In our series of discussions on the New Democratic revolution and the stages in the ascent to socialism, several key issues were examined in trying to assess the correctness and consistency of the CPC’s theory and practice:
What exactly were Lenin’s views on the transition to socialism and the possibility of class alliances in revolutionary governments?
How did these views develop over time given the increasing revolutionary experience of the Russian proletariat?
Was New Democracy an appropriate development of Lenin’s views on the transition to socialism, given Chinese conditions?
What made the alliance with the national bourgeoisie necessary and how did it serve the needs of the Chinese economy?
How did the People’s Democratic Dictatorship differ from the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and what kinds of socialist development could take place under such a broad-based dictatorship?
Lastly, how did Lenin outline the role of state capitalism as an aid to socialist construction, and were the Chinese correct in their application of it?
The conclusions we have reached contradict the analysis offered by the PLA and Jim Washington’s pamphlet “Socialism Cannot Be Built in Alliance with the Bourgeoisie”. Their rigid and dogmatic approach indicates their inability or unwillingness to come to grips with Lenin’s teachings on how to correctly develop socialism in an underdeveloped country. We intend to show, for example, that both J.W. and the PLA fail to understand that it was essential to utilize state capitalism in China after 1949 and as a result are blind to the different sectors of the bourgeoisie that existed in China and the quite different roles they played.
* * *
For Lenin the acid test of a Marxist revolutionary was his consistent striving toward the proletarian socialist revolution. This revolution was seen as primarily a political act, the seizure of state power by the vanguard of the proletariat on behalf of and representing the proletariat. The establishment and consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship was Lenin’s primary aim, so we can see why a large body of his work is devoted to the problems of political tactics.
Marxist tactics are predicated on an analysis of the concrete conditions of the time and place where they are to be applied. A proper understanding of Lenin’s tactics for the seizure and maintenance of state power requires at least a brief review of the conditions then prevalent in Russia.
One of the most obvious traits of late nineteenth century Russia was its economic backwardness relative to Western Europe. We cannot go into detail about the historical origins of Russia’s economic backwardness within this paper but we can point out some of its main characteristics bearing on our argument.
First, agriculture was, by far, the largest sector of the economy. Second, there was a sharp contradiction between the small class of largely aristocratic landowners and the overwhelming peasant majority. Third, the highly centralized czarist bureaucracy exercised an important influence in economic affairs. Fourth, capitalism was a relatively new phenomenon in late 19th century Russia and had been largely begun by foreign investment and government subsidy. It is important to note, though, that the development of capitalism in Russia was proceeding very rapidly and that it had grown to the point where it was characteristic of the economy as a whole. Nevertheless, especially in the countryside, there were significant feudal remnants.
In Lenin’s first major work, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia”, he points out that one aspect of Russia’s backwardness was the prevalence of petty-bourgeois (largely peasant) elements. Lenin’s view was that, given the rapid pace of capitalist development, the peasantry as a class would be destroyed. A relatively small number of upper peasants would develop into independent farmers. Large numbers of the peasant masses would be driven off the land to supply the “free” laborers necessary for the further development of capitalism. Significant numbers of poor peasants, already semi-proletarians, would derive an increasing share of their income by working for larger farmers. Eventually they would develop into a rural proletariat.
Prior to 1905 Lenin felt that the prospect for Russia was a ’democratic’ revolution against the czar in which the bourgeoisie would play a key role, followed by the proletarian socialist revolution. Lenin was not under any illusions as to the unreliability and treachery of the bourgeoisie, but he thought it would be in their class interest to struggle for a bourgeois democratic republic. Although he felt the peasantry would play a part in this, he saw the basic leadership coming from the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.[1]
In 1905, however, the bourgeoisie was prepared to accept the charade of a constitution offered by Nicholas. This possibility, although never ruled out by Lenin, caused him to reevaluate the roles of the class forces in the Russian revolution. What was unique about 1905, and what caused it to present a threat of unprecedented proportions to the czarist regime, was that for the first time the proletariat and peasantry were in revolt simultaneously. This was a lesson that was not lost on either Lenin or the czarist elite. In fact, the peasant reforms of Stolypin after 1905, were, in large measure, intended to placate the peasantry. They would have allowed a class of independent farmers to arise alongside the large estates of the gentry, while simultaneously driving the majority of the poor peasants off the land. This Lenin felt would have resulted in capitalism of the Prussian Junker model.
Lenin now held that the bourgeois revolution could be accomplished without the aid of–even against the wishes of–the bourgeoisie. He said in 1910:
In Russia, the problem so far is only the creation of the modern bourgeois state which will either be similar to a Junker monarchy (in case of the victory of tsarism over democracy) or to a bourgeois democratic republic (in case of the victory of democracy over tsarism). And the victory of democracy in modern Russia will be possible only if the peasant masses follow the revolutionary proletariat and not treacherous liberalism.[2]
In order to try to win the support of the peasants, Lenin at the 1906 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party advocated the expropriation of the landed estates and their distribution to the peasants. This was still an aspect of the bourgeois democratic revolution, as Lenin stated in 1914:
Marx amply proved that the bourgeois economists often demanded the nationalisation of the land, i.e., the conversion of all land into public property, and that this was a fully bourgeois measure. Capitalism will develop much more widely, more freely, and more quickly from such a measure. This measure is very progressive and very democratic. It will do away completely with serfdom, will break the monopoly in land, and will abolish absolute rent . . .It will speed up the development of productive forces in agriculture and purge the class movement among the wage workers.[3]
The class alliance that Lenin envisioned to pick up and complete the tasks of the democratic revolution abandoned by the Russian bourgeoisie he called “the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”.[4] This would be revolutionary in the sense that it would carry out and complete in the most radical fashion all the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution and that it would pave the way for the proletarian-socialist revolution. It would be democratic in that it would be the rule over the few by the many. And it would be a dictatorship in that the masses would have unrestricted power over their former oppressors.[5]
It should not be thought, however, that Lenin ever lost sight of the eventual goal of proletarian revolution. As he said in 1905:
That the peasant movement in Russia today is of a really petty-bourgeois nature there can be no doubt. We must explain this fact by every means in our power, and we must ruthlessly and irreconcilably combat all the illusions of all the “Socialists-Revolutionaries” or primitive socialists on this score. The organisation of an independent party of the proletariat which, through all democratic upheavals, will strive for the complete socialist revolution, must be our constant aim, not to be lost sight of for a moment. But to turn away from the peasant movement for this reason would be sheer philistinism and pedantry. No, there is no doubt as to the revolutionary and democratic nature of this movement, and we must with all our might support it, develop it, make it a politically conscious and definitely class movement, advance it, and go hand in hand with it to the end – for we go much further than the end of any peasant movement; we go to the very end of the division of society into classes.[6]
Upon first hearing of the February-March revolution of 1917, Lenin immediately saw the prospects for introducting the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. In the first of his “Letters from Afar”, Lenin correctly identified the class forces at work in the first stage of the revolution. These were:
(1) the tsarist monarchy, the head of the feudal landlords of the old bureaucracy and the military caste;
(2) bourgeois and landlord-Octobrist-Cadet Russia, behind which trailed the petty-bourgeoisie (of which Kerensky and Chkheidze are the principal representatives);
(3) the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which is seeking to make the entire proletariat and the entire mass of the poorest part of the population its allies – these three fundamental political forces fully and clearly revealed themselves even in the eight days of the “first stage”.[7]
Lenin contended that the success of the February revolution was so complete and so sudden because it was essentially a fait accompli (or accomplished fact). The class of capitalist landlords and bourgeoisie had long been ruling the country economically. During the revolution of 1905-7, and the counter-revolution that followed, and especially the beginning of the first world war, the bourgeois class had been taking control of governmental bodies at all levels. “This new class was completely in power by 1917.”[8]
But side by side with the Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie had arisen a countervailing and alternate source of revolutionary political power--the Soviet of Worker’s Deputies. Only the Soviets could satisfy the demands of the overwhelming majority of the population for “peace, bread, and freedom”.[9] The Provisional Government was already committed to continuing the slaughter and was negotiating above the heads of the people for the restoration of the Romanovs. Therefore, said Lenin, anyone who supported the Provisional Government was “a traitor to the workers, to the cause of the proletariat, to the cause of peace and freedom.”[10]
It was this Soviet of Worker’s Deputies which was already expanding its representation into the soldiers and peasantry that Lenin saw as exercising the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry. And his slogan was, “All power to the Soviets”.[11]
Lenin goes on to formulate the immediate tasks of the revolutionary proletariat in Russia as follows:
(1) to find the surest road to the next stage of the revolution, or to the second revolution, which (2) must transfer political power from the government of the landlords and capitalists (the Guchkovs, Lvovs, Milyukovs, Kerenskys) to a government of the workers and poorest peasants. (3) This latter government must be organized on the model of the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, namely, (4) it must smash, completely eliminate, the old state machine, the army, the police force and bureaucracy (officialdom), that is common to all bourgeois states, and substitute for this machine (5) not only a mass organisation, but a universal organisation of the entire armed people. (6) Only such a government, of “such” a class composition (“revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”) and such organs of government (“proletarian militia”) will be capable of successfully carrying out the extremely difficult and absolutely urgent chief task of the moment, namely: to achieve peace ... (7) In Russia the victory of the proletariat can be achieved in the very near future only if, from the very first step, the workers are supported by the vast majority of the peasants fighting for the confiscation of the landed estates ... (8) In connection with such a peasant revolution, and on its basis, the proletariat can and must, in alliance with the poorest section of the peasantry, take further steps toward control of the production and distribution of the basic products, towards the introduction of “universal labor service”, etc. These steps are dictated, with absolute inevitability, by the conditions created by the war, which in many respects will become still more acute in the post-war period. In their entirety and in their development these steps will mark the transition to socialism, which cannot be achieved in Russia directly, at one stroke, without transitional measures, but is quite achievable and urgently necessary as a result of such transitional measures ...[12]
By April of 1917, it had become apparent to Lenin that the majority parties in the Soviets (representatives of the petty-bourgeois and the peasantry) had voluntarily and peacefully yielded hegemony in the revolution to the bourgeois Provisional Government. As he said the Soviet ”has itself surrendered and is itself surrendering its position to the bourgeoisie.”[13]
Only after the acquiescence of the leaders of the Soviets in the repression of the Bolsheviks during the July days did Lenin change his goal from the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat, declaring,
Now, after the experiences of July, 1917, it is the revolutionary proletariat which must independently take over state power. Without that the victory of the revolution is impossible. The only solution is for power to be in the hands of the proletariat and for the latter to be supported by the poor peasants or semi-proletarians.[14]
However, as late as September, 1917, Lenin still held out the possibility of a government of class alliances if the moderate parties agreed to the overthrow of the Provisional Government.[15]
Thus we can see that Lenin tried very hard to develop a revolutionary democratic coalition government under the hegemony of the proletariat. Even after the seizure of state power by the proletariat, he offered, and for a short time was able to maintain, a governmental coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. From all of this it seems fair to infer that, for Lenin, a revolutionary democratic coalition government, for a limited time, to accomplish specific democratic tasks and pave the way for socialism was not only possible, but desirable in an underdeveloped country. It was only the repeated betrayals of the parties of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie that led Lenin to turn reluctantly from this tactic.
It is our contention that Mao-Tsetung correctly, even brilliantly, applied not only the Leninist idea of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, but other fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of the Chinese revolution. The points Mao raises in “On New Democracy”, and elsewhere, agree in essence with Lenin’s on the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Those points which differ from Lenin’s views are either the result of demonstrable differences between the Russian and Chinese pre-revolutionary societies or else stem from broad changes in the world brought about by World War I and the Russian Revolution.
If a close comparison of the program of the Communist Party of China under New Democracy, as outlined by Mao in “On Coalition Government” (1945), is made with Lenin’s delineation of the tasks of the Soviets in “The Tasks Involved in the Building of the Revolutionary Proletarian State”, quoted above, it can be seen that Mao’s conceptions are in basic alignment with Lenin in all major areas. Both discuss the need for an independent revolutionary army encompassing the whole of the people. Both insist upon the creation of a coalition revolutionary government which will usurp the functions of the corrupt feudal-bourgeois state. Both agree that the success of the revolution depends on the support of the peasantry and call for annexation of the landlords, and land to the tiller. Furthermore, both Lenin and Mao point out that these steps are transitional, and pave the way for socialism. Most importantly, Lenin and Mao agree on and stress repeatedly the necessity for the hegemony of the proletariat and its party throughout this process.
The only major discrepancy is Mao’s inclusion of the national bourgeoisie as part of New Democracy. What was the basis for Mao’s position? The Chinese and Russian bourgeoisies were very different. Mao called the Russian bourgeoisie “military feudal”.[16] As noted earlier, Russian capitalism was built largely as a result of foreign investment and governmental intervention, from the top down, as it were. The Russian bourgeoisie was, therefore, inextricably bound up in a web of obligations and class alliances to both foreign imperialism and the highly centralized czarist state and bureaucracy. Because of the relatively late development of a class of independent farmers and the highly centralized state apparatus (with its attendant trade monopolies), development of an independent native capitalism based on primitive accumulation was negligible. Therefore, we can see that almost the entirety of the Russian bourgeoisie was equivalent to what was termed the comprador or bureaucrat bourgeoisie in China, and thereby excluded from participation in any broad-based democratic dictatorship.
China’s bourgeoisie, while relatively less developed than Russia’s, did have a certain measure of independence. The uncompleted bourgeois revolution of 1911 and the political and economic chaos it engendered in China did allow some small capitalist enterprises to develop relatively free of both the state and foreign imperialism. Like all bourgeoisies, these elements wanted to develop China as an exclusive market; they therefore had a history of struggle against imperialism going back to the time of Sun Yat Sen. The above is not intended to imply that these national bourgeois elements played a dominant or even a very large role in China’s industrial development. But in a country as underdeveloped as China, they could play a significant role in a struggle against foreign imperialism.
Lenin, at the Second Congress of the Comintern, specifically discussed this phenomenon of a possible split in the bourgeoisie of colonial and semi-colonial countries (he cited China as an example). Lenin said that some elements of the colonial and semi-colonial bourgeoisie would probably effect a “rapprochement” with the imperialist bourgeoisie and must be opposed. Other elements of the colonial and semi-colonial bourgeoisie would participate in the “national-revolutionary” movement and should be supported when they “do not hinder our work of educating and organizing in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited.”[17]
It is clear from reading “On New Democracy” that when Mao referred to the governmental form as new, he meant not only its specific Chinese character but also its role as part of the proletarian international revolution. As Mao points out, the events of October, 1917 had created a situation where people of whatever class, who legitimately struggled against imperialism, became part of the proletarian international revolution whether they willed it or not.[18] To deny this aspect of the situation is not only to deny the international significance of the Bolshevik Revolution, but to engage in the worst sort of metaphysics and ahistoricism.
It is also important to understand that the New Democracy stage lasted throughout the period of the anti-Japanese struggle as well as the civil war against the Kuomintang.[19] It was only with the military victory of the democratic revolution in 1949 that the People’s Democratic Dictatorship was introduced. The People’s Democratic Dictatorship was a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.[20] While on the surface, the People’s Democratic Dictatorship had much in common with New Democracy (for example, the continued participation of the national bourgeoisie), what was qualitatively different about it, and what is crucial in all these questions of the transition, was that the proletariat and its party held state power.[21]
In 1949, Mao explained the difference between the two concepts when he summed up the history of the Chinese revolution up to that point in “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship”:
Up to now the principal and fundamental experience the Chinese people have gained is twofold:
(1) Internally, arouse the masses of the people. That is, unite the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, form a domestic united front under the leadership of the working class, and advance from this to the establishment of a state which is a people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. . .[22]
The difference is between a united front under the leadership of the working class in which the national bourgeoisie plays a role and a state under the leadership of the working class which is based on an alliance of the workers and peasants.[22a]
Mao goes on to stress the central importance of the state apparatus as a means to control the national bourgeoisie:
There remains the national bourgeoisie; at the present stage, we can already do a good deal of suitable educational work with many of them. When the time comes to realize socialism, that is, to nationalize private enterprise, we shall carry the work of educating and remoulding them a step further. The people have a powerful state apparatus in their hands–there is no need to fear rebellion by the national bourgeoisie.[23]
The national bourgeoisie does, however, continue to have an important role to play in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship:
The national bourgeoisie at the present stage is of great importance. Imperialism, a most ferocious enemy, is still standing alongside us. China’s modern industry still forms a very small proportion of the national economy. No reliable statistics are available, but it is estimated, on the basis of certain data, that before the War of Resistance Against Japan the value of output of modern industry constituted only about 10 per cent of the total value of output of the national economy. To counter imperialist oppression and to raise her backward economy to a higher level, China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and the people’s livelihood; and we must unite with the national bourgeoisie in common struggle. Our present policy is to regulate capitalism, not to destroy it. But the national bourgeoisie cannot be the leader of the revolution, nor should it have the chief role in state power.[24]
Of course, to say that the national bourgeoisie should not have the “chief role in state power” implies that they should have some role under the hegemony of the proletariat.[25] For, although the People’s Democratic Dictatorship is based on the alliance of the workers and the peasantry, Mao specifically includes the national bourgeoisie as part of the people who are to exercise democracy under the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. But Mao elsewhere makes it very clear that the relationship with the national bourgeoisie is not only one of unity and struggle, but that armed struggle must never be excluded:
Unity here means the united front with the bourgeoisie. Struggle here means the “peaceful” and “bloodless” struggle, ideological, political and organizational, which goes on when we are united with the bourgeoisie and which turns into armed struggle when we are forced to break with it. If our Party does not understand that it must unite with the bourgeoisie in certain periods, it cannot advance and the revolution cannot develop; if our Party does not understand that it must wage a stern and resolute “peaceful” struggle against the bourgeoisie while uniting with it, then our Party will disintegrate ideologically, politically and organizationally and the revolution will fail; and if our Party does not wage a stern and resolute armed struggle against the bourgeoisie when forced to break with it, our Party will likewise disintegrate and the revolution will likewise fail.[26]
The People’s Democratic Dictatorship was an accurate reflection of the political and economic realities in China in 1949. In the economic sphere, most of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution remained to be accomplished. In the countryside, the most important of these was the redistribution of the land and the smashing of feudal relations. The industrialization process also needed to be accelerated, and in order to accomplish this the Communist Party of China correctly utilized state, private, and joint state-private forms. (In carrying out these tasks it was in the national bourgeoisie’s “interest” to cooperate with the proletarian state, since refusal would have led to harsher and quicker restriction of the class.) In addition, because it had control of the state and the army, the proletariat was able to initiate and complete many important socialist tasks prior to the completion of the democratic stage. This was one of the real strengths of the Chinese revolution.
It is impossible to understand the role of the national bourgeoisie in China without an appreciation of state capitalism as an aid to socialist construction. One of the principal difficulties of developing socialism in an underdeveloped country is that capitalism is still growing, is still developing naturally and inevitably out of small production and primitive accumulation. This, of course, is contrasted to a developed capitalist economy where capitalism has passed its zenith, is in fact moribund, and in its monopoly stage begun to consolidate, which makes state regulation much easier. In a state under the control of the workers, state capitalism is a way to channel capitalism so that it works in the interests of the workers and their state. As Lenin said in 1921:
The whole problem – in theoretical and practical terms – is to find the correct methods of directing the development of capitalism (which is to some extent and for some time inevitable) into the channels of state capitalism, and to determine how we are to hedge it about with conditions to ensure its transformation into socialism in the near future.[27]
In underdeveloped countries, like China and Russia, where small-scale production predominated over large-scale, the advantages of socialist rationalization and planning of the economy are exceedingly difficult to introduce. So state capitalism may have an important role to play.
In 1918, Lenin enumerated the five types of “socio-economic structures” that existed in Russia at the time. These were:
1) patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;
2) small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);
3) private capitalism;
4) state capitalism;
5) socialism.[28]
Of these categories he said, “It is not state capitalism that is at war with socialism, but the petty bourgeoisie plus private capitalism fighting together against both state capitalism and socialism.”
State capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat has three basic functions. First it is a method of instituting national accounting and control by the workers’ state over existing capitalist institutions. This is accomplished mainly by the state control of credit, raw materials, transport, and markets. Secondly, it is a method of accelerating the transition from petty to large-scale production. This is done largely through the institution of small producer and retailer co-operatives. Third, and most important, it is a transitional form from capitalism to socialism.
Lenin further points out that state capitalism is not only a method for encouraging and controlling capitalist development. When it is under the firm control of the proletarian state it becomes an effective method for restricting and combating the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.[29] Under the dictatorship of the proletariat an important aspect of state capitalism is that it becomes a transitional form from a capitalist economy to a socialist one. Lenin describes such state capitalist forms as mixed companies, capitalist concessions, and commission trade as “capitalism + socialism”, or as a “new phenomenon”, which is neither capitalism or socialism, but rather a transitional form.
Lenin advocated a dual policy toward the capitalists:
On the one hand, we must ruthlessly suppress the uncultured capitalists who refuse to have anything to do with “state capitalism”, or to consider any form of compromise and who continue ... to hinder the realisation of the measures taken by the Socialists. On the other hand, we must use the method of compromise, or of buying off the cultured capitalists who agree to state capitalism and who are useful to the proletariat as intelligent and experienced organizers of the largest type of enterprise, which actually supply products to tens of millions of people.[30]
Lenin also outlined the circumstances under which state capitalism could be put into effect. These were:
First: the seizure of state power, headed by the working class under the leadership of the Communist Party;
Second: the existence of an independent worker’s militia, sufficiently powerful to smash the military resistance or subversion of the capitalists;
Third: that the commanding heights and lifelines of the economy be in the hands of the state.
Fourth: that some “cultured” capitalists are willing to co-operate in state capitalism under the control of the worker’s state;
Fifth: that the international alignment of class forces be such as to preclude large-scale intervention or aggression by the forces of imperialism.
All of Lenin’s conditions for the use of state capitalism existed in China in 1949. The Japanese and the Kuomintang had been defeated militarily. The People’s Liberation Army was in control of the country. Comprador and bureaucrat capital had been expropriated and these constituted the decisive and by far the largest sectors of the economy. The national bourgeoisie with its long history of anti-imperialist struggle, was prepared to cooperate with the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. And perhaps most importantly, the protection and support of the Soviet Union precluded likelihood of any large-scale imperialist intervention.
The Communist Party of China’s decision to utilize state capitalism under these circumstances was perfectly correct and in line with Leninist norms. A variety of state capitalist forms were utilized in China. The forms tended to change over time, reflecting advances in the fight to transform the economy. The earlier and lower forms were largely state orders for the processing of state-owned raw materials and for the manufacture of finished products. During this period the connections between the socialist and capitalist sectors were mainly in the sphere of circulation. The state utilized the state’s control of capital or loans, raw materials, and marketing, to effectively control capitalist development. Through its control of taxation, prices, and the distribution of profit, it also controlled the rate of exploitation. The WuFan campaign (1951-52) stripped the national bourgeoisie of much of its economic and political power, laying the basis for accelerated expropriation of the private sector by the state. As a result of these measures and the growing preponderance of the socialist sector of the economy, the capitalist sector found itself dependent on the socialist one. Capitalists more and more lost unfettered managerial control of “their” companies, which were constantly being drawn into the orbit of state planning. By 1956, the highest form of state capitalism, mixed enterprises (that is, part state ownership-part private) was the dominant form. This represented an important change in the relations of production. Having achieved mixed enterprises, the state proceeded to systematically buy out the national bourgeoisie. (See Appendix 2.)
It should not be thought that the period just described was a walk in the park. On the contrary, it represented a bitter and hard-fought battle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie on what Lenin described as the fundamental point of the transition, “who will win”. It showed that state capitalism does not sell out class struggle but that under the right circumstances (as outlined above) it can be extremely advantageous to the proletariat. In this case the national bourgeoisie were literally their own gravediggers. From the above description we feel that it is obvious that the participation of the national bourgeoisie in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship was a positive feature which made the transition to socialism relatively peaceful.
Dogmatists like Jim Washington and the Party of Labor of Albania would do well to remember what Lenin said of Marx in the context of the transition to socialism:
Marx did not commit himself or the future leaders of the socialist revolution to matters of form, to ways and means of bringing about the revolution. He understood that a vast number of new problems would arise, that the whole situation would change in the course of the revolution, and the situation would change radically and often in the course of revolution.[31]
The use by the proletariat of the national bourgeoisie in the transition to socialism in China was a new way to solve such a “new problem”. To demand complete exclusion of the national bourgeoisie from participation in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, given the history of the Chinese national bourgeoisie, would have been to narrow the allies of the proletariat at the time, especially since large-scale bourgeois democratic tasks remained to be accomplished. But this is what, in retrospect, Jim Washington would have us do: that is, undo the successful transition to socialism in China in the name of a supposedly inviolable principle. The facts are that after 1949 the proletariat allowed the national bourgeoisie to take part in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship and to exercise some, very limited power during the period; the proletariat, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, moved step by step to regulate, restrict, and finally expropriate the national bourgeoisie and thereby liquidate the economic basis for its power as a class.
While firmly defending the Communist Party of China on these points, we do not mean to imply that we have no criticisms of the party in this area. For example, the Communist Party of China has not been consistent in its accounts of the stages in the revolution since 1949. Different sources give different dates for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and there is inconsistency on whether the People’s Democratic Dictatorship was or was not a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.[32] There also seems to be a discrepancy between the realities of power and what the Communist Party of China’s propaganda proclaimed. For example, while Chinese propaganda and agitation referred often to the sharing of power by the classes under the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, under the leadership of the working class, all accounts indicate that the Communist Party of China was so firmly in control that the share of power allotted to other classes, particularly to the national bourgeoisie, was insignificant. This is of course the kind of discrepancy which in a way speaks well for the party, since it really had more power than it said it had. Still it is better not to allow room for opportunism or be accused of deception by issuing propaganda which, from what we can tell, embellishes the roles actually played by the other classes.
But deficiencies like these are a minor blemish on a fine record of applying Marxism-Leninism to the realities of China and making the transition to socialism for one quarter of mankind. The puny criticisms raised 30 years late by the Party of Labor of Albania and its supporters can never undo this accomplishment.
[1] Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 21-28 (abbreviated as: LCW 8.21-28). See also LCW 2.119-21, 4.242-54, 6.47-51, 6.56-58.
[2] LCW 16.379.
[3] LCW 20.376.
[4] LCW 15.360.
[5] LCW 11.375.
[6] LCW 8.328-29.
[7] LCW 23.299-300.
[8] LCW 23.303.
[9] LCW 23.304.
[10] LCW 23.305. Cf. Dittmer, Liu Shao-Chi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, p 65.
[11] LCW 23.324.
[12] LCW 23.340-41.
[13] LCW 24.39.
[14] LCW 25.191.
[15] LCW 26.59-68.
[16] Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 348 (abbreviated as: Mao, SW 2.348).
[17] LCW 31.242.
[18] Mao, SW 2.346.
[19] “In present day China, the Anti-Japanese united front represents the new-democratic form of state.” Mao, SW 2.351.
[20] Peking Review, Jan. 20, 1961, pp. 9-10, “Distinctions and Link Up Between the Two Stages of the Chinese Revolution” by Shih Tung Hsiang.
[21] The term “New Democracy” continued to be used occasionally (see Mao, SW 4.420).
[22] Mao, SW 4.415.
[22a] Within our group differences exist on some points made here.
[23] Mao, SW 4.419.
[24] Mao, SW 4.421.
[25] Mao, SW 4.417.
[26] Mao, SW 2.290-91.
[27] LCW 32.345.
[28] LCW 27.335-36. For the conditions for the use of state capitalism, see LCW 33.263-309. Also 33.60-79, 83-116, 418-32, 472-80.
[29] LCW 32.491.
[30] LCW 27.345.
[31] LCW 27.343.
[32] In “On New Democracy” Mao stresses the differences between the dictatorship of the proletariat and “republics under the joint dictatorship of several revolutionary classes.” Mao, SW 2.350.