The reality of the GLF and the communes offered incontrovertible evidence of the bureaucratic and Stalinist nature of the CCP. But there are none so blind as those that will not see: Rousset, after the event when he had the facts to hand, continued to offer a half-hearted defence of the communes – they were initiated with the best of intentions but the CCP had bitten off more than it could chew and after “an initial success” intolerable burdens on the administration resulted in chaos and failure.[62]
The real lessons of the communes are very different, the most important being that workers’ democracy was needed in China not least because it could have saved the Chinese people from the waste, suffering and famine caused by the GLF and the communes. A centralised bureaucracy cannot determine every aspect of production, terrible distortions and inefficiencies are inevitably produced. A centrally planned economy can only work efficiently if there are checks at every level by the workers involved. Workers’ democracy, workers’ control, and workers’ management are essential for determining the optimum goals and the efficient functioning of any proletarian regime. The workers, who are also the consumers, have a material interest in making sure that the plan works efficiently at all levels. Bureaucrats are only interested in meeting their quotas regardless of quality of output – so that they will get their bonuses and retain their positions.[63]
The GLF and the communes had demonstrated that the bureaucracy was not a necessary social layer in the development of the Chinese economy and it soon became a hindrance. This was clear confirmation of Leon Trotsky’s analysis of the bureaucracy published as In Defence of Marxism written in October 1939. Trotsky explained that the Soviet bureaucracy had no historical purpose. It was born out of the degeneration of the Soviet Union under conditions of extreme backwardness and isolation. He argued that the idea that the Stalinist regime in Russia would eventually reach socialism was mistaken and that without a political revolution to remove the bureaucracy a backslide to capitalism was quite possible, and the longer the bureaucracy lasted the more likely that would be.