China, the revolutionary left and internationalism
Monday, 8 October 2007.
The Committee for a Workers’ International salutes a new generation of revolutionaries in China
Vincent Kolo and Peter Taaffe
The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), now based in over 40 countries, is closely following the debates and discussions within the revolutionary left in China, including an increasing number of questions directed towards our organisation, about our policies, perspectives and methods of campaigning. It is natural that there will be discussion and sometimes differences within the ranks of the genuine Marxists and Trotskyists internationally, especially at major historical turning points, which is the case today. Provided the issues are discussed in an open and constructive spirit, we can learn from each others’ experience and arrive at greater clarity as to the road ahead.
The world is discussing China
It is no exaggeration to say the whole world today is discussing China. China is at the ’cutting edge’ of capitalist globalisation and neo-liberal attacks. Its economic ’model’ is being used by the capitalists everywhere to spread wage cuts, longer hours and increased exploitation. The CCP regime is in a de facto alliance with the top global companies that not only ruthlessly exploits Chinese workers, but also internationalises Chinese conditions, using the threat of relocation and factory closures to further attack wages and conditions even in the wealthiest capitalist countries. This alliance is symbolised by the friendship between Hu Jintao and Bill Gates, the world’s richest capitalist, who opened the doors of his Seattle mansion to Hu last year.
As Chinese comrades are fully aware, these policies have been a catastrophe for large layers of working people and the poor. A recent study by the Asian Development Bank reveals that China, alongside impoverished and war-ravaged Nepal, is now the most unequal society in Asia. At the same time, of course, the pro-capitalist policies of the Chinese regime are encountering growing resistance. Socialists around the world are enormously encouraged by the heroism and preparedness to struggle shown by Chinese workers, poor peasants, and young people in tens of thousands of protests every year. The strategists of the CCP are increasingly alarmed as food prices soar, safety and environmental scandals erupt on a daily basis, young people and students face ever-greater insecurity over jobs and education, and the countryside remains a ticking bomb despite some limited extra funds from Beijing. Meanwhile, the refusal by the heads of regional and local governments to ’come to order’ and follow central policies is complicating Beijing’s problems a thousand-fold.
All the ingredients of a social and political explosion are present in China. When this comes, and it is a question of when not if, it will of course have global effects. The task of genuine Marxists is to prepare, in the first instance politically.
Perspectives for struggle
The situation is especially complicated in China, because of repression, but also because of the confused consciousness of broad layers of the population including the working class. This is not just a Chinese problem, although there are special features in the Chinese situation due to decades of repressive one-party rule and absence of genuine workers’ organisations. Consciousness has been blunted internationally as a result of the shift to the right of the old workers’ parties (social democrats and communists), which are now in the main openly capitalist formations. Workers lack a clear point of reference, to link their immediate struggle to the bigger picture – how to change society? Therefore, as we saw in France last year, even big struggles in countries with a strong, militant proletariat (the movement in 2006 was the biggest since 1968) have not directly challenged capitalism, or led to increased political organisation in socialist or left parties as was the case in the past. The situation today is far more complicated than it was even in Lenin and Trotsky’s lifetime.
The CWI has identified these processes in numerous international documents – the result of pooling our international experience. We stress the need for Marxists in different parts of the world to position themselves now, politically and organisationally, for a mighty wave of class struggle which will see renewed mass interest in the ideas of socialism and Marxism. This process has already begun in Latin America, and will spread with increased struggle and a deepening capitalist crisis. Given the massive contradictions – rising inequality, environmental collapse and increased state repression (30,000 new police stations in the countryside) – China could well be to the thrown to the fore of this international process.
As tensions between the imperialist states and regional blocs sharpen, and the class struggle intensifies, open public splits within the Chinese regime and dramatic policy swings are inevitable. Especially in the event of an economic downturn, the self-confidence of the capitalists and the strategists of the Chinese regime will be shattered. In the not-too-distant future we could witness the emergence of independent workers’ organisations on a significant scale, and the appearance of a mass pro-democracy movement (as in South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia in the 1980s-90s). We have begun to explore these issues in the material of the CWI, including our perspectives document ’China at the Crossroads’. The emergence of independent trade unions and parties of the working class will mark a historic turning point, in which to use Marx’s term the working class will make the leap, ”from a class in itself, to a class for itself.”
Tasks of socialists
Marxists are not anarchists, who deny the need for a party of the working class. This would fly in the face of all international and historical experience. Semi-anarchist prejudices against political organisation in favour of looser networks and coalitions have gained currency in recent years partly as a backlash against the betrayals of the former social democratic and communist parties. These networks and broader campaigning alliances – which involve an element of the united front, although as yet most are not mass formations – are absolutely necessary in the course of the class struggle. But they are not a substitute for a party. The relationship between network and party is complimentary rather than antagonistic (see our article ’Anarchism and Marxism’). Having said this, there are obvious, special factors that apply in China. Nevertheless, while the exact methods vary from one country to another, it would be a big mistake, in an attempt to rationalise over the difficulties that exist in China today, to put forward supposedly Marxist arguments against the historical necessity of a party. Writing on Germany in 1932, Trotsky summed up the relationship of the party to the united front in the following way:
”The class, taken by itself, is only material for exploitation. The proletariat assumes an independent role only at that moment when from a social class in itself it becomes a political class for itself. This cannot take place otherwise than through the medium of a party. The party is that historical organ by means of which the class becomes class conscious. To say that “the class stands higher than the party,” is to assert that the class in the raw stands higher than the class which is on the road to class consciousness. Not only is this incorrect; it is reactionary. There isn’t the slightest need for this smug and shallow theory in order to establish the necessity for a united front.
”The progress of a class toward class consciousness, that is, the building of a revolutionary party which leads the proletariat, is a complex and a contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at different times. The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working class, it creates its own institutions, or utilizes those already existing, in order to oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat several parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its historical journey, it remains split politically. The problem of the united front – which arises during certain periods most sharply originates therein.” (Leon Trotsky, What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat, 1932)
While the CWI does not in any way claim a monopoly on Marxist practise in recent years, our comrades have accumulated valuable experience in Kazakhstan and other parts of the former Soviet Union, where democratic rights are almost non-existent. Likewise in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which today is under a form of undeclared martial law, the CWI sections have despite major difficulties been able to build support for Marxist ideas, as we did previously in South Africa and Chile during the years of dictatorship. In all these examples there are obvious parallels with the tasks that faced the Bolsheviks in the underground period, particularly before the 1905 revolution.
One crucial lesson from our own experiences and those of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, is the role of an international. An international is first and foremost a programme and a common world outlook. The organisational forms flow from these political premises and can be very flexible, taking account of different national conditions. But the absence of an international – as a process of ongoing discussion, analysis and testing of ideas against actual experience of class struggle in different countries – can seriously hold back and distort the development of Marxism in any given country. China is a textbook case of the baleful role of nationalism on the revolutionary movement in the past.
What is revolutionary internationalism?
It is argued by some lefts, including some very serious comrades, that an international Marxist organisation like the CWI, should restrict itself to promoting a general left-wing culture, implying we should only give ’support’ but not directly comment, criticise or state our viewpoint on Chinese developments and the political positions of various left-wing tendencies in China. Unfortunately, such an approach would not be in the tradition of Marxism and the workers’ movement. Marx and Engels did not operate within a national framework – they took the ideas of British political economy, French socialism and German philosophy and synthesised these into a programme and method for the socialist revolution. Lenin looked to the German Social Democracy, not for material support but for ideas, in the period when that party was still a Marxist formation. Trotsky of course intervened actively in the internal debates and discussions of the Marxists in China, Spain, Britain – making sharp criticisms when the situation demanded it. Trotsky’s analysis and criticisms of the CCP’s and Stalin’s mistakes, which destroyed the revolutionary possibilities in China in the 1920s, were crucial in helping Chen Duxiu and a revolutionary minority within the CCP arrive at a correct position in the aftermath of the defeat.
There should be no political ’tariff barriers’ erected between Marxists and socialists of different countries. On the contrary, there must be an ongoing and active exchange of ideas and experiences. Chinese Marxists have every right to question and criticise the political positions taken by CWI comrades in Europe, Latin America or Asia, just as comrades in these regions have the right to critically examine and comment upon events in China. The work of the CWI in Kazakhstan, for example, has been severely criticised by Li Xing, a Chinese Trotskyist in an internet article. We are producing a reply to comrade Li’s points, which we believe are mistaken, but he has every right to state his opinions. His critical points will be answered, but no one should argue that comrade Li should ’keep out of Kazakhstan’ and confine himself merely to offering solidarity and support – important as that can be.
Given the complexities of the problems that face the working class today, it is vital to get first-hand reports and analysis of workers’ struggles in Brazil, Nigeria or France, for example, to counter the completely misleading impression given by the global media, including much of the ’left’ or ’independent’ media.
The CWI does not consider itself to be ’the’ new workers’ international. This is why we adopted the name Committee for a Workers’ International – indicating a provisional or preparatory character, while of course this does not mean we leave the question of organisation to tomorrow. But the forces for a new Marxist international of a mass or semi-mass character will, in our opinion, come not just from the existing sections of the CWI, but also from a wealth of different socialist formations, especially new fighting layers of workers and youth that will be radicalised by the mighty struggles ahead.
However, in the here and now, it must be said that the CWI is unique within the revolutionary left in that we still clearly stand for the building of a Marxist international. The majority of so-called Trotskyist groups worldwide, including the USFI (the so called ’Fourth International’), have in practise abandoned this idea, in favour of becoming a left ’post box’ whereby different groups retain a nominal link to each other, without ever really discussing, agreeing or defending a common standpoint and political programme. Rather than different sections learning from each others’ experience of struggle through open and serious debate, each national grouping is left to make all the same mistakes.
Again, an international is first and foremost a correct Marxist programme. Even without any organisational structures, a mistaken and opportunist international tendency can transmit its ideas to other countries with extremely harmful effects.
Adaptation to Maoism?
An example of this is the current discussion among Chinese Marxists and Trotskyists about how to relate to Maoism, which we believe raises possibilities but also dangers, and where international experience can also prove to be invaluable. It is not hard to understand why a layer of youth, without a fully rounded-out understanding of Mao’s ideas and historical role, look towards these ideas as a possible way to fight back against the current regime. It is also true the CCP has been ’de-Maoised’ and does not use Mao’s slogans, speeches etc., regarding all talk of ’mass struggle’ as a threat to its position. The regime keeps Mao only as a nationalist icon – to whip up support for the ”Great Chinese Nation”.
But this does not mean that Trotskyists and genuine Marxists should now use Maoist slogans or ideas, which are the ideas of a Stalinist bureaucracy that rested mainly on the support of the peasantry and middle layers. Unfortunately the USFI and its main theoretician, the late Ernest Mandel, has a record of making such mistakes – opportunistically adapting to the latest political ’fashion’: Mao in the 1960s-70s, and Tito in Yugoslavia (they supported Tito as if he was an ’unconscious’ Trotskyist, when in fact he represented a national Yugoslav variant of Stalinism). In 1968 the USFI carried Ho Chi Minh portraits on demos against the Vietnam war. Our (CWI) slogans were ”USA out of Vietnam” and ”Support the struggle of the Vietnamese people against imperialism”, but we did not opportunistically adapt ourselves to the ruling Stalinist regime in Hanoi. The USFI did the same in Ireland, supporting the nationalist IRA, and more recently in Brazil – serving as ministers in Lula’s neo-liberal government. This should be a warning to the left in China against such an approach, which has nothing to do with the real tradition of Lenin and Trotsky.
Any adaptation to the muddled and contradictory ideology of Maoism will only create .... Maoism! In Italy and other countries in the late 1960s, the USFI produced pamphlets containing speeches of Mao, radical phrases from the Cultural Revolution on the ’uninterrupted revolution’ and other themes. They did this without the slightest criticism, creating the impression that Mao’s ideas were consistent with revolutionary Marxism and Trotskyism. Instead of attracting workers and youth to Trotskyism, of course, this ’tactic’ provided a theoretical justification for a layer of workers to embrace Maoism!
The CWI agrees there is a strong case for united front type work between genuine left groups, including those layers with illusions in Mao: common campaigns around agreed questions such as strikes, solidarity with workers’ struggles, defence of arrested activists, etc. But as Lenin always said about the united front: ”strike together, march separately” – there must be no mixing of political banners! After all, that is the mistake the CCP and Stalin made in 1924-27 – they used the slogans and name of GMD, of Sun Yatsen, and the broad masses believed the CCP and GMD were the same thing, with catastrophic results.
While we can work together in some campaigns with Maoists, and can expose how far the current regime has shifted from Mao’s position (which did defend public property and planning, but with very bad, bureaucratic methods), we must also constantly educate about the real role of Maoism, which because of its bureaucratic and national limitations, prepared the way for the shift back towards capitalism.
There are big opportunities in China for a reawakening of the ideas of genuine socialism. But political mistakes of this type can produce a shipwreck for the, as yet, small left forces.
Genuine dialogue
There is perhaps a fear among some sections of the Trotskyist left in China that the established international groups represent ’warring elephants’ that should be kept outside. We understand this sentiment, and can say that it is partially justified based on the actions of other so-called Trotskyist groups who – to put it mildly – have not always acted in a principled fashion. As for the CWI, we are keen for a dialogue with genuine fighting layers of youth and workers in China. We are already enriching our own experience through this exchange of ideas. But we would urge the socialist youth in China to pay serious attention to the different positions of the groups claiming a Trotskyist tradition.
There are now dozens of articles in Chinese about the debates and struggles of Marxists in many countries – in Africa, the Middle East, Europe – on our website, chinaworker.info. Familiarise yourselves not just with the programme and perspectives of the CWI, but other groups too, and subject them to strict comparison. Even more important than written programmes, however, is to look at how the different shades of international Trotskyism actually apply themselves in practise – to workers’ struggles, to questions of theory, tactics and methods of work. This is the case in relation to the national question in Scotland, Ireland or Israel-Palestine, for example, which contain vital lessons for China, not just in relation to Taiwan. Unfortunately, huge mistakes have been committed in this field by groups claiming a Marxist or Trotskyist pedigree. Or the problems entailed in orientating to new workers’ parties and left-wing formations, a process in which the CWI has played a crucial role in Brazil, Britain, Germany and Nigeria. We believe that the work of the CWI’s sections around the world passes the test of any such comparison.
The coming political and economic typhoon in China will not just be of importance for Chinese workers, but for the working class around the world. The problems of the coming Chinese revolution therefore must be approached through international eyes as well as Chinese eyes, something that equally applies to the processes in America, Africa and Europe. With such an approach – of real socialist internationalism – we are confident huge advances can be made in China in coming years by the supporters of genuine Marxism.
Vincent Kolo and Peter Taaffe
The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), now based in over 40 countries, is closely following the debates and discussions within the revolutionary left in China, including an increasing number of questions directed towards our organisation, about our policies, perspectives and methods of campaigning. It is natural that there will be discussion and sometimes differences within the ranks of the genuine Marxists and Trotskyists internationally, especially at major historical turning points, which is the case today. Provided the issues are discussed in an open and constructive spirit, we can learn from each others’ experience and arrive at greater clarity as to the road ahead.
The world is discussing China
It is no exaggeration to say the whole world today is discussing China. China is at the ’cutting edge’ of capitalist globalisation and neo-liberal attacks. Its economic ’model’ is being used by the capitalists everywhere to spread wage cuts, longer hours and increased exploitation. The CCP regime is in a de facto alliance with the top global companies that not only ruthlessly exploits Chinese workers, but also internationalises Chinese conditions, using the threat of relocation and factory closures to further attack wages and conditions even in the wealthiest capitalist countries. This alliance is symbolised by the friendship between Hu Jintao and Bill Gates, the world’s richest capitalist, who opened the doors of his Seattle mansion to Hu last year.
As Chinese comrades are fully aware, these policies have been a catastrophe for large layers of working people and the poor. A recent study by the Asian Development Bank reveals that China, alongside impoverished and war-ravaged Nepal, is now the most unequal society in Asia. At the same time, of course, the pro-capitalist policies of the Chinese regime are encountering growing resistance. Socialists around the world are enormously encouraged by the heroism and preparedness to struggle shown by Chinese workers, poor peasants, and young people in tens of thousands of protests every year. The strategists of the CCP are increasingly alarmed as food prices soar, safety and environmental scandals erupt on a daily basis, young people and students face ever-greater insecurity over jobs and education, and the countryside remains a ticking bomb despite some limited extra funds from Beijing. Meanwhile, the refusal by the heads of regional and local governments to ’come to order’ and follow central policies is complicating Beijing’s problems a thousand-fold.
All the ingredients of a social and political explosion are present in China. When this comes, and it is a question of when not if, it will of course have global effects. The task of genuine Marxists is to prepare, in the first instance politically.
Perspectives for struggle
The situation is especially complicated in China, because of repression, but also because of the confused consciousness of broad layers of the population including the working class. This is not just a Chinese problem, although there are special features in the Chinese situation due to decades of repressive one-party rule and absence of genuine workers’ organisations. Consciousness has been blunted internationally as a result of the shift to the right of the old workers’ parties (social democrats and communists), which are now in the main openly capitalist formations. Workers lack a clear point of reference, to link their immediate struggle to the bigger picture – how to change society? Therefore, as we saw in France last year, even big struggles in countries with a strong, militant proletariat (the movement in 2006 was the biggest since 1968) have not directly challenged capitalism, or led to increased political organisation in socialist or left parties as was the case in the past. The situation today is far more complicated than it was even in Lenin and Trotsky’s lifetime.
The CWI has identified these processes in numerous international documents – the result of pooling our international experience. We stress the need for Marxists in different parts of the world to position themselves now, politically and organisationally, for a mighty wave of class struggle which will see renewed mass interest in the ideas of socialism and Marxism. This process has already begun in Latin America, and will spread with increased struggle and a deepening capitalist crisis. Given the massive contradictions – rising inequality, environmental collapse and increased state repression (30,000 new police stations in the countryside) – China could well be to the thrown to the fore of this international process.
As tensions between the imperialist states and regional blocs sharpen, and the class struggle intensifies, open public splits within the Chinese regime and dramatic policy swings are inevitable. Especially in the event of an economic downturn, the self-confidence of the capitalists and the strategists of the Chinese regime will be shattered. In the not-too-distant future we could witness the emergence of independent workers’ organisations on a significant scale, and the appearance of a mass pro-democracy movement (as in South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia in the 1980s-90s). We have begun to explore these issues in the material of the CWI, including our perspectives document ’China at the Crossroads’. The emergence of independent trade unions and parties of the working class will mark a historic turning point, in which to use Marx’s term the working class will make the leap, ”from a class in itself, to a class for itself.”
Tasks of socialists
Marxists are not anarchists, who deny the need for a party of the working class. This would fly in the face of all international and historical experience. Semi-anarchist prejudices against political organisation in favour of looser networks and coalitions have gained currency in recent years partly as a backlash against the betrayals of the former social democratic and communist parties. These networks and broader campaigning alliances – which involve an element of the united front, although as yet most are not mass formations – are absolutely necessary in the course of the class struggle. But they are not a substitute for a party. The relationship between network and party is complimentary rather than antagonistic (see our article ’Anarchism and Marxism’). Having said this, there are obvious, special factors that apply in China. Nevertheless, while the exact methods vary from one country to another, it would be a big mistake, in an attempt to rationalise over the difficulties that exist in China today, to put forward supposedly Marxist arguments against the historical necessity of a party. Writing on Germany in 1932, Trotsky summed up the relationship of the party to the united front in the following way:
”The class, taken by itself, is only material for exploitation. The proletariat assumes an independent role only at that moment when from a social class in itself it becomes a political class for itself. This cannot take place otherwise than through the medium of a party. The party is that historical organ by means of which the class becomes class conscious. To say that “the class stands higher than the party,” is to assert that the class in the raw stands higher than the class which is on the road to class consciousness. Not only is this incorrect; it is reactionary. There isn’t the slightest need for this smug and shallow theory in order to establish the necessity for a united front.
”The progress of a class toward class consciousness, that is, the building of a revolutionary party which leads the proletariat, is a complex and a contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at different times. The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working class, it creates its own institutions, or utilizes those already existing, in order to oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat several parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its historical journey, it remains split politically. The problem of the united front – which arises during certain periods most sharply originates therein.” (Leon Trotsky, What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat, 1932)
While the CWI does not in any way claim a monopoly on Marxist practise in recent years, our comrades have accumulated valuable experience in Kazakhstan and other parts of the former Soviet Union, where democratic rights are almost non-existent. Likewise in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which today is under a form of undeclared martial law, the CWI sections have despite major difficulties been able to build support for Marxist ideas, as we did previously in South Africa and Chile during the years of dictatorship. In all these examples there are obvious parallels with the tasks that faced the Bolsheviks in the underground period, particularly before the 1905 revolution.
One crucial lesson from our own experiences and those of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, is the role of an international. An international is first and foremost a programme and a common world outlook. The organisational forms flow from these political premises and can be very flexible, taking account of different national conditions. But the absence of an international – as a process of ongoing discussion, analysis and testing of ideas against actual experience of class struggle in different countries – can seriously hold back and distort the development of Marxism in any given country. China is a textbook case of the baleful role of nationalism on the revolutionary movement in the past.
What is revolutionary internationalism?
It is argued by some lefts, including some very serious comrades, that an international Marxist organisation like the CWI, should restrict itself to promoting a general left-wing culture, implying we should only give ’support’ but not directly comment, criticise or state our viewpoint on Chinese developments and the political positions of various left-wing tendencies in China. Unfortunately, such an approach would not be in the tradition of Marxism and the workers’ movement. Marx and Engels did not operate within a national framework – they took the ideas of British political economy, French socialism and German philosophy and synthesised these into a programme and method for the socialist revolution. Lenin looked to the German Social Democracy, not for material support but for ideas, in the period when that party was still a Marxist formation. Trotsky of course intervened actively in the internal debates and discussions of the Marxists in China, Spain, Britain – making sharp criticisms when the situation demanded it. Trotsky’s analysis and criticisms of the CCP’s and Stalin’s mistakes, which destroyed the revolutionary possibilities in China in the 1920s, were crucial in helping Chen Duxiu and a revolutionary minority within the CCP arrive at a correct position in the aftermath of the defeat.
There should be no political ’tariff barriers’ erected between Marxists and socialists of different countries. On the contrary, there must be an ongoing and active exchange of ideas and experiences. Chinese Marxists have every right to question and criticise the political positions taken by CWI comrades in Europe, Latin America or Asia, just as comrades in these regions have the right to critically examine and comment upon events in China. The work of the CWI in Kazakhstan, for example, has been severely criticised by Li Xing, a Chinese Trotskyist in an internet article. We are producing a reply to comrade Li’s points, which we believe are mistaken, but he has every right to state his opinions. His critical points will be answered, but no one should argue that comrade Li should ’keep out of Kazakhstan’ and confine himself merely to offering solidarity and support – important as that can be.
Given the complexities of the problems that face the working class today, it is vital to get first-hand reports and analysis of workers’ struggles in Brazil, Nigeria or France, for example, to counter the completely misleading impression given by the global media, including much of the ’left’ or ’independent’ media.
The CWI does not consider itself to be ’the’ new workers’ international. This is why we adopted the name Committee for a Workers’ International – indicating a provisional or preparatory character, while of course this does not mean we leave the question of organisation to tomorrow. But the forces for a new Marxist international of a mass or semi-mass character will, in our opinion, come not just from the existing sections of the CWI, but also from a wealth of different socialist formations, especially new fighting layers of workers and youth that will be radicalised by the mighty struggles ahead.
However, in the here and now, it must be said that the CWI is unique within the revolutionary left in that we still clearly stand for the building of a Marxist international. The majority of so-called Trotskyist groups worldwide, including the USFI (the so called ’Fourth International’), have in practise abandoned this idea, in favour of becoming a left ’post box’ whereby different groups retain a nominal link to each other, without ever really discussing, agreeing or defending a common standpoint and political programme. Rather than different sections learning from each others’ experience of struggle through open and serious debate, each national grouping is left to make all the same mistakes.
Again, an international is first and foremost a correct Marxist programme. Even without any organisational structures, a mistaken and opportunist international tendency can transmit its ideas to other countries with extremely harmful effects.
Adaptation to Maoism?
An example of this is the current discussion among Chinese Marxists and Trotskyists about how to relate to Maoism, which we believe raises possibilities but also dangers, and where international experience can also prove to be invaluable. It is not hard to understand why a layer of youth, without a fully rounded-out understanding of Mao’s ideas and historical role, look towards these ideas as a possible way to fight back against the current regime. It is also true the CCP has been ’de-Maoised’ and does not use Mao’s slogans, speeches etc., regarding all talk of ’mass struggle’ as a threat to its position. The regime keeps Mao only as a nationalist icon – to whip up support for the ”Great Chinese Nation”.
But this does not mean that Trotskyists and genuine Marxists should now use Maoist slogans or ideas, which are the ideas of a Stalinist bureaucracy that rested mainly on the support of the peasantry and middle layers. Unfortunately the USFI and its main theoretician, the late Ernest Mandel, has a record of making such mistakes – opportunistically adapting to the latest political ’fashion’: Mao in the 1960s-70s, and Tito in Yugoslavia (they supported Tito as if he was an ’unconscious’ Trotskyist, when in fact he represented a national Yugoslav variant of Stalinism). In 1968 the USFI carried Ho Chi Minh portraits on demos against the Vietnam war. Our (CWI) slogans were ”USA out of Vietnam” and ”Support the struggle of the Vietnamese people against imperialism”, but we did not opportunistically adapt ourselves to the ruling Stalinist regime in Hanoi. The USFI did the same in Ireland, supporting the nationalist IRA, and more recently in Brazil – serving as ministers in Lula’s neo-liberal government. This should be a warning to the left in China against such an approach, which has nothing to do with the real tradition of Lenin and Trotsky.
Any adaptation to the muddled and contradictory ideology of Maoism will only create .... Maoism! In Italy and other countries in the late 1960s, the USFI produced pamphlets containing speeches of Mao, radical phrases from the Cultural Revolution on the ’uninterrupted revolution’ and other themes. They did this without the slightest criticism, creating the impression that Mao’s ideas were consistent with revolutionary Marxism and Trotskyism. Instead of attracting workers and youth to Trotskyism, of course, this ’tactic’ provided a theoretical justification for a layer of workers to embrace Maoism!
The CWI agrees there is a strong case for united front type work between genuine left groups, including those layers with illusions in Mao: common campaigns around agreed questions such as strikes, solidarity with workers’ struggles, defence of arrested activists, etc. But as Lenin always said about the united front: ”strike together, march separately” – there must be no mixing of political banners! After all, that is the mistake the CCP and Stalin made in 1924-27 – they used the slogans and name of GMD, of Sun Yatsen, and the broad masses believed the CCP and GMD were the same thing, with catastrophic results.
While we can work together in some campaigns with Maoists, and can expose how far the current regime has shifted from Mao’s position (which did defend public property and planning, but with very bad, bureaucratic methods), we must also constantly educate about the real role of Maoism, which because of its bureaucratic and national limitations, prepared the way for the shift back towards capitalism.
There are big opportunities in China for a reawakening of the ideas of genuine socialism. But political mistakes of this type can produce a shipwreck for the, as yet, small left forces.
Genuine dialogue
There is perhaps a fear among some sections of the Trotskyist left in China that the established international groups represent ’warring elephants’ that should be kept outside. We understand this sentiment, and can say that it is partially justified based on the actions of other so-called Trotskyist groups who – to put it mildly – have not always acted in a principled fashion. As for the CWI, we are keen for a dialogue with genuine fighting layers of youth and workers in China. We are already enriching our own experience through this exchange of ideas. But we would urge the socialist youth in China to pay serious attention to the different positions of the groups claiming a Trotskyist tradition.
There are now dozens of articles in Chinese about the debates and struggles of Marxists in many countries – in Africa, the Middle East, Europe – on our website, chinaworker.info. Familiarise yourselves not just with the programme and perspectives of the CWI, but other groups too, and subject them to strict comparison. Even more important than written programmes, however, is to look at how the different shades of international Trotskyism actually apply themselves in practise – to workers’ struggles, to questions of theory, tactics and methods of work. This is the case in relation to the national question in Scotland, Ireland or Israel-Palestine, for example, which contain vital lessons for China, not just in relation to Taiwan. Unfortunately, huge mistakes have been committed in this field by groups claiming a Marxist or Trotskyist pedigree. Or the problems entailed in orientating to new workers’ parties and left-wing formations, a process in which the CWI has played a crucial role in Brazil, Britain, Germany and Nigeria. We believe that the work of the CWI’s sections around the world passes the test of any such comparison.
The coming political and economic typhoon in China will not just be of importance for Chinese workers, but for the working class around the world. The problems of the coming Chinese revolution therefore must be approached through international eyes as well as Chinese eyes, something that equally applies to the processes in America, Africa and Europe. With such an approach – of real socialist internationalism – we are confident huge advances can be made in China in coming years by the supporters of genuine Marxism.
Post comment
You must be logged in to post comments
