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Yuanhang Yihao 3/3/2021 (Translator’s
preface: This post appeared on the Red China website www.redchina.cn.org a couple of months
ago. It argues the case for a
socialist planned economy and refers to the widespread passivity of Chinese
workers who “lie flat” to resist the system.
In a sense, that’s also my criticism of this article: the author “lies
flat” on the question of socialism replacing capitalism, saying that the way
out towards socialism is dependent on capitalism coming to an end. As Mao
said, however, “if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall”. The author’s name is a
pseudonym, meaning Voyage One.) In the Red Community
Forum, "Activate" and "Righteousness" discussed the
comparison between planned and market economies and the specific problems
that planned economies may encounter in the future. This is a meaningful
discussion. We are opposed to
imagining the future society, but in the process of building a new
Marxist-Leninist movement, it is necessary to sum up the lessons of the past
socialist revolution and construction and, on the basis of an analysis of the
existing contradictions of capitalism, to look at how the future socialist
revolution can solve the contradictions that capitalism cannot solve, which
is also part of the theoretical preparation needed for future revolutions. As
Marx said, "The skill with which bees build their hives puts many
architects on earth to shame. But where the lamest architect is superior to
the most dexterous bee from the beginning is that he has built the hive in
his own mind before he builds it." Of course, such buildings built first
in the mind must still be tested in practice; the availability of materials
and the soundness of the structure have to be worked out gradually during the
building process. Why did Marx and
Engels believe that the future socialist (communist) economy should gradually
eliminate the commodity economy and introduce a planned economy? On the one
hand, this is because Marx and Engels believed that only on the basis of a planned
economy could the system of public ownership of the means of production be
truly established and consolidated, thus eliminating the system of
exploitation of man by man and oppression of man by man. On the other hand,
it is also because Marx and Engels believed that only with a planned economy
could the anarchy of production under capitalist conditions be eradicated and
the enormous economic waste be eliminated, thus opening the way for the
enormous development of the material productive forces. Marx and Engels
argued that the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations
of production under capitalist conditions inevitably leads to increasingly
serious economic crises, thus seriously hampering the development of the
modern productive forces. The causes of such economic crises are, in turn,
twofold: firstly, under capitalist conditions, the working masses are
increasingly exploited and their purchasing power of consumption fails to
keep pace with the growth of the productive capacity of modern large-scale
industry, thus leading to serious overproduction and, consequently, economic
crises; secondly, under capitalist conditions, there is no unified plan and
individual capitalists decide on their own subjective and one-sided
perceptions. The lack of coordination between investment and production plans
inevitably leads to serious overcapacity in some sectors and serious
undercapacity in others, thus causing serious disproportionality and waste of
resources. (The Marxian theory of a declining trend in the rate of profit
leading to a crisis will not be discussed here for the time being.) For Marx and Engels,
both of these crises (under-consumption and disproportionality) are
inevitably brought about by private ownership of the means of production and
the anarchy of production. Only by implementing a unified plan for society as
a whole, on the basis of a scientific survey and study of the material needs
of the people, and then making reasonable arrangements according to the
labour force and various means of production available in society, so that
the production capacity of each industry and each product is roughly
equivalent to the social needs of that industry and that product, can the
enormous waste brought about by the capitalist market be eliminated, the
economic crisis be eradicated and guarantee the rapid and smooth development
of the material productive forces. Pragmatically
speaking, since the beginning of the twentieth century, both capitalist and
socialist practices have developed considerably, and the advantages of a
socialist planned economy over capitalism in practice in overcoming the
crisis of under-consumption and the crisis of disproportionality are either
non-existent or quite insignificant. As far as under-consumption crises are
concerned, after the Second World War, due to the greatly increased
intervention of capitalist countries in economic activity and the conscious
implementation of Keynesian macroeconomic policies, serious economic crises
caused purely by the lack of purchasing power of the working masses have
become almost non-existent. As for the problem of proportional coordination
between the various sectors of the national economy, the socialist planned
economy has also shown no advantage in practice over capitalism, and
localised overproduction or underproduction has occurred frequently and
sometimes severely. After the October
Revolution in the Soviet Union, a debate erupted in bourgeois economics
circles about the feasibility of a socialist planned economy. During the
debate, bourgeois economists such as Hayek argued that the elimination of
private ownership and the market made it impossible for socialist planning
authorities to collect and process the vast amounts of information necessary
for sound 'economic calculation', and therefore it would not be feasible. It
should be noted here that some Marxists believe that with the development of
modern computer technology, especially big data and cloud computing, the
information problem posed by Hayek can be completely solved. This is a
misconception. Hayek's information problem is more about the large amount of
information that people experience first-hand, acquired in specific contexts
and which cannot be expressed in statistics, similar to what we often call
"practical knowledge". Moreover, the information on which the
so-called big data and cloud computing under capitalist conditions are based
comes from the personal information of consumers stolen by monopoly
capitalists and the privacy of citizens collected by the bourgeois state.
Such technological means are incompatible with the socialist and communist
morality of the future. The socialist, communist society of the future should
not be a society full of cameras. Why, then, do
bourgeois economists believe that the capitalist market is superior to
socialist planning? There are two main points: firstly, they believe that
under private ownership, everyone will work hard and innovate in order to get
rich and famous; secondly, they believe that the market can guide consumers
and enterprises to make rational economic decisions and achieve an efficient
allocation of resources. Both of these points are actually problematic as
well. On the first point, in a capitalist society, the vast majority of
workers do not have the means of production, so their motivation to work and
create is limited; even if a few workers have illusions at the beginning
(such as new migrant workers in the cities), in time, or when the second
generation grows up, they will be disillusioned and no longer dream of
getting rich but instead "lie flat "[1].
As for the market
guiding consumers and enterprises to make rational decisions, bourgeois
economists and writers in the pay of the bourgeoisie, have often made the
so-called "invisible hand" look like a miracle. In fact, bourgeois
economics itself has never proved in the strictest sense that the
"invisible hand" can actually achieve an efficient allocation of
resources. Adam Smith was strictly speaking only proposing a hypothesis.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, bourgeois economists had not really
proved mathematically that a so-called 'general equilibrium' could exist
(i.e. that there was a set of prices that would guarantee a balance between
supply and demand in all markets at the same time). It was only in the
mid-twentieth century that bourgeois economists could barely prove that, with
the addition of a series of extremely unrealistic assumptions (e.g. that both
consumers and "manufacturers" had perfect information), the
so-called "Pareto optimum" could be achieved under conditions of
so-called "perfect competition". This so-called "Pareto
optimum" is another strange concept of bourgeois economics, which says
that resources are allocated in such a way that no one can improve his or her
own welfare without harming others. In bourgeois economics, according to their
own theory, it is impossible to measure and compare the total welfare of
society, so one can only compare the welfare of one person with his or her
own welfare. The key issue here
is the role of market prices. We know that both Marxists and bourgeois
economists recognise that in a capitalist economy, capitalists produce in the
pursuit of profit and private gain, and consumers generally behave in
consumption to satisfy their personal interests. How, then, can society
progress when all people seek personal gain? Ultimately, the theories of
bourgeois economics are designed to demonstrate that when the demand of many
consumers and the supply of many capitalists are added together, the
interaction results in a price that reasonably reflects the 'preferences' of
consumers and the costs of various social resources. In this way, both
capitalists and consumers, guided by prices, can make choices that are
consistent with the progress of society as a whole in the pursuit of their
own interests. All the arguments for a market economy are ultimately based on
this argument. However, modern
bourgeois economists' own research has concluded that in the actual
capitalist economy, prices are in the vast majority of cases
"incorrect", that is, they do not correctly reflect the interests of
society or the costs to society. For example, almost all prices of goods do
not include the environmental costs of these goods, not to mention the huge
social costs imposed on workers such as 996[2]
and sudden death from overwork (in bourgeois economics, the case of
"incorrect" market prices is called "market failure"; the
Chinese bourgeoisie translate this as "market distortion", as if
the market is still very flexible, but occasionally fails). Thus, there is a
society made up of selfish, self-interested people, guided by
"incorrect" prices, desperately seeking outcomes where private
benefits outweigh private costs but real social costs outweigh real social
benefits (what we now often call "involution "), which not only
does not lead to social progress in the long run, but also carries the risk
of great catastrophe. It is true that the
practice of socialist planned economy in the twentieth century has not
managed to surpass capitalism in terms of socially average labour
productivity, as Lenin had promised, nor in terms of long-term growth rates
of labour productivity. However, in terms of long-term economic growth rates
over half a century or more, socialist countries can achieve rough parity
with capitalist countries at a similar level of development over the same
period. Of course, the bourgeois ideologues and liberals will cite the
supposedly faster development of West Germany than East Germany as an
example, but Marxists can also cite China compared to India as a
counter-example. In the case of a large sample of socialist countries at the
same level of development as capitalist countries, the long-term economic
growth rate is roughly comparable and should be considered equal. The real superiority
of socialism lies not in economic growth, but in full employment, iron rice
bowls, free health care, free education, workers' sanatoriums; in short, jobs
for all, food for all, and a life of human dignity for all, rather than
"struggling" for the capitalists day and night like cattle and
horses, and being insulted and scolded by the capitalists like serfs. How did socialism
fail in history, given its great superiority? For one thing, the bureaucracy
stole the leadership of the socialist state and then went down the road of
capitalist restoration in order to enrich itself and to pass on its power and
wealth for generations to come. The bureaucratic clique not only wanted to
follow the path of capitalist restoration themselves, but also used the
propaganda machine at their disposal to deceive the people, using the
"high consumption" of the so-called "developed countries"
to paint a picture of a big pie and the so-called "million dollar
household" typical of the early restoration period to stimulate certain
backward ideas among the working masses. They then desperately advocated the
so-called "iron rice bowl, nurturing lazy people" and the idea that
"there is no way out without reform and opening up" (similar to
Thatcher's "There Is No Alternative"), causing many inexperienced working
people to lose confidence in socialism. Apart from the
betrayal of the bureaucracy, there is another important reason for the
failure of the socialist state in history. That is, as long as the capitalist
world system exists, socialist countries need to participate in the
international capitalist division of labour, to do business with capitalism,
and therefore to compete with the capitalist economy. To compete in the
capitalist market, either by technology, or by resources, or only by fighting
for cheap labour. As socialist countries have historically been established
in economically backward or even extremely backward countries, it is
impossible to compete with developed capitalist countries in terms of
sophisticated technology. A situation like that of the oil-exporting
countries of the Middle East, rich in resources and small in population, is
one that is unattainable. Thus, socialist countries can only compete with
capitalist countries for the cost of labour. However, precisely because
workers in socialist countries live like human beings, this necessarily means
that labour cannot be "cheap". So, in the long run, as long as the
capitalist world system exists, the socialist economy will not be able to
compete with the capitalist economy, not because socialism is inefficient,
but because capitalism is too barbaric. To use an analogy, the whole
capitalist world system is a giant inward reel machine, where the rules of
internal competition are to out-compete each other for ruthlessness and
rottenness. Socialist countries can neither exploit the colonies and
semi-colonies, nor have excess profits abroad, nor can they 996, and as a
result they can only temporarily withdraw from the stage of world history. If socialism cannot
compete with capitalism in the capitalist world system, then where is the way
out for socialism? The way out for socialism lies at the point where
capitalism comes to an end. The great involutionary machine that is
capitalism, involute to the end, is bringing endless disaster to mankind.
This manifests itself on the one hand in the near collapse of the world's
ecosystems and the imminent destruction of the material basis on which human
civilisation rests. On the other hand, it is also manifested in the fact
that, as the Communist Manifesto puts it, the bourgeoisie "cannot even
ensure that its slaves maintain the life of slaves". Under modern
capitalism, the inability of workers to maintain "slave-like conditions
of existence" is not reflected in the absolute low level of material
consumption, but in the inability of workers to complete the normal
intergenerational reproduction of labour in conditions of dignity and without
excessive physical and emotional exertion. The result of Chinese capitalism
forcing hundreds of millions of workers to work inhumanely under extremely
long and intensive hours is the gradual collapse of intergenerational
reproduction of labour; this collapse will in turn lead to the collapse of
capitalist accumulation and order of domination. What, then, should a
future socialist planned economy look like? First of all, the surplus
products of society (and the depreciation of fixed assets) should be pooled
together on the basis of the public ownership of the means of production of
the whole society, and the distribution and use of the surplus products of
society should be decided according to a unified plan on the basis of
democratic discussion and decision-making by the whole society. Unlike the
socialist economy of the twentieth century, the principle of using surplus
products in the planned socialist economy of the future is not to achieve the
expanded reproduction of material goods, but to first limit the level of
material consumption of society as a whole to below the level required by the
principle of ecological sustainability, and then to use part of the surplus
products to transform the national economy so that it is based on an
ecologically sustainable material foundation. With the elimination
of the extravagance and waste of the capitalist class and the cessation of
the vast majority of the expansion and reproduction that is harmful to the
ecosystem and the arms race of the capitalist countries, the total scale of
social material production could be immediately and significantly reduced. In
China, the resulting reduction in the production of material goods could
account for about half of the current scale of material production, and the
actual effective working time of the vast majority of workers could thus be
immediately halved, allowing all workers to truly enjoy the right to rest
commensurate with normal physical and psychological needs of human beings.
The material production that would remain would be sufficient to provide all
workers with sufficient nutritious food, dignified housing conditions, free
medical care, free education and the necessary support in the event of their
loss of working conditions. In the long run,
with the gradual increase in labour productivity, the working hours of all
workers can be gradually reduced. For example, if the average social
productivity of labour increases by 1% per year, after 70 years the average
social working day or working week can be reduced by half; if the working day
or working week remains the same, it is also possible to adopt the approach
of adding two holidays per year, and after 70 years, about half a year can be
a holiday for all workers. In this way, the ideal proposed by Marx in The German Ideology could eventually
be realised: "in communist society, where nobody
has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any
branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it
possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after
dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
herdsman or critic" so that
the “free development of each individual" is thus "the condition
for the free development of all". |
[1] “Lying flat” (“躺平” in Chinese) is a
relatively new phenomenon whereby workers engage in passive defiance of demands
to work hard, seek promotion and otherwise “get ahead”. These doors are closed for the majority of
the workers, so they simply opt out. Some Chinese netizens say that the essence
of lying flat is the dismantling of the Party’s control over people’s lives. The
phenomenon has become so widespread that the official Xinhua news agency
recently cited the example of medical workers fighting the pandemic to declare “The new generation is not a generation that chooses to lie flat,
but one that chooses to work hard!” It just goes to show that, as they say, you
cannot believe anything until the authorities deny it.
[2] A practice that has
spread throughout China, beginning with high-tech companies in Shenzhen, which
requires that employees work from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, 6
days per week; i.e. 72 hours per week. It is grossly exploitative and has led
to workers suiciding, unable to bear the pressure of work.
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