BobKKKindle$
20th October 2009, 17:12
I originally posted this in articles, but I'll put it here as well to stimulate discussion.
***************
This essay is concerned with the class forces that enabled the CPC to come to power in 1949, marking the culmination of a prolonged civil war between the Communists and the KMT, as well as the class interests that were served by the reforms enacted by the new government as it swept to power. It will be argued that the revolution of 1949 was not a revolution of the working class, and that, whilst the CPC drew its support from the rural population, and its reforms resulted in significant changes to the patterns of land ownership in China, benefiting those peasants who had previously suffered intense exploitation at the hands of landlords and rich peasants, the Chinese revolution was ultimately enacted by a section of the intelligentsia, orientated towards the completion of the historic tasks that the bourgeoisie had been unable to carry out, especially national reunification, and the development of the productive apparatus. In taking this position, this essay aligns itself with Harris and other historians who have analyzed the Chinese experience within a Marxist framework, as well as historians such as Bianco, Hinton, and Gray, who have drawn attention to the countryside and emphasized the role of material conditions in sustaining support for the CPC. The first part of the essay will examine the lack of activity on the part of the working class, whereas the second will analyze the rural policies of the CPC, and the relationship between the party and the rural population.
It is, however, first useful to sketch out how Mao and his own comrades understood the revolutionary process in which they were engaged. The leaders of the CPC did not believe that China's revolution would assume the form of a socialist revolution, directed against the bourgeoisie, and intended to initiate the transition to a classless society. It was instead designated a New Democratic revolution, which would be carried out by a bloc of four classes, consisting of the working class, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie, all of which Mao saw as having a progressive role to play in the elimination of feudalism and the development of a national economy that would enable China to free itself from imperialist domination. In calling for a united front consisting of these class forces Mao excluded the section of the bourgeoisie which he regarded as sharing the same interests as imperialism at the expense of China's national interests, otherwise known as the comprador or “big” bourgeoisie, which, together with the landlord class, found its political expression in the KMT, as well as the puppet regime of Wang Jingwei, during the war against Japan. In his essay on this subject, entitled 'On New Democracy', Mao asserted that the policies of this historic period would be rooted in the Three People's Principles formulated by Sun Yat-sen, which, in concrete terms, meant that capital would not be permitted to “dominate the livelihood of the people”, and that whilst the government would “confiscate the land of the landlords” and distribute it to those with “little or no land”, it would still permit a “rich peasant economy”.
As Schram notes, the roles that Mao allocated to each participating class as well as his views on the commitment of each class to New Democracy were not expressed in the same way in all of his documents, as whilst 'On New Democracy', designed for intellectuals, seeks to identify Mao's project with the legacy of the May 4th Movement, a separate document, entitled 'The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party', published in December 1939, and circulated among CPC cadres, takes a negative view of the role of the national bourgeoisie, asserting that the class is only revolutionary “at certain times and to a certain extent” whilst at other times it acts as an accomplice “in counter-revolution” on the side of the comprador bourgeoisie. It is also significant that in the first draft of 'On New Democracy', Mao advanced the slogan of a bloc of three classes, as he had initially considered the peasantry a mere segment of the petty-bourgeoisie and not a class in itself, indicating that at no point did Mao see the peasantry as having the leading role. Nonetheless, Mao consistently emphasized that New Democracy would be implemented under the hegemony of the proletariat, which he described as “the most revolutionary class”, and that, after this period had fulfilled its purpose of preparing the preconditions for socialism, roughly analogous to the historic role payed by capitalism in Marx's thought, the proletariat to carry out a socialist revolution. In this respect it is possible to draw a line of continuity between Mao's late formulations and his first major work, namely 'Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society', published in 1926, in which Mao identifies the proletariat as “the most progressive class in modern China”, and representative of “China's new productive forces” before going on to identify a number of important class struggles.
The most immediate measure of the role of the working class in 1949 is the social composition of the CPC, and in this area, the evidence suggests that by the time the CPC came to power, the working class played almost no role whatsoever within the organization, and was absent from the leadership, with a small number of exceptions. According to Harris, in late 1944, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin, whilst the leadership was comprised almost solely of intellectuals, and merchants, amongst other privileged sectors, although it should be noted that a significant section of this leadership could trace their history of political activity back to their experiences as worker-students in France and other European countries during the first decade of the century, where, according to Li Lisan's account, students frequently came into contact with Marxist ideas, having initially traveled to Europe in order to educate themselves in accordance with Li Shizeng's principles but later being forced to become employees in order to sustain themselves or pay for their tuition, with many eventually being deported by the authorities when strikes and demonstrations were organized in defense of their rights. The shared personal background of many of the CPC's leadership in 1949 is relevant to this essay because it supports the notion that the revolution was fundamentally about attaining national independence, deriving its goals and organization from the intelligentsia. Harris goes on to assert that the central cadre of the party was small by the time it took power, as, according to Mao's own estimates, only 800 members survived from the early 1930s to 1945, out of a total party membership of 1.2 million in the latter year.
Mao's own statements and the policies that were adopted by the CPC in the process of seizing the cities also give a clear indication of the absence of working-class participation, especially the 'Proclamation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army', released in April 1949, in which Mao hoped that “workers and employees in all occupations will maintain production as usual and that all shops will remain open as usual” and called on the various officials of the former government to “stay at their posts” and promised that they would not be humiliated or denied employment “so long as they do not offer armed resistance or plot sabotage”. Subsequently, in a Peking Radio broadcast on the 4th of June, 1949, Mao stated that workers should "co-operate with the capitalists, so that maximum production can be attained", and in the same year, party leaders condemned the Labour Maintenance Law of October 1945 on the grounds that it had set wages too high, and introduced "excessive" welfare measures, with the same leaders subsequently complaining that, given widespread unemployment, too many people were employed, at excessively high wages, and cadres were promoting themselves to management positions despite having no experience or competence in production. The general message to cadres as the CPC moved into urban areas, Harris contends, was not to promote what Mao termed a “relief standpoint”, which consisted of a desire to “uphold workers' welfare” but ultimately “impairs the cause of the people's revolution”, and on this basis Harris concludes that the revolution did not involve activity on the part of the working class, and was not carried out in the interests of that class, despite “great excitement and hopes” in the cities. Bianco accepts the inactivity of Chinese workers by citing the city of Tianjin, as, during the Sixth Congress of the Pan-Chinese General Union, representing some 2,660,000 workers in both the White and Liberated areas, under the control of the CPC, and covering all sectors of the economy, the city was experiencing an acute slump with major factories being closed, including 54 soap factories and 36 oil refineries in January 1948, with these closures deriving primarily from a government decision to limit the city's share of national imports to 7.8% of the total, despite having accounted for between 18% and 20% prior to the Second World War. At this point the Communist armies were between 30 and 40 miles to the north of the city, and Bianco notes that the government decision was designed to weaken North China as the CPC extended its hold, and yet, in spite of all these factors, the working class remained still, not even pursuing its interests through the government-sponsored unions, which had as their sole role the negotiation of incremental improvements. Brugger, however, notes that when the city itself was occupied, prior to the siege of Beijing, worker organizations took advantage of the situation by “taking over factory management themselves” and causing “a considerable amount of confusion”.
To explain this in light of the party's proclamations, Teiwes suggests a division between the cadres and the leadership in terms of the attitude of each group towards the working class, as cadres retained “notions of mobilizing the downtrodden” and initially put their sentiments into action by spreading themselves throughout residential areas and small-scale enterprises, backing workers against management, despite orders from the leadership not to extend class struggle to the cities. This practice reportedly came to a halt only in April in May 1949, beginning with Tianjin, when Liu Shaoqi relocated deviant cadres to the administrative and educational sectors, or to larger state enterprises where they could be supervised properly, as well as centralizing political organization, with training and supervision being further tightened from 1951 onwards, due to the tensions between new and old cadres. An additional specific instance of urban class struggle, from earlier in the civil war, is the city of Chongqing, where, according to Howard, during the period October 1945 to the end of 1946, there were at least 426 labour disputes, including 80 strikes, involving around 100,000 workers, who were employed at over 560 factories, occurring in all sectors of the economy, but especially in the armaments sector, and industrial plants. In the case of the Dadukou steel mill, workers who were demanding the right to unionize took a militant stance by first forcing the power station to shut off power in order to stop all work, and then threatening to use hand grenades if the station was surrounded by guards, with oral histories from the 1950s showing that workers organized a union independently of management whilst they were on strike, led by 46 elected representatives, and demanded that these representatives all be present at meetings with management. However, Howard goes on to note that, despite the enthusiastic support given by Xinhua ribao, and the decision of the Southern Bureau to establish a labour movement leadership cell in order to coordinate economic struggles, Du Yangqing, in his report to the the party centre in early 1947, accused the participants of being too militant, and Howard cites this as evidence of a divergence of interests between radical workers and the CPC.
Thus, when urban class struggle did emerge, the leadership, both local and national, was not likely to give full support In addition to the party's approach to struggles, the subordination of the working class to the goal of economic development manifested itself concretely in the early economic policy of the CPC as it proceeded to establish itself as the new government. When the expropriation of the property of bureaucratic and comprador capitalists was carried out, it was initially placed under the control of KMT officials and CPC officials, who took an inventory, before being passed to a triple alliance, consisting of party-military personnel, representatives of mass organizations such as the worker pickets, and retained personnel from the old regime, especially in the south, where these officials had been concentrated before the advance of the PLA and were not removed by the government, with the manager of the factory frequently acting as president of this alliance, and workers being given a consultative role only, as well as being forced to enter into arbitration when industrial disputes presented themselves. As such, workers were not given power, and neither did they take it for themselves, in spite of China's proud history of working-class struggle.
In light of the protracted nature of the Chinese revolution, and the size of China's peasant population, it is not surprising that the main drama played out in the countryside. As Averill shows, whilst almost all writers accept the notion that a peasant revolution occurred, there are differences concerning the factors that led peasants to join the war effort and accept the CPC as the new government in place of the rule of the KMT. Johnson argues that the success of the revolution had less to do with underlying socio-economic grievances such as feudalism and more to do with the destruction wrought by the Japanese invasion, as this latter factor benefited the CPC, due to both its organizational strength, and geographical location, whereas Levine contends that in 1945 and even after the outbreak of the final stage of the civil war in 1946, there was no guarantee that either the KMT or the CPC would win, such that what enabled the latter organization to emerge victorious was its success in transforming the peasantry from a passive mass into an effective fighting force. These approaches share the assumption that the peasantry was not the subject but the object of the Chinese revolution, and, as Averill notes, they both assume the validity of “peasantry” as an analytical category, despite its deep internal differentiation, and the absence of a single pattern of land ownership in China. The first of these assumptions is correct insofar as the pace of land reform was set by the CPC leadership, and was at all times orientated towards the imperatives of New Democracy and not the class interests of the poorest sections of the peasantry, such that the primary role of land reform as far as the CPC was concerned was to win the support of the rural population for strategic reasons, and, in anticipation of the future, to create a solid basis for national development.
This is demonstrated by the various changes made to CPC policy from the late 1930s onwards. During the war against Japan, the abolition of feudalism, expressed through the slogan “Land to the Tiller”, was abolished in favour of rent and interest rate reductions, derived from a law passed by the KMT government in 1933, with landlords being asked to reduce rents by at least 25% and to reduce interest rates from the existing level, which varied from 30% to as much as 100%, to no more than 10%, and a system of differential taxes was also introduced whereby those with the lowest income would not pay any taxes at all, and the large landowners payed a maximum of 30%. Hinton suggests that it would have been possible for the poorer peasants to refuse to pay any rent at all and could also have repudiated their debts if they had so desired, by virtue of their ownership of arms, and yet they were asked to tolerate the continued rule of the landlords in order to support the war effort, and, according to Pepper, there were also instances of rent reduction being shelved in areas directly threatened by the enemy so as to ensure maximum social cohesion. Pepper also points out that from 1945 onwards the activity of the party was expanded to include the full list of grievances, including local tyrants, low wages, corruption, unpaid taxes, spies, bandits, thieves, and even loose women. This was especially important in some areas such as North China where even the poorest peasants generally owned the land they tilled such that tenancy was not a key issue. It was not until the May 4th directive of 1946 that policy shifted away from partial amelioration of rural exploitation in favour of land redistribution, and whilst this policy would have enabled the confiscation of the largest estates, with compensation being paid to all landlords except those who had collaborated with the Japanese, the plan to implement the directive was interrupted by the civil war. Gray contends that the subsequent draft, produced under the guidance of Liu Shaoqi in response to an impending military threat, signified a return to the heady days of the Jiangxi Soviet as it called for the seizure of all land and an egalitarian pattern of distribution, to be implemented through poor peasant associations, and yet this plan was modified as a result of Mao's objections, with the final reform being based on the 1933 Jiangxi Soviet law, which implemented change through village assemblies consisting of everyone except landlords, allowed middle peasants to retain their holdings, and permitted rich peasants to retain the land they cultivated themselves, such that, once the reform had been introduced, the ratio of the largest to the smallest farms was still around two to one. Despite this, Mao argued that the CPC had been able to gain the support of the peasantry only where the 1946 decree had been implemented and land reform had been solved “radically and thoroughly”, as elsewhere peasants adopted a “wait and see attitude”.
The role of land reform in strengthening the CPC’s support base is demonstrated by its impact on the willingness of the peasantry to support the Communist cause militarily, as, in early 1947, 50,000 men were reported to have joined the Red Army in twelve counties along the Shantung-Henan border, whereas a similar recruiting drive in 1946 had, according to the regional party committee, failed to develop into a “large-scale mass movement”. However, there were numerous cases of poor peasants seeking to pursue their class interests without guidance from above, and it is these cases that give the lie to those historians who characterize the peasantry as essentially passive. Gray reports that in Henan in 1949, villagers seized all of the land formerly owned by rich peasants, and categorized a number of middle peasants as belonging to the higher category, then going on to divide everything that could be moved, as well as beating and even killing those whom the community despised, including a number of rich peasants who were reportedly guilty of acting as bailiffs for the landlords. Harris shows that this was not restricted to Hunan, as, in response to land seizures in Hubei during the winter of 1947-1948, as well as demands that peasants should supervise the party, which were themselves prompted by the unwillingness of the party to implement reform rapidly, Mao reportedly argued that peasants who had seized land should not follow landlords into the towns to deliver justice, rejected the seizure of industrial enterprises, called for the reclassification of rich peasants and landlords as middle peasants when those groups had been unfairly classified, and asserted that poor peasant associations should be required to admit rich peasants and the “enlightened gentry” into their ranks. These events eventually resulted in land reform being halted, such that, from that point onwards, reform was implemented by administrative methods only, over a period of time, and alongside the creation of local governmental organs, in contrast to the previous strategy of encouraging peasants to struggle openly against their oppressors and divide the struggle fruits amongst themselves. It is therefore evident that the CPC's role in limiting class struggle was not limited to the urban areas, but extended to the countryside as well, such that, if the Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution, it did not go as far as many peasants wanted it to, a notion that is affirmed by ongoing need to use social pressure, exercised through bodies like the women's associations, to sustain recruitment, as well as the conservative nature of the Agrarian Reform Law in 1950, which allowed rich peasants to own not only land they and their families worked but also land that was worked by hired laborers and rented out to other peasants, on the condition that no more than half of their total land belonged to these latter categories. This is not to undermine the impact of land reform, as Gray acknowledges that the program resulted in the distribution of 200 million acres to about 75 million families, and yet, if light of what could have emerged if land reform had been allowed to proceed autonomously, this was moderate. In this respect, Mao was faithful to New Democracy, which, by upholding moderation and class collaboration, required the CPC to intervene on the side of the oppressor.
In conclusion, the Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution in the sense that it was dependent on peasant support for its military victory, but it was not a revolution under the leadership of the peasantry, who found themselves held back and subordinated to the objectives of the CPC elite, who wanted a mere dinner party. There is therefore a tragic similarity between the unfulfilled dreams of the peasantry in 1949 and the aspirations of workers in the 1920s, as the latter group also sought to break free from the bureaucratic leadership of the Comintern and challenge the ruling class without constraints. It was not until the Cultural Revolution that the Chinese peasantry and working class would be able to pursue their class interests independently, leading to a clash not with the KMT, but with the bureaucracy that had established itself in 1949 by leaning on broader class forces.
Bibliography:
Averill, 'The Chinese Revolution Re-evaluated', Problems of Communism, 1989
Bianco, 'Origins of the Chinese Revolution 1915-1949', 1971
Brugger, 'China: Liberation and Transformation 1942-1962', 1981
eds. Fairbank, Feuerwerker, The Cambridge History of China, XIII, Republican China, 1912–1949, 1986
Gray, 'Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to 200', 1990
Harris, 'The Mandate of Heaven: Marx and Mao in Modern China', 1978
Hinton, 'Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village', 2008
Howard, 'Workers at War Labor in China’s Arsenals: 1937-1953', 2004
Lescot, 'Before Mao: The Untold Story of Li Lisan', 2004
Mao, 'Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society,' SWI, Peking 1976, original publication 1926
Mao, 'On New Democracy', SW II, Peking 1976, original publication January 1940
Mao, 'Correct the “Left” errors in Land Reform Propaganda', SW IV, Peking 1976, original publication February 1948
Mao, 'Proclamation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army', SW IV, Peking 1976, original publication April 1949
Teiwes, 'Establishment of the New Regime' in 'The Politics of China 1949-1989', 1993
***************
This essay is concerned with the class forces that enabled the CPC to come to power in 1949, marking the culmination of a prolonged civil war between the Communists and the KMT, as well as the class interests that were served by the reforms enacted by the new government as it swept to power. It will be argued that the revolution of 1949 was not a revolution of the working class, and that, whilst the CPC drew its support from the rural population, and its reforms resulted in significant changes to the patterns of land ownership in China, benefiting those peasants who had previously suffered intense exploitation at the hands of landlords and rich peasants, the Chinese revolution was ultimately enacted by a section of the intelligentsia, orientated towards the completion of the historic tasks that the bourgeoisie had been unable to carry out, especially national reunification, and the development of the productive apparatus. In taking this position, this essay aligns itself with Harris and other historians who have analyzed the Chinese experience within a Marxist framework, as well as historians such as Bianco, Hinton, and Gray, who have drawn attention to the countryside and emphasized the role of material conditions in sustaining support for the CPC. The first part of the essay will examine the lack of activity on the part of the working class, whereas the second will analyze the rural policies of the CPC, and the relationship between the party and the rural population.
It is, however, first useful to sketch out how Mao and his own comrades understood the revolutionary process in which they were engaged. The leaders of the CPC did not believe that China's revolution would assume the form of a socialist revolution, directed against the bourgeoisie, and intended to initiate the transition to a classless society. It was instead designated a New Democratic revolution, which would be carried out by a bloc of four classes, consisting of the working class, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie, all of which Mao saw as having a progressive role to play in the elimination of feudalism and the development of a national economy that would enable China to free itself from imperialist domination. In calling for a united front consisting of these class forces Mao excluded the section of the bourgeoisie which he regarded as sharing the same interests as imperialism at the expense of China's national interests, otherwise known as the comprador or “big” bourgeoisie, which, together with the landlord class, found its political expression in the KMT, as well as the puppet regime of Wang Jingwei, during the war against Japan. In his essay on this subject, entitled 'On New Democracy', Mao asserted that the policies of this historic period would be rooted in the Three People's Principles formulated by Sun Yat-sen, which, in concrete terms, meant that capital would not be permitted to “dominate the livelihood of the people”, and that whilst the government would “confiscate the land of the landlords” and distribute it to those with “little or no land”, it would still permit a “rich peasant economy”.
As Schram notes, the roles that Mao allocated to each participating class as well as his views on the commitment of each class to New Democracy were not expressed in the same way in all of his documents, as whilst 'On New Democracy', designed for intellectuals, seeks to identify Mao's project with the legacy of the May 4th Movement, a separate document, entitled 'The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party', published in December 1939, and circulated among CPC cadres, takes a negative view of the role of the national bourgeoisie, asserting that the class is only revolutionary “at certain times and to a certain extent” whilst at other times it acts as an accomplice “in counter-revolution” on the side of the comprador bourgeoisie. It is also significant that in the first draft of 'On New Democracy', Mao advanced the slogan of a bloc of three classes, as he had initially considered the peasantry a mere segment of the petty-bourgeoisie and not a class in itself, indicating that at no point did Mao see the peasantry as having the leading role. Nonetheless, Mao consistently emphasized that New Democracy would be implemented under the hegemony of the proletariat, which he described as “the most revolutionary class”, and that, after this period had fulfilled its purpose of preparing the preconditions for socialism, roughly analogous to the historic role payed by capitalism in Marx's thought, the proletariat to carry out a socialist revolution. In this respect it is possible to draw a line of continuity between Mao's late formulations and his first major work, namely 'Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society', published in 1926, in which Mao identifies the proletariat as “the most progressive class in modern China”, and representative of “China's new productive forces” before going on to identify a number of important class struggles.
The most immediate measure of the role of the working class in 1949 is the social composition of the CPC, and in this area, the evidence suggests that by the time the CPC came to power, the working class played almost no role whatsoever within the organization, and was absent from the leadership, with a small number of exceptions. According to Harris, in late 1944, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin, whilst the leadership was comprised almost solely of intellectuals, and merchants, amongst other privileged sectors, although it should be noted that a significant section of this leadership could trace their history of political activity back to their experiences as worker-students in France and other European countries during the first decade of the century, where, according to Li Lisan's account, students frequently came into contact with Marxist ideas, having initially traveled to Europe in order to educate themselves in accordance with Li Shizeng's principles but later being forced to become employees in order to sustain themselves or pay for their tuition, with many eventually being deported by the authorities when strikes and demonstrations were organized in defense of their rights. The shared personal background of many of the CPC's leadership in 1949 is relevant to this essay because it supports the notion that the revolution was fundamentally about attaining national independence, deriving its goals and organization from the intelligentsia. Harris goes on to assert that the central cadre of the party was small by the time it took power, as, according to Mao's own estimates, only 800 members survived from the early 1930s to 1945, out of a total party membership of 1.2 million in the latter year.
Mao's own statements and the policies that were adopted by the CPC in the process of seizing the cities also give a clear indication of the absence of working-class participation, especially the 'Proclamation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army', released in April 1949, in which Mao hoped that “workers and employees in all occupations will maintain production as usual and that all shops will remain open as usual” and called on the various officials of the former government to “stay at their posts” and promised that they would not be humiliated or denied employment “so long as they do not offer armed resistance or plot sabotage”. Subsequently, in a Peking Radio broadcast on the 4th of June, 1949, Mao stated that workers should "co-operate with the capitalists, so that maximum production can be attained", and in the same year, party leaders condemned the Labour Maintenance Law of October 1945 on the grounds that it had set wages too high, and introduced "excessive" welfare measures, with the same leaders subsequently complaining that, given widespread unemployment, too many people were employed, at excessively high wages, and cadres were promoting themselves to management positions despite having no experience or competence in production. The general message to cadres as the CPC moved into urban areas, Harris contends, was not to promote what Mao termed a “relief standpoint”, which consisted of a desire to “uphold workers' welfare” but ultimately “impairs the cause of the people's revolution”, and on this basis Harris concludes that the revolution did not involve activity on the part of the working class, and was not carried out in the interests of that class, despite “great excitement and hopes” in the cities. Bianco accepts the inactivity of Chinese workers by citing the city of Tianjin, as, during the Sixth Congress of the Pan-Chinese General Union, representing some 2,660,000 workers in both the White and Liberated areas, under the control of the CPC, and covering all sectors of the economy, the city was experiencing an acute slump with major factories being closed, including 54 soap factories and 36 oil refineries in January 1948, with these closures deriving primarily from a government decision to limit the city's share of national imports to 7.8% of the total, despite having accounted for between 18% and 20% prior to the Second World War. At this point the Communist armies were between 30 and 40 miles to the north of the city, and Bianco notes that the government decision was designed to weaken North China as the CPC extended its hold, and yet, in spite of all these factors, the working class remained still, not even pursuing its interests through the government-sponsored unions, which had as their sole role the negotiation of incremental improvements. Brugger, however, notes that when the city itself was occupied, prior to the siege of Beijing, worker organizations took advantage of the situation by “taking over factory management themselves” and causing “a considerable amount of confusion”.
To explain this in light of the party's proclamations, Teiwes suggests a division between the cadres and the leadership in terms of the attitude of each group towards the working class, as cadres retained “notions of mobilizing the downtrodden” and initially put their sentiments into action by spreading themselves throughout residential areas and small-scale enterprises, backing workers against management, despite orders from the leadership not to extend class struggle to the cities. This practice reportedly came to a halt only in April in May 1949, beginning with Tianjin, when Liu Shaoqi relocated deviant cadres to the administrative and educational sectors, or to larger state enterprises where they could be supervised properly, as well as centralizing political organization, with training and supervision being further tightened from 1951 onwards, due to the tensions between new and old cadres. An additional specific instance of urban class struggle, from earlier in the civil war, is the city of Chongqing, where, according to Howard, during the period October 1945 to the end of 1946, there were at least 426 labour disputes, including 80 strikes, involving around 100,000 workers, who were employed at over 560 factories, occurring in all sectors of the economy, but especially in the armaments sector, and industrial plants. In the case of the Dadukou steel mill, workers who were demanding the right to unionize took a militant stance by first forcing the power station to shut off power in order to stop all work, and then threatening to use hand grenades if the station was surrounded by guards, with oral histories from the 1950s showing that workers organized a union independently of management whilst they were on strike, led by 46 elected representatives, and demanded that these representatives all be present at meetings with management. However, Howard goes on to note that, despite the enthusiastic support given by Xinhua ribao, and the decision of the Southern Bureau to establish a labour movement leadership cell in order to coordinate economic struggles, Du Yangqing, in his report to the the party centre in early 1947, accused the participants of being too militant, and Howard cites this as evidence of a divergence of interests between radical workers and the CPC.
Thus, when urban class struggle did emerge, the leadership, both local and national, was not likely to give full support In addition to the party's approach to struggles, the subordination of the working class to the goal of economic development manifested itself concretely in the early economic policy of the CPC as it proceeded to establish itself as the new government. When the expropriation of the property of bureaucratic and comprador capitalists was carried out, it was initially placed under the control of KMT officials and CPC officials, who took an inventory, before being passed to a triple alliance, consisting of party-military personnel, representatives of mass organizations such as the worker pickets, and retained personnel from the old regime, especially in the south, where these officials had been concentrated before the advance of the PLA and were not removed by the government, with the manager of the factory frequently acting as president of this alliance, and workers being given a consultative role only, as well as being forced to enter into arbitration when industrial disputes presented themselves. As such, workers were not given power, and neither did they take it for themselves, in spite of China's proud history of working-class struggle.
In light of the protracted nature of the Chinese revolution, and the size of China's peasant population, it is not surprising that the main drama played out in the countryside. As Averill shows, whilst almost all writers accept the notion that a peasant revolution occurred, there are differences concerning the factors that led peasants to join the war effort and accept the CPC as the new government in place of the rule of the KMT. Johnson argues that the success of the revolution had less to do with underlying socio-economic grievances such as feudalism and more to do with the destruction wrought by the Japanese invasion, as this latter factor benefited the CPC, due to both its organizational strength, and geographical location, whereas Levine contends that in 1945 and even after the outbreak of the final stage of the civil war in 1946, there was no guarantee that either the KMT or the CPC would win, such that what enabled the latter organization to emerge victorious was its success in transforming the peasantry from a passive mass into an effective fighting force. These approaches share the assumption that the peasantry was not the subject but the object of the Chinese revolution, and, as Averill notes, they both assume the validity of “peasantry” as an analytical category, despite its deep internal differentiation, and the absence of a single pattern of land ownership in China. The first of these assumptions is correct insofar as the pace of land reform was set by the CPC leadership, and was at all times orientated towards the imperatives of New Democracy and not the class interests of the poorest sections of the peasantry, such that the primary role of land reform as far as the CPC was concerned was to win the support of the rural population for strategic reasons, and, in anticipation of the future, to create a solid basis for national development.
This is demonstrated by the various changes made to CPC policy from the late 1930s onwards. During the war against Japan, the abolition of feudalism, expressed through the slogan “Land to the Tiller”, was abolished in favour of rent and interest rate reductions, derived from a law passed by the KMT government in 1933, with landlords being asked to reduce rents by at least 25% and to reduce interest rates from the existing level, which varied from 30% to as much as 100%, to no more than 10%, and a system of differential taxes was also introduced whereby those with the lowest income would not pay any taxes at all, and the large landowners payed a maximum of 30%. Hinton suggests that it would have been possible for the poorer peasants to refuse to pay any rent at all and could also have repudiated their debts if they had so desired, by virtue of their ownership of arms, and yet they were asked to tolerate the continued rule of the landlords in order to support the war effort, and, according to Pepper, there were also instances of rent reduction being shelved in areas directly threatened by the enemy so as to ensure maximum social cohesion. Pepper also points out that from 1945 onwards the activity of the party was expanded to include the full list of grievances, including local tyrants, low wages, corruption, unpaid taxes, spies, bandits, thieves, and even loose women. This was especially important in some areas such as North China where even the poorest peasants generally owned the land they tilled such that tenancy was not a key issue. It was not until the May 4th directive of 1946 that policy shifted away from partial amelioration of rural exploitation in favour of land redistribution, and whilst this policy would have enabled the confiscation of the largest estates, with compensation being paid to all landlords except those who had collaborated with the Japanese, the plan to implement the directive was interrupted by the civil war. Gray contends that the subsequent draft, produced under the guidance of Liu Shaoqi in response to an impending military threat, signified a return to the heady days of the Jiangxi Soviet as it called for the seizure of all land and an egalitarian pattern of distribution, to be implemented through poor peasant associations, and yet this plan was modified as a result of Mao's objections, with the final reform being based on the 1933 Jiangxi Soviet law, which implemented change through village assemblies consisting of everyone except landlords, allowed middle peasants to retain their holdings, and permitted rich peasants to retain the land they cultivated themselves, such that, once the reform had been introduced, the ratio of the largest to the smallest farms was still around two to one. Despite this, Mao argued that the CPC had been able to gain the support of the peasantry only where the 1946 decree had been implemented and land reform had been solved “radically and thoroughly”, as elsewhere peasants adopted a “wait and see attitude”.
The role of land reform in strengthening the CPC’s support base is demonstrated by its impact on the willingness of the peasantry to support the Communist cause militarily, as, in early 1947, 50,000 men were reported to have joined the Red Army in twelve counties along the Shantung-Henan border, whereas a similar recruiting drive in 1946 had, according to the regional party committee, failed to develop into a “large-scale mass movement”. However, there were numerous cases of poor peasants seeking to pursue their class interests without guidance from above, and it is these cases that give the lie to those historians who characterize the peasantry as essentially passive. Gray reports that in Henan in 1949, villagers seized all of the land formerly owned by rich peasants, and categorized a number of middle peasants as belonging to the higher category, then going on to divide everything that could be moved, as well as beating and even killing those whom the community despised, including a number of rich peasants who were reportedly guilty of acting as bailiffs for the landlords. Harris shows that this was not restricted to Hunan, as, in response to land seizures in Hubei during the winter of 1947-1948, as well as demands that peasants should supervise the party, which were themselves prompted by the unwillingness of the party to implement reform rapidly, Mao reportedly argued that peasants who had seized land should not follow landlords into the towns to deliver justice, rejected the seizure of industrial enterprises, called for the reclassification of rich peasants and landlords as middle peasants when those groups had been unfairly classified, and asserted that poor peasant associations should be required to admit rich peasants and the “enlightened gentry” into their ranks. These events eventually resulted in land reform being halted, such that, from that point onwards, reform was implemented by administrative methods only, over a period of time, and alongside the creation of local governmental organs, in contrast to the previous strategy of encouraging peasants to struggle openly against their oppressors and divide the struggle fruits amongst themselves. It is therefore evident that the CPC's role in limiting class struggle was not limited to the urban areas, but extended to the countryside as well, such that, if the Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution, it did not go as far as many peasants wanted it to, a notion that is affirmed by ongoing need to use social pressure, exercised through bodies like the women's associations, to sustain recruitment, as well as the conservative nature of the Agrarian Reform Law in 1950, which allowed rich peasants to own not only land they and their families worked but also land that was worked by hired laborers and rented out to other peasants, on the condition that no more than half of their total land belonged to these latter categories. This is not to undermine the impact of land reform, as Gray acknowledges that the program resulted in the distribution of 200 million acres to about 75 million families, and yet, if light of what could have emerged if land reform had been allowed to proceed autonomously, this was moderate. In this respect, Mao was faithful to New Democracy, which, by upholding moderation and class collaboration, required the CPC to intervene on the side of the oppressor.
In conclusion, the Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution in the sense that it was dependent on peasant support for its military victory, but it was not a revolution under the leadership of the peasantry, who found themselves held back and subordinated to the objectives of the CPC elite, who wanted a mere dinner party. There is therefore a tragic similarity between the unfulfilled dreams of the peasantry in 1949 and the aspirations of workers in the 1920s, as the latter group also sought to break free from the bureaucratic leadership of the Comintern and challenge the ruling class without constraints. It was not until the Cultural Revolution that the Chinese peasantry and working class would be able to pursue their class interests independently, leading to a clash not with the KMT, but with the bureaucracy that had established itself in 1949 by leaning on broader class forces.
Bibliography:
Averill, 'The Chinese Revolution Re-evaluated', Problems of Communism, 1989
Bianco, 'Origins of the Chinese Revolution 1915-1949', 1971
Brugger, 'China: Liberation and Transformation 1942-1962', 1981
eds. Fairbank, Feuerwerker, The Cambridge History of China, XIII, Republican China, 1912–1949, 1986
Gray, 'Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to 200', 1990
Harris, 'The Mandate of Heaven: Marx and Mao in Modern China', 1978
Hinton, 'Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village', 2008
Howard, 'Workers at War Labor in China’s Arsenals: 1937-1953', 2004
Lescot, 'Before Mao: The Untold Story of Li Lisan', 2004
Mao, 'Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society,' SWI, Peking 1976, original publication 1926
Mao, 'On New Democracy', SW II, Peking 1976, original publication January 1940
Mao, 'Correct the “Left” errors in Land Reform Propaganda', SW IV, Peking 1976, original publication February 1948
Mao, 'Proclamation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army', SW IV, Peking 1976, original publication April 1949
Teiwes, 'Establishment of the New Regime' in 'The Politics of China 1949-1989', 1993