[This pamphlet reproduces the three articles on China published in ‘Militant’ in July 1979. Some minor alterations and corrections have been added by the author. Printed August 1979]
Contents
The Meaning of the Cultural Revolution
Workers Fight Bureaucratic Stranglehold
The Foreign Policy of the Bureaucracy
The Meaning of the Cultural Revolution
There has been an enormous revival of interest in China throughout the capitalist world.
This has been stimulated, as far as big business and its spokesmen are concerned, by the prospect of lucrative trade deals between the capitalist world and China. Something like 70 trade missions have visited China in the last year, as the capitalists frantically elbow each other aside in order to capture their share of this potentially vast market.
The upheavals in the post-Mao era have also been the subject of numerous analyses in the West. This interest will no doubt be sustained by the plethora of books, magazines, features and articles which can be expected on the 30th anniversary of the Chinese revolution, which falls in October of this year.
Justification for the Chinese revolution – after the Russian revolution, the second greatest event in the history of mankind – is to be found in the colossal development of China since 1949.
Stability and progress
Output has increased in China by something like 80-fold during the last thirty years. A mere 1.8 million tons of steel was produced in China in 1952 while almost 32 m tons were produced in 1978. This was, moreover, a seven million ton increase in comparison to 1977. Compare this to capitalist Britain, which produced 20 million tons of steel last year, a drop of 7 million tons in comparison to 1970! China’s industrial production is 5 times that of 1957. Electric power has increased from 7.3 billion kilowatts in 1952 to 121 billion kilowatts in 1976. Over the same period tractor production has shot up up from less than 1,000 to 190,000. Similar figures show the same spectacular progress in coal production, electrical generators, trucks, locomotives, which have increased from 20,000 units in 1952 to 505,000 units in 1974.
China’s progress is even greater when compared to the colonial and semi-colonial world. India, for instance, produced 20 million tons of cement in 1977, while China produced 60 million. To the starving masses of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and the other cities and countries of South-East Asia, the conditions of the Chinese workers and peasants seem enviable.
Even the most bigoted capitalist commentators have spoken with grudging admiration of the favourable conditions of the Chinese masses in comparison to the rest of the ‘under-developed’ world. Rees-Mogg, editor of “The Times’, concluded after a visit to China: “It is clear, the average Chinese worker is adequately, though plainly fed, properly dressed, and has a roof over his head.” (“Times” 28 November 1977).
Health and education
Dramatic improvements have been recorded in health care, and education. The ‘Financial Times’ commented recently: „The life expectancy of people in China is rising so quickly that it may soon match those of highly developed countries. Recent worldwide surveys by independent demographers have put the average Chinese life-span at 62 years.
“However. internal statistics show that in some regions, it is 70 or more. A year or two less than countries such as Japan and the USA. The increase is largely a result of China’s rapidly improving living standards and medical care system.“ (12 September 1978).
Yet, in 1945, the average life span in China in the Shan Tung province, was 40 years! The average life-span today is in the region of 70 years. Public health is maintained by a co-operative medical service, which gives each peasant complete medical care for an annual fee of 50 fen (15 p).
China is now believed to have one physician for every 1,000 people, a figure surprisingly close to that of Japan, which has one physician for every 800. The infant mortality rate is down to 2% which compares well with the USA’s 1.8%. Some 95% of China’s 900 million people are literate.
In the past 30 years, China has appeared as a haven of stability and progress in the eyes of the masses of Asia and of the rest of the underdeveloped world, whose lives have been blighted by the mass unemployment, rampant inflation, and other diseases of capitalism and landlordism.
Take for instance, the question of price stability. Under the Kuomintang regime, prior to the revolution, inflation was a scourge for the Chinese workers and peasants. In the 12 years before 1949, prices rose by more than 8 million million-fold! The amount of currency which would buy two oxen in 1937 would buy two eggs in 1945, and 1 sheet of toilet paper in 1949.
China’s price stability – in the last 30 years is an enormously favourable contrast to this period. In 1952, the standard grade rice sold for 29.6 fen a kilogram. Today, the same product costs 30.4 fen. White cotton cloth has dropped in price in the same period from 86.7 fen to a mere 84 fen.
Other commodities have also fallen in price, such as pharmaceuticals (cut by half), pens and stationery, and some brands of watches. The workers of Ghana with an inflation rate of 100%, or Argentina, with prices soaring by 150%-200%, or even the British workers, where prices have more than doubled in the last four years, would on this score undoubtedly envy the Chinese workers and peasants.
Bureaucratic rule
In the language of steel, of concrete, of cement and also in the rising living standards of the masses, the Chinese Revolution has more than justified itself. The elimination of landlordism and capitalism and the introduction of a plan of production has made it possible for China to advance with giant strides.
This progress, moreover, has taken place in spite of the existence of a monstrous bureaucratic elite in China. The explanation for the existence of this bureaucracy is to be found in the origins and development of the Chinese revolution of 1944-49. The social forces involved were entirely different from the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, based themselves on the working class which drew behind them the poor peasants to overthrow Tsarism and then to eliminate landlordism and capitalism.
Because of the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky the Russian Revolution was probably the most conscious movement in human history.
The working class and even – the poor peasants were saturated with the spirit of internationalism. They saw the Russian revolution as the prologue of the international socialist revolution which was the only salvation of Russia. Power, moreover, was vested in the workers’ and peasants’ councils with the right of recall over all officials.
But the isolation of the revolution to a single backward country led to the bureaucratic degeneration of Russia, a process personified by the rise of Stalin. Gradually the masses were pushed aside with power concentrated in the hands of a bureaucratic elite.
Mao Tse-tung began where Stalin left off. Right from the outset of the Chinese revolution, management and control was vested in the hands of the bureaucracy. Mao came to power at the head of a peasant army. The working class in the towns was largely passive. But where workers greeted the Red Army by going on strike they were arrested and, in some cases, shot. The Red Army already possessed an embryonic state machine with its own courts, money, and administrative apparatus.
Mao was the Bonapartist leader of the bureaucracy, the military-police dictator at its head. The bureaucracy feared the independent movement of the working class which would have threatened their rule.
Chinese society was in an impasse. Over the two preceding decades Chinese capitalism had shown its complete incapacity to take society forward. Manoeuvring between the classes, Mao eliminated landlordism and capitalism and created a state machine in the image of Moscow, that is a one-party totalitarian regime, with power in the hands of a caste of privileged officials in the police, army and state machine, but resting on a planned economy.
Nevertheless, the Chinese bureaucracy has been able to play a relatively progressive role in the development of industry, of agriculture, and of Chinese society as a whole. They are still able to play that role today, in contrast to their cousins, the bureaucratic elite of Russia.
The Russian bureaucracy has become an absolute fetter, a monstrous drag on the further progress of Russian society. The Chinese bureaucracy is a relative fetter on the development of China.
The role and the development of the two bureaucracies is indicated by the rates of development in both economies. Thus, Russia last year, was capable of developing the economy by a mere 4%. It is estimated that the Chinese economy leapt upwards at a rate of almost 14%.
But despite the tremendous progress of Chinese society, because of the existence of a monstrous bureaucracy, of a one-party, totalitarian regime, this has been at three or four times the cost it would have been had workers’ democracy existed in China.
Tremendous mismanagement and waste goes hand in hand with the existence of a bureaucratic aristocracy.
To take just one example, the Chinese press itself has admitted that the engineering industry has only worked at 50% of capacity over the past period.
This has been reinforced by the constant zig-zags in economic and social policy throughout the last 30 years. Mao Tse-tung and his bureaucratic acolytes veered from one policy to another. Economic adventurism, attempts at ‘liberalisation’, extreme centralisation, followed by decentralisation, have all been tried in dizzying succession in an attempt to drag Chinese society. up by its ‘bootstraps’.
Such methods are inseparable from control by a bureaucratic elite. But, it has meant massive dislocation of the Chinese economy and society. The Chinese economy is only now just emerging from the devastation which resulted from the so-called ‘Great Cultural Revolution’.
Capitalist commentators and the quasi-Marxist sects in the West were taken in by the radical demagogy of Mao Tse-tung and the red guards used at the time of the launching of the cultural revolution in 1966. Only the Marxists explained the objective basis for this violent switch in policies on behalf of Mao Tse-tung and the bureaucratic elite he represented.
By 1966, Chinese society had reached an impasse. The huge and swollen bureaucracy was consuming more and more of the surplus produced by the labour of the working class and the peasantry. This in turn cut down the resources that were needed for investment in industry, the development of modern weapons for the army, etc.
The stagnation in Chinese society was reflected in the growing discontent of the masses, which in turn communicated itself to the bureaucracy, and even to the summit of that bureaucracy, represented by Mao. As Stalin had done in a similar situation, Mao Tse-tung launched an assault on the more blatant examples of abuse and mismanagement by the bureaucracy.
Red guards
He leaned on the 22-million strong Red Guards and used them as a whip to cut down and eliminate, at least temporarily, some of the excesses of the bureaucracy. An era of so-called ‘egalitarianism’ was initiated. So-called revolutionary committees were introduced, allegedly to supplant the Communist Party. Demands for the establishment of “real workers’ democracy” and of the methods of the “Paris Commune” appeared in some of the propaganda of ‘the Red Guards.
Many radicals in the West were captivated by these developments. Some so-called Trotskyists even argued that it represented the development of a political revolution against the bureaucracy itself. They forgot – or never understood! – that Mao Tsetung was a representative of the millions of privileged officials in the state machine, the police and the army. Mao y represented the bureaucracy, and was its supreme arbiter. But, as with Stalin before him, Mao was not averse on occasions, to striking blows against this very stratum which he represented.
The bureaucracy was consuming the fruits of the planned economy which should have been used to develop industry and agriculture, and also to improve living standards. Mao considered that it was therefore necessary to slash the privileges of the bureaucracy. Liu Shao-chi – the „top party person taking the capitalist road“ according to Mao – believed that China’s development could only be assured through greater rewards for the bureaucracy.
This was the meaning of the so-called cultural revolution. An attack was launched on “all privileges”. The Yugoslav Tan Jug agency recently claimed that during the cultural revolution: „Wages, in practice, were frozen and the scale of difference between the highest and lowest was 1 : 5.”
The methods of shock-brigadeism, of ‘moral incentives’ were employed in industry and agriculture. Sixteen million students were mobilised for rural work. A vicious and hooligan attack was launched on all aspects of “bourgeois culture.“ Extreme jingoism and Chinese xenophobia was whipped up in this period.
Under the so-called ‘Gang of Four’, the Ministry of Foreign Trade was labelled the “‘Ministry of National Betrayal”. A Chinese version of ‘socialism in one country’ was proclaimed. But, as Stalinist Russia had shown, it is impossible to insulate any country from the world market, from the world division of labour. In reality, throughout the ‘Cultural Revolution’ and during the reign of the Gang, China continued to be involved on the world market. If China was to acquire modern technology, then it was compelled to sell its products on the world market.
“Autarchy“ – a completely self-sufficient economy – is impossible in the modern world even for the mightiest economies such as America and Russia, let alone China which is still backward in comparison to these two giants.
The Russian revolution demonstrated that in a society of scarcity the quenching of the stimulus of personal interest leads to stagnation and sometimes to a decline in production. This is what happened during the period of „War Communism” when goods were strictly and equitably rationed.
The Bolsheviks were compelled to retreat and allow a partial introduction of a free market between the peasants and the state enterprises. Strictly controlled and limited incentives were also introduced in industry for managers, technicians and experts. But Communist Party members were expected to take in Wages no more than the “party norm”, which was the average wage.
This in turn laid the basis for the growth of a privileged elite. But such a development was Inevitable on the basis of the isolation of the revolution.
In China, Mao attempted similar methods – with disastrous results. The denunciation of ‘incentives‘ – while the bureaucracy, particularly the summits, still enjoyed a privileged existence – led inevitably to a lack of interest on the part of technicians, in the development of industry. Consequently, progress enormously lagged behind the real possibilities of China’s planned economy. Hua Guofeng, moreover, has revealed the colossal damage resulting from these methods. The dislocation resulting from the rule of the “Gang of Four’ was particularly calamitous.
Hua recently claimed that “as a result of their interference and sabotage between 1974 and 1976, the nation lost 100,000 million yuan (£33, 000 million) of industrial output, 28 million tons of steel and 40,000 million yuan of state revenue“!
In China’s technical colleges alone in 1975 “fighting produced 8 million dollars’ worth of damage“. Hua claims that the economy was “on the brink of collapse in 1976”.
The bureaucracy still ruled although some of its privileges were cut. The top echelons of the bureaucracy continued to live a comfortable and cossetted existence behind the walls of its exclusive Peking Compound.
This was shown by the revelations of an American journalist who spent some time with Madame Mao during the period of the Cultural Revolution. She denounced “decadent Western capitalism”. Yet in their private quarters she wore the latest western fashions and watched western films in her personal cinema!
Mao failed in his attempt to cut down and eliminate the bureaucracy. The triumph of the ‘right wing’ led by Deng and Hua shows that, on the basis of backwardness and the isolation of the revolution, the growth of a privileged bureaucracy is inevitable.
The experience of China in the past 13 years bears out the analysis made by Trotsky of the causes which led to the triumph of Stalinism in Russia.
Even before Mao’s death, the right wing of the bureaucracy had been fully restored to power. As “The Times” commented: “the new ruling group looks like a phantom of the one destroyed in 1966” (‘Times Review’ 1978). Those like Deng and his supporters, who had been purged by Mao for allegedly “taking the capitalist road”, have been fully integrated back into the bureaucratic machine.
Mao’s shock tactics against the bureaucracy have completely failed. „Premature egalitarianism“. has been loudly condemned. Inequality and privilege are now openly proclaimed as the greatest of virtues.
## Workers Fight Bureaucratic Stranglehold
By the time of Mao’s death in 1976, Chinese society was once again in a cul-de-sac.
Chairman Hua has recently revealed that the economy hardly grew at all in 1976: At the same time, imports of grain had risen to 12 million tons a year. Incredibly, it has also been revealed that consumption of grain has fallen to lower than the level of 1957!
One of the major reasons for this is undoubtedly the drought conditions which up to recently existed in certain key agricultural areas of China. But at the same time, the method of organisation of Chinese agriculture, and particularly the forced collectivisation of the land through the Communes have compounded the situation.
Mao never committed the same crimes and blunders as Stalin in carrying through this measure. Nevertheless, China possessed neither the cultural nor technical level at the time of collectivisation to ensure its success. Massive communes were created on the basis of wooden ploughs in some areas. Trotsky pointed out in his criticisms of Stalin’s measures that the success of collectivisation could only be guaranteed by persuasion, convincing the peasants of its advantages, which in turn was only possible by the mechanisation of agriculture. This implied a developed industry which could supply the collectives with modern agricultural machinery.
During the cultural revolution, the private plots of the peasants were outlawed in some areas. The discontent of the Chinese workers and peasants burst out in strikes and even uprisings in many cities and areas of China throughout the cultural revolution.
This surfaced again on the anniversary of the death of Chou En Lai in April 1976, in what came to be known as the Tien An Mien riots. 100,000 Peking workers and peasants gathered together in a mass demonstration to protest against the methods of the Mao wing of the bureaucracy. This was suppressed by Madame Chiang and her supporters, but paved the way for their downfall – and the coming to power of Deng Xiaoping.
There was then a complete somersault in policy – in the economy, in agriculture, and in Chinese society in general.
Hua had originally supported Madame Mao and was one of her stooges, but subsequently swung over to support Deng. Together they launched a new version of the earlier ‘Great Leap Forward’. A campaign for the ‘Four Modernisations’ in science, industry, agriculture and defence was launched.
A massive industrialisation programme was initiated, involving the construction of 120 mammoth projects in steel, chemicals, railways, etc, which was to transform China into a modern economy.
Hua proclaimed that Chinese agriculture would be mechanised by 1980. The plan was heavily reliant on the import of modern technology from the capitalist west. With the onset of economic difficulties and a looming recession in the West, the capitalists have been only too eager to scramble for trade with this potential economic giant. Like vultures, one delegation after another has descended on China in the past three years.
It has been noticed in the West that China has immense reserves of coal, something like a tenth of the world’s reserves of tin, and an estimated 7% of the world’s reserves of iron. It is also not short of lead, zinc or nickel, and has enormous, though as yet not fully explored, prospects of oil.
Neighbouring Japan, which is acutely short of its own raw materials, jumped in first with a massive trade deal worth £10,000 million over ten years. In exchange for her coal and oil, China was to receive Japan’s modern technology.
However, this dash for the Chinese growth, with targets plucked from the air, soon proved to be completely beyond the limits of the Chinese economy. China could pay for the import of Western technology either through increased exports of mainly agricultural products or by massive borrowing from the capitalist West. Increased exports of agriculture would entail a further squeezing of consumption, and at best a stagnation in the conditions of the Chinese masses.
On the other hand, astronomical sums would have to be borrowed from the capitalist West to finance this industrialisation programme. This would drag back the development of China. The massive repayments which Poland, and to a lesser extent Russia, is forced to make to the West, has a baleful effect on the development of their economies.
On the other hand, a squeezing of consumption in order to increase exports, thereby acquiring the necessary foreign currency, to buy western capitalist technology, threatens to provoke tremendous popular resentment.
The Chinese bureaucracy flirted with this policy. This was shown by the interview which the Chinese vice-premier Li gave to a visiting Australian delegation in 1977. He told the Australians that ‘500,000 tons of grain could be saved if every Chinese ate half a kilo less.”’ (‘Financial Times’, 14 October 1977).
Yet, the living standards of masses have hardly increased during the course of the last three to four years. Only recently have improvements been made because of growing discontent. ‚The Times’ Supplement pointed out: “In a remote mountain area, there is no oil for lamps. no firewood or coal, in some places there is not enough food.” (9 September 1978).
The ‘Financial Times’ correspondent also reported in January of this year: “Hungry peasants, demonstrating at the weekend in Peking, called attention to China’s immediate problems of feeding its huge population after two years of catastrophic drought. This followed a similar scene last week when peasants from outlying provinces marched through the streets proclaiming among other demands, ‘Down With Starvation’. A Western visitor to Shanghai recently saw police firing on workers who were protesting that their pay was too low to buy enough food”.
Mass initiative
In the light of these developments, the bureaucracy have hesitated to squeeze living standards any further. It has become increasingly apparent, moreover, that the lion’s share of Chinese resources in coal, oil, etc, will be required to supply the country’s growing industries and modernisation programme. bureaucracy have been forced to abandon their original programme for modernisation.
In a recent speech at the congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Hua ratified the postponement of the programme. Scaled-down targets for industry and agriculture were accepted. At the same time, wages and bonuses have been increased as well as the remuneration to the peasants.
This demonstrates that the real possibilities in a planned economy cannot be formulated or understood by a bureaucratic caste, separate from the masses, Only on the basis of a thorough-going discussion among the masses, who can add the necessary correctives, additions, etc., will it be possible to utilise all the resources in the economy and society on the basis of a realistic plan of production.
Without this discussion, and a reliance on mass initiative to implement the plans, the blunders, the bungling, and the mistakes which have characterised the policies of the Chinese bureaucracy over the past period, are inevitable.
Now in the place of the plans to turn to the West, a new watchword has been proclaimed by the Chinese regime: “Rely on your own resources’. A certain amount of foreign technology will be imported and this will be coupled with an attempt to stimulate production by the introduction of incentives for managers, scientists, the intelligentsia and sections of skilled workers.
Corruption
As the ‘Financial Times’ remarked: “The primary development appears to be the recognition of a managers’ role and of the need to reward him with money and status“. (14 March 1979).
At the same time, numerous articles praising Yugoslavia’s “self management” have appeared in the Chinese press. Yet at the beginning of the Sino-Soviet dispute the Chinese bureaucracy attacked Yugoslavia as a means of indirectly attacking the Russian bureaucracy. It singled out “‘self management” in Yugoslav factories as an indication of the “triumph of capitalism” in Yugoslavia.
The experimentation with these schemes by the Chinese bureaucracy shows just how far removed from real, workers’ democracy is the present regime in China. As with the capitalists in the West, these schemes are devised to tap the potential and initiative which resides in the Chinese workers and peasants. At best, it is a form of ‘participation’, analagous to similar schemes in the West.
The agricultural plans formulated two years ago have also been scaled down. The ludicrous target of ‘mechanisation’ by 1980 has been pushed to the indefinite future. However, the new orientation of the Chinese bureaucracy will undoubtedly give a big push to the development of industry and science.
But this will be at the cost of the widening of the gulf between the bureaucracy and the Chinese workers and peasants. Numerous and growing cases of corruption have been highlighted by the Chinese press during the last three years.
“Gluttony and drunkenness among officials have been severely criticised in China in recent weeks, and the construction of new restaurants and hotels in different parts of the country have been banned” (‚Times’ 31 January 1978). A broadcast from a province in Eastern China recently said: “Big eating and drinking is a rotten bourgeois style and to spend funds on giving banquets and presenting gifts is disguised corruption. We must resolutely prohibit this.”
But not withstanding these strictures against the more glaring abuses of the bureaucracy in June a provincial trade official of the Jilin province’s foreign trade bureau was dismissed for organising a “sumptuous 20-day binge that drained 26,000 yuan (£7,500) from the state ‘coffers.” (22 March 1979, ‘Financial Times’)
This worthy had disposed of „one ton of wine, 60,000 cigarettes and 12 kilograms of high grade tea“ in an attempt to get preferential treatment for his province’s trade. This was the equivalent of a year’s wages for 100 peasants!
A recent case featured in the Peking newspaper, “People’s Daily’, really shows the scale of the corruption. A gang of embezzlers were arrested for „bribing scores of officials”. The ringleader of the gang was a 58-year-old woman, who lavished furs, television sets, and other luxuries on associates and herself.
This gang embezzled a total of £161,000 from a fuel company in one of the provinces of China and “‘according to incomplete statistics, those who accepted their presents numbered more than 200, involving more than 90 units at the provincial prefectoral and county levels, and in the army”. („People’s Daily“)
Contrast this extravagance and rottenness with the lot of the Chinese workers, whose average annual wage is about £200 (exclusive of bonus payments) while the peasant’s income is estimated at about £107 a year. But these individual cases are merely the tip of the iceberg. Last October, the official ‘People’s Daily‘ denounced the growth of “graft, theft and speculation”.
Despite the attacks on the more extravagant examples of bureaucratic abuse, mismanagement and waste, these incidents show that an uncontrolled caste dominates Chinese society.
Opposition to the rule of the bureaucracy has been shown in recent demonstrations, strikes and to a certain extent in the posters displayed in Peking in the latter part of the last year, criticising different aspects of Chinese society.
Poster campaign
In January “a demonstration marched towards Peking’s Chuang nan Hai Compound,. where China’s leaders live, demanding food, and the right to work.” (Guardian 15.1.79). At the same time “‘a demonstration by raggedly dressed people from throughout China, seeking redress from the country’s leaders“ took place.
Strikes of students and workers have also been reported from different parts of China, The ‘Guardian’ reported in December of last year that 50,000 students were on strike in South China “in a mass revolt against forced farm labour.” The strikers protested that “local officials” had trampled on young farm workers’ rights, and cheated and oppressed them. Some had worked as rubber tappers for nine years.
Some of this festering discontent was undoubtedly reflected in the outburst in Peking and other cities in China in October of last year. The poster campaign of that period raised demands for “freedom and democracy” from wide layers of students and even sections of the workers of Peking, Shanghai, and some other cities of China.
But at the same time this poster campaign was carefully controlled by the Deng wing of the bureaucracy. Deng realised that it was necessary to make concessions to the growing clamour of the intellectuals, scientists, artists and musicians, for “‘incentives“ and freedoms to develop their talents. At the same time, he was prepared to lean on these layers, and on the peasants and working class, irritated by the ten years of grey uniformity of the cultural revolution, in order to strike a decisive blow against the remnants of the supporters of the ‘Gang of Four’, and the hard-line Stalinists who remained.
In the aftermath of Stalin’s death Khrushchov had also been forced to adopt similar measures as a counter-weight to the open Stalinist wing of the bureaucracy. Khrushchov understood that is was necessary to introduce certain reforms from the top in order to prevent revolution from below.
Nevertheless, the poster campaign revealed the enormous discontent with the rule of the bureaucracy. Thousands gathered in Peking to support posters demanding “free speech“. Some proclaimed “no KGB here”. “Beware of plain-clothes police”, indicating the growing Opposition to the police.
Attacks on the despotism of Mao Tse-tung’s regime were also made. Indeed, “The posters likened the previous reactionary government to the ‘fascist’ dictatorship of Tsar Nicholas II“ (‘The Times’ 26 November 1978).
The de-mystification of Mao had obviously had the full backing of the Deng wing of the bureaucracy. Deng characterised Mao as „70% good, and 30% bad.”
Some posters claimed that Mao had some of his speeches and poems written for him. The 30% “bad” no doubt referred to that period of the cultural revolution when Deng was removed from his position on two occasions.
However, many students and workers, using the new-found, if limited freedom, obviously went further than Deng and his supporters wanted. Some groups began to question the very existence of the bureaucracy itself. Autocratic rule by a privileged stratum of officials came in for criticism, and demands were made for its removal. One group around the “human rights alliance“ clashed with the police in Peking when one of its posters “emphasised that they were Communists, but that in Marxism-Leninism there was no absolute condemnation of human rights, it was in the interests of anti-democratic forces to attack human rights, and against these forces we cannot but launch a counter-attack. Those opposed to human rights were afraid of losing their privileged position in Chinese society”. (‘Guardian’ 5 April 1979).
Trotskyism
Some groups of workers and students have undoubtedly groped in the direction of genuine Marxist-Trotskyist conclusions. Some demands were made for the election of officials and the right of recall. Something similar also happened, in certain isolated cases, during the cultural revolution, when some groups of young workers moved towards the programme of Marxism and Trotskyism, that is, for workers’ democracy, and for a political revolution against the bureaucracy. But, as soon as it became evident that the poster campaign was getting out of hand, Deng and his secret police ruthlessly crushed all dissent. „Ultra-democracy”’ was denounced in the official Chinese press.
Moreover, a clear line of distinction was drawn between “permitted criticism” and that which was deemed „dangerous”’. The fear of the bureaucracy, of the Deng wing in particular, that students and workers engaged in this campaign could embrace genuine ideas of workers’ democracy, was shown in newspaper articles denouncing “Trotskyism”.
Some articles praised the Moscow trials of the 1930s. A front page article in the official ‚People’s Daily‘ stated that “The Soviet Trials of the 1930s” were correct, and „the elimination of counter-revolutionaries, Trotskyists, spies, and hostile elements of all sorts were justified”. This shows the bureaucracy’s abiding fear that the masses should embrace the ideas of genuine Marxism. A further indication of the fear of the bureaucracy of Trotskyism, was highlighted by a recent Amnesty International report on imprisonment in the People’s Republic of China.
It reported “‘that about 200 Trotskyists and sympathisers were arrested between the end of 1952 and the beginning of 1953, most of whom were never heard of again. Among them, was Zheng Chao Lin, a political theorist and linguist, who joined the CCP in the early 1920s and was expelled from it as a Trotskyist in 1929. He then became active in the Chinese Trotskyist movement, and was arrested by the Kuomintang in 1931.
“After his release, seven years later, he pursued his political work and historical studies while translating Marxist works into Chinese. He stayed in China when the People’s Republic was established in 1949 and was arrested in Shanghai in 1952, reportedly for refusing to compromise with the CCP.
“Little has been heard about him since. However, he was said to be still detained in Shanghai in 1974. If he is alive, he is now about 78 years old.”
The Foreign Policy of the Bureaucracy
On the world arena, the Chinese bureaucracy have been prepared to trample in the mud every principle of socialism and internationalism in order to enhance the national interests of the Chinese state. It has been prepared to embrace every bloody dictator in the globe, on condition that this extends its power and influence.
It is a bonus for them, if at the same time this strikes a blow against the Russian Stalinists, whom, until recently, the Chinese leadership regarded as its principal enemy on the world stage.
Only months before his overthrow, the Shah was publicly supported by Hua when the latter visited Iran.
The Chinese Stalinists have also assiduously courted the reactionary sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. China and Oman established diplomatic relations last year, and Hua visited Oman at about the same time. Yet, in the late 1960s, China actively helped the guerrillas who were attempting to overthrow the Oman regime.
Now, however, the Chinese Stalinists believe that this was not “a very wise step”! Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states have also established relations with the Chinese regime. The guiding principle of the Chinese Stalinists is not the interests of the workers and peasants of the area, oppressed by the reactionary sheikhdoms, but the building of its power and influence in the region.
To support these regimes, moreover, is, according to the Chinese Stalinists, to strike a blow against the Russian bureaucracy. The same goes for their support of Mobutu in Zaire. They rushed to support him at precisely the moment when the workers and peasants in the Shaba province were rising in an attempt to overthrow this dictatorship. Indeed, the Chinese Stalinists upbraided the British capitalists for not playing their part in shoring up the Mobutu regime: “A senior Chinese leader recently asked a British visitor to Peking why Britain had not sent troops to Zaire, like the French and Belgians.” (‚The Times’, 5 June 1978)
This is music to the ears of Thatcher. It is no wonder that the Peking regime finds favour with the Tory leaders.
Moreover, in a step which nauseated the peoples of Latin America and the world the Chinese regime “got its ambassador in Santiago, Chile, to sing General Pinochet’s praise.” (‘Le Monde’)
Deng, in his recent visit to Japan embraced Hirohito, who was personally involved in the invasions and rape of Manchuria during the Second World War. Deng fought with the Chinese Red Army against the Japanese imperialists in the war. Hirohito had been condemned formerly as “‘number one war criminal.”
The national interests of the Chinese state clearly take precedence over the interests of the workers and peasants throughout the world. The Chinese Stalinists have attempted to play off US imperialism, in particular, against the Russian Stalinists.
“Joint endeavour”
US imperialism has been only too willing to exploit this situation. The cosy relationship which has been built up between both powers was indicated when Brzeziński, Carter’s security advisor, and one of the most “‘hawkish”’ in the American administration, visited the Great Wall of China last year. ‘The Times’ reported: „Mr Brzeziński [was] dispensing anti-Soviet jokes, and scoring a great hit with the Chinese sailors, who called him the tamer of the Polar bear. ‚Which side were the barbarians,‘ he asked, at the beginning of the climb; from then on, he did not stop poking fun at the Soviet Union. ‚If we get to the top first, you go in and oppose the Russians in Ethiopia, if you get there first we go in and oppose the Russians in Ethiopia,‘ Mr Brzeziński joked with the Chinese accompanying him.”
Such a ‘joint endeavour” between America and China in relation to Ethiopia is of course ruled out. Nevertheless, the fact that the representatives of American imperialism can jocularly refer to the possibility of joint action with China against another alleged „socialist power“ shows the character of these regimes.
This was underlined recently in the clashes between Russia and China, and between Vietnam and the Cambodian regime of Pol Pot and the subsequent invasion of Vietnam by China. The Communist Parties in the capitalist world seek to explain these clashes in terms of “tragic mistakes“ or as arising from regrettable „misunderstandings”. Thus one of the reasons recently given by the Executive Committee of the British Communist Party for a loss of one fifth of its membership between 1975 and 1976 is “the differences in the international communist movement, the armed conflicts between socialist states, and the limitations on democracy in socialist countries” (‘Morning Star’ 16 July 1979).
However, the CP membership will search in vain in the Executive Committee’s statement for any explanation as to why “Socialist states” need to resort to guns, planes and tanks to resolve differences. A child of ten would not accept that armed clashes between alleged “Socialist states” arises from “misunderstanding”. On the contrary, its causes lie in the vested interests of the vicious gangs of national Stalinist bureaucracies which dominate these countries.
This was clearly shown in the clashes between Vietnam and China which resulted in the invasion of the former by the latter.
The sacrifice of Chinese workers’ and peasants’ lives, and their Vietnamese brothers, was made in order to satisfy the thirst for revenge of the Chinese Stalinists against the „upstart“ Vietnamese Stalinists. The roots of the conflict lay on the one side in the desire of the Vietnamese bureaucracy to dominate Indo-China, and on the other side, of the Chinese bureaucracy’s insistence that the region was its “sphere of influence”.
The Vietnamese Stalinists leaned on the Russian bureaucracy as a counterweight to the pressure of the Chinese bureaucracy. Vietnam’s joining of Comecon and the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam in turn aggravated the conflict between China and Vietnam.
The Chinese Stalinists justified their invasion on the grounds that it was necessary to “punish” the Vietnamese. This earned them the title of “the world’s greatest Magistrate”. At the same time, the Chinese bureaucracy began a frantic courtship with the national Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, of Romania, and Yugoslavia in particular, in order to create a counter pressure on the Russian Stalinists.
Its friendship with the former “revisionist“ Yugoslavia brought it into conflict with Albania, the sole supporter of Mao in Eastern Europe, during his conflicts with the Russian bureaucracy. Among other things, the vicious Stalinist Albanian regime has been in a long conflict with Yugoslavia on the issue of the treatment of national minorities within Yugoslavia, who have ethnic ties with the population of Albania.
There are also, as with all the Stalinist regimes, claims and counter-claims on each other’s territory. In all of these conflicts there is not an atom of socialism or of internationalism. The power, the privileges, the prestige of each national Stalinist regime, is of foremost importance.
USSR in 1917
Contrast this to the internationalist perspectives of Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution. This was seen even in the name of the first workers’ state – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Lenin deliberately chose this name in order to show that the Russian revolution was only the beginning of the world socialist revolution. He looked towards more and more countries joining the socialist federation until the whole globe was encompassed into a World Socialist Federation.
Yet the Stalinist regimes of China and Russia proved incapable of even forming a federation between the two countries. Such a federation would, for instance, have Chinese industry has made great advances. enabled a rapid exploitation of Siberia to the mutual benefit of both economies. Siberia is rich in natural resources but short of labour: China with its colossal labour reserves would easily be able to make up for this.
Such a scheme would be of enormous benefit to the economies and peoples of Russia and China. It is the narrow nationalist bureaucracies which stand in the way of accomplishing this.
These bureaucracies, while locked in conflict with one another, and occasionally coming into collision with imperialism, at the same time have a common mortal dread of the prospect of either a socialist revolution in the West, or of a political revolution to establish workers’ democracy in any of their countries. Indeed, one of the reasons for the revival of China’s trade relations with the West is the fear of economic recession and the consequent political repercussions on the most vulnerable and unstable capitalist regimes in Europe.
The ‘Financial Times’ quite openly commented last year that: “Peking sees a welcome side-effect in propping up ailing European industry like British Steel, with substantial orders, to stabilise doubtful economies.“ (7 June 1978) In other words, the Chinese Stalinists fear as much as the imperialists, if not more, the socialist revolution in any of the advanced capitalist countries.
The socialist revolution in Europe, Japan, America, or the most industrialised states of Latin America, would bring crashing down not just capitalism, but also the Stalinist bureaucracy itself.
But despite the clashes between the Chinese and Russian bureaucracies, they will eventually be forced to come together.
The Russian bureaucracy have been compelled to accept China, and recognise it as a world power. At the same time, the Chinese bureaucracy has been cruelly disappointed at the limited benefits which now seem possible from the trade deals with the West. Russia is an alternative, and a lot cheaper, source of high technology with which to industrialise China.
Both bureaucracies wish to cut down, if possible, the costly expenditure in arms and equipment which is entailed in defending their common borders against each other. If not immediately, then when the wounds of the Vietnamese-China conflicts have receded, undoubtedly the Chinese and Russian bureaucracies will come to an agreement.
In the face of the growing radicalisation throughout the capitalist world, and the mounting opposition to the rule of the bureaucracy in Eastern Europe, China, Russia, etc., both the privileged elites of these regimes and the capitalists in the West will cling together for common support.
As opposed to the Russian Stalinists, the Chinese bureaucracy is still able to play a relatively progressive role. To a certain extent, the Chinese regime is fulfilling the tasks which capitalism fulfilled in the West in the past by developing industry, science, and technique. But in so doing they are producing their own grave-diggers in the form of a mighty working class.
Already, the Chinese working class has developed enormously over the past 30 years. Although 80% of the Chinese population still live on the land, mainly as peasants, the Chinese working class is a mighty force. This working class will not tolerate for ever the rule of a greedy, privileged and ignorant elite.
The socialist revolution in any of the advanced capitalist countries would undoubtedly provoke a political revolution in China. A similar development would take place if political revolution were to take place in Russia, in Eastern Europe or any of the other deformed workers’ states.
On the basis of workers’ democracy, all the potential, the colossal possibilities rooted in a planned economy, would be exploited to the full.
With the Chinese revolution, one quarter of mankind stepped for the first time onto the stage of human history. A new supplementary revolution, a political revolution, which would eliminate the stranglehold of a bureaucratic elite, would have enormous repercussions throughout the colonial and semi-colonial world, and indeed in the advanced capitalist countries as well.
The present regime appears to be very stable. Indeed, it is perhaps the most stable of all the Stalinist regimes. This is due to the enormous social weight of the peasantry, the fact that the working class is still a minority, and the fact also that the bureaucracy is still capable of playing a relatively progressive role.
However, mighty events in the capitalist world, or in the Stalinist world, could quickly see the downfall of the Stalinist bureaucracy in China. Once that happens even the colossal development of China over the last 30 years would be put in the shade.
The tremendous. possibilities resulting from a planned economy would be exploited to the full under a regime of workers’ democracy.
This would at the same time result in the collapse of the rotten landlord and capitalist system throughout Asia leading to an Asian Socialist Federation as part of a World Socialist Federation.
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