From 1956 to the early 1980s, the
Communist Party of China and their
Maoist or ‘
anti-revisionist’ adherents around the world often described the
Soviet Union as state-capitalist, essentially using the accepted Marxist definition, albeit on a different basis and in reference to a different span of time from either the Trotskyists or the left-communists. Specifically, the Maoists and their descendants use the term state capitalism as part of their description of the style and politics of
Khrushchev and his successors, as well as to similar leaders and policies in other self-styled ‘socialist’ states.
[20] This was involved in the ideological break of the
Sino-Soviet Split.
After Mao's death, amidst the supporters of the
Cultural Revolution and the exploits of the '
Gang of Four', most extended the state capitalist formulation to China itself, and ceased to support the
Communist Party of China, which likewise distanced itself from these former
fraternal groups.
Another group appeared out of this movement in 1978, aligned with
Albania and its leader
Enver Hoxha, who insisted that Mao himself had pursued state capitalist and
revisionist economic policies.
[21]
Most current
Communist groups descended from the Maoist ideological tradition still hold to the description of both China and the Soviet Union as being ‘state-capitalist’ from a certain point in their history onwards — most commonly, the Soviet Union from 1956 to its collapse in 1991, and China from 1976 to the present day. Maoists and ‘anti-revisionists’ also sometimes employ the term ‘
Social-imperialism’ to describe socialist states that they consider to actually be capitalist in essence — their phrase,
"socialist in words, imperialist in deeds" denotes this.
