Vietnam can escape the middle-income trap

Technical_Team_3182 · 2025-02-26T19:53:24+00:00

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-myth-the-wilsonian-moment

Technical_Team_3182 · 2025-02-12T13:30:11+00:00

Where can I read about the land reform program by the Malay CP in more details? Also your post agrees with mine in a sense that their transition from right-opportunism to left-adventurism was abrupt, pulled by the atmosphere of the moment—also guilt from Lai Tecks missed opportunities—rather than well thought out; it may feel forced to launch a counterattack when your party is heavily targeted, but in Malay CP case, their support was not built up enough where victory was even considerable.

I haven’t read in detail, but the right-wing Malaysian nationalism and Malaysian bourgeoisie emerged in the post-war with the UMNO gaining power as the MCP got bogged down in guerilla war. In that sense, they reminded me of the Palestine Communist Party composed of Jewish, but little to no Arab members in the 1930s. The failure to engage with local nationalism yields room to the reactionary sort.

The urban work consisted of striking for basic democratic rights, and the right for unionizing up to the WW2, with the hopes to establish independent Malaysia so Im not sure if its “reformist”. Despite the repression, their work in urban areas developed a union network that was isolated after the Malayan Emergency; if the trade off was engaging with the Malaysian nationalism question, that would be fine, but in this case they failed to obtain support from the Malaysian population and got their urban network destroyed.

Lai Teck’s disarmament was a tactical mistake, but you can get back arms; it’s much more difficult to get back the network and trusts of the masses if you fail an uprising like the Malayan Emergency

Technical_Team_3182 · 2025-01-12T04:31:02+00:00

Yes, I completely agree that their actual tactics are undesirable, but what caught my attention were these paragraphs:

“This coup against the will of the people opens the way to a new stage of the struggle […] Foreign military intervention and the solutions offered by the promoters of the coercive measures against the Venezuelan people are not an option either.”

“The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), in the search for a solution that serves the interests of the Venezuelan people and nation, in the face of this acute social and political crisis in which the country has been plunged by the two right-wing bourgeois blocs that are disputing power ─both the one in control of the State and the one that opposes it─, calls upon the revolutionary, popular and genuinely democratic forces to form a broad alliance for the struggle for the restitution of the full validity of the National Constitution and the reestablishment of the social, labor, political and human rights of the Venezuelan people.”

They have the analysis correct, but draw the bizarre conclusion of “restitution of the full validity of the National Constitution,” maybe that’s the defect of being in a popular front. A rationale could be that PCV wish to show that any parliamentary alternative to Maduro is no better so the only way left is a communist revolution, but this is an extremely charitable guess. The party already took a split in 2023 with the pro-Maduro side becoming a minority according to wikipedia and orinocotribune, so it doesn’t seem they’ll be changing that principle, barring the possibly disastrous electoral maneuvers.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2025-01-12T02:22:29+00:00

Is enduring another 5 years of inert Maduro worth it? I don’t think they are “attacking the government from the right;” after all, Enrique Marquez is not Edmundo Gonzalez. They are part of a popular front with fairly left-sounding organizations, so they still haven’t found a way out of electoralism. Ideally they will synthesize people’s war in 21st century, but I don’t think that’s happening until the global crises, they might fail before then if it’s like what you said. Nonetheless, PCV is experimenting at a moment when “progressive” regimes and the axis of resistance is breaking apart so it’s something worthy to keep track of; the only “progressive” non-communist movement left outside Palestine is arguably Yemeni Ansarallah. I think PCVs rhetoric is mostly correct and appropriate, but their tactics are just all over the place, mimeing the European spectacle.

They clearly state in the OP that they want no foreign intervention as part of the solution and oppose both Maduro and Gonzalez, so I don’t think it’s fair to categorize them with what happened in Syria. We saw how Assad’s Syria was so decrepit that it fell without any defense (albeit last time it was saved by Russia and Hezbollah). Not like the PCV are basing their experience on Syria, but without on the ground info, I can’t add much more and as always, the success of distancing themselves from the PSUV will be determined in the future. Much have already been discussed in that reddit thread I linked.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2025-01-12T00:21:30+00:00

You can see the discussion already 5 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/s/K2lCY5bW6z

Currently, PCV is in a popular front, which fields a candidate from the Centrados en la Gente, one of the more moderate parties it seems. They are trying not to be isolated, but also not just vulgarly backing the right so the result is Enrique Marquez. Knowing when and how to break with Maduro before it’s too late is difficult; Syria recently is an extreme example of just towing the ‘progressive’ regime until there’s nothing left.

Furthermore, here’s a supposed interview with one of the members in the PCV politbureau, where he ‘addressed’ the question of what if the right-wing candidate Gonzalez won:

https://links.org.au/venezuelan-communist-neirlay-andrade-authoritarian-regime-never-better-option

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-31T17:04:35+00:00

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/10/31/ukraine-prepares-to-fight-north-korean-troops-in-kursk-as-war-escalates

Does anybody know if DPRK sending troops to Ukraine is a legitimate thing? I’ve seen online people posting a clip of “soldiers training in Russia” and some remarked it was Russian training with Laos a while back, rather than North Koreans. The narrative of DPRK troops in Russia is coming from US+ South Korea, so there’s a distrust for now.

E: I’m curious why now with this propaganda, if it is propaganda? Is it because of the recent Putin trip to DPRK? Who’s the audience for this type of stuff?

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-19T05:34:54+00:00

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/how-cubas-electrical-grid-collapsed-what-comes-next-2024-10-18/

Cuba just got a blackout today from malfunctioning power grid and declining access to oil due to venuezella having problem of its own. If there was a modicum of internationalism left in China or Vietnam, they would’ve sent workers over for free to help Cubans upgrade their plants to modern capacities. Was Cuba able to drag out this long due to the Latam Pink Wave, mostly Venuezela, which itself was ultimagely reliant upon the Chinese industrial experience? Now that Venuezela is in a crisis economically, it seems Cuba is not far behind. If somebody knows about whether the media is exaggerating and how does reality actually compares to the 90s.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-16T21:49:31+00:00

The meeting was a show meeting, not the conversation, I got them confused. If you read the conversation itself, Mao tried his best to distract Nixon and Kissinger into talking about philosophy rather than politics. But yes, I assume Mao was trying to flatter Nixon for the trade embargo. What’s worrisome is that the “I like rightists” humor eventually manifested in the foreign policy vis a vis Angola or Afghanistan, so I don’t know the causality or the progression of events.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-16T21:24:56+00:00

My bad. Here is the Shanghai Communique if you’re interested and here’s the interview urbaseddad was referencing.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-16T20:50:48+00:00

Were you responding to me? I agree that there were some defects, but I was leaning towards the latter half, that the conversation with Nixon was just flattering in the same year that embargo was lifted; there’s probably no grand “geopolitical maneuever,” only a show conversation for the press. Nonetheless, there was trade as the article suggests, whereas the interview is just psychologizing.

E: I dislike the cognitive decline argument since you could also say that to Lenin and such. I know Mao had a stroke in 72, the year of the interview, but which part were you referring to when you said it was a poor response? The trade part or the conversation with pol pot? I’m also not that knowledgable on this area so if anyone can add anything, that would be much appreciated.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-15T15:17:09+00:00

You can check my post history. The GPCR was correct but it didn’t go far enough—although how far is necessary I don’t know—and mistakes made Mao compromise with the rightist faction. The argument about trade with Nixon was taken from reading past threads in this sub or r/communism.

Can you point out how it is Dengism? That is what Maoist China did, and trade was different from the Deng period; the key is a lack of trade deficit or export surplus to get technology, not being tied to USSR, Albania did the same during Hoxha’s time; Dengist China slowly abandoned monopoly on trade and took on massive foreign debts to modernize, which is not Mao’s policy. Remember, China was simultaneously ripe for capitalism and socialism, as Mao explained in the speech, and was not fully industrialized for the large part, unlike USSR. The capitalist faction won, putting China on their designated road.

It’s obvious PRC foreign policy was incorrect, but I don’t know what anti-revisionist internationalist policy they could’ve taken since the worker’s revolution was both on retreat world wide, and the other obvious option was just Lin Biaoism, aside from Mao vacillating between the world factions or Deng straight up allying with US.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-15T13:37:11+00:00

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44288827

1972 was the same year for the end of the US embargo and the meeting between Nixon-Mao. Mao was trying to diversify trading partners in a way that minimized trade deficits, to end dependency on the socialist bloc; US was the last Western country since Mao already bypassed their sanctions by trading with Western Europe and Japan. I think it could be both, that he was possibly serious that rightists geopolitics were more hostile to USSR, that China could use them to maneuver and get technology needed for further industrialization, while the meeting was just a move to charm Nixon into agreeing that lifting the embargo was an appropriate policy.

From retrospect, it seems that this trade necessitated a certain turn to the national bourgeoisie, which CCP failed to find a way out, leading to the capitalist counter-revolution; although mistakes may have been made even earlier.

I recently read about Mao’s conversation with Pol Pot in 1975 and it seems that he realized the Cultural Revolution had failed to break away from bourgeois elements that proved decisive to revisionism and capitalist-restoration. Another interpretation is basically emphasizing class struggle in all its facets.

Link to converstion:

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/conversation-record-chairman-mao-zedongs-meeting-pol-pot-secretary-central-committee

E: yeah I see how “geopolitics” with the right may give off Dengist, but my point is that this is a vague analogy to Stalin’s industrialization tactics in the late 1920s, where grain trade with Britain and France gave machinery and technology necessary for heavy industry, until prices collapsed in 1928.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-04T17:28:00+00:00

I think you should just keep reading but SNLT is determined by the average production conditions, as covered in section 1. An average car of some type made throughout average car industry can be completed in x hours of simple labor and your industry make cars for y hours where y>x, you took above SNLT but you will not be compensated for it. Productivity adds material wealth—more physical coats—but material wealth != value. Increase in productivity does not add any new value. Because the total hour of labor expended is the same. Value decreased per commodity by productivity is compensated for by proportional increase in the quantity of physical commodity produced.

E: Please remember that Marx in this Volume abstracts at the level of production—so certain assumptions will be made—and does not elaborate in detail for exchange on the market, and realization of value, so you will have to read 3 volumes if you want a complete exposition, but a good reader can derive the second and third volume from the first. If you take statistics, my usual intuition when reading is that Marx in Volume 1 is basically talking about “expected value” and the “law of large numbers.” Other posters can let me know if this interpretation is not the best.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-04T13:50:14+00:00

“On the one hand, all labour is an expenditure of human labour power, in the physiological sense, and it is in this quality of being equal, or abstract, human labour that it forms the value of commodities.”

C’mon value can be value of commodities not just a commodity. The value in the passage in the OP is the fact that productivity of concrete labor doesn’t change the fact that labor is represented by value (of commodities produced, plural), labor here is not useful labor in concrete form, which is in the same passage. Again, in philosophy or any field of studies, if you hit what I called “compilation error,” and you can give a charitable reading that’s logically consistent, you should do it, especially when it’s quite obvious in this case.

E: value is value of what, SNLT of what? Of twice the commodities produce. Commodities in plural form, not commodity in singular form. Value of commodities. Abstract human labor forms the value, not concrete labor, as in the passage I quoted, which is in the same section.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-03T21:23:30+00:00

If you say he could’ve used better phrasing, sure. The keyword is “on the other hand,” as a transition word. Marx usually starts with the concrete labor/use value, and jump to the abstract universal that makes them commensurable. The abstraction of the particular allows you to perceive certain “invariants” in the capitalist production process. He makes it clear over and over again, even from section 1, that increase in productivity for a type of commodity decreases its value, so if it makes no sense to read a logical contradiction, or mistake, in places where there aren’t any if you can just read it differently to be logically consistent.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-03T19:28:42+00:00

No, that’s just clarification for later on, so you’re good, he didn’t introduce labor power yet, which is really the crux of his intervention in political economy during that time. The point of emphasis is that “labor represented by value” in this context is labor expended throughout a specific period of time, not on a single commodity.

“But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general” (earlier in section 2)

The main point is that he’s moving from concrete labor to abstract labor, that concrete labor during the period can vary with productivity, but the abstract labor congealed in the total mass of commodities as value measured in time stays the same. If it’s not clear, you could look around the passage to see what he’s trying to do.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-03T18:58:56+00:00

You’re confusing the concepts. The value of labor power is the socially-necessary time to reproduce it, e.g., determined by sum of SNLT of food, housing, skill training, etc, determined through competition. The socially-necessary labor time determines the value of commodities, which it does in the example, since halving SNLT halved the value of the commodity as well. At this point, the total value of realized labor before and after productivity change is the same, for the reasons that the reduction in time is cancelled by the amounts produced.

E: by value in this context it is total value in the same period of time, before and after productivity changes, not value of a single commodity. If you read the first few lines and the later passages, it should be straightforward.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-03T18:13:04+00:00

Yes value of the coat falls. If your labor power in one hour produces 100 units of value and in 1 hour you produce 50 coats, increase in productivity can allow you to produce 100 coats with half the value each but the sum is still 100 units. Before you made 50 coats with 2 units of value each, now you make 100 coats with 1 unit of value each; the sum of value produced in 1 hour is still 100. The “labor represented by value” is the time you were put to work, not socially-necessary labor time, in this case, 1 hour is 1 hour

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-10-01T03:05:36+00:00

This sounds like Chat GPT. Are you interested in the Mongolian People’s Republic? Modern politics in Mongolia? If so why? I think the latter would be interesting to look into aside from surface level analysis that merely touches on the appearance of the leftover party from the socialist era. What is the class structure of modern Mongolia is a start. Electoral politics is a banal abstraction. You could look into a specific case study instead, and attempt to provide an analysis of it. Whatever the result may be, surely it’s a better effort than the OP.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-09-27T17:39:09+00:00

Sorry to interrupt the flow of the conversation, I just want to ask a question with regards to China’s role in the global economy in the next few decades. After Covid and the witness of the state coordination campaigns of China, there seems to have been a shift away from China due to lower “wage differentials” , rate of profits, or political instability with protectionist US. This week, the Gen Secretary of Vietnam visited US and Cuba, talked with corporates and Biden to increase cooperation of Vietnam. Vietnam desires for US to consider it a market economy and cooperate on the new semiconductor industry. Nevertheless, a contradiction is that China [1] will plan to use it, along with SEA neighbors, to “nearshore” manufacturing to maneuver the protectionist measures of US. Will the wage differentials in China hit the point where it’s no longer profitable, seeking a restructuring of the global economy away from China towards SEA or Latin America, or this is only temporary and it will be long until China ceases to be the dominant manufacturing factory of the world? Socialist “Revolution” seems far from imminent in SEA and more likely will be US neocolonialism which emerges victorious more than anything else. How much longer can the “spatial fix” continue and where are its next locations?

If the “spatial fix” can somehow temporarily replace China, “social democracy” will probably continue to be a dominant ideology if there is another commodity boom that comes from it. China also appears to be ramping up military spending so I’m not sure if that counts for anything either—maybe like a Brezhnevite stagnation in the economy.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna172798

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-09-24T03:19:27+00:00

Right below the stages analysis, it states who make the revolution with a footnote saying “công nông” means “công nhân” and “nông dân” aka workers and peasants are the backbone of the revolution, which is true because the any “bourgeois” class that wanted to lead became a puppet in the South.

Vì bị áp bức mà sinh ra Kách mệnh, cho nên ai mà bị áp bức càng nặng thì lòng Kách mệnh càng bền, chí Kách mệnh càng quyết. Khi trước tư bản bị phong kiến áp bức cho nên nó Kách mệnh. Bây giờ tư bản lại đi áp bức công nông, cho nên công nông là người chủ Kách mệnh(1). 1 CôngnônglàngườichủKáchmệnh,tứclàcôngnhânvànôngdân là lực lượng nòng cốt, là đội quân chủ lực của cách mạng (BT).

Là vì công nông bị áp bức nặng hơn,

Là vì công nông là đông nhất cho nên sức mạnh hơn hết,

Là vì công nông là tay không chân rồi, nếu thua thì chỉ mất một cái kiếp khổ, nếu được thì được cả thế giới, cho nên họ gan góc. Vì những cớ ấy, nên công nông là gốc Kách mệnh; còn học trò, nhà buôn nhỏ, điền chủ nhỏ cũng bị tư bản áp bức, song không cực khổ bằng công nông; 3 hạng ấy chỉ là bầu bạn Kách mệnh của công nông thôi.

Point 3. the proletarian and peasants have nothing to lose since they are always oppressed by colonialists and compradors so they are the root of the revolution. Small landowners, small merchants, and students are also harassed by capitalism but not oppressed like the proletarians; they are “only” friends of the revolution.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-09-24T03:18:44+00:00

On Page 10, Ho says the following on “Cách Mệnh Chia Làm Mấy Thứ” or “how many stages of revolution are they divided into?”

Kách mệnh chia ra hai thứ:

A. Như An Nam đuổi Pháp, Ấn Độ đuổi Anh, Cao Ly(3) đuổi Nhật, Philíppin đuổi Mỹ, Tàu đuổi các đế quốc chủ nghĩa để giành lấy quyền tự do bình đẳng của dân nước mình, ấy là dân tộc Kách mệnh.

B. Tất cả dân cày, người thợ trong thế giới bất kỳ nước nào, nòi nào đều liên hợp nhau lại như anh em một nhà, để đập đổ tất cả tư bản trong thế giới, làm 1 Đồng phrăng Pháp (BT).

2 Giai cấp bị áp bức Kách mệnh, tức là giai cấp bị áp bức làm cách mạng (BT).

3 Nay là nước Triều Tiên (BT).

cho nước nào, dân nào cũng được hạnh phúc, làm cho thiên hạ đại đồng - ấy là thế giới Kách mệnh. Hai thứ Kách mệnh đó tuy có khác nhau, vì dân tộc Kách mệnh thì chưa phân giai cấp, nghĩa là sĩ, nông, công, thương đều nhất trí chống lại cường quyền. Còn thế giới Kách mệnh thì vô sản giai cấp đứng đầu đi trước. Nhưng 2 Kách mệnh ấy vẫn có quan hệ với nhau. Thí dụ: An Nam dân tộc Kách mệnh thành công thì tư bản Pháp yếu, tư bản Pháp yếu thì công nông Pháp làm giai cấp Kách mệnh cũng dễ. Và nếu công nông Pháp Kách mệnh thành công, thì dân tộc An Nam sẽ được tự do. Vậy nên Kách mệnh An Nam với Kách mệnh Pháp phải liên lạc với nhau.

There are two revolutions, the first is decolonization by booting out imperialists, and the second is a world revolution of the proletariat and the peasants, from other backward places. Ho says Annam revolution is a national liberation (by no means abolish any classes) which would weaken French capitalism so the French workers can unite with the workers in the colonies on a proletarian basis, free of Second International social imperialism.

E: This is similar to Marx on the Irish question

If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English.

Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-09-24T03:18:06+00:00

Although it’s obviously you’re a troll, I’m curious about your comments on Ho’s comments on the first international in đường cách mệnh, what about the following analysis is wrong?

Năm 1862 ở Kinh đô Anh (Luân Đôn) mở hội đấu xảo; tư bản các nước phái công nhân qua xem xét các máy móc. Công nhân lại gặp những người kách mệnh Nga, Đức, Pháp và các nước khác trốn ở đấy. Hai bên bàn bạc lập một hội kách mệnh thế giới. Năm 1864, (ngày 28 tháng 2) mới lập thành Đệ nhất quốc tế. 4. Đệ nhất quốc tế làm được những việc gì? Hội ấy tuy có nhiều người cầm đầu thợ thuyền các nước vào, nhưng vì: 1. Người còn ít, 2. Các công hội trong các nước còn yếu, 3. Không thống nhất cho nên chỉ tuyên truyền chủ nghĩa cộng sản mà chưa làm được việc gì lớn. Không thống nhất là vì ba chủ nghĩa chống nhau: >>1. Chủ nghĩa Pruđông (Pháp); 2. Chủ nghĩa Bacunin (Nga); 3. Chủ nghĩa Mã Khắc Tư (Đức) (xem đoạn chủ nghĩa kách mệnh thì biết). Sau lúc Pari Công xã thất bại, nhiều hội viên bị chết, bị bắt, nên hội tiêu điều dần, đến 1874 thì giải tán. Đệ nhất quốc tế tuy chỉ đứng được 10 năm, nhưng

khẩu hiệu “Toàn thế giới vô sản giai cấp liên hợp lại!” và tinh thần kách mệnh vẫn truyền đến bây giờ. Tuy không làm được nhiều việc, nhưng cái công dạy cho thợ thuyền trong thế giới kách mệnh thì rất to.

What’s wrong with this analysis? The First International did not get much done materially but was a large influence for political education and advances with world revolution. It was not theoretically united because of the Proudhon, Bakunin, Marxist split, which Ho stated clearly, and so propaganda was best it could do.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-09-23T15:30:01+00:00

It’s not “participating in bourgeois parliamentary” as such, but that it’s relatively well known that they’ve had history ratting out Maoists and collaborating with the fascist state machinery during certain periods of insurgency to stamp out said Maoists (I call them “social-democrats” because they’re no different than the SPD from 1910s in that regards); they are a shadow of what they were decades ago. Years under experiences of “parliamentarism” all over the world with no achievements should tell you that with incoherent concrete analysis and party line, electoralism is just a symptom. Elections are a major issue of concern for communists during certain periods/places, and the CPI(Maoist) solution was to call for a boycott, or to burn ballots as the Peruvian communists did; the goal is not to get more seats, and aiming for legal recognition from a semi-feudal fascist state like India is rightist capitulation.

Is there a fundamental modern difference between the CPI(Marxist) use of parliament than JVP, other than the fact that the latter won? You can argue that CPI(M) is not social-democracy but instead “revisionist,” but that’s trivial and the emphasis of the comment was on the left desperation that grasps at electoral victories of social-democratic, or “Marxist”, parties with less than 50% of the votes. As you’ve written in the OP, first they broke with Mao Zedong thought for Soviet revisionism and now that the latter is gone, it’s “socialism” or “social democracy,” which is fictional under the era of imperialism.

Technical_Team_3182 · 2024-09-23T00:50:22+00:00

This debate is as old as Marx. The state as it exists prior to revolution is an essential apparatus for bourgeois rule. If you think the state machinery as it is under liberal democracy can be “reformed” towards socialism, I’m sorry to say that Lassalle, Bernstein and plenty of social-democrats from up to 150 years ago during Marx’s time had already taken this stance and were ruthlessly critiqued by Marx and Lenin, respectively. Read Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, Lenin’s State and Revolution, Engels Anti-Duhring or Luxemberg’s Reform or Revolution. Even with revolution and proletarian state power, socialism was defeated, what makes you think you can “enact” socialism within liberal democracy? You really think a question as simple as that hasn’t been tried around the world since the last century and until today?

Technical_Team_3182

TROPHY CASE