THE EVENTS of April-June 1989 in China will go down in history as a milestone in the struggle of the masses against the domination of the bureaucratic caste. A huge movement of students, workers, intellectuals and other sectors of the working population swept Beijing and other big cities, virtually paralyzing the country.
THIS movement was the product both of the decades long crisis of the bureaucratic regime and of the economic and social measures embarked on at the end of the 1970s. It was characterized from the start by democratic and egalitarian demands that struck at the very roots of the bureaucratic regime.
From the outset it created new instruments that, in the best revolutionary tradition, met the movement's need for organization and assured the emergence of young leaders and the exercise of control over these leaders by the masses. From the first days, the working class took part in the mobilizations and began to establish nuclei of unions, independent of the old, ossified structures. Along with students, workers played an active role in the most significant and moving episode of the revolutionary days — the fraternization between the masses and young soldiers that prevented the application of martial law for ten days.
"Market socialism" and bloody repression
In this crisis, the bureaucracy has revealed more than ever its intrinsic weakness: the narrowness of its social base; its isolation from those masses that it falsely claims to represent; its inability, as soon as the masses go into action, to get its mechanisms of domination and manipulation to function; its own divisions over how to deal with an ever worsening crisis and the challenge to its own power.
It was for such reasons that, after some weeks of hesitation and prevarication, the bureaucratic leaders decided that they had no choice but to unleash repression on a large scale, throwing overboard any concern for their "liberal" or "reformer" image. They have thus demonstrated that "market socialism" is no guarantee of democracy.
The only way that they could crush such a massive movement was by using the army, putting in the front line those sectors over which they had the tightest control.
It was the army that crushed the movement in Beijing, and it is the army, along with the police, the secret services, and all sorts of provocateurs and informers, that is carrying out the massive arrests that are now taking place. The Chinese army, which was born out of the flames of a popular and anti-imperialist war, has now perpetrated a massacre of those very popular masses who — despite all the contradictions — identified with it for decades. These events, therefore, mark the culminating point of the historic degeneration of the army.
In order to justify their crimes, the sinister figures — in the first place that old super-bureaucrat Deng Xiaoping — who have been appearing on the Chinese television have resorted to the old Stalinist refrain. It was, they say, necessary to defend the "socialist" state against counter-revolutionaries who wanted to restore capitalism. It is impossible to imagine a more blatant lie! Aside from the occasional formulation or symbol, the basic demands of the movement were for elementary democratic rights and against the oppression by the bureaucratic caste.
A party that has no internal democracy
The movement demanded an end to privileges and corruption and to the growing social inequalities. People nostalgic for capitalism do not struggle for these kinds of objectives nor adopt such forms of mass self-organization to obtain their ends! Nor do they raise their voices together to sing the International!
It is the bureaucrats of the ruling caste who are responsible for the Chinese tragedy. Forty years after the revolution, no democratic institutions have been established. The fate of the country depends on decisions by the leaders of a party that has no internal democracy whatsoever. It is these decisions that have led the Chinese economy from one crisis to another. The crisis, furthermore, far from easing, is getting worse. It is the bureaucrats who explained that the solution lay in introducing a market economy, who have made concession after unprecedented concession to the multinationals of the capitalist countries and who have encouraged the development of a national private sector, in industry and commerce as well as in agriculture.
A revolutionary leadership is essential
They are the ones who have dealt hard blows to the standard of living of the majority of workers and peasants and provoked the appearance for the first time since 1949 of the blight of unemployment. They are the ones who have conducted and are conducting a policy of compromise with US imperialism at the expense of revolutionary struggles, especially in Asia, and who have sung the praises of the West European bourgeoisies, including its most reactionary representatives.
The Fourth International, which has always vigorously denounced every crime committed by the bureaucratic caste, stands unreservedly on the side of the students, the workers, the peasants and intellectuals of China. It is on the side of all those who have given such a striking example of revolutionary initiative and combativity.
These militants, drawing the lessons of their dramatic experience, will make their contribution to the development of the revolutionary leadership whose necessity has been demonstrated yet again by the events in China.
Such a leadership is essential if the question of the replacement of the bureaucratic regime by revolutionary democratic institutions, designed to guarantee the self-organization of the masses and democratic planning of the economy, is to be posed concretely in the crises that Chinese society will inevitably experience in the future.
For a united mobilization worldwide against the repression!
Support the struggles of the students, workers, intellectuals and peasants of China!
Down with the bureaucratic dictatorship!
June 10, 1989