p One of the theses being vigorously spread in China is that "the class struggle intensifies under socialism" not only between the working people and the remnants of the bourgeoisie, but also within the working class. The journal Hsin Chianske wrote that "certain degenerates and new bourgeois elements may appear within the contingents of the working class, among high officials of state institutions, among factory and office workers.. . . From the standpoint of objective conditions this possibility is the result of the penetration of bourgeois ideology into the ranks of the proletariat, while the ‘birthmarks’ inherited by the working class from the old society are the subjective conditions for the above-mentioned possibility”.  [129•* 

p Do the objective and subjective possibilities for this sort of degeneration exist in China? First, it would not be superfluous to consider what this means. Some sections of the working people may join the ranks of the bourgeoisie if, at the cost of privation and immense effort, they accumulate funds, use them for the purchase of the means of production 130 and capitalise their income. It will be recalled that in the period witnessing the disintegration of feudalism in Western Europe and serfdom in Russia, a section of the peasants acquired capitalist property in this manner and joined the ranks of the bourgeoisie. There were cases of individuals from working-class families becoming capitalists.

p But neither European nor Russian, much less Asian, practice knows of any instance of a more or less considerable number of proletarians becoming capitalists and living by exploiting hired labour. This conclusion has been fully borne out by the sociological studies conducted by Communists and progressive scientists in the socialist and capitalist countries. Even according to statistics compiled by bourgeois sociology, the "social mobility" of the proletariat is confined to the acquisition of a few shares by individual workers, but this does not change their objective position in the system of capitalist relations of production. For these workers the principal source of livelihood remains the sale of their labour, hired labour at the factories remaining the undisputed property of the capitalists, of their monopoly associations or the bourgeois state.

p Much less, therefore, is it possible for workers to become capitalists in a country that has taken the road of socialist development. Under the socialist system the bourgeoisie is liquidated as a class, and as a social concept it is destroyed and disappears. In a transitional society its economic and political positions are fundamentally undermined. Under these conditions it is absurd and unscientific to speak of the bourgeois degeneration of various sections of the working class. The process is sooner the reverse: the bourgeoisie is compelled gradually to dissolve in the working classes.

p However, the concept "bourgeois degeneration" has another (ideological) meaning. It is frequently taken to mean capitalist influence and a definite way of thinking, which penetrates the consciousness of certain sections of the working people without changing their objective class position. Socialist society develops not in a vacuum but in the real, contemporary world with its powerful capitalist states and strong bourgeoisie that has extensive experience of class struggle in its peaceful and non-peaceful forms, and a varied arsenal of means and methods of influencing the working masses ideologically and politically. But long experience 131 shows that the Chinese proletariat is immune to bourgeois influence. The compradore and national bourgeoisie was least of all concerned with winning the support of the Chinese working class. On the contrary, it subjected the Chinese workers to brutal, inhuman exploitation, regarding them only as mute slaves and chaining them to tyranny and illiteracy.

p As regards the influence of the imperialist bourgeoisie of capitalist countries, the Chinese working class, which has experienced long years of colonial rule and savage foreign oppression, is perfectly well aware of what may issue from any intensification of bourgeois influence in China. If ever an accusation of bourgeois degeneration was laid at the wrong door, this is it. In every aspect of its life—economic position, social experience, way of thinking, and traditions of revolutionary struggle—the Chinese working class is associated not with capitalism but with socialism. It expects socialism, not capitalism, to bring to materialisation its hopes and aspirations and secure to it a fundamental improvement of its economic condition.

p But perhaps what the Maoists have in mind is that in present-day China it is possible for the remaining capitalists to bribe individual workers? Indeed, among socialist countries China is an exception. In that country the dissolution and disappearance of the bourgeoisie has been held up artificially by the state. The capitalists who consented to co-operate with the government have been granted immense benefits and privileges, which set them apart from the rest of the population. They receive parasitical incomes amounting to 5 per cent of their former capital, enjoy the right of free exit to foreign countries, hold executive positions in industry and have their own mansions and cars.  [131•*  In the socialist world China is the only country with millionaire investors. Some have even been appointed to government posts and in the higher legislative bodies. However that may be, the Chinese national bourgeoisie has been deprived of the means of production and it is hardly conceivable that it would share part of its income with the working class for the sake of a hopeless cause.

p The Maoists evidently disagree with these obvious truths. In order to reinforce their assertions that the working class has “birthmarks”, they refer to the authority of Lenin, who said that the old society "inevitably cultivated in the workingman the desire to escape exploitation even by means of deception, to wriggle out of it, to escape, if only for a moment, from loathsome labour, to procure at least a crust of bread by any possible means, at any cost, so as not to starve, so as to subdue the pangs of hunger suffered by himself and by his near ones”.  [132•*  The Chinese theorists maintain that under the dictatorship of the proletariat and public ownership the political and economic position of the working class changes radically and there is no need to "seek deliverance from exploitation”, engage in “deceit” or shun "loathsome wor.k”. In the same breath they add that the “birthmarks” remain in the form of "sinful aspirations”. What do these vague words mean? Possibly, the workers’ desire to eat and to see their families fed. The journal Hsin Chianshe wrote that the “uprooting” of this “ aspiration”, which it qualifies as a survival of the old society, is part of the proletariat’s ideological re-education.  [132•** 

p This brings to the fore the real purpose of the drive for the ideological re-education of the people, who, according to the Maoist canons, must work solely "for the sake of the revolution, not for themselves personally, not in order to earn money and support a family”.  [132•***  The same purpose is pursued by the struggle against economism, which, in the light of the latest developments, acquires a specific political hue. While vulgarising and ignoring the people’s natural desire for an improvement of their economic condition, the social demagogy of the Maoists calls upon the people to sacrifice their personal interests for the sake of social interests, and characterises personal interests as counterrevolutionary economism. In their opinion it boils down to "using bribery to indulge the demands of numerically small backward groups, corrupt the revolutionary will of the masses, direct the political struggle of the masses towards the phoney path of economism so that they would cease to 133 reckon with the interests of the state and the collective, with the interests of the future, and pursue exclusively personal, temporary interests”.  [133•* 

p While flouting the socialist principles requiring the combination of personal and social interests, the Chinese ideologists propound the absurd theory that the people’s aspiration for a better life has to be curbed because it is a "class aspiration and mirrors the class struggle within the proletariat and the working masses”.  [133•**  "Aspirations, shortcomings and the ‘birthmarks’ inherited by the working class from the old society," Hsin Chianshe writes, "are the inner factors making some people degenerates, profiteers or embezzlers and turning the contradictions within the people into contradictions between them and our enemies.”  [133•*** 

p The Chinese working class is thus accused of all mortal sins into which it has never nor can ever lapse. It is charged with aspiring for a better life and every means is used to indoctrinate it into killing its individuality and turning into a "stainless cog”. The workers’ requirements are reduced to a minimum, which is hardly enough to restore their physical strength to say nothing of their rights. The Maoists do not confine themselves to attacks on the Chinese proletariat. They accuse the peoples of the socialist countries of bourgeois degeneration, declare that the working class of the capitalist countries has lost its revolutionary spirit, and charge the international communist and working-class movement with opportunism. Contrary to their official statements, they are guided not by concern for the development of the world revolution but by a petty-bourgeois fury, Great-Power chauvinism and hatred of the Marxist-Leninist Communist and Workers’ Parties that have rejected their claims to dictatorship and domination. This in fact is the meaning of the "latest discoveries" of the Maoist theorists with their inventions about the bourgeois degeneration of the Chinese working class and of the socialist countries.

p A society where the only forms of ownership are state and collective has no objective soil for the spontaneous restoration of private proprietor capitalist relations and the 134 accompanying degeneration of various contingents of the working class. But given certain conditions this society may be faced with the threat that closed bureaucratic castes may appear, usurp the management of the means of production, divorce themselves from the people and ignore their demands and requirements. Such castes may take shape in economically undeveloped countries accomplishing the transition to socialism in the absence of clearly defined material prerequisites of the socialist mode of production, in countries that lack democratic traditions, have a very small industrial proletariat and where the population is predominantly peasant. This danger becomes real when the leadership of such a country disregards the extensive international experience of building socialism, turns away from an alliance with the proletariat of the developed socialist and capitalist countries, rejects a scientific policy in favour of adventurism, and identifies socialism with the selfish interests of a small ruling group that recognises no other methods of leadership other than the unlimited arbitrary rule of a deified leader placed over society.

Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhduiuirixlniye otnoshcniya, No. (i, 1967, pp. 30-44