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

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

50 Years Ago: Who is Mao Tse-Tung? (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is the purpose of this article to show what Mao really stands for by examining The Thoughts of Chairman Mao (‘The Little Red Book’). This Chinese Bible contains extracts from Mao’s voluminous writings. There are quotes from his early works written when as a guerrilla leader, Mao (and his Red Army) were such a thorn in the side of the Chiang-Kai-Shek regime, right through to the 1960s. Now Mao’s ideas are so influential in China that they actually do serve as the equivalent of religious dogma. (…)

Mao’s own words show that he is in favour of keeping the Chinese workers in poverty. In 1958 (nine years after the revolution!) he wrote:

‘Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are ‘poor and blank’. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing‘ (p. 36 — our emphasis).

It must be such a comfort for the poverty-stricken Chinese to know their leader thinks it is good for them to be poor. Mao does not make it clear that he thinks it is good for the leaders to be poor! (…)

In order to ensure that the workers are kept down, Mao can’t resist urging on them abstinence and sacrifice:

‘To make China rich and strong needs several decades of intense effort, which will include, among other things, the effort to practise strict economy and combat waste ie, the policy of building up our country through diligence and frugality’ (p.186).

If those words had been spoken by Wilson or Heath in crisis-ridden Britain you would not have been surprised.

The similarity between Mao and other capitalist politicians is so striking as to make one rub one’s eyes in disbelief at the sight of people in the West waving banners with Mao’s picture on them and proudly calling themselves ‘Maoists’. Mao is just as much an anti-Socialist as his one-time hero Stalin was. They both have in common the fact that they successfully exercised a dictatorship over the proletariat in their own country. When workers throughout the world learn to examine the contents of the packet and refuse just to accept the label, the fraud of Mao Tse-Tung will also be a ‘Museum piece’.

[From the article, 'Who is Mao Tse-Tung?' by Ronnie Warrington, Socialist Standard, February 1975]

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

Talking about a revolution. No apologies to Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao! (1993)

A Short Story from issue 10 of the World Socialist Review

Overheard in the lobby off a welfare hotel . . . 

Nick L: I say with a well-organized team and enough support from the general public at the right time, we can do it: we can take over the state and reorganize it from top to bottom.

Karl M: But wouldn’t that make you just another management team?

Nick L: No, no, no! Of course the team’s head would be in the right place. Once we took over, we’d make sure things moved in the right direction. OK, we’d have to plan on a complete renovation of the playing field, and sure, it probably would take quite a while before we were off and running . . . 

Karl M: I still don’t see how the “general public” fits into this. Nothing seems to change for them. You keep all the old rules—work for pay, return on investment, everybody still needs money to get what they need, and nobody sinks any capital into anything unless they’re sure they’ll at least get it back. Where’s your revolution?

Nick L: Eventually, everything will work out.

Leo T: Yeah, provided all the team members play by the rules—

Joe S: You heard him, everything works out. Period.

Nick L: Things just sort of unfold automatically: A team with its head on its shoulders, sticking together and teaching the public, step by step, how to end the game of exploitation, you know, with lots of feedback and all that crap—I mean, hey! How can we go wrong?

Karl M: You call it a revolution, but there’s nothing socialist about it—that’s what can go wrong! You can’t just expect to replace one set of managers with another. “Eventually” never comes. The only change that works is right now.

Mao Z: Oh, come on! You mean right here—in this room?

Leo T: [Sotto voce] Hey, be careful! There’s somebody over there who might be listening . . .They might be police—

Karl M: No, that isn’t what I mean: that’s closer to what you meant, in fact. What I meant was, you have to get rid of capital and wage labor everywhere as your first move. If you don’t do that, no amount of screwing around with the machinery of state is going to matter. Your “team” will only get caught up in making it work. You’re dreaming if you think you can “guide the masses” like that. The relations of exploitation you start out with—based on wage-labor and capital—won’t waste any time telling you what to do.

Mao Z: Oh, now wait a minute . . . You don’t just announce to the public that the game is over as soon as they’ve all sat down! The struggle against exploitation is like any good match: it could last forever if need be. The play is everything.

Leo T: The public needs to be led!

Nick L: There—you see? Outvoted!

Karl M: We’ll see about that.

Leo T: Listen, keep your voice down—someone could be listening!

Karl M: The point is simply to end the game. According to the rules, certain people own capital and they invest it, deciding in the process how everyone else will live and work. That just isn’t a community in any basic sense of the word. What we need is another set of rules: people in general decide what they can’t do without and make it known to whoever produces it. In the process everybody decides for themselves how they will live and work. We all take turns making sure production happens.

Nick L: Hello-o! Hello-o! I’m sure that’ll work just fine. How will you manage all of a sudden to turn people made passive or lazy and irresponsible by centuries of repression into paragons of reason? Think! Think!

Karl M: Think for yourself! Sooner or later, we’ll all have to.

Joe S: But without capital, how can you run the state? And who’s going to invest what you, sitting there in your nice easy chair, have “abolished” in your head? We’ve got to have a ruling class to struggle against—or are you just thick?

Karl M: Enough people have to abolish capital “in their heads” before any revolution can get off the ground. Without capital— you’re so right—the ruling class disappears. Like smoke from an extinguished fire. But it can’t just be in my head: it’s got to be in everyone’s head. No more goods and services for sale at a profit. The ending of the game means the starting of the real play, a game without spectators! People say they need certain items— wealth; producing and distributing those items implies only the administration of wealth. No one “rules” anyone, and everyone has control. From each according to ability and to each according to need.

Nick L: Oh, hey, look, I can see you don’t really belong in this group; you’re just too weird to be a real activist like us . . .

Karl M: You’ve just got to start out by replacing the wages system with a system of free access. I can say that here and now, in this lobby, but the only way anything’s going to happen is if a large enough majority of people come to have some idea of how they want to reorganize production the world over—

Mao Z: Will somebody please shut him up?

Karl M: No, I’m serious! Without ending the class struggle first, people will be unable to see an end to their powerless, downtrodden status and will just go on trying to make the world “a better place”; what we all really need is to replace this reality of fragments with an interconnected reality of whole people. Around the world, now . . . 

Nick L: So you’re saying history won’t be able to distinguish my team from—

Joe S: [Walking to the doorway] That does it! I’m leaving.

Mao Z: [Getting up] Yeah, I really can’t deal with this doctrinaire stuff, either. See you in St. Louie.

Leo T: [Huffily] I’m history. [The door to the stairwell slams closed]

Nick L: [Rising and turning around] Happy? You just ruined a perfectly good revolution!

Karl M: I didn’t ruin mine. Look, I really have done a lot of work on the subject. People have fought the introduction or confronted the reality of the wages system with a persistence that is positively impressive: the German Anabaptists who followed Thomas Muenzer in the Peasant Wars around 1525; the English “true Levellers” or Diggers in 1649; 19th- and 20th-century Utopian experiments too numerous to mention—among them, communities based on the writings of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. Each of these tried, in its own way, to break with the system of wage labor and capital—and all of them failed for lack of ability to reorganize the entire system of production—

[The stairwell door slams shut] 

Ron Elbert

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.

The Mandarin (1974)

From the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The papers have had rather a lot to tell us about the wonderful welcome given by Maoist China to that well-known communist and faithful servant of the workers of the world, Comrade Ted Heath. One wonders what on earth the many thousands of workers who call themselves Marxists and Maoists can really think of the antics of the Chinese red-fascists who go out of their way to fête such an obvious and clumsy anti-worker as Heath. The same people who shouted “Heath Out” and “Long live Chairman Mao” can somehow bring themselves to swallow the spectacle of tens of thousands of workers being dragooned into turning out to stand by the wayside to cheer and march and dance in order to impress this capitalist buffoon.

What would the same people say if the workers here were called out to march like cheering automata to celebrate the arrival of “Former Prime Minister Heath”? It was hilarious, as well as tragic, that this was the only title they could greet him with because his present rôle, as distinct from his former one, is of course Leader of the Opposition. Somehow, it was regarded as unsuitable to use such a title in Maoist China. The workers may not have quite understood what a leader of the opposition could be in a land where there is no opposition, except in the cemetery. Or maybe it was feared that they would have understood too well; so even Heath’s title has to be twisted.

Of course, Heath was immensely bucked by this splendid reception which made him feel so much more important than he would be in England where he would be more likely to be greeted with a chorus of raspberries if he were to flaunt himself before the proletariat. And it goes without saying that when he returned he was full of praise for the rulers of China whose system he is supposed to hate. And did he say how abhorrent it was for workers to be drilled into clapping and waving flags and the rest of the disgusting charade? You must be joking. He enjoyed every minute of it. He and Mao are brothers under their skins. Like a couple of Orwell’s pigs.

L. E. Weidberg

Voice From The Back: House hunting (2001)

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

House hunting

As young working class couples contemplate marriage and start looking for a house or flat that they can afford to buy or rent, it might be worth them considering how members of the capitalist class deal with their “housing problem”:

“This mansion in Surrey cost £70m. It has 30 bedrooms, five swimming pools and its own cinema . . . By American standards, of course, the Surrey mansion is at the mean end of the scale. This is a country where Larry Ellison takes on Bill Gates for the title of top cheese by building a bigger house than him. (Gates recently announced that he was extending his lavish $100m home near Seattle, to which Ellison replied with a $150m Japanese style mansion in California, twice the size of the White House and complete with artificial lakes, waterfalls and 3,750 tons of hand-chiselled Chinese granite for the retaining walls.) The world’s largest private house is believed to be the New York industrialist R.A.Rennert’s mansion Fair Field, which is 100 miles east of Manhattan and boasts 29 bedrooms, 42 bathrooms, a 164 seat theatre, two bowling alleys and an English-style pub.” (Guardian, 15 June.)

A cancerous system

Commenting on an article in a previous issue two letters to the editor in Time magazine (25 June) show that workers as far apart as Istanbul and Massachusetts have a pretty good idea about how capitalism operates :

“If there really is a war against cancer, as you contend then why not attack this disease on the battlefield? Why not go after its supply lines of tobacco, food additives and pollution? The drive for corporate profits generates many of the products that can cause this illness, and even more profits are made in treating it. Meanwhile, cancer victims fall by the wayside as collateral damage. Chris Glover (Istanbul)”. “Finally, the breakthrough in cancer drugs that we have long been searching for! Too bad that few of us will be able to afford them. David Chesterton (Massachusetts)”.

Touchy, feely socialists

We are often accused of class bias, of being nasty individuals who are only concerned about the working class, with never a thought for the plight of the capitalist class. Not so, we were almost moved to tears when we read the following :

“Ronit Lami, a London psychologist who treats people suffering from affluenza or ‘sudden wealth syndrome’, says her patients are highly motivated perfectionists who will do anything to achieve their ends. She says: ‘It doesn’t matter how much money there is in the bank, there is never enough. There is a huge fear of failure. If they suddenly lose their money, they suffer deep depression. Many identify themselves through their possessions, so their whole identity collapses’“ (Sunday Times, 24 June).

This “affluenza” is an awful disorder, one that we fortunate members of the working class will never suffer; so we think it only right to comfort these sufferers with the news that there will be no money or banks inside socialism. Another good reason to organise for socialism, you can relieve these poor souls from their insecurity fears and leave Ronit Lami free to get a real job.

Mao’s afterthought

Chinese state capitalism is desperate for foreign investment; so much so, that at its 80th anniversary celebrations the Communist Party revealed its long held admiration of capitalism :

“Liu Jingfeng, a history professor at the party school, told an on-line forum run by the official People’s Daily newspaper: ‘Mao Zedong did not oppose capitalism all the time. At the Seventh Party Congress, Mao Zedong fully endorsed the idea that China should develop capitalism.’” (Times, 5 July)

Science in fetters

Capitalism was once a progressive force in the field of science. The discoveries of chemistry and physics were essential for the advance of the new society. But now capitalism has entered its restrictive phase, where, because of copyright and information ownership, scientific investigation is being restricted. Immense publishing firms like Reed Elsevier zealously guard the copyrights that earned them profits of £231 million last year :

“More than 800 British researchers have joined 22,000 others from 161 countries in a campaign to boycott publishers of scientific journals who refuse to make research papers freely available on the internet after six months. ‘Science depends on knowledge and technology being in the public domain’, said Michael Ashburner, professor of Biology at Cambridge University and one of the leading signatories of the campaign, the Public Library of Sciences. ‘In that sense, science belongs to the people, and the fruits of science shouldn’t be owned or even transferred by publishers for huge profits’“ (Guardian, 26 May).

It seems that science is now being restricted by the ownership relationships of capitalism. Karl Marx wrote in January 1859 in his introduction to The Critique of Political Economy something that foresaw such a development:

“At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression of the same thing – with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters.”

Myanmar and the myth of ‘the national progressive bourgeoisie’ (2022)

From the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

China has financial interests in Myanmar and is demanding their economic zones be secured from the military conflict. For this, China had to maintain diplomatic relations with the current military junta, but is still supplying weapons to the ethnic armed groups that are fighting against the junta. China is also demanding to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi for political discussion. So, it can be concluded that China hasn’t chosen a side so far. However, since China is only interested in its imperial power and economic advantage, the conclusion can be drawn that it will bet on the winning horse in the future.

Russia, on the other hand, has chosen its side. Long before the coup, Russia had been a steady supplier of weapons and maintained a stable relationship with the Myanmar military. Russia still exists as the sole steady weapons supplier for the military junta even during the coup and revolution era. The Moscow leadership also welcomed Min Aung Hlaing, the military junta leader, and some ultranationalist monks to Russia even after the coup. In September, General Min Aung Hlaing and Putin confirmed their strategic alliance at the Moscow-organised Eastern Economic Forum. Since Russia’s imperialism has chosen to support the reactionary military regime, the anti-imperialist idiot Stalinists who are only opposed to Western imperialism are currently facing backlashes from the working class and the public.

Theoretically, the young Mao Zedong was for federalism, according to his article in Ta Kung Pao. However, hypocritically, the authoritarian Mao Zedong in power rejected the self-determination of Tibet, Mongolia, and some other provinces. The hostility to federalism by Myanmar’s military junta is in fact rooted in the anti-federal arguments of Stalin in the first place. Therefore, advocating for federalism while maintaining ‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism’ as a revolutionary tactic is irrational at its core and opportunistic. Such opportunism can be found in the Communist Party of Burma and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

Since the Communist Party of Burma is mainly influenced by Mao Zedong’s thoughts, they still buy into the idea of a revolutionary national bourgeoisie. In an article Mao Zedong wrote the following:

‘The national bourgeoisie is a class which is politically very weak and vacillating. But the majority of its members may either join the people’s democratic revolution or take a neutral stand, because they too are persecuted and fettered by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism’.

Karl Marx, in contrast to Mao Zedong and his revisionism, introduced the principles of perpetual revolution in his 1850 letter ‘Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League,’ written in the course of the abortive German bourgeois-democratic revolution:

‘While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers’.

In other words, Marx was advocating a revolutionary method in which the working class must maintain and defend the democratic revolution as much as they can until state power has been seized. In contrast, Mao Zedong substituted the class struggle with his ‘new democracy’ concept, which is revisionist at its core. Mao Zedong’s new democracy states that the political revolutionary alliance between the working class, the peasants, the intellectuals, and the national bourgeoisie should be accomplished and protected at all cost. Here, Mao Zedong even distinguished the national bourgeoisie into two camps. According to his article ‘On the Question of the National Bourgeois and the Enlightened Gentry’:

‘The few right-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism and oppose the people’s democratic revolution are also enemies of the revolution, while the left-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to the working people and oppose the reactionaries are also revolutionaries’.

Nevertheless, Karl Marx had warned that a kind of political sabotage could be potentially done by the petty bourgeoisie in his letter ‘Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League’. They, Marx wrote:

‘seek to ensnare the workers in a party organisation in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat’.

Instead of maintaining this socialist tradition of class struggle, a revisionist party, the Communist Party of Burma, betrays the class war by forming an alliance with the national bourgeoisie.

Hein Htet Kyaw

China’s never left the capitalist road (2021)

Book Review from the December 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Road to Capitalism. How Unrest and Containment Have Pushed China’s (R)evolution since 1949. By Ralf Ruckus, PM Press, 2021. 233pp.

The explicit thesis of this book, expressed in its title, is that post-1949 China was initially a communist (or socialist) society, later shifting to being capitalist, which it is now. This shift, according to the author, began to take place after the death of Mao, from 1978 onwards, and finally led to the firmly established form of capitalism that China has today under Xi Jinping. Regular readers of the Socialist Standard will immediately take issue with this characterisation on the grounds that, while China today is certainly capitalist (state capitalist), it has been ever since the Maoist takeover of the country in 1949 and, though it called itself socialist or communist, it was so in rhetoric alone. All that has changed since then is the way Chinese capitalism has been managed by its rulers and the country’s increasing integration into the world capitalist market.

Having said that, there is little in the book’s detailed analysis of the social and economic history of China over the last 70 years to argue with. Painstakingly documented and indexed and with an exhaustive bibliography, this ‘critical historiography’, as the author calls it, chronicles the ups and downs (mainly downs) of the China of this period and the dizzying movements and counter-movements of a state with countless changes of policy and practice in which those ruling it are struggling with one another and with their people for control and supremacy. It also gives us an intimate view of the harsh experience of life for most people in China during the whole of this period. The only trouble is that these people are said to have been living in socialism (‘actually existing socialism’) in the first part of the period, when it is clear from the author’s own account that they were living in a ruthless state-capitalist regime where the privileged few running the system had both wealth and power and the vast majority, both peasants and workers, lived in conditions of poverty and powerlessness, in which they often had cause to fear for their lives and their safety and there was torture, death and suffering for millions. The author himself quotes an estimate that, during the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958-61), anything from 15 to 45 million people died of famine. All this is as far as anything could be from the leaderless democratic society of voluntary work and free access to all goods and services that is socialism.

So why does the author insist that what existed in China in the first 30 years after Mao’s revolution was socialism? He does so because he is espousing the view often expressed by those on the left of capitalist politics (and indeed by many who see themselves as Marxist) that socialism can somehow be brought about by a violent revolution in which a minority establishes state control over a country and then rules by some form of central economic plan, even though they then effectively constitute a capitalist ruling class. This ignores the reality (clearly seen and expressed by Marx) that socialism is only possible in a situation of advanced capitalist development where workers can vote it into existence and then run it collectively and democratically. Just as in Russia in 1917, where workers were not in a position to do that and so all that could develop there was some form of capitalism, so in China too in 1949 it was inevitable that Mao’s regime could only develop along similar lines. And it did – and in a brutal and at times particularly horrendous way, as well illustrated throughout this book. It has been especially bad for minorities of various kinds whose treatment is described as ‘assimilation, control, surveillance and repression’.

In the book’s preface, the author states that his motive for writing it ‘is a desire and determination to overcome capitalist exploitation and all forms of oppression, as well as to learn from previous attempts to accomplish this goal (even if they failed)’. This is obviously a laudable aim, even if we would not share his view that what happened in China was any kind of genuine attempt to achieve what we would call socialism. But in the concluding section, entitled ‘Getting Over Actually Existing Socialism’, he does refer to the need ‘to transform and topple capitalism’ and to establish ‘a classless society without exploitation and oppression’. He heads one paragraph of this section ‘destroy national borders’ and states that ‘abolishing capitalism means abolishing it globally’. So though he insists on calling Maoist rule in China ‘socialism’, he does seem to be moving in the right direction and as he puts it himself, to be learning ‘from the pitfalls of this past experience’.

As for the future of China itself (referred to by its current regime as ‘The Harmonious Socialist Society’), the author refers to the regime’s ‘astonishing ability to deal with social and political unrest, while retaining a certain level of popular support’. However, he seems hopeful, despite increasingly authoritarian rule, enhanced repression and ‘the criminalization of open disagreement and discontent’ (described by one writer as ‘terror capitalism’), that the social unrest this is likely to cause may lead to more enlightened government policies or at least a relaxation of repression. As the author details in the course of this book, such unrest has sometimes had beneficial effects for workers (who now constitute the majority of the Chinese population) and he draws a parallel with ‘the late 1980s in Eastern Europe’ where ‘we have seen other seemingly stable regimes crumble’. What is certain is that ‘belt and road’ China’s increasing integration into world capitalism and the need this generates for the free expression of ideas and invention for economic development to proceed are in the long term incompatible with an anti-democratic, socially repressive, one-party form of government.

Howard Moss

State Capitalism is not Socialism (1975)

From the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pages of the Socialist Standard have always pointed out the differences between the various competing capitalist states. These differences fall into two main categories.

The first concerns the amount of democracy permitted to the workers. The UK, certain parts of Western Europe and the United States are examples of countries where the expression of an opinion contrary to the interest of the ruling class does not mean persecution. It would be misguided to over-emphasise this point: the freedoms that are available come down to the bourgeois right of freedom of contract. That means the freedom of the capitalist to exploit the workers. The worker has the freedom to be short of the essentials of life, to be exploited.

In addition in the countries where freedom of expression does exist, it is strictly limited. There is no right to hold public meetings in the streets, or anywhere else for that matter. Nonetheless, the freedom of expression that prevails in the UK and some other countries is of some value to the working class. It is easier to put the Socialist case in London than in Budapest or Peking.

Whilst the first difference between the various political systems is therefore of some interest to the working class, the other main difference is not. This concerns state control, or nationalization as opposed to private enterprise. As far as the workers are concerned, exploitation by individual capitalists is just as bad as exploitation by a monolithic state organisation. Even Bukharin and Preobrazhensky were able to see this in 1919. Referring to the fact that under state capitalism all enterprises come under the dominance of the state they said:

State capitalism, centralising all those organisations, converting them all into the instruments of a single united organisation, contributes immensely to the power of capital. Bourgeois dictatorship attains its climax in State Capitalism . . . State capitalism uniting and organising the bourgeoisie increasing the power of capitalism has, of course greatly weakened the working class. (The ABC of Communism, Pelican edition p. 164).

Despite years of hard effort by the Socialist Party, two myths remain. The first is that state capitalism or some form of nationalization is of benefit to the workers. The second is that those countries that have a high degree of state control have in fact introduced Socialism or are at least in the process of doing so. Both these delusions are held by various sections of the political "left” despite the mass of evidence against them.

Take Russia first. The reality of state capitalism with all that it implies was made plain by Alexander Shelepin the former head of the Russian secret police when he was over here in March and April of this year as the guest of the TUC. The Guardian reported him as saying that the Russian unions were struggling to increase their living standards and to participate both in a share of the profits from industry and in industrial management (2nd April 1975). The next day The Sun reported him boasting that "Things were getting better every year. Wages were being increased.” Presumably in this workers’ paradise wages were previously "lower”.

The existence of wages is the hallmark of capitalism. Capitalism implies a certain relationship between people, depending on whether they own capital or merely the ability to work. The workers in selling themselves day after day to the capitalist enrich not themselves but the owners of capital whose wealth their work increases.

But despite the frantic action of the so-called communist parties throughout the world, the illusion that Russia is anything but a brutal fascist dictatorship, red-raw capitalism, is now held by very few. Instead, tragically people looking for hope from elsewhere (instead of working things out for themselves) have turned to China. Information on China is limited; nonetheless the papers are full of examples, for those prepared to see them, that what is going on in China is the build-up of a form of state capitalism. For instance, The Guardian reported Mao’s argument that there is an acute danger of capitalism reappearing just as he says that it has done in the Soviet Union. Mao is supposed to be urging the workers to keep up the struggle for Socialism (3rd April). If Socialism has been established why struggle to achieve it? If capitalism has been abolished how does it reappear?

The arguments go deeper. There are two fundamental conditions for the establishment of Socialism (which must be a world-wide event). The first is the technology capable of production in abundance. This patently was not possible in Russia in 1917 or in China in 1949. The second is the desire of the working class, based on knowledge and understanding, to establish and run a social system where all wealth is owned in common by the whole of mankind, where production takes place for use, and where all that is made by man, is freely available to man. This condition never existed in Russia or China and as yet exists nowhere in the world. But the measure of the political awareness of the working class, is their level of understanding of Socialism. Without Socialist knowledge, Socialism is no more possible than walking on water. Those that claim they are introducing Socialism for the working class (or have introduced it) are hoodwinking humanity.

Ronnie Warrington

Rear View: Chinese Capitalist Party (2021)

The Rear View Column from the August 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese Capitalist Party

‘China is now an integral and irreplaceable part of global capitalism’ (consortiumnews, 28 July 2020). More recently, the Financial Times had this to say:

‘The very first line of the Chinese Communist Party’s constitution declares it is “the vanguard of the Chinese working class”. In reality, the last ruling Communist party of a major country has morphed into a conservative reactionary party bent on preserving the power of state capitalist elites and advancing a distinctly 19th century form of ethno-nationalist imperialism. None of this will be allowed to spoil the festivities as the CCP celebrates the centennial of its founding next month’ (ft.com, 16 June).

There was nothing to celebrate, and the event merited no mention in last month’s Socialist Standard. The FT’s largely correct analysis in a piece titled ’How Xi’s China came to resemble Tsarist Russia’ provoked numerous rebukes, including one from Zeng Rong of the Chinese Embassy in London, who described it as ‘. . . ideologically biased and full of smearing, defaming and groundless accusations against the Communist Party of China and China’s political system. It smacks of political prejudice and is a long way from the standard of journalism and professional ethics of the FT as an influential international newspaper. The leadership of the Communist party is a choice of the people…’ She could not be more Rong!

One nation under Xi

‘One party has ruled China for 72 years, without a mandate from voters. That is not a world record. Lenin and his dismal heirs held power in Moscow for slightly longer, as has the Workers’ Party in North Korea. But no other dictatorship has been able to transform itself from a famine-racked disaster, as China was under Mao Zedong, into the world’s second-largest economy, whose cutting-edge technology and infrastructure put America’s creaking roads and railways to shame. China’s Communists are the world’s most successful authoritarians’ (economist.com, 16 June).

The history of Leninism and Maoism in power shows that allowing elites to rule on behalf of the working class is always disastrous — for us. Working class self-emancipation necessarily precludes the role of political leadership. So, for its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant transitional society misnamed ‘socialism’, in theory and in practice, vanguardism deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. And there are signs in China and slsewhere of resistance: ‘Zhang is a Chinese millennial who has joined the ranks of a social movement called tang ping – the “lying flat movement.” It’s a mindset, a lifestyle, and a personal choice for some disillusioned Chinese youth who have given up on the rat race and are staging a quiet rebellion against the trials of 9-9-6 [9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, plus overtime] work culture’ (insider.com, 8 June).

Arbeit macht frei

‘The Chinese government remains in opposition to the “lying flat” movement. It promotes working hard — as Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a 2018 televised address — as the “most honorable, noblest, greatest, and most beautiful virtue.”‘ Emperor Xi wants his wage slaves to continue working hard: ‘The number of US dollar millionaires in China will increase by 92.7 percent to 10.17 million by 2025, compared with a 27.8 percent rise in the US to 28.06 million US dollar millionaires over the same period, according to a projection by the Swiss lender’ (scmp.com, 22 June).

Wealth is the product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. We work, they take and pass on. Paul Lafargue reminds us: ‘The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labour: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind… The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness…’ (The Right to Be Lazy, 1883). The Ju/’hoansi people work only 15 hours a week and ‘they hate inequality or showing off, and shun formal leadership institutions. It’s what made them part of the most successful, sustainable civilisation in human history’ (theguardian.com, 29 October 2017).

Ministry of Truth

‘Xi Jinping‘s new history of Chinese communism has little room for criticism of Mao Zedong. In February Mr. Xi issued a revised version of “A Brief History of the Communist Party of China,” the official party history, in preparation for next month’s commemoration of the party’s 100th anniversary. This edition plays down Mao’s atrocities, in particular softening the party’s historic 1981 condemnation of the Cultural Revolution. That places Mr. Xi in the dubious company of dictators for whom “yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree”—a power George Orwell attributed in 1942 to Franco, Stalin and Hitler’ (wsj.com, 20 June).

But it was another journalist, Julian Harvey, writing a century earlier who came much closer than Orwell to describing the democratic (i.e., leaderless) revolution socialists work for and regard as essential if we are to establish a post-capitalist world of production for use and allocation according to self-defined need: ‘It is not any amelioration of the conditions of the most miserable that will satisfy us; it is justice to all that we demand. It is not the mere improvement of the social life of our class that we seek; but the abolition of classes and the destruction of those wicked distinctions which have divided the human race into princes and paupers, landlords and labourers, masters and slaves. It is not any patching and cobbling of the present system we aspire to accomplish; but the annihilation of the system and the substitution, in its stead, of an order of things in which all shall labour and all shall enjoy, and the happiness of each guarantee the welfare of the entire community’ (The Red Republican, October 12, 1850).

Mao: the Untold Story (2005)

Book Review from the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday: Mao: the Untold Story. Jonathon Cape £25.

Overturning a paragraph of conventional history can be the basis for an entire thesis, if not an entire professional reputation. Chang and Halliday have set out to re-write every paragraph of the story of Mao Zedong.

The authors attack the established canon of Mao biography; and their clear, unrelenting hostility may house the book’s greatest weakness. Much of their re-interpretation depends upon assessments of Mao’s character, and his internal states when he made vital decisions. For example, they maintain that Mao deliberately meandered along the Long March (a period of retreat by the Red Army from the nationalists) in order to strengthen his grip on the party before they met up with the rest of the army.

Repeatedly they make reference to what Mao was thinking, which, without written sources, is impossible to determine. Most historians and biographers would hedge and say ‘maybe’ or ‘probably’ he thought something.

Such potential weakness, although they may allow latter-day Maoist wingnuts to deflect debate away from the issues raised, aren’t fatal. The book describes in aching detail the horrors of Mao’s regime, facts established by witnesses and irrefutable evidence. This is largely because, unlike Hitler or Stalin, Mao’s preference was not for disappearances and quiet murder, but for public witch-hunts – mobilised terror in which anyone refusing to wholeheartedly join in would find themselves a target. He repeatedly used this strategy throughout his career to gain and hold power, culminating in the infamous Cultural Revolution, which accounted for some 100 million people being humiliated, tortured, maimed and, in 3 million instances, murdered.

His callousness is almost beyond the scope of human imagining. In one year, 22 million people died of starvation – brought about primarily through Mao’s disastrous project to make China – then one of the poorest countries on Earth – into a nuclear super-power. The famines and overwork induced by the programme led to 38 million deaths.

The authors maintain Mao was essentially apolitical: merely egotistic and power hungry. They reject claims that he cared about peasants – producing a quote in which he maintains that the lot of students (like himself) was worse than that of the peasants. They suggest his choice of the communist party over the nationalists (for a time the two parties were united) was simply down to a predilection for violence.

He had many homes built for himself – at great expense – which he would only set foot in once – if ever. While people starved he would gorge himself on whole chickens and huge quantities of meat and fish. Around him, millions of Chinese had less food than labourers in Auschwitz.

His reputation for supporting feminism also takes a battering in this book, as the authors reveal how he used women almost as imperial concubines, procured from the local labour force. Anyone who objected to his and other leaders’ privileges amongst squalor were derided as “petit-bourgeois egalitarians”.

Chang and Halliday even attempt to overturn the central story of the Mao myth – the war of national liberation against Japan. Even very recent writers hedge criticisms of Mao by mention of the vicissitudes of that war. However, this book alleges that the Reds under Mao were more concentrated on fighting the nationalist government than the Japanese.

Further, they try to show that on the Long March, Mao and the other leaders didn’t march with their soldiers: they were carried; that the leader of the nationalists, Chiang Kai-Shek allowed the Red Army to escape because his son was being held hostage by Stalin; and that some of Mao’s major victories may have been assisted by the treachery of the nationalist general who repeatedly allowed troops to walk into horrific ambushes.

The narrative makes out that Mao never commanded much support with either the Chinese communist party or the population. His ascent was largely down to the backing of Russian communist officials who never met him.

This book is unlikely to be the last word on the matter, but it is a forceful reappraisal of a figure who would be the equivalent of a George Washington for the emerging Chinese superpower. This is the story of what happened when a ruthless tyrant tried to rule a quarter of the human race.

The only positive message is that ultimately, his terror proved futile, as he increasingly found himself having to horse trade policies to stay in power against his rivals – leaders are prisoners of their followers. The terror of Mao’s rule could well be seen as the impotent rage of a tyrant.

Pik Smeet