OPENS DISCUSSION ON DEVELOPMENTS IN CHINESE REVOLUTION
(The International Executive Conmittee of the Fourth International decided at a recent meeting to open a discussion in the ranks of the world Trotskyist movement on the current developments in the Chinese Revolution.
(As a basis for discussion, the committee drew up the following statement. This is not intended as a finished resolution but simply as a document to open the discussion.
{The discussion will last until the next world congress scheduled for some time in 1968. At that gathering a final decision on the various questions involved will be made by the delegates. ]
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The crisis which has shaken China without letup since November 1965 emerged first as a crisis in the leadership of the Chinese Communist party. This leadership, which was formed mainly during the war against Japan and in the revolution, retained its essential homogeneity in the . ten years that followed the revolution. It disintegrated in face of the domestic and international problems posed from 1959 on and the new social tensions that arose as a result of these problems.
In the course of the violent struggle which resulted from this crisis of leadership, and in particular due to the forms taken by the "Great Cultural Revolution," the party, state, tradeunion, youth apparatuses, etc., were upset from top to bottom. For the same reasons, the relationships among the lead~ ers, the apparatuses, and the masses also underwent fundamental changes. For the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the masses, and in particular the proletarian masses of the large cities, were mobilized in a process the logical culmination of which is an antibureaucratic political revolution.
Any return to the situation prevailing prior to the "Cultural Revolution" is excluded. The reconstitution of a united leadership with an authority even slightly comparable to that which overthrew the Kuomintang regime and the reorganization of apparatuses with a strong grip.on the masses have been made all the more difficult because a whole series of ideological themes were put forward in the course of these events which were taken seriously by the youth and worker masses. The use of repressive measures on a very large scale has likewise been rendered difficult by virtue of the fact that such measures would be possible only through extensive recourse to the army, which itself has been deeply affected by the crisis, and whose capacity for action must be at least maintained in face of the danger of war posed by the American escalation in Vietnam.
The Different Phases of the Crisis
let us recall the different phases of the crisis:
(a) A first phase extending from November 1965 to the end of April 1966. In this phase, the leading group seemed to be feeling its way, engaging in polemics that could seem of secondary importance to the uninitiated but which had as their target the intellectuals displaying the most critical attitude toward Mao. At the same time, without too much fanfare, a reorientation or a rectification in certain basic sectors (the army, industry).
(b) A second phase stretching from May to the end of July 1966. This phase was featured by an offensive against the Peking group (Peng Chen) and some promi-. nent intellectuals, and their elimination, as well as by the first wave of the "Cultural Revolution."
(c) The August 1966 Central Committee plenum, whose length (twelve days testified to the extent of the debate and to the resistance encountered in the toplevel leadership. This plenum ended with the adoption of a 16-point resolution in which the Mao group's positions were formally ratified.
(d) However, immediately following the Central Committee plenum, new conflicts appeared in the upper echelons. A second wave of the "Cultural Revolution" was launched with the mobilization of university, high-school and primary-school students, and the formation of the Red Guards. The leaders most particularly under fire in this phase were Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao Ping.
In the period extending from the end of the plenum to the beginning of December 1966, the Mao group failed to achieve its goals and to resolve the crisis. Clashes occurred between Red Guard groups and groups of workers and peasants. Divisions occurred among the Red Guards themselves, some of whom went beyond the instructions handed down from above. A growing resistance to the Maoist attacks showed up in the state and party apparatuses. The Mao tendency. itself wavered on several occasions and divisions began to develop in its ranks, as attested to by the varying fortunes of some figures.
The struggle became sharper and sharper, and it was probably at this time
when the first repressions, admitted later by official sources, took place. Mao could no longer be content with applying the line set at the August 1966 plenun; he had to resort to new measures.
(e) After some preparatory steps, the Mao group, which up until then had sought support mainly among the youth, decided to appeal directly to the worker and peasant masses; and also to prepare the army, despite its persistent divisions, to play a larger and more decisive role than in the preceding phases. At the same time, other factions in the bureaucracy likewise appealed to the masses.
To mobilize the masses, the Mao group put forward ideological themes identical to those which had served to mobilize the Red Guards. The workers were called upon to eliminate the "partisans of the capitalist road" who had infiltrated the political and economic apparatuses, to assert their desires and their aspirations, and to elect revolutionary committees on the model of the Paris Commune. The army was told that its duty was not to stand aside and that it must take part directly in the political struggle at a time when a major conflict was in progress. Certain factions sought to mobilize the masses around their own economic demands and around the aspirations of the workers for autonomy.
The Shanghai Events
In this phase, the events occurred which threw numerous cities and industrial centers, Shanghai among others, into turmoil. Disturbances were likewise seen in some peasant districts.
Any attempt to explain this period by means of the activities of reactionaries must be rejected as false. Moreover, in the midst of the crisis itself, the survivors of the former regime do not seem to have played the least role, even in the countryside.
The immediate cause of the events of January 1967 lay in the rupture in the leadership of the Chinese CP and in the growing disintegration of the party and state apparatus at all levels. A vacuun, a relative absence of power, was thus created. In these conditions, in which the appeals to the masses helped, the various social forces were set in motion, each impelled by its own needs and objec~ tives. Thus a crisis which had begun as a crisis in the leadership, resulting from conflicts over domestic and international problems, probably affected also by a resurgence among the masses, was transformed into a social crisis in which, transcending the official slogans and tactical maneuvers of this or that group or faction in the leadership, all the fundamental tendencies arising in the -520-
course of the transitional period from capitalism to socialism took form and confronted each other for the first time.
The workers' movement tended to develop rapidly on a much broader and more concrete basis than was the case with the Red Guards, with a relatively independent dynamism, its own objectives and its own content; and it tended to go far beyond the vague and general appeals of the disputing factions. ’
The workers' movement in Shanghai, the most industrialized city in China and the richest in revolutionary traditions, had an unquestionably antibureaucratic portent. This movement was unleashed against the persons whom the workers considered responsible for their material difficulties and for the lack of real proletarian democracy. The workers resorted to their traditional forms of struggle, from work stoppages to strikes in the full sense of the word, from street demonstrations to the occupation of official buildings, from electing representatives to sending them to the regional authorities, and even to the central authorities. According to the reports, their demands concerned both the level of wages and more general living conditions. The housing problem seemed to play a special role; since people -- who must have been poorly housed -- moved into some buildings and houses.
In the countryside, the movements have been much weaker and, in general, limited to those regions closest to the large working-class centers. The demands put forward where the peasants were mobilized called for a greater allocation of production to family consumption, the opportunity to devote more effort to private plots, lessening of the gap between conditions in the countryside and in the cities. On this last point, the hundreds of thousands who were forced to return to the country from the cities after the failures of the “Great Leap Forward" must have made themselves felt.
The group thrown on the defensive by this crisis, although its views, with regard to economic orientation in particular were reflected in the party, was the technicians, cadres, and economic specialists -- with the exception of very small groups engaged in high level research, particularly in the nuclear field. This stratum had already been the object of attacks at the time of the industrial conferences in the spring of 1966 and had been directly in the line of fire during the mass mobilizations. Although it is still handicapped by its numerical weakness, it will not fail to assert its own demands in the future.
The Present Phase
Since the end of January, unques-
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tionably in reaction to the mass movements and their getting out of hand, Mao's leading group attempted to effect a turn, which found its expression in the theme of the "Triple Alliance." This formula meant forming new leading bodies of the "Cultural Revolution" composed of representatives of the "Revolutionary Rebels" (the Mao faction), the army, and cadres, which even if they have committed "errors," have not "broken faith" and ac~ cept "Mao's thought."
To be explained mainly by the fear that the masses would get out of control and by the strength of the resistance within the bureaucracy itself, this change in orientation had the obvious object of keeping the masses in bounds and of recuperating a large number of cadres and leaders by again assigning them an important role. At the same time it was confirmed that the army was intervening. The shift showed very clearly that Mao is aiming solely at reforming and not overthrowing the bureaucracy; his faction now maintains that ninety-five percent of the cadres must be maintained in place.
This new phase in which a relative normalization is sought was also imposed by a series of other pressing needs. Reopening of the schools had to be assured, in order to avoid new delays in the training of cadres and specialists. Slowdowns in industrial production had to be avoided. Above all, it was necessary to avoid upsetting work in the fields during the spring planting season. The official