By successful I mean in maintaining relative party unity, work with the masses, and thus the masses trust in the party, and political and economic stability.
With the exception of the latter years of the Cultural Revolution, the CPC has been remarkably stable, ideologically consistent, and have maintained power and dominance over the Chinese state and economy. All of this is even more impressive given the fall of communist states in Europe and the rise of western/American unipolarity.
While similar tendencies have been found in the CPSU, the rise of figures like Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and especially Gorbachev, and of course their supporters within the party, makes the CPSU appear less stable and ideologically consistent compared to the CPC. Added onto this the fact that the CPC has a much larger and diverse membership, including the national bourgeoisie.
Rather than viewing this question through great man theory, I want to know how the structural formation and process of the CPC itself maintains stability, and how it’s party structure is different from the CPSU. While both parties are founded on democratic centralism, how does this manifest differently between the two? In an interview with Marxist Paul, Hakim said the ban on factions within the CPSU, while imperative during the civil war and early years of the revolution, ultimately hurt the party. He then praised the informal factionalism of the CPC: Dengists, Maoists, liberals, etc. From the outset it would appear that such a situation of factionalism should rip the party apart, but it doesn’t. Why,?
Looking at the relatively young history of communist movements and parties show that many, for material reasons, were/are unable to be stable and ideologically consistent. Again, outside factors and capitalist sabotage are of course a major contributing factor, but could there be structural elements within various parties which explain, to a certain extent, their successes or failures?
Seeing the immense progress the CPC has brought their own people and, increasingly, the people of the rest of the colonized world, means we must understand how they operate. Every party and movement will be different and adjusted to their particular circumstances and material conditions, and thus copy and pasting the CPC anywhere else will not yield positive results. However, could/should the structural basis of the CPC be applied and modified to other countries and contexts?
The biggest difference IMO, is the focus on integrating rather than de-linking with the world economy. The PRC and the USSR were both demonized cold war targets, so why did one thrive, and the other stagnate?
With the Deng Xiaoping era and the opening up to the world economy, we have the answer. The focus shifted away from a the ideological struggle that exemplified the Cultural Revolution. The lesson learnt there: you cannot better people’s material conditions, and end poverty with ideological struggle, or isolationism.
The USSR, through historical inertia, and an emphasis on siege socialism, demonstrated an unwillingness to pursue opening up. Deng Xiaoping by contrast stated: “we don’t need to be afraid to open the window just because a few flies might get in… The fresh air will do us good, and the flies are nothing to we can’t handle.”
Since then, the focus shifted to economic construction and technological advancements gained via an open market system with the west: the superiority of socialism over capitalism must come through it’s better development of the productive forces, and better ability to feed your people.
The USSR had to use spycraft to get tainted western microchips already a few years old. Yet since the 1980s the west is falling over themselves to build factories and export tech to China.
There’s a lot of nuance to this strategy, because integration with the west almost always means getting caught in the low-wage-trap, but SWCC organized this bargain in their favor. They traded limited wage exploitation, in exchange for long-term technological expertise… A strategy that’s clearly been paying off.
Some more resources here: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#is-china-state-capitalist
The lesson learnt there: you cannot better people’s material conditions, and end poverty with ideological struggle, or isolationism.
The cultural revolution lead to a drastic increase in material conditions to the vast majority of the Chinese population. This can be tracked from education to food availability.
In fact, the rural collectives, working more autonomously than they do now, were able to build industry to a scale never seen before in China. The schools they built in rural areas, which previously went ignored by the party, raised literacy rates to near 90%. That’s up from around 30% previously.
The industrialization undertaken in these areas was SO successful that Deng’s government privatized them and built upon them to “develop productive forces” that were already being developed at previously unseen speeds.
I’m not saying that the reform era is revisionist or whatever. Clearly, the strategy has worked out incredibly in many ways (and failed in others), but the idea that the cultural revolution was some kind of economic disaster that stunted industrial production is false. It’s a myth that’s carted out as justification for the reforms (which, frankly, isn’t needed because the arguments for reform can stand on their own merit).
All of this and more can be found in Dongping Han’s “The Unknown Cultural Revolution”
I’d be wary of anyone who tries to glorify the Cultural Revolution.
For example, the point about literacy rates:
From China’s second census in 1964, 233,267,947 out of 723,070,269 people over the age of 13 were illiterate, that’s 32.3%.
From China’s third census in 1982, 235,820,002 out of 1,031,882,511 people over the age of 12 were illiterate or semi illiterate, that’s 22.9%.
Note that these two statistics aren’t referring to the same thing, so the report for the third census in 1982 also mentions that the percentage of people that were illiterate and semi illiterate went down from 38.1％ in 1964 to 23.5% in 1982.
Side note: I found a site that’s supposedly “The voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA” https://revcom.us/a/174/dongping_han-en.html that mentions this book, and what do I find?
But after Mao died in 1976, top leaders in the Communist Party, headed by Deng Xiaoping, carried out a reactionary coup.
Thanks for that.
Dongping Han certainly has a negative view of Deng Xiaoping. Certainly more negative than I do. However, regardless of his line on Deng, his book is well sourced and provides a ton of on-the-ground experiences that I think are worthwhile for anyone interested in China’s revolution. Mobo Gao is also very anti-Deng, but most communists around here uphold his book for good reading on the cultural revolution, too. Michael Parenti has also called reform China revisionist, and I don’t think that invalidates his work.
I recommend checking out the book yourself, but if you’re really interested and you don’t have the time, I can go through and pull out where he’s sourcing his info and message them to you. I’m gonna check the info myself anyway because of the numbers you posted.
Just let me know.
I reread my comment and fixed a mistake for the 1964 statistic, it turned out to be 32.3% because I mixed up the denominator and used the population number from 1982 when calculating for 1964.
From Amazon it looks like the book is written in English and Han Dongping “teaches history and political science at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Han comes from a rural background in China. ” Now that doesn’t sound like something I would waste time reading as a Chinese. But I found a PDF of it on http://www.socialiststories.com/en/writers/Han-Dongping/ so I might read it.
Side note: I found a site that’s supposedly “The voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA”.
RCPUSA seems like a batshit cult of personality to me. They uphold the leader to a disturbing degree.
I get the impression that the mindsets in both US and USSR were shaped by WW2. Both saw military power as the ultimate form of strength, and focused primarily on the competition in the military tech sector. However, China was not a superpower after the war and was in no position to compete militarily wither either superpower. The party realized that they needed to catch up technologically, and so we saw the whole opening up approach that allowed for rapid technology transfer from the west while also integrating China deep into the world economy. This allowed China to create soft power globally that didn’t rely directly on its military strength.
Chinese approach has a lot of benefit over the one USSR pursued. It allowed China to maintain a relatively modest military until recently, and to focus their productive forces on rapid infrastructure development, and this is now being exported globally. Instead of having to preach the virtues of socialist ideology, China demonstrates them.
US is also finding it very difficult now to decouple from China or to have a war with China because that would have a huge detrimental impact on US economy. On the other hand, China is now able to start doing some decoupling of their own with dual circulation, BRI, and BRICS.
In fact, the decline of US on the global stage continues to drive countries towards China out of necessity. Everybody can see that US system is headed for another crash akin to 2008 crisis, and countries obviously want to insulate themselves from it. The best way to do that is to be as independent of western economic system as possible.
I think it’s going to e very interesting to see what happens when the crash finally does come. It’s possible that it could be the final nail in the coffin of the capitalist model that US champions. If western economy crashes while BRICS doesn’t that’s going to utterly discredit the west.
I’d also recommend this book, it’s a pretty deep dive into socialism in China https://redletterspp.com/products/the-east-is-still-red
dual circulation, BRI, and BRICS.
Have a feeling that this setting up of multiple, overlapping, support networks for Chinese trade and influence is going to go down in history as a masterstroke.
The US also has different networks that support it’s hegemony but they’re interconnected in a different way and ultimately rely on everyone else going what the US says because otherwise the US will otherwise destroy them. That’s no basis for mutual development.
China’s approach could surprise us and fall apart but the recognition of contradiction/antagonism built into the Chinese model hints at it’s longevity.
absolutely
If western economy crashes while BRICS doesn’t that’s going to utterly discredit the west.
People in the imperial core would never be told of this. The next crash, regardless of where its effects fall, will be described as a worldwide phenomenon. If you point out other countries are doing fine libs will call you a shill and reactionaries will make some racist joke about the rest of the world living in huts/the U.S. is better even while its economy crumbles.
It’s gonna be pretty hard to hide in the long run. I’m sure there will be a wave of propaganda coming, but people are already losing faith in the system in the west as is.
Interestingly enough, Xi Jinping’s speech at the Closing Ceremony of the BRICS Business Forum 2023 makes a similar remark:
An ancient Chinese thinker observed that “following the underlying trend will lead one to success, while going against it can only cause one to fail.” We humankind have achieved notable economic development and social progress over the past decades, and that is because we have drawn lessons from the two world wars and the Cold War, followed the historical trend of economic globalization, and embarked on the right path of openness and development for win-win cooperation. Our world today has become a community with a shared future in which we all share a huge stake of survival. What people in various countries long for is definitely not a new Cold War or a small exclusive bloc; what they want is an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys enduring peace, universal security and common prosperity. Such is the logic of historical advance and the trend of our times.
This “underlying trend of things” is the dao, by the way :) Daoist philosophy and worldview, and Confucian philosophy and worldview–in addition to an awareness of history–still deeply underly Chinese thought and society. The way Judeo-Christian philosophy underlying the West. It’s part of what accounts for the “with Chinese characteristics”.
Just finished my meeting with PSL last week over this article, and I thought this could help with context of Deng (I am not a fan of him in regards to how his wing overthrew the other wing and enacted their own reforms at the cost of millions of poorer, rural workers forced to work for the capitalist enterprises without the safety net and protections offered by state jobs):
Note: Take this article with a grain of salt. This is an older article (2007-05-31) from the PSL that paints the Cultural Revolution in an overly positive light while omitting the corruption that occurred from Mao’s wing. I apologize for my ignorance on this topic. Thank you, @muad_dibber and @qwename, for enlightening me.
What do socialists defend in China today?
https://www.liberationschool.org/what-do-socialists-defend-in-china-today/
Immediately after its victory in 1949, the leadership of the Communist Party, by necessity, focused on the question of China’s economic development. Affecting the day-to-day lives of more than 500 million people, no task was more urgent than economic and social development. On this all wings of the Communist Party agreed.
How this development would take place in the context of the continued class struggle, however, became the pivot for what became known in China as the “two-line struggle” between elements of the party centered around Mao Zedong and those led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. The Mao grouping advocated socialist methods for development, including nationalized public property in the core industries and banking, centralized planning, collectivized agriculture, mobilization of the workers and peasants, and a monopoly of foreign trade. The wing led by Liu and Deng was essentially pragmatic rather than Marxist in their approach, utilizing material incentives, capitalist-style accounting methods and elements of the capitalist market—all while professing allegiance to the goal of building socialism.
In 1966, this struggle led to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a mass campaign initiated by Mao and his allies that aimed to rally the poor and the young to dislodge from positions of authority Liu, Deng and thousands of others castigated as favoring the “capitalist road” for China’s economic development.
Contrary to the presentation by bourgeois historians, the two-line struggle was not primarily over the pace of economic development in China, with Mao favoring a slower approach and Liu and Deng favoring a faster tempo. Both sides in the two-line struggle put the rapid economic development of China as a top priority.
…
Despite the historic achievements on the road to socialism during this period, a series of international events and their reflection within the Communist Party weakened the strength of the revolutionary wing of the party. The defeat of the Indonesian Revolution in 1965, the escalation of the Sino-Soviet split and the ultimate rapprochement between China and U.S. imperialism, the corresponding death of People’s Liberation Army leader Lin Biao, and the purge of other leftists—all these events laid the basis for the reemergence of the “capitalist road” grouping following Mao’s death in 1976.
At the time, some observers of the Chinese Revolution considered the accusation that certain party leaders were “capitalist roaders” to be one more rhetorical flourish or excess of the Cultural Revolution. But the accusation, as it turned out, was not overheated rhetoric at all. It was a precise and accurate description of Mao’s political opponents inside the leadership of the Communist Party.
Following Mao’s death in 1976, the left wing of the party was routed and its leaders were arrested. By 1978, the “capitalist roaders,” galvanized under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, introduced sweeping economic reforms under the newly concocted and theoretically unfounded label of “market socialism.”
These reforms led over the course of several steps to the “opening up” of China to imperialist banks and corporations. The development strategy was premised on a strategic assumption: The lure of super profits from the employment of low-wage labor in China would lead to massive capital investment by the industries and banks that possessed the most advanced technology. China would benefit in its “development” by accessing and acquiring the latest technologies.
The Chinese commune system of collectivized agriculture was also dismantled. The Chinese countryside, known throughout Asia in the decades prior to the 1970s for its egalitarian achievements and social gains for the poorest peasants, became severely stratified again.
While millions of more well-to-do peasants saw a sharp rise in their living standards, a huge mass of rural dwellers lost everything. Left to fend for themselves, they migrated by the tens of millions to urban areas seeking employment in newly created factories—many in special economic zones set aside for foreign capitalist investors. This migrant labor force, uprooted from the land, became the source of human material necessary for the establishment of a new market-based private capitalist sector.
Within 25 years, the People’s Republic of China was fully integrated into the capitalist world economy. Foreign direct investment skyrocketed as U.S., European and Japanese capital set up in China to take advantage of the huge labor pool. Transnational corporations helped create the largest industrial work force in the world.
At the same time I am disgusted by this event, I also wonder if it was unfortunately necessary to help China reach to its current state today. If events had played in a different way where Mao’s wing would have been dominant over Liu and Deng’s, could China have suffered the same fate as the USSR? In the end, the West is responsible for creating a divide between the USSR and China, hurting their relations so the West could use one enemy against the other to their advantage.
To claim that SWCC is “pragmatic, and not Marxist”, typifies the ultra-left stances of most western leftist orgs, in their standard condemnation of actually existing communist formations on the basis of a selective and dogmatic interpretation of Marxism, and their obsession with martyrdom and failure. PSL should have dropped this “gang of four” leftism a decade ago.
This is the second time I’m seeing the Cultural Revolution put in a good light in this post, get off your high horses you naive idealists!
The Cultural Revolution was hijacked by ultras, Lin Biao tried to assassinate Mao.
This is the Constitution of the CPC in 1969: https://fuwu.12371.cn/2014/12/24/ARTI1419387596442272.shtml, it includes this paragraph in the preamble:
林彪同志一贯高举毛泽东思想伟大红旗，最忠诚、最坚定地执行和捍卫毛泽东同志的无产阶级革命路线。林彪同志是毛泽东同志的亲密战友和接班人。
(DeepL translation) Comrade Lin Biao has consistently held high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought and has most faithfully and resolutely implemented and defended the proletarian revolutionary line of Comrade Mao Zedong. Comrade Lin Biao is Comrade Mao Zedong’s close comrade-in-arms and successor.
Utterly disgusting.
Ultra-lefts love appointing kings for some reason, and think socialism is when one guy controls everything, and hand picks a sucessor. Look at the history of int’l trotskyist movement squabbles, or their historical attachment to the myth that “Lenin appointed trotsky king of the USSR”.
I’m sorry, but I believe I am in agreement with you. I am disgusted by the hijacking of the Cultural Revolution and the attempted assassination of Mao by his own close comrade. I am also open to different perspectives and want to improve my own to help humanity reach its best possible future. I intend to be a dialectical materialist and not an idealist. If my message came across as otherwise, I apologize. I am also still learning, and I only mean well. I appreciate your response as it helps me improve my understanding of China’s history. I am an American, so please forgive me if I make a bad take and/or miss important context regarding different countries’ histories. My goal is to avoid misinforming people.
Sorry I got heated up after reading the article you linked, the strong words are directed at that. I personally wish the Cultural Revolution had succeeded but alas here we are.
There will always be the risk of reactionaries sneaking into the party and climbing up to the higher ranks, or former comrades turning corrupt and endangering the the socialist cause. But that doesn’t mean we should destabilize the country just to deal with them, that only helps the reactionaries further their cause.
What everyone should learn from the Cultural Revolution is how NOT to handle internal contradictions.
Isolationism is my exact problem with the DPRK and Cuba. Sure it helped ya survive 70 years but eventually it’s not gonna be viable long-term.
I find myself more and more politically aligned to Juche so isolationism will be the one thing I disagree with.
Not sure Cuba or the DPRK chose their isolation
Wdym?
They both have pursued further integration with the larger global economy, but (mostly) the U.S. keeps them from doing so via overwhelming sanctions and the Cuban embargo.
One explanation I’ve heard is that the experiences of the immense changes of the Cultural Revolution, followed by its sudden end and Reform and Opening Up have given the CPC a unique flexibility. It can experiment with new policies, learn from the experiments, both from failures and successes, and freely admit failure. The CPSU arguably had a similar kind of flexibility early on- they emerged from the civil war to experiment with the NEP, something which seemed like heresy to a lot of socialists, and then radically changed policy again several years later with Stalin’s five year plans- but they lost this flexibility over the years. The CPSU also had a difficult time publicly admitting problems and doing self-criticism. You basically had to wait until the old leader died or was replaced to get a full accounting of his mistakes.
lets not forget that that the Sino-Soviet split did benefit the PRC vis-a-vis the USSR. imperialist pressure against the USSR never decreased, but the pressure against China decreased (till recently), and could arguably be replaced with ‘support’ from the west at certain times. a state that is not under siege is simply more functional and more adaptable than one suspecting sabotage from every corner.
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Meritocracy seems an obvious explanation to reach for.
Meritocracy? Gimme a break
Meritocracy is often used as a buzz word by neoliberals, but its not inherently a negative dog-whistling term. Capitalism’s “meritocracy” is primarily through finances and exploitation.
Its arguable that China is more of a meritocracy than capitalist states, except meritocracy is about legitimate skill, intelligence, historical material analysis, speaking to and deriving public policy from the proletariat, and arguing your points.
except meritocracy is about legitimate skill, intelligence, historical material analysis, speaking to and deriving public policy from the proletariat, and arguing your points.
Please elaborate
Meritocracy actually works both in capitalism and socialism. The issue lies, of course, in what the “merit” really is - in both systems it’s the merit in pursuing the interests of the ruling class - the proletariat in socialist countries and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist ones. So the capitalist meritocracy see the rich and corrupted people being pushed up - because they further the real purpose of the system, remember that the capitalism works, just not for us and the corruption is a deviation in socialism but a feature in capitalism.
