The Passing of a Revolutionary Generation

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MAD Revolution. Reliance on a peasant was never able to unify the country focus has limited its social base and or to independently develop , its admiration for The death of Mao Tse-tung on 9th September marks the end of a major phase in the Chinese Revolution. Mao led the most important upsurge of the oppressed masses of the world since the Russian Revolution. He will be remembered down the generations for his role in bringing forward the Chinese peasantry and working class from centuries of feudal barbarism, from capitalist militarism and imperialist exploitation. Mao Tse-tung (third from Uprising, 1927.

But how far did Mao take this process! His revolution was constrained by the narrowness of its social base, and the rigidity of its nationalism.

Mao led the Chinese masses along a revolutionary road, but his method. and his practice placed a limit upon the distance he, or they, could travel.

The death of Mao, following closely on that of Chou En-lai, political organiser of the Chinese CP, left/ with other leaders of the Autumn Harvest and Chu Teh, its greatest military politician, marks the passing of a revolutionary generation.

But it is necessary to go beyond the nauseating hagiography of their admirers and the counter-revolutionary cynicism of their detractors to study their development and their heritage.

We must say first that the practice of 'socialism in one country' has stultified the political development of the Chinese Revolution. Reliance on a peasant focus has limited its social base and economic development.

The Stalinised party has created a rigid bureaucratic structure with few anti-capitalist credentials, and no reliance on the self-activity of the masses.

Mao and his companions have left behind a closeted bureaucratic elite who look to the mobilisation of the masses solely within limits set by themselves. They have left behind a limited and lop-sided economic development masked under phrases about 'self-reliance' while sattelites sing out The East Is Red' in the upper atmosphere. They instigated the political line of the Indonesian CP, hundreds of thousands of whose members were murdered, and actively supported suppression the revolutionary youth of Ceylon.

They maintain relations of warm inendship, with every reactionary blackguard, even stooping as low as Edward Heath and Richard Nixon.

Yet Mao was not, like the Stalin he professed to admire, a conscious gravedigger of revolution. He led a great revolutionary struggle, sometimes despite his own politica line, and at times in direct opposition to it.

Born in 1893, Mao was just old enough to welcome the bourgeois revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-sen against the old imperial oligarchy.

He was then inspired by the proletarian internationalism of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

Mao was one of countless millions around the world inspired by the revolution of Lenin and Trotsky to turn to the traditions of Marxism for methods of struggle against local and particular forms of was never able to unify of to independently economic resources.

The DMT, especially after it came under the control of Chiang Kai-shek in the mid-20s, was never able to put an end to the influence ot the reudal warlords, or to push back the incursions of internationa. imperialism.

Yet it was to this class, and to the historically backward KMT that the leaders of the Chinese CP were first directed. To take a case in point, Mao himself was in the national leadership of both movements, and even retained his position in the KMT after he had lost it in the Communist Party.

NATIONAL MOVEMENT The CP obviously had to take part in the national movement, but rom the start it denied itself the right to independent policy or initiative, and thus only provided the backbone for a movement which had none of its own.

This policy proved a disaster. In the 1927 Revolution against the warlords and the remnants of the old feudal order, the Communists were by far the best fighters, and took over power in many of the big cities, notably Shanghai.

Then they were turned upon and murdered in their thousands by the KMT. Chou En-lai only escaped by minutes, and Mao by being in a remote part of the countryside.

If the KMT had for a time, thanks to the policies of Stalin, defeated the first upsurge of the Chinese proletariat, they were never then able to confront the economic and social problems that inevitably faced any Chinese government.

In particular, they were impotent against the Japanese invasion of three Northern provinces, which began in 1931. ars of endeavour, Is young, ong, ur writings, ed no more than dust.

Young communist army volunteers in N Bottom: Chiachin Mountain on the roul in any case, they were more concerned to finish the job and/ wipe out the Communists and their * supporters.

This was the most desperate and heroic period in the history of the Chinese CP.

Feared by the warlords, hated by the Japanese, and continually harassed and attacked by the Kuo Min Tang, the Communists nevertheless built up enough support to survive as a serious political force.

Even the most stalwart revolutionary fighter in the West today has not had to put up with a thousanth part of the terrible deprivations of the Cr immunist heroes of those days.

There can b There can be nothing but admiration for the great achievement of the Long March of 1934-5, when 100,000 soldiers marched 6000 miles to a safe haven. Only 20,000 survived.

This great feat of revolutionary warfare had a number of important political consequences.

Mao and his supporters were confirmed in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and the main political basis for this was in an exclusive turn to the peasantry.

From the point of view of revolutionary. Marxism, it was inevitable that the peasantry would play a decisive role in the Chinese Revolution, and Chen Tu-hsiu, supporter of Trotsky and former CP leader came round to this view also.

However, Mao went beyond a turn to the peasantry, to the exclusion of the working class. He consistently held back the working class from action, both before and after the CP came to power.

RESTRICTED

This narrowed the social base of the revolution, and restricted its ability to go beyond the capitalist stage. The conditions under which capitalism was finally overthrown will be dealt with in more detail in the second article in this series.

A further restriction could be seen in the method of party building during the time when the CCP was largely confined to its base area in the Yenan part of Shensi province.

It was a successful military machine, rather than a Party in the tradition i of Lenin that emerged from this, a bureaucratic military command structure, whose mobilisation could of necessity only be within the limits set by its leaders.

Torth China, 1937 te of the Long March, I The Party-builder Liu Shao-chi represented traditions that came into ultimate conflict with the revolutionary process.

Neither could the military radicals represented by Lin Piao keep within the limits Mao sought to impose.

There was much talk in later years of the 'spirit of Yenan" , which had a positive side in terms of heroism and self-sacrifice.

But it also brought with it the creation of a military-bureaucratic elite who needed its commands to be obeyed and ruthlessly suppressed all opposition.

Continued Next Edition.