Comments on the Summer China Issue; From Joshua Horn; More on Attica

Abstract

Paul Sweezy's piece, "China: Contrasts with Capitalism," in your special summer issue says some really fundamental things about socialist transformation. I agree that China is a long way from having created hundreds of millions of new socialist men and women, but I would add something to what is said about the dynamics of the popular participation there. The new social relations are not something fixed and given, which the Communist Party and the conscious part of the working class repeatedly reinforce with movements such as the Great Leap, etc. The social relations, productive relations, and class relations from which they spring are in a constant process of transformation (the rate, of course, is not constant but wave-like).

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