By Harsh Thakor
Ranking amongst the
most creative writers is Charles Bettlheimm who justified Mao’s transcending of
regions unexplored in production relations or revolutionary democracy of the
working class. Practically his was arguably the best illustration of how Mao had
taken Leninism to a higher stage within the factories. Quoting Charles
Bettleheim in ‘Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organisation in China “The
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution thus represents an ideological and
political struggle the effects of which bear both on the economic base and on
the superstructure, destroying the old social relationships and giving rise to
new ones. The very fluctuations of the struggle which unfolded during the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution evidence the degree to which its outcome
depended both on the mass movement and on its correct orientation by a
revolutionary leadership.
“At each stage of the
Cultural Revolution, the adherents of Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary line had to
accomplish an enormous labour of discussion. At the outset, for instance, it
took several months for the workers to rebel against the prevailing methods of
management and the division of labour and against the diehard supporters of the
existing relations in the factories. It was only gradually, through the give
and take of prolonged discussion, that they began to realize that the old
relations were obstructing progress along the road to socialism. When I visited
China in 1967 the members of various revolutionary factory committees told me that
during its initial stages they believed the Cultural Revolution to be concerned
only with literature and the arts, and that they had distrusted the critics of
the situation in their own factories. Eventually they came to understand that
the prevailing conditions in the factories had to be changed before further
advances along the road to socialism could be made. “ Later, when confronted
with the task of elaborating new relations, the workers were often at odds
about how to interpret the slogans of the revolutionary line. Months and even
years of discussion and struggle were required to achieve the unity
indispensable to the success of the Cultural Revolution.[3] Through discussions
and struggles involving millions of workers and vast sections of the population,
a new road was opened up in the struggle for socialism. There is no precedent
for such an attempt to transform social relations. It constitutes a decisive
and permanent achievement, as decisive and permanent as any scientific or
social experiment which discovers new processes or new objective laws.”
Part1 discusses the
essential features of the changes that have occurred both in the management of
industrial enterprises and in the division of labor within these enterprises.
It is largely an account of my conversations with the members of the
revolutionary committee at the General Knitwear Factory in Peking.
Part 2 is a relatively brief outline of the guiding political principles of Chinese planning. Although these principles were operative before the Cultural Revolution, their application was then frequently frustrated by the "centralizing" tendency abetted by Liu Shao-chi's line.
Part
3discusses the significance, principles, and perspectives of the main thrust of
the Chinese Revolution -- the gradual elimination of the distinction between
performance tasks and administrative tasks, between manual labour and
intellectual labor, and between town and countryside. This is the road outlined
by Marx and Engels.
Part 4 discusses the
political principles that were implemented during the Cultural Revolution and
advances some theoretical conclusions regarding the revolutionizing of the
social relations of production. JOSEPH BALL WRITING ON GREAT LEAP FORWARD- ‘In the
Great Famine Frank Dikötter alleges that the Great Leap Forward starved the
Chinese masses. This was a complete distortion of history with the book
literally twisting facts.’ Joseph Ball most effectively countered the lies of
Dikottter, hitting back at the very root. Quoting writer Joseph Ball on the Great
Leap Forward
“To read many modern
commentators on Mao’s China 4, you would get the impression that Mao’s
agricultural and industrial policies led to absolute economic disaster. Even
more restrained commentators, such as the economist Peter Nolan 5 claim that
living standards did not rise in China, during the post-revolutionary period,
until Deng Xiaoping took power. Of course, increases in living standards are
not the sole reason for increases in life expectancy. However, it is absurd to
claim that life expectancy could have increased so much during the Mao era with
no increase in living standards.’ ‘For example, it is claimed by many who have
studied figures released by Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death that per capita
grain production did not increase at all during the Mao period. But how is it
possible to reconcile such statistics with the figures on life expectancy that
the same authors quote? Besides which these figures are contradicted by other
figures. Guo Shutian, a Former Director of Policy and Law in the Chinese
Ministry of Agriculture, in the post-Mao era, gives a very different view of
China’s overall agricultural performance during the period before Deng’s
“reforms.”
It is true that he
writes that agricultural production decreased in five years between 1949-1978
due to “natural calamities and mistakes in the work.” However he states that
during 1949-1978 the per hectare yield of land sown with food crops increased
by 145.9% and total food production rose 169.6%. During this period China’s
population grew by 77.7%. On these figures, China’s per capita food production
grew from 204 kilograms to 328 kilograms in the period in question.’ ‘Even
according to figures released by the Deng Xiaoping regime, industrial
production increased by 11.2% per year from 1952-1976 (by 10% a year during the
alleged catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution). In 1952 industry was 36% of
gross value of national output in China. By 1975 industry was 72% and
agriculture was 28%. It is quite obvious that Mao’s supposedly disastrous
socialist economic policies paved the way for the rapid (but inegalitarian and
unbalanced) economic development of the post-Mao era.’ ‘There is a good
argument to suggest that the policies of the Great Leap Forward actually did
much to sustain China’s overall economic growth, after an initial period of
disruption. At the end of the 1950s, it was clear that China was going to have
to develop using its own resources and without being able to use a large amount
of machinery and technological know-how imported from the Soviet Union.’
‘Although problems
and reversals occurred in the Great Leap Forward, it is fair to say that it had
a very important role in the ongoing development of agriculture. Measures such
as water conservancy and irrigation allowed for sustained increases in
agricultural production, once the period of bad harvests was over. They also
helped the countryside to deal with the problem of drought. Flood defenses were
also developed. Terracing helped gradually increase the amount of cultivated area.’
Great Achievements of Mao Mao’s conception of 2 line struggle thwarted the bid
of Liu Shao Chi and others to deny the existence of 2 line struggle within the
party ,to deny the difference between the proletarian line of upholding Marxism
,and the various bourgeois lines which had penetrated the history of the CPC. Mao,
like Lenin, recaptured Marxism from the hands of the bourgeois intellectuals
and returned it to the working class. George Thomson stated that Moa cleared
the road from deception, confirming the basic principals of scientific
socialism and enabling the new generation of revolutionaries to gain access
towards them. Like other great leaders Mao, defended Socialist theory from
revisionists and took nothing for granted from Marxism-Leninism, analysing it
in light of the Chinese Revolution. The Peoples Communes, the Socialist
Education Movement, the Cultural Revolution were all undertaken by the people’s
initiative, tapping the creativity from above and not imposed from above by the
bureaucracy. George Thomson gave specific reference to “On Contradiction ‘ and
“On the Correct handling of Contradictions among the People.” He summarises
Mao’s insistence on distinguishing between antagonistic and non –antagonistic
contradictions-unlike Stalin. Mao also highlighted the malleability between
antagonistic and non –antagonistic contradictions. One of the most enriching
aspects of Mao thought was its stress on the human element, and revolutionary
transformation of the individual, to give birth to the new man. Socialist
morality was restored to the movement, unlike Revisionist Russia. Quoting Bob
Avakian in Mao Tse Tung’s Immortal Contributions
“Mao consistently
argued that the Universal principles of Marxism Leninism must be applied and
that the basic lessons of the October Revolution in Russia must be
upheld-especially the need for the seizure of power through the armed struggle
of the masses and for the leadership of the revolutionary party of the
proletariat, but these had to find different application in China’s concrete
conditions than they had in Russia. It was on this basis that, as part of
leading the struggle for the seizure of nationwide political power in China,
Moa made some of his most important contributions which enriched and developed
Marxism-Leninism especially in the formulation of strategy of New Democratic
Revolution, in military line and thought, and in laying the basic groundwork of
his development of Marxist philosophy. If it was true that Mao could not have
led the Chinese Revolution, in its first stage to victory, to the founding of
the people’s republic, without challenging and breaking with powerful
convention sin the International Communist Movement, this was still more the
case with regard to leading the combined advance in the Socialist stage, after
the Peoples Republic was founded. This was so in the fields of political
economy and culture and it was most definitely the case with the greatest of
Mao’s immortal contributions-the basic line and theory of continuing Revolution
under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Most of all, it is inconceivable
that there should have been a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, an
unprecedented event, in the history of the Communist Movement. If Mao had been
unwilling to “go against the tide.” not only to fly into the face of the bitter
opposition within the Chinese Communist party itself, most especially from
powerful leaders of the party, but also to depart from, even violate certain
norms which some have come to regard as sacred, in such areas as functioning of
the party and its relation to the masses? Of course this is inconceivable. that
without such ‘violations’ or developments-of Marxism Leninism, the Chinese
Revolution would have scaled the heights it did ,not only making new break
throughs on the path to Communism but inspiring, teaching and drawing
revolutionaries all over the world toward the same goal.
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