The huge gains brought about for the Chinese workers and peasants by the revolution of 1949 are obvious, and are clearly outlined by Maitan.
* On the basis of radical land reform, the scourges of mass famines, epidemics and diseases were wiped out for 90 per cent of the population of China.
the fiefdoms of various warlords, and after 100 years of being a plaything of imperialist power, China was unified and the imperialists expelled.
• One eighth of humanity, the women of China, were delivered from a state of medieval oppressior and degradation which bordered on near slavery - if the Chinese revolution nad achieved notning more than this it would have been gigantically historically justified.
• Finally, through the breaking of the domination of imperialism and the establishment of a planned economy, the conditions were created for the beginning of the industrialisation of China.
The importance of assessing what sort of social system it is which brought about such huge gains is obvious. If it were really the case that capitalism, whether in an 'ordinary' or a 'state capitalist' form, were capable of bringing about even the first three of these huge gains then, far from considering it a system in decline and decay, Marxists would have no optior but to consider capitalism as a system still. with gigantic potential and one capable of achieving great steps forward for large sections of humanity. The implications of that for revolutionaries are obvious.
In fact, as Maitan shows, the Chinese revolutior brought its gains and had its enormous world impact because capitalism was incapable of meeting even the most immediate needs of China. Even to bring about land reform, unify the country, and bring women the Chinese WORKCES CELE peasants had to smash the power not merely of the foreign imperialists but also of the capitalist class of China. The China which emerged from the revolution of 1949 was based not on the demination of the capitanst class, producaon for pront, and we anarcay or the market, but on the suppression of capitalism and the creation of the social relations of planned produc O1 — O a WOrKErS SLaLC.
Destruction The destruction of the present economic system of China, and the restoration of capitalism, would represent one of the most terrible defeats ever suffered by the working class and would throw the country back into the conditions of India or Pakistan. That is the real issue wnen is at stake in tne discussion or what is sometimes obscurely called the class nature of the Chinese state'. All those who assert the capitalist nature of the Chinese economy and state. and there fore conclude that the Chinese workers have no interest in choosing between their present economic and social system and a capitalist one, are completely out of touch with reality.
All the points which Maitan makes in his book about the non-capitalist nature of the Chinese revolution, and the tremendous gains that this made possible for the Chinese workers and peasants, are absolutely crucial for any serious view of the world today. Try being a revolutionary in Asia today and explaining to Party, Army and Masses in China Livio Maitan country" in Russia. More than any other country, China needs the international extension of the revolution.
It is here that the greatest weaknesses and dangers exist. The Chinese revolution of 1949 achieved the destruction of capitalism but not the creation of workers democracy. The workers state which came into existence in 1949 was bureaucratically deformed from birth. This had two decisive effects.
Deformation First, it prevented the working out of any rational economic plan which could tap the creative power and enthusiasm of the masses — Maitan correctly points out that all the rhetoric of the 'mass line' and 'from the people to the people is in fact merely an attempt to find a bureaucratic substitute for those things which in reality only workers democracy can bring.
Secondly, this bureaucratic deformation — expressed at the political level in the acceptance of the theory of socialism in one country — led the Chinese leadership more and more into co-operating with, rather than attempting to overthrow, colonialist neighbours of China and the imperialists themselves. In Chapter 15 of his book, Maitan gives a blow by blow account of Chinese foreign policy from the original support of guerilla war, through the so-called "Bandung principles' of co-operation with neo-colonial puppets such as Nehru, right up to the recent agreements with and support for the United States in the struggle against the Soviet Union It is an unfortunate and terrible epitaph on this, perhaps the most advanced aspect of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Chinese revolution, that apart from North Korea and Albania, the only regime to order official mourning for Mao's death was that of Pinochet in Chile!
It is within this framework of the bureaucratic deformations of the Chinese revolution that Maitan places the main theme of his book — the explanation, Cultural Revolution'. Maitan demonstrates conclu- COULDO. and aftermath of the sively the dual aspect of the Cultural Revolution - on the one hand, that it was initiated as a struggle within the bureaucracy, and on the other, that the forces unleashed went far beyond the leadership Maoists and began to pose fundamental questions of proletarian democracy in China.
Maitan's book is particularly strong at this point in collecting all the available material on those events which posed clearly the development of real initiatives by the working class during the Cultural Revolution. The events described include the protest march of the *Revolutionary Rebels' of Shanghai, the most proletarian city in China, to Soochow to extract demands from the bureaucrats; the rail strikes, occupations of buildings, and the 43 day strike of food and commerce workers in Shanghai in December-January 1966/7; the waves of strikes in Peking in the same period; and the formation of workers committees in Kiangsu province. All these went far beyond the demands of the bureaucracy and anything even the most 'radical" Maoists were prepared to accept. Livio Maitan's Party, Army and Masses in China* is the first serious Marxist book in Eng lish to have appeared on the development of China since the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party. Most studies either simply accept the myths of the Maoist leadership itself or, in the case of the International Socialists, attempt to maintain the absurd position that the revolution of 1949 merely transferred power from one section of the capitalist bureaucratic deformations of the Chinese revolution.
many as 100,000 people were arrested. By mid-1967 it was the army which intervened in virtually every sphere to take dominance in the organisations emerging from the "Cultural Revolution'. It wasn't until the downfall of LinPiao that the role of the army declined once again — and even then it didn't fall bac! to the previous level.
Maitan shows that it is also this fight to confine the struggle within bureaucratic limits that explains the process of the formation of the Revolutionary Committees' which marked the final stage of the Cultural Revolution. At the height of the upsurge of the masses, when the Revolutionary Committees were established in centres such as Shanghai and Peking the composition of the Committees, while bureaucratically dominated, reflected the real pressure of the masses — 33 per cent represented the mass organisations of the SULLIC. OCL cent 'revolutionary cadres', and 32 per cent military forces. By mid-1967, however, the proportions in the Revolutionary Com mittees established in otner areas nad sainted to ss pe cent military representatives and only 21 percent representatives of the mass organisations of struggle.
The chapters in which Maitan describes first the upsurge of the workers and then its repression by the bureaucracy are the finest in the book, and the most significant for understanding the internal politica. dynamics of China.
Entrenched Finally, these developments also explain why there was, and could be, no decisive outcome to the Cultural Revolution; and why, despite the removal of its leaders, the faction of Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiaoping remained well and truly entrenched in decisive sections of the bureaucracy despite all the attacks of Ine Maoists. ror einer wing or te bureaucracy to have really smashed the other would have necessitated mobilisation of the masses on such a scale that it would have outrun the contro of any section of thi bureaucracy and, through the establishment of real organs of workers democracy, brought about a political revolution in China against all fractions of the bureaucracy.
However, allowing the workers and peasants to act only so long as they did not strike out on a path of meir own mean Wine Orn bureaucracy could, at best, merely strengthen itself
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Party, Army and Masses in China ivio Maitan
class to another. Maitan, however, shows both the tremendous results which have flowed from the establishment in China of a qualitatively superior form of economic organisation to capitalism, and, at the same time, the contradictions which have resulted from the