'Maoist' China... Communist?

[Module]

Was China ever a communist nation? Or even a socialist nation? I have always been under the impression that it wasn't.
Could somebody give me a brief rundown of why it wasn't, if it wasn't?
Or vice versa.
I'm trying to write a response to a teacher's (disappointing, given her previous apparent attitude towards Marxism) criticisms of communism.
One included all communist leaders becoming "autocratic", using Mao as an example. I will respond to the general criticism myself, however I don't feel confident enough in my knowledge on China to really respond to the specific example.
Cheers in advance. :)

[BanderaRoja]

Was China ever a communist nation? Or even a socialist nation? I have always been under the impression that it wasn't.
Could somebody give me a brief rundown of why it wasn't, if it wasn't?
Or vice versa.
I'm trying to write a response to a teacher's (disappointing, given her previous apparent attitude towards Marxism) criticisms of communism.
One included all communist leaders becoming "autocratic", using Mao as an example. I will respond to the general criticism myself, however I don't feel confident enough in my knowledge on China to really respond to the specific example.
Cheers in advance. :)

The answer depends on who you ask.

If you ask Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, the answer is yes, it was a socialist nation.

If you ask other Marxist-Leninists or Trotskyists, the answer will vary.

If you ask Anarchists or Left Communists, they would say no.

[redcannon]

honestly, China was socialist, at best. It could not have been communist because it was not stateless (and really, this is just one of many aspects). Today, it is neither. Today it is capitalistic. Evidence of this is that the two largest problems in China today are class division and worker exploitation, and those don't sound Socialist or Communist to me.

As far as your teacher is concerned though, it is a communist nation run by autocrats, because all of the "communist" countries her or his teacher taught about were as well.

[Q]

There have been many threads about this...

Anyway, to be a socialist society you have to be:
1. a workers democracy.
2. have international cooperation that outgrows the nationstate.
3. surpass capitalism economically.

China never was either of that. It was a "workers state" in the sense that the economy was nationalised and rationalised, but it was not under workers control. It was a deformed workers state since it never knew a genuine socialist revolution, led by the proletariat. But still - despite all its limitations - a workers state, since all it needed to become a workers democracy was a political revolution, not a social one, to topple the bureaucratic stratum.

Nowadays China could be called capitalist, but with a twist. It certainly isn't your average free market economy and the state still has a big say. However, the ruling clique is in a process to "safely" return to capitalism. "Safely" in the sense that it wants to avoid any of the mess Russia had after the collapse of Stalinism.

An indepth article about this question be read here (http://socialistworld.net/eng/2007/03/22china.html).

[Eleftherios]

If you ask Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, the answer is yes, it was a socialist nation.

If you ask other Marxist-Leninists or Trotskyists, the answer will vary.

If you ask Anarchists or Left Communists, they would say no.

So true

But most agree that it was never communist in the proper sense as defined by Marx, which was a society vbased on the principle of
"To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability."

Here's another good quote by Marx and Engels:

"When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

[Dros]

Firstly, tell your teacher that the term "Communist nation" is a total contradiction in terms.

Secondly, China was objectively a socialist state between the time when Mao seized power and when he lossed power to the revisionists in the late seventies and then more obviously after his death and bourgeois factions within the party completely took control.

Mao collectivized ownership of the means of production, liberated women, boosted agriculture, created industry, enriched culture, and emancipated millions of people out of the slavery of capitalism in the most revolutionary way yet seen. The Cultural Revolution is the best example of how this occured and what this was all about. Over the course of his rule, the life expectancy of people in China went from 35 to 60. The allegations that he was autocratic are bullshit.

[subham]

To denounce China as a capitalist country would be a sheer travesty of truth and render inclination to sectarian politics. China, the socialist republic is trying to proceed with the rapid change in the politico- economic scenario of today's world. The policy of reform executed by the CPC are merely part of tactics rather than strategy. What they are trying to do, is to build up socialism doing a concrete analysis of the concrete situation!!

[Niccolò Rossi]

China was never communist as has been noted. However, not was it socialist either. China was, and is, state capitalist. See here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1184441&postcount=27) for more info.

[Prairie Fire]

"Communist nation"? Perhaps, you mean communist state, and even that would be a contradiction.

Was China ever a socialist state? Nope.

China never established a dictatorship of the Proletariat (look at the chinese flag; four stars,four classes). The Chinese leadership incorporated the chinese national bourgoisie into their organization and revolution, making concessions to them rather than defeating them and struggling against them.

Chairman Mao says:


Here in China we have been relatively moderate with our national bourgeoisie who feel a little more comfortable and believe they can also find some advantage"
-Mao Tsetung

"Some advantage"? :confused: Here is another good quote from Imperialism and the Revolution on the subject (These were all found by Marcos :D):


Capitalist rent has not been abolished by law in China, because the Chinese leadership has adhered to the strategy of the bourgeois-democratic revolution formulated in 1935 by Mao Tsetung, who said at that time: "The labour laws of the people's republic... will not prevent the national bourgeoisie from making profits ... ". (Mao) In conformity with the Policy of the equal right to land", the kulak stratum, in the forms which have existed in China, has retained great advantages and profits. Mao Tsetung himself gave orders that the kulaks must not be touched, because this might anger the national bourgeoisie with which the Communist Party of China had formed a common united front, politically, economically and organizationally. (Mao)

Further reading:

Imperialism and the Revolution, Enver Hoxha
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/toc.htm

The Chinese School of Revisionism, A. Marcos
http://www.revleft.com/vb/chinese-school-revisionism-t82860/index.html

[Module]

Thanks guys, but that was made in March. It's now July :p
That teacher no longer works there, but again, thanks for replying.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I've posted this elsewhere before, but for you're benefit I'll do so again (even though it's past time with that teacher, obviously):

1) The Invasion of Tibet: In 1950, the Red Army invaded Tibet, a British colonial possession, Mao Tse-Tung was widely blamed for the destruction of Buddhist temples and crack down of religious practices as well as the thousands of deaths during the invasion.
On the contrary, the Red Army was democratic at this point, as was Mao’s wish, so Mao himself had no authority over when the Chinese army invaded the colony. He merely pretended to as to not appear weak to the western imperialists, which would have taken such opportunity to fund a counter revolutionary operation to remove the new communist government.
As for the invasion itself and atrocities which occurred, since Mao had little control over the red army at the time, he obviously didn’t control when soldiers went out of line and torched a Buddhist temple, which were actually rare occurrences. Besides the deaths, which were mostly those of enemy combatants anyways, the Invasion actually liberated Tibet from harsh British rule, healed the poverty of the region, and promoted further rebellion against the British on the continent.

2) The Hundred Flowers Campaign: Once Mao had a firm grip on party policy, he launched the Hundred flowers campaign 50 years ago in 1956. It was started by Mao as an attempt to liberalize party policy and allow multi ideal practices in China. The hardliners of the party, which also held some influence, saw Mao as trying to restore capitalism, failing that a loose socialism, and aimed to stop him.
Mao was forced to step back from full power because of bombardment by his enemies, and during this time, those who expressed their ideals to the party were attacked because of their "reactionary" thinking, and as a matter of fact, the failure to liberalize party policy and the deaths of those attacks in truth, greatly grieved Mao.

3) The Great Leap Forward: In the late 50's and early 60's Mao noticed that the Nationalists failure to commercialize the Agricultural network in China and the booming population would soon lead to a disaster. Noticing the coming problems, Mao launched a series of Industrial and Agricultural reforms to combat the coming starvation.
In any other scenario, Mao would have prevented many deaths except for one problem; drought. During the middle of his agricultural reform, drought struck China and many died from Famine, a famine which Mao is widely blamed for. It can be noted and seriously debated however, that without the Great Leap forward, many more, as much as three times as recorded, could have died from starvation. Despite US propaganda at the time, the Great Leap Forward was actually a big success and saved many lives.

4) The Cultural Revolution: The Cultural Revolution, affectionately called "The Time China went mad" by anti-communists, is the major event for which Mao is remembered.
Before Mao died in 1976, he launched his final campaign which he called the Cultural Revolution. Mao saw reactionary capitalists gaining ground in the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) as well as external forces demonizing the party’s actions (Including attempts to overthrow the Congolese government, end Pol-Pot’s primitive reign over Cambodia, and send economical aid to Albania during the Sino-Soviet Split).
Mao called upon the masses for a second revolution and for the proletariat and farmers alike to besiege party headquarters and end the reactionary threat. The people applied and formed the Red Guard which went beyond Mao's plans and attacked religious sites of worship, immigrants that were thought to be working for reactionaries, and even each other. Mao, foreseeing the coming anarchy, quickly moved to restore order in China and called the Cultural Revolution a "success" and asked the Red Guard to dismantle.
Shortly after, Mao died of illness and China was left in a power struggle. In truth, had the Red Guard not gone out of hand and the Cultural Revolution been truly successful, China could have been on its way to a true communist utopia. Arguably, it was the Cultural Revolution that was the closest period in time in which a nation was the closest to reaching true communism.

[Rawthentic]

Was China a socialist state? Yes.

China was in every way socialist then, and in every way capitalist, today.

Was socialist China an amalgam of 4 classes? No.

Priarie Fire takes things out of context. During the Chinese Communist Party's policy of the United Front, there was a necessity to unite all progressive forces to defeat Japanese imperialism. There was never any class collaboration, in the sense that Mao or the CCP capitulated to the bourgeoisie and watered down or eliminated their communist politics (as the chinese trotskyists asserted at the time). As the situation in china changed, as a new stage of resistance came into being (as Japan started to invade China) class relations changed in relation to that imperialist invasion. There was what Mao called the comprador bourgeoisie, or the imperialist section of the chinese bourgeoisie (the "running dogs" of imperialism) that supported the various imperialist nations vying for control of China (USA, Japan, Britain) and the national bourgeoisie (which DID exist and still does in some oppressed nations) which had a section that supported Japan and a section that did not. Mao said that the section that did not support Japan had to be won over to the national united front, but always under the leadership of the proletariat and the communist party. We can also use dialectics for this: in the prior period of civil war against the Kuomintang, the main contradiction was that of between the oppressed masses and the kuomintang. In the new stage against Japan, it became a secondary contradiction, while the prime one became national resistance against Japan, because only ousting Japan could pave the road to socialism (as it did). I think it is wrong to assert then (and today) that if there are sections of other classes that for several reasons can support or be neutral to your cause that one would reject them under false notions of "class collaborationism". Resistance to Japan became the interests of the vast majority of chinese, including sectors of the national bourgeoisie, and the resistance needed all the forces possible to be able to defeat Japan.

Yet, the bourgeoisie never led this struggle. It was always under the leadership of the proletariat. And, after Japan was defeated, the socialist revolution came to power. This is where the national bourgeoisie (after the comprador bourgeoisie) was expropriated fully (not right away, through a process). He talks about this in "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" (http://marx2mao.com/Mao/PDD49.html). China had collectivized agriculture and communes in the countryside, new forms of workplace control (3-in-1 committees that consisted of worker, manager, and Party cadre). The base was socialist, as well as the superstructure (communist ideology was the leading line, it was the leading ideology and its policies reflected this).

Mao in the ""The Contradiction between the Working Class and Bourgeoisie is the Principal Contradiction in China" :


With the overthrow of the landlord class and the bureaucrat-capitalist class, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie has become the principal contradiction in China; therefore the national bourgeoisie should no longer be defined as an intermediate class.Mao saw that this class no longer could be an ally of the proletariat in its socialist reconstruction. He wrote this as a response to some Party members who still thought that it was.

From Mao on "On State Capitalism" :

The present-day capitalist economy in China is a capitalist economy which for the most part is under the control of the People's Government and which is linked with the state-owned socialist economy in various forms and supervised by the workers. It is not an ordinary but a particular kind of capitalist economy, namely, a state-capitalist economy of a new type. It exists not chiefly to make profits for the capitalists but to meet the needs of the people and the state. True, a share of the profits produced by the workers goes to the capitalists, but that is only a small part, about one quarter, of the total. The remaining three quarters are produced for the workers (in the form of the welfare fund), for the state (in the form of income tax) and for expanding productive capacity (a small part of which produces profits for the capitalists). Therefore, this state-capitalist economy of a new type takes on a socialist character to a very great extent and benefits the workers and the state.From the "Party's General Line in the Transition Period" :



The time between the founding of the People's Republic of China and the basic completion of socialist transformation is a period of transition. The Party's general line or general task for the transition period is basically to accomplish the country's industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce over a fairly long period of time. This general line should be the beacon illuminating all our work, and wherever we deviate from it, we shall make Right or "Left" mistakes. Many policies under this general line were already set forth and decided upon in principle in the resolution adopted at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee held in March 1949. Nevertheless, many comrades were not inclined to work in accordance with the decisions of the Second Plenary Session and on some matters preferred to go their own way contrary to the session's decisions or even openly violated its principles.
These last three quote were all from 1953, to show how much of a long process it was. It cannot be said that because four years later China still had private industry that this negated socialism. Look at the USSR and their implementation of the NEP to speed up industry and development. I don't think any serious Marxist would argue that a process like this, particularly in a semi-colonial/feudal nation like China, would be done immediately.

We need a concrete analysis of concrete conditions as Mao would say. We can't ascribe China pre-made formulas as if that is how revolutions were made and developed. Each revolution and its socialist process goes through a long and protracted struggle with all kinds of forces. Let us keep in mind that each revolution also develops according to its own conditions.