Chinese Maoists persecuted by revisionist gov't

[1949]

Mao Forever Our Leader”: Chinese authorities jail pro-Mao leafleters

17 January 2005. A World to Win News Service.

The latest news from China has been filled with desperate workers’ strikes and violent peasant upheavals against tyrannical authorities. In the last few weeks, the government’s fear of a spark of dissent turning into a roaring fire has become so great that a thousand policemen fill Peking’s Tienanmen Square every morning before it opens to block any attempted demonstration. Recently the Web site of the US-based magazine Monthly Review reported a wave of support for four people arrested and jailed for circulating a leaflet upholding Mao Tsetung, declaring that what exists in China is not socialism but capitalism, and calling Communist Party leaders “enemies of socialism and the people”.

In a closed trial 24 December, Zhang Zhengyao and Zhang Ruquan were found guilty of deliberately spreading falsehoods to damage reputations and undermining the social order and national interests. The initial, far more serious charges of “subversion” against them were dropped. The trial date for the other two is yet to be set. Many people reportedly came to the courthouse for this trial to support the defendants, although they were kept out. Some travelled from other cities in China. News about the case and the contents of the leaflet were spread through the Web.

In China, as in the Soviet Union, socialism was overthrown from within the Communist Party, but the countries took different paths after that. In the USSR, because of policies carried out by the Communist Party in a decisive way after the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union’s once-socialist institutions became instruments to oppress and exploit the people. Then some two decades later, the new ruling elite decided to get rid of these institutions and become Western-style capitalists. After Mao’s death, political power in China was taken over by the people in the party he warned against. He called them “capitalist roaders” because they wanted to implement the same kind of policies as those who had seized power in the USSR in the 1950s. But unlike in today’s Russia, China’s capitalist ruling class still pretends to be “communist”, retaining the old form of government and keeping some of the state economy.

The “three represents” this leaflet refers to illustrate this situation. The Chinese party leaders claim to represent “the advanced productive forces” (in other words, economic development at any price, instead of development in the interests of the people), “advanced culture” (a money-worshiping, slavishly pro-Western culture where China’s common people are considered dirt) and “the interests of the majority of the people” (impossible for a party that serves the first two “represents”, and so just a lie).

This leaflet was judged dangerous by the Chinese authorities because it tears away their “socialist” mask and exposes their real class nature. It clearly represents the feelings of uncounted millions of Chinese people that society in Mao’s time was far better than it is now or even promises to be, and their determination to understand what happened and bring back socialism. Some of the leaflet is puzzling. The excerpts given below, chosen and translated by the China Study Group, blast Deng Xiaopoing, the man who organised the overthrow of Mao’s successors, and Jiang Zemin, party leader until late 2002, but don’t mention Hu Jintao, who replaced Jiang as head of the party and the government. Most notably, and reflecting confusion at best, the leaflet seems to put forward the idea that China could return to the socialist road without a violent revolution, one led by a new Maoist party to overthrow the state run by what was once Mao’s party.

As Mao warned might happen after his death, some of the same words used by real Maoist revolutionaries seeking to put an end to the division of society into social classes and everything that has arisen from that are now being used by a new capitalist class born within the party. This new capitalist clique began by opposing steps to advance along the socialist road and then took all power into its own hands through a military coup and the arrest and murder of many of Mao’s followers. This shows the importance of learning to tell the difference between real and phoney Marxism, known as revisionism because it revises and robs Marxism of its revolutionary content.

Monthly Review wrote, “On 21 December, four Maoists were tried in Zhengzhou for having handed out leaflets that denounced the restoration of capitalism in China and called for a return to the ‘socialist road’. The leaflets had been distributed in a public park in the city of Zhengzhou on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the death of Chairman Mao Tsetung. Two of the defendants, Zhang Zhengyao, 56, and Zhang Ruquan, 69, were both found guilty of libel, and each given a three-year prison sentence on 24 December.

“In recent years, on the anniversary of Mao’s passing on September 9, many people in Zhengzhou would gather before Mao’s statue in the Zijinshan Square, to pay tribute to Mao’s memory by laying wreaths or reciting poems. Each year there would be a massive police presence, which inevitably would lead to incidents of confrontation and arrest.

“This year a crowd again gathered on 9 September; the event was relatively peaceful, as no police were dispatched to forcefully disperse the crowd. A local resident, Mr Zhang Zhengyao, however, was taken into custody by plainclothes agents around 10:00 am, apparently because he was distributing leaflets whose contents were judged inflammatory or subversive in nature. What Zhang handed out were copies of a commemorative piece, titled ‘Mao Forever Our Leader’, specifically written for this occasion. On 10 September at 1 am, Zhengzhou City Police took Zhang Zhengyao in handcuffs back to his apartment to conduct a search; they took away his computer, the remaining copies of the commemorative piece and other documents. Three other persons were implicated in connection with this case.”

----

The China Study Group’s abridged translation of the leaflet follows:

Mao Tsetung Forever Our Leader!
A statement in commemoration of the 28th anniversary of the Passing of Mao Tsetung

Twenty-eight years have elapsed since Chairman Mao left us. In the past 28 years, the reactionary forces headed by capitalist-roaders within our Party have usurped the state and Party powers and divided up state assets among themselves. Meanwhile, they have been spewing deep-seated hatred and venom against Mao Tsetung and his socialist legacy. They have done their utmost to attack and slander Mao Tsetung, by the use of such tactics as concocting Party resolutions, issuing official documents or reports, and publishing articles and editorials in official news media; moreover, in their attempt to smear Mao Tsetung, they have resorted to such low blows as “Democracy Wall” posters, rumours and innuendos, personal memoirs and interviews with foreign journalists.

But the great majority of Chinese people, accounting for more than 95% of the population, and in particular workers and the peasants will always stand by the side of Mao Tsetung. Under Mao Tsetung’s leadership, to serve the people wholeheartedly was set out as the fundamental precept guiding the work of the Party, the government and the army. He had repeatedly urged all Party members and all the cadres always to take the mass line and stand on the side of 95% of the people; he emphatically stated that: “To take the mass line is a fundamental principle of Marxism.” Throughout his life, he had fought for the liberation of the people, until his last breath.

From their direct experience, the Chinese people realized that Mao Tsetung and they themselves were intimately bound together, in good times and bad, in victory and defeat: with Mao Tsetung as their leader, Chinese people were the masters of the country, and enjoyed inviolable democratic rights. They lived a happy life, confident, optimistic and reassured of ever better days ahead. But after Mao Tsetung passed away, the working class in China was knocked down overnight by the bourgeoisie; they are no longer the masters of their own country. In this society of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, money means power and social status. The wealth polarisation has driven working people into abject poverty; as a result, they have lost their social status and all the rights they had enjoyed previously. They are no longer dignified socialist labourers; instead, they are forced to sell their labour power as commodities for survival: they have become tools that can be bought freely by the capitalists.

Part of the working people work for so-called state-owned enterprises, but the term “state-owned” actually means capitalist-owned because the entire state is owned by the capitalist class. The labourers are no longer working for themselves; they are working to create surplus value for the capitalist class. Another part of working people have in effect become slaves for large and small capitalists. They suffer from even more cruel exploitation and oppression. In addition, hundreds of millions of workers and peasants have been constantly subjected to layoffs and forced migration, living from hand to mouth, always on the march, looking for jobs and struggling for mere survival. Labour has become the only means for the survival of themselves and their families. Work is no longer a guaranteed right. As a result of the commercialisation of education, health care, cultural activities, sports and legal recourse, they have been in effect deprived of the right to send their children to school, access to health care, the right to a pension and other rights associated with old age, the right to participate in cultural, recreational and sports activities, and even the right to legal protection. Moreover, as a result of the waste of resources and environmental pollution caused directly by the rapacious development pursued by the capitalist class, the working people have even lost their right to healthy food, clean water and fresh air. Poverty has brought them untold suffering!

Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and the like call themselves the core, or chief architects of China’s reforms, or the proud authors of the “Theory of the Three Represents”; a close look at their performances and deeds will lead to the conclusion that they only represent the interests of imperialism, and the interests of the bourgeoisie. The historical practice and stark social realities of the past 28 years have opened our eyes and raised our class consciousness; the bourgeois elements within our Party are the head and the backbone of the Chinese bourgeois class. These are extremely selfish persons, stubbornly pursuing the capitalist road. They are much more sinister, ruthless, greedy, and devious than an average capitalist outside the Party. Just take a look at what has transpired in a relatively short period of twenty plus years: the large and small capitalist-roaders in the Party and their family members have all become millionaires and even billionaires; who can deny that all their talk about socialism and the “Three Represents” are outright lies. What they really want is capitalism, because only capitalism will bring them the greatest benefit. They are the enemies of socialism and the people.

We, however, must not forget that the CCP after all is a Party that had been founded and led by Mao Tsetung, and one with a long revolutionary tradition. It is a Party that had carried resolute struggle against Khrushchev’s revisionism, and had been tempered by the Cultural Revolution. And consequently, just as there are capitalist-roaders in the Party, there are certainly socialist-roaders in the Party as well, particularly at the grassroots level. Among the rank and file Party members and low-level cadres, the overwhelming majority are resentful of revisionist leaders within the Party. They wish to see the Party change its current line and to revert to the socialist road. Some of them cannot tolerate it any more. They have stepped out to openly challenge the current leadership, but more people still find it safe for themselves or for their families not to speak their minds. We are convinced that, along with the deepening of the revisionist clique’s push for privatisation, the class contradictions in China are bound to become more acute; and the masses will certainly intensify their struggle on ever-wider scales.

When the development of contradictions and mass struggles nationwide reach a climax, the people within the Party, the government and the army who have understood the true nature of revisionism will wage a resolute struggle against it, and will rejoin the proletarian class ranks to hold high the banner of Mao Tsetung and to resume the fight for socialism in China. As long as classes and the class struggle still exist in our world, Mao Tsetung will remain alive, forever the leader of the oppressed and exploited classes. As the entire history of China’s revolution has repeatedly shown, as long as the revolutionary people follow steadfastly the guidance of Mao Tsetung, their struggle will surely advance from victory to victory.

The struggle of the people is the inexhaustible source of our confidence and power.

[Severian]

The workers' strikes and protests', as well as peasant unrest, in China today is highly significant. Much of it is objectively directed against the pro-capitalist policies, including of course strikes against private businesses. One sign of these actions' power is that even the highly repressive Chinese regime sometimes has to hesitate rather than send in the cops or soldiers against them - even in one case where strikers had blocked a railway line!

Mao is sometimes taken as a symbol of a more egalitarian time; both because he isn't identified with the more recent market orientation, and because he's a symbol of the great revolution he stood at the head of. And the memory of his crimes has had time to fade; who knows he may be more popular in China now then at the time of his death.

Part of it also may be protective coloration; waving a red flag and locating oneself in the traditions of the CCP may make it somewhat harder to for the CCP leadership to justify repression. That the authors of this leaflet only got three years may reflect that it works sometimes.

In short, don't be disappointed if Maoism's popularity turns out to be shallow and transitory as things develop and especially after the regime falls - as much of the left coloration of East European opposition movements disappeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As for communism, it's nonexistent in China and probably will be for some time - communism requires internationalism, not just in the abstract but a real connection to struggles around the world. Revolutions elsewhere will probably be required to restart a communist movement in the formerly Stalinist countries.

The important thing, in any case, is the living class struggle and the mass actions, not looking for signs of the vindication of one's particular ideological brand name. As Marx wrote, that's the mark of a sectarian. ("The sect finds its point of honor and raison d'etre not in what it has in common with the general movement, but in the particular shibboleth that sets it apart." or something like that.)


Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 02:46 PM
After Mao’s death, political power in China was taken over by the people in the party he warned against. He called them “capitalist roaders” because they wanted to implement the same kind of policies as those who had seized power in the USSR in the 1950s.
Y'know, if capitalism could so easily - almost without resistance - and instantly be restored after the deaths of Stalin and Mao, by people who were their "comrades" for many years, what does this say about their regimes? (It's true that Deng was Mao's factional opponent, but Mao brought him back every time he was purged, and Deng went all the way back to the Long March. Hua was Mao's choice for premier and party vice chair shortly before Mao's death.)

Of course capitalism wasn't restored so quickly and easily; what actually happened was the bureaucratic system became less repressive after the deaths of Stalin and Mao. If some people say this decline in repression amounted to the restoration of capitalism, that just shows they've mistaken dictatorship over the proletariat for the dictatorship of the proletariat.


Part of the working people work for so-called state-owned enterprises, but the term “state-owned” actually means capitalist-owned because the entire state is owned by the capitalist class.

Actually, this is backwards. In a post-capitalist context, even private capital is not so capitalist as its nominal owners would like. Bourgeois analysts have attempted to deal with this problem by dividing the economy into three sectors instead of the usual two: state, private, and then the "non-state" sector. Even in China today, there all kinds of limits on what can be done with one's capital.


Most notably, and reflecting confusion at best, the leaflet seems to put forward the idea that China could return to the socialist road without a violent revolution, one led by a new Maoist party to overthrow the state run by what was once Mao’s party.

Well, if socialism can be overthrown without a violent revolution, or much of any upheaval really, why can't capitalism? If you accept reformism in reverse, why not forwards?

[ShineThePath]

This page below gives an excellent indictment against the Capitalist China of today on the economics level. It shows from the 1980's how China has progressed from the Socialist Economy (or State Capitalist) to outright Capitalism in 1997, and beyond. China has become the back burden of labor for the Imperialist forces throughout the world (even Taiwann and Hong Kong have taken apart of this). I find in quite odd to say China is less repressive uner the Deng forces, when China currently executes more prisoners than any other country. While in China you had unique liberty for the Proletariat, they use this liberty combat the CCP itself, as in the Shanghai Commune. Not just the Proletariat took action in Mao's time, but the Youth, the Peasants, and Women took it upon themselves to change society.

http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/china1.htm
Logged

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 10:41 AM
I find in quite odd to say China is less repressive uner the Deng forces, when China currently executes more prisoners than any other country.
Probably not the highest in proportion to population, though.

Regardless, I meant less repressive than Mao, not less repressive than other countries.

[Skeptic]

I wonder who is happier that China is now Capitalist, Bill Gates or Severian.

Gates - China's New Form
Of Capitalism Is Best Ever
1-29-5

http://www.rense.com/general62/best.htm

DAVOS, Switzerland, (AFP) - US software giant Bill Gates has high praise for China, which he says has created a brand-new form of capitalism that benefits consumers more than anything has in the past.
"It is a brand-new form of capitalism, and as a consumer its the best thing that ever happened," Gates told an informal meeting late Friday at the World Economic Forum in this ski resort.
He characterized the Chinese model in terms of "willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead".
Manufacturers have created "scale economies that are just phenomenal", in part owing to companies there and elsewhere on the planet designing good products, Gates said.
Looking ahead, he added: "You know they haven't run out of labor yet, the portion that can come out of the agriculture sector" was still considerable.
"It's not like Korea, Korea got to a point where, boom, the wages went up a lot," he said, adding "that's good, you know, they got rich and now they have to add value at a different level.
"They're closer to the United States in that sense than they are to where China is right now."
Gates continued by heaping praise on the current generation of Chinese leaders.
"They're smart," he said with emphasis.
"They have this mericratic way of picking people for these government posts where you rotate into the university and really think about state allocation of resources and the welfare of the country and then you rotate back into some bureaucratic position."
That rotation continued, Gates explained, and leaders were constantly subjected to various kinds of ratings.
"This generation of leaders is so smart, so capable, from the top down, particularly from the top down," he concluded

[t_wolves_fan]

Did Mao's policies lead to like 20 million deaths?

[UltraLeftGerry]

It sounds almost as if Gates is extolling the virtues of fascism...

[RedStarOverChina]

As a Chinese Marxist, I must admit wht the article has to say was true in many aspects. However, I dont pity the so-called Maoist after 1976. As much as I respect Lenin and Mao, I dont agree with many of their ideas. However, thats has little to do with my lack of pity towards the "maoist".

As painful as it is for me to see China being graspped by Capitalism, I fear any revolutionary movement would harm the interests of the Chinese people. Because in various ways, it is still quite feudalistic and requires instrialization (as much as I hate the concept) to provide the basis of a socialist society (this is where, me, as a marxist disagree with Marx-leninism).

In addition, I suspect that violence cannot bring down capitalism. Only when we are in that certain stage of historical developement, can we deal a final blow to the evil, blood-sucking system. And China, regretably, doesnt seem to be ready.

by the way, believe it or not, in China, there is no such a term as Maoism. Because we Chinese felt that Mao Zedong thought is completely built upon Marx-leninism, and that it lacks the characteristics of an ideology.

[1949]

I had a post from March 1 in this thread criticizing Skeptic for his unprincipled attack against Severian. I don't see it anymore. Does anybody know where it went? Anyway, here is my response to Severian's arguments--finally.


The workers' strikes and protests', as well as peasant unrest, in China today is highly significant. Much of it is objectively directed against the pro-capitalist policies, including of course strikes against private businesses.
Severian, here you proceed from preconceived notions, not from the facts.

Your assumption is that this is a socialist state, with growing "private capitalist" sectors (and for you "capitalist" and "private capitalist" are the same thing), and that this growth is rooted in "pro-capitalist policies" of the socialist government.

So therefore (in your view) it is important to suggest that the strikes are aimed at "pro-capitalist policies" and against "private businesses."

This is a bit confused. First of all, a great many strikes (and we don't know enough to say "most", since much is kept out of the media) are aimed at the state sector--and the officials who run it. The reason is not surprising: first, these are highly oppressive workplaces, and, for example, in coal mining, the treatment of workers there is an international scandal. Second, there are huge changes happening there--layoffs, cutbacks, speed up etc. This is not limited to the non-state sectors at all.

This is because these state sectors are not socialist at all, but are state capitalist. And because the problem in China is not "pro-capitalist policies"--but the restoration of capitalism, which is now thirty years old. In other words, China is not a socialist country with growing capitalist sectors--it is a capitalist country with state capitalist sectors and privately owned sectors (which are often owned by foreign imperialists).

And, for example, these state sectors are often contractors for the foreign imperialists, and run in ways indistinguishable from the factories of Nike in Indonesia, or the electronics factories of Taiwan.


Mao is sometimes taken as a symbol of a more egalitarian time; both because he isn't identified with the more recent market orientation, and because he's a symbol of the great revolution he stood at the head of.
This is a strange way of sidestepping the simple truth: Mao is taken as a symbol of a more egalitarian time, because the era of Mao was a more egalitarian time.

You have a method of erasing inconvenient truths. You are defending a thesis, not seeking the truth--and so you simply fudge where you need to. (Mao called that "cutting the toes to fit the shoes.")


And the memory of his crimes has had time to fade; who knows he may be more popular in China now than at the time of his death.
This too is upside down: Mao warned that there was a real danger of restoration. And now thirty years later, people can see how truly visionary and correct his concerns were.

Mao waged sharp struggle against that. This was extremely difficult within China, and great sacrifices were involved in the waves of revolutionary transformation. The revisionists who then climbed to power denounced it as disruptive and unnecessary, as paranoia and persecution and as merely the power-hunger of Mao's supporters among the masses. And, this was of course the analysis that revisionist forces like the SWP which you support.

In other words, hundreds of millions now say "Mao was right!" And also "Life was better under Mao in so many ways!"


Well, if socialism can be overthrown without a violent revolution, or much of any upheaval really, why can't capitalism? If you accept reformism in reverse, why not forwards?
You are raising a classic argument of Trotskyism--that there could not be a restoration of capitalism in Russia or China since there was no violent seizure of power with the smashing of the state.

They say Mao's analysis of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union was "running the tape of reformism backwards."

There are a lot of things to say about this.

1) First this argument proceeds from a mechanical formal logic not from reality. It is basically a dogmatic and idealist argument, not a dialectical materialist one.

In other words, the Trotskyites say "Marx and Lenin said that the proletariat could only seize power by violent revolution, breaking up the state machinery, and creating a new state. So how could the bourgeoisie seize power from the working class without violent counterrevolution, breaking up the state machinery and rebuilding a version of their old state?."

If you can't seize power without violence, how can it be seized from you without violence?

And they think this is very clever.

The answer is that reality and human politics doesn't follow such rigid and dogmatic thinking. Our thinking must conform to reality in order to be true and correct.

In 1872, Marx and Engels wrote their last joint preface to their 1848 Communist Manifesto. They wrote that they had learned from the experience of the Paris Commune. They said "One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.'" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...tm#preface-1872 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1872)

You can see the scientific process in their thinking and method. They did not know this earlier, because the experience of the proletarian revolution had just started. And they could sum it up after 1871.

But does that mean that they were also summing up that the bourgeoisie "cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery' of those furture proletarian states that had not yet emerged??!

No, obviously not!

Marx and Engels made no summations about how the process of counterrevolutionary restoration might happen in the socialist epoch. Why? Because they weren't pulling shit out of their asses, based on logical hashing of rigid formulas or apriori assumptions.

They were scientific socialists, drawing insights and understandings from their deep analysis real history and real events.

And, now, 130 years later, we have deep experiences with capitalist restoration--particularly in Russia and China, the two main socialist revolutions of our epoch.

Trotskyism has, routinely, rejected the process of scientifically summing up that experience. Instead they argue from their own dogmatic assumptions and (when necessary) simply reject (and even mock) what real historical experience has shown. (Again: this is "cutting the toes to fit the shoes.")

And we can sum up some things about how restoration can happen, where it comes from.

One thing we can sum up is that you are exactly wrong: yes, the proletariat cannot seize power without a sweeping violent revolution. But, contrary to your assumptions, the bourgoeisie can--and has!--seized power from within socialism, without dismantling the state aparatus, and without even the sweeping violence of a civil war or coup-from-without.

In China there was widespread resistance--including armed resistance by the revolutionary militia in Shanghai...but they were fighting the regular armies of the PLA, which were a backbone of the restoration. In other words, it was not the bourgeoisie that had to defeat the armed forces of the state at that point. And that is why their restoration did not need to take the form of a sweeping civil war.

And this is true about many processes in nature and society, if you think about it. The process of "going one way" is not the same as "going the other way," despite your assumptions about logic and reality. For example: it is hard work to memorize all the material for a final exam, but it is relatively easy to reverse the process and forget it all. It is relatively easy for a fetus to emerge from the birth canal, but it would be brutal and destructive to force one back in. It is hard to build a building, but easy to collapse one...and so on. So who says that the process of overthrowing capitalism and restoring it have the same laws, and are somehow mirrors of each other? It is pedantic dogmatism and mechanical thinking, that denies the particularity of these two processes--how profoundly different they are from each other.

So what about the process of restoration?

In 1975 Mao launched a campaign to "Study the Theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Combat and Prevent Revisionism." He warned against the danger of capitalist restoration saying, "If people like Lin Piao come to power, it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system."

Why is that?

Because socialism is highly contradictory, and the socialist base (its relations of production) and the socialist superstructure--including the party and state--have capitalist forces contending at every level within it. It is the nature of socialism.

It is not true, as some rigid law, that all transfer of class power from one class to another requres a sweeping war and the break up of the state. For example: the transfer from one ruling class to another represents a break, and would require upheaval of various kinds, but not necessarily war. Feudalism everywhere had growing capitalist elements within it--and in some places the transition to capitalism from feudalism happened through violent revolutions (such as France). But in other places the transition was more a morphing in which exploiting class was wielding power (such as Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries).

The socialist revoluton requires a huge rupture with the very nature and purpose of the bourgeois state.

On important essay by the Maoists of the "Gang of Four" summed this up. It is called "On the Social Basis of the Lin Piao Anti-Party Clique" and examines the important question of where the capitalist roaders come from, and how do they arise at the heights of power within socialist states.

http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/changyao.htm#Yao

Anyway: there is much more to say on this, both historically and theoretically.

But the basic point is this: we now have a great deal of experience with the restoartion of capitalism, and the ways it can be overthrown from within by forces (like Krushchev, Deng, Brezhnev, Lin Piao) that emerge within the heights of the socialist state and the heights of the ruling communist party.

The fact that they emerge there, and their restorationist programs have tremendous power and influence throughout socialist society, is the basic reason why restoration is, as Mao said, easy, once they come to overall power.

[viva le revolution]

This is a shameful development it appears that the chinese leaders have forgotten why China has such a unique identity and respect among the world's powers.
Mao tsetung lifted China from an opium addicted farm of unskilled workers for the imperialist into a nation that was strong enough to stand up on it's own and defy imperialist powers.
China is now drifting slowly towards Capitalist-Fascism.We should support the brave comrades who are trying to remind the Chinese leaders of the values and teachings under which the commnist state was founded and the debt of gratitude they owe to their founder.
The chinese people should stand tall and declare to the Capitalist pigs:CHINA IS NOT FOR SALE!

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 09:05 PM
I had a post from March 1 in this thread criticizing Skeptic for his unprincipled attack against Severian.
Well, thanks anyway. A lot of posts were lost due to technical difficulties.



Severian, here you proceed from preconceived notions, not from the facts.

Sometimes a conclusion reached long ago looks like an assumption...but my assessment of the Chinese situation is based on economic facts....which I don't all have to hand. This has to be constantly reassessed as things change, of course. But in any case you seem to have different criteria, not based on economic data.

You haven't referred to one concrete economic fact that supports your thesis, anywhere in your post.


Your assumption is that this is a socialist state, with growing "private capitalist" sectors (and for you "capitalist" and "private capitalist" are the same thing), and that this growth is rooted in "pro-capitalist policies" of the socialist government.

No. One, the PRC has never been socialist - which to me implies a classless society - rather dominated from the beginning by a privileged bureaucracy, with Mao and Chiang Ch'ing living the most luxurious lifestyle of all.

It did nationalize capitalist property, a necessary but not sufficient condition for advancing towards socialism. The PRC was in a transitional stage somewhere between capitalism and socialism. The economic facts used to make this assessment in the 1950s are still the kind of facts used to assess the PRC's current state. It's still in-between.

If current trends continue long enough it'll slide all the way back to capitalism. But of course trends don't usually continue indefinitely in reality.

(In the Trotskyist tradition, this transitional stage is called a "workers' state", a somewhat misleading-sounding term, since it doesn't necessarily imply the workers hold power.)

In a capitalist context, of course the property of the capitalist state is capitalist property. Employee-owned companies also operate much like other companies.

In a post-capitalist context, this ain't necessarily so. As investors in the former USSR often complain.


So therefore (in your view) it is important to suggest that the strikes are aimed at "pro-capitalist policies" and against "private businesses."

No, it's significant because it suggests the direction of this opposition is progressive, and objectively directed against not for capitalism. Some other opposition to the PRC is pro-capitalist after all.


This is a bit confused. First of all, a great many strikes (and we don't know enough to say "most", since much is kept out of the media) are aimed at the state sector--and the officials who run it.

And the pro-capitalist policies of those officials.


The reason is not surprising: first, these are highly oppressive workplaces, and, for example, in coal mining, the treatment of workers there is an international scandal. Second, there are huge changes happening there--layoffs, cutbacks, speed up etc.

Yes, exactly. The effect of the market-oriented policies is "not limited to the non-state sectors at all." It involves shutting down many state-owned enterprises; others must become profitable or at least less unprofitable which necessarily involves "layoffs, cutbacks, speed up etc."


This is because these state sectors are not socialist at all, but are state capitalist. And because the problem in China is not "pro-capitalist policies"--but the restoration of capitalism, which is now thirty years old.

If you say that's 30 years old, then you have the problem of explaining what's happening now. A lot of Chinese workers seem to think something pretty major is happening to their conditions of life. And you just acknowledged "huge changes" are involved.


And, for example, these state sectors are often contractors for the foreign imperialists, and run in ways indistinguishable from the factories of Nike in Indonesia, or the electronics factories of Taiwan.

On the contrary, they're run very differently, or were until recently. You just admitted that "huge changes" are required even to attempt to bring them into line with market competitiveness.



This is a strange way of sidestepping the simple truth: Mao is taken as a symbol of a more egalitarian time, because the era of Mao was a more egalitarian time.

You have a method of erasing inconvenient truths. You are defending a thesis, not seeking the truth--and so you simply fudge where you need to. (Mao called that "cutting the toes to fit the shoes.")

Oh, that's rich coming from your political tendency. with its long tradition of the Big Lie. But that would be a digression.

In reality, I don't deny that Mao's time was more egalitarian than the "recent market orientation"...but only relatively.



Mao waged sharp struggle against that. This was extremely difficult within China, and great sacrifices were involved in the waves of revolutionary transformation. The revisionists who then climbed to power denounced it as disruptive and unnecessary, as paranoia and persecution and as merely the power-hunger of Mao's supporters among the masses.

Hmm...that "sharp struggle" and "great sacrifices" DID NOT prevent the restoration of capitalism, according to you, shortly after Mao's death, by Hua who was Mao's choice for premier...therefore Mao was right. There seems to be something wrong with that logic.


And we can sum up some things about how restoration can happen, where it comes from.

One thing we can sum up is that you are exactly wrong: yes, the proletariat cannot seize power without a sweeping violent revolution. But, contrary to your assumptions, the bourgoeisie can--and has!--seized power from within socialism, without dismantling the state aparatus, and without even the sweeping violence of a civil war or coup-from-without.

Circular, since you haven't proved - with facts, remember you were talking about them? - that the bourgeoisie did in fact seize power. You gotta do that before you draw theoretical conclusions from this alleged event.

And: what a devastating criticism of the parties and states headed by Mao and Stalin, if it were true that those parties and states so readily went over to capitalism so soon after their deaths. Including all kinds of people who were Mao's and Stalin's comrades throughout their lives, and after Mao and Stalin purged so many others for allegedly favoring capitalist restoration. Apparently virtually all of their co-leaders were really agents of the bourgeoisie. Apparently out of millions in the country, only a handful could be found who really supported socialism. A stunning exposure of the bankruptcy of that "socialism" if it were true.

They musta demobilized the workers and peasants pretty thoroughly, too, since there was so little resistance...


In China there was widespread resistance--including armed resistance by the revolutionary militia in Shanghai...but they were fighting the regular armies of the PLA, which were a backbone of the restoration.

Heh. In reality, as opposed to the Big Lie, the main fighting between "revolutionary militias" and the PLA was well before your supposed restoration of capitalism. When Mao ordered Lin Piao to crush the Red Guards. Who he had unleashed to crush his factional opponents, but then got out of his control and threatened his bureaucratic power and privilege.

I'm guessing that's not the resistance you're claiming happened, so when exactly was it? Do you have any evidence of it other than Maoist propaganda?

Before you misrepresent me again, I'm not saying there was no fighting. I don't kno w, off hand, if there was or not, or whether it was at all "widespread" or significant if it did exist. You've made the assertion, so it's up to you to prove it.



In 1975 Mao launched a campaign to "Study the Theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Combat and Prevent Revisionism." He warned against the danger of capitalist restoration saying, "If people like Lin Piao come to power, it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system."

Which raises the question, then why did Mao promote Lin Piao to head of the army and trust him to crush the Red Guards?


Because socialism is highly contradictory, and the socialist base (its relations of production) and the socialist superstructure--including the party and state--have capitalist forces contending at every level within it. It is the nature of socialism.

And odd assertion, about a situation after the nationalisation of all capitalist property and the destruction of capitalists as a class. What are these, ghost capitalists?

Lemme suggest that you were projecting when you said I was operating from preconceptions rather than facts...that you yourself are operating from a Divine Revelation handed down by Mao, which has no relationship to facts, but serves rather to rationalize the interests of a privileged bureaucrat.


But in other places the transition was more a morphing in which exploiting class was wielding power (such as Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries).

A crappy example, given that in fact there were two British capitalist revolutions - the so-called Great Rebellion and Glorious Revolution. Real power was in capitalist hands after those, and the aristocracy was quite bourgeoisified.

Wouldn't it be more relevant if you could give a back-to-feudalism example, anyway?

Incidentally, Redstar, who comes out of a Maoist tradition, has drawn the logical conclusion from your theory and says that reformism works forward too: He argues that capitalism was restored in the USSR under the NEP, then destroyed again under Stalin, then restored again..I think under Khrushev....