Maoism - Repudiation of the Leading Role of the Working Class

Marxism-Leninism is the scientific teaching of the working class, summing up the experience of its struggle, providing it with the theory and tactics for the revolutionary transformation of society, and scientifically substantiating the ways and means of building socialism. Proletarian internationalism is embodied in Marxism-Leninism.

Maoism is a petty-bourgeois, chauvinistic ideology and policy in theory justifying hegemonism in the international communist and the national liberation movements. It is an expression of petty-bourgeois adventurism in domestic and foreign policy, which became especially pronounced when China moved from democratic to socialist reforms.

The Chinese pseudo-Marxists’ negation of the proletariat’s leading role is clearly expressed in their understanding of the essence of the world revolutionary process. On the basis of a non-Marxist interpretation of the experience of the national liberation, people’s democratic revolution in China, Mao Tse-tung expands this interpretation to embrace the entire world revolutionary process and the problems of socialist construction in different countries.

The peasantry, as everybody knows, is numerically the largest force in the national liberation movement. When Lenin analysed the problems of this movement he said that it was absolutely necessary to take into account the fact that "the overwhelming mass of the population in the backward countries consists of peasants. ... It would be Utopian to believe that proletarian parties in these backward countries, if indeed they can emerge in them, can pursue communist tactics and a communist policy, without establishing definite relations with the peasant movement and without giving it effective support”. [26•*

Lenin dealt comprehensively with the question of the role played by the peasantry in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the national liberation movement, and brought it to the logical conclusion that there had to be an alliance between the proletariat and the working peasants in the socialist revolution and in the building of socialism. This thesis has been acknowledged and accepted as a guide to action by the Communists of all countries.

In China the peasants played a prominent revolutionary role in the national liberation struggle and the people’s revolution. By applying Marxist-Leninist ideas to the specific conditions obtaining in China and relying on the experience of the working-class movement and on proletarian revolutionary cadres, the Communist Party of China was able to make successful use of the tremendous revolutionary potentialities of the millions of peasants in the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution. 

A major role in this struggle was played by the revolutionary bases set up in rural areas. But Mao Tse-tung drew from this fact the totally unfounded conclusion that at the socialist stage of the revolution the alignment of motive forces remains the same as at the democratic stage, and that the socialist revolution would come from the countryside to the towns.

Based on this premise, his forecast of the development of the world revolutionary process is that the insurgent "world village" would surround the "world city”, that the peasant uprisings in Asian, African and Latin American countries would surround North America and Western Europe and destroy world imperialism. As distinct from Lenin’s teaching of the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry on a global scale, the Maoists set the countryside apart from the towns, the East from the West.

This concept obviously springs from their scepticism of the revolutionary possibilities of the world working class, from their refusal to recognise the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolutionary process and in the socialist reconstruction of society.

This concept is fundamentally at variance with the development of the world revolutionary movement and with the vital interests of the peoples of the developing countries who are fighting imperialism. It leads to the dismemberment of the world’s principal revolutionary forces, to the 28isolation of the national liberation movement from the socialist countries and the international working-class movement. Such isolation would leave the working people of Asia, Africa and Latin America to the tender mercies of "their own" landowners and capitalists and doom them to bondage to foreign capital.

What is making the Chinese arch-revolutionaries seek to force the world revolutionary movement to accept this concept? Is it because they are orienting themselves not on the socialist countries and the world communist movement but on the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements in the Eastern countries and counting on using them as tools for the attainment of their hegemonistic ambitions?

Small wonder that in their domestic policy the Mao group belittles the role of the working class and rejects the very idea that the masses of China should be led by the proletariat.

Mao Tse-tung advanced the idea of turning the agricultural cooperatives into people’s communes and proclaimed that the communes were the best means of speeding up the transition to communism. In his opinion, rural people’s communes are a universal form of communist construction. He went to all lengths to make the Communist Party of China accept these fantasies. As early as August 1958 a decision adopted by the Central Committee of the CPC stated: "The people’s commune is the best organisational form for the gradual transition from socialism to communism, and in its development it will be the primary unit of the future communist society.. . . The attainment of communism in our country is evidently no longer a matter of the distant future. We must make energetic use of the people’s commune and through it find the concrete road of transition to communism.” This decision recommended: "Militarise organisations, act in a militant spirit and follow a collective way of life.” Established initially in the countryside, the communes, as planned by the Maoists, would then embrace industry and unite the entire urban population, and thereby lead to the triumph of communism on a national level.

Mao Tse-tung and his supporters have thus “discovered” a fairly old Socialist-Revolutionary theory, according to which the countryside would arrive at communism earlier 29than the towns and would carry with it the urban population. Theories of this kind were searchingly criticised and emphatically rejected by Lenin. An indisputable law is that in the socialist revolution and in the transition from capitalism to socialism and communism the town gives the lead to the countryside. On this point Lenin wrote: "The town inevitably leads the country. The country inevitably follows the town." [29•* By rejecting this immutable law of Marxism, Mao Tse-tung has denied the working class its leading role in the socialist reorganisation of society.

The failure of the people’s communes undermined the standing of the Maoists but did not cure them of the ailment of petty-bourgeois, Populist-anarchist notions about the motive forces of society’s communist reconstruction.

The notorious "great proletarian cultural revolution" was the most striking demonstration of the Maoists’ rejection of the leading role of the working class and its Party, and of their distrust of the trade unions and the Young Communist League. They counterposed students and anarchist hungweiping and rebel organisations to the Party and organised their assault on the latter. From the dustbin of history they extracted the Trotskyite slogan: "Students are the barometer of the revolution”.

The Maoists are making wide use of troops to smash the Party and state organs. Armed force against legal organisations of the working class is evidently the practical illustration of the thesis that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, which the Maoists regard as a "major contribution" to the Marxist teaching of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Actually, in present-day China the interpretation and application of this thesis betrays efforts to justify a reactionary military coup.

In the theory and practice of the Maoists the negation of the role of the working class and its Party is closely linked with their disregard for the basic interests of the working people. They have given the label of “economism” to the policy of raising the living standard under socialism. Their bid to achieve communism without providing the people with material incentives, exclusively by “revolutionary” appeals and slogans, is totally at variance with Leninism. Under the 30guise of communist propaganda, they are, in effect, serving up the old Confucianist teachings that moral self-perfection is the means of settling all problems and overcoming all ills.

It is not difficult to see that disregard for economic conditions runs counter to the materialist understanding of history and is based on voluntaristic concepts and, in the last analysis, on the "theory of violence”. No Marxist can ignore the material conditions of society’s life and development and disregard the basic interests and needs of the masses. Socialism is called on to ensure the masses not only with political power but also with a steady rise of their living standard and cultural level. Any disregard of these basic interests is indissolubly linked with the anti-popular ideology of the personality cult.

The Chinese admirers of Mao Tse-tung idolise him as the originator of the theory that under socialism the decisive role is played by the subjective factor. According to Sinicised Marxism, objective factors determined social development only in the past, before the socialist revolution, while under socialism they have been superseded by subjective factors. This magnification of the role played by the subjective factor is ultimately reduced to the influence of a “great” personality on the social process.

True, Mao Tse-tung and his followers speak verbosely of the role of the masses and of the working class, but in fact they have nothing but scorn for the people. Mao Tsetung portrays China’s huge population as being devoid of ideas and cultural traditions, likening it to a "sheet of clean paper" on which anything may be written. "There is nothing,” he says, "on a clean sheet of paper but on it one can write the newest and most beautiful words, and draw the newest and most beautiful pictures.” That is how Mao Tse-tung himself portrays the relationship between himself, as the "leader and mentor”, and the Chinese people.

Anti-Marxist views of this kind have been criticised by Chinese Communists. Alarm over the growing cult of Mao’s personality was voiced at the 8th Congress of the CPC. At that Congress, in connection with the revision of the Party Constitution, it was stated: "Of course the cult of the individual is a social phenomenon with a long history, and it cannot but find certain reflections in our Party and public life.” The Congress denounced the personality cult and put it on, 31record that the Party held no brief for personality deification, which was alien to it.

This denunciation of the ideology and practice of the personality cult is fiercely resented by Mao Tse-tung and his admirers. One can therefore see why the hungweipings are vilely abusing those who had ever been opposed to the inordinate exaltation of Mao Tse-tung.

The Mao personality cult has resulted in the belittlement of the role played by the masses and the Party, and in the rejection of socialist democracy. What leading role of the Party and what norms of Party life are there to speak of when in the course of the 17 years since the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China there has been only one Congress of the CPC.

The deification of Mao Tse-tung has surpassed the most ugly manifestations of the personality cult known to history. While the Chinese emperors were regarded as the "Sons of Heaven" and rulers of a Celestial Empire, Mao Tse-tung is extolled as the brightest sun. Here his supporters stick to the long-standing vicious tradition of the cult of rulers. More than two thousand years ago the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti wrote: "What the lord regards as truth must be regarded as truth by us; what the lord regards as a lie must be regarded as a lie by us.” Precepts of this kind are now used to “substantiate” the Mao personality cult and reduce the masses to an unthinking mob memorising the precepts of the “ruler”.

Having lost all sense of proportion, Mao Tse-tung’s votaries have declared that Maoism is the “highest” stage of Marxism and want it to be accepted as such by all the Communist Parties in the world, by all peoples. They count on making the Mao cult a weapon for achieving dominance in the world communist and national liberation movements.

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Notes

[26•*] V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 241–42.

[29•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 257.