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The University’s McCosh Health Center houses Counseling and Psychological Services.
A recent study from the American College Health Association found that 41.9 percent of undergraduates have “felt so depressed within the past twelve months that it was difficult to function.” The Princeton Mental Health Initiative has dedicated a week to raise awareness of their plight.
The organization designated the week of Feb. 18 as “Mental Health Week,” inviting service dogs, producing theater productions, and hosting a mental health-focused exhibit.
“Because Princeton is academically rigorous and is a different social environment, many students are prone to [developing] mental illnesses without realizing, and more importantly, [without] seeking help,” Yang said.
Some events — such as a therapy dog study break in Frist Campus Center — aimed to provide students with a non-academic outlet to relax and take time away from their work. Other events focused on raising awareness of depression, suicidality, and other mental health concerns.
On Monday, Feb. 18, for example, the organization hosted the IN THEIR SHOES™ traveling exhibit by Attitudes In Reverse — a mental health advocacy group — in the Frist East TV Room. The exhibit consists of 269 pairs of shoes belonging to New Jersey children and young adults who had committed suicide.
Following the exhibit, Arch & Arrow Literary Magazine and Butler College co-hosted an open-mic night on Wednesday, Feb. 20, where students shared prose, poetry, and music related to mental health.
In one of the keynote events from the week, from Thursday, Feb. 21, to Saturday, Feb. 24, students staged performances of the “Me Too Monologues” for the fifth year in a row.
Written and performed by University students, the monologues shared personal experiences with topics such as sexual assault, suicide, and eating disorders.
Each performance included a “talkback” after the show to encourage dialogue surrounding mental health on campus.
“[The Monologues] help us to take a step back and have some perspective, especially when the beginning of the semester can be hard,” she said.
Yang echoed her sentiments. He believes that such events can help discussion of mental illness to become more open.
“Increasing the dialogue surrounding mental health will help destigmatize mental illnesses. I hope that people won't be afraid to seek help when they need it. There is nothing to be ashamed about because balancing academics, activities, and life at Princeton is tough,” he said.
Overall, Yang believes that demonstrations of solidarity and awareness will be beneficial for students experiencing mental health concerns.
“Demonstrating that depression is a widespread issue across campus and at other universities will help people recognize that they can always seek help from their peers or advisors,” Yang said.
“I hope that students realize that there are supportive students and staff to help them get through their mental health issues,“ he continued.
Mental Health Week began on Monday, Feb. 18, and ended on Saturday, Feb. 24.
Parade of Homes is more than a collection of stunning new houses created by the region’s top building teams.
This celebration of North Idaho’s home construction market — presented annually by the North Idaho Building Contractors Association (NIBCA) — showcases the latest home designs and trends while celebrating the culture and lifestyle that make North Idaho a great place to live, work and play.
The event takes place this month, over the next two weekends: Sept. 15 and 16 and Sept. 21, 22 and 23.
Through Parade of Homes, NIBCA members, who are builders, designers, craftsmen, suppliers, financers and more, share their artistry and expertise with the public, but they also support the community they believe in.
“Parade of Homes is for the benefit of the builders, suppliers, subcontractors and the citizens of the North Idaho,” said NIBCA board president Shawn Anderson, who, with husband Joel, owns Monarch Custom Homes.
This year, NIBCA Parade of Homes is putting the spotlight on the Kootenai Technical Education Campus (KTEC), a public technical training high school in Rathdrum available to 11th- and 12th-grade students in the Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Lakeland school districts.
“We are working together to bridge the gap between the skilled labor market and education,” said this year’s Parade of Homes Committee Chair, Therese Goodwin Gurgel, who is a business relationship officer with Idaho Central Credit Union in North Idaho and NIBCA member.
KTEC students can earn construction industry-accepted certifications while in high school, and that’s good news for a building market that’s struggling to find skilled workers.
North Idaho’s booming economy, with sizzling job growth and low unemployment, has increased the demand for construction tradespeople.
The labor shortage is a national problem, she said, and workers are going where the money is.
“We want these young people in the trades industry to know there is a great way for them to make good money here and stay in our community,” Goodwin Gurgel said.
NIBCA, which has an education committee, is partnering with KTEC, North Idaho College and the Idaho Department of Labor and Home Depot to bring the Construction Combine, an innovative effort to counter the construction labor shortage, to North Idaho, said Anderson. The two-day program exposes students and community members to the possibilities of working in the industry and provides potential job opportunities.
“Our focus in the coming year is to increase our workforce, not just so that it benefits us, but for the benefit of the young adults coming up, giving them hope for the future by providing a career opportunity they might not have considered,” Anderson said, noting that construction trade jobs pay well and don’t require a college degree.
Colby Mattila, KTEC’s director, said industry partners like NIBCA members are an important part of student success at KTEC, where last year, by the end of the year, every graduating student studying the construction trades was placed in a job or on track to continue their education after graduation.
By working closely with industry leaders, experts and prospective employers, KTEC develops programs that meet the needs of the industries in the area, a move that also ensures greater job opportunities for students.
During NIBCA Parade of Homes, Idaho Central Credit Union, through its community outreach, is working to help a KTEC student to advance his or her career in the trades industry after high school.
For every $5 ticket purchased to take this year’s Parade of Homes tour, Idaho Central Credit Union will donate $1 (up to $3,000) to provide a scholarship to a KTEC student in carpentry, CAD, landscaping, HVAC and the electrical and plumbing apprenticeship programs at North Idaho College.
“We’d like for them to further their education and continue on with NIC, to achieve the next level in construction management,” said Goodwin Gurgel.
To highlight the skills learned at KTEC, NIBCA members have also created a more immediate learning opportunity for KTEC students.
Earlier this month, KTEC students built a children’s outdoor playhouse constructed with materials donated by NIBCA members.
“We have a whole community that’s coming together for this event,” Goodwin Gurgel said.
NIBCA Parade of Homes ticket purchasers can win this special playhouse by voting for their favorite Parade Home. The drawing for the winner will be held Monday, Sept. 24 at the NIBCA office.
KTEC’s Mattila said building the playhouse got students off to a good start for the new school year by getting them back in the building mindset.
It’s also a way for the students and the school to show their appreciation for their building industry partners.
"If we determine that we're going to allow women to go in the infantry and be successful, they are probably at some time going to have to go through Ranger school," Odierno told reporters. "If we decide to do this, we want the women to be successful."
Only about 40 percent make it through Ranger school on their first attempt. The Department of Defense allows soldiers who don't make it through the first time to keep trying.
About 90 percent of senior Army infantry officers have gone to the school and are qualified as Rangers. Allowing women to go to Rangers school would allow them to be competitive with their male counterparts as they move through the ranks.
Longgrear wondered what will happen with women in the Ranger school trying to meet current standards.
"It's going to be crossing a line that you are going to say, 'if they don't lower the standards,'" he said. "These Rangers today are equal to the Spartans in history and the Greeks, the great soldiers and armies we admire in history. These Rangers today are the greatest fighting soldiers in the world, and, in my opinion, in the history of the world. I do not believe that a woman can compete and that is in the terms he is using. I'm not sure what they are competing for."
Going to Ranger school, however, does not automatically mean women would be allowed to serve in one of the Army's three elite Ranger battalions, including one at Fort Benning. In fact, many male soldiers who wear the Ranger tab on their uniforms never actually serve in one of the three battalions.
Currently, women are not allowed to serve as special operations, infantry or armor forces, which are considered the most dangerous combat jobs. They are, however, allowed to serve in a number of support jobs such as medics, military police and intelligence officers that are sometimes attached to combat brigade units.
Odierno said his commanders are looking at whether the Army should open up infantry and armor jobs to women, and how that should be done.
Women make up about 16 percent of the Army.
As a Ranger who has served on long-term patrols and in the field for several days, Lockett said he is not one to belittle women, but he is aware of combat situations that Rangers experience.
"Look at sanitation problems for women as it pertains to men," Lockett said. "A man can go without bathing or shaving for days on days off. It's going to be a sanitation problem for women in that task."
Lockett said he is neutral on the proposal until a decision is made.
"I'm just going to wait and see," Lockett said.
If the Army is going to be equal, Longgrear said he has lived and worked in Israel where men and women soldiers don't have separate bathroom facilities.
"If that is where we are going and women can make it through Ranger school, God bless her," he said. "They are going to have to lower the standards to do it and that will be a shame."
Nearly thirty years have passed since Deng first introduced his “market reforms”. What started as an attempt to stimulate growth within a planned economy has ended up by establishing capitalist relations in the Chinese economy. How did all this happen and where is China going today?
The following text, to be published in three parts is the transcript of a speech given by Fred Weston at a meeting of the International Committee of the International Marxist Tendency in January of this year.
More than one fifth of the world population lives in China, a vast country that is becoming more and more a key player in the world economy. What happens in China affects the rest of the world in a big way. In the past period the Chinese economy has been an important factor in determining the degree and depth of recessions on a world level. The growth of the Chinese economy in the recent period explains why world recessions have been milder than would otherwise have been expected. But in the future this will turn into its opposite with China becoming a big factor in determining a major crisis on a world level.
What is happening in China takes us back to some basic ideas of Marxism. First of all, it confirms on a grand scale the basic postulate of Marxism that socialism in one country is not possible. It wasn’t possible in the Soviet Union, and it isn’t possible in China, and yet we are not talking here about small countries such as Cuba but countries of continental dimensions. Even with their vast resources these two huge countries have not been able to advance towards genuine socialism.
Both these countries in different periods of their history were extremely underdeveloped and it is especially considering this that they were duty bound to participate in the world market if they wanted to develop their national economies. The Bolsheviks never had the idea of autarchy and closing the borders of the Soviet Union. They maintained the monopoly of foreign trade of course. This was a mechanism to defend the young workers’ state and the young planned economy from the encroachments of world capitalism.
However, they never had the idea that they would not trade with other countries or that they would not seek advanced technology from the more developed countries. And most importantly, they understood that without world revolution they faced the serious danger of capitalist restoration. Lenin wrote about this on several occasions.
No country can escape from the processes taking place in the world economy. It is world economy, world events that in the last analysis determine the outcome of the processes taking place in any one country, even a country the size of the former USSR or China.
Let us now look at the processes unfolding in China. In 1949 we had the coming to power of the People’s Army, based on the peasantry and led by the Chinese Communist Party under Mao. The perspective that Mao had then was not of the immediately passing over to socialism. Mao’s policy was to root out landlordism but to promote capitalism. In fact his perspective was one of 100 years of capitalism before the prospect of socialism could be posed. This was based on the idea that because China was an underdeveloped economy it had to go through the capitalist “stage” first, and only once capitalism had become mature would the possibility of socialism be posed.
Events were to unfold somewhat differently. The aims of the Maoist leadership were to carry out the national democratic revolution. What they did not understand was that under modern conditions, with imperialism dominating the world, the national democratic revolution would either move forward towards socialism or fail. There was no so-called “progressive bourgeoisie” upon which a modern capitalist China could be built. The coming to power of the People’s Army meant that the bourgeois state of Chiang Kai Shek in China had been smashed. There was no bourgeoisie with which to “share” power. It had fled to Taiwan together with Chiang’s corrupt and hated Kuomintang. Thus all power was concentrated in the hands of Mao’s Communist Party. In these conditions the only way of developing the economy was for this new state to take over control of all the major economic resources of the country. In spite of his earlier perspective Mao found himself carrying out the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the setting up of a centrally planned economy. Capitalism was snuffed out in China.
All this also came about within the world context where we witnessed the strengthening of the Soviet Union with a widening of its sphere of influence, particularly in Eastern Europe. We also had the colonial revolution unfolding around the world with the defeat of imperialism in several key countries. India is one of the most striking examples of this. There was also the fact that US imperialism could not intervene militarily in China. Its troops were war weary after the end of the Second World War and could not be mobilised for another major effort in China.
This created a situation whereby, in spite of their own perspective, the Chinese Communist Party leadership carried out the Permanent Revolution in a distorted manner. Starting with the bourgeois democratic tasks they were forced to move beyond these if they were to maintain the reforms they had already carried out.
The setting up of a centrally planned economy in turn led to a huge development of the economy over a period of several decades. In actual fact it was this economic development that laid the basis which allowed the present situation to develop. But we will deal with this later.
With China adopting a planned economy, the prospect was there for an international cooperation between China, Russia and Eastern Europe. Had the leaders in Russia and China been internationalist in their outlook, a socialist federation between these countries would have allowed for an even greater economic development.
But the narrow nationalist outlook of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and in China led to conflict between the two countries which eventually led to the Sino-Soviet schism in the late 1950s to early 1960s.
Our tendency at the time predicted that this would happen. If you look at Ted’s writings in 1948-49, you will see that we predicted this even before Mao had come to power. The reasons for this were to be found in the limited nationalist outlook of Mao and because he had an independent power base. He did not come to power on the back of the Russian Red Army moving in as in most of Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War. Mao found himself in a similar position to Tito in Yugoslavia (where a similar process unfolded).
After having consolidated the new regime, the Chinese Communist Party leadership revealed its own narrow nationalists interests. As the Chinese revolution had not been led by the working class, as there were never genuine organs of workers’ democracy, the Chinese Communist Party in power became the expression of the interests of the bureaucracy, and this bureaucracy of the new regime had its own interests to defend.
On the other hand we had the position of the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. Prior to the coming to power of Mao, the Russian Stalinists had no confidence whatsoever in the ability of the People’ Army to take power. The Russian made secret deals with Chiang Kai Shek and basically betrayed their Chinese comrades. However, once capitalism had been smashed in China and Mao was in power, they accepted the accomplished fact, but throughout the 1950s they tried to impose their own will on China. The Chinese bureaucrats were not going to be dictated to. All this led to a conflict.
Thus China broke with Russia, and the Russians withdrew all their advisers, and their technology and aid. In those conditions the Chinese bureaucracy attempted to go down the road of autarchy, i.e. complete self-sufficiency, cutting off China from the world economy, to the degree that there were such phenomena as the “Great Leap Forward” or the “Cultural Revolution”. You had attempts to reach the level of steel production of countries in the west, by such means as having a little furnace in every village producing steel. They actually achieved the quantity they had aimed at, with huge amounts of steel being produced, but much of it was totally useless of course, because it was of such poor quality. Therefore, making enormous efforts in terms of labour, they failed to achieve the desired results. In agriculture we had similar attempts which actually led to periods of famine.
So it is actually in spite of the crazy zig-zags of the bureaucracy that the Chinese economy developed at quite a rapid pace. What this demonstrates is the superiority of the plan, even in its most distorted fashion. Of course, it was a bureaucratic plan. It wasn’t under the control of the workers. If there had been genuine workers’ democracy it would have been a completely different situation. If the Soviet Union, China and the East European countries had all been healthy workers’ states, then you can imagine a situation where it would have been possible to bring together the resources of all these countries under one genuine, democratic, international plan. The growth of the productive forces would have been much bigger.
The same ideas that Trotsky developed for Russia apply to China. So long as the bureaucracy was developing the basic infrastructure of a backward country, the plan could work and there could be a certain stability and the bureaucracy could play a relatively progressive role. But once the bureaucracy had built up the economy to a higher level it would reveal all its limitations and become an absolute fetter on the development of the productive forces. This is clearly what happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
China could not escape the same contradictions, and although the economy was still growing, by the 1970s there were some indications that there too economic problems were emerging. Because of the bureaucratic control there was lack of coordination between the different sectors and inefficiencies were creeping into the system.
Today the pro-capitalist wing has clearly emerged as the dominant force within the Chinese Communist Party, but this did not suddenly appear the day Mao died. There was clearly a pro-capitalist wing of the bureaucracy even at the height of the Maoist era. There was such a phenomenon in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. And Stalin had to take measures to curb that wing of the bureaucracy. In China if you look at the Cultural Revolution there is an element of the same process. The Maoist bureaucracy was leaning on the masses to strike blows against the pro-capitalist wing and some of the most corrupt elements.
However, although we can make historical analogies between China in the 1960s and 1970s and Russia in the 1930s there are also some important differences between the Soviet Union in the 1930s and China in both the post-war period and in the recent period. What did capitalism have to offer the Russian bureaucracy in 1930? The Soviet Union was growing very fast, but the capitalist world was in the middle of its biggest depression ever. Even from a purely empirical, immediate material point of view, what interest could the dominant wing of the Russian bureaucracy have in moving towards capitalism at that stage? None of course. This is what determined Stalin’s turn against this layer.
However, if we look at the Chinese bureaucracy we see important differences. First of all the Chinese revolution never experienced a period of genuine workers’ democracy, of genuine Soviets (i.e. workers’ councils) with the workers leading the struggle for power as was the case in Russia in the early period under Lenin. Secondly, the Chinese Communist Party came to power as capitalism on a world scale was entering the period of the post-war boom. The period of the Mao regime, was the period in which we saw the biggest boom in the history of capitalism, indeed it was the period of the biggest growth of the productive forces in the whole history of humanity. Imagine the effect this would have had on the Chinese bureaucrats looking beyond their borders. They saw Japan, Germany, the USA… They saw a massive development of the productive forces under capitalism. This must have determined the thinking of at least a layer of the Chinese bureaucracy.
So when they used to talk about the “capitalist roaders” it wasn’t just an insult used by one faction against another, it was a real tendency that existed. At that time, however, the Chinese economy was going forward. Even the Soviet Union was still growing at a faster rate than the capitalist world, (although it was already slowing down and was no longer able to achieve the rates of growth of the 1930s). Thus the dominant wing of the Chinese bureaucracy was that wing which defended the planned economy. Their own material privileges were tightly linked to the state owned, planned economy and that same system also guaranteed social stability. In spite of all this, there was always that wing that looked to capitalism, or at least capitalist incentives, to develop the economy.
The Communist Party in that period was not one homogeneous block. It had different tendencies within it. In the last years of Mao’s life it was clear these tendencies were pushing in different directions. Mao, however, as the supreme arbiter at the top was able to hold back the pro-capitalist tendencies – but he could not completely eliminate them. It is clear that once Mao died, the situation changed. Here we have a clear example of an individual at the top of the regime determining how things go, but once he is dead things can change radically and quite rapidly, as the pent up pressures come to the surface. It is not that the individual determines the whole process, independently of the objective situation. But he can hold a situation for a period. Once he is gone all the contradictions that had been developing over a period suddenly come to the surface and can erupt in quite a violent and speedy manner.
In a certain sense it is similar to the position Castro holds in Cuba. At this stage Castro is a determining element in holding back the pressures of the pro-capitalist wing in Cuba. However, once Castro dies things can suddenly accelerate. There is already a pro-capitalist wing in Cuba. The Cubans have in fact been studying China very carefully. Castro visited China in the early 1990s and he came back with the idea that that was not the road he wanted to go down. But there are a lot of university professors and economists in Cuba who write articles about the “Chinese model” (we have their counterparts in Venezuela too).
Actually the Chinese model is used by the reformists in the labour movement internationally to say, “look, socialist market economy works”. What they are doing is not looking for a way of making socialism work; they are using China to justify their own support for capitalism in the west. What is worth noting is that the Chinese “model” is not one of a market economy providing reforms like the Swedish “model” in the 1960s and 1970s, for example. It is a model that has destroyed all the social gains of the revolution. All the structures that provided for free healthcare, education, care for the elderly, etc., have been destroyed. You now have to pay for these things. So when we see these intellectuals saying that China is the model, we know what they are talking about: raw, crude capitalism without any social reforms!
The late 1970s produced a major change in China with the death of Mao and the later coming to power of Deng. What had previously happened in the Cultural Revolution is significant in understanding the later development under Deng. The Maoist bureaucracy had leaned on the masses to strike blows against a section of the bureaucracy. In doing so they had unleashed forces from below, but there was a risk involved in this. To have allowed the masses to go any further implied the possible loss of control on the part of the bureaucracy. Mao and his followers at a certain stage – once they had curbed the excesses of a wing of the bureaucracy - clamped down on the very movement they had unleashed, and reined it back in. Chinese slogans can be quite revealing. They can change radically according to the needs of the bureaucracy. At one stage the main slogan was, “The masses are right, what the people say is right” and then it became, “What is right is what is in the mind of Chairman Mao”.
However this process had a logic of its own. By clamping down on the masses, which they had previously leaned on, the balance of forces inevitably swung back towards the pro-capitalist wing in those conditions. We have mentioned Castro’s recent speech in which he raises the danger of capitalist restoration on the island. He is obviously directing this against a wing of the bureaucracy. The problem is you cannot curb these bureaucratic tendencies with bureaucratic methods. The bureaucracy that wants to return to capitalism can only be stopped by leaning on the masses, by mobilising the masses. Once Mao had curbed the masses, then the balance of forces was determined within the bureaucracy. Mao had good reason to worry about the masses, because there had been different waves of strike action, movements from below in the preceding period, the last of these being in 1966-67 and again in 1976. There was a growth in these periods of workers’ organisations to redress their grievances on wages and conditions.
What we saw here was the tendency of the working class to move beyond the limits imposed by the bureaucracy. The point we have to understand is that the Maoist bureaucracy in defending the state plan could not go so far as to give power to the workers. This would have meant the loss of their privileges. In spite of this, they were faced with the problem of developing the economy. From a genuine Marxist point of view the only solution would have been to introduce workers’ democracy, which of course was the last thing the bureaucracy would do. We must not forget that that wing of the bureaucracy that did defend the plan did it to defend their own interests, their own privileges and not those of the workers.
Trotsky explains the situation very well in his writings published as “In Defence of Marxism”. He says, “The bureaucracy is first and foremost concerned with its power, its prestige, its revenues. It defends itself much better than it defends the USSR. It defends itself at the expense of the USSR and at the expense of the world proletariat.” That is in essence the nature of the bureaucracy.
Deng, representing the right wing of the bureaucracy, had been sidelined in the process that unfolded during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution under Mao. But what is significant about Deng is that he wasn’t expelled like a lot of other bureaucrats in the past would have been. That is because he represented wing of the bureaucracy, which was not at all a small isolated minority. Mao could not turn against that wing and remove Deng as he would have liked to.
Already by then you can see how the pro-capitalist wing was far stronger than it would have been in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Probably a significant layer of the bureaucracy must have thought that the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were just crazy. They saw them as only disrupting the economy, causing chaos, and so on.
But then Mao died. There was a short interim period of Hua Guo Feng and then there was the Gang of Four. The Gang of Four actually had the crazy idea of relaunching a second Cultural Revolution. However, without Mao they were far weaker. Thus they were very quickly removed, arrested and never re-emerged.
It is in that period, without Mao, that what was by now obviously the dominant wing of the bureaucracy began discussing which way forward for China. They could see the inefficiencies of the bureaucratic system and they were looking for a way of having some kind of control over quality, levels of production, productivity, etc.
It is clear that a Marxist answer would have been to introduce workers’ democracy and workers’ control over production. But in the mind of the bureaucrat that is excluded. Instead they decided to introduce certain elements of market economy, market control, a kind of Chinese NEP.
Let us say this: from a Marxist point of view, in the conditions in which they found themselves a kind of NEP would not be excluded even by a revolutionary Marxist party, as the Bolsheviks did. As long as the main levers of the economy remain under state control, under the guidance of the plan, these methods can be used to stimulate and develop the economy. Remember that Lenin considered this when he wrote about Siberia. There were lots of raw materials, but the economy was underdeveloped. The weak, young workers’ state did not have the means to develop Siberia. So Lenin’s position was that the workers’ state could make a deal with the foreign capitalists, they could be allowed to invest with some guarantees on profits, etc., and at the end of the day they would have developed Siberia, obtaining the new means of production, the technique and so on, and this would be to the benefit of the revolution.
The problem is that China in 1978 was not a healthy workers’ state. There was no genuine workers’ power. It was a deformed workers’ state, with a bureaucracy, a caste at the top of society with privileges, living completely differently from the masses. Thus any opening up to capitalist methods in such circumstances meant the danger of capitalist restoration could become a real one.
Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed referred to the tendencies within the bureaucracy. He says at one point: “One may argue that the big bureaucrat cares little what are the prevailing forms of property, provided only they guarantee him the necessary income” but then he added, “This argument ignores not only the instability of the bureaucrat’s own rights, but also the question of his descendants. The new cult of the family has not fallen out of the clouds. Privileges have only half their worth if they cannot be transmitted to one’s children. The right of testament is inseparable from the right of property. It is not enough to be the director of a trust, it is necessary to be a stockholder. The victory of the bureaucracy in this decisive sphere would mean its conversion into a new possessing class.” At a certain point he emphasises, “In reality a backslide to capitalism is wholly possible.” This is all in Chapter 9 of Revolution Betrayed.
By the way, it is also interesting how Trotsky defines the Soviet Union. He doesn’t give a simple answer. He gives a, b, c, d, e… He gives a whole list of characteristics explaining that it was a complex process and he added that the dogmatic sectarian wants a yes, yes, no, no answer to the question of what is the nature of the regime, but that it is not possible to give that answer. He says the definition he gave was a bit clumsy but it was the nearest one had that approached reality.
Trotsky said that it would be wrong as a method to exclude from the list of characterisations any element that might contradict your preconceived view of what it is, simply because that element might end up contradicting your analysis later on. If you read Trotsky it is really refreshing, brilliant in fact. You see how Trotsky was open to the real processes taking place, without any prejudice, without any preconception, using a method. We must make sure that our comrades understand the method of Trotsky and not simply quote saying Trotsky said this therefore it must be… as if it were a Bible. Trotsky’s writings are not a Bible, there is a method, and we must learn the method. It is the dialectical method.
If we look at what happened in China we see how the bureaucracy understood the need to develop the economy, the need to have some form of control. And without workers’ control, the only other kind of control is the market. The bureaucracy is incapable of having control over every level, every layer, every moment in the productive process. So they drew the conclusion that it was necessary to introduce some capitalist criteria, to force the management of the state-run companies to be more efficient.
They had the idea that they needed to learn from the capitalists. So initially they launched four special zones. In the very early period these zones did not give the results they were expecting. You see, capitalists will invest but they want a guarantee that their profits are safe, that their property is safe, and that they have control over their investments. The initial conditions were such that the bureaucracy were trying to keep firm control. But then to get results they had to make further concessions, such as allowing wholly owned foreign companies, i.e. allowing capitalists to have companies they owned in China.

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