[The author of this article, Wang Xizhe, was a member of the "Li Yizhe" dissident group. He and two others were released from prison in December 1978. (See Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, March 26, 1979. p. 301) Since the group split up after their release, Wang has continued to speak out and write in his own name. He is probably the best-known dissident activist in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (Canton).
[This article, which Wang describes as "a sequel" to the 1974 wall poster that got him jailed, reflects the deepening political discussion going on within an important current of Chinese dissidents today. Seeking to refute the caricature of Marxism presented by the bureaucracy's "theoreticians," these young activists have gone back to the Marxist classics in order to analyze the problems their country faces. While for the most part avoiding the kind of open attacks on Chinese leaders that have led to repression against other dissident groups, they have nonetheless managed to carry on a public discussion of some very important ideas.
[In an attempt to reach a wider audience, Wang originally submitted the text of this article for publication to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which puts out a series of scholarly magazines. The article later appeared in the July issue of the Guangzhou dissident monthly Renmin zhi Sheng (Voice of the People). It was reprinted in the September issue of the leftist Hong Kong magazine The Seventies, from which we have taken the text. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
The latest media fad in our country is a kind of "worship" of the Gang of Four. It appears to people as if the Gang of Four were almost gods, with vast magical powers. They were capable of moving heaven and earth-they could make China change colors if they wanted to. Naturally, then, all the disasters that hit China during the last decade or so must have been their doing. If only they hadn't been here, we wouldn't have suffered so....
Things have even reached the point where Comrades Wan Bin and Liu Yucheng were obliged to stoop to this sort of worship, contrary to their own beliefs. In their essay "Some Tentative Remarks on the Source of Problems in Democratic Life"-an essay we consider to be quite well written-they wrote that Lin Biao and the Gang of Four created feudal fascism in China."
Marx once commented:
The Young Hegelians are in agreement with the Old Hegelians in their belief in the rule of religion, of concepts, of an abstract general principle in the existing world. Only, the one party attacks this domination as usurpation, while the other extols it as legitimate.?
Today, a lot of our commentators would agree on one point of faith concerning the Gang of Four: namely, that a handful of people in leading roles managed to transform the character of our country overnight. (Whether they were heroes or criminals, though, depends on whom you ask.) As these commentators see it, it was not a certain set of social relations that created the Gang of Four, but rather the Gang of Four who created a certain type of social relations.
This is a new brand of superstition, a new religion!
People may worship benevolent gods out of love for them, or they may worship evil gods out of fear and loathing. But in either case this shows that people feel baffled and powerless in the face of seemingly supernatural alien forces.
In a society where people are no longer dominated by the products of their own creation which seem like alien forces-in other words, in a society where people are able to fully control their own destiny-it would be totally impossible for superstition to take root. And conversely, if such a ridiculous superstition as this "Gang of Four worship" is still in vogue among our commentators today, doesn't that very fact prove that the Chinese people don't yet really, fully control their own destiny?
The purpose of this article, then is to briefly examine the social relations that have given rise to such superstition, and also the necessary social conditions for eliminating it.
The Division of Labor
One of the most basic facts of life today is that people are still bound by a division of labor in the system of social production.
Members of the Mahengchang Model Production Brigade may engage in a certain amount of volunteer activities, but if they start spending too much time at it society will insist (through the press) that they return to their places of production. In the same way, leading cadres may participate directly in production, but if they work too much they can actually be disciplined and forced to return to their supervisory posts.
Socialism, after all, represents the elimination of classes. But the precondition for doing away with classes is abolishing the division of labor. (We understand this can only be abolition of the old type of division of labor.)
As Engels put it:
So long as the total social labour only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labour engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of societyso long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labour, arises a class freed from directly productive labour, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction of labour, State business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes.3
But to make it possible to abolish the old division of labor requires the full development of the social forces of production under conditions of public ownership, along with the rise of a whole generation of human productive talent.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels depicted the productive forces they saw around them as colossal already-and they were talking of course about steam-powered industry. In their view, the existing forces of productionsymbolized by the steam engine-already made it possible for people to construct a social system in which "such an abundance of goods will be produced that society will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members ... [and] in this way make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use."* This would provide the basis for abolishing the division of labor, and thus eliminating classes.
3. Engels,
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1972, p. 60.
Marx and Engels even believed that the productive forces in the nineteenth century had already grown to the point where they could no longer be contained within capitalist relations of production. They stated flatly that it was possible for the capitalist mode of production to die out in that century (consistent with the principle that no social order can perish unless and until it has brought into play all the productive forces it is capable of containing). Given that steam-powered industry represented the most advanced productive forces compatible with the capitalist mode of production, and that the steam engine had already been fully developed, therefore, they reasoned, capitalism ought to perish.
Half a century later in 1895, Engels, recognizing that this had not been the case, wrote:
case, wrote.
History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made clear that the state of economic development on the [European] Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production; it has proved this by the economic revolutions..
After listing the economic transformations that had occurred in the economies of various European countries during that half century, Engels noted that these had occurred "all on a capitalist basis, which in the year 1848, therefore, still had great capacity for expansion." (Note that 1848 was the year in which Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed the imminent doom of the canitalist mode the imminent doom of the capitalist mode of production!)
Based on this understanding, Engels wrote that in France, although the workers had been "conscious ... of the fatal antagonism existing between their own class and the bourgeoisie, still, neither the economic progress of the country nor the intellectual development of the mass of French workers had as yet reached the stage which would have made a social reconstruction possible."
What conclusion should be drawn from this? That the proletariat should sit back and wait until capitalism has fully developed all the productive forces it is capable of containing, and only then organize a revolution? Certainly not. The gradualism of the Second International was denounced by Lenin, who boldly led the October Revolution. Lenin understood that it was possible for the proletariat to seize power, and to carry out the tasks of capitalist development under its own leadership, thereby creating the material preconditions for socialism.
Socialism, however, is not just a matter of one country; socialism is a worldwide system. The material preconditions for socialism include not only highly developed productive forces, but also the world market created by capitalism, the essentially interdependent, worldwide association of humankind that Marx spoke of. Engels stated flatly that socialism could not triumph in a single country, but on the
But in view of this, what we are talking about is really a capitalist mode of production based on a system of public ownership in a single country-that is, a capitalist mode of production without capitalists. (And the state set up on that economic foundation is a sort of bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie.)
Billboard roasts deposed "Gang of Four." Since Mao Zedong's death, new regime has claimed that all the country's problems were caused by these four individuals. Wang Xizhe ridicules such claims, calling them the "new superstition.
contrary had to be considered above all from the standpoint of the world market.?
Once the proletariat has seized power and gradually taken control of the means of production in a single economically backward country, one which occupies a subordinate position in the world market, it then has to choose between two possible courses. It can pursue a policy of isolation and self-sufficiency, promoting the growth of its own natural economy-thus pushing the country backward toward a form of "socialism" with feudal features (one which will sooner or later collapse). Or else it can pursue an open-door policy, entering the world market and achieving progress through association with all the nations of the world.
In the latter case, under conditions where the capitalist productive forces of the most advanced nations are in the dominant position internationally, production will inevitably retain some features of the capitalist mode of production. Marx wrote that the dominant mode of production is like a great, colored light, that causes all objects of whatever color to appear the same color as it. It is fundamentally for this reason that socialism in the scientific sense cannot by achieved in a single, isolated country.
In this mode of production, the proletariat as a whole becomes in one sense its own employer, and in another sense its own employee. It is engaged in commodity production, and although on the domestic market it may be able to gear production along generally socialist lines, according to a plan more or less, nevertheless in view of the expanding and deepening links betwéen its own commodities and the capitalist world market, this really amounts to nothing more than a special form of the capitalist mode of production. It still has to follow many of the basic rules of capitalist production. This becomes increasingly apparent as the relative weight of its commodities on the capitalist world market increases.
In his discussion of worker-owned cooperative factories within the framework of the capitalist mode of production, Marx wrote:
The cooperative factories of the laborers themselves represent within the old form the first beginnings of the new.... The antagonism between capital and labor is overcome within them, although only in the form of making the associated laborers their own capitalists, that is, enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labor.®
Marx recognized such workers' cooperative factories as a form of "positive elimination" of the capitalist mode of production.
Don't Russia since the October Revolution, and China since the victory in 1949, simply represent this form of elimination of the capitalist mode of production, on a huge scale? Viewed on a world scale, these "socialist countries" are merely enlarged forms of workers' cooperative factories, which have arisen within the capitalist mode of production prevailing internationally.
This is the point of departure for consid. ering all the theoretical problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
What is it in these huge workers' cooperative factories (or "socialist countries") that determines their character? It can only be the following factors.
First of all, those who manage the coop. erative as representatives of the workingclass collective must be democratically selected by the working class as a whole, and subject to dismissal at any time. They cannot act like masters of the working class—on the contrary they must be totally responsible to the working class.
Secondly, the wages these managers get must be the same as, or just a bit more than, those of a skilled worker.
And thirdly, the hard-and-fast division of labor between managers and workers must be eliminated, making it possible for all workers to carry out managerial and supervisory functions.
This is what we can call the lower stage of the socialist mode of production within a single country (although in fact it is merely working-class management within a special form of the capitalist mode of production). In political terms we call it the class dictatorship of the proletariat.
But this "workers' cooperative factory," due to its enormous scale (taking the form of a country, also entails new kinds of problems. Since, as we have indicated, the degree of development of the productive forces does not yet provide the necessary material basis for eliminating the division of labor, and since the cultural level and managerial capabilities of the proletariat as a whole are still limited, it is necessary to entrust the tasks of management to the most advanced layer of the proletariat (organized in the Communist Party).
Lenin put it this way:
The result of this low cultural level is that the Soviets, which by virtue of their programme are organs of government by the working people, are in fact organs of government for the working people by the advanced section of the proletariat, but not by the working people as a whole.°
But as Lenin noted, such a division of labor involves enormous potential dangers, since it "is reducing the significance of Soviet power and reviving bureaucracy. °
The great majority of the working masses do not participate in management. And since "the exercise of a social function [is] everywhere the basis of political supre-
Moscow,
1965, p. 183. Emphasis in the original.
macy,"' they therefore do not participate in the dictatorship.
What can be done about this? If, indeed, the dictatorship of the advanced section of the proletariat is an unavoidable economic and political stage in the development of such a "bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie," then all we can do is to recognize and understand that fact. What we must examine, however, are the two possible courses of development of the dictatorship of the advanced section of the proletariat-the dictatorship of the Communist Party.
Two Possible Courses
Clearly, once the dictatorship of the Communist Party has been established, it can go one of two ways.
One possibility is that the development of the social forces of production, and the rising cultural level and managerial capabilities of the big majority of the working masses, will be accompanied by a gradual transition from the dictatorship of the party to the organization of the proletariat as a whole, and eventually to the dictatorship of the proletariat.'
On the other hand, it is also possible for the dictatorship of the Communist Party to gradually break loose from control by society, and turn into a domineering force over society. What starts out as the advanced section of the proletariat (and in particular its leading organization) can become estranged from and turn against the proletariat. What starts out as the dictatorship of the advanced layer can change into a dictatorship of the "CP bureaucrats" who cloak themselves in the banner of the Communist Party. 13 Engels, in analyzing how the social division of labor leads to the formation of classes, described clearly "how this independence of social functions in relation to society increased with time until it developed into domination over society: how he who was originally the servant, where conditions were favourable, changed gradually into the lord....
Comrade Mao Zedong was also quite concerned about the possibility of this happening once the dictatorship of the Communist Party had come into being. He warned us to beware of the formation of new aristocratic social layers, and he put now amatomatio ennial lavere and he nut
[February 22, 1922], Collected Works Vol. 35, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 549.
Wreaths and poems placed in Tiananmen Square in honor of former premier Zhou Enlai. When Peking authorities removed thousands of wreaths from the square in April 1976, it provoked a series of angry demonstrations.
Part of Tiananmen Square demonstration of April 5, 1976.
forward the concept of a "bureaucratic class."
Still it must be recognized that on the theoretical level Comrade Mao Zedong had not completely freed himself from the influence of the heroic view of history. He did not apply Lenin's concept of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat through a transition from the dictatorship of the party to the organization of the proletariat as a whole.
Quite the contrary-even though Mao saw the danger of bureaucratization of the Communist Party once it took power, he nevertheless pinned his hopes for permanently maintaining a healthy party and state on the ideological quality of a few leading individuals. He considered the fate of the party and the state to depend on whether or not the top leadership was in the hands of "true Marxists."
This is in contrast to Lenin's view that the fate of the party and the state hinged on whether or not leadership was really in the hands of the entire proletariat as a class.
This theoretical error by Comrade Mao Zedong inevitably caused the dictatorship of the party to degenerate into a dictatorship of individual leaders. The leaders thus broke loose from control by the party and the people. They became veritable gods who could decide the fate of the people, sacred idols who lorded it over society, not tolerating the slightest irreverence.
It was the new religion fostered by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four that provided the subjective conditions for this to happen.
But what should we do, then, in order to set ourselves on the road from the dictatorship of the party to the organization of the proletariat as a whole, and finally to the dictatorship of the proletariat? What are the characteristics of the class dictatorship of the proletariat, anyway?
As Comrade Yu Guangyuan explained quite well, we can get some clues on this by looking at socialist Yugoslavia.
Let's take a look, then, at the theory and practice of Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav Experience
The Yugoslav comrades are fully aware of the danger of bureaucratization under the dictatorship of the Communist Party. They understand correctly Lenin's warning about "restoration of bureaucracy." They don't think that Marx and Lenin's warnings about the danger of bureaucratism can be reduced "only to the danger from distinctive characteristics of men employed in officialdom, that is, inefficiency, slowness, mercilessness, and inhuman behavior of the administrative machine."is Rather, they view this sort of
Center, New
York, undated, p. 3.
bureaucratism as a socioeconomic phenomenon.
This phenomenon occurs in a single socialist country (which we view as a tremendous workers' cooperative factory within the worldwide capitalist mode of production) when the producers are not yet really united with the means of production, and hence the means of production continue to act as an alien, opposing force to the producers. The party and the state are supposed to manage the means of production as representatives of the producers, but as Comrade Kardelj noted, "as soon as this representative becomes independent in the management of the means of production, he ceases to be the real representa. tive of the working masses and becomes the master over them."16
The Yugoslav comrades don't deny the historic necessity for the party and the state to manage the means of production as representatives of the working masses during a certain stage following the victory of the revolution, in a situation where the cultural level of the working masses is still low. They consider it necessary, though, to root out any danger of the party and the state turning into rulers over the people, new masters of society.
From this flows the need to proceed gradually but resolutely along the road indicated by Marx and Lenin, of uniting the associated producers with the means of production, to accomplish what Lenin posed as "transformation of the political posed as transiormation or the pontical power of working people's representatives into political power of the working people."
On this theoretical foundation, the Yugoslav comrades have implemented three significant norms in practice:
1. Workers management in the economic sphere;
2. Workers self-government in the political sphere; and
3. A leading role for Communist Party members which consists not of direct administration of the society, but rather the strengthening of political ideology.
Workers management in the economic sphere realizes in practice the ideal explained by Marx and Engels that "all... branches of production are operated by society as a whole ... and with the participation of all members of society. "17
Workers self-government in the political sphere assures that proletarian democracy is truly the most direct democracy. And as in all socialist countries the comrades in Yugoslavia will tell you that socialist democracy is superior to even the most thoroughgoing Western-style democracy.
But on this point the Yugoslav comrades don't stop at general propaganda.
Nor do they use empty propaganda to intimidate the common people who voice demands for democracy. On the contrary, they have proceeded in a realistic way to create a firm economic and organizational basis for this kind of democracy.
Socialist democracy is not something that can be bestowed on society artificially by passing some kind of law; it can only arise organically out of certain new economic relations, on a new economic foundation. It is nothing other than the political form that naturally corresponds to those new economic relations. Here we see an embryonic form of the class dictatorship of the proletariat, for in essence the dictatorship of the proletariat is merely the political expression of the organization of the entire proletariat to manage production directly.
A system of this type, in which members of the Communist Party do not take direct administrative leadership of society, but merely lead in strengthening political ideology, has prevented the bureaucratization of the party by getting to the root of the danger. It has firmed up the links between the party and the popular masses, really preserved the character of the proletarian vanguard, and consolidated the fundamental power of the popular masses as a whole.
This is the basic theory and the practical experience of Yugoslavia.
Here we must quote briefly from a report given by Comrade Su Shaozhi after a visit to Yugoslavia. He reported that he, Li Yimin, and other comrades who had been there agreed that "while in the thirty-two years since Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform! there have been all kinds of polemics, still it is difficult to gauge the truth from such documents. Practice, after all, is the sole criterion of truth. One look at Yugoslavia, though, shows that they have definitely prospered, and their future is extremely bright."
Well then, in emancipating our thinking, shouldn't we investigate for ourselves different forms of socialism and roads of socialist development? And shouldn't we learn a bit from the Yugoslav comrades? Remember how they stood up to Stalin and emancipated their thinking!
Danger of Bureaucratization In China
If we can say that the social division of labor necessitated by economic and cultural backwardness constitutes the objective condition for the danger of bureaucratiza.
tion under the dictatorship of a Communist Party in general and in our country in particular, it follows that there are also subjective conditions involved. Comrades Wan Bin and Liu Yucheng have analyzed this point quite well. As they put it:
The real source of the problem is that we lack a conscious understanding of the following point. The teachings of Marxism-Leninism stipulate that the proletarian state is in essence a state that has already begun to 'wither away' (in the sense that power in society lies increasingly with the people themselves), and the Marxist-Leninist program calls for the complete liquidation of the old system of government functionaries. The proletarian state is still an instrument of class rule. Yet at the same time it is no longer a state in the old sense, but rather an organ of advanced democracy. In our country, however, these two aspects of the proletarian state have become divorced from each other theoretically and in practice, with emphasis on the former and disregard for the latter. As a result of this the party and state organs in our country have deviated to an extent from the teachings of Marxism on the proletarian state. 19
These are the subjective conditions underlying the danger of bureaucratization of the party.
In an effort to block its own tendency toward bureaucratization, the party is constantly carrying out purges aimed at cleansing itself and ensuring its proletarian purity. This shows the loyalty of the party to the people.
However, from a historical point of view, primary factors are ultimately decisive over secondary ones, no matter how much secondary factors may at times react upon and influence the primary ones. Material factors are ultimately decisive over ideas. This is a fact that can in no way be altered by anyone's subjective intentions.
If the material roots of the danger of bureaucratization of the party lie in the special capitalist mode of production that prevails in the so-called initial stage of socialism, then how can those who repres ent the relations of production in an independent capacity, and who constantly increase their independence in the course of production, possibly eliminate through purges their own tendency to become estranged from the proletariat? How can they possibly eliminate the danger of bureaucratization in any fundamental sense?
Isn't our society always calling on party cadres not to seek privileges for themselves? Aren't we constantly demanding that cadres never forget they are "public servants"? But if in their social existence cadres see no material reason to act as servants of society, how can we expect them, in their consciousness, to remember that they are "public servants"?
Now let's turn from the realm of theory to reality.
The Tiananmen incident2° gave us a glimpse of how far the party had escaped from control by the people and become a domineering force over society as a whole.
Remember all those tens of thousands of poems at the Tiananmen demonstration? Those were ballots. That demonstration was a spontaneous opinion poll, a real referendum. There, in the form of their poems, the people voted for public servants they could trust-cadres like Zhou Enlaiand at the same time sought to unseat the local despots they were saddled with. It was a courageous attempt by the people to regain control over a party and a state that had become increasingly alien to them.
In the end, however, the people found that this thing they had created had already turned into its opposite, and started to become a force ruling over them. The party suppressed the Tiananmen dem onstration, and thereby proved that all the necessary social, material, and subjective conditions for such a suppression to be carried out had already matured.
Thus it was not all some accidental result of a seizure of power by the Gang of Four. It was nothing other than a public revelation and confirmation-in the form of a large-scale, open clash-of the estrangement of the party from the people!
Most importantly, however, this public revelation led to a positive result—it shocked broad layers of the people, as well as quite a few genuine Marxists within the party. It left them with a burning feeling that such a thing must never be allowed to happen again, and that something had to be done to save the party!
Later on came the victory of October [1976], when the genuine Marxists within the party, representing the will of the people, totally smashed the Gang of Four. (In legal terms, they "removed" the Gang of Four from their posts.) In the final analysis, though, this resulted not from the people's direct exercise of their right to remove officials, but rather from the genuine Marxists in the party exercizing their right to remove them.
The victory of October thus represented not the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but merely a victory for the dictatorship of the advanced section of the proletariat-the dictatorship of the Communist Party (exercising dictatorship against the antipopular, reactionary forces within the party).
20. On April 5, 1976, a many a 100,000 demonstrators battled police in Tiananmen (Tien An Men) Square in the heart of Peking, after the authorities had removed thousands of wreatha and poems placed in the square in memory of the late Vice-Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai). Zhou and the wing of the CP led by him were seen as the exponents of economic modernization.
For an account of the Tiananmen incident see Intercontinental Press, September 27, 1976, P. 1355.-IP/I
And as a result, even though the people were pleased and inspired by the victory of October, it nevertheless resulted in two different kinds of demands being raised.
Some of the masses felt dissatisfied because they still lacked the material and subjective means to remove the Gang of Four directly, and so they raised demo cratic demands that went a step further in that direction.
But on the other hand, some of the masses merely seemed to discover once more the need for a "savior." These people would go around saying, "Let's hope Uncle Deng lives to a ripe old age!" Some even offered prayers.
While this was an indication of the people's love for the genuine Marxists within the party, still in the final analysis it showed how little people feel they can actually control their own destiny!
We can also look at the danger of bureaucratization from another angle.
Wang Xiaoping, the main figure in the Wang Xiaoping corruption case, stated after his trial, "This is a political frame-up! They're victimizing me in order to get at my father!"
What does this remark reveal? It indicates that intraparty struggles are regarded as fights over the redistribution of property within the party. This way of thinking is apparently quite universal among rank-and-file cadres and their children today. If it weren't, how could Wang Xiaoping ever have hoped to obtain such tremendous sympathy from cadres and their children?
The present bureaucratic cadre system, based on hierarchical authority, has already caused all but a few party cadres to practically ignore the four modernizations? except when it comes to fighting for wealth and power for themselves, or doing their damnedest to hold onto their official salaries.
The problem of cadre reassignment has already become a major brake on the four modernizations, and the voices of people demanding reform of the bureaucratic cadre system are growing stronger and stronger. An efficient cadre system—one that doesn't recognize any kind of privi leged status-is essential if we are to achieve the four modernizations. Doesn't the continuing existence and expansion of the bureaucratic cadre system despite the crying need for reform pose a serious threat to our great national task?
Even since the Third Plenum of the
Central Committee [in December 1978] we have often spoken of the problem of rigid, ossified thinking on the part of many people in the party. These people neither think for themselves, nor do they allow others to think.
But shouldn't this sort of ossified thinking be explained in terms of these people's ossified social existence? Isn't it precisely the ossification of their social existence that leads to such an inflexible way of thinking? Their social position, after all, is nothing but a stagnant, utterly lifeless, bureaucratic existence.
Could a capitalist, who goes rushing all over the world in pursuit of profits and out of fear of competition, suffer from such ossified thinking? Could a scientist, who dares to challenge old, accepted theories despite opposition from all sides, possibly sink into such a rigid way of thinking?
Cadres whose thinking has hardened into "whatever-ism"22 are nothing other than the intellectual representatives of the forces of bureaucratic decadence within the party. They are the biggest source of inertia obstructing the progress of Chinese society today.
Haven't they simply switched from an approach of "clinging forever to the line once set" over to "whatever-ism?" Aren't they the ones who, when confronted by the genuine Marxists in the party and by the masses' rising outery for reform always try to reassert and defend their own special interests by crying about the threat from those who seek to "cut down the banner"
[of Maoism]? If these people are so fond of "the banner," why wasn't there even a peep out of them when Lin Biao and the Gang of Four were busy "cutting down the banner"?
Of course, all this is only one side of the question. We can be optimistic about the party in our country. Within the party a conscious Marxist outlook predominates, or ultimately will predominate. One proof of this is the party's resolute action in smashing the tendency to "cling forever to the line once set," criticizing "whateverism," and upholding the banner of consist-
Mao Zedong's ideas have also been disavowed, although this is handled more delicately than the criticism of Mao's underlings. The press has featured a discussion of philosophical principles, in which Deng Xiaoping is presented as a champion of the concept that "practice is the sole criterion of truth." In a country where for years Mao's writings were treated as scripture, the political implications of this phrase are unmistakable.-IP/I
ent materialism, the concept that practice is the sole criterion of truth.
The party is determined to eliminate the danger of its own bureaucratization, to follow the principled course that Marx and Lenin indicated in their writings on the Paris Commune, and thus to advance from the dictatorship of the party to the organized dictatorship of the proletariat as a whole. Haven't the efforts of leading party ideologists in the realm of philosophy already demonstrated this?
For Class Dictatorship of Proletariat!
In seeking to realize the class dictatorship of the proletariat, the biggest ideological stumbling block facing us is the conception of the leading role of the Communist Party.
This is a question that never became a problem for Marx in his time. Marx never envisioned the possibility that a socialist revolution might take place in a single, economically and culturally backward country where people were not yet capable of running the country themselves. For this reason, Marx never even imagined that within such a "workers state" the Communist Party might take on a directly administrative leadership role, and start lording it over society, 23
In Marx and Engels' blueprint for the society of the future, all the social relations in such a "workers state" were to be an extension of the relations of production within a workers' cooperative factory.24 The new economic relations among citizens would determine the selection of administrators of the new society, who could only come from the ranks of selfgoverning communes. And, of course, those administrators would only be responsible to the people who elected them, never to any sort of special power ruling over society.
The question of the party's role only became a problem in Lenin's time. The problem was taken up by Lenin, who taught us that a workers state erected on a backward economic and cultural foundation, as in Russia, would for a time have to let the advanced section of the proletariat exercise administrative and political control on behalf of the proletariat. Therefore, under the conditions prevailing at that time, Lenin proposed that no state agency not yet inder party direction be allowed to resolve any major political or organizational question.
Stalin not only carried out this directive of Lenin's, he made it into an absolute rule. From that time on, the exercise of direct, administrative leadership over society as a whole by the Communist Party came to be seen as the absolute, irrevocable, one-and-only form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a socialist country. In the early 1950s, when the Yugoslav com. rades raised some disagreements, they were immediately declared heretics and excommunicated.
But the experience and the lessons of the past sixty years teach us that this sort of theory, which views the exercise of direct administrative leadership over society as the one-and-only form of the party's leading role, is extremely harmful in practice. It is also inconsistent with Lenin's original intention, since the task that Lenin posed was precisely to "transform political power of working people's representatives into political power of the working people."
In fact, if all major political and organizational questions have to be settled by directives from the central party leadership, this would mean that when it came to dealing with public officials like the Gang of Four, the people would be totally powerless to do anything other than quietly await instructions from the party tops. Doesn't the bureaucratization of the Soviet Communist Party-and the danger of bureaucratization of the Chinese Communist Party-testify to this?
Our tasks then, are to transform the dictatorship of the party into the organized dictatorship of the proletariat as a whole, to transform the party's role from one of direct administrative leadership of society into one of strong political and ideological leadership in the context of selfgovernment in society as a whole, based on self-governing communes. (Lenin considered this kind of self-government to be the prerequisite for democratic centralism.)
But do conditions today make it possible to pose the gradual accomplishment of these tasks?
Marx once said that humanity always poses only such tasks as it is capable of solving. This is so because the tasks themselves can be discovered and thought out only once the material conditions for accomplishing them already exist or at least are in the process of being formed.
In our opinion, the Tiananmen incident was one example that pointed up the material conditions which enable us to pose these tasks today.
In explaining the historical reasons why the proletarian dictatorship in its initial stage had to temporarily allow the advanced section of the proletariat to exercise dictatorship on behalf of the whole class, Lenin wrote:
... so far we have not reached the stage at which the working people could participate in government. Apart from the law, there is still the level of culture, which you cannot subject to any law.-5
But the striking thing about the "April 5
Movement"26—and something that distinguishes it from the "May 4 Movement"-is the fact that the vanguard and most of the activists in the Tiananmen demonstration were young workers. Isn't this a reflection of the fact that a massive, cultured, and socialist-minded industrial work force has grown up over the past generation?
During those dark days for the proletarian cause, in that time of crisis when politicians and theorists trembled with fear, silent as crickets on a cold night, wasn't it the young workers who boldly stepped forward, who defended the interests of the people and in so doing demonstrated their own ability to run this society?
Especially noteworthy was the fact that through the Tiananmen incident the people, acting as the makers of history and by their own creativity, revealed the secret: administrative leadership by the party is not the only form the party's leading role can take! Didn't the demonstrators at Tiananmen come out under their own leadership, thanks to the exemplary action of a self-sacrificing vanguard of party members, as well as to the years of political and ideological education by the party? In its April 5 editorial this year, People's Daily summed it up quite well:
The participants in the movement had been educated by the party for many years and many of the activists were party members or cadres, youth league members or outstanding young people, and quite a number of party organizations supported or organized the mass struggles. This means that, without party leadership, the April 5 Movement would not have produced such immense impact. Party leadership was embodied mainly in the correctness of its line, principles and policies and in the exemplary role played by party members.27
This is truly an important theoretical conquest!
What does this show? It shows that even when the party refrains from administra tive leadership the people can still make earthshaking accomplishments under correct ideological leadership from the party.
But what about the comrades who participated in suppressing the April 5 Movement? What about those infamous hatchet men of Tiananmen Square? Hadn't they also "been educated by the party for many years?" Weren't many of their ringleaders party members? The Tiananmen incident also shows what horrendous crimes people can commit under certain conditions (such as interference by the likes of the Gang of Four) by ignoring their consciences and blindly obeying the administrative leadership of the party.
It should also be pointed out that changes in the form of the party's leading role will not come about as the result of some discovery by theoreticians. On the contrary, they will come as the inevitable result of specific changes that are indispensable for development of the productive forces in our country. Consequently in the final analysis they cannot be subordinated to any kind of sentimental, traditional, or administrative considerations-any more than a young man who has become economically independent can be stopped from telling his parents to quit trying to run his life the way they did when he was a child.
Naturally, we don't think that the tasks of the class dictatorship of the proletariat can be posed all at once and accomplished immediately. On the contrary, they will have to be carried out gradually. The system of economic management established by the Anshan Constitution2 and known as "workers' participation in management" (the corresponding political term would be "workers' participation in the dictatorship*") must be transformed into direct, democratic management by the workers. The class dictatorship of the proletariat can only be realized on the firmest of material foundations, under conditions of direct, democratic control of the means of production by the workers. This is what the Paris Commune sought to accomplish, and it is still the goal that every socialist loyal to the class dictatorship of the proletariat should strive for.
We have often discussed questions of democracy and the legal system. But the ideal of democracy and a legal system can be transformed from a utopia into reality only in the context of social relations based on self-governing communes.
The class dictatorship of the proletariat can only be realized in a situation where the associated workers are directly united with the means of production. Only then will the people really be able to control their own destiny. Only then will the whole web of mysterious social relations that once seemed to envelop them and dominate their lives be smashed. They will know that they have finally become true human beings, and they'll look on all forms of superstition and worshipincluding worship of the Gang of Four-as long-gone relics of their ignorant past.
Notes
1. This essay was published in the Chinese magazine Zhexue Yanjiu (Philosophical Studies) No. 2 in 1979. It surveys the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat.-IP/I
2. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, International Publishers, New York 1978, p. 41.
4. Engels, Principles of Communism, Samasamaja Prakashan, Bombay, 1969, p. 17.
5. Engels, Introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 12.
6. Engels, "Preface to the 1893 Italian Edition," in The Communist Manifesto, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 37.
7. See Engels, Principles of Communism, Section 19.
8. Marx, Capital, International Publishers, New York, 1967, Vol. 3, Chapter 27, p. 440.
9. Lenin, "Report on the Party Program" [at the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), March 19, 1979], Collected Works Vol. 29, Progress Publishers,
10. Ibid., p. 179.
11. Engels, Anti-Dühring, International Publishers, New York, 1972, p. 198.
12. The author notes that "this point has been elaborated quite well by Comrade Yu Guangyuan, to whom we are indebted." The article by Yu, comparing the writings of Lenin and Stalin on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the role of the Communist Party, appeared in the magazine Baike Zhishi (Encyclopedic Knowledge), No. 1 in 1979.—IP/1
13. See Lenin's "Letter to G.Y. Sokolnikov"
14. Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 198.
15. Edvard Kardelj, The Practice of Socialist Democracy in Yugoslavia, Yugoslav Information Center, New York, undated, p. 3.
16. Edvard Kardelj, "Report to the People's Assembly on the New Constitution," New Fundamental Law of Yugoslavia, Union of Jurists' Associations, Belgrade, 1953, p. 19.
17. Engels, Principles of Communism, p. 12.
18. The Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) was created by Stalin in 1947. (The Comintern had been abolished as a favor to allied governments during World War II.) Its original affiliates included the Communist parties of the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Italy, and France. The Yugoslav CP was expelled in June 1948 at the beginning of the Tito-Stalin dispute.—IP/I
19. Wan Bin and Liu Yucheng, "Some Tentative Remarks on the Source of Problems in Democratic Life," Zhexue Yanjiu, No. 2 in 1979.
21. The policy of "four modernizations" (modernizing China's industry, agriculture, science and technology, and military) was proposed by Zhou Enlai in a speech to the Fourth National People's Congress in January 1975. This policy was denounced by the Mao regime after Zhou's death, but has been revived by the current leadership of Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, which pledges to accomplish the four modernizations, thus making China into a modern developed country, by the year 2000.-IP/I
22. Since 1978 the Chinese press has carried on a campaign of criticism against government functionaries ("cadres") who obtained their posts under the Mao regime and now resist the implementation of new policies. The term "whateverism" has been coined to ridicule those who insist that whatever Mao said must be right, despite what the facts may suggest. Other stubborn bureaucrats have been denounced for "clinging forever to the line once set."
23. Marx, "The Conspectus of Bakunin's Book State and Anarchy," in Marx, Engels, and Lenin on Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 148.
24. Ibid., p. 151.
25. Lenin, "Report on the Party Program," p. 183.
26. The Tiananmen demonstration of April 5, 1976 is often referred to as the "April 5 Movement." Since the twelve months of the Western calendar are represented by numerals in Chinese, this reference to the "4/5 Movement" calls to mind the "5/4 Movement," which was the wave of mass protests against Japanese colonialism touched off by students in Peking on May 4, 1919.-IP/I
27. English text released by Xinhua News Agency, April 6, 1979.