Is China today dominated by a privileged, nationalist-minded bureaucratic caste that is steering a domestic and international course designed to meet its own immediate needs, not those of the Chinese masses or of the world revolution? That is a key question in determining the political nature of an organization like Progressive Labor which has consistently and uncritically supported the policies of the Chinese government. In fact, virtually the only consistent aspect of PL’s program has been support for the Peking bureaucracy.
First, on the question of privileges. It is extremely difficult to obtain detailed, completely reliable information about life in China, because the Mao regime itself refuses to allow even sympathetic visitors to travel freely in the country. There are still areas of China where no foreigner has been since the revolution. This highly-restrictive policy in itself raises many questions about the Chinese regime –what are they trying to hide? Why the secrecy? What needs to be concealed?
Such clandestinity stands in sharp contrast to the openness of the Cuban regime, for example, which allows visitors to move freely around the island, talking with anyone and everyone. They do not try to hide the fact that some inequalities and privileges exist, because they too consider this a problem and are working to combat it.
No reliable statistical data exists which documents the wage differentiation between the average Chinese peasant or worker and the average army man or state functionary. Based on the information that does exist, it appears that the degree of difference between the highest paid bureaucrat and the lowest paid worker or peasant is undoubtedly less than in the USSR or the workers states of Eastern Europe. But that is not the decisive criterion.
Privilege is relative. In a country where the masses live extremely close to the subsistence level, where the threat of falling below subsistence level has not been eliminated, even the guarantee of survival represents a privilege enjoyed by few. One need only recall the agricultural crisis of the early ’60s in China to realize that the threat of insufficient food remains a very real one for the Chinese masses. While the differential in standard of living may remain relatively small, even minimal differences can be qualitative.
To put it more graphically, in the age of tractors, it may not seem much of a privilege to own an ox, but to the man who must plough by hand, an ox represents a qualitative advance.
The political privileges enjoyed by the bureaucracy are even more glaringly apparent. It has a complete monopoly on the right to engage in political activity and express political opinions. As the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” so graphically proved, political activity on the part of any other sector of the population – such as the Red Guards – is tolerated only insofar as it serves the needs of the bureaucracy as a whole, or different factions of the bureaucracy struggling for power. Once the Maoist faction had consolidated its victory and there was no longer any need for the Red Guard, it was disbanded and its members sent by the millions to the countryside. And despite the name given the great “cultural” event, even less political activity was tolerated on the part of the Chinese working class.
The domestic policies followed by the Mao leadership reflect the needs of the small privileged stratum of the society and the bureaucracy that rules in its interest. The grotesque abominations of the cult of Mao are an excellent example. Is it in the interests of the Chinese revolution, or in line with the promotion of scientific socialism, to create an infallible “pope of Marxism-Leninism,” a deity whose every mental vibration is the source of wondrous miracles responsible for the healing of wounds and the winning of ping-pong games? Is the adulation of the “great helmsman,” “great red sun of the east,” the “glorious pilot,” designed to stimulate critical thinking, revolutionary independence and initiative?
On the contrary, it is designed to discredit any who dare think for themselves, any who dare challenge the correctness of the policies advanced by the shining red sun himself.
During the three year period between 1966 and the end of 1968 more than two billion copies of Chairman Mao’s Three Constantly Read Articles, Five Constantly Read Articles and other “brilliant” works were printed –in addition to 740,000,000 copies of the little red book, close to 300,000,000 sets of the Selected Works and Selected Readings, and 96,000,000 copies of the good Chairman’s poems to boot. Yet during the same period the educational system of China was shut down.
For a country struggling to raise its technological and educational level – a prerequisite to increasing the productivity of labor and the standard of living – the loss of millions of days of education was a staggering blow which will be felt for decades. Unfortunately for China, Mao Tse-tung Thought is a rather inadequate substitute for the study of math, science, engineering, history, languages and all the other specialties the Chinese revolution needs so desperately.
Taken together, the various aspects of the Cultural Revolution provide one of the most striking examples of the manner in which the domestic policies of China’s rulers serve their interests, not those of the revolution. The disintegration of the educational system, the grotesque deification of Mao, the total absence of any proletarian democracy within the institutions of Chinese society, the obfuscation of the real political, economic and other differences by leveling totally unsubstantiated charges against all who disagreed with Mao, the use of the army as the main instrument of support for Mao, the significant growth of the army’s influence – all these and many other factors give ample testimony to the willingness of the Peking bureaucracy to subordinate the interests of the revolution.
Peking’s foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. Whatever the rhetoric may be, when it comes down to the decisive questions Peking has demonstrated itself totally willing to use those forces outside China which look to Peking for leadership as pawns in Peking’s diplomatic games rather than urging them to follow a principled revolutionary line. And Peking Itself has no qualms about sacrificing principles for some immediate “practical” gain.
For example, when the Boumedienne coup occurred in Algeria in June 1965, blocking the possibility that the Algerian revolution would take the Cuban road (in any immediate sense), China rushed to recognize the new regime within hours, hailing it as a revolutionary step by the Algerian people. By doing so Peking hoped to gain a factional advantage over the Soviet leaders at the Afro-Asian Conference scheduled to open in Algiers shortly after the coup. The Algerian students responded by publicly burning the Chinese flag. The attitude of the Chinese leadership stood in sharp contrast to that of the Cubans. Castro made a major address to the Cuban people condemning the coup.
Like the Kremlin leaders, Peking is willing to collaborate with reactionary capitalist rulers when it is advantageous to do so. Pakistan and Indonesia stand as the two most glaring examples. Ayub Khan, the former military dictator of Pakistan, was frequently hailed by Peking as one of the great leaders of the Pakistani people and provided with economic and military aid. When a mass upheaval of revolutionary proportions forced Ayub to step down last March – in favor of a new military dictator – Peking blatantly refused to even acknowledge the events taking place in Pakistan. Two days before Ayub was forced to resign, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai and Vice-Premier Hsieh Fu-chih praised Ayub at a reception in Peking given by the Pakistani ambassador. The new military dictatorship was accorded similar treatment almost as soon as it took over. Revolutionaries In Pakistan were in jail, and the country was ruled by martial law, but a special visit to Peking by one of Pakistan’s new dictators in July of this year ”produced many avowals of Chinese-Pakistani friendship” and talks, according to Chou En-lai, proceeded in a cordial atmosphere.
Revolutionary Marxists do not criticize Peking or the other workers states for engaging in diplomatic maneuvering. That is often necessary. But there is a vast difference between diplomatic maneuvering and aiding the ruling class of a capitalist country in defeating a revolutionary upsurge directed against a hated military dictatorship. It is the difference between revolution and counterrevolution.
Peking’s policy vis-a-vis the Sukarno government of Indonesia followed exactly the same pattern. Because the Sukarno regime was willing to maintain diplomatic and trade relations with Peking, the Chinese leaders counseled the pro-Peking Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) to bloc with the “progressive bourgeoisie” represented by Sukarno and subordinate all revolutionary perspectives to that bloc. Far from preparing a struggle for power, the PKI placed Sukarno’s portrait beside those of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin at their public gatherings, called upon the Indonesian masses to learn from the “beloved Bung Karno” and “expressed thanks to President Sukarno for the promise he has made to arm the workers and peasants when necessary.” (Peking Review, June 4, 1965, Chairman D. N. Aidit’s speech to the rally celebrating the 45th anniversary of the founding of the PKI) The Peking leadership totally endorsed the policies followed by the PKI–the policies that led directly to the massacre of close to half a million Indonesian Communists and sympathizers.
Much more, of course, could be said about the domestic and international policies of Peking, but such a treatment belongs more properly in a history of the Chinese revolution than one of Progressive Labor. What is of fundamental importance as far as PL is concerned is that from its inception the organization has supported the Chinese bureaucracy and all its policies, dogmatically portraying them as the model for revolutionary theory and action.
The extension of that model and that methodology to the United States has led to the results we have already examined throughout the history of PL. Their approach towards every major event in the International class struggle has been to subordinate the interests of the world revolution to what it sees as the needs of the Peking bureaucracy and to the immediate narrow factional needs of Progressive Labor.
It all comes back to the starting point of this “unvarnished history” – PL’s origins in the American Communist Party and failure to ever break with or understand Stalinism. From that beginning, the evolution of Progressive Labor has pursued a thoroughly consistent course.