The U.S. neo-revisionist trend has two roots. This trend represents in essence the merger of two traditions:
a) Chinese revisionism and “three worlds-ism” and
b) American Browderite liberal-labor and social-democratic politics.
These two trends have proved capable of merging themselves very snugly into a single harmonious, if utterly corrupt, whole. Investigation shows that this is because Mao Zedong Thought and its offspring, the theory of “three worlds,” are saturated with theses reminiscent of the social-democracy of the Second International. These two traditions of Browderism and Chinese revisionism have not only merged recently, they have merged before in the mutual support of Mao Zedong and the ultra-revisionist Browder. And today the Chinese leadership is openly following in the footsteps of the arch-renegade and traitor Browder as shown in the development of the warmongering U.S.-China alliance.
Below, we reproduce a speech prepared by the editorial staff of The Workers’ Advocate as the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists’ [the predecessor of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA] contribution to a study session on Mao Zedong Thought.
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As part of the great struggle of the world’s Marxist-Leninists against Chinese revisionism, a struggle which requires the demolition of the revisionist myth of Mao Zedong Thought, we would like to share with you part of some investigation which COUSML has recently carried out. This work further demonstrates the fact that Mao Zedong Thought has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism, and that this revisionist ”Thought” stands on common ground with the extreme social-democratic opportunism of the notorious American revisionist Earl Browder.
Mao Zedong Thought is an eclectic amalgam of assorted anti-Marxist-Leninist ideologies. Mao Zedong Thought has borrowed heavily from the doctrines of Kautsky and the yellow Second International as well as from the later revisionist betrayers of communism: Bukharin, Browder, Tito, Khrushchov, etc. Thus, this so-called “Thought” is imbued with a number of basic theses which are classically social-democratic and right opportunist in character.
It is well known that Mao Zedong’s sycophants in the U.S., the “three worldist” revisionists, are clustered into a number of extreme right opportunist sects, thoroughly imbued with the liberal-labor and reformist politics of the imperialist labor aristocracy. In essence these opportunists belong to two traditions: a) They comprise a contingent of the international opportunist trend of Chinese revisionism, based on the anti-Marxist-Leninist dogmas of the “three worlds” theory and Mao Zedong Thought; and b) They are the true heirs to the mantle of Earl Browder, faithful adherents to Browderite American great-power chauvinism and social-democratic liberal-labor, reformist politics and ideology. Furthermore, examination of these two revisionist traditions shows that they have common features; that the revisionism of Browder and that of Mao Zedong have appreciated each other in the past and converge on common revisionist positions and share a common historical development.
Browderism emerged within and set about seriously corroding the Communist Party of the USA in the mid-1930’s, in the same years that so-called Mao Zedong Thought triumphed within the Communist Party of China. Browder was the most despicable renegade to the American working class. It was under Browder that the Party of the proletariat, the CPUSA, was disbanded in 1944. Browderism also emerged before and during World War II in a number of other parties in the western hemisphere and elsewhere. Browderism fully matured as a revisionist distortion of Marxism-Leninism under the conditions of the emergence of U.S. imperialism as the most powerful imperialism and the undisputed leader of the imperialist camp. And this revisionism was particularly tailored and constructed to serve the global plans of U.S. imperialism for complete world domination.
The contemporary convergence of Mao Zedong’s theory of “three worlds” and the revisionism of Browder is obvious and glaring. They share in common their adaptation to the counter-revolutionary global ambitions of U.S. imperialism in particular. Browderism obliterates the fundamental contradiction between capitalism and socialism; denies the class struggle; writes off the revolution and demands that the proletariat and oppressed people seek salvation under the so-called “democratic” slavery of U.S. imperialism. So too with Mao’s anti-Leninist theory of “three worlds.” The formation of the contemporary U.S.-China alliance – justified by the “three worlds” theory – is one of Browder’s pet dreams come true. Undoubtedly. Browder’s specter was dancing over both of the Nixon-Mao tete-a-tetes. For his part, Mao sought the counter-revolutionary U.S.China alliance for the realization of his own dream, to turn China into a powerful social-imperialist state.
But our investigation shows that Mao’s search for this alliance did not begin in 1971 or in 1972. On the contrary, during the Second World War and after its conclusion, Mao Zedong turned to U.S. imperialism for salvation. And the ever pragmatic line and policy pursued by Mao and the Communist Party of China coincided with the revisionist line and policy of Browder at that time too. The examination of this all too revealing chapter in the chaotic development of the CPC provides further insight into the social-democratic features and the revisionist essence of Mao Zedong Thought.
During World War II, besides a pro-Chiang Kai-shek lobby, a pro-Mao Zedong lobby emerged within the U.S. State Department, within the U.S. military departments and inside and outside the Senate and other government bodies. The State Department men appointed to the U.S. embassy in China during the first years of the war were among those who sought a “realistic” approach to Mao. The advocates of this policy held that not only Chiang Kai-shek, but also Mao Zedong could be turned into a useful instrument of U.S. imperialist policy in China and Asia. John Service, deputy to the U.S. ambassador and subsequently attached to U.S. military headquarters, was, according to the U.S. ambassador to China, the U.S. imperialists’ “governmental authority on Chinese Communism.” (see Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service, p. xvii) In 1944, after long and intimate discussions with Mao and the other leaders of the CPC in Yenan, Service wrote his superiors that it was not only the Kuomintang but also the Chinese Communists who “are friendly to the United States and look to it for the salvation of the country, now and after the war,” adding that “the parallel with Yugoslavia has been drawn before but is becoming more and more apt.” (Ibid., pp. 164-65)
And, in fact, a survey of Mao’s writings at the time shows that Mao did indeed look to U.S. imperialism for salvation. This is also confirmed by the reports and interviews provided by the U.S. imperialist diplomats and journalists in contact with the CPC leaders – including those diplomats and journalists favored by the Chinese leaders themselves and used by them as spokesmen, for example, Edgar Snow, John S. Service, etc. It is also the case that Mao was more than eager to play the role of a Chinese Tito. In particular, Mao Zedong agreed with Earl Browder about the prospects for the emergence of a democratic capitalist China under the wing of U.S. imperialism. In no uncertain terms, Mao Zedong told the Americans that the Communist Party of China preferred U.S. imperialism and its system of “democracy” as opposed to a “one-party dictatorship” and “the type of communism practiced in Russia.” According to Service, Mao considered a U.S. land invasion of China absolutely necessary for the liberation war against Japan, stressing that “We think the Americans must land in China” and that “any contact you Americans have with us Communists is good.” (Ibid., p. 304) As for the socialist Soviet Union, Mao told the Americans:
The Russians have suffered greatly in the war and will have their hands full with their own job of rebuilding. We do not expect Russian help.
Furthermore, the KMT because of its anti-communist phobia is anti-Russian. Therefore KMT-Soviet cooperation is impossible. And for us to seek it would only make the situation in China worse. China is disunified enough already! (Ibid., p. 306)
As Mao expressed it, since the Soviet Union was ravaged by the war, the hopes of the CPC had to be placed on the rising star of U.S. imperialism, its military might and its all-powerful dollar.
Regarding the ideological position of the CPC, the so-called “greatest Marxist-Leninist” Mao told the American journalists in 1944:
We accept critically the long tradition of China – inheriting that which is good and rejecting that which is bad. We do the same with things coming from abroad. We have accepted such things as Darwinism; the democracy exemplified by Washington and Lincoln; the eighteenth-century philosophy of France; the materialism of Feuerbach; Marxism from Germany; and Leninism from Russia. We accept anything from abroad that can be good for and useful to China. We reject bad things, such as Fascism. Such things as the type of Communism practiced in Russia are not to be adopted in China, for the conditions in China are not ripe. Conditions are not present for the introduction of Communism. (Ibid., p. 256)
Such is the anti-communist sophistry and eclectics which Mao cooked up to serve his American guests. This is the crystalization of the real meaning of Mao’s slogan “make foreign things serve China.” This is a frank confession on Mao’s part as much as to say that: I am an unbridled pragmatist. If it is good and useful to China, I will take it. A little French philosophy here, a little German Marxism there, a dash of Leninism from Russia (only for red coloring of course), and the democracy exemplified by the American capitalists, blended with a heavy dose of “traditional Chinese” doctrines is just the kind of stew which will nourish the future Chinese imperialist state. As for the present, we accept American “democracy” and we will go in for the U.S. imperialist’s anti-communist propaganda and declare that we reject bad things such as fascism and “the type of communism practiced in Russia.” Such is the frank opportunism of Mao Zedong Thought.
For Mao, like Browder and all the revisionist apologists of U.S. imperialism, so-called American democracy was their ideal. As Browder expressed it:
“The Party goal of socialism was defined as an organic continuation of Jeffersonian democratic principles.” (Browder Talks!, “Why I am not a Communist,” 1952) That is to say that the emancipation of the exploited and oppressed can be realized through the extension of so-called “American democracy” as if the so-called ’’American democracy” of the 20th century was not completely subordinated to the interests of the parasitic financial oligarchy, and was not the ever more hollow shell of the savage dictatorship of monopoly capital. As if the “organic continuation” of “American democracy” had not proved to be political reaction all along the line, a characteristic feature of imperialist “democracy.” And Mao, like Browder, “overlooked” the fact that even the democracy of Washington and Lincoln, while a model of the bourgeois democracy of the 18th and 19th centuries, nevertheless represented the rule of the exploiting classes, the dictatorship of the capitalist and slave owning minority.
Thus at the time of the departure of the U.S. Vice-President Wallace from China after a tour, on July 4, 1944, the Communist Party of China’s newspaper, Liberation Daily, carried an editorial declaring:
“Democratic America has already found a companion...in the Chinese Communist Party.... The work which we communists are carrying on today is the very same work which was carried on earlier in America by Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln; it will certainly obtain, and indeed has already obtained, the sympathy of democratic America.” (see Schram, Mao Tsetung, pp. 225-26) Mao Zedong took this same theme even further, advising the American military observers that:
every American soldier in China should be a walking and talking advertisement for democracy.... After all, we Chinese consider you Americans the ideal of democracy. (Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service, p. 303)
Thus, Mao Zedong was not steering along the Marxist-Leninist road of the uninterrupted revolution; of carrying out the anti-imperialist bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution as a necessary preparation for the immediate transition to the socialist revolution. This means, in effect, to turn the anti-imperialist, democratic struggle into a means to transform China into a modern capitalist state. Not only that, within the bourgeois democratic future which Mao foresaw for China, U.S. imperialism was to play a major role.
In an interview with Service, Mao assured the Americans that:
The policies of the Chinese Communist Party are merely liberal....
Even the most conservative American businessman can find nothing in our program to take exception to.
China must industrialize. This can be done – in China – only by free enterprise and with the aid of foreign capital. Chinese and American interests are correlated and similar. They fit together, economically and politically....
The United States would find us more cooperative than the Kuomintang. We will not be afraid of democratic American influence – we will welcome it.” (Ibid., p. 306-07)
This line of Mao’s was elaborated in a more theoretical way to Service by a member of the CPC Politbureau, Po Ku, the founder and director of Liberation Daily, and according to a note in Mao’s Selected Works (Vol. III, p. 222, 1965 ed.), working directly under Mao’s leadership. Po Ku explained to Service Mao’s line as follows:
But to try to transplant to China all of Marx’s description of the society in which he found himself...and the steps (class struggle and violent revolution) which he saw would be necessary for the people to escape from those conditions, would not only be ridiculous, it would also be a violation of our basic principles of realistic objectivism and the avoidance of doctrinaire dogmatism.
China at present is not even capitalistic. Its economy is still that of semifeudalism. We cannot advance at one jump to socialism. In fact, because we are at least two hundred years behind most of the rest of the world, we probably cannot hope to reach socialism until after most of the rest of the world has reached that state.
First we must rid ourselves of this semifeudalism. Then we must raise our economic level by a long stage of democracy and free enterprise. What we Communists hope to do is to keep China moving smoothly and steadily toward this goal. By orderly, gradual and progressive development we will avoid the conditions which forced Marx to draw his conclusions of the necessity (in his society) for class struggle: we will prevent the need for a violent revolution by a peaceful planned revolution.
It is impossible to predict how long this process will take. But we can be sure that it will be more than thirty of forty years, and probably more than a hundred years.... (Ibid., pp. 311-12)
In short, a century or more of “free enterprise” so-called was the avowed program of the Communist Party of China according to the “basic principles of realistic objectivism” as elaborated by Po Ku. On the other hand, “doctrinaire dogmatism,” that is to say Marxism-Leninism, which demands the uninterrupted transition to the socialist revolution – without going through a “long stage” of raising the economic level and “free enterprise” – must be avoided like the plague. Only Browder could express himself more clearly in favor of capitalism than Po Ku. As Browder cynically put it:
...we declare in advance our understanding that the democratic-progressive camp to which we adhere will adopt the defense of ’free enterprise,’ that we understand this term as a synonym for capitalism as it exists in our country, and that we will not oppose it nor put forth any counter-slogans. (Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, Browder, 1944, p. 71)
The defenders of Mao Zedong may object that we are being unfair to attribute this scandalous opportunism to Mao and the CPC on the say-so of State Department officials and bourgeois journalists. However, after over 35 years of circulation, the accuracy of these interviews and documents has yet to be challenged, and even Mao Zedong’s friends and admirers quote Service and the others favorably as a reliable source. The “friend of China” Han Suyin, for example, not only freely uses Service’s accounts as a source of “Mao’s thoughts” and praises these accounts as “entrancing,” but she even enthusiastically carries pictures of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai with Service, Barret, and the other emissaries of U.S. imperialism. (Han Suyin, The Morning Deluge, p. 428) Moreover, more importantly, the accuracy of these documents are wholly confirmed by the official documents of the CPC at the time, not only in the Liberation Daily but also in the works of Mao Zedong. Of particular significance here is Mao Zedong’s political report to the 7th Congress of the CPC held in 1945, otherwise known as his article “On Coalition Government.” At the 7th Congress, “Mao Zedong Thought” was formally placed in the Constitution of the Communist Party of China as the theoretical guide to all the Party’s work. And the anti-Marxist-Leninist nature of this Mao Zedong Thought is particularly revealed in Mao’s political report which elaborates his opportunist strategy and tactics.
In this report, Mao Zedong pontificates:
It would be a sheer illusion to try to build a socialist society on the ruins of the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal order without a united new-democratic state, without the development of the state sector of the new-democratic economy, of the private capitalist and the cooperative sectors.... (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 233)
(It should be noted that in the original 1945 translation, the phrase “state sector of the new-democratic economy” is completely absent, leaving only the plan for “the development of a broad private capitalist and cooperative economy.” (The Fight for a New China, New Century Publishers, New York, 1945, p. 38) But in either case this anti-Leninist concept reads the same.) Mao goes on to lecture against “some people (who) fail to understand why, so far from fearing capitalism, Communists should advocate its development,” that “indeed, we have too little capitalism.” Mao even attempts to claim that this opportunist line is required by the Marxist laws of social development, that:
From our knowledge of the Marxist laws of social development, we Communists clearly understand that under the state system of New Democracy in China it will be necessary in the interests of social progress to facilitate the development of the private capitalist sector of the economy.... (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 233)
This system of so-called “New Democracy” which ensures “the growth of private capital and the protection of private property,” was the central ingredient of the “general program” elaborated at the 7th Congress of the CPC. And Mao proclaims that this “general program of New Democracy will remain unchanged throughout the stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, that is, for several decades.” (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 235)
Thus, it is obvious that Po Ku, by way of Service’s interview, elaborated Mao Zedong’s revisionist position exactly. We will leave it to the defenders of Mao Zedong Thought to accuse us of attributing to Mao, Po Ku’s desire for capitalist development for “more than a hundred years.” Oh no, Mao only sought capitalist development for “several decades”!
As mentioned, Mao’s 7th Congress report provides a relatively systematic elaboration of the anti-Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics of Mao Zedong Thought on a whole series of cardinal questions of the revolution. Nevertheless, to get the full flavor of the completely shameless opportunist nature of this report it is necessary to compare the well-doctored current edition with the original translation of 1945. In both editions Mao describes how over a number of years under so-called “New Democracy,” that is, with the growth of the capitalist economy, China will be transformed into an industrial country, how the “Communists are ready to fight for this objective in cooperation with all the democratic parties and industrial circles throughout the country,” and how “both labor and capital will work together to develop industrial production.” (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 253) This is clear enough. But at this point an entire major paragraph has been edited from the original text, a paragraph of particular importance to Mao’s strategy for China’s development. The missing paragraph reads as follows:
Large amounts of capital will be needed for the development of our industries. They will come chiefly from the accumulated wealth of the Chinese people, and at the same time from foreign assistance. We welcome foreign investments if such are beneficial to China’s economy and are made in accordance with China’s laws. Enterprises profitable to both the Chinese people and foreigners are swiftly expanding large-scale light and heavy industries and modernizing agriculture, which can become a reality when there is firm internal and international peace, and when political and agrarian reforms are thoroughly carried out. On this basis, we shall be able to absorb vast amounts of foreign investments. A politically retrogressive and economically impoverished China will be unprofitable not only to the Chinese people, but also to foreigners. (The Fight for a New China, Mao Zedong, New Century Publishers, New York, 1945, p. 62, emphasis added)
This too is crystal clear. Mao was for carrying out the democratic revolution not for the purpose of clearing the path for socialist revolution and development in China, but to clear the way for “several decades” of bourgeois capitalist development in general and for the absorption of “vast amounts of foreign investments” in particular – to make China profitable not only for the Chinese capitalist exploiters but for the foreign imperialist plunderers to boot!
Mao argued that it was only the CPC with its system of “New Democracy,” and not the KMT with its stifling bureaucracy, etc., which could guarantee the highest return on the investments not only of the Chinese bourgeoisie but also those of the foreign bankers and other imperialists sharks. And which imperialists Mao had his eye on is demonstrated by two other paragraphs cut from the original text. The first expresses gratitude to Britain and particularly to the United States “for their sympathy with the Chinese people and their help.” And the second starts with a quotation from the U.S. imperialist President: “The late President Roosevelt once said that the world had shrunk. In fact, the American people, once thought by the Chinese people to be living very far away, are now our next door neighbors.” (Ibid., p. 68)
And finally, there is another set of important passages omitted from the original text, passages which could have been lifted from Browder’s revisionist testament Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace. Speaking of the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance in the war, Mao declares that with “this all-decisive condition, finally demonstrated at the Crimea Conference (Browder’s Teheran – Mao’s Yalta!(Crimea)).... The whole aspect of the world has changed since this condition made its appearance.” (Ibid., p. 7) “We are in a totally new situation.” (Ibid., p. 8) “International problems are to be solved by conferences led by the three or five major nations: internal problems of the various nations will have to be solved, without exception, in accordance with democratic principles.” (Ibid., p. 7)
From these declarations at the 7th Congress of the CPC, the fundamentally opportunist positions which the Chinese leadership had come to at the time were unmistakable. Mao Zedong Thought, this ideology without any Marxist-Leninist backbone, this ideology which formed the basis for extreme zigzags and deviations in the political line of the CPC, had brought the CPC to the edge of the social-democratic revisionist, capitulationist abyss of the arch-renegade Browder. Here it should be pointed out that while Mao Zedong had no appreciation for the work of the great Leninist Stalin nor for that of the Comintern which made invaluable contributions to the development of the Chinese revolution, there is evidence that Mao highly appreciated the renegade Browder. At the time that the American communists overthrew Browder’s leadership and reconstituted the Party in 1945, Mao Zedong used the occasion to acclaim Browder as his “comrade.” According to the original text of Mao’s message to the CPUSA as it appeared in the Liberation Daily (but edited out of the later edition) Mao went out of his way to lavish Browder with the praise that: “In his past activity. Comrade Browder has rendered many services to the struggle of the Chinese people, which deserve our gratitude.” (see Schram, Political Thought of Mao Tsetung, p. 425) Moreover, the opportunist positions of the CPC were not missed by Browder himself who recognized in the Chinese leadership an ally for his revisionist-imperialist course.
Browder was an unabashed champion of U.S. imperialism’s crusade for the domination of the entire world. His work Teheran actually gives detailed encouragement to the American imperialists to “establish the primacy of the foreign market for America’s immediate post-war economic perspective” (Browder, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, p. 77) and carries a chart on the billions of dollars of “new markets” to be conquered by U.S. imperialism in the various corners of the globe. Browder explained this enthusiasm for U.S. imperialism with the absurd hoax that American capitalism “retains some of the characteristics of a young capitalism.” (Ibid., p. 70) Thus Browder’s vision was for “big capital” to “subordinate its operations to a broadly conceived and definitely planned program of national and international expansion of well-being for all” (Ibid., p. 73, emphasis as in original) – that economic development under the tutelage of U.S. imperialism would be the salvation of mankind.
It is from this standpoint that Browder hailed the Chinese Communists as “America’s most reliable friends in China.” (Ibid., p. 27) “The chief consideration” according to Browder “is that America...must have enormous post-war markets for its products, for which Asia provides the chief potential. These markets must be on a scale never before dreamed of...” and the seizure of these markets “is a life-and-death necessity for the prevailing American way of life.” (Ibid., p. 47) Browder lectured the U.S. imperialists on the need to adopt a neo-colonial policy: “A policy directed toward realizing a great market in Asia for American products must be directed...toward abolishing the colonial system and its replacement by a system of free, self-governing, unified nations...independent, self-governing nations provide expanding markets.” (Ibid., p. 48) And like Service, and like Mao, Browder considered the CPC the best instrument of American imperialist interests in China, pointing out that: “It is a demonstrable fact that the economic policies characteristic of ’Kuomintang’ China today are operating to defeat America’s interest in an expanding Chinese market, while the economic policies of ’Communist’ China are those most favorable and conducive to an expanding market.” (Ibid., p. 48)
Indeed. Browder, who had worked in China with the CPC and who always maintained a special concern for the Chinese situation, was quite aware of the political complexion of the Chinese communists. As Browder had assured the U.S. imperialists in 1942: “The Chinese Communist Party accepts the perspective of a capitalist development of China, not only now 16 but for an indefinite future.” (Browder, Victory and After, pp. 189-90)
And after Browder’s expulsion from the CPUSA in the course of Browder’s open fight to justify his extreme revisionism against so-called “dogmatic” Marxism-Leninism, Browder became an ardent champion of the “wisdom of Mao Zedong.” In 1949 Browder delivered a lecture entitled ”Chinese Lessons for American Marxists.” In this rabidly anti-Marxist-Leninist speech, Browder made the argument that the “brilliant Mao” was victorious in China because he pursued the same policies which Browder had always advocated, whereas the American communists were weak, not because of Browderite liquidationism as they claimed, but because Browderite revisionism had been rejected and the “wisdom of Mao Zedong” had not been correctly assimilated. Among other points, Browder elaborated the following “Chinese lessons.”
The “most important Chinese lesson for American Marxists,” according to Browder’s lecture, is the necessity to create a “national Marxism” for each country. The “good Marxist policy in China” and the “successful leadership...epitomized in the person of Mao Tsetung,” Browder attributed to Mao’s “’China-ization’ of Marxism.” Browder cites approvingly a 1943 speech of Zhou Enlai’s according to which: “The twenty-two years of the history of our party have proved that in all these years Comrade Mao Tsetung’s policy has been to develop a particular line for Chinese Communism, to China-ize Marxism and Leninism.” And Browder elaborates on Zhou Enlai’s thesis with extensive quotations from Mao’s political report to the 7th Congress of the CPC (“On Coalition Government”) drawing the “lesson” that: “American Marxists, having repudiated the very concept of ’Americanizing’ Marxism, have imprisoned themselves in dogmatism.”
Browder explains that “Mao Tsetung taught the Chinese Communists that they must not copy unthinkingly any other country, or adopt unthinkingly any other cultural system” – that is to say should not “adopt unthinkingly” the “cultural system” of Marxism-Leninism and socialism! Once again quoting extensively from Mao’s 7th Congress report, Browder points out that “Mao Tsetung specifically repudiated the idea that the Chinese Communists intend, now or in the future, to copy the Soviet Union” in establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism. And Browder waxes particularly enthusiastic about Mao’s “uniquely Chinese application of Lenin’s teachings about the ’progressive’ character of capitalist economic forms, in preparing for socialism – and even in building socialism – in his concept of a ’new capitalism’ in China.” As Browder put it: Mao “did not hesitate to speak of the necessity of ’harmony’ as well as struggle between the workers and private Chinese capitalist employers”; and “rounded out the concept of the ’new democracy’” which “promote(s) the free development of private capitalist economy” over a “prolonged period...of over scores of years.”
Furthermore, Browder finds in Mao an ally for his arch-revisionist thesis of the “path of Teheran” in post-WWII international relations. Browder cites Mao’s thesis of the “all-decisive condition, finally demonstrated at the Crimea Conference” ensuring the “new world order” of permanent peace, democracy and harmony guaranteed by three or five powers. And Browder concludes that just as the rejection of Browder’s “Teheran” thesis is responsible for the “failures” of “dogmatic” Marxism, “Mao’s sound and correct judgments led the Chinese Marxists to victory.” Browder’s only remorse was that Roosevelt’s “wisdom” did not also prevail and therefore U.S. imperialism failed to “preserve China as a friend of America with cooperative relations.” And Browder places the blame for this on “dogmatism,” that is the rejection of the “clear and definite judgments of Mao Tsetung,” by the CPUSA. Thus it is clear from Browder’s revisionist ravings of the time that, while Browder actually exaggerated the extent to which Browderism had in fact been repudiated by the CPUSA, Browder was acutely aware of the political nature of the “wisdom of Mao Zedong.”
History shows that this path advocated by Browder and Mao – the path of a democratic capitalist development of China under the umbrella of U.S. imperialism’s military and economic power after the war – proved impossible. As Leninism teaches, any idea of imperialism facilitating the democratic emancipation of the colonies is nothing but a sinister illusion propagated by the imperialists and their lackeys. Despite the promises of Browder and Mao that the CPC would be the best instrument of capitalism and U.S. imperialist interests in China and Asia, the pro-Chiang Kai-shek lobby triumphed over the pro-Mao lobby in the U.S. State Department. Unlike the situation in Yugoslavia, in China U.S. imperialism had in place Chiang’s well-armed and massive armies. Hence, as U.S. imperialism stepped into the shoes of Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini at the conclusion of the war and launched its barbarous crusade against communism and the revolution in order to enslave the entire world, the Americans armed Chiang Kai-shek to the teeth and hurled him against Mao Zedong’s forces. As a point of information it was the “great democrat” Roosevelt, and not Truman, who threw the pro-Mao lobby out of the U.S. State Department. This is contrary to the claims of Mao who, like Browder and the other apologists of U.S. imperialism, acclaimed Roosevelt as the one who “refrained from adopting a policy of helping the Kuomintang to undertake armed attacks on the Chinese Communist Party.” Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 285) In fact, for the entire 12 years of Roosevelt’s presidency, U.S. imperialist policy had consistently backed Chiang Kai-shek’s ceaseless armed attacks on the liberation forces. Furthermore, while it was the Roosevelt administration which was linked to the pro-Mao lobby (the State Department and military men who wanted to combine support for Chiang with a “realistic approach” to Mao) it was also Roosevelt who initiated the purge of these elements and their replacement with Patrick Hurley and his policy which led to the war of extermination against the Chinese communists.
Even after the fierce civil war in which the liberation forces triumphed and the bloodstained fascist Chiang Kai-shek clique was routed despite massive U.S. imperialist intervention, Mao Zedong and co. still harbored the idea of an alliance with U.S. imperialism. As Zhou Enlai appealed to the Americans in 1949, “China (is) still not (a) communist country, and if Mao’s policies are correctly implemented (it) may not be so for (a) long time.” (The New York Times, “The Peiping Cable,” August 13, 1978) As far as our investigation goes, it was only the Korean War that brought to a conclusion these first attempts at a U.S.-China alliance. As Mao himself points out, before the Korean War Stalin did not trust the Communist Party of China and thought that they would follow the same traitorous road as the renegade Tito. (See Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. V, p. 304)
This chapter in the chaotic development of the Communist Party of China, this extreme opportunist zigzag, is but further testimony to the fact that Mao Zedong was a bourgeois democrat; that Mao, as a leader of a so-called Marxist-Leninist communist party of the proletariat, was in fact a wily revisionist. It is another demonstration of the fact that Mao Zedong Thought converges with the extreme opportunist theses – even with Browderite revisionism and social-democracy. The opportunist positions of the CPC at the conclusion of World War II cannot be attributed to some quirk of history, to an aberration due to the complex situation of the times. No. Behind these deviations lie definite ideas, a definite theoretical system. The truth is that Mao Zedong’s opportunist political report to the 7th Congress of the CPC is fully consistent with Mao Zedong Thought. The truth is that the theoretical fabric of Mao Zedong Thought, when examined in light of the doctrine of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, is woven with a whole series of yellow threads, with blatantly social-democratic and right opportunist theses.
Let’s examine one such yellow thread, one of Mao’s “immortal contributions,” his so-called theory of “New Democracy.”
Mao Zedong dressed up his theory of “New Democracy” to appear as if it were in accord with the Marxist-Leninist theory of the “new democracy,” that is, the national democratic revolution of the new type; that in the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples is no longer the reserve of the bourgeoisie but has become inseparably linked with the world proletarian revolution and socialism. But this was a hoax. The actual theory of Mao Zedong was that of the great barrier between the democratic and socialist revolutions. While Lenin stressed that under the conditions of imperialism the oppressed nations can ensure their genuine freedom and independence only with the establishment of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that the proletariat and people can bring the revolution to the socialist stage through the bourgeois democratic revolution of the new type; Mao, on the other hand, advocated the opposite. Mao wanted to stop the Chinese people’s revolution of a new type halfway, to drag it back towards the bourgeois democratic revolution of the old type, dreaming pipe dreams of a non-socialist independent Chinese state on a middle road, independent of both imperialism and socialism.
Mao Zedong elaborated the idea that only in the industrially advanced countries is it possible to set up the socialist system and the dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas “in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries” it is necessary to go through a historical period of so-called “New Democracy,” including a long period of democratic capitalist development as a precondition for the transition to the socialist revolution. Mao did not believe in the capacity of the proletariat to lead the toilers in a backward country such as China in socialist revolution, socialist construction and socialist industrialization. Instead, since in China “modern industry constituted only about 10% of the total output of the national economy,” Mao held that “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.” (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. IV, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” p. 421)
This “Thought” of Mao’s, however, is not in the least original or new but is a basic tenet of the revisionism of the heroes of the Second International, an idea held by the Russian Mensheviks which was theoretically demolished by Lenin as early as 1905. It is a basic social-democratic dogma which the Great October Socialist Revolution demolished in practice, demonstrating before the entire world that the working class, in alliance with the toiling peasantry, can in fact build a modern socialist economy and industry without the capitalists and exploiters, even on the ashes of a ruined backward peasant country such as tsarist Russia.
Moreover, there is the brilliant example of socialist industrialization in tiny Albania. Before liberation, feudal-bourgeois Albania was the most backward country in Europe. Albania had been reduced to a semi-colony of Italian imperialism and remained virtually without industry. While in China, according to Mao, industry constituted 10% of the national economy, in pre-liberation Albania “industry represented only 4.5% of all national economy.” (See The Social Class Structure of the Working Class in Albania, Tirana, pp. 20-21) But the backwardness of Albania’s economy in no way blocked the Albanian working class and people from embarking on the triumphant road of the socialist revolution and from resolutely expropriating and eliminating the capitalist and landlord exploiting classes. The incontestable evidence of this fact is that today, 35 years after liberation, the Albanian working class, cooperativist peasantry and people’s intelligentsia, on the basis of their own efforts, have successfully transformed Albania into a flourishing and modern, industrial-agricultural, socialist country.
These glorious achievements of socialist Albania are yet further proof of the correctness of Leninism and the total bankruptcy of the dogmas of social-democracy and of Mao Zedong’s dogma of “New Democracy.”
To revise Leninism, Mao Zedong resorted to simple sophistry. Mao Zedong points to the fact that China is capitalistically undeveloped and the bourgeoisie is also weak and undeveloped. So what does Mao Zedong conclude from this? That therefore “the national bourgeoisie is of...great importance”!, that the bourgeoisie should be treated like a sacred cow, propped up and taken under the wing of the Chinese communists till the next millenium.
In fact, the entire policy of “New Democracy” is not directed in the first place towards the multi-million army of the revolutionary Chinese proletariat, nor towards the toiling peasantry, but towards what Mao himself describes as the weak and flabby so-called “national bourgeoisie.” Take for example, Mao Zedong’s slogan that “Chinese society is big in the middle and small at both ends,” and therefore “the Communist Party cannot solve China’s problems unless it wins over the masses of the intermediate classes and unless it enables them to play their proper role.” (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 466) This sounds reasonable enough until you realize which classes Mao is actually referring to. A footnote to the text claims that here Mao is only referring to the fact that the proletariat and the reactionary landlords and big bourgeoisie were a minority of China’s population. But this is a shallow hoax as clearly seen by an examination of what Mao considered “middle” or “intermediate” classes. According to Mao, “the winning over of the middle forces is an extremely important task for us,” as “The middle forces carry considerable weight in China and may often be the decisive factor in our struggle.” And just what are these “middle forces”? Mao’s writings are consistent to the effect that: “Winning over the middle forces means winning over the middle bourgeoisie, the enlightened gentry and the regional power groups”; that there are “three distinct categories” that make up “the middle forces”: the “national bourgeoisie,” the “enlightened gentry who are the left-wing of the landlord class,” and “regional power groups” with “most of the leaders of the regional power groups belong (ing) to the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie.” (Ibid., pp. 423-24) In fact, whenever Mao refers to “middle forces” he refers only to the capitalist and landlord classes. What was “big” in Mao’s eyes was not the vast army of Chinese toilers with the proletariat in the center but the small minority of the exploiting classes.
The point here is that Mao Zedong made great play with the fact that China was a peasant country with a vast intermediate strata in order to trumpet the “great importance” of the Chinese exploiters and denigrate not only the significance of the Chinese proletariat, but also to belittle the weight of the other, non-proletarian, laboring classes. Hence, in Mao’s formula that the “middle forces carry considerable weight in China,” it must be kept in mind that nowhere in Mao’s writings are these toilers described or referred to as “intermediate” or “middle” classes. Mao is not speaking of the vast army of hundreds of millions of non-proletarian toilers. He is not speaking in the first place of the poor peasantry and farm laborers, the rural semi-proletariat, who by themselves, according to Mao’s own figures, comprised a majority of China’s population.
The proof of the pudding is in the text where Mao places his slogan “big in the middle and small at both ends.” Here Mao is arguing against those communists advocating ”a so-called state power of the workers, peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie” and who want to abandon the “united front policy” of the “three thirds system” of political power. So what is this “three thirds system”? Mao explains:
Places in the organs of power should be allocated as follows: one-third to the Communists, representing the proletariat and the poor peasantry; one-third to the left progressives, representing the petty bourgeoisie; and the remaining one-third to the middle and other elements, representing the middle bourgeoisie and the enlightened gentry.” (Ibid., p. 427) And to make it clear who these other elements might be, Mao explains that any representative of the exploiting classes ’ ’who are not actively opposed to the Communist Party must be drawn into participation both in the government and in the people’s representative bodies,.... Even a small number of right-wingers may be allowed to join the people’s representative bodies”! (Ibid., p. 445) So the question is what kind of “people’s representative bodies” are these where the vast majority of the “people,” that is the workers and peasants, are allowed only one-third of the power and where the other classes are propped up and guaranteed a two-thirds majority in complete disproportion to their actual political or numerical strength? The only imaginable explanation for this absurd “three thirds system” is to be found in Mao’s idea that the so-called middle forces were in fact “the decisive factor in our struggle” – that is to say, the small minority of exploiters was put in the middle of Mao’s strategy of “New Democracy.”
Some of Mao Zedong’s noisier sycophants such as the “RCP.USA” are raising a hue and cry that the accusations against Mao are unjust, that in “essence” Mao’s “New Democratic” state is a “form of the dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “New Democratic” system is not capitalist but socialist. The best answer for ignoramuses of this sort is to tell them to go back and read the works of their mentor more carefully. Referring back again to the article “On Coalition Government,” Mao emphatically stresses that: “a new-democratic state based on an alliance of the democratic classes is different in principle from a socialist state under the dictatorship of the proletariat. ...throughout the stage of New Democracy China cannot possibly have a one-class dictatorship and one-party government and therefore should not attempt it. ...for a long time to come there will exist a special form of state and political power, a form that is distinguished from the Russian system....” (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 234-35, emphasis added)
Also in his article “On New Democracy” Mao explains that:
a third form of state must be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely the new-democratic republic...
Thus the numerous types of state systems in the world can be reduced to three basic kinds according to the class character of their political power: (1) republics under bourgeois dictatorship; (2) republics under the dictatorship of the proletariat; and (3) republics under the joint dictatorship of several revolutionary classes. (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 350)
Obviously, Mao’s idea of “New Democracy,” a separate “basic kind” of state “different in principle from a socialist state under the dictatorship of the proletariat” cannot possibly be reconciled with the opposite idea of being “in essence the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
So what kind of animal did Mao Zedong have in mind? Was Mao proposing a form of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry? No, this is obviously not what Mao had in mind when he attempts to shield himself with the slogan “dictatorship of several revolutionary classes.” A democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in Mao’s distorted vision which did not properly distinguish the working class from the peasant classes would also be a violation of his laws against one-class dictatorship. Or was Mao’s conception of “New Democracy” some other transitional form to bring the revolution uninterruptedly to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to “one-class dictatorship and one-party government”?
No, this too is impossible to defend as well because it contradicts the entire practice of the Chinese revolution and the fact that the bourgeois parties remain in power in Beijing to this day. It contradicts Mao’s thesis of “long-term coexistence and mutual supervision” between the Chinese capitalist parties and the communist party. Moreover, it contradicts the entire bourgeois democratic outlook of Mao Zedong. When Mao Zedong told Service that “After all, we Chinese consider you Americans the ideal of democracy,” he was not making an idle compliment. In fact, Mao considered a multi-party system of bourgeois democracy to be superior to the “one-party system” and “the type of communism practiced in Russia.” As Mao put it, “We are not destroying the dictatorship of the big comprador bourgeoisie and the big landlord class in order to replace it with a one-party dictatorship of the Communist Party.” (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 445) And Mao continually harped on the theme of opposition to the “one-party dictatorship” of either the KMT or any other party. Mao’s anti-Marxist line on this question is summed up in one of his countless trite and idiotic formulas: “Just as everyone should share what food there is, so there should be no monopoly of power by a single party, group or class.” (Ibid., p. 409)
But what does it mean to renounce the idea of “monopoly of power”? It means to renounce the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution which Lenin described as “the most consistent reformism” (V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 232) It means to renounce the dictatorship of the proletariat which “can be complete only if it is led by one party, the Communist Party, which does not and must not share leadership with other parties. (J.V. Stalin, “Interview with American Labor Delegation,” Works, Vol. 10, p. 104)
The Maoists may object and say that Mao called for the “leading role of the proletariat and the Communist Party” within his multi-party democracy. But what, according to these so-called “Marxist” theoreticians, is a political party if not a “leader” of a definite class. And if such a leader of the bourgeois class shares power in the government along with the Communist Party what does this mean but sharing leadership? The phrase “leading role of the proletariat and its party” is only a phrase attached to an anti-Marxist policy, an afterthought after the fact, a slogan to fool the naive into thinking there is something “proletarian” in Mao Zedong’s bourgeois democratic policy. Why else is it that in the original text of “On Coalition Government” the idea of “the leading role of the proletariat and the Communist Party” is not even mentioned once, while the doctored versions are peppered with this phrase? It is because Mao Zedong Thought and so-called “New Democracy,” like social-democracy, stand for bourgeois democracy and not the Marxist-Leninist theory of proletarian democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As for the “socialism” of “New Democracy,” here again, as already mentioned, Mao himself stressed that this regime is “different in principle” from a socialist state. And the “socialist future” which Mao charted after “several decades” of “New Democratic” development was to evolve peacefully out of this hybrid bourgeois democratic order. That is, just as in classic social-democracy, the realization of socialism will not require a socialist revolution, the resolute expropriation of the capitalists and all exploiters and the elimination of the exploiting class. According to Mao, none of these socialist tasks were necessary for the realization of socialism in China. Instead, capitalism and the exploiters were to be merged into the system of Mao’s “socialism.” This theory is fully concretized in Mao’s notorious thesis that with the victory of the “New Democratic” revolution and its alleged transition to the socialist revolution, even then, the contradictions “between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a non-antagonistic aspect” and should be handled as “contradictions among the people.” (Mao Zedong, Selected Readings, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” pp. 433-34) Mao’s idea that “In the concrete conditions of China that this antagonistic class contradiction (between the working class and the bourgeoisie – ed.) can, if properly handled, be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods” (Ibid., p. 435) is nothing more nor less than the idea of the dying out of the class struggle; as Mao put it, the idea of “harmonizing” or “adjusting” the class struggle. It is the idea of the peaceful growth of the capitalists into socialism. This theory was not first elaborated by Mao at all but by countless anti-Marxist “socialists” from Proudhon and the “bourgeois socialists” of the days of Marx and Engels to the chiefs of the Second International to the renegade Bukharin. In fact, J.V. Stalin’s polemic against the revisionist theories of Bukharin is also a powerful condemnation of the true nature of the “socialism” of Mao Zedong Thought. The following is part of a speech of Stalin’s against the “Right Deviation in the CPSU(B)”:
Capitalists in town and country, kulaks and concessionaires, growing into socialism – such is the absurdity Bukharin has arrived at.
No, comrades, that is not the kind of ’socialism’ we want. Let Bukharin keep it for himself.
Until now, we Marxist-Leninists have been of the opinion that
between the capitalists of town and country, on the one hand, and
the working class, on the other hand, there is an irreconcilable antagonism of interests. That is what the Marxist theory of the class
struggle rests on. But now, according to Bukharin’s theory of the
capitalists’ peaceful growth into socialism, all this is turned upside
down, the irreconcilable antagonism of class interests between the
exploiters and the exploited disappears, the exploiters grow into
socialism...
One thing or the other: either there is an irreconcilable antagonism of interests between the capitalist class and the class of the workers who have come to power and have organized their dictatorship, or there is no such antagonism of interests, in which case only one thing remains – namely to proclaim the harmony of class interests.
One thing or the other:
either Marx’s theory of the class struggle, or the theory of the capitalists growing into socialism;
either an irreconcilable antagonism of class interests or the theory of harmony of class interests.
We can understand ’socialists’ of the type of Brentano or Sydney Webb preaching about socialism growing into capitalism and capitalism into socialism, for these ’socialists’ are really anti-socialists, bourgeois liberals. But one cannot understand a man who wishes to be a Marxist, and who at the same time preaches the theory of the capitalist class growing into socialism. (Problems of Leninism, pp. 354-56, emphasis Stalin’s)
Of course, Mao’s theory too, that is Mao’s thesis of the non-antagonistic nature of the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie and his policy of uniting with the bourgeoisie in “building socialism,” is not Marxist socialism at all but is really anti-socialism and bourgeois liberalism. Those Maoist birds who like to puff out their chests and chirp at Stalin for allegedly “denying the class struggle” are truly pathetic creatures as it is obvious that it is Mao and his followers, and not Stalin and the Marxist-Leninists, who have feathered a common revisionist nest with the likes of Bukharin.
For these reasons, among many others, there is no question that there is not a trace of Marxism-Leninism to be found in Mao’s theory of “New Democracy.” Furthermore, on a whole series of other cardinal questions of the revolution, Mao Zedong Thought has grossly revised the Marxist-Leninist principles. And on many of these questions, such as Mao’s theory of the communist party as an arena of vying platforms, his idea of opportunism constituting a middle force to be united with, etc., etc., Mao Zedong Thought has simply borrowed wholesale from classical social-democracy. Like the other revisionists, Mao Zedong’s theoretical energies were not devoted to the elaboration of Marxism-Leninism in the conditions of China as it is sometimes claimed, but to emasculating the Marxist-Leninist theory and adapting communism to social-democracy and a mishmash of other anti-Marxist-Leninist trends.
It is on this basis that Mao developed his revisionist idea of “two paths to power”: the October road of Marx and Lenin for the advanced capitalist countries and the “Chinese road” of Mao Zedong for the peasant countries. Mao Zedong advocated the stereotype formula of the non-revolutionary West in contrast to the revolutionary East, and the non-revolutionary proletarians as opposed to the revolutionary peasants. Thus, accordingly, Mao created a completely schematic picture of the purely legal, parliamentary, reformist and peaceful development of the revolution in the capitalist countries and declared that such a social-democratic, Browderite strategy “has been proved correct by the October Revolution in Russia”! (Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 220) And Mao counterposed this gross distortion of the road of the October Revolution to the “Chinese road” which Mao claimed to be “different,” free of what he describes as the ’ ’task of the party of the proletariat in the capitalist countries to educate the workers and build up strength through a long period of legal struggle.” (Ibid., p. 219) (For further analysis of Mao Zedong’s social-democratic schematism on this question, see the following article, “Mao Zedong Thought Cannot Dull the Brilliance of the Great October Socialist Revolution.”)
Such a social-democratic conception of the proletarian revolutionary movement in the developed capitalist countries is, as is well known, one of the cornerstones of Mao’s theory of “three worlds” which openly condemns the proletariat as a class without a revolutionary nature or capacity. Moreover, Mao has been elaborating these opportunist dogmas since the 1930’s, which further demonstrates the affinity of Mao Zedong Thought and Browderism in those years. As well it demonstrates that so-called Mao Zedong Thought is not in the least antagonistic to the liberal-labor reformism of the “three worldist” modern day Browderites but in fact merges with it completely. This shows that the struggle against Mao Zedong Thought is a necessary part of the struggle against reformist, social-democratic and modern revisionist politics of all hues. The repudiation of Mao Zedong Thought is part and parcel of the struggle for the triumph of the Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics and ideology in the revolutionary movement.