First Published: Frontline, Vol. 4, No. 8, October 13, 1986.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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After the Communist Party of China (CPC) renounced the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in the late 1970s, it was only a matter of time. Still, one cannot help but experience a certain jolt when the director of Beijing’s Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao ZeDong Thought, speaking in a matter-of-fact fashion, repudiates the entire theoretical framework upon which the CPC and international Maoism once bid for leadership of the world communist movement. (“Marxism in China Today,” an interview with Professor Su Shaozhi, in Monthly Review, September 1986.)
Remember the thesis that capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union, which served since the early 1960s as the theoretical rationale for attacks on “Soviet social-imperialism,” for the “Theory of the Three Worlds,” for China’s tilt toward alliance with U.S. imperialism and for its entire foreign policy? According to Institute director Su, “In the past we once said that the Soviet Union had restored capitalism, but we now think that was wrong. That was a result of leftist’ influences .... China is in the beginning of the early stage [of socialism] ... Russia and some Eastern European countries are in the middle stage.”
What about Mao’s assertion that the bourgeoisie still exists and is reproduced under socialism, mandating a continuation of class struggle to prevent society’s degeneration? “After 1957 ... his theories, especially his theory of class struggle in socialist society and the theory of continuous revolution under the proletarian dictatorship were completely wrong. ... After the socialization of private ownership, the exploiting class has vanished, in the class sense of class,” declares Su.
Does anyone still recall the CPC’s bitter denunciations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) for declaring at its 20th congress in 1956 that the shift in the world balance of forces meant world war was no longer inevitable? Or the tirades the CPC aimed at the CPSU for arguing that peaceful transition to socialism was a serious possibility in a number of countries? Regarding the danger of war, Su might have been a delegate at the CPSU congress: “In light of history since the Second World War, Lenin’s theory of the inevitability of wars between imperialist countries is no longer valid .... It is because now the developed capitalist countries have basic common interests and multinational companies are very influential, and also the contradiction between the Soviet Union and the U.S. is greater than the contradiction among the imperialist countries.” As for peaceful transition, this notion sparks no irate polemic, just carefully qualified consideration: “But the third road [to socialism] is the ’democratic and peaceful road to socialism.’ It is the result of the study of Marxism in combination with the concrete situation of the developed countries. But of course it has not yet been proved to be valid.”
Finally, to top it all off, here’s what Professor Su has to say about “Soviet revisionism” (or “modem revisionism”), the critique of which was the fundamental justification for the CPC’s ideological onslaught against the CPSU and for launching a distinct international trend under the banner of “Mao ZeDong Thought”: “We used the term revisionism often in the Cultural Revolution and the 1960s. Whenever any party didn’t agree with Mao ZeDong Thought we called them revisionist. But now we say [that was] totally wrong. Revisionism is a special terminology designating only Eduard Bernstein, at the beginning of the imperialist stage .... So now we only designate revisionism to mean Bernsteinism. Of course there may be other opportunism from the left or right, but we think it is better we should not call it revisionism.”
Su’s comments, while not accompanied by the tremendous fanfare with which the CPC originally promoted Mao’s “breakthrough” theories, are not only encouraging, they objectively amount to a theoretical bombshell – even though the interviewer (about whom more later) is careful to state that they are not yet“ authoritative or official.” What consequences will this about-face have for forces around the world who still claim ideological kinship with the CPC and or Mao ZeDong Thought? And most importantly, what are the implications for China itself?
As for the former, the CPC’s latest pronouncements will only deepen the dilemma that has gripped the Maoist trend’s steadily dwindling ranks for over a decade. Organizations whose very basis for existence has been “anti-revisionism” and opposition to “Soviet social-imperialism” have already been having a hard time squaring these concepts with the actual dynamics of the international class struggle; now, these ideas have been explicitly abandoned by the very party which first put them forward and which gave them whatever credibility they ever attained.
To be sure, ten-plus years of practice at hiding (even from themselves) the incompatibility of Maoism’s central propositions with revolutionary politics have given the few Mao ZeDong Thought formations that survive a certain skill at staving off a crisis. In the U.S., for example, the unabashedly Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) solves its dilemma by giving up any pretense to political relevancy. Diehard defenders of the Cultural Revolution in China and the most extreme ultra-left practice in the U.S., the RCP is theoretically consistent, if nothing else, and will undoubtedly gloat in their splendid isolation that Professor Su’s comments only confirm their thesis that China, too, has followed the Soviet Union down the “capitalist road.”
Matters are a bit more difficult for those like the League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS) who have supported and followed every twist and turn of the current leadership of the CPC. Their survival mechanism has been to encourage a disdain for theoretical consistency, relying more and more on naked anti-Soviet prejudice (and, among a section of their core and base, deep-seated Chinese nationalism) to justify their continued flunkeyism toward the CPC – indeed, their very existence.
Such maneuvers have proven adequate to keep LRS afloat so far, but Professor Su’s comments certainly pose a new challenge to an organization which boasts that it is “the only intact, functioning anti-revisionist communist organization in the U.S.“ (Forward, #4, January 1985) and which still has not been able to come to terms with the political positions (concerning Cuba and Angola, for instance) that it adopted during Maoism’s heyday.
It may be difficult for LRS to avoid for much longer the choice between an open disagreement with the CPC over an absolutely central ideological point or a fundamental re-examination of the entire basis for the organization’s existence. (Still, an indication that the LRS center will try its mightiest to sweep all this under the rug yet again is the fact that the interview itself was conducted – in December 1985 – by LRS leader Gordon Chang, even though Chang was not identified as such in Monthly Review and no mention of the interview has appeared in the LRS press.)
A somewhat different dilemma now confronts those intellectuals outside of China who were strongly influenced by Mao ZeDong’s theories about socialist construction even if they did not politically support every aspect of China’s collaborationist foreign policy or participate in the organizational workings of the various Maoist groups. One such person is Monthly Review editor Paul Sweezy, who adopted and utilized many of Mao Ze-Dong’s ideas in formulating his own theory of “post-revolutionary society,” the theory that those countries generally thought of as socialist are neither socialist nor capitalist, but a new form of oppressive class society.
Su criticizes this theory – and Sweezy by name – in his interview. Sweezy’s short reply – in which he argues that Mao’s “innovative ideas” on “class struggle in socialist society and ... continuous revolution” are “Mao’s most important contributions to keeping Marxism abreast of 20th century reality” – helps shed light on the quality of his own understanding of Marxism. But with the fundamental premises of Sweezy’s theory now explicitly rejected by that political force that went farthest at trying to put them into practice – achieving disastrous results – the theory or “post-revolutionary society” (and similar idealist constructs) is bound to leave its adherents in an awkward and increasingly isolated position.
Though developments among U. S. leftwing organizations and the motion among Marxist-oriented intellectual currents is important – and also the usual topic of this column – obviously the most significant question flowing from Professor Su’s remarks is what does it all mean for China? Just as obviously, this is part of a far broader discussion which must take into account developments on the economic and political as well as the theoretical fronts. In-depth analysis is required of such phenomena as the CPC’s current economic reforms, signs of positive trends in Sino-Soviet relations, the increasing ties between China and the Eastern European socialist countries (symbolized at this writing by the warm welcome being given Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski in Beijing), etc. Frontline intends to explore just these questions over the next few months. Here we offer only a few preliminary opinions.
Speaking strictly in terms of Marxist theory, the CPC has now abandoned any justification for its advocacy of a split in the world communist movement, for its anti-Soviet foreign policy or its tacit political/military alliance with U.S. imperialism. In fact, Su’s comments – if taken to a rigorous theoretical conclusion – set the basis for a Chinese rapprochment with the rest of the socialist camp and for returning China to an anti-imperialist foreign policy, as well as for a materialist approach to tackling the immense problems of economic development that China now faces. And Marxist theory, once embraced by a political party, can be a tremendously powerful force.
But in the CPC there is also a powerful countervailing pressure: a long entrenched narrow Chinese nationalism. Nationalism in fact, has always been at the core of the Maoist deviation, whether expressed in terms of the ultra-left semi-anarchistic views advocated by Mao ZeDong and the Gang of Four or the pragmatic “modernization-at-all-costs” positions associated with Deng Xiaoping and the current CPC leadership. The common thread of nationalism is what has allowed China to swim from Mao’s Cultural Revolution to Deng’s “Four Modernizations” without any qualitative alteration in its anti-Soviet policy. As the Vietnamese Communist Party put it in 1980 when discussing the CPC’s internal battles over the extent to which Mao’s ultra-leftism should be repudiated: “Is all this a contradiction between those who persist in adopting Maoism and those who stand for de-Maoisation? Or only a contradiction between Maoist groups? It seems that the second is more likely. For of all these groups, not a single one has renounced great power nationalism and hegemonism – the foundation and nature of Maoism.”
Unfortunately, for all the positive elements in Professor Su’s interview, what is conspicuously missing is any examination of the role narrow nationalism might have played in distorting the CPC’s views. On the contrary, definite evidence of a nationalist deviation still persists, as in Su’s continuing defense of “Mao ZeDong Thought” as a positive formulation which – even if Mao was personally off the mark –expresses the “crystallization of the contributions” of the entire CPC.
Su’s comments could help the CPC to begin a re-evaluation of the narrow nationalist outlook which has given rise to both the “left” and right swings in its political line for three decades. In this sense, they are welcome. But they also indicate that it will be some time yet before it is finally settled whether or not China will move away from narrow nationalism and realign with the world-wide anti-imperialist front. The process of deciding this question will undoubtedly consist of hundreds of specific theoretical, political, economic and ideological struggles; the stakes in the outcome are tremendous for the Chinese masses and the entire international working class movement.