Distortion of the Marxist Teaching of the Transition Period.

Rejection of Socialism as the First Phase of Communism

Mao Tse-tung holds that the theory of violence, military administration and compulsion are applicable to all historical periods, including the highest phase of communism. He 32rejects socialism as being a special phase of communism, including it in the transition period during which compulsion and suppression play a substantial role. He goes so far as to attribute his concepts to the classics of MarxismLeninism. For instance, in the recommendations of the Central Committee of the CPC (see Pravda, July 14, 1963) it is stated: "Both Marx and Lenin considered the entire period until the beginning of the highest phase of communist society as a period of transition from capitalism to communism, as the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Actually, in Critique of the Gotha Programme and other works Marx clearly distinguished between the period of transition, the first phase of communism, i.e., socialism, and the highest phase of communism. Conformably, in his famous The State and Revolution Lenin singled out the following stages of the formation and development of the communist system, namely: "the transition from capitalism to communism”, i.e., its first phase, then follows "the first phase of communist society" and, lastly, "the highest phase of communist society.” [32•* In this and subsequent works he examined the question of the economic foundation of society, and of the state and its functions during each of these stages.

During the period of transition the economy is polystructural, for this is a period when survivals of the capitalist economic system are still in evidence and, consequently the exploiting class exists and an unremitting class struggle on the principle of "who will win" rages between the working class and the bourgeoisie. Enlarging on Marx’s ideas about the dictatorship of the proletariat as the state of the transition period, Lenin wrote: "During the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the ‘state’, is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state.” [32•**

During the first phase of communism, i.e., under socialism, all the means of production are publicly owned and every person engaged in socially useful work is paid in accordance with the work done by him. The existence of the state 33during the first phase of communism is linked by Lenin not with the need for suppressing hostile classes, because such classes no longer exist, but with the task of protecting and multiplying public property and controlling the measure of labour and the measure of consumption. He wrote: "To this extent, therefore, there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labour and in the distribution of products.” [33•*

The economic foundation for the complete withering away of the state is provided by the attainment of a level in the development of the communist formation where the productive forces can fully satisfy the reasonable requirements of all citizens, and the essential distinctions between labour by hand and by brain disappear.

On this point Lenin wrote: "The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: ’From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’, i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labour has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability”. [33•** Such are the dialectics of the formation of the communist system, and such are the principal stages of its development.

Why then do the Chinese pseudo-theorists reject socialism as a special phase of the formation of the communist social system, and why do they identify socialism with the transition period? The answer is that having adopted antiSovietism as a policy and by insinuating that bourgeois elements are growing in the USSR, the Maoists want the CPSU and the Soviet Union to accept the theory according to which the class struggle grows ever more acute until the highest phase of communism is attained. They unequivocally suggest that the function of suppression, exercised by the socialist state towards the exploiting classes during the transition period, should be preserved throughout the period of socialism right until the highest phase of communism.

The Chinese theorists and propagandists endlessly repeat that under socialism the class struggle inevitably grows acute 34and will last at least 100 or 200 years or, perhaps, even longer. This thesis is a gross distortion of Marxism-Leninism and of the prospects of socialist development.

The struggle against alien elements continues, of course, even under socialism. But under conditions where exploiting classes are non-existent and only the friendly classes of workers, collective farmers and the socialist intelligentsia have remained the principal aim is to ensure the further unity of all social strata round the working class and consolidate the socio-political and ideological unity of socialist society.

The enemies of the Soviet Union have always dreamed of driving a wedge between the Soviet working class, peasants and the intelligentsia, to disunite them and weaken and undermine their socio-political and ideological cohesion. Is this not the aim of the anti-Soviet campaign of the Maoists? Is this not the reason why they savagely attack the CPSU Programme’s propositions on the growth of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a socialist state of the entire people? What makes them so eager to compel the CPSU to adopt the anti-Leninist line of applying dictatorial methods of administration and of curtailing socialist democracy in conditions of complete arid final victory of socialism, until the highest phase of communism has been reached? They obviously want to narrow down the mass social basis of the Soviet state and shatter the unity of the people round the Communist Party and the Soviet Government.

There is another aspect to this identification of socialism as the first phase of communism with the transition period, namely, the fear of the Chinese leaders to make a concrete analysis of the economic and class structures of Chinese society and of the real forms of the class struggle during the period of transition.

Socialist reforms, as everybody knows, presuppose radical changes in the relationship between classes. Mao Tse-tung, however, studiously avoids this question or speaks of it in a vague and abstract way.

In February 1957 in a speech on "The Correct Solution of the Contradictions Within a Nation”, he offered no analysis of the economic and class structures of Chinese society during the transition period. Instead, he listed all sorts of contradictions, grouping them under two categories: 35contradictions with enemies and contradictions within the nation. Among the latter he singled out the following contradictions: between the proletariat and the peasants; between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie. The contradiction between the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie and the contradictions within the national bourgeoisie were lumped together in the same category.

Actually, this abstract characteristic is tantamount to abandoning the class approach in assessing the different strata of society in the transition period, and to automatically carrying over the tactics characterising the national liberation stage of the revolution to the stage of socialist reforms. If, during the transition period, as this pattern implies, the contradictions between the proletariat and the peasants are of the same type as those between the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie, the policy of the proletariat towards these classes must also be of the same type.

Shortly before this, in the resolution adopted by the 8th Congress of the CPC it was stressed that "the internal contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie continues to be the main one”. However, at the same Congress Mao Tse-tung put forward a vaguely worded slogan about uniting the "democratic classes”. From his “teaching” of the contradictions during the period of transition from capitalism to communism it follows that communism can be built through the unity of the working class and peasants with the bourgeoisie.

The countries moving towards socialism naturally differ from each other in social structure and in the class composition of the population. In the Soviet Union the exploiting classes have been uprooted long ago, and this process involved a bitter struggle. The landowner class and the big bourgeoisie were eradicated in the course of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War. Then, with the development of the socialist industry and state and cooperative trade, capitalist elements were ousted from industry and trade, while the kulaks were liquidated as a class through nation-wide collectivisation.

In China, on the other hand, there has been a "peaceful reorganisation of capitalist industry and trade”. Mixed stateprivate enterprises were set up and the factories were 36“redeemed" through the payment of a rate of interest on capital to the capitalists.

Marxism-Leninism takes into account the diverse forms of socialist construction and of the class struggle in the different countries. However, it goes without saying that the general laws of the class struggle must not be ignored. If the exploiting elements—capitalists, landowners, kulaks, merchants—have remained in one capacity or another and have been set to work in state-owned or co-operative enterprises, it does not mean that they have adopted socialism. It must be seen and understood that even after the so-called peaceful reorganisation of capitalist industry and trade, these elements continue to influence society’s class structure and also politics and ideology. These elements are fertile soil for chauvinism, racialism, nationalism and other trends.

The Chinese press has never published statistics to show how many capitalists in China continue to receive an interest on their capital from the state and what this interest amounts to. According to figures published in the foreign press, there are in China today over a million capitalists who continue to receive five per cent on their "capital investments”; of this number about 300,000 hold executive jobs at nationalised enterprises. As salaries they receive from 300 to 400 dollars a month, while the interest on capital paid to some of them adds up to 200,000–300,000 dollars and in a number of cases to over a million dollars a year. In order to receive such incomes in capitalist countries, share– holders must own capital amounting to several million dollars. The Chinese “Marxists” keep this mechanism of capitalist exploitation a close secret. Neither is anything being said of the fact that over the past few years China has been reorienting her external economic relations from the socialist to the capitalist world.

Indicative in this respect is that the "great proletarian cultural revolution" did not in the least affect the interests of the Chinese millionaires. Initially, in some of their leaflets the hungweipings demanded a halt to the payment of interest on capital to the capitalists. However, as by a signal, this motif disappeared from the arch-revolutionary tatzupao (wall newspapers).

This attitude to the capitalists has, of course, completely puzzled representatives of a number of Communist Parties 37and it has been strongly criticised by them. The “ explanation” offered by Mao Tse-tung’s supporters is that the question of cancelling the payment of interest on capital to the capitalists would be raised after the completion of the "great proletarian cultural revolution”. They have thereby demonstrated that the "cultural revolution" is not an antibourgeois revolution but a struggle to establish the armybacked Maoist military-bureaucratic dictatorship. At the same time, the "cultural revolution" was launched with the objective of crushing the resistance of the Party and Government cadres and organisations and of the people to the adventurist policy of the Maoist group.

Mao Tse-tung’s supporters are evidently aware that these attempts have failed ignominiously. They are changing their tactics, applying Mao Tse-tung’s pet principle, borrowed from ancient politicians, of "alternately stretching and releasing.” The Maoists are beginning to flirt with a section of the executive cadre, while continuing to attack others. From time to time they have begun to beat a retreat and blame the lack of discipline among the hungweipings and tsaofans for the butchery in the Party organisations and for the massacre of their leaders. But this manoeuvre does not hold out the prospect of success. Life shows that many Chinese Communists are much more staunch and devoted to communism than Mao Tse-tung and his supporters expected, and the Chinese workers, peasants and intellectuals did not prove to be the "clean sheet of paper" on which Mao Tsetung planned to write what suited him. The stiff resistance that is being put up to the "cultural revolution" by the Party and non-Party masses is evidence that the wanton, adventurist policy underlying the "great cultural revolution”, which plunged the country into chaos, will be brought to a halt by the Communists of China and the Chinese people. The Marxist-Leninist line will triumph in the CPC sooner or later, and the CPC will occupy a worthy place in the world communist movement, while People’s China will return to the united ranks of the common anti-imperialist front.

Kommunist, No. 5, 19P7. pp. 107–22

* * *

Notes

[32•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 464–68.

[32•**] Ibid., p. 463

[33•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 467.

[33•**] Ibid., p. 469.