BEHIND CHINA'S POLITICAL CRISIS by S.S. WU III. CLIMAX & ANTICLIMAX The Maoist faction has its trump card - Mao himself. But the "reversionist faction" also had a trump card -Chou En-lai. Before the cultural revolution, there could be no equation between the impact of the two. Shortly before the death of Chou, however, the situation had changed. The popularity of Mao the revolutionary was declining in favor of that of Chou, who was widely regarded by the masses as the "stabilizer" of society, the man under whom the masses would not be so frequently bothered and thrown into panic by constant political campaigns. Asignificant number of Communist party codres felt the same way. As the February mass movement receded, the new trump card was played. For thousands of years the Ching Ming Festival in April had been an occasion for people to commemorate their late relatives and friends. The revolution did not alter this tradition. On April 3 people bearing wreaths appeared of the site in Peking where the public mourning for Chou had taken place not many weeks before. In effect, this was a political offensive against the Maoist faction. It was Chou, even more than Teng Hsiao-ping, who had insisted on the "four modernizations" of China and had called for unity and stability. No one can be sure whether it was the reversionist Faction that initiated this dramatic beginning. But in any event, the action drew genuine popular support and the Mapist faction was stymied, fearing discredit if it used force to break up this peaceful mass outpouring. The following day more people went to lay wreaths; some even. made speeches, others distributed leaflets, and wall posters were put up. There was a high degree of spontaneity and tension was building. With Chou dead, people began to express indignation not only ogainst the Maoist faction, but also against the social formation as a whole. This became clear on the following day. In the early morning of April 5 Tien An Men Square, political heart of China, was engulfed in a riot involv34 ing 100, 000 anonymous citizens of Peking. Most reports indicated that the strong mass reaction was triggered by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which is said to have removed the wreaths on the night of April 4 and the morning of April 5. The first target of the masses was a propaganda car belonging to the Public Security
Department; it was overturned and smashed. By 9:00 a.m. 10,000 demonstrators were already massed before the Great Hall of the People. The number of protesters eventually grew to ten times that figure, even according to official estimates. Scuffles broke out between the demonstrators and the police and militiamen. Hundreds of militiamen were beaten by demonstrators and forced to kneel down and "confess."
After 11:00 a.m. tens of thousands of protesters stormed the Museum of History and a PLA camp. During the following two hours, police fried to break up the demonstration but were unsuccessful and even suffered injuries.
The situation got completely out of control in the afternoon. Goverment cars were burned, buildings stormed and the equipment inside smashed, The violence continued late into the evening and resulted in hundreds of casualties among the police and militia.
The demands of the demonstration were expressed in a poem that was reprinted by the Peking People's Daily on April 7:
Devils howl as we pour out our grief, we weep but the walves laugh, we spill our blood in memory of the hero, raising our brows we unsheathe our swords.
China is no longer the China of the past, and the people are no longer wrapped in sheer ignorance, gone for good is Chin Shih Huang's feudal society-
We believe in Marxism-LeninismI
To hell with those scholars who emasculate itl
For the sake of genuine Marxism-Leninism we do not fear to lay down our lives or shed our blood, and the day that China's modemization is realized we will retum to offer libations and sacrifices.
People's Daily reported that a handful of class enemies had deliberately prepared and organized the mass outburst. But who were these class enemies? The report did not even dare ask. The role of Teng and the reversionists in this event remains obscure. No one has yet been able to prove or disprove their involvement in the organization of the riot. But this is not of great significance, What is more important is that 100,000 people took to the streets and directly confronted the party and the state. It is difficult to believe that the protest would have taken such a violent form if the reversionist faction had really planned it in advance. In fact, the size and violent nature of the action strongly suggest that what was involved was an outburst of mass discontent against bureaucratic control and party policies. Whether or not the reversionists tried to play a hand in it, the action was spontaneous. Nevertheless, we should not be overjoyed by this mass explosion, for it was marked by severe weaknesses as well as strengths, In their desire and search for a better society, the masses seem to harbor illusions in the reversionists. These illusions could lead the masses into defeats, or at least serious setbacks, as the movement develops. Ironically, the hope for a better society which rested in the Mooist faction at the beginning of the cultural revolution has now dramatically shifted to the opposing side. But in any event, the night of April 5 was a long one for all the leading members of the CCP. All sides feared the spread of the mass movement and began calculating the best tactics to adopt. The first decision was to place the PLA and the police an alert and to ban any further mass protests, to prevent them at any cost. This was probably the first political decision since the beginning of the "anti-rightist" compaign that was supported by nearly all high party officials. The supporters of the Moist Faction had every reason to agree, since the demonstration had been a direct attack on them. But so did the other officials, for it was clear that if the mass movement spread it would be difficult to control it and utilize it against the Maoist faction; the protest could well turn against the anti-Maoists as well. The second decision was to discharge Teng Hsiao-ping. IV POLITICAL CLARIFICATION OF THE
FACTIONAL STRUGGLE It is important to define the political character of the contending factions, for at least since the late 1950s, the ups and downs of the faction struggles have affected nearly every aspect of society and have proven an important factor in shaping overall political development. Both factions unreservedly support the theory of socialism in one country, but from different bases: the Maoist faction mainly from its ideological foundations, the reversionists mainly from the narrow interests of the bureaucracy. The ideological foundation of the Moists does, of course, reflect the interests of the bureaucracy, but in a very different manner.
Ideology and orientation of the Maoist faction The Maoist Faction has a solid ideological basis, with Mao as the ideological mentor. Despite all the maneuvering and concessions, the faction's policies are a strikingly concrete and straightforward application of its ideology. Mao's conception of world revolution primarily reflects the detour of world revolution since the October revolution and the specific development of Chinese society in isolation. Secondly, it is a theoretical justification and rationalization of the particular features of this detour. (This is what allows Stalinism to find channels through which to assimilate Maoism.) Mao's basic positions in this regard may be summarized as follows:
1. It is true that the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism is a worldwide phenomenon determined by the objective laws of history. But the concept that this worldwide transformation is deeply rooted in the very nature of the political economy of capitalism, which integrates separate societies and countries, has never become a genuinely operative proposition in Maoist philosophy. On the contrary, Mao has moved to the opposite position, conceiving of the world revolution simply as the arithmetic sum of separate national revoTutions.
2. The detour of the world revolution has been theorized by Mao into the proposition that not only will revolutions generally occur first in the economically backward countries, but also that the construction of socialism will be completed in these countries first. Hence the strategy according to which the cities (the advanced capitalist countries) will be surrounded by the countryside (the backward countries).
3. Mao does not examine the outbreak of revolution in backward countries in its international context, but instead explains it according to the following vulgar formula: The more backward, exploited, and oppressed the masses are, the more revolutionary they will be. On the basis of this voluntarist conception of revolution, Mao reaches the conclusion that with revolutionary consciousness not only can the old mode of production be overturned, but a completely new one can be consolidated. To some extent, of course, this is true. But Mao carries it to an extreme, maintaining that advanced modes of production (communism) can be established and completed solely on the basis of high revolutionary consciousness. Any other aspects of the relationship between the forces of production and the mode of production are thoroughly ignored. Mao thus reaches the highly voluntarist conclusion that material conditions are at best a secondary factor in the building of socialism in China. The primary factor is the raising of the polifical consciousness of the masses through political education, campaigns, and even struggles (under the strict leadership and control of the Maoists) in order to liberate the productive forces and establish advanced social relations. This explains why every time the party leadership decides to implement a policy
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CHINA that will affect broad masses, the masses are politically mobilized as the vehicle by which to realize the policy. In order to be able to carry out certain types of economic and social policies through mass movements (albeit controlled), the Maoist faction favors maintaining a non-rigid relationship between the masses and the bureaucracy. The party cadres must therefore immerse themselves among the masses, for otherwise the bureaucracy would lose touch with the masses. In this respect, we may say that the Maoist faction wants to maintain the tradition of the party as a mass movement. In order to maintain close relations between the party and the masses, the Maoist faction is inevitably led to maintain two additional basic positions. First, the bureaucracy must be as "purified" as possible in the sense that the social and economic privileges of the cadres should be as small as possible. Second, the party's leadership should be direct, with no middle caste between the party and the masses. The Maoist faction views the consolidation of technocrats in the Soviet Union into a caste whose power increasingly threatens the party's leadership and widens the already vast separation between the masses and the party as a very dangerous development. This is regarded as the origin of the "revisionism" the Maoists adamantly oppose. It is in this light that Mao's position on the clash between "red and expert" as well as the educational policies pursued after the cultural revolution and the recent attack on scientists and technicians in China become comprehensible. The same conception may be seen in the Maoist faction's hard line on intellectuals as a caste and in the regime's tightened control over art and literature. The Maoist faction should be credited for its effort to combat certain rightist social and political trends. But without understanding the material basis of such trends, the faction believes that they can be overcome with merely another mass political campaign. In this respect, we can say that the Maoist faction fetishizes mass movements, which it believes can transcend all objective difficulties and surmount the limits imposed by material forces in the shaping of socialist society. This is the origin of such ultraleft Maoist policies as the Great Leap Forward and the commune movement. Search for a self-conscious bureaucracy The other faction expresses the awareness of the bureaucracy as a bureaucracy. Its primary goal is to seek a more stable existence in society. It hopes to achieve this through its own bureaucratic resources and channels and through so-called moderate social and economic policies designed to compensate for the negative effects of the ultraleft policies of the Maoist faction, Rather than striving to maintain the tradition of the party as a revolutionory mass movement, this faction attempts exclusively to pacify and strangle the mass movement. Essentially, this faction is not based on any solid ideological foundation. On the surface, it espouses a sort 38 of "pragmatism, " but in reality its goals amount to an "ideology" of a bureaucracy envisaged as a permanent social formation. The "pragmatic" responses of this faction to the ultraleft policies of the Maoists offered this faction some solid ground for development both inside and outside the party. Its "pragmatism" grows out of the bureaucracy's conservatism and inertia. One might say that it is more "Stalinist" than the Maoist faction in the sense that it represents the most conscious and advanced features of the bureaucratization of the revolution.
Chou Before the cultural revolution this faction hod not presented its programs openly. But after the traumas of the cultural revolution, it found a common platform in Chou En-lai's report to the Fourth People's Congress, summed up in the three words "stability, unity, prosperity." Unity and stability mean nothing more or less than the strengthening of the party's leadership and the halt to political campaigns, movements, and struggles. But if a strong and unified party is not to be achieved through a mass movement or even through winning the confidence of the masses, then it can be achieved only through intensifying the political, economic, and social privileges of the bureaucracy. In fact, if party policy is not to rely on mass movements, even controlled ones, then the only possibility is to merely implement orders that come from the top. But this system can work only if the party maintains a more authoritarian position and if a huge and complex mechanism of bureaucratic social functioning is created as a stabilized social infrastructure. The society envisaged by this faction is structurally similar to that of the Soviet Union. The faction's stance on technocrats provides a good example. In the clash between "red" and "expert," the adherents of this faction place the emphasis on "expert, " as is expressed in Teng Hsiao-ping's well-known quote, "Black cat, white cat, what's the difference as long as it can catch mice?" The supporters of this faction will tolerate and even welcome the emergence of the technocrats as a privileged caste, for they believe that the economy cannot function efficiently otherwise. Accordingly, they are
more lenient in dealing with intellectuals and favor a more "traditional" and "regular" policy in education. Economically, this faction lacks a long-term perspective. But it does favor making concessions to spontaneous capitalist development and yielding to the rightist tendency of the peasantry. Bureaucratic control and workers democracy Which of the two factions is more "democratic"? This is a question that is often asked. Workers democracy in the full sense of the term does not exist and never has existed in China. Both factions clearly stand for the continuation of bureaucratic rule and the existence of the bureaucratic coste. The differences revolve around the infrastructures and mechanisms needed for ensuring this. On the other hand, a special type of "horizontal democracy" does and did exist, In fact, this horizontal democracy is a special mechanism of the bureaucratic structure under which the policies of the party, vertically controlled from the top down, can effectively obtain the support and voluntary identification of the masses. An example: It was the party that decided to implement the commune movement. But before this was done, a "model" commune movement was established in one province and presented as a spontaneous mass movement that should be extended throughout the whole country. At the same time, political propaganda and activity by the party went into full swing. This decision, "vertical" in its origins, was thus "internalized" by the masses to some extent. With the building of a mass movement for the formation of communes, the party allowed the masses to discuss the details of implementation, within the already worked out regulations set down by the party leadership. Thus, a vertical and compulsory policy was recast so as to resemble a voluntary and democratic initiative of the masses. The Maoist faction regards this sort of horizontal democracy as the best means by which to resolve the contradictions generated by the existerice of the bureaucracy, whereas the opposing faction, as we have already noted, regards this democracy as an obstacle. It is reasonable to assume that the more the bureaucracy relies upon the masses, the greater will be the involvement of the masses in implementing the bureaucracy's policies, and vice versa. If the bureaucracy desires independence of the masses, then a system of control must be devised that is powerful enough to confidently and effectively suppress any mass dissent or opposition. Objectively then, the policies of the Maoist faction tend to weaken the bureducracy, or at least prevent it from growing stronger (regardless of whether the Maoist faction is conscious of this or not), while the policies of the other faction definitely bolster the bureaucracy. Under certain conditions, the latter faction may "pragmatically" put forward some "democratic" policies, but these do not involve any lessening of bureaucratic control. Rather, they are tactical measures aimed at corsolidating the bureaucracy. Although this faction has recommended some "moderate" policies, it was also the faction responsible for dispatching 11, 000 troaps to ruthlessly put down the struggle of the workers in Hangchow, while the more "authoritarian" Maoist faction had sent Wang Hung-wen in a futile attempt to negotiate an end to the dispute in that city. In essence, the reversionist, or "moderate, " faction represents the rightist tendency of the party and the bureaucracy. The Maoist faction is a unique creature of the Chinese revolution in its post-liberation period. It may be characterized as a left-centrist tendency in the party and the bureaucracy. The Maoist faction would find it difficult to cease its hard attacks on the "revisionism" of the Soviet Union for two reasons. First, this faction opposes the total social and political separation of the party from the masses, the hardening of the privileges of the bureaucracy, the existence of a distinct layer of technocrats, and the nonexistence of any horizontal democracy. Second, to support or tolerate such "revisionism" would mean to politically strengthen the rightist tendency in China, for it is precisely this sort of "revisionism" that the rightist faction has been striving for. During the early 1960s the Maoist faction od vanced another argument against the Soviet leadership: the Soviet Union stood for collaboration with imperialism as opposed to world revolution. With the turn in Chinese foreign policy during the early 1970s, however, this argument evaporated. Is this another example of Maoist "flexibility" or does it represent an abandonment of the previous Maoist position? A definitive answer cannot yet be given. But in view of the weakening of the Maoist faction's moss base after the cultural revolution and in view of the fact that the Indochinese revolution had taken a comparatively independent path of development, it seems very likely that the Maoist faction is moving further away from its earlier positions. The foreign policy of the reversionist faction is more clear, This faction believes that while peaceful coexistence with the imperialist powers is helpful to China, peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union would also do no harm and would in fact create a more favorable situation for China. Is the storm coming? We cannot predict precisely when another revalutionary storm will break out, but we can outline certain condifions that would fuel such an explosion. The First question is, To what extent has the April 5 demonstration broken the atmosphere of political apathy among the masses that had prevailed during the previous period? Similar events occurred in more than ten provinces, which indicates that if was a national and not regional phenomenon. How deeply the mood of the masses has changed, however, remains unclear and can be evaluated only in the future. The second question is, How will the masses respond to the repression that followed the demonstration? In other
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CHINA words, to what extent will the repression succeed in stifling further political opposition among the masses? Third, does the demonstration mean that the nucleus of a revolutionary vanguard has emerged? To be sure, the demonstration and the official reactions to it will enlighten the more politically conscious elements in China. If is likely that they will group themselves together in some form, but at present it seems improbable that this process can occur in such a way as to unify all these elements on a national scale. It is difficult to predict the pace of the process. These are the specific questions that arise from the Peking protest, But others arise from a more general examination of the political development of the masses, and they should be considered as well. First, it is obvious that the most politically conscious elements in China today are divided. On the one hand there are those who are still attracted by the "leftism" of the Maoist faction. These people constitute the Maoist nucleus within the mass movement, despite the fact that some of them believe that the Maoist leaders compromised with the status quo at the conclusion of the cultural revolution. On the other hand, there are those who have embarked on a politically independent path but who are unable to clarify the character of either faction. They express varying degrees of bellef in the illusions presented by the reversionist tendency without understanding the essential nature of the faction as such. There are various sigre of the real presence of such independent elements. As long ago as 1973 a wall poster written by three politically advanced youths appeared prominently in the city of Canton. Its contents were rapidly circulated in mimeographed form throughout the province of Kwangtung (population 45 million), creating a political sensation among Kwangtung's intellectuals and students. This wall poster is of great interest, in part because it reflected the fact that the long period of political passivity among former rebellious youth embittered by the defeat of the red guard movement had come to an end. In addition, however, the poster questioned the very existence of the privileges enjoyed by the bureaucratic caste, arguing that such privileges could constitute the beginning of "social fascism" in China. The poster called for socialist democracy as a means of combatting such a dangerous possibility. The three writers were subjected to enormous political pressure from the authorities after the appearance of this poster. Two of the authors capitulated and left the third to struggle alone. But it was clear that the poster had triggered a groundswell of popular support, for the authorities did not dare to send the third author to prison immediately. Instead, the provincial party committee of Kwangtung published its own wall poster attacking him. Later, the party organized many "struggle meetings" in which the targeted author was forced to participate. Unexpectedly, in many of these meetings he won the sympathy and support of the masses who were supposed to be struggling against him. These episodes were extremely enlightening. If the demand for socialist democracy (regardless of exactly how the masses conceive it at any given moment) and the attack on the privileges of the bureaucrats did not correspond to the thinking of the people, how could the author have been treated so leniently and how could he have won such sympathy in meetings designed precisely to attack him? But while the ideological basis of Maoism is disintegrating, the political maturity of the mass movement has not reached the point that a revolutionary alternative enabling the masses to go beyond both existing factions can yet be formed. The emergence or absence of such a revolutionary alternative is a decisive factor in the political development of the masses. If the masses continue to struggle against the party's policies and bureaucratic control and privileges, the resolution of the abovementioned problems will be placed in much more favorable conditions. But will the mass struggle continue? We believe that it will, for the repression that Followed the April 5 demonstration has not resulted in a decisive defeat for the masses. The likelihood of repression alone halting the political development of the masses is thus small. Moreover, as long as the bureaucracy remains divided and unable to find satisfactory solutions to Chinese economic and social problems, the masses will be compelled to seek such solutions themselves. Further, the most odvanced class in China, the working class, has never been defeated by the party and is therefore not devoid of political energy and vigor. This is one aspect of the situation, from the historical standpoint. The other, more immediate aspect is that the appointment of Hua Kuo-feng as premier in place of Chou does not represent the complete victory of the Maoist faction or the decisive defeat of the rightist faction. On the contrary, the factional differences persist, the party remains divided, and the state apparatus is still paralyzed by the confusion and demoralization of the lowerranking cadres. These are the essential factors that will guarantee the emergence of yet another round of factional struggle in the not too distant future, Given the present situation and its likely evolution, it will be the masses who will benefit most from this new round. When will it come? Most likely after the death of Mao: The decisive battle that will then erupt may well mark the emergence of the masses themselves onto the stage of China's political revolution. In any case, the April 5 events in Peking and other cities lend a powerful new impetus to the worldwide movement of the Fourth International and its active supporters in Hong Kong, the Revolutionary Marxist League (publishers of the Daily Combatting Bulletin). The scientific Marxist judgment that a political revolution is needed in China no longer appears abstract. History will prove that the masses in China will fight for genuine socialism, fettered neither by the Stalinist bureaucratism of the rightist reversionist faction nor by the subjective idealism of the Maoist faction. O
CONGRESS OF THE
BOLIVIAN MINERS
The following text, which we received from Bolivia, deals with the