Bourgeois academics have long argued that Mao’s New Democracy was a master strategy for the CCP to take power: that the New Democracy was a façade, a sugar coating behind which Mao hid his true intentions. The New Democracy was intended to deceive the national bourgeoisie, landowners and rich peasants, neutralising them while the CCP prepared to transform China into a workers’ state. All the manoeuvres and confusions generated by the New Democracy have been lauded as contributions to the final victory of the Chinese Revolution while, in reality, victory was actually achieved in spite of them.
It is, of course, axiomatic that revolutionaries should maximise the forces arrayed against imperialism, but if this is done at the cost of principle then the unity achieved becomes self-defeating. Unfortunately, within the world Trotskyist movement there has long been a current with a ‘get rich quick’ mentality that has consistently looked for ways to short-circuit the arduous task of building a Leninist Party. Their siren song is that the socialist revolution could be better and sooner accomplished by joining with other forces. These people greeted Maoism as a genuine revolutionary force and accommodated their politics to it. In Italy, for example, under the leadership of Livio Maitan (prominent member of the United Secretariat of the 4th International) the formation of Maoist groups was welcomed and no serious political fight put up against Maoist ideas with the result that in the late 1960s the majority of the Maitan group broke away from Trotskyism and joined the Maoists, possibly the only time in history that such a thing has happened.
Maitan and Ernest Mandel (Secretary of the United Secretariat of the 4th International) were sufficiently impressed to support a Maoist strategy of peasant guerilla warfare for an extended period, looked for a suitable environment and hit on Latin America as an appropriate location “on account of technical and military considerations.”[40] What followed was scandalous, the good name of Trotsky was appended to ultra-left, rural, sectarian Maoist guerrilla groups, leading an entire generation of revolutionary youth down a blind alley and contributing to the needless deaths of numerous young revolutionaries. There was even a discussion within the Ligue Communiste (largest and most prestigious of the sections of the USec) as to whether the rural (sic!) guerrilla tactics used in Latin America should be applied in France on the grounds that power comes from the barrel of a gun!
Mandel and Maitan were the most prominent representatives of an international mood. Michael Lowy, a respected academic, whose book Combined and Uneven Development was widely promoted as a defence of Trotsky’s ideas was not immune. The manner in which he introduced Mao in this book showed where his emotions lay. Mao is presented as a “young and unknown Communist leader”, who “largely in defiance of Comintern directives” was the organiser of the 1927 radical peasant movement in Hunan which was actively seizing the land and killing landlords, supported apparently, by no lesser person than Trotsky. It turns out on investigation, that Mao was already an established leader in both the CCP and the KMT and a firm supporter of the policies of the Comintern, and that Trotsky was praising the independent peasant movement in Hunan and Hupeh which was acting against the wishes of the CCP and, especially, Mao Zedong.[41]
Maitan, Lowy and others saw Mao as having led a successful revolution and, taking appearances for reality, accepted him as a genuine revolutionary. Marxist analysis and the history of Stalinism was thrown aside by these people because they wanted to believe that Mao would make the revolution for them. Lowy makes it clear that he did not consider the CCP either Stalinist or petty-bourgeois, rather he suggests that large sections of the Red Army and CCP had attained a socialist consciousness.[42] It could be argued that the facts were not known, that Mao had led a revolution and that he appeared a genuine revolutionary. But such an approach is impressionism, taking the appearance for the reality. These people wanted to believe in Mao and this desire trumped Marxist analysis and the counter-revolutionary history of Stalinism.
In the UK, publications which considered themselves both left and intellectual, such as the New Left Review, swung behind Mao and the CCP with many on the editorial board appearing to believe there was no real difference between Mao and Trotsky.[43] As the revolutionary mask of Maoism slipped, the NLR failed to produce an in-depth critique of either Mao’s record or its own analysis, probably because that would have threatened a split in its own ranks. Instead it adopted at local level a policy of ideological peaceful co-existence. This was all the more scandalous because leading editorial board member Robin Blackburn had only recently been feted as a new recruit to Mandel’s Fourth International.
In France, Pierre Rousset considered that despite his avowed Stalinism, Mao adhered in practice to revolutionary Marxism. Rousset’s confusion may be due to a selective reading of Mao’s writings such as The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party where the “new-democratic revolution” is described as
“part of the world proletarian-socialist revolution … Politically, it means the joint revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of several revolutionary classes over the imperialists and reactionary traitors, and opposition to the transformation of Chinese society into a society under bourgeois dictatorship … This kind of new-democratic revolution … results in the dictatorship of the united front of all revolutionary classes under the leadership of the proletariat, not in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”[44]
In 1939, in the original text which had the bloc of four classes in mind, the phrase in italics did not appear.
Possibly Rousset was unaware of the original text; perhaps like Lowy, he took Mao’s additions as a “self-criticism” rather than Stalinist face-saving.[45] However, for revolutionary Marxists “under the leadership of the proletariat” can be guaranteed only by mobilising the broad masses of the urban proletariat through Soviets or similar democratic organisations. For the CCP, “under the leadership of the proletariat” meant its own continuing domination, Soviets remained anathema.
Dazzled by appearances, this political current failed to appreciate that Mao gained power due to a special conjuncture of world events. Instead it was proposed that Mao’s actual political practice “was flatly in contradiction to Stalin’s policies.”[46]
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Maitan, L. Cuba, Military Reformism and Armed Struggle in Latin America, Intercontinental Press, 20 April 1970, p360.
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Lowy, M. Combined and Uneven Development, Verso, 1981, p83.
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Ibid, p95.
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Birchall, I. 1980, w.m.org.
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Mao Zedong, The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, Dec. 1951, w.m.org.
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Lowy, Op. cit. p118.
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Lowy. Op. cit. p122.