1. The death of Mao Tse-tung has not only placed a question mark over the existing precarious balances in the upper reaches of the Chinese party and state, but more generally has broken an essential element of the bureaucracy's mechanism of leadership. Because of the prestige he enjoyed in the eyes of the masses, the party cadres, and various sections of the bureaucracy, for decades Mao had represented a factor of cohesion as the authority of highest appeal, especially during times of the most acute crises. It was precisely this role played by its top leader that had enabled the Chinese bureaucracy to avail itself of methods different from those used in the USSR during the time of Stalin and thus to maintain more effective links with the masses, whose mobilization was stimulated at important moments, although within channels and with objectives laid down from above. The sudden liquidation of the group of four, which had emerged from the events of the cultural revolution and the subsequent phases as the most solid nucleus of the Maoist faction, has provided an incontestable demonstration of the change that has occurred.
Nevertheless, the recent events must be viewed within the framework of a much broader crisis of the bureaucratic leadership. In reality, the nearly twenty years of postrevolutionary Chinese history—beginning with the 1958 turn toward forced march industrialization, the introduction of the people's communes, and the subsequent retreat, beginning with the outbreak of the conflict with the USSR, which took shape just after the twentieth congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union in 1956—have been marked by a high degree of instability. The crisis has assumed more acute and striking forms during the past ten years, affecting the entire leading nucleus and the whole broader leadership structure which, in spite of the recurrent emergence of differences and a few sensational liquidations, had remained relatively intact for a long period.
The cultural revolution, which shook the historic leadership at all levels, was a dramatic attempt on the part of Mao and the group around him to resolve the crisis by means of reform measures within the context of the bureaucratic regime. through promoting new cadres (especially among the middle and peripheral layers) and through newly strengthened links with the masses. But as soon as the most advanced sectors of the mass movement, first among the red guards and then among the working class, embarked on a dynamic that went beyond the objectives laid down by the Mao faction, this faction openly set itself against the movement from below and pressed for restabilization, resorting to the intervention of the army, which had previously remained unaffected by the crisis. On the other hand, the solution for which the Mao faction opted did not at all involve any revision of the essential orientation of economic policy or any qualitative change in the political structures.
The ninth congress of the Chinese Communist party (1969), convoked in order to ratify the results of the cultural revolution, recompose a leading nucleus, and resolve the problem of succession by explicitly designating Lin Piao, was in tended to bring the crisis to a close. Instead, new conflicts and breaks soon occurred. The fall of Lin Piao and the other leading personalities of the cultural revolution, the return and then the second fall of Teng Hsiao-ping, and the new campaigns of denunciation and rectification rapidly led to the explosion of the crisis of last September, very soon after the two major leaders disappeared from the scene. There is no sign that the equilibrium that has now been established will be any more solid or long lasting. On the contrary, the situation seems more than ever laden with tension and conflict. The new leadership around Hua Kuo-feng probably represents a compromise solution among various groups and orientations; it has yet to define itself clearly, does not possess figures who enjoy great popularity among the masses, and may be reshuffled or transformed, even in the short run.
2. The economic, social, and political problems that lay at the origin of the crisis of 1965-69 also lie at the root of the most recent crisis.
China has achieved undeniable economic growth during the past several years, especially in some sectors. But from a more long-term standpoint, the rate of industrial development still remains largely insufficient and depends, at least in part, on the possibility of reaching accords with imperialist countries, not only on questions of foreign trade, but also on questions of acquisition of machinery and even entire plants (with the related problems for the balance of payments, the tendency to fall into debt, and so on). The situation is not substantially different as regards agriculture, which in general continues to register only very modest rates of growth (with the consequent difficulty in compensating for the constant increase in the population). Socially, a series of factors continue to weigh on the situation: insufficient improvement of the living standards of the urban masses after the historic conquests of the revolution and the immediately subsequent years; the contradictory pressures to which the peasants are subject, on the one hand deriving benefits from collective organization in the framework of the communes, on the other hand retaining their interest in cultivating their own small plots as the main priority; the tensions with broad sectors of the so-called educated youth who, unable to fit into the urban economy, have been compelled to move to the countryside, where they also find difficulties in integrating themselves and adapting to the situation; the discontent and attitudes tending toward criticism among the intelligentsia and sectors of the students, who suffer from the rigid control of artistic endeavor, degraded to the level of pedagogic moralizing or vulgar propaganda.
Politically, there has been no resolution of the strident contrast between the proclamation of the sovereign role of the masses and the partial possibility of decision-making at peripheral levels on secondary points on the one hand and the monopoly on political choices and management of national affairs held by the narrow bureaucratic leadership on the other hand.
3. Neither the Sino-Soviet conflict, especially given the content it assumed in the first phase, nor a phenomenon like the so-called cultural revolution can be explained without noting the specificity both of the revolutionary process in China and of its bureaucratic degeneration. During various phases revolutionary Marxists have emphasized these specific features and the national and international factors in which they originate: victory of the revolution as the conclusion of a prolonged civil war, with a considerable section of the territory under the control of the Red Army before the overthrow of the ruling class; relative autonomy of the leadership of the Chinese CP even during the periods of most rigid control by the Kremlin over the international workers movement; the structural weakness of the working class in the 1930s; bureaucratization which developed parallel to the construction of the new regime from its very origins; continuity of the leading group, unbroken by massive bloody purges; concern, except during certain periods, for development relatively balanced among the various sectors of the economy, and concern, following reflection about the consequences of the Stalinist collectivization of the early 1930's, for maintaining solid relations with the peasants; understanding for a certain period that in view of the threatening attitude of discrimination adopted by imperialism, it was useful for China to favor revolutionary struggles in other countries; understanding of the danger represented by the tendency to ward Social Democratization of the large Communist parties, with the trend toward their integration into the national and international capitalist system, etc.
Nevertheless, all this could not eliminate the common basic features of the Chinese bureaucratized transitional society and the other bureaucratized societies that have arisen up to now. These features, the origin of which lie in the simultaneous existence of the collectivist relations introduced after the overthrow of the capitalist system and the limits of this collectivization (both because of the insufficiency of material conditions and because of the devastating consequences of bureaucratic degeneration) are essentially as follows: nationalization of the industrial economy, the banks, trade, etc.; state monopoly of foreign trade; agricultural relations intermediary between a collectivist mode of production and individual agriculture; economic planning managed by the summits of the party and state; absence of political structures of proletarian democracy; complete hegemony of the party in all institutions and mass organizations (the trade unions in the first place); ideological and cultural monolithism. On the basis of these features a whole series of tensions emerged in the past and have tended to operate permanently: a) tensions related to the development of industry, with the counterposition between material and moral incentives, between centralization and decentralization, between the need for central planning which takes account of sociopolitical factors in addition to strictly economic ones and the need for "objective" control with a partial survival of market laws; b) tensions in agriculture arising from the difficulties in combining the need for collectivization with the necessity of maintaining positive political relations with the peasantry; c) political tensions arising from the contrast between the need to obtain the active participation of the masses and the bureaucracy's need not to endanger its hegemony; d) tensions arising from the contradiction between the need for science to enjoy a maximum of creative independence and the will of the bureaucracy to rigidly control it in order to prevent breaches from being opened in its system of rule.
In various forms and at various times such tensions have characterized the USSR before and after the death of Stalin as well as the other deformed workers states (quite transparently, for example, in the cases of Yugoslavia and Poland) and China itself, provoking oscillations among differing if not diametrically opposite solutions as well as sharp turns and striking breaks. Obviously, all these tensions may be traced back to the basic contradictions of bureaucratized transitional society, and particularly to the contradiction arising from the attempt to construct a collectivized society without allowing the masses to participate actively and without allowing the working class to actually exercise its own hegemony, and to the no less rending contradiction entailed in trying to impose a national limit (socialism in one country) on socialist construction, which actually requires supranational economic unity as a necessary condition.
Mao and his faction repeatedly sought a way out by insisting on the specificity of the Chinese road, counterposing this road ever more sharply to the "revisionist" road, attempting to maintain contact with the masses, and lending priority, especially during the cultural revolution, to political-ideological factors rather than socioeconomic ones. At the same time, partly because of the necessity engendered by Moscow's abrogation of economic accords, they hailed self-sufficiency while nevertheless finding themselves constrained to seek accords and compromises with the imperialists, that is, to resort to the road taken by the USSR and the other countries of the USSR's sphere of influence. In the final analysis this attempt failed, as is confirmed by the heritage of difficulties and contradictions Mao left his own heirs, which provoked a new explosion of serious crisis at the very moment of his death.
4. The present crisis of the leadership comes in a context not of demoralization or apathy among the masses, but on the contrary in one of activization and politicization. A whole series of events entitle us to make this judgment. Limiting ourselves to the past three years, we may note the antibureaucratic ferment and strikes in Canton, the demonstration of retiring soldiers in the same city, and the Hangchow strikes, not to mention the demonstration in Peking last April 5. On the other hand, during the crisis of the second half of the 1960s, vanguard cadres and militants were forged in the heat of the mobilizations of the student youth and combative layers of workers. These cadres and militants underwent significant experiences and reconsidered not only the character of the leadership as a whole, but also the character of the Maoist faction itself. During the new phase, they will be able to express the aspirations of broad layers of the masses better than in the past, to develop a clearer comprehension of what is at stake, and to take initiatives within the perspective of an antibureaucratic struggle.
The post-Mao leadership, whether the present one or another that may emerge from some possible change, is surely not unaware of this situation and of its own weakness. For a certain period, this leadership will be able to hesitate and even emphasize the continuity of conceptions and orientations. But it is likely that the new leadership will gradually have to opt for the road of rectifications and turns. Some official documents have already revealed a desire to draw attention to the need to stimulate production. An effort in this direction would have little possibility of finding support among the masses unless it was accompanied by the prospect of an improvement in living conditions; in other words unless there was a concurrent shift of emphasis from moral incentives to material ones. To the extent that they succeed in making real concessions on this point the new leaders could be able to acquire a certain credibility and temporarily broaden their maneuvering room. A similar operation may be worked out in regard to the peasants, making concessions to their aspiration to concern themselves more with their individual plots. At the same time, the new leadership could propose a certain loosening of bureaucratic control over scientific and artistic activity through a return to a more flexible version of the "let a hundred flowers bloom" policy. These shifts in orientation could be presented in government propaganda as a logical development of the struggle against the four, who have already been denounced as having been guilty of insensitivity toward the needs of the masses and as advocates of the most rigid bureaucratic control. This may be combined with counterposing the figure of Chou En-lai, whose prestige was confirmed during the Peking demonstration last April, to the group of four.
In other words, the most conservative tendencies, that is, those most strongly linked to the state and party apparatus, have been and will be strengthened by the disappearance of Mao. But in the given context they will not be able to directly rely on a policy of tightening bureaucratic control and repression. They will have to take account of the state of mind and maturation of broad layers of the masses and will have to seek to overcome or attenuate the crisis through a series of readjustments, of rectification of conceptions, even rather profound ones, in the direction indicated.
The new leaders will not be able to avoid drawing a balance sheet on international policy. After some initial successes, the policy of conflict with the USSR has run up a heavily negative balance. The Chinese leadership has seen its attractive power in the eyes of the Communist parties and other sectors of the international workers movement reduced to a minimum, and after Pakistan, the Sudan, Chile, Angola, etc., its prestige in the eyes of the liberation movements of the colonial and neocolonial countries has plummeted. The conception that the USSR is the main enemy has also had negative consequences on Chinese policy and the orientations of the most orthodox Maoist organizations and has reduced Peking's maneuvering room even on the level of state policy. In the end, rectification will probably take place, although its scope and pace cannot be predicted, given the need of a leadership that is anything but consolidated to avoid providing pretexts for a counterattack by the personalities who have been defeated in the recent tests. A first step could be to accentuate the difference already introduced in the past between policy of the state and policy of the party.
5. The Fourth International must be in position to positively exploit the crisis of the Chinese bureaucratic regime and Maoist ideology. Its task is to contribute to the definition of a perspective of antibureaucratic struggle in the People's Republic of China and to the recomposition of the forces that are now acting and will actin the future within the perspective of a political revolution against bureaucratic oppression and for the establishment of a proletarian democracy in which the hegemony of the working class in socialist construction is asserted in reality and no^ merely in hypocritical constitutional formulas.
Revolutionary Marxists are committed to the struggle against any form of bureaucratic constraint and repression. They fight for conducting political conflicts in the most democratic forms; for the right of all to express themselves and fight for their conceptions and orientations; for all to know the real terms of the questions under discussion at the various levels of the state and the party; for an end to the antidemocratic practice of first settling things in narrow leadership bodies and then granting the right to speak only to the faction or group that has prevailed, which can then proceed to deform or falsify the positions of the defeated factions or groups, denouncing them as agents of the enemy and intriguers and plotters who deserve the severest punishment. Revolutionary Marxists fight for the abolition of all repressive measures against those who criticize or form oppositions. While not at all sharing the positions of the group of four or of any of the other factions, revolutionary Marxists demand their right to express their point of view without suffering repressive sanctions of any sort. They demand that their present state be made known, as well as the state of the leaders and militants purged after previous battles. They demand the broadest information on the fate of those who have been victimized by repression in the past, particularly the Trotskyist militants who were arrested or deported at the beginning of the 1950s and have not been heard from since. All those who have been deprived of their freedom because of their political opinions must be immediately released; all measures of discrimination against them must be halted.
Revolutionary Marxists insist that in a party based on democratic centralism there must be freedom of expression and freedom to organize tendencies, as was the constant practice of the Bolshevik party before the Stalinist degeneration and of the Communist International at the time of Lenin and Trotsky. They insist that the trade union organizations must have an equally democratic internal structure and must function independently of the party and the state. They confirm that a proletarian democracy must be based on a freely elected soviet structure in which representatives can be recalled at any moment and enjoy no material privileges.
Revolutionary Marxists fight for condemnation of the aberrant theory that the USSR is the main enemy and for the end of a political practice that has led to shameful collusion with American imperialism and with the most reactionary sectors of the international bourgeoisie. They reaffirm the demand for the unity against imperialism of all the workers states and all the organizations of the workers movement throughout the world.