JAY: The fireworks have been bursting at the most expensive opening to an Olympic ceremonies in history. Just what is being celebrated? You've called what's happening in China the communism. What do you mean?
KLEIN: The communism, Stalinism, market Stalinism, authoritarian capitalism, I think this is an incredibly efficient, actually, a scarily efficient way of organizing society that's actually being celebrated here, which is a hybrid of some of the worst elements of authoritarian communism—mass surveillance of the population, total lack of civil liberties, lack of a free press, lack of democratic rights, authoritarian central planning, all harnessed not to advance the goals of social justice, even in name, although there may be some lip service still paid to that, but to advance the goals of global capitalism. So it is Stalinism meets global capitalism. And it works. China is the most successful capitalist economy in the world: 11 percent growth, year after year after year. It is the most successful economy in the world. And that efficiency, that success, is intimately tied, I would argue, to the suppression of democratic rights. It's not successful despite the fact that it's not a democracy, despite the fact that you don't have independent trade unions; it is successful in large part because of that, because workers can't organize independent unions, [coughing] because Beijing, if they want to build a new export processing zone or a new shopping mall or a new Olympic stadium, can just raise whatever they want to raise and build whatever they want to build and displace as many people as they want to displace.
The Real News
China's "communisme" lijkt verdacht veel op de "successen" van de neoliberale globalisering...maar dan nóg ongeremder. Hoe meer economisch succes, hoe minder democratie.
Klinkt als de race to the bottom die ook met Europa in gang is gezet...
