In this article the Chinese Trotskyist Wang Fanxi gave his assessment of the new Maoist state soon after the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949. The CCP came to power on an announced programme of land redistribution and preserving capitalist relations in industry. It quickly established a totalitarian state, and moved to gain control over the economy for that state. By 1955-6 most of the remaining private capitalists were squeezed out, and the government moved to “collectivise” agriculture. A move to “People’s Communes” and attempted forced-march industrialisation in 1958-9 killed tens of millions; another bureaucratic convulsion to strengthen central control, called the “Cultural Revolution”, in 1966-8, was also costly. From the late 1970s the successors of Mao Zedong, who had died in 1976, started to move towards reintegration into the world market and licensing individual agriculture and private capitalist enterprise. Industry has boomed. In the year 1500, China had over four times the economic output of France and the UK combined; by 1950, after a century dominated by big wars, scarcely one-sixth; by 1998, 1.7 times as much. But inequality has continued and deepened. China now combines the plagues of Stalinistic governance and of private-capitalist profiteering.
In judging and estimating the nature of a movement, a political party, or a state, for the proletarian revolutionist there is one unchanging standard: What is its relation to the working class, that is, to the only revolutionary class in the modern world? For us there can be no more decisive standard than that, nor can there be any other point of departure.
What is the relation of the CCP, the Liberation Army led by it, and the People’s Republic which it has established, to the Chinese working class? What attitude does it take toward that working class? Notwithstanding the fact that the CCP calls itself a working-class party, notwithstanding the fact that the CCP proclaims this new state to be a “people’s” state led by the workers, nevertheless a variety of facts demonstrates that the political and economic position of the workers has not only failed to improve, but in certain respects has even deteriorated. The working class is the victim of this “War of Liberation.” “The liberation of the working class is the function of the working class itself.” Consequently, “liberators” drawn from another class cannot confer genuine liberation upon it.
And this has in fact been the case. Politically speaking, the position of the working class has not changed at all. The military governments established by the conquerors are composed entirely of a new nobility, and have no connection with the working class. Not only could workers’ soviets not be formed in practice, they were not permitted to exist even as a concept. All that the workers got from their “liberators” was the designation — on paper — of “leaders” of the new society…
In Tianjin from February to April [1949] and in Shanghai during June and July [1949] there was extensive activity on the part of the workers, but after the suppression in April of the Tianjin movement by Liu Shaoqi and the promulgation in Shanghai on 19 August [1949] of Military Government regulations for the adjustment of labour-management disputes, the working class was robbed completely of its right to fight and of its fundamental right to strike. In other words, it was made the victim of exploitation at the hands of private entrepreneurs. This new slave status of the working class was finally fixed in September by governmental fiat, and the workers have been unable to win an improvement in living conditions by striking. In order to disguise this act of barbarism, the new rulers have given the working class the right of “factory control.”
Trickery
But this right, as a glance at the Regulations for the Conduct of Factory Committees will indicate, is a patently worthless piece of trickery. For example:
“7. The Factory Committee shall be presided over by the Head of the Factory (or the Manager)...”
“8. If a decision passed by a majority of the Factory Committee shall be judged by the Head of the Factory (or the Manager) to be in conflict with the said Factory’s best interests, or when the said decision shall be in conflict with the instructions of higher authority, the Manager or Head of the Factory is empowered to prohibit its implementation…”
Therefore we may affirm that politically the Chinese Communist regime has not improved the position of the working class, while economically it has lowered its standard of living. The Chinese Communist regime, while characterising itself the “representative of the working class” and making use of the words “people” and “nation,” has in reality, like the Guomindang, in effect enslaved the Chinese working class. This view must constitute the point of departure for our interpretation of the nature of the CCP and its government.
Any political party or state apparatus which enslaves the working class is, in this day and age, from a proletarian, socialist, revolutionary point of view, fundamentally and completely reactionary. Therefore the CCP and the state apparatus which it has set up are also reactionary. Yet at the same time we must recognise the following facts: They have overthrown the Guomindang government, which represented foreign imperialism and the native bourgeoisie and landlord class; they are wiping out the anachronistic agrarian relationships in China’s farming villages; they have dealt a mighty blow to the foreign imperialist powers led by the United States. All of these actions, from the point of view of Chinese nationalism and democracy, have an undeniably progressive character…
These three phenomena, (a) the tendency of world capitalism toward statification, (b) the thoroughgoing corruption and decay of the individual capitalist, and (c) the numerical increase of the petty bourgeoisie and its rise in importance as a social and political force, may serve to explain the principal events that have taken place throughout the world during the last twenty years, particularly since the end of the war, and can explain very adequately the events that have transpired in China.
The Chinese Stalinists, taking advantage of this state of affairs, basing themselves on the overwhelming numerical strength of the impoverished and embittered peasantry, and proposing a program of reformed state capitalism (that is, the New Democracy), rallied the urban petty bourgeoisie and medium bourgeoisie, and gathered to their banner even a part of the working class. Through military might they easily transformed the rotten rule of the Chinese-style “national capitalists” and took over (but by no means abolished) the state machinery and the entire economy under its control.
The Chinese proletariat since 1927, when it suffered a staggering defeat thanks to its adherence to Stalinist policies, has not ascended the political stage. Although a year or two before the struggle with Japan and within the first year after Japan’s surrender the labour movement revived for a time, nevertheless, thanks to the weakness of the proletarian parties, the Guomindang ‘s oppression and deceit, and the degeneration of Chinese industry in the war, and under the influence of the decay and stagnation of world capitalism, the ranks of the working class were scattered and weakened, and these movements could never acquire sufficient political and revolutionary character. The fact that the Chinese proletariat for over twenty years was unable to interfere in China’s political processes to a significant extent determined the peasant aspect, the capitalist nature, and the bureaucratic-collectivist direction of Chinese Stalinism. Of course — and this is far more important — we must seek the answer to this question in the nature of the Soviet Union and the CPUSSR and the influence they exerted on the CCP.
Therefore the Soviet Union now stands in the following class relationship politically and economically: On the one hand the bureaucracy collectively holds all political and economic power in the state, and on the other the toiling masses are absolutely without rights. This sort of state is naturally not a workers’ state, nor even a degenerate workers’ state, because the working class is politically ruled over and economically exploited; and yet it is not a capitalist state, since there is no capitalist class in it which privately owns the means of production. In that state all the means and materials of production are concentrated in the hands of a bureaucracy comprising the party, the governmental machinery, and the army, which collectively owns all the wealth…
Stalinism
On the face of it, bureaucratic collectivism, that is, Stalinism, would appear to be a completely new thing. It is neither socialism nor capitalism. But upon closer examination it is not difficult to perceive that it belongs under a subheading of capitalism. One difference between it and traditional capitalism is collective ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. The ownership of the means of production has not been socialised, but it has been collectivised (in the hands of the ruling class). And as for the relationship of owners to producers, exploitation continues to exist, and is in fact intensified. Bureaucratic collectivism has two great advantages over private capitalism and even over state capitalism (under the latter also there is large-scale private ownership): (a) it is possible to regulate capital in a more systematic fashion; (b) it is possible to exploit workers more efficiently. These two advantages are precisely what is needed to overcome the present crisis of capitalism. Seen from this point of view, Stalinism is a special kind of reformism, it is the reformism of the age in which capitalism has developed into imperialism. On the one hand it prevents the emergence and success of a genuine socialist revolution, and on the other, by means of collective exploitation, it continues the rule of capital over labour. Bureaucratic collectivism or Stalinism is essentially the transitional form which obtains during the delayed and difficult birth of socialism from the womb of capitalism. It cannot create a new historical era, but it can maintain itself for a time, and in several countries at once. In southeast Europe several such states have already been created, while the New China is being recast in the same mould.
To create a bureaucratic-collectivist state, one must first have a bureaucratic-collectivist party to carry out the action. The Chinese Communist Party has been that ever since Communism degenerated into bureaucratic collectivism. Because of a common international situation and long-standing historical ties, also because the class relationships within China after the defeat of the Great Revolution (the destruction of the proletariat, the long peasant wars, the utter corruption of the bourgeoisie, the anger and dissatisfaction of the petty bourgeoisie) were favourable to reformism and unfavourable to the growth of revolutionary socialism, the Chinese Communist Party took over entirely the bureaucratic collectivism perfected by Stalin within the Soviet Union. This ideological change was complete by the early Thirties. Now the CCP, embracing this ideology, has come to power and is organising the state around it…
Since the creature spawned by the CCP is a bureaucratic-collectivist state and must continue to enslave the workers, it is reactionary; but since such a state must reform capitalism, change property forms, and increase productive power, it cannot help adopting certain progressive measures…
The capitalism represented by the Stalinists is no longer capitalism in the original sense of the word, but bureaucratic collectivism; the class they represent is not a capitalist class in the original sense, but a bureaucratic class which collectively owns the means of production. This distinction is of exceptional importance. If one points to the Bonapartism of the CCP without understanding this difference, then one will be unable to understand the events taking place before one’s very eyes or to predict future developments, because, while others may expect the attitude of the CCP to become daily more conciliatory toward the bourgeoisie, what we shall in fact see is a greater solidification of collectivism and a strengthening of state capital…
When the Stalinist party, in order to advance the cause of bureaucratic collectivism, very cautiously initiates its mass movement, can the workers and poor peasants, taking advantage of this opportunity, push the struggle further, work free of the limitations imposed upon them by the Stalinist party, and cause a bureaucratically dominated movement to turn into the Chinese socialist revolution — or can they not? In theory, we can never exclude this possibility, and we — the Chinese proletarian revolutionary party — must turn all our subjective efforts in that direction. But, in fact, if we dispassionately analyse China’s present class relationships, we cannot deny that this possibility is extremely slight. The prestige of the Stalinist party among the general masses is still very great, the illusion that bureaucratic collectivism equals socialism is widespread; the Chinese proletariat and its real vanguard have yet to educate themselves and unite through the bitter experience of Stalinist rule, for only then can they initiate a mighty anti-Stalinist revolution.
Our chief task at present is patiently to interpret and reinterpret the fundamental nature of Stalinist bureaucratic collectivism. Naturally, “patient interpretation” by no means signifies passive observation. We must participate actively in these events. We must, while pointing out the internally contradictory character of the Stalinist party’s present struggle, on the one hand advance and broaden in scope the fight against the landlords and rich peasants and advocate and participate in all anti-capitalist struggles; and, on the other hand, oppose simultaneously the fight of the bureaucracy, oppose the enslavement of the workers under whatever guise, oppose the oppression of the poor peasantry, and, above all, consistently advocate the convocation of a Congress of workers, peasants, and soldiers, to exchange the Stalinist military agencies and the so-called “People’s Government” for a genuine workers’ and peasants’ state. We must direct every struggle toward the formation of soviets. Our principal slogan must be for a Congress of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants…
Soviet Union
Therefore, not only can we state positively that China is not a workers’ state, but we can also prove by the same token that the Soviet Union is no longer any sort of workers’ state. The difference between the new China and the Soviet Union at present is one of degree, not of kind. Both are equally bureaucratic-collectivist states, except for a huge difference in degree of thoroughness. Therefore the Fourth International’s traditional attitude toward the Soviet Union must be altered. It must reject the view that it is any sort of workers’ state.
Similarly it must reject the view that the Stalinist parties are parties of Menshevik opportunism, because, although the Stalinist parties are at present indeed fundamentally reformist, their principal crime is not their collaboration with the bourgeoisie but their bureaucratic enslavement of the proletariat. Needless to say, it is only by viewing the Soviet Union and the Stalinist parties from the point of view of bureaucratic collectivism that one can understand their nature and their actions. The same is true of the Chinese Stalinist party and its newly established state.
• The Stalinist state in China, New International, March-April 1951
