Word: marxisms
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...exactly that, but to the extent that he bothers with ideology, which is not very far, he certainly tends to a minimalist definition of Marxism. As Deng told TIME: "In carrying on socialism, I think we should uphold two things. First, public ownership should always play a dominant role in our economy. Second, we should try to avoid [class] polarization and we should always keep to the road of common prosperity." Beyond that, he implies, pretty much anything goes if it "will lead China to development...
Chinese intellectuals are engaged in a spirited debate about just what can be accommodated under a Marxism stripped to its barest essentials. The sale of stock in a business? Yes, says one theoretician, as long as the shares are bought by employees, or possibly their neighbors if an enterprise happens to be a collective (a few of which have in fact sold shares). An exchange on which employees and neighbors could trade the shares among themselves? "That is under study." A social scientist specializing in Marxist ideology goes so far as to suggest that since Marxism-Leninism purports...
...minimum, the spirit of Deng's course is very different from that of classic Marxism. While Marx can be read as allowing the market to coexist with socialism for a while, he regarded the market as an exploitative device that would eventually disappear. It seems doubtful that he would have approved any attempt to revive it after it had disappeared. Most of all, Deng's version of Marxism lacks the crusading zeal of the classic variety. Marx preached his revolution as history's final showdown between the forces of light and those of darkness. It strains the imagination to conjecture...
Long range, though, the prospect of China's creating a modern society by following a heretical brand of Marxism constitutes a deadly ideological danger to the Soviets. They are having enough trouble as it is getting their allies, not to mention Communist movements that have not yet come to power, to follow their leadership. China's example can only encourage such countries as Yugoslavia and Hungary to continue their efforts to blend market elements into state-dictated economies, and lead out-of-power Marxist parties to think they do not have to copy the Soviet line either...
Italian Communist leaders have praised the Chinese for asking the right questions about why Soviet-style Marxism has failed economically, and a highly sympathetic account of the Chinese reforms appeared in East Germany's official newspaper Neues Deutschland. Svetozar Stojanovic, a Yugoslav social scientist now serving as a visiting scholar in the U.S., goes so far as to say that "in the eyes of many people, the Chinese have become the new vanguard in the Communist world." More surprising still are the views of Silviu Brucan, professor of sociology at the University of Bucharest in Rumania, a nation formally allied...