50 Years Ago: The passing of Mao (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Mao Tse-Tung has been anticipated for many years in speculations over who would be his successor. Now it has happened and drawn world-wide attention to China. Ostensibly the interest is in the passing of a celebrated national leader; practically, it is in whether there will be changes of policy and how they will affect China’s relationship with the rest of the world.

The history of China since 1949 closely resembles that of Russia thirty years before. The Communist revolutions in both countries were the taking of political power so that capitalism could develop and the entry to the modern world be made. Like Lenin, Mao provided a figurehead, and as with Lenin a version of Marxism was put out in his name to create a social vision to gain mass support for modernization. The projection of Mao’s personality has been carried much further than Lenin’s; but behind this cultivated charisma has stood a ruling class strongly conscious of its economic aims.

The phrase for China in these conditions is ‘Mao’s China’, implying that his personal and political qualities have been the chief factor. The effect of this ‘great man’ view of history is to make it dependent on the emergence of outstanding individuals; but the opposite is true. Individuals are given opportunities by crises and the pressure of new developments, and these make them ‘great’. But for the 1939-45 war Churchill would have remained an unpopular minor statesman. Napoleon was the product of post-revolution conditions in France. The rise of Mussolini and Hitler was primarily the result of the failure of social-democracy in Europe and the effects of the 1929 depression on Germany. In some circumstances history appears almost to go looking for some nonentity or a lunatic to elevate into a ‘great man’.

Of course the day-to-day behaviour of individuals, once they have political power, produces effects of its own. But what makes them ‘great’ is precisely that their ambitions and whims are not incompatible with the wider requirements of the time. The shifts and innovations in Chinese policy under Mao have had a plain coherence in aiming at the achievement of world power status as quickly as possible.

[From the article, The Passing of Mao, by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, October 1976.]

Thought and Contradiction (2026)

Book Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mao: Power and Contradiction. By Kerry Brown. Reaktion Books £20.

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, and for over a quarter of a century before then he had been the ruler of China. Here Kerry Brown presents an account of his life, with a great deal of background information on developments in China, including since his death.

Born in 1893, Mao was one of fifteen people who attended the founding meeting of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party (CCP) in 1921. This was a time when few of Marx’s writings were available in Chinese. The CCP’s first manifesto stated that one of its aims was to eradicate the capitalist system, even though the vast majority of China’s inhabitants were peasants, and capitalism was just getting off the ground. Mao argued that the peasantry would play a crucial role in bringing the CCP to power, though he also accepted the Leninist idea of a centralist, vanguard party. He had very little understanding of capitalism, and sometimes saw class as something that was inherited.

Mao gradually rose to the top of the CCP during its and the Red Army’s fight against the Nationalists, but his life at this time was not easy. In 1927 he narrowly avoided being executed by the Nationalists, and in 1930 his second wife Yang Kaihui was tortured and executed by the provincial government. On the Long March of 1934–5 his two children by his third wife were given up soon after birth to local families, but could not be traced later.

The CCP took power in 1949, after driving out the Nationalists. Brown points out that Chinese society at that time was in a dire condition, after two decades of civil war and Japanese occupation. Average life expectancy was just 35, and the country was worse off economically than it had been in 1820. Land reform and the expansion of state-owned enterprises led over time to much-improved living conditions, but movements such as the Great Leap Forward were the cause of maybe as many as fifty million deaths, by famine and persecution (it is not clear how much Mao knew about the consequences of his policies, or how hard he tried to find out). The Cultural Revolution from 1966 was a power struggle within the ruling class, with Mao turning on anyone he saw as an enemy.

Since Mao’s death China has become the world’s second largest economy, rivalling the US, and a major manufacturing base, also now a hub of technological development. There has been nothing in China like de-Stalinisation in Russia, and Mao is officially viewed in China as a great man who made mistakes. The term Mao Zedong Thought is used, rather than Maoism, and Brown seems to see his ideas as some odd mix of Marxism and Daoism, though this may mean little more than a supposed emphasis on contradiction. There is no recognition here that Mao’s views had little to do with those of Marx, and that he contributed to the spread of capitalism in China: not abolishing the wages system but forcing it on far more of the country’s population.

Paul Bennett

Letter: Chinese language (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese language

Comrade Petter in the February issue seems to be basically in agreement with me: most public works were not managed by government officials (though it is correct to add that a few were), and there was small-scale trading throughout the Empire (again it is correct to add that larger enterprises were mostly to be found in specific areas).

However, although I do not wish to take up the pages of the Socialist Standard with trivia, I must protest about Comrade Petter’s remarks on the Chinese language. To claim that it is “almost devoid of grammar” is complete nonsense, a language with little or no grammar being a contradiction in terms. The case for the subordinate role of the CCP in its early years is surely quite strong enough from an examination of its relationship with the CPSU. To appeal to linguistic “facts” weakens the argument, being erroneous as well as irrelevant.

Paul Bennett 

London, E.2.

Reply:

This matter arose from a reference in our Special Issue on China, October 1974. We cannot pursue a debate on the structure of the Chinese language in the columns of the Socialist Standard, but give the following quotations to show that there is warrant for what was said:

The Chinese written language, composed of characters with rich but shadowy meanings and devoid of grammar in the Western sense, provides the most challenging ground for literary exercise.

(The Ageless Chinese, Dun J. Li. Professor of Eastern Studies, Paterson State College, N.J.)

. . . because of the nature of the Chinese language (ideogrammatic characters, the minimum role of grammar, the natural conciseness of the written language.

(Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, Etienne Balazs)

Broadly, it may be said that a word may do a duty for any part of speech within the limits set by its intrinsic meaning; and. particularly, that what might at first sight seem to be adjectives, are in a very large number of cases capable of use as nouns and verbs, and almost universally used as adverbs. In spite of the opinions of some eminent scholars, the last word on the question probably rests with Dobson: ‘Undifferentiated, a plerematic word might be said to represent a notion undifferentiated by grammatical quality, rather than any inherent grammatical meaning, that invests the word with that quality.’

(The Chinese Language, R.A.D. Forrest, School of Oriental and African Studies.)

Editors. 

R. Ramshaw, F. Ansell, R. Phillips and R. Smith:

Held over, through pressure on space, to next issue.

Correspondence. (1956)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow, C.2, 22/8/56.

Sir.

In the Socialist Standard for August your contributor F. Offord, says “At the conclusion of the Second World War when the Japanese capitulated to Russia their arms and ammunition and their control of Manchuria were handed over by Stalin, not to the Communists who had borne the brunt of the Chinese war against the Japanese, but to their mortal enemies the Nationalists.”

These statements are not merely incorrect—they are the very reverse of the truth. When withdrawing from Manchuria, the Russians, instead of handing over Manchuria to Chiang Kai-shek, whose authority they had by treaty recognised, gave advance notice to the Communist forces who were able to take up positions before the Nationalists arrived. The Russians surrendered immense quantities of captured Japanese arms to the Chinese Communists and this was one of the principal factors in ensuring Mao Tse-tung’s success.

Neither is it true, but the very opposite of the truth, to say that the Chinese Communists bore the brunt of the fighting against Japan. The Communists reserved as much of their strength as possible for the coming struggle for China while the Nationalist forces were exhausted by their long and terrible campaign against the Japanese. Lin Yutang did not exaggerate when he said, in 1945: “For every Japanese the Communists claim to have killed they have killed at least five Chinese; for every town they have captured from the Japanese, they have captured fifty towns from the Chinese.”

The Communists directed their struggle mainly against their own countrymen and the immense aid which Russia gave them was a direct breach of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship of August 1945 in which Stalin recognised the National Government as the central Government of China.

Yours faithfully.

H. W. Henderson.

Reply to Mr. Henderson.

On Mr. Henderson's first main point that Russia surrendered to the Chinese Communists the arms and ammunition left by the Japanese in Manchuria and also assisted, with advice, he does not give proof of his assertion. As for the statements in the article, they are fully supported by the following quotations from the generally-recognised historian on China, Professor C. P. Fitzgerald, and quoted from his work “Revolution in China.” “Late in the war, in 1945, Stalin could say to Harry Hopkins that he did not regard the Chinese Communists as a serious factor, and recognised only Chiang’s Government as that of China. ... It was this regime [that of Chiang Kai-shek] that the victorious powers recognised as the legitimate Government of China. The Communists were treated as dissident forces who should properly submit to the authority of Chiang Kai-shek. Their claim to share in the surrender of the Japanese, or to administer the provinces in which they had maintained resistance for eight years, was not accepted ” (page 83). On page 86 is a description of how Chiang Kai-shek (the leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang Party) obtained “the surrender of the Japanese to the forces of the Kuomintang, not to those of the Communists.”

As to which side bore the brunt of the fighting against Japan—on page 64 “Chiang devoted his time and his German-trained armies to fruitless campaigns against the Communist rebels in South China. Huge sums of money were wasted on these vain attacks, heavy losses of material, many casualties among the best trained troops. None of these troops were ever permitted to fight the Japanese. . . .” On page 77, “. . . the Communists, who had ten years of experience of guerrilla warfare behind them, could be sure of being able to keep the field, for years if need be, till they, and they alone, represented Chinese resistance.” Again, on page 80, “.The Nationalist Government, from the end of 1939, never made any further military effort to recover lost territory . .  It did not engage to any serious extent in guerrilla warfare behind the Japanese lines. This task was left to the Communists. . . ." Incidentally it was the constant fight against the Japanese which the Communists maintained that was such an important factor in rallying the patriotic Chinese behind the Communist Party, and that, in turn, really was a factor which enabled the Communists eventually to conquer China.

F. Offord.

Where East meets West (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although attention is today focussed on Korea, it is but a glittering spark in the great smouldering mass which is China. Throughout the past 100 years it has been the struggle for spheres of influence, trade, raw materials, which made China a hot bed of intrigue, murder and corruption. A glance at a map will show that the importance of Korea is its geographic position. It is a peninsula of land pointing like a great finger into the Sea of Japan, covering or threatening Vladivostok to the North, Shanghai and Hong-kong to the South and Japan to the East.

That the war which ended in 1945 solved no problems now becomes clear. The economic position that made occupation of Manchuria so essential to Japan is still the same. America as the political power in occupation of Japan is forced to take over the role of the Japanese militarists who preceded them. The Communist party of Russia carry on the same policy of expansion as did Czarist Russia.

But whereas the leading role of the West was played by British Imperialism in the carving up of China during the 19th century, that mantle too, has now fallen on American shoulders. The antagonism of China and Russia to both Britain and Japan now shows itself in open hostility to America. The drama remains the same, only the actors appear in different guises.

From time immemorial China had developed and perfected an economic and social system quite adequate for her needs. This was a system of production organised in the towns along lines similar to the Guilds of Mediaeval Europe. About 80 per cent. of her population were absorbed in agriculture. The basis of her rural life was the village community. The cohesive force that held together these almost exclusive units of town and village, was the organised Scholar Gentry; that is educated land owners from whose ranks the officials, provincial governors, magistrates, etc. were chosen. Following on the diverse products of different regions, there had developed in this society a rich merchant class which dealt in the finished products of the Guilds.

The only opportunity presenting itself to the owners of money as a source of investment aside from dealing in the products of the towns, was usury. The lending of money to peasants, the hiring of land from great land owners and reletting of it at exorbitant rents became one of the main sources of wealth.

However, with the breaking of the West into China, dealing in opium, and later, investing in foreign enterprises, banks, railroad building, mining etc., soon developed a class of Chinese who, while still retaining lucrative investments in usurous capital, also identified themselves with the interests of the foreigners.

It was from these that the foreign powers in their rivalries chose their puppet governments to rule in parts of China. But side by side with the foreigners there arose a small number of Chinese who emulated and copied the factory method of production. However meagrely they lived, however cheaply they paid their workers, however long they worked their employees, they found that they could not compete against the influx of Western made commodities. From them arose the cry for “Tariff Autonomy” that is to say the right to protect and nurture their budding industries by government action.

Because of the dissolution of the handicraft industries, labour capable of employment in factories became abundant and cheap. Industries dominated by foreign capital sprang up in the towns all round the coast of China. Workers who worked as many as 12 hours a day for as little as a shilling a day, formed a seething mass of discontent in the towns. As the capitalists who employed them were non-Chinese, their struggles took a nationalistic direction. They were the natural allies of a weak, embryonic Chinese capitalist class in their struggle for a “Free China.”

But the mass of the Chinese were still peasants. The land problem was still the crux of the unrest and turmoil troubling China.

Governments, in order to rule, need revenue, not only for administrative purposes but also to meet payments on foreign loans. Because of the privileges gained by the foreign invaders, they were exempt from Chinese government taxes. As the government was also denied access to the customs revenue at the ports, the burden of taxation fell, not only on Chinese industry, thus restricting its development still farther, but also on the peasant. Any increase of taxes levied on the land owner was easily shifted onto the peasant by the mere expedient of raising his rent. The government itself was peopled by men who had a vested interest in the land. Any movement organised by the peasants for a reduction in rents meant either a reduction of government revenue or a reduction of income accruing to the land owners who constitute a large and powerful section of the community.

As the government revenue was a source of income for the banking concerns of the Western powers, a reduction in it was out of the question. The struggle between the land owners and the peasant was settled by force. Non-payment of the required rent meant the eviction of the peasant from the land. This was accomplished either by the private army of the land owner or by some neighbouring War lord with whom he was intimately connected.

The Great War (’14-’18) however created the conditions for a rapid growth of a home-grown Chinese industry : furthermore, the Russian Revolution pointed a way to the solution of many of the problems that confronted the Chinese. It was just after this war that a Chinese Communist Party was formed. A child of the intellectuals of China, it had a somewhat chequered career from the time of its formation till the end of the last war (’39-’45). Its phenomenal success after the cessation of hostilities lies in the fact that the representative government of China, recognised and supported by the Allies in their war against the Axis powers, entered into agreements with America which virtually handed over the whole of Chinese assets. The National Sovereignty which had been promised to them as a reward for victory against Japan, although given on paper, was denied them in reality. The realization of this was the reason for the sudden and remarkable victories of the “communists.” Fear of Russian infiltration into China from the North East which she had already occupied after the defeat of Japan was no doubt one of the reasons that spurred America to almost frenzied support of the Kuomintang. Its reaction however, was to drive the “communists” into the arms of Russia in whom they saw a natural ally.

The “communists,” although the victors in the Civil War, have still to consolidate their position and implement their programme. It is to a consideration of this programme that we now turn.

Stuart Gelder in his book “The Chinese Communists” quotes a long political report of Mao Tse-Tung. Under the heading “Policy of the Communists,” on page 25, we find, “Troops and armed forces form an important part of the New Democratic State-authority. Without them, the nation is without protection. Like all other governmental authorities, and completely different from the old-time troops and police who belong to a few, and are tools for oppressing the people, all armed forces of New Democracy belong to the people and protect them.”

This of course rings true to a people long oppressed by bandits and the soldiers of thieving warlords. To a socialist however it means that the “New Democracy” means to maintain law and order. But what kind of law and order will this be? Mao Tse-Tung goes on:—“Imperialist and feudal oppression has restricted the development of individuality and private capital, and has ruined the property of the masses. The task of our New Democratic system is to remove this restriction and ruination, to safeguard the free development of the people’s individuality in their social life, to promote the free development of private capitalist economy that benefits and does not control the people’s livelihood, and to protect all proper private property.”

Like all pseudo-Marxists in backward countries, their alleged ultimate goal is communism but the immediate objective is the realization of the capitalist mode of production. This, apparently, can be striven for as a step towards the ultimate goal. Again from the report of Mao Tse-Tung (p. 26):—“When we joined the party, we had in our mind two clearly defined objectives : to fight for the new bourgeois-democratic revolution, and to strive for the materialisation of the future Socialist revolution of the proletariat.”

According to this line of reasoning the proletariat (propertyless workers) are quite capable of understanding the need for capitalism in order to obtain socialism. Not only is socialism to be the result of consciousness but capitalism also. In short, the large industrial working class created by the foreign capitalists are firstly to aid the native capitalist to get rid of his foreign competitor and then to joyfully help him onto their backs in the foreigners’ place. This of course is nonsense.

The Chinese worker will find, nay, has probably already discovered that capitalists of whatever nationality or colour are much of a muchness. The development of the capitalist mode of production is the beginning of new struggles between new classes. Capital and its growth depend on a greater degree of exploitation, greater amounts of surplus value and the complete subjugation of the workers to its sway. In so far as the workers are blinded to the real import of capitalist production and look on it as a prelude to something better in the future, to that extent will their struggle be blunted. To that extent will they be the more effectively milked.

The acceptance of the “communist” position, however sincere, must conflict with the real interests of the working class. Any resistance by the workers at any time must be construed as preventing accumulation of greater amounts of capital. It will therefore be opposed by the state. Basically, despite its Marxist jargon, the “communist party” are putting forward that old shibboleth so roundly condemned by Marx and Engels in the “Communist Manifesto”—“ Capitalism for the benefit of the working class.”

Again from the report of Mao Tse-tung (p. 46): — “ The New Democratic system of government will adopt the policy of harmonizing the relationship between capital and labour. . . .  On the other hand the proper profits of state, private and co-operative enterprises will be protected.”

Despite the day dream of developing capitalism first and socialism afterwards, the “communists” get down to brass tacks. “Large amounts of capital will be needed for the development of our industries. They will come chiefly from the accumulated wealth of the Chinese people, and in a lesser degree from foreign assistance. We welcome foreign investments if such are beneficial to China’s economy and are made in observance of China’s laws. What is beneficial to both the Chinese people and foreigners is that China, after winning a firm internal and international peace, and instituting thorough political and agrarian reforms will be able to develop her large-scale light and heavy industries and modernized agriculture. On this basis we shall be able to absorb vast amounts of foreign investments. A politically backward and economically impoverished China will be unprofitable not only to the Chinese people, but also to foreigners.” (P. 46)

To sum up; the relation of the West to China has been one of ruthless exploitation. The apparent struggle between the powers which presents itself as a struggle between ideas or differing ways of life, is in fact a struggle over the spoils. The development of a strong native capitalist government therefore enters the field to expel the foreigners. Armed with the history of exploitation as justification for its actions, it attempts to place itself in position as the future exploiter of China.

The position of the masses of China will still be that of exploited toilers.

Rufus.

Material World: Socialist ideas on the Internet (2025)

The Material World column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we all know, the internet has virtues and vices. One of its virtues is that it allows ideas and information to be exchanged among people, often in different parts of the world, with an ease that would have been impossible in pre-internet days. So we, in the Socialist Party, can more readily than ever find out about other individuals or organisations who have come to similar conclusions to ours and share, or are close to sharing, our views on the system we live in and the need to replace it with a different kind of system. We are talking here about a society of free and equal access to all goods and services with no buying and selling or wages and salaries and with the technology and the abundant resources of the planet used to satisfy needs and not for profit-making ends. An example of such like-mindedness is to be found on the Facebook site called ‘A Group Where We Are All Active Against Capitalism’. It carries its own self-description:

’This group exists to support the abolition of the power of capital through the transformation of the means of production from private to social ownership. This will only be achieved by the working class emancipating ourselves world wide.

The revolutionary reconstitution will also involve the ending of wage labour and all elements of capitalism as the global proletariat (the working class within capitalism) lays the basis for a sustainable future for humanity.

That transition to a socialist/Communist/cooperative world will eliminate all the horrors associated with the Imperialist period including military conflicts and ecological destruction.

The replacement for such barbarism will be a stateless, classless, moneyless society based on free association and production and distribution according to need.

We are open to all individuals and organisations who are in broad agreement with that position. We actively seek to host contributions that are in accord with that position from any source.

For the avoidance of doubt we will not carry posts that support any existing or proposed nation state.

Neither will we carry posts supporting the historic or continuing theory and practice of state capitalist entities such as the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China or similar regimes.

Forward to an end to capitalism!’

It would be hard to find a closer likeness to our own position and aspirations. And this being the case, one might expect the posts on the site to be largely supportive of its objectives or at least asking honest questions of those. Yet this is by no means always what one finds. Rarely, in fact, do those posts contain clear mention of aspirations like the end of wage labour and ‘stateless, classless and moneyless’ social arrangements.

What is to be found on the whole are the kind of reformist calls for various improvements to what already exists that regularly come from those on the left who (mistakenly in our view) call themselves socialists or communists. So there are plenty of references to, for example, state ownership of industry, more ‘rights’ for workers, laws to favour trade unions, better health care, higher taxes for the rich, etc., etc. Calls, in other words, for more crumbs from the table, for a more benign form of capitalism. And mixed in with them we also often find support for, or defence of, states or regimes within capitalism that are somehow deemed to be ‘progressive’ (eg, Cuba, China, Vietnam). Any posts that challenge this tend to elicit the response that yes, in reality and ideally we want the same thing as you, but that’s likely to be a long way off and we need to improve things as much as possible ‘in the meantime’. So they are deaf to the obvious reality that if you put off the demand for socialism, you continue to put off socialism itself.

Maoist mythology

A prime example was to be found on that site in a recent post entitled ‘Is Maoism Marxist?’ and providing a link to an article written by Steve Leigh from a website called ‘A Marxist View of Current Events’. Leigh, who describes himself as ‘a member of Seattle Revolutionary Socialists and Firebrand, national organization of Marxists, 50 year socialist organizer’, begins by asking ‘What is our relationship to Maoism?’ and ‘What Maoist ideas, if any, have merit?’. He goes on to outline the history of Mao Zedong’s gradual rise to political prominence in China from the late 1920s onwards leading to his eventual takeover in the late 1940s and then authoritarian rule of the country till his death in 1976. Much of what the writer has to say actually makes good sense – for example that Maoism was a form of Stalinism which, via its economic policies, caused ‘widespread famines’ (the ‘Great Leap Forward’) and, in its oppression of those who were not held to be in conformity with Maoist doctrine, practised mass persecution and killings of its supposed enemies (the ‘Cultural Revolution’).

The writer also criticises Mao and Maoism for putting forward the idea that ‘socialism’ can be developed and achieved in a single country and has to be imposed on workers by a revolutionary leadership rather than workers establishing it democratically themselves. But he then goes hopelessly awry in declaring that ‘the Chinese revolution had many positive aspects to it’ (tell that to its millions of victims) and that ‘all of these things are towering historical accomplishments’. Clearly some of the mythology of China under Mao being in some sense positive and having something to do with socialism has stuck with Steve Leigh, as it has with many others on the Left.

The reality is that, rhetoric apart, China under Mao and subsequent regimes have been anti-socialist dictatorships bearing no relation whatever to the society of voluntary cooperation, democratic organisation and economic equality via free access to all goods and services which the Socialist Party stands for and consistently advocates and that the website which gives access to this article declares that it too endorses. So why, one might ask, does such a website, which says it will not carry ‘posts supporting the historic or continuing theory and practice of state capitalist entities such as the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China or similar regimes’ give a platform to articles like this. Of course, a free exchange of ideas from all sides is entirely desirable, but why carry without any attempt at response ideas or material that do nothing to promote – and indeed even contradict – the aspirations it claims to stand for?

Howard Moss

Working class China (2025)

Pamphlet Review from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalist China and Socialist Revolution. By Simon Hannah. Resistance Books, 2023. 67pp.

This pamphlet begins with some indisputable truths: ‘The working class in China is massive – the largest in the world. But they often work in terrible conditions with few effective rights and no independent trade unions. They labour under an authoritarian government calling itself “socialist with Chinese characteristics”.’ Its author then goes on to further characterise modern China as a country run by a ‘pro-business’ party, which, while calling itself ‘communist’, is so only in name. Nor is he impressed by those on the political left who defend China simply on the grounds that its government has massively developed the country’s productive forces and in so doing has lifted millions out of absolute poverty. He points out that this process has not been a prerogative of China and that globally capitalism has ‘lifted millions of people out of abject poverty, whilst condemning millions of others to live in misery’. He goes on to say that ‘the Chinese state corresponds to all the definitions of a capitalist state’, in which ‘both the state sector and the private sector follow capitalist imperatives of growth’.

Nothing here at all that socialists would disagree with. But disagreement does start when he asserts that this state of affairs (ie, China being capitalist) only began in 1976 ‘with the economic and political reforms after the death of Chairman Mao’. The author does recognise that things weren’t great under Mao and that the various schemes adopted by his regime such as the ‘five-year plan’ and ‘the Great Leap Forward’ were abject failures that heaped suffering on the people and led to, among other things, mass famine. Yet, at the same time he definitely soft-peddles that disastrous rule, even referring to it at one point as ‘a new course towards socialism’, albeit one that didn’t go to plan. But little is said about that overall, with the main criticism reserved for what happened after Mao’s death when Deng Xiaoping took over leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, as quite rightly observed here, opened up the economy to the world market, something he described, in a supreme exercise of smoke and mirrors, as ‘using capitalism to develop socialism’. The writer then goes into significant detail to show how this process of integration into the world market continued and intensified in the decades that followed continuing to the present day and how it was coupled with increasingly authoritarian political control by the CCP, which has managed, sometimes by brute force, to keep the lid on protest, as, for example, in the slaughter of students and workers at the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. As for the current situation in China under the leadership of Xi Jinping, he quotes the words of a recent Hong Kong opposition activist: ‘Today’s CCP, with its fusion of both political and economic power, its hostility towards people enjoying basic rights of association and free speech, its xenophobia, nationalism, Social Darwinism, cult of a corporate state, “unification” of thought, etc., is now comparable to a fascist state’. And he points to the fact that China, in its mix of state and private ownership, has more billionaires than any other country in the world, while workers are largely denied independent trade unions and, if they protest, are likely to be arrested or battered into submission by the police.

None of this can be denied, but what is hard to understand is how the author can see redeeming features in what happened previously (ie, under Mao) and can somehow see what is happening now as fundamentally different from – and worse than – the repressive and tyrannical state capitalism that existed then. He correctly points to the fact that ‘state ownership does not equate to socialism’, but it did not under Mao either. Mao’s journey was just as much down ‘the capitalist road’ as that of his successors.

As to how China will develop in the future, the author rightly sees this as unpredictable, but avers that the ruling party may not be ’as homogenous and united as it pretends to be’ and its leader, Xi Jinping, not quite so impregnable as he may seem. So he does not see it as impossible that China may develop into ‘a liberal democratic capitalist state on the model of Western democracy’ or into ‘a Russian style capitalism controlled by a small and powerful aristocracy’. But, as he makes clear, any such arrangement would still be capitalism. As an alternative to this, he calls for a society ‘not based on profit but on need, social development and human capacity’. As to whether this can happen in a single country or whether it must be global, there appears to be some contradiction in his mind. The fact that he sometimes makes reference to ‘socialist countries’ suggests that he does not necessarily see socialism as a world system, as we insist it must be. At the same time he does talk about the need for ‘an international working class movement’, and the ‘Anti-Capitalist Resistance’ group under whose aegis this pamphlet is published states its aim as ‘social transformation, based on mass participatory democracy’. Whatever the case, it is clear that socialism, meaning a system of free access to all goods and services based solely on human need, cannot exist in just one country. It must, by definition, be a world society and one that has to be consciously brought into being and then organised cooperatively by a majority of workers who have taken democratic action to opt for it.

Howard Moss

Dreams and Schemes (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Need to Talk About Xi: What We Need to Know About the World’s Most Powerful Leader. By Michael Dillon. Ebury Press/Penguin £10.99.

Xi Jinping is general secretary of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, president of China and chair of the country’s Central Military Commission. This combination certainly makes him one of the most powerful people on the planet, and here Michael Dillon summarises his personal history and political policies, against the background of developments in China, especially since the death of Mao Zedong. Little is known of his private life, but who cares?

Born in 1953, Xi gradually worked his way up through CCP ranks, working in various provincial posts. In 2002 he became a member of the Central Committee, and in 2007 of the Politburo Standing Committee. He became general secretary of the party in 2012, and his five-year term was renewed in 2017 and again in 2022. The expected practice was for the general secretary to serve two such five-year terms before stepping down, but Xi has overturned this. He is apparently seen by others in ruling circles as a ‘safe pair of hands’, though he is also less collegial and more authoritarian.

Dillon says that Xi has reversed much of the modernisation of the Chinese economy begun under Deng Xiaoping, though without saying a great deal about this. And he has lost support among ‘captains of industry’, who see him as not sufficiently friendly to business. A few years ago he announced a clampdown on the billionaires with plans to ‘regulate excessively high incomes’ (NBC News, 5/9/21), though it is not clear that this has had any real effect.

The authoritarian side has been made plain not just in the general attacks on dissidents but in events in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. In both cases, Xi has run things behind the scenes, making local leaders appear responsible. In Hong Kong, for instance, a man was recently jailed for fourteen months for wearing a T-shirt with a supposedly seditious slogan on it. Many Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been sent to ‘re-education camps’ as they are euphemistically called, in order to suppress demands for independence for the region. Finding information about developments there is difficult, but Dillon states that there has been much damage to social and religious networks, and also to the economy, with many workers being removed from their posts.

Allegedly Xi has less interest in international affairs, though the Belt and Road initiative has been an expensive and potentially influential policy. His extremely vague China Dream may see the country as a global power like the US, but clearly he is primarily interested in maintaining his own power and that of all those who rule China, whether private capitalists or part of the state and party bureaucracy.

Paul Bennett

What’s happening in China (1965)

From the November 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The so-called communist rulers of China are in trouble. They are trying to achieve two impossible feats; to make exploitation popular with the Chinese workers and to kid them along that the form of capitalism which is developing there is socialism.

The latest campaign to accomplish this is called the “Socialist Education Campaign”, now in full swing, which was recently commended by the Chinese premier as being “of great revolutionary and historical significance”. Such campaigns are no novelty in “communist” China, where the workers seem to need a lot of convincing.

Previous campaigns have been passed off as methods of getting rid of the remains of capitalism or as part of the building-up of a “communist” system of society, or as the eradication of specific errors and failings of the Old China. They were represented as a necessary process of cleaning up and modernising the social structure and they dealt largely with problems that were laid at the door of the old era.

But this time it is different, in that the government leaders have to deal with problems which, they frankly proclaim arise directly from the present system of society. The “Socialist Education Campaign” is teaching workers, both in industry and the civil service, to deal with the new problems caused by the creation of a modern, technically developed state from a recently backward country. It is this which enables Premier Chou-En-lai to assign “historical significance” to the current campaign.

To enable them to reconcile awkward facts with an incorrect interpretation of society, the Chinese have to be dosed with plenty of “communist” education.

One problem with which they have to deal is that of the new “managerial class”. Mao-Tze-tung, Chou-En-lai and the rest of the old die-hards of the Communist Party, were tough, unscrupulous but courageous labour leaders tested in battle and called upon for great personal sacrifices in prompting the Communist Party to the leadership of what they may have once believed was a different system of society.

But the old guard are getting older, and they are finding it difficult to select their successors from the ranks of the new business bureaucracy who seem to be taking their place. These young people are slick, well educated executive types who are rising to the top in the nationalised concerns and government departments. They have little understanding of political theory, little desire to make personal sacrifices, but, like business executives the world over, are ambitious to rise in the hierarchy and enjoy the luxuries which only the possession of money makes possible. Such is a thumb-nail sketch of one of the groups that the die-hards are trying to impregnate with so-called communist ideology. But the die-hards are as horrified at this developing class, as the swan was when it found it had hatched a duckling. Capitalist society develops along its own lines, irrespective of the muddled thinking of its apologists.

An Tzu-wen, Director of the Organisation Department of the Party’s Central Committee, considered the nature of some of these groups in some detail in an article which appeared in the Party journal Red Flag on 22/9/64 and which was reported in the China Quarterly April/June 1965. An is primarily concerned with the campaign to train successors to the present leadership. He distinguishes between the older cadres of pre-liberation vintage who have failed to adapt themselves to the technical and organisational development going on, and the younger ones who have not the political benefit of those who went through the Civil War.

It is from An’s article that it is possible to build up a picture of the various groups he sees developing around him. His criticisms have been publicised to the greatest extent possible in the Chinese national press and on the radio. He said that the gravest dilemma for the Chinese leaders may be the conflict between their own background and the need for modernisation in economic planning.

Chou-En-lai made it clear in his report last December that one of the main motives behind the “Socialist Education Movement’’ was the need to prepare the country for economic expansion. He speaks of the need for a “scientific and realistic approach”. An calls on the older cadres to adapt themselves and he describes the movement as “a mass movement for studying Marxist-Leninist and Mao Tse-tung ideology with emphasis in its flexible interpretation and application”.

The Chinese Government are training the new managerial class to a degree which must involve contact with the thinking of the outside world and they are at the same time inducing the old die-hards to work efficiently in the fervent atmosphere of industrial capitalism, misnamed “socialist expansion”.

Another section being “educated” are the Chinese followers of the Russian communist party. Since it now seems that many of the interests of the Chinese ruling class are opposed to those of .the Russian, Chinese supporters must be “re-educated” to enable them to make an intellectual somersault. China is living in a capitalist world jungle and must be prepared, in its own interests, to support a war against its erstwhile “comrades”. There must be no fifth column in the Chinese camp.

Another homegrown problem is the rise of the wealthy farmer, a new economic group since the seizure of governmental power by the Chinese “communists”. With their surpluses of commodity crops they have made a mockery of the food and clothing rationing which still obtains in China. The black market is now known as the free market and is officially recognised by the Government. Any of the rationed goods can be obtained at a higher price and this is part of a process whereby the rural rich are becoming richer. Universal rationing for all has become rationing by price, officially lauded by the authorities. This, of course, is the state of affairs to which the workers of the rest of the world are accustomed, whether they are starving in the backward countries or the “affluent” of western capitalism.

China has had a somewhat different history of social development to the West over the centuries, so that capitalism there is a little different from capitalism here in some of the details. But Chinese workers have basically the same economic interests as the workers here; and the so-called communist government there behaves domestically and in its foreign policies, like the capitalist power that in fact it is.

Frank Offord

50 Years Ago: Confucius, Lin Piao and the CCP (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lin Piao is dead and in disgrace. Confucius who died a couple of thousand years earlier is getting the treatment reserved for high-ranking renegades — scapegoats of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party. (…)

The Chinese ‘Communist’ Party set out to develop and control capitalism, and now claim to have set up a Socialist society. Socialism will come sure enough, but in spite of them. What any student of Marxian economics would recognise as an emerging capitalist state was described as ‘People’s Democratic Dictatorship’ and when the state had gained control of the greater part of industry and agriculture it was supposed to have carried out the transition to Socialism. A state of affairs where, on their own admission, classes and the class struggle still exist.

This is not a harmless deception as capitalist society can only work against the interests of the working class and any government trying to run it must come into conflict with the workers. Part of any government’s armoury of weapons in this conflict are arguments designed to get workers to make sacrifices for the mythical nation and warn them of the dangers to the workers of wanting more of the wealth which they produce. Although there may be power struggles taking place in the top ranks of the government, the Lin Piao-Confucius campaign is also a weapon in the class war against the workers. Once workers become aware of their class status they will see through the deceits and come to understand that a class-less society cannot be brought to them from above. They will then form their own Socialist party in opposition to those who at present administer their exploitation. (…)

The Chinese ‘Communist’ Party having pursued the national liberation of China are, despite their protestations to the contrary, nothing but a party of capitalism. They have taken the terminology of Socialism and used it to disguise the State capitalism they administer. The ‘Thoughts of Mao’ may serve them now, but such is the dynamic of capitalism that they will ‘become antiquated before they can ossify’ and become redundant like ‘the ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions’ of Confucius.

(from Socialist Standard Special Issue on China, October 1974)

Remembering and forgetting (2024)

Book Review from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Red Memory: the Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution. By Tania Branigan. Faber & Faber. £9.99.

The Cultural Revolution lasted officially from 1966 to 1976, with the first couple of years being the most violent and disruptive. Perhaps two million were killed and thirty-six million ‘hounded’ in some way. It is not possible to understand China today, says Branigan, without understanding the Cultural Revolution. Her concern here is not so much with what happened then as with how it is remembered (or not) nowadays.

It is generally viewed as Mao Zedong’s way of destroying opposition within the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, and people denounced family members and others for supposedly taking the ‘capitalist road’. The first victim in Beijing was a teacher battered to death by her pupils. Her husband documented her death, but the Red Guards responsible were never charged, presumably because they had connections with powerful people. But there were factions within the Red Guards, and some were later criticised and jailed.

From 1970, many Red Guards were sent to the countryside to live and work in communes (this included the present ruler, Xi Jinping). This is probably the only part of the Cultural Revolution that is still regarded in a positive way, viewed by many as ‘fresh air, comradeship and honest toil’, even though many young city-dwellers died while living on communes. Mostly, though, the events have been banished from public memory, although a number of memoirs and novels dealing with it were published in the years following. But this came to an end, and it now receives little coverage in textbooks, which certainly do not refer to the murders and suicides that took place. Unlike the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, references to the 1966–76 period are not completely taboo, but they are carefully controlled. The CCP later described the Cultural Revolution as a catastrophe.

A museum dealing with the Cultural Revolution was set up, by a wealthy private individual, in the small southern town of Shantou, though it was later shut down. Amazingly, there are a number of Cultural Revolution restaurants, where waitresses wear Red Guard uniforms. These, says Branigan, are ‘serving up tragedy as farce’.

The days of Red Guard terror are over, but China remains a country where people have little freedom and an authoritarian regime is in charge. Xi has enormous personal power, the families of dissidents are punished and their children may be expelled from school, and the state tries to control people’s beliefs and emotions. Normal discussion is not tolerated, and of course it is now far easier to gather information on people. One apparently unrepentant Maoist tells Branigan that in today’s China, ‘eighty-five per cent of ordinary people can’t afford to buy a home or get medical care or education’.

A well-researched study of how rulers can manipulate the ruled and even impose amnesia.

Paul Bennett

Letter: China’s Communist Party (1967)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Friends,

Frank Offord states that the early Chinese Communist Party consisted entirely of an affluent and educated elite—”the ordinary worker being conspicuous by his absence”. I wonder where he gets his information from, he should read Red Star over China by Edgar Snow, an unbiased account of the early days of the revolution written inside the Communist areas of North West China in 1937.

Mao tse-Tung’s father was in fact a poor peasant who had managed to increase his property and income until he acquired the status of rich peasant, employing only one labourer—his family doing most of the work. Mao himself started working in the fields at the age of six, later became an apprentice in a rice shop. He finally went to a proper school at the age of sixteen, and then against his father’s wishes and with a minute allowance. Lin Piao’s father had once owned a small factory, but had been forced out of business by extortionate taxes. Only Chou en-Lai is a member of a traditional mandarin family. It is true that the Communist Party was founded by intellectuals—so are most organisations—but this is hardly surprising considering that the peasants and workers, oppressed as they were with fiercely reactionary landlords and their attendant thugs, and by immense taxes, had no chance to come into contact with Marxist thought. Once the party had been founded the proletariat joined in large numbers.

One thing is certain, the Chinese revolution was achieved not by power-seeking members of the bourgeoisie, but by men who suffered over twenty years of continual fighting and hardship simply because they believed firmly in their convictions. Maybe these same men betrayed their convictions when they gained power, nevertheless the Chinese worker is now a responsible citizen, not a slave. Of course there will always be people seeking wealth as long as money continues to exist, and these people are worthy of our hate. The SPGB attacks everybody and everything—sometimes justifiably and sometimes not—but exaggeration will do nothing to help the cause. By taking it too far you are liable to isolate yourselves and become entirely impotent. You’ll be saying that ‘Che’ Guevara was in it only for the money next.

Tim Deane,

Wimborne, Dorset.

Reply

Edgar Snow got his information through being in China at the time, but we can refer our correspondent to what is in our opinion the best work on the subject written so far—Revolution in China by Fitzgerald, from which we quote from page 193:

“At present the Chinese Communist Party is recruited in very large measure from the educated class, the university students … It is thus not really at all a party made up of members of the toiling masses. It could not be, because the peasants are still mainly illiterate, the workmen very little educated, and too few to supply the dominant clement. The university students come from the classes which Mao Tse-tung has stigmatized as only in part reliable, and lacking in vision and courage, the former country squires or landlords, the city bourgeois and the old official families . . . The present generation of recruits, taken into the party in very large numbers after ‘liberation’ are mainly university students, still very young. They will form the bulk of the Communist Party for another forty years

. . . . . 

The new members from these mandarin families are, of course, ardent Communists, sincere believers in the New Democracy, servants of the people. They are also precisely the same group of people who have governed China for the last two thousand years. It is in their blood. They are born to rule, and whether by virtue of Confucius and the Emperor, or Marx and Mao Tse-tung, makes very little real difference. Deep rooted, not in any way destroyed by the Revolution, is the old Chinese conviction that government is an affair for the elite, for those who sit in the seats of authority, and that the qualification for such a seat is knowledge of the orthodox doctrine, not blood, nor wealth, but ‘book perfume’ is the real test.”

Regarding Mao Tse-tung’s background we can give a tip—’straight from the horse’s mouth’ by quoting the statement made by Mao himself taken down by Edgar Snow and published in Red Star Over China which, as our correspondent says, is an unbiased account. On page 121 he says that it took the five members of the family plus a hired hand to run their farm while his father devoted his time to his prosperous grain business and other activities. “The old man continued to amass wealth or what was considered to be a great fortune in that little village. He did not buy more land himself, but he bought many mortgages on other people’s land”.

It should be remembered that due to lack of development in China at that time it was not necessary for a prosperous business man to own a firm the size of say Marks & Spencer in order to be “one of the nobs”.

Mao had the equivalent of a provincial University education and graduated at the age of 25 (Mao Tse-tung by Stewart Schram—Pelican Books), and so became one of the educated elite and typical of the recruits to the Mandarin class that has traditionally ruled China right up to and including the present period of Capitalism there.

We do not hate, as individuals, either the capitalists or the wage slaves who work for them; it is the capitalist system of society which we seek to abolish and replace with Socialism.

Editorial Committee.

Editorial: The New Chinese Constitution (1954)

Editorial from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new Constitution of the Chinese Republic, endorsed in Peking in September last by the delegates of the National People’s Congress, was published in full in the organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties (Bucharest, 24 September, 1954).

According to the Preamble to the Constitution, the “People’s Republic of China” is “a people’s democratic dictatorship,” and the “system of people’s democracy—new democracy—of the People’s Republic of China can in a peaceful way eliminate exploitation and poverty and build a prosperous and happy Socialist society.”

It goes on to say that the Chinese Republic is now in a period of transition: —“The central task of the State during this transition period is to bring about, step by step, the Socialist industrialisation of the country and to accomplish, step by step, the Socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce.”

The claim is made that in the past few years the land system has been successfully reformed, counter-revolutionaries have been suppressed and the conditions have been created “for planned economic reconstruction and the steady transition to Socialism.”

After the double talk about “democratic-dictatorship” and the familiar Labour Party phrases about step by step transition to Socialism, it was only to be expected that the term Socialism would be found to be used in the Constitution to mean various forms of capitalist organisation. The following extracts bear this out:—

Article 5: "The ownership of the means of production in the People's Republic of China at present falls mainly into the following categories: State ownership, that is, ownership by the whole people; co-operative ownership, that is, collective ownership by die working masses; ownership by individual working people; and capitalist ownership.

Article 6: “State-owned economy is Socialist economy, owned by the whole people; it is the leading force in the national economy and the material basis on which the State carries out the Socialist transformation. The State ensures priority for the development of the State-owned economy.

“All mineral resources and waters, as well as forests, undeveloped land and other resources which the State owns by law, are the property of the whole people.”

We see from the above that the “Socialism” to which the Chinese Republic is said to be advancing, is a misapplication of the term Socialism to State Capitalism.

Article Seven tells us that co-operation, too, is “ Socialist economy.”

Article Eight reads:—“The State protects the right of the peasants to own land and other means of production according to law while Article Twelve gives the same protection to the right of citizens “to inherit personal and private property.”

Article Ten is especially interesting.

“The State protects the right of capitalists to the ownership of the means of production and other capital according to law.

“The policy of the State towards capitalist industry and commerce is: use, restrict and transform. Through control by administrative organs of the State, leadership by the State-owned economy and supervision by the workers, the State uses the positive qualities of capitalist industry and commerce which are beneficial to the national welfare and the people’s livelihood; encourages and guides the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce into various forms of State-capitalist economy, step by step replacing capitalist ownership with ownership by the whole people.

“The State forbids capitalists to endanger the public interest, disturb the social-economic order or undermine the national economic plan by any kind of illegal activity.” 

One piece of unintended humour is that according to Article Twenty “the armed forces . . . belong to the people.” Whenever the Chinese workers come into conflict with the armed forces of the emerging Chinese capitalism they should reflect on that grim jest.

Much of the Constitution is naturally taken up with constitutional and electoral organisation and with the usual high flown declarations of the “people’s rights.” All constitutions contain these latter trimmings and they mean nothing at all. The workers never get and retain elementary rights of trade union organisation, voting, forming political parties, and so on, without struggling for them.

The aims set by the Constitution contained in the articles quoted above have no relationship to Socialism, which is at present quite beyond the knowledge and acceptance of the vast majority of China’s largely peasant population.

Their promised land is much more like the Attlee- Bevanite dream (or nightmare) of a rigidly government controlled welfare capitalism.

Let us hope that the Chinese workers may be spared that fate.

Voice From The Back: Worldwide genocide (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Worldwide genocide

Under the headline “Scientists to probe worldwide genocide” The Observer gives yet more proof about how awful modern capitalism is. “The world’s first centre for the investigation of genocide is to be set up by British scientists with experience of working with some of the most appaling war crimes of modern times. The International Forensic Centre of Excellence for the Investigation of Genocide (Inforce) will use expertise gained in excavating mass graves in the Balkan conflict to provide independent evidence of war crimes and state-sponsored killing from across the world … The new centre, which could be up and running by the end of next year, plans to investigate atrocities in Sierra Leone, Central Africa and Indonesia. It is estimated that about 170 million people have been murdered by their own governments in the past century.” A hundred years of political reformism, thousands of “peace” conferences and this is what capitalism produces. Inside a socialist system we will have no need for an organisation called The International Forensic Centre of Excellence for the Investigation of Genocide. Who knows? We may even have one called The Global Centre for the Understanding of Diverse Cultures.

Sour notes

Rupert Murdoch’s Times has been sponsoring a long running campaign against the British government adopting the Euro currency. Now it seems they have another reason to be anti-Euro – it offends their aesthetic sense. “The euro banknotes are stark, bland and dead. With no recognisable building and no friendly humanity, they look as though they have been designed by committee, as they have … The design principle could not differ more from those of the pound. On the £20 note an imposing portrait of the Queen dominates. Flip it over and there is Sir Edward Elgar, with Worcester Cathedral in the background. There is nothing so bold on the euro notes.” The Times, 31 August. But all those lovers of bits of paper depicting parasites and monuments to outmoded institutions should not despair. Inside socialism you would still be able to see them in the Museum of Ancient Artifacts alongside such displays as the flint axe and the suit of armour. Who knows, it may even be housed in Worcester Cathedral.

Freedom of the press

Shock, Horror, Probe, Startling Revelations and all the other stupid cliches of the media. The Guardian of 6 September astonished us all with its findings. “Rupert Murdoch’s influence over editorial policy at his most prestigious British title, the Times, is so great that journalists are censored by executives frightened of offending their proprietor, according to a former member of the paper’s foreign staff. In a stinging attack in the London Evening Standard Mr Kiley wrote that Mr Murdoch’s friendship with Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister, and Mr Murdoch’s extensive Israeli investments led executives to extensively rewrite copy.” Of course, the proprietors of The Guardian never interfere in the dissemination of truth. That is why you often see articles in that journal attacking private property and advocating World Socialism. Don’t you?

Another brilliant ‘Marxist’

The Socialist Party has always insisted that China and Russia were never socialist, had nothing to do with Marxism and were in fact examples of state capitalism. The recent antics of the Chinese leadership show how correct we were. This piece of nonsense was reported in The Guardian (13 September) under the heading “China’s leader tries to wed Marx and Blair”. “President Jiang Zemin of China has stolen the mantle from the late Mao Zedong in a new press campaign that suggests he is a brilliant Marxist as well as a great leader. Mr. Jiang has made a “new contribution” to Marxist theory which should be studied throughout the country, the Communist party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, said this week. And according to Hong Kong reports of a recent top level conference, Mr. Jiang and his supporters now wish to study the experience of European social democracy: “Many in our party believe that the Third Way is not such a bad idea,” a party theorist, Yan Shuhan, told Asiaweek magazine, referring to the credo with which Tony Blair is most identified.”

A mad, mad world

Amidst the millions of words pumped out by the media on the hijacked aircraft carnage in the USA, the following short letter in the Guardian (13 September) contained probably the wisest. “Shortly after 3pm British time, as the events in the US were unfolding, BBC News began analysing how the situation would affect share prices – surely yet more proof, as if any were needed, of what a sick world we live in.”

The Revolution in Chinese marriage (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, despite the usual misleading Communist phraseology, marked the completion of the Capitalist revolution there. The new system of society which is emerging from it has changed many things hitherto fundamental to the Chinese way of life, and not the least of these is marriage.

The majority of people, both in Europe and Asia, regard their existing form of marriage, together with the sexual morality that their society claims as sacrosanct, as something permanent, something that always has been and always will continue. But, in fact, marriage laws and sexual morality change in keeping with changing social systems.

Early Chinese Marriage

In ancient times in China the aristocracy were married with elaborate rites and ceremonies. The wife of an aristocrat would be associated in the rites of her husband’s ancestral temple; the temple of his "Clan.” Marriage was particularly important because property was involved and the heirs’ legal claim to the estate had to be established.

But the peasants were not included in the clan system, had no surname or pedigrees, and consequently could not participate in ancestor-worship. Moreover, they did not possess any land of their own. They were serfs, cultivating their master’s soil under his direction. They dwelt in groups in villages during the harsh winter, and in huts built among the fields during the summer when agriculture was possible. Every spring, the peasants celebrated a festival in which the youths and girls of neighbouring villages met in free association, only translated into formal marriage in the autumn if the girls were with child

The Traditional Chinese Marriage

Feudalism was abolished in China in 300.B.C. and replaced by a unified central government ruling through a civil service. Wealth increased rapidly, and extended to fresh groups of the population. This spread of private property necessitated a change in morality as well as in the marriage customs of the population for peasants wished to leave their farms to their own sons, and marriage, therefore, became a social necessity for them. But the heavy tasks of draining farmland in the marshy valleys and the irrigation works that were needed afterwards, required the labour of large family groups. 

A system of ethics was evolved which was expressed by the teachings of the sage Confucius, laying down a code of behaviour to cover all relationships. The submission of the subject to the ruler, and, within the family, the submission of the individual to the head of the household. Moreover there were rules formulated to cover relationships such as between younger brother and elder brother, husband and wife, wife and mother-in-law. Thus Confucianism not only made the task of ruling over vast China easier, but enabled the individuals in these otherwise unwieldy family groups to live together in more or less harmony and co-operation. Some of those whose mothers-in-law lived with them as one of the family may perhaps have received an inkling of the desirability of such regulating of family life and behaviour.

This somewhat puritanical code of Confucianist morals was rigidly adhered to in conservative China, where changes were extremely gradual because the Chinese made their living by engaging in small scale intensive agriculture, which has developed very slowly right down through the ages until a few years ago. It also forms the philosophic basis for the literary classics, a thorough knowledge of which was necessary to pass the civil service examinations.

In China until recent times it was the custom for the parents of the bride and bridegroom to be brought into contact by a marriage broker, the parents being the final arbiters on the suitability of the proposed union. The couple had no say in the choice and moreover did not meet before the ceremony. The Chinese compared this form of betrothal with a cold pot that is put on the fire and gradually heats up; whereas marriage in the West usually taking place after courtship was likened to a pot boiling at the time of the ceremony, but thereafter beginning to cool off.

Marriage in “Communist” China

The Marriage Law of the Peoples Republic of China, which came into force on 1st May, 1950, indicates the need for a new set of family rules to govern behaviour in this new Capitalist system of society. It reveals too an interesting side-light on some of the social changes taking place there; for it is only to be expected that China, the latest recruit to the State Capitalist system, should adopt the most up-to-date set of Capitalist marriage laws.

Article 1 of the new law formally abolishes the previous marriage system, and in its place institutes the “New Democratic” Marriage Law which, it states, is based on free choice of partners, on monogamy, on equal rights for both sexes, and of the lawful interest of women and children.

“Husband and wife are companions living together and shall enjoy equal status in the home. Both shall have the right to free choice of occupation and free participation in work or social activities."

Other Articles deal with prohibition of bigamy and concubinage. The local government is delegated to issue the marriage certificates.

The change in the status of women has the advantage for the ruling-class that the women are “free" to become wage-workers.

Rights and duties are further detailed, as well as the relations between parents and children; and divorce is to be granted only when the efforts of the local government officials have failed to bring about a reconciliation. After appropriate measures have been taken for the care of children and property, divorce certificates are to be issued without delay. Both parents still have the duty to support their children. In case of divorce, the wife shall retain such property as belonged to her before her marriage.

As a further indication of the trend of society in modern China, 12 put of the 27 articles that go to make up this law deal wholly or partly with money or property matters.

For the smooth running of capitalism, workers must conform to the rules of behaviour which have been found suitable for the social system; and because the needs of capitalism are similar irrespective of which part of the globe is involved, the marriage laws, which codify a part of this behaviour pattern are also similar, differing only in detail in the various national sections of the Capitalist world.

It is understandable that the new Chinese marriage law abolishes the previous marriage system; it is in the interest of the Capitalists to try to increase the surplus value obtained from the labour of the workers, who are induced to speed up their work by the prospects of a higher standard of living. This elusive prize is dangled before them, like the carrot before the donkey’s nose. Moreover, in order to get the Chinese worker to work harder, the old-fashioned household, consisting of several related families sharing the income of their wage-earners, has had to be broken up into smaller units; in this way the wage-earner and his immediate family receive all the benefit from his wages.

The breaking-up of this now out-moded household into the more modern form of family unit has the further advantage, from the Capitalist point of view, that the parents, because the family is now dependent on their sole earnings, are more amenable to Capitalist demands. Hence, the new marriage laws of China, by substituting for child betrothals, the “free choice” of husband and wife and by fixing the responsible minimum marrying ages for women and men, transfer the responsibility for the marriage; financially and otherwise, from the large family group to a smaller family unit; the unit which is now considered normal in the Capitalist world.

This change in the status of women has evoked great interest in China, and Chinese newspapers and magazines frequently carry photos showing the various jobs women have undertaken. One day the Peking newspapers carried on their front pages photographs of women proudly driving the local trams, other pictures showed women repairing these trams, and others, gear-cutting in the machine building shops. A picture of a group of smiling nurses had a caption to the effect that 85,000 medical assistants were to be trained in the next five years. On the railways some of the engine crews are women and there is a train on the Peking-Tientsin run entirely staffed by women whose photographs show them as being understandably pleased with their accomplishments. There are many pictures published of proud "Labour Heroines ’’—those pacesetters of China’s industrialisation drive.

Work teams composed of functionaries of the People's Court and members of the Democratic Womens’ Federation and the Youth League, visit the villages to see that the Marriage Law is properly enforced. They help to settle marital disputes on the spot and illustrate the merits of the law through plays, skits and lantern slide exhibitions.

It is reported that the special panel meetings for husbands and mothers-in-law are proving very effective.

But as a lotus petal separated from the flower is carried along in the grip of the wind, so have the women of China been broken away from the relatively secure group-household to start on a separate course of life. This has at least begun with great hopes of happiness. The publication of the Marriage Law was accompanied by articles written by leading Chinese personalities—the-Vice-President of the Supreme People’s Court and the Vice-Chairman of the All-China Democratic Women’s Federation—anticipating domestic bliss as a consequence of the operation of this law. In other parts of the globe where somewhat similar laws obtain, the mounting figures of divorces, separations, and juvenile delinquency resulting from broken homes, give cause for doubts about such optimism.

And in China, some of the smiles must surely have changed to tears by now, for another photograph published later shows a parting between a young mother and her toddler at the entrance to a factory nursery. The caption reads—“Come, dear! Let your mother go to work."

Other pictures show women members of the armed forces in Korea of whom it is stated that they are merely in the medical corps but that others are taking part in the fighting as combat troops. This information has been borne out by reports in Western newspapers of women figuring in the fighting in Korea. Thus is the road to woman's “emancipation" via blood, toil, tears and sweat."

And so the world changes. But the more things change the more they often really stay the same; for in a class-dominated society so many reforms, on the eve of fulfilment, turn to dust and ashes. By the promulgation and enforcement of the Marriage Law of the Peoples' Republic of China are the women of China free—free to become wage-slaves.

Frank Offord