As was to be expected, the Ninth Congress of the Chinese CP -- which was the culmination of the struggle begun in November 1965 -- essentially represented a reorganization and reaffirmation of the party as the primary instrument of leadership and command in all spheres of the country's life.
So far the documents have been published only in part. Among other things, we know nothing about the two speeches given by Mao Tsetung. While the report issued about the congress stressed the exceptional value of these speeches, it quotea only one sentence from them, the importance oi which was purely propagandistic: "We hope that the present congress will be a congress of unity and a congress of victory and that, after its conclusion, still greater victories will be won throughout the country."
It is probable, in my opinion, that Mao's speeches were in the vein of all his contributions during the "cultural revolution," that is, characterized bJ statements of very general truths put in the form of moral maxims or exhortations. Ine real meaning can be determined only by reference to the concrete context in each instance.
We also know nothing of the real debates or even the speeches given by the most important representatives of the Mao tendency (the official report mentioned Chou En-lai, Chen Po-ta, Kang Sheng, Huang Jong-cheng, etc.).
In contrast to the 1956 congress, the Ninth Congress did not adopt a single resolution. I'he only document approved, aside Irom the new statutes, was lin Piao's report. As for the communiques, rhose apologetic character was painfullj obvious, all they Indicated was that the orientations expounded during the "cultural revolution," and especially in its final stage, were unanimously confirmed.
Despite the criteria that determined the selection of delegates -- the April 1 communiqué reiterated that they were "unanimously chosen...through full democratic consultation"
and not merely
"elected" - It is still very probable that there were rather lively discussions and that differences were expressed. The fragmentations and differentiations which occurred within the Maoist tendency itself during the "cultural revolution" were no doubt reflected in this congress also.
Ine official communiques, for their part, mentioned that
'the delegates have made many good proposals for additions to and modifications of the report" of Lin Piao. Ihey alluded to the fact that a great many proposals had been made in regard to the new statutes (since November 1967, the Central Committee had received "several thousand drafts").
Most of all on the composition of the new Central Committee, the discussion was prolonged.* Above and beyond the methods of selection, it is obvious that very delicate questions of balanced representation of factions arose. What relative weight was to be given to the different elements active in the "cultural revolution"? It is significant that the first communiqué, which discussed the delegations present at the congress; and the final communiqué, which among other things announced the election of the Central Committee, both carefully stressed the representation of all the various strata and sectors of Chinese Communists.
It goes without saying, in any that the play of democracy was funcase, damentally perverted from the start. The opposition had been expelled or shunted into the background before the congress. Thus the delegates could not hear the oppositionists' views and, in practice, could only ratify accomplished facts.
The political guidelines approved may be seen from the April 24 communiqué, which summarized the essential themes"culespecially of the final stage of the tural revolution"; and from Iin Piao's report.
Lin's report clearly proposed to draw the conclusions from a whole period of struggles, and it did not, essentially, include any new elements. It was balance sheet of the "cultural revolution," with chapters on its antecedents, its genesis, and its development.
It is significant from the standpoint of the content as well as the methodology and style of this document that it is built around an exceptional number of quotations from Mao Isetung (more than sixty!).
Thus Lin Piao went back over the inevitability of class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie for the entire stage of the transition from capitalism to socialism. He went back to explain the errors and crimes of Liu Shaochi, mixing up together real differences, denunciations based on grotesque amalgams, and the purest Stalinist-style slanders.
He described the major events of the "cultural revolution," in his own fashion, of course, without stopping to consider the wave of strikes at the beginning of 1967. He recalled the internal struggle in the Maoist tendency and the polemics against all kinds of left and right deviations leading up to the reorganization which culminated in September 1968.
For his central themes, Lin stressed the necessity that the apparatuses not becone detached from the masses. (Liu was accused of having prevented Mao from getting his directives to the broad masses.)
He stressed the primary role played by the army. The allusions to economic problems were very brief. He noted the favorable market conditions and the stability oi prices, as well as the full payment of the public debt both domestic and foreigo. The fundamental orientation was confirmed that calls for giving priority to agriculture.
As for the intellectuals and students, the report repeated what has been said many times, especially since July 1968. Particularly stressed was the necessity for the intellectuals and students to accept direct supervision by the workers and peasants (which in practice neans supervision of the reorganized apparatus) and the duty of the vanguard youth to go into the countryside and the mountainous regions (which reflects the persistence of the problem of finding openings for them in the industrial economy and the urban economy in general).
There was nothing new regarding international questions, on which the report introduced no adequately developed analyses. The only new element in this area was the overture for negotiations with the USSR to elininate the border conflicts.
I cannot go back over the criticisms here that revolutionary Marxists have raised in regard to the Maoist conceptions which were reaffirmed in the report approved by the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist party.*
We believe that these conceptions are an improper basis for finding a real solution to the crucial problems of the stage of transition from capitalism to socialisn or for overcoming the contradictions that have convulsed postrevolutionary Chinese society. While the Maomost often correctif, the answers to the problems of the transitior given by the post-stalinist and post- Khrushcherist Soviet bureaucracy as well as by other East European bureaucracies, they nonetheless end up with a fundamentally erroneous analysis of the social nature of conflicts in transitional society and of the present nature of the USSR. As for themselves, the Chinese have projected orientations which in part are not new and in reality repeat criteria and conceptions already tried without success (for example, the Great Leap Forward and the launching of the People's Communes in 1958-59), in part smack of a propagandistic and voluntarist conception, and in part can at most have only temporary legitimacy and bearing.
The adoption of the new statutes merits comment. In general, the chinese CP seems always to have had an empirical conception of its party statutes, inasmuch as they have always in large measure been adapted to the specific political needs of the time they were enacted
(this has been reflected most of all in their preambles). The result has been that every congress has found itself compelled to adopt new statutes or to make marked changes in the old ones. And this has been all the more true because after a certain point, the highest party body met at hichly infrequent intervals...* The 1969 statutes are no exception. In fact, they were directly inspired by the needs of the "cultural revolution." The themes of the "cultural revolution" are briefly recapitulated in the first chapter, in a statement that differs fron previous expositions only by its greater conciseness.
Regarding the content of the statutes, the fundamental principles renair same as in the 1945 and 1956 bylaws. Especially in the case of the norms gorerning the right of criticism, the right of appeal to higher bodies, etc., the changes were much more a matter of language than substance. Also with respect
Year intergal cos macotaress, although
International [published in the July 14 issue of Intercontinental Pressl.
of the congress. *
tation of the vowers tation ol the powers oi the congress."
This point deserves emphasis. In the first place, the statutory rules or the freauency of congresses were never respected by the bureaucracy, although it itself pushed through the adoption of these provisos. No justification, for example, of the absence of congresses in the long and crucial period from 1945 to 1956 could be anything but mendacious and aypocritical. But in any case, these incervals would be excessively lone ano would permit an exercise of almost uncontrolled authority by the leading groups.
What the article on the frequency of congresses represents seems clear if we remember that the congress is considered "the highest leading body of the Party" (article No. 6) and that according to the Maoist principles which reject any kind of "polycentrism," the "organs of state power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the People's Liberation Army, and the Communist Youth League and other revolutionary mass organizations, such as those of the workers, the poor and lowermiddle peasants and the Red Guards, must all accept the leadership of the party." In this context, the article in questior seems a reflection in statutory terms of the fundamentally bureaucratic nature of the regime, of its bureaucratic character which has subsisted in spite of all the storms and propagandistic bluster of the "cultural revolution."**
But the regime's bureaucratic nature is revealed still more clearly by the basic conception of the new statutes, the canonization of Mao's thought, which is enthroned as the highest criterion. This is shown not only in the reaffirmation, in much stronger terms, of the 1945 formulas that were criticized in 1956. It is reflected above all in the statutory proclamation of Mao as party chairman and of Lin Piao's right to succeed him. *** If
During the
1956 congress, Mao was called "comrade"; now this title never reoccurs. Mao is memory serves correctly. this statutory memory serves correctly, this statutory enthronement is, In lact, an innovation. lo what extent it might be considered an original contribution to Marxism is another problem whose solution I will leave to the apologists of Maoism, especially those of the spontanéist variety...
I'he congress marked the end of the crisis which shook China from top to bottom since November 1965. Lin Piao did not hide the fact that the leading group wants to rehabilitate the old cadres as much as possible and even deal respectfully with the intellectuals who were termed "reactionary academic authorities." In general, he recommended an attitude of leniency toward adversaries. However, the Mao-Iin Piao group's control is not Jet evenly consolidated and in certain areas the "purification" has not Jet begun.*
But the conflicts will break out again, especially when it becomes necessary to make a real accounting of economic develnnment and the political and social gains. The problems China has to confront remaln enormous and will create very serious difficulties for quite a long period.
In the last analysis, these problems can only be solved in an international context; they can only be solved when the world revolution has won new victories in Asia and on the other continents and when, as a result of this, the construcof socialism in China itself is tion placed in a qualitatively different context.**
always "chairman." This also is very Ievealing as to the extent of the equalitarian conceptions held by the Chinese bureaucracy.
** It is interesting that Lin Piao quoted this statement by Mao (made in October 1968): "We cannot speak of final victory. Not even for decades. We must not lose our vigilance. According to the leninist viewpoint, the final victory of a socialist country not only requires the efforts of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people at home, but also depends on the victory of the world revolution and the abolition of the system of exploitation of man by man on the whole globe...." (Chapter 5.)
Message from Jose Revueltas to the World Congress of the Fourth International
José Revueltas is one of the best-known writers of Latin America. His second novel El Luto Humano (Human Mourning) won the national prize for literature in Mexico in 1943. Long a member of the Communist party, he parted company with it in 1956. Recently he has devoted his attention primarily to studying the causes of the worldwide youth revolt. For this reason, the Díaz Ordaz government accused him of being the intellectual inspirer of the revolutionary struggle of the Mexican students which broke out following July 26, 1968. On October 2, 1968, he was arrested for "subversive activities." On April 5 José Revueltas sent the following message from his cell in the Mexico City preventive prison to the world congress of the Fourth International.
Comrades,
I greet the Third World Congress of the Fourth International After Reunification with enormous enthusiasm. This meeting will certainly result in the very near future in the creation of a revolutionary general staff uniting all the independent
Marxist-Leninists throughout the world. And this general staff will lead the great mass struggles already in progress and constantly growing in power and immensity, struggles that will inevitably lead to the victory of the new world revolution before the end of this half of the twentieth century.
The years to come will be decisive not only for the destiny of socialism throughout the world but for the very existence of humanity. This can be understood when you take into account the new factors which appeared in contemporary history following the end of the second world war. These factors transformed the old components of reality and transmuted them into essentially new - and generally unforeseen — phenomena. These elements cannot be approached with the aid of certain classical Marxist concepts, which without losing their basic methodological correctness have nonetheless been superseded by tnis new reality.
The discovery of the technique of splitting the atom and its military use as a weapon of genocidal destruction is the direct dialectical opposite in the twentieth century of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth. Revolutionary Marxism was not able to comprehend the significance of this fact immediately. It had to master it gradually and at the cost of a certain number of surprises. The military use of atomic energy combined with factors of a historic context which seemed made to order foritas a medium in which to grow and develop to its utmost limits. Or, to put it the other way, this richly favorable medium made possible the direct emergence of man's splitting of the atom as a historically unprecedented destructive force instead of permitting the application of this discovery to an equally unprecedented development of the productive forces. Strictly speaking, if shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Soviet Union was able to build its own atomic bomb, it is by no means a foolish or light-minded question to ask why the socialist states could not outstrip imperialist technology and develop nuclear fission for peaceful construction, which the capitalist modes of production had undermined throughout the world. Neither the question nor the answer are foolish or light-minded, although historically they have a different name. The most adequate description of the question is utopian; of the answer, brutally objective. With respect to the utopianism of the question - it was impossible to expect that after forty years of Stalinism Soviet socialism would respond as a proletarian, revolutionary, and internationalist power capable of becoming the decisive force in the struggle for the liberation of the working class and the peoples of the world. As for the objective character of the answer, the Soviet Union appeared in history as a new type of state, which was only a "proletarian" counterpart of the "pure" power alienation which developed among the nations after they got possession of atomic energy. The logical implications of this type of state have become steadily more clear and unmistakable. And they already do not exclude - or rather they specifically countenance - armed clashes between socialist states, that is, in plain words, war between "workers states."
Behind all this, of course, appears, like an inexorable specter, the ever more monstrous shadow of socialism in one country, swollen by new accretions. With or without Stalin, the theory and practice of socialism in one country could not help but widen and deepen the course of its distorting dialectic. Within this dialectic, the historic contradiction between socialism in one country and world revolution is resolved in an alienated form which does not overcome the contradiction but causes it to coexist in an inevitably counterrevolutionary and reactionary equilibrium of opposites. And this equilibrium of opposites is masked by a social appearance which gives specific and marked emphasis to the socialization of the means of production, as if this already constituted the entire historical desideratum. Thus, because it has not transcended itself through transformation into world revolution, socialism in one country becomes national and geopolitical socialism in a series of countries. Here, then, is another of the previously uncomprehended new factors in the contemporary context of the second half of the twentieth century. This explains why the countries which made their own revolution during and after the second world war and which sustained themselves essentially by their own resources, like China and Yugoslavia, were the first to break with this false "world system" of socialist countries. But in this break also there was and is a fundamental deformation and corruption. Both China and Yugoslavia (the latter perhaps less so but only because of its lesser spe cific weight) have assumed national positions completely alien to the real, historical interest of the world working class.
Revolutionary Marxism has already faced, and in the very near future will still face, a context of widening and deepening revolutionary convulsions. The logic of these convulsions implies first of all undermining the present state of socialist consciousness dominated and distorted by the Communist parties in most of the countries in the world. This means that the essential task is to create a proletarian, internationalist, Marxist revolutionary world party. And the Fourth International will doubtless devote its maximum effort to this end.
What, then, is the key point, the nerve center of the distortion and the confusion of worldwide socialist consciousness? This point is none other than the alienation of the real historic consciousness of the proletariat, transforming it into atomic consciousness. This takes the form of the regression of consciousness to the level of simple, immediate, sense perception. It is the mental reflex of possessing atomic energy as a weapon of war, which rests in a feeling of security and power for the country possessing it, in a feeling that it is a collective good and a sacrosanct common heritage. (We have already seen how in the period 1914-18 the "socialist" masses of Germany and France opted for the defense of their respective imperialist bourgeois fatherlands). This"atomic consciousness" affects equally the proletarian masses of the USSR and People's China, as, in another sense it explains the criminal blindness so far of the immense majority of the American working class.
The New World Revolution, whose presence can be discerned in the great mass struggles already shaping up on the horizon, cannot be separated from this world context, whose decisive characteristic is the possession of nuclear weapons by groups of states with different social systems-the USSR and China on the one hand and the imperialist powers on the other. This poses the problem of human alienation in categorical terms which supersede the old formula of revolutionary war as the conduct of class struggle by other means. Humanity must choose between two alternatives — atomic war or world revolution, it being understood of course that the latter must include the specific forms of revolution that are to be adopted in the socialist countries.
If the socialist powers had not abandoned proletarian internationalism in favor of geopolitical nationalism, the problem of averting and preventing an atomic war would have an unequivocal, revolutionary, and Leninist answer-unilateral destruction of their respective nuclear arsenals by the Soviet Union and China. Today, the only realistic outlook for preventing nuclear war is the perspective of international action by the proletariat and the popular masses of all countries under a leadership that represents organized consciousness on a world scalethat is the creation of a proletarian internationalist world party embracing, along with the old cadres of Trotskyist fighters, the new independent Marxist-Leninist currents. The task of any future revolution in any of the nuclear 1 powers is to emancipate proletarian consciousness from its atomic alienation. Wherever it occurs, this new revolution can only be an internationalist revolution, which will renounce its own atomic power and will be prepared to do so unilaterally. This unilateral renunciation would signify the shattering of the unity which, as an antihistorical whole, represents the military form of existence of atomic energy without regard to whether these weapons belong to socialist or imperialist countries.
In no case can atomic weapons be considered defensive, even in repelling an aggression of the same type. Atomic energy would make any war-whatever its causes - the most reactionary of all reactionary wars in human history. It is impossible to propose an atomic war for any revolutionary purpose, even the extermination of imperialism. Such a proposal would only be a kind of "spiritual effluvium" of an alienation of revolutionary consciousness in the realm of practice resulting from a reflex reaction against imperialist consciousness, a mirror reflection of imperialist consciousness. In this case, imperialist consciousness would have driven revolutionary consciousness-and it is doing so-to its own disrealization, to complete and utter irrationality in its own revolutionary terms. As long as this fact has not been sufficiently understood by free and unalienated Marxism to be subsumed in praxis, that is embodied in the inherent pattern of all revolutionary practice, this praxis will lack real historical meaning, however advanced and radical its external manifestations may seem. Revolutionary forms, deprived of this praxis, cannot but be-as they are now - only a futile testimony to a succession of chimerical actions and movements, no more than "shadow boxing" with nothingness.
The disruption of atomic monolithism by a country in which the revolution takes power - or where it has already taken power, as in the Soviet Union or People's Chinawould be a brake on nuclear war. The compromising of the total character of atomic power within the family of nuclear states would create an imbalance in the atomic condominium. This fact would have the greatest importance in rousing the proletariat and the people of all nations of the world to revolution. It would be the beginning of the end of the use of atomic energy as an instrument of war. This is the only way proletarian internationalism can be expressed within the atomic context of the contemporary world.
The New Revolution will have a dual character. It will be both anticapitalist and antidogmatic and will embrace at once the countries still dominated by the bourgeoisie, the socialist countries, and the countries of the so-called Third World. The New Revolution will be a qualitative leap with respect to the role played by the Communist parties over the last fifty years since the death of Lenin. Of course, it will be a revisionist revolution. It will revise the role the Communist parties have played and put freedom and democracy on the order of the day in conformity with the Marxist principles of struggle to end human alienation. It will transform the party from an instrument of state domination into an organ of collective consciousness, of the highest and most developed forms of consciousness. It will subvert the concept and the practice of converting the notion of the proletariat into an absolute, transforming the theory and practice of class struggle into an ever broader fusion of conscious society. The New Revolution cannot succeed without the dialectic development intrinsically represented by the proletariat which negates itself as a social class. This New Revolution will broaden its sphere of action with respect to the relations between the working class and other social strata. It will supersede the old-though illustrious and combative-concept of "Workers of the World Unite" with that of "Let Us Pass from the Realm of Necessity to the Realm of Freedom."
we are now on our reduced summer schedule. During July we published two issues, one of them a special 72-page number containing the major documents and reports of the world congress of the Fourth In-
In this issue
Then the great masses of humanity will play the role of conscious creators in the historical process for the first time in human history.
Comrades: Again I greet you, with joy and confidence in the future from my present post of combat, a revolutionist's cell in the Mexico City preventive prison.
REDUCED SUMMER SCHEDULE
As mentioned in a previous issue, ternational. During August, we will not publish anything unless something big happens -- like a revolution.
We will resume on a regular weekly basis at the beginning of September.
Page
November 15 Set for Mass Action in Washington Against Vietnam War
U.s. Nerve Gas Raises Temperatures in Okinawa Interview with Japanese Antiwar Leaders:
The Struggle Against the U.s. Occupation of Okinawa For the Man Who Has Had Everything The Antiwar Movement in West Germany -- by Lothar Boepple Agnew Ready to Take Off for Mars - If He Can Stay in Vietnam Nixon's Real Game in Rumania -- Chinese Checkers? DRAWING: Henry Kissinger Chilean Police Hunt Luis Vitale Repression in Chile -- by Roberto Icaza The Crisis in Italy -- by Guy Desolre From Czechoslovakia:
Students Resist Order to Dissolve University Union A Case of Trotskyist "Boring from Within"? Why an Auto Costs Iwice as Much in Latin America Claim Pro-Moscow Forces Fingered Guerrillas in Indonesia Colonial Economy Burdens Philippines Saigon Leave-Taking Just a Gimmick to GIs Uruguay Ripe for Revolution DRAWING: President Jorge Pacheco Areco An Eyewitness Account:
The Demonstrations in the City of Córdoba Manitoba NDP Victory Stuns Old Parties in Canada The Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party — by Livio Maitan Documents:
Message from José Revueltas to the World Congress of the Fourth International ...
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Notes
* The discussion on political policy lasted April 1-14; the discussion on the Central Committee from the April 15-24. In all, the length of the congress was not exceptional in comparison to the past, if it is remembered that the Eighth Congress lastea september 13-2/, 1936, ano the seventh congress April 23-June 11, 1945.
* On this subject, see abore all the resolution and report on China approved by the Ninth World Congress of the Fourth
* New statutes were adopted by the 1938 and 1945 congresses and in 1956 the statutes were rectified to a considerable extent.
* The 1956 statutes provided for a congress every five years, but at the same time they introduced the principle -- never honored in practice - of calling a session of the congress every year. The 1945 statutes provided for a new congress every three Jears.
** It goes without saying that the frequency of congresses is not in itself a decisive criterion.
*** The congress confirmed the fact that Maoism predominates over Marxism-Leninism in the ideology of the Chinese Communists (the portrait of Mao alone dominated the great hall of the congress...). One detail usually goes unnoted.
* See Chapter 4 of Lin Piao's report. In the same chapter he alludes to "places where the revolutionary great alliance not jet been sufficiently consolidated" and to "units where the work of purifying the class ranks has not yet started or only just started."