Mad the Passing of a Revolutionary Generation

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As the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army were ently successful fighters The bourgeois Kuo Min Tang, on the other hand, used the arms provided by Britain, Germany, the United States and other capitaist powers much more against the Communists than against the imperialist invaders.

Was Mao then wrong to constantly offer an alliance with Kuo Min Tang leader Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese? Not necessarily.

But it cannot be said that he served the interests of the Chinese masses by surrendering the identity of the Red Army into the Kuo Min Tang. Many hundreds of thousands of fighters were killed as a result.

OPPOSED

Mao went well beyond the offer of alliances. He actively opposed the raising of socialist aims for the Chinese Revolution.

Not only did he release Chiang after his kidnap in 1936, he also sought cooperation with him well after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945.

He was negotiating with the shadow of the bourgeoisie well after coming to power in 1949!

Behind this policy stood Stalinist Russia, which recognised and supported the Chiang regime until the end, and urged Mao to do the same.

Mao set out the justification for this position in his article On New Democracy, published in January 1940, when he asserted that:

"today is not yet the time to introduce socialism. The present task of the revolution in China is to fight imperialism and feudalism, and socialism is out of the question until this task is completed.

He tried to qualify this by maintaining that, nevertheless the Chinese revolution 'has long become a part of the proletariansocialist world revolution."

As late as 1945, Mao still asserted that:

"the Chinese people cannot, and therefore should not, attempt to build a socialist state system" and in 1949 when the People's Republic was proclaimed, it was said to be an alliance of four classes including the native capitalists.

POLICIES

It has been argued that these policies 'proved themselves' in the success of Mao and his followers in coming to power, and in the ultimate elimination of the main centres of private capitalism.

Others have argued that Mao 'empirically broke from Stalinism' and became for a time something else, a special kind of revolutionary.

Others suggested that Mao succumbed to the 'pressure of the masses' , which forced him to establish, despite himself, a workers state that opened the possibility of the establishment of socialism.

None of these arguments provide a correct explanation of the basis of the successful overthrow of capitalism in China. The success of Mao's army and party was not achieved because he sought to make class alliançes, but because he was unable to sustain them.

The general line of his policy, if not necessarily all the details, were furthermore clearly consistent with those advocated by the Stalinist movement on a world scale.

And it should not be forgotten that Mao came to power not through the strength of mass mobilisation, but through the efficiency of his peasant army at a time when the mass struggle was on the ebb.

after e he defeat of Mae Tapacess after was, as he himselt was wel aware, an international one, where imperialism was weak and divided and the working class everywhere initially on the advance.

ALLIANCES

Like Stalinists everywhere, Mao fought for alliances with capitalist class in this period, just as, in France and Itlay, the Stalinists joined strike-breaking capitalist governments.

It was through no fault of his own that Mao found himself unable to do the same thing. He negotiated for 43 days in 1945 to find a basis for a similar alliance with Chiang Kai-shek.

He discouraged the outbreak of mass strikes and other struggles in the big cities at the same time.

But the bourgeoisie of China itself was too historically weak, and its international allies for the moment incapable of organising its defence.

One of Mao's most famous aphorisms was "The enemy advances, we retreat....the enemy retreats, we pursue.' In the period after the end of the Japanese War he applied this in a special way, by retreating and calling for compromise with the Kuo Min Tang when the working class was advancing, especially in the big struggles after 1945, and by advocating revolutionary struggle only when Chiang and his forces advanced against him!

Tim Wolforth in his Theory of Structural Assimilation has well expressed the basis for the turn away from alliance with the Kuo Min Tang towards the seizure of power:

"The real cause was not the pressure of the masses' but rather the pressure of Chiang! After utilising the period of negotiation with the CCP to crush the mass movement Chiang then moved directly to annihilate the CCP itself. Only when its very existence as a political force was at stake did the CCP move in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek and initiate, a battle which was to culminate in victory in 1949."

It should be added that by the time of the rupture with Chiang, the period of post-war compromise between Stalinism and imperialism on a world scale was coming to an end, and the Soviet bureaucracy was looking both to the East and the West for ways to defend itself against the inevitable conflicts with the imperialist powers.

Thus Mao was compelled to take up revolutionary struggle as the post-war international mass offensive subsided.

The struggle for power was defensive both on a national and an international scale. It succeeded because of the weakness and Chinese bourgeoisie itself.

Mao not only did not seek to set up a socialist republic in 1949, ne pushed back the working class trom action deriving from the impetus brought about by his seizure of power.

In May 1950 miners in Chin Sin were murdered, and more than 1,000 exiled, for presuming to act on their own initiative.

SHOT DOWN

At Tiensin in the same month, there were 300 casualties at a factory where striking workers were shot down by machine guns.

This all happened while Mao's government was offering loans on easy terms to small capitalists, and insisting that his goverment was a "coalition' including bourgeois parties which had no basis and no However, there was no social or economic basis for this policy. The pressures of internationa imperialism were inevitably felt in 1953 as the US army thinly disguised as a "UN peace keeping force" advanced through North Korea to the Chinese border.

A possible rallying point for pro-capitalist elements within China was being provided.

Once again, Mao acted defensively. He broke from his 'class alliance policy, expropriating the main capitalists and redistributing the land. Soon afterwards the first of the five year plans was initiated.

At the same time as doing this, he completely denied democrațic rights to the working class and imprisoned or killed many hundreds of those who had buit the revolutionary movement.

EMPIRICAL

Since that time, the Chinese bureaucracy has reacted empirically to the mass pressures within a workers state.

Continually wracked with internal crisis only rarely brought out into the mass movement, they have so far resisted not only the right-ward leaning politics of Liu against whom vilification Chou En-lai, Lin Piao and Mao in 1967 continues.

They have also apparently proved unable to integrate those sections of the bureaucracy like the 'young radicals' of Shanghai represented by Wang Hong-wen, which have some links with the working class.

Instead, ascendancy seems to be moving to the bureaucrats of the classic Stalinist type, notably the former secret policeman and now Prime Minister Hu Kuo-feng.

The numerous conflicts within this cloistered caste have only on occasions erupted into the mass movement. Brief outbursts of democratic debate in the 'Hundred Flowers' period in 1957 and the Cultural Revolution a decade later Mao with friend Nixon last year. were brought to an end by order from above.

The youth who questioned thi direction of the revolution wer 'ultra-left' and the workers whi fought for improved condition suffered from 'economism'.

Only the Party leaders wer allowed to define the limits o debate, and its direction.

Since 1953, the bureaucracy ha tried to hide behind the illusion o the "Great Leap Forward' and "sell reliance' to mask the difficulties o economic development.

INDEPENDENT

By acquiring their own indepen dent interests tied to their ow state, the Chinese leaders hav come into conflict with th Russians, and turned instead on a international level to allies such a the PNLA in Angola, and the Sha of Iran, as reactionary as th blackest figures in Chinese history.

How do we, as Trotskyist remember Mao Tse-tung? As revolutionary leader certainly placed at the head of one of th greatest mobilisations of the masse in history.

But we cannot say that thos whom he has left behind in th Forbidden City to decide on th future fate of the Chinese peopl will be able to go beyond the limit he has set.

A political revolution is sti necessary to drive out this burea cratic elite, establish the power ‹ the proletarian and peasant masse and with a programme fo economic and social developmer and participation in the inte national revolutionary struggle.

As Trotskyists, as revolutionar internationalists, we will continu to study and draw inspiration fro the Chinese Revolution. But we wi look at it critically, objectively an as a whole.

we will certainly not see through the prism of the sickenin cult of personality that hi surrounded Mao in recent years.

We will remember the man revoluționary traditions, often no' suppressed and forgotten, that wer to make the greatest revolution ‹ our generation.

LEFT OPPOSITION

We will remember Chen Tu-hsi one of the first leaders of tr Chinese Communist Party, supporter of the International Le Opposition in the 30s, imprisone by the Kuo Min Tang and harasse by the CCP, dying in miserab: circumstances in 1942.

We will remember also Wan Shih-wei, who tried to raise th banner of communist debate i Yenan, and was tried and exile for his pains, being killed by CC security forces in 1947.

We will remember also Ku Kang, a native of Shensi provina who built the party there befor the arrival of the Red Army, br after an unblemished history c revolutionary struggle, was liquir ated by Mao in 1953.

There were many who disar peared in those times and hav never been heard of.

As was pointed out in Socialis Press number 7 of Ist May 1975 a number of Trotskyists ar included in this total, like Che Chani engines, leader of th the CCl Chiang eater Shanghai labour movement, H Chi-shen and Ying Kwan, studen leaders from the 20s, and Lin Huar hua, from the anti-Japanese resi tance of the 30s.

If it is impossible to knot whether, these comrades are n01 alive or dead, we can at least b sure that the Chinese revolution i their revolution also, and that th struggle to continue and extend i can only be taken up by thos faithful to their memory an traditions.

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SOCIALIS ESS, Wednesday oth Uctober, 19r0 To listen to Power no one would imagine the Labour government

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built up, they showed them- selves to be the only consist-

against the Japanese imperial- ists and their various puppets and supporters.

division of international imperial- ism, and the lack of allies for the