The Continuing Adventures of the Dialectic

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.12.3.0321
• Pages: 321-347
• Published date: 01 October 2021
• Date: 01 October 2021
• Author: Antonis Balasopoulos
• Subject Matter: Boer,socialism with Chinese characteristics,Marxism-Leninism,political economy,philosophy

World revieW of Political economy vol. 12 no. 3 fall 2021

THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF

THE DIALECTIC

On Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese

Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners

Antonis Balasopoulos

Antonis Balasopoulos is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the Department of English

Studies, and Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Cyprus, Cyprus. His most recent

published and forthcoming work includes a co-edited collection entitled Reading Texts on Sovereignty

(Bloomsbury Academic 2021), as well as essays on Marxism and utopianism, Walter Benjamin,

Georges Sorel, and the representation of the fair and unfair city from Romanticism to Modernism.

Email: balaso@ucy.ac.cy

Abstract: This article begins by dwelling on the forms and causes of Western “historical

nihilism” toward the Chinese socialist project. I then analyze issues attendant to Deng’s

appeal to “liberating thought,” particularly as regards the importance of the development

of the forces of production and the dilemmas this presents for socialists. This segues into a

discussion of contradiction analysis, which is theoretically central in Boer’s book. Through

the discussion of the difference of such analysis from forms of “either/or” logic dominant

in the West, I arrive at the significance of the category of the “concrete universal” (Hegel)

for the understanding of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” After unpacking some

of the central issues posed by the “reform and opening-up,” I dwell on the question of

socialism in China. I emphasize some of the complications inherent in the combination

of socialist planning and the market economy, including the issue of the conception of a

future or prospective “communist” stage. The discussion concludes by dwelling on issues

of law and political structure, with particular emphasis on the innovative importance

of “rule of law” in the socialist context, as well as on the importance of contradiction

analysis for understanding the dialectic of sovereignty and globalization.

Keywords: Boer; socialism with Chinese characteristics; Marxism-Leninism; political

economy; philosophy

322 ANTONIS BALASOPOULOS

WRPE Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/wrpe/

“By now it is clear that China has stepped onto the centre of the world stage.” The

phrase, quoted from the conclusion of Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese

Characteristics (2021, 315) is indisputably a statement of fact: economy-wise,

China had overtaken the US as the world’s leading economy in terms of GDP in

purchase power parity (PPP) in 2017 and is projected to lead the world in market

exchange rates sooner than expected, as it significantly outperformed the US in eco-

nomic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic (Elegant 2021). Politically, it is

showing a more assertive face both nationally (as witness the government’s recent

anti-monopoly probes and heavy fines against giants in the Big Tech industry)

(Matsuda 2021) and internationally (as witness its unflinching response to the pre-

dictable accusations of the newly elected Biden administration at the US–China

Summit in Anchorage, Alaska) (Wei and Davis 2021). At the same time, Western

pundits’ predictions of either economic stagnation after the galloping growth of the

past three decades or of full conversion to both economic and political liberal capi-

talism have clearly not come to pass. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, poverty allevia-

tion, focus on growth in poorer and more remote regions, the fight against corruption

and the improvement of the environmental and intellectual quality of life have

emerged as the country’s top priorities, while Marxism-Leninism has received far

more than lip service from the Communist Party of China (CPC), as witness, to take

only one example, the 2017 initiative to establish Schools of Marxism as independ-

ent institutions directly under the administration of universities (Qu 2017).

The timing of the publication of Boer’s book, then, is anything but accidental.

Indeed, it seems to be itself part of what the author acknowledges as the imperative

of building “cultural confidence,” a goal set out by China’s leadership given its

concern that “the status and quality of China’s philosophy and social sciences is

incommensurate with China’s global status” and that concerted effort should be

made to “address this imbalance” (Boer 2021, 312). As an already established,

internationally reputed Marxist scholar fluent in Chinese, Boer is almost uniquely

equipped to step up to such a challenge on the international scholarly stage.

Accordingly, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is both an in-depth examina-

tion of the basic theoretical, practical, and historical constituents shaping the

Chinese socialist project and a defense of this project against a number of Western

prejudices, including the prejudices specific to Western Marxism. As a scholar

who is fully versed in both Soviet and Western Marxism, as well as in the largely

untranslated and voluminous body of Chinese Marxist literature—classical and

contemporary—Boer undertakes the difficult “task of the translator,” providing

non-Chinese readers, and particularly Marxists, with a valuable and timely oppor-

tunity to rethink and re-evaluate. In my view, this study, as well as the work that

has preceded and is likely to follow it, is poised to provide a welcome challenge to

ideas that have now for some time seemed impotent and stagnant: for not merely