From the article of 'Petrel'
No.743 / September 26, 1999

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//EDITORIAL// Half Century of 'Revolutionary China'
Summary of the Era of Revolution and Upheaval


China where has 1,200 million of population is about to celebrate the 50 anniversary of 'establishment'.

Half century has went by after they swept the National Party power in 1949, achieved revolution in vast China successfully, and the Communist Party held power. It was exactly a stormy half century.

The first half in this half century was the era of turbulence and struggle for China to develop through what kind of way, to 'chooses' what kind of social system. On the other hand, the second half, especially after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the firm holding of the power by Deng Xiao Ping in 1978, was exactly a stormy era of the development of the capitalism, and was the era when China has appeared on the stage as one of the greatest bourgeois nation in the world.

The China revolution was declared that it won as 'a national and democratic revolution'- a kind of bourgeois revolution, namely peasant revolution=a radical bourgeois revolution - at the beginning. However, the system has been evaluated as the society that is facing to communism since it was asserted that it had moved to socialism right away with the try of the people's commune by Mao Zedong. It is similar to that the system of Stalinism that raised NEP was advertised as having materialized 'socialism' in Russia, after the 1930's.

Marx asserted that the social system is prescribed by the production power--socialism is indispensable the progressed physical condition and the growth of working class--, and the revolution of China that lacked the objective base of socialism was exactly unable to 'grow and change' to socialism.

Mao Zedong fantasized to have built socialism by the people's commune and followed to the precedent of Stalin asserted to built socialism by the 'collectivization' of land, but this was only the fantasy of Narodniki. Narodniki of Russia misunderstood the land revolution of peasant with socialism.

The stormy struggle of the Mao Zedong group with the liberal group and the reformist group--they were called 'the bureaucrat group' and 'the capitalist roader group' in the era of the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution--that had colored the first half of the history of China 50 years was the expression of this contradiction of China, and was the one that appeared from the contradiction to "have built socialism" in China where lacked the objective condition.

Therefore the demand or struggle to the Mao Zedong system was always the 'liberalization' and the 'deregulation', the opposition to the 'one-party dictatorship' of the Communist Party and the admission, the introduction of market economy.

This demand was always put up and the economic liberalism of some extent was introduced when the economy deadlocked and the confusion expanded--it came along political, cultural 'thaw' corresponding to it that. When the difficulty and crisis had been overcome to some extent, it appeared strongly the repulsion to liberalism and market economic direction this time, and Mao Zedong represented the indication.

There was many times of the repetition as such. And 'the Proletarian' Great Cultural Revolution that continued about 10 years from the 1960's came as the peak.

In this try, Mao Zedong determined to make up communism (the foundation) in China resolutely and finally, and also decided hard to sweep the element that had the fear to 'return' to capitalism, so even the counterattack of the liberalist group became to the desperate thing that risked the life.

And although the liberalist group, the bourgeois sect won finally after all, the reason they won was that the development of the capitalism is the historic inevitability of China and they were representing it than they were correct.

Thus it was a natural case that the victory of the bourgeois 'bureaucrat group' and 'the capitalist roader group' became the breakthrough and the starting point of the development of capitalism in China.

It has been over 20 years after Deng Xiao-Ping grasped the power and begun to take the "reforming/opening" line-- namely the policy of NEP in China, the policy of authorization and 'introduction' of capitalism--, and the 'bourgeois' development in China is remarkable. Now, those who are believing that China is 'socialist' nation are only bourgeoisie and a part of stupid intellectuals, and the people who know the economic reality of China never doubt at all that China is a different social system from socialism.

As a matter of fact, such as "the socialistic market economy" that Deng Xiao-Ping asserted and Jang Zemin is advocating now are a contradictory concept and may be one confusion.

This is doctrinairism to hide the capitalistic essence of the production relation and social contents of China in fact, and the truth of the social system of China is a bourgeois increasingly. The people's commune has been 'dismantled' and China has become a small farmer's state, furthermore they cry for the reformation of the state enterprise that is to be said as the last citadel of 'socialism' and the state enterprise became to be controlled by the bourgeois principle (such as the move to joint-stok company) increasingly or was 'disposed' to private-sector.

The image such as 'Socialism' already have remained in nowhere. The China of 'populism' or 'farmer's communism' (in other words, the China in the first half of this half century, the China in Mao Zedong era) has grown and changed to the China of bourgeois.

Needless to say, the fact that 'one-party rule' of Communist Party is remaining does not show the socialistic nature of the system of China at all, but only teach the particularity of the development of the capitalism in China.

This one-party rule is having accumulated contradiction in the development of bourgeois increasingly, and the dismantling will not be avoided in the near future. For the development of Chinese capitalism, the dictatorship of the Communist Party already has finished the historical role and even has turned to be a fetter.

For the 50 years' history of China after the revolution, both the first half and the second half are the real history of China, and each has an inevitable opportunity. Now, they say that the China in the first half was wasteful entirely and was a vacant era, a useless detour. However, there was never the developing China without going through the China of populism, and the China in the era of populism had arranged the condition of development after that. There may be not so bourgeois-like and shortsighted history summary as to beautify and make absolute only the era of the economic development in the second half.

Now China is right in the middle of many contradiction and difficulty which is unique in the era of the stormy development of Capitalism, and is also approaching to the era of the exaltation of the class struggle of working class, that is to say, the era when the bourgeoisie of China is becoming to be reactionary and nationalist. The working class of China will develop a resolute struggle and will be finding out the way of the solidarity with the workers of the world just through it. We believe it and expect it.

(Translated by Yoshi)