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ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the sustained growth of the state sector in the Chinese economy shows that Chinese model is very different from state capitalism, even more from liberal capitalism. In our view, China’s market socialist system can be interpreted as classified as a “New Socioeconomic Formation” (NSEF). The most important attribute of the NSEF is complexity, as it is marked by the coexistence of different modes of production. China’s market socialism is still in its embryonic stage, and is governed by an ever-evolving combination of different modes and relations of production. In this framework, some basic laws of motion of China’s socialist market economy can be identified.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The success of Townships and Village Enterprises (TVEs), based on property rights that are difficult to understand, demonstrates that private property per se does not guarantee economic dynamism. For more on this debate about TVEs and property rights, see Harry (Citation2001).
2 According to Piketty, Yanf, and Zucman (Citation2017, 4–5),
[…] China moved a long way toward private property between 1978 and 2015, but the property regime of the country is still very different from other parts of the world. In most developed countries, the share of public property in national wealth used to be around 15–25% in the 1960s–1970s and is now close to 0. […] China has ceased to be communist, but is not entirely capitalist. In effect, the share of public property in China today is somewhat larger than—though not comparable to—what it was in West during the “mixed economy” regime of the post-World War II decades (30% of China’s mixed economy seems to have strengthened since the 2008 financial crisis, while it has dropped again in rich countries). (Cited in Jabbour and Paula Citation2018, 20)
3 We are grateful for Sergio Barroso’s comments on the way Marx treated the SEF category. On the passage cited, we make two observations: (1) According to Sereni ([Citation1971] Citation2013, 301): It is true that long before this work, the concept (if not the term) of economic and social formation is found in the first complete elaboration of the materialist conception of history that Marx and Engels left us in the 1846 German Ideology manuscript. Here, as you can easily see, a good part of volume I is dedicated to a quick passage through world history, whose periodization is justified on the different degrees of development of the productive forces and of property relations, that is, in the way production (Weise der Produktion) characterizes different eras. (…) However, the term Ökonomische Gesellschaftsformation is missing, as we had warned, in its place, for now, only that of Gesellschaftsform (literally “form of society” or “social form”), which soon reappears in the Grundrisse, as, also before in many other writings of the years between 1846 and 1857; (2) We tend to agree with Gabriele and Schettino (Citation2012, 22), according to them in the “Preface” the difference between the concepts of economic-social formation and the mode of production is not perceptible: Here, the concepts of SEF and MP are virtually indistinguishable. Yet, room is left for subsequent interpretative approaches that—without undermining the close relationship between the social and the economic spheres which constitutes one of the most fundamental legacies of Marx’s thought—tended to differentiate the two concepts, along lines that are consistent with the respective different meanings of the terms “social” and “production” respectively.
4 There are those who try to explain China by describing it as a large field of forced labor led by “savage capitalists” within the rules of a certain “Party-State” even an interesting attempt at a “mixed economy.” The absolute majority of researches about China existing by the thousands on the shelves of bookstores fail to pay attention to the fact that, in the reality, the construction of an original building is taking place in that country, where elements and institutions from different historical periods appear and re-emerge. We reaffirm here that the only reason for this gigantic process underway in China is to observe it as part of the history of human civilization, it is not a miracle; much less an accident.
5 Continuity in the sense of the directions and objectives that brought the CCP to power in 1949, and rupture with the method and forms that since the mid-1950s have come to prevail throughout Chinese social body.
6 For more on the analysis of the main mechanisms used for capital concentration and the formation of a domestic capitalist class in China, read Nogueira (Citation2018). For a rationalization similar to that of Nogueira about the influence of domestic capitalists in China, but from the point of view of a geographer, read Lim (Citation2014).
7 Its construction is largely based on Lenin ([Citation1921] Citation1964).
8 The plan is to completely eliminate the existence of populations living in such conditions by 2020. It is worth mentioning, for example, that according to the World Bank the percentage of the Chinese population living in conditions of extreme poverty fell from 88% in 1981 to 6.5% in 2012 (World Bank Poverty and Equity Data Portal: https://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN. Accessed on May 15, 2018).
9 See “Agriculture in China.” Australian Farmers, April 12, 2017. https://farmers.org.au/community/blog/the-sheer-scale-of-agriculture-in-China-12042017.html. Accessed on April 10, 2018.
10 It is very common to associate China as an experience of “state capitalism.” This association is a consequence of the separation between politics and economics in the analysis of the process. To us it is a phase of capitalist development in countries where the state plays a great role, but private companies are the dominant formation/structure.
11 According to a report by the important American think tank, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, between 2005 and 2018 China invested US$1.9 trillion across the five continents. See https://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/.
12 For us, “market socialism” is synonymous with what is conventionally called the “primary stage of socialism.” We wrote about it in Jabbour, Dantas, and Belmonte (Citation2017).
13 For more on the limits of planning under market socialism, read Gabriele (Citation2016).
14 The Chinese case also aligns with the following passage by Rangel:
In all periods of history […] the economy has always had, alongside the private sector, the public sector. From time to time, the distribution of attributions between these sectors is called into question and […], we proceed to a redistribution of these attributions between the two sectors. This helps to overcome the crisis and open a new period of development. Now, there is no way to suppose that this dialectic has played out. (Rangel [Citation1957] Citation2005, 455)
15 We deepen this observation in Jabbour and Paula (Citation2018).
16 It is interesting to note the fact—which distinguishes the Chinese developmental experience from other cases—that the emergence of new institutional frameworks does not suffer, during the industrialization process, from discontinuity (Medeiros Citation2013, 435).
17 According to Harnecker:
Without participatory planning there can be no socialism, not only because of the need to end the anarchy of capitalist production, but also because only through mass engagement can society truly appropriate the fruits of its labor. The actors in participatory planning will vary according to different levels of social ownership. (Harnecker Citation2012, 243)
18 Concerning planning, we offer Rangel’s words:
This science and this art have since become the queen of all arts and all sciences of our time, because it is thanks to them that the enormous collection of human knowledge accumulated over the centuries gains new meaning, producing new and surprising results. And, above all, it is thanks to them that human society has gained self-mastery, enabling itself to choose the pace and direction of its march. At last, but not least, in other (and opposite) hand the austerity is one of the main elements of neoliberal economic policy. (Rangel [Citation1957] Citation2005, 453)
19 This “investment package” was mediated by money created by state-owned banks.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Elias Jabbour
Elias Jabbour is Associate Professor of Theory and Policy of Economic Planning at the Rio de Janeiro State University, and one of the most prestigious Latin American researchers on Chinese socialism affairs. He is author of many books in Portuguese on Chinese market socialism and economic reforms.
Alexis Dantas
Alexis Dantas is Associate Professor of Industrial Economy at the Rio de Janeiro State University, Director of School of Economics at the same university, and coordinator of America’s Study Group at the same university. He is author and editor of a dozen of books on Latin American economic and geopolitical affairs.
Carlos Espíndola
Carlos Espíndola is Titular Professor of Agrarian Geography at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, and one of the most prestigious Latin American researchers on the ideas of Marx, Kautsky and Lenin on agrarian dynamics of accumulation and development.