Debate on China

In FRFI 292 Alvaro Michaels wrote: ‘In China the re-establishment of capitalism has hugely developed the working class, putting it in a much better position to achieve its historic goal of controlling society for itself, and [it] is presently advantaged by the control of state power by a Communist Party, in spite of its ideological compromises.’ While Michaels doesn’t give a thorough periodisation in his short article, his claim seems to be that from the period of capitalist reforms from 1978 until the present, the Chinese working class has got closer to ‘controlling society for itself’ than during the socialist period of 1956-78. This claim is hard to swallow given the massive political setbacks for the working classes of China, massive gains for the Chinese bourgeoisie and massive dividends wrought from Chinese toil and soil by foreign capitalists (also mentioned by Michaels).

During the socialist period, industrial workers had a guaranteed right to work in a planned economy. The constitutional right to strike, won during the cultural revolution, was revoked in 1982. Rural workers participated in and benefited from the commune system which provided healthcare and education to the whole community, agricultural tools and land were owned and operated collectively and work was remunerated in terms of quantity. After the capitalist reforms, under ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, the working classes gained the right to unemployment, the village communes were dissolved from above and hundreds of millions of rural people had to travel to the cities looking for work. The political losses of Chinese workers to ‘their’ bourgeoisie is also reflected in Chinese culture, such as the elitism in education mentioned by Michaels. While Chinese economic growth since the Deng period (built on the foundations of the socialist period) is a world-historic achievement of the CPC, it seems mistaken to conflate this with political gains for the workers.

MATT GLASS
West London

Reply

Comrade Glass has misrepresented the sentence he quotes from. The quote he provides clearly states that ‘capitalism has hugely developed the working class, putting it in a much better position to achieve its historic goal’. It certainly does not say that the working class has actually ‘got closer to controlling society for itself’ as Glass states. There is a fundamental difference between the material size and maturity of the working class today compared to 1978 and its degree of political self-consciousness. The former is a necessary but insufficient condition of the latter. If they were identical bourgeois society would have already implemented its own socialist future.

Today the Chinese working class is transformed. It is no longer made up in the majority of agricultural hand workers in almost completely underequipped cooperatives, living in poverty. Urbanisation increased from 17.92% in 1978 to 59.58% in 2018. In 2021, 63% of the population was urbanised. The implications are obvious. The Chinese working class is now better able to communicate, to act as a mass, working more immediately closer together, but which, in the forthcoming period, is bound to suffer from growing unemployment and material stagnation as capital accumulation falters. How the CPC is planning to resolve this looming crisis is the subject of the two recent articles in FRFI.

Glass points to removal of the communal system. The losses to the working class, as a whole, in the period were briefly illustrated in the article, but our task is not to regret the past, but expose reactionary trends and support the revolutionary movements today. A developing capitalist economy, managed by an ideologically compromised Communist Party, is a modern contradiction that has never been previously experienced. It is our responsibility to assess the forces at work today, and our ongoing analysis will strive to contribute to this.

ALVARO MICHAELS

The rising cost of childcare

Perhaps the most highlighted part of Jeremy Hunt’s budget plan is the promise to expand free childcare for children between nine months and three-years-old. The government has been under pressure from businesses facing labour shortages as the rising cost of childcare has forced women back into the home. 43,000 women have been forced out of the workforce to look after family in the last year alone.

A key part of the plan is increasing the child-to-staff ratio, which would make the intense and exhausting work even harder, for the same poverty pay. More staff are leaving the sector than joining, with a 24% annual turnover rate. Further, 97% of childcare workers are women themselves; the burden on women to take care of their own children at home is simply being transferred to other women working in childcare.

Plans for expansion don’t come into full effect for two years – far too late for thousands of women. The demand for free and accessible childcare now must go alongside a demand that those working in the sector be properly trained and paid.

ANNIE O’CONNOR
Newcastle

Free Alfredo Cospito!

Italian political prisoner Alfredo Cospito has been on a hunger strike for more than 200 days in protest at the humiliating and repressive detention regime he is under, known as 41 bis. Among the many restrictions, he can only have one meeting per month with family members behind a screen, and he is not allowed to hang posters or photos on the walls of his cell. Prison officers are also operating strict censorship on his post and books. Even the bourgeois European Court of Human Rights has declared that this detention regime can be considered torture.

The Italian Supreme Court has ruled against lifting the 41 bis regime for Cospito. This is a perfect example of the cruelty the Italian state uses against political enemies. It is the same attitude of the Italian ruling class when it recently declared the upcoming abolition of the historic benefit paid to those on low incomes. It is class struggle against the working class: we need to organise and fight back. On 20 February FRFI organised a banner drop and protest at the Italian Consulate in London in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito and on 24 March joined a protest outside the Italian Embassy.

BIANCA PEZZOH
South London

Absence of dentistry

George Monbiot’s piece in The Guardian on 2 March about the absence of NHS dentistry was a sober read for those who cannot afford private dental care.

Being on a low wage I could not afford six-monthly dental check-ups so I was cut off from NHS services at my old dentist. When I developed agonising tooth and jaw pain and one side of my face swelled up so dramatically that I was barely recognisable, no local dentist was accepting new NHS patients. I finally managed to get one of a limited number of emergency appointments, which cost £23.80 each time. I spent six months being repeatedly prescribed strong antibiotics for abscesses that had developed around a cracked and rotten tooth. It was not until I was finally able to register for an NHS dentist that I could get the tooth extracted.

Monbiot gives some sobering figures. 90% of UK dental practices are no longer taking on new adult NHS patients. Meanwhile, people are reduced to chewing cloves, extracting their own teeth, DIY fillings and dentures, and overdosing on painkillers.

CLAIRE WILKINSON
Liverpool

Return gold to Venezuela!

On 4 May the Revolutionary Communist Group organised a protest outside the Bank of England demanding a return of the gold stolen from Venezuela.

From Venezuela we appreciate the expressions of solidarity expressed by our comrades and friends from the United Kingdom, who demand that the gold be returned to our beloved homeland Venezuela. At the same time we raise our voices to end the blockade and sanctions by the North American empire. Long live Chavez. Long live Venezuela.

ROGER JIMÉNEZ
President of the Bolivarian National Union of Postal Workers of Venezuela

Solidarity to UCU workers on strike!

Since 2017, UCU lecturers and staff have been taking strike action against changes to their pension scheme and, since 2018, also against low pay and working conditions. Workers have achieved record levels of participation in strikes and other actions, demonstrating their will to change the higher education sector through class conflict. However an opportunist union leadership has continuously lagged behind its membership, acting as a handbrake to the most advanced demands of the workers and adopting a cooperative attitude with the employers.

This term the UCU leadership called off strike days ‘to create a period of calm’. While very small steps forward have been made on the pension scheme issue, nothing has been offered on pay, workload and casualisation, which are the matters most directly and immediately affecting the most exploited section of the UCU membership. The UCU should adopt a marking boycott as it would paralyse the entire academic system while lecturers, who are not directly paid for this task, would not have to renounce further parts of their salary.

We stand in solidarity with all the lecturers and staff who will fight to extend and expand the current strike action until better conditions for all workers have been achieved.

ALEXANDER TROME
South London

Fighting the racist prison system

On 29 July 2021 I was assaulted by officers at HMP Long Lartin. To mention just some of the other vile treatment I have received: my property being damaged and covered in urine when moving prisons; being refused kosher food at Leeds and Long Lartin, even though I’m mixed race and registered Jewish and had been on a kosher diet in three prisons before those; being refused to be put on an ACCT [the system for monitoring suicidal and self-harming prisoners].

I sued HMP Long Lartin for the assault on me, so they quickly charged me for assaulting them. I’m at Worcester Crown Court around September 2024 and I’m going to use the court as a platform to expose HM Prison Service. I need as much support as possible.
I have to expose these HMPS racists.

MICHAEL PETERS
A7918AG, HMP WOODHILL
Tattenhoe Street,
Milton Keynes MK4 4DA

FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 293 April/May 2023