The Cultural

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It is to Maitan's credit that he recognises and clearly states the importance and difficulty of the task he sets himself.

DETAILED

The centrepiece of the book is a fairly detailed account (a little less than 200 pages) of the events of the Cultural Revolution, concentrating the period from the August 1966 Plenum of the Communist Party Central Committee, at which the public demotions of Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping began, through Mao's drive to reestablish central control in the first half of 1967, using the Army as a means of intervention in political struggle and calling for support for the 'good cadres' of the Party apparatus, to the defeat of the left' groupings in 1968.

This central section is preceded by an opening chapter outlining developments from the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 to 1965; and Maitan ends with a final chapter on The Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution' which deals with the ousting of Lin Piao (Mao's main lieutenant in the earlier stages of the Cultural Revolution) in September and the adden moves of Chinese foreign policy to closer relations with American imperialism in the same year.

The book does not, of course, discuss the spectacular events which Jave taken place this year following the death of Chou En-lai: the econd removal of Teng Hsiao-ping, he death of Mao and the leadership crisis which it brought to a head, id tbe ousting of the 'Shanghai Aft by Hua and the military chiefs.

UNDERSTANDING

But how far can Maitan's book help us understand these events ned, more generally, the basic class forces at work in the Chinese state?

In asking this question we must ok two further ones. How successal is Vaitan in examining all the contradictory sides of Chinese acia, and political history? And how far does he succeed in bringing nut the central, essential antagonms of Chinese society and of the Dinese state within the interational class struggle?

As far as the first question is oncerned it mould be wrong to cadema Maitan's book solely 1, Army and Mai Its Aftermath', Second, revised because it concentrates so heavily on the 'first three years of the Cultural Revolution, 966-68. These events did, indeed, form a crucible. In it were release d many of the hostilities of the masses, and especially the youth, towards mavering stratum aspects many of the ANTAGONISMS Latent antagonisms within the latter erupted violently, sometimes dating back to times well before the liberation of 1949 (and, at least as often, being dated back that far in polemic by Party leaders determined to show - in the full Stalinist tradition - that their opponents had worked covertly against Mao against socialism and the state for decades past).

In the chapter on "The Dismissed Leaders' Maitan reviews the main accusations and replies that were exchanged, but without casting much light on their underlying causes, He demonstrates clearly, for example, that the charges levelled against Liu-Shao-chi from April 1967 as having been an opponent of Mao were utterly false and dishonest. They represented, moreover, an attempt to rewrite history during the 'left' phases of the Cultural Revolution in such a way that the rightist policies of Mao and the Party leadership as a whole in the past could be blamed on scapegoats and 'infiltrators' like Liu.

Thus the charge that Liu favoured 'peace and democracy' rather than class struggle and social revolution following the victory over Japan in 1945 is one that is patently true of the whole Party leadership, including Mao, who personally conducted the negotia ises in China: A Marxist Interpretation of by Livio Maitan. Translated by Gregor Be REVIEWED BY PAUL STEIN tions for a coalition with Chiang Kai-shek.

Maitan's book accurately punctures, theretore, many of the falsifications and abuses carried out - or encouraged - by Mao and his supporters at different times in the top echelons of the bureaucracy.

He deals also with the opportunist origins and development of the 'theory' that the Soviet Union under Kruschev and since has become a 'social imperialist' state with a new ruling class, and with the crass suppression of cultural and intellectual life by Mao's wife, Chiang Ching as well as the slanders against Liu and others.

ECLECTIC

But Maitan's assessment of these political positions is eclectic and inconsistent.

For example, a few pages after his defence of Liu he is quoting with approval (Pp 2346) the important programmes of the 'Sheng-wu-lien' Committee in Hanan (published March 1968), on the grounds that it finds the driving force of the Cultural Revolution in the contradiction between the economic foundations, which "looks generally to be socialist" and the political superstructure (the state machinery) which is controlled and inhabited by "the newborn and yet decadent privileged stratum of the bourgeoisie" ..headed by Liu and Teng!

The programme goes on to retail all the "approved" political estimates of the day, including eulogies to Mao, Lin Piao and Chiang Ching.

Although Sheng-wu-Lien was publicly attacked, it appears to have overstepped the mark only in the Cultural Revolution nton and Marie Collitti. first edition published as 1969.)

one specific respect - branding Chou En-lai as the "general representative of China's red capitalist class"

Yet Maitan draws the conclusion that this and other 'ultra-left' groups, of which less is known, "show that the cultural revolution generated forces capable of understanding its dual nature, its contradictions and its essential limitations and capable of showing the way forward to the revolutionary struggle necessary to overthrow the rule of the bureaucracy"

Such a conclusion contains a kernel of truth, and of correct optimism, but as a whole it is dangerously vague and complacent.

What marks and limits the texts he quotes is an inability to break from dependence on the political authority on a section - and at that moment the ruling section -of the bureaucracy.

The Cultural Revolution in China was not the breaking of the political revolution against the bureaucracy as a whole, nor, in almost all cases, did those who were drawn into struggle against "capitalist roaders' break from bureaucratic On the contrary, Mao and his changing layers of support within the state, army and Party apparatuses were able to strengthen their positions by directing the fire which arose from political hostility to the bureaucracy as a whole against particular sections which were made into objects of sacrifice.

Maitan mentions only briefly the invasion of the Foreign Ministry by Red Guards of the Foreign Revolution: that the revolutionary transformation of property and production relations in this huge nation state has taken place under the leadership of a Stalinist party which played - and continues to play - a role of compromise and balance with the main imperialist powers, acting to protect capitalist rule outside its own frontiers.

ILLUSION

It is an illusion to suppose that Mao's leadership broke with Stalinism in carrying through the revolution in 1949, and that only later came the social formation of the bureaucracy. Chinese Stalinism, led the war for military and political power in order to defend the social base into which it had already sunk deep roots.

Maitan's analysis, however, oscillates on the basic character of the bureaucracy in China and its social root. He tends to seek for the causes of its openly Stalinist political methods in habits brought over and revived from the Stalinised Comintern.

And though his book contains many important and interesting observations and facts, and numerous úseful references to nonChinese language sources, these are mostly embedded in arguments so general that one is left with a series only of impressions, of never having examined the wood for always looking at the trees - even if very critically at some of them.

POST WAR STALINISM In this. Maitan's approach reflects the basic eclecticism towards the post-war history of Stalinism which characterises the entire tendency within the USFI of which he forms a part.

His book has been attacked in the bourgeois press for depending on solely non-Chinese sources. Such accusations are light- minded. There is an entire cottage industry in the West now devoted to the narrow and blinkered 'explanation' of this or that aspect of China. Maitan recognises that the Chinese revolution is too important a matter to be left to the Sinologists: he attempts - though he does not succeed - to treat it as a whole and as a Marxist. And despite its faults, his book provides one of the most useful factual accounts in English of the Cultural Revolution.

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PREssi, Wednesday 15th December, 1976

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edition, New Left Books, London, 1976; 'Partito e Masse nella Crisi Cinese, Rome