I.
In order to understand the "cultural revolution," we have to go back and spend some time on the principal contradictions and tensions which lie at the root of the events of the last three and a half years.
First of all, as regards economic development, it must not be forgotten that China started off from an extremely backward economic base, far inferior to the one from which the Soviet Union started. The first five-year plan (1953-57) unquestionably scored spectacular successes in various fields. But in spite of an extraordinary effort and substantial aid from the Soviet Union, the results were still quite modest in absolute figures.[1] Moreover, in 1957 the growth rate declined with respect to 1956.[2]
The line of the Great Leap Forward and the People's Communes was designed to meet the following necessities:
(a) The necessity of not only maintaining but accelerating the tempo of industrial production. This had to be done without limiting the flow of capital into the modern sector while at the same time developing the secondary and traditional industries.
(b) The necessity of achieving a sharper increase in agricultural production in order both to satisfy greater domestic needs and to increase exports and, hence, foreign currency reserves.
(c) The necessity of dealing with the problem of rural underemployment and exploiting fully the advantages of the new productive relations.
In the countryside, the Maoist leadership wanted also to counteract rightist tendencies which in the years 1956-57 showed up in an attempt to liquidate a certain number of cooperatives.
As is well known, the Great Leap Forward was marked in its initial stage by spectacular growth, but it ended in a failure which created a grave situation, especially in the years 1961 and 1962. It was after this that the Chinese leadership proceeded to carry out a profound readjustment of its economic orientation, giving priority to the development of agriculture. Thus in 1963-65 an unquestionable revival took shape. Nonetheless, the rate of growth remained limited and clearly insufficient in relation to the country's needs. It is difficult to give concrete data on this subject because the Chinese authorities have not furnished overall statistics for almost ten years (this silence, however, is very eloquent). According to the estimates of bourgeois economists, it seems, though, that in 1965 China had again come up to its 1958 level (that is the 1958 per capita level) and that only toward 1970 would the country regain its 1960 level of production.[3] In agriculture where the difficulties were indicated, among other things, by the large imports of foodstuffs, the 200 million tons of cereals obtained in 1958 has not yet been equaled.
I am not overlooking the fact that important successes were scored in certain branches of industry nor am I minimizing the influence of unfavorable noneconomic factors such as bad weather conditions and natural calamities—and above all the abrupt suspension of Soviet collaboration. In any case, the impetus of growth remained absolutely insufficient, and that was all the more grave because the world economy was characterized in this period by substantial new advances in the realm of technology and industrial production.
The limited industrial growth rate had the consequence of accentuating the conflict between the tendency toward urbanization on the one hand and the contraction of the urban economy's capacity of absorption on the other. The urban population had increased as a result of migration to the cities stimulated by a search for jobs, higher salaries, and generally more comfortable living conditions. At the beginning of the sixties it had reached 130,000,000, while the economic policy makers considered that at the time it should not have exceeded 110,000,000.[4] If it is considered that the Chinese population increases by about 14,000,000 to 16,000,000 persons a year and that each year the youth reaching working age number 10,000,000, the extent of the problem will be comprehended. In certain periods, the return to the villages took on considerable proportions, and it is significant that, even today, official propaganda, by means of a directive from Mao, is stressing the necessity for the young people to go into the villages.[5] In any case, serious bottlenecks had developed on the eve of the "cultural revolution."
The draft resolution stresses another contradiction, the one "between the rapid expansion of literacy and the increase in general level of education of the Chinese youth on the one hand, and the still relatively low number of skilled jobs available in China." A single statistic is sufficient to show this. In the ten years before 1960, the number of secondary school and university level diplomas rose to 3,300,000; in the subsequent six years it rose to about 23,000,000. It must be added that according to official sources it was impossible to provide education for all those who wanted it.[6] In the case of the higher level technical specialties, the opposite phenomenon occurred. The supply did not match the demand.[7]
Coming to the problems of the countryside, let us keep in mind first of all that the weight of the rural population and the agricultural economy remained heavily predominant and that backward conditions subsisted in all fields. Subsistence agriculture accounted for 80 percent of the total. Mechanization touched only limited sectors and electrification was only in its beginnings.[8] The launching of the People's Communes, which aimed at assuring both a very marked increase in production and the overcoming of the social conflicts which the spread of cooperatives throughout the countryside had failed to eliminate, ended essentially in failure on both scores, which was implicitly acknowledged by a readjustment both in general economic policy and in the structures of the Communes themselves. Thus the oscillation between collectivist thrusts on the one hand and tendencies toward private accumulation, the use of private plots, and utilization of the "free" market, on the other, reoccurred even after the Communes, especially in 1961 and 1962. To return to the draft resolution, there existed "the contradiction between the objective necessity to socialize the surplus product of agriculture, for purposes of accelerated economic and industrial development, and the political need to achieve this socialization with the approval of the majority of the peasantry" and "the contradiction between the objective necessity to interest materially the bulk of the poor and middle peasantry in increasing agricultural production, and the inevitable tendency to increased inequality and private accumulation which results from these 'material incentives.""
The period 1949-65 was not characterized in China by a social stratification as pronounced as the one that occurred in the USSR in the thirties, which was reflected in certain aspects of the official ideology. However, as our movement has not failed to note on several occasions in the past, differentiations and tensions nonetheless de-
First of all, there were inequalities between the living conditions in the cities and the countryside. It is significant in this regard that taking precedence among the demands of the peasants who mobilized at the beginning of 1967 was the demand for a reduction of their relative disadvantage. In the second place, I have already alluded to the inequalities persisting or widening in the villages due to different opportunities for accumulation and remuneration. At the extremes of a wide gamut were found on the one hand peasants living exclusively from the income of their labor and on the other middle or "rich" peasants who were able to accumulate important savings.[9]
Among the workers, tensions were provoked by the stagnation of wages at a very modest level that lasted quite a long time (for all practical purposes, it seems that no more general increases were given after 1959; the increases in 1963 probably represented the promotion of workers toward better-paid categories).[10] Conflicts were provoked also by the existence of quite important inequalities (the differentiation into different categories was accentuated by the employment of piecework, the introduction of bonuses, the granting of consumption and vacation privileges, etc.).[11] We must not forget either the malaise caused by job insecurity and by delays in the payment of wages.[12]
In opposition to the workers and the overwhelming majority of the peasants, unquestionably privileged strata existed. The vestiges of the old ruling classes themselves were considerable and, despite the expropriations, the former capitalists enjoyed exceptional living conditions.[13] Differentiations had, however, taken form within the postrevolutionary society. Within the economic apparatus, technicians and managers enjoyed salaries about double those of the best-paid workers. In the state apparatus and in administration in general, a wage differential of one to twenty-six introduced marked inequalities. But most of all at the highest levels in the party and the state, privileges were extended and consolidated beyond the formal incomes. While this was already clear to us before, after 1966 it was confirmed by the denunciations made by the Mao tendency and the Red Guards. They raised the question of privileged living conditions, luxurious habits, and manipulation and misuse of public funds for private aims, etc.[14] In the case of the army, the remunerations of the generals were among the highest paid by the state.[15]
Let me repeat: the social differentiation in China in 1965 was not as pronounced as it was in the USSR in the thirties. But in order to comprehend the trend, relative terms are as important as absolute ones. What is more, the fundamental question arises of who made the big economic and political decisions?
The extent of actual centralization in 1965 was more limited than generally thought and remains so today. Central economic planning operated in a very relative way and a quite large margin was left to decentralized decisions (in certain cases with real possibilities for influence to be exercised from below). It is enough, moreover, to recall that the agricultural economy, which remained heavily predominant, was essentially outside the
Nonetheless, the essential decisions, both political and economic, were the prerogative of the state and party, and more particularly of their highest spheres. Once again, by their denunciations in 1966-67, Maoist sources confirm that this apparatus was very hardened, that it played a conservative braking role, and that it was detached from the broad masses of the people. This was all the more true because the party, which was the real backbone, by no means functioned in a democratic manner and because certain commitments to increase internal democracy that were made at the 1956 party congress remained a dead letter.[16]
The party's relations with the intellectuals, finally, provoked especially important conflicts. On the one hand, the intellectuals were a part of the privileged strata, but on the other hand they were the only ones who in the given conditions were able to express the malaises and criticisms that existed and even initiate a public polemic. To the extent that the intellectuals kept to their own milieu and raised primarily their own demands, the regime took a benevolently paternalistic attitude. But when their criticism became more political and they tried to step forward as the spokesmen of broader collective needs, they were pilloried and became the target of virulent attacks reminiscent of Zhdanov's methods and arguments.[17]
This then was the background against which the 1965-66 events were to explode. To the tensions I have summarized must be added other factors of a major portent. The now complete break with the Soviets and the evolution of the USSR under the Khrushchev and Brezhnev regimes led the Chinese leadership to ponder the fundamental problems of the transitional stage between capitalism and socialism. The conclusion of the Maoist tendency was that the post-Stalinists had worked for a restoration of capitalism and that the adoption of similar methods would involve a danger of capitalist restoration in China also. Thus, in their view, it was essential to wage an all-out struggle. The circumstances assumed a more dramatic cast, moreover, as a result of a world situation distinguished at once by American imperialism's attack on Vietnam—which clearly represented a very great danger for China also-and by the defeat suffered in Indonesia by the strongest Communist party that had aligned itself with the Chinese positions.
II.
I will not go back over the precise origins of the Mao-Lin Piao offensive here nor the question of how clearly Mao and his followers saw from the start the scope and difficulty of the battle they were unleashing. What is certain is that profound differences in a whole series of areas had existed for years, especially since the time of the Great Leap Forward and the Communes. Mao's resignation from his post as president of the republic, among other things, had a much greater significance than was supposed at the time.
As regards the positions of the various tendencies and personalities prior to November 1965 and during the "cultural revolution," an evaluation remains extremely difficult. In accordance with an old bureaucratic custom, only the victors have the right to speak and the positions of the others are known only through truncated or arbitrary quotations or by views attributed to them on no-one knows-what foundation. The monstrous accusations directed against Liu Shao-chi and other former leaders can only be taken seriously by those who have a stake in propagating them or by incurable innocents. The fact is eloquent, moreover, that not a few of the criticisms raised against these officials during the "cultural revolution" were raised in the past, sometimes in exactly the same terms, against other oppositionists by Liu Shao-chi, Peng Chen, Lo Jui-ch'ing, Chou Yang, etc. This said, the Maoist polemics and accusations hold a certain interest because they reflect the orientations and conceptions that the Chinese leaders wanted to prevail. In this sense, these arguments represent essential source material.[18]
In its initial phase, Mao's battle developed along the following lines:
(a) Attacking those intellectuals most dangerous both because of the implications of their polemics and because of their position in the party and administrative apparatus (the offensive of November 1965); (b) winning the leading group in the army by eliminating the doubtful Lo Jui-ch'ing and by assuring strict control by Lin Piao (the military conference of January 1966); (c) dismantling the fortress around Peng Chen in Peking (the offensive of spring 1966).
As the conflict developed, Mao saw the breadth and the strength of the opposing front. He realized quite quickly that he could not win a majority, at least a stable majority, in the decisive party bodies and that even the campaigns he was launching could be deflected by other forces (see, for example, the vicissitudes of the first wave of the "cultural revolution" in the universities). The August 1966 Central Committee plenum, which ended with a certain compromise, confirmed the resistance of essential sectors of the apparatus. This is why, precisely at this time, he decided to renew the struggle by appealing to sectors of the masses. This decision could not fail to be heavy with consequences.
Why did Mao choose to appeal first to the students? The reasons for this are manifold and can be summed up as follows:
(a) This was a sector of the population particularly sensitive to certain kinds of appeals against the vestiges of conservative structures and conceptions. And this was true, above all, inasmuch as it suffered from some of the most acute tensions, which I have just mentioned.[19]
(b) The problem of the new generations and their relationship to the leadership of the party and the state was particularly felt and this concern had a basis in objective reality. In fact, for the older generations who had known the barbarous exploitation under the former regime, the gains of the revolution were not put in question by the difficulties and contradictions of the new government. For the youth, however, who had been born or who had grown up after the revolution, the revolutionary gains represented a starting point taken for granted and they were inevitably drawn to examine the failings and inequalities of the new society, whose possibilities they wanted to exploit fully, with a more critical eye. It was not without a profound significance that Mao strove to make the youth go through experiences substituting for those undergone by the anti-Japanese war and civil-war generations and to have them learn the horrors and the sufferings of Kuomintang China from the mouths of the old people.[20]
(c) Mobilization of the student masses involved much more limited consequences for the life of the country, especially in the functioning of the economy. Moreover, the leading group may have thought that the youth could be more easily controlled.
Thus the Red Guards were mobilized by means of revolutionary democratic and equalitarian slogans, and they mounted an assault on a very large section of the apparatus, and, more generally, against the various symbols of privilege. Although the initiative unquestionably came from above, and was tied to the specific interests of the Mao-Lin Piao tendency, the organization was not rigid in form or strictly controlled. From the beginning, a very pronounced fragmentation occurred, giving rise to sometimes very numerous groups competing among themselves in the name of the same Maoist orthodoxy (the official documents are quite explicit in this regard). In a series of schools and universities, including the University of Peking, these divisions and these internecine struggles stretched out over two years, lasting until the intervention of groups of workers at the end of July 1968. In the initial phase, the attacks of Mao's partisans were directed against "work groups" allegedly led by oppositionists. These groups were attacked especially for their "excesses" and their "violence." From the spring of 1967 on, criticisms were directed primarily against ultraleftist, anarchist, etc., groups which were often accused of pushing too far in purging the old cadres. In general, from the beginning, a very clear tendency took form to outdistance the Maoist tops who had unleashed the mobilization, to break out of the limits that they wanted to impose, to work—despite the subjective will of Mao and Lin Piaofor clearly antibureaucratic and revolutionary goals. Those who fail to understand the objective dynamic of mass mobilizations and do not go beyond the intrabureaucratic crises at the top cannot comprehend the full portent of the Chinese crisis of the last three years.
Facing the persisting resistance and difficulties, toward the end of 1966 Mao decided to appeal to the workers, calling on them also to mobilize directly and build revolutionary committees in the plants. The consequences of this appeal were not long in coming, and they far exceeded what Mao would have wanted. The beginning of 1967 was marked by a powerful wave of workers struggles (with strikes, demonstrations, building occupations, etc.), which, while it reached its height in Shanghai, spread throughout a number of the country's provinces and big cities. To quote the document with which we opened the discussion after the 1967 IEC plenum: "The immediate cause of the events of January 1967 lay in the rupture in the leadership of the Chinese CP and in the growing disintegration of the party and state apparatus at all levels. A vacuum, a relative absence of power, was thus created. In these conditions, in which the appeals to the masses helped, the various social forces were set in motion, each impelled by its own needs and objectives."
The question as to how much the Mao group's appeals influenced the demonstrations of January-February 1967 and how much it was the oppositionists who inspired or made use of these demonstrations is, after all, a secondary one.[21] The essential thing is that the workers judged the time had come to express their demands and to throw themselves into direct actions to win these demands. And at the same time they sought to develop new organizations.[22] The tendency for the mobilization to get out of hand, which had distinguished the mobilization of the student masses, reoccurred in a still more explosive form among the workers.
The response of Mao and Lin Piao was again symptomatic. Their essential aim was to halt the strike movement, to canalize the mobilization of the workers, including by resorting to threats and repression. But at the same time, not wanting to cut themselves off from the masses, they continued to appeal to the population by launching the slogan of taking power, that is, a profound reorganization of the country's entire apparatus of leadership. It is precisely this attitude which explains why these outbreaks recurred periodically, why multifarious organizations mushroomed, and why the political crisis shook the country for a quite long period.
As regards the countryside, I must rectify the opinion expressed at the IEC plenum in March 1967 that the movement was limited primarily to the areas close to the big cities like Shanghai and Peking. On the basis of many items provided since then by the official sources, I must conclude, rather, that the upset was quite wide spread. In addition to the demands that I have already underlined—such as the demand for eliminating the relative disadvantage of the countryside—substantial peasant sectors raised demands similar to those that took shape after the halting of the movement of the People's Communes, especially in 1961-62 -that is, a relative freedom for private accumulation, an expansion of the private plots, the chance to use the "free" market, a decrease in deliveries to the state, etc. It is significant that in certain cases it was the Maoists who sought to counteract excessive state intervention, which was attributed to Liu Shao-chi and his supporters. In other words, the "classical" conflicts of the transitional period were recurring once again in the Chinese countryside.
III.
As I have said, faced with the movements which were sweeping the country, Mao intervened to halt them and canalize them, threatening to go as far as repressive measures and appealing primarily to the army, which in the decayed state of all the apparatuses, remained the only effective instrument.[23] He drew up a plan for politically reorganizing the country which could make use of the forces newly emerging from the great turmoil. In the initial phase, emphasis was put on revolutionary-democratic themes, appealing to the tradition and concepts of the Paris Commune. But all this was toned down quite rapidly[24] and new political and organizational forms appeared. Thus the formula of the "great alliance" was constantly repeated, whose aim was to unify all the various groups that had emerged. Also repeated over and over again was the formula of the "triple alliance," which as we know, was supposed to group the representatives of the masses, of the army, and of the cadres. It was on this basis that the "revolutionary committees" progressively formed, which were presented as the essential elements in the organization of the state and administration in general.
This reorganization was achieved, however, with very great difficulties. Manifold difficulties arose anew among the various tendencies and groups, all of which claimed to be Maoist. It was only on the eve of the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic in 1968 that the reorganization was completed in all the Chinese provinces. Despite at times stubborn resistance, the old cadres will be very largely "rehabilitated" (according to the current watchword, 95 percent should be considered healthy). But the army will unquestionably play the most important role in the entire operation, while representatives of the masses will probably get a higher percentage of seats in the committees.[25] It must not be forgotten, in any case, that these committees were not elected but were the product of agreements at the top. As for the students, I have already mentioned the leaders' moves to put an end to the conflicts in the universities. Let me add that the role reserved for the Red Guard has been more and more limited to the point that for several months after the fall of 1968, official propaganda almost stopped talking about it.[26]
The reorganization of the party, which is being completed by the congress in progress as this report is being given, is the culmination of the reconstruction that has followed the storm of the "cultural revolution." In Mao's concept, contrary to what some Maoists tinted with spontanéism think, the party retains its primary role. And it is significant that Liu has been insistently accused over the last months of spontanéist tendencies. Moreover, even in the periods in which the party structures were most profoundly shaken, the most important decisions were made and published in the name of the leading party bodies.[27]
IV.
According to the propagandists of the "cultural revolution," the concepts formulated by Mao constitute an original contribution, a major development of Marxism-Leninism. In practice, the appeals to Marx and Lenin are being more and more overshadowed by excessive commendation of Chairman Mao's thought.
It could not be said that the Maoism of the "cultural revolution" involved any fundamentally new elements with respect to the Maoism of the past. And in this sense, the effort made by official propaganda to establish a line of strict continuity is not unfounded. Of course, the conceptions and orientations of the Chinese CP have undergone not a few swings and rectifications. That is why the present leaders are breaking sharply from everything considered "un-Maoist" in the history of the party, and to this end they have resorted to arbitrary reconstructions and outright falsifications, attributing the most embarrassing decisions to various scapegoats, especially Chen Tu-hsiu and Liu Shao-chi. Thus in the last analysis, the Maoist conceptions are a melange. They are made-up reassertions of very general Marxist and Leninist propositions and of the experience of the Stalinist USSR, put in a positive light (including the collectivization of the early thirties); and—however strange it may seem—of certain Khrushchevist ideas; as well as specifically Maoist ideas which flow often from the specific features of the revolutionary history and present reality of China. In general, certain of the orientations proposed seem justified and may even have a concrete validity in a well defined context. But their error lies in trying to make a virtue of necessity and to erect purely empirical conclusions into theory. This, moreover, harks back to a tradition of the Chinese CP (we need only recall here the fanciful theories of the initial phase of the People's Communes).
The Maoist theories are understandable, however, if you take into account not only the present stage in the development of Chinese society but also an international context involving at once the constant threat of an imperialist aggression, relative economic encirclement of China, and the process of further degeneration in the USSR and in the European people's democracies. The crisis of the bureaucratized transitional society which emerged in the fifties has presented the bureaucracy itself with the hopeless problem of finding new or relatively new solutions with respect to the Stalinism of the thirties and forties. Over and above multiple variants, a solution was outlined in the Khrushchev-Libermann line, that is a right-wing technocratic bureaucratic solution whose results can already be judged on the basis of about fifteen years experience. In Mao's eyes, these results are fundamentally the following: (a) a deep-going social differentiation with the crystallization of privileged layers; (b) political administration completely divorced from the masses and exercised, in the last analysis, for the benefit of neobourgeois strata; (c) a development of powerful centrifugal forces both in the industrial and agricultural sectors (with the logic of profit-seeking prevailing in the former and tendencies to private accumulation predominating in the latter); (d) an ideological demobilization with a mushrooming of all kinds of revisionist theories which serve as a vehicle for an outright bourgeois ideology; (e) and last but not least, a line of compromise with imperialism on a world scale to the detriment of revolutionary struggles.
There is no need for me to recall the unquestionable historical fact that the degeneration of the USSR began well before 1953. What interests us here is that, basing themselves on the negative results in the USSR in the years 1959-69, the Maoists are trying to outline an alternative solution to the crisis of bureaucratized transitional society and to present the "cultural revolution" as a struggle to achieve such a solution.
Let us see then, briefly, what the Maoist solutions are in the main areas and to what extent they can be regarded as valid.
In the area of agriculture, Mao clarified or reasserted the following ideas during the "cultural revolution":
(a) Collectivization is a prerequisite for mechanization because otherwise industrialization in the countryside could not develop without introducing new productive relations and this would take place under conditions permitting a continual regeneration of capitalism.[28]
(b) Collectivization does not necessarily entail centralization and nationalization; to the contrary, it can facilitate the utilization of local resources and cut down state intervention.
(c) Mechanization must be based on giving priority to the development of a small and medium agricultural implements industry. As regards use of tractors, the solution of state tractor stations was rejected in favor of the Khrushchev-type solution of turning over the tractors to the communes.
(d) Nonmechanized methods of cultivation must be widely utilized and preference must be given to natural fertilizers.
(e) Production must not be spurred by adopting individual stimuli which smack of a capitalist logic. This implies a criticism of concepts relying on private plots, tendencies to individual accumulation, setting production quotas on a family rather than a group basis, and methods of remuneration which were in force before the "cultural revolution" (repeated criticism of "work-points in command").
The summit of all these conceptions is represented by the idea of the primacy of politics and Mao's thought, which leads to the primacy of political cadres, essentially, the party cadres, for whom political loyalty and class origin count for more than technical skills.
Let us remember, first of all, that similar ideas were behind the campaign for the Communes and even, to a lesser extent, for the development of cooperatives. However, the Communes failed to assure a stable, high rate of productive growth. They did not make it possible either to avoid economic and social differentiation among the peasants in the long run. These tendencies cannot, then, be eliminated now. And this is all the more true because the basic structure of the Communes remains much less collectivist than is generally thought and, despite everything, does not involve any qualitative differences from the kholkhozes.[29] The decision to turn over the tractors to the Communes and the appeal to self-help in contrast to broader state intervention—no matter what reasons inspired them—are, moreover, likely to provoke further differentiations.
As for individual or "private" stimuli, while they in fact involve a danger of inequality and can block the expansion of collectivist relations, they cannot be replaced in the long run by propaganda, by a simple appeal to subjective consciousness. They can only disappear really and completely when new objective conditions void them of their content. The verdict of experience, including in China, is absolutely clear in this matter.
Finally, the polemic against the methods of remuneration in force has not been accompanied thus far by any really innovating proposal. (The method adopted by the celebrated Tachai brigade, which is presented as a model, changes nothing fundamental. It involves primarily the peasants themselves estimating the remuneration to which they are entitled. In was already in practice before November 1965.)
In the state industrial sector, the real leadership in the past belonged to the party committee, which was considered to represent more the party at the plant level than the workers of the plant in which it was active. Participation from below was quite limited.[30] According to Chinese sources, the criterion of unified leadership exercised by the plant manager was later introduced, at least in some sectors. At the same time, the stress is supposed to have been put on the necessity of adopting profit as the basic index and the administrative apparatus is supposed to have considerably increased. In fact, economic arguments developed in China on several occasions that were similar to those which took place in the Soviet Union. The economist Sun Ken-fang, whose adversaries accused him of wanting to "put money and profit in command" is supposed to have come to the fore as an extreme Libermannist.[31]
In this sphere also, polemics seemed to predominate over concrete proposals and to the extent that solutions were outlined, they were more political measures designed to avoid or block certain degenerative processes than they were real innovations. Two important conferences had stressed already in April 1966 the demand for tripartite collaboration among the leadership, the technicians, and the masses, denounced the danger of technocratic backsliding, and reaffirmed the primacy of the party leadership and Mao's thought. During the wave of 1967 and the period of reorganization, the constantly recurring themes were the criticism of material incentives and opposition to the utilization of profit and profitability as primary criteria, stress on the right of leadership belonging to the working class, the affirmation of the duty of cadres not to separate themselves from production and to reject all privileges, as well as the need for substantial reductions in the administrative apparatus.
This opposition to the technocratic bureaucratic solutions advocated in the Soviet Union and in the majority of the European people's democracies obviously cannot in itself be criticized. But we must not forget the following facts either:
(a) Planning and economic development cannot exclude certain economic indexes, of which profitability is one, without a very high cost in waste and irrationality which must be paid for in the final analysis by the masses.
(b) Rejection of material incentives as the supreme criterion is justified but it would be absolutely wrong to reject not only all kinds of material incentives but also all wage and income increases for the masses.[32] Sacrifices can be asked and even imposed during exceptional periods and with precise aims (for example, the Cubans' campaign for 10,000,000 tons of sugar), but such practices cannot be prolonged indefinitely without causing physical and psychological exhaustion, which, in the last analysis, has a negative effect on the productivity of labor-to say nothing of the possible political and social consequences.
(c) The tendency of the apparatus to become detached from the masses cannot be eliminated by voluntary and partial measures. It can only be counteracted if real workers management is achieved and genuinely democratic structures exist at all levels which deprive the apparatuses of all opportunity to determine the fundamental choices. It is symptomatic, moreover, that campaigns were conducted in the past also for direct participation of specialists and managers in production without preventing the crystallization of privileged apparatuses. Also, degenerative tendencies took form quite rapidly in the newly constituted "revolutionary committees." This must not, however, lead us to overlook the fact that mighty energies from below were mobilized and that broad strata of workers acquired a clearer consciousness of their rights and aspirations-which will not fail to have its consequences in the future.
I have already stressed the Chinese leaders' characteristic tendency to often make a virtue of necessity and to convert into a general rule a procedure that is valid only in a narrow sense or in a very specific context. This is the case, for example, of their self-reliance concept, which, moreover, is related to the concept of "socialism in one country." No one could honestly criticize China, which is still the target of severe economic sanctions by imperialism and hard hit by Moscow's criminal reprisals, for appealing to its people to use all their ingenuity. But we have to take a different view when the Maoist leaders advance the idea of self-reliance as a fundamental principle of building socialism. In the last analysis, exactly the contrary is true. China will only be able to overcome all its difficulties and contradictions-which have profound roots—when it can integrate itself in a truly international system of workers states endowed with a great economic potential.
Similarly, as I already said at the 1967 plenum, we cannot take for good coin the theory that the division of labor is being overcome in an original way in China. The system that requires the Chinese to devote themselves at the same time to industrial, agricultural, and cultural activities, as well as military training, may correspond to the needs of a period when a war against imperialism remains possible while the economic level of the country is still modest. However, such a system has nothing in common with the conditions that will be achieved in the stage of communism. The explanations given for sending or returning large contingents of youth to the countryside are of more or less the same sort. These campaigns are explained by the conflicts and bottlenecks I described in the first part of my report.
Regarding the political reorganization, the renewal achieved at the end of the great crisis is much more limited than the official propaganda would have us think. It is true that all the structures have been thoroughly shaken up and that a change occurred on a considerable scale. (I will return to the question of the objective consequences of three years of the "cultural revolution"). But, it must be repeated, the "revolutionary committees" which emerged as the essential instruments of renewal are not a real democratic emanation from the masses but the result of deals at the top, with the old cadres regaining the basic functions in the majority of cases. Furthermore, despite the reconstruction of the party, the army has not ceased playing a leading role. Military men often hold the key posts in the committees. I am not forgetting that because of its class nature, its traditions, and its structure, the Chinese army cannot be compared with the traditional armies. But the question is whether the structure of any army—even the most democratic—can be considered a model of proletarian democracy for the society as a whole. I definitely do not think so.
But we can see the feature that most reveals the very undemocratic and unproletarian character of the structures of the Chinese workers state, even after the "cultural revolution," if we consider that according to the official conception, the crown of the whole edifice resides in Mao's thought. Mao's thought is considered the supreme, absolutely unquestionable, value. In other words, the summit of the whole structure is a small, highly centralized leadership, the quintessence and symbol of which is Mao, who is the object of an unbridled cult that is in fact most often absolutely grotesque.[33] A political structure which projects such an ideology is, in the last analysis, profoundly authoritarian, just as is any conception which calls for mobilizing the masses by slogans which are not designed to develop their consciousness or expand their critical spirit. Moreover, such an ideology is a very unreliable kind of social cement. And this, in the long or short run, means that the outlook is for new instabilities and new ruptures.[34]
V.
I do not have the time here to deal extensively with the international role of Maoism. I will note only two quotations.
"Within the framework of the world Communist movement, the Fourth International reaffirms its critical support to the Chinese Communists in their struggle against the neoreformism of the Khrushchevist leadership and of a big part of the other Communist leaderships, because it holds that the Chinese line on the fundamental problems of the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggles (methods of struggle against the war, conception of the colonial revolution, 'uninterrupted' revolution, the road to socialism in the advanced capitalist countries) is on the whole more progressive than that of the Khrushchevists and is more capable of polarizing the currents of the left in the Communist movement." (Fourth International, October-November, 1963, p. 63.)
The resolution of the 1965 World Congress stated among other things:
"The Fourth International has stressed many times that fundamentally the Sino-Soviet conflict involves two bureaucracies. But revolutionary Marxists never limit themselves to bare characterizations like this which cannot solve the problem of what specific attitude to take in each concrete case. They have never identified the workers states or the Communist parties with the bureaucracies leading them; nor have they viewed the bureaucracy as nothing but a single reactionary mass without internal distinctions. On the contrary, they have tried in each concrete case to determine wherein the bureaucrats are only defending their own reactionary class interests and wherein they are compelled by their own social position to defend at the same time—in their own way—the acquisitions of a revolution. Similarly they have explained the stratification of the bureaucracy and how conflicts can arise between different layers under the pressure of conflicting objective factors and clashing social forces. ..
"The attitude of the world Trotskyist movement flows from the same logic. It supports the Chinese Communists in their defense of the Chinese revolution and the People's Republic of China against the economic block ade mounted by the Kremlin and aginst the military aid granted by the Kremlin to the Indian bourgeoisie. It supports the Chinese Communists in their struggle against the Khrushchevist concept of conjuring away the danger of imperialist war through 'peaceful coexistence,' and their attitude toward the colonial revolution and their criticism of the neoreformist orientations of most of the Communist parties." (International Socialist Review, Spring 1966, p. 85.)
As the draft resolution shows, I consider that these evaluations remain fundamentally correct. For that reason I would be opposed to any change in orientation in this area. It goes without saying that we are not changing any of the criticisms that we advanced in the two documents quoted. On the basis of the experiences of the last years, we give special stress to our criticism of the Maoist conception of the international Communist movement. This conception seeks to impose an absolute monolithism around "Mao's thought" and, in practice, around every position taken by the Chinese leading group. It is characterized by an extreme sectarianism with respect to any current, including any revolutionary current, which does not fit into the schemas of Maoist orthodoxy.[35] This conception and these attitudes are, moreover, at the root of the failures and fragmentation of the official Maoist groups in the majority of countries.[36]
VI.
The "cultural revolution," which was unleashed as a result of conflicts among different tendencies at the summit of the Chinese Communist party, attained the scope of a profound social and political shakeup in its culminating phase. Whatever its conclusion, it has shaken the country from top to bottom, putting the apparatuses, the structures, and the relationships of forces again in question. The struggles of the masses for their demands will develop in the next stages in much more favorable objective and subjective conditions than in the past.
The draft resolution states unequivocally that the strategy of revolutionary Marxists in China is centered on the perspective of an antibureaucratic revolution which will be the task of the new vanguard of revolutionists presently in formation to achieve. Let me add that this vanguard has greatly progressed and matured in the course of the events of the last three years. The lack of real information makes it impossible to say exactly in what groups and in what sectors this vanguard appears. The charges of Trotskyism which have been leveled in certain documents have at least a symptomatic value. And there is no doubt that conceptions have developed among the Red Guards and the Revolutionary Rebels that are in reality closer to revolutionary Marxism than Maoism. In any event, it is among the most principled contingents of the youth who took part in the movements of August-September 1966 and the workers who unleashed the strikes of January-February 1967 that the cadres will emerge for an antibureaucratic revolution, for a real socialist democratic reorganization of the Chinese workers state.
The transitional demands which revolutionary Marxists propose to stimulate the mass antibureaucratic struggles in China were already formulated in the document which opened our discussion in 1967. They can be summed up as follows:
• Struggle for broader democracy for the masses and against bureaucratic advantages and privileges. Democratic election of committees by the masses, organization of the state on the basis of such bodies. Freedom of organization and speech for all working-class political currents, trade-union independence from the state, the right to strike, the right of assembly, freedom of the press, the right to demonstrate and to participate in elections, permanent supervision by the masses of elected representatives and the right to recall them, in accordance with the lessons of the Paris Commune.
• Democratic planning by bodies democratically elected by the masses from the bottom to the top of the system. It is through such a system and not by decision of the bureaucratic tops that the fundamental economic choices must be determined—especially the relative share of investment and consumption, that is, in the last analysis, the wage level and the living conditions of the workers.
• In the countryside, complete democratization of the life of the Communes in order to counteract possible conservative tendencies. Real participation by the peasants in formulating general economic policy and the determination of the necessary priorities at every given stage.
• Rejection of all Zhdanovist-style conceptions and practices in the cultural field. Freedom of expression and criticism, rejection of the leader cult, and a free confrontation of ideas and tendencies. Struggle against the vestiges of the ideologies of the past must not be conducted by means of administrative measures and demagogic slogans but the development of the potentialities of the new society.
Notes
1. See in this regard The Socialist Transformation of the National Economy of China (Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1960), p. 241. According to An Economic Profile of Mainland China (Washington, 1957), p. ix, the per capita consumption at the end of 1957 had not yet exceeded the 1933 level.
2. The gross value of industrial and agricultural production is supposed to have increased by 7.8% in 1956. In regard to industry more particularly the growth is supposed to have declined from 31% in 1956 to 10.9% in 1957. (See the article published in the Chinese magazine Agricultural Machinery Technique translated in Selections from China Mainland Magazines, November 4, 1968, No. 633, p. 5.)
3. See An Economic Profile, pp. xi, 53, and 73.
4. See an interview with Po I-po by Anna Louise Strong in January 1964.
5. Certain sources have spoken of a displacement of tens of millions of people. (See An Economic Profile, p. 422.) For Mao's directive, see, for example, Peking Review, No. 1, 1969, p. 14.
6. See An Economic Profile, p. 682; and People's Daily, March 31, 1966 (quoted also in An Economic Profile, p. 516). On this question, see also Edgar Snow, The Other Side of the River, p. 212 in the Italian edition.
7. See An Economic Profile, p. 529.
8. See Bettelheim, La Construction du Socialisme en Chine, p. 87. According to Snow (op. cit., p. 198), 94% of the territory of China is being cultivated without the aid of mechanical implements.
9. In the book cited (p. 403), Snow speaks of peasants with bank accounts living in "privileged" conditions with respect to the masses.
10. See An Economic Profile, p. 494.
11. The differential in workers' wages, in general, was on the order of one to three. See An Economic Profile, passim; and Snow, op. cit., pp. 190-91, and elsewhere.
12. See An Economic Profile, p. 682. The problem of delayed wage payments is mentioned in the Urgent Notice published during the January movements. (See Hsinhua News Agency, Hong Kong, January 12, p. 21.)
13. American sources estimated in 1966 that the indemnities paid to the former capitalists -5% per annum on the value of the confiscated property-were quite substantial and that 90,000 families benefited from them. (See the New York Herald Tribune, September 16.)
14. See on this subject the sources cited by E. Germain in Quatrieme Internationale, July 1967, p. 35. See also, for example, Selections from China Mainland Magazines, No. 633, November 4, pp. 17-18. See also Snow's book (pp. 32, 190, etc.). Snow himself notes that the salaries of 95% of the party officials were markedly higher than the wages of workers.
15. See Snow, p. 263.
16. As regards the completely subordinate role of the workers even inside the plants, see, for example, Hsinhua News Agency, April 6, 1967, p. 14. The 1956 congress had set a maximum term of five years for the calling of a new congress and decided that plenary meetings of the Central Committee would be held every year. None of these specifications were met.
17. Very significant in this regard is the polemic against the "miscellaneous scholars" undertaken by Teng To, which was spoken of frequently in the official publications, especially in June 1966.
18. As regards the orientation of the main leaders attacked by Mao and certain episodes in the struggle, see the report given to International Executive Committee of the Fourth International in March 1967. (World Outlook, August 25, and September 8, 1967.) (See also "Stormy Internal Conflicts in China," World Outlook, October 7, 14, 1966.)
19. Let us remember that, among other things, professors' salaries were among the highest.
20. Examples of youth listening to the stories of the old about their past recur quite frequently in Chinese publications.
21. In the case of Shanghai, it must be taken into account that the local leadership at the beginning of the "cultural revolution" had been considered a stronghold of the Maoist tendency and the accusations that the opposition fomented the strike by means of this leadership seem to have scant foundation.
22. The official documents mentioned organizations of a trade-union type which arose at the time.
23. Differences existed, however, even in the army, certain sections of which were opposed to intervening directly in the vicissitudes of the political struggle.
24. The use of the term "Commune" to describe the new structures in a few big cities had only an ephemeral duration.
25. According to Chinese sources, the members of the provincial revolutionary committees will number about 4,000 of which 2,000 are supposed to come from "the revolutionary masses."
26. This holds at least for the big national press, whose main articles are circulated widely abroad.
27. See on this subject the report to the March 1967 IEC plenum already cited.
28. A very important Chinese document on this question, "History of Struggle Between Two Lines," has been reprinted in No. 633 of Selections from China Mainland Magazines.
29. Let me note once again that in the Communes, ownership by the production team, and to lesser extent the brigade, predominates over collective property in the strict sense.
30. On this subject, see Bettelheim, op. cit.
31. A notable article on the theory of value and profit in a transitional society was published in August 1966. ( Hsinhua News Agency, August 13.)
32. A whole campaign has been developed in China to show that workers have no interest in material advantages.
33. The primary role of the masses proclaimed by the Chinese documents is rigorously subordinated to the acceptance and understanding of Mao's thought as the supreme value which must be "inculcated" into the population. Many quite explicit quotations could be given on this subject.
34. With regard to certain idealist features in the Maoist conceptions and ideology, see the chapter "The Ideology of the Mao Tendency" in the plenum report which has been previously cited. See also the article by E. Germain in Quatrieme Internationale, July 1967.
35. The most extraordinary example of this is the attitude the Chinese leaders have taken toward the Cuban revolution and the Castroist movement, which has gone to the point of maintaining a conspiracy of silence against the epic and the death of Che Guevara. Similarly, the Chinese in general avoid mentioning the organizations and leaders of the Afro-American revolutionary movement, thus encouraging the sectarian blindness of their American supporters in the Progressive Labor Party.
36. In a series of countries, Maoist influence is expressed mostly in "unorthodox" pro-Chinese movements and organizations, often strongly colored by spontanéism.