Introduction

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

Curated By

Amy Yang

Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist. No one is free until we are all free.

About this Collection

About this Collection

Articles, books, videos about socialism with Chinese characteristics

48 years after the Reform and Opening-up, the debate on whether China is a socialist country is still going on among many Western Marxists. The question is not a trivial issue as it is related to a more important question “does China provide a socialist alternative of development for the third world countries?”. If one reads articles and the book by Roland Boer recommended in this collection, one can easily see the answer to both questions is yes.

After five centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism, countries in the third world have for the first time an alternative provided by a third world country, China, to break free from the stranglehold of the imperialist West and the “core-periphery” trap. That’s why it’s important to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Read this collection online: https://unlearn.capital/collections/socialism-with-chinese-characteristics

10 articles · 1 book · 2 podcasts · 2 videos

This ebook is about 163 pages long.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. Building a Socialism With a Specifically Chinese Character

5 pages

https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/building-a-socialism-with-a-specifically-chinese-character/

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping explains why China must adhere to Marxism and socialism, integrating them with Chinese conditions to develop productive forces and achieve a relatively comfortable living standard.

2. On Practice

21 pages

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm

Marxists Internet Archive

By Mao Zedong

Knowledge arises from social practice, develops from perception to rational understanding, and must be tested in practice, unifying knowing and doing.

3. Mao Zedong Thought Must Be Correctly Understood As An Integral Whole

8 pages

https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/mao-zedong-thought-must-be-correctly-understood-as-an-integral-whole/

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping argues that genuine Mao Zedong Thought, taken as an integral whole, should guide the Party, army, and people, and stresses Party building theory shaped in the Yan'an rectification movement, countering Lin Biao's and the Gang of Four's distortions.

4. The New Forms of Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

14 pages

https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2023-4-new-forms-socialism-twenty-first-century/

Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横)

By Pan Shiwei

Examines the evolution of socialism from its European origins to new 21st-century forms, highlighting China's development path as a model that aims to surpass capitalism.

5. On The Ten Major Relationships

33 pages

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_51.htm

Marxists Internet Archive

By Mao Tsetung

Mao Tsetung's 1956 speech outlines ten contradictions in socialist construction, urging balanced development of industry and agriculture, and mobilizing all positive forces for building China.

6. Has China Turned to Capitalism? Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

30 pages

https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-china/#quantitative-and-qualitative-inequality

Red Sails

By Domenico Losurdo

Argues that China's market socialism is not a restoration of capitalism but a Marxist-Leninist development strategy that prioritizes developing productive forces, and that within the context of global inequality, China's rise is reducing international disparities and challenging Western dominance.

7. Adhere to the Principle “To Each According To His Work”

3 pages

https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/adhere-to-the-principle-to-each-according-to-his-work/

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping outlines specific methods for implementing the socialist principle of distribution according to work, addressing pay scales, evaluations, rewards and penalties.

8. We Can Develop A Market Economy Under Socialism

8 pages

https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/we-can-develop-a-market-economy-under-socialism/

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

China's modernization requires developing productive forces and can incorporate a socialist market economy without abandoning socialism, asserting that market mechanisms are compatible with a planned socialist framework.

9. Oppose Book Worship

11 pages

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm

Marxists Internet Archive

By Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong argues against dogmatic book worship, insisting that effective problem-solving and correct revolutionary tactics require investigating actual social conditions.

10. On the Experimental Nature of Socialism and the Complexity of China's Reform and Opening Up

30 pages

https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2025-1-experimental-nature-socialism-china/

Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横)

By Li Tuo

Argues that socialism is inherently experimental, with China's Reform and Opening Up representing a major continuation of this tradition throughout history.

Other Resources

Other Resources

This collection also includes other media types such as books, videos, podcasts, and more.

Book

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/specials/2021SocialismwithChineseCharacteristics-AGuideforForeigners(Springer).pdf

Resource Not Added

By Roland Boer

Roland Boer's book uses Chinese Marxist scholarship to explain socialism with Chinese characteristics, arguing that Marxism is China's 'special skill' and that Western frameworks of analysis, including those of Western Marxists.

Podcasts

The China Episode

https://youtu.be/0QppJfn3tiY?si=xmNiVtIa0wiWEMgx

Resource Not Added

By Episode 222

The hosts discuss China's socialist development, its economic growth, and the Western narrative surrounding it, alongside broader leftist critiques of capitalism and geopolitics.

The 2nd China Episode

https://youtu.be/R5oT3c8nBQ8?si=dDig-7zetu61L0GU

Resource Not Added

By Episode 223

This exclusive Patreon episode of The Deprogram podcast serves as the show's second China episode, exploring the nation's history and current circumstances. It covers topics such as the Chinese Communist Party, economic development, and the political system, examining how these elements shape contemporary China and its trajectory.

Videos

A Summary of Xi Jinping's Governance of China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llTZ-drTvSY

Red Pen

Summarizes key points from Xi Jinping’s four-volume work, outlining his Marxist-Leninist framework for China’s development and global strategy.

The Two Sessions | Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nh4oJTQOAY

Resource Not Added

By Tricontinental Asia

The Two Sessions, or Lianghui, are the simultaneous annual meetings of the NPC and CPPCC, where the NPC reviews laws while the CPPCC provides suggestions. They also serve as a key platform for discussing national policies and plans, including economic and social development goals, thus shaping laws that affect citizens' daily lives and symbolizing China's socialist democracy.

Building a Socialism With a Specifically Chinese Character

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — Building a Socialism With a Specifically Chinese Character

Building a Socialism With a Specifically Chinese Character

Article 1 of 10

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Originally published at https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/building-a-socialism-with-a-specifically-chinese-character/

BUILDING A SOCIALISM WITH A SPECIFICALLY CHINESE CHARACTER

June 30, 1984

Since the defeat of the Gang of Four and the convocation of the Third Plenary Session of the Party’s Eleventh Central Committee, we have formulated correct ideological, political and organizational lines and a series of principles and policies. What is the ideological line? To adhere to Marxism and to integrate it with Chinese realities — in other words, to seek truth from facts, as advocated by Comrade Mao Zedong, and to uphold his basic ideas. It is crucial for us to adhere to Marxism and socialism. For more than a century after the Opium War, China was subjected to aggression and humiliation. It is because the Chinese people embraced Marxism and kept to the road leading from new-democracy to socialism that their revolution was victorious.

You may ask, what if the Chinese people had taken the capitalist road instead? Could they have liberated themselves, and could they have finally stood up? Let us review the history. The Kuomintang followed the capitalist road for more than 20 years, but China was still a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, which proved that that road led nowhere. In contrast, the Communists, adhering to Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought, which integrates Marxism with actual conditions in China, took their own road and succeeded in the revolution by encircling the cities from the countryside. Conversely, if we had not had faith in Marxism, or if we had not integrated Marxism with Chinese conditions and followed our own road, the revolution would have been a failure, and China would have remained fragmented and dependent. So faith in Marxism was the motive force that enabled us to achieve victory in the revolution.

At the founding of the People’s Republic, we inherited from old China a ruined economy with virtually no industry. There was a shortage of grain, inflation was acute and the economy was in chaos. But we solved the problems of feeding and employing the population, stabilized commodity prices and unified financial and economic work, and the economy rapidly recovered. On this foundation we started large-scale reconstruction. What did we rely on? We relied on Marxism and socialism. Some people ask why we chose socialism. We answer that we had to, because capitalism would get China nowhere. If we had taken the capitalist road, we could not have put an end to the chaos in the country or done away with poverty and backwardness. That is why we have repeatedly declared that we shall adhere to Marxism and keep to the socialist road. But by Marxism we mean Marxism that is integrated with Chinese conditions, and by socialism we mean a socialism that is tailored to Chinese conditions and has a specifically Chinese character.

What is socialism and what is Marxism? We were not quite clear about this in the past. Marxism attaches utmost importance to developing the productive forces. We have said that socialism is the primary stage of communism and that at the advanced stage the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs will be applied. This calls for highly developed productive forces and an overwhelming abundance of material wealth. Therefore, the fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system. As they develop, the people’s material and cultural life will constantly improve. One of our shortcomings after the founding of the People’s Republic was that we didn’t pay enough attention to developing the productive forces. Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism.

Given that China is still backward, what road can we take to develop the productive forces and raise the people’s standard of living? This brings us back to the question of whether to continue on the socialist road or to stop and turn onto the capitalist road. Capitalism can only enrich less than 10 per cent of the Chinese population; it can never enrich the remaining more than 90 per cent. But if we adhere to socialism and apply the principle of distribution to each according to his work, there will not be excessive disparities in wealth. Consequently, no polarization will occur as our productive forces become developed over the next 20 to 30 years.

Our political line is to focus on the modernization programme and on continued development of the productive forces. Nothing short of a world war could tear us away from this line. And even if a world war broke out, we would engage in reconstruction after the war. The minimum target of our modernization programme is to achieve a comparatively comfortable standard of living by the end of the century. I first mentioned this to former Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira during his visit here in December 1979. By a comparatively comfortable standard we mean a per capita GNP of US$800. That is a low level for you, but it is really an ambitious goal for us. China has a population of 1 billion now, and by then it will have reached 1.2 billion. If, when the GNP reaches $1 trillion, we were to apply the capitalist principle of distribution, most of the people would remain mired in poverty and backwardness. But the socialist principle of distribution can enable all the people to lead a relatively comfortable life. This is why we want to uphold socialism. Without socialism, China can never achieve that goal.

The present world is open. One important reason for China’s backwardness after the industrial revolution in Western countries was its closed-door policy. After the founding of the People’s Republic we were blockaded by others, so the country remained virtually closed, which created difficulties for us. The experience of the past thirty or so years has demonstrated that a closed-door policy would hinder construction and inhibit development. There could be two kinds of exclusion: one would be directed against other countries; the other would be directed against China itself, with one region or department closing its doors to the others. Both kinds of exclusion would be harmful. We are suggesting that we should develop rapidly, but not too rapidly because that would be unrealistic. To do this, we have to invigorate the domestic economy and open to the outside world.

Proceeding from the realities in China, we must first of all solve the problem of the countryside. Eighty per cent of the population lives in rural areas, and China’s stability depends on the stability of those areas. No matter how successful our work is in the cities, it won’t mean much without a stable base in the countryside. We therefore began by invigorating the economy and adopting an open policy there, so as to bring the initiative of 80 per cent of the population into full play. We adopted this policy at the end of 1978, and after a few years it has produced the desired results. Now the recent Second Session of the Sixth National People’s Congress has decided to shift the focus of reform from the countryside to the cities. The urban reform will include not only industry and commerce but science and technology, education and all other fields of endeavour as well. In short, we shall continue the reform at home and open still wider to the outside world.

We have opened 14 large and medium-sized coastal cities. We welcome foreign investment and advanced techniques. Management is also a technique. Will they undermine our socialism? Not likely, because the socialist sector is the mainstay of our economy. Our socialist economic base is so huge that it can absorb tens and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of foreign funds without being shaken. Foreign investment will doubtless serve as a major supplement in the building of socialism in our country. And as things stand now, that supplement is indispensable. Naturally, some problems will arise in the wake of foreign investment. But its negative impact will be far less significant than the positive use we can make of it to accelerate our development. It may entail a slight risk, but not much.

Well, those are our plans. We shall accumulate new experience and try new solutions as new problems arise. In general, we believe that the course we have chosen, which we call building socialism with Chinese characteristics, is the right one. We have followed this road for five and a half years and have achieved satisfactory results; indeed, the pace of development has so far exceeded our projections. If we go on this way, we shall be able to reach the goal of quadrupling China’s GNP by the end of the century. And so I can tell our friends that we are even more confident now.

(Excerpt from a talk with the Japanese delegation to the second session of the Council of Sino-Japanese Non-Governmental Persons.)

On Practice

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — On Practice

On Practice

Article 2 of 10

Marxists Internet Archive

By Mao Zedong

Originally published at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing

July 1937

[There used to be a number of comrades in our Party who were dogmatists and who for a long period rejected the experience of the Chinese revolution, denying the truth that "Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action" and overawing people with words and phrases from Marxist works, torn out of context. There were also a number of comrades who were empiricists and who for a long period restricted themselves to their own fragmentary experience and did not understand the importance of theory for revolutionary practice or see the revolution as a whole, but worked blindly though industriously. The erroneous ideas of these two types of comrades, and particularly of the dogmatists, caused enormous losses to the Chinese revolution during 1931-34, and yet the dogmatists cloaking themselves as Marxists, confused a great many comrades. "On Practice" was written in order to expose the subjectivist errors of dogmatism and empiricism in the Party, and especially the error of dogmatism, from the standpoint of the Marxist theory of knowledge. It was entitled "On Practice" because its stress was on exposing the dogmatist kind of subjectivism, which belittles practice. The ideas contained in this essay were presented by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in a lecture at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yenan.]

Before Marx, materialism examined the problem of knowledge apart from the social nature of man and apart from his historical development, and was therefore incapable of understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, that is, the dependence of knowledge on production and the class struggle.

Above all, Marxists regard man's activity in production as the most fundamental practical activity, the determinant of all his other activities. Man's knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production, through which he comes gradually to understand the phenomena, the properties and the laws of nature, and the relations between himself and nature; and through his activity in production he also gradually comes to understand, in varying degrees, certain relations that exist between man and man. None of this knowledge can be acquired apart from activity in production. In a classless society every person, as a member of society, joins in common effort with the other members, enters into definite relations of production with them and engages in production to meet man's material needs. In all class societies, the members of the different social classes also enter, in different ways, into definite relations of production and engage in production to meet their material needs. This is the primary source from which human knowledge develops.

Man's social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms--class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life). Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man's knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.

Marxists hold that in human society activity in production develops step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently man's knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided. For a very long period in history, men were necessarily confined to a one-sided understanding of the history of society because, for one thing, the bias of the exploiting classes always distorted history and, for another, the small scale of production limited man's outlook. It was not until the modern proletariat emerged along with immense forces of production (large-scale industry) that man was able to acquire a comprehensive, historical understanding of the development of society and turn this knowledge into a science, the science of Marxism.

Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit". The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice. Thus Lenin said, "Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality." [1] The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. [2]

But how then does human knowledge arise from practice and in turn serve practice? This will become clear if we look at the process of development of knowledge.

In the process of practice, man at first sees only the phenomenal side, the separate aspects, the external relations of things. For instance, some people from outside come to Yenan on a tour of observation. In the first day or two, they see its topography, streets and houses; they meet many people, attend banquets, evening parties and mass meetings, hear talk of various kinds and read various documents, all these being the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things. This is called the perceptual stage of cognition, namely, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions. That is, these particular things in Yenan act on the sense organs of the members of the observation group, evoke sense perceptions and give rise in their brains to many impressions together with a rough sketch of the external relations among these impressions: this is the first stage of cognition. At this stage, man cannot as yet form concepts, which are deeper, or draw logical conclusions.

As social practice continues, things that give rise to man's sense perceptions and impressions in the course of his practice are repeated many times; then a sudden change (leap) takes place in the brain in the process of cognition, and concepts are formed. Concepts are no longer the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things; they grasp the essence, the totality and the internal relations of things. Between concepts and sense perceptions there is not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference. Proceeding further, by means of judgement and inference one is able to draw logical conclusions. The expression in San Kuo Yen Yi, [3] "knit the brows and a stratagem comes to mind", or in everyday language, "let me think it over", refers to man's use of concepts in the brain to form judgements and inferences. This is the second stage of cognition. When the members of the observation group have collected various data and, what is more, have "thought them over", they are able to arrive at the judgement that "the Communist Party's policy of the National United Front Against Japan is thorough, sincere and genuine". Having made this judgement, they can, if they too are genuine about uniting to save the nation, go a step further and draw the following conclusion, "The National United Front Against Japan can succeed." This stage of conception, judgement and inference is the more important stage in the entire process of knowing a thing; it is the stage of rational knowledge. The real task of knowing is, through perception, to arrive at thought, to arrive step by step at the comprehension of the internal contradictions of objective things, of their laws and of the internal relations between one process and another, that is, to arrive at logical knowledge. To repeat, logical knowledge differs from perceptual knowledge in that perceptual knowledge pertains to the separate aspects, the phenomena and the external relations of things, whereas logical knowledge takes a big stride forward to reach the totality, the essence and the internal relations of things and discloses the inner contradictions in the surrounding world. Therefore, logical knowledge is capable of grasping the development of the surrounding world in its totality, in the internal relations of all its aspects.

This dialectical-materialist theory of the process of development of knowledge, basing itself on practice and proceeding from the shallower to the deeper, was never worked out by anybody before the rise of Marxism. Marxist materialism solved this problem correctly for the first time, pointing out both materialistically and dialectically the deepening movement of cognition, the movement by which man in society progresses from perceptual knowledge to logical knowledge in his complex, constantly recurring practice of production and class struggle. Lenin said, "The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short, all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [4] Marxism-Leninism holds that each of the two stages in the process of cognition has its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an integrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deeply perceived. Perception only solves the problem of phenomena; theory alone can solve the problem of essence. The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. In feudal society it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance because capitalism had not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society. Marx, in the era of laissez-faire capitalism, could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era of imperialism beforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; only Lenin and Stalin could undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded. The saying, "without stepping outside his gate the scholar knows all the wide world's affairs", was mere empty talk in past times when technology was undeveloped. Even though this saying can be valid in the present age of developed technology, the people with real personal knowledge are those engaged in practice the wide world over. And it is only when these people have come to "know" through their practice and when their knowledge has reached him through writing and technical media that the "scholar" can indirectly "know all the wide world's affairs". If you want to know a certain thing or a certain class of things directly, you must personally participate in the practical struggle to change reality, to change that thing or class of things, for only thus can you come into contact with them as phenomena; only through personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the essence of that thing or class of things and comprehend them. This is the path to knowledge which every man actually travels, though some people, deliberately distorting matters, argue to the contrary. The most ridiculous person in the world is the "know all" who picks up a smattering of hearsay knowledge and proclaims himself "the world's Number One authority"; this merely shows that he has not taken a proper measure of himself. Knowledge is a matter of science, and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse--honesty and modesty. If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. But one cannot have direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge comes from indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and foreign lands. To our ancestors and to foreigners, such knowledge was--or is--a matter of direct experience, and this knowledge is reliable if in the course of their direct experience the requirement of "scientific abstraction", spoken of by Lenin, was--or is--fulfilled and objective reality scientifically reflected, otherwise it is not reliable. Hence a man's knowledge consists only of two parts, that which comes from direct experience and that which comes from indirect experience. Moreover, what is indirect experience for me is direct experience for other people. Consequently, considered as a whole, knowledge of any kind is inseparable from direct experience. All knowledge originates in perception of the objective external world through man's physical sense organs. Anyone who denies such perception, denies direct experience, or denies personal participation in the practice that changes reality, is not a materialist. That is why the "know-all" is ridiculous. There is an old Chinese saying, "How can you catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger's lair?" This saying holds true for man's practice and it also holds true for the theory of knowledge. There can be no knowledge apart from practice.

To make clear the dialectical-materialist movement of cognition arising on the basis of the practice which changes reality--to make clear the gradually deepening movement of cognition--a few additional concrete examples are given below.

In its knowledge of capitalist society, the proletariat was only in the perceptual stage of cognition in the first period of its practice, the period of machine-smashing and spontaneous struggle; it knew only some of the aspects and the external relations of the phenomena of capitalism. The proletariat was then still a "class-in-itself". But when it reached the second period of its practice, the period of conscious and organized economic and political struggles, the proletariat was able to comprehend the essence of capitalist society, the relations of exploitation between social classes and its own historical task; and it was able to do so because of its own practice and because of its experience of prolonged struggle, which Marx and Engels scientifically summed up in all its variety to create the theory of Marxism for the education of the proletariat. It was then that the proletariat became a "class-for-itself".

Similarly with the Chinese people's knowledge of imperialism. The first stage was one of superficial, perceptual knowledge, as shown in the indiscriminate anti-foreign struggles of the Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Yi Ho Tuan Movement, and so on. It was only in the second stage that the Chinese people reached the stage of rational knowledge, saw the internal and external contradictions of imperialism and saw the essential truth that imperialism had allied itself with China's comprador and feudal classes to oppress and exploit the great masses of the Chinese people. This knowledge began about the time of the May 4th Movement of 1919.

Next, let us consider war. If those who lead a war lack experience of war, then at the initial stage they will not understand the profound laws pertaining to the directing of a specific war (such as our Agrarian Revolutionary War of the past decade). At the initial stage they will merely experience a good deal of fighting and, what is more, suffer many defeats. But this experience (the experience of battles won and especially of battles lost) enables them to comprehend the inner thread of the whole war, namely, the laws of that specific war, to understand its strategy and tactics, and consequently to direct the war with confidence. If, at such a moment, the command is turned over to an inexperienced person, then he too will have to suffer a number of defeats (gain experience) before he can comprehend the true laws of the war.

"I am not sure I can handle it." We often hear this remark when a comrade hesitates to accept an assignment. Why is he unsure of himself? Because he has no systematic understanding of the content and circumstances of the assignment, or because he has had little or no contact with such work, and so the laws governing it are beyond him. After a detailed analysis of the nature and circumstances of the assignment, he will feel more sure of himself and do it willingly. If he spends some time at the job and gains experience and if he is a person who is willing to look into matters with an open mind and not one who approaches problems subjectively, one-sidedly and superficially, then he can draw conclusions for himself as to how to go about the job and do it with much more courage. Only those who are subjective, one-sided and superficial in their approach to problems will smugly issue orders or directives the moment they arrive on the scene, without considering the circumstances, without viewing things in their totality (their history and their present state as a whole) and without getting to the essence of things (their nature and the internal relations between one thing and another). Such people are bound to trip and fall.

Thus it can be seen that the first step in the process of cognition is contact with the objects of the external world; this belongs to the stage of perception. The second step is to synthesize the data of perception by arranging and reconstructing them; this belongs to the stage of conception, judgement and inference. It is only when the data of perception are very rich (not fragmentary) and correspond to reality (are not illusory) that they can be the basis for forming correct concepts and theories.

Here two important points must be emphasized. The first, which has been stated before but should be repeated here, is the dependence of rational knowledge upon perceptual knowledge. Anyone who thinks that rational knowledge need not be derived from perceptual knowledge is an idealist. In the history of philosophy there is the "rationalist" school that admits the reality only of reason and not of experience, believing that reason alone is reliable while perceptual experience is not; this school errs by turning things upside down. The rational is reliable precisely because it has its source in sense perceptions, other wise it would be like water without a source, a tree without roots, subjective, self-engendered and unreliable. As to the sequence in the process of cognition, perceptual experience comes first; we stress the significance of social practice in the process of cognition precisely because social practice alone can give rise to human knowledge and it alone can start man on the acquisition of perceptual experience from the objective world. For a person who shuts his eyes, stops his ears and totally cuts himself off from the objective world there can be no such thing as knowledge. Knowledge begins with experience--this is the materialism of the theory of knowledge.

The second point is that knowledge needs to be deepened, that the perceptual stage of knowledge needs to be developed to the rational stage--this is the dialectics of the theory of knowledge. [5] To think that knowledge can stop at the lower, perceptual stage and that perceptual knowledge alone is reliable while rational knowledge is not, would be to repeat the historical error of "empiricism". This theory errs in failing to understand that, although the data of perception reflect certain realities in the objective world (I am not speaking here of idealist empiricism which confines experience to so-called introspection), they are merely one-sided and superficial, reflecting things incompletely and not reflecting their essence. Fully to reflect a thing in its totality, to reflect its essence, to reflect its inherent laws, it is necessary through the exercise of thought to reconstruct the rich data of sense perception, discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside, in order to form a system of concepts and theories--it is necessary to make a leap from perceptual to rational knowledge. Such reconstructed knowledge is not more empty or more unreliable; on the contrary, whatever has been scientifically reconstructed in the process of cognition, on the basis of practice, reflects objective reality, as Lenin said, more deeply, more truly, more fully. As against this, vulgar "practical men" respect experience but despise theory, and therefore cannot have a comprehensive view of an entire objective process, lack clear direction and long-range perspective, and are complacent over occasional successes and glimpses of the truth. If such persons direct a revolution, they will lead it up a blind alley.

Rational knowledge depends upon perceptual knowledge and perceptual knowledge remains to be developed into rational knowledge-- this is the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge. In philosophy, neither "rationalism" nor "empiricism" understands the historical or the dialectical nature of knowledge, and although each of these schools contains one aspect of the truth (here I am referring to materialist, not to idealist, rationalism and empiricism), both are wrong on the theory of knowledge as a whole. The dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge from the perceptual to the rational holds true for a minor process of cognition (for instance, knowing a single thing or task) as well as for a major process of cognition (for instance, knowing a whole society or a revolution).

But the movement of knowledge does not end here. If the dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge were to stop at rational knowledge, only half the problem would be dealt with. And as far as Marxist philosophy is concerned, only the less important half at that. Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world. From the Marxist viewpoint, theory is important, and its importance is fully expressed in Lenin's statement, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." [6] But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but--and this is more important--it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice. The knowledge which grasps the laws of the world, must be redirected to the practice of changing the world, must be applied anew in the practice of production, in the practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle and in the practice of scientific experiment. This is the process of testing and developing theory, the continuation of the whole process of cognition. The problem of whether theory corresponds to objective reality is not, and cannot be, completely solved in the movement of knowledge from the perceptual to the rational, mentioned above. The only way to solve this problem completely is to redirect rational knowledge to social practice, apply theory to practice and see whether it can achieve the objectives one has in mind. Many theories of natural science are held to be true not only because they were so considered when natural scientists originated them, but because they have been verified in subsequent scientific practice. Similarly, Marxism-Leninism is held to be true not only because it was so considered when it was scientifically formulated by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin but because it has been verified in the subsequent practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle. Dialectical materialism is universally true because it is impossible for anyone to escape from its domain in his practice. The history of human knowledge tells us that the truth of many theories is incomplete and that this incompleteness is remedied through the test of practice. Many theories are erroneous and it is through the test of practice that their errors are corrected. That is why practice is the criterion of truth and why "the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge". [7] Stalin has well said, "Theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory." [8]

When we get to this point, is the movement of knowledge completed? Our answer is: it is and yet it is not. When men in society throw themselves into the practice of changing a certain objective process (whether natural or social) at a certain stage of its development, they can, as a result of the reflection of the objective process in their brains and the exercise of their subjective activity, advance their knowledge from the perceptual to the rational, and create ideas, theories, plans or programmes which correspond in general to the laws of that objective process. They then apply these ideas, theories, plans or programmes in practice in the same objective process. And if they can realize the aims they have in mind, that is, if in that same process of practice they can translate, or on the whole translate, those previously formulated ideas, theories, plans or programmes into fact, then the movement of knowledge may be considered completed with regard to this particular process. In the process of changing nature, take for example the fulfilment of an engineering plan, the verification of a scientific hypothesis, the manufacture of an implement or the reaping of a crop; or in the process of changing society, take for example the victory of a strike, victory in a war or the fulfilment of an educational plan. All these may be considered the realization of aims one has in mind. But generally speaking, whether in the practice of changing nature or of changing society, men's original ideas, theories, plans or programmes are seldom realized without any alteration.

This is because people engaged in changing reality are usually subject to numerous limitations; they are limited not only by existing scientific and technological conditions but also by the development of the objective process itself and the degree to which this process has become manifest (the aspects and the essence of the objective process have not yet been fully revealed). In such a situation, ideas, theories, plans or programmes are usually altered partially and sometimes even wholly, because of the discovery of unforeseen circumstances in the course of practice. That is to say, it does happen that the original ideas, theories, plans or programmes fail to correspond with reality either in whole or in part and are wholly or partially incorrect. In many instances, failures have to be repeated many times before errors in knowledge can be corrected and correspondence with the laws of the objective process achieved, and consequently before the subjective can be transformed into the objective, or in other words, before the anticipated results can be achieved in practice. But when that point is reached, no matter how, the movement of human knowledge regarding a certain objective process at a certain stage of its development may be considered completed.

However, so far as the progression of the process is concerned, the movement of human knowledge is not completed. Every process, whether in the realm of nature or of society, progresses and develops by reason of its internal contradiction and struggle, and the movement of human knowledge should also progress and develop along with it. As far as social movements are concerned, true revolutionary leaders must not only be good at correcting their ideas, theories, plans or programmes when errors are discovered, as has been indicated above; but when a certain objective process has already progressed and changed from one stage of development to another, they must also be good at making themselves and all their fellow-revolutionaries progress and change in their subjective knowledge along with it, that IS to say, they must ensure that the proposed new revolutionary tasks and new working programmes correspond to the new changes in the situation. In a revolutionary period the situation changes very rapidly; if the knowledge of revolutionaries does not change rapidly in accordance with the changed situation, they will be unable to lead the revolution to victory.

It often happens, however, that thinking lags behind reality; this is because man's cognition is limited by numerous social conditions. We are opposed to die-hards in the revolutionary ranks whose thinking fails to advance with changing objective circumstances and has manifested itself historically as Right opportunism. These people fail to see that the struggle of opposites has already pushed the objective process forward while their knowledge has stopped at the old stage. This is characteristic of the thinking of all die-hards. Their thinking is divorced from social practice, and they cannot march ahead to guide the chariot of society; they simply trail behind, grumbling that it goes too fast and trying to drag it back or turn it in the opposite direction.

We are also opposed to "Left" phrase-mongering. The thinking of "Leftists" outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist in their actions.

Idealism and mechanical materialism, opportunism and adventurism, are all characterized by the breach between the subjective and the objective, by the separation of knowledge from practice. The Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge, characterized as it is by scientific social practice, cannot but resolutely oppose these wrong ideologies. Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man's knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth. [9] The development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, and so is the development of the movement of human knowledge. All the dialectical movements of the objective world can sooner or later be reflected in human knowledge. In social practice, the process of coming into being, developing and passing away is infinite, and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge. As man's practice which changes objective reality in accordance with given ideas, theories, plans or programmes, advances further and further, his knowledge of objective reality likewise becomes deeper and deeper. The movement of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending and so is man's cognition of truth through practice. Marxism-Leninism has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice. Our conclusion is the concrete, historical unity of the subjective and the objective, of theory and practice, of knowing and doing, and we are opposed to all erroneous ideologies, whether "Left" or Right, which depart from concrete history.

In the present epoch of the development of society, the responsibility of correctly knowing and changing the world has been placed by history upon the shoulders of the proletariat and its party. This process, the practice of changing the world, which is determined in accordance with scientific knowledge, has already reached a historic moment in the world and in China, a great moment unprecedented in human history, that is, the moment for completely banishing darkness from the world and from China and for changing the world into a world of light such as never previously existed. The struggle of the proletariat and the revolutionary people to change the world comprises the fulfilment of the following tasks: to change the objective world and, at the same time, their own subjective world--to change their cognitive ability and change the relations between the subjective and the objective world. Such a change has already come about in one part of the globe, in the Soviet Union. There the people are pushing forward this process of change. The people of China and the rest of the world either are going through, or will go through, such a process. And the objective world which is to be changed also includes all the opponents of change, who, in order to be changed, must go through a stage of compulsion before they can enter the stage of voluntary, conscious change. The epoch of world communism will be reached when all mankind voluntarily and consciously changes itself and the world.

Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.

NOTES

1. V. I. Lenin, "Conspectus of Hegel's The Science of Logic". Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 205.

2. See Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach". Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in two volumes, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1958, Vol. II, p. 403, and V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, ring. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1952, pp. 136-4.

3. San Kuo Yen Yi (Tales of the Three Kingdoms) is a famous Chinese historical nova by Lo Kuan-chung (late 14th and early 15th century).

4. V. I. Lenin, "Conspectus of Hegel's The Science of Logic", Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 161.

5. "In order to understand, it is necessary empirically to begin understanding, study, to rise from empiricism to the universal." (Ibid., p. 197.)

6. V. I. Lenin, "What Is to Be Done?", Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1961, Vol. V, p. 369.

7. V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, p. 141.

8. J. V. Stalin, "The Foundations of Leninism", Problems of Leninism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 31.

9. See V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, pp. 129-36.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.
HTML revised 2004 by Marxists.org

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

Mao Zedong Thought Must Be Correctly Understood As An Integral Whole

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — Mao Zedong Thought Must Be Correctly Understood As An Integral Whole

Mao Zedong Thought Must Be Correctly Understood As An Integral Whole

Article 3 of 10

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Originally published at https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/mao-zedong-thought-must-be-correctly-understood-as-an-integral-whole/

MAO ZEDONG THOUGHT MUST BE CORRECTLY

UNDERSTOOD AS AN INTEGRAL WHOLE

July 21, 1977

Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought constitute the guiding ideology of our Party. Mao Zedong Thought has sprung from and developed Marxism-Leninism. But Lin Biao negated Mao Zedong Thought by saying that it was fully embodied in the “three constantly read articles”. He even severed Mao Zedong Thought from Marxism-Leninism. This was a gross distortion of Mao Zedong Thought and was most detrimental to the cause of the Party and socialism in China and to the cause of the international communist movement.

In my letter of April 10 to Comrades Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying and the Central Committee of the Party, I said that we should use genuine Mao Zedong Thought taken as an integral whole to guide our Party, our army and our people in order to advance the cause of the Party and socialism in China and the cause of the international communist movement. In saying that we should use as our guide genuine Mao Zedong Thought taken as an integral whole, I mean that we should have a correct and comprehensive understanding of Mao Zedong Thought as a system and that we should be proficient at studying it, mastering it, and applying it as a guide to our work. Only in this way can we be sure that we are not fragmenting Mao Zedong Thought, distorting or debasing it. We can then see that what Comrade Mao Zedong said with regard to a specific question at a given time and under particular circumstances was correct, and that what he said with regard to the same question at a different time and under different circumstances was also correct, despite occasional differences in the extent of elaboration, in emphasis and even in the formulation of his ideas. So we must acquire a correct understanding of Mao Zedong Thought as an integral system instead of just citing a few specific words or sentences. But the Gang of Four, and especially their so-called theoretician Zhang Chunqiao, distorted and adulterated Mao Zedong Thought. They tried to fool people or intimidate them by quoting a phrase or two from Comrade Mao Zedong. We need to have a true grasp of Mao Zedong Thought and a correct understanding of it as an integral whole, even when dealing with a particular sphere or one aspect of a particular problem. Take, for example, the question of the intellectuals, which pertains to a specific sphere. Comrade Mao Zedong always attached importance to the role of the intellectuals, at the same time stressing that they should earnestly remould their world outlook. He did this both for the good of the intellectuals themselves and for the purpose of better mobilizing their energies, releasing their talents and enabling them to serve the socialist cause better. But the Gang of Four indiscriminately labelled all intellectuals the “stinking Number Nine” and asserted that it was Chairman Mao who so named them. We should admit that at one time Comrade Mao Zedong treated the intellectuals as part of the bourgeoisie, but we should no longer do so. Comrade Mao Zedong did value the role of the intellectuals in the whole process of revolution and construction. To counter the slander spread by the Gang of Four, he declared in 1975, “We can’t do without Number Nine.” We need a correct and systematic understanding of Comrade Mao Zedong’s thinking and policy regarding intellectuals. Or take another example, the question of the relationship between the leaders and the masses. It is a consistent principle of Mao Zedong Thought that the people are the force that propels history forward. Being a great Marxist, Comrade Mao Zedong repeatedly spoke out against inappropriate and unscientific assessments of himself, and on many occasions he taught us what the correct relationship should be between the people and leaders. Mao Zedong Thought has developed Marxism-Leninism in many spheres, not just in some individual aspects. It constitutes an integral system and is a further development of Marxism. For this reason I suggest that in addition to editing and publishing the works of Mao Zedong, comrades doing theoretical work should endeavour to expound Mao Zedong Thought as a system from various perspectives. We should educate our Party in Mao Zedong Thought as a system so that it can continue to guide us forward.

Today I should like to discuss briefly the theory of Party building, which is a component part of Mao Zedong Thought. Marx and Engels did not say much on this subject, but Lenin had a comprehensive theory concerning it. It was precisely because Lenin built such a fine party that the October Revolution triumphed and that the first socialist country was created. And it was Comrade Mao Zedong who developed Lenin’s theory of Party building most comprehensively. Even in the period of revolutionary struggle in the Jinggang Mountains, that is, in the period of the formation of the Chinese Red Army, his ideas on Party building were already well defined. You can see this by reading the resolution adopted at the Ninth Party Congress of the Fourth Army of the Red Army. His comprehensive theory on the subject took shape, on the basis of practice, in the Yan’an rectification movement. He developed an integral theory on the type of party to be built and its guiding ideology and style of work. By creating a comprehensive theory of Party building in the Yan’an rectification movement — and by educating the whole Party, army and people in this theory — he made it possible for us to build a fine party; that was why we were able to win complete victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan [1937-45] and in the War of Liberation [1946-49]. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China our Party continued to be vigorous and dynamic. Later, Comrade Mao Zedong’s theory of Party building was developed further. In 1957 he summed up our aim as follows: “Our aim is to create a political situation in which we have both centralism and democracy, both discipline and freedom, both unity of will and personal ease of mind and liveliness, and thus to promote our socialist revolution and socialist construction, make it easier to overcome difficulties, build a modern industry and modern agriculture more rapidly and make our Party and state more secure and better able to weather storm and stress.” Of course, Comrade Mao Zedong was discussing a political situation that should prevail not only in the Party but also in the army and among the people of the whole country. To repeat, this kind of political situation should prevail in the whole Party, in the whole army and among the whole people.

Let us recall that it is precisely according to Comrade Mao Zedong’s theory of Party building that this fine party of ours has been built. After the rectification movement in Yan’an, people in both the front and rear areas were active and buoyant, their minds were at ease and they were united as one. The Party built by Comrade Mao Zedong was able to encourage a broad spirit of democracy and of voluntary observance of discipline among those working at the lower levels and, on this basis, it established a high level of centralism. Who then would not willingly obey the orders and answer the calls of Chairman Mao and the Central Committee? Without this style of work in the Party, how could we have defeated an enemy so much stronger than we, and how could we have gone on from victory to victory after the founding of the People’s Republic?

The Gang of Four’s opposition to Comrade Mao Zedong’s theory of Party building had disastrous effects on the building of our Party and its style of work. I don’t want to go into that in detail today. How can we create the political situation advocated by Comrade Mao Zedong? By earnestly studying his thinking on Party building. That thinking encompasses a great many fundamental principles. These include: combining a high degree of democracy with a high degree of centralism; distinguishing between the two different types of contradictions [those among the people and those between the people and the enemy] and handling each correctly; applying the formula “unity — criticism — unity”; “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing the illness to save the patient”; giving full scope to democracy in order to unite more than 95 per cent of the cadres and the masses; following the mass line and trusting the masses; and acting on the four-character slogan Comrade Mao Zedong wrote for the Central Party School in Yan’an, “Seek truth from facts.” It seems to me that the call for the “three honests” — the Daqing Oilfield workers’ exhortation to be an honest person, honest in word and honest in deed — is identical with seeking truth from facts. I think that the principles of following the mass line and seeking truth from facts are of fundamental importance in the style of work advocated by Comrade Mao Zedong. Of course, the relationships between democracy and centralism and between freedom and discipline are also very important. But in view of the existing state of affairs in our Party, I believe that following the mass line and seeking truth from facts take on special importance. Comrade Mao Zedong was a thoroughgoing materialist. He had complete faith in the masses and always opposed any act that was not in keeping with trust in the masses and reliance on them. He listened particularly to what the masses had to say. Our comrades certainly remember how the production campaign was launched in the Yan’an days. What were the reasons for that production campaign? One was that we had requisitioned too much grain from the masses, so that there were complaints among them, which made many Party members unhappy. But Comrade Mao Zedong saw things differently. He said that the complaints were justified and were the voice of the masses. He was indeed great and different from the rest of us in that he was able to discern the problems behind the complaints of the masses and formulate the principles and policies required to deal with them. He paid great attention to the opinions, ideas and problems of the masses.

Why do I say that seeking truth from facts is of such importance at present? Because our effort to improve the style of work of the army and among the people at large hinges on the improvement of the Party’s style of work. The Gang of Four really debased our standards of social conduct. For 10 years or even longer, they engaged in disruptive activities, acting at the outset in collaboration with Lin Biao. Things reached such a pass that many of our Party comrades dared not speak out and, in particular, dared not tell the truth but resorted to pretence and deception. Even some of our veteran comrades became infected with this bad habit, which was unforgivable. But provided we have full faith in the masses, seek truth from facts, ensure democracy and reaffirm and further develop Comrade Mao Zedong’s theory of Party building and the Party’s style of work, we can certainly bring about the political situation he envisaged. With such a political situation, we shall be able to weather every storm and test. We must create a political situation in which the whole Party, army and people are united under the leadership of the Central Committee and in which we have “both unity of will and personal ease of mind and liveliness”, a situation in which we can place all problems on the table for discussion and people can criticize the leading comrades when they think it necessary.

It is essential to consolidate the Party and rectify its style of work. Veteran comrades should be involved in this process along with the others. Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone will have to pass a severe test. That indiscriminate method won’t be used any more. But it is still necessary that we voluntarily rectify incorrect styles of work. Let us set a good example for the young Party members and cadres, help and guide them and pass our experience on to them. Let us effectively help and guide them in applying the theory on Party building and on the Party’s style of work created by Comrade Mao Zedong and tell them about our experience in this regard. If we are successful in this, we will be able to surmount any difficulty and endure any storm, and our socialist revolution and construction will be able to develop to the full.

At this time, the political consciousness of the whole Party, army and people has risen remarkably, as has their ability to distinguish right from wrong. People are using their heads, thinking problems over and showing concern for the state and the Party. When the Gang of Four was wrecking the Party, the overwhelming majority of the people — one can say, 99 per cent of our cadres, Party members and people generally — were deeply disturbed. We have such fine cadres, such fine Party members and such a fine people, with such a high level of political consciousness and such boundless confidence in the cause of the Party! It is they who represent the surest guarantee that we can overcome all difficulties and win great victories in all fields. It is they who are our country’s most precious asset. Therefore, I am certain, as are all of you, that under the leadership of the Central Committee we shall unite the whole Party, the whole army and all the people of our various nationalities, and that, holding high the great banner of Mao Zedong Thought, we shall be able to utilize all positive factors to achieve the four modernizations by the end of this century. We shall enable our socialist state and the cause of our Party to grow and prosper, and we shall further consolidate our dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus we shall be able to make still greater contributions to the international communist movement and to all mankind.

(Excerpt from a speech at the Third Plenary Session of the Tenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.)

The New Forms of Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — The New Forms of Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

The New Forms of Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

Article 4 of 10

Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横)

By Pan Shiwei

Originally published at https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2023-4-new-forms-socialism-twenty-first-century/

Pan Shiwei (潘世伟) is the honorary president of the Institute of Chinese Marxism, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. His research focuses on Chinese socialism, party building, and political development. His published works include A Study of the Chinese Model and World Socialist Research Yearbook.

‘The New Forms of Twenty-First Century Socialism’ (新时代，新自觉——如何在当下重新思考社会主义) was originally published in Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横), issue no. 3 (June 2023).

After three decades of expansion following the end of the Cold War, liberal capitalism is now facing a crisis. The world is enveloped in a fog of uncertainty amid significant challenges posed by economic recession, geopolitical conflicts, social rifts, and disruptive new technologies. At this historical juncture, it is necessary to revitalise socialism and further develop socialist theories suited to the new conditions of the twenty-first century, paving the way for a new future for humanity.

The world has come a long way since the mid-nineteenth century, when Marx and Engels completed the fundamental transformation of socialism from utopia to science, most famously synthesised in The Communist Manifesto. Over the past 175 years, generation after generation of socialists have followed in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, working tirelessly to elevate socialism from a mere ideological concept to class struggles, political organisations, social revolutions, governments, and civilisation forms. The historical development of socialism can be divided into three main forms.

Classical Socialism in the Centres of European Capitalism

The socialist movement originated in Europe and its transformation from utopia to science also took place there, which was not accidental. This region benefited from the development of capitalism, becoming the most developed area in the world. The major European countries, with the first-mover advantage of the Industrial Revolution, created a new and powerful productive force.

Internally, a new ruling class rose to prominence, the bourgeoisie. Through various forms of bourgeois revolution, this class seized power successively in a series of European countries, creating corresponding social, political, market, and cultural structures, including the modern nation-state. The advancements and transformations of early capitalist modernisation ultimately turned the page on Europe’s somewhat gloomy medieval era.

Externally, these European countries that led in modernisation, through continuous colonial expansion and comprehensive means such as military wars, religious propagation, and cultural aggression, opened the prelude to the subsequent centuries-long globalisation centred on Europe. It is worth noting that, during this period, the internal and external development of European capitalism was intertwined and mutually conditioned: the internal development of politics, economy, culture, and society propelled and led the external expansion; in turn, external expansion greatly supported and strengthened internal development.

Behind the dazzling achievements of European capitalism, however, a new socialist ideology was quietly gestating and breaking ground. The economic and political development of European capitalism created the social conditions for the emergence of Marxism; the growth of the working class and the rise of the labour movement to advocate for their own interests, provided the class foundation; and the flourishing of social sciences, philosophy, and economics provided the intellectual environment. Together these various elements culminated in the publication of The Communist Manifesto and the birth of scientific socialism.

The founders of scientific socialism – Marx, Engels, and their contemporaries – generously acknowledged and congratulated the achievements of capitalist development. However, what set them apart from the majority of their peers was their ruthless criticism of European capitalism and firm belief that the seemingly thriving capitalist system would usher in its own swan song. These socialist pioneers fearlessly pointed out that – despite capitalism’s development of the productive forces and material wealth, and the associated advancements in politics, society, and culture – the system had profound inherent contradictions and shortcomings that capitalism could only alleviate but not eradicate. As such, capitalism could never be considered the ultimate form of human social development. It emerged in history and will be negated by history.

The socialists of this period believed that the power to make change and transcend capitalism was held by the working class and other social forces that faced oppression. In their view, it was in the interests of the working class to pursue a revolution and shatter the old world and the declining capitalist system, rather than submit to continued exploitation and oppression at the hands of the bourgeoisie. Through political struggles and social revolutions, the oppressed classes would overthrow the bourgeoisie, become the ruling class, and build a more rational and humane system in place of capitalism. The ideal system was socialism, which would eventually move towards a more advanced form of development, communism. Although the precise details of this future ideal society could not be depicted, these thinkers contended that the working class and its political parties would inevitably progress toward it.

Most importantly, in the process of criticising capitalism and arguing for socialism, this generation of socialists distilled the general laws of human social development and formulated a worldview and methodology with historical materialism at its core. This has enabled successive generations to develop more accurate understandings of the world and the movement of human history.

The classical form of socialist thought that developed in Europe during this period consisted of three key elements:

1. Socialism can only emerge in those societies where capitalism is most developed. The productive forces, political forms, and ideological resources needed to build socialism are generated within advanced forms of capitalism.

2. Capitalism can and will inevitably be negated and transcended. No matter how long capitalism sustains itself, it will ultimately amount to a fragment of human history. Even if capitalism can make internal improvements as circumstances evolve, it will not be an eternal system due to its inherent contradictions. After fulfilling its historical mission, capitalism cannot avoid being relegated to history.

3. The end of capitalism is the starting point of socialism. Socialism will be built upon the productive forces, material wealth, intellectual development, and modernisation that humanity has already created. It is precisely on the basis of these resources accumulated under capitalism that socialism seeks to resolve the tensions and conflicts between the productive forces and relations of production, overcome the constraints of private ownership of the means of production, and address all of the contradictions that arise from this order. While socialism is indeed a critique and negation of capitalism, beyond this it aims to achieve a new transcendence and sublimation. The more capitalism develops, the more it prepares the material and other conditions for socialism. Similarly, as the productive forces of capitalism become more advanced, the relations of production become more complex, and state governance grows more sophisticated, in turn, it becomes increasingly challenging to attain higher productivity, develop greater productive forces, ensure genuine fairness, and build a harmonious society. In other words, the need to construct a new socialist society grows alongside capitalism. Humanity is capable of building this better society.

The socialist classics offer a sweeping narrative of immense vitality, illuminating the path for humanity to traverse through the jungle of capitalism and inspiring people to engage in the long historical struggle towards socialism.

Transformative Forms of Socialism in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies

During the twentieth century, socialism developed in a manner that differed significantly from the expectations of classical socialism. Rather than progress in a linear manner, socialist development took place in alternating peaks and valleys, including the reversal of successful revolutions and socialist developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Socialism failed to emerge in the areas it had been expected to, namely the developed capitalist countries of Europe. However, new areas of growth emerged beyond the vision of classical Marxist writers. Socialism emerged, not within global capitalism, but outside of it; not in the countries with the most advanced productive forces, but in the economically underdeveloped regions; not in the West, but in non-Western countries; not out of traditional, urban class struggles, but from national liberation movements in the colonies and semi-colonies under the grip of imperialism. The essential meaning and logic of socialism were redefined. The extraordinary breakthroughs of socialism in Russia, China, and elsewhere transcended classical Marxism and constituted a distinct form of transformative socialism.

From the perspective of socialist thought, one essential feature of capitalism is its conquest of the world. The invasion and plunder of vast non-Western regions is necessary to sustain the prosperity and comfort of the capitalist centres of Europe. The development of wealthy countries is built upon the underdevelopment of poor countries. In this way, capitalism not only creates internal inequality but also external inequality. Classical Marxist writers recognised the destructive impact of capitalist colonial expansion on the vast non-Western world, but due to various objective historical conditions, they did not develop a systematic and detailed understanding of this matter. It was not until Lenin and subsequent Marxist theorists that the national liberation struggles of colonies and semi-colonies against capitalist and imperialist aggression received more acute attention. Reflecting this greater emphasis, the classic proposition, ‘workers of the world, unite!’ was expanded to ‘workers of the world and oppressed peoples, unite!’. Although the focus of socialist theory and practice at that time still centred on the core capitalist countries, the influence of the European socialist movement in the vast colonies and semi-colonies continued to grow. Socialist criticisms of capitalism, the ideal and pursuit of a better future society, and the courage and determination of the working class and its parties to overthrow the old world, were important sources of inspiration in the colonised world. Socialism demonstrated that it was possible for the oppressed to make new choices and build new societies, and so it became an extremely important intellectual resource for these countries in their resistance against capitalist aggression and conquest.

In the colonies and semi-colonies, a new, transformative form of socialism developed. The development of socialism in China illustrates many of the significant changes between the classical and transformative forms. This new form emerged from the intersection and integration of the socialist development logic and China’s own development logic.

In the case of China, after being isolated in the East for thousands of years, the country’s doors were forcefully opened through warfare by Western powers that were superior economically, militarily, technologically, and in terms of governance. This upheaval was not merely the result of a Western expedition against an ancient Eastern country, but also a destructive blow from a rising capitalist system against a declining feudalist order. The humiliation of China, the suffering of its people, and the tarnishing of Chinese civilisation sparked national resistance. Those who pursued national liberation and rejuvenation were in dire need of new sources of intellectual enlightenment. Faced with the predicament of internal intellectual stagnation, many Chinese intellectuals turned their gaze outward, particularly towards the highly developed Western countries. A number of Western ideas were introduced into China, with socialism and Marxism being just one of them. However, socialism resonated most with the Chinese people.

China’s encounter with and integration of socialism was the outcome of specific political, temporal, and spatial conditions. In particular, three factors led the Chinese people to embrace socialism.

1. The world’s peripheral regions, including China, were inherently opposed to the aggression of the Western capitalist countries. As an ancient civilisation with a long history of its own, China rejected the notion that it needed to be discovered, enlightened, or civilised by the Western powers. Having been invaded and plundered by Western capitalist countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, China became more inclined towards socialism.

2. Socialism identified with and foregrounded the interests of the oppressed, namely, the working class within capitalist countries that resisted bourgeois rule as well as the colonies and semi-colonies that resisted conquest by capitalist countries. As an oppressed nation, the Chinese people were naturally inclined to identify with other oppressed peoples and, therefore, the Chinese people were attracted to socialism.

3. Socialism revealed the inherent sins and decay of capitalism. As the Chinese people’s understanding of Western capitalism deepened, the dark side behind its glamorous façade became increasingly apparent, including the evils of the slave trade, the global scramble for colonies, the plight of impoverished groups within capitalist countries, and, especially, the bloody slaughter between the imperialist countries during World War I. These injustices reflected the internal flaws and contradictions of the capitalist countries, thereby igniting the Chinese people’s yearning for a better society. Socialism represented the possibility of building an ideal society.

However, many colonies and semi-colonies around the world, beyond China, encountered socialist ideas but did not similarly integrate them. Why then did socialism take root in China? The entrance of socialism into China and the Chinese people’s choice of socialism merely demonstrated the potentiality of the historical movement. To transform this potential into reality and yield fruitful results, several other crucial conditions were undoubtedly necessary. These conditions included the presence of an exemplary vanguard organisation, a generation of youth willing to sacrifice everything, intellectuals who empathised with the toiling masses, and leaders who possessed a deep understanding both of China’s national conditions and the essence of Marxism. In the twentieth century, all of these conditions were met within China. Therefore, socialism was able to take root and blossom on Chinese soil.

The entrance of socialism into China changed the nature of social transformation in China. In the blueprint of world capitalism, China was situated on the periphery, subordinated to the capitalist core, and consigned to foreign domination. Whether China developed and overcame its semi-feudal and semi-colonial status was irrelevant to the core capitalist countries. These countries sought to define any social transformation within China and ensure that it was carried out by political agents that would direct it towards capitalist homogenisation and the interests of the core. This blueprint was terminated after socialism arrived in China as a different vision of social transformation emerged. The Communist Party of China (CPC) took the place of the country’s bourgeois political parties and became the leader of China’s social transformation. In this process, the working class, together with the peasantry and other classes, overthrew the bourgeoisie and became the driving force in China’s social transformation. The blueprint of China’s social transformation was fundamentally redrawn, and now pursued the following aims: opposition to the aggression, oppression, and exploitation of foreign capitalism in China; opposition to foreign capitalism’s support for reactionary forces in China; an end to the rule of feudalism, bureaucratic capitalism, and imperialism in China; and the achievement of national liberation and independence. Socialism outlined a revolutionary vision for China that completely overturned the content and methods that had been put forward by the bourgeoisie.

The socialist vision for social transformation also changed how China approached the building of a modern state. After the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, the new state did not choose a capitalist development path, but rather, pursued a direct transition to socialism. Accordingly, the entire process of state construction followed this principle, shaping the construction of China’s basic political, economic, and social systems. Furthermore, the state and its institutions were built based on China’s specific conditions and aimed to ensure that the Chinese people were masters of the country. Key features included the leadership of the CPC, the system of a people’s congresses that extended from the local, village-level to the national-level, the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation, the system of ethnic regional autonomy, and the system of community-level participatory governance. In this manner, China was able to construct a modern state and attain long-term political stability.

Finally, socialism reset China’s approach to modernisation. As humanity transitioned from agricultural to industrial societies, European countries led the initial process of modernisation thanks to the first-mover advantage that they gained from the industrial revolution. During their expansion, these countries imposed incomplete and subordinate forms of capitalist modernisation onto many developing countries, including China. This process was not smooth, but was characterised by setbacks, stagnation, and failures. After the Chinese Revolution, the PRC pursued a sovereign, non-capitalist path to modernisation. The CPC effectively mobilised and organised hundreds of millions of Chinese people to vigorously promote China’s industrialisation, striving to create the material foundation for socialism. This process took place in a hostile international environment and experienced a series of twists and turns during the initial decades after the revolution. By the late 1970s, a new path for China’s modernisation had opened up: the socialist market economy, active participation in the world economy, and the pursuit of common prosperity. Following the initiation of reform and opening up, China achieved a miracle of long-term rapid economic development, making great strides in industrialisation, urbanisation, technological advancement, developing the market economy, and pursuing international exchanges. These efforts have placed China at the forefront of the world’s modernisation tide.

The preceding paragraphs offer a general outline of how new forms of socialism and socialist development have emerged, with particular reference to the case of China. The emergence of a transformative form of socialism in China does not represent a general process of socialist development, although it may have implications that are relevant for other countries. Rather, the birth and growth of this new form vividly illustrates the diverse nature of socialist development.

Building a New Form of Socialism That Can Surpass Capitalism through Self-Improvement

In the mid-nineteenth century, socialism emerged in Europe and took its initial form, based on a starting point of advanced capitalist development. This original form has not disappeared and continues to slowly grow. It has mainly manifested in criticisms of capitalism at the ideological and cultural level, as well as social and political movements that strive to advocate for the interests of the oppressed classes. However, this form of socialism still has a long way to go before it can ascend to a dominant position and replace capitalism. Reasons for this include the divisions and variations within the socialist movement itself, as well as capitalism’s extraordinary resilience and capacity for adaptation. Fundamentally, however, socialism has not grown in the developed capitalist countries as it has in developing countries due to the absence of vanguard parties in the former. As a result, capitalism has been able to operate in a normal manner.

In the twentieth century, the socialist movement opened up new development opportunities in non-capitalist regions of the world. Developing countries, such as China, chose not to embrace the path offered by core capitalist countries and severed their ties with capitalism, becoming new areas of growth for socialism. Faced with pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist societies, and situated in historical positions of relative backwardness in terms of economic, political, cultural, and social development, these countries faced challenges that could not be answered by classical theories on the direct transition from capitalism to socialism. Fortunately, they demonstrated unprecedented historical initiative and creativity by pursuing socialist-oriented revolutions, socialist-oriented nation-building, and socialist-oriented modernisation. As a result, completely different theories and practices of socialist construction took shape in developing countries, along with new forms of socialist development.

How will socialism continue to develop and progress in the twenty-first century? This is a question of concern for all socialist thinkers and practitioners. Of course, the aforementioned forms of socialist development and late-starter modernisation remain important in developing countries and non-capitalist regions. At the same time, as socialism continues to develop in China, a further new form is emerging. Having attained socialist modernisation, China’s social productive forces, technological strength, overall national strength, and achievements in other aspects of development are demonstrating the possibility of socialism surpassing capitalism as well as the superiority and potential of socialism. For this new form of socialism to strengthen, China must advance beyond its current level of development to a higher level.

This new form cannot simply be an extension of the existing transformational form of socialism, but rather a meaningfully advanced form. In a certain sense, this new form entails a return to classical Marxism, as it must take up the question of how to transcend the capitalism of the core countries (although from the outside). The new form aims to surpass capitalism through the self-improvement of socialism.

Objectively speaking, this new form has just begun to emerge. We are not yet able to fully grasp its overall direction and inherent laws, but can only provide a rough outline of its basic contours. To strengthen this new form of socialism in China, the following areas of development are key.

1. Develop a deep and unified theoretical understanding of socialism and cultivate corresponding abilities to realise a higher level of development. The CPC, which leads the development of socialism in China, needs to engage in deep thinking, comprehensive planning, and long-term strategising, while adapting to the unfolding situation. It is important for the party to establish this foundation and build upon it for further learning, to unify its thinking, and to gradually establish an ongoing process of self-growth. In particular, it is crucial for the party to develop a comprehensive understanding of the country’s level of development, bottlenecks, favourable and unfavourable conditions, and operational mechanisms, along with an understanding of the practical experiences of capitalism in the United States and Europe.

2. Strengthen overall development. China’s level of development is not consistent across different fields. Economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological development varies in terms of progress, prioritisation, and imbalances. It is necessary to promote balanced and integrated development in these five fields.

3. Promote high-quality development of productivity and enhance the material foundation. Despite China’s large strides in catching up with and, in certain respects, surpassing the economic development of the core capitalist countries, the country still has a long way to go in terms of further developing productivity, productive efficiency, advanced technology, and material wealth. Without this, the inherent advantages of socialism cannot be fully realised.

4. Strengthen institutional maturity and unique governance advantages. Building on the consolidation of existing, unique institutional and governance advantages, concrete efforts should be undertaken to accelerate this process. Only by doing so can China develop institutional strength on par with the institutions of Western capitalism, which have been in place for hundreds of years.

5. Strengthen the inherent advantages of socialism. Compared to capitalism, socialism has many unique advantages, such as making the people the masters of the country; the people-centred approach of the ruling party, which is not guided by personal privileges and self-interest; the steadfast pursuit of common prosperity to prevent extreme wealth inequality; concerted efforts to maintain the party’s progressive nature, integrity, and strong leadership; and the emphasis on social harmony and avoiding fundamental conflicts or confrontations among the people. These advantages need to be valued and carefully nurtured. On top of this, a new system should be built to pool and mobilise resources nationwide for major issues.

6. Strengthen cultural and intellectual power. Being a civilisational nation and state is of utmost importance to China. Chinese civilisation has distinct characteristics in language, culture, and thought. The integration of Marxism and the emergence of a new form of socialism in China owes much to their compatibility with Chinese culture, which has always been deeply rooted in society and people’s daily lives. Efforts should be made to creatively transform China’s valuable cultural resources into more proactive cultural and intellectual strength. China should also work together with other cultures to highlight the value of human diversity.

7. Highlight the global comparative advantages of socialist development. China’s development has created global comparative advantages in some fields, even relative to developed capitalist countries. China has advanced the modernisation of a country of 1.4 billion people, surpassing the combined modernisation of the developed capitalist countries in scale and scope. Moreover, China’s modernisation has been achieved at a faster pace, with lower social costs and broader inclusivity, and using a more peaceful approach. This is the greatest experiment in modernisation in human history. China has also taken the lead in areas such as renewable energy, ecological protection, poverty alleviation, and technological development, with impressive achievements comparable to those of developed capitalist countries. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has embarked on an ambitious, cooperative developmental project with the countries of the Global South, encouraging their own pursuits of modernisation. To address the world’s common challenges, China has put forward the concept of building a ‘community with a shared future for humanity’ (人类命运共同体, rénlèi mìngyùn gòngtóngtǐ) and a range of proposals to promote global peace and development. China welcomes and embraces cooperation, competition, and different forms of modernisation and development around the world. As China’s own modernisation continues to advance, its international comparative advantages will become more prominent. As for hostile attempts by certain countries to contain China, China will respond with sufficient intelligence and capability.

The wheels of progress are racing forward, as we advance through the third decade of the twenty-first century. What excites all socialists is the emergence of new forms of socialism. Building off more than a century of socialist development, in a way, we seem to have returned to the era of Marx and Engels, who continuously pondered over how socialism would surpass capitalism and become its gravedigger. Today, we can see that socialism is better than capitalism at doing what the latter purportedly does best, while also successfully accomplishing many things that capitalism cannot. Socialism in China continues to grow stronger and strives to comprehensively surpass even the most advanced forms of contemporary capitalism, as Marx and Engels envisioned, and create a better society for humanity. Faced with this emerging new form of socialism, we need a new sense of consciousness.

On The Ten Major Relationships

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — On The Ten Major Relationships

On The Ten Major Relationships

Article 5 of 10

Marxists Internet Archive

By Mao Tsetung

Originally published at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_51.htm

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

April 25, 1956

[Speech at an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Bearing in mind lessons drawn from the Soviet Union, Comrade Mao Tsetung summed up China's experience, dealt with ten major relationships in socialist revolution and socialist construction and set forth the ideas underlying the general line of building socialism with greater, faster, better and more economical results, a line suited to the conditions of our country.]

In recent months the Political Bureau of the Central Committee has heard reports on the work of thirty-four industrial, agricultural, transport, commercial, financial and other departments under the: central authorities and from these reports has identified a number of problems concerning socialist construction and socialist transformation. In all, they boil down to ten problems, or ten major relationships.

It is to focus on one basic policy that these ten problems are being raised, the basic policy of mobilizing all positive factors, internal and external, to serve the cause of socialism. In the past we followed this policy of mobilizing all positive factors in order to put an end to the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism and to win victory for the people's democratic revolution. We are now following the same policy in order to carry on the socialist revolution and build a socialist country. Nevertheless, there are some problems in our work that need discussion. Particularly worthy of attention is the fact that in the Soviet Union certain defects and errors that occurred in the course of their building socialism have lately come to light. Do you want to follow the detours they have made? It was by drawing lessons from their experience that we were able to avoid certain detours in the past, and there is all the more reason for us to do so now.

What are the positive factors, internal and external? Internally, the workers and the peasants are the basic force. The middle forces are forces that can be won over. The reactionary forces are a negative factor, but even so we should do our work well and turn this negative factor as far as possible into a positive one. Internationally, all the forces that can be united with must be united, the forces that are not neutral can be neutralized through our efforts, and even the reactionary forces can be split and made use of. In short, we should mobilize all forces, whether direct or indirect, and strive to make China a powerful socialist country.

I will now discuss the ten problems.

I. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEAVY INDUSTRY ON THE ONE HAND AND LIGHT INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE ON THE OTHER

The emphasis in our country's construction is on heavy industry. The production of the means of production must be given priority that's settled. But it definitely does not follow that the production of the means of subsistence, especially grain, can be neglected. Without enough food and other daily necessities, it would be impossible to provide for the workers in the first place, and then what sense would it make to talk about developing heavy industry? Therefore, the relationship between heavy industry on the one hand and light industry and agriculture on the other must be properly handled.

In dealing with this relationship we have not made mistakes of principle. We have done better than the Soviet Union and a number of East European countries. The prolonged failure of the Soviet Union to reach the highest pre-October Revolution level in grain output, the grave problems arising from the glaring disequilibrium between the development of heavy industry and that of light industry in some East European countries -- such problems do not exist in our country. Their lop-sided stress on heavy industry to the neglect of agriculture and light industry results in a shortage of goods on the market and an unstable currency. We, on the other hand, attach more importance to agriculture and light industry. We have all along attended to and developed agriculture and have to a considerable degree ensured the supply of grain and raw materials necessary for the development of industry. Our daily necessities are in fairly good supply and our prices and currency are stable.

The problem now facing us is that of continuing to adjust properly the ratio between investment in heavy industry on the one hand and in agriculture and light industry on the other in order to bring about a greater development of the latter. Does this mean that heavy industry is no longer primary? No. It still is, it still claims the emphasis in our investment. But the proportion for agriculture and light industry must be somewhat increased.

What will be the results of this increase? First, the daily needs of the people will be better satisfied, and, second, the accumulation of capital will be speeded up so that we can develop heavy industry with greater and better results. Heavy industry can also accumulate capital, but, given our present economic conditions, light industry and agriculture can accumulate more and faster.

Here the question arises: Is your desire to develop heavy industry genuine or feigned, strong or weak? If your desire is feigned or weak, then you will hit agriculture and light industry and invest less in them. If your desire is genuine or strong, then you will attach importance to agriculture and light industry so that there will be more grain and more raw materials for light industry and a greater accumulation of capital. And there will be more funds in the future to invest in heavy industry.

There are now two possible approaches to our development of heavy industry: one is to develop agriculture and light industry less, and the other is to develop them more. In the long run, the first approach will lead to a smaller and slower development of heavy industry, or at least will put it on a less solid foundation, and when the over-all account is added up a few decades hence, it will not prove to have paid. The second approach will lead to a greater and faster development of heavy industry and, since it ensures the livelihood of the people, it will lay a more solid foundation for the development of heavy industry.

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDUSTRY IN THE COASTAL REGIONS AND INDUSTRY IN THE INTERIOR

In the past our industry was concentrated in the coastal regions. By coastal regions we mean Liaoning, Hopei, Peking, Tientsin, eastern Honan, Shantung, Anhwei, Kiangsu, Shanghai, Chekiang, Fukien, Kwangtung and Kwangsi. About 70 per cent of all our industry, both light and heavy, is to be found in the coastal regions and only 30 percent in the interior. This irrational situation is a product of history. The coastal industrial base must be put to full use, but to even out the distribution of industry as it develops we must strive to promote industry in the interior. We have not made any major mistakes on the relationship between the two. However, in recent years we have underestimated coastal industry to some extent and have not given great enough attention to its development. This must change.

Not so long ago, there was still fighting in Korea and the international situation was quite tense; this could not but affect our attitude towards coastal industry. Now, it seems unlikely that there will be a new war of aggression against China or another world war in the near future and there will probably be a period of peace for a decade or more. It would therefore be wrong if we still fail to make full use of the plant capacity and technical forces of coastal industry. If we are to have only five years, not to say ten, we should still work hard to develop industries in the coastal regions for four years and evacuate them when war breaks out in the fifth. According to available information, in light industry the construction of a plant and its accumulation of capital generally proceed quite rapidly. After the whole plant goes into production, it can earn enough in four years to build three new factories, or two, or one or at least half of one, in addition to recouping its capital outlay. Why shouldn't we do such profitable things? The notion that the atom bomb is already overhead and about to fall on us in a matter of seconds is a calculation at variance with reality and it would be wrong to take a negative attitude towards coastal industry on this account.

It does not follow that all new factories should be built in the coastal regions. Without doubt, the greater part of the new industry should be located in the interior so that industry may gradually become evenly distributed; moreover, this will help our preparations against war. But a number of new factories and mines, even some large ones, may also be built in the coastal regions. As for the expansion and reconstruction of the light and heavy industries already in the coastal regions, we have done a fair amount of work in the past and will do much more in the future.

Making good use of the old industries in the coastal regions and developing their capacities will put us in a stronger position to promote and support industry in the interior. To adopt a negative attitude would be to hinder the latter's speedy growth. So it is likewise a question of whether the desire to develop industry in the interior is genuine or not. If it is genuine and not feigned, we must more actively use and promote industry in the coastal regions, especially light industry.

III. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC CONSTRUCTION AND DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION

National defence is indispensable. Our defence capabilities have attained a certain level. As a result of the war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea and of several years of training and consolidation, our armed forces have grown more powerful and are now stronger than was the Soviet Red Army before the Second World War; also, there have been improvements in armaments. Our defence industry is being built up. Ever since Pan Ku separated heaven and earth, we have never been able to make planes and cars, and now we are beginning to make them.

We do not have the atom bomb yet. But neither did we have planes and artillery in the past. We defeated the Japanese imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek with millet plus rifles. We are stronger than before and will be stronger still in the future. We will have not only more planes and artillery but atom bombs too. If we are not to be bullied in the present-day world, we cannot do without the bomb. Then what is to be done about it? One reliable way is to cut military and administrative expenditures down to appropriate proportions and increase expenditures on economic construction. Only with the faster growth of economic construction can there be greater progress in defence construction.

At the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of our Party in 1950, we already raised the question of streamlining the state apparatus and reducing military and administrative expenditures and considered this measure to be one of the three prerequisites for achieving a fundamental turn for the better in our financial and economic situation. In the period of the First Five-Year Plan, military and administrative expenditures accounted for 30 per cent of the total expenditures in the state budget. This proportion is much too high. In the period of the Second Five-Year Plan, we must reduce it to around 20 per cent, so that more funds can be released for building more factories and turning out more machines. After a time, we shall not only have plenty of planes and artillery but probably have our own atom bombs as well.

Here again the question arises: Is your desire for the atom bomb genuine and very keen? Or is it only lukewarm and not so very keen? If your desire is genuine and very keen, then you will reduce the proportion of military and administrative expenditures and spend more on economic construction. If your desire is not genuine or not so very keen, you will stay in the old rut. This is a matter of strategic policy, and I hope the Military Commission will discuss it.

Would it be all right to demobilize all our troops now? No, it would not. For enemies are still around, and we are being bullied and encircled by them. We must strengthen our national defence, and for that purpose we must first of all strengthen our work in economic construction.

IV. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STATE, THE UNITS OF PRODUCTION AND THE PRODUCERS

The relationship between the state on the one hand and factories and agricultural co-operatives on the other and the relationship between factories and agricultural co-operatives on the one hand and the producers on the other should both be handled well. To this end we should consider not just one side but all three, the state, the collective and the individual, or, as we used to say, "take into consideration both the army and the people" and "take into consideration both the public and the private interest". In view of the experience of the Soviet Union as well as our own, we must see to it that from now on this problem is solved much better.

Take the workers for example. As their labour productivity rises, there should be a gradual improvement in their working conditions and collective welfare. We have always advocated plain living and hard work and opposed putting personal material benefits above everything else; at the same time we have always advocated concern for the livelihood of the masses and opposed bureaucracy, which is callous to their well-being. With the growth of our economy as a whole, wages should be appropriately adjusted. We have recently decided to increase wages to some extent, mainly the wages of those at the lower levels, the wages of the workers, in order to narrow the wage gap between them and the upper levels. Generally speaking, our wages are not high, but compared with the past the life of our workers has greatly improved because, among other things, more people are employed and prices remain low and stable. Under the regime of the proletariat, our workers have unfailingly displayed high political consciousness and enthusiasm for labour. When at the end of last year the Central Committee called for a fight against Right conservatism, the masses of workers warmly responded and, what was exceptional, overfulfilled the plan for the first quarter of the year by working all out for three months. We must strive to encourage this zeal for hard work and at the same time pay still greater attention to solving the pressing problems in their work and everyday life.

Here I would like to touch on the question of the independence of the factories under unified leadership. It's not right, I'm afraid, to place everything in the hands of the central or the provincial and municipal authorities without leaving the factories any power of their own, any room for independent action, any benefits. We don't have much experience on how to share power and returns properly among the central authorities, the provincial and municipal authorities and the factories, and we should study the subject. As a matter of principle, centralization and independence form a unity of opposites, and there must be both centralization and independence. For instance, we are now having a meeting, which is centralization; after the meeting, some of us will go for a walk, some will read books, some will go to eat, which is independence. If we don't adjourn the meeting and give everyone some independence but let it go on and on, wouldn't it be the death of us all? This is true of individuals, and no less true of factories and other units of production. Every unit of production must enjoy independence as the correlative of centralization if it is to develop more vigorously.

Now about the peasants. Our relations with the peasants have always been good, but we did make a mistake on the question of grain. In 1954 floods caused a decrease in production in some parts of our country, and yet we purchased 7,000 million more catties of grain. A decrease in production and an increase in purchasing -- this made grain the topic on almost everyone's lips in many places last spring and nearly every household talked about the state monopoly for marketing grain. The peasants were disgruntled, and there were a lot of complaints both inside and outside the Party. Although quite a few people indulged in deliberate exaggeration and exploited the opportunity to attack us, it cannot be said that we had no shortcomings. Inadequate investigation and failure to size up the situation resulted in the purchase of 7,000 million catties more; that was a shortcoming. After discovering it, we purchased 7,000 million catties less in 1955 and introduced a system of fixed quotas for grain production, purchasing and marketing [1] and, what's more, there was a good harvest. With a decrease in purchasing and an increase in production, the peasants had over 20,000 million more catties of grain at their disposal. Thus even those peasants who had complaints before said, "The Communist Party is really good." This lesson the whole Party must bear in mind.

The Soviet Union has adopted measures which squeeze the peasants very hard. It takes away too much from the peasants at too low a price through its system of so-called obligatory sales [2] and other measures. This method of capital accumulation has seriously dampened the peasants' enthusiasm for production. You want the hen to lay more eggs and yet you don't feed it, you want the horse to run fast and yet you don't let it graze. What kind of logic is that!

Our policies towards the peasants differ from those of the Soviet Union and take into account the interests of both the state and the peasants. Our agricultural tax has always been relatively low. In the exchange of industrial and agricultural products we follow a policy of narrowing the price scissors, a policy of exchanging equal or roughly equal values. The state buys agricultural products at standard prices while the peasants suffer no loss, and, what is more, our purchase prices are gradually being raised. In supplying the peasants with manufactured goods we follow a policy of larger sales at a small profit and of stabilizing or appropriately reducing their prices; in supplying grain to the peasants in grain-deficient areas we generally subsidize such sales to a certain extent. Even so, mistakes of one kind or another will occur if we are not careful. In view of the grave mistakes made by the Soviet Union on this question, we must take greater care and handle the relationship between the state and the peasants well.

Similarly, the relationship between the co-operative and the peasants should be well handled. What proportion of the earnings of a co-operative should go to the state, to the co-operative and to the peasants respectively and in what form should be determined properly. The amount that goes to the co-operative is used directly to serve the peasants. Production expenses need no explanation, management expenses are also necessary, the accumulation fund is for expanded reproduction and the public welfare fund is for the peasants' well-being. However, together with the peasants, we should work out equitable ratios among these items. We must strictly economize on production and management expenses. The accumulation fund and the public welfare fund must also be kept within limits, and one shouldn't expect all good things to be done in a single year.

Except in case of extraordinary natural disasters, we must see to it that, given increased agricultural production, go per cent of the co-operative members get some increase in their income and the other lo per cent break even each year, and if the latter's income should fall, ways must be found to solve the problem in good time.

In short, consideration must be given to both sides, not to just one, whether they are the state and the factory, the state and the worker, the factory and the worker, the state and the co-operative, the state and the peasant, or the co-operative and the peasant. To give consideration to only one side, whichever it may be, is harmful to socialism and to the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a big question which concerns 600 million people, and it calls for repeated education in the whole Party and the whole nation.

V. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CENTRAL AND THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES

The relationship between the central and the local authorities constitutes another contradiction. To resolve this contradiction, our attention should now be focussed on how to enlarge the powers of the local authorities to some extent, give them greater independence and let them do more, all on the premise that the unified leadership of the central authorities is to be strengthened. This will be advantageous to our task of building a powerful socialist country. Our territory is so vast, our population is so large and the conditions are so complex that it is far better to have the initiative come from both the central and the local authorities than from one source alone. We must not follow the example of the Soviet Union in concentrating everything in the hands of the central authorities, shackling the local authorities and denying them the right to independent action.

The central authorities want to develop industry, and so do the local authorities. Even industries directly under the central authorities need assistance from the local authorities. And all the more so for agriculture and commerce. In short, if we are to promote socialist construction, we must bring the initiative of the local authorities into lay. If we are to strengthen the central authorities, we must attend to the interests of the localities.

At present scores of hands are reaching out to the localities, making things difficult for them. Once a ministry is set up, it wants to have revolution and so it issues orders. Since the ministries don't think it proper to issue orders to the Party committees and people's councils at the provincial level, they establish direct contact with the relevant departments and bureaus in the provinces and municipalities and give them orders every day. These orders are all supposed to come from the central authorities, even though neither the Central Committee of the Party nor the State Council knows anything about them, and they put a great strain on the local authorities. There is such a flood of statistical forms that they become a scourge. This state affairs must be changed.

We should encourage the style of work in which the local authorities are consulted on the matters to be taken up. It is the practice of the Central Committee of the Party to consult the local authorities; it never hastily issues orders without prior consultation. We hope that the ministries and departments under the central authorities will pay due attention to this and will first confer with the localities on all matters concerning them and issue no order without full consultation.

The central departments fall into two categories. Those in the first category exercise leadership right down to the enterprises, but their administrative offices and enterprises in the localities are also subject to supervision by the local authorities. Those in the second have the task of laying down guiding principles and mapping out work plans, while the local authorities assume the responsibility for putting them into operation.

For a large country like ours and a big Party like ours the proper handling of the relationship between the central and local authorities is of vital importance. Some capitalist countries pay great attention to this too. Although their social system is fundamentally different from ours, the experience of their growth is nevertheless worth studying. Take our own experience; the system of the greater administrative area instituted in the early days of our People's Republic was a necessity at that time, and yet it had shortcomings which were later exploited to a certain extent by the anti-Party alliance of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih. It was subsequently decided to abolish the greater administrative areas and put the various provinces directly under the central authorities; that was a correct decision. But neither was the outcome so satisfactory when matters went to the length of depriving the localities of their necessary independence. According to our Constitution, the legislative powers are all vested in the central authorities. But, provided that the policies of the central authorities are not violated, the local authorities may work out rules, regulations and measures in the light of their specific conditions and the needs of their work, and this is in no way prohibited by the Constitution. We want both unity and particularity. To build a powerful socialist country it is imperative to have a strong and unified central leadership and unified planning and discipline throughout the country; disruption of this indispensable unity is impermissible. At the same time, it is essential to bring the initiative of the local authorities into full play and let each locality enjoy the particularity suited to its local conditions. This particularity is not the Kao Kang type of particularity but one that is necessary for the interest of the whole and for the strengthening of national unity.

There is also the relationship between different local authorities, and here I refer chiefly to the relationship between the higher and lower local authorities. Since the provinces and municipalities have their own complaints about the central departments, can it be that the prefectures, counties, districts and townships have no complaints about the provinces and municipalities? The central authorities should take care to give scope to the initiative of the provinces and municipalities, and the latter in their turn should do the same for the prefectures, counties, districts and townships; in neither case should the lower levels be put in a strait-jacket. Of course comrades at the lower levels must be informed of the matters on which centralization is necessary and they must not act as they please. In short, centralization must be enforced where it is possible and necessary, otherwise it should not be imposed at all. The provinces and municipalities, prefectures, counties, districts and townships should all enjoy their own proper independence and rights and should fight for them. To fight for such rights in the interest of the whole nation and not of the locality cannot be called localism or an undue assertion of independence.

The relationship between different provinces and municipalities is also a kind of relationship between different local authorities, and it should be properly handled too. It is our consistent principle to advocate consideration for the general interest and mutual help and accommodation.

Our experience is still insufficient and immature on the question of handling the relationship between the central and local authorities and that between different local authorities. We hope that you will consider and discuss it in earnest and sum up your experience from time to time so as to enhance achievements and overcome shortcomings.

VI. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HAN NATIONALITY AND THE MINORITY NATIONALITIES

Comparatively speaking, our policy on the relationship between the Han nationality and the minority nationalities is sound and has won the favour of the minority nationalities. We put the emphasis on opposing Han chauvinism. Local-nationality chauvinism must be opposed too, but generally that is not where our emphasis lies.

The population of the minority nationalities in our country is small, but the area they inhabit is large. The Han people comprise 94 per cent of the total population, an overwhelming majority. If they practiced Han chauvinism and discriminated against the minority peoples, that would be very bad. And who has more land? The minority nationalities, who occupy 50 to 60 per cent of the territory. We say China is a country vast in territory, rich in resources and large in population; as a matter of fact, it is the Han nationality whose population is large and the minority nationalities whose territory is vast and whose resources are rich, or at least in all probability their resources under the soil are rich.

The minority nationalities have all contributed to the making of China's history. The huge Han population is the result of the intermingling of many nationalities over a long time. All through the ages, the reactionary rulers, chiefly from the Han nationality, sowed feelings of estrangement among our various nationalities and bullied the minority peoples. Even among the working people it is not easy to eliminate the resultant influences in a short time. So we have to make extensive and sustained efforts to educate both the cadres and the masses in our proletarian nationality policy and make a point of frequently reviewing the relationship between the Han nationality and the minority nationalities. One such review was made two years ago and there should be another now. If the relationship is found to be abnormal, then we must deal with it in earnest and not just in words.

We need to make a thorough study of what systems of economic management and finance will suit the minority nationality areas.

We must sincerely and actively help the minority nationalities to develop their economy and culture. In the Soviet Union the relationship between the Russian nationality and the minority nationalities is very abnormal; we should draw lessons from this. The air in the atmosphere, the forests on the earth and the riches under the soil are all important factors needed for the building of socialism, but n material factor can be exploited and utilized without the human factor We must foster good relations between the Han nationality and the minority nationalities and strengthen the unity of all the nationalities in the common endeavour to build our great socialist motherland.

VII. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARTY AND NON-PARTY

Which is better, to have just one party or several? As we see it now, it's perhaps better to have several parties. This has been true in the past and may well be so for the future; it means long-term , coexistence and mutual supervision.

In our country the various democratic parties, consisting primarily of the national bourgeoisie and its intellectuals, emerged during the resistance to Japan and the struggle against Chiang Kai-shek, and they continue to exist to this day. In this respect, China is different from the Soviet Union. We have purposely let the democratic parties remain, giving them opportunities to express their views and adopting a policy of both unity and struggle towards them. We unite with all those democratic personages who offer us well-intentioned criticisms. We should go on activating the enthusiasm of such people from the Kuomintang army and government as Wei Li-huang and Weng Wen-hao, who are patriotic. We should even provide for such abusive types as Lung Yun, Liang Shu-ming and Peng Yi-hu and allow them to rail at us, while refuting their nonsense and accepting what makes sense in their rebukes. This is better for the Party, for the people and for socialism.

Since classes and class struggle still exist in China, there is bound to be opposition in one form or another. Although all the democratic parties and democrats without party affiliation have professed their acceptance of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, many of them are actually in opposition in varying degrees. On such matters as "carrying the revolution through to the end", the movement to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea and the agrarian reform, they were against us and yet not against us. To this very day they have reservations about the suppression of counter-revolutionaries. They didn't want to have a constitution of the socialist type, for, as they said, the Common Programme was just perfect, and yet when the Draft Constitution came out, their hands all went up in favour. Things often turn into their opposites, and this is also true of the attitude of the democratic parties on many questions. They are in opposition, and yet not in opposition, often proceeding from being in opposition to not being in opposition.

The Communist Party and the democratic parties are all products of history. What emerges in history disappears in history. Therefore, the Communist Party will disappear one day, and so will the democratic parties. Is this disappearance so unpleasant? In my opinion, it will be very pleasant. I think it is just fine that one day we will be able to do away with the Communist Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Our task is to hasten their extinction. We have spoken about this point many times.

But at present we cannot do without the proletarian party and the dictatorship of the proletariat and, what is more, it is imperative that they should be made still more powerful. Otherwise, we would not be able to suppress the counter-revolutionaries, resist the imperialists and build socialism, or consolidate it when it is built. Lenin's theory on the proletarian party and the dictatorship of the proletariat is by no means "outmoded", as alleged by certain people. The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot but be highly coercive. Still, we must oppose bureaucracy and a cumbersome apparatus. I propose that the Party and government organs should be thoroughly streamlined and cut by two-thirds provided that no person dies and no work stops.

However, streamlining the Party and government organs does not mean getting rid of the democratic parties. I suggest you give attention to our united front work so as to improve our relations with them and make every possible effort to mobilize their enthusiasm for the cause of socialism.

VIII. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

What kind of factor are counter-revolutionaries? They are a negative factor, a destructive factor, they are forces opposed to the positive factors. Is it possible for counter-revolutionaries to change? The die-herds will undoubtedly never change. However, given the conditions in our country, most of the counter-revolutionaries will eventually change to a greater or lesser extent. Thanks to the correct policy we adopted, many have been transformed into persons no longer opposed to the revolution, and a few have even done some good.

The following points should be affirmed:

First, it should be affirmed that the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in 1951-1952 was necessary. There is a view that this campaign needn't have been launched. This is wrong.

Counter-revolutionaries may be dealt with in these ways: execution, imprisonment, supervision and leaving at large. Execution -- everybody knows what that means. By imprisonment we mean putting counter-revolutionaries in jail and reforming them through labour. By supervision we mean leaving them in society to be reformed under the supervision of the masses. By leaving at large we mean that generally no arrest is made in those cases where it is marginal whether to make an arrest, or that those arrested are set free for good behaviour. It is essential that different counter-revolutionaries should be dealt with differently on the merits of each case.

Now let's take execution in particular. True, we executed a number of people during the above-mentioned campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries. But what sort of people were they? They were counter-revolutionaries who owed the masses many blood debts and were bitterly hated. In a great revolution embracing 600 million people, the masses would not have been able to rise if we had not killed off such local despots as the "Tyrant of the East" and the "Tyrant of the West". Had it not been for that campaign of suppression, the people would not have approved our present policy of leniency. Now that some people have heard that Stalin wrongly put a number of people to death, they jump to the conclusion that we too were wrong in putting those counter-revolutionaries to death. This is a wrong view. It is of immediate significance today to affirm that it was absolutely right to execute those counter-revolutionaries.

Second, it should be affirmed that counter-revolutionaries still exist, although their number has greatly diminished. After the Hu Feng case surfaced, it was necessary to ferret out the counter-revolutionaries. The effort to clear out those who remain hidden must go on. It should be affirmed that there are still a small number of counter-revolutionaries carrying out counter-revolutionary sabotage of one kind or another. For example, they kill cattle, set fire to granaries, wreck factories, steal information and put up reactionary posters. Consequently, it is wrong to say that counter-revolutionaries have been completely eliminated and that we can therefore lay our heads on our pillows and just drop off to sleep. As long as class struggle exists in China and in the world, we should never relax our vigilance. Nevertheless, it would be equally wrong to assert that there are still large numbers of counter-revolutionaries.

Third, from now on there should be fewer arrests and executions in the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in society at large. They are the mortal and immediate enemies of the people and are deeply hated by them, and therefore a small number should be executed. But most of them should be handed over to the agricultural co-operatives and made to work under supervision and be reformed through labour. All the same, we cannot announce that there will be no more executions, and we must not abolish the death penalty.

Fourth, in clearing out counter-revolutionaries in Party and government organs, schools and army units, we must adhere to the policy started in Yenan of killing none and arresting few. Confirmed counter-revolutionaries are to be screened by the organizations concerned, but they are not to be arrested by the public security bureaus, prosecuted by the procuratorial organs or tried by the law courts. Well over ninety out of every hundred of these counter-revolutionaries should be dealt with in this way. This is what we mean by arresting few. As for executions, kill none.

What kind of people are those we don't execute? We don't execute people like Hu Feng, Pan Han-nien, Jao Shu-shih, or even captured war criminals such as Emperor Pu Yi and Kang Tse. We don't have them executed, not because their crimes don't deserve capital punishment but because such executions would yield no advantage. If one such criminal is executed, a second and a third will be compared with him in their crimes, and then many heads will begin to roll. This is my first point. Second, people may be wrongly executed. Once a head is chopped off, history shows it can't be restored, nor can it grow again as chives do, after being cut. If you cut off a head by mistake, there is no way to rectify the mistake, even if you want to. The third point is that you will have destroyed a source of evidence. You need evidence in order to suppress counter-revolutionaries. Often one counter-revolutionary serves as a living witness against another, an there will be cases where you may want to consult him. If you have got rid of him, you may not be able to get evidence any more. And this will be to the advantage of counter-revolution, not of revolution. The fourth point is that killing these counter-revolutionaries won't (1) raise production, (2) raise the country's scientific level, (3) help do away with the four pests, (4) strengthen national defence, or (5) help recover Taiwan. It will only earn you the reputation of killing captives, and killing captives has always given one a bad name. Another point is that counter-revolutionaries inside Party and government organ are different from those in society at large. The latter lord it over the masses while the former are somewhat removed from the masses, and therefore make enemies in general but seldom enemies in particular. What harm is there in killing none of them? Those who are physically fit for manual labour should be reformed through labour, and those who are not should be provided for. Counter-revolutionaries are trash, they are vermin, but once in your hands, you can make them perform some kind of service for the people.

But shall we enact a law stipulating that no counter-revolutionary in Party and government organs is to be executed? Ours is a poll for internal observance which need not be made public, and all we need do is carry it out as far as possible in practice. Supposing someone should throw a bomb into this building, killing everybody here, or half or one-third of the people present, what would you say -- execute him or not execute him? Certainly he must be executed.

Adopting the policy of killing none when eliminating counter-revolutionaries from Party and government organs in no way prevent us from being strict with them. Instead, it serves as a safeguard against irretrievable mistakes, and if mistakes are made, it gives us a opportunity to correct them. In this way many people will be put a ease and distrust among comrades inside the Party avoided. If counter-revolutionaries are not executed, they have to be fed. All counter-revolutionaries should be given a chance to earn a living, so that the can start anew. This will be good for the cause of the people and be well received abroad.

The suppression of counter-revolutionaries still calls for hard work. We must not relax. In future not only must the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in society continue, but we must also uncover all the hidden counter-revolutionaries in Party and government organs, schools and army units. We must draw a clear distinction between ourselves and the enemy. If the enemy is allowed to worm his way into our ranks and even into our organs of leadership, we know only too well how serious a threat this will be to the cause of socialism and to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

IX. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG

A clear distinction must be made between right and wrong, whether inside or outside the Party. How to deal with people who have made mistakes is an important question. The correct attitude towards them should be to adopt a policy of "learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing the sickness to save the patient", help them correct their mistakes and allow them to go on taking part in the revolution. In those days when the dogmatists headed by Wang Ming were in the saddle, our Party erred on this question, picking up the bad aspect of Stalin's style of work. In society the dogmatists rejected the middle forces and inside the Party they did not allow people to correct their mistakes; they barred both from the revolution.

The True Story of Ah Q is a fine story. I would recommend comrades who have read it before to reread it and those who haven't to read it carefully. In this story Lu Hsun writes mainly about a peasant who is backward and politically unawakened. He devotes a whole chapter, "Barred from the Revolution", to describing how a bogus foreign devil bars Ah Q from the revolution. Actually, all Ah Q understands by revolution is helping himself to a few things just like some others. But even this kind of revolution is denied him by the bogus foreign devil. It seems to me that in this respect some people are quite like that bogus foreign devil. They barred from the revolution those who had committed errors, drawing no distinction between the making of mistakes and counter-revolution, and went so far as to kill a number of people who were guilty only of mistakes. We must take this lesson to heart. It is bad either to bar people outside the Party from the revolution or to prohibit erring comrades inside the Party from making amends.

With regard to comrades who have erred, some people say we must observe them and see if they are going to correct their mistakes. I would say just observing them will not do, we must help them correct their mistakes. That is to say, first we must observe and second we must give help. Everybody needs help; those who have not done wrong need it and those who have need it still more. Probably no one is free from mistakes, only some make more and some less, and once they do they need help. It is passive just to observe; conditions must be created to help those who have erred to mend their ways. A clear distinction must be drawn between right and wrong, for inner-Party controversies over principle are a reflection inside the Party of the class struggle in society, and no equivocation is to be tolerated. It is normal, in accordance with the merits of the case, to mete out appropriate and well grounded criticism to comrades who have erred, and even to conduct necessary struggle against them; this is to help them correct mistakes. To deny them help and, what is worse, to gloat over their mistakes, is sectarianism.

For revolution, it is always better to have more people. Except for a few who cling to their mistakes and fail to mend their ways after repeated admonition, the majority of those who have erred can correct their mistakes. People who have had typhoid become immune to it; similarly, people who have made mistakes will make fewer ones provided they are good at drawing lessons. On the other hand, since it is easier for those who have not erred to become cocky, they are prone to make mistakes. Let us be careful, for those who fix people guilty of mistakes will more often than not end up finding themselves in a fix. Kao Kang started out to lift a rock to hurl at others only to find himself being knocked down. Treating with good will those who have erred will win general approval and unite people. A helpful attitude or a hostile attitude towards comrades who have erred -- this is a criterion for judging whether one is well-intentioned or ill-intentioned.

The policy of "learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing the sickness to save the patient" is a policy for uniting the whole Party. We must stick to this policy.

X. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHINA AND OTHER COUNTRIES

We have put forward the slogan of learning from other countries. I think we have been right. At present, the leaders of some countries are chary and even afraid of advancing this slogan. It takes some courage to do so, because theatrical pretensions have to be discarded.

It must be admitted that every nation has its strong points. If not, how can it survive? How can it progress? On the other hand, every nation has its weak points. Some believe that socialism is just perfect, without a single flaw. How can that be true? It must be recognized that there are always two aspects, the strong points and the weak points. The secretaries of our Party branches, the company commanders and platoon leaders of our army have all learned to jot down both aspects in their pocket notebooks, the weak points as well as the strong ones, when summing up their experience. They all know there are two aspects to everything, why do we mention only one? There will always be two aspects, even ten thousand years from now. Each age, whether the future or the present, has its own two aspects, and each individual has his own two aspects. In short, there are two aspects, not just one. To say there is only one is to be aware of one aspect and to be ignorant of the other.

Our policy is to learn from the strong points of all nations and all countries, learn all that is genuinely good in the political, economic, scientific and technological fields and in literature and art. But we must learn with an analytical and critical eye, not blindly, and we mustn't copy everything indiscriminately and transplant mechanically. Naturally, we mustn't pick up their shortcomings and weak points.

We should adopt the same attitude in learning from the experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Some of our people were not clear about this before and even picked up their weaknesses. While they were swelling with pride over what they had picked up, it was already being discarded in those countries; as a result, they had to do a somersault like the Monkey Sun Wu-kung. For instance, there were people who accused us of making a mistake of principle in setting up a Ministry of Culture and a Bureau of Cinematography rather than a Ministry of Cinematography and a Bureau of Culture, as was the case in the Soviet Union. They did not anticipate that shortly afterwards the Soviet Union would make a change and set up a Ministry of Culture as we had done. Some people never take the trouble to analyse, they simply follow the "wind". Today, when the north wind is blowing, they join the "north wind" school; tomorrow, when there is a west wind, they switch to the "west wind" school; afterwards when the north wind blows again, they switch back to the "north wind" school. They hold no independent opinion of their own and often go from one extreme to the other.

In the Soviet Union, those who once extolled Stalin to the skies have now in one swoop consigned him to purgatory. Here in China some people are following their example. It is the opinion of the Central Committee that Stalin's mistakes amounted to only 30 per cent of the whole and his achievements to 70 per cent, and that all things considered Stalin was nonetheless a great Marxist. We wrote "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" on the basis of this evaluation. This assessment of 30 per cent for mistakes and 70 per cent for achievements is just about right. Stalin did a number of wrong things in connection with China. The "Left" adventurism pursued by Wang Ming in the latter part of the Second Revolutionary Civil War period and his Right opportunism in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japan can both be traced to Stalin. At the time of the War of Liberation, Stalin first enjoined us not to press on with the revolution, maintaining that if civil war flared up, the Chinese nation would run the risk of destroying itself. Then when fighting did erupt, he took us half seriously, half sceptically. When we won the war, Stalin suspected that ours was a victory of the Tito type, and in 1949 and 1950 the pressure on us was very strong indeed. Even so, we maintain the estimate of 30 per cent for his mistakes and 70 per cent for his achievements. This is only fair.

In the social sciences and in Marxism-Leninism, we must continue to study Stalin diligently wherever he is right. What we must study is all that is universally true and we must make sure that this study is linked with Chinese reality. It would lead to a mess if every single sentence, even of Marx's, were followed. Our theory is an integration of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution. At one time some people in the Party went in for dogmatism, and this came under our criticism. Nevertheless, there is still dogmatism today. It still exists in academic circles and in economic circles too.

In the natural sciences we are rather backward, and here we should make a special effort to learn from foreign countries. And yet we must learn critically, not blindly. In technology I think first we have to follow others in most cases, and it is better for us to do so, since that is what we are lacking at present and know little about. However, in those cases where we already have clear knowledge, we must not follow others in every detail.

We must firmly reject and criticize all the decadent bourgeois systems, ideologies and ways of life of foreign countries. But this should in no way prevent us from learning the advanced sciences and technologies of capitalist countries and whatever is scientific in the management of their enterprises. In the industrially developed countries they run their enterprises with fewer people and greater efficiency and they know how to do business. All this should be learned well in accordance with our own principles in order to improve our work. Nowadays, those who make English their study no longer work hard at it, and research papers are no longer translated into English, French, German or Japanese for exchange with other countries. This too is a kind of blind prejudice. Neither the indiscriminate rejection of everything foreign, whether scientific, technological or cultural, nor the indiscriminate imitation of everything foreign as noted above, has anything in common with the Marxist attitude, and neither in any way benefits our cause.

In my opinion, China has two weaknesses, which are at the same time two strong points.

First, in the past China was a colonial and semi-colonial country, not an imperialist power, and was always bullied by others. Its industry and agriculture are not developed and its scientific and technological level is low, and except for its vast territory, rich resources, large population, long history, The Dream of the Red Chamber in literature, and so on, China is inferior to other countries in many respects, and so has no reason to feel conceited. However, there are people who, having been slaves too long, feel inferior in everything and don't stand up straight in the presence of foreigners. They are just like Chia Kuei [3] in the opera The Famen Temple who, when asked to take a seat, refuses to do so, giving the excuse that he is used to standing in attendance. Here we need to bestir ourselves, enhance our national confidence and encourage the spirit typified by "scorn U.S. imperialism", which was fostered during the movement to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea.

Second, our revolution came late. Although the Revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Ching emperor preceded the Russian revolution, there was no Communist Party at that time and the revolution failed. Victory in the people's revolution came only in 1949, some thirty years later than the October Revolution. On this account too, we are not in a position to feel conceited. The Soviet Union differs from our country in that, firstly, tsarist Russia was an imperialist power and, secondly, it had the October Revolution. As a result, many people in the Soviet Union are conceited and very arrogant.

Our two weaknesses are also strong points. As I have said elsewhere, we are first "poor" and second "blank". By "poor" I mean we do not have much industry and our agriculture is underdeveloped. By "blank" I mean we are like a blank sheet of paper and our cultural and scientific level is not high. From the developmental point of view, this is not bad. The poor want revolution, whereas it is difficult for the rich to want revolution. Countries with a high scientific and technological level are overblown with arrogance. We are like a blank sheet of paper, which is good for writing on.

Being "poor" and "blank" is therefore all to our good. Even when one day our country becomes strong and prosperous, we must still adhere to the revolutionary stand, remain modest and prudent, learn from other countries and not allow ourselves to become swollen with conceit. We must not only learn from other countries during the period of our First Five-Year Plan, but must go on doing so after the completion of scores of five-year plans. We must be ready to learn even ten thousand years from now. Is there anything bad about that?

I have taken up ten topics altogether. These ten relationships are all contradictions. The world consists of contradictions. Without contradictions the world would cease to exist. Our task is to handle these contradictions correctly. As to whether or not they can be resolved entirely to our satisfaction in practice, we must be prepared for either possibility; furthermore, in the course of resolving these contradictions we are bound to come up against new ones, new problems. But as we have often said, while the road ahead is tortuous, the future is bright. We must do our best to mobilize all positive factors, both inside and outside the Party, both at home and abroad, both direct and indirect, and make China a powerful socialist country.

NOTES

1. The system of fixed quotas for the production, purchase and marketing of grain was instituted in the spring of 1955. The quotas for production fixed in that year were based on the grain yield per mou in normal years, and increases in production were not to entail extra sales of grain to the state for three years. The fixed quota for purchase refers to the purchase by the state of a fixed proportion of surplus grain from peasant households having a surplus. The fixed quota for marketing refers to the quota for the state's supply of grain to grain-deficient households. The system was adopted in order to raise the peasants' enthusiasm for increasing production.

2. The system of obligatory sales enforced in the Soviet Union from 1933 to 1957 was the principal measure by which the state bought agricultural products. Under it the collective farms and individual peasant households were required to sell their agricultural products annually to the state in quantities and at prices fixed by the state.

3. In the Peking opera The Famen Temple, Chia Kuei is a trusted lackey of Liu Chin, a Ming Dynasty eunuch.

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

Has China Turned to Capitalism? Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — Has China Turned to Capitalism? Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Has China Turned to Capitalism? Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Article 6 of 10

Red Sails

By Domenico Losurdo

Originally published at https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-china/#quantitative-and-qualitative-inequality

Contents

Abstract

Soviet Russia and Various Experiments in Post-Capitalism

The Peculiarity of the Chinese Experience

Marxism or Populism? A Confrontation of Long Duration

Global Inequality and Inequality in China

Quantitative and Qualitative Inequality

Wealth and Political Power: An Adversarial Relationship

The Sights of the West: “Democratisation” or “Plutocratisation” of China?

References

Abstract

If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see three social experiments. The first experiment, based on the equal distribution of poverty, suggests the “universal asceticism” and “rough egalitarianism” criticised by the Communist Manifesto. We can now understand the decision to move to Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which was often interpreted as a return to capitalism. The increasing threat of war pushed Stalin into sweeping economic collectivisation. The third experiment produced a very advanced welfare state but ended in failure: in the last years of the Soviet Union, it was characterised by mass absenteeism and disengagement in the workplace; this stalled productivity, and it became hard to find any application of the principle that Marx said should preside over socialism — remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered.

The history of China is different: Mao believed that, unlike “political capital,” the economic capital of the bourgeoisie should not be subject to total expropriation, at least until it can serve the development of the national economy. After the tragedy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it took Deng Xiaoping to emphasise that socialism implies the development of the productive forces. Chinese market socialism has achieved extraordinary success.

Soviet Russia and Various Experiments in Post-Capitalism

Nowadays it is common to talk about the restoration of capitalism in China as resulting from the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. But what is the basis for this judgment? Is there a more or less coherent vision of socialism that can be contrasted with the reality of the current socio-economic relations in China today? Let’s take a quick look at the history of attempts to build a post-capitalist society. If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see war communism, then the New Economic Policy (NEP), and finally the complete collectivisation of the economy (including agriculture) in quick succession. These were three totally different experiments, but all of them were an attempt to build a post-capitalist society. Why should we be shocked that, in the course of the more than 80 years that followed these experiments, other variations like market socialism and Chinese socialism appeared?

Let’s concentrate for now on Soviet Russia: which of the three experiments mentioned is closest to the socialism espoused by Marx and Engels? War communism was greeted by a devout French Catholic, Pierre Pascal, then in Moscow, as a “unique and intoxicating performance […] The rich are gone: only the poor and the very poor […] high and low salaries draw closer. The right to property is reduced to personal effects.” [1] This author read the widespread poverty and privation not as wretchedness caused by the war, to be overcome as quickly as possible; in his eyes, as long as they are distributed more or less equally, poverty and want are a condition of purity and moral excellence; on the contrary, affluence and wealth are sins. It is a vision that we can call populist, one that was criticised with great precision by the Communist Manifesto: there is “nothing easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist coat of paint”; the “first movements of the proletariat” often feature claims in the name of “universal asceticism and a rough egalitarianism.” [2] Lenin’s orientation was the opposite of Pascal’s, as he was far from the view that socialism would be the collectivisation of poverty, a more or less egalitarian distribution of privation. In October 1920 (“The Tasks of the Youth Associations”) Lenin declared, “We want to transform Russia from a poor and needy country to a rich country.” First, the country needed to be modernised and wired with electricity; therefore, it required “organised work” and “conscious and disciplined work,” overcoming anarchy in the workplace, with a methodical assimilation of the “latest technical achievements,” if necessary, by importing them from the most advanced capitalist countries. [3]

A few years later, the NEP took over from war communism. It was essential to overcome the desperate mass poverty and starvation that followed the catastrophe of World War I and the civil war, and to restart the economy and develop the productive forces. This was necessary not only to improve the living conditions of the people and to broaden the social basis of consensus on revolutionary power; it was also about avoiding an increase in Russia’s lag in development compared to the more advanced capitalist countries, which could affect the national security of the country emerging from the October Revolution, not to mention it being surrounded and besieged by the capitalist powers. To achieve these objectives, the Soviet government also made use of private initiative and a (limited) part of the capitalist economy; it used “bourgeois” specialists who were rewarded generously, and it sought to take advanced technology and capital, which were guaranteed attractive returns, from the West. The NEP had positive results: production started up again, and a certain development of the productive forces began to take place. Overall, the situation in Soviet Russia improved noticeably: on the international level it did not worsen; rather, Russia’s delay in development started to decrease compared to the successful capitalist countries. Domestically, the living conditions of the masses improved significantly. Precisely because social wealth increased, there were more than just “the poor and the very poor,” as in the war communism celebrated by Pierre Pascal; desperate hunger and starvation disappeared, but social inequalities increased.

These inequalities in Soviet Russia provoked a widespread and intense feeling of betrayal of the original ideals. Pierre Pascal was not the only one wanting to abandon the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; there were literally tens of thousands of Bolshevik workers who tore up their party cards in disgust at the NEP, which they re-named the “New Extortion from the Proletariat.” In the 1940s, a rank-and-file militant very effectively described the spiritual atmosphere prevailing in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution — the atmosphere arose from the horror of war caused by imperialist competition in plundering the colonies in order to conquer markets and acquire raw materials, as well as by capitalists searching for profit and super-profit:

We young Communists had all grown up in the belief that money was done away with once and for all. […] If money was reappearing, wouldn’t rich people reappear too? Weren’t we on the slippery slope that led back to capitalism? [4]

Therefore, one can understand the scandal and a persistent feeling of repugnance for the market and the commodity economy at the introduction of the NEP; it was above all the growing danger of war that caused the abandonment of the NEP and the removal of every trace of the private economy. The wholesale collectivisation of the country’s agriculture provoked a civil war that was fought ruthlessly by both sides. And yet, after this horrible tragedy, the Soviet economy seemed to proceed marvellously: the rapid development of modern industry was interwoven with the construction of a welfare state that guaranteed the economic and social rights of citizens in a way that was unprecedented. This, however, was a model that fell into crisis after a couple of decades. With the transition from great historical crisis to a more “normal” period (“peaceful coexistence”), the masses’ enthusiasm and commitment to production and work weakened and then disappeared. In the last years of its existence, the Soviet Union was characterised by massive absenteeism and disengagement in the workplace: not only did production development stagnate, but there was no longer any application of the principle that Marx said drove socialism — remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered. You could say that during the final stage of Soviet society, the dialectic of capitalist society that Marx described in The Poverty of Philosophy had been overturned:

While inside the modern factory the division of labour is meticulously regulated by the authority of the entrepreneur, modern society has no other rule or authority to distribute the work, except for free competition. […] One can also determine, as a general principle, that the less the authority presides over the division of labour inside the society, the more the division of labour develops inside of the factory, and it is placed under the authority of just one person. Thus the authorities in the factory and in society, in relation to the division of labour, are inversely related to each other. [5]

In the last years of the Soviet Union, the tight control exercised by the political powers over civil society coincided with a substantial amount of anarchy in workplaces. It was the reversal of the dialectic of capitalist society, but the overthrow of the capitalist society’s dialectic was not socialism and, therefore, it produced a weak economic order unable to resist the ideological and political offensives of the capitalist-imperialist world.

The Peculiarity of the Chinese Experience

China’s history is different. Although the Communist Party of China seized power at the national level in 1949, 20 years earlier it had already started to exercise its power in one region or another, regions whose size and population were comparable to those of a small or medium-sized European country. For much of these 85 years in power, China, partly or totally ruled by the communists, was characterised by the coexistence of different forms of economy and property. This was how Edgar Snow described the situation in the late 1930s in the “liberated” areas:

To guarantee success at these tasks it was necessary for the Reds, even from the earliest days, to begin some kind of economic construction. […] Soviet economy in the Northwest was a curious mixture of private capitalism, state capitalism, and primitive socialism. Private enterprise and industry were permitted and encouraged, and private transactions dealing in the land and its products were allowed with restrictions. At the same time the state owned and exploited enterprises such as oil wells, salt wells, and coal mines, and it traded in cattle, hides, salt, wool, cotton, paper, and other raw materials. But it did not establish a monopoly in these articles and in all of them private enterprises could, and to some extent did, compete. A third kind of economy was created by the establishment of cooperatives, in which the government and the masses participated as partners, competing not only with private capitalism but also with state capitalism! [6]

This picture is confirmed by a modern historian: in Yan’an, the city where Mao Zedong directed the struggle against Japanese imperialism and promoted the construction of a new China, the Communist Party of China did not pretend “to control the whole of the base area’s economy.” It rather supervised a “significant private economy,” which also included “large private landholdings.” [7]

In an essay in January 1940 (“On the New Democracy”), Mao Zedong clarified the meaning of the revolution taking place at that time:

Although such a revolution in a colonial and semi-colonial country is still fundamentally bourgeois-democratic in its social character during its first stage or first step, and although its objective mission is to clear the path for the development of capitalism, it is no longer a revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It belongs to the new type of revolution led by the proletariat with the aim, in the first stage, of establishing a new-democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes. Thus this revolution actually serves the purpose of clearing a still wider path for the development of socialism. [8]

This was a model characterised, at the economic level, by the coexistence of different forms of ownership; at the level of political power, by a dictatorship exercised by the “revolutionary classes” as well as the leadership of the Communist Party of China. It is a pattern confirmed 17 years later, although in the meantime the People’s Republic of China was founded, in a speech on January 18, 1957 (“Talks at a Conference of Secretaries of Provincial, Municipal and Autonomous Regions Party Committees”):

As for the charge that our urban policy has deviated to the Right, this seems to be the case, as we have undertaken to provide for the capitalists and pay them a fixed rate of interest for a period of seven years. What is to be done after the seven years? That is to be decided according to the circumstances prevailing then. It is better to leave the matter open, that is, to go on giving them a certain amount in fixed interest. At this small cost we are buying over this class. […] By buying over this class, we have deprived them of their political capital and kept their mouths shut. […] Thus political capital will not be in their hands but in ours. We must deprive them of every bit of their political capital and continue to do so until not one jot is left to them. Therefore, neither can our urban policy be said to have deviated to the Right. [9]

It is, therefore, a matter of distinguishing between the economic expropriation and the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie. Only the latter should be carried out to the end, while the former, if not contained within clear limits, risks undermining the development of the productive forces. Unlike “political capital,” the bourgeoisie’s economic capital should not be subject to total expropriation, at least as long as it serves the development of the national economy and thus, indirectly, the cause of socialism.

After taking off in the second half of the 1920s, this model revealed a remarkable continuity and offered great economic vitality before 1949 to the “liberated” areas governed by the communists and then the People’s Republic of China as a whole. The dramatic moment of breakthrough came with the Great Leap Forward of 1958–59 and with the Cultural Revolution unleashed in 1966. The coexistence of different forms of ownership and the use of material incentives were radically thrown on the table. There was an illusion of accelerating economic development through calls for mass mobilisation and mass enthusiasm, but this approach and these attempts failed miserably. Moreover, the struggle of everyone against everyone heightened the anarchy in factories and production sites.

The anarchy was so widespread and deep-rooted that it did not disappear immediately with the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping. For some time, customs continued in the public sector as described by a witness and Western scholar, “even the last attendant […], if he wants to, can decide to do nothing, stay home for a year or two and still receive his salary at the end of the month.” The “culture of laziness” also infected the expanding private sector of the economy. “The former employees of the State […] arrive late, then they read the newspaper, go to the canteen a half-hour early, leave the office an hour early,” and they were often absent for family reasons, for example, “because my wife is sick.” And the executives and technicians who tried to introduce discipline and efficiency into the workplace were forced to face not only resistance and the moral outrage of the employees (who considered it infamy to impose a fine on an absent worker caring for his wife), but sometimes even threats and violence from below. [10]

Thus, there was a paradox. After distinguishing itself for decades for its peculiar history and its commitment to stimulating production through competition not only between individuals but also between different forms of ownership, the China that arose from the Cultural Revolution resembled the Soviet Union to an extraordinary degree in its last years of existence: the socialist principle of compensation based on the amount and quality of work delivered was substantially liquidated, and disaffection, disengagement, absenteeism and anarchy reigned in the workplace. Before being ousted from power, the “Gang of Four” attempted to justify the economic stagnation, debating the populist reason for a socialism that is poor but beautiful, the populist “socialism” that in the early years of Soviet Russia was dear to Pierre Pascal, the fervent Catholic whom we already know.

Then populism became the target of Deng Xiaoping’s criticism. He called on the Marxists to realise “that poverty is not socialism, that socialism means eliminating poverty.” He wanted one thing to be absolutely clear: “Unless you are developing the productive forces and raising people’s living standards, you cannot say you are building socialism.” No, “there can be no communism with pauperism, or socialism with pauperism. So to get rich is no sin.” [11] Deng Xiaoping had the historic merit of understanding that socialism had nothing to do with the more or less egalitarian distribution of poverty and privation. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, socialism was superior to capitalism not only because it ensured a more equitable distribution of resources but also, and especially, because it ensured a faster and more equal development of social wealth, and to achieve this goal, socialism stimulated competition by affirming and putting into practice the principle of remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered.

Deng Xiaoping’s reforms reintroduced in China the model that we already know, although giving it new coherence and radicalism. The fact remains that the coexistence of different forms of ownership was counterbalanced by strict state control directed by the Communist Party of China. If we analyse the history of China, not beginning with the founding of the People’s Republic, but as early as the first “liberated” areas being set up and governed by communists, we will find out that it was not China of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, but China in the years of the Great Leap Forward and of the Cultural Revolution that was the exception or the anomaly.

Marxism or Populism? A Confrontation of Long Duration

Well beyond the borders of Russia and China, during the twentieth century and even now, populism influenced and still negatively influences the reading of the great revolutions that radically changed the face of the world. In this sense, we can say that, after having played a part as an essential feature of the twentieth century, the conflict between populism and Marxism is far from over.

Pascal condemned the abandonment of war communism, or the society in which there are “only the poor and the very poor,” and that is precisely why it was free of the tensions and rifts caused by inequality and social polarisation. The attitude taken by fervent Christians at that time in Moscow was not in any way confined to Soviet Russia. Traces of populism can be felt in the young Ernst Bloch. In 1918, when he published the first edition of Spirit of Utopia, he called on the Soviets to effect a “transformation of power into love” and to put an end not only to “every private economy,” but also to any “money economy” and with it the “mercantile values that consecrate whatever is most evil in man.” [12] Here the populist trend was intertwined with Messianism: no attention was paid to the task of rebuilding the economy and developing the productive forces in a country destroyed by war and having a history marked by recurrent and devastating famines. The horror at the carnage of World War I stimulated the dream of a community that is satisfied with the scarce material resources available and that only in this circumstance, freed from worrying about wealth and power, can people live shielded from the “money economy” and instead live in “love.”

When he published the second edition of Spirit of Utopia in 1923, Bloch believed that it was appropriate to delete the populist and Messianic passages, as previously mentioned. However, the state of mind and the vision that inspired them did not vanish either in the Soviet Union or outside of it. The transition to NEP found perhaps its most passionate or sentimental critics among the militants as well as among Western communist leaders. As for them, in the “Political Report” he presented to the XI Congress of the Communist Party held on March 27, 1922, Lenin sarcastically wrote:

Seeing that we were withdrawing, some of them scattered, childishly and shamefully, even with tears, as happened at the last large session of the Executive Committee of the International Communist Party. Motivated by the best communist sentiments and the most ardent communist aspirations, some friends burst into tears. [13]

Antonio Gramsci had a very different attitude as early as the October Revolution, which he expressed in this way:

Collectivism of poverty and suffering will be the principle. But those very conditions of poverty and suffering would be inherited from a bourgeois regime. Capitalism could not immediately do more than collectivism did in Russia. Today, it would do even less, because it would have immediately run afoul of an unhappy, frantic proletariat, now unable to bear for others to endure the pain and bitterness that the economic hardship would have brought. […] The suffering that will come after peace will be tolerated only because the workers feel that it is their will and their determination to work to suppress it as quickly as possible. [14]

In this context, the war communism about to prevail in Soviet Russia was at the same time legitimised tactically and delegitimised strategically, legitimised immediately and delegitimised with an eye to the future. The “collectivism of poverty and suffering” is justified by the specific conditions prevailing in Russia at the time: capitalism would not be able to do anything better. It was understood, however, that the privation had to be overcome as quickly as possible.

Precisely for this reason, Gramsci had no difficulty in recognising himself in the NEP, the meaning of which he made sharply clear in his October 1926 stance: the reality of the Soviet Union put us in the presence of a phenomenon “never before seen in history.” A politically “dominant” class “as a whole” finds itself “in living conditions inferior to certain elements and strata of the [politically] dominated and dependent class.” The masses of people who continued to suffer a life of hardship were confused by the spectacle of “the NEPman dressed in fur who has at his disposal all the goods of the earth.” And yet this should not constitute grounds for a scandal or feelings of repugnance, because the proletariat, as it cannot gain power, also cannot even keep power if it is not capable of sacrificing individual and immediate interests to the “general and permanent interests of the class.” [15] Those who read the NEP as synonymous with a return to capitalism committed two serious errors: ignoring the issue of the fight against mass poverty and thus the development of the productive forces; they also wrongly identified the economically privileged class and the politically dominant class.

A reading of the NEP not unlike that seen in Gramsci came from another great intellectual of the twentieth century. He was Walter Benjamin, who, after returning from a trip to Moscow in 1927, summed up his impressions:

In a capitalist society, power and money have become of equal dimension. Any given amount of money can be converted into a well-defined portion of power and the exchange value of all power is a calculable entity. […] The Soviet state has interrupted this osmosis of money and power. The Party, of course, reserves power for itself; it does, however, leave the money to the NEPman. [16]

The latter, however, underwent a “terrible social isolation.” For Benjamin, too, there was no correspondence between economic wealth and political power. The NEP had nothing to do with the restoration of bourgeois and capitalist power. Soviet Russia could not help but engage in the reconstruction of the economy and the development of the productive forces. The task was made more difficult by the persistence of customs that were not suited to a modern industrial society. In Moscow, Benjamin was a direct witness to a very instructive display:

Not even in the Russian capital is there, in spite of all the “rationalisation,” a sense of the value of time. The “trud,” the Trade Union Institute of Work, by means of wall posters, waged […] a campaign for punctuality […] “time is money”; to give credence to such a strange rallying cry, they had to draw on Lenin’s authority in the posters. So, this mentality is foreign to Russians. Their playful instinct prevails over everything […] If, for example, a movie scene is being shot in the street, they forget where they are going and why, they queue up behind the crew for hours and arrive at work befuddled. [17]

Pascal also witnessed the developments in Soviet Russia, forming an opinion of strong condemnation: now in Moscow and in the rest of the country, everything revolved around the question of whether “industrialisation must be a little faster or a little slower,” around the problem of “how to get the necessary money.” The consequences of this new approach, which put aside “every revolutionary purpose,” were devastating: yes, “on the material level we approach Americanisation, a great development of national wealth,” but at what cost? “The docile mass became a slave to it, to its work, to its exploitation. It produces, there is an economic recovery, but the revolution is well buried.” [18]

The great Austrian writer Joseph Roth, not involved in the communist movement, reached the same conclusions. When visiting the land of the Soviets between September 1926 and January 1927, he expressed his disappointment at the “Americanisation” in progress. “They despise America, meaning big soulless capitalism; the country where gold is God. But they admire America, meaning progress, the electric iron, the hygiene and the waterworks.” In conclusion, “This is a modern Russia, technically advanced, with American ambitions. This is no longer Russia.” [19] The “spiritual void” had opened in a country that initially aroused many hopes. [20] The popular inspiration for these positions was obvious: as expressions of betrayal of the original revolutionary inspiration and of a drift toward a philistine and vulgar worldview, they pointed to the desire to improve living conditions and the pursuit of comfort (or of a minimum of comfort).

As Pascal did, Roth also expressed his distaste for the “Americanisation” under way. These were the years in which the Bolsheviks engaged in the reconstruction and development of the economy to try to learn from the most advanced capitalist countries and the United States in particular. In March and April 1918 (“The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power”) Lenin noted that “compared to workers in the most advanced nations, the Russian is a bad worker”; therefore, he must “learn to work,” assimilating critically the “rich scientific achievements” of the “Taylor system” developed and implemented in the North American Republic. [21] On the same wavelength, Bukharin proclaimed in 1923, “We need to add Americanism to Marxism.” [22] The following year, Stalin made a significant appeal to the Bolshevik cadres: if they really wanted to be at the height of “principles of Leninism,” they should try to weave “Russian revolutionary impulses” with “the practical American approach.” [23] “Americanism” and “the practical American approach” were here synonyms for the development of productive forces and the escape from poverty or scarcity: socialism is not the equal sharing of poverty or deprivation, but the definitive and widespread overcoming of these conditions.

From outside of Russia, Gramsci countered populism with particular rigour and consistency. As we know, from the beginning he stressed the need for a rapid end to this “collectivism of poverty and suffering.” It was a political position with a wider theoretical vision as its foundation. L’Ordine Nuovo (The New Order) — the weekly he founded in the wake of the October Revolution in Russia — plus the movement to occupy factories in Italy, asked the revolutionary workers to fight for wages and thus for a more equitable distribution of social wealth, but also and above all to be “producers” taking “control of production” and the “development of work plans.” In doing so, in order also to promote the development of the productive forces, the revolutionary workers must know how to make use of the “most advanced industrial technology” that “(in a sense) is independent from the method of appropriating the assets produced,” that is, it got its autonomy from capitalism or socialism. [24] Not coincidentally, between October and November 1919, L’Ordine Nuovo devoted several articles to Taylorism, analysed beginning with the latest analysis of the distinction between “rich scientific achievements” (mentioned by Lenin) and their capitalist use. [25] In this sense, the Prison Notebooks later observed that already L’Ordine Nuovo had claimed its “Americanism.” [26] It was the Americanism that Lenin, Bukharin and Stalin directly or indirectly referenced.

And it should be clear that this is an Americanism that does not in any way rule out a judgment and clear condemnation of US capitalism and imperialism. In Gramsci’s eyes, this was a country that, despite its professions of democratic faith, imposed slavery on blacks for a long time and that, even after the Civil War, was characterised by a terrorist regime of white supremacy, as shown by “lynching of blacks by crowds incited by atrocious merchants dispossessed of human flesh.” [27] That terrorism was also manifested in terms of foreign policy: The North American Republic threatened to deprive the Russians of the grain necessary for their survival and, therefore, to starve to death the people who felt the pull of the October Revolution and were tempted to follow its example.

The “Americanism” understood as attention reserved for the problem of development of the productive forces pushed Gramsci, in the early 1930s, to greet enthusiastically the launching of the first Soviet five-year plan: the economic and industrial development of the country that emerged from the October Revolution was proof that, far from stimulating “fatalism and passivity,” in fact, “the concept of historical materialism […] gives rise to a flowering of initiatives and enterprises that astonishes many observers.” [28] Materialism and Marxism showed the ability to influence reality concretely, not only inspiring revolutions like the one that occurred in Russia but also promoting the growth of social wealth and freeing the masses from centuries of poverty and deprivation.

More disappointed than ever, even outraged by the developments in Soviet Russia, however, was Simone Weil, who in 1932 proceeded to a final showdown with the country which she had initially looked to with sympathy and hope: Soviet Russia had ended up taking America, American efficiency, productivity and “Taylorism” as its models. There could no longer be any doubts.

The fact that Stalin, on this issue, which is at the centre of the conflict between capital and labour, has abandoned the views of Marx and has been seduced by the capitalist system in its most perfect form, shows that the USSR is still quite far from having a working-class culture. [29]

In fact, the position taken here had nothing to do with Marx and Engels: according to the Communist Manifesto, capitalism is destined to be overcome because, after developing the productive forces with unprecedented scope and speed, it became an obstacle to their further development, as confirmed by the recurrent crises of overproduction. This deeply Christian French philosopher, also inclined to populism, recognised the country that emerged from the October Revolution only up to the stage of more or less equal distribution of poverty or deprivation; later, in addition to Soviet Russia, Weil also broke with Marx and Engels.

Global Inequality and Inequality in China

Populism continues to make its presence felt more than ever in the dismissive judgment that the Western left passes on today’s China. It is true that the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping spurred an economic boom unprecedented in history, with hundreds and thousands of millions of people liberated from poverty, but this is basically irrelevant for the populists.

Did the elimination of desperate and mass poverty happen at the same time as the worsening inequality? The answer to that question is less obvious than it may appear at first glance. Throughout history, the communist parties have won power only in countries that are relatively undeveloped economically and technologically; for this reason, they had to fight against not one but two types of inequality: 1) inequality existing on the global scale between the most and least developed countries; and 2) the inequality existing within each individual country. Only if we take into account both sides of the struggle can we adequately take stock of policy reform. With regard to the first type of inequality, there are no doubts: internationally, global inequality is levelling out sharply. Yes, China is gradually catching up to the most advanced Western capitalist countries. It is a turning point!

In the last years of the twentieth century, a prominent American political scientist noted that if the process of industrialisation and modernisation that started with Deng Xiaoping is to be successful, “China’s emergence as a major power will dwarf any comparable phenomena during the last half of the second millennium.” [30] About 15 years later, again with reference to the prodigious development of this great Asian country, a no less illustrious British historian noted, “What we are living through now is the end of 500 years of Western predominance.” [31] The two authors cited here share the same, emphatic, view of timing. About five centuries ago, the discovery/conquest of America took place. In other words, the extraordinarily rapid rise of China is ending or promises to end the “Colombian epoch,” a period characterised by extreme inequality in international relations: the distinct lead held by the West in economics, technology and military might has allowed it to subdue and plunder the rest of the world for centuries.

The fight against global inequality is part of the struggle against colonialism and neo-colonialism. Mao understood this well and, in a speech given on September 16, 1949 (“The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History”) warned that Washington wants China reduced to relying “on US flour, in other words, to become a US colony.” [32] In fact, the newly founded People’s Republic of China became the target of a deadly embargo imposed by the United States. Its objectives are clear from studies done by the Truman administration and the confessions and statements of its leaders. It started from the premise that the type of measure that could defeat and oust the communist government “is economic rather than military or political.” And so, they needed to ensure that China suffered or continued to suffer the scourge of a “general standard of living around and below the subsistence level”; Washington felt committed to causing “economic backwardness” and “cultural lag” and leading a country of “desperate needs” to “a catastrophic economic situation,” “toward disaster” and “collapse.” [33] At the White House, one president succeeds another, but the embargo remains, and it is so ruthless as to include medicines, tractors and fertilisers. [34] In short: in the early 1960s, a collaborator of the Kennedy administration, Walt W. Rostow, pointed out that, because of this policy, the economic development of China was delayed for at least “tens of years.” [35]

There is no doubt: Deng Xiaoping’s reforms greatly stimulated the fight against global inequality and thus placed the economic (and political) independence of China on a solid footing. High technology is no longer a monopoly of the West, either. Now we see the prospect of overcoming the international division of labour, which for centuries has subjected people outside the West to a servile or semi-servile condition or relegated them in the bottom of the labour market. It is thus outlining a worldwide revolution that the Western left does not seem to be noticing. Rationally, they consider a strike obtaining better wages or better working conditions in a factory as an integral part of the process of emancipation, or they discuss it in the context of the patriarchal division of labour. It is very strange, then, that the struggle to end the oppressive international division of labour that was established through armed force during the “Colombian epoch” is considered something alien to the process of emancipation.

In any case, those who condemn China today as a whole due to its inequalities would do well to consider that Deng Xiaoping also promoted his reform policies as a part of the fight against planetary inequality. In a conversation on October 10, 1978, he noted that the technology “gap” was expanding compared to more advanced countries; these were developing “with tremendous speed,” while China could not keep up in any way. [36] And, 10 years later, “High technology is advancing at a tremendous pace”; so that there was a risk that “the gap between China and other countries will grow wider.” [37]

Quantitative and Qualitative Inequality

Drawing attention to the importance of global inequality does not mean losing sight of the second type of inequality. So, what is happening with China’s existing inequality? Have the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping escalated it to an intolerable point?

Before answering these questions, we should make a preliminary observation: both the Soviet NEP and the new Chinese course were preceded by poverty and shortages acute and widespread enough to cause large-scale starvation; this situation had to be ended and a repetition had to be prevented, and this marked the turning point within Soviet Russia and China. But how is inequality fought in such a desperate economic situation? In the quantitative sense, the distribution of the scarce available resources can be inspired by emphasising egalitarianism, so as to try to feed individuals, families and villages uniformly; however, the overall inadequacy of the available resources does not change, nor does the differing degree of need (the weakest individuals succumb more easily than the others); in such conditions, starvation can be contained but not eliminated. Well, the piece of bread that allows the most fortunate to survive, as modest and reduced in terms of quantity as it may be, nevertheless sanctions an absolute inequality in terms of quality, the absolute inequality that exists between life and death. In other words, when scarcity reaches an extreme level, the struggle against inequality can only be tackled effectively by focusing on the development of the productive forces. That is, even with regard to the second type of inequality, the inequality within a single country, Deng Xiaoping’s reforms eliminated once and for all the absolute qualitative inequality inherent in starvation and the risk of starvation.

Of course, once this scourge has been ended once and for all, it is time to address the problem of the struggle against quantitative inequality, as well as to achieve what Deng Xiaoping called “common prosperity.” [38] There is no doubt: the achievement of this goal is still far away. According to the Gini coefficient, which measures income distribution within a single country, social polarisation has reached alarming levels in China. We should of course pay close attention to the Gini coefficient, but without overemphasising its significance. Despite its utility, it has fundamental limitations: not only does it not distinguish between the two types of inequality (the global and the local), but it also tells us nothing about the underlying trends in local inequality in a given country.

The changes that have occurred in recent decades in China might be illustrated with a metaphor. There are two trains running from a station called “underdevelopment” and heading towards a station called “development.” One of the two trains is very fast, while the other train is slower: consequently, the distance between the two increases progressively. This discrepancy can be explained easily if you keep in mind the size of continental China and its tormented history: the coastal regions, which already had infrastructure (albeit elementary), enjoying easier access and the possibility of trade with developed areas, are in a better situation than the traditionally less developed regions that are landlocked and have as neighbours countries and areas marked by economic stagnation. It is clear that the distance between the two trains travelling at different speeds widens, but we should not lose sight of three fundamental points: in the first place, the direction (the development) is the same; second, today some interior regions are seeing their income grow faster than that of the coastal regions; third, because of the impressive urbanisation process (which pushes the population to the most developed regions and areas), the faster train tends to carry more passengers. Not surprisingly, if we take China as a whole, we see a steady and sizable growth of the middle class, as well as a wider diffusion of social protection and features of the welfare state.

However, the implicit warning in the values reported by the Gini coefficient still applies: if not contained in a proper and timely manner, quantitative inequality can also result in social and political destabilisation.

Wealth and Political Power: An Adversarial Relationship

Social and political destabilisation can also come from another front. How long will the new rich continue to accept a situation in which they can quietly enjoy their economic wealth (accumulated legitimately) but cannot turn it into political power?

Mao was aware of this problem. In 1958, he responded to criticism from the Soviet Union regarding the persistence of capitalist areas in the Chinese economy by saying, “There are still capitalists in China, but the state is under the leadership of the Communist Party.” [39] Almost 30 years later, to be exact, in August 1985, Deng Xiaoping made a remark we should ponder: “Perhaps Lenin had a good idea when he adopted the New Economic Policy.” [40] Here is an indirect comparison between the Soviet NEP and the reform policies adopted by Deng Xiaoping in China. It is obvious what the two have in common: total political expropriation of the bourgeoisie does not equal total economic expropriation. Of course there are also differences. The NEP involved a very small part of the private economy and was primarily intended as a temporary “retreat.” In other words, what was driving the Soviet NEP was the need to find some way out of an economically hopeless situation. There was no comprehensive reflection on which economic model to pursue: not surprisingly, according to Benjamin’s testimony, which we have already seen, the rich NEP man, who was also expected to contribute to developing the productive forces, was facing a “terrible social isolation.” The policy adopted by Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, leaves behind a clear historic toll: experience has shown that the totally collectivist economy erases all material incentives and motives for competition, paving the way (as previously seen) for mass disaffection and absenteeism; moreover, the populism that saw wealth and gain as such a sin hindered the development of entrepreneurship and technological innovation.

While initiating his policies of reform and openness, Deng was aware of their inherent risks. In October 1978, he cautioned, “We shall not allow a new bourgeoisie to take shape.” This goal is not contradicted by tolerance granted to individual capitalists. Of course, they must be given much consideration. However, one point is constant: “the struggle against these individuals is different from the struggle of one class against another, which occurred in the past (these individuals cannot form a cohesive and overt class).” [41] Although there are residues of the old class struggle, on the whole, with the strengthening of the revolution and the communist party’s power, a new situation was created. “Is it possible that a new bourgeoisie will emerge? A handful of bourgeois elements may appear, but they will not form a class,” especially as there is a “state apparatus” that is “powerful” and able to control them. [42] Besides the power of the state, ideology plays an important role: many of the new rich, although not communists, feel patriotic and share the horror at the “century of humiliation” that began with the Opium Wars and ended with the victory of the revolution, so these new rich also share the dream of “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

And yet, precisely as a result of the success of policy reforms and the extraordinary economic growth of China, the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing dramatically; will the wealth accumulated by the new capitalists have an influence on politics? It is in light of this concern that you may fully comprehend the ongoing campaign against corruption. The clean-up process does not aim only to consolidate social consensus on the Communist Party of China and the government; it means to implement Deng Xiaoping’s recommendation and thus prevent the “bourgeois elements” from forming a class that is ready to take power.

The Sights of the West: “Democratisation” or “Plutocratisation” of China?

The capitalists who were established and continue to get established can be a real danger only if they ally themselves with imperialist circles or pro-imperialists committed to achieving a “colour revolution” even in China. Strengthened by their excessive media power, for a very long time the United States has been trying to consolidate their world hegemony in order to impose a “democracy” on China in the time and manner Washington dictates.

In this behaviour, the United States shows ignorance of the lessons offered by their own national history and liberalism, that is, from the school of thought that they claim to represent. In 1787, just before the implementation of the Federal Constitution, Alexander Hamilton explained that limits on power and the establishment of the rule of law had been successful in two “insular” countries, Great Britain and the United States, thanks to the protection given by the ocean and their geopolitical position shielding them from threats from rival powers. If the plans for a federal union had failed and a system of states similar to the one in Europe had formed on its ruins, soon America would have seen a standing army, a strong central power and absolutism regardless. “Thus we should in a little time see established in every part of this country, the same engines of despotism, which have been the scourge of the old world.” [43] Hamilton ascribed so much weight to geopolitical security in creating a system based on the rule of law that he wrote how if, instead of being an island surrounded and protected by the sea, Britain had been placed on the continent, it “would in all probability, be at this day a victim to the absolute power of a single man,” just like the other European continental powers. [44] On the other hand, according to Hamilton, whenever “the preservation of the public peace” is threatened either by “external attacks” or by “internal convulsions,” even a country like the United States, which also enjoys an extremely fortunate geopolitical position, is authorised to resort to a strong power “without limitations” and without “constitutional shackles.” [45]

In fact, even protected by the Atlantic and the Pacific, every time it has felt, whether rightly or wrongly, in danger, the North American Republic has more or less drastically strengthened executive power and more or less heavily restricted freedom of association and expression. This was the case in the years immediately following the French Revolution (when its followers in America were affected by the harsh measures provided by the Alien and Sedition Acts) and during the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and the situation created by the attack on the Twin Towers. To give an example: What happened to traditional liberal freedoms after the passage, on May 16, 1918, of the Espionage Act? Based on this act, a person could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for having expressed:

[…] any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag […] or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States. [46]

If the leaders in Washington were really serious about the banner of democracy that never tires of waving, they would seek in some way to reinforce geopolitical peace and a sense of security in the countries they claim to want to see become democratic. At the end of the Cold War (as was calmly acknowledged by a scholar who was an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney), the lone superpower used its naval and airforces to violate “China’s airspace and territorial waters with little fear of harassment and interdiction” unscrupulously and with impunity. The great Asian country was powerless at that time. Today, the situation has changed significantly. The United States is, however, still able to control the channels of maritime communications. Therefore, “China is already vulnerable to the effects of a naval blockade, and it will become even more so as its economy grows”; in fact, “its fate could depend on American forbearance.” [47] And it is this situation that the United States strives to perpetuate. All this is not conducive to the development of the rule of law.

The campaign of the West for the “democratisation” of China is taking place just as many political analysts are forced to see the decline of democracy in the West. A few years before the economic crisis, one could read in the International Herald Tribune that the United States had become a “plutocracy”; now the forces of private and corporate wealth have already taken hold of political institutions, while the rest of the population is cut off. [48] Nowadays, on the left as well as among those completely opposed to the Marxist tradition, it is common to read that in the West, and primarily in the United States, plutocracy has taken the place of democracy. We can conclude that the on-going campaign for the “democratisation” of China is actually a campaign for its plutocratisation, to turn in the opposite direction the “political expropriation” of the bourgeoisie that has taken place since 1949 in the big Asian country.

A second campaign, as usual, conducted by Washington and Brussels, requires substantial liquidation of the state-owned sector and the public economy which play such an important role in the fight against two great inequalities: on the international scene, this sector is making a major contribution to China’s technological development, which is increasingly closing the gap with the advanced countries; internally, the state-owned sector and the public economy reduce inequalities between different regions, accelerating the development of China’s less developed regions, which are now growing at a much faster pace than the coastal regions. If this second campaign launched by the West had been successful, the “economic” expropriation of the bourgeoisie, already reduced, would have been cancelled altogether, so that the bourgeoisie could enormously increase its influence in society and again pave the way for conquest of political power.

It is very clear which weapons will be used to fight in the country that has emerged from the greatest anti-colonial revolution in history to engage in a long-term process of building a post-capitalist and socialist society. Which side will the Western left take?

Adhere to the Principle “To Each According To His Work”

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — Adhere to the Principle “To Each According To His Work”

Adhere to the Principle “To Each According To His Work”

Article 7 of 10

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Originally published at https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/adhere-to-the-principle-to-each-according-to-his-work/

ADHERE TO THE PRINCIPLE “TO EACH

ACCORDING TO HIS WORK”

March 28, 1978

I have read the article, “Implement the Socialist Principle `To Each According to His Work’ ”, drafted by the Office of Research on Political Affairs under the State Council. It’s a good article, and it explains why the principle discussed is socialist, not capitalist. But it still needs some revision to make clear how the principle applies to current practical problems.

We must adhere to this socialist principle which calls for distribution according to the quantity and quality of an individual’s work. In accordance with this principle, a person’s grade on the pay scale is determined mainly by his performance on the job, his technical level and his actual contribution. Political attitude should also be taken into account, but it must be made clear that a good political attitude should find expression mainly in a good performance in socialist labour and a greater contribution to society. If, in handling distribution, we judged mainly on the basis of a person’s politics rather than on the basis of his work, that would mean we were following the principle “to each according to his politics” rather than “to each according to his work”. In short, distribution should be made only according to a person’s work, not according to his politics or his seniority.

We are following a policy of low pay, and will continue doing so for a considerable time to come. At present, the maximum monthly pay for a worker of Grade 8 [the highest grade at present] is a little over 100 yuan. In the future, as production expands, there will gradually be more promotions to higher grades on the pay scale, and the amount of pay accruing to each grade will also be increased. Today, salaries for primary school teachers are too low. The work of good primary school teachers is quite onerous, so their salaries should be raised. In future, those primary school teachers who have done an excellent job may be classified as special-grade on the pay scale. The special-grade system should be introduced in all trades and professions so as to encourage people to devote their entire lives to one line of work.

It is imperative to institute a system for the evaluation of work. The evaluations must be strict, comprehensive and regular, and they should be made in all trades and professions. In the future, promotion on the pay scale will be based on the result of these evaluations. Those who reach the required standard will be upgraded and may even jump grades. Those who do not won’t be promoted.

We must have rewards and penalties, and the criteria must be perfectly clear. Those whose work is evaluated as good should be paid at a different rate from those who have done poorly. Our general policy is to place moral encouragement first, material incentives second. The awarding of medals and certificates of merit constitutes moral encouragement and represents a political honour. This is essential. However, material incentives cannot be dispensed with either. All related measures which have proved effective in the past should be restored. The bonus system should also be reinstated. Money awards should be given to those who have made special contributions, including inventors and innovators. As for persons who have scored major achievements in scientific research, in addition to being given awards for their inventions or innovations, they should be promoted on the pay scale. On the other hand, if a person has no achievement to his credit after several years’ effort, he should be asked to switch to some other occupation. According to a decision recently made in Romania, a somewhat higher remuneration will be given to cadres and workers in factories which do good work, while those in factories which do poorer work will be docked. This makes a clear distinction between reward and penalty. The system of making additional payments to writers and artists for articles, etc. should be restored, with some modifications in the light of the new situation.

There is still a lot to be done to implement the principle “to each according to his work”. Some problems must be solved step by step, through investigation and study. Some former practices should be restored, and some new ones introduced. The point of all this is to encourage people to make progress.

(Excerpt from a talk to leading members of the Office of Research on Political Affairs under the State Council.)

We Can Develop A Market Economy Under Socialism

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — We Can Develop A Market Economy Under Socialism

We Can Develop A Market Economy Under Socialism

Article 8 of 10

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

By Deng Xiaoping

Originally published at https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/we-can-develop-a-market-economy-under-socialism/

WE CAN DEVELOP A MARKET ECONOMY

UNDER SOCIALISM

November 26, 1979

Gibney: Over a fairly long period of time China has remained closed off from the United States. For such a country as China, it is really a big challenge to achieve rapid modernization. It seems that China has to carry out a new revolution.

Deng Xiaoping: Modernization does represent a great new revolution. The aim of our revolution is to liberate and expand the productive forces. Without expanding the productive forces, making our country prosperous and powerful, and improving the living standards of the people, our revolution is just empty talk. We oppose the old society and the old system because they oppressed the people and fettered the productive forces. We are clear about this problem now. The Gang of Four said it was better to be poor under socialism than to be rich under capitalism. This is absurd.

Of course, we do not want capitalism, but neither do we want to be poor under socialism. What we want is socialism in which the productive forces are developed and the country is prosperous and powerful. We believe that socialism is superior to capitalism. This superiority should be demonstrated in that socialism provides more favourable conditions for expanding the productive forces than capitalism does. This superiority should have become evident, but owing to our differing understanding of it, the development of the productive forces has been delayed, especially during the past ten-year period up to 1976. In the early 1960s, China was behind the developed countries, but the gap was not as wide as it is now. Over the past 11 or 12 years, from the end of the 1960s through the 1970s, the gap has widened because other countries have been vigorously developing their economies, science and technology, with the rate of development no longer being calculated in terms of years, not even in terms of months, but in terms of days. For a fairly long period of time since the founding of the People’s Republic, we have been isolated from the rest of the world. For many years this isolation was not attributable to us; on the contrary, the international anti-Chinese and anti-socialist forces confined us to a state of isolation. However, in the 1960s when opportunities to increase contact and cooperation with other countries presented themselves to us, we isolated ourselves. At last, we have learned to make use of favourable international conditions.

We must realize the four modernizations. To attain this objective, we must rely on our own efforts, on correct principles and policies, and on specific effective measures. Some people doubt whether we can accomplish the modernization drive and ask us on what basis we can achieve the four modernizations. We enjoy four favourable conditions for attaining the goal of modernization as follows.

First, we have abundant natural resources. China is a country with vast territory and abundant energy and mineral resources, including almost all the ferrous, nonferrous and rare metals. If these resources are exploited, they will produce great economic power.

Second, over the past 30 years, regardless of the follies that we have committed, we have laid a preliminary material foundation for industry, agriculture, science and technology, thus creating a basis for achieving the four modernizations. We now have over 2 million machine tools, and produce more than 100 million tons of oil, over 600 million tons of coal, and more than 30 million tons of steel annually. In short, we have laid the material foundation for realizing the four modernizations.

Third, we believe that the Chinese people are apt. For about ten years, the mental shackles imposed by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four fettered people’s thinking and restrained them from bringing their wisdom and creativity into full play. But now we are encouraging people to emancipate their minds and reiterating the policy of “letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend”, as was proposed by Chairman Mao Zedong, so as to create the necessary conditions for arousing the Chinese people’s initiative and bringing their intelligence and wisdom into full play. We are strengthening and promoting democracy for the same purpose. But some people mistake our expanding democracy for advocating anarchy. In fact, anarchy was practised in the days of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. Development is out of the question under anarchy. If you had come to China in the 1950s or in the early 1960s, you would have found that our social conduct was good. During those hard times, people observed discipline, took the overall situation into consideration, combined personal interest with the overall interests of the collective, the state and society, and conscientiously overcame difficulties with the government. It was in this way that we passed through the three years of economic difficulties beginning in 1959. However, Lin Biao and the Gang of Four completely corrupted this good social conduct. Now, the “Xidan Wall” in Beijing has for some time been a place where those people, who do not work, often create disturbances. They are perniciously influenced by the ideology of the Gang of Four and gather to make trouble and even to engage in espionage. Although a few of them are well-intentioned, actually they are imbued with the ideology of the Gang of Four. They practise ultra-individualism and anarchy. Although these young people are few in number, they have enormous influence. We have adopted a serious attitude towards them for the purpose of educating the younger generation. Therefore, we maintain that while strengthening democracy, we should improve the socialist legal system. We should emancipate our minds and restore the good social conduct that prevailed for a long time. We shall try to fully arouse the initiative of the people in order to accomplish the four modernizations, but we have a precondition, that is, we need to create a political situation characterized by social stability and unity. Meanwhile, we should also pay attention to training personnel. For many years, we have neglected scientific research and education, resulting in great losses in this area. Therefore, we must strengthen science and education, discover capable personnel and make good use of them. To sum up, we should arouse the initiative of our people. As long as we put to use the wisdom and intelligence of the people, China has high hopes.

Fourth, to realize the four modernizations, we must follow the correct foreign policy of opening to the outside world. Although we rely primarily on our own efforts, on our own resources and on our own foundations to realize the four modernizations, it would be impossible for us to achieve this objective without international cooperation. We should make full use of advanced scientific and technological achievements from around the world and also of potential funding from abroad so that we can accelerate the four modernizations. This opportunity did not exist for us in the past. Later, when conditions changed, we failed to make use of them for some time. It is high time that we learn to utilize this opportunity.

The principles and objectives of the four modernizations were formulated by Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, but owing to the interference of the Gang of Four, we could not actually implement them. After the downfall of the Gang of Four, we made great efforts to solve the numerous problems they had caused. It was not until last year that we began to shift our focus onto the drive for modernization.

What is the most significant political task for China? It is the achievement of the four modernizations. During the drive for modernization we are bound to solve complicated problems and encounter difficulties. For instance, our departments are overstaffed. Also, we must master modern science and technology, but we do not yet have enough competent personnel. We need the political situation of stability and unity that we have basically already created, but still, many problems remain to be solved. We participate in international cooperation, but still we need experience in learning to absorb advanced foreign science and technology and foreign capital. However, despite various difficulties and problems, I am convinced that we have taken the correct road towards modernization. We are confident that we can gradually remove the obstacles and overcome our difficulties and shortcomings. Perhaps we shall not score any notable achievements in two or three years, but a great change will take place in a few more years. Although some people still doubt whether we can achieve the four modernizations, the Chinese leaders and the majority of the Chinese people are convinced that we shall succeed in our modernization programme.

Gibney: The United States made a big mistake when it interpreted the socialism of China as a copy of that of the Soviet Union. Could China have been so ideologically confused initially as to have completely imitated and adopted the socialist style of the Soviet Union, failing to make it into a Chinese-style socialist road?

Deng: The socialist road of China is not the same as that of the Soviet Union. They were different from each other from the very start in that China’s socialism had its own characteristics ever since the founding of the People’s Republic. For instance, we adopted the policy of redemption instead of that of deprivation in our socialist transformation of capitalist enterprises. As a result, we succeeded in abolishing the bourgeoisie and carrying out the socialist transformation without affecting the national economy. Besides, the political situation characterized by both centralism and democracy, both discipline and freedom, both unity of will and personal ease of mind and liveliness, as advocated by Chairman Mao Zedong, is not similar to that of the Soviet Union. However, some of our economic systems, especially enterprise management and organization, have been greatly influenced by the Soviet Union. For this reason, it is advantageous that we inherit the advanced methods of operation, management, and scientific development from advanced capitalist countries. We are still having many difficulties reforming these aspects of our economy.

Gibney: It is wonderful that the initiative of the Chinese people is being aroused. But someday in the future, with China remaining a socialist country and operating within the limits of socialism, will China develop some kind of market economy?

Deng: Market economy involves only the foreign-funded enterprises. Taking the country as a whole, this is not a problem. The state-owned sector and collectively owned sector are still the mainstay of our economy. Although in our economy there may be some investment from overseas Chinese which might be in the form of capitalism, it is different from regular foreign investment because the majority of these overseas Chinese come to China with reverence, hoping to develop their socialist motherland. Some people are afraid that China will take the capitalist road if it tries to achieve the four modernizations with the help of foreign investment. No, we will not take the capitalist road. The bourgeoisie no longer exist in China. There are still former capitalists, but their class status has changed. Although foreign investment, which belongs to the capitalist economy, occupies a place in our economy, it accounts for only a small portion of it and thus will not change China’s social system. Achievement of common prosperity characterizes socialism, which cannot produce an exploiting class.

Paul T. K. Lin: China made a mistake when it placed restrictions on its socialist market economy too early and too rapidly. Because of this, do you think China needs to make its socialist market economy play a bigger role under the guidance of a planned socialist economy.

Deng: It is wrong to maintain that a market economy exists only in capitalist society and that there is only “capitalist” market economy. Why can’t we develop a market economy under socialism? Developing a market economy does not mean practising capitalism. While maintaining a planned economy as the mainstay of our economic system, we are also introducing a market economy. But it is a socialist market economy. Although a socialist market economy is similar to a capitalist one in method, there are also differences between them. The socialist market economy mainly regulates interrelations between state-owned enterprises, between collectively owned enterprises and even between foreign capitalist enterprises. But in the final analysis, this is all done under socialism in a socialist society. We cannot say that market economy exists only under capitalism. Market economy was in its embryonic stages as early as feudalist society. We can surely develop it under socialism. Similarly, taking advantage of the useful aspects of capitalist countries, including their methods of operation and management, does not mean that we will adopt capitalism. Instead, we use those methods in order to develop the productive forces under socialism. As long as learning from capitalism is regarded as no more than a means to an end, it will not change the structure of socialism or bring China back to capitalism.

(Excerpt from a talk with Frank B. Gibney, Vice-Chairman of the Compilation Committee of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. of the United States, Paul T. K. Lin, Director of the Institute of East Asia at McGill University of Canada, and others.)

Oppose Book Worship

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — Oppose Book Worship

Oppose Book Worship

Article 9 of 10

Marxists Internet Archive

By Mao Zedong

Originally published at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

May 1930

I. NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense? 

It won't do!

It won't do!

You must investigate!

You must not talk nonsense!

II. TO INVESTIGATE A PROBLEM IS TO SOLVE IT

You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and its past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it. Conclusions invariably come after investigation, and not before. Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together with a group, to "find solution" or "evolve an idea" without making any investigation. It must be stressed that this cannot possibly lead to any effective solution or any good idea. In other words, he is bound to arrive at a wrong solution and a wrong idea.

There are not a few comrades doing inspection work, as well as guerrilla leaders and cadres newly in office, who like to make political pronouncements the moment they arrive at a place and who strut about, criticizing this and condemning that when they have only seen the surface of things or minor details. Such purely subjective nonsensical talk is indeed detestable. These people are bound to make a mess of things, lose the confidence of the masses and prove incapable of solving any problem at all.

When they come across difficult problems, quite a number of people in leading positions simply heave a sigh without being able to solve them. They lose patience and ask to be transferred on the ground that they "have not the ability and cannot do the job"; These are cowards' words. Just get moving on your two legs, go the rounds of every section placed under your charge and "inquire into everything''[1] as Confucius did, and then you will be able to solve the problems, however little is your ability; for although your head may be empty before you go out of doors, it will be empty no longer when you return but will contain all sorts of material necessary for the solution of the problems, and that is how problems are solved. Must you go out of doors? Not necessarily. You can call a fact-finding meeting of people familiar with the situation in order to get at the source of what you call a difficult problem and come to know how it stands now, and then it will be easy to solve your difficult problem.

Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.

III. OPPOSE BOOK WORSHIP

Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, "Show me where it's written in the book." When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from "a higher organ of leadership" but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.

The method of studying the social sciences exclusively from the book is likewise extremely dangerous and may even lead one onto the road of counter-revolution. Clear proof of this is provided by the fact that whole batches of Chinese Communists who confined themselves to books in their study of the social sciences have turned into counter-revolutionaries. When we say Marxism is correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a "prophet" but because his theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalisation of mystical notion as that of "prophecy" ever enters our minds. Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. Of course we should study Marxist books, but this study must be integrated with our country's actual conditions. We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced from the actual situation.

How can we overcome book worship? The only way is to investigate the actual situation.

IV. WITHOUT INVESTIGATING THE ACTUAL SITUATION, THERE IS BOUND TO BE AN IDEALIST APPRAISAL OF CLASS FORCES AND AN IDEALIST GUIDANCE IN WORK, RESULTING EITHER IN OPPORTUNISM OR IN PUTSCHISM

Do you doubt this conclusion? Facts will force you to accept it. Just try and appraise the political situation or guide the struggle without making any investigation, and you will see whether or not such appraisal or guidance is groundless and idealist and whether or not it will lead to opportunist or putschist errors. Certainly it will. This is not because of failure to make careful plans before taking action but because of failure to study the specific social situation carefully before making the plans, as often happens in our Red Army guerrilla units. Officers of the Li Kuei[2] type do not discriminate when they punish the men for offenses. As a result, the offenders feel they have been unfairly treated, many disputes ensue, and the leaders lose all prestige. Does this not happen frequently in the Red Army? 

We must wipe out idealism and guard against all opportunist and putschist errors before we can succeed in winning over the masses and defeating the enemy. The only way to wipe out idealism is to make the effort and investigate the actual situation.

V. THE AIM OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INVESTIGATION IS TO ARRIVE AT A CORRECT APPRAISAL OF CLASS FORCES AND THEN TO FORMULATE CORRECT TACTICS FOR THE STRUGGLE

This is our answer to the question: Why do we have to investigate social and economic conditions? Accordingly, the object of our investigation is all the social classes and not fragmentary social phenomena. Of late, the comrades in the Fourth Army of the Red Army have generally given attention to the work of investigation, [3] but the method many of them employ is wrong. The results of their investigation are therefore as trivial as a grocer's accounts, or resemble the many strange tales a country bumpkin hears when he comes to town, or are like a distant view of a populous city from a mountain top. This kind of investigation is of little use and cannot achieve our main purpose. Our main purpose is to learn the political and economic situation of the various social classes. The outcome of our investigation should be a picture of the present situation of each class and the ups and downs of its development. For example, when we investigate the composition of the peasantry, not only must we know the number of owner-peasants, semi-owner peasants and tenant-peasants, who are differentiated according to tenancy relationships, but more especially we must know the number of rich peasants, middle peasants and poor peasants, who are differentiated according to class or stratum. When we investigate the composition of the merchants, not only must we know the number in each trade, such as grain, clothing, medicinal herbs, etc., but more especially we must know the number of small merchants, middle merchants and big merchants. We should investigate not only the state of each trade, but more especially the class relations within it. We should investigate the relationships not only between the different trades but more especially between the different classes. Our chief method of investigation must be to dissect the different social classes, the ultimate purpose being to understand their interrelations, to arrive at a correct appraisal of class forces and then to formulate the correct tactics for the struggle, defining which classes constitute the main force in the revolutionary struggle, which classes are to be won over as allies and which classes are to be overthrown. This is our sole purpose.

What are the social classes requiring investigation?

They are:

The industrial proletariat
The handicraft workers
The farm labourers
The poor peasants
The urban poor
The lumpen-Proletariat
The master handicraftsmen
The small merchants
The middle peasants
The rich peasants
The landlords
The commercial bourgeoisie
The industrial bourgeoisie

In our investigation we should give attention to the state of all these classes or strata. Only the industrial proletariat and industrial bourgeoisie are absent in the areas where we are now working, and we constantly come across all the others. Our tactics of struggle are tactics in relation to all these classes and strata.

Another serious shortcoming in our past investigations has been the undue stress on the countryside to the neglect of the towns, so that many comrades have always been vague about our tactics towards the urban poor and the commercial bourgeoisie. The development of the struggle has enabled us to leave the mountains for the plains.[4] We have descended physically, but we are still up in the mountains mentally. We must understand the towns as well as the countryside, or we shall be unable to meet the needs of the revolutionary struggle.

VI. VICTORY IN CHINA'S REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE WILL DEPEND ON THE CHINESE COMRADES' UNDERSTANDING OF CHINESE CONDITIONS

The aim of our struggle is to attain socialism via the stage of democracy. In this task, the first step is to complete the democratic revolution by winning the majority of the working class and arousing the peasant masses and the urban poor for the overthrow of the landlord class, imperialism and the Kuomintang regime. The next step is to carry out the socialist revolution, which will follow on the development of this struggle. The fulfilment of this great revolutionary task is no simple or easy job and will depend entirely on correct and firm tactics on the part of the proletarian party. If its tactics of struggle are wrong, or irresolute and wavering, the revolution will certainly suffer temporary defeat. It must be borne in mind that the bourgeois parties, too, constantly discuss their tactics of struggle. They are considering how to spread reformist influences among the working class so as to mislead it and turn it away from Communist Party leadership, how to get the rich peasants to put down the uprisings of the poor peasants and how to organize gangsters to suppress the revolutionary struggles. In a situation when the class struggle grows increasingly acute and is waged at close quarters, the proletariat has to depend for its victory entirely on the correct and firm tactics of struggle of its own party, the Communist Party. A Communist Party's correct and unswerving tactics of struggle can in no circumstance be created by a few people sitting in an office; they emerge in the course of mass struggle, that is, through actual experience. Therefore, we must at all times study social conditions and make practical investigations. Those comrades who are inflexible, conservative, formalistic and groundlessly optimistic think that the present tactics of struggle are perfect, that the "book of documents"[5] of the Party's Sixth National Congress guarantees lasting victory, and that one can always be victorious merely by adhering to the established methods. These ideas are absolutely wrong and have nothing in common with the idea that Communists should create favourable new situations through struggle; they represent a purely conservative line. Unless it is completely discarded, this line will cause great losses to the revolution and do harm to these comrades themselves. There are obviously some comrades in our Red Army who are content to leave things as they are, who do not seek to understand anything thoroughly and are groundlessly optimistic, and they spread the fallacy that "this is proletarian". They eat their fill and sit dozing in their offices all day long without ever moving a step and going out among the masses to investigate. Whenever they open their mouths, their platitudes make people sick. To awaken these comrades we must raise our voices and cry out to them: 

Change your conservative ideas without delay!

Replace them by progressive and militant Communist ideas!

Get into the struggle!

Go among the masses and investigate the facts!

VII. THE TECHNIQUE OF INVESTlGATION

1. Hold fact-finding meetings and undertake investigation through discussions.

This is the only way to get near the truth, the only way to draw conclusions. It is easy to commit mistakes if you do not hold fact-finding meetings for investigation through discussions but simply rely on one individual relating his own experience. You cannot possibly draw more or less correct conclusions at such meetings if you put questions casually instead of raising key-questions for discussion.

2. What kind of people should attend the fact-finding meetings?

They should be people well acquainted with social and economic conditions. As far as age is concerned, older people are best, because they are rich in experience and not only know what is going on but understand the causes and effects. Young people with experience of struggle should also be included, because they have progressive ideas and sharp eyes. As far as occupation is concerned, there should be workers, peasants, merchants, intellectuals, and occasionally soldiers, and sometimes even vagrants. Naturally, when a particular subject is being looked into, those who have nothing to do with it need not be present. For example, workers, peasants and students need not attend when commerce is the subject of investigation.

3. Which is better, a large fact-finding meeting or a small one?

That depends on the investigator's ability to conduct a meeting. If he is good at it, a meeting of as many as a dozen or even twenty or more people can be called. A large meeting has its advantages; from the answers you get fairly accurate statistics (e. g., in finding out the percentage of poor peasants in the total peasant population) and fairly correct conclusions (e.g., in finding out whether equal or differentiated land redistribution is better ). Of course, it has its disadvantages too; unless you are skillful in conducting meetings, you will find it difficult to keep order. So the number of people attending a meeting depends on the competence of the investigator. However, the minimum is three, or otherwise the information obtained will be too limited to correspond to the real situation.

4. Prepare a detailed outline for the investigation.

A detailed outline should be prepared beforehand, and the investigator should ask questions according to the outline, with those present at the meeting giving their answers. Any points which are unclear or doubtful should be put up for discussion. The detailed outline should include main subjects and sub-headings and also detailed items. For instance, taking commerce as a main subject, it can have such sub-headings as cloth, grain, other necessities and medicinal herbs; again, under cloth, there can be such detailed items as calico, homespun and silk and satin.

5. Personal participation.

Everyone with responsibility for giving leadership — from the chairman of the township government to the chairman of the central government, from the detachment leader to the commander-in-chief, from the secretary of a Party branch to the general secretary — must personally undertake investigation into the specific social and economic conditions and not merely rely on reading reports. For investigation and reading reports are two entirely different things.

6. Probe deeply. 

Anyone new to investigation work should make one or two thorough investigations in order to gain full knowledge of a particular place (say, a village or a town) of a particular problem (say, the problem of grain or currency). Deep probing into a particular place or problem will make future investigation of other places or problems easier.

7. Make your own notes.

The investigator should not only preside at fact-finding meetings and give proper guidance to those present but should also make his own notes and record the results himself. To have others do it for him is no good.

On the Experimental Nature of Socialism and the Complexity of China's Reform and Opening Up

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — On the Experimental Nature of Socialism and the Complexity of China's Reform and Opening Up

On the Experimental Nature of Socialism and the Complexity of China's Reform and Opening Up

Article 10 of 10

Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横)

By Li Tuo

Originally published at https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2025-1-experimental-nature-socialism-china/

Li Tuo (李陀) is a writer and literary critic. He has written screenplays and authored numerous essays on Chinese literature, cinema, and art. His works have won major awards, including the first National Short Story Award (1978) for ‘I Hope You Hear This Song’ 愿你听到这支歌 and the Ministry of Culture Best Film Awards for Li Siguang 李四光 (1979) and Sha Ou 沙鸥 (1981), which he co-wrote. Li has also edited several major Chinese literature anthologies, including Beijing Literature in the 1980s, and Shijie (Horizons) in the 1990s-2000s. He is currently the editor of Jintian (Today).

I.

To understand the complexity of socialism, it is best to take a broad historical perspective on the actual development of socialist movements.¹ Particular attention should be paid to an often-overlooked aspect of this development – the continuous experiments that have accompanied the history of the socialist movement. Some of these experiments have succeeded, while others have failed. In retrospect, it is clear that these ongoing experiments were an integral part of socialist practice.

From the very early stages of the socialist movement, the period of utopian socialism, such experiments already existed. For example, in 1824, Robert Owen travelled to the United States and purchased 1,214 hectares of land along the Wabash River in southern Indiana. There, he launched the New Harmony commune experiment, which caused a global sensation. Although this dream of an idyllic utopia only lasted four years before failing, it was the first attempt to construct an ideal society amid the capitalist world system. As such, this experiment should be regarded as a remarkable opening of a new historical era.

Half a century later, the Paris Commune carried out an even greater experiment. The victory of the Paris Commune on 18 March 1871 lasted only 72 days. During this brief period, the Parisian proletariat not only established the first workers’ government but also introduced a series of political, economic, and cultural reforms.² These included the abolition of the standing army and state bureaucracy, the elimination of high salaries for officials, the abolition of parliamentary governance, and the implementation of democratic universal suffrage for electing public servants at all levels. Such measures were unprecedented in the historical development rooted in private ownership. From the perspective of human social practice, all revolutionary initiatives of the Paris Commune were inherently experimental in nature.

Although this experiment was short-lived and drowned in blood due to brutal repression, Marx argued that it was ‘…the dawn of the great social revolution which will forever free the human race from class rule’.³ Illuminated by this dawn, subsequent socialist movements aiming to overthrow the capitalist system, though fraught with twists and turns, carried on the revolutionary experiments initiated by the Paris Commune. These experiments have never ceased, and this continuity is one of the most valuable legacies left by the Paris Commune to the socialist revolution.

II.

The famous Rotes Wien (Red Vienna) urban development proposals serve as another example of a revolutionary experiment. Between 1918 and 1934, the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (SDAP) governed the Austrian capital city of Vienna in a period known as Rotes Wien.⁴ During this time, the SDAP seized the opportunity to conduct a democratic socialist experiment through the implementation of a series of reforms. Among these reforms, the most remarkable was the construction of public housing to address the poor living conditions of Vienna’s working class. By 1934, nearly 65,000 public housing units had been built in Vienna, forming 348 new residential complexes imbued with strong socialist ideals. One of the most famous of these complexes is the Karl-Marx-Hof, completed in 1924. This massive public housing unit not only provided 1,400 apartments housing over 5,000 residents but also included numerous public facilities such as large laundries, public baths, a dental clinic, an obstetrics hospital, a public library, and a pharmacy. Designed with careful consideration of the balance between public and private spaces, the workers living in these apartments enjoyed both excellent living conditions and comprehensive public services.

However, like the Paris Commune before it, this experiment too came to an end. In this case, it was because the SDAP was a party committed to parliamentary politics and reformism. The socialist experiment, which was largely confined to urban development, came to an abrupt halt in 1934 when the Nazi Party rose to power and banned the SDAP.

III.

Looking back at the reformist social experiment of Rotes Wien, it serves as a reference point that allows us to re-examine Vladimir Lenin’s ‘strategic retreat’ in the spring of 1921, when he abandoned war communism in favour of the New Economic Policy (NEP). This shift not only fundamentally altered traditional Marxist understandings of socialism but also provided the socialist movement with a new direction.

There were major shifts in Lenin’s thinking towards the latter part of his life, when he declared, ‘We have to admit that there has been a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism’.⁵ For many reasons, Lenin seemingly abandoned the immediate transition to socialism in favour of a more circuitous route – retreating to a position of state capitalism and transitioning from a tactic of assault to siege. What is worth noting today is that while these historical experiences offer a wealth of insights and interpretations, they often overlook one key issue: for a Soviet government that had existed for barely three years and was still struggling to find its footing, implementing such a dramatic shift in revolutionary strategy was highly experimental in practice. Lenin’s series of retreats aimed at achieving a circuitous transition to socialism can, to a significant extent, be seen as a series of experiments.

Taking a broader view, the October Revolution of 1917 was itself a revolutionary experiment. Carrying out a proletarian revolution in a backwards agrarian country that was unindustrialised and still rooted in serfdom was considered impossible from the perspective of classical Marxist theory. This experiment deviated entirely from the revolutionary experiences of the European proletariat since the 19th century. This theoretical divergence explains why the theorists of the Second International dismissed Lenin’s theory that the revolution should begin at the weakest link in the global capitalist system. These theorists always held a negative attitude toward Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Even among Marxists who broadly supported Lenin’s strategy, many adopted a critical stance due to uncertainties about his specific practices. The ideological and theoretical debates sparked by these issues have persisted for over a century. In China, similar debates have flourished, especially since the beginning of the reform and opening up era, when discussions about the history of the October Revolution became a vibrant field of study. Yet even in the discussions in China, the experimental nature inherent in Lenin’s leadership of the Russian Revolution has received limited attention. This oversight has limited our understanding of Lenin’s tactical shift in 1921. As a result, the difficulties and dangers of this tactical retreat and the profound theoretical and practical challenges it posed are often underestimated or overlooked.

IV.

Lenin provided clear expositions about these challenges in key works written during his later years (1921–1923). In these writings, Lenin reviewed the history of the implementation of the NEP with serious introspection and self-criticism, drawing lessons from past failures. He also repeatedly warned that the Soviet government would face even greater difficulties and challenges in the construction of socialism.

In The Tax in Kind, a particularly critical document regarding the NEP, Lenin explicitly stated that nobody …ever expected to bring about “complete” socialism smoothly, gently, easily and simply’.⁶ Moreover, he sharply criticised the argument that Russia’s economic and political conditions lacked the historical prerequisites for a socialist revolution, and that therefore the Bolsheviks should not have seized power. To this, Lenin retorted that, ‘…it always exists in the development of nature as well as in the development of society that only by a series of attempts – each of which, taken by itself, will be one sided and will suffer from certain inconsistencies – will complete socialism be created by the revolutionary cooperation of the proletarians of all countries’.

Lenin’s insights, when combined with his other writings on the overarching theme of achieving a circuitous transition to socialism, form a rich and complex body of thought. On a practical level, one key point stands out: the construction of socialism must abandon the dream of immediately realising a ‘complete socialism’. This notion of avoiding dogmatic attempts at a direct realisation of a ‘complete socialism’ represented a significant leap in Lenin’s approach to socialist revolution and construction.

A systematic review of Lenin’s series of retreats in the 1920s reveals a tactical variety – ranging from the implementation of a tax in kind for farmers, restoration of small-scale industries and smallholder peasant businesses, reintroduction of commodity exchange and monetary circulation, and encouragement of market economies and free trade. However, these tactical retreats can be understood as part of a broader strategic compromise. They accommodated the spontaneous forces of smallholder peasant economies and elements of commercial capitalism, both private and state capitalism. Collectively, these retreats were concrete steps in implementing the overarching strategy of avoiding the idealistic and premature realisation of ‘complete socialism’.

These retreats had serious political consequences, eliciting criticism and opposition from all sides, including the Second International and its affiliates, the Mensheviks, and the Socialist Revolutionaries. SDAP leader Otto Bauer charged that the Bolsheviks were ‘retreating to capitalism’, and that the October Revolution ‘was a bourgeois revolution’.⁷ The journal Smena Vekh accused the Bolsheviks of ‘sinking into the usual bourgeois mire’.⁸ Even within the Bolshevik Party, there was a lack of unity, as many members resisted these retreats. Some veteran members protested directly to Lenin: ‘Why talk about state commerce? No one ever taught us business in prison!’ In the Central Committee, there were fierce debates over theory and strategy between Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, and Zinoviev. These internal conflicts created significant challenges for implementing the NEP.

Compounding these internal challenges was Russia’s dire state, which, after the Civil War, was ‘like a person beaten half to death’. Domestic crises abounded, including industrial stagnation, decline in agricultural output, severe famine, and growing peasant unrest triggered by opposition to the Prodraverstka system, which in some regions even escalated into uprisings.⁹ Meanwhile, the proletarian revolutions in Europe that Lenin and many Marxists had pinned their hopes on had failed, leaving the Russian Revolution isolated. Amid these severe circumstances, Lenin and the Bolsheviks made the bold decision to implement a series of major economic reforms that were unprecedented in traditional Marxist theory and socialist movements. This posed significant theoretical challenges and practical risks.

The experimental nature of this circuitous approach to forging a new path to socialism, marked by its extraordinary risks and difficulties, should not be overlooked. Lenin was fully aware of the immense risks involved and even foresaw the possibility of failure but was able to unite the party to address these challenges and navigate the crises of practically implementing policies.

V.

On 21 April 1921, Lenin wrote in The Tax in Kind that ‘It was not without reason that the teachers of socialism spoke of a whole period of transition from capitalism to socialism and emphasised the “prolonged birth pangs” of the new society. And this new society is again an abstraction which can come into being only by passing through a series of varied, imperfect, and concrete attempts to create this or that socialist state’.

On 14 October 1921, in his speech on the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin outlined the link between the bourgeois-democratic and proletarian-socialist revolutions, explaining that ‘The first develops into the second. The second, in passing, solves the problems of the first. The second consolidates the work of the first. Struggle, and struggle alone, decides how far the second succeeds in outgrowing the first’.¹⁰

Two weeks later, on 3 and 4 November 1921, in his Report on the New Economic Policy at the Seventh Moscow Gubernia Conference of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin further emphasised the non-linear path to victory in war:

This applies to ordinary wars, but what about wars which decide the fate of a whole class, which decide the issue of socialism or capitalism? Are there reasonable grounds for assuming that a nation which is attempting to solve this problem for the first time can immediately find the only correct and infallible method? What grounds are there for assuming that? None whatever! Experience teaches the very opposite. Of the problems we tackled, not one was solved at the first attempt; every one of them had to be taken up a second time. After suffering defeat, we tried again, we did everything all over again.¹¹

A year later, on 27 March 1922, at the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), Lenin reiterated:

On the question of state capitalism, I think that generally our press and our Party make the mistake of dropping into intellectualism, into liberalism; we philosophise about how state capitalism is to be interpreted and look into old books. But in those old books, you will not find what we are discussing; they deal with the state capitalism that exists under capitalism. Not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism. It did not occur even to Marx to write a word on this subject; and he died without leaving a single precise statement or definite instruction on it. That is why we must overcome the difficulty entirely by ourselves.

In January 1923, as Lenin’s health deteriorated, he dictated On Cooperation, a significant text discussing the need for institutional innovation. Here, he stressed, ‘Our opponents told us repeatedly that we were rash in undertaking to implant socialism in an insufficiently cultured country. But they were misled by our having started from the opposite end to that prescribed by theory (the theory of pedants of all kinds), because in our country the political and social revolution preceded the cultural revolution, that very cultural revolution which nevertheless now confronts us’.

Revisiting Lenin’s argumentation today, we cannot help but link it to the history of the socialist movement after his death. We must re-examine the specific practices of that historical period and consider how many of the twists, turns, and failures in that history are tied to Lenin’s repeated assertion that a direct transition to ‘complete socialism’ is unfeasible. If the construction of socialism embraces detours and retreats, avoids chasing the ‘only correct and infallible method’, and refrains from, ‘looking into old books’, to determine the path and direction, but instead undertakes, ‘a series of varied, imperfect, and concrete attempts’, then in practice, many of these ‘concrete attempts’ are inevitably experimental in nature. This means that uninterrupted social experimentation is an inseparable component of socialist construction.

VI.

In the socialist history of New China after 1949, the connections and relationships between Mao Zedong’s and Lenin’s theories and practices have been an important area for Marxist research. While considerable literature already exists on this topic, there is room for more detailed explorations of issues such as the transition to socialism. Specifically, a deeper investigation is needed to study how Mao creatively expanded and developed Lenin’s idea that ‘complete socialism’ cannot be simply and directly realised.

For example, suppose the direct realisation of a ‘complete socialism’ is not pursued; this inevitably raises a core issue of ownership under socialism – how should Lenin’s concept of ‘state capitalism under communism’ be understood? How should it be implemented in concrete practice? What should its institutional form look like? While Lenin discussed these questions in works such as The Tax in Kind, he did not have the opportunity to implement, test, or resolve them in practice before his death in 1924. Subsequently, Stalinism completely deviated from Lenin’s ideas and approach. Stalin crafted an entirely different script, ultimately directing the tragedy of the Soviet Union’s complete failure, while also leaving behind monumental challenges for the socialist movement.

To understand the Chinese Revolution, it is necessary to analyse how Mao, as Lenin’s most steadfast successor, addressed and resolved the challenge of socialist construction. A close reading of Mao’s writings – especially On the Ten Major Relationships (April 1956), On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 1957), and Talks on Reading the Soviet Political Economy Textbook (December 1959 – February 1960) – along with documents written under his leadership, such as On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1956) and More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1956), and other historical accounts like Bo Yibo’s Reflections on Several Major Decisions and Events (1991), provide significant insights.

However, while Mao’s theories and practices clearly inherited Lenin’s own strategy from the NEP, the two revolutions were vastly different. Socialist construction in New China faced broader difficulties and challenges, engaged in more complex practical activities, and accumulated both the most successes and failures. The Chinese Revolution was not only more creative in the history of the socialist movement but also emphasised the dynamism and flexibility that characterise such a movement. More importantly, it preserved greater possibilities for the future of socialism. This perspective is essential when examining the continuity between the two revolutions. Therefore, understanding how to solve the challenges Lenin left behind naturally becomes a vital aspect of comprehending both the Chinese Revolution and China’s reform and opening up.

VII.

In March 1949, at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Mao proposed a structure of ownership comprising five components: state-owned economy, cooperative economy, individual economy, private capitalist economy, and state-capitalist economy.¹² He said, ‘The state-owned economy is socialist in character and the cooperative economy is semi-socialist; these plus private capitalism, plus the individual economy, plus the state-capitalist economy in which the state and private capitalists work jointly, will be the chief sectors of the economy of the people’s republic and will constitute the new-democratic economic structure’.

This was the first time that Mao comprehensively articulated the idea that multiple forms of ownership could coexist and operate in a socialist system – a concept that has often been referred to in recent years, in the context of reform and opening up, as ‘mixed ownership’ by economists. However, this term lacks the theoretical rigour and precision of Lenin’s terminology, ‘state-capitalism under communism’. Mao’s clear articulation of a social ownership system with five coexisting economic components at the very founding of New China was a significant event. Even within the broader history of the socialist movement, this was a momentous development with far-reaching implications. However, this idea did not emerge out of thin air – its seeds can be traced back to experimental practices by the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the period of the Chinese Soviet Republic (1931–1937). One particularly notable source is Zhang Wentian’s long-standing research on this issue.¹³

In 1922, while studying in the United States through a work-study programme, Zhang came across an article titled The Development of Soviet Russian Policy in an English publication. The article, personally approved by Lenin, carefully explained the background and theory behind the implementation of the NEP. Recognising its significance, Zhang immediately translated the article into Chinese and sent it back to China, where it was published in The Republican Daily News in Shanghai. This was possibly the earliest introduction of Lenin’s NEP to China, even as the policy itself was just beginning to take shape in the Soviet Union. Zhang continued to study Lenin’s NEP throughout China’s protracted Land Reform Movement and the Liberation War (1945-1949) and even after stepping down as the CPC’s General Secretary. He conducted numerous investigations and wrote essays such as On the Development of New-Style Capitalism (1942). He repeatedly proposed to the CPC Central Committee the idea of vigorously developing rural capitalism under a revolutionary regime. In Bo Yibo’s book Reflections on Several Major Decisions and Events, the section titled The Blueprint for New China’s Construction Drafted at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee highlighted that Zhang, then a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a standing member of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, submitted a document to the CPC Central Committee before the plenary session. Titled, Outline of Northeast China’s Economic Composition and Basic Economic Policies, it was subsequently revised by Liu Shaoqi and further refined by Mao, who clearly stated, ‘In terms of overall economic policy, private capital should be restricted, but it should also be guided onto the track of serving the “national economy and the people’s livelihood”’.¹⁴

In 1956, Chen Yun presented a report at the Eighth CPC National Congress titled New Problems That Have Arisen Following Basic Completion of Socialist Transformation, where he introduced the concept of ‘three main components, three supplements’.¹⁵ He argued that under the framework of public ownership and a planned economy, the development of self-employment and free markets could supplement the socialist economic system. After the Second Five-Year Plan was finalised, Zhou Enlai also proposed establishing free markets within the broader framework of state leadership in certain regions. These discussions underscored the fact that the concept of ‘mixed ownership’ within a socialist system underwent prolonged incubation, deliberation, and debate within the CPC. This was formally affirmed at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee and later revisited at the Eighth CPC National Congress. However, the realisation of this idea in practice encountered numerous twists and turns.

Looking back today, the agricultural ‘cooperativisation’ of the early 1950s, the effort to unite with the national bourgeoisie during the Three-anti Campaign (1951) and Five-anti Campaign (1952), the peaceful transformation of industry and commerce through public-private partnerships around 1956, and the subsequent transformation of national handicrafts all followed the principle of mixed ownership. These policies achieved considerable success and addressed significant challenges in socialist construction. In contrast, such challenges were poorly resolved in Soviet socialist practice, sowing the seeds for the Soviet Union’s tragic collapse. Yet, by the late 1950s, Chinese socialism faced severe setbacks. After the second session of the Eighth CPC Congress in May 1958, the Party adopted the general line of ‘going all out, aiming high, and striving for greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building socialism.’¹⁶ This set the stage for the nationwide campaign of the Great Leap Forward and the setting up of people’s communes. These sweeping campaigns, accompanied by mass movements, momentarily convinced the CPC and the people that Communism was imminent. However, in a little over a year, these efforts failed one after another. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao attempted another experiment by establishing Revolutionary Committees modelled after the Paris Commune, such as the Shanghai Commune and Beijing Commune. However, this final effort also ended in failure.

VIII.

Understanding the intertwined successes and failures of this historical period, exploring their causes, and analysing their long-term impact on the socialist movement have become major points of debate in the history of the Chinese Revolution and the global socialist movement. Research on this subject spans numerous theoretical and academic fields across both left-wing and right-wing perspectives. Among these debates, the failures of the Great Leap Forward and the people’s commune movement have attracted the most discussion and sharpest criticism. However, these interventions often overlook the fact that the earliest critiques and reflections on these failures originated from within the CPC itself. At the renowned Zhengzhou Conference in 1959 – barely a year after the launch of the Great Leap Forward – Mao condemned the ‘communist wind’ that had emerged after the establishment of communes in the autumn of 1958.¹⁷ Subsequently, from early 1959 to early 1962, Mao conducted around ten rounds of self-reflection and self-criticism at various levels and in different contexts within the CPC. Particularly noteworthy is that during this period, Mao carefully studied Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR and the Soviet publication Political Economy: A Textbook to re-examine earlier practices in socialist construction. He then proposed an original theoretical framework: ‘It is possible to divide the transition from capitalism to communism into two stages: one from capitalism to socialism, which could be called underdeveloped socialism; and one from socialism to communism, that is, from comparatively underdeveloped socialism to comparatively developed socialism, namely, communism’.¹⁸ This formulation went beyond a mere reflection on the Great Leap Forward and signified a deeper theoretical reconsideration of the trajectory of socialist development.

Similar to Lenin’s immediate strategic retreat and swift implementation of the NEP following the setbacks of War Communism in 1921, the retreat after the failure of the Great Leap Forward began as early as 1960. By 1962, the Draft Regulations Concerning the Rural People’s Communes explicitly stipulated that, ‘the production team is the basic accounting unit of the people’s commune… this system would remain unchanged for at least thirty years’.¹⁹

When reflecting on Mao’s thoughts and practices during the mid-1950s, particularly the much-criticised leftist errors, a more historicised perspective is required. During that period, Mao himself did not fully adhere to the approach of developing the economy through the coexistence of the five forms of ownership proposed at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee. Instead, he sought to bypass detours by experimenting with the people’s commune system as an alternative path to socialism. Can this solely be explained as a leftist error, or does it need to be sufficiently distinguished from other leftist errors in the history of the Chinese revolution? Since the time of the Peasant Movement Training Institute in Guangzhou in 1924, Mao had been deeply engaged in exploring the unique characteristics of the Chinese Revolution.²⁰ These prolonged reflections and explorations inevitably extended into the post-1949 period, influencing his understanding of socialism and, in particular, the path that socialism should take in China. A closer examination of the rash advance of the Great Leap Forward and the people’s commune movement, as well as the theoretical considerations and complex deliberations reflected in their implementation, requires connecting them to Mao’s intensified emphasis on ideological class struggle from the 1960s onward. His repeated reflections on how to prevent capitalism from undermining and subverting socialism from within are deeply tied to his emphasis on the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of Chinese society: his assertion that, ‘the peasant question is the fundamental question of the Chinese revolution’, and that, ‘the essence of the Chinese revolution is a peasant revolution’.²¹ Furthermore, these ideas were undoubtedly related to the ideological divergence between the communist parties of China and the Soviet Union, that began in the 1950s and culminated in open Sino-Soviet debates in the 1960s. All these historical factors converged to create the historical environment in which the Three Red Banners and the Great Leap Forward emerged.

When we connect history and reality in this way, we cannot simply focus on specific leftist errors but must also consider their inherent relationship with Mao’s unique socialist thought and theory. Furthermore, we should place these issues in the broader context of the history of the world socialist movement, examining how they relate to the ongoing development of socialist theory and practice. For example, when we look at the practice of the people’s commune today, it is clearly connected to Lenin’s idea that, ‘this new society is again an abstraction which can come into being only by passing through a series of varied, imperfect, and concrete attempts to create this or that socialist state’. Could the people’s communes be seen as an ‘imperfect and concrete attempt’, or was it an attempt to directly transition to ‘complete socialism’? Conversely, did the failure of the people’s commune prove that directly transitioning to ‘complete socialism’ was not feasible?

These are questions worth deep reflection because it is not only the successes in the history of the socialist movement that we must cherish; the failures are also valuable experiences and milestones for future practice, carrying significant meaning that can be unravelled through thorough review and self-criticism.

When Lenin said that ‘Not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism’, he wasn’t just pointing out that socialism had no pre-designed blueprint. He was also warning those who came after the October Revolution that socialists must start from scratch, with no ready-made answers. Practice has proven that neither Russia nor China could directly transition to ‘complete socialism’ in an underdeveloped industrial environment but had to go through ‘…a series of varied, imperfect, and concrete attempts to create this or that socialist state’. Therefore, socialism is an inherently experimental movement, and it could be argued that China’s reform and opening up in the 1980s is an expression of this spirit of experimentation.

IX.

In 1985, Deng Xiaoping told visiting delegations from Algeria and Japan that China’s entire open-door policy was a great experiment that could not be found in books – whether the path taken was correct could only be determined over time.²² Henry Kissinger once told Deng Xiaoping, ‘No one has ever attempted a reform on the scale of China’s. No other country has tried to combine planned and market economies… If you succeed, you will raise philosophical questions for both planned and market economies’.²³ In retrospect, it is now clear that the reform process that began in the 1980s – an unprecedented experiment in human history – was not a sudden explosion of Chinese wisdom or a simple forced search for a way out of crisis. Rather, it was a logical development of the socialist movement. This is particularly evident in the fact that after a series of explorations and experiments, China established a basic economic system with public ownership as the mainstay and the coexistence of multiple forms of ownership. This system has been repeatedly proven successful in the decades-long economic miracle, thus marking the beginning of a new phase in the history of the socialist movement.

Throughout the 20th century, many socialist countries undertook reforms. From the mid-1950s onward, Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, Yugoslavia, and others all implemented various reforms. Though the immediate goals of these reforms were to break free from the Soviet model and enter the industrialisation process already undertaken by Western capitalist countries, they all inevitably had to experiment with new political and economic ownership systems. Most of these core reforms ultimately failed, leading to the collapse of socialism in these countries and an unprecedented low point for the world socialist movement.

The question that then arises is why only China’s reform was successful. More importantly, how did China enter global capitalist production relations in the 1990s without fundamentally changing the major characteristics of its ideological, political, and economic system? Instead, China continued as a new form of socialism, experimenting with practices never seen before in the history of the socialist movement, amid a broader historical era of division, turmoil, and restructuring.

X.

Connecting the reform process that began in the 1980s to the experimental nature of the socialist movement, replete with successes and failures, provides a more complex perspective for analysis. For example, regarding the relationship between the reforms initiated in the 1980s and Lenin’s NEP, China is clearly the inheritor of Lenin’s thought. However, upon closer comparison, China’s reforms differ significantly from Lenin’s approach. In practical terms, how retreat was implemented, how detours were taken, and how reforms and experiments were carried out to correct past mistakes naturally led to differences. These distinctions have profound historical causes. The revolutions led by Lenin and Mao differed significantly in terms of paths, policies, methods, and strategies. These differences historically contributed to the complexity of the Chinese Revolution and are also integral to the complexity of contemporary China’s reforms. Therefore, understanding this complexity must be connected to the historical development of Mao’s thoughts and theories.

A detailed study is needed of the differences between Mao and Lenin’s thoughts and strategies regarding socialist transition, as well as how each integrated Marxism with their national revolution to create their unique contributions. For example, many have studied Mao’s On the Ten Major Relationships, but the creative ideas expressed in this work are rarely analysed in the context of the differences between the path of the October Revolution and the revolutionary path that gradually developed in China. This difference had already begun to emerge after the establishment of the first revolutionary rural base in Jinggangshan in 1927. This difference was not just one of revolutionary strategies and methods; it already implied differing understandings of socialism. It could be argued that today’s reforms are either subtly or directly connected to the ideas in On the Ten Major Relationships. However, this clarity is not simply a relationship of inheritance but involves both acceptance and rejection, with a dialectical complexity of affirmation and negation.

XI.

When examining socialism today, many intellectuals tend to overlook the complexity of the Chinese Revolution and the subsequent reform and opening-up process. Providing a direct and comprehensive study on this complexity is beyond the scope of this intervention. However, in light of China’s current reality, especially the fact that the reform (including its various experiments) has not stopped and is still developing, it is worth discussing certain issues that are more prone to error or misunderstanding.

One issue is that many people fail to recognise a key factor of China’s reform, which was inherited from Lenin’s reform: the idea of not striving to achieve ‘complete socialism’ through a direct transition. Not only is this concept often overlooked, but due to long-established biases, many still view the socialist blueprint as a ‘complete socialism’ – an ideal socialism that can be realised through reform, meeting standards in every aspect. As a result, the reforms are seen as trimming an unruly, imperfect tree – difficult, but achievable if the correct methods are followed, eventually restoring the vitality of the socialist tree. Even though at the Seventh Plenary Session of the CPC’s Seventh Central Committee, Mao explicitly proposed the coexistence of multiple economic sectors, many still fail to connect these ideas with the current reform process. They do not realise that today’s reform is essentially a return to the coexistence and development of five economic sectors within a socialist system. They also fail to recognise that this indirect transition to socialism involves detours, likely large ones, which will inevitably require many experiments. It can be said that many have not prepared for this path of reform or have not prepared at all.

As a result, in the face of various problems in society today that do not align with the spirit and principles of socialism – such as the increasing class stratification, income inequality (China’s Gini coefficient once surpassed that of the US), uneven distribution of opportunities and resources, severe societal involution, and the continuous expectation of realising ‘complete socialism’ – doubts arise.²⁴ People begin to question whether the direction of reform is correct, or even if China is still a socialist country.

However, we cannot simply attribute these doubts to a misunderstanding. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said, ‘The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarcely one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together’.²⁵ This acknowledges the creative energy unleashed by such a transformation. Therefore, when those who still seek to immediately achieve ‘complete socialism’ see this release of creative energy in China but also notice the serious contradictions between these new developments and the ideals and values that socialism strives for, their confusion cannot simply be regarded as an error. They are witnessing objective facts and the actual changes occurring in Chinese society. On the other hand, for some intellectuals who are familiar with Friedrich Hayek’s works or similar critiques of socialism, and who identify with their neoliberal theories and ideas of spontaneous order and individual freedom, the situation becomes even more complicated. The ideological inclinations of these intellectuals determine what they see or don’t see; for them, facts are irrelevant.

XII.

Without delving too deep into economic theory, it is worth asking some more common-sense and practical questions about China’s reform process. Namely, what has Chinese socialism after reform accomplished that capitalism today could not or would not be able to? A common saying in China is, ‘To get rich, build roads first’. In the practice of reform, the meaning of this phrase has continuously evolved to encompass the implementation of various large-scale infrastructure projects. Therefore, the implementation and maintenance of large-scale infrastructure is a good benchmark to compare the differences between Chinese socialism and free market capitalism.

The United States currently operates a railway network of 293,564.2 kilometres, nearly twice the length of China’s rail network.²⁶ However, China has built approximately 36,100 kilometres of high-speed rail, whereas the US has zero kilometres of high-speed rail.²⁷ On the surface it seems like there are strengths and weaknesses on both sides, but there is one significant difference: US railways are predominantly privately owned, and one obvious result of this is frequent accidents. According to data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there was an average of 1,704 train derailments annually between 1990 and 2021, meaning there is an average of 4.7 derailments every day.²⁸ The fact that US railways are so underdeveloped is due to specific national conditions – vast land and a sparse population, which have made air travel the preferred mode of transportation. This partially explains why the US had 19,627 airports, including 5,099 public ones, in 2018.²⁹ In comparison, China had only 814 airports in 2018. Upon closer analysis, private airports make up the majority of US airports, and only a few hundred airports have facilities for online ticket purchasing. Moreover, most of these airports are outdated and in dire need of renovation. The same applies to the equipment and infrastructure supporting the airlines, much of which is also old and in need of renewal. More troublesome is that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the US aviation industry has been in crisis, with frequent accidents that have made news headlines. These have become so commonplace that they are now seen as the norm. But as with the railroad situation mentioned earlier, these urgent issues are long overdue for resolution, yet they cannot be solved quickly, and there is no clear path to resolving them. The situation is so bad because most of the entities involved in the aviation industry are private enterprises. Faced with pressures for profits, cost reductions, competition, and other market forces, they don’t have a comprehensive solution to these problems and are often powerless to address them. As a country built around automobiles, the US road system cannot escape criticism. Just one statistic is revealing: there are 617,000 bridges in the US, 42% of which were built more than 50 years ago – and most infrastructure has a lifespan of about 50 years. In addition to bridges, the entire US infrastructure system needs repair or reconstruction because much of the equipment is outdated. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the infrastructure funding gap in the US will exceed $2 trillion by 2025.³⁰ An understanding of the US’s recent fiscal situation should raise concerns over where this $2 trillion will come from.

This account of recent issues in the US transportation system provides a comparative and contextual backdrop when discussing China’s ‘to get rich, build roads first’ strategy. In this comparison, a key issue becomes clear: the inability of so-called ‘advanced countries’ and wealthy superpowers like the United States to build and maintain large-scale infrastructure. By comparing China’s ambitious infrastructure projects, it becomes easier to understand why the US cannot achieve these goals.

The first example worth discussing is the construction of China’s high-speed railway network. Not only does this require an enormous investment – the cost of building the railways alone was between 120 million and 150 million yuan per kilometre – but the operating costs are also high. Moreover, many of the routes pass through economically underdeveloped regions, making it impossible to expect quick and substantial returns. From the perspective of pure market economics, the high-speed railway network appears irrational and contradicts market principles. However, China has resisted such criticisms and continued to invest in expanding the network despite limited prospects for profit-making.

The second example, and one that could possibly be considered even more irrational, is the construction of bridges in Guizhou. Over the past few years, Guizhou has built 28,023 road bridges, connecting 210,000 kilometres of highways. Half of the top 100 tallest bridges in the world, and four of the top ten, are in Guizhou. This region has long been known as one of the poorest and most underdeveloped areas in China, with the saying ‘no flat land for three li, no clear skies for three days’ reflecting its harsh conditions.³¹ Perhaps there could be a geopolitical justification for these bridges, given Guizhou’s strategic proximity to Southeast Asia. However, this alone is not persuasive enough given the size and scale of investment involved and the risk of no payoff.

The third example is the construction of the west-to-east power transmission programme. This initiative involves three power corridors, which are thousands of kilometres long, using ultra-high-voltage transmission technology to cross mountains, deserts, and rivers, from the north to the south and west to the east. This project required an investment of 4.4 trillion yuan over a period of more than 30 years. A remarkable outcome of this project is that it has enabled China’s vast rural areas, where hundreds of millions of farmers live, to have access to electricity, water, and the internet. This is not only a great accomplishment in modern history but also a testimony that utopia is not entirely an ideal, and that ‘common prosperity’ can be achieved.

The above examples present a profound contradiction: while developing the market economy is the basic policy of China’s reform and a national economic strategy, much of the practical work of development has not aligned with the principles of a purely profit-driven market economy. At different levels and in various spaces, these experiments have involved new combinations of economic, production, and resource factors. The objective effects of these experiments have already spread far beyond the boundaries of these projects, reaching metropolitan areas, industrial ecosystems, and even residential neighbourhoods. Given that China plays a significant role in global economic development, especially through the Belt and Road Initiative, these experiments acquire new meaning: they provide a grand vision for the restructuring and reorganisation of the world economy on a larger scale, in accordance with socialist principles.

XIII.

In the analysis of China’s reform and opening up process, especially prior to the ‘New Era’ marked by the 19th National Congress of the CPC in 2017, state-led construction of large-scale infrastructure often did not receive the same level of attention as private sector accomplishments such as Jack Ma’s Taobao and Ant Financial (now Ant Group), or Pony Ma’s Tencent Goldings.³² This led to serious consequences: to many Chinese people, it was not clear what reform meant. It may be associated with the full development of the market economy, or allowing some people to become well-off first, or simply a method to modernise China. These are purely economistic views of reform which have become quite popular in China in recent years. The more successful the reform process, the more popular this economistic view becomes. China’s reform marks the beginning of a new historical phase for the socialist movement. Integrating the market economy into the socialist economy and then restructuring them into a new economic system is not a purely economistic act. In practice, the reform process is rife with ideological contradictions. Competing ideological tendencies struggle to realise themselves through the reform process.

To criticise the economistic view of reform and recognise the ideological struggle embedded in the reform process, the work of Louis Althusser can serve as a valuable theoretical resource. Despite the work of scholars such as Chen Yue and Wu Zifeng in translating and researching the works of Althusser, his theories have still received insufficient attention in Chinese academia and even within left-leaning intellectual circles. From the perspective of the development of contemporary Marxism, Althusser’s thought is distinctive: while sharply criticising high-minded traditional philosophy that detaches itself from the masses and political practice, he has also consistently emphasised the need to link theory with practice. This sets his theories apart from Western Marxist research that emerged in the 1950s and especially from the left-wing theories that developed out of postmodernism. This makes Althusser’s thought relevant for gaining a critical perspective on the history of the socialist movement while also focusing on the concrete practice of contemporary socialism.

In the map of contemporary Marxism, Althusser’s On the Reproduction of Capitalism holds an extremely important position.³³ This work reconstructs Marxist theory on the state, fully presenting the theory of ideological state apparatuses and their inseparable link from the reproduction of production relations. Compared to Marx and Lenin’s writings on the state, Althusser introduces the key concept of ideology. After analysing, criticising, and reinterpreting various traditional concepts of ideology, including the classical Marxist concept, he presents an entirely new understanding – ideology is not purely a spiritual activity or an existence of ideas, but a material existence. Ideology always exists within institutions, particularly within the state or state apparatus, and becomes an indispensable structural component that enables the operation of the state apparatus.

XIV.

In Althusser’s theoretical framework, the relationship between ideology and economic production is not a dualistic division. On the contrary, it is argued that economic production and ideology are not completely detached from each other. This differs from various historical interpretations of ideology. Althusser not only denies the spirituality of ideology but also challenges the view that ideology is part of the superstructure. Ideologies are embedded in all the activities of the state. He provides a famous metaphor for this: If we consider the state and society as an edifice, ideology is the cement that holds them together. No corner, layer, or space in this edifice can exist without cement. Similarly, ideology permeates every part of the state’s edifice, including the practical activities of the people within it. It even penetrates the relationship between economic practice and political practice.

Althusser can help us view the reform from a fresher perspective than the classical Marxist dichotomy of superstructure and economic base. Returning to the question of large-scale infrastructure, the question remains as to why the state, and not private capital, undertook these investments. The immediate answer is that private capital is only interested in investment in return for a profit. However, hidden behind this practical response is the notion of homo economicus (man as an economic and rational being). This, in turn, rests on an entire system of knowledge, including classical economics, sociology, and modern philosophy – a system that is unambiguously ideological.

When Mao proposed the economic framework of New Democracy, he advocated for the coexistence and development of five types of ownership systems. These ownership systems represent distinct relations of production. In other words, China’s reform is taking place within a network formed by five different relations of production. This complexity has been understudied because, in the history of socialist construction, it is rare for different production relations to be so intertwined for such a long time. However, if we adopt Althusser’s perspective and apply his theory of the reproduction of production relations, we can find a way to explain and think through this complexity.

According to Althusser’s theory of the state, socialist China, having established a revolutionary government with control over the state ideological apparatuses, naturally uses these to ensure the reproduction of socialist relations of production. However, since China’s economic policies allow for the coexistence of different forms of ownership, it is only natural that these forms will also engage in the reproduction of certain production relations. At the same time, these respective reproductions of production relations will inevitably compete with each other. This competition serves two functions: first, it stimulates the economy, creating new opportunities for development, dynamism, and structural transformation; second, it also makes use of various state mechanisms, excluding the political apparatus (which is firmly controlled by the socialist state), to achieve its reproduction. We can raise the following question: Is this multi-layered, multi-spatial, and multi-directional reproduction an essential reason for the complexity of economic development in the reform process? And is it also an important reason for the existence of various opposing and conflicting ideological and knowledge systems within the current reform process?

The difficulty in understanding contemporary Chinese socialism often stems from an insufficient understanding of the complexity of the current reforms and the experimental nature of the socialist movement. However, China’s reform proves that confronting these complexities and recognising them within the historical development of Marxist theory is needed to navigate the complex realities of the ‘great changes unseen in a century’, thereby opening new possibilities for achieving socialism.³⁴ China’s reform is certainly not a purely economistic reform, but an unprecedented series of experiments in the history of the socialist movement.

Citations

Citations

Has China Turned to Capitalism? Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

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Oppose Book Worship

NOTES

1. See Confucian Analects, Book III, "Pa Yi": "When Confucius entered the Ancestral Temple he inquired into everything." 

2. Li Kuei was a hero in the well-known Chinese novel shui Hu Chuan' (Heroes of the Marshes) which describes the peasant war that occurred towards the end of the Northern Sung Dynasty (960-1127). He was simple, outspoken and very loyal to the revolutionary cause of the peasants, but crude and tactless. 

3. Comrade Mao Tse-tung has always laid great stress on investigation, regarding social investigation as the most important task and the basis for defining policy in the work of leadership. The work of investigation was gradually developed in the Fourth Army of the Red Army on Comrade Mao Tsetung's initiative. He stipulated that social investigation should be a regular part of the work, and the Political Department of the Red Army prepared detailed forms covering such items as the state of the mass struggle, the condition of the reactionaries, the economic life of the people and the amount of land owned by each class in the rural areas. Wherever the Red Army went, it first made itself familiar with the class situation in the locality and then formulated slogans suited to the needs of the masses. 

4. Here 'the mountains' are the Chingkang mountain area along the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan Provinces; the 'plains’ are those in southern Kiangsi and western Fukien. In January 1929, comrade Mao Tse-tung led the main force of the Fourth Army of the Red Army down from the Chingkang Mountains to southern Kiangsi and western Fukien in order to set up two large revolutionary base areas. 

5. The "Book of documents" consisted of the resolutions adopted at the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in July 1928, including the political resolution and the resolutions on the peasant question, the land question, the organization of political power, etc. Early in 1929 the Front Committee of the Fourth Army of the Red Army published these resolutions in book form for distribution to the Party organizations in the Red Army and to the local Party organizations.

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

On the Experimental Nature of Socialism and the Complexity of China's Reform and Opening Up

Notes

¹ This article is based on a speech by the author at an academic seminar titled ‘The “Two Movements” of the 1980s and the Socialist Issues in Contemporary China’, hosted by Beijing Cultural Review (Wenhua Zongheng) on 16 March 2024.

² For more on the Paris Commune, read: Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Bertolt Brecht, Tings Chak and Vijay Prashad, Paris Commune 150 (LeftWord Books, 2021).

³ Karl Marx, ‘Resolutions of the Meeting Held to Celebrate the Anniversary of the Paris Commune’, in MECW Vol. 23 (1872).

⁴ Otto Bauer, The Austrian Revolution (Haymarket Books, 2021).

⁵ V.I. Lenin, ‘On Cooperation’, in Collected Works Vol. 33 (Progress Publishers, 1965).

⁶ V.I. Lenin, ‘The Tax in Kind’, in Collected Works Vol. 32 (Progress Publishers, 1965).

⁷ V.I. Lenin, ‘Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)’, in Collected Works Vol. 33 (Progress Publishers, 1965).

⁸ Smena Vekh was a journal published by Russian émigrés who were formerly loyal to the conservative White movement in the Russian Civil War. Led by N.V. Ustrialov, this tendency later viewed the Bolsheviks as an expression of Russian national will. See: Yu Pushchaev, ‘The Smenovekhovtsy Movement as the First Historical Attempt to Reconcile the Reds and the Whites: Achievements and Failures’, Orthodoxia (2023): 246-265.

⁹ Prodraverstka refers to the policy of requisitioning grain from the peasantry at a fixed price, which the Bolsheviks adopted as a measure of war communism. See: Silvana Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918–1921 (Cambridge University Press, 1985).

¹⁰ V.I. Lenin, ‘Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution’, in Collected Works Vol. 33 (Progress Publishers, 1965).

¹¹ V.I. Lenin, ‘Seventh Moscow Gubernia Conference of the Russian Communist Party’, in Collected Works Vol. 33 (Progress Publishers, 1965).

¹² Mao Zedong, ‘Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’, in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung Vol. IV (Foreign Language Press, 1961).

¹³ Zhang Wentian (1900–1976) was a CPC leader and theorist born in Nanhui (now part of Shanghai). He was a veteran of the Long March and served in various leadership roles including as general secretary of the CPC, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, and principal of the Academy of Marxism and Leninism. For more of his work, read: Zhang Wentian, Selected Works of Zhang Wentian [张闻天选集] (People’s Publishing House, 1985).

¹⁴ Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969) was a leading CPC theorist and statesman born in Ningxiang, Hunan Province. He played a leading role in the Jiangxi Soviet and the Long March and later served as the President of the People’s Republic of China and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

¹⁵ Chen Yun (1905–1995) was a CPC leader who played a key role in shaping China’s economic policies under the leadership of both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Born in Qingpu (now part of Shanghai), he served as head of China’s Central Financial and Economic Commission. For more of his work, read: Chen Yun, Selected Works of Chen Yun Volume III (1956–1994) (Foreign Language Press, 1999), 13–26.

¹⁶ The Institute of Party History and Literature of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chronicle of the People’s Republic of China (October 1949-September 2019) (Cengage Learning Asia, 2020), 42-244.

¹⁷ Mao Zedong, ‘Speech at Cheng-chow’, Marxist Internet Archive, 2004, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_27.htm.

¹⁸ Mao Zedong, A Critique of Soviet Economics (Monthly Review Press, 1977).

¹⁹ ‘Chapter 4 Article 20’, in Draft Regulations Concerning the Rural People’s Communes (1962) http://www.reformdata.org/1962/0927/6032.shtml.

²⁰ Gerald W. Berkley, ‘The Canton Peasant Movement Training Institute’, Modern China 1, no. 2 (1975): 161-179 https://doi.org/10.1177/009770047500100203.

²¹ Mao Zedong, ‘Preface to the Peasant Issue Series’, in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought (1968); Mao Zedong, ‘On New Democracy’, in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung: Vol. II (Foreign Language Press).

²² Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping Vol. 3 (People’s Publishing House, 1993), 130–133.

²³ Party Literature Research Centre of the CPC Central Committee ed., A Chronology of Deng Xiaoping (1975-1997) (Volume II) (Central Party Literature Press, 2004), 1094.

²⁴ In the Chinese context, the term involution refers to fierce internal competition brought about by the market economy.

²⁵ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin Classics, 2002).

²⁶ The World Factbook 2024 (Central Intelligence Agency, 2024).

²⁷ This may have been true when the author wrote this article. However, as of 2024, China has 45,000 kilometres of HSR while the US has 735 kilometres.

²⁸ Joe Sommerland, How Many Train Derailments Have There Been in the US in 2023?, Independent, 6 March 2023, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/train-derailments-per-year-usa-b2294966.html.

²⁹ National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), US Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration, 2018, https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/airports/planning_capacity/npias/current/NPIAS-Report-2019-2023-Narrative.pdf.

³⁰ American Society of Civil Engineers, Bridging the Gap, May 2024, https://bridgingthegap.infrastructurereportcard.org/.

³¹ Li (里) is a traditional unit of measuring distance in China. One li is roughly five hundred metres.

³² At the 19th Congress of the CPC in 2017, ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’ was adopted as a guiding ideology and written into the CPC constitution. This slogan reaffirmed the goal of achieving socialist modernisation and national rejuvenation.

³³ Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Verso, 2014).

³⁴ The phrase ‘great changes unseen in a century’ is frequently used by President Xi Jinping and the CPC to refer to shifts in the centre of gravity of global economic and political power.