CRISIS IN CHINA
By Joseph Hansen
The political crisis that has been shaking the Mao regime, appears to have entered a new phase, finally involving masses of workers in the plants. The conflict that began in the top circles of the ruling group has thus become extended further and further into the population as those in the leadership seek a definitive solution.
Sensational headlines, based on reports in wall bulletins put up primarily in Peking and relayed through consular attachés and Japanese correspondents, have appeared in the Western press. According to these sources, battles between the adherents of Mao and his opponents reached such sharpness in a number of cities, including Canton and Shanghai as to amount to “civil war."
These interpretations, however, have been discounted among the Western powers, conspicuously so in the case of the U.S. State Department which hopes to reduce its credibility gap by discounting speculation and sticking to hard facts in this instance.
One of the most striking features of the situation remains its obscurity. Although the crisis involves the key country in Asia and a quarter of the human race and weighs heavily in the immediate world situation through its effect on the course of American : escalation of the war in Southeast Asia, the real issues, as well as the true alignment of forces and the figures representing them can only be deduced.
This fact alone directly belies the image of intransigent Marxism which Mao seeks to present to the world. The main characteristic of Marxism is its effort to secure full consciousness of reality in order to be able to intervene correctly in changing it. This is impossible without adequate factual information.
In the current conflict access to the facts is deliberately barred. The press and radio in China is controlled by the Mao faction and it puts out only tendentious information. The opposition is barred from free presentation of its views. There are no free discussions or debates. ee
On top of this, such information as does pierce the curtain.of censorship is often highly contradictory. Leaders who are presented one day as sterling representatives of "Mao's thought," even entrusted with the most responsible ‘posts in defending, disseminating and advancing Mao's views, come under fire themselves sometimes almost as soon as their names have’ become familiar. Declarations that appear to be completely in the spirit of "Mao's thought" are shortly denounced as being a mere smokescreen intended to cover up the very opposite ‘of what’ the declarations: say.
The forces set in motion prove to be far from homégeneous! “Thus the Red Guard Movement, created as ‘the sword and shield of Mao, presently is found to contain contradictory currents so that reports appear of one sector of Red Guards being opposed to another. The same holds true in other areas, not excluding the armed forces.
An impression of confusion and even chaos is inevitably created abroad and it is probably not ‘far from the mark to conclude | that the confusion is even greater inside China itself.
Such a situation is characteristic of a blind factional struggle in which the programmatic differences have not yet come out into the open, or are deliberately kept bottled up, while the contending groups battle over what they are most interested in -power. The factional lines tend to form along false issues or exaggerated issues, and gossip, slander and vilification play an inordinate role. The most damning thing that can be said about both the two main groupings, the one around Mao and the other around Liu Shao-chi, is that both of them appear to be playing the same kind of game, neither of them seeking in the Leninist way to bring out the real programmatic issues.
If there is a difference in responsibility in this, the heaviest charge must be laid against Mao, for he is in position to change the way in which the factional struggle is being conducted.
A single instance will illustrate the point. The Maoists claim that the opposition is seeking to restore capitalism. If true, this is an exceedingly serious charge. Yet if an examination is made into the real import of the charge, it is seen at once that Mao is not referring to the capitalists still-remaining in China. In a study published in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review, Professor Barry M. Richman, a Canadian who visited China in the spring of 1966 and who was permitted. to make a survey of 38 factories in a wide range of industries in 11 major cities, estimated that there are still 400,000 capitalists in China. They are scattered throughout industry and occupy influential positions. In Shanghai about 30 to 35 percent of all textile enterprises and many retail stores are run by them. They draw five percent interest on their capital and high.salaries.
One of them, who was interviewed by Richman, picked him up in a new Jaguar and drove him to his luxurious home.
These capitalists, protected, fostered and even pampered by the regime, have not yet come under attack in the current crisis. On the contrary. They have been reassured that any shots falling in their direction are accidental or incidental.
The talk about "capitalist restoration" thus refers in reality to proposals or arguments in top circles of the bureaucracy either identical, or closely similar, to the proposals of Liberman in the Soviet Union to put individual plants on a "profitability" basis. It can be argued that in the long run this would tend to foster a capitalist restoration more quickly than other bureaucratic ways ‘of running the planned econony; but the immediate objective of those in the Soviet Union who advocate such a "reform" is to gain a greater voice for the technocrats in political decisions and along with it
more extensive privileges and greater security in their enjoyment. Other sectors of the bureaucracy, particularly those specializing in the manipulation of political power, understandably resist this pressure.
This is not debated openly in the Soviet Union due to the fact that all sectors of the bureaucracy are concerned about covering up the spécial privileges enjoyed by the bureaucracy as a whole. The debate thus swings around "efficiency."
Similar considerations appear to weigh heavily with the Mao regime although it is obvious that bureaucratic privileges in China are not nearly so gross as they are in the Soviet Union. Thus the argument there swings around whether or not such proposals signify the "restoration of capitalism."
Despite the secrecy and the confusion it is possible to peg the point where the current phase of the struggle opened.
It was made public with an editorial in the December 26 issue of the People's Daily stating that "a new upsurge of the great proletarian cultural revolution is rising in industrial and mining enterprises throughout the country."
According to the editorial, "great achievements" have been made in the past 17 years. "However, it should be noted that many of our industrial and mining enterprises, to various degrees, are seriously influenced by capitalism, revisionism and even feudalism in political ideology, organization, administration and the work of leadership. Such influences not only shackle the workers' revolutionary enthusiasm and hinder the development of the productive forces, but also breed the seeds of revisionism and are potential hot-beds of capitalist restoration."
As further described in this important editorial, "In some enterprises, in collaboration with the landiord, [the] rich peasant, [the]. counter-revolutionary and bad elements who have sneaked into the ranks of the workers, [that is] with bourgeois elements who have not reformed themselves sufficiently and [with] degenerated elements, a handful of people within the party who are in authority and have taken the capitalist road have doggedly opposed Chairman Mao's correct line and done their utmost to promote revisionist practices. They have been vainly attempting to lead the socialist enterprises onto the capitalist road."
Although the efforts of the "handful" have been in vain, "tens of millions of workers" are now rising up in defense of the correct line of Chairman Mao.
The editorial held out a perspective of electing "cultural revolutionary groups, committees or conferences" to represent the masses. "A system of general elections must be instituted in accordance with the principles of the Paris Commune,"
As yet there have been no indications that Mao really intends to institute a system of proletarian democracy such as that exemplified by the Paris Commune. The promise, however, certainly makes an attractive plank in the faction's platform whatever Mao's real aims are.
On December 27, the day after the editorial appeared, a Red Guard newspaper in Peking announced that the Federation of Trade Unions in China had been dissolved and its official organ suspended. Since the trade unions include 21,000,000 members, it was rather dubious that they had been dissolved with a stroke of the pen. More likely what is involved is the reorganization of the union. bureaucracy.
Thus, instead of a step toward the establishment of proletarian democracy along the lines of the Paris Commune, it appears that the actual objective in opening this new phase of the factional struggle was to strike at the mass base on which the Liu Shao-chi group stands. Since this meant the involvement of "tens of millions of workers," as the editorial in the People's Daily put it, it also signified a more spectacular and even more dangerous stage of struggle in which the final outcome remains to be seen.
It was following this aggressive move by the Mao-Lin group that clashes were reported between Red Guards and workers and between different sectors of workers in a series of cities.
As for the Communist party, it is torn by the conflict. Instead of holding the initiative, it occupies the strange position in a single-party system of apparently constituting the opposition party, as one acute observer has noted. Yet to become activated in. the struggle is the peasantry. This most powerful force is reflected primarily through the army. The next moves may therefore be made there. These could well prove decisive, bringing the struggle to its culmination.