Norton was just an example, I view him as sort of the champion of the Marxist China wishcasters in the current day, but there are many people with virtually identical beliefs who will tell you most of the same things.
Have you read a lot of Xiaohongshu’s posts?
There are no Marxist voices in the mainstream today. All the distinguished Marxist economists have long been banished to the humanities and social science departments long ago. They do write books, sometimes articles/blogs on the internet, and newspaper columns, but they have very little influence on policymaking. The mainstream is full on dominated by Western economists these days.
If you actually listen to the debate, both sides are openly making fun of the Mao era central planners for being inefficient lol.
Also FYI the correct term for Marxist economics in China is “political economy” (政治经济学). Nobody uses the word Marxist economics. Similarly, neoclassical economics is called “Western economics” (西方经济学). If you don’t know the correct terminology in Chinese, it can be very difficult to search for the relevant information you want.
I personally know someone who grew up under Mao, who was sent to work in a factory as a teenager under his policy (and doesn’t really cherish those memories but maintains a life-defining respect for him). He’s a huge revisionist and makes silly claims about China if you start from a zoomed-out ideological standpoint (claims silly enough that I refuted them in seconds such that he admitted they weren’t right), but has plenty of knowledge about the state of the country in many more concrete respects (he can talk my head off about manufacturing), and everything that he’s told me in terms of concrete facts comports with Xiaohongshu’s characterizations: Marxism exists in academia, but when people are studying economics, they are studying Western economics and those are the lines along which they debate economics, it just manifests very differently because China has different circumstances from places like America and has threats to its sovereignty that are a lot more imminent than merely imploding under its own weight, which is America’s only threat (and one that is still killing it anyway). That is why a basically nationalist project remains historically progressive.
Another one from our comrade:
That was before Hudson and Harvey went to the Marx conference in Beijing in 2018, where they were both stunned that Capital Vol. 3 was never taught in China.
You’d think that China would have learned this by looking at the West, or at least by reading Volume 3 of Capital. In fact the Peking University meeting, the Second World Conference on Marxism, David Harvey gave the opening and closing speech. His point was that the Chinese should read Volume III of Capital to understand why and how the volume of debt and credit grows exponentially. As banks get richer and richer, the One Percent get richer. They need to nurture more and more markets for their credit and debt creation. So they lend on easier and easier terms, at a rising proportion of the home’s value. So it’s bank credit that has been inflating the price of housing.
David Harvey asked how China can let the price of housing go up so high in Shanghai (the most privatized city) that almost everybody who has a house is a millionaire. How can China expect to remain competitive in exporting industrial products when the cost of housing is so high?
Unfortunately, his talk and mine were almost the only economic talks at the meeting in Peking. As one of the Russian attendees pointed out to me, “Marxism” is the Chinese word for politics. “Marxism with Chinese characteristics” means to doing what they want politically. But economically they’ve sent their students to the United States, to attend business schools to learn how U.S. financial engineering practices.
Shanghai is where Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys came in the 1970s and early 80s, because the Chinese government worried that if western Marxists came over, they would tend to interfere with domestic Chinese politics. So actually, China had less exposure to foreign Marxian economics than to U.S.-style neoliberal teaching.
I won’t pretend that my views are identical to theirs, that is not remotely true, but the central point in this branch of our discussion is something where I believe they agree with me.
Yes, I’ve read a good deal. I’m aware that the central stance of yours and Xiaohongshu’s is similar. At the same time, I simply do not have enough evidence, just online anecdotes to tell me that Marxism has been so completely sidelined as to be irrelevant. With such a level of evidence, I can only agree that there are contradictions, and indeed a large number of liberals that do have a good degree of influence, but not that this influence has toppled and removed Marxism entirely. I’ve seen just as much evidence, frankly, that Marxism is gaining in influence since the late 90s and 2000s period. At this point, I refuse to take a declarative stance about the outcomes of this struggle, and I hope that’s something you can at least understand, in an era where there are huge networks of wishcasters and China hawks.
Sorry for the late reply, but I just want to point out that what I’m talking about has to do with the open discussions among economists, the National People’s Congress, and so on. You don’t need to maintain long-term epistemic suspense when it’s not too difficult to research, even if it might take you some time to gather a sample size to your satisfaction.
This was a very interesting discussion and I appreciate both of you for it.
I was thinking about it since yesterday and I wanted to ask you something. Putting aside worker’s rights issues, the existence of billionaires, etc. If we all take it as granted that there’s at least some form of capitalism in China, and Marxists say it’s state capitalism as a brand of Chinese socialism under the control of the CPC, then would there be any real conflict if economics is driven by Western capitalist theories under the control of a Marxist political party?
Essentially, does it really matter if the economists are capitalists when the politicians guiding policy and business are (at least theoretically) still Communists?
First of all, yes it absolutely does matter, because there are fundamental failures on the part of western economists to understand elements of their field with serious social consequences (see the second quote for an example), and if these are the only real voice, what the hell can you do?
But second, and I probably should have emphasized this more, as much as I don’t like that Marxism is gone from Chinese economic study, a worse element is that those politicians you mention are also plainly not Marxists and are debating, again, mainly in terms of western economics. The National People’s Congress is a bunch of liberals (not all created equal, mind you) who are debating policy on western economic, nationalist terms rather than Marxist[, nationalist] ones. That’s part of why I suggested looking at Qiushi more, because the government really does not hide this, it just also uses the terms “socialism” and sometimes “Marxism” here and there. Probably the most effort that I’ve seen them put into red-washing was when I was reading a debate from ~2006 where someone suggests that “risk-labor” must be added to the LTV, with their meaning being identical to how the western bourgeoisie justify their wealth by citing “risk.” I don’t think that’s really representative of the contemporary discourse, but that’s mainly because it acknowledges substance from Marx to make its liberal point instead of just making its liberal point directly.
Norton was just an example, I view him as sort of the champion of the Marxist China wishcasters in the current day, but there are many people with virtually identical beliefs who will tell you most of the same things.
Have you read a lot of Xiaohongshu’s posts?
If you actually listen to the debate, both sides are openly making fun of the Mao era central planners for being inefficient lol.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6291342
I personally know someone who grew up under Mao, who was sent to work in a factory as a teenager under his policy (and doesn’t really cherish those memories but maintains a life-defining respect for him). He’s a huge revisionist and makes silly claims about China if you start from a zoomed-out ideological standpoint (claims silly enough that I refuted them in seconds such that he admitted they weren’t right), but has plenty of knowledge about the state of the country in many more concrete respects (he can talk my head off about manufacturing), and everything that he’s told me in terms of concrete facts comports with Xiaohongshu’s characterizations: Marxism exists in academia, but when people are studying economics, they are studying Western economics and those are the lines along which they debate economics, it just manifests very differently because China has different circumstances from places like America and has threats to its sovereignty that are a lot more imminent than merely imploding under its own weight, which is America’s only threat (and one that is still killing it anyway). That is why a basically nationalist project remains historically progressive.
Another one from our comrade:
https://hexbear.net/comment/6313832
I won’t pretend that my views are identical to theirs, that is not remotely true, but the central point in this branch of our discussion is something where I believe they agree with me.
Yes, I’ve read a good deal. I’m aware that the central stance of yours and Xiaohongshu’s is similar. At the same time, I simply do not have enough evidence, just online anecdotes to tell me that Marxism has been so completely sidelined as to be irrelevant. With such a level of evidence, I can only agree that there are contradictions, and indeed a large number of liberals that do have a good degree of influence, but not that this influence has toppled and removed Marxism entirely. I’ve seen just as much evidence, frankly, that Marxism is gaining in influence since the late 90s and 2000s period. At this point, I refuse to take a declarative stance about the outcomes of this struggle, and I hope that’s something you can at least understand, in an era where there are huge networks of wishcasters and China hawks.
Sorry for the late reply, but I just want to point out that what I’m talking about has to do with the open discussions among economists, the National People’s Congress, and so on. You don’t need to maintain long-term epistemic suspense when it’s not too difficult to research, even if it might take you some time to gather a sample size to your satisfaction.
This was a very interesting discussion and I appreciate both of you for it.
I was thinking about it since yesterday and I wanted to ask you something. Putting aside worker’s rights issues, the existence of billionaires, etc. If we all take it as granted that there’s at least some form of capitalism in China, and Marxists say it’s state capitalism as a brand of Chinese socialism under the control of the CPC, then would there be any real conflict if economics is driven by Western capitalist theories under the control of a Marxist political party?
Essentially, does it really matter if the economists are capitalists when the politicians guiding policy and business are (at least theoretically) still Communists?
First of all, yes it absolutely does matter, because there are fundamental failures on the part of western economists to understand elements of their field with serious social consequences (see the second quote for an example), and if these are the only real voice, what the hell can you do?
But second, and I probably should have emphasized this more, as much as I don’t like that Marxism is gone from Chinese economic study, a worse element is that those politicians you mention are also plainly not Marxists and are debating, again, mainly in terms of western economics. The National People’s Congress is a bunch of liberals (not all created equal, mind you) who are debating policy on western economic, nationalist terms rather than Marxist[, nationalist] ones. That’s part of why I suggested looking at Qiushi more, because the government really does not hide this, it just also uses the terms “socialism” and sometimes “Marxism” here and there. Probably the most effort that I’ve seen them put into red-washing was when I was reading a debate from ~2006 where someone suggests that “risk-labor” must be added to the LTV, with their meaning being identical to how the western bourgeoisie justify their wealth by citing “risk.” I don’t think that’s really representative of the contemporary discourse, but that’s mainly because it acknowledges substance from Marx to make its liberal point instead of just making its liberal point directly.