This paper has, by and large, defended the theory and practice of the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Tse-tung on the transition to socialism in China, in particular the “controversial” theory of New Democracy. In doing so we have shown the inadequacy of the main theses on China contained in Jim Washington’s pamphlet on the Chinese and Albanian revolutions and refuted many of the arguments and “facts” cited in support of them. At the same time we have noted certain erroneous tendencies and mistakes that occurred in the CPC during the period 1949-1960, not excluding Mao Tse-tung himself in this regard.
In this last section of the paper we will outline our tentative views on the seeds or roots of revisionism within the CPC. That is, we will look at errors already mentioned, as well as others, in terms of their significance for the future reversal which the Chinese revolution suffered in 1976 when the Teng-Hua clique came to power. In this section we will by and large present our tentative conclusions with little of the evidence on which they are based, since our primary concern in this paper lies elsewhere; namely, in an examination and defense of Mao and the CPC on the transition to socialism along with a polemic against J. Washington’s attack on the Chinese revolution.
Our approach is to start with and give adequate consideration to the concrete conditions the Chinese revolutionaries faced, in particular the objective difficulties confronting the CPC. Those analyses, such as the PLA’s, which dismiss Mao and the CPC as “bourgeois democrats” give little or no significance to such factors. But to do so is to rest one’s analysis on an idealist foundation rather than a materialist one.
As the Soviet Union once was, China is a peasant-majority country.[1] The working class in China has always been a very small percentage of the population, and the CPC has had a low proportion of working class members, particularly after 1927 when it became necessary to concentrate work in the countryside in order to avoid the total liquidation of the party. By 1956, for example, workers made up only 14% of party membership, while peasants accounted for 69%. In 1957, the figures were respectively 13.7% and 66.8% (the number of intellectuals having increased, the percentages for workers and peasants had gone down).[2]
As Lenin noted, the peasantry considered as a whole is a social force which continuously generates capitalist tendencies and practices, the result of its small-producer existence, and this has always posed a great danger for the working class and its party in peasant-majority countries. This danger was certainly to be found among the Chinese peasantry, which was an even greater percentage of the population than it was in Russia.
Of course, it must be noted that the CPC, like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, did not write off the peasantry as one reactionary mass, as some “orthodox” Marxists did at the time.[3] Rather, the CPC diligently investigated the peasantry over a long period of time and arrived at correct policies to differentiate among strata of the peasantry, help channel its immense force toward the successful resolution of its contradictions with Chinese and foreign reactionaries, and eventually was able to rely on it as the main (though not the leading) force in the revolution.
As Mao once put it, while some, like Borodin, a Comintern representative in China, had a low opinion of the potential of the Chinese peasantry, the CPC thought something could be done with human beings who were forced to strip bark from the trees twelve feet above the ground in order to “eat”.
However, the main point here is that the working class and its leadership, the CPC, were immersed in a sea of non-proletarians. And among the Chinese peasantry there were strong feudal influences (e.g. Confucianism), a very low literacy rate, and other problems of a formidable nature.[4]
A second important objective condition was the capitalist sea ringing most of China. Like Russia, China confronted the enormous forces of imperialism determined to crush the revolution. In the case of China, imperialism was able to retain one province, Taiwan, as a major base from which to launch missions of espionage, propaganda, surveillance, etc.
Fortunately, the Chinese revolution did have a great socialist state adjacent to and supporting it. With the degeneration of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, however, this support turned into its opposite, and China was virtually surrounded by hostile forces (N. Korea an exception). This increased the pressures on Chinese society, both ideologically and materially. It meant capitalism had the advantage of penetrating by both the front and the back door; that is, openly as capitalism from the West and covertly as “socialism” from the Soviet Union.
Even without going any further, the above points indicate the CPC faced quite difficult odds in constructing and maintaining an advanced socialist society. Ultimately, socialism was defeated in China–for how long is difficult to say–as it had been in the Soviet Union. These reversals gave new life in some people’s minds to the question: Can socialism be constructed and defended in individual, peasant-majority countries in an imperialist-dominated world?
Our answer is that socialism was constructed in both countries–and others as well–with distortions and deficiencies, but socialism nonetheless. Not only that, but the further answer to this Trotskyist question is that the attempt to build socialism in one’s own country was the only course to take. The Trotskyist line to stake all on a more-or-less simultaneous European-wide or worldwide socialist revolution was bankrupt when put forward from within the CPSU by Trotsky in the 1920s and it is bankrupt today. This line was rejected by the Soviet people after extensive debate in the late 1920s, and the construction of socialism in the USSR proved them correct. We see no need to resurrect this viewpoint today. Such a line of course does not rule out military aid to revolutionary movements not in power; in fact, to give such aid is an elementary aspect of proletarian internationalism. But it does rule out the glib sacrifice of the revolution in one country for the possibility of revolution in “more important” countries.
We rule out another line of thinking, one that has some currency today. This view holds that because a revolution suffered a grave reversal, the policies of the party or leading revolutionaries (Stalin or Mao, for example) must have been completely responsible for the defeat. But the degree of responsibility of the Communists can only be decided after a thorough study of all the particulars.
It is true, as Lenin argued, that under socialism, politics or line is very critical, decisive. This is because under socialism, unlike under capitalism, the class in power has the means to go about more or less rationally and consciously re-organizing society. It is able to formulate policies and carry them out, in close connection with the masses, so as to transform society.
But this does not mean that the policies pursued, even if generally correct, can always triumph. As Mao wrote:
In the social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later. (“Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?”)
It is only by keeping this in mind that an objective evaluation of the leadership in China, as well as in the Soviet Union can be reached. The Chinese attempted this with Stalin and the CPSU, arriving at the view that overall Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist though “30 percent” of his work was wrong or harmful.[5] While not agreeing with the attempt to quantify such a question, we agree with the thrust of these remarks. The restoration of capitalism in Russia cannot simply be ascribed to “Stalin’s mistakes”. Similarly, only a thorough and serious study of the Chinese experience can arrive at a sound estimate of the responsibility of Mao Tse-tung and the CPC.[6] We have not seen such an analysis, though we have seen contributions to it. We view our study here and the National Joint Study as a whole as an effort partially directed at resolving this question.
Following the Rectification Campaign of 1942-44, the “thought of Mao Tse-tung” was accorded great prestige and authority in China, and at the Seventh Congress in 1945 the CPC formally stated that it “takes the theories of Marxism-Leninism and the unified thought of the practice of the Chinese Revolution, the thought of Mao Tse-tung, as the guideline for all its actions.”[7] In the following years in China “Mao Tse-tung Thought” was given varying emphases in relation to Marxism-Leninism.
Certainly Mao made enormous contributions to revolutionary theory and practice, and it was correct for the CPC to popularize this, especially his contributions to the Chinese revolution. A 1964 Jenmin jihpao editorial stated:
The thought of Mao Tse-tung is one which, in the era moving toward the collapse of imperialism and the victory of socialism, in the great revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people, united the universal truths of Marxism-Leninism with the practice of revolution and construction in China and creatively developed Marxism-Leninism. Our proletarian revolutionary successors must be real Marxist-Leninists and thus must firmly and unflaggingly study the works of Mac Tse-tung, actively learn and actively use the thought of Mao Tse-tung.[8]
However, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and afterwards, Mao Tse-tung Thought (MTT) was not only trumpeted as a guide to the revolutionaries of all countries, but it was said to be “infallible”, the “sole guide”, and to represent a “new stage” in the development of dialectical and historical materialism.
Many of us are familiar with the excesses that resulted, such as the slogan, “China’s Chairman is Our Chairman” (proclaimed most notably by the Hardial Bains clique in Canada); the adoption by many U.S. M-L groups of MTT as the basis of their activity, including the mechanical transfer to our situation of such things as the “three magic weapons”.
Today, most if not all of those spreading the poison of the “theory of three worlds” claim to be marching under the banner of MTT, and in fact Mao shares some of the responsibility for the growth and influence of this theory. He supported the division into three worlds and failed to polemicize against viewing it as the international strategy of the communist movement.[9]
For these reasons we think it was a serious mistake for the CPC to magnify the contributions of Mao as they did in canonizing MTT–going so far as to print his words in bold type, as the Christians do for Jesus Christ. The world communist movement continues to be guided by Marxism-Leninism, while we must recognize the great contributions Mao made to the development of the science, along with contributions of other revolutionary parties and leaders.
In the U.S., as well as other countries, those who uphold MTT have relied heavily in recent years on the principle “Unite all who can be united!” In fact it is this “principle” which forms the primary theoretical basis, such as it is, for the “strategy of the theory of three worlds”.[10] But this concept, stated in such a way, has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism. All bourgeois politicians attempt the same thing. It is what Jimmy Carter as well as Ronald Reagan aim to do. The “principle” omits the key thing: on what basis are allies to be united?
Mao did at times utilize this concept, and in doing so he helped spread confusion on Marxist tactics, a serious error. But Mao more often outlined the content he intended that principle to convey, as when he said:
Our tactics are guided by one and the same principle: to make use of contradictions, win over the many, oppose the few, and crush our enemies one by one. (Mao, Selected Works 2.443-44)
And:
With regard to the alignment of the various classes within the country, our basic policy is to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, and isolate the anti-Communist diehard forces. (SW 2.442)
One sound point about this approach is the attempt to win over middle or vacillating forces. This represents an improvement on Stalin’s pre-1935 approach which was to aim the main blow at the middle forces.[11] But in correcting this leftist mistake by Stalin, Mao helped cover for Rightist views, as in the concept under consideration, “unite all who can be united”. This is particularly surprising and unfortunate since Mao took tremendous pains to investigate the concrete conditions, ascertain the stage or stages in processes, differentiate the class and other forces involved, and devise generally correct tactics time after time.
In sum, Mao’s practice and his own presentation of his theoretical basis in this area are much sounder than the tactical principle, which he helped popularize, “unite all who can be united”.
Another important area of ideological weakness stems from Soviet influence on Chinese development, particularly economic development. As has been noted by others, there was a tendency to downplay the importance of continuing to revolutionize the relations of production during the course of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and to put one-sided emphasis on the development of the forces of production, particularly emphasizing technique and heavy industry. Mao explicitly criticized Stalin and the Soviets in this area;[12] however, many in the Chinese party were influenced by the Soviet model, including through the Soviet advisors in China, and in the early and mid-1950s struggles took place in China which finally led the Chinese party along roads of development more suited to their conditions even before the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1960.[13]
From the above it is evident that there were definite ideological weaknesses in the CPC and, moreover, that they were of a kind that would lead to Right errors generally, when deviations occurred, rather than “Left” errors. Politically, “unite all who can be united” errs on the side of all unity, no struggle. Economically, the influence of the “theory of productive forces” also leads to Rightist policies and ultimately toward the restoration of capitalism. It should be noted that the Right danger was likely to be greater in the CPC since its leadership had emerged after the three major struggles against “Left” lines in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Our study has not focused on this question, however, we do have some initial views based on our study of this period (1949-1960) as well as other study we have done.
To put it briefly, there has been considerable inner-party struggle over line throughout the existence of the CPC, and repeated battles to rid the party of erroneous lines, practices, and attitudes. In our view, the CPC has struggled as hard as any other party to rid itself of erroneous tendencies, factions, etc. However, there has been a decided weakness in taking corresponding organizational measures to carry through the purging of the party. One bourgeois source estimates the annual attrition rate at less than five percent, which he calls “low.”[14] “Curing the sickness to save the patient” is not an anti-Marxist principle, as some would have it, but as practiced in China it has meant leniency toward Rightist elements, and this leniency finally was a major factor in the emergence of Teng Hsiao Ping and Hua Kuo-Feng and the purging of the Left in the party in the late 1970s.
This weakness in taking firm organizational measures can be attributed to several main factors. The Chinese party had been factionalized during the 1920s and 1930s, though no major split took place. The Chinese were eager, by 1942, when the Rectification Campaign began, to end this state of affairs. In struggling against the method of “merciless blows” delivered by some of the earlier “Leftists”, it appears the party, under Mao’s leadership, went too far in the other direction. Another factor, related to the above, was the influence of Soviet experience in the 1920s and 1930s on the Chinese party. It is generally agreed that the Chinese leaders made great efforts to avoid the excesses of the purges that took place under Stalin in the Soviet Union. Some of those with whom the leadership of the party under Mao struggled had been strongly influenced by Soviet practices and methods, in inner-party struggle as elsewhere, and it was the aim of the Rectification Campaign to set inner-party struggle on a sound footing, taking the Russian experience into account.
Another factor that may be mentioned in this connection, of lesser scope but suggestive, is the idea that “90% of the people are good”.[15] This notion was propagated by Mao on more than one occasion, and in reference to a variety of contexts (that is, the world as a whole, China, etc.). The use of the moral criterion and the extreme generality of the statement can give rise to loose thinking and Rightist practices. To decide whether at a given time “90%” of the party cadres are “good” or not requires knowledge of the party and current conditions, and it should not be left to a general principle like this one.
In the history of the party, as touched on above, we do think there were factions up until the Rectification Campaign in the early 1940s. Prior to that there were definite groupings in the party: around Chen Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san, and Wang Ming, for example. The Cheng Feng campaign carried out during WWII did much to resolve this problem.
After taking power in 1949, the party was on the whole unified, all things considered, and not rent by factional activity, until the early 1960s. We find absolutely no evidence for J. Washington’s contention that there was a Liu-Teng wing of the party from 1949 on, and Washington offers no evidence himself. In fact this obviously was not the case, as Liu and Teng took varying positions on important matters, oftentimes siding with Mao. What factional activity there was was found in the Kao Kang and Peng Teh-huai episodes, but they were not representative of party life in the 1950s.[16]
It is true that around the Eighth Congress of the CPC in 1956 a Rightist line became dominant within the party and made its imprint in a number of ways at the Congress. However, Mao and the other truly revolutionary elements were able to reverse this situation a year later at the Third Plenum, and, following that in the Anti-Rightist campaign and the Great Leap Forward. It should be noted, though, that at this time Mao agreed to, and may have suggested, the division of the leadership into two “lines”, which thrust Liu and Teng into more prominence in carrying out daily work, while Mao and others devoted more efforts to theoretical and other work which placed them more in the background. Mao was later self-critical, if the Schram text can be believed, for going along with this division into “two lines”.[17]
In the Rectification Campaign of 1957-58, we believe that while polemics, both written and oral, were very sharp at times, the organizational measures taken were overall quite lenient. This campaign is a good example of how the party waged ideological struggle in a militant way but did not follow up with the necessary purgative measures.[18]
In terms of organization there is another important factor that needs to be mentioned. The CPC, like all the other communist parties after the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, was basically on its own. Actually, the Comintern had ceased functioning as a democratic centralist international organization a couple of years before that, and the increase in centrifugal tendencies can be traced back to the Seventh World Congress in 1935, when Dimitrov and other Comintern leaders sanctioned greater independence by the parties. After 1943, the CPC, like other parties, still had the one socialist state to look toward for guidance and support, and like all the other parties, the CPC did so–to some extent. But the absence of an international communist organization inevitably bred nationalist tendencies in the communist parties, and the CPC was no exception. This was compounded by a serious problem of Chinese chauvinism, the tradition of viewing China as the center of the world (“the middle kingdom”).
Still, it is to the great credit of Mao and the Left in the CPC that they, along with the PLA, were able to go against the tide of revisionism in the 1950s and 1960s, a tide which rolled over the great majority of communist parties. The historic polemics launched by the CPC in 1963 are testimony to this fact. Yet the CPC in the 1970s was unable to hold out and succumbed itself.
We believe it is in the above-mentioned areas of ideology and organization that we find the seeds or roots of the errors of political line that became so apparent in the 1970s and of the revisionism that came to power in 1976. The sources of many major and minor errors of political line stem from the weaknesses in these areas of ideology and organization. Too often, thus far, in analyses by the Marxist-Leninist movement of such gross deviations as the “theory of three worlds”, attention is focused on the political line errors themselves, and their roots not touched on. This is an example of making political line key–with a vengeance–as if the line had a life of its own or the wrong ideas somehow popped into a leader’s head, ignoring or misunderstanding the underlying ideological errors from which the deviation sprang and the organizational errors that allowed them to take hold and flourish.
We recognize that many errors of line were made by the CPC, on both a large and a small scale. The same is true of the Soviet experience. The committing of such errors is inevitable in such a vast undertaking as the transition to socialism in a large country, since the party and society as a whole are made up of individual human beings with their own weaknesses and strengths, and not of pure, perfect, undeviating communists, as some of our “Bolsheviks” contend. In our view the errors that were made took place within a generally correct approach to stages in the revolution, the correct theory of New Democracy, the improvements in line on the collectivization of agriculture and a more balanced development of industry based on learning from the Soviet experience, the advanced experience of the practice of the mass line and continuing the class struggle under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and so on. Those who dismiss the rich experience of socialist construction in China at the wave of Hoxha’s baton give evidence of many things which have been wrong with the new communist movement these past 10-12 years. Two of these are a continuing strong tendency towards flunkeyism among many groups and the vacillation and lack of consistent principle stemming from the petty-bourgeois composition of this movement.
[1] The working class makes up 61.6 percent of the population and the peasantry 15.7 percent in the Soviet Union, according to “USSR: Facts and Figures”, published by Novosti Press Agency, 1978.
[2] See Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, p. 132. J. Guillermaz is on target in citing the following factors: “Its (the proletariat’s) numerical weakness, the Party’s stiff criteria for admission after 1949, and the fact that the towns were slow to come under Communist control explain this anomaly, which was relative, however, for peasants were five times as numerous as workers in the Party but were thirty times as numerous in the nation as a whole.” (p. 131)
[3] See for example Lenin’s remarks on the working peasants. (em>CW 27.311)
[4] The Soviet revisionist E. Korbash gives at least some minimal attention to the objective difficulties confronting the Chinese revolution in his book, The Economic “Theories” of Maoism, pp. 8-9. The attack on CPC economic policy, while quite wrongheaded, is much more detailed and “documented” than anything the PLA has published. (In passing, it may be worth noting that Hoxha’s description of Mao’s ideology is quite similar to Korbash’s: “eclectic and pragmatic, comprising elements of the most diverse doctrines (like Confucianism, Marxism, Utopian socialism, idealism, populism, anarchism, and Trotskyism)”. (Korbash, p. 9))
[5] See, for example, Mao Selected Works, 5.304.
[6] In this connection, what should be said of those–like the PLA and their followers in various countries, as well as those minor forces who throw out the PLA as well–who laud Stalin to the skies and exempt him from any responsibility for the defects of socialism in the USSR while at the same time assuming it’s obvious that Mao was primarily responsible for a similar setback in China? It should be said that such people are suffering from schizophrenia due to religious dogmatism.
[7] Schurmann, p. 2Iff.
[8] Schurmann, pp. 26-27.
[9] Lenin and Stalin at times divided the world on a basis other than the class rule in each country (for example, for a rough economic approach to the situation). In doing this much, Mao was not in error. But in some of the policies Mao followed as a development of this division into three, Mao did make Rightist mistakes. For example, the opening to Nixon and the U.S. in 1971 when firm adherence to the principles of proletarian internationalism would have prevented such tactics during the fierce bombing of North Vietnam. But it remained for Teng and Peking Review #45 to extrapolate from the original division into three worlds and the Rightist deviations Mao made to the full-blown, reactionary “strategy” of the “theory of three worlds”. Most anti-three worlds analyses fail to recognize that Mao was not mistaken in his approach and method in, and had historical precedent for, upholding the rough division of countries into three based on their economic level. (For the historical precedents see Peking Review #45 (1976).
[10] The National Network of Marxist-Leninist Clubs mistakenly claims that the thesis of capitalist restoration provides the theoretical basis for the theory of three worlds. See for example Goldfield and Rothenberg, The Myth of Capitalism Reborn, pp. ii, iii, 105. The Rightist (not “Leftist”, as the NNMLC strangely proclaims) deviations of Chinese foreign policy are based primarily in misunderstandings of united and popular front tactics.
[11] Compare On the Roots of Revisionism, pp. 161-63.
[12] Mao Tse-Tung, A Critique of Soviet Economics, Monthly Review Press.
[13] Andors, China’s Industrial Revolution, Chapter 3.
[14] Lewis, p. 113.
[15] See, for example, Mao SW 5. 500, and “Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism” (1963).
[16] We would add here that we are critical of the CPC, as of virtually every other CP, for not making available to communists outside the country, even now, sufficient documents to allow a serious and thorough study of some of these struggles. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the Cultural Revolution, when a number of documents the CPC had not released and would not release were distributed by the Red Guards, our knowledge of Peng Teh-huai’s views would be as sketchy as it still is about Lin Piao. Unlike the Soviets under Lenin, and for a period under Stalin, the Chinese have not published extensive polemics by both sides of disputes.
[17] Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, p. 266.
[18] We found other evidence of leniency, both inside and outside the party. During WuFan, for example, punishment of those members of the national bourgeoisie who were guilty was largely limited to financial measures. Again, after the Anti-Rightist campaign most Rightists were later rehabilitated. However, it is primarily organizational leniency by the party towards “comrades” like Teng Hsiao-Ping that gave the Right a continuing base inside the party and helped divert the Chinese revolution toward the “Teng-heap” it is currently mired in.