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p An analysis of the views and practical policy on classes, the class struggle and class relations pursued by the Chinese leaders leaves no doubt that they have distorted the key principles formulated by Marxism-Leninism on the establishment of new social relations in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.

p The socialist countries’ experience, summed up in the documents of the International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1957, 1960 and 1969, fully confirmed the proposition of the Marxist-Leninist theory that the processes of socialist revolution and socialist construction are based on a number of key laws which apply to all countries taking the socialist path. These laws are manifest everywhere in the presence of a great diversity of historicallyrooted national specifics and traditions which must be taken into account.

p Among these general laws are: leadership of the working people by the working class, with the Marxist-Leninist party as its core, in carrying through the proletarian revolution in one form or another and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship in one form or another; the alliance of the working class with the bulk of the peasantry and other sections of the working people; the elimination of capitalist property and the establishment of socialist property in the principal means of production; the gradual socialist 166 transformation of agriculture, the balanced development of the national economy aimed at building socialism and communism and raising the working people’s living standards; the implementation of socialist changes in the sphere of ideology and culture and the creation of a numerous intelligentsia loyal to the working class, the working people and the socialist cause; the elimination of national oppression and the establishment of equality and fraternal friendship among nations; the defence of socialist gains against the encroachments of external and internal enemies; and proletarian internationalism, which means solidarity between the working class of a given country and the working class of other countries.

p While favouring strict account in socialist construction of the concrete historical conditions and national features, the participants in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969 stressed the need to follow the general laws. These are the general laws of the socialist revolution and socialist construction bearing on the development of classes and class relations:

p 1. Exercise by the working class of leadership of the mass of working people in the proletarian revolution, and, once the proletarian dictatorship is established, of its leading role in society. Reliance of the working class on its alliance with the bulk of the peasantry and other sections of the working people.

p 2. Elimination of exploiting classes resulting from the abolition of private property in the means of production.

p 3. Socialist re-education of the peasantry and the intelligentsia; creation of a numerous intelligentsia loyal to the cause of socialism.

p These laws governing the development of the social structure and class relations necessarily apply to any country taking the socialist path.

p These are of especial importance for China, considering the level of her socio-economic development at the end of 1949, when under the leadership of the Communist Party the Chinese people took power into their own hands. In that period, China was an agrarian small-peasant, economically, socially and culturally backward country. Her transition to socialism did not take place on the level of developed capitalism but of a feudal-capitalist social system in which the 167 exploiters were landowners and a bureaucratic and national bourgeoisie.

p In 1949, the bulk of China’s population (over 80 per cent) consisted of peasants. The principal antagonistic contradictions of Chinese society were those between the landowners and the peasants. The absentee landowners rented out their lands to the landless and land-hungry peasants, collecting an exorbitant feudal rent which came to over one-half the peasant’s crop. In the Chinese countryside, the development of capitalist relations was shackled by feudalism, which is why the rich peasants (kulaks) were very weak economically and as a rule used pre-capitalist forms of exploiting peasants: they rented most of their land to farmhands and middle peasants and engaged in usury. The landowners and the kulaks, who made up less than 10 per cent of the rural population, owned 70-80 per cent of the farmland. The other 90 per cent of the rural population—farmhands and poor and middle peasants—had only 20-30 per cent of the land.  [167•1 

p This was the reason for broad action by the Chinese peasants against the existing social regime. The existence of a peasant anti-feudal movement was a positive fact for the revolutionary struggle of the working class, because the bulk of the peasantry is an ally of the proletariat. However, the petty-bourgeois character of the peasants constituting a majority of the population produced various difficulties for the working-class party in the transition period.

p These difficulties were compounded by the fact that when the people’s revolution in China won out, industrial workers constituted roughly 0.5 per cent of the total population.  [167•2  Industrial and office workers numbered only 8 million, or 1.5 per cent of the population (together with their families the figure came to about 5-6 per cent). This naturally created the highly acute problem of the numerical growth of the working class, of its vanguard role in town and country and in all the branches of the national economy. Another equally acute problem was the remoulding of the social character 168 of the peasantry, so as to make it take the socialist path of development, and the formation of a numerous socialist intelligentsia.

p In the first 7-8 years of the transition period (1949-1957) the Communist Party of China took account of the experience of the development of classes and class relations in the other socialist countries and relied on the general laws of socialist construction, taking these as a basis for its policy in developing the social structure. In that period, the formulation of the CPC’s political line was greatly influenced by men among the Party leadership who had a clear understanding of the tremendous difficulties the Chinese people had to overcome to ensure a transition to socialism, and fully and finally to establish the socialist mode of production. China’s economic and cultural backwardness, the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the 7th CPC Central Committee (March 1949) said in its decisions, require a more or less prolonged period for creating the economic and cultural prerequisites necessary for ensuring the full victory of socialism.

p Following the establishment of the CPR, the government’s first act was to expropriate the property of the imperialists and the compradore bourgeoisie. The state nationalised almost all the railways, the bulk of the enterprises in the heavy industry, and also some of the key branches of the light industry, and this helped to create a socialist sector in the country.

p Following the expropriation of the property of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie from 1950 to 1952, an agrarian reform was carried out in China designed to eliminate feudal relations of production and the class of landowners, and to hand over, without redemption, the land confiscated from the landowners to the landless and land-hungry peasants. The 47 million hectares of land confiscated from the landowners went to 300 million landless and land-hungry peasants. Feudal property in land gave way to individual peasant property in land. Once the land reform was completed, the following social groups took shape within the Chinese peasantry: the poor peasants, the middle peasants, who consisted of the lower middle peasants (the poor middle peasants), the higher middle peasants (the rich middle peasants), and also the kulaks. In economic status, the poor middle peasants 169 were close to the poor peasants and together with the latter made up 60-70 per cent of the rural population.  [169•1 

p The land reform which eliminated the landed estates helped considerably to enlarge the domestic market, and in these conditions capitalist industry and trade began rapidly to develop.

p The state used the capitalist economy for the purpose of rehabilitating the national economy, which had been ruined by the foreign intervention and the civil war. However, the national bourgeoisie put up stiff resistance to the measures the people’s government took to improve the state of the country’s economy. For one thing, it sought to corrupt and weaken the government apparatus from inside by means of graft. Accordingly, in late 1951 and early 1952, the CPC launched two campaigns: first one against the “three evils" (stealing, waste and bureaucratic practice) and then against the “five evils" (graft, tax evasion, stealing of government funds, careless fulfilment of government orders and stealing of secret economic information in government agencies).  [169•2 

p These campaigns helped to limit and cut short the bourgeoisie’s economic and political subversion against the people’s power and to purge the government and Party apparatus of persons who were making concessions to the bourgeoisie or were its direct agents.

p In 1952, once the rehabilitation of the national economy, ruined by the civil war and the foreign intervention, had in the main been completed, the CPC Central Committee worked out the Party’s general line for the transition period, which set these tasks before the Chinese people: gradually to carry out the country’s socialist industrialisation and socialist change in agriculture, the handicrafts industry and in capitalist industry and trade. These tasks were to be fulfilled in roughly three five-year periods, that is, about 15 years, from 1953 to 1967, by which time China was expected to become a “great socialist state".  [169•3 

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p In connection with the announcement of the Party’s general line for the transition period, the CPC Central Committee approved a set of special theses for its study and propaganda, which said that if socialism was to score a full victory in China in the transition period the following had to be done: the relations of production were to be simultaneously modified with the development of productive forces; a powerful socialist industry had above all to be set up as a basis for transforming the individual peasant farms, that is, non-socialist sectors into a socialist sector; socialist industry had to be converted into the leading and guiding force of the whole national economy.

p In accordance with the CPC’s general line, important socio-economic changes were started in the country from 1953. The whole peasantry (including the kulaks) was involved in agricultural producers’ co-operatives. The individual property of the peasants and the handicraftsmen was transformed into collective property. All private industrial and commercial enterprises were transformed into state-private enterprises. The capitalists were deprived of the means of production and were allowed an interest of 5 per cent per annum on their erstwhile capital and also higher salaries for their work as government employees.

p The 8th Congress of the CPC, held in September 1956, declared that the following socio-class changes had by then taken place in China as a result of the implementation of the Party’s general line.

p 1. The exploitation of man by man, together with its roots, was in the main eliminated; the class contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were resolved in favour of socialism, thereby deciding the issue of “who beats whom" in the struggle between socialism and capitalism.

p 2. Class contradictions ceased to be the principal contradictions of Chinese society, giving way to contradictions “between the advanced socialist system and the backward social productive forces”, thereby centring the Chinese people’s attention on the task of developing material production.  [170•1 

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p However, the social changes carried out in the country did not yet mean the complete establishment of socialist relations of production, which were still highly immature and imperfect, and rested on an extremely backward material and technical basis. The country was just making a start on all-round industrialisation. Chinese society was yet to effect its full and final transition to socialism, a transition that had to be consolidated through the further development of society’s productive forces, and of the whole of the national economy.

p The working class still constituted a clear minority and was concentrated mainly in the cities. The very small percentage of workers who came from working-class families were mainly skilled cadres. The national bourgeoisie still maintained some economic and ideological influence. A sizable section of the handicraftsmen were yet to be drawn into co-operatives. There was an acute shortage of intellectuals, and the new, socialist intelligentsia was virtually just taking shape. These objective difficulties were compounded by a number of subjective mistakes made in the course of socialist change through Mao’s fault.

p Let us emphasise that in 1955 and 1956, the Maoists and their opponents were already seriously divided over the methods and pace of socialist construction. Mao and his followers were trying to impose on the country a totally unrealistic pace of socialist change and were pushing the peasants into a stepped up transformation of their individual property, without providing any solid material and technical basis for such a change-over. Mao’s opponents urged that socialist changes should be carried out within the periods set by the Party’s general line, and insisted that any changes in the social character of the peasantry should be tied in with changes in their economic life and their mentality.

p However, Mao managed to saddle the Party with his adventurist line which was expressed chiefly in the hasty completion of agricultural co-operation, without the necessary economic measures: instead of the 15-18 years initially envisaged, the co-operatives were nominally set up within just over 2 years. The balanced development of economic, social and spiritual processes was disrupted and the need for proportional social development discarded. There was 172 discontent among a section of the peasantry with this stepped up pace in agricultural co-operation and the rapid transition from lower-type to higher-type co-operatives, and this naturally did not help to strengthen the social basis of the people’s power.

p In contrast to Mao, the CPG leaders who held correct views on various aspects of socialist construction, believed that the Party should concentrate the people’s efforts on laying a modern material and technical foundation for the new relations of production. The report of the CPC Central Committee to the 8th Congress of the CPC (September 1956) said: “Now, however, the period of storm and stress is past, new relations of production have been set up, and the aim of our struggle is changed into one of safeguarding the successful development of the productive forces of society."  [172•1 

p The decisions of the 8th Congress of the CPC mapped out a real and concrete programme for transforming China into an advanced socialist power. On the social plane, its implementation was to result in a considerable growth of the working class, improvement of its professional training, and its ideological and political levels, thereby reaffirming and consolidating its leading position in Chinese society. In the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, the introduction of science and technology into agriculture was bound to have changed the face of the Chinese countryside, favourably affecting the tradition-bound thinking and mentality of the Chinese peasants, and converting them into real allies of the proletariat in the struggle for China’s social transformation. The development of science and culture, the cultural revolution, was to have helped to create a numerous intelligentsia closely allied with the people.

However, because of the voluntarist line of social development, imposed by Mao on the Party and the country, the changes in the classes and class relations, which naturally occur in the transition period, and which followed from the decisions of the 8th Congress of the CPC, were not carried out.