Towards a Marxist-Leninist Re-Evaluation of Mao Tsetung, 1957–1976

The Aftermath of Stalin’s death and Culmination of the Sino-Soviet Split

The relationship between the Soviet Union and China at the beginning, from the founding of the PRC in 1949 up to the Korean War’s end and Stalin’s Death in 1953 was prosperous at most. In the aftermath of the liberation of Manchuria by Soviet forces and the renewal of the “Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance.” Stalin obliged to give concessions and loans the young nation desperately needed, such as a loan of $300 million, military aid, the transfer of the Manchu and Xinjiang railways, Port Arthur and Dalian back into Chinese control, whereas Mao in return recognized the Mongolian People’s Republic as a sovereign nation.

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, the revisionist leadership of Nikita Khrushchev promised more minor concessions in order to win Mao’s favor and attempt to reconcile in believing Mao was a lesser partner to Stalin. Mao was given;

“fifteen industrial-development projects, and exchanges of technicians (c. 10,000) and political advisors” (c. 1,500) (Luthi, Lorenz (2008). “Historical Background, 1921–1955”. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 39–40.)

Here begins our re-evaluation, an ardent Marxist Leninist who follows the Line of Enver Hoxha would initially take Mao’s anti-stalin position by 1956–57 as nothing but a hit-job and took a right-deviationist line as a result, there is an element of truth to this claim, however this is a distorted truth and requires a nuanced stand as a result. For example, would we call Enver Hoxha an opportunist for joining the Warsaw Pact in 1955, when it was under the leadership of a Soviet Union restoring capitalism? and would we call him an opportunist for being pictured with Khrushchev and his lackeys on multiple occasions, even taking a $160 million loan to kickstart the third Five Year Plan?

However, it can easily be argued that Enver Hoxha never took an equivalent line to Mao Tsetung, in terms of slandering Stalin and reconciling with Yugoslavia and the reactionary Tito-clique. (1) At this point, we start to see deviationism within Mao and the creation of an increasingly bureaucratic and emerging bourgeoisie, which held much sway and latitude over Mao’s decisions.

The Bureaucracy begins to Emerge

In order to understand how the revisionist clique of Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai emerged, we must once again go back in time to the Kao Kang Affair. This was an attempt by Kao Kang, the head of central planning in Northeast China (particularly Manchuria) and leader of the first Five Year Plan, led a grouping of Marxist-Leninists to liquidate Zhou and other revisionists to steer China on a correct path of socialist development. This grouping opposed the antithesis of class collaboration that Mao and the emerging bureaucracy had proposed;

“State capitalism in various forms is to be put into practice gradually so as to attain socialist ownership by the whole people”. (Mao Tse-tung: ‘On the Draft Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (June 1954), in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 5; Peking; 1977; p. 143).

“To achieve socialism through state capitalism.. is a peaceful means of transition”. (Liu Shao-chi (1956): ‘Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China’ p. 24).

“Under conditions obtained in this country, the exploiting class will be completely eliminated by peaceful means.” (Kuan Ta-tung: ‘The Socialist Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce in China’; Peking; 1960; p. 111).

In contrast, the Marxist-Leninist line follows these immediate agendas on the bourgeoisie and class collaboration;

“The bourgeoisie are both liberal and counter-revolutionary. Hence their ridiculously impotent and wretched reformism. They dream of reforms and fear to settle accounts in real earnest with the feudal-minded landowners who not only refuse to grant reforms, but even withdraw those already granted…They preach reforms and fear the popular movement. They strive to oust the landowners, but fear to lose their support and fear to lose their own privileges.”- (V.I Lenin: ‘Controversial Issues Collected Works, Volume 19, (1913) in: AN OPEN PARTY AND THE MARXISTS IV. ‘THE CLASS SIGNIFICANCE OF LIQUIDATIONISM’, from “On Bureaucracy” pp. 147–169.)

“The class of proletarians…does not and cannot share power with other classes. The party of the proletariat, the Party of the Communists…does not and cannot share leadership with other parties”. (Josef V. Stalin: ‘Concerning Questions of Leninism’ (January 1926), in: ‘Works’, Volume 8; Moscow; 1954; p. 27, 28).

“Can such a radical transformation of the old bourgeois order be achieved without a violent revolution, without the dictatorship of the proletariat? Obviously not. To think that such a revolution can be carried out peacefully, within the framework of bourgeois democracy, which is adapted to the rule of the bourgeoisie, means that one has either gone out of one’s mind and lost normal human understanding, or has grossly and openly repudiated the proletarian revolution.”.(Josef V. Stalin: ‘Concerning Questions of Leninism’ (January 1926), in: ‘Works’, Volume 8; Moscow; 1954; p. 25).

However, Mao was inept, at the 4th Plenum of the CC in February 1954, Kao was quoted as saying;

“Have you ever read ‘On the Opposition’ by Stalin?…Didn’t Bukharin also advocate a peaceful entry into socialism?” (Frederick C. Teiwes (1990): ‘Politics at Mao’s Court: Kao Kang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s’ p. 61).

When these concerns were brought to the attention of higher cadres, the inner-revisionist clique wasted no time in making sure Kao Kang was eliminated;

“When Gao expressed his thoughts to Li Xiannian, Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping, they were all concerned that his attempts were a clear threat to Party unity. Chen and Li informed Zhou Enlai first about Gao’s activities and then spoke to Mao. Deng spoke to Mao directly about Gao’s approach.”- Frederick C. Teiwes, Politics At Mao’s Court: in ‘Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s’ (New York, 1990), pp.109–11.)

And thus, any further attempt from Kao Kang to advance his position and oust the revisionists from the highest echelons of state power was futile. Kao Kang would later die in 1956 enabling the bureaucrats to continue their influence on Mao almost unabated. Does this, however, mean Mao was the figurehead of revisionism in China? This is likely the case until the bureaucracy was genuinely challenged during the epoch of the cultural revolution (which we will come to later). In the book “Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War”, which includes documentary sources, including cables and letters between Mao Tsetung and Stalin, the authors come to an interesting conclusion on the makeup of Mao and his politburo;

“Mao’s situation and requirements for information differed from Stalin’s in several aspects. Most importantly, though Mao was undoubtedly the recognised leader of his Party, in the first postwar years he had not acquired a total monopoly over foreign policy-making and felt no need to do so. He esteemed and sought the opinions of politburo members Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and to a lesser extent, Gao Gang on important matters concerning relations with Moscow. Mao had played no role in the comintern which made him both suspicious and partially dependent on its representatives(emphasis added)…Moreover, we should not dismiss the influence of “democratic figures” in Mao’s governing circles. They were often sharply critical of his moves towards Moscow(emphasis added)…All of these factors affected Mao’s handling of practical foreign policy affairs. Generally, he formulated the broad strategic guidelines and gave Zhou Enlai, his foreign minister, wide latitude in carrying them out.” (Sergei Goncharov, John Lewis, Litai Xue: ‘Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Studies in International Security and Arms Control)’ California, (1995), p. 19)

What can we gain from this analysis? It insinuates that Mao was easily swayed by his contemporaries in both the domestic and international sphere. As we will discuss in the coming chapter, this resulted in Mao’s controversial, deviationist and, borderline counter-revolutionary foreign policy goals, where his anti-stalin slander was exposed, however, this would soon zigzag in the dates that led up to the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’’ (abbreviated as GPCR later in this article) and the Sino-Soviet split, where China attempted to show itself as a truly communist project on the world stage.

Consequences of the Bureaucracy, Mao and the Yugoslav Delegation in Beijing

In this extract from the Yugoslav delegation, we see the consequences of the revisionist’s influence on Mao Tsetung where Stalin is discredited under the guise of an independent Chinese policy on the proletarian nature of the state. Mao states;

“Within our party, the mistakes of the two Wang Ming lines are well known; but our people do not know that these mistakes originated in Stalin. Only our Central Committee was aware that Stalin blocked our revolution and regarded me as a half-hearted Tito.” (Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan [Selected Diplomatic Papers of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: The Central Press of Historical Documents, 1993), 251–262. Translated and Annotated by Zhang Shu Guang and Chen Jian)

There is a lot in this statement that can be balanced as truth and slander, firstly on the “Wang Ming Line”. Wang Ming was a member of “28 Bolsheviks” grouping that had studied Marxism-Leninism at Sun Yat Sen university in Moscow and was very orthodox in his criticisms against Mao who he described as a nationalist deviation. Wang then left the CCP headquarters in Yan’an to fight on the Yangtze front with Kuomintang and United Front forces, where he demonstrated himself as an ineffective and inept force against Japanese forces. To which Wang Ming was dismissed back to Yan’an in the aftermath of the lost battles of Wuhan and Xuchou and the abolition of his division. Understandably for Mao, Wang would naturally be seen as a liability to the CCP due to his performances within both the party and battlefield and was given a menial job as a member of the legal committee of the party. When he visited to Soviet Union for medical treatment, he would write the book “Mao’s Betrayal” during the years leading up to and including the Cultural Revolution, although this work has varied worthwhile criticisms of Mao himself, it is worthwhile to note however, that these criticisms were made from the comfort of Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. To which he saw nothing to criticise about the revisionist nature of the Soviet Union itself, which is concerning, thus presenting a rightful criticism from Mao.

However, Mao then shifts the blame of Wang Ming’s line over to Stalin in the same sentence, this is a historical fallacy. Earlier on during the revolutionary war, Stalin had repeatedly urged the CCP, through 1926 and early 1927 to break the bloc with the right Kuomintang and move to a militant revolutionary struggle. The CCP did not heed this advice;

“The victory of the revolution cannot be achieved unless this bloc is smashed, but in order to smash this bloc, fire must be concentrated on the compromising national bourgeoisie, its treachery exposed, the toiling masses freed from its influence, and the conditions necessary of the hegemony of the proletariat systematically prepared. In other words, in colonies like India it is a matter of preparing the proletariat for the role of leader of the liberation movement, step by step dislodging the bourgeoisie and its mouthpieces from this honorable post. The task is to create an anti-imperialist bloc and to ensure the hegemony of the proletariat in this bloc. This bloc can assume, although it need not always necessarily do so, the form of a single Workers and Peasants Party, formally bound by a single platform. In such centuries the independence of the Communist Party must be, the chief slogan of the advanced communist elements, of the hegemony of the proletariat can be prepared and brought about by the Communist party. But the communist party can and must enter into an open bloc with the revolutionary part of the bourgeoisie in order, after isolating the compromising national bourgeoisie, to lead the vast masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the struggle against imperialism.” (J.V.Stalin “Stalin’s Letters to Molotov”; Edited Lars T.Lih; Oleg V. Naumov; and Oleg V. Khlevniuk; Yale 1995; p.318–9.)

“The fear that the aggravation of the class struggle in the countryside will weaken the united anti-imperialist front is baseless. Not to approach the agrarian question boldly by supporting all the economic demands of the peasant masses is positively dangerous for the revolution. To refuse to assign to the agrarian revolution a prominent place in the national-liberation movement for the fear of offending the dubious and disloyal cooperation of a section of the capitalist class is wrong. This is not the revolutionary policy of the proletariat. The present situation is characterized by its transitional nature when the proletariat must choose between allying itself with a considerable section of the bourgeoisie or further consolidating its own alliance with the peasantry. If the proletariat does not put forward a radical programme it will fail to attract the peasantry into the revolutionary struggle and will lose its hegemony in the national-liberation movement. Under direct or indirect imperialist influence, the bourgeoisie will regain the leadership of the movement once more.” (Ibid; p.318.)

As a result, to shift the Wang Ming lines onto Stalin is very dishonest for a reader on the Yugoslav delegation as it simply is not true, what Mao is likely referring to however, was the situation of the current demarcation of China in 1945, where Stalin urged the CCP to keep its alliance with the Kuomintang and the recognized Republic of China at the time in order to avoid China devolving into chaos and for the CCP to keep its current gains.

“…He acknowledged that the Nationalists were the sole legitimate government of China, pledged to provide help only to it, and stated that the Communist divisions should be merged into the Nationalist armies. Contemporary evidence, however, suggests that neither the Nationalists nor the Americans believed that Stalin would keep his word.” (Sergei Goncharov, John Lewis, Litai Xue: ‘Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Studies in International Security and Arms Control)’ California, (1995), p. 6)

However debatable and controversial Stalin’s line may be at that time, the Internationale Comintern was all but abolished in 1943, which drove Wang Ming into political irrelevance regardless of Stalin’s line on China’s demarcations. Therefore Mao is rather dishonest in this regard.

Finally, the notion that Stalin and the Soviet Union had “blocked” the Chinese Revolution is nothing short of dishonesty. As anyone with even a sense of attempting historical accuracy would know that Stalin and the Red Army had ordered the liberation of Manchuria in 11 days from Japanese and Kuomintang imperial control in 1945, to which the entire region was ceded to local communists and led to the foundations of the DPRK beyond the Yalu river, to where the entire peninsula was liberated. As well as this, the following contradicts Mao’s overwhelmingly positive admiration of Stalin in 1939, which further insinuates dishonesty;

“However, there are friends of another kind, friends who have real sympathy with us and regard us as brothers. Who are they? They are the Soviet people and Stalin…All the imperialists opposed us during our First Great Revolution; the Soviet Union alone helped us. No government of any imperialist country has given us real help since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan; the Soviet Union alone has helped China with its aviation and supplies. Is not the point clear enough? Only the land of socialism, its leaders and people, and socialist thinkers, statesmen and workers can give real help to the cause of liberation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, and without their help our cause cannot win final victory. Stalin is the true friend of the cause of liberation of the Chinese people. No attempt to sow dissension, no lies and calumnies, can affect the Chinese people’s whole-hearted love and respect for Stalin and our genuine friendship for the Soviet Union.” (Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: Vol. II “Stalin, Friend of the Chinese People, December 20, 1939)

On the contrary, we would be remiss to just blame these deviations on bureaucracy alone, Mao has a proven track record of metaphysical and deviationist ideas in the field of dialectics, which is amalgamated to the state’s primary conditions of class collaboration. As Marx, Lenin, and Stalin have already enumerated, the Bourgeoisie must not, and cannot be reconciled in the class struggle nor in the creation of a proletarian dictatorship, as any attempt to do so is grossly repudiating the proletarian revolution. Therefore any attempt to do so while proclaiming “socialism” is absurd. In the PRC, this is the opposite of what happened, as Mao thought these contradictions can be reconciled;

“The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods.”- (Mao Zedong: ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People’)

And as a result, they cannot be included;

“…in the category of contradictions between the enemy and ourselves.” (Mao Zedong: On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People, in: R. MacFarquhar et al., The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward, Council on East Asian Studies/Harvard University, Cambridge 1989, p. 135.)

In contrast, the Marxist and materialist dialectic is the complete opposite;

“Materialist dialectic which is ‘in essence critical and revolutionary’ (Marx) understands the resolution of contradictions by another. This resolution, in which ‘opposites become identified’ (Lenin), expresses not the ‘reconciliation’ but the resolution of their contradiction in a new contradiction, a new type of internal conflict.” (M. Shirokov: Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, Victor Gollancz Ltd., London 1941, p. 186)

As a result, any type of socialism that was attempted post 1956 was severely hampered. It is very worthwhile to mention that this reconciliation of other classes was not only done merely because of the opportunists surrounding Mao at this time, Mao personally references that vital laws of dialectics are either outdated or don’t outright exist. Especially in the Negation of Negation. Mao states;

“There is no such thing as the negation of the negation. Affirmation, negation, affirmation, negation… in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation…Engels talked about the three categories, but as for me I don’t believe in two of those categories. (The unity of opposites is the most basic law, the transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites quality and quantity, and the negation of the negation does not exist at all.)” — (Mao Zedong: Talk on Questions of Philosophy, in: Selected Works, vol. 9, Foreign Languages Press, Paris 2021, p. 126)

We should most definitely recognize these metaphysical ideas affected the reasons why the national bourgeoisie was preserved (which is further revealed later in this article). And was not the entire fault of a minority that surrounded him, the correct Marxist interpretation of the Negation of Negation is this;

“So what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general, and for this very reason extremely far-reaching and important, law of development of nature, history, and thought;… In fact, dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.” — (F. Engels: Anti-Dühring, Foreign Languages Press, Paris 2021, p. 152.)

“The capitalist mode of appropriation, which springs from the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private pro­perty. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of its proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own nega­tion. This is the negation of the negation. It does not re-establish private property, but it does indeed establish individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely co-operation and the possession in common of the land and the means of production produced by labour itself.” — (K. Marx: Capital, vol. 1, Penguin Books, London 1976, p. 929)

So! Mao in his attempts to create a socialist state at the same time completely disregards an important and far reaching development in dialectics, as a result, Mao sings in unison with the deviationist and metaphysicist world outlook of Eugen Dühring;

“According to this, the expropriation of the expropriators is, as it were, the automatic result of historical reality in its materially external relations… It would be difficult to convince a sensible man of the necessity of the common ownership of land and capital, on the basis of credence in Hegelian dodges such as the negation of the negation…The nebulous hybrids of Marx’s conceptions will not however appear strange to anyone who realises what nonsense can be concocted with Hegelian dialectics as the scientific basis, or rather what nonsense must necessarily spring from it.” (Quoted in: F. Engels: Anti-Dühring, Foreign Languages Press, (Paris 2021), p. 140)

In terms of Mao and the Zhou clique’s reactionary foreign policy, which has already been thoroughly discussed in alternative articles which are well worth reading over in their own right, this delegation and its ahistorical analysis of Stalin is merely the tip of the iceberg. However this is not the subject of the entire article, as I believe it would be unfair to allow its legacy to completely smear Mao’s genuine attempts to purge the party despite its population of revisionists, opportunists, and bureaucrats that surrounded and directed him on matters concerning international politics, which would be the same clique that limited and later usurped him as a result.

Mao’s attempts to denounce revisionism, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

It is at this stage, around the 22nd Congress of the CPSU that Mao Tsetung, and the Albanian Party of Labour now banded together and denounced Khrushchev as modern revisionists and opportunists;

“…Marxism-Leninism and all brands of revisionism and are now the focus of struggle between Marxist-Leninists the world over and the revisionist Khrushchov clique. At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, the revisionist Khrushchov clique developed their revisionism into a complete system not only by rounding off their anti-revolutionary theories of “peaceful coexistence” and “peaceful transition” but also by declaring that the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary in the Soviet Union and advancing the absurd theories of the “state of the whole people” and the “party of the entire people’’. The Programme put forward by the revisionist Khrushchov clique at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU is a programme of phoney communism, a revisionist programme against proletarian revolution and for the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletarian party.” (Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IX) ‘On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World’, Mao Tse-Tung, 14th July 1964)

In what can only be described as a sudden twist of fate, Mao begins to criticise the Khrushchev clique for declaring a peaceful transition to socialism and declaring a state of the entire people, in contrast to what Mao himself proclaimed what line China should follow just 7 years ago. But we should ask ourselves, what changed Mao’s opinion? Because Mao, just like Enver Hoxha saw that “peaceful coexistence”, which tranquilized class struggle on a continental scale, making Khrushchev an apologist for world reaction, and the overthrow of the People’s Democracies and the overthrow of Marxism-Leninism in nations like Bulgaria under Dimitrov and Czechoslovakia under Gottwald, was a wake-up-call for the Marxist-Leninists of the world. The struggle against social-imperialism had now begun, with Mao and the PRC at the forefront. This is especially clear in 1966, when infighting within the CPSU saw Khrushchev ousted from power and his disciple Brezhnev taking the mantle of leadership. Mao states;

“…Heroic people’s Albania has become a great beacon of socialism in Europe. The revisionist leading clique of the Soviet Union, the Tito clique of Yugoslavia, and all the other cliques of renegades and scabs of various shades are mere dust heaps in comparison, while you, a lofty mountain, tower to the skies. They are slaves and accomplices of imperialism, before which they prostrate themselves, while you are dauntless proletarian revolutionaries who dare to fight imperialism and its running dogs, fight the world’s tyrannical enemies. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and all those counties where the modern revisionist clique is in power have either changed colour or are in the process of doing so. Capitalism has been or is being restored there, and the dictatorship of the proletariat has been or is being transformed into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Against this adverse current of counter-revolutionary revisionism, heroic socialist Albania has stood firm.” (Mao Tsetung ‘The Soviet Leading Clique is a Mere Dust Heap’, October 25, 1966)

During April of the same year, Mao-Tsetung had initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which aimed to remove the revisionist bourgeoisie and capitalist roaders. A party-wide purge of both the politburo and the People’s Liberation Army. It is here where I wish to criticize the analysis presented by authors like W.B Bland and Enver Hoxha himself. Firstly, Hoxha’s summary of the GPCR is as follows;

“The course of events showed that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power. Of course, this Cultural Revolution was a hoax. It liquidated both the Communist Party of China, and the mass organisations, and plunged China into new chaos. This revolution was led by non-Marxist elements, who have been liquidated through a military putsch staged by other anti-Marxist and fascist elements” (Imperialism and the Revolution, Enver Hoxha (Tirana, 1978) p. 107)

This is an observation I would disagree with, Mao knew that it was precisely through waging a two-line struggle that the party had to advance, Mao argued that the two-line struggle is a constant feature of the communist party and, indeed, that without the struggle against erroneous ideas the life of the party would come to an end. But he analysed that the struggle between Marxism and opportunism goes through different phases and would necessarily call forth different means to resolve it. And, the GPCR, like any other proclaimed revolution, would be met by fierce and stubborn resistance, not only from the targets of the revolution who represented a percentage of Chinese society and of the Party but also from among sections of the masses themselves. Here I believe we should remember Lenin’s observation of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and what a “putsch” entails;

“The term “putsch,” in its scientific sense, may be employed only when the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of conspirators or stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the masses. The centuries-old Irish national movement, having passed through various stages and combinations of class interest, manifested itself, in particular, in a mass Irish National Congress in America…which called for Irish independence; it also manifested itself in street fighting conducted by section of the urban petty bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations, suppression of newspapers, etc. Whoever calls such a rebellion a “putsch” is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon. To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.–to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, “We are for socialism”, and another, somewhere else and says, “We are for imperialism”, and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a “putsch”. Whoever expects a “pure” social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.” (Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up,” Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow, 1964), pp. 355–56)

However, it is in fact undeniable that the youth played a significant role during the GPCR, but as Lenin above stated, social revolution goes through multiple, at times complex phases and that “pure” revolution is a fantasy, which has been the case both for the Russian Revolution as well as the Chinese Revolution and the GPCR. It is with this understanding that Mao enabled the youth and their theoretic initiative in order to awaken and mobilise the working class, Mao had even stated this during the Albanian delegation to China in 1967;

“The “May 4th” Movement was launched by the intellectuals, thereby fully demonstrating their foresight and awareness. However, we must depend on the masters of the time, the workers, peasants and soldiers, to serve as the main force in carrying through thoroughgoing revolutions on the order of a real Northern Expedition or Long March. Although it was the intellectuals and the broad masses of young students who launched the criticism of the bourgeois reactionary line, it was, nonetheless, incumbent upon the masters of the time, the broad masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, to serve as the main force in carrying the revolution through to completion…Intellectuals have always been quick in altering their perception of things, but, because of the limitations of their instincts, and because they lack a thorough revolutionary character, they are sometimes opportunistic.”- (Speech to the Albanian Military Delegation,” Joint Publications Research Service, Miscellany of Mao Tsetung Thought (1949–1968) (Arlington, Va., 1974), p. 458)

Hoxha, to his detriment, leaves out the role of the working class in the Cultural Revolution. But who was behind the revolutionary events in Shanghai, the first example of the revolutionary masses dissolving the reactionary Party committees? It was mainly the organisations of the revolutionary workers and students in Shanghai, led by Chang Chun-chiao, Yao Wen-yuan and Wang Hung-wen, all of whom are now recognized as members of the gang of four, that accomplished the uprising. And this method was repeated in multiple other cities in China where the national bourgeoisie had amassed their own influence.

On the other hand, bureaucracy was, by now, so ingrained in Mao’s politburo that the gains by the proletariat that were made, were now being undone and usurped by his closest advisors who still had Mao’s favor, in particular Lin Biao (who represented the pro-soviet section of the national bourgeoisie) and the Zhou Enlai clique of opportunists; (2)

“In contrast to his continuous use of Zhou with apparent deep-seated disdain, Mao had long regarded Deng as a favourite, and by the latter 1950s hinted at a future successor role for his colleague, presumably as next in line after Liu Shaoqi. Even during his disenchantment with Deng during the Cultural Revolution as he removed his favourite from power, the Chairman still had a future role in mind for his wayward colleague, as shown in his repeated (at least ten times) declarations distinguishing Deng from Liu. With Lin Biao’s demise, and Deng having performed his own self-abasement in appealing to Mao for the opportunity to work, Deng’s return was only a matter of time.” (The End of the Maoist Era, Chinese politics during the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972–1976, Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun, (New York, 2007) p. 20)

“In July 1967 Mao Zedong had a private talk with me alone in Wuhan. I reported to the Chairman, “You’ve said many times that Liu and Deng must be distinguished, but now the slogan is ‘Down with Liu, Deng, [and] Tao [Zhu]’.” Mao Zedong immediately answered: “Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping are different. Xiaoping can administratively (wen) match Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, and militarily (wu) he can match Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai. If Lin Biao’s health doesn’t hold out, then it will be Deng Xiaoping who comes forward.” (Wang Li, a younger radical from the Central Cultural Revolution Group, recalling in 1991 a conversation with Mao at the height of the Cultural Revolution, ibid p. 25)

“The Cultural Revolution Group’s proposal that Teng Hsiao-ping (pinyin of Deng Xiaoping)…be expelled from the Party altogether, along with Liu Shaochi, was rejected”. (Harry Harding (1991): ‘The Chinese State in Crisis’ ‘The Cambridge History of China’ Volume 15, p. 195)

It is here where I wish to touch on the Lin Biao affair, in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in the early 1970’s, serious contradictions between the “pro-mao” faction and the “pro-soviet” faction began to emerge. Lin Biao was now poised to launch a coup and seize state power for himself, code-named ‘Project 571’ which;

“Envisaged a military coup based on Air Force and Army support; Soviet pressure on the frontier; the arrest of Chairman Mao; and the murder of the conspirators and other leading opponents in the Party leadership…Marshal Lin had offered to cede large areas of Chinese territory to the Soviet Union in return for its support”. (‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 18; p. 25,635).

Lin Biao was ultimately unsuccessful due to his high standing party platform being diminished by Mao one year before, how was this allowed to happen in the first place? The reader may ask, we may find a similarity to the Lin Biao Affair, as well as Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping’s platform of opportunism, and Mao’s collaboration with these party members, in Stalin’s analysis of the New Opposition’s fall to Trotskyism;

“The “New Opposition’s” passing over to Trotskyism was determined by two main circumstances:

a) the weariness, vacillation, and spirit of pessimism and defeatism, alien to the proletariat, among the adherents of the “New Opposition” in face of the new difficulties of the present period of radical change; furthermore, Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s present vacillation and defeatism arose not by accident, but as a repetition, a recurrence of the vacillation and pessimism which they displayed nine years ago(!), in October 1917, in face of the difficulties of that period of radical change;

b) the complete defeat of the “New Opposition” at the Fourteenth Congress, and the resulting endeavour to unite at all costs with the Trotskyists, in order, by combining the two groups — the Trotskyists and the “New Opposition” — to compensate for the weakness of these groups and their isolation from the proletarian masses, all the more because the ideological views of Trotskyism fully harmonised with the present spirit of pessimism of the “New Opposition.” To this, too, must be attributed the fact that the opposition bloc has become a rallying centre for all the miscellaneous bankrupt trends inside and outside the C.P.S.U.(B.) which have been condemned by the Party and the Comintern — from the “Democratic Centralists” and the “Workers’ Opposition” in the C.P.S.U.(B.) to the “ultra-Left” opportunists in Germany and the Liquidators of the Souvarine variety in France. Hence the unscrupulousness in choice of means and unprincipled-ness in policy which form the basis of the bloc of the Trotskyists and the “New Opposition,” and without which they could not have brought together these diverse anti-Party trends.” (J.V Stalin, The Opposition Bloc in the C.P.S.U.(B.) Theses for the Fifteenth All-Union Conference of the C.P.S.U.(B.). In Works, Vol. 8, January-November, 1926, pp. 226–227.)

Conclusion

On balance, the politburo that surrounded Mao seems to be a coalition of classes, contemporary authors on Mao’s revisionism such as W.B Bland is correct to call party members such as Liu Shouqi and Zhou Enlai members of the national bourgeoisie, however, I believe it is also an unfair observation to call Mao a “comprador”. Mao instead represented a Bonapartist faction of the CCP which moderated the representatives of various classes which contained scheming opportunists such as Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping. A large part of the Bonapartist dynamic in post-revolutionary France was the role of the Grande Armée which helped preserve state power and initiated instructions from a central leadership, in France’s case, the coup against the Council of Five Hundred, in China’s case, the Student assisted Red Guards seizing assets of the national bourgeoisie as well as Lin Biao’s attempted coup. If we are to view the PRC in this fashion, the GPCR was the attempt to destroy this coalition. A trouble with the analysis of Bill Bland and Enver Hoxha’s analysis is that they seem to view it as merely a “coup”. In retrospect, the Cultural Revolution grouping that seized power was a coup, but it initiated what was essentially a civil war between various class forces.

Furthermore, the GPCR in certain aspects did take a genuine proletarian form. Most obviously the example of Shanghai, although we could argue that people such as Chang Chun-chiao, Yao Wen-yuan and Wang Hung-wen were representative of the proletariat. However, the movement we saw in Shanghai was severely limited in that it was a rough sketch, which was usurped by the bureaucrats and pro-soviet faction headed by Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping. And finally in 1976, the national bourgeoisie headed by Deng Xiaoping managed to seize power from Mao, and framed the Gang of Four as conspirators, thereby finishing the restoration of capitalism in China. As we see with the example of Shanghai, it would be unfair to view Mao as a “comprador”, as the bourgeoisie in that city were in fact liquidated. This however peaks interest as during 1966–67 the bonapartists headed by Mao, the proletariat, and the Pro-Soviet camp banded to purge the revisionist grouping headed by Liu Shouqi, which inevitably entered into antagonistic contradiction in 1968. To conclude, the Shanghai Commune Model, if adapted into every aspect, including the peasantry and against the opportunist groupings, could have culminated in the largest proletarian mass movement since the October Revolution. But the Bonapartists headed by Mao were inept, as the inevitable result of the New Democratic state with peaceful reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, was going to be a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie regardless.

(1) Mao Tsetung’s u-turn on foreign policy, regarding Yugoslavian and the Krushchevite revisionism is discussed later on in this article, this footnote is referring to context which prepares the reader for a more balanced argument.

(2) there is a footnote from the quotation provided by Frederick Teiwes that I think is worthwhile mentioning here;

“In his memoirs, Khrushchev reports that Deng was the only CCP leader about whom Mao was consistently positive, while during the Great Leap Mao referred to himself as the “main marshal” and Deng as “vice marshal.” See Strobe Talbott, trans. and ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974), pp. 252–53; and Teiwes with Sun, China’s Road to Disaster, p. 149. According to several PRC sources, in the late 1950s Mao explicitly told Khrushchev that Deng would be the “second generation leading core” after Liu. Guo Dehong and Tang Yingwu, eds., Zhonggong dangshi gaoceng renwu pingzhuan, shang juan [Critical Biographies of Senior Figures in CCP Party History, Volume 1] (Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe, 2000), p. 45; and Gao Yi, Lishi xuanze le Deng Xiaoping [History Chose Deng Xiaoping] (Wuhan: Wuhan chubanshe, 1999), pp. 184–85. See also MacFarquhar, Origins 3, pp. 640–41n14.”

-The use of the pinyin version of Mao’s name “Mao-Tsetung” is purposed to make the article and its vocabulary more familiar with international audiences.