here is the Socialist Fight LCFI position on China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Africa extracted from the longer document, The Marxist theory of the state: Deformed and degenerated workers’ states and capitalist states Reply to the RCIT Part 3 which you might want to ‘spot’, available here: socialistfight/2014/01/20/the-marxist-theory-of-the-state-deformed-and-degenerated-workers-states-and-capitalist-states-reply-to-the-rcit-part-3/ China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Africa Mao crushed the striking workers who greeted his ‘Red Army’ into Peking in 1949. On this basis Cambodia/Kampuchea was not a deformed workers’ state before the Vietnam invasion of 1978. Peng Shuzi is therefore wrong when he reasons thus: Our opinion is: under Pol Pot’s rule, Cambodia was very contradictory. On the one hand, it had confiscated the properties of the bourgeoisie and established socialist property relations; on this basic point, it was a workers’ state. But on the other hand, since Pol Pot was the most stupid and the most brutal among the Stalinist bureaucrats, and a butcher killing over a million people, its regime was an extremely brutal and ugly dictatorship deeply hated by the Cambodian people. From a dialectical viewpoint, the progressiveness of its property nationalizations could not be denied, and should be supported. But its blind adventurism in abolishing the currency and halting all commerce should be criticized; as for its ugly bureaucratic rule, it should be exposed and attacked to the maximum. But the SWP held different opinions. It stressed the crimes of the bureaucratic dictatorship and denied the fact of its confiscation of private properties, and so defined Cambodia as a capitalist country. Such a view is queer because a capitalist country without private property and without commerce has never existed in the world. Because Cuba supported Vietnam, the SWP also followed to support Vietnam. [i] Cambodia before the Vietnam invasion was not a workers’ state because not only did Pol Pot not mobilise the working class in any way to overturn property relations but he immediately wiped out not only the capitalists but also the working class; in fact his year zero destroyed the whole of the modern culture of the country. Peng says, “Such a view is queer because a capitalist country without private property and without commerce has never existed in the world”. But a workers’ state without a working class or commerce has never existed either and never can; Pol Pot had reduced the country to pre-capitalist barbarism- Wikipedia reports, “it had left the PRK (Peoples Republic of Kampuchea) founded by the Salvation Front in 1979 after the Vietnamese invasion - SF) with little to start with, for there was no police, no schools, no books, no hospitals, no post and telecommunications, no legal system and no commercial networks, whether state-owned or private”. Peng also failed to see the whole picture, the invasion by Vietnam was historically progressive and arguably the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979-89) did become a deformed workers’ state under the Salvation Front. It was supported by the USSR, Vietnam and Cuba but the opposition of China, Britain, the USA and the ASEAN countries prevented it from getting a seat in the UN and so international recognition. The ‘democracies’, slavishly backed by China, continued to support the remnants of Pol Pot armies and two other pro-Imperialist guerrilla forces until the regime capitulated entirely, the state became openly capitalist in 1989, so-called Marxism-Leninism was abandoned as a state ideology in 1991 and the monarchy was restored in 1993. Thailand and China supplied the genocidal Pol Pot with vast quantities of armaments on behalf of western Imperialism. Vietnam had already become a capitalist state in 1986, the first deformed workers’ state to be abolished by a ‘cold stroke’ in the period of the ‘collapse of Communism’. Wikipedia tells us: At the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in December 1986, reformist politicians replaced the “old guard” government with new leadership. The reformers were led by 71-year-old Nguyen Van Linh, who became the party’s new general secretary. Linh and the reformers implemented a series of free-market reforms – known as Đổi Mới (“Renovation”) – which carefully managed the transition from a planned economy to a “socialist-oriented market economy”. Though the authority of the state remained unchallenged under Đổi Mới, the government encouraged private ownership of farms and factories, economic deregulation and foreign investment, while maintaining control over strategic industries. The Vietnamese economy subsequently achieved strong growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction, exports and foreign investment. However, these reforms have also caused a rise in income inequality and gender disparities. [ii] The deformed workers’ state was transformed into a capitalist state in both Vietnam and Cambodia controlled by a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ government when they decided to promote capitalism as the source of their privileges and state planning was directed at that object. Although Vietnam effectively controlled the Cambodia state through their influence on the Salvation Front they were unable to restore a capitalist state there until 1989 because the continuing war against the US/China/Thai guerrilla armies on the Thai border made a compromise with Imperialism impossible then. The fact that Imperialism was able to force the ‘Marxist-Leninists’ from office in Cambodia but not in Vietnam or Laos does not change the dynamic of the situation. Now we must look at Laos to complete the picture. Laos became a deformed workers’ state in 1975 with the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy under Sisavang Vong by the Communist Pathet Lao movement with the assistance of Vietnam. Laos is the most heavily bombed nation per head of population on the planet: During the Vietnam War, the US spread combat operations to neighbouring Laos. The US secretly waged widespread bombing runs on nearly every corner of the country… Laos experienced more than 30,000 casualties during the bombings, more than 20,000 people have died since bombing ceased in 1974 due to leftover unexploded munitions, and many more tens of thousands were needlessly displaced. A UN report notes that Laos is, per capita, the most bombed country on the planet, with .84 tons of explosives dropped per person from the years 1965 to 1974. [iii] The Wikipedia article on Laos claims: The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, along with China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea is one of the world’s five remaining socialist states. The only legal political party is the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP). The head of state is President Choummaly Sayasone, who is also the General Secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. The head of government is Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, who is also a senior member of the Politburo. Government policies are determined by the party through the all-powerful eleven-member Politburo of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and the 61-member Central Committee of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Important government decisions are vetted by the Council of Ministers. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam maintains significant influence over the Politburo of Laos and the one-party communist state apparatus and military. [iv] We contend that only Cuba and North Korea are deformed workers’ states now and that China, Vietnam and Laos are capitalist states ruled by ‘Marxist-Leninist’ parties which staff the entire bureaucratic state apparatus with their own nominees but which encourages and develops capitalist property relations in the economy. In China a new bourgeoisie has emerged, mainly from the sons of the top Communist party bureaucrats who are millionaires and billionaires now. This has not progressed to that extent in Vietnam and Laos but it is moving in that direction very clearly. The new Laotian constitution of 1991 contains a clear indication that the state was then bourgeois if we take it to signify what property relations that state would guard and defend: The chapter on the socioeconomic system does not mention the establishment of socialism, a principal goal of earlier dogma. Instead, the objective of economic policy is to transform the “natural economy into a goods economy.” Private property appears to be assured by the statement that the “state protects the right of ownership,” including the right of transfer and inheritance. The state is authorized to undertake such tasks as managing the economy, providing education, expanding public health, and caring for war veterans, the aging, and the sick. The constitution admonishes that “all organizations and citizens must protect the environment.” [v] There was opposition to the party remaining the sole legal political group and clear efforts to turn the rubber stamp National Assemble into a bourgeois parliament. However the most openly political representative of that movement was defeated, Wiki tells us: “In 1990, deputy minister for science & technology Thongsouk Saysangkhi resigned from the government and party, calling for political reform. He died in captivity in 1998”. And now the Wikipedia article informs us of the consequences of this, it is a member of the WTO, the monopoly of foreign trade is gone and a stock exchange is established: It is a member of the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), East Asia Summit and La Francophonie. Laos applied for membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1997, and on 2 February 2013, it was granted full membership… In 2009, despite the fact that the government is still officially communist, the Obama administration in the US declared Laos was no longer a Marxist-Leninist state and lifted bans on Laotian companies receiving financing from the U.S. Export Import Bank. In 2011, the Lao Securities Exchange began trading. In 2012, the government initiated the creation of the Laos Trade Portal, a website incorporating all information traders need to import and export goods into the country. [vi] Laos is no longer a deformed workers’ state, however it is, with Vietnam, (and Cambodia) a semi-colonial oppressed nation which must be unconditionally, though not politically and uncritically, defended against Imperialist attack. And we are obliged to defend both Russia and China against the attempts of Imperialism to dismember them via support for pro-Imperialist movements in Georgia, Tibet etc. Ethiopia was hailed as a workers’ state by Grant and various other African states could make the same claim; the governments proclaimed themselves Marxist-Leninists and defenders of ‘scientific socialism’. However to any who cared to follow the actual transformations on the ground they were very much like Burma or Nasser’s Egypt, viciously hostile to the political independence of the organised working class and carrying out no more that a nationalisation to defend the development of a native capitalist class; private property in the means of production was not abolished merely suspended until the productive forces were strong enough to compete on the world market. That fact that for almost all (apart from the Asian Tigers promoted to encircle China) adopted neo-liberal policies when it became obvious that the Imperialist=sponsored transnational companies would never allow them this independence is proof enough that these were never any type of deformed workers’ state. [i] Peng Shuzi, Criticisms on the U.S. SWP’s Opinion on Cuba opus cit. [ii] Vietnam, Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam [iii] Freewheel Burning: US Bombings in Laos 1965-1973, peterslarson/2010/12/15/us-bombings-in-laos-1965-1973/ [iv] Wikipedia Laos, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laos [v] Ibid. [vi] Ibid.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 10:55:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015