The myth of Mao’s ‘anti-imperialism’

Working to wipe imperialism off the face of the earth is a fundamental duty taken up by all communists. The day we entered the fight for socialism was the day we pledged ourselves to an uncompromising struggle for a world without imperialism, from the oppressed countries to the imperialist powers, leaving its bloody legacy in the dustbin of history where it belongs. The question is: how?

In search of a direction, some communists today look towards Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese revolution of 1949, for guidance. But the fact is that, although his name is still surrounded by an ‘anti-imperialist’ halo, Mao’s position represented a break with genuine revolutionary Marxism that, in practice, had reactionary consequences.

Marxists have long explained that to end imperialism, capitalism must be overthrown the world over. Lenin, in particular, explained that imperialism represents the highest stage of capitalism, and the fight against imperialism is a fight to end capitalism. Therefore, he explained, “under present-day international conditions there is no salvation for dependent and weak nations except in a union of Soviet republics.” That is to say, only the dictatorship of the proletariat can offer a way out for the nationally oppressed peoples of the world.

Let us contrast this with the advice of Mao to young African revolutionaries who visited China in 1959: “The task of Africa as a whole is to oppose imperialism and those who follow imperialism, not to oppose capitalism or to establish socialism… The current revolution in Africa is to oppose imperialism and carry out national liberation movements. It is not a question of communism, but a question of national liberation.”

Here the fight against imperialism and capitalism are counterposed in a manner that stands in stark contradiction with the position of Lenin. What lay at the root of this difference? And what did Mao do in practice in struggling against imperialism on the world stage after the Chinese Communist Party under his leadership took power in China? Finally, what would a real communist policy for eradicating imperialism look like?

What Mao could have done, and what he actually did

Many revolutionaries around the world consider Mao Zedong an anti-imperialist hero primarily because the 1949 Chinese Revolution, which communists hold as the second most important event in history after the 1917 Russian Revolution, threw off the yoke of imperialism in China and served as an inspiration to oppressed and dominated people around the world.

If Mao was genuinely communist in his outlook, then at the earliest possible moment, he would have striven to form an international organisation of communists / Image: public domain

But one must ask: did the regime born out of the revolution – the People’s Republic of China with Mao Zedong at its head – pursue a communist policy to combat imperialism internationally?

If Mao was genuinely communist in his outlook, i.e. a revolutionary who worked to overthrow capitalism internationally, then at the earliest possible moment, he would have striven to form an international organisation of communists with the fullest support that the CCP, now governing a continent-sized country, could muster. This was what Lenin and Trotsky did with the Communist International, the formation of which as a worldwide party of socialist revolution, they placed the highest importance upon, despite all the difficulties facing the besieged Soviet republic at that time.

This was never done in China, nor was it even considered.

Instead, Mao’s regime was content with forming loose and mutable ‘bilateral relations’ with leftist organisations around the world where they deemed that such relations benefited their national interests. At times, they supplied arms and funds to foreign groups abroad. But this aid was only forthcoming when it suited China’s geopolitical interests. This was at all times the axis of Mao’s policy, and not the struggle against world imperialism.

We can see this clearly in the case of the many Southeast Asian communist insurgencies that looked to Mao for guidance. In relation to Myanmar, for example, instead of assisting the local Communist Party of Burma (CPB) to gain the leadership of the national liberation movement, China gave the bourgeois government there guarantees that it would have no contact with the CPB, and forbade Chinese communists in the diaspora from supporting their struggles. Speaking to Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, who signed an independence agreement with the British government that the CPB characterised as a “sham independence”, Mao did not hide his unprincipled, ‘pragmatic’ considerations:

“There are radicals among the Chinese diaspora in Myanmar. We admonished them from interfering with Myanmar’s internal politics. We teach them to follow the laws of their host countries and not to contact the armed parties that oppose the Burmese government. We do not organise communist parties among the Chinese diaspora. Those they have organised have disbanded already. We do the same in Indonesia and Singapore. We instruct the Chinese diaspora in Burma not to get involved in political activities inside Myanmar, only those that were approved by the Burmese state, such as ceremonies and nothing else. Otherwise this would put us in an awkward position and make it hard to do things.” (Conversations with Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, 11 December 1954, Chinese Mao Zedong Collected Works Vol 6).

In other words, for cosy relations with a neighbouring capitalist state, Mao turned his back on the revolutionary struggle of Burma’s workers and peasants. This only changed when, in the 1960s, Maoist China came into conflict with Myanmar, which at the time began to side with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet split. For Mao, the CPB were not comrades in the struggle for international socialism, but small change in the pursuit of China’s national interests. Needless to say, this is a far cry from the communist internationalist ideas of Marx and Lenin.

Lenin always stressed that a successful international revolution was the only way to guarantee the survival of the worker’s state in Russia. Promoting world socialist revolution was the whole purpose of founding the Communist International. We only need to offer a few quotes to underline his crystal-clear position.

Four months after the October Revolution, on 7 March 1918 Lenin explained, “At all events, under all conceivable circumstances, if the German Revolution does not come, we are doomed.” In May, Lenin explained, “To wait until the working classes carry out a revolution on an international scale means that everyone will remain suspended in mid-air… It may begin with brilliant success in one country and then go through agonising periods, since final victory is only possible on a world scale, and only by the joint efforts of the workers of all countries.” (my emphasis).

Compare these thoroughly revolutionary and internationalist perspectives to the passive, cynical horse trading of Mao’s CCP towards the Burmese revolution.

The Indonesian Communist Party pursued a strategy of collaboration with the ‘progressive national bourgeoisie’ on the advice of Mao and the CCP / Image: public domain

Mao’s ‘advice’ – governed by a desire to see ‘friendly’ neighbourly relations with bourgeois governments – led to deadly results for communists in more than one country. The Indonesian Communist Party, once one of the largest and most well-organised communist parties in the world, pursued a strategy of collaboration with the ‘progressive national bourgeoisie’ on the advice of Mao and the CCP who wished to curry favour with the Sukarno government.

Instead of arming the working class and seizing power, as they could have done, the Indonesian communists placed full faith in Sukarno, who balanced between the classes in Indonesian society. This balancing act inevitably came undone, and Sukarno was overthrown in a coup. The communists, politically and physically unprepared for this turn of events, were drowned in blood, with some 1.5 million communists being murdered under Suharto’s dictatorship.

We see the same thing in relation to Vietnam: a policy of zigs and zags determined not by the interests of the Vietnamese or world revolution, but the geopolitical security concerns of the Chinese state.

In 1954, the partisan forces under the leadership of the famous Ho Chi Minh held a powerful position to not only expel imperialism out of the whole Vietnam, but from Laos and Cambodia as well. What did Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai advise Ho to do instead? He convinced him to not only pull out his forces from Cambodia and Laos, surrendering both to pro-imperialist regimes, but also to accept a partitioned Vietnam as a tactic to appease US imperialism. Zhou told Ho:

“Because the imperialists are afraid of China's "expansion," they absolutely will not allow Vietnam to achieve a great-scale victory. If we request too much [at the Geneva conference] and if peace is not achieved in Indochina…. Therefore, we must isolate the United States and break up its plans; otherwise we will fall into the trap prepared by the U.S. imperialists. Consequently even in a military sense we will not be able to seize [parts of] Vietnam.”

Zhou Enlai was a faithful follower of Mao’s policies. Did his advice constitute an astute revolutionary strategy against imperialism? Did it succeed in appeasing US aggression? The outbreak of the Vietnam War only a few years later answered this question in the negative.

Zhou’s advice to Ho Chi Minh was based on the self-interested concerns of the Chinese bureaucracy, which feared a confrontation with US imperialism south of its border. They therefore convinced the Vietnamese to delay their own liberation from imperialism to serve the short-sighted goal of protecting China’s ‘national interests’. Why was this?

Zhou’s advice to Ho Chi Minh was based on the self-interested concerns of the Chinese bureaucracy / Image: public domain

In 1949, the victory of the Chinese Revolution had been based on the victory of the People’s Liberation Army led by Mao, which had captured the cities. Mao initially believed that the Communist Party could come to an agreement with the old capitalist class, but the latter fled China and he was soon forced to carry out sweeping nationalisations. This was not a revolution based upon the conquest of power directly by the working class through organs of democratic workers’ power, as had happened in Russia in 1917. Rather, while it crushed capitalism, it established a new bureaucracy drawn directly from the peasant army, which soared above the masses and developed its own privileges and interests.

Protecting these interests and securing the power and privileges of this bureaucracy, and not the spreading of world revolution, became the foremost domestic and foreign policy concern of Mao’s regime. Thus the logic of attempting to appease imperialism and neighbouring reactionary regimes.

When these policies inevitably failed, however, Mao and the bureaucracy were forced to change tracks, zagging in a new direction, and giving increased assistance to North Vietnam in its war with US imperialism. But while the Chinese bureaucracy was looking out for its own narrow nationalist interests, the same was true of the Russian bureaucracy, which inevitably brought on a conflict in the late 1960s. Thereafter, seeing the Vietnamese as too Soviet-aligned, Mao withdrew the majority of China’s support and sought to repair relations… with US imperialism! In all this, the national interests of the bureaucracy, and not those of the struggle against world imperialism, remained the only constant.

How Mao sided with reactionaries abroad

Mao didn’t simply provide incorrect advice and inconsistent aid to communist revolutionaries outside of China. When it suited their short-term interests, his regime actively assisted gruesome counter-revolutionaries who worked to drown communists in blood.

Why was this done? The chief concern was to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union, which had come into conflict with China. In the fight against the supposedly ‘social imperialist’ Soviet Union, the Chinese regime supported regimes that also enjoyed the backing of US imperialism across three continents.

Mao’s China and Pakistan’s military dictator Ayub Khan rapidly became close allies / Image: public domain

In the 1960s, as a result of a border conflict between China and India, as well as the latter’s increasingly close relationship with the Soviet Union, Mao’s China and Pakistan’s military dictator Ayub Khan rapidly became close allies. Relations became so cosy that China (alongside the US) became one of the main exporters of arms to the Pakistani regime.

When the Pakistani ruling class was faced with a revolutionary rising in the 1960s, and the potential break away of East Pakistan (modern-day Bangladesh) from West Pakistan, Mao dutifully came to the aid of his bourgeois allies. Mao even advised the China-aligned Bangladeshi Maoist peasant leader, Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, to support Ayub Khan! This forced Bhashani to square the circle of somehow fighting for Bangladeshi independence while supporting the very regime that fought tooth and nail against it. The Maoist regime thus played a key role in ensuring that the independence struggle of Bangladesh could not fall under communist leadership.

Even after their Pakistani allies had drenched their hands in blood trying to crush Bangladeshi independence, China continued to faithfully assist their counter-revolutionary allies, even using their position in the UN Security Council to deny Bangladesh entry to the UN until 1975.

In South East Asia, Mao forged relations with the US-backed, right-wing dictator Ferdinand Marcos, even though the Filipino communists were in a life-and-death struggle against the Marcos regime. These ‘friendly relations’ are summed up by a famous photo of Mao gently kissing the hand of Marcos’ wife, Imelda Marcos, notorious for her lavish, bourgeois lifestyle and a collection of 3,000 pairs of shoes.

In Africa, China’s behaviour was equally treacherous. During the Angolan War of Independence against Portugal that began in the 1960s, the resistance forces quickly degenerated into a three-way civil war between various factions. In this conflict, China backed the right-wing reactionary forces of FNLA and UNITA by providing them with arms and training. These forces were both simultaneously being aided by the US.

A 2017 paper published by a historian at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, explained plainly how China was interested in maintaining a divided Angolan resistance movement precisely to prevent the pro-Soviet MPLA from dominating the movement for independence from Portugal. Again, the main foreign policy aim of Mao’s China was not to promote revolutionary anti-imperialist struggles, but to gain a geopolitical advantage, in this case against its rival, the Soviet Union.

In Latin America, Maoist China’s counterrevolutionary crimes are most evident in the tragic defeat of the 1973 Chilean revolution. When right-wing general Pinochet overthrew the democratically-elected, left-wing government of Allende through a CIA-backed coup, Zhou Enlai insisted that this amounted to nothing more than the “internal affairs” of Chile, and immediately opted to establish relations with the new Pinochet regime.

As left-wing activists sought refuge in foreign embassies of Santiago to avoid the bloody counter-revolutionary orgy wrought by Pinochet, the Chinese embassy shamefully shut its doors to the refuge-seekers. Bilateral relations with the Pinochet regime and its US backers meant more to the CCP leaders than the lives of Chile’s revolutionary workers and youth.

Kissinger spotted an opportunity to undermine the Soviet Union by collaborating with China / Image: public domain

One should note that, disgracefully, many of these counterrevolutionary crimes were conducted in harmony with the activities of Henry Kissinger, one of the most murderous war criminals in the post-war period. Indeed, as a cold-blooded strategist of US imperialism, Kissinger spotted an opportunity to undermine the Soviet Union by collaborating with China, in the process hastening the destruction of both. The Chinese bureaucracy led by Mao, with its own limited, self-seeking nationalist agenda, had no qualms about such a rapprochement.

To this day, the CCP refers to Kissinger as “an old friend of the Chinese people.” Indeed, he was an old friend of the bureaucracy, and later of the newly emerging Chinese capitalist class, the development of which the bureaucracy fostered.

We must ask our readers with sympathies towards Maoism: was Henry Kissinger not clearly an enemy of the proletariat and a defender of the most reactionary imperialist force on Earth? Is there anything genuinely ‘anti-imperialist’ in Mao’s policy that international communists can take guidance from? Unfortunately, anyone who answers this question in the positive is not a communist.

How Mao’s class collaborationism miseducated world communists

We can see that Mao’s foreign policy was clearly dictated by narrow nationalist interests, and not by considerations of combating imperialism. Nevertheless, this cynical policy was clothed in theoretical justifications. Mao presented himself as a great ‘Marxist-Leninist’ theoretician, the content of whose ‘theoretical’ output consisted of advising communists around the world to follow a deadly path of class collaborationism.

In Mao’s Collected Works Vol. 8, we find such gems as “Africa's Task is to Struggle Against Imperialism, Not Capitalism” (21 February 1959), the content of which is exactly what the title suggests. “Anyone proposing to establish socialism in Africa would be making a mistake… The nature of the revolution there is a bourgeois democratic revolution, not a proletarian socialist revolution,” Chairman Mao made it clear to his interlocutors.

In the same year, during a meeting with Latin American communist leaders, we again find Mao advising them that “in order for the working class to win, they must form alliance with two classes. One is the petty bourgeoisie, including the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoise… the other is the exploiting class i.e. national bourgeoisie… we have one thing in common: opposition to imperialism, and therefore we can build a united front.” (Mao’s Collected Works Vol. 8).

But despite claims, nowhere in Latin America could you find such a national bourgeoisie in opposition to imperialism. By its very nature, the capitalist class of this continent was dominated by imperialism and tied by a thousand threads to imperialist interests. Besides which, they feared the masses far more than their imperialist masters.

Similarly, when meeting with the iconic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara, who already stood at the head of a successful revolution that had taken power from the bourgeoisie, Mao advised with the same refrain:

“[The] Latin American petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie are afraid of socialism. For a substantial period, you should not rush on the social reform. This approach will do good to win over Latin American small bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie.”

Ironically, the Cuban Revolution was successful precisely because it went against Mao’s advice: they went about expropriating the capitalist class and establishing a planned economy, on the basis of which they were able to institute wide-ranging, progressive reforms.

There are many, many more examples, but the above is sufficient to prove that class collaborationism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation has been a consistent piece of advice from Mao on how to ‘oppose’ imperialism.

The Cuban Revolution was successful precisely because it went against Mao’s advice / Image: public domain

However, the national bourgeoisies of oppressed countries the world over are inevitably tied to the interests of imperialists by the thousands of threads of the world market. Therefore, they are not only organically incapable of bringing about a national liberation struggle, they would actively fight against it.

The Chinese Revolution of 1949 itself proved this point, when the national bourgeoisie fled along with Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang to Taiwan. Mao had actually tried to form such a ‘united front’ with the Chinese capitalists, hoping to create an essentially capitalist regime that he called ‘New Democracy’ in coalition with “all revolutionary classes”, in which he included a (non-existent) section of the capitalists who, he alleged, were not opposed to the revolution.

But on the basis of events, especially the pressures from US imperialism with the start of the Korean War, he was forced to abandon this schema. The CCP government soon expropriated all sectors of the economy, and instituted a nationalised planned economy.

In fact, all the colonial revolutions of the 20th century proved this point. Some proved it positively, such as China or Cuba, where the revolution made strides forward only by expropriating the ‘national bourgeoisie’. Others demonstrated the same point negatively, with the establishment of formally ‘independent’ regimes in which the national bourgeoisie came to power and continued to act as the local agents of imperialism, assisting their continued plunder while repressing the working class and peasantry.

Mao’s insistence on educating others in the opposite direction, which led to bloody failures in many cases, was later developed into a whole new, uniquely Maoist ‘theory’.

In the 1970s, Mao proposed a ‘theory’ that divided the countries of the planet into three categories. He didn’t take as his starting point the property relations in different nations – i.e. whether capitalist or nationalised state property predominated. Instead, he emphasised a country’s level of economic development and supposed ‘hegemonic’ ambitions. What emerged was a new ‘Theory of Three Worlds’. As Mao explained to Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda in 1974:

“I hold that the US and the Soviet Union belong to the First World. The middle elements, such as Japan, Europe, Australia, and Canada, belong to the Second World. We are the Third World… The US and the Soviet Union have a lot of atomic bombs, and they are richer. Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada, of the Second World, do not possess so many atomic bombs and are not so rich as the First World, but richer than the Third World… All Asian countries, except Japan, belong to the Third World. All of Africa and also Latin America belong to the Third World.”

Note that Mao included both the capitalist western European countries and the deformed planned economies of Eastern Europe in the category of ‘Europe’.

According to Mao, since the countries of the Second World have conflicts of interests with those of the First World, the Third World countries can and must try to obtain their support. “We must win them over, countries such as England, France, and West Germany,” he asserted. Many of these ‘Second World’ powers, as defined by Mao, are incontrovertibly imperialist countries. Mao is therefore advising ‘Third World’ countries to ask the imperialists for help! Worse still, for Mao it was acceptable to accept the help of imperialism to undermine the Soviet Union!

The ‘Theory of Three Worlds’ ushered in an era of China’s rapprochement and cooperation with capitalist governments and would pave the way for the future opening up to foreign capital and the restoration of capitalism in China under the CCP’s watch.

In a sign of this rapprochement, in 1975, China became the first nominally ‘communist’ country to establish diplomatic relations with the European Economic Community, which was formed by west European imperialist countries. Mao also began to establish ties to West German politicians at the expense of East Germany, above all West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Through Deng Xiaoping, Maoist China declared to Schmidt that it favoured German reunification, which meant that they supported West Germany annexing East Germany on a capitalist basis. Mao later personally reaffirmed this position to Henry Kissenger.

Actively supporting the replacement of a country’s planned economy by capitalist property relations is, in itself, an extraordinary betrayal. But it flowed logically from Maoist China’s chief concern for their own national interests – in this case, establishing relations with European imperialist countries in exchange for rallying against the Soviet Union.

In contrast with his eagerness to establish friendly relations with European imperialism, his attitude to the revolutionary wave sweeping Europe at that time was one of indifference and even irritation at how it interfered with his diplomatic plans. Indeed, in a phone call with US President Gerald Ford, Mao expressed approval for “stabilisation of Portugal and Spain”, two countries that were undergoing revolutionary ferment.

Mao’s ‘Theory of Three Worlds’ was not an innovation, but rather, faithfully flowed from the narrow nationalist outlook of Stalinism, placing the interests of the world working class far below the bureaucracy’s interest in remaining in power within their own borders. It accepted the right of the capitalists to dominate certain sections of the world, rather than fighting to unite the working class around the world to overthrow it altogether.

Maoism and ‘anti-revisionism’

Mao’s theoretical distortions stem not from a consistent communist theory, but from Stalinism’s insistence on collaborating with the bourgeoisie and appeasing imperialism. This policy attempts to create a quiet life for the bureaucracy to enjoy the privileges that it accrued from its administrative role in the planned economies. This was first justified by Stalin under the guise of the theory of ‘socialism in one country’.

Mao’s theoretical distortions stem not from a consistent communist theory, but from Stalinism’s insistence on collaborating with the bourgeoisie and appeasing imperialism / Image: public domain

But relations between the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies after the Sino-Soviet split became extremely acrimonious. This split was itself a glaring demonstration of the narrow nationalism of these competing national bureaucracies.

Had these two regimes represented healthy workers’ democracies, they would have united in a single federation of European and Asian Soviet Republics, using the resources of a whole continent to fight for world socialism. The fact that both were dominated by privileged bureaucracies with their own national interests, on the contrary, inevitably led to a schism.

In this context, Mao and the CCP presented themselves as the ‘anti-revisionist’ side in their controversy with Moscow. Ostensibly, they claim to uphold the genuine ideas of communism, as opposed to the “revisionists”, “fascists,” “social imperialists” that they suddenly realised were installed in the Kremlin.

In the dispute, the CCP denounced Khrushchev’s slogan of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialist countries, and reasserted the necessity of class struggle, especially in the colonial world. This stance, in turn, created the impression that Mao and the CCP are the standard-bearers of the fight against imperialism. Many communists around the world were won over to China’s side because of Mao’s stance on this question.

Does the CCP have a right to claim to be defenders of Marxist theory against revisionism? They do not. In fact, the “orthodox” ‘Marxism-Leninism’ that they defend is itself a revision and caricature of Marxism: namely, Stalinism.

The core ‘theoretical’ innovation of Stalin, one maintained by Mao, was the anti-Marxist idea, utterly unheard of in Bolshevik circles until Stalin came forward with it after Lenin’s death in 1924, of ‘socialism in one country’. Less than a ‘theory’, this represents the psychology of the conservative, nationalist-reformist bureaucracy that had raised itself up in the Soviet Union at the expense of workers’ democracy, translated into Marxist-sounding language. This ‘innovation’ remained 100 percent a part of the Maoist bureaucracy’s theoretical baggage.

This privileged bureaucracy, parasitically feeding off the planned economy, had no interest in world revolution and the fight for communism. Any revolution in which the working class seized power and wielded it through democratic organs of workers’ rule, like soviets (workers’ councils), would place a question mark over the right of the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies to exist. They also feared that spreading revolution would ‘provoke’ the imperialists, which might imperil their own rule. Better to reach a modus vivendi with imperialism.

In fact, within the dispute between Moscow and Beijing regarding the question of “peaceful coexistence,” Mao and CCP were not counterposing “peaceful coexistence” with world revolution. The CCP instead objected to Khrushchev’s tactic of immediate rapprochement with the West in favour of using national liberation struggles in colonial countries, not to break imperialism, but in order to put pressure on the imperialists in order to achieve better terms for the “socialist countries” to enjoy peaceful coexistence. This is merely a tactical difference over how to safeguard ‘socialism in one country’, as outlined in a letter addressed to the Central Committee of the CPSU:

“It is necessary for the socialist countries to engage in negotiations of one kind or another with the imperialist countries. It is possible to reach certain agreements through negotiation by relying on the correct policies of the socialist countries and on the pressure of the people of all countries. But necessary compromises between the socialist countries and the imperialist countries do not require the oppressed peoples and nations to follow suit and compromise with imperialism and its lackeys. No one should ever demand in the name of peaceful coexistence that the oppressed peoples and nations should give up their revolutionary struggles.

“The application of the policy of peaceful coexistence by the socialist countries is advantageous for achieving a peaceful international environment for socialist construction, for exposing the imperialist policies of aggression and war and for isolating the imperialist forces of aggression and war.”

Of course, as we have amply demonstrated, Mao and the CCP abandoned this apparently more ‘revolutionary’ policy by lining up with counter-revolutionary forces, many backed also by the US, where and when it suited their interests to do so.

Connected to this idea of ‘socialism in one country’ is the Stalinist ‘stageist theory’ of revolution. This is the assertion that before socialism can be achieved, a long stage of capitalist development must take place in all countries.

What is necessary in the backward countries dominated by imperialism, therefore, are neatly executed bourgeois revolutions, where the workers act as willing collaborators to the bourgeoisie, in order to create the conditions for such development, long before there can be any possibility of a socialist revolution with the proletariat at its head.

In Lenin’s day, the Bolsheviks insisted that the working class must strive for leadership of the revolution, in alliance with the peasantry but against the bourgeoisie / Image: public domain

There is absolutely nothing in common between this idea and genuine Leninism. In fact, it was the Mensheviks who argued before the Russian Revolution of 1917 that the working class of backward Russia must tie themselves to the liberal bourgeoisie to help them come to power. They dismissed the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat could be established in Russia before its establishment in the advanced western nations.

There was not a drop of genuine ‘Marxism’ in this theory. Marx and Engels always insisted on the complete independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie. In Lenin’s day, the Bolsheviks insisted that the working class must strive for leadership of the revolution, in alliance with the peasantry but against the bourgeoisie, which had definitely proven that it had become reactionary. In the Second Congress of the Comintern, Lenin further highlighted the reactionary nature of the national bourgeoisie with respect to their own nation’s liberation movement:

“A certain understanding has emerged between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very often, even perhaps in most cases, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries, although they also support national movements, nevertheless fight against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes with a certain degree of agreement with the imperialist bourgeoisie, that is to say together with it.”

But the old Menshevik idea was once more revived by the Stalinist bureaucracy after Lenin’s death in order precisely to justify their class-collaborationist approach all over the world in order to curry favour with the imperialists and national bourgeoisies.

There is a direct line connecting the Menshevik originators of this theory and its adoption by the Chinese Communist Party. It was precisely a former Menshevik, Aleksandr Martynov – a man heavily criticised for his opportunism by Lenin in What is To Be Done?, but welcomed into the Communist Party by Stalin – who directly advised the nascent CCP to adopt the theory of a “bloc of four classes”. This “bloc”, he argued, must include the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie… and the so-called ‘national’ bourgeoisie.

In order to unite these classes, Martynov urged the CCP to hold back the Chinese revolution to the attainment of purely bourgeois tasks, whilst bringing the working class under the leadership of the national bourgeoisie, represented by the Kuomintang. The CCP never renounced this perspective, and it runs like a thread throughout all of Mao’s writings.

We see, therefore, that for all Maoist China’s charges of “revisionism” against the Soviet Union leadership after Khrushchev, they had absolutely no right to claim that they upheld genuine Marxist ideas. The political content of both regimes, despite their rancorous rivalry, was equally revisionist.

Material roots

The nationalist outlook of Mao’s regime was not merely a product of Mao’s subjective whims. This article is not merely a criticism of Mao’s character. His domestic and foreign policies were ultimately guided by the need of the bureaucracy of the People’s Republic of China whom he represented.

The nationalist outlook of Mao’s regime was not merely a product of Mao’s subjective whims / Image: public domain

The Chinese Revolution of 1949 was a tremendous step forward for the world revolution, but it was accomplished not via the self-activity of the working-class masses led by a Bolshevik Party, but by a peasant army with a bureaucratic, Stalinist party at its head.

The working class of China played a passive role as the Kuomintang lost one battle after another to the CCP. When the CCP took power, therefore, it founded a regime in which workers’ democracy was completely absent, modelled after the degenerated, Stalinist Soviet Union. Nevertheless, capitalism was smashed, and new economic relations established. China became what Marxists refer to as a ‘bureaucratically deformed workers’ state’.

While enormous advances were made through the nationalised planned economy, which dragged the country out of grinding backwardness it was trapped in, China was never governed by the democratic organs of the working class, but by the single-party dictatorship of Mao’s CCP, consisting of a bureaucracy of declassed former workers, former students and intellectuals. It was this machine that determined the policies enumerated above, and which maintained the Stalinist orthodoxy of ‘socialism in one country’, renouncing in deeds the struggle for world revolution.

There were deep material interests at play in determining this policy: the bureaucrats were principally interested in defending their own privileges, which they leached in the form of incomes drawn from the nationalised planned economy, which they commanded. They dreamed of creating a stable world situation in which they could continue enjoying the fruits that their position bestowed.

There were also dangers in a successful revolution abroad for this bureaucracy. Any revolution that produced a healthy workers’ democracy might inspire the workers within these deformed workers’ states to see an example to follow and politically topple the rule of the bureaucracy. These factors moulded the ruling bureaucracy’s nationalist outlook.

In a bid chiefly to safeguard their own national interests rather than those of the world proletariat, they often held back and even sabotaged revolutionary opportunities.

This outlook was not unique to the Mao regime. The Stalinist Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern European regimes, and so on, all held essentially the same perspective. And to the extent that the bureaucracies had their own base of power, and were not merely propped up by the Soviet Union, they used this to also manoeuvre against one another according to their own narrow national interests. Their foreign policy was dictated not by spreading the world revolution, but defending their borders and their own spheres of influence.

Mao, Tito, Khrushchev, Kim Il-Sung, et al. might have bandied about talk of world socialism and railed against imperialism. They sang the Internationale at events and functions. They even hosted and communicated with foreign revolutionary organisations. But all ultimately defended the interests of their own ‘socialist state’ – that is to say, of the bureaucracies that stood at their head.

In the long run, unless world imperialism was overthrown, these deformed workers’ states would themselves succumb. ‘Socialism in one country’ was an illusion. Ultimately, these bureaucracies would not be satisfied with merely enjoying privileges and high incomes at the expense of the planned economy. They would ultimately strive to turn themselves into the owners of the means of production. In the absence of a political revolution to place the working class in power and spread the revolution worldwide, this was ultimately what happened, with terrible, reactionary consequences.

The tasks of communists now

Today, we must learn the lessons of this tragedy and return to Lenin. Rather than supporting this or that capitalist government we must, as Lenin explained, base ourselves on the revolutionary movement of the world proletariat.

We must retie the knot of history and recommence the task that Lenin undertook / Image: public domain

We must retie the knot of history and recommence the task that Lenin undertook: to refound a revolutionary Communist International, a world party of socialist revolution. It is the duty of communists organised in such a party to explain to the advanced workers in the imperialist countries that it is up to them to end imperialism at its source, and that their own liberation is intimately connected with this task.

In the former colonial world, communists must organise the advanced workers around a programme of socialist revolution now. There can be no ‘democratic’, ‘national’ capitalism in these nations. Stalinist ‘stageist’ theories have shown their bankruptcy. Only by taking full political and economic power from their local ruling class, and fighting to spread the socialist revolution worldwide, can the oppressed peoples of the world end imperialist domination and achieve true national liberation. And we must at all times highlight the class question and build internationalist class solidarity.

These perspectives are the only way to relegate imperialism and its legacy to the past. But we underline, flowing from all this is the task of building a revolutionary International to spread these ideas and train communists in its ranks, in order to make these ideas the ruling ideas in the working class and put them into practice.

This is the communist work that the Revolutionary Communist International is conducting in both the imperialist and dominated countries around the world. We based ourselves on the granite foundations of Marxist theory, developed over time by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, in the first four Congresses of the Communist International, in the founding documents of the Fourth International, and in the works of Ted Grant after the Second World War. These represent the genuine unbroken thread of communist ideas, the necessary weapon we need to triumph over imperialism and capitalism around the world.