Here is the place to answer the challenge posed by Pierre Rousset who has written extensively on political developments in Asia, that a party which takes power in a revolution that leads to a workers’ state cannot be Stalinist.[52] Rousset is not defending Marxism, quite the opposite! Rousset had previously made an overly positive assessment of the strength and prospects of Stalinism. He saw Mao as a genuine revolutionary who had been able to drag the CCP behind him and create a Chinese workers’ state. Thus, he was determined to paint a revolutionary face on Mao and prettify Maoism.
The source of the Chinese Revolution did not lie in the personality of Mao Zedong but in the very deep crisis of capitalism that occurred on a world scale at the end of WWII, and the contradictory character of petty-bourgeois political parties. It is one thing to say the theory of permanent revolution had found confirmation in China where the CCP was compelled to undertake socialist measures to resolve the bourgeois tasks of national independence and freedom from landlordism; it was quite another to suggest Mao Zedong was acting as a Trotskyist, even if as an ‘unconscious Trotskyist’.[53]
Rousset suggests that to argue that a non-socialist, petty-bourgeois party can, under certain exceptional circumstances, overturn capitalism revises Marxism. Rousset might appear to be on strong ground since in 1922, the 4th World Congress of the Communist International had considered the case of a petty-bourgeois government brought to power by a revolutionary upsurge and decided that it would be unlikely to progress to the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, very different conditions existed in 1949 than in 1922. Imperialism had been seriously weakened and China was rotten ripe for revolution.
Marx described and explained that even though a petty-bourgeois party was a contradictory phenomenon it could still be revolutionary, for example in his analysis of the Paris Commune, Marx reported that the Alliance Républicaine des Départements – a political association of petty-bourgeois representatives – called on the people throughout the country to fight against the Versailles government and the monarchist National Assembly and to support the Commune.[54] Petty-bourgeois formations were, and are, quite prepared to use revolutionary means but the contradictory nature of their goals (to harmonise the interests of capital and labour) meant that in the era of the growth of capitalism, such groups invariably ended on the side of the bourgeoisie.
But they are also pulled in the opposite direction, especially in the era of the decay of capitalism. Could a petty-bourgeois grouping having taken power move towards a workers’ state? Based on his experiences in Russia and his analysis of unfolding events, Trotsky concluded:
“one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. …. one thing is not to be doubted: even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some time becomes a reality … it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat.”[55]
In China the pre-conditions for such a petty-bourgeois group coming to power was a mass upheaval so extensive that the bourgeois government and its armies were swept away. It would be expected that the resulting petty-bourgeois government, even in a Stalinist form, would carry through substantial reforms of the system but, at a crucial point, would have to choose between deepening the revolution or conceding power to the bourgeoisie.
What were the exceptional circumstances that pushed the Mao regime to make the final decision to become a workers’ state? Ten reasons spring to mind, though there may be more.
- Capitalist development in China had reached an impasse. China was over-ripe for revolution and this had been confirmed by the implosion of the KMT and the collapse of its armies.
- The initial impetus for the course of events lay not with Mao but with Chiang Kai-shek’s refusal to accept the advice of US imperialism or listen to the pleas of the CCP, and his decision to launch his armies against the PLA in a fight to the death.
- Imperialism was temporarily paralysed.
- There was no credible governmental alternative to the Mao regime and this political vacuum permitted the entrenchment of a petty-bourgeois Stalinist government.
- The CCP was determined to seize bureaucratic capital, but the assets of the four families were so huge that the state took effective control of heavy industry, the banks, communications, and transport. The CCP was unable to privatise these holdings because the collapse of society had been so severe that to end famine, bring inflation under control and get the economy moving again, required extensive state intervention and economic measures that were socialist in principle.
- The capitalist elements in the New Democratic government had little independent weight, no mass support, and could be tolerated. When these bourgeois elements became a hindrance they were rapidly and easily eliminated, although to preserve the appearance of continuity these parties remain in government even today!
- The historic links between the Chinese and Russian Communist Parties, the Soviet Union’s incredible economic progress, and the aid supplied by the Soviet Union meant that most Party members in China saw a Soviet style, planned economy as the natural outcome of their efforts.
- The entire membership of the CCP from Mao down genuinely wanted social reform for the betterment of the lives of peasants and workers. This would have been complemented by pressure from the peasant masses (including many in the PLA) to carry through the land reform rapidly and in a revolutionary way. Because of the links between the landlords and the national bourgeoisie this mass pressure pushed the regime in the direction of a workers’ state.
- Under pressure from imperialism (the Marshall Plan), Stalin had swung left and overthrown the coalition regimes in Eastern Europe. This short-lived left turn meant that the ‘highly improbable variant’ of transition to workers’ states under petty-bourgeois leadership, actually took place in a number of countries after WWII. China was part of this international development.
- The CCP had a twenty-year history of being the sole governing body in extensive areas of China (notwithstanding the three-threes arrangement). In October 1949, the business of running a government was not a new venture for the Maoists; rather it was the continuation of what they had been practising for years. When considering annexation of territories by the USSR Trotsky wrote: “… the Moscow government will carry through the expropriation of the large land-owners and stratification of the means of production … not because the bureaucracy remains true to the socialist program but because it is neither desirous nor capable of sharing the power, and the privileges the latter entails, with the old ruling classes …..”[56] While prepared to give the appearance of sharing power with an enfeebled national bourgeoisie, the Maoists were not prepared to accept counter-revolutionary activities that could lead to the end of their power and privileges.
The debate concerning whether the petty-bourgeois can be revolutionary was decided once and for all by the Cuban Revolution. This was made by a party that at first did not even claim to be socialist and finally dissipated any mystification on the character of these revolutionary upheavals. The key is in the contradictory character of petty-bourgeois political groups and the degree of decay and corruption of capitalism.
Even while making the final moves towards a workers’ state in China the Stalinist framework of class-collaboration (epitomised in the slogan “Peaceful coexistence”), the theory of socialism in one country, revolution by stages, bureaucratic party structure and administrative methods, the systematic denial of Soviet democracy, and limitation of workers’ rights remained constant factors in the Mao regime.