Re: Canada Day 2025
Hugh Williams
perhaps an easier way to get the attachment referred to in the email below
is by way of this link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TBoG7aoqzkvqeCZ56BED-y86YepHktIF/view
sorry for any inconvenience
but the document may well be that definitive for our times ...
H.
It is the celebration of Canada Day in our nation. However, these days we are finding that our nation’s history and future need to be given some larger context …
Though recently many of us have held the opinion that our Church leaders have been way too quiet on the pressing issues of our times, this is not true everywhere in the Church it seems. Perhaps it is more that the Church leaders have been divided and even confused about what to say together. But there also has been ongoing work, it seems, and even some significant developments, especially after Pope Francis’ very provocative encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ of almost ten years ago now.
As much as some might say there has been lacking a clear radical alternative to the political-economic system that is increasingly being denounced, perhaps this too is also changing. This change is witnessed to in today’s declaration (see attached) by the Catholic Bishops of the Global South: Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
This statement (again, see attached) was issued today, on our Canada Day, in preparation for the UN’s next COP30 (UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change) in Brazil in November. This declaration is in many ways much more focused and much more radical, in that it is arguably anti-capitalist and more open to the eco-socialist option. In the meantime, though it is a call for collaboration with coherent allies in the Global North of good will, it is a firm evidence-based call to resistance.
Take some time to read it … as the summer’s ‘heat dome’ slowly envelopes us, and think of the many others affected elsewhere in a much harsher manner as you read …
consider passing this on ...
HW
Hugh Williams
| Subject: | Re: Canada Day 2025 |
|---|---|
| Date: | Tue, 1 Jul 2025 23:04:02 -0300 |
| From: | Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> |
| To: | Hugh & Stephanie Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> |
Hugh Williams
Lest there be some misunderstanding from this 'Canadian nationalist'
in my distributing such a compelling Church document issued on Canada Day by church leaders from the Global South ...
in preparation for the next COP30 in Brazil ...
this email has been acted on in large part because of a very close reading of John's and Pierre's text "Attentive, Intelligent, Rational, and Responsible (2023)".
In Appendix E at p.270 ... the authors with perhaps some degree
of prescience write:
"There is a role then for a Church with a world-wide educational system
in preparing the ground for the reception of a critically realist account of the economy."
This is the basis for attributing a certain definitive quality for this very recent declaration to which I've provided the 'link' below.
Definitive - in the sense that it is a final 'call to action', along with the dialectical recognition that the inaction or ineffective actions
of the past ten years since Pope Francis' issuing of the encyclical 'Laudato Si' has largely (though not exclusively)
been the result of the actions of persons and corporations in the Global North with vested interests
in a very problematic economic status quo. And that now there are and will be geo-political implications to this actual dialectic ...
which now makes the BRICS geo-political initiative of considerable importance especially when considered in conjunction with this Church declaration,
as it does as well point to the central role of China for 'our' learning, especially here in the Global North, for how we must now restructure capital
in its dual nature as both commodity and power (see the Marxist author Yanis Varoufakis, "Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism"
(Melville House, 2023, pp.15-17) and do so in earnest for the sake of the real possibility of an 'alternative world' ...
... to give those who may be interested some highly generalized indication of the Chinese Marxist perspective on the needed changes
and where 'we' in the Global North may have fundamentally important things to learn see the following link -
with some apologies
Hugh
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PIERRE WHALON
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John Raymaker
Hugh Williams
This link -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZUeShGMarI&t=426s
on the BRICS as an important geo-political development
should be listened to or 'read' in conjunction with what the
Church leaders in the global south are now saying with an unprecedented insistence ...
... it poses a real challenge for Canada's own foreign policy and its efforts
to assert its own sovereignty while still under immense US influence ...
there does seem to be a 'choice' emerging on the global-international scene ...
is it too naive, or too early to see it as that between 'cooperation' and 'competition' ...
'competition' which can quickly mutate into
violent militarized conflict and 'war', if things do not go in
someone's favor?
Hugh
Hugh Williams
It still remains a very challenging question for us
as to what course 'we' in Canada will follow ... (or actually are following)
but it is quite clear there is an alternative to our present course ...
pass it on please
Hugh
July-August 2025 (Volume 77, Number 3)
by The Editors
(Jul 01, 2025)
On January 23, 2025, Climate and Capital Media published an article by Danny Kennedy, senior adviser to the Sunrise Project, entitled “US’s Petrostate Versus China’s Electrostate.” This was among the first of a torrent of articles from the corporate media and climate watchers on the astonishing successes of China in peaking and then lowering carbon emissions due to what the Financial Times on May 12, 2025, called China’s “Electricity Revolution.” According to the Financial Times, “China could be on its way to becoming the world’s first major ‘electrostate,’ with a growing share of its energy coming from electricity and its economy increasingly driven by clean technologies” (Danny Kennedy, “US’s Petrostate Versus China’s Electrostate,” Climate and Capital Media, January 23, 2025, climateandcaptialmedia.com; Nassos Stylianou et al., “How Xi Sparked China’s Electricity Revolution,” Financial Times, May 12, 2025).
The extent of the Chinese energy revolution almost defies belief. As Kennedy writes:
China [is] moving faster than ever on the energy transition. It feels silly to say they’ve had another breakout year on solar, but they’ve had another breakout year with the numbers just coming for 2024. It’s worth remembering that China’s official targets for wind and solar at the start of this critical decade were almost too much to imagine. But they exceeded them so quickly that they brought them forward to 2025 in 2023 and then met them in 2024! Likewise, Beijing’s target for EV’s [electric vehicles] was 50% of car sales by 2035. It’ll hit that this year…ten years ahead of schedule! (Kennedy, “US’s Petrostate Versus China’s Electrostate”)
On May 15, 2025, Carbon Brief announced that not only have China’s carbon emissions now peaked but they have actually dropped by 1 percent over the last twelve months. This has occurred at the same time that its energy demand has been rapidly increasing. China’s electric vehicle (EV) sales in 2025 will more than double those of 2022, representing the first time that EVs have outsold internal combustion engines in any major auto market in the world. China accounts for 90 percent of the world’s electric bus market. Its high-speed rail system is five times the size of that of the European Union. Not only is it the world leader in clean energy technology, but half of China’s exports of solar and wind equipment and EVs now go to the Global South. Although China is the lead carbon emitter worldwide, this is largely explained by the fact that it produces 30 percent of the world’s manufactured goods, while remaining heavily dependent on coal. Still, with 18 percent of the world population, its per capita carbon emissions are only around half the U.S. level. Within the next three years, China, according to the Financial Times, is expected to be sourcing half of its power “from low-carbon energy including hydro, solar, wind, nuclear and battery storage systems.” Its solar capacity also is projected soon to exceed coal-fired power generation as China’s main energy source (Laurie Myllyvirta, “Clean Energy Just Put China’s CO2 Emissions Into Reverse for the First Time,” Carbon Brief, May 15, 2025, carbonbrief.org; Stylianou et al., “How Xi Sparked China’s Electricity Revolution”; Tina Landis, “Don’t Believe the New Cold War Lies, China Is Leading the World in Climate Solutions,” Liberation News, May 15, 2025, liberationnews.org; Jennifer L., “China’s Renewable Energy Boom: A Record-Breaking Shift or Still Chained to Coal?,” Carbon Credits, February 6, 2025, carboncredits.com).
China’s achievements in ecological modernization via the revolutionizing of its social forces of production are a result of its existing social relations, which include the ability to carry out extensive energy planning. This has so far proven impossible for monopoly-capitalist regimes. In short, China’s signal advantage in terms of addressing the climate change threat and ecological challenges generally is its “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” This contrasts with persistent U.S. failures to carry out an energy transition. This was true even under the Biden administration, which sought a stance friendly to fossil fuel corporations in its Inflation Reduction Act. Under Trump, energy transition along with the reality of climate change are gone altogether and the goal is to build on the U.S. role as the world’s leading petrostate. If humanity is to prevent a planetary climate holocaust, the dominant class relations of global monopoly capitalism will need to go. There is no other way.
Hugh Williams
| Subject: | perhaps there is hope but it requires a serious critical analysis and a commitment to profound structural changes |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sun, 27 Jul 2025 16:48:34 -0300 |
| From: | Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> |
| : |
Hugh Williams
Listers all,
this exchange below and the attachment is not a digression from John and Pierre's AIRR . For there are many references to China
that I've felt, as a result of my own research, require certain supplementations that might have us look a little closer at just what has and is happening there
from an economic perspective particularly ...
finally a friend provided a piece (see the attachment if the link below doesn't work) that tells a compelling story
which, if for the most part true, has profound practical implications for our world ....
so it seems to me
Hugh
----------------------------------------
On my pilgrimage to China[1]
This exchange below and the attachment, especially, are highly relevant for a hopeful consideration of ‘our’ future. And let me say something in honor of the good (and late) Pope Francis … that he was reported as once saying something that would be highly controversial in many places in the West. And it was something to the effect – that he found ‘the nation that seemed to be taking the encyclical Laudato Si most seriously was China’.
I’ve been suggesting of late in several email communications that ‘we’ may well have things to learn from China, things of fundamental importance.
And finally, I’ve gotten a response from a long-time friend that provides what I might call an accessible ‘narrative’ around what actually has taken place, and is taking place, in China. It comes with a few charts and statistics but nonetheless I find it relatively free of distracting jargon despite its seemingly rigorous focus on economy and economics. It tells a compelling story with compelling pedagogical and educational implications, if it be anywhere close to the truth ....
We are in a situation here in the West and Canada, and indeed globally where, now as a matter of survival, we have to be able to look outside and beyond our own cultural biases and prejudices, if we are going to emerge from the crisis or catastrophe that we have entered into …
There are lessons here … use your own mind to grasp and interpret this, for God’s sake … and then use AI, if you are so disposed to help you grasp the essence of this story and argument.
And then share it or some part of it with whom ever. And maybe a few of us can discuss it further. Some may be able to enhance the story and its implications in helpful and even useful ways …
... and yes more needs to be investigated and critically considered but as a direction for both research and interpretation this is an extraordinarily compelling lead, don't you agree ... ???
take care
Hugh Williams
[1] I once thought a pilgrimage to Rome might be an important spiritual and learning experience. I no longer think that … but instead have said half-jokingly - ‘I’d rather go on pilgrimage to China’. As things continue to unfold in a Geo-political sense in our good but very troubled world this comment, half said in jest, is proving to carry, metaphorically at least, some powerfully significant truth …
-------- Forwarded Message --------
| Subject: | Re: perhaps there is hope but it requires a serious critical analysis and a commitment to profound structural changes |
|---|---|
| Date: | Wed, 30 Jul 2025 23:32:38 -0300 |
| From: | Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> |
| To: | Keith Helmuth <keithh...@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| CC: | Stuart Kinney <Stu...@gmail.com>, Vince Zelazny <vince....@gmail.com> |
Keith,
thanks for this
I will study this ...
Some in the West
do believe we can learn a lot from China.
I believe this to be so ...
though many others pay it no mind
largely because of 'our' cultural-media bias
regarding China ...
I would not want to romanticize China.
However, it has managed changes on a mass scale
and any socioeconomic system that can more or less
manage that these days needs to be given some serious consideration
for the sake of learning (and hope).
so it seems to me
Hugh
Hugh,
I assume this email has gone to a group of people as have your recent sharings and that Stuart and Vince are included.
To make sure, I have cc them on this reply.
I have not been able dig into the content of your recent emails and the references cited as I would have wished but I have picked up the slant of the themes and thought you are currently following.
The current information below you have shared about China puts me in mind of an Ellen Brown post from January. Here’s the link.
How has China been able to do what it is doing?
In large part it stems from the way they have structured and managed their monetary system. Her post on this subject includes U.S. comparisons. It elucidates the astounding speed of China achievements, which have startled the editors at Monthly Review.
Mark Carney is certainly aware of what is happening in China. His vision for Canada sounds a similar note of potential and expectation. Is this what you refer to in asking, “what course we in Canada will follow”?
Carney also understands all the permutations of monetary systems and fiscal policy. It may take a full blown financial crisis to open the door to monetary system reform, but if the ship hits that reef, I’ll be glad for this captain to manage the rescue operation.
Keith
John Raymaker
Hugh, you have a knack for linking present global realities and its threats, e. g. in the following 3 sentences: "Under Trump, energy transition along with the reality of climate change are gone altogether and the goal is to build on the U.S. role as the world’s leading petrostate. If humanity is to prevent a planetary climate holocaust, the dominant class relations of global monopoly capitalism will need to go. There is no other way."As Pierre and I argue in AIRR, Lonergan offers a Third Way, one, to sure that needs many variations in attempts to save the planet. That's why we subtitled AIRR with the phrase "Transforming Economics to Save the Planet." As we further argue in AIRR that process needs two more turnarounds or "conversions", namely economics and environment conversions-turnarounds. Pope Francis and now Pope Leo XIV have been aware of this while insisting on the need of a spiritual-ethical foundation,John
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Pierre Whalon
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Hugh Williams
John et al,
You don't make any reference to what I believe to be the important and relevant attachment which references
in a relatively accessible summary some of the complex things that have been going on in China's economy in recent years.
(perhaps I'll try and provide a precised gloss on this ...)
I keep giving some focus to China mainly for pedagogical reasons. So there is some method to this 'madness'.
A lesson long ago from my own work experience was that in serious social change efforts ...
that is ... in any attempted movement from personal authenticity to communal authenticity we all need models.
Models are helpful ... and modelling is one of the most powerful aides to learning.
And so as we need individual models as in mentors, so too we need system or institutional models
for the larger systemic or structural changes you and AIRR and so many others try and point towards and call for.
This is why I with at least a few (perhaps many) others at this moment in history
look to China (again, see attached) as a possible model ... perhaps even for something
actually relevant for the real world implementation of some approximation of Lonergan's theory of economy.
I would then pose the question - has China in fact embarked on something like this 'third way' you speak of?
And yes there are gaps, misleading glosses, and disturbing oversights in these references to China.
China is no perfect state. However it certainly is for some at this moment in history
a hopeful and even helpful guide for systematic change and perhaps even for the communal conversions
in economy and ecology that AIRR refers to repeatedly from the Christian side ...
Hugh
David Bibby
It was both encouraging and instructive to read how Marxist ecology is taking shape—delivering long-term, sustainable development within the Chinese economy—and how it may offer lessons and inspiration for others.
I see real value in Marxist ecology’s systemic critique of environmental destruction, especially its robust structural analysis of capitalism’s contribution to the crisis:
- The structural compulsion for infinite growth (the “sky is the limit” logic)
- The commodification of natural goods (viewing everything through the lens of profit)
- The alienation of nature (as a force to be dominated and controlled)
- The separation of ownership and labor (undermining collective responsibility)
At the same time, I think we must also acknowledge the contradictions in its implementation within China. The state’s authoritarian influence tends to stifle dissent and leave limited space for grassroots innovation. Ecological goals are often framed in terms of national power and control, with less emphasis on conscience, participation, or the personal maturation of citizens.
I also have a copy of John and Pierre's book, though I still need to study it in more detail. I think they are right to emphasize the need for a transformed approach to economics, and that such a transformation must be rooted in the subject: attentively, intelligently, rationally, and responsibly. If we apply those principles to Marxist ecology (which I’m not sure the authors were familiar with at the time), then I think we can affirm what is good in the Chinese approach while simultaneously calling ourselves to a deeper renewal—of economics, of culture, and ultimately of personhood—so that we may together face and meet the global crisis with integrity.
This is also what I was referring to in my recent post on ψ_integration.
Hugh Williams
David,
thanks for responding
I very much appreciate your attention to this
and your insights ...
I believe a little more needs saying on 'the China model' and its relevance.
And perhaps in the interest of research and interpretation as it may pertain
to the AIRR text ... can you say a little more "on ψ_integration"
as it may pertain to GEM-FS and the personal and communal conversions.
I believe open minded Chinese Marxist scholars would see this as a Western emphasis,
especially the emphasis on personal subjective conversion
but not necessarily one that they would eschew as a matter of principle ....
Hugh
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Hugh Williams
Dear Listers
This is intended to amplify the notion that China's economy and economic development
can serve as a 'model' for pedagogical purposes here in the West.
On a big scale, it especially gives content to this notion of communal conversions – economic and ecological, that the AIRR text
keeps referring to when it speaks of its somewhat unique version of the Lonergan GEM-FS methodology of social change.
Hugh
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ellen Brown “Quantitative Easing with Chinese Characteristics: How to Fund an Economic Miracle” in Sheerpost, February 9, 2025.
My Precised Gloss
This is a precise’ of Ellen Brown’s relatively recent summary narrative account of China’s astonishing economic development. It is a story that tries to identify some of the main elements of the ‘China story model’. It is relatively accessible for those of us who are not trained economists.
China has been able to rise out of desperate poverty in about 40 yrs. It has developed an impressive infrastructure.
This all requires money and lots of it; so where did the money come from?
The Chinese central bank has printed money. From 1996 to 2024 the money supply in China increased 5300% from 5.84 billion to 314 billion cny (yuan).
How did this happen?
Exporters brought foreign currencies, mostly US $ received for goods exported, to their local banks and traded them for cny needed to pay workers and suppliers. The central bank printed cny and traded them for foreign currencies and kept them as reserves thereby doubling the national export revenue.
A highly significant element in this development is that this 5300% explosion in cny did not produce uncontrolled inflation.
How was this achieved?
The central bank engaged in selling government securities in the open market thus ‘withdrawing excess cash’ according to Brown’s account. It (or the government?) imposed price controls on certain essential commodities – iron ore, copper, corn, grain, meat, eggs, and vegetables as part of its 14th five-year plan (2021-2025). The intention was to ensure food security for the people. And to maintain price stability, money was invested in manufacturing and infrastructure. GDP (supply) rose with the money available (demand) so as to keep prices stable.
In 1978 market-oriented reforms were introduced in China. Farmers sold surplus produce in the market, foreign investment was permitted, private businesses and foreign companies were encouraged to grow.
By the 1990s China was a major exporter of lower-cost manufactured goods because of lower cost labor and because of infrastructure development. China’s membership in the WTO in 2001 is also considered an important factor.
The lower cost of labor is possible because China subsidizes social needs thereby reducing operational costs of Chinese enterprises and improving labor productivity.
Government invests in public transportation infrastructure – metros, buses, rail, … all intended to be affordable for workers and for the affordable transport of goods to market.
Education and training of workers is subsidized. There is affordable housing for workers, especially in the urban areas.
Public health care is subsidized. There is a public pension system reducing the need for private retirement plans.
The government subsidizes and incentivizes key industries in technology, renewable energy, and manufacturing.
In the early stages of reform foreign investment was a key source of capital.
However, another key element has been China’s development of banks, lots of banks, community banks, regional banks, supporting local businesses by providing funds to get the latest technology. This diverse means of public and community banking means control over the valuation of currency, and over capital flows. The central bank acts as lender of last resort providing liquidity to other state/publicly-controlled banks when needed.
This complex system of publicly controlled banking in China and its complex system of technical controls, checks and balances admittedly is hard to follow in a summary narrative such as this. However, what must be emphasized, it seems to me, is that it is a public system first motivated by government or, lets say, motivated by a form of governance providing publicly determined priorities rather than by the pursuit of private profits.
Injecting money into the economy, as much as 80% from money printing, sounds extreme. But this monetary element must be understood within the context of China’s political-economy and macroeconomic policies of carefully structured 5yr plans. These are plans designed to serve the public good and the whole economy and they are funded by policy banks that are under public control. The profits are publicly owned. Private financialization and speculative exploitation is avoided and can be compared to what happened in the US and the West’s financial system in the so-called 2007-2008 financial crash.
Newly issued money is used for production so that increased supply is coordinated with demand so as to keep prices stable.
In China health and social services, which does not produce revenue, is still viewed as productive in its support of human capital for production. Workers needs to be healthy and well educated in order to produce effectively. And so, government needs to support the costs of health and social supports borne by companies and enterprises in order to compete with China’s more directly subsidized businesses.
The US led geo-political macro-economic strategy of vicious competition by means of sanctions and tariffs intended to damage one’s economic competitors perceived as enemies is seen, in China, as leading to economic warfare and perhaps to military conflict and actual warfare. This is strongly viewed as highly unreasonable and incoherent, and ultimately ineffective in that it is unnecessarily costly for the world economy and its ecology.
Production and wealth creation is better served by an overall cooperative context in which concerted and strategic public ownership and control, adaptive planning in governance, monetary control and regulation are all seen as necessary parts of the good of order in economy and now also for ecological well-being as well.
Commentary
This, as I understand it, is a summary picture of the Chinese historical-materialist vision of hope, a hope that is very much needed at this moment in history. I believe that to the extent that this account, limited as it is, is true, it then can serve as a ‘model’ at least for pedagogical purposes here in the West. On a big scale, and in reference to our on-going review of Raymaker-Whalon's AIRR text, it especially gives content to this notion of communal conversions – economic and ecological that this important text keeps referring to when it speaks of its Lonergan inspired GEM-FS methodology of social change.
Hugh Williams
August 2, 2025
Hugh Williams
As perhaps the final rebound off the good AIRR text into summary analyses of China's political-economy as a concrete pedagogical model for GEM-FS communal or collective conversion,
and into its extraordinary economic development and certain ongoing associated challenges ...
In my research into China’s political-economy I’ve come upon an article jointly authored in Monthly Review from December 2018, “The Enigma of China’s Growth” by a Chinese economist, Zhiming Long, and a French economist, Remy Herrera. It helps to give our perspective and analysis some better appreciation for ongoing efforts within China itself for a better collective self-understanding, along with an honest assessment of the challenges faced by this important nation and its people. The historical discernment underlying the analysis is both striking and refreshing.
My gloss-precise’:
The Chinese economy clearly has been marked by astonishing GDP growth, perhaps the highest in the world over the past four decades. China is now a recognized leader among the nations of the global South.
However, the reasons for this development are not well understood or even misunderstood in many cases. This may even be the case among Chinese economists themselves where there are intense debates. There remains an indeterminacy and confusion in characterizing the Chinese political and economic systems on both the right and left sides of the ideological spectrum.
The right wants to reduce China’s development to being the result of the triumph of capitalism in China. Among Marxists on the left the range of viewpoints is very broad. There is persistent criticism of social inequality, and there is hope for a new super-power that can thwart US hegemony.
The view from the right usually adheres to one of three lines of thought. 1) China’s development can only come from reorientation and openness to the capitalist world system. 2) The Chinese economy would have stagnated during its Maoist period for this is the nature of socialist projects. 3) China could have modernized sooner if it had abandoned its communist and socialist institutions.
But these assumptions obscure certain fundamental historical realities, such as – China’s millennial historical depths as a major civilization and nation state. It was a significant economy in the 19thC. And there is the fact that the Maoist revolution ended a century of wars and destruction.
Also it is important to recognize that there has been this sustained effort of resource and value accumulation enabled especially by the surplus transfers from the rural areas that has contributed to industrialization and to this robust GDP growth to a significant degree.
There has also been massive investment in education and research.
It is this longer term historical and comparative analysis that can help us understand the power and dynamism of the Chinese economy and to avoid reducing it to simply an openness to capitalist globalization marked by such things as WTO membership and such.
The efforts and achievements of the Maoist socialist period simply cannot be ignored. And furthermore this new openness to the West and Western ways and any contribution on its part to China’s success can only be adequately considered in the context of effective Chinese governance controls. This means that this new openness is structured by internal needs and objectives, and is integrated into a relatively coherent development strategy that really is unparalleled in any other nation in the global South.
The role and efforts of the Chinese Communist Party cannot be overlooked either. The Chinese firmly view any uncontrolled and unregulated openness to capitalism, without the careful and proper oversight and control, as inevitably obliterating the national economy as has so often happened in the global South.
The other vitally important factor according to these authors is how China’s social progress must be related to what is called “the agrarian question”. This involves legal access to the land by the peasantry as a constitutional guarantee. The role of this peasantry as rural workers is central to China’s development and thus to any analysis of this development. Fundamental to this agrarian question is the material fact that China has been faced with the challenge of having 20% of the world’s population with less than 7% of the planet’s arable land – a quarter of a hectare per capita. India has double this and the US has 100 times this. This is the huge food challenge and it could only be faced up to by guaranteeing access to land for the peasants. This was a constitutive element of the Maoist revolution.
Nevertheless, market mechanisms have penetrated modes of production and distribution in the agricultural sector departing from Maoist policies, yet land ownership remains state owned or collectivist. This firm emphasis on forms of public ownership of land is key for any adequate response to what is called the agrarian question.
These insightful authors argue that another fundamental aspect of any analysis of China’s development over these several decades since the revolution requires careful discernment and analysis of what they call the profit rate indicators. Marxists study the dynamics of capital accumulation in capitalist countries. This can also be done in socialist countries so long as the analytical constructs and the interpretation makes the necessary distinctions from capitalist economies. This has meant building profit-rate indicators based upon physical capital stocks which can show – 1) surpluses corresponding to the difference between GDP and remuneration of workers (direct and indirect), 2) advances in capital either fixed or capital plus circulation capital estimated by speed of rotation. These analyses provide a highly technical decomposition of the profit rates in long term trends and short-term cycles. These analyses show two things – a downward trend in China’s profit rates between 1952-2015. And for these authors, the most decisive phenomenon in explaining the decline in profit rates is the rise in the organic composition of capital (i.e., the ratio between the constant and the variable parts of capital).[1]
Historically we have to remember the tremendous hardship the Chinese people faced after 1949 attributable to the destruction of wars and the exploitation and oppression of the pre-revolutionary decades.
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc there was a short period of neo-liberalism that resulted in a sharp economic downturn in 1990-1991 accompanied by an explosion in corruption.
Clearly the reality of growth and development does not eliminate the difficult challenges ahead for China which are characterized by powerful contradictions even though the appearance of GDP growth may seem to suggest all is well.
Long term historical analysis is crucial to understand the causes of economic development in China, causes that in very general terms may be identified as – a firm central commitment in governance to social progress, industrialization, and an ongoing concern for the ‘agrarian question’.
Hugh Williams
August 4, 2025
[1] As I understand it, the organic composition of capital is a concept developed by Karl Marx. It refers to the ratio of constant capital (means of production like machinery and raw materials) to variable capital (labor power) in a production process. It essentially reflects the capital intensity of an industry indicating the relative reliance on machinery versus labor.
David Bibby
Hugh Williams
and the Vietnam War was raging
I finally got to a point where I knew in my 'guts' that the whole thing
was very wrong
and tried to speak out about it with whomever I could when ever I could ...
it was life changing.
... this genocide in GAZA today is much worse, much worse
in so many ways
and now that I am in my 75th year
I need to exercise more prudence and take much better 'care' around what
I take in
and what I come to know in my 'guts' ...
... nevertheless, here is a 'hard hitting' account by an experienced UN
relief agency leader.
I do this because mainstream media is simply unlikely to give you
anything that comes close to the clarity
and comprehensiveness of this ... though it only be about 15 minutes of
video ...
If you are able ... it is a viewpoint that needs to be heard and shared ....
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2025/september/1/former-un-chief-exposes-october-7
in solidarity
Hugh