For the revolutionary forces to rebound after their recent retreats, we must defeat the forces that seek to keep Marxism trapped in an ideological prison. That want Marxism-Leninism to not be an actual science, able to respond towards fluid history, but a stagnant monolith that only reenacts the past.
This is the attitude towards Marxism that the KKE has put forth in relation to China, as well as to numerous other things. China is the example that I’m focusing on here because of its relevance to the present moment, where Cuba’s government has been forced into enacting free market reforms. In the discourse over these reforms, the KKE plays an underhanded role; because the KKE has been rallying behind Cuba’s revolution, yet it's made clear that it views reforms like these ones as being the destruction of socialism. In reality, they are a defensive measure in the face of genocide. A measure that may succeed or fail to achieve the growth it’s intended to bring, but that cannot be confused with proof of socialism’s demise.
As we see Cuba use markets to navigate its dire circumstances, we must keep in mind that the pivotal question is whether these markets can successfully build up the country’s productive forces. If they can’t then this will create a bigger setback, but the Cuban workers state is still fundamentally in control of the economy. The underlying structure has not changed, there is still a proletariat dictatorship that subordinates business. Therefore the question is whether this state has been set on a path to collapse of integrity, like the Soviet state was. Which is a danger that should never be dismissed, but the dogma of the KKE tells us to automatically assume this has happened.
This comes through in its analysis on China from 2011, which concluded the Deng reforms represent corruption based on how these reforms are distinct from Lenin’s New Economic Policy:
The reality in China is entirely different from that of the USSR during the NEP. In China: a. There is no monopoly in foreign trade. Thousands of foreign companies that operate in China cover the largest proportion of the Chinese exports, which of course are dependent on their plans, based on their profitability and not on a centrally planned economy. b. 440 private foreign banks operate in China, and they have acquired at least 10% of the shares of the Chinese state banks and since 2005 there has developed a domestic private banking sector.[61] c. An important percentage of industry is private or privatized (in the form of stock companies), while the private sector is estimated to produce 70% of the GDP. d. Chinese legislation, especially in the economic and commercial sector, is fully harmonized, thanks to the assistance of the WTO, to the norms of the global capitalist economy.
The analysis then predicts that “the dominance of capitalist relations in China, which is a fact today, slowly or quickly, will lead to a bigger compliance of the political system, the dominant ideology and all the elements of the superstructure whose capitalist character will be reflected in its symbols. The intensification of class contradictions will ripen and so will the need for the revolutionary labour movement to be represented by its own party against capitalist power.”
Take note of the solution the KKE presents: create a new party that can overtake the CPC, which is a project that would inevitably require overthrowing the government itself given the nature of China’s system. The answer to these real or alleged problems is not internal struggle within the CPC, which Mao has already provided a model for doing; it’s an insurgency that the imperialists could easily infiltrate and exploit. This reflects the seriousness of the central argument itself.
To support the “China sold out to the west” narrative, the KKE points to the ways that China’s economy differs from the Soviet economy from a century earlier. That these conditions greatly differ is a given. Yet how superficially different they are is not the pivotal issue; all of the areas that the KKE addresses here are tangential to whether the workers are in power within China, because capitalism does not equal markets or money. It also doesn’t necessarily equal the presence of individual capitalists, not if these capitalists exist under proletarian rule.
Since capitalism’s transition to its monopoly stage, capitalism has at its core been about financial control; when a country has broken free from banking rule, and its state has the structure of workers democracy, it is socialist. This is why we should treat these critiques about China’s incorporation of banks and private business as superficial: it ignores the question of which class is in control.
As for the KKE’s predictions of escalating class conflict in China, the PRC has indeed experienced new crises since 2011, but the outcome has not been a weakening of the CPC’s position among the working masses. The CPC has responded to the needs of the masses by enacting unprecedented crackdowns on the billionaires, who’ve gotten far poorer while the workers have continued to be lifted up by China’s economic ascension.
Socialism has been strengthened by everything that’s happened since the Deng reforms, rather than being destroyed by them like the KKE expected. This is what comes from rejecting stagnant dogmatism, like Deng said China needed to do. He talked of how the CPC follows
a fairly important principle, generalized by Comrade Mao Zedong, that is, in order to formulate correct strategies and tactics and achieve victory in revolution, a party must integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the revolutionary practice and actual conditions in its own country.
Our experience consists of formulating and carrying out correct strategies and tactics in the light of our country’s specific conditions and, in particular, on the basis of profound understanding of the conditions of classes and the class struggle. Shortly after its founding, our Party clearly recognized that Chinese society was a semi-colonial and semi-feudal one. With this nature of our society in mind, our Party determined the stages, targets and motive forces of the revolution, and decided that opposing imperialism and feudalism was our revolutionary task in the first stage. But, can we say that by presenting this task we have truly understood the meaning of the struggle against imperialism and feudalism? No! We cannot say this, because it is no easy job to formulate and implement correct strategies and tactics for such a struggle. Over a fairly long period of time in this revolutionary stage our Party was unable to settle or straighten out such questions as how to fight against imperialism and feudalism, what forces we should rely on, what forces we should unite with, and what forces we should attack.
When George Soros has constructed his insipid narrative about China—where Deng Xiaoping is portrayed as the pro-“capitalist” who opposed Leninism and whose policies must be restored—he’s drawing from an entirely superficial view of history. A view that looks purely at the surface-level characteristics of something, rather than at the actual objective role it plays within the class struggle.
This is the logic that the dogmatic opportunists within Marxism are operating on, and it assists the designs of actors like Soros. The next victories that our cause wins will come from those who’ve broken free from the box which they’ve placed Marxism into, and applied Mao’s practice of truly investigating the historical conditions.
The root error of western Marxism was to believe that dialectical materialism means a series of rote-copied doctrines, confined to the framework of a predetermined and unchanging ideology. This is a way of thinking that fails to see the inherent motion within history, and therefore breeds complacency. In organizational terms, such thinking looks like neglect towards the education of the organization’s ranks, letting the members conclude that they understand the meaning of something even though they’ve cut their investigations short. You need to be constantly investigating your reality, or your revolutionary project will be set on the path to its demise.
This is why the Soviet communist party couldn’t survive, while the CPC has only grown more vital. After Stalin’s death, the opportunistic Khrushchevite faction took advantage of the weaknesses in educational rigor, and undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat as part of its “de-Stalinization” campaign. This is a reality that the KKE obscures, because the KKE fundamentally shares the dogmatic opportunist views which Khrushchev propagated. In the KKE’s view, the path to socialism’s destruction didn’t begin with “de-Stalinization,” but with Gorbachev forty years later. The events that led to the Gorbachev period are ignored, in favor of an ahistorical fetishization of the USSR’s system prior to when it fell apart.
This is exactly the kind of anti-dialectical thinking that Mao sought to combat, and Deng successfully rescued China from such errors. Now Cuba is utilizing the same type of intelligence. It’s applying Deng’s synthesis between the strident anti-liberalism of Mao, and the historical flexibility that China’s reforms embodied. To lead the world’s workers to a new revolutionary wave, we must reject the KKE and embrace Deng.
The globe’s working masses are already being inspired by the achievements that Deng brought to China, and they’re looking for the route towards replicating these successes. By looking at this history and theory, we’ve learned what the route is, and it’s not as simple as the dogmatic opportunists would say. The meaning of the task before us can only become clear through applying the principle Mao followed, where you have to look at history in a fluid manner in order to defeat your class enemies.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment