for tighter integration of unions under specific civil war conditions, while Trotsky and later the Left Opposition argued that permanent integration of unions into the state would lead to a bureaucratic ossification which is exactly what happened in the USSR, and later in China.
Rosa Luxemburg also warned: “Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.” Suppressing dissent in the name of unity only strengthens bureaucrats, not workers. A union that cannot strike or disagree with the state is not a union it is a transmission belt of the ruling bureaucracy.
All that sounds great in theory, but in practice we have seen historically where it ends. Do you believe Poland is better off now for having had their socialism destroyed, in large part by the subversive actions of the Solidarność union? How do you concretely propose to avoid that scenario from re-occurring?
It is not a far step from independent unions to demanding that each enterprise should be independent of state interference, and then you just end up with Perestroika.
The only logical end result of the creation of dual power structures separate from and competing with the state is the undermining and eventual destruction of that state. The reasons why communists strive to build such dual power structures in capitalist societies are precisely the reasons why these should not exist in socialist societies.
The thing is that both in Soviet Democracy and in China’s Whole-Process People’s Democracy there are mechanisms for the people to not only elect but also to actively participate in the political life of the country, from the local all the way to the national level, and to hold government accountable.
Why circumvent those democratic processes? What gives you the right to elevate the interests of certain small groups of workers above those of the whole working class?
Frankly this whole line of criticism is indicative to me of a liberal and individualist mentality more concerned with “individual freedom” than with the greater material well-being of the whole society. It reeks of anarchism/ultra-leftism.
I won’t get into the Trotsky debate here but suffice it to say that his position ended up being rejected by the majority of the Bolsheviks. My point is that there is no need to dig up and rehash this particular struggle, it has already been settled. Better to focus on concrete improvements based in real material criticism of the problems of unions in China.
You argue that workers in China have no need for independent unions because the state already represents them. But this assumes that the state and the working class are in perfect harmony an assumption that Marx, Lenin, and especially Trotsky warned against.
In a workers’ state, the possibility of class differentiation, degeneration, and bureaucracy always exists. Trotsky emphasized that unless workers maintain the right to independently organize even against the state they have no way of resisting the rise of a bureaucratic caste.
The very fact that strikes in China are not protected, not organized by independent unions, and are often met with suppression proves that the state does not welcome autonomous working-class activity.
If the state truly embodied proletarian power, it would welcome strikes as expressions of workers’ will not repress them. Instead, it treats independent organizing as a threat, much like how Stalin treated dissent in the 1930s. You’re mistaken on one point: if this republic were truly a workers’ republic organized by workers and governed by them then imperialists wouldn’t be able to intervene in the first place. That argument is just an excuse, and we all know it from Soviet experience. Perhaps all so-called workers’ states collapsed precisely because of this because they suppressed free workers’ action and independent movements.
As for the Lenin quote: Yes, there was a debate in 1920, but you leave out the context. Lenin pushed for tighter integration of unions under specific civil war conditions, while Trotsky and later the Left Opposition argued that permanent integration of unions into the state would lead to a bureaucratic ossification which is exactly what happened in the USSR, and later in China. Rosa Luxemburg also warned: “Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.” Suppressing dissent in the name of unity only strengthens bureaucrats, not workers. A union that cannot strike or disagree with the state is not a union it is a transmission belt of the ruling bureaucracy.
All that sounds great in theory, but in practice we have seen historically where it ends. Do you believe Poland is better off now for having had their socialism destroyed, in large part by the subversive actions of the Solidarność union? How do you concretely propose to avoid that scenario from re-occurring?
It is not a far step from independent unions to demanding that each enterprise should be independent of state interference, and then you just end up with Perestroika.
The only logical end result of the creation of dual power structures separate from and competing with the state is the undermining and eventual destruction of that state. The reasons why communists strive to build such dual power structures in capitalist societies are precisely the reasons why these should not exist in socialist societies.
The thing is that both in Soviet Democracy and in China’s Whole-Process People’s Democracy there are mechanisms for the people to not only elect but also to actively participate in the political life of the country, from the local all the way to the national level, and to hold government accountable.
Why circumvent those democratic processes? What gives you the right to elevate the interests of certain small groups of workers above those of the whole working class?
Frankly this whole line of criticism is indicative to me of a liberal and individualist mentality more concerned with “individual freedom” than with the greater material well-being of the whole society. It reeks of anarchism/ultra-leftism.
I won’t get into the Trotsky debate here but suffice it to say that his position ended up being rejected by the majority of the Bolsheviks. My point is that there is no need to dig up and rehash this particular struggle, it has already been settled. Better to focus on concrete improvements based in real material criticism of the problems of unions in China.