If, for Garrido, this intellectual move is not enough, this is very similar to Marx’s argument that the intellectual recognition of the source of value is not enough to banish the fetish character of commodities. The ‘mystical character’ attaches itself to the commodity thanks to its social form and the three-fold objectivity it gives to historically specific social relations. First is that ‘[t]he equality of the kinds of human labour takes on a physical form in the equal objectivity of the products of labour as values’. Secondly, the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour’. And thirdly, ‘the relationships between the producers, within which the social characteristics of their labours are manifested, take on the form of a social relation between the products of labour’. Thus the fetish character of commodities arises from 

• ​the tendency to equate different kinds of human labour into a uniform producer  of values, 

• the tendency of values to be expressions of mere duration of labour and 
• the tendency of social relations to take on the form of relations between product

Marx’s discussion was prompted by the fact that this social objectivity of products when they are produced as commodities which went beyond their simple use values had been hard for political economy to grasp and continued to dog comprehension of capitalism and the dynamics of its most basic ‘cell’, the commodity. 

However, Marx also argued that the mere intellectual understanding was not going to be enough to banish the mysticism and replace it with clarity. That clarity would only be achieved by a clarification, and thus transformation, of the social relations: 
​

The reason is that the appearance arises spontaneously, not from thought but from practice. ​

This means, again in Marx’s words, that ​

​There is no way of banishing the semblance when it is daily reproduced by human social practice. 

​Carlos’s argument in The Purith Fetish is similar. The purity fetish cannot be removed by mere intellectual advances. It requires the emergence of a different reality, in his case, a different kind of left. Mere intellectual realization of the truth is not enough.

​Noah Khrachvik: … Alan Freeman is a former principal economist with the Greater London Authority and is now a research affiliate of the University of Manitoba. With Radhika Desai, he is co-director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group. He is also co-editor of the Future of World Capitalism book series with Pluto Books, and the Geopolitical Economy book series with Manchester University Press He is a committee member of the Association for Heterodox Economics (www.hetecon.net) and a vice-chair of the World Association for Political Economy. He is a board member of Video Pool Winnipeg and the Christopher Freeman Trust, and a former board member of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Go ahead, Alan--
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Alan Freeman: I’m very pleased to be in this discussion for two reasons. One is that it’s a wonderful book, but the second is that we’re talking, that we have at least three organizations whose origins are completely different, who are sitting around and actually talking.  And I must say from my experience on the left—this is a very rare event. This is a very important new stage in the evolution of the left, grounded in actually acknowledging a variety of different views that exist and discussing them out, so that’s a very welcome event, it’s a very welcome book.

I often say that I prefer to meet and discuss with people that I don’t agree with than people I agree with because if I discuss with people I agree with, I know what they’re going to say. So, the reason for discussing with people you don’t agree with is precisely to bring out differences, which is the purpose of dialectic. So I am going to kind of, in a humorous way, say, I’m going to throw out a criticism of the book, which is a friendly criticism.
I think it’s too soft on the hard left.

And I’ll try to do a second thing, which I don’t know if I can do in the time, and that is to bring that into an evaluation of a very important contribution of the book, which is its critique of the Socratic and Platonic tradition. And you may think, “what the hell is the connection between those?” So I’m going to read a few quotes out to you that may make you think more about, you know, what did Plato actually say? The first is Alfred North Whitehead, who said: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that is consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” So everything you’ve been brought up on, that you’ve been told is the basis of western democracy owes most of what it claims to its heroes Plato and Socrates.

What they forget is that both Plato and Socrates were irreconcilable enemies of democracy. Their position in Greek society arose after the defeat of the Athenian democracy in the Peloponnesian War, probably self-inflicted, but nevertheless a defeat. A tyranny of the Council of Thirty, who killed nearly 5% of the Athenian population, exiled many more. And they came to the conclusion after looking at this that the problem was democracy, and what you needed what a rule of the experts, a rule of the philosophers. And this rule had to be based on what Plato calls the “noble lie.” So your recipe for democracy is first of all, you put experts in charge. Don’t have anything to do with democracy which Socrates and Plato both called, “the rule of the ignorant.” And second is you have to lie to them. That’s the foundation of western democracy. And the lie in Plato is justified in the following terms: that it is necessary in order to maintain social harmony, so it’s a “noble lie.” And he tells a fictional tale know as the “Myth (or Parable) of the Metals.” And this is the origin of the Three Social Classes who compose his “Ideal,” his “Pure” republic, which never came into existence. It’s perhaps the first form of the purity fetish. And these are--the gold, the silver, and the iron. And the gold, the silver, and the iron are--the rulers, the workers (the iron), and the guys in the middle who kind of, you know, do the real business. 

Now I want to put it to you that that “Noble Lie” and the rule of the philosophers are what we are actually getting from the far left. And I explain this in the following way: I have never met a member of the far left who is, and I count myself as a member of the far left, but of a far left purist organization, that has justified supporting the Provisional IRA in Marxist terms, or defending Saddam Hussein in Marxist terms, or defending the Iranian Revolution in Marxist terms, or siding with Russia in the aggression of NATO against it that provoked the current war, in Marxist terms. I’ve never heard any justification for supporting socialist China in Marxist terms, from many of these people.

So what are these people? They are apologists for imperialism. Let’s say that bluntly. Let’s say that loud, and let’s say that clearly. And the way they do it is the same as the method of Plato, which is they construct—basically based on a confusion between form and essence – an ideal form: an ideal society has to be like this, and if it’s not, it’s wrong, it’s impure, it’s imperfect. But the doctrine of essence that was developed in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition is something very different. It says, “no, we don’t look at what’s ideal, we look at what lies behind what we see.” Now in both of them they can appear quite similar, because they make a contrast between what you see and what’s really going on.

 So this gets distorted, I mean I have a lovely quotation from Wolras, the founder of modern economic thesis: “A truth long a go demonstrated by the Platonic philosophy is that science does not study corporeal entities, but universals of which these entities are manifestations. Corporeal entities come and go, but universals remain forever. Universals, their relations, and their laws are the object of all scientific study.” Now that, you know, you could sort of square that with a kind of Hegelian narrative that underneath the reality there lies some, underneath the observed superficial appearance, there lies something. But actually, it’s the opposite. And there’s another beautiful quotation from Plato that illustrates this.

Because Plato argued that to stop people resorting to the sin of looking at things as they really were, what you have to do is you have to have gods that are out of reach. So Plato actually invented the idea that the heavens are the abode of the gods. Not Mount Olympus. Because they’re so far above us that you will never have people saying I want to go there and see what’s happening. Nowadays, you do have it, in Plato’s time you didn’t. And he justifies this with this wonderful phrase which I’ve—just sums it all up: “No one can ever gain knowledge of any sensible object by gazing upwards, any more than shutting his mouth and searching for it on the ground because there can be no knowledge of sensible things. These intricate traceries in the sky are no doubt the loveliest and most perfect of material things. But still part of the visible world, and they therefore fall far short of the true realities, the real relative philosophies in the world of pure number and all perfect geometrical figures.” So he says not only can you not see things in the heavens, but there’s no point in looking at the heavens, because the real heaven is even beyond all that. It’s completely inaccessible.

Now, how does that work? The gold and the silver and the iron are with us today. The gold is the world created by the imperialists. It’s perfect, it’s wonderful. Everything else is an inferior form of that. Then we have the people who kind of go along with that, and they’re the silver. The people who collaborate with that. And then you have the iron who is everybody else. And everybody else is inferior. The fundamental way that Russians are described in the narrative of the West is in the words of somebody like [EU foreign policy chief] Joseph Borrell: “Europe is a garden, and everywhere else is a jungle.” That’s naked racism, and when people in the Ukrainian government persistently say that the problem is all Russians, not the Russian state, not the Russian government, but all Russians—that naked racism. And it’s only accepted by people from pure Marxism because they use the pure Marxism to prove that Russia is just an imperialist country like any other.

Now I’m going to say one more thing to bring all that back together. And this is what you might call the classic origin of purity, which is the way in which Lenin defended the Russian Revolution against the charge of putschism. And he does that by reference to the Paris Commune. And from the notion of the Paris Commune is the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the prototype thereof, there comes the justification that he gives for the Soviet form of the state. I think I have no issue with that at all. But I think that subsequently what happened, is people then, through the purity fetish in its earliest form, said “only if you have a Soviet republic do you have a pure democracy, do you have a real democracy, do you have something that fits the criteria of Marxism-Leninism.”

 Now what’s wrong with that? Lenin never says that the Paris Commune proves that the ideal form of democracy is Soviet democracy. What he says, and this is essence as opposed to form, is that you cannot have a socialist revolution. You cannot go to a new form of society in which the working class rules, without smashing the existing state. There are a hundred different ways to smash the state. Sometimes it just dissolves itself and then you can have a quiet, peaceful process. Sometimes it fights back very, very hard and then you have to have a revolutionary war. Or, as in China, sometimes you simply have an upsurge against the state, and the state virtually disappears and is replaced by something that you don’t quite understand, like the Iranian state. But to impose on that the criterion that it has to meet the ideal form is to misunderstand the need to look at it from the standpoint of essence. That is, does it advance and defend the interests of working people and does it retard and make more difficult the interests of the property owners?

And I’ll finish on a wonderful statement that was given in one of our webinars by an Iranian revolutionary, which is the analogy of the ice cream. He says the way that revolutionaries approach revolutions is they say—"I’m going to an ice cream van, and I’m going to get offered a strawberry ice cream, a Neapolitan ice cream, a vanilla ice cream. And I’ll choose the strawberry one.” He says, when you have a revolution, you don’t get a choice. You get the damn ice cream. And you take what you’re given. I think that notion that you deal with the reality, you look at the essence behind it, but you do not worship form, is the true way that the tradition of Marxism and of all the revolutionary currents one finds, whether they call themselves Marxist or not, should be adopted and taken on board in a rich and broad dialogue – for instance, - with Bolivarianism, with the Iranian revolutionary tradition, with the emerging currents that we now see in the very fervent debate going on in Russia, with the socialist China and the Chinese Communist Party and the Vietnamese Communist Party. That’s the kind of debate we need. A broad debate in which we all engage with each other on the basis of mutual respect without any precondition that we’re going to say, “this is pure” and if you don’t say that, then we’re actually going to go into another shouting match. 

Noah Khrachvik: Our next speaker is Gabriel Rockhill. ​Gabriel Rockhill is a Franco-American philosopher, cultural critic and activist. He is the founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. His books include Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy (2017), Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (2016), Radical History & the Politics of Art (2014) and Logique de l’histoire (2010). In addition to his scholarly work, he has been actively engaged in extra-academic activities in the art and activist worlds, as well as a regular contributor to public intellectual debate. Follow on twitter: @GabrielRockhill
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Gabriel Rockhill: Thank you so much, comrades, it’s great to be here with you for this important event. I have a few congratulatory remarks for Carlos, and then I have three comments based on the book, which have to do with elements that inspired my thinking and conversations I’ve been having with organizers in my circles. So first and foremost, I think the book is quite an significant achievement, at two levels at least. One is that it manifests the collective ethos of everything that you’ve been doing at Midwestern Marx, which is quite an incredible undertaking. It is very impressive that a group of people can build on their own such a significant, collectively resourced institute that provides political education, brings people into the struggle, breaks down complex ideas, makes them accessible to a large audience, etc.  You occupy a very significant position, and I think an important element of Carlos’s work has to do with the ways in which he’s been working with other people in this collective endeavor, not simply to fight intellectually against the purity fetish, but to build institutional power in order to struggle back against it. Collective institution building should never be given short shrift because it’s one of the most important things we can do. 

The second achievement is that the book itself is highly accessible and very well written. It is also urgent, insofar as it addresses one the central problems facing the contemporary left, particularly within the imperialist core . It provides a resounding critique of the purity fetish, of controlled counter-hegemony, and other related issues, while also advancing a positive project. So it’s dialectical through and through, and that’s one of its strengths. It’s also a kind of manifesto for the anti-imperialist left. I would therefore encourage everyone to read the book. As Radhika pointed out, it is also relatively thin so you can get through it. It is erudite without being bogged down in academic referentiality.

Regarding the points that I want to highlight for discussion, the first one is that Carlos provides us with a very astute account of what I would call the dialectics of socialism. The relationship between capitalism and socialism is not a simple relation between two fixed socio-economic systems, as if there would be capitalism over here, which would be “A” and socialism over here, which would be “B.”   On the contrary, socialism is a collective project that is built out of the skeletal system of capitalism in its decline. Therefore, socialism inherits so many of the problems that plague the history of capitalism. And it is tasked with doing something that is nearly impossible, which is moving from a system that is based on profit over people to one in which people are put at the center of the socio-economic system.

One of my favorite jokes that I’ve heard about the socialist project is the following: socialism looks good on paper, but in reality… you just get invaded by the United States. This, of course, addresses the fact that we’ve never had a free socialist country emerge in the history of the world. We have only had what Michael Parenti calls “socialism under siege”: every single socialist experiment has been the target of imperialist destruction. This means that socialism as it emerges in the very real world has to deal with these concrete material factors that it does not control, because it is coming from the bottom up, within a world-system dominated by capitalism.

Moreover, socialist countries need to develop by starting out from a position within the geopolitical world of structural under-development. They have to do this without relying on many of the principal mechanisms of development under capitalism, such as colonialism and extreme forms of racist super-exploitation. Finally, socialists inherit all of the political and moral injustices of the capitalist system—baked in racism and homophobia, misogyny and gender oppression, all of the ideologies of the capitalist world—as well as ecological degradation.

I think that Carlos’s book does a good job of bringing to the fore this dialectics of socialism and the fact that we should never expect a pure and perfect socialist system to spring forth fully formed as if from the head of Zeus. Instead, we should actually anticipate that socialism will be wracked by a whole series of contradictions related to the fact that it is born out of a system of human and environmental degradation, which is the capitalist system. What is absolutely remarkable, and again Carlos’s book brings this to the fore, is that in spite of all of these odds, or against all of these odds, if you look at the quantifiable data that we currently have, socialism has registered some truly remarkable victories. In fact, there’s an interesting study that was done in 1986 that used data from the World Bank, which couldn’t be accused of being a communist sympathizer, and which is arguably the largest body of data globally. This study compared the Physical Quality of Life Index—which is a composite index calculated from life expectancy, infant mortality rate, and literacy rate—in socialist and capitalist countries at similar levels of development. It found that socialist countries had a more favorable performance in 22 of 24 comparisons.

So what’s extraordinary is that even though socialism emerges in this dialectical tension with capitalism, it has nonetheless proven itself successful at the level of its material gains for working people. In that regard, Carlos’s book is an invitation for us to think very differently about the socialist project than the Western fetishization of purity tends to make us think about it. That is, it encourages us to both recognize the extreme difficulties of the socialist project and also support and celebrate the incredible gains that have been made for humanity, and for that matter planet Earth, given the environmental policies of socialist countries. On the latter front, there have, of course, been times of significant contradictions between the need to develop the productive forces in underdeveloped countries and the ecological footprint that this brings (until the productive forces have been developed to the point of being able to work through the contradictions, as in contemporary China for instance).  

My two other comments have to do with a series of thoughts that were provoked in both reading Carlos’s book and then discussing it with some people who are very close to me. The first is how the purity fetish relates to the longstanding criticisms of utopian socialism, and in particular those that were already expressed by Marx and Engels. You can look at the Communist Manifesto or the Poverty of Philosophy, where Marx explains that utopian socialism was largely a product of the lack of development of both the capitalist system and the state of class struggle at that point in time.  This meant that the class struggle had not yet fully revealed to the working class the systemic workings of the capitalist ruling class, and therefore scientific socialism, as it emerged with the work of Marx and Engels, was actually a consequence of the material evolution of both capitalism and class struggle.

So one of my questions for Carlos is: How would you situate your understanding of the “purity fetish” in relationship to these longstanding critiques of utopian socialism, and in particular those critiques that foreground the material forces that are operative behind these ideologies. I think this echoes some of the things that Radhika said because I’d like to hear Carlos more on the central role played by the labor aristocracy in the history of the imperial left, and what kind of material forces are operative behind this. I’m thinking here of the promotion of the idea that socialism has to be something that is structurally impossible: it has to be absolutely pure and come forth in the world in a way that would be untainted by the history of capitalism. In short, it has to be basically immaterial. And ultimately that’s what a segment of the Western left wants: an immaterial socialism, meaning one that would never exist. This would thereby preserve the extant social relations such that this segment of the left would remain at the top of global labor structures.

My last comment has to do with leftist organizing in the imperial core. If we take seriously the material role of the labor aristocracy in promoting certain forms of ideology, such as that of the “purity fetish,” then what is to be done? I was recently reading the book Communisme by Bruno Guigue, which I strongly recommend.  Drawing on Gramsci, he argues that the class struggle within the imperial core takes on a different form. Since socialist revolutions have generally proven themselves to be successful across the tri-continent, meaning the global south, and we have not had one within the global north of the imperial core, it makes sense that class struggle here would take on a slightly different form.

Guigue draws on the distinction that Gramsci makes between a war of position and a war of maneuver. Within the imperial core, there is such a deeply developed level of industrialized ignorance, due to the power of the cultural and media apparatus, as well as the system of indoctrination referred to as education. The Western left is therefore faced with a very fundamental problem, namely that the masses, for the most part, are profoundly uneducated about very basic things about how the world works (which, of course, is not necessarily their fault).

Guigue suggests, therefore, that what we need in the imperial core is a war of position, meaning a form of trench warfare in which we focus primarily on hegemonic struggle, fighting for political education. The war of movement, the war in which you’d actually be able to seize power in a revolutionary manner, as has been done across the global south in certain instances, is for the most part, I take it—that’s at least what he’s implicitly suggesting—not really on the table at this point in time. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t advocate for developing the necessary conditions. Someone like George Jackson is quite clear in this regard: if there is not a revolutionary situation, the onus is on us to make one.

Guigue’s position, I take it, is that to do that in the imperial core requires tasks that are slightly different. The fight against the purity fetish that Carlos is undertaking in this book is part of—it seems to me—a larger struggle for political education and for wresting control away from controlled counter-hegemony, while building up a real counter-hegemony—like Midwestern Marx is trying to do, like the International Manifesto Group is endeavoring to do, as well as the Critical Theory Workshop and many other organizations with which we all work.  

These are my three general thoughts on Carlos’s book, including a few questions for the discussion to follow. I’ll finally close just by saying that it’s extremely impressive and inspiring to have such a young scholar and vibrant mind doing such important work at an early stage in his career. I really look forward to continuing to collaborate with everyone at Midwestern Marx, learn more from you, and continue the struggle. 

​Noah Khrachvik: Awesome, our first speaker is Thomas Riggins. Thomas is a retired philosophy teacher from NYU, the New School for Social Research and others. He received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center in 1983 and he’s the Consulting Editor for the Midwestern Marx Institute. He’s been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960’s, when he was Chairman of the Young People’s Socialist League at Florida State University. And he also worked for CORE in voter registration in North Florida. He’s written for many online publications like People’s World and Political Affairs, where he was an Associate Editor. He also served on the Board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was President of the Corliss Lamont Chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He’s the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism and Eurocommunism: A Critical Reading of Santiago Carrillo and Eurocommunist Revisionism. Here’s Thomas…
​
Thomas Riggins: Well, I’m going to introduce this book in the spirit of our comrades from the Middle Flowery Kingdom. I have the 5 Takeaways that we need to have from this book. I should reformulate that as the Middle Flowery People’s Republic. The 5 Takeaways from The Purity Fetish. These are the five most important things I think that you’ll have to remember:

1. One is, we have to take away the idea that those Marxists who refuse to accept the reality of states and peoples who are struggling to institute socialism, to build Marxism in their countries, that have faced failures and have made mistakes; that this does not mean that they are supposed to be rejected and denounced as traitors to Marxism because they’re not living completely according to some ideal idea of what Marxism and socialism is supposed to look like. The real world is very different from the ideal world, as we learned from reading Hegel. It’s one thing to say, “all men are created equal”---it takes a Civil War to make it begin to happen.
2. The second takeaway is those people who dismiss certain elements of the working class in this country--especially in this country, but in other countries too--because they are backwards in their thinking, reactionary in their thinking, they have racist ideas, whatever the problems are that make these people hostile to us or hostile to progressivism. Instead of blaming them we should remember it’s the system that’s creating these people and our job is to educate them and to try to free them from the shackles that have been put on them by the capitalist system, instead of denouncing them as deplorables and useless and trying to ignore them. That’s the second thing that Carlos—one of the five things that Carlos puts forth in that book. That’s the second takeaway I think we have to make.
3. The third takeaway we have to do is fight back against dumping on China from the West. This seems to be something that is incorrigible in the press now because of the cold war starting with China again. Academic leftists and the petty bourgeoisie leftist that claim to be Marxists want to attack China, call China capitalist because it goes through the usual forms to try to improve the living standards of their people. We all know the struggles are going on in China, and so we have to fight back against—it’s our job to explain to people the reality of what the Chinese struggle is. We must at least be able to explain what’s going on there and why we should support the Chinese and support the Chinese government in its efforts to increase the living standards not only of the Chinese, but to bring about a more peaceful world to live in. And to bring about real foreign aid to the peoples of Africa and South America, instead of the phony type of foreign aid the United States insists on giving, that requires them to vote the way we tell them to in the United Nations.
4. The fourth takeaway is the people who ignore the progressive history of the United States. The people who want to dump--Lincoln statues are being tossed away now, in some ultra left groups. It’s true that our country has a checkered past with the Indian removals and with racism and with slavery. Nevertheless there were people back in those days that fought against that even though they didn’t have the advanced positions of the 21st century, they knew slavery was wrong, they tried to do something to eliminate slavery. They may have been caught up in the system themselves because they were economically in the plantation system. So, but we have to remember that--just to try to dump on all American progressive history because of the weaknesses of the past is alienating from people, regular Americans today who have some feeling of patriotic pride in their country. It’s true the Communist Manifesto says the working people “have no country.” We can’t forget that. We are actually internationalists. But we can tell them we do have a country. You know, it’s not as great as Trump cracks it up to be. But it’s not as bad as people who think we’re all colonial settlers or something and we have to give everything back to the original inhabitants. Okay that’s the fourth thing.
5. And the last thing is the left is soft on the anti-imperialism front. There’s too many people on the left who are also flying Ukrainian flags in their backyard or porches. We have to remember that any struggle against the major enemy of the worlds people—which is U.S. imperialism, by far the most bloodthirsty killing machine since World War II, must be supported. Just the number of Vietnamese they killed and the number of Koreans that were bombed out, far exceed anything any left group or any left country has done as a communist country or a socialist country, or even as a bourgeois country. I’m talking about Russia, which is lost its communism but nevertheless plays a progressive role against U.S. imperialism. And that’s the common enemy of humanity right now. And they should be getting—at least we should be supporting them, if not outright cheering—we should at least be supporting their right to defend themselves from NATO and the use of other countries like Ukraine as puppets and proxy wars against them. If we read Carlos’s book we can see the “purity fetish” of those Marxist, or people that claim to be Marxist, who in the name of trying to be true Marxists, don’t accept any of those five takeaways that I’ve put out. We can understand what these people, whatever their good intentions, are. We on the left and in the communist party at least have a distinction between objective and subjective enemies. And they may be subjectively communists and friends, but they are objectively helping U.S. imperialism.  And I think reading Carlos’s book will make anybody who is not aware of that, aware of that. This book is a big advance in the struggle here in the United States. 

​The Communist Party of Cuba is a vanguard political party in a political system of people’s democracy.  As such, its role is to educate the people, guiding the people in the construction of socialism.  The Party in Cuba possesses the moral authority to guide and educate, but it does not have the legal and constitutional authority to decide.  The Constitution grants to the National Assembly of People’s Power, the deputies of which are nominated by the delegates of the people and elected directly by the people, the authority to decide policies and measures, to enact legislation, and to elect and recall the highest members of the executive branch of the government.

I have written in previous commentaries concerning the Cuban political process of people’s democracy, different from and in important respects superior to representative democracy (see “Cuba wins the 2023 elections,” March 28, 2023).  Whereas the structures of representative democracy initially took form in the context of bourgeois revolutions against the monarchies in the late eighteenth century in North America and Western Europe, the structures of people’s democracy were developed in the context of Third World people’s revolutions against a neocolonial order in the twentieth century.  Today, Korea, Vietnam, China, Laos, and Cuba have developed different versions of people’s democracies.

Ricardo Cabrisis, Cuban Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of International Commerce and Foreign Investment, has observed that Cuba is passing through one of the most difficult moments in the sixty-two years since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, as consequence of the economic and ideological war being waged against it by U.S. imperialism.  Similarly, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, declared that Cuba is in an extraordinary complex scenario that is provoking the deterioration of the infrastructure, shortages of supplies, and lack of goods and services, which also is generating a social deterioration.

The Party leadership is calling the Party members and the people to creative resistance, looking for innovative solutions to the economic problems, thus breaking the economic siege of the United States against Cuba.  The nation must advance with speed and dynamism, eradicating inertia, bureaucratism, snags, and complacency.

On May 23, 2023, the VI Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party was held.  A Report of the Rendering of Accounts on the work of the Political Bureau was presented to the Plenary by Roberto Morales Ojeda, a member of the Political Bureau who is also the Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

The Report notes that the Plenary occurs in the context of increasing socioeconomic complexity, caused by the effects of the intensification of the blockade with 243 new measures of the Trump administration, which includes the arbitrary inclusion of Cuba in the spurious list of countries that sponsor terrorism.   There is insufficient understanding among the people, the report observes, of the impact of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade on the economy of the nation.

The Report affirms the political victory of the Revolution in the recent national elections, inasmuch as they ratified the unity and the confidence of the Cuban people in the Cuban democratic and socialist system.  It also recognizes the implementation of improvements in the conditions national electric energy system, enabling it to overcome instability, although some disruptions of service persist that require continuous attention.  The Report considers valuable the recent visit of a Party delegation to Laos, Vietnam, and China, for the purpose of interchanges with the communist parties of said nations.  And the Report reaffirms the foreign policy of the government, based in the principles of respect for the sovereignty of all nations and the development of mutually beneficial commercial relations among nations.

However, the Report acknowledges a host of problems.  A shortage of supplies of gasoline and diesel has generated a fuel crisis, creating serious difficulties in both public and private transportation.  In the countryside, housing and transportation have deteriorated, and the service infrastructure is insufficient.  A rural exodus has occurred, leading to an insufficient workforce in rural areas.  The 2023 sugarcane harvest was insufficient, as a result of undisciplined work, an insufficient number of technically qualified workers, and shortages of fuel, lubricants, and equipment.The Report observes that emigration, essentially of youth and professionals, constitutes a challenge for the present and the future.

Emigration aggravates a situation of deficit of medicines, and it contributes to the reduction of availability of medical equipment tied to high technology and of ambulances.  The Report recommends improvement of ideological political work in the formation of professionals.The Report refers to an investigation of the problem of persons not connected to either study or work.  Fifty percent are adolescents and youth, with the highest incidence occurring in Santiago de Cuba, Havana, Granma, Villa Clara, and Sancti Spiritus.

The Report notes that the socialist state companies are far from the full attainment of their potential.  In his address to the National Assembly on May 25, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, noted that 84% of the state-managed companies are running in the black, with income greater than expenses.  Of those in the red, some are being maintained by the state because of their value to the economy and society.  However, the goal is to gradually attain a situation in which all state companies will operate with income greater than costs.

The Report noted that inflation and the deprecation of Cuban currency have reduced the acquisitive power of the people, giving rise to an increase in illegalities, criminal behavior, corruption, and social indiscipline.  The report notes that passive attitudes before the phenomenon are prevalent, and there is lack of administrative control.  There is poor attention to the imposition of fines, and weak vigilance by the directing councils of centers of production.  Night watch and vigilance by workers and neighborhood organizations are nearly nonexistent.  The report calls for attention to the battle against corruption, crime, illegalities, and indiscipline.

In reporting to the Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People’s Power on May 25, Minister of Economy Gil noted that the average year-over year inflation of prices is currently 45.4%, with some goods, especially those provided by the state, having no price increase; with the price of other goods increasing at a higher level.  Gil explained the three factors that have caused inflation.  First, the increase in prices of imported goods, due to inflation in the world economy.  Secondly, a decline in Cuban production, particularly agricultural production, including such goods as milk, corn, potatoes, pork, rice, and eggs.  Production has declined because of shortages in supplies and fuel, as well as due to undisciplined work.  Thirdly, speculation in the retail market, with some intermediaries demanding a price five times what they paid, taking advantage of shortages.  Such abusive speculation, Gil observed, contributes nothing of value to the economy.  The government is attempting to clamp down on this form of corruption, he noted.

Gil concluded his report to the National Assembly with the observation that as of April of this year, the Cuban economy is on track to comply with the objectives defined by the 2023 economic plan.  He expressed confidence that the Cuban people are capable of overcoming obstacles, despite the U.S. blockade.

Alejandro Gil, it should be noted, regularly provides comprehensive and scientifically informed analyses of the Cuban economy, putting forth clear explanations.  He has repeatedly stated that the solution to the economic difficulties of the country is an increase in production, especially agricultural production.  He regularly outlines steps being taken by the government to increase production, which include cooperative arrangements with strategic partners and allied nations.  He is a key member of the Cuban leadership team, headed President Miguel Díaz-Canel, that through its continuous display of competence inspires confidence and hope.

At the May 25 Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez spoke from the floor of the Assembly, not in his capacity as foreign minister but as an elected deputy of the assembly.  He declared that the fundamental cause of the economic problems of the nation is, by far and without any doubt, the U.S. blockade against Cuba.  In his extensive commentary, he reviewed the history of the blockade from 1959 to the present.  He noted that the blockade has evolved with increasing intensity, such that the blockade in its early years did not have the impact that it has today, especially in a world context in which Cuba had a cooperative relation with the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc.  He pointed out that as a result of the measures imposed by the Trump administration in 2019, companies and banks in third countries are sanctioned by the USA for commercial and financial transactions with Cuba, often imposed by the arbitrary inclusion of Cuba in a spurious list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism.
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The Report concludes with a call for attention to the priorities of the people: housing, speculative and abusive increase of prices, the long lines for the purchase of goods, and the instability of the electric system.  The Report calls upon greater involvement of the Party cells in all the processes.  It calls for improvement in the schools of the party, tying ideology to knowledge, and for improvement in the theoretical formation of the Party cells.

A report on the compliance with the Guidelines of the Social and Economic Policy of the Party and the Revolution for the period 2021 to 2026 was presented to the Plenary by Joel Queipo Ruiz, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party and Head of its Productive Economic Department.  He noted that the report was developed on the basis of ample consultation with the 48,121 Party cells in the country.  He observed that the effective implementation of the Guidelines does not correspond with what is needed to guarantee the social and economic development of the country.  He maintained that Party cells in centers of production have to become true units of combat that impulse effective compliance with the Guidelines.

Alejandro Gil, Minister of Economy and Planning, noted that of the 201 guidelines, 13 are without advancement in implementation, and 67 have low advancement, such that approximately 40% of the guidelines had had little or no implementation.  On the other hand, 110 guidelines have had medium advancement (54.7%) and 11 have high advancement (5.4%).  He further noted that the thirteen guidelines without advancement in implementation are primarily connected to agriculture and food production.  Gil observed that “nothing falls to us from heaven, and there is no magic.  We have in our hands a group of measures that have not given results, but they have a great potential.”

The Plenary approved the Code of Ethics of the Cells of the Revolution.  The Code was formulated on the basis of the Theses and Resolutions of the First Congress of the Party; the definition of revolution expressed by Fidel in 2001; and reflections on the theme expressed by Raúl and Che.  The Code expresses the characteristics that a leader ought to possess: the honor and the duty of defending the country; anti-imperialist spirit; the permanent disposition to explain comportment and to submit oneself to public scrutiny; permanent interaction with the citizenry; and to be proactive in the solution of difficulties and problems, confronting them with the available resources.  The Code elaborates fifteen values that a good leader ought to have: patriotism, anti-imperialism, fidelity, honesty, honor, discipline, altruism, humanism, solidarity, professionalism, collaboration, integrity, responsibility, transparency, and austerity.

Miguel Díaz-Canel, President of Cuba and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, declared at the closing of the Plenary that the principal challenge confronting the Party today is to search for solutions to the economic challenges that the country confronts.  He called for rigorous implementation of the measures and actions proposed at the Plenary.  He stressed that it is imperative to increase production, especially the recuperation of agricultural production, and to eliminate the network of intermediaries in the commercialization of merchandise.  He called for confronting the present challenges in a spirit of victory, effort, talent, determination, and creativity.  He declared that it is not only a matter of resisting, but of resisting and creating at the same time.

The Party, Díaz-Canel declared, must stimulate the comprehension and participation of the people and the lifting of hope.  He noted that in his most recent trip in the provinces of the country, he found that there had been advances in comparison with five months earlier.  We found a capacity to manage production at the local level, a will and persistence despite adverse circumstances, he declared.  We found persons that have been disposed to overcome adversity, and they have attained it, taking advantage of existing potentialities.  These persons have been blockaded, just like everyone in Cuba, yet they were able to advance, even though they were in the same conditions as everyone else.  They are the ones who are challenging the blockade, Díaz-Canel asserted.  They are lifting the blockade through creative resistance.  They are not complacent or immobile; they confront with intelligence each of the problems that they confront.

The President calls for such a spirit of resistance not only from some, but from all.  We are calling all, he declared, to overcome the blockade without it being lifted, overcoming it at the local level, taking advantage of existing potentialities in each of the provinces and the municipalities of the country.

The difficulty the U.S. faces in its current attempts to damage China’s economy was analysed in detail in the article “The U.S. is trying to persuade China to commit suicide”. Reduced to essentials, the U.S. problem is that it possesses no external economic levers powerful enough to derail China’s economy. The U.S. has attempted tariffs, technology sanctions, political provocations over Taiwan, the actual or threatened banning of companies such as Huawei and Tik Tok etc. But, as always, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Taking the latest period, during the three years following the beginning of the Covid pandemic, China’s economy has grown two and a half times as fast as the U.S. and six times as fast as the E.U..

Therefore, as the previous article put it, in the economy the U.S. cannot “murder” China—even although it can create short term problems. Furthermore, unlike with Gorbachev, whose illusions in the U.S. led to a centralised political collapse of the CPSU, the disintegration of the USSR, and an historical national catastrophe for Russia, the policies of Xi Jinping and the CPC are centrally protecting China and socialism.  As the U.S. cannot pursue a course of “murder”, therefore it is forced to attempt an indirect route to get China to commit “suicide”—that is, to try to persuade China to adopt policies which will damage it.

Given that economic development underlies China’s success, one of the most central of all U.S. goals is to attempt to persuade China to adopt self-damaging economic policies. Enormous resources are therefore poured into spreading factually false propaganda regarding China’s economy. This also has the secondary goal of internationally attempting to persuade others not to learn from China’s economic success—because an understanding of the reality that China’s socialist economy is more efficient and successful than capitalism would be a devastating ideological blow to the U.S..

A crucial part of this false propaganda is to try to get accepted as “truth” claims about China’s economy which are entirely false—as basing policies on “facts” which are untrue would naturally lead to wrong policies. One of the most important of these false claims is that China’s socialist economy is “inefficient” compared to capitalism—or, more specifically, that investment in socialist China is inefficient in creating economic growth compared to capitalist America or in general compared to capitalist countries.

Naturally, socialism’s goal is not abstract economic efficiency, it is people’s well-being. But an inefficient economy, in the long term, would be incapable of maintaining the maximum well-being of the people. Therefore, how efficient an economy is constitutes an important issue in economic development. Claims that capitalism is more economically efficient than capitalism, usually put in the form of U.S. claims of the “inefficiency of socialism”, consequently has at least two purposes.

First, most immediately, to attempt to persuade China that as its investment is allegedly “inefficient” it should be reduced. As discussed in the earlier article, “The U.S. is trying to persuade China to commit suicide”, a key U.S. goal to get China to reduce its level of investment in GDP. This is because that same policy was successfully used earlier by the U.S. to derail its competitor economies of Germany, Japan and the Asian Tigers.

Second, more generally and ideologically, this claim that China’s investment is inefficient, and capitalism’s is efficient, is an attempt to undermine and discredit socialism and promote capitalism.

In summary, such propaganda is an attempt to spread two interrelated falsifications.

• First, that China’s investment is inefficient in promoting economic growth.
• Second that this “inefficiency”, which doesn’t actually exist, is due to socialism as opposed capitalism.

As will be systematically factually shown below, the exact reverse of these claims are true. Socialist China’s investment is much more efficient in creating growth than in capitalist countries such as the U.S.. As will be shown, this efficiency of China is integrally linked to the socialist character of its economy.
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As usual the method will be used to use the wise Chinese dictum to “seek truth from facts”. The first section of the article will establish the facts showing the greater efficiency of China’s investment. The second section will demonstrate that the reasons for this lie in the socialist character of China’s economy.

As an opening aside it may be noted that the present author was taught at an early age that when a theory and the facts, the real world, do not coincide there are only two things that can be done. A sensible person, following the scientific method, abandons the theory: a dangerous one abandons the real world, that is the facts. But as will be seen there is a variant of this second position—that is simply to invent “facts” which are quite untrue!. A typical case can be taken from Business Week, where it was claimed:

It takes $5 to $7 of investment to generate a dollar’s worth of gross domestic product in China, versus $1 to $2 in developed regions such as North America, Japan and Western Europe.1

Similarly Western economic analyst Charles Dumas claims:

China is incredibly good at wasting savings through misallocating investment.2

It is in fact very easy to factually test these claims and show they are false. How much must be invested to generate a dollar’s worth of GDP is a perfectly standard and well-known economic measure—the Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR). ICOR is defined as the percentage of GDP which must be invested to generate one percent GDP growth. Therefore, the lower the ICOR—provided it is a positive number, representing economic expansion and not contraction, the more efficient investment is in generating growth. The results of such standard measurements of ICOR are unequivocal. China has to invest significantly less than the U.S., Japan or Western Europe to generate a “dollars’ worth” of GDP—i.e. China’s investment is more efficient in generating economic growth than the Western economies.

Starting with the most recent results, the factual situation regarding efficiency of fixed investment in generating economic growth is shown in Table 1—which gives ICORs for the world’s 20 largest economies. These together account for 80.4% of world GDP. If the Eurozone as a whole is included, and also South Africa, so as to include all BRICS countries, then the Table shows the ICORs for countries and economic regions accounting for 83.9% of world GDP—i.e. for all economies which have a major impact on world growth.

Taking a five-year average, to avoid the effects of purely short-term shifts in the business cycle, China had to invest 7.1% of GDP to generate 1% of annual GDP growth. It may immediately be seen that China’s investment was characterised by its extremely low ICOR in terms of international comparisons—i.e. its extremely high efficiency in generating economic growth. China was the second best out of the world’s 20 largest economies. In particular, China’s ICOR of 7.1 was more efficient than the US’s 10.0, the Eurozone’s 22.4, Germany’s 30.3, the U.K.’s 70.1—not to speak of Japan’s ICOR which was a negative number, showing that its economy contracted despite its investment.

Therefore, the claim that China’s investment is inefficient in producing economic development is simply a lie. There is nothing secret about the data from which this can be calculated, it is perfectly publicly available. Anyone who spreads falsifications that China’s investment is inefficient is consequently simply engaged in propaganda, not in serous economics.
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The implications of this fact that China’s investment is extremely efficient by international standards will be considered below after the facts are further explored.

Turning from current international comparisons to historical developments, Figure 1 shows China’s ICOR since 1966, again taking a five-year average for both GDP growth and the percentage of fixed investment in GDP in order to remove inevitable purely short-term fluctuations caused by business cycles. The starting date is taken as 1966 because that is after the end of the period of disruptions caused by the Great Leap forward.

The trends are clear.

• From 1966-76 China’s ICOR rose sharply from 2.0 to 6.5. This was a serious negative development, a more than tripling of ICOR in a 10-year period, meaning China would have had to invest more than three times as high a percentage of GDP to maintain the same economic growth rate—or that if the level of fixed investment in GDP had remained constant China’s economic growth would have fallen to only one third of its previous level. The damaging economic consequences accompanying the political events of this period in the Cultural Revolution is therefore obvious.
• After 1976 China’s ICOR began to improve—it had reached 5.1 by 1978. Following the systematic introduction of Reform and Opening Up in that year a prolonged improvement began and China’s ICOR fell to 2.5 by 1988. This showed the great improvement made by Reform and Opening up to China’s economic efficiency—international comparisons during this entire period are analysed below. This huge rise in the efficiency of investment following Reform and Opening Up launched the beginning of China’s “economic miracle” after 1978.
• China’s ICOR then remained very low for two decades, rising only to 3.3 by 2007. Given the increasing level of China’s economic development in this period, the transition from a low-income economy first to a low-middle income economy and then to an upper middle-income economy, this was an extremely good performance. The reason for this is that, as analysed in detail below, it would be expected that as an economy becomes more developed its ICOR will increase—this is predicted by Marx’s analysis of the rising organic composition of capital. Consequently, an increase in ICOR from 2.5 to 3.3 over a 19-year period, during which China underwent huge economic development, was extremely impressive—as international comparisons analysed below demonstrate. Furthermore, China’s average growth rate did not fall significantly during this period as its percentage of fixed investment in GDP was also increasing, from 31.1% of GDP in 1988 to 37.9% of GDP in 2007. This offset a rising ICOR so China’s GDP growth rate remained essentially the same. This illustrates a simple but crucial point: because as an economy becomes more developed its ICOR will increases it will inevitably slow down if its percentage of fixed investment in GDP remains constant. But this economic slowing is not inevitable as is sometimes argued—if the percentage of fixed investment in GDP rises at least as fast as ICOR then an economy will not significantly slow as it becomes more developed. This is exactly what occurred with China from 1988 to 2007. The slowing of an economy as it becomes more advanced is therefore not inevitable, it is a choice which is determined by a decision not to raise the percentage of fixed investment in GDP in line with the increasing ICOR which occurs with economic development.
• From 2007 China’s ICOR rose sharply to reach 7.4 in 2020. It is this trend that those who claim China’s investment is inefficient by international standards sometimes point to. But unfortunately, they make two fundamental factual errors. First, they fail to make international comparisons—it will be seen that the ICOR of other countries was also rising rapidly after 2007, in most cases by far more than China. That is, China’s worsening ICOR after 2007 was not some specific deterioration in China but a part of a process occurring internationally—one clearly created, given the dates involved, by the international financial crisis which started after 2007 and during which China actually performed better than almost every other major economy. Second, they fail to note the historical dynamic that as an economy becomes more developed its ICOR rises—and China is now approaching a “high income country” level by World Bank standards.

Analysing first the rising ICOR which occurs with economic development, then in the founding work of modern economics, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith had already analysed that with increasing economic development fixed investment would play a greater role in economic growth—and that the percentage of fixed investment in the economy would rise. This was repeated by Ricardo. It was made a foundation of Marx’s economics in his analysis of the rising organic composition of capital. It was reiterated by Keynes. Milton Friedman attempted to claim this claim was not accurate, but he made an elementary factual error in analysing only the U.S. economy and not international trends.

One of the manifestations of this increasing capital intensity of production with economic development is that ICOR rises as an economy becomes more developed. Thus Figure 2 shows the historical reality that the ICOR of developed/high income economies is higher than the ICOR of developing economies—to take the latest data, for the five years up to 2021, the average ICOR of developing countries was 8.2 but the average ICOR of high-income economies was 15.3.

This, of course, has clear consequences for China as it undergoes economic development. It means that as China makes the transition to a high-income economy its ICOR should be expected to rise—such a rise would not reflect inefficiency but simply the effects of economic development. Whether China’s fixed investment was inefficient could, therefore, not be established by showing that its ICOR had risen with time—as such a process would naturally occur with economic development. Inefficiency could only be established by a comparison to current economies at a similar stage of economic development—the comparisons, to be valid, would have to be with current economies, and not with historical cases of economies, due to the overall international rise of ICOR which has taken place particularly since 2007 and which is analysed below. This rise in ICOR is the first trend which affects China with economic development and shows why analyses which do not make international comparisons are invalid.

​Given this trend that ICOR will rise with economic development the relevant question is whether China has maintained its advantage in efficiency of investment compared to other countries? Figure 3 shows that the answer to this is clearly yes. Not only is the ICOR of developing countries lower than that for high income economies but China’s ICOR is lower than that for the average of developing countries. For all periods, except for the five years leading to 1976, China’s ICOR was lower than the average for developing countries. Taking the latest data, for 2021, the average ICOR of developing countries is 8.2 and for China 7.1. As China is by now one of the most highly developed of developing countries, and will in only a few years become a high income economy by World Bank standards, this shows the strong efficiency of China’s investment.

While the increasing level of economic development of China would by itself have led to an increase in China’s ICOR a second international process has been taking place since the international financial crisis which has been negative for all countries—in particular high-income economies. Figure 3 shows this clearly. As can be seen the ICOR for both high income and developing economies, and therefore the international average, has worsened since 2007.

• ICOR for developing economies rose from 3.5 in 2007 to 8.2 in 2021.
• ICOR for high income economies rose from 8.0 in 2007 to 15.3 in 2021.
• The world average ICOR rose from 5.8 in 2007 to 10.9 in 2021.
• China’s ICOR rose from 3.3 in 2007 to 7.1 in 2021.

Therefore, the worsening of China’s ICOR from 2007 to 2021 was not some process specific to China, representing part of a specific inefficient process within China, but was part of an overall international process in which ICOR rose globally. However, within this overall deterioration, China’s efficiency of investment in generating growth remained better than the average even for developing countries—whose efficiency of investment in generating growth itself remained better than that for high income economies. Regarding major economies, as noted at the beginning, China’s efficiency of investment in generating growth was ranked second out the world’s 20 largest economies.

Because comparisons are frequently most specifically made between China and the U.S., the ICORs for the two countries are shown in Figure 4. As may be seen China outperforms the U.S. in the efficiency of investment in generating growth in all periods. Figure 3 and Figure 4 show clearly that claims such as that by Business Week quoted at the beginning, “It takes $5 to $7 of investment to generate a dollar’s worth of gross domestic product in China, versus $1 to $2 in developed regions such as North America, Japan and Western Europe,” are simply fraudulent—“fake news”. China has to invest less dollars to generate a unit of growth than the U.S.—as well as Europe or Japan.

Putting these trends together it can be clearly seen why China’s ICOR would have increased since 2007 and why it is entirely misleading not to make international comparisons. Two macro-economic processes were occurring.

1. China is making the transition from a developing to a high-income economy, that is to more capital-intensive production, therefore its ICOR will go up.
2. There has been a general global worsening of ICOR under the impact of the international financial crisis and China is part of that trend—China cannot completely escape the consequences of the overall international economic situation.

Therefore, a rise in China’s ICOR after 2007 is entirely to be expected. The relevant measure is therefore the international one—that is, how has China’s efficiency of investment in producing economic growth changed relative to other current economies at a similar stage of development. The factual answer is clear. China’s efficiency of investment is in terms of international comparisons extremely high—in particular superior to the U.S. Europe and Japan, as well as compared to other developing countries. What is factually striking is not that China’s investment is inefficient in generating economic growth, that is a propaganda falsification which serious economists should not be taken in by, but how highly efficient China’s economy is in terms of international comparisons.
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Having established the facts, as opposed to the myths, the question is then obviously why is China’s investment so efficient?

Turning from establishing the fact of the high efficiency of China’s investment, in terms of international comparisons, to explaining it, it will become clear that the overwhelming reason for China’s very high efficiency of investment is due to the socialist character of its economy. In particular, it results from China’s extremely strong anti-crisis macro-economic strength which flows from possessing a socialist economy compared to capitalist ones. To clarify this, given that the most frequent international comparison made for China is with the U.S., this will be concentrated on. Furthermore, this automatically deals with the other cases of high-income economies—as, while the U.S.’s efficiency of investment in creating growth is less than China’s, it is superior to the other major capitalist economies such as the EU and Japan.
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The fundamental process which is involved, and which particularly creates China’s advantage compared to the U.S. in ICOR, can be seen from Figure 5. This shows that the worsening of U.S. ICOR, that is the efficiency of its investment, was not at all a smooth process. It was characterized by two specific periods of huge deterioration which were so severe that they affected average efficiency of investment over the entire period. These were a more than doubling of ICOR to 26.8 in the period leading to 2011, that is following the international financial crisis, and a rise to 16.8 in the period leading to 2020 in association with the Covid induced recession. In short, economic crises led to a sharp worsening of U.S. ICOR, to a severe fall in the average efficiency of U.S. fixed capital investment.

To illustrate clearly the long-term cumulative effects of such crises, and to smooth out the extreme short-term spikes, Figure 6 shows a longer term, 10-year, average for U.S. and China’s ICOR. The long-term cumulative worsening of U.S. ICOR under the impact of its successive economic crises is clear. In short, the fall in the efficiency of U.S. capital investment was particularly associated with crises in the U.S. economy.

Regarding the more precise explanation of this worsening of U.S. ICOR, it should be recalled that the latter is by definition GDP growth divided by the percentage of fixed investment in GDP. If ICOR has risen therefore one of two processes must have occurred—or both.

• The first is that the rate of GDP growth has slowed.
• The second is that the percentage of fixed investment in GDP has increased.

But while in principle either could have taken place factual examination shows that the worsening of U.S. ICOR since 2007 is entirely due to its economy slowing and none of it is due to an increase in the percentage of fixed investment in GDP.  U.S. gross domestic fixed capital formation was 22.3% of GDP in 2007, remained slightly below that level in the entire period after 2007, and was to 21.4% of GDP by 2021. Therefore, zero percent of the worsening of U.S. ICOR after 2007 was due to an increase in the percentage of fixed investment in GDP, and the entire worsening of ICOR was due to the slowdown in the average annual growth of the U.S. economy.

This process of economic slowing is shown in Figure 7. The U.S. went through two sharp recessions with negative growth—economic contraction of 2.6% in 2009 and of 2.8% in 2020. The contraction of the U.S. economy in crisis years sharply slowed its average growth rate and therefore raised its ICOR.
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In contrast, while China’s economy slowed since the beginning of the international financial crisis, that is it could not entirely escape the negative consequences of the post-2007 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, despite these international crises China never experienced in this period a year of economic contraction—unlike the U.S.. Consequently, the U.S.’s much weaker anti-crisis macro-economic capacity than China explains the superiority of China in efficiency of investment compared to the U.S. and is the primary explanation for the deterioration of U.S. ICOR—that is for the worsening of the efficiency of U.S. investment.

Turning to what explains the much greater weakness of the U.S. than China in anti-crisis capacity it is crucial to understand factually what actually occurs in a major recession and the different behaviours of investment and consumption during it.

Consumption is a much higher percentage of GDP than fixed investment in the U.S.—in 2007, on the eve of the international financial crisis, consumption was 82.5% of U.S. GDP compared to 22.3% for fixed investment. This therefore sometimes leads to the false assumption, formed by not studying the facts, that it is falls in consumption which primarily creates recessions. But this commits a simple arithmetical error. The fluctuations in investment in the U.S. economy are so much more violent than the fluctuations in consumption that, despite the fact that investment is a much smaller percentage of GDP than consumption, it is fluctuations in investment which actually primarily control the U.S. business cycle—and in particular which create its recessions. This may easily be seen by looking at the facts.

Between 2007 and 2009, the latter being the worse year of the U.S. recession created by the international financial crisis, then overall U.S. GDP declined by 2.5% adjusting for inflation. The inflation adjusted fall in U.S. household consumption, which accounts for 82% of total U.S. consumption, was 1.5%. But the inflation adjusted fall in U.S. private fixed investment, which accounts for 82% of U.S. fixed investment, was 27.6%—almost twenty times as severe as the fall in consumption.

Figure 8 shows that, in current prices, between 2007 and 2009 U.S. household consumption rose by $145 billion and U.S. government consumption by $235 billion—a total rise in consumption of $380 billion. But this entire increase in consumption was more than offset by $508 billion fall in gross fixed capital formation. That is, the post-international financial crisis recession was overwhelmingly created by the fall in investment, not in consumption.
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Moreover, depreciation of fixed capital during this period was $119 billion. Consequently, the fall in U.S. net fixed investment was even worse than that of gross fixed investment—a decline of $626 billion. Therefore by 2009, the U.S. capital stock was lower than in 2007, lowering U.S. potential for long term growth. In summary, the U.S. recession after 2007, and therefore the worsening in U.S. ICOR, was due to the fall in U.S. fixed investment during the international financial crisis after 2007.

The reason the U.S. was unable to control this fall in investment is equally clear. The U.S. is a capitalist economy. That means, by definition, its dynamic is determined by decisions of private capitalists. If these capitalists decide not to invest the economy goes into recession—which, in turn produces an increase in ICOR. There is no U.S. state sector sufficient to offset this. Private ownership of all the main means of production therefore produces weakness in the U.S. macro-economic crisis mechanisms.

​In contrast to the U.S. Figure 9 shows what occurred in China in 2007-09, faced with the international financial crisis. In 2007 to 2009 China’s GDP, in inflation adjusted terms, rose by 20.0%. Looking at current prices, it may immediately be seen that there was no fall in fixed investment of the U.S. type. On the contrary, in current prices, China’s gross fixed capital investment rose more rapidly than any other major component of GDP—increasing by $890 billion. compared to $511 billion for household consumption and $233 billion for government consumption. China’s fixed capital depreciation in this period was $356 billion. Therefore, China’s net fixed investment rose by $534 billion. China’s capital stock was significantly greater in 2009 than in 2007, increasing its potential for long term growth—in sharp contrast to the U.S. trend.

The reason that, unlike the U.S., China’s fixed investment did not fall is also quite clear. China is a socialist economy with a large state sector and state-owned banks which entirely dominate its financial system. Following 2007 state investment, and financing of private investment by state owned banks, could be and was used to prevent a fall in fixed investment. In contrast, the private capitalist U.S. economy had no such anti-crisis mechanism. In summary, China’s large state-owned sector gave it much stronger macro-economic anti-crisis mechanisms than the U.S. The fact that China suffered no decline in output in any year during the international financial crisis, in turn, limited its rise in ICOR. So, it was the strength of China’s state sector, by preventing a fall in investment, which prevented recession and ensured China’s superior ICOR to the U.S. The macro-economic strength given to China by its state sector thereby ensured the high overall efficiency of China’s investment in generating growth.

Turning now to what occurred in economies during the Covid pandemic, not all national accounts data is yet available, but the overall pattern is clear. First, Figure 10 shows that China’s economy far outperformed the U.S. during the pandemic period. In the three years 2019-2022 China’s GDP grew by 13.3% compared to the U.S.’s 5.2%. That is, during the pandemic China’s economy grew by more than two and a half times as fast at the U.S..

Regarding the internal structure of the U.S. economy during this period the changes in current prices in the main domestic components of GDP are shown in Figure 11. As in 2007-2009 there was a substantial increase in household consumption, of $2,970 billion. Government consumption also rose by $581 billion. Gross fixed capital formation also rose, by $838 billion, but this was insufficient to offset fixed capital depreciation of $848 billion. Therefore, U.S. net fixed capital formation fell by $10 billion—given the margin of error, and the small measured contraction, it is probably best to state that the rise in U.S. net fixed capital formation during this period was approximately zero. Clearly there was no significant addition to U.S. capital stock during 2019-2020—and there may have been no addition at all, or even a marginal fall.

Turning to China, complete internationally comparable national accounts data is not yet available for the entire pandemic period. Nevertheless, comprehensive national accounts data is available for part of this period, and the more limited data until the end of 2022 leaves no doubt as to the overall pattern. The fundamental contrast in pattern with the U.S. is the same as in the post 2007 recession.
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Starting with the comprehensive national accounts data which is available for China for 2019-2021, Figure 12 shows that once again increase in gross domestic fixed capital formation was the single biggest contributor to China’s GDP growth in this period at $1,311 billion—as compared to $1,200 billion for household consumption and $428 billion for government consumption. This contrasts sharply with the U.S. pattern where, in 2019-2021, household consumption rose by $1,510 billion and gross fixed capital formation by $458 billion. Internationally comparable data for depreciation is not available for China after 2020 but given the fact that in 2020 fixed capital depreciation was $333 billion, and there is no reason to suppose it remotely reached almost $1,000 billion in 2021, it is clear that China’s net fixed capital investment was positive in the period 2019-2021.

Turning to 2022, internationally comparable national accounts data for China is not yet published. But it is clear from the data which has been released by the National Bureau of Statistics that the same pattern continued. This shows that in 2022 total consumption accounted for 1.0% of the increase in GDP, gross investment for 1.5%, and net exports for 0.5%. As inventories are only a small part of that figure for total investment, this clearly shows that the contribution of fixed investment to GDP growth remained the leading contributor to China’s GDP growth in 2022 and therefore also for the period 2019-2022 as a whole. This is the exact opposite of the U.S. pattern in which household consumption was the leading contributor and fixed investment low.

The reason for the high contribution of fixed investment to China’s GDP growth during the pandemic period is also clear. Figure 13 shows the way in which China’s state investment, during a crisis, could be used to offset the decline in private investment. As the Wall Street Journal noted regarding China’s system of a socialist market economy, without understanding the significance of what it was saying in terms of the superiority of China’s socialist system:

Examining the detailed pattern during the pandemic in China, in both the peak Covid crisis year of 2020 and during the economic slowdown of 2022, the increase in private investment fell to very low levels—1.0% in and 0.9% in 2022. But overall fixed investment remained significantly higher—2.9% in 2020 and by 5.1% in 2022. The reason for this was that in those years China’s state investment could be and was significantly increased—a rise of 5.3% in 2020 and 10.1% in 2022. This produced a strong anti-cyclical effect in preventing a more severe decline in investment. In contrast, during 2021, when the economy was recovering and private investment was rising relatively strongly, the rate of growth of state investment was reined back to 2.9%.

The reason that China’s overall investment could remain high was only due to the large size of China’s state sector. To be precise in making a comparison to the U.S., in 2022 only 16%, less than one sixth, of U.S. fixed investment was in the state sector, accounting for only 3.4% of GDP. Given this extremely small size of the U.S. state sector even a very high percentage increase in U.S. state investment would be unable to prevent overall U.S. fixed investment from falling—to offset a 10% fall in private investment U.S. state investment would have to rise by 50%.
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In contrast, China’s large state sector, means it is possible to stabilize China’s investment level with much lower increases in state investment. In short, China’s large state sector is an extremely powerful anti-crisis mechanism. This, in turn, because it sustains economic growth, prevents the type of severe crisis increases in ICOR seen in capitalist economies such as the U.S.. China’s large state sector, therefore, has a powerful effect in keeping China’s ICOR down and maintaining a high level of investment efficiency.

Finally, what are the conclusions that follow from these facts? And why are entirely false claims made that China’s investment is inefficient in generating economic growth which are in fact are the complete opposite of the truth?

This comes back to the point made at the beginning of this article of what happens if the real world, the facts, and a theory do not coincide? According to the theory of those who believe Western capitalism is a superior economic system, a capitalist system must be more efficient than a socialist one. But as the facts contradict this theory then science would demand that the theory be changed or abandoned. But that would lead to a conclusion that was against capitalist ideology—it would have to be accepted that China’s, a socialist country’s, investment was more efficient in producing economic growth than the U.S., Europe, and Japan. That is, it would have to be accepted that China’s socialist system was much more efficient in its investment than the Western capitalists—which is clearly an evidently unacceptable conclusion! Therefore, instead of abandoning the theory the real world has to be abandoned—instead of following “seek truth from facts” Western propaganda has to invent facts and abandon the real world!
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[The Chinese version of this article was published at Guancha.cn.]

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Dr. Cornel West, the moral philosopher and civil rights activist, will formally announce today he is running for president on the People’s Party ticket. Cornel will be a singular voice for serious social and political change in an electoral system saturated with corporate money and rigged to crush third parties. His decades-long commitment to the oppressed, his fierce opposition to American militarism and empire, his condemnation of the grotesque avarice of the billionaire class, and his determination to halt the ongoing ecocide, will see him contemptuously dismissed by the establishment. For all of these reasons we must support him.

“We’re at such a low point in the American empire,” Cornel said when we spoke about his decision. “Its spiritual decay and its immoral decadence are so profound that we have to begin on the foundational level of a spiritual awakening and a moral reckoning. Organized greed. Institutionalized hatred. Routinized indifference to the lives of poor and working people of all colors. We’ve got to get beyond an analysis of the predatory capitalist processes that have saturated every nook and cranny of the culture. We’ve got to get beyond the ways in which the political system has been colonized by corporate wealth and by monied elite. We’ve got to get beyond that sense of impotence of the citizenry. These are all the signs of an empire in decline. The only thing that we have to add is military overreach, and we see that as well.”

If this campaign becomes a movement, and it will need a lot of organizing to get Cornel on the ballot and build grassroots support, the array of forces that will seek to discredit and sabotage his candidacy will be formidable. The Israel lobby, the war industry, the courtiers in the media, the corporatists, the billionaire class and the Democratic Party leadership, will be as vicious to Cornel as these forces in Britain were to Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. Entrenched power will fight us with every tool in its arsenal. And, as with Corbyn, these assaults — rooted in a mendacious campaign of character assassination — will be relentless. 

Cornel said he seeks “a paradigm shift,” a realignment of “the ideological landscape.” He calls on us to redirect the focus of governing institutions from the demands of markets and corporations, the military machine, empire and the ruling oligarchs, to poor and working people.

“What we need is a recognition that the corporate duopoly, both parties, constitute major obstacles and impediments for the kind of spiritual awakening and moral reckoning that focuses on poor and working people,” Cornel said.

He is calling, in short, for a political revolution and the overthrow of the ruling corporate class.

“Trump is mendacious,” he said. “Everybody knows that he’s a criminal. Everybody knows that he’s a gangster. Yet at the same time, the best that the Democratic Party can put forward is mendacity and hypocrisy. The Democratic Party has an arrogance against working and poor people of all colors. We’re a laughing stock. Is Trump versus Biden the best the country can do?”

He sees the two ruling parties as “parasitical,” playing off each other in a tawdry burlesque act designed to perpetuate corporate dominance. It’s impossible, he points out, in the two party system to vote against the interests of the big banks, the fossil fuel industry, the Israel lobby, the drug and insurance companies, the animal agriculture industry and the arms merchants. The weapons manufacturers, who consume nearly half of the Pentagon budget, look at permanent war, whether in the Middle East, Ukraine or with China, as a business opportunity. These structural evils are sacrosanct. And these are the evils which, if left unchecked,will ultimately kill us.

“It’s not a narrow choice, it’s a preposterous choice,” he said.

“There is a difference in neofascist catastrophe and neoliberal disaster,” he said. “Catastrophes are worse than disasters. Disasters have less scope and range regarding certain kinds of issues. I never want to downplay the least vulnerable in our society — our gay brothers, lesbian sisters, trans, Black poor, brown poor, Indigenous poor. They are more viciously attacked by the neofascists than the neoliberals. But the neoliberals capitulate to the attack. I would never say they’re identical, but I would say poor and working people are still getting crushed over and over again.”

“If we can’t bring together the best of the trade union movement, if we can’t bring the best of the Black freedom movement, the Indigenous people’s movement, the women’s movement, the gay-lesbian movement, the queer movement as a whole, then we’re going under,” he added. 

“And then what’s at stake is, as you know, the utter destruction of the planet, destruction of the species, destruction of American democracy and for me, coming out of the Black prophetic tradition, the destruction of the Black prophetic tradition.”

He sees the rampant militarism, not only abroad but in our internal systems of control, as the enemy within. This militarism must be dismantled if the paradigm shift he seeks is to occur.

“Progressives in the Democratic Party think they can get away with rendering invisible their consensus to extravagant militarism,” he said. “But it goes hand-in-hand with the U.S. imperial policy. It goes hand-in-hand with expansion of NATO. It goes hand-in-hand to lead us in the proxy war with Russia. It goes hand-in-hand with taking money out of programs that have to do with education and healthcare and jobs with a living wage and housing, basic social needs of, not just people in this country, in the empire, but around the world.”

“How many precious Iraqis were killed by the U.S. war machine?” he asked. “Each life is precious. Iraqi lives have the same value as a life anywhere else in the world. How many lives were killed in Afghanistan? And Libya? We can look at all of the different examples. Then you’ve got examples in Haiti, you’ve got examples in Panama, you’ve got examples in Grenada and so forth in the last forty or fifty years. And we’re not even talking about the co-ordinated activities of overthrowing democratic regimes in Iran and in other places. These are the kinds of issues we’re going to have to hit head on my brother, the same is true in terms of the Middle East. The monies we give to Egypt, the monies we give to Israel. How can we render invisible the suffering of our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters given the U.S. complicity and endorsement of these vicious apartheid-like conditions? There’s no way that the Democratic Party can get away with this anymore.” 

“We had the same problem of the Democratic Party deferring to the apartheid regime in South Africa,” he went on. “What did we have to do? We came out with boycotts and sanctions. We came out with divestments. Well, the same is true now in apartheid-like conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. We can do that without in any way falling prey to one of the more vicious ideologies of the last two thousand years, which is the hatred of Jews. We don’t have a minute to engage in any kind of anti-Jewish hatred or anti-Jewish sentiment, but at the same time we don’t have a minute to turn our backs to the suffering of Palestinians tied to U.S. foreign policy that always looks away from their suffering, looks away from their social misery, looks away from the murders taking place, looks away from the houses that are crushed, looks away from the land that is taken, and so forth. Those are the kinds of issues that we have to bring to the public with whatever integrity, honesty and decency that we have and that’s pretty much what the tradition that produced me isall about, from Frederick Douglass to Ella Baker.”

His goal is “the abolition of poverty.”

“We have liberal versions of slavery,” he said. “We have liberal versions of Jim and Jane Crow. We have liberal versions of attacking poverty. No, we want the elimination of poverty, the elimination of homelessness, the elimination of laws that try to crush labor and trade unions. We want affirming jobs with a living wage. We want affirming access of poor people and working people to housing equality.”

He quoted the sociologist Max Weber: “What is possible would never have been achieved if, in this world, people had not repeatedly reached for the impossible.”

“We have to arm ourselves with that staunchness of heart that refuses to be daunted by the collapse of hope,” he said. “That’s the Harriet Tubmans, the Frederick Douglass’, the Sojourner Truths and Lydia Maria Childs. There were different colors who were part of the abolitionist movement. They were trying to achieve the impossible! You can say the same thing about the labor movement of the thirties. You can say the same thing about the Black freedom struggle against American apartheid in the south in 1955 beginning with Rosa Parks. Trying to achieve the impossible! You can only achieve the possible by trying to achieve the impossible. And of course, as Nelson Mandela said, ‘And then when you achieve the impossible, everyone said Oh well that was inevitable.”’

“We’ve got to break the fear inside of us!” he said. “The first fear goes back to Frederick Douglass in that famous struggle he had with Edward Covey, his master. The first fear was the fear of dying. Once you break the back of the fear of dying you’re a free person, you’re a free human being. Frederick Douglass said, ‘Well when I broke that fear I felt for the first time that I was already free, even though I was still a slave.’ And we know that Queen Mother Moore said the same thing. There’s a whole weight of freedom fighters who have acknowledged this kind of thing. You can see it in the works of the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. You can see it in Grace Boggs. You can see it in Edward Said. You can see it in Dorothy Day. I mean, these are the figures, and my God, we haven’t got to it, the towering figures amongst Indigenous peoples, Chief Joseph, the towering figures among our Latin American brothers and sisters, José Martí, and others.”

“How do you break that fear?” he asked. “You have to have a movement, a campaign that speaks to the fear amongst poor and working people and breaks the back of fear inside of them to get them to want to straighten their backs up and do things that are outside of the box. Outside of the prevailing framework. Outside of what they have been perceiving themselves as being a part of.”

He said he will take his campaign south and into rural enclaves to address the disenfranchised white workers who support Trump.

“We must go to Trump’s social base,” he said. “We must tell those white brothers and sisters, ‘We know you’re still suffering. We know you’ve been the losers of corporate globalization. We’re going to speak to your needs in such a way that you don’t have to follow a neofascist pied piper.’ We on the left are concerned about working people even when they themselves are xenophobic. We can steal some of the thunder from the neofascists. We’re not in any way putting up with the xenophobia. No way! Not one minute! The anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish, anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim — I have no patience with that whatsoever! But I’ll go straight into Trump country and tell all those white working brothers and sisters that I am deeply concerned about their wounds and their inability to gain access to the resources that they ought to have as citizens. We cannot defeat fascism with glib milquetoast neoliberalism. We’ve got to get at the roots of it.”

“We’re trying to achieve the impossible,” he said. “By trying to achieve the impossible we’re going to do something that people think is not possible. The first thing is to break the back of the two-party system, to break the back of corporate duopoly. If we don’t, everything is at stake — democracy, dignity, the planet.”

I have known Cornel for many years. We drove together, leaving at 3:00 am from our homes in Princeton, New Jersey, to attend the trial at Fort Meade of U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. I was in the visitors room at the prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, as Cornel gripped the shoulders of the political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and told him “You have Frederick Douglass in you, brother!” Tears streamed down Mumia’s face. Cornel and I held a People’s Hearing of Goldman Sachs in Zuccotti Park during the Occupy movement where those who were evicted and bankrupted by big banks testified against the heartlessness and greed of corporate capitalism. We have spoken together at rallies in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Israeli-apartheid state. We walked three miles on a sweltering July day in Philadelphia with thousands of homeless people to the Wells Fargo Center during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, because housing is a human right. 

I was with Cornel when Bernie Sanders delegates, disgusted by the machinations of the Democratic National Committee against their candidate and his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, walked out of the convention. Cornel turned to me and said presciently, “Bernie lost his political moment.” 

We have taught classes together in East Jersey State Prison. We have spoken on stages at universities where Cornel has demanded reparations for Black people and called for a guaranteed income for all citizens. I have heard him denounce the prison industrial complex as “a crime against humanity.” I have listened to him call for  universal health care, canceling student debt, free university education, freedom for Julian Assange and heard him thunder against those who deny women access to abortion.

Cornel officiated, along with the theologian Dr. James Cone, at my ordination as a Presbyterian minister. We spoke, and wept, at James’ funeral in 2018 at Riverside Church. James wrote that we must stand, no matter the cost, with the crucified of the earth. 

Cornel, like the Biblical prophets, is driven by an unshakeable belief that our brief sojourn on the planet is validated by what we do for those the world has cast aside. His is not only a political campaign, but a calling. 

This June 4 marks the 34th anniversary of what is known in the United States as the Tiananmen “massacre.” 

The story we are typically told in the West is that young student activists had gathered in Tiananmen Square, uniting around the liberal demands of democracy and freedom, bravely defying the repressive Chinese government. After weeks of these ongoing protests, the Communist Party of China had had enough and cracked down on the peaceful protesters. As the story goes, in the early morning hours of June 4, 1989, People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled into the square. They were said to be indiscriminately shooting and mowing down innocent, unarmed protesters, killing thousands.
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To put it simply, this particular understanding of a “massacre” of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4 is a fabrication, the mythology of which has been exploited by the West for over 30 years as evidence of the ruthless, authoritarian nature of the CPC to justify imperialist aggression against China.

Even the story of the “tank man” — the most iconic image to come out of the event and has become a metonym for the Tiananmen massacre itself — has been deliberately manipulated by the U.S. media machine in the service of its anti-China propaganda effort. For one, the photo was taken on the morning of June 5, not June 4, so the military tanks were actually leaving the square. And second, the man in the photo was not run over by the tanks as implied by the image. The full video shows that after a few seconds of the stand-off, the tank attempts several times to swerve around the man, but he manages to keep stepping in its way blocking its path. Finally, the man climbs on top of the tank, looks to speak to the driver for a few minutes, before finally climbing off and eventually jumping in front of the tank’s path again. The standoff continues for another few seconds, before the man is finally pulled away by a group of civilians.
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The truth of the 1989 Tiananmen protests is far more complex than the simple rendering of an authoritarian Chinese government cracking down unprovoked on pro-democracy protesters — it’s a story of societal divisions unresolved from the Cultural Revolution, which bled into the “reform and opening up” policy implemented under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, finally erupting into the the seven-week long occupation of Tiananmen Square. It is also a story of the internal and external contradictions the Communist Party of China found itself navigating as it embarked on economic development.

To fully understand the Tiananmen protests, we need to lay out the economic conditions and emerging ideological undercurrents which laid the foundations for them. In 1966, Mao along with close allies in the leadership of the Communist Party, like Jiang Qing, Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan — known as the Gang of Four — launched what is known in China as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This triggered a decade-long struggle within the CPC between their faction — which sought to prevent China and the international communist movement from going down the path of what they saw as Soviet revisionism that strayed from the revolutionary principles of Marxism — and who they called the “capitalist roaders” led by Deng Xiaoping. 

It’s important to note here that both factions of the CPC feared counterrevolution and recognized the necessity of economic development in order to overcome the legacy of its century of domination by colonial powers, but differed in their assessment of how to achieve it. Mao favored the continuation of a fully planned economy. He feared a new local bourgeoisie would develop as a result of opening up China to the global capitalist economy, and that it would bring with it counterrevolution. Deng, on the other hand, recognized these risks, but was willing to take the gamble. By granting access to its domestic market and cheap labor pool, China would in exchange receive access to Western technology, allowing it to develop the productive capacity of its economy. Deng saw no other option but to walk that tightrope to achieve modernization.

Mao saw the Cultural Revolution as a continuation of the class struggle. The ten-year campaign not only targeted those seen as revisionists and counterrevolutionaries both inside and outside the party, but also attempted to bridge the divide between the rural and urban populations. The political tumultuousness and social upheaval of the period is well known, but less acknowledged are its achievements, particularly in education reform and expansion of medical care into the rural sectors of society. At the time, 80% of the Chinese population lived in the rural areas, and most of them were illiterate. The Cultural Revolution saw expansion of primary school education and development of railways and other infrastructure to these areas. During this period, college entrance exams were suspended, and instead, high school graduates were sent to the countryside to do work and learn from local populations. 
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Despite these achievements, the rural-urban class divide still remained, and these antagonisms would intensify in the lead-up to, and during, the Tiananmen protests.

After a decade, the Cultural Revolution ended with Mao’s death in 1976. In December 1978, at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, the CPC met and adopted the “Resolution on certain questions in the history of our party since the founding of the People’s Republic of China” to reckon with and correct what they saw as the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution, and to officially set the party on the path to reform. Recognizing the Cultural Revolution as a “severe setback,” this resolution placed the responsibility for its excesses on Mao, but did not repudiate him. It argued Mao made grave mistakes during the later years of his life, but what he contributed to China and the CPC far outweighed whatever missteps he took.
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With this resolution came a reevaluation of the priorities of the revolution. Whereas Mao had previously identified the class struggle — of which the Cultural Revolution was the culmination — as the principal contradiction, the CPC now contended that China had advanced past this stage, as the “exploiters have been eliminated as classes.” While elements of class struggle still remained, the principal contradiction was now of backward social productivity versus people’s material needs. This resolution concluded:

Thus, the CPC embarked on the road to combine its planned economy with a market-based one in order to, in Deng’s words, “liberate the productive forces and speed up economic growth,” so that the people of China would one day achieve common prosperity.

Under Deng’s leadership, the CPC officially launched its “Reform and Opening-Up” program in 1980 to reboost an economy devastated by the Cultural Revolution and speed up modernization to build its productive forces. During this period, China integrated itself into the world economy abroad, while scaling back social welfare programs and implementing economic liberalization policies domestically.
The “reforms” included domestic policies to boost economic productivity. The government’s “iron rice bowl” safety net was gradually chipped away, jobs were no longer guaranteed by the government, and the centrally planned economy was transformed into more of a market-oriented one, while retaining some level of state control. In the rural areas, communes were decollectivized, with the collective farming system converted into a “household responsibility system,” which “allowed households to contract land, machinery, and other facilities from collective organizations.” The households could make independent operating decisions within the confines of their contract, which allowed farmers to financially benefit from their crops. Farmer incomes and agricultural prices were raised to encourage consumption in the rural areas and help further close the rural-urban income gap. Crop yields increased significantly during this period, adding another major boon for farmers. Urban reforms included decentralizing state industrial management and reforming state-owned enterprises to grant them some level of business independence and autonomy, and the lifting of price controls on staple foods and agricultural commodities.

The “opening up” included the implementation of Deng’s “Open Door Policy,” which allowed for foreign business investment into the country in exchange for access to China’s cheap labor pool and the promise of super-profits. A degree of risk was always present in the pursuit of these economic policies. They opened up China to foreign investment and foreign technology transfer to allow it to overcome its poverty and underdevelopment, but as predicted a capitalist class emerged. Along with that came a new bourgeois ideology, producing social forces hostile to socialism. Now a segment of society, particularly students and intellectuals, increasingly looked westward to the United States and its institutions as an aspirational political model. 

Liu Xiaobo — one of the most vocal activists during the Tiananmen protests who later won the Nobel Peace Prize — relayed such pro-colonialist aspirations in a 1988 interview when he firmly stated, “To choose Westernization is to choose to be human.” In another 1988 statement, Liu similarly asserted, “It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is. Given the size of China, certainly it would need 300 years of colonization for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough.”

Of this political shift among China’s intellectuals, Li Minqi, a Chinese political economist who also participated in the Tiananmen protests as a student, wrote, “[A]mong the intellectuals, there was a sharp turn to the right … Many regarded Mao Zedong himself as an ignorant, backward Chinese peasant who turned into a cruel, power-hungry despot who had been responsible for the killing of tens of millions. The politically active intellectuals no longer borrowed discourse from Marxism. Instead, western classical liberalism and neoliberal economics, as represented by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, had become the new, fashionable ideology.”

For his part, Deng anticipated and warned of these kinds of bourgeois ideological undercurrents, which would later feature so prominently among the student protesters at the 1989 Tiananmen protests. In 1985, he stated matter-of-factly, “Since the downfall of the Gang of Four an ideological trend has appeared that we call bourgeois liberalization. Its exponents worship the ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ of the Western capitalist countries and reject socialism. This cannot be allowed. China must modernize; it must absolutely not liberalize or take the capitalist road, as countries of the West have done.”

Though Deng saw the necessity of employing “the mechanisms of the marketplace to develop its productive economy” for the time being, the goal of socialism remained. Deng argues that the development of production would in time lead to common prosperity for the people.

It was these legacies of the Cultural Revolution and the economic liberalization reforms, which would provide the social basis for the Tiananmen protests. On April 15, 1989, Hu Yaobang, former General Secretary of the CPC and one of the more radical advocates of the free market program, suffered a heart attack and died suddenly. Hu was one of the leaders of the “Boluan Fanzheng” (translated as “to eliminate chaos, and return to normality”) campaign, which reversed many policies of the Cultural Revolution. It was the Boluan Fanzheng policy which saw the reopening of universities closed during that ten-year period, as well as the reopening of college entrance exams, granting students a pathway to higher education again. He also exonerated a number of intellectuals persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. For these reasons, Hu was a beloved figure among students and intellectuals.

Over the next few days, university students mourned Hu’s death and held rallies in his honor, marching to Tiananmen Square to place flowers for him at the Monument to the People’s Heroes. These rallies then evolved into protests for further economic and political reform, turning into an occupation of the square, which lasted seven weeks until June 4, in what we now know as the Tiananmen protests.

The demands in the beginning of the protests were mostly related to the lifting of price controls, inflation and labor market competition. The lifting of price controls led to price hikes on staple foods and commodities for those in urban areas. This was a boon to rural businesses and farmers, but in the cities this intensified an existing inflation and cost of living crisis. Urban workers’ wages were not keeping pace with this inflation, which had reached a staggering 18% by 1989. It was for these reasons that a significant number of workers eventually joined the students in the protests in Tiananmen.

Demands also revolved around ending corruption within the CPC, as some party members used their political leverage to become the earliest capitalists, enriching themselves. The student protesters especially resented those in the party who with the right connections were able to attain the few higher level jobs that existed. While the 1980s saw an expansion of higher education, most jobs at that time were still in low-end manufacturing, which didn’t appeal to university students.

But sharp class divisions were evident among those in the square, and tensions existed between student and worker protesters. Though they were eager to grow their numbers and enlist support, the student protesters shunned and looked down upon the urban workers, and the two segments were often segregated at Tiananmen. Student leaders insisted that the workers stay off the main part of the square, in order to keep the democracy movement in their eyes “pure.”

The student leaders of the protests were not shy in voicing their contempt for the workers. In an interview for The New York Times, Wang Dan, a 20-year-old history student at Beijing University who was one of the most prominent student leaders in the square, stated bluntly that the movement was not yet ready for worker participation. According to him, “Democracy must first be absorbed by students and intellectuals before they can be spread to others.”
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Li Minqi similarly wrote of these elitist attitudes felt among the students in his later reflection of the protests:

Indeed, the demands put forth by the protests overall were often diverse, and at times at odds with one another. Workers were critical of Deng’s economic liberalization policies as they bore the brunt of their negative impacts. Inspired by the emerging capitalist class in China, the students demanded an acceleration of these reforms, yet were also protesting the very consequences these reforms brought — corruption, inflation and skyrocketing cost of living. And of course, the vague demands of “democracy” adopted by the students and intellectuals reflected the nascent “bourgeois liberalization” political orientation that Deng had previously warned of.

And while worker participation in the protests was certainly not insignificant, it should be noted that the political character of a movement is not determined by the individual ideologies of the participants — it is determined by the movement’s leadership. It was the student protesters with their pro-western orientation, signs written in English and cries for bourgeois democracy that received the most international media attention and the most resources. They refused to cede or even share leadership with urban workers. 

Over time due to this media amplification, it was the student leaders’ demands that became synonymous with the movement itself. Reporters from NBC, BBC, ABC and Voice of America had a consistent presence throughout the protests and covered them extensively. The U.S.-funded propaganda arm VOA, in particular, had an especially heavy presence in Tiananmen with one correspondent recalling, “VOA was extremely popular on the square, with students holding up radios so crowds could hear our Mandarin-language newscasts. Others transcribed our stories and posted them on electrical poles around the city.” 

As time passed, the actions along with the demands began to escalate as student leaders became more and more hardline and radicalized. In mid-May, the student leaders organized mass hunger strikes to coincide with the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, then-leader of the Soviet Union. The hunger strikes prevented the Chinese government from welcoming Gorbachev in Tiananmen Square. The protests paralyzed the city and alarmingly created fissures and power struggles within the CPC. Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang openly expressed sympathy toward the student protesters even visiting them in the square as a show of support. Premier Li Peng finally declared martial law on May 20, further radicalizing the students.

Many protesters defied martial law and chose to remain in the square. In late May, to further pander to western sympathies, the students built and erected a 30-foot “Goddess of Democracy” statue, bearing a striking resemblance to the Statue of Liberty, attracting international attention. 

There was undoubtedly CIA involvement in the protests, but the full extent remains unclear to this day. According to a Vancouver Sun article from Sept. 17, 1992, the CIA had sources among protesters and within Chinese intelligence services, and it was assisting students in organizing the anti-government movement by providing support in the form of typewriters and other equipment. Chinese officials at the time also accused U.S. diplomats and CIA agents of “collecting intelligence aggressively” during the protests, and Zhao was later arrested and charged as having connections to U.S. intelligence.
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Given what we do know about CIA involvement in other socialist countries during the Cold War, however, we can safely assume there was some level of U.S. intelligence at least attempting to steer the direction of the student demonstrations. Soon, what were demands to control inflation turned into calls to overthrow the CPC entirely, with some leaders even going so far as calling for bloodshed.
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In a now infamous tearful interview, 23-year-old student protest leader Chai Ling, who was considered “commander-in-chief” of the square, tells a BBC reporter:

It’s worth noting here that by the time of this interview, Chai had already secured a visa to the United States as part of the CIA’s Operation Yellowbird mission, which secretly smuggled hundreds of student dissidents out of China. She would not even be around for the bloodshed she was calling for. After their arrival into the United States, student leaders like Chai would then be thrust into the media spotlight, meeting with politicians and used as propaganda tools to cement the mythology around the so-called June 4th massacre.

Up until that point, the response to the demonstrations on the part of the CPC had been remarkably restrained throughout. But It was clear that without decisive action, the protests had the potential to escalate even further, bringing about the very real threat of civil war or even toppling the Chinese government.

As the story goes, the protesters continue to defy martial law, and finally having had enough, the CPC orders the People’s Liberation Army to clear Tiananmen. According to this story, in the early morning hours of June 4, PLA tanks roll into the square, indiscriminately mowing down peaceful, unarmed demonstrators in a bloody crackdown. The “massacre” narrative is as sensationalist as it is incontestable: Supposed eyewitness accounts tell tales of student protesters linking arms only to be run over repeatedly by military vehicles, remains of protesters incinerated and then washed down drains, of students begging for their lives only to be bayoneted by soldiers. Some western reports estimate as many as 10,000 killed.

But there was no such massacre in Tiananmen Square. By that time, most of the protesters had left the square, and the ones who remained left peacefully after negotiating with the army.

A leaked diplomatic U.S. cable sent around that time confirms there was no such bloodshed in the square. “They [student protesters] were able to enter and leave the square several times and were not harassed by troops,” the cable reads. “Remaining with students by the Monument to the People’s Heroes until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings of students in the square or at the monument.”

Other eyewitness accounts from on-the-ground journalists corroborate this. CBS News correspondent Richard Roth, who covered the protests later wrote, “There were some tanks and armored personnel carriers. But we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a ‘massacre’ had recently occurred in that place.”

Likewise, Jay Matthews, who traveled to Beijing to cover the protests for The Washington Post, wrote in 1998, “The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square. A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.”

Reporter Nicholas Kristoff, then-Beijing correspondent for The New York Times, similarly disputed the account, printed in the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po, of PLA troops attacking students in Tiananmen:

While these journalists refute the narrative of a Tiananmen “massacre,” most of them do acknowledge that street fighting had occurred the night of June 3 in other parts of Beijing, albeit under different circumstances. This is consistent with Chinese government accounts of the events. 

On June 2, the CPC decided to clear Tiananmen Square. On the night of June 3, PLA tanks pushed into Beijing with clashes occurring in the neighborhoods of Muxidi, Gongzhufen, and along Chang’an Avenue. These clashes occurred outside of Tiananmen, so while there were some students involved, they were relatively few in number. Armed with Molotov cocktails, workers and civilians stopped and attacked trucks of soldiers, seizing weapons to use against the soldiers. Tanks were set ablaze by the rioters with soldiers still inside. Some soldiers were even lynched. 

A Wall Street Journal article from June 5, 1989, recounts: “As columns of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers approached Tiananmen, many troops were set on by angry mobs who screamed, ‘Fascists.’ Dozens of soldiers were pulled from trucks, severely beaten and left for dead. At an intersection west of the square, the body of a young soldier, who had been beaten to death, was stripped naked and hung from the side of a bus. Another soldier’s corpse was strung up at an intersection east of the square.”

Journalist David Aikman recalls, “In some places, soldiers were stripped almost naked, chased or struck by angry citizens. Other injured troops had difficulty getting to hospitals as mobs deflated or slashed the tires of military ambulances.”
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According to official Chinese government figures, the number of people killed in these clashes totaled 241, a figure which includes PLA soldiers.

One might ask why these details matter. After all, people were killed during that time — what is the significance of the exact location, or how many? 

The details matter because they present a narrative not so easily co-optable by western press in the service of its imperialist aims. For one, the reality of the street fighting disrupts the popular understanding of the military attacking “non-violent” protesters — it is this characterization of “nonviolence” which is crucial to evoking western sympathy. The workers involved in these protests and clashes came from factories, steel mills, railway yards and construction companies, and they did not have the level of higher education that the student protesters did. They did not draw the same level of attention from western press as the highly educated, pro-western student leaders, who their university-educated counterparts in the United States could identify with and see themselves in. It is this status of untainted victimhood which mobilizes support for foreign intervention.

The details also present a story of what were at the time the contemporary realities and historical legacies of the Chinese socialist path. The night of June 3 saw an eruption of class antagonisms and deep societal divisions from the Cultural Revolution never fully resolved — and in fact heightened — by the policies of the Reform and Opening-Up era. PLA soldiers, for instance, were mainly recruited from the countryside where the CPC drew a large base of support and where there were many beneficiaries of Cultural Revolution and reform policies. Many urban workers and middle-class students and intellectuals suffered many negative impacts of these policies — albeit unevenly — such as inflation, job precarity and high cost of living. These clashes then can be understood as spontaneous expressions of these long-standing divisions.
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These deaths are a tragedy and are understood in China as such, but they should be recognized as part of the tragic complexities of a nation attempting to overthrow the yoke of a century of underdevelopment and subjugation, and to assert its own sovereignty. That the West manipulates the details and fabricates its own mythology around what happened only speaks to its own self-serving imperialist ambitions.

Again, the class character of a movement is determined not by the individual make-up of its participants, but by its leadership. Workers may have been active during the demonstrations, but the student leadership had a bourgeois, pro-capitalist orientation. It’s clear from the students’ contempt for and behavior toward the workers at Tiananmen alone that their goals did not lie in advancing the interests of the broad masses of people. 

For western imperialists, Deng’s reforms were not enough: They wanted unfettered access to China’s markets and resources so that the country became a neocolony of the United States. Around the same time as the Tiananmen protests, anti-communist and counterrevolutionary revolts were spreading across Eastern Europe. One only needs to look toward the collapse of the Soviet Union just a few years later to understand the stakes of Tiananmen in 1989. If these anti-government forces had succeeded, China would have been thrust back decades in its economic and socialist development. An overthrow of the CPC would have resulted in the kind of “shock therapy” capitalist reforms that devastated the former USSR applied to China’s 1.1 billion people. The ensuing poverty, disease and starvation would have been massive.

It was at Tiananmen that the unresolved contradictions from the Cultural Revolution and the Reform and Opening-Up period were unleashed — this much is true. But in the end, the final confrontation was between revolution and counterrevolution, and the outcome has had profound consequences that continue to shape the world today.

Starting with the most extreme expression of the situation, the war in Ukraine has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The UN calculates nearly 18 million people need humanitarian assistance and millions have been displaced.

This tragedy was avoidable. The underlying cause of the war was the U.S. policy to expand NATO up to Russia’s border, including the proposal that Ukraine join NATO when Russia has repeatedly made clear that that is a ‘red line’ threat to its security interests. The U.S. continued to push for NATO expansion despite this.

The absence of an independent European foreign policy has been demonstrated in the policy of major European governments during the past year, with these governments supporting U.S. policy in Ukraine.
This has been extraordinarily expensive. In 2022, NATO powers allocated huge sums to Ukraine—about $50 billion from the U.S., €52 billion from the EU and its member states, and £2.3 billion from Britain. In 2023, there has been an escalation in military aid sent. After pressure from the U.S., Germany approved the deployment of their Leopard tanks, while the British government is sending depleted uranium munitions.

Militarization in Europe is clearly on the rise, in the past year, with major European governments increasing military spending—something the U.S. has called for over many years.
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Last year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged €100 billion in military spending, committing Germany to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense going forward. President Emmanuel Macron is increasing France’s military spending to around €60 billion by 2030—approximately double 2017’s allocation. Britain, historically the U.S.’s closest European ally, already spends 2.2 percent of GDP on the military, £48 billion a year.

The U.S., in turn, has 100,000 troops stationed in Europe and numerous military bases, including 119 in Germany.

The impact of this has negatively affected Europe’s interests. Without an effort to negotiate peace in Ukraine, rather than escalation, many will die and be displaced. Meanwhile, across Europe, there is an impact of high energy prices as a result of sanctions on Russia, while increased military spending diverts resources away from addressing the cost-of-living crisis. Europe has become more dangerous and poorer.
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The U.S. has not supported recent proposals for peace in Ukraine, such as those from China, which means a prolonged war. European countries could pursue a different path and play a role in backing negotiations to end the conflict.

Economically, Europe faces a parallel crisis. Slow economic growth, high inflation, and government austerity policies are hitting living standards while some European governments’ policies toward Russia and China have made the situation worse.

Europe has been seriously damaged by participation in sanctions against Russia. These have increased energy prices while the U.S. has profited from selling more expensive liquefied gas to Europe to replace cheaper Russian gas delivered by pipelines. Journalist Seymour Hersh has made a serious case that the U.S. was also responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany. But European governments have failed to support the call for an independent investigation into this attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

The U.S. has also urged Europe to pursue a more anti-China posture. This recently led to Europe’s relationship with China deteriorating. The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment between China and the EU, agreed in principle in December 2020, has not been signed despite the economic opportunities it opens for Europe. European governments are also being asked to join the U.S. attacks on China’s technology industry, some recently banning TikTok from government work phones with pressure for a wider ban.
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The economic consequences of this direction would be serious for Europe. China is the EU’s largest trading partner and the most rapidly growing major economy. The IMF’s latest growth projections for 2023 estimate China will grow by 5.2 percent—six times faster than the euro area’s 0.8 percent. The potential benefits for Europe of increasing win-win economic cooperation with China are therefore considerable.

The U.S.’s new cold war policy has therefore tended to produce chaos in Europe. In light of this, there are now signs some major European politicians do not wish to continue down this course.

President Macron made a widely reported comment following his April 2023 visit to China. He stated that Europe must not be a “follower” of the U.S. when it comes to Taiwan, a key issue, and should instead pursue “strategic autonomy.” This followed significant economic deals struck between France and China during Macron’s visit. It remains to be seen whether Macron will have the political strength to follow through on such an independent approach, particularly given the backlash these comments immediately received from Washington.

In March 2023, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez struck a similarly independent tone, stating, “Relations between Europe and China do not need to be confrontational. There is ample room for win-win cooperation.”

Globally, the pursuit of an independent foreign policy is a growing trend. Such an approach has sustained peace in Asia with most countries focusing on economic development rather than confrontation. The recent breakthrough restoring diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, established with China aiding negotiations, opens up the possibility of overcoming a number of conflicts in the Middle East. In Latin America, Lula’s recent reelection in Brazil strengthens the political forces in favor of regional independence and development.
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Trends in Europe seeing an independent foreign policy as important for the region’s future are therefore in line with this overall global development.

Imperialism and militarism have always disguised and justified themselves as the defense of freedom. The American President recently called for the unity of the free world, outlining the fight for democracy against autocracy as the defining challenge of our times.1 There is little doubt his fight for “democracy” means the continued funding of the American military apparatus around the world, which will continue to “free” unwilling people who have not yet realized their slavery.

To understand the link between science, imperialism, and militarism, it is important not just to see the complicity of science in militarism at a technological level, but to understand the ideological justification that a narrow view of science provides for the continuation of imperialism and militarism. The foundations of this ideological justification crystallized during the Cold War.
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I will argue in this article that two views of science emerged during the Cold War. The first saw science as a technical activity to be pursued by elites who would individually have freedom in deciding their research. The purpose of science and its use in war was thus not a concern for the scientists themselves. The second was explicitly concerned with the moral responsibility of scientists, and had a broader conception of how science could contribute to peace and to the freedom of the masses of people. This second view was particularly important to the anti-colonial struggle, as I will bring out by examining the example of India. It is important today to understand what shaped these two views, as the debate on the proper role of science remains unresolved. This debate takes on added significance in the midst of a rapidly changing world order which is shifting from a unipolar to a multipolar world.

In 1953, a group of scientists from nineteen Western countries gathered in Hamburg in a conference titled Science and Freedom to discuss, as the New York Times reported, “the problem of how [to] defend freedom of science against the encroachments and requirements of the modern state.”2 The conference was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).3 The central plank of Cold War propaganda was to portray science as objective, disinterested activity that was to be free from political, ideological, and philosophical influence. The task of scientists was the collection and interpretation of facts in a pursuit of truth that was unperturbed by the society they functioned in. It was to put forth the idea of the “free” individual scientist unconcerned with morality and purpose. This was a sophisticated way to put science in the service of the empire by covering it in the facade of objectivity while promoting a subjective and individual definition of freedom.

This Cold War view of science was obviously not novel and had earlier precedent. What made it important was the context in which it was promoted. At the philosophical level, the discovery of quantum mechanics had raised a host of interesting philosophical questions. Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg debated the philosophical consequences of the new discoveries, revisiting the question of the objective nature of reality famously debated by Lenin and Bogdanov.4 Bogdanov was following the philosophy of Ernst Mach, an important thinker for the philosophy of logical positivism, who argued that the proper object of scientific study is “sensations” and any discussion of objective reality independent of these sensations is metaphysical. Lenin, in his Materialism and Empirio-criticism, argued that there is an objective reality independent of our sensations and that we can know it.5 Soviet scientists like Vladimir Fock argued that the dominant interpretation of quantum mechanics popularized by Bohr (the Copenhagen interpretation) was just a reiteration of positivism and presented a philosophical defense of dialectical materialism against subjectivism in the face of the new discoveries.6 In both physics and mathematics, the Soviets not only produced an extraordinary set of scientists but also a philosophical interpretation of the results of the field. Similarly, in biology, Soviet science had a big influence—particularly on a group of prominent British biologists who formed the Theoretical Biology Club and were developing an organicist philosophy closely related to dialectical materialism.7

The revolution in Russia had a huge influence on scientists around the world. In the colonized countries, which started getting political independence soon after the end of the Second World War, Russia served as an example of how rapid scientific and technological development could take place. In countries which had been immiserated and de-industrialized, the Soviet Union assisted in this necessary task of scientific development. In India, for example, the Soviet Union provided technical and scientific assistance, including in setting up the Bhilai steel plant, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and other institutions.8 By 1960, India and the Soviet Union had signed an agreement stating the “desire to maintain and strengthen co-operation in the fields of education, arts, science and technology.”9
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Furthermore, scientists and intellectuals had flocked to the defense of peace after seeing the horrors of the Second World War and the rise of fascism. Many scientists admired the role of the Soviet Union in defeating fascism and calling for planned scientific development. Peace congresses were held in Poland, New York, and Paris, which brought together prominent artists and scientists from around the world. In sum, the pre–Cold War period was a time of the churning of ideas, the working out of the consequences of new scientific discoveries for epistemology, and the realization that scientists must play a role that went beyond their laboratory.

It is in this context that we must understand the Cold War view of science that was promoted by the Western establishment, particularly because it is this view that has become the dominant view of science today. The Western ruling class essentially conducted a campaign of psychological warfare on the dangers of mixing philosophy, politics, and ideology with science. They did this by making an example out of Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko was an agronomist who believed in the inheritance of environmentally acquired characteristics, and whose story has been told elsewhere.10 His legacy today is advertised as the scientist who “probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history.”11 These absurd claims were spread during the Cold War period and continue to be propagated.12 Mistakes in Lysenko’s scientific work were not treated in the West as they are in the normal course of science, to be corrected and learnt from; instead they were to serve as a permanent example to the world on the deficiencies of science in a socialist system and, ironically, the danger of mixing science with ideology. The primary meaning of Lysenko’s work became political.

The Western hero who denounced Lysenko was Nobel laureate H. J. Muller, a man who had earlier been influenced by radical ideas but then turned into a fierce anti-communist. Muller had been trained in Thomas Hunt Morgan’s lab, which was foundational to genetics, and thus himself was a geneticist who promoted the fruit fly as a model organism. Muller was also a committed believer in eugenics. In earlier times, Muller had tried to persuade Stalin to take up the project of eugenics: “Many a mother of tomorrow, freed of the fetters of religious superstitions, will be proud to mingle her germ plasm with that of a Lenin or a Darwin, and to contribute to society a child partaking of his biological attributes.” Stalin was not pleased with this idea.13 After getting disillusioned with the Soviet Union, Muller became a key component of the CIA’s propaganda campaign.14

It should be remembered that prior to the fall of fascism, mainstream genetics had closely been linked to eugenics and racism, with eugenics societies flourishing in the Western world. The idea that innate characteristics were most important was an important justification offered for racism. In the United States, the Rockefeller Foundation was involved in the creation of a new science of man, with ideas that were sometimes implicit but nevertheless closely related to eugenics and social control.15 On being questioned about the persecution of geneticists, an article published in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia responded: “There really does not exist in the USSR that ‘freedom’ of genetical science which in certain states is understood as freedom to kill people or as freedom to destroy whole nations because of their alleged ‘inferiority.’”16

Muller had been a key part of the organization of the Hamburg conference in 1953. In an address to the Congress for Cultural Freedom in 1950, he explicitly defended Western civilization as containing values that permitted science and scientific discovery.17 These values were to be defended against totalitarianism. This was just one example of the kind of diatribe that Muller would issue against the Soviet Union. Hence, freedom had found its heroes: the CIA, Rockefeller Foundation, and a eugenicist had come together to protect the free world against the dangers of totalitarianism. What is astonishing in retrospect is how many western scientists, with a few notable exceptions, capitulated to these ideas in the Cold War era.18 The end result was that scientists were told, so to speak, to “shut up and calculate,” be confined to their laboratories, and avoid any association with philosophy or radical ideas. While funding for science greatly increased in this time, most scientists were conveniently content with some limited freedom in their own work. Lobbying for increased funding for science became a value in itself without regard to the purpose of scientific activity.
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This was part of a politics that valorized the narrow definition of scientific freedom as a value of the West worth defending. Hence, scientific freedom was made consistent with an imperialist system, for the definition of freedom was confined to the freedom of the individual scientist to do their research while being funded by business and war.19 Furthermore, this idea of scientific freedom could be propagated around the world as a Western value.

It is important to remember the alternative vision of science and freedom being developed at the same time, which the Western ruling class was contesting. Many scientists were convinced of the political nature of scientific work after the Second World War. The World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFSW) was officially formed in London in 1946, basing itself on the previous Association of Scientific Workers in Britain. The Federation was primarily formed through the efforts of J.D. Bernal, and the French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie was appointed the first president. Bernal was a famous crystallographer who by then had written his seminal The Social Function of Science. Frederic Joliot-Curie and Irene Joliot-Curie had jointly received the Nobel Prize for their work in radioactivity. Frederic Joliot-Curie was also the president of the World Peace Council, a movement that strongly supported denuclearization and the cause of oppressed people around the world. At the very outset, the WFSW involved participation from China and India.

Bernal and Curie both theorized that the primary role of scientific workers was in the fight for peace. Thus, the first point in the charter of the World Federation, which was announced a couple of years later in Prague, was “to work for the fullest utilization of science in promoting peace and the welfare of mankind.”20

Joliot-Curie was a strong believer in a genuine scientific internationalism, in the association of scientists with trade unions, and the necessity for scientists to pick sides on great issues of the day. In his words, “Scientists and technicians do not and cannot belong to an elite which is detached from practical contingencies. As citizen members of the great community of workers, they must necessarily be concerned with the use society makes of their discoveries and inventions.”21 Very little historical work has been done on organizations like WFSW and the World Peace Council; academic histories tend to dismiss them as “Soviet-Fronts.” It is thus particularly interesting to see the influence of the WFSW in India, a country that was just emerging into freedom.

The Indian delegate to the foundational conference of WFSW was Meghnad Saha, a prominent physicist elected to represent India. That same year, the journal Science and Culture, which Saha edited, put forth “A Plea for an Association of Scientific Workers,” starting with the lines: “Science can no longer be maintained as a profession of few elites in academic world engaged in leisurely pursuits far away from humdrum of the realities of life.”22 The next page carried an article by Bernal arguing that the two greatest and most immediate problems facing the world are hunger and war, and scientific workers have a role to play in both.

Saha consequently worked to expand the association, and it was formally inaugurated the following year in 1947. Remarkably, the first president of the Association of Scientific Workers of India was also the first prime minister of the country, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru believed in the “spirit of science,” which meant to “accept the disintegration of the old” and “not to be tied down to a social fabric or an industrial fabric or even an economic fabric simply because you have carried on with it.”23 He did not think of science as limited to the practice of scientists but as a means of knowledge that had broader application to society. In the Indian Science Congress held in Delhi in 1947, he argued against an abstract idea of scientific truth separated from the lives of people: “For a hungry man or a hungry woman, truth has little meaning. He wants food . . . So science must think in terms of the 400 million persons in India. Obviously, you can only think in these terms and work along these lines on the wider scale of coordinated planning.”24 He was fully committed to scientific planning as the only approach to the problems of a colonized country like India. Despite some internal debate, the Association of Scientific Workers in India supported the activities of the Planning Commission. Opining on the challenges facing India, the Association argued that “the solution of the problem lies in the industrialisation of the country on the basis of a socialist economy.”25 They established a journal, Vijnan-Karmee, for discussing and developing the importance of science from the perspective of the formerly colonized world.26

In a speech to Indian scientists in 1963, Nehru had said, “Naturally, our interest is in India and in the people of India, so that they might get rid of their poverty and other forms of unhappiness. But apart from that, we are convinced searchers after peace—workers for peace.”27 Nehru’s vision for peace was shaped in the struggle against imperialism and included the Inter-Asian Relations Conference of 1947 as well as the historic Bandung Conference of 1955. His idea of peace was a positive idea of peace: “Peace in our view is not merely abstention from war but an active and positive approach to international relations leading to . . . a growing co-operation between nations in various ways.”28

Nehru, in his speeches to scientific workers, would actively encourage them to support the cause of peace and ask them to go beyond their scientific work to consider their responsibility to society. Many prominent scientists in India played a hugely important role in theworld peace movement, including figures like D. D. Kosambi and S. S. Sokhey.29

Nehru’s idea of freedom was shaped by the Indian freedom struggle and went beyond bourgeois individual freedom. This idea of freedom actively asked the scientist to take on the responsibility of changing society. Foremost in the scientists’ responsibility was the fight for peace, which set the pre-condition for any other change in society. In a formerly colonized society like India, this was inextricably linked to the fight against hunger and poverty.

Two visions of science were presented during the Cold War. The Western offensive presented an elite, technocratic view of science which stands above the people. The scientist has a certain narrow freedom in research but is bound to larger processes that are ultimately controlled by foundations and war industries—a framework they are not free to change.

The second is of a scientist with moral responsibility and a philosophical basis to their ideas. This is the legacy of the scientists who participated in the peace movement and the anti-colonial struggles. The formation of the World Federation of Scientific Workers and its branches around the world constituted a moment of great ideological clarity on the purpose of science.
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Today, we live in a world that is again divided into camps. The actions of the Western ruling elite have brought the world onto the brink of a nuclear war, and it will become essential for scientists to choose sides and no longer pretend to be neutral. It is no surprise that the general crisis of legitimacy in the West is combined with a loss of trust in science. Scientists are increasingly viewed by the people as allied to the ruling class, as technicians who do the dirty work of the ruling class. To continue to do “science” in a narrow way is unsustainable. It is necessary to revisit these questions on the purpose of science and its relationship to philosophy and the politics that shaped the twentieth century. It is necessary to broaden the objectives of science and to search for a way to root it in the masses of people. It is also necessary for scientists to rededicate themselves to the movement for peace. It is in this process that science can liberate itself from the narrow confines of imperialism and truly realize its relationship with freedom.

The “groundwork for insurrection” in Nicaragua was laid down months and years before the coup attempt began, as our first article explained. But the coup could only succeed if it mobilized sufficient people into demanding that President Daniel Ortega should resign. How was this to be done, with polls showing his government had some 80% support in a country that had enjoyed several years of prosperity and social development?

One tool was old-fashioned class war. The middle and upper classes could be convinced to follow the example of the elite and of business leaders if they thought this would bring Nicaragua closer to the U.S., favor multinational investment and end the revolution, but only if there was no threat to their current prosperity. Recruiting young people from this sector, especially students in private universities, was a route to securing their support. It required constant reinforcement of the message that the protests were “peaceful,” with the violence concentrated in poorer areas while the middle classes could join in mainly peaceful anti-government marches (and they succeeded to the extent that no middle or upper-class people were killed).

However, Nicaragua’s middle class is small. The majority, poorer part of the population had been beneficiaries of a decade of government social investment. Many were firm Sandinista supporters. Turning them against the government was vital but far more difficult. Several methods were used. One was to focus the insurgency on cities like Masaya, Leon and Estelí that were linked historically to the revolution, and where young, poorer Nicaraguans could be recruited as cannon-fodder. If Monimbó, the traditionally radical barrio in Masaya, was in revolt, the rest of the country might follow.

A second tactic was to give the impression that government supporters themselves were in revolt, by branding violent opposition groups as “Sandinista mobs” and even having youths don Sandinista t-shirts before they ransacked shops.

A third was to put former Sandinista leaders like Dora Maria Téllez at the forefront, to present the opposition as a progressive alternative to the government. The money, food and weapons that they distributed in poorer areas showed that the uprising had powerful backing.

But the crucial weapon was media manipulation, at two levels. First, it was necessary to get people onto the streets, or at least to change their attitudes towards Daniel Ortega, by creating an overwhelming impression that the violence was government-provoked. This began on the first day, April 18, with fake posts on social media that students had been shot by police at Managua universities (see photos). It brought young people out ready for violence on April 19, when the first three deaths actually occurred: a police officer, a youngster involved in defending the Tipitapa town hall when it was attacked, and an innocent bystander.
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Facebook and Twitter posts about fake deaths in Managua universities on April 18. The young man pictured, supposedly “shot” by police, was not a student, and died at home of natural causes. There were no coup-related deaths until the following day.

A tsunami of social media posts followed. Several reported more deaths that never happened: for example, those of Mario Alberto Medina who died months beforehand, or Marlon Josue Martinez and Marlon Jose Dávila who were both abroad at the time. In this video people give testimony of false reporting of the deaths or disappearances of sons and daughters, used to inflame public opinion. Other posts gave the impression that different solidarity organizations supported the coup attempt, including international groups, but close examination shows that these were paid publicity messages (second set of photos).

Paid-for Facebook posts (indicated by the marking “Publicidad”) giving the impression that various solidarity groups supported the coup in days following April 18 2018. Once reposted, the marking disappears.
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Later, social media posts showing students “under attack” became more sophisticated and were reposted widely, including by journalists working for international media. The most notorious, viewed over five million times, showed student Dania Valeska and a young man “under fire” from police at the UNAN university, appealing to their mothers to “pardon” them for taking part in the protests, supposedly because they might die (third photo). Later, a video emerged showing students being filmed while “under fire,” clearly showing a photographer and others standing and sitting nearby, apparently indifferent to the “gunfire.” Of course, by the time it was shown to be fake, the original video had gone viral.

Daniel Ortega acted to calm things down. He withdrew the planned pension reforms, the ostensible reason for the protests, and ordered a ceasefire by the police. He then invited the Catholic church to host a “national dialogue”, which they agreed to but then repeatedly delayed. During two weeks of relative peace, three opposition marches took place without incident. Nicaraguan researcher Enrique Hendrix told us that he believed the combination of reduced violence and the delayed start of negotiations were deliberate tactics that gave the opposition time to consolidate its forces, turn key universities into centers of criminal operations, and begin setting up roadblocks.

When the dialogue finally opened on May 16, Daniel Ortega’s opponents made it clear that their only aim was to force his resignation (the pension reforms were barely mentioned). Student leader Lesther Aleman told Ortega to his face: “This is not a table of dialogue. It is a table to negotiate your exit, as you know well. Give up!” Ortega’s reply was a further act of conciliation: ordering the police to stay in their police stations. The opposition’s response was to launch a new, bigger phase of violence, focused on the universities in Managua, but intensifying across the country as roadblocks controlled by armed rebels were erected on main roads and in many cities, taking advantage of the absence of police. Could they succeed in creating sufficient mayhem to force Daniel Ortega out of office and, even better, to leave the country?
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Next month’s article will show how, as the violence increased, support for the coup began to wane.