Mao's heirs attempt to dea with their past

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Ricardo Napuri).

On the right of the FOCEP the major figure around which various other small parties and independents are grouped is Genero Ledesma, an independent who, like Blanco, has been active since the sixties.

This front was not based on a socialist programme but did stipulate in its founding statement that it would "make no alliances with bourgeois parties" -parties that were mentioned by name.

The other forces on the left are the Stalinist PCP and the UDP, a Maoist grouping led by Barrantes.

Sovereign

On Juy 28 last year the T-aisx, s: 5°= -0S ora-suc= •as as didn' are sec are ihar -om that day the maliar, zove: nment was defunct and the constituent assembly sovereign.

Not surprisingly they were supported only by a few independents from the Maoist lists.

The massive strike wave continued, the civil servants, bank workers, metal workers and miners were all out and in a militant mood, staging demonstrations that called not only for wage rises and better working conditions but for the downfall of the dictatorship.

Naturally neither the bourgeois parties nor the Stalinists were anxious to take power under these conditions and were only too pleased to leave the military to continue their savage repression and keep their own hands clean.

Left cover

The Stalinists gave a left cover to the bourgeois parties who had moved to a position of outright support for the military, by refusing to call for the downfall of the dictatorship or organising a general strike to coordinate the widespread but random strikes.

in September 1978 the miners strike was broken through hunger, isolation and military attacks, and there was a The thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China is a good opportunity to reassess the years' achieve. ments and developments and recent trends.

=== =333. -39:75 expets as=e ize Maxwell and Jonn Gi: 955 m3s a miserable affair which failed on all counts.

Talking to a sparse audience, the speakers were keen not to upset the delegation from the Chinese embassy sitting in the tront row.

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He, of course, analyse why.

Exploitation

Fi te a= sorry am-s being offered dy ine inta. cracy in China.

According to a Japanese survey, Chinese imports of capital goods may reach $35 billion in the next.six years to meet its modernisation The bureaucracy has made efforts to encourage investment from firms and capitalist governments, with promises of super profits which will be allowed to be removed from the country.

It offers its vast pool of cheap labour which the bureaucracy will discipline for capitalism.

One investment deal has just been announced by Rong Yiren, chairman of the newly-established Chinese International Trust and Investment Corporation, with Eaton-Shen Pacific Corporation of San Francisco, which will supply $150 million.

Anti-soviet

The other interest imperialism has in China is its anti-USSR role.

A secret Defence ment study concluded US should bolster military potential and expressed that those bitterest People's its enthusfailed Departthat the China's Defence Secretary Harold Brown shortly to visit Peking.

The latest round of talks between the Soviet Union and China-the first such talks since the Cultural Revolution-may show signs of upsetting American plans in this direction.

Much "China watching" is also going on at the moment to try and ferret out the present su gaucraiie clisués etr:ude = ==905 5: =3 FlF53 trials of ine lace 33: : Four"

Ye Jianying, a senior vice-president made the main anniversary speech on behalf of the "Contribution"

He listed Mao as one of those (along with Chou Endai, Chu Te and others) who made an "immortal contribution" to the building of the People's Republic.

The supple-spined Maoists of the British Revolutionary Communist League however.still straddling the fence-are at pains to emphasise that this speech attacks only a "dogmatic understanding" of Mao, not the man himself-and is against 'ossification of the revolutionary struggle".

Ye described the Cultural Revolution as "ten long years of havoc"

This is not surprising as most of the twelve new members just brought onto the Peking Political Committee are 70-year olds who were accused of different crimes in the Cultural Revolution or earlier and disgraced.

They are now renabitaise of course, and have mostly regained places lost dozens of years ago.

In this way the "right" faction has been strengthened as against the group around Wang Dongxing, Mao's closest collaborator.

But though they have now apparently gained the confidence to try the Gang of Fuur, all is still not well in Peking. There are many signs of opposition to the regime.

Stories are filtering out of rioting in Hainan Island involving about 9,000 people with 300 reported dead and wounded.

Opposition groups have also reemerged, with the publication of a magazine Tansuo (Explorations) which attacks the lack of political justice and defends Mao's memory.

Put and Deng - 3e-sastration organised Dy ine Association for Democratic, Scient fe and Socialist Studies . complained at the maltreatment of petitioners and at the lack of any official ceremony to mark the third anniversary of Mao's death.

Despite all its efforts to appear to the contrary, the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy, like its counterparts in the USSR and elsewhere, remains a fundamentally unstable regime balancing nervously between the power of the masses in their own country and the power of world imperialism.

Vitally needed is a Trotskyist leadership capable of advancing the struggles of the masses in the direction of the political overthrow of the Peking bureaucracy.

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James Callaghan can draw comfort from the fate of his fellow rightwing reformist leader, Felipe Gonzalez