The Political Process

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The

Political

Process

A collection

of political

writings from

across the

world

Kapil Arambam

http://kapilarambam.blogspot.com

March 2009

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W

hat is basically wrong with capitalism? Ask a hat is basically wrong with capitalism? Ask a number o socialists andnumber o socialists and

you will get a number o dierent answers. These will depend on their

vision o what social ism might be like and on their ideas as to what

political action is all about. Revolutionary libertarian socialists see these things

very dierently rom the trad “let”. This article is not an attempt to counterpoise

two conception

two conceptions o socialism and political action. It s o socialism and political action. It is an attempt to stress a acetis an attempt to stress a acet

o socialist thought that is

o socialist thought that is in danger o being orgotten.in danger o being orgotten.

When one scratches beneath the surace, “progressive” capitalists, liberals, Labor

reormists, “communist” macro-bureaucrats and Trotskyist mini-bureaucrats all

see the evils o capitalism in much the same way. They all see them as

see the evils o capitalism in much the same way. They all see them as primarilyprimarily

economic ills, owing rom a particular pattern o ownership o the means o

production. When Khrushchev equated socialism with “more goulash or

everyone” he was voicing a widespread view. Innumerable quotations could be

ound to substantiate this assertion.

I you don’t believe that traditional socialists think in

I you don’t believe that traditional socialists think in this way, try suggesting to onethis way, try suggesting to one

o them that modern capitalism is beginning to solve some economic problems.

He will immediately denounce you as having “given up the

He will immediately denounce you as having “given up the struggle or socialism”.struggle or socialism”.

He cannot grasp that slumps were a eature o societies that state capitalism

had not sufciently permeated and that they are not intrinsic eatures o

had not sufciently permeated and that they are not intrinsic eatures o capitalistcapitalist

society. “No economic crisis” is, or the traditional socialist tantamount to “no

crisis”. It is

crisis”. It is synonymous with “capitalism has solved its synonymous with “capitalism has solved its problems”. The traditionalproblems”. The traditional

socialist eels insecure, as a socialist, i told that

socialist eels insecure, as a socialist, i told that capitalism can solve this kind ocapitalism can solve this kind o

problem, because or him this i

problem, because or him this is the s the problemproblem, par , par excellenexcellence, aecting capitalistce, aecting capitalist

society.

The traditional “let” today has a crude vision o man, o his aspirations and his

needs, a vision molded by the rotten society in which we live. It has a narrow

concept o class consciousness. For them class consciousness is primarily

an awareness o “non-ownership”. They see the “social problem” being solved

as the majority o the population gain access to material wealth. All would be

well, they say or imply, i as a result o their capture o state power (and o their

particular brand o planning) the masses could only be

particular brand o planning) the masses could only be ensureensured a higher level od a higher level o

consump

consumption. “Socialism” is tion. “Socialism” is equated with ull bellies. The flling equated with ull bellies. The flling o these bellies iso these bellies is

seen as the undamental task o the

seen as the undamental task o the Socialist revolution.Socialist revolution.

Intimatel

Intimately related to this concept o man y related to this concept o man as essentialas essentially a producing and consumingly a producing and consuming

machine is the whole traditional “let”

machine is the whole traditional “let” critique o laissez-aire capitalism. Many oncritique o laissez-aire capitalism. Many on

the “let” continue to think we live under this kind o capitalism and continue to

criticize it because it is i

criticize it because it is inefcient (in the domain o productionnefcient (in the domain o production). The whole o John). The whole o John

Strachey’s writings prior to World War II were dominated by these conceptions.

His Why You Should Be a Socialist sold nearly a million copies - and yet the

ideas o reedom or sel-manageme

ideas o reedom or sel-management do not appear in it, as nt do not appear in it, as part o the socialistpart o the socialist

Objective. Many o the leaders o

Objective. Many o the leaders o today’s “let” graduated at his today’s “let” graduated at his school, includingschool, including

the so-called revolutionaries. Even the usual vision o communism, “rom each

according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, usually relates, in the

minds o “Marxists” to the

minds o “Marxists” to the division o the cake and not at all division o the cake and not at all to the relations o manto the relations o man

with man and between man and his environment.

For the traditional socialist “raising the standard o living” is the main purpose

o social change. Capitalism allegedly cannot any longer develop production

(Anyone ever caught in a trafc jam, or in a working class shopping area on

a Saturday aternoon, will fnd this a strange proposition.) It seems to be o

secondary importance to this kind o socialist that under modern capitalism

people are brutalised at work, manipulated in consumption and in leisure, their

intellectual capacity stunted or their taste corrupted by a commercial culture.

One must be “sot” it is implied, i one considers the systematic destruction o

human beings to be worth a big song and dance. Those who talk o socialist

objectives as being reedom in production (as well as out o

objectives as being reedom in production (as well as out o it) are dismissed asit) are dismissed as

“Utopians”.

Were it not that misrepresentation -is now an established way o lie

Were it not that misrepresentation -is now an established way o lie on the “let”,on the “let”,

it would seem unnecessary to stress that as long as millions o the world’s

population have insufcient ood and clothing, the satisaction o

population have insufcient ood and clothing, the satisaction o basic materialbasic material

needs must be an essential part o the socialist program (and in act o any

social program whatsoever, which does not extol the virtues o poverty.) The

point is that by

point is that by concentrconcentrating entirely on this aspect o ating entirely on this aspect o the critique o capitalismthe critique o capitalism

the propaganda o the traditional “let” deprives itsel o one o the most telling

weapons o socialist criticism, namely an exposure o what capitalism does to

people, particularly in countries where basic needs have by and large been met.

And whether Guevarist or Maoist riends like it or not, it is in these countries,

where ther

where there is a e is a proletariat, that the socialist uture o mankind will proletariat, that the socialist uture o mankind will be decided.be decided.

This particular emphasis in the propaganda o the traditional organisations is

not accidental. When they talk o increasing production in order to increase

consumption, reormists and bureaucrats o one kind or another eel on airly sae

ground. Despite the nonsense talked by many “Marxists” about “stagnation o

the productive orces” bureaucratic capitalism (o both the Eastern and Western

types) can develop the means o production, has done so and is

types) can develop the means o production, has done so and is still doing so still doing so onon

a gigantic scale. It

a gigantic scale. It can provide (and historically has provided) a gradual increasecan provide (and historically has provided) a gradual increase

in the standard o living -

in the standard o living - at the cost o at the cost o intensifed expintensifed exploitation during the workingloitation during the working

day. It can provide a airly steady level o employment, so can a well-run gaol.

But on the ground o the subjection o man to institutions which are not o his

choice, the socialist critiques o capitalism and bureaucratic society retain all

their validity. In act, their validity increases as modern society simultaneously

solves the problem o mass poverty and becomes increasingly bureaucratic and

totalitarian.

It will probably be objected that some obeat trends in the “Marxist” movement

do indulge in this wider kind o critique and in a sense this is true. Yet whatever

the institutions criticized, their critique usually hinges, ultimately, on the notion

o the unequal distribution o wealth. It

o the unequal distribution o wealth. It consists in variations on the theme o consists in variations on the theme o thethe

corrupting inuence o money. When they talk or instance o the sexual problem

or o the amily, they talk o the economic barriers to sexual emancipation, o

hunger pushing women to prostitution, o the poor young girl sold to the wealthy

man, o the domestic tragedies resulting rom poverty. When they denounce what

capitalism does to culture they will do so in terms o

capitalism does to culture they will do so in terms o the obstacles that economicthe obstacles that economic

needs puts in the way o talent, or they will talk o the venality o artists. All this is

undoubt

undoubtedly o great importance. But iedly o great importance. But it is t is only the surace o only the surace o the problem. Thosethe problem. Those

socialists who can only speak

socialists who can only speak in these terms see man in much less in these terms see man in much less than his ullthan his ull

stature. They see him as the bourgeoisie does, as a consumer (o ood, o wealth,

Capitalism and socialism

Maurice Brinton of Solidarity outlines his view of traditional socialists, and liber

tarian socialists.

December 1968

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o culture, etc.). The essential, however, or man is to  ulfll himsel. Socialism must give man an opportunity to create, not only in the economic feld but in all felds o human endeavor. Let the cynics smile and pretend that all this is petty-bourgeois utopianism. “The problem” Marx said, “is to organise the world in such a manner that man experiences in it the truly human, becomes accustomed to experience himsel as a man, to assert his true individuality”.

Conicts in class society do not simply result rom inequalities o distribution, or ow rom a given division o the surplus value, itsel the result o a given pattern o ownership o the means o production. Exploitation does not only result in a limitation o consumption or the many and fnancial enrichment or the ew. This is but one aspect o the problem. Equally important are the attempts by both private and bureaucratic capitalism to limit -- and fnally to suppress altogether, the human role o man in the productive process. Man is increasingly expropriated rom the very management o his own acts. He is increasingly alienated during all his activities, whether individual or collective. By subjecting man to the machine - and through the machine to an abstract and hostile will - class society deprives man o the real purpose o human endeavor, which is the constant, conscious transormation o the world around him. That men resist this process (and that their resistance implicitly raises the question o sel-management) is as much a driving orce in the class struggle as the conict over the distribution o the surplus. Marx doubtless had these i deas in mind when he wrote that the proletariat “regards its independence and sense o personal dignity as more essential than its daily bread”.

Class society prooundly inhibits the natural tendency o man to ulfll himsel in the objects o his activity. In every country o the world this state o aairs is experienced day ater day by the working class as an absolute misortune, as a permanent mutilation. It results in a constant struggle at the most undamental level o production: that o conscious, willing participation. The producers utterly reject (and quite rightly so) a system o production which is imposed upon them rom above and in which they are mere cogs. Their inventiveness, their creative ability, their ingenuity, their initiative may be shown in their own lives, but are certainly not shown in production. In the actory these aptitudes may be used, but to quite dierent and “non productive” ends! They maniest themselves in a resistance to production. This results in a constant and antastic waste compared with which the wastage resulting rom capitalist crises or capitalist wars is really quite trivial!

Alienation in capitalist society is not simply economic. It maniests itsel in many other ways. The conict in production does not “create” or “determine” secondary conicts in other felds. Class domination maniests itsel in all felds, at one and the Same time. Its eects could not otherwise be understood. Exploitation, or instance, can only occur i the producers are expropriated rom the management o production. But this presupposes that they are partly expropriated at least rom the capacities o management - in other words rom culture. And this cultural expropriation in turn reinorces those in command o the productive machine. Similarly a society in which relations between people are based on domination will maintain authoritarian attitudes in relation to sex and to education, attitudes creating deep inhibitions, rustrations and much unhappiness. The conicts engendered by class society take Place in every one o us. A social structure containing deep antagonisms reproduces these antagonisms in variable degrees in each o the individuals comprising it.

There is a proound dialectical inter-relationship between the social structure o a society and the attitudes and behavior o its members. “The dominant ideas o each epoch are the ideas o its ruling class”, whatever modern sociologists may think. Class society can only exist to the extent that it succeeds in imposing a widespread acceptance o its norms. From his earliest days man is subjected to constant pressures designed to mould his views in relation to work, to culture, to leisure, to thought itsel. These pressures tend to deprive him o the natural

enjoyment o his activity and even to make him accept this deprivation as something intrinsically good. In the past this job was assisted by religion. Today the same role is played by “socialist” and “communist” ideologies. But man is not infnitely malleable. This is why the bureaucratic project will come unstuck; its objectives are in conict with undamental human aspirations.

We mention all this only to underline the essential identity o relations o domination - whether they maniest themselves in the capitalist actory, in the patriarchal amily, in the authoritarian upbringing o children or in “aristocratic” cultural traditions. We also mention these acts to show that the socialist revolution will have to take all these felds within its compass, and immediately, not in some ar distant uture.

The revolution must o course start with the overthrow o the exploiting class and with the institution o workers’ management o production. But it will immediately have to tackle the reconstruction o social lie in all its aspects. I it does not, it will surely die.

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Preface to the Second English Edition

T

he Theses on the Chinese Revolution were written during the spring and summer o 1967, when China was in the threes o the so-called ‘Cultural Revolution’. Inormation concerning these historic events was insufcient at the time. The author nevertheless made an attempt at a social analysis, that brought him to certain conclusions concerning the Chinese Revolution as a whole. The author’s views dier undamentally not only rom those o the Maoists, but also rom those o all sorts o Leninists (Trotskyists included). Unlike what they think-and in contradistinction too to bourgeois appreciations-the Theses don’t accept that the political aims o the Chinese Communist Party determined the Chinese events. On the contrary, those political aims and the events that really occurred were both aspects o the stage o development o the Chinese Revolution. This revolutionary process is none other than the transition rom pre-capitalist orms o production into a modern society, based on wage-labour, and on its way to something like state- capitalism.

The Theses on the Chinese Revolution were frst published in Dutch in the monthly Daad en Gedachte (Act and Thought’). in the spring o 1969 they were published in France in Cahiers du Communisme de Consei ls. In 1971 the frst Englis h edition appeared as an Aberdeen Solidarity pamphlet. In 1973 an Italian edition was published in Caserta. In one respect this second English edition is like the frst; in the Theses proper, nothing has been changed. Although the author resorted to several sources, among them some well known sinologists, outstanding Chinese communist writers (such as Mao himsel), pamphlets (published in English in the People’s Republic o China) and articles rom Peking Review, he desisted rom ootnotes. He preerred to convince, not by mentioning names or titles, but by the inherent logic o the series o events that have been recorded.

True enough, many explanations could now be expanded on the basis o greater knowledge. But to do so would have taken us ar beyond the original character o the Theses, although it would not have meant any undamental reappraisal. The new acts at the author’s disposal have not basically transormed his views. On the contrary, as he sees it the latest developments in China have only confrmed them.

This is best understood i one looks at two o his other writings, added here to the primary text by way o introduction. The frst deals with some aspects o Chinese oreign policy. It was fnished shortly ater the restoration o diplomatic relations between the

People’s Republic o China and the USA. The main point is a critical look at Chou-En-lai’s attitude to the Ceylon and Bangladesh revolutions. The second point-specially dealt with or this edition-describes the conicts within the Chinese Communist Party as they became apparent at its Tenth Congress and through the anti-Conucius campaign. Both essays must be considered as a link between the seven year old Theses and the present state o aairs. The author hopes that they will contribute to making current events more easily understood.

Introduction (1974)

1) Some Reections on the Counter-Revolutionary Nature o Chinese Diplomacy

In the last quarter o the eighteenth century the USA, under George Washington, threw o the British colonial yoke. Even beore the French people had made their own middle-class revolution, the Americans had sent to the courts and governments o a predominantly eudal* (*The British Kingdom (since the revolutions o 1641 and 1688) and the Dutch Republic were the sole exceptions.) Europe their own diplomatic representatives.

To the Paris court o Louis XVI there came in this role one o America’s most able ambassadors: none other than Benjamin Franklin. In the preceding years he had not only been a red-hot champion o American independence, but he had also acquired an international reputation as a physical scientist. In his person two things ound themselves combined. He was enveloped in the lustre o the young Transatlantic Republic which, by its very existence, announced to the absolutist princes that their reign had come to an end. On the other hand, Franklin was the personifcation o pure science, unobstructed by ecclesiastical dogma. Technical progress, based on the new science, had enabled the rising bourgeoisie to build up its own orms o` production in countries that were still dominated by the nobility and clergy.

The act that it was Benjamin Franklin who had set oot on the French shore as the ambassador o the despised American Republic, had to be tolerated by the worn out order. It also stimulated the sel-consciousness o the French Third Estate. The stimulus was made even stronger by the behaviour o this diplomatic representative o the early. American employers.

Benjamin Franklin had always led a simple lie. This was, on the one hand, the result o puritanism (the product o rising capitalism). On the other, it was explicable by the demands o thrit, created by the problem o accumulation in a country o middle-class pioneers. Franklin would never have dreamt o giving up his way o lie, ater moving to the extravagant neighbourhood o the French royal household. He went about Paris and Versailles in a dress readily recognised by all as Third Estate garb. He wore his clothes with the same pride with which the marquesses and dukes o France wore their silk coats. Deeply convinced that his middle-class country-and the republican orm o government-represented the uture, Franklin orced, by his appearance, the French nobility to honour his personality. In the process, he also orced it to recognise a new class, that was laying an increasing claim to its rightul position in society.

Acting in this manner, Franklin gave an example o revolutionary diplomacy that the world has never seen since. He could be characterised as a middle-class prove. He daily defed his detested class enemy and put new heart into his French class-comrades. Later (ater the bourgeois revolution had triumphed in France and elsewhere) such a conduct totally lost its meaning. The bourgeoisie, itsel

Theses On the

Chinese Revolution

and Cultural

Revolution

By Cajo Brendel Solidarity (U.K.) Pamphlet # 46 (1974)

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becoming the ruling class, was no longer engaged in revolutionary practice. It started imitating the manners and style o its ormer class enemy. Nothing could be ound anymore o revolutionary diplomacy.

Much later, the world was led or a moment to believe that the Russian Bolsheviks (in dierent circumstances but in a similar way) had repeated what Benjamin Franklin had done to intimidate the nobility and to activate the Third Estate. In March 1918, when the Soviet government was negotiating at Brest-Litovsk with German imperialism, the Muscovite representatives came to this Polish town with working-class caps and peasant ur coats. Bolshevik Russia had barely introduced the New Economic Policy, had scarcely taken the road to state-capitalism, than its diplomats star ted behaving just as the ofcial representatives o a state-capitalist republic might be expected to do. The delegation that sat at Brest-Litovsk, in ront o the German imperial generals, was composed o political idealists. When idealism had gone, and the bourgeois character o the Russian Revolution had become obvious, the suits o the Russian diplomats became as starched and conventional as one can imagine. At the same time, the thoroughly bourgeois character o Russian oreign policy and the bourgeois traits o Russian diplomacy appeared.

It is not hard to illustrate this with some examples. In eudal, pre-revolutionary France, Benjamin Franklin would have guarded himsel against the smallest gesture that might have been understood as a sign o alliance or sympathy with those in power. On the other hand, the diplomats o state- capitalist Russia (at the time o Lenin and Trotsky, as well as at the time o Stalin and his successors) displayed day ater day their inner afnity with capitalism and with the bourgeoisie.

Chicherin, as a People’s Commissar or oreign relations, expressed his warm sympathy towards the liberal German Secretary o State, Dr. Stresemann, over the death o President Ebert (a man who once declared that he ‘hated revolution like sin’). Later on there were many expressions o sympathy at the death o other dignitaries o the European middle-class. The Kremlin diplomats kept up very riendly relations with Chiang Kai-Shek and with Kemal Pasha, while the latter respectively massacred Chinese and Turkish communists. Representatives o the Kremlin honoured Mussolini, Churchill, and Roosevelt. They entered into a pact with Hitler. In the early thirties they made their way into the League o Nations, which in their revolutionary heyday they had called the ‘thieves kitchen’.

From where did these clear and important dierences with the revolutionary diplomacy o Benjamin Franklin arise? The explanation is simple. Franklin in eighteenth century France was surrounded by his class enemies. The diplomats o state- capitalist Russia moved in middle-class Western Europe, among people o a similar political and social background. Far rom having made diplomatic or psychological mistakes, the Russian representatives did just what they were expected to do.

For some time the Russian (bourgeois) revolution seemed to have great consequences or similar bourgeois developments in Asia and Arica. Bolsheviks, like the previously mentioned Chicherin, or like Borodin (who in the twenties was the political adviser to the Chinese Kuo Min Tang) were political idealists. They dreamed o an anti-colonial struggle in which Eastern peoples would strike a heavy blow at Western capitalism. But this dream had one pre-condition: the political idealists in Russia needed the reassurance that they would not suddenly and horribly be awoken rom another dream, the dream that they weren’t living, anyhow, in a capitalist country.

As soon as the capitalist nature o Bolshevik society came to the ore, the time or political dreams came to an end. The political idealists made way or the realists. Instead o illusions about revolutionary support or Asia or Arica there came

the reality o bestowing avours upon that particular class in Eastern society that tended to slow down the break- through o modern capitalism (with the aid o western imperialism). This harmonised better with Russia’s own interests and with the oreign policy which the Kremlin had opted or ever since 1921.

So it is today with Chinese oreign policy and Chinese diplomacy. The Chinese Revolution had essentially (not in details) the same character as that in Russia in 1917. There may indeed be dierences between Moscow and Peking, but China just like Russia is on its way to state-capitalism. Just as Moscow does, Peking pursues a oreign policy that has little to do with revolution elsewhere in Asia (not even middle-class revolution).

Like Russia in the thirties, modern Maoist China has or over 20 years been seeking membership o the United Nations. Chinese oreign policy is not directed at the stimulation o the bourgeois revolution throughout the rest o Asia and in Arica. It is directed at obtaining alliances. It is a policy in which Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai display as little fnesse as Stalin and Litvinov displayed in their time.

The true character o Chinese oreign policy and o Chinese diplomacy can be seen in the light o two examples drawn rom very recent history. We mean Peking’s attitude to the revolutionary events in Ceylon and Pakistan respectively. In Ceylon, where the coalition government o the so-called United Let Front under Prime Minister Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike clashed with the revolutionary movement that stood or a state-capitalist uture, Peking did not take the side o the revolutionaries. It gave ull support to Mrs. Bandaranaike. The same happened in Pakistan when a civil war broke out between the reactionary eudal dictatorship o General Yahya Khan and the population o East Pakistan. The armed revolt in East Pakistan was the desperate answer to the colonial exploitation o the country by the West Pakistan clique. It was directed against the pattern o large landownership and against social conditions that intentionally kept the country backward. Sheik Mujibur Rahman headed the uprising or a short time. Even i the insurrection had not been beaten down, he never could have maintained that position. Behind him (and behind the social orces that he represented) more radical orces were looming up, just as in Russia. The Bolsheviks had loomed up behind those political orces that had emerged ater the February Revolution.

However, the coming to power o Sheik Mujibur would have meant progress compared to the brutal rule o Yahya Khan, who was linked with imperialism. (We speak o course o progress within the ramework o bourgeois development.) Mujibur called himsel` a ‘socialist’. Neither he nor those who are called on to complete the East Pakistan revolution deserve any such denomination. Neither in East nor West Pakistan was socialism on the agenda. Sheik Mujibur represents the East Pakistani bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie is weak, just as it is in most Asian countries. That explains why middle-class revolution in this part o the world tends to be enacted in orms that frst maniested themselves in Russia, and later in China.

I-and or convenience only-anyone wanted to give names to the actors in the Pakistan drama, one might call Sheik Mujibur a Menshevik. One might designate as Bolsheviks the revolutionary orces in the background, to which Tariq All, the London political writer, belongs. General Yahya Khan could be compared to some Tsarist general or other, perhaps to a Kornilov (a Kornilov successul in the western part o Ids bi-partite country but who ran up against serious resistance ill its eastern hal).

Peking-whose policy is our subject-didn’t support the Pakistan ‘Bolsheviks’. It didn’t even support the ‘Menshevik’ Sheik Mujibur. Peking gave diplomatic, political and military aid to the Pakistan ‘Kornilov’, General Yahya Khan. The Chinese Minister or Foreign Aairs, Chou En-lai, sent a message to Yahya Khan that was frst published in the Peking Review, then in the Pakistan Times (the

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mouth-piece o the reactionary West Pakistan government). In this message Chou En-lai declared: ‘Your Excellency and leaders o various quarters in Pakistan have done a lot o useul work to uphold the unifcation o Pakistan and to prevent it rom moving towards a split. We believe that through the wise consultations and eorts o Your Excellency and leaders o various quarters in Pakistan, the situation in Pakistan will certainly be restored to normal. In our opinion the unifcation o Pakistan and the unity o the people o East and West Pakistan are the basic guarantees or Pakistan to attain prosperity and strength.’ The meaning was clear enough: Peking was opposed to the national, middle-class uprising in East Pakistan. The People’s Republic o China considered the East Pakistan (bourgeois) revolutionaries as ‘a handul o persons who want to sabotage the unifcation o Pakistan’(1) Hence Chou’s words in the quoted message.

China, as we have said, did more. She supplied the counter-revolutionary government o Yahya Khan with weapons and equipment. These weapons-tanks made in China-were not only used against the East Pakistan insurgents. They were also used against West Pakistan workers, fghting a class-struggle against their rulers.

In other words Chinese policy towards Pakistan was just like Moscow’s policy towards China in the late twenties. At that time Russian aid enabled Chang Kai-shek to massacre the workers o Shanghai. General Yahya Khan massacred the Pakistani workers with Chinese aid.

At a public meeting in Amsterdam the West Pakistani Trotskyist, Tariq All, pointed out these acts. The Dutch Maoists present were scandalised. Evidently they hadn’t yet read Chou En-lai’s letter to Yahya Khan, a letter that had appeared in the Peking Review. They behaved like Stalinists in the thirties, unaware o Stalin’s latest changes o line. A Maoist sympathiser, writing in the British paper New Society(and much better inormed about what had really happened), suggested that the Chinese might have backed Yahya or ‘long- term motives’, namely to enable him to smash the (‘Menshevik’)Awarmi League o Sheik Mujibur and pave the way or the Bengal let. (2) One might ask such a simpleton why Lenin in 1917 didn’t back Kornilov, thereby Enabling him (Lenin) to settle with the Kerensky government, ater a successul coup!

Tariq Ali doesn’t talk such nonsense. He considers Chinese oreign policy towards Ceylon and Pakistan as ‘wrong’ policies. We reject his Bolshevik opinions. We see the policy that we denounce as the logical consequence o the state-capitalist character o the Chinese Republic.

The latest example o this-strictly logical-policy is the Chinese approach to the United Nations and the USA. Peking wants to keep up good relations with both. (3) When a number o young supporters o the American let (and sympathisers o Mao) were recently in Peking, Chou En-lai made it clear to them that their resistance to Nixon was, o course, just their own problem. China was looking or riendly relations with the White House. Such an attitude is similar to Moscow’s attitude to Hitler and to Mussolini. It is the cynical policy o diplomatic zig-zags in ront o the worst enemies o the working-class. Neither Mao nor Chou En-lai can be blamed or it, or they are not in ofce to promote the interests o the Chinese working-class. They are in ofce to promote the interests o Chinese state-capitalism. It is not they, the Chinese leaders, who are going the ‘wrong way’. Those who are on the wrong path are those who expect a revolutionary policy or revolutionary diplomacy rom Maoist China.

2) The Tenth Congress o the Chinese Party and Ater

I anyone wishes to characterise the play acted behind closed doors in Peking last summer (under the title o ‘Tenth Congress o the Chinese Communist Party’) he would have to defne it as a ‘Comedy o Errors’. Although a mere spectator, he

would eel like another Duke Solinus who, surrounded by two pairs o twins, didn’t know which was which.

Wasn’t there the Chinese Foreign Secretary, Chou En-lai, declaring that ‘the struggle o the Asian, Arican and Latin American peoples to obtain or deend national independenc e was deepening and enlarging as the result o an irresistibl e historical trend’? Didn’t Chou simultaneously express his ‘solidarity with oppressed nations all over the world, those countries that were exposed to tyranny and domination’ and deplore what he called ‘the mutilation o Pakistan’ caused by (a act, o course, which he didn’t mention) a social uprising or autonomy, a social uprising that he (Chou En-lai himsel) had vainly helped to suppress? From such words ordinary people might conclude that by Chinese standards ‘solidarity with the oppressed’ doesn’t mean what it means to the oppressed themselves. They might conclude that behind the walls o Peking reigns a conusion o tongues. That frst impression would be strengthened by everything the Congress revealed about what was logically its main concern: the Chinese scene itsel.

On that score the Congress attached the greatest possible importance to the doings o the late Lin Piao, once Chair man Mao’s ‘close comrade in arms’. Killed in a plane crash as he was ying to Russia on September 13 1971 (and consequent-ly dead or two years), Lin Piao’s ghost overshadowed the Peking conerence. The meeting so remembered him, and was so dominated by his personality, that the 1249 delegates even proceeded to expel him rom the party ‘once and or all’, as i he were still in the world o the living. Wasn’t it conusing that this man, Lin Piao, who as recently as a year beore had been posthumously charged with ‘let-extremism’, was now being called a ‘right-wing criminal’ who had always (!) had a bourgeois outlook and who had aimed at the restoration o capitalism in China. (Incidentally, the orms o production existing in China, based on wage-slavery, didn’t need such a ‘restoration’, being in their very essence capitalist.

Wasn’t it even more conusing that Lin Piao (a ervent champion o the so-called ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’),whose rise to power had taken place during and immediately ater that political tempest that had strengthened the Party’s position, could have been described as the leader o an anti-Party group? Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao’s opponent in those crucial years rom 1966 to 68, and against whom the whole weight o the Party had been launched, was on the other hand merely described as a ‘revisionist’, serious as such a charge may be. Wasn’t it embarrassing that Wang Hung-wen, a young Shanghai worker who played an important role in the battle against that ormer head o state, Liu Shao-chi, was chosen as one o the fve (instead o one) Vice-Chairmen o the Party, and as a member o its Central Committee, only to be conronted outside the meeting by ormer political riends o Liu, like Teng Chiau-ping, rehabilitated as were many others o his kind, despite a rontal attack on Liu Shao-chi by Chou En-lai?

One can’t avoid asking what, in the Chinese jargon, terms like ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’, ‘revisionism’ and ‘anti-Party clique’ really mean. Can it be that the conusion o tongues in Peking is as great as it was in state-capitalist Russia in the early sixties, when the Moscow leaders were fghting out their dierences hidden behind deceptive defnitions? Didn’t the same abuse o ‘anti-Party groups’ indicate on that occasion something very dierent rom what one might have expected? Indeed, a short but close examination o those mimic-battles is very useul to clariy their present Chinese counterpart. The spectacular Russian play had been preceded by another. In the twenties and thirties the contradiction between social reality and Bolshevik reality had given rise to a theoretical discussion about Leninist thought, the real issue o which was the class structure o the so-called soviet state. In the early sixties the interpretation o Leninism wasn’t at issue. Though Leninism (whatever that happened to be) remained the ofcial Bolshevik theory, its special social unction (namely, to hold back the truth about state-capitalist exploitation by discussing it in ‘socialist’ phraseology), had become less urgent. O course Leninism still supplied this ideological need, but

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at the same time another need had come into being.

In the past the theoretical battles mainly reected developing contradictions between Russian workers and a new rising ruling class. By the second hal o the century, these contradictions had become a widespread reality. The new ruling class was in the process o becoming a dominant and inuential actor in society. Against this social background Party traditions, born in entirely dierent social circumstances, were elt to be theoretical humbug, a stumbling block in the new class’s way to genuine development. The new ruling class could no longer collaborate with a bureaucracy that indulged in practices in no way adapted to the new situation, practices that hindered the development o production.

What the new class wanted was a more or less ‘new’ Bolshevik Party adapted to the current situation, a Party that would recognise the new class’s powerul position. The requirements o the new class led to an interesting struggle between the old Party bureaucracy and the representatives o the actory management that had come into being, and that ormed the basis o the new class. The struggle lasted many years. Both actions balancing one another, the outcome was or a long time undecided. At one time the old Party held the strongest positions, at other times the managerial action did.

All this started in darkness, beore Stalin’s death. It became visible in the post-Stalin era. It reached its culminating point in the days o Khruschev, who won power because he was the right man at that particular time. His personality-as his biographer, George Paloczi-Horvath, wrote-was just as enigmatic as the Soviet world. The true content o this enigma was that the Russian situation had produced the unstable character o Nikita Sergeyevich Khruschev, and that conversely, an unstable man like Khruschev (more than anyone else among government notables), was suited to a situation in which neither the bureaucracy nor the new ruling class could claima fnal victory. Khruschev was a misft in the bureaucracy to which he ormally belonged. But he didn’t identiy himsel with the Russian management, nor did the managerial strata regard him as a reliable supporter. Perhaps just because o these qualities, Khruschev had an unmistakable eeling about what was up. When his adversaries boxed his ears with quotations rom the dead Lenin. Kruschev pointed out that people were living in another time: what was valid then had lost its value. With those words he accurately divulged what was going on behind the scenes.

With Khruschev in ofce, the struggle between the new class and the old Party reached its fnal stage. Lengthy trench warare made way or a war o movement. So oten and so quickly did positions in the Kremlin change that when Suslov and Mikoyan returned to Moscow rom a short visit to Budapest (where, as representatives o the new class, they were prepared or a exible attitude towards the government o Imre Nagy, to whom they had guaranteed the withdrawal o Russian troops) they were conronted with an entirely dierent mood.* (*Background inormation given by Tibor Meray in one o the most interesting books on the Hungarian Revolution: Thirteen Days that Shook the Kremlin (Thames & Hudson, 1958).)

During this period the attack  rom the new management on the Party traditionalists became fercer. The embarrassment provoked by its mystiying slogans was greater than ever beore. Those who avoured the domination o the new ruling class over the old bureaucracy never tired o proclaiming their legal heritage rom the Party. At the same time the deenders o the Party (old style) were stigmatised as the ‘anti-Party group’. What lay behind the slogans and stigmatisations was clear enough in the debate (though it wasn’t carried on in plain Russian but in a language one might defne as Party-Chinese). We here give some quotations with (in brackets) translations into everyday speech.

<em> KOSYGIN (member o the Presidium o the Central Committee, deending

management): ‘Members o the anti-Party group opposed everything that was new or progressive. By such an attitude, in act, they wrecked the economic policy o the Party and o the country ... ‘ (‘The anti-Party group opposed the rise o the new class o managers and wrecked its economic policy’).’They were against any proposal that could have improved the soviet economy’ (‘They opposed proposals not in accordance with the policy o the new class’). ‘Molotov opposed the new economic and agricultural policy’ (‘Molotov was an adversary o management’). MIKOYAN (the most outstanding champion o the new class): ‘They-the members o the anti-Party group-cling to conservative, dogmatic points o view that prevent the introduction o innovations’ (‘They stood or the past and opposed any accommodation to the reality o the growing power o the new class’). ‘Molotov is the ideologist o bygone times’ (‘Molotov’s thought is adapted to yesterday’s reality. That reality does not exist any longer because o the increasing inuence o the managerial class’). MOLOTOV (in deence o the anti-Party group): ‘The Party’s new programme is a revisionist and counter-revolutionary one’ (‘The Party’s new programme aims to make the Party a tool o the new class. It transorms the principles o Stalinism. It is directed against everything the old Party represented’). SATJUKOV: ‘Molotov has always been a bungler in home aairs’ (‘Political knowledge is strictly reserved or the class that has power and rules’). KHRUSCHEV: ‘The Soviet Union is in great need o capital’ (‘The accumulation o capital doesn’t keep pace with the needs o the new managerial class’).

Joining the debate in this way, Khruschev in act took the victors’ side.’Long live the new ruling class’ was the true meaning o his belated intervention. Beore long he ound out that he had acted too late. He was dismissed as soon as the new ruling class no longer elt itsel seriously threatened. With Kosygin’s appointment as Prime Minister there started a new chapter in Russian history. Could it be that last year’s happenings in China resemble in some way what we have described as happening in Russia? In present day China, too, there are orces at work more or less avourable to the rise o a ‘new class’. Attempts to analyse these orces have been made in the Theses. There is no need to repeat the argument. Nor is it necessary again to explain-as was done in the Theses-why the Great Cultural Revolution can be regarded as the response to social developments similar to those that, in Russia, had strengthened managerial positions. There have been many subsequent indications suggesting that the Cultural Revolution wasn’t as successul as Chou En-lai would have had the delegates to the Tenth Congress believe. Those social orces in the background which even i they didn’t give rise to a ‘new class’ nevertheless prepared its way (pushing orward individual managers), still exist. They proved themselves stronger than the violence o the Red Guards and appeared to be totally interwoven with Chinese social relations. However, unlike the ‘new class’ in Russia, its Chinese counterpart has not so ar proved stronger than the Chinese Party. In the course o the Cultural Revolution the Party was transormed or the purpose o better resistance. Such acts should be a warning against too simplifed an analogy.

Things in China are not what they had previously been in Russia. Nevertheless, the phenomenon o a (uture) managerial class holds the key to every Chinese problem. For instance, Chou En-lai was very clearly criticising the managerial point o view in his speech to the Tenth Congress when he addressed himsel to ‘those who pretended that ater the Ninth Congress (held in April 1969) the development o production should be the Party’s main task’ and to those ‘who claimed that it was not the antagonism between the working class and the bourgeoisie that was the most important contradiction in China, but the contradiction between the advanced socialist system and the backward productive orces in society’.

But in China things are ar more complicated than this. The same Chou En-lai, in the same speech, underlines the necessity or a ‘transormation o all part s o the superstructure that are not co-ordinsted with the economic oundation’. That sounds like a concession to managerial demands. Apparently matters were not

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pushed to extremes. The orementioned presence o rehabilitated adherents o managerial champion Liu Shao-chi and the act that some o those men had again been able to obtain inuential positions in the country point in the same direction.

The only possible explanation is that hitherto the managerial and pro-bureaucratic orces were balanced. One must not orget that these are not the only social orces in China, where there is also a very large peasantry. Finally, i the Party was reormed during the Cultural Revolution, partly in response to the views o the peasants, it was just to take the wind out o the management’s sails. To conclude: the antagonism between the Party and the new class in China hasn’t by a long way reached the point that had been reached in Russia some fteen years earlier. This is the situation that accounts or various declarations about perect Party-unity applauded by the delegates in Peking.

How does one reconcile the act that this unity has been so loudly trumpeted with the act that delegates were proclaiming, in the same breath, ‘the inevitable necessity or many more struggles in the uture’? And why, i unity was as solid as one was made to believe, were the deliberations strictly secret, with only the texts o the speeches and the new constitution published, together with a meaningless ofcial postscript?

The implied contradiction is nothing but a paradox. The appearance o unity stands out because Party and management are equally strong. Hampered by the peasantry, they don’t ace each other in the same way as they did in Russia. This is why the Cultural Revolution remained unfnished. Behind the scenes, managerial tendencies (the orces that led to the development o the new class) are still at work. Sooner or later the equilibrium will be upset. The Party’s new constitution stressed classic Leninist ‘democratic centralism’ as the basic organisational principle, while at the same time adding that it would be ‘absolutely impermissible to suppress criticism and to retaliate’ and that, on the contrary, ‘the Party should encourage other views and great debates’. This was an attempt to delay the clash or as long as possible.

Nevertheless the ofcials are well aware that such a postponement cannot be permanent. ‘The downall o the anti-Party group’ Chou En-lai told the delegates, ‘doesn’t end the struggle between the two Party lines’. It wasn’t unity that characterised the Tenth Congress but the sound judgment that the tendencies representing the new class could not be made to disappear and that the fght against them would decide the Party’s uture. To put it in Mao’s words:’within a number o years another revolution will probably have to be carried out. Demons and devils will break the surace’. Since then, history has borne out that i one talks o the devil he is sure to come.

Beore concerning ourselves with the devil, let us talk o the demons. Just as Molotov in Russia, the ghost o Lin Piao was hammered with the charge o deending an ‘anti-Party line’. What strikes one is the ormal resemblance o the indictments. True enough, the Chinese at their Congress were speaking Party-Russian just as the Party-Russians had been speaking Party-Chinese. This doesn’t automatically imply that words in Party Chinese have the same meaning as in Party-Russian.

In Russia the ‘anti-Party group’ deended the (old) Party. It was thereore attacked by the new class. In China the new class was attacked by the reormed Party that sought new strength through its sel-reorm. Did Lin Piao resist? I so, his position would have been the opposite to that o Molotov. Instead o deending the Party against the management as Molotov had done, Lin Piao would have stood at the side o the new class. He would have stood at the side o Liu Shao-chi, who was his bitter enemy in the Cultural Revolution. Though their names were linked at the last Congress, such a conclusion isn’t strengthened by Lin Piao’s speeches.

None o them contain the least indication to such a change o ront.

At most, it might be remembered that it was Lin Piao who jammed the brakes on the Red Guards when the Cultural Revolution threatened to plunge the country into economic disaster. But he did so with the ull agreement o Mao himsel, and o the Party. Could it be that Lin Piao didn’t agree with this moderate policy? I so that might explain why the Party frst accused him o ‘let extremism’. It doesn’t explain however why such a reproach was only heard three years later.

Or was Lin Piao really as moderate as he showed himsel to be? Hadn’t he been on the Party’s let long beore the Cultural Revolution, whose ruits didn’t prove to be as red as many people had expected? What supports this view is the position o his alleged number one accomplice, Chen Po-ta, another head o the Cultural Revolution drat and a aithul transmitter o Mao-thought at every moment o his lie. There are good reasons or the view that Lin Piao was a tempered radical and that this led him to being seen as on the let when the Party, withdrawing rom the Cultural Revolution line, veered to the right. Ater Lin Piao’s death, his position seemed to be on the right because the pendulum had oscillated and because the Party, in reaction to another new class danger, had undergone a radicalisation.

Against this view one might quote Lin Piao’s more or less ‘managerial’ position concerning production. But this is rather uncertain as Chou En-lai’s reproaches on this point were directed rather against Liu Shoa-chi, with whom Lin Piao was linked only by means o a political manoeuvre. In avour o this view, on the other hand, are Chou’s own words, that the so-called anti-Party line ‘had been and still was one o the two lines inside the Party’. Be this as it may, the Party’s radicalisation was obvious. The appointment to its leadership o Wang Hung-wen, who had had to be called to order because he had gone ‘too ar’ during the Cultural Revolution, was thereore symptomatic. But let nobody think that the radicalisation in question has anything to do with the working-class struggle against capitalism. At the Tenth Congress no word was spoken either about the exercise o power by the workers themselves or about the abolition o the wages system, or o a society based on production. Chou En-lai commented with satisaction about ‘the stability o prices and the market’s prosperous position’. His statement was characteristic both in its lack o any working-class analysis and because o what it revealed concerning the true nature o Chinese economic and social relations.

These basic economic and social relations are evidently not at stake. Consequently the real issue is not the choice between a proletarian or a bourgeois alternative. Everything depends on whether the trans ormed (or even more transormed) Party or whether management will rule the roost. That is what lies behind the Party’s radicalisation, whatever Chou may have been saying about ‘a conict between proletarian and bourgeois interests, in which one would have to distinguish alse communists rom sincere ones’. Speaking thus, Chou was just churning out Party-jargon, whose deceptive appearance masked real dierences. When the process o radicalisation had started, where did the traditional and outstanding leaders like Mao and Chou really stand? At the Congress the latter never tired o quoting Mao and o stressing his hostility to Lin or Liu. But that doesn’t necessarily argue his real position ** (**Chou told the delegates, that the ofcial’Report to the Ninth National Congress’, delivered by Lin Piao, had actually been written by Mao; that Lin himsel, in collaboration with Chen Po-ta, had drated another document (that had been cancelled); and that Lin didn’t agree with the text he was delivering. Whatever the truth o this story may be (and whatever it may not be) it remains that what could be true or Lin, might also be true or Chou.) What exactly Chou represents is unclear. This is partly due to the act that, since some time beore the Tenth Congress, everything in China’s social and political lie has again been on the move. Firm positions will become visible as time goes by. That applies to everyone on the Chinese scene.

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Congress the Chairman had given several warnings to Lin Piao, all o them in vain, seeking to ‘save’ him. Does this mean that Mao Tse-tung, Lin Piao and Chen Po-ta hadn’t such undamental dierences ater all? Was it only.at a later date that the rit widened? In that case, it isn’t only the ofcial statement about Lin Piao that stands contradicted. It is also suggested that Mao wasn’t heading the radicalisation but merely tail-ending it.

How, in connection with all this , should one seek to understand the three attempts on Mao’s lie, in which Lin Piao is said to have been closely involved as the main conspirator? Were these attempts made because the Chairman tended to an even more managerial point o view? Or were they made because Mao frmly reused to adopt such a position? Listening to the Party-jargon, looking at the Chinese smoke-screen, happenings remain obscure. Nevertheless, conclusions can be drawn that go ar beyond the commonplace fxations about a ‘power battle’. Such descriptions don’t tell us anything o the social orces that drive the actors to appear beore the ootlights. It is ar more important to understand this act than to know who is who. From the historical point o view it doesn’t matter so much whether this one or that one represents the Party or the management. The actors are o secondary interest. The play: that’s the point. The battle or power is not important. What are important are the economic and social rameworks that determine its limits and by which it is characterised. It is or this reason that we have placed in the centre o our analysis the struggle between the new class and the Party bureaucracy, quite apart rom actua l questions o polic y. The correctness o this method is confrmed when we examine the anti-Conucius campaign, a campaign that reached its ull development ater the Tenth Congress.

The campaign was launched on August 7 1973 by an article in the Peking Peoples Paper. The author was Yang Chung-kuo, deccan o the Philosophy Faculty o the Canton Sun Yat-sen University (and since reerred to as the No. 1 theorist o anti- Conucianism). The campaign did not start as a pure philosophical discussion. Philosopher Yang said, ‘the battle o words with Conucius has a very actual meaning. To criticise his reactionary thoughts can be useul whenever one participates in present-day class struggle ...’ What sort o class struggle could Yang be reerring to? Neither in his article nor in the debate that ollowed was the subject touched upon. Nowhere was it treated rom the point o view that human thought is connected with society, and thereore is right as long as the society exists that gave birth to it, becoming incorrect to the extent that a given society is lost in its successor. Such a treatment, linked with the con- viction o the oppressed that neither society nor thought are invariable and eternal, doesn’t suit any ruling class. Ruling classes never have an eye or the relativity o their own mastery. From the mere act that things were not put in this way one can draw some plausible conclusions.

Conucius wasn’t interpreted as a child o his time, who reected the social relations and contradictions o the Chou dynasty in Chinese antiquity. His ideas were considered apart rom their soil. They were described as intrinsically reactionary. No attempt was made to understand Conucius rom within Chinese society. On the contrary, Chinese society was explained by stressing Conucius’ inuence. This method naturally led to the substitution o social comprehension by moral judgement.

Consequently the anti-Conucius campaign wasn’t a philosophical attack on the essential roots o class power. That remains unchallenged. The discussions became moral condemnations o certain politicians on behal o others. For this purpose, Conucius, who had died 2000 years previously, was raised rom his grave and criticised. Whether all this was really being aimed at the dead Lin Piao, or at his living competitors, is less clear. But once again this is o secondary signifcance.

For our purpose, it is more important to realise that there is a direct connection

between the anti-Conucius campaign and the issues o the Cultural Revolution. ‘Conucius’, we are told by Philosopher Yang, ‘reserved absolute wisdom or the monarch. The reormers o his time however wanted reedom o thought on behal o a hundred philosophical schools, with dierent and opposite opinions.’ Conucius ‘promised his monarch all the land. The reormers on the contrary were fghting or private landed property and or individual arming’.

The themes hardly need urther explanation. Yang, whose origin was the non-Bolshevik Democratic League o China (which had once taken an intermediate position between the Communist Party and the Kuo Min-tang) seems to be a clear voice o the new class. When he speaks o a less important philosopher, dispatched at Conucius’ command, one might believe that he is not only pointing at Lin Piao’s murder plot against Mao but that-rom an opposite position-he is also reerring to the rumour that Lin didn’t die in a plane crash but was done away with by Chou En-lai. I Yang condemns Conucius or calling back ‘those who were already buried in oblivion, aiming to restore the old order’, that too seems to concern Chou. Chou, ater all, was the man who or many years had been the architect o the new class policy. Moreover, he had his own responsibility or the rehabilitation o those who had been sacrifced in the Cultural Revolution.

Yang can thus be interpreted in dierent ways, possibly because his philosophical contribution to an actual struggle suers rom the contradictions o the struggle itsel. Another possibility i s that these contradictions are either the pure consequence o the special Party-philosophical jargon, or that they have been created deliberately, or reasons o saety in turbulent times. For times are turbulent in China. Quoting Conucius, bureaucrats and managers march against each other. The devil that looms up is a second Cultural Revolution, as predicted by Chairman Mao. Whose uture is at stake? That o Chou or that o Mao? Time will tell. Nonetheless, one thing seems certain: the outcome o the struggle will not in the least change the (state) capitalist nature o Chinese society. The rule o the Party-bureaucracy or managerial rule? That is the question or the years to come. Whatever the answer, in the long run the new class seems to have the best testimonials. On to the Thesis on the Chinese revolution