CPC’s 18th Congress
A Society in Transition
Sankar Ray
The laudatory greetings
from the Communist Party of
India (Marxist) to the CP of China for the recently concluded 18th Congress of CPC reflects the mendicant mindset of mandarins of India's largest Leftist outfit with 10 million members . Wooing the Beijing bosses in an unflinching manner, a 492-word message from the A K Gopalan Bhavan, party's national headquarters in New Delhi, stated "The CPI(M) is confident that the deliberations of the 18th Congress of the CPC will facilitate the further growth and consolidation of socialism in China, upholding the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics.". Why words like 'anti-imperialism', 'US imperialism' and 'proletarian internationalism' disappeared from the lexicon of CPC, also from the party constitution do not bother the leaders of official CPs of India.
China has the largest number of internal migrants and their numbers are constantly on the rise and externally, its exports at incredibly low prices take away thousands of jobs abroad . Peter J Taylor of department of Geography, professor in the School of the Built and Natural Environment, Northumbria University, and emeritus professor at Loughborough University, Leicester, UK, termed this phenomenon as 'labour imperialism'.There is no denying that elements of egalitarianism are rapidly evanescing in the middle kingdom. The social effect is manifest. Prostitution is on the rise and going by the official disaggregation of gross domestic product into different sectors and sub-sectors reveals that revenue generated by prostitution account for 7 percent of GDP.
The CPI(M), CPI, CPI(ML) Liberation and other Naxalite groups are inexplicably silent about Beijing's increasing bonhomie with the neo-liberal finance capital. They ignore the distinctively rightward orientation of CPC's rule book, not even bothered about deletion of 'class struggle' from the party constitution. The CPI(M) on the contrary creates illusions about ridiculous oxymorons like 'socialist market economy' that suits Marx's adversary Eugen Duhring as Marx and Engels were against the very concept of market. Market "is coercive", aptly said Ellen Meiksons Wood, former editor, Monthly Review,in a commentary in the early 1990s. Primacy of market means licence to continuity and augmentation of wage slavery, firmer endorsement of capitalism that may only be of a neo-liberal strain today (particularly in China amidst burgeoning growth sans egalitarianism) and barbarism which is inseparable from the capitalist system that needs the state in contrast to the Marxian goals.
Long working hours (over 12 hours) for tens of thousands of migrant workers and increasing difference in living standards between the nouveau riche (including some top party leaders) those workers are not even casually mentioned in any document placed or discussed at the Congress. "Published figures show that the wealthiest 70 delegates to the National People's Conference had a combined fortune of US$90 billion in 2011. The top 70 in the Chinese People's Political Congress were even richer at US$100 billion. It is fair to assume that they all didn't come by that money honestly", noted corporate research-analyst Steve Wang in the Hong Kong based Asia Sentinel. Senior CPC functionary Zhou Erjie in an article in Xinhua, proudly mentioned the presence of Sanny group supremo Liang Wengen among the 30-odd capitalists of 2268 delegates (against 17 at the 17th Congress). John Chan of Socialist International ridiculed the jamboree as an'oligarchic gathering'and lambasted the media-hyped 10 years of "golden decade" under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao as a period as "golden for the country's capitalists". Even in 2002, there was no dollar billionaire in China but there are 271 billionaires (201l), next only to the US.
The CPC bureaucracy trampled dissent completely through a super-sophisticated surveillance system installed during Beijing Olympic in 2008 under a consortium of US companies, mostly listed with NASDAQ and NYSE. Some 300,000 security cameras and an estimated 100,000 security officers in Beijing alone, plus 600 'safe' cities are constantly on alert.. A hugely powerful secret system of vigilance, it monitors everything and keeps tab on any criticism of the state and the party. Which is why unlike during the run-up to the previous Congress, when over a dozen of veteran CPC leaders of yesteryears circulated a 4000-plus word dissent note, our Views on the Black Brick Kiln and Other Incidents and Recommendations for the 17th Party Congress, there was no ripple at all. The military-bureaucratic vigilance is an integral part of a global $200 billion homeland security industry, quipped Christian Parenti in 2008. But can a police state pacify the unstoppable anger and resentment forever? Let history, 'a slaughter house' (Hegel), decide.
Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 21, Dec 2-8, 2012
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