On the death of Mao Zedong: Socialism in China? The thwarted progress in the service of the people
Communists cannot remain indifferent to the path the Chinese revolution will take after the death of Comrade Mao Zedong. The way in which internal party controversies are being resolved through the sidelining of individuals just weeks after the CCP chairman's death leaves little room for illusions about the current state of socialism in China.
The Western world is worried about an alliance partner. While the People's Republic of China commemorated its deceased chairman with what was arguably the largest funeral in world history, and the Chinese people were called upon to "transform grief into energy" to continue on the path of revolution, Mao Zedong's death has given rise to concern and doubt in Western public opinion, as Mao's passing suddenly portrays China as a global security risk. This renewed interest in China is not afraid to distort the reality of what is happening there. The resulting picturesque image of China betrays the envy of bourgeois writers, who are gripped by their own bogeyman, the figure they have made the Chairman of the Central Committee of the CCP into: the absolute ruler of 800 million blindly obedient citizens who let him do anything to them and even worship their master as the "Red Sun." In their admiration for such a statesman , they overlook the fact that, in the seclusion of his Beijing palace, he has developed a utopia of a China that has nothing to do with what is considered a proper state in this country. The death of a man who has produced such achievements brings a sense of anticipation to newsrooms. The profession of "observer," so frequently cited in the press, is therefore extremely busy at such times, for the death of the great leader raises a host of questions. Which path will China take after the passing of its leader? Which forces will prevail in the country? Since, as is well known, there are two types of politicians in China—pragmatists and ideologues—it is essential to carefully study the actions of both, for the fate of China's future apparently depends upon them. Is the fact that Wang Hung-wen was chairman of the funeral committee to be seen as the final breakthrough of the left wing, or is it due to the moderating influence of the "pragmatists" that not the "young man from Shanghai," but Hua Kuo-Feng, known as the "man of compromise," became the new party chairman—which, on the other hand, shouldn't have surprised anyone, since the "54-60-year-old" had recently given the most speeches and risen to become the leader in signing party declarations? Finally, it shouldn't be forgotten that the left wing is so strong primarily because its leading figure, Mrs. Mao, as his wife, enjoyed the best access to the great chairman, who, as is well known, protected the ideologues. Thus, the speculation surrounding Mao's successor is not an opportunity to learn anything about China, but rather reveals the interests of the speculators: Disagreements within the Chinese leadership are viewed with concern about a possible rapprochement between China and the USSR. The unequal, yet welcome, ally will surely not be dwelling on its common ground with the Soviet Union. A prime example is the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which, just days after Mao's death, ran the Chinese party's rejection of the CPSU's telegram of condolence as its front-page headline, even though any news of the dispute between Moscow and Beijing would have been deemed worthy of little more than a three-line mention for quite some time – after all, such matters are commonplace. The second concern is the preservation or continuation of China's "opening to the West," which is understood to mean maintaining, but above all, expanding the Chinese market. Here, of course, the focus is on the "pragmatists" and "realists," who, in contrast to the out-of-touch and closed-minded "ideologues," are seen as those who should make China what it unfortunately isn't enough for the West today, but could be even more tomorrow: an adversary that can be used for one's own purposes. The uncertainty surrounding China's future path stems from the certainty that great men not only make history but also take the history they have made to their graves. The question of China without Mao thus gives rise to the most absurd considerations—will the vast empire perhaps disintegrate into individual provinces?—as if the Chinese state and Mao's physical existence were one and the same. In this way, the most self-evident thing, the continuation of existing Chinese policies, becomes a problem. While the People's Republic doesn't provide justification for such interest in China, in its appropriation and subversion, it does provide the necessary material—raising the question of the nature of such reference points to the prevailing image of China. While Mao certainly didn't take the People's Republic of China to his grave, the fact that Mao as a person held significance for this country is, in turn, not a journalistic invention, as the images of mourning Chinese citizens demonstrated. Similarly, the factionalism within the Chinese Communist Party is a reality, but it points to divisions within society and not to generational problems or even rank disputes among power-hungry courtiers. Undeterred by this, the bourgeois press flaunts its hope for a future China that can be harnessed to the pursuit of its own foreign policy goals – thereby demonstrating its disinterest in an objective assessment of Chinese society.
Production and science in socialist China The communists' seizure of state power is not synonymous with the victory of socialism, especially not in China, which still refers to itself as an "underdeveloped country." The CCP was aware of this fact ( "To achieve victory throughout the country is merely the first step on a long march of ten thousand miles." Mao Zedong) and set itself the goal of the comprehensive development of the productive forces in the countryside and the establishment of industrial production as the next step. Before 1949, China—with the exception of the areas liberated during the revolution—possessed a feudal social order based on the unbridled exploitation of rural producers; large sectors of domestic trade, all foreign trade, and the meager beginnings of industrial production in the cities were subject to imperialist states, which plundered the country's existing wealth. Under these conditions, the development of production could not take place; mechanized production barely existed, and the majority of the Chinese population eked out a living in agricultural areas, constantly threatened by famine, epidemics, and natural disasters. The development of productive forces, the planned construction of industry, the efficiency of agriculture to provide the immediate necessities of life, and, in the course of this efficiency, the release of parts of the rural population for the emerging factory production, are mutually dependent: The segments of the population drawn into industry are missing from agriculture, while conversely, the still insufficiently developed industry can only provide agriculture with an inadequate amount of the means of production (fertilizers, machinery, etc.) necessary for its development. To increase agricultural production, it was necessary to draw on existing resources: the enormous potential of human labor, which was employed in new, cooperative forms of work—building upon traditional methods of collective farming. Furthermore, it was essential to teach farmers rational cultivation methods, which was not merely a matter of training but a difficult ideological struggle against the traditional views of the rural population. To tame nature without the use of large machinery, only the combined labor of vast numbers of people was available; nevertheless, the well-known remarkable achievements were accomplished (dams, irrigation systems, canals, the bridge over the Yangtze River, etc.). Thus, "relying on one's own strength" in the countryside was the only means of increasing food production, because external aid, insofar as it was provided by the Soviet Union, focused almost exclusively on industrial development. However, such pre-industrial forms of soil cultivation cannot achieve the decisive breakthrough to modern agriculture, as created by capitalism in Western agriculture: without artificial fertilization of the soil, which is superior to natural methods (human and animal excrement), its natural composition still dictates what it yields, resulting in a narrowing of production to extremely vulnerable monocultures.
“That industry and agriculture, socialist industrialization and socialist transformation of agriculture must under no circumstances be considered in isolation from one another” (Mao) was undoubtedly a correct insight of the CCP, and despite some difficulties and mistakes, the success of these efforts in industrial and agricultural production is evident: the overcoming of hunger, disease and misery in the People’s Republic. By the mid-1950s, however, the limitations of this organization of production based on existing resources became undeniably apparent and were exacerbated by the abrupt and total cessation of Soviet aid (which, in industry, amounted to sabotage of what had been achieved so far), leading to crisis-ridden stagnation. The Communists' response, the "Great Leap Forward," did not unleash the productive forces, but rather the misguided policies of the Chinese Communist Party, which differed from those of the pro-Soviet Communist Parties primarily in its premise: the underdeveloped productive forces in China. The "Great Leap Forward" was not the implementation of a central economic plan to concentrate existing resources on the absolutely essential development of efficient key industries in order to alleviate the shortage of agricultural production resources and their limitation to the mass use of manual labor; Rather, it was about heeding the appeal to producers to "double, triple, and even a hundredfold their efforts" based on the existing level of development, and thus, "building on their own strength," to establish miniature industries throughout the country. The party agitated the people with the assurance that they only needed to remain as they were in order to achieve peak performance even with the most limited theoretical and practical resources. In doing so, it transformed the peasants' limitations into a virtue that spared it any confrontation with the people. "Besides leadership by the Party, the population is a decisive factor. The more numerous the people, the higher the flames of passion, the greater (not: "better," MSZ) the creative power." (Mao Tse-tung 1958) The Chinese path to socialism is therefore based on the masses, and the party promotes it through their enthusiasm. The result of the "Great Leap Forward" was not steelworks and fertilizer factories, but rather those fragile mud kilns, which now largely function only as what they always were: monuments to a "militant enthusiasm." To the obvious objection that a single modern iron and steel plant could have supplied all of Chinese agriculture with enough material for plows that wouldn't break after a short time, the CCP countered that such measures would have jeopardized the "alliance between the working class and the peasantry ," and that this was "of primary importance, since these two constitute 80 to 90 percent of China's population." (Mao) The Chinese Communists thus make the fact that they owe their victory to a peasant revolution their program, and therefore an ideology that, in its constant praise of the masses, refrains from implementing a rational economic plan against them. In the long run, this means that the concept of "building on the masses" must prove detrimental to the masses: instead of conquering the "realm of freedom," the Chinese, under the leadership of their party, have for the time being settled comfortably in the "realm of necessity." The appeal to Marx, that a central contradiction of bourgeois society—that between city and country, industry and agriculture—must be combated, in China, where this contradiction simply does not exist, legitimizes a false policy that does not want to come into conflict with its proponents and, precisely in doing so, imposes these very contradictions upon them. With hardly any industry in the cities, the constant focus on the urban-rural divide resulted in a stance in favor of the countryside, leading to a fiasco of rural industrialization attempts as a result of the "Great Leap Forward", a stagnation of industry in the cities, a decline in production figures, and even losses in the harvests of the people's communes, which experimented with mini-blast furnaces and therefore neglected fieldwork. The "Great Leap Forward" ended in a crash landing: instead of one step forward, two steps back had been taken. Nevertheless, this policy was never seriously criticized by the party; instead, it was liquidated in the usual manner of resolving party controversies within the CCP, which will be discussed later: Mao lost one post, that of President of the People's Republic, and under the decisive influence of Liu Shao-chi and Teng Xiao-ping, who were later exposed as the "rulers" who " went down the capitalist path ," the "right wind" began to blow, a lasting reaction to all the great leaps the people made at the behest of their party. From 1961 onward, industrialization was promoted in the cities. However, true to the ideology of the self-reliance of the masses , which united its two wings, the party placed its hopes this time on the creative power of the working class. Once again, there was a rejection of a central, consistently implemented industrialization plan, replaced by decentralization, extensive powers for factory managers, and a system of material incentives for workers. While the people's communes abandoned the ambitious blast furnace projects of the Great Leap Forward, they attempted to establish their own production facilities for primitive industries, intended to manufacture basic agricultural implements. The autonomy of the people's commune, proclaimed in the previous period, was maintained, but with the later-criticized "capitalist" twist that this autonomy also included control over the profits , leading to enormous disparities in the wealth of the communes and their members across the country.
The "shining example" of the Dajai commune, whose path was to be followed in all phases of the Chinese revolution, illustrates the impact of the Chinese state's economic policies on the country. During the "Great Leap Forward," several small blast furnaces burned in Dajai, from whose iron the commune forged its plows. Through the "superhuman" efforts of its members (months of night work in the fields), it was possible to maintain and in some cases even increase crop yields. The "right wind" reached Dajai just in time to replace the now-unusable equipment of its own iron production. And once again, it was the "heroic effort" of the commune members that quickly made Dajai the wealthiest agricultural production unit in China. The Cultural Revolution initially found a target for its critique of the "capitalist way" in the leadership of the Dajai commune, until the latter reacted "exemplarily" by sending its best cadres to poorer communes to pass on their experience. Replacing the missing, most skilled workers with students sent to the countryside inevitably led to a decline in production in Dajai, and once again the new "right-wing wind" that swept the peasants back to the countryside and the students back to the universities saved Dajai as a "beacon of socialism in the countryside." In conclusion, it can be stated that Dajai's successes are not attributable to the party's respective economic measures and their exemplary applications, but rather to the willingness of its members to work harder than other farmers and to make every sacrifice for the party line. (It was probably also these qualities of the former Dajai cadre Hua Kuo-Feng that brought the "colorless functionary" the chairmanship of the Communist Party, proving that he is optimally qualified for this office.)
Mao Zedong's last published directive, the prelude to the campaign against Teng Xiaoping , also demonstrates that the CCP's economic policy abandoned the transformation of the relations of production and thus the development of the productive forces. Against Teng's concept of the autonomous development of all production units, with its emphasis on "management responsibility" and material incentives for workers, Mao and those forces within the party referred to in this country as the "left-wing ideologues" advocated the autonomy of the masses. These masses, through their own efforts, were to develop industry and agriculture and, in the ongoing class struggle, appropriate the party's ideology of the masses' infinite creative power, or rather, prevail against those who "still follow the capitalist path." The development of the productive forces was not planned and implemented by the party according to objective possibilities, but rather imposed upon the masses and their capabilities—that is, solely upon their willingness to sacrifice themselves. The "capitalist" aspect of the right wing of the party is its "contempt for the masses," which, however, does not manifest itself as criticism of them, but rather leads to the measures common in Eastern Europe that aim to extract the utmost from the workforce through a mixture of violence and concessions , while also pursuing an opening to Western know-how and industrial products. (For example, the first official news from Beijing after the rumor of the left's ouster was the government's declaration of intent to intensify trade with Western Europe .)
When it came to the unavoidable use of science and research for the development of industrial and agricultural productive forces, the Chinese Communists faced similar difficulties after gaining state power as when boosting production: systematic natural science and technology, related to the needs of the country, was virtually non-existent, and so attempts were made to supplement the weak approaches of modern natural science by resorting to traditional forms of knowledge in China, which led to usable results in some areas (acupuncture in medicine). From the outset, it was essential to ensure that science and education, even under the limited resources of revolutionary China, would be productive—and in a manner fundamentally different from science and education in bourgeois society. While capitalism requires science separate from production , subordinated to its economic purposes by providing potential applications, and in education excluding the immediate producers from intellectual potential because their education is only required according to economic dictates, the People's Republic of China intends to practice neither the separation nor the opposition between science and labor. However, the application of science to solving the pressing problems of socialist construction presupposes science itself. Invoking Marx's concept of the hostile opposition between manual and intellectual labor, the CCP hinders the development of science by subjecting it to the practical understanding of the immediate producers. This leads to the reactionary consequence that the Chinese economy must forgo the only thing that capitalism provides in abundance and free of charge : the results of modern natural science and technology. Instead of utilizing these skills and applying them to practical problems, instead of compelling our own scientists to focus all their efforts on the practice of economics, they are sent into the deficient realm of economic practice, where they are supposed to learn from precisely those who desperately need scientific knowledge because they lack it. Conversely, instead of sending workers and peasants to the schools of science, they are sent to universities to teach scientists what to research and how to do it .Thus, existing research institutes are obligated to solve only those problems that are immediately pressing in the countryside and in the factories, thereby merely "scientifying" common craftsmanship. Schools and universities must operate factories, and conversely, the factories and people's communes maintain scientific institutions that transform the narrow-minded use of primitive tools and cultivation methods into a "science." Accordingly, for education, "students are selected from the ranks of workers and peasants with practical experience who, after their university studies, return to the practice of production" (Mao) , because they already know the current problems of production, and only their solutions are permitted. The Chinese Communists take the hostile opposition between science and education, which is inherent in capitalism and institutionalized in its separation , and create a fundamental antagonism that does not exist, especially not in a society without a trained scientific community, and fight against it by abolishing this institutional separation. The fact that science is only used to better cope with the existing shortage, instead of eliminating it through its results and raising overall production to a higher level, is demonstrated by the results of such use of science as well as by the theoretical engagement with it in Chinese documents from the Cultural Revolution, in which the insistence on the practical relevance of theory takes a clearly anti-scientific turn.
The Cultural Revolution's attack on science and education targeted all approaches to research and teaching practiced in China up to that point, and not just some "bourgeois excesses." For example, working-class students who wanted to acquire technical drawing skills at the Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering reported: “But the bourgeois gentlemen (teachers) insisted that the working-class and peasant students should first learn descriptive geometry, and tried to confuse them with concepts like intersection point and curve intersection.” (Following the path of the Shanghai Machine Factory. A path whose observance in the former “socialist studies” of the KSV led to stylistic aberrations of the following kind: “Away with the completely superfluous power series!” ) A science and education limited to the immediate problems of production is thus justified by the claim that everything else—even descriptive geometry—is dangerous nonsense. The fundamental critique of "overly theoretical books ," attacked for their lack of practical application, is intended to expose science's "bourgeois character." However, since this character is not found in the results of natural science, natural science is reduced to technologies directly applicable to the deficient practical world, thereby hindering both research and production. Instead of advancing science, the party is issuing a demand to scientists to "To strive...to scientifically analyze the laws of natural science and to explain them convincingly from a dialectical materialist standpoint, to adhere to the principles of combining theory and practice, and to design teaching materials according to the principle of 'less but better' so that they are revolutionary, practical, and advanced." (Fighting for the Construction of Socialist Universities) The opposition between the laws of natural science and materialism, as posited in this program, opposes the understanding of nature and has nothing to do with Marx and Engels, who emphatically praised the established state of knowledge in the natural sciences. In scientific practice, it prevents improvements in production practices through the application of science, which celebrates its hostility to theory as practical relevance. "In the past, the concepts of differential and integral calculus were derived from a vast number of axioms and were not easy to understand. Now, the concepts are derived clearly using well-known practical examples." (ibid.) Instead of utilizing mathematics as the necessary foundation of all natural science, China's communists turn against it because they only want to allow knowledge that is immediately accessible to the masses in their current tasks. The naive empiricism of those directly involved in production is used against science, and the Chinese can recount many examples where sound practical wisdom discredits the scientific mind. "A group of university and college-trained technicians, lacking practical experience, once designed an internal thread grinding machine. Workers manufactured the parts based on blueprints. However, assembling them proved impossible. Only after workers with extensive practical experience reworked some of the parts could the machine be assembled." (Following the Shanghai Machine Factory's Path) The rational aspect of the above example—that practical experience proves the applicability of science and corrects its technology —is lost in the conclusions of the Shanghai machine builders who, based on their misfortune with the internal thread grinding machine, concluded that they should henceforth grind their tools themselves as best they could. When one encounters the shortcomings of the exchange of experience, one uses them to prove the opposite: The author of the treatise "Overcoming Empiricism" demonstrates, using an example, what conclusions can be drawn from the different properties of copper and cast iron. Working with these two materials requires different tools, because if the same drill bit is used both times, the following happens the second time: "The result was that the first drill bit burned immediately and the second drill bit broke..." The conclusion drawn from this incident is not that it is therefore essential to investigate the properties of cast iron and copper in order to build instruments suited to them. Rather, the author derives a "materialistic" principle: one must not absolutize partial experiences. "Some of the experiences gained from one thing can be applied to other things, some perhaps partially, and some not at all." Thus, even when the experience-based process does not promote production but rather sabotages it, the Chinese still gain experience. "that the practice of the masses is a true treasure trove of wisdom."
The spectacular technological achievements of socialist China are not the result of science conducted by the people in service of the people, but rather either the combined power of vast numbers of people or the fruits of state-institutionalized enclaves where highly qualified scientists, largely trained abroad, constructed the atomic bomb and launched an Earth satellite into space so that the national anthem of the People's Republic could be broadcast around the globe. Instead of denouncing such pioneering feats as the product of a right-wing, dehumanizing approach to science, the detonation of the Chinese hydrogen bomb and the commencement of that entirely absurd undertaking—for China's needs—of launching billions of dollars into space are celebrated as examples of the victory of the Chinese revolution. Apart from such showcase products, state-organized research takes place in areas that are significant for the existence of the Chinese state or the power-political interests of the People's Republic: military, heavy industry, electronics, etc. For a certain type of sycophant of capitalism in the West, these very results of Chinese science are proof that socialism in China will only succeed if it employs capitalist methods. The arrogant mockery of the "primitive" mode of production of the "blue ants" conceals an attack on the fact that the People's Republic of China has thus far avoided dependence on imperialism—an attack, therefore, that operates on the premise that the subjugation of science to the purposes of capital, as practiced by bourgeois society, is its only appropriate form. That the freedom of science in the West is the form in which it practices its opposition to labor, that the entrustment of research objects to scientists is not the alternative to their obligation to tinker with the problems of backward production that arise at any given moment, was demonstrated by the "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom!" campaign, personally initiated and led by Chairman Mao in the early 1960s. The artists and scientists, urged by the party to produce the most original and novel works and approaches possible, enthusiastically embraced Mao's directive, and the state power had great difficulty withholding the hundreds of "poisonous blossoms and shoots" that had sprung up.
The efforts of the Chinese Communists to develop science and production, thereby laying the foundations of communism in China, are not only inadequate. As has become apparent, the CCP continually produces, on a higher level, the very problems it set out to solve. The party's agitation, therefore, does not consist of convincing its audience of the correctness of the measures taken, but rather of a constant appeal to morality, hard work, and self-sufficiency—permanent trappings of Chinese revisionism—which, through comparison with the dark past, never fail to have an effect. This also institutionalizes the "struggle of two lines" within the party, something of which China's Communists are proud. The part of the party designated as the left wing attempts to overcome the constantly generated difficulties by appealing to the people, who are called upon to adopt a "new attitude toward work" and to adhere to the goals of the revolution, not because they are right, but because they correspond to the will of the people. In this, they can fully rely on Mao's last directive: "Revising correct judgments goes against the will of the people." (Mao, 1976) However, the very chaos into which left-wing campaigns regularly threaten to plunge the Chinese economy is now calling upon the so-called right wing, which, in its search for more successful ways to increase production, disregards the communist ideals of the party and, according to Teng Xiaoping, doesn't care "whether the cat is black or red, as long as it eats mice." Since such tendencies can also invoke the words of the chairman— "We must learn from all experts—whoever they may be—how to manage the economy." (Mao 1949) The emerging loss of influence of the "Shanghai Group" by no means signifies a departure of the Chinese leadership from Mao Zedong's ideas, or, in Chinese terms, that the West Wind has gained the upper hand over the East Wind, "but this is only a temporary phenomenon, for the prospects of the revolutionaries are always bright." "Pragmatists" and "ideologues" are the two interrelated sides of the contradictions with which China's Communists grapple due to their flawed policies, and their constant conflict shapes the party's relationship with the masses, who suffer the consequences.
The party and the masses Mao Zedong's ideas as a lever and a barrier to the development of the productive forces The Chinese Communist Party drew a conclusion from the failure of its efforts to achieve a major economic leap forward and the subsequent flourishing of "capitalist methods" in the economy—a conclusion that, upon its initial implementation, caused only confusion in the Western world. It is worth recalling that some people at the time were outraged, claiming the Chinese were about to destroy their priceless cultural monuments, waging a battle against Beethoven, and that China was on the verge of descending into chaos. Others, however, were enthusiastic about a "magnificent experiment" that was realizing a piece of the ideal of liberating humanity from authority and bureaucracy: the Cultural Revolution was celebrated and viewed with disgust . This "new all-round leap forward" (Beijing Review, October 8, 1966) was now supposed to bring China precisely the economic successes that previous efforts had failed to achieve. The Cultural Revolution was not a mass uprising , but a movement orchestrated by the party leadership , triggered entirely unspontaneously by a resolution of the Central Committee of the CCP. This resolution stated the following purpose for this state act: "To have the revolution firmly in hand in order to stimulate production: The goal of the great proletarian cultural revolution is to revolutionize the ideology of the people so that work in all areas is done more, faster, better, and more economically. If the masses are fully mobilized and appropriate precautions are taken, it is possible to continue the cultural revolution and production..." (October 8, 1966)
The revolutionizing of the ideology was therefore necessary because the Chinese apparently did not have the attitude towards the economic development of their country that corresponded to the wishes of the state and party. Thus, the Cultural Revolution was directed against the "Four Olds" (culture, ideas, customs, and traditions) and was intended to have a comprehensive impact: to correct the role of functionaries , to strengthen the relationship between functionaries and workers, and to change the work style of workers, peasants, and managers. Furthermore, the Cultural Revolution aimed to cultivate a "socialist attitude" in everyday life and within the family. The tools of this struggle were Mao Zedong's ideas—the Red Book , a collection of quotations from Mao's speeches and writings—an apparently highly successful weapon against the old enemy, because "Once Mao Zedong's ideas are embraced by the masses, they generate tremendous material power." (Important Documents from the Cultural Revolution) So that with them one could not only defeat old ideologies, but also cultivate fields, even though the Mao Bible “Many officials and commune members have erected wooden plaques in the fields bearing quotes from Chairman Mao, or they carry Chairman Mao’s works with them so that whenever a difficult problem arises while working in the fields, they can immediately study these works and apply what they have learned. This enables them to find timely solutions to many difficulties and problems in production.” (Beijing Review, September 20, 1966) ...and among the workers : “The experts and specialists had always explained that it was impossible to dye and double-sided print jersey fabric with this type of machine. The workers said, ‘Why not? We can try it anyway.’ After the Cultural Revolution, they made suggestions, and after testing, two-color printing became possible.” (A member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Beijing Knitwear Factory, in: Bettelheim, China after the Cultural Revolution) It is now hardly conceivable that one could use the wisdom, "One must not only look at the front of things, but also at their back" (Mao), to make a machine print in two colors or on both sides. So what, then, is the achievement of Mao Zedong's ideas?
The application of Mao Zedong's ideas and the astonishing successes allegedly achieved through them have been met with a condescending smile in the Western world. On the one hand, there is a firm belief that technological progress is best promoted through the application of science and technology, especially in the atomic age. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the Chinese have also achieved something. With a pat on the back, people point to the unforeseen possibilities inherent in the combined power of millions of blue ants and sometimes even accuse German workers of the unconcerned work ethic of the people in the Middle Kingdom. This is the standpoint of smug enthusiasm for the superiority of Western technology over "underdeveloped countries." Such representatives of Western civilization use other societies as material to demonstrate that wealth and poverty are a matter of the competence and cleverness of a certain type of person, which also implies that the poor are expected to reward such qualities. Certainly, Mao's pronouncements cannot replace the underdeveloped natural sciences, nor can they replace knowledge of agricultural problems. However, the emphasis on personal experience , propagated by Mao's ideas, represents a challenge to those ideas in the minds of the Chinese that belong to a bygone society and stand in the way of planned development of production. To revisit the once very popular comparison between China and India (poor but free), which has recently faded somewhat from public memory: While starving Indians still let their sacred cows roam the big cities, even though these have long since lost the purpose that once made their protection a necessity for survival, and superstition still prevents people from squashing a fly because it is believed to be the embodiment of their grandparents' umpteenth earthly existence, the Chinese communists did not shy away from even the toughest and most protracted confrontations with similar religious beliefs of the peasants, until they were convinced that the graves of ancestors in the middle of the rice paddies were not conducive to agriculture and that crippled feet were not attributes of feminine beauty. The core of the "revolutionizing the ideology of the people," however, lies elsewhere. When the party demands that everything be "faster, better, and more economical" from the "masses," it demands more effort and personal commitment—more learning, more output, more work discipline, sacrifice, and the curbing of personal needs. If the attack on "egoism" is at the heart of this ideological struggle, then this is an attempt to jolt people out of lethargic complacency. Not to settle for what they have already achieved—sufficient food, housing, and clothing—but to make new efforts, not for personal gain, but for a higher purpose. "When we see red flags fluttering and waves rising on board a 10,000-ton ship being launched today, we don't think at all about how much we earn, but about how we can accelerate the building of socialism with our own hands, carry out the socialist revolution even better, and contribute to the liberation of all humanity." (Workers at the Hudung shipyard in Shanghai) It is therefore not individual interests that should matter, but rather the interests of the party and the state, of revolution and socialism, which the masses are supposed to adopt as their own. What is happening in China as a mass campaign by the party to win people over to the great leap into socialism, to not be content with the already achieved solution to the most pressing problems of survival, is something different from the contradiction that defines the relationship of the Eastern Bloc states to their citizens: there, workers and peasants are supposed to work harder for the economic goals pursued by the state, even though this state limits their personal advantage; the pro-Soviet states, as is well known, attempt to resolve this contradiction by using state power . However, since not every worker can be assigned a supervisor, such states create the problem that someone who has no reason to work for the state will not do so (unless they are obligated to) – except, of course, for their own personal benefit. The solution then lies in material incentives. Although there have been repeated instances of resorting to such methods in China, the Cultural Revolution was specifically an attack on such "capitalist practices," which does not mean, however, that one ever replaced the other. The goal of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese say, is to distance itself from... “To use material well-being as an incentive, as is practiced in capitalist society. We rely mainly on political and ideological work, raising the political consciousness of the people and thus transforming spiritual forces into material forces.” (China Analyses, April 1966) The commitment to the state , which has proven itself in the "creative application" of Mao Zedong's ideas, is denounced in this country as "coordination"; the Chinese are accused of having to buy their painstakingly acquired material progress with the compulsion of unconditional belief in a pseudo-religion. Such accusations, however, contain the undeniable basis for this "seduction" of the Chinese: material progress, which on other occasions is always used to prove the opposite, namely as a testament to the maturity of the political ideas associated with it. Thus, the renunciation of "egoism" and greater efforts in favor of the state are indeed synonymous with securing the material existence of the Chinese—albeit on a modest basis—which, compared to previous conditions, represents enormous progress. The Chinese state does not (yet?) face the problem of having to forcibly restrict existing individual needs in order to maintain its power; on the contrary, past poverty and the masses' lack of needs make the implementation of the state plan appear solely as an achievement of the state, the Great Chairman, and his ideas for securing existence. The Chairman's values and directives are a glorification of the masses' limitations and a constant exhortation to make a virtue of necessity out of the underdeveloped productive forces. Not their comprehensive and planned development based on systematic science, but rather the "creative power of the people" is to be the driving force of development, and as long as the Red Book instills in the masses faith in their own mission, the voluntary nature of their commitment to the state's economic goals is ensured. If it only depends on the initiative and willingness to sacrifice of the people, then their understanding of the context and goals of the state plan for building the economy is unnecessary. Thus, in Chinese documents of the Cultural Revolution, economic issues only appear in the form of campaigns against individuals accused of belonging to the bourgeois camp, against whom one should rally more closely around the "proletarian headquarters in the party." Proof that, for example, Liu Shao-chi, and later Teng Xiao-ping, had "embarked on the capitalist path" was their "lack of confidence in the power of the masses," while the "proletarian line" is characterized by its denunciation of "experts" as "technocrats" who "want to bully the masses." The use of quotations from the economic writings of Marx and Engels should not be confused with a controversy about the planned organization of the economy: they merely serve to prove the correctness of Mao's directives, which represent the exact opposite of what is found in the writings of the classics. Instead of criticism, enthusiasm: "...hard struggle to make the fatherland powerful... to hold the great red banner even higher... to have the strong will and high ideal of the proletariat... to dare to go down paths never before trodden... to have a feeling of pride... etc. etc." These are the appeals to the "masses," and when they speak out, the same echoes back. Since a general morality of leadership and people is practiced in the PRC—in contrast to the function of morality in bourgeois societies, where it is meant to console people about the contradiction between their personal benefit and the harm the state continually inflicts upon them, and where hypocrisy and violence are its necessary complements—the CCP can largely refrain from using its apparatus of force against the masses. (Even the exceptions confirm this: what workers' militias and police drove from Tiananmen Square following the funeral ceremonies for Zhou Enlai were, in official jargon, not dissatisfied citizens, but "bad elements" consisting of "cow devils and snake spirits.")
The very outward appearance of the Cultural Revolution reveals that it was not about revolution at all: the masses carried out their actions under the guise of the Communist Party and its chairman, who in turn encouraged or congratulated them on these actions. The campaign aimed not to impose the party line on the masses, but rather to establish the "mass line" within the party. The goal of the Cultural Revolution—a new attitude toward work—was to be achieved by the masses through the correct generalization of their own experiences. The party facilitated this by both encouraging the masses and removing those cadres who had become too "detached from the masses." The CCP propagated its own superfluity by seeking to establish the "mass line" as its own, proclaiming that it intended to do nothing other than what the masses actually wanted. If the party celebrates the "mass line" in this way, then its anchoring within the masses must also be the masses' own doing. "In the great proletarian cultural revolution, the masses can only liberate themselves, and the method of acting on their behalf in everything must not be applied." (Documents ...) It is as if the party no longer has to wage the struggle to resolve the contradictions in the economic conditions of society against the existing order—although there is constant talk of fighting against bourgeois interests—but rather the already existing unity between the party and the workers and peasants must be renewed at certain periodic intervals to reaffirm their militant stance. This “permanent revolution ,” which repeatedly unites the party with the “masses,” is therefore anything but the gradual domination of economic development. Rather, the party’s reliance on the workers’ and peasants’ own strength is a declaration of intent to base its economic plans on the initiative, experience, and “creative power of the masses.” This refusal by the Party to create and implement a production plan celebrates scarcity as an achievement of socialism : because the prerequisites for a comprehensive and planned development of production are lacking, it is left to the "ingenuity" and (often painful) experiences of the producers, according to which the planning authorities operate. This characterizes the CCP's pervasive opportunism , which it and its supporters here celebrate as "mass-friendliness ." What the Chinese cite as prime examples of the maxim "learning from the masses" is nothing other than the admission that the Chinese socialist state is incapable of providing the knowledge that enables planned production—celebrated as a victory! A "glorious" example: Clothing Factory A produces raincoats for People's Commune B. The farmers of the People's Commune need raincoats for working in the rice fields. Since the farmers are standing in the water while doing this work, and the raincoats are hanging in the water because they are too long, the farmers of the People's Commune tell the workers of the clothing factory that the raincoats are unsuitable and why, whereupon the workers decide that this will be remedied. Capitalism can handle problems of this magnitude without sending farmers on emigration. However, in the Chinese ideology of the people's "progressive experience process," this narrow-minded approach to the problem (Lenin called it "craftsmanship") is celebrated as the only correct solution: the initiative of the masses has cut the Gordian knot; farmers and artisans are fighting side by side for the revolution, united in the people. In the praise of the "comprehensive initiative" of the "masses," the economic problem disappears. Overcoming difficulties is then explained to the "masses" as a matter of goodwill , as demonstrated by the statement of an official regarding the coal shortage: "Once this situation was known, the workers intensified their efforts... Industry thus had sufficient fuel to further develop production, and the state plan could be fulfilled. This shows that it is better to rely on the initiatives of the masses than on abstract calculations." Now, coal shortages are certainly not the result of insufficient effort – but this consideration is no longer relevant here, as the initiative of the masses renders it superfluous. The enthusiasm of the masses for taking action, and the enthusiastic praise of these action-taking masses by the Party, becomes a barrier to a planned, productive division of labor . The Party tirelessly promotes action and enthusiastically declares that its "abstract calculations" are not only inadequate but actually superfluous. The shortcomings of practice are not caused by inadequate scientific training, but rather the other way around: the necessary knowledge for their elimination is supposed to emerge from practice, whose deficiencies are palpable at every turn. Guided by the ideas of the "greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era," the principles of socialist planned economy championed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin are thus turned on their head: development is not based on a comprehensive scientific plan regulating production, but rather, conversely, something resembling a plan is supposed to emerge from production through successful exchange of experience – and thus, precisely, it is not!
This reduction of China's economic problems to questions of a "materialistic" worldview and the reliance on "mass initiatives" is not only responsible for the unresolved contradiction between the demands of agriculture and industrial production and the stunted development of science and technology, but also turns party controversies into endless repetitions of the same phrases. This is because they fail to address any pressing issues ; they are not about solving problems, but rather about deviating from the party dogma of the primacy of mass experience. Often, it is not even necessary to mention the subject of the controversy. For example, the mere accusation that someone has formulated their theses "alone" is sufficient to constitute a deviation from the "mass line." "He brewed them according to his own ideas and behind the back of Comrade Kang Shen." Furthermore, he employed an unseemly method, usurping the name of the Central Committee and distributing his theses throughout the party. Beyond this characterization of the author, the theses themselves are no longer attacked , but rather confronted with words from Chairman Mao : "Chairman Mao often said: 'Without tearing down, there can be no building up...' However, these theses emphasize that 'without building up, there can be no real and thorough tearing down.' In reality, the intention is to prohibit the eradication of bourgeois ideology and the construction of proletarian ideology." The fact that all sides invoke the chairman's words ensures the endless "struggle between two factions," as do the obligatory attacks on the other's bourgeois leanings. When all sides operate with the same slogans, it no longer matters what they say, but who they are. The ultimate goal of the "black versus red" struggle is thus always the unmasking of those who have embarked on the capitalist path, which is proven not by their theories, but by their lifestyle (Lin Piao, for example, enjoyed reading Confucius, and Liu's wife wore French perfume). The defeated mass enemy ultimately has to change not his views, but himself: he is sent to the countryside or a factory to be cleansed by immersing himself in the masses. Whoever wins this battle of unmasking is right, and the deciding factor is once again the masses: whoever mobilizes their majority for himself and against the other prevails. This is why local Marxist-Leninist organizations see the realization of "proletarian democracy" in China, in contrast to the Eastern Bloc states, where, within the party, the one who usually prevails is the one with the strongest battalions in the state apparatus or the secret police, and where the masses only learn that the controversy has taken place after it has ended. The fact that the different form in which party controversies are conducted in China says nothing about the quality of the decisions, except that they have nothing to do with communist politics, does not prevent our Maoists from copying it for their own party life, thereby degenerating—detached from their Chinese base—into grotesque mimicry. For example, when the Communist League of West Germany (KBW) ousts three leading members of its Central Committee as right-wing deviants and retrospectively declares the central organ they headed to be a "bourgeois headquarters," without suppressing the KVZ's issues of recent years as pronouncements of the class enemy.
China as a major power Foreign policy as a guideline for world revolution? The only state in the world that still diplomatically advocates for the reunification of Germany is the People's Republic of China. The rousing toasts to Western European anti-communism, heard at certain receptions from Beijing, obscure the conflicting interests between democratic countries and the People's Republic, masking them with declarations of friendship and polite "joint communiqués," even if some of these pronouncements don't fit at all into the agenda of Western "détente" politicians.
The irreconcilable antagonism of the People's Republic of China towards the USSR cannot be explained by differing principles of "revolutionary foreign policy," because the same slogans appear: "peaceful coexistence" and "anti-imperialism" are the cornerstones of both states' propaganda. Until the withdrawal of all Soviet advisors from the People's Republic and the cessation of all economic aid, this similarity in rhetoric also corresponded to a shared foreign policy interest. Through Khrushchev's boycott measures against China , the Soviet Union demonstrated that it was indeed in accordance with the principles of "peaceful coexistence" to assert the interests of the USSR even against China. And in the attempts to integrate the People's Republic into the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, the Chinese leadership learned the true nature of alliances between states: they serve the greatest possible advantage of the strongest among the partners. The entire famous debate " On the General Line " between the CCP and the CPSU is the ideological manifestation of China's refusal to subordinate its national interests to those of the USSR and the Soviets' insistence on pursuing their great power policies, even against China. From the outset, it was therefore a conflict between states , and in this controversy, China, as a state , acted not according to the principles of communism, but rather according to those of nationalism , a fact reflected in its terminology since the Ussuri skirmish: "Defending the Motherland!" Thus, in addition to the USA, which had threatened its existence since the victory of the revolution, the People's Republic of China gained a new adversary in the Soviet Union to protect its national interests. With China's rapprochement with the USA, or rather the withdrawal of US imperialism from Southeast Asia, the "main enemy of humanity" became a secondary contradiction, and the USSR became the main enemy. Furthermore, common ground can be found between the "fascist Kremlin czars" and ordinary fascists.
The shift in relations with the USSR necessitated a change in Chinese policy toward Western countries: even imperialists now have their merits. None of the European or American conservatives who have been chosen as new Chinese allies, however, delude themselves into thinking that the Chinese offers are anything other than anti-Soviet policy in China's interest. Such diplomatic maneuvers for self-interest are understandable, as they align with Chinese principles, and Chinese foreign policy in this respect is no different from that of capitalist countries. Establishing this kind of unity with other states presupposes the useful identity of a hostile attitude toward a common adversary, regardless of the reason for such antagonism. The power politics of the USSR and the USA, which pose such a threat to the Chinese nation, in turn provides China with an opportunity to transform the rest of the world into a collection of states in which positive qualities can be discovered: they are either adversaries of the USSR or the USA, and as such, they can be grouped together, that is, used as a means of asserting China's own national interests against other major powers. The art of erasing all societal differences with the help of a common enemy is called the United Front policy in China . The states or politicians who allow themselves to be harnessed in this way for anti-Soviet purposes are truly an illustrious group. The Chilean military dictatorship is readily accepted, American reactionaries are found on the other side of the United Front, and "liberation movements" in Africa are welcome allies if they are opponents of the Soviet Union. The allies of the other branch of the United Front are no less remarkable, considering the "anti-imperialist" military potentates from Southeast Asia or the Shah of Persia. In providing diplomatic or material support to foreign political movements, it is inevitable that the pursuit of China's foreign policy interests coincides with the promotion of anti-imperialist policies, as in Vietnam. However, if the purpose of Chinese foreign policy is to subordinate all foreign policy activities to the interest in maintaining its power within the constellation of three major powers in order to preserve China's independence and guarantee its economic development, then this policy becomes a barrier to social progress in other countries. Such a policy no longer asks whether an African liberation movement can free a country from imperialism through social change, but rather is concerned with whether China's current main enemy can expand its "sphere of influence." The "principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states," with which the Chinese sought to defend their own state power against external adversaries, is transformed in the context of the new Chinese foreign policy into an alliance with imperialism, which, as is well known, couldn't care less about this principle: Cubans in Angola are denounced as "foreign mercenaries" (which will not only force the Chinese to reassess the role of Comrade Che Guevara, but will also cause the People's Liberation Army's deployment against the imperialists in the Korean War to disappear from Chinese history books). For the peoples of the "Third World," who want to free themselves from their dependence on imperialism and cannot do without the help of the USSR and its allies, because armed conflict with the enemy is impossible without them (this was especially true for Vietnam!), the People's Republic of China has thus become an adversary that even attempts to legitimize its counter-revolutionary activities with the will of the people, which, in Angola, for example, was supposedly represented by none other than the racist UNITA gangs. Thus, it becomes clear that the creative expansion of the demands on the proletarians of all countries in the "Communist Manifesto" to include the "oppressed peoples " who are to unite, with its shift of the internationalist class struggle to a conflict between peoples and states, does not stem from the endeavor for socialist world revolution, but is the ideology of a great power policy that must be decisively opposed by the communists of all countries. From: MSZ 13 – October 1976 |
A rough and dirty translation from an article "Gespensterjagd -- Zur Ideengeschichte des Antikommunismus" from Gruppen Gegen Kapital Und Nation (Groups Against Capital and Nation). Original can be found here: https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/gespensterjagd-zur-ideengeschichte-des-antikommunismus/ “A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism."“ All the powers of old Europe have united in a holy hunt against this specter,” wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto — and that, contrary to other claims in that work, is a pretty true statement. Hatred and fear of radical change in civil society is as old as its revolutionary implementation itself. At the latest with the French Revolution, which did not operate in a religious disguise like the Dutch and English revolutions, and which was much more radical in its theoretical justification than the American one, the fear of the “Red Terror” arose (before “La Grande, by the way. “Terreur” really started in ...
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