To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
July 23, 2019
RE: Lights for Liberty; solidarity with Hong Kong protesters
Lights for Liberty calls itself "A vigil to end human detention camps". It organized hundreds of demonstrations across the US and Canada for July 12. They were directed against the concentration camps set up at the US border for refugees and migrants, where families are separated, people are crowded on top of each other, and there is a lack of proper health care, sanitation, food, hygiene, etc. The July 12 actions were also against the expected immigration raids for the coming weekend. Moreover, these demonstrations are supposed to be the start of a protracted campaign, and they are directed against ICE, CBP (Customs and Border Protection runs the camps), and the detention camps themselves.
In Detroit, about 1,000 people showed up for a rally and march on Friday evening. This is an encouraging number for Detroit, where left actions are generally much smaller. It shows the anger building up against the increasing repression of the Trump administration. What follows is based on an account sent in to the D/SWV list by DW, a participant in the evening protest:
Against the backdrop of a banner reading "Close the camps", speaker after speaker denounced the inhuman immigration policy. One of the main speakers said there were three objectives or protest, "Come out and speak out, listen, take action."
There was a lively group in front of the ICE office and across the street. They continually crossed the streets with signs for greater visibility to traffic.
At the march, the slogans included "No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here! Let the families stay, ICE melt away! No justice, no peace!" There was a chorus of car horns along Jefferson Avenue in solidarity with the march.
Hand-made signs included: "Close the camps! Trump, Pence must go! Keep families together! Immigration reform now! Jail Trump, not Children!"
The organizations involved in organizing the rally and march included We the People, MI United, and Detroit Rapid Response, and people from various groups attended, including UAW vice-president Cindy Estrada and a few UAW members.
This was one of three protests in Detroit that day against the detention camps. Earlier that day, there had been another protest, while later in the night, there was a candlelight vigil.
-- Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice
Since the *Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice* list article of June 25 in support of the Hong Kong protests against the bill allowing extradition to mainland China (http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-190625.html), mass demonstrations have continued. Certain differences have appeared among the demonstrators, with most engaging in marches, but a section of youth engaging in more confrontational tactics, such as confronting the police and occupying the Legislative Council chamber on July 1. Among the protests was that of July 17, where older Hong Kong people marched in support of the youth activists and against police suppression. Police abuses have become harsher over time. On July 21, an anti-extradition march was attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets by the police. And then the police stood by as a gang of men with wooden bats attacked demonstrators and other people at a subway station.
The demands of the youth who occupied the Legislative Council are as follows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7LYrLemXOw):
1. Fully withdraw the proposed amendments
(the extradition bill is officially a series of amendments);
2. Rescind the characterization of the movement as a "riot";
3. Drop all charges against anti-extradition protesters;
4. Fully investigate and hold responsible abuses of the power of
the Hong Kong police;
5. Dissolve the Legislative Council and introduce Universal Suffrage
There have also been some marches of pro-government counter-protesters with the theme of support for law and order and the police, including one on July 20, but anti-extraditions marches have been much larger.
While the extradition bill shows the distrust of the mass of the population towards the mainland Chinese government, the protests are directed against Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong government. Why is there such a huge gap between what the people want and what the Hong Kong government does? Well, for one thing, there isn't direct and equal suffrage. The Chief Executive isn't elected by the people, but by an Election Committee with 1,200 members. In turn, these members are selected through a complicated, corporatist sectoral system favoring business people, professionals, and politicians, with only 1/4 of the positions open for representatives of social agencies, religions, artists, media, and also trade unions. The Legislative Council itself is supposedly elected by proportional representation, but half of the 70 seats are selected by its own complicated sectoral system. It is dominated by rich pro-Beijing businesspeople, real estate developers, and other privileged interests. Moreover, the Election Commission feels free to disqualify militant candidates it doesn't like, and this too guarantees the Council is stacked with pro-Beijing businesspeople.
This reflects the fact that Hong Kong is an extremely unequal society, and the rich run the government. Hong Kong is known for its millionaires and billionaires, but most of the population are working people, with a fifth a population living below the official poverty line. Many live in cramped shared subdivided apartments, several of which would fit in an American parking space. It isn't just that Hong Kong is crowded; it's that the poor are treated like dirt so that foreign companies can get cheap labor and the big real estate interests can carry out fancy projects.
It's notable that so many rich businesspeople are pro-Beijing. They realize that the Chinese revolution faded away a long time ago. They know that present-day China isn't really socialist, although they are concerned not to be arrested in the course of the factional fighting in the Chinese ruling class.
The Legislative Council dates back to the time when Hong Kong was a British colony. But since 1997 Hong Kong has been a Special Administration Region of the Chinese People's Republic, temporarily administered under the rules of "one country, two systems". This is to last until 2047. The form of the Legislative Council changed when Hong Kong was returned to mainland China, but its unrepresentative nature remained -- only now it was subordinate to the government of mainland China. Despite this, the overall political system in Hong Kong is, for the time being, milder than that of mainland China, and the people have -- for the time being -- more rights in Hong Kong then elsewhere in China.
The opposition to the extradition bill is not a radical social movement. It embraces a variety of different social groups, and many people even have illusions about Western imperialism. What ties it together is that the mass of people are afraid that mainland China is going to tighten its grip on Hong Kong. There is fear that the bill points to the end of "one country, two systems", and that it will allow the extradition of critics and protesters. Even the Hong Kong Bar Association and various judges and lawyers have denounced the bill, pointing to extradition without the need to provide sufficient evidence that the accused committed a crime, that evidence against extradition wasn't allowed, that the Chief Executive, not the Hong Kong courts, would decide on each case of extradition, etc.
A number of businesspeople were also worried about the bill when they realized that it allowed, not only extradition, but the freezing of their assets. This not only concerned Chinese millionaires who park some of their assets in Hong Kong in case of trouble with mainland authorities, but foreign firms who do business in Hong Kong, Thus, as the mass protests mounted, some members of the Legislative Council cooled on the bill. The bill was revised on May 30, which probably helped it win over pro-Beijing businesspeople, but this didn't stop the mass protests against it. Carrie Lam announced that the process of enacting the bill was indefinitely suspended, but this didn't stop the protests either, which demand that the bill be withdrawn, not postponed.
The movement against the extradition bill takes place while mainland China is stepping up repression in China. It is putting in place surveillance cameras and computer systems in China. It has clamped down on journalists, Uighurs, eve Chinese university students going to the workers in the name of Marxism. Everyone in Hong Kong sees that they risk their future by demonstrating, but they feel that if they don't fight now against the bill, everything may be lost. No doubt the example of Hong Kong activism also upsets the present Chinese government, for fear it may spread throughout China.
The Hong Kong protest movement is a struggle to support people's rights. It is not a movement for socialism, or for radical social demands. It is not clear about what is the nature of mainland China, and it embraces a variety of political and social trends. But it is a courageous movement that deserves support from workers around the world, for democratic rights grease the road towards a more conscious and class-conscious workers' struggle.
-- Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice <>
The radical left is supposed to be the standard-bearer of struggle against oppression everywhere. But in fact, a substantial part of the American left is silent about, or opposed to, the Hong Kong protests.
For example, the Workers World Party regards the democratic movement as a US imperialist plot. They argue, in essence, that since US imperialism is the greatest enemy of the world's peoples, the democratic movement -- in which there are illusions about Western imperialism -- is therefore also an enemy of the world's people. (https://www.workers.org/2019/06/30/u-s-role-in-hong-kong-protests/) They take a similar stand on many other struggles around the world. For example, they denounce the struggle against the dictator Assad in Syria as a "US war on Syria".
The Party for Socialism and Liberation also denounces the democratic movement in Hong Kong, and pretends that is an equally large opposition to the movement. (https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/10/party-for-socialism-and-liberation-analyzes-protests-in-hong-kong/) In general, PSL denounces all the movements for democracy or social justice on China on the grounds that "these struggles can only, under the current political circumstances and absent an organized revolutionary communist leadership current, move into the camp of reactionary counterrevolution". PSL even denounces the 1989 protests at Tienanmen Square and is silent about the massacre that occurred there. (https://liberationschool.org/what-do-socialists-defend-in-china-today/)
Another example of the denigration of the democratic struggle is seen from the response to the the D/SWV article of June 25. When our article appeared on the Dope_x_resistancela list, it was immediately replied to by Norma J F Harrison, a California activist who has repeatedly run for a position on the Berkeley school board. Her statement was as follows:
>Re: D/SWV: Support the democratic
movement in Hong Kong!
>Tue Jun 25, 2019 7:07 am (PDT).
>Posted by: "Norma J F Harrison"
>does democracy = socialist… communist?
>We have democracy in the U.S., for example. Israel has democracy,
they keep telling us. I forget the figure - I think >it was 500,000
people now sleep in the streets of the U.S. That’s democracy.
>Fidel said of the revolution 'everybody eats the same'.
>He also told us some enormous world-wide figure - number of people
that sleep in the streets, and that none of them was(is) in Cuba.
>That’s democracy.
>Norma
Harrison denounces the struggle for democracy, on the grounds that it isn't socialism. She identifies democracy with having 500,000 people homeless. It doesn't occur to her that the working masses use democratic rights to fight against horrible conditions.
Our article of June 25th explicitly said that the protest movement wasn't a socialist movement. But we agree with the views of Marx and Lenin that the fight for democratic rights is an essential part of the class struggle. Democracy isn't the final goal, but the struggle for democratic rights is part of the struggle for liberation.
It's notable that Harrison seems to have learned her denigration of democracy from Castro. The Cuban revolution was a great event, but Castro eventually set up a system in which there is a show of having elections, but the candidates are forbidden to campaign against any policy of the ruling party, or, in fact, to campaign at all. This system has been described by many visitors to Cuba. For example, Arnold August, a Canadian activist who is an ardent backer of Castroism, boasts that the lack of discussion of opposing views is one of the great virtues of the Cuban system. He writes that in elections to the Municipal Assemblies, "Once candidates have been nominated..., the local electoral commission obtains a short, biographical profile and a photo from the candidates. These are circulated and/or posted in local public places ... This is the only publicity permitted under the electoral law." He regards this as a much deeper form of democracy than allowing campaigning, and as a wonderful way to avoid the influence of money on elections. He admits that in the elections to the National Assembly, "there is one candidate per seat", but he sees this as deeply democratic because the unopposed candidate has to receive "at least 50 percent of the vote plus one". (See his book "Cuba and Its neighbours: Democracy in Motion", 2013. The quotes are from pp. 162, 179. The praise of this system is all through the book.) This is the ideology of putting one's hopes in a "benevolent despot". And in the land of the benevolent despot, whether Cuba or China, it's never the case that everyone eats the same.
Another form of opposition to the democratic movement is seen in a June 30th letter written to us by I.Z. She thinks that all the governments that called themselves "communist" should be recognized as such, and supported. Since the present Chinese government is one of them, this would mean denouncing the Hong Kong protests or any mass struggles in China. Below we give her letter, and then our reply.
I.Z. writes:
>Subject: Leaflet notation on *Seattle
Workers Voice* vol 3 number 2
[http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-190413.html]
>Good afternoon! I read your organizations leaflet that was
distributed at Seattle Pride this year. While reading I found myself in
near full agreement with each presented point, and I'm glad to find
that there are some like-minded people in my area attempting to pursue
a path toward communism and environmental stability. However, it was
disheartening when I reached the bottom box with a sort-of disclaimer
that states, "*Communist Voice* is a journal... that upholds real
Marxism-Leninism, which has nothing in common with false "communist"
regimes like the former Soviet Union, or China and Cuba" .
>This notation illustrates to me that the writer(s) of this
publication lack an accurate understanding of the historical background
of communism, and how it works when applied to real situations and
people. It implies that these communist states were somehow not
following Marxist-Leninist beliefs, which makes it seem to me that
whomever wrote this notation has gobbled up and regurgitated the
McCarthyist propaganda created to attack communism.
>I recommend that this writer educates them self further on the
complexities of creating a communist state in a world dominated by
imperialism and capitalism, and view these states through a critical,
but realistic eye. Each of these states faced severe economic blockade,
decades long media attack, and even assaults, both covert and overt,
from the US military. While I'm not an expert by any means, in my study
of these communist states and others I've found that the policies
implemented by their leaders attempt to follow ML theory as best as
possible while under the massive strain of global ostracisation and
economic, militaristic, and media attack.
>Thanks for reading, feel free to respond with any clarification,
refutation, or further discussion!
I replied as follows:
July 3, 2019
Dear I.Z.,
Thank you for taking the time to reply to issues raised in the Seattle Workers' Voice leaflet. I am surprised, however, that you are apparently blind to the tragedy that has afflicted the last century of the revolutionary movement, in which important revolutions, revolutions that shook the world, died away and were replaced by state-capitalist regimes.
Socialism is not state ownership by an oppressive state. The Stalinist regimes and various other state-capitalist regimes have major amounts of state ownership, but this is not ownership of the economy by the working people. One simply has to look at how these regimes work to see this. Moreover, the experience of these regimes shows that the state-capitalist economies even have the anarchy of production characteristic of capitalism. The article "The anarchy of production beneath the veneer of Soviet revisionist planning" is available at http://www.communistvoice.org/12cSovAnarchy.html, and it uses well-known facts, admitted and discussed by the Stalinist officials themselves, to illustrate the anarchy in the economy of the Soviet Union (when it existed).
Marxism holds that politics is a superstructure built up on the economic base. We therefore would expect the politics of [supposedly] socialist or communist countries to reflect on the economic base. And what did we find in, for example, the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors? We find the mass executions in the purges, and the large-scale concentration camps. We find the constant lying about what really takes place in the people's lives, and the constant reiteration of ritualized slogans dictated from above as a sort of ultra-repulsive Muzak. We find the total reversal of the Leninist policies concerning the national question. Under Stalin, there was the total removal of all Chechens from Chechnya, and similar brutal ethnic cleansing of a number of other small nationalities. We find the replacement of Ukrainization by Russification in the Ukraine, and similar Russification elsewhere. We saw Soviet tanks moving into fellow state-capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe. We saw the savage invasion of Afghanistan. And so on.
We could give a list for China as well. But for now let's just leave it at the internment of one million Uighurs in Xinjiang, simply for being ethnic Uighurs; the Tienanmen massacre of 1989 and the ban on even mentioning it today; and the suppression of the thousands of workers struggles that keep breaking out, with the prohibition on forming workers' organizations that really represent the workers.
This is not socialism, but state-capitalism. This is not explained by outside pressure. For example, the deportation of the Chechens and the mass detention of the Uighurs were not the result of outside pressure, but of the internal politics of these countries.
There is a good deal of material about the state-capitalist regimes on the Communist Voice website at www.communistvoice.org. I invite you to take a closer look at it. I would be interested in your comments.
Sincerely,
Joseph Green, for the Communist Voice Organization <>
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Corrected and posted on July 28, 2019
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