p V. Vyatsky

p The Chinese working class has many revolutionary traditions. It powerfully influenced the course of the national liberation, anti-feudal, anti-imperialist struggle, contributed greatly towards the victory of the socialist revolution and the creation of the People’s Republic of China, and played the decisive role in consolidating the economic and political foundations of the new system and in promoting China’s socialist development. However, at all stages of the revolutionary movement the working class of China encountered enormous difficulties of both an objective and subjective nature.

p For a long time, from 1927 to almost 1949, the leading organs of the Communist Party of China were located in economically backward regions far away from working-class centres. The geographical isolation of the proletarian centres from these areas made it difficult for the working class to influence the peasantry, the revolutionary army and, in the long run, the Party itself. Some of the difficulties were due to the economic and political condition of the Chinese proletariat. There were very few industrial workers proper in China. The working class had not completely purged itself of patriarchal survivals and petty-bourgeois sentiments. It lacked the experience of leading a revolutionary movement involving different strata of the population. The proletariat’s numerical weakness, the low level of the productive forces, particularly of modern industry, the backward structure of the economy and the heavy petty-bourgeois pressure were serious obstacles to working-class leadership of society even after the revolution triumphed,

p Moreover, the development of the working-class movement was fettered by the subjectivist, misdirected policy of the CPC’s nationalistic petty-bourgeois leaders, of Mao Tse-tung above all. An unremitting struggle raged over the workingclass problem between two main trends: internationalist Marxist and nationalistic, petty-bourgeois. While representatives of the Marxist-Leninist trend in the CPC, supported 136 by the international working-class movement, upheld the interests of the Chinese proletariat and sought to consolidate its leading role in the revolution, the nationalists for years underrated work in the towns and in many cases allowed the Kuomintang to seize complete control of them. Mao Tse-tung and his associates reduced the entire strategy of the revolutionary process to "surrounding the town by the village”. They absolutised the role of the Chinese peasantry, disregarding the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution. For instance, at the 3rd Congress of the CPC in 1923 Mao Tse-tung declared that "a massive organisation of workers created by Communists is impracticable”. He believed that an independent workers’ "trade union movement cannot be started in China”.

p The result of this line was that instead of increasing, the proletarian stratum in the CPC began to diminish from the 1930s onwards. In 1927 nearly 58 per cent of the Party membership were workers, yet in 1949 only 3 per cent were proletarians. Mao Tse-tung absolutised the specifics of the revolutionary movement in China. On account of the protracted character of the armed struggle, the army had not only to fight but carry out political tasks: organise the population, administer the various areas and even build up the Party. The Maoists gave army leadership out as leadership by the Party and the working class. In particular, it was declared that the proletariat was implementing its hegemony and alliance with the peasantry through the army despite the fact that it was a peasant army.

p The victory of the revolution and all-round assistance from the CPSU, other fraternal parties and the international working-class movement created the conditions for a fundamental change of the role played by the working class of China in politics and in economic leadership. In the country’s Constitution it was proclaimed that the People’s Republic of China is "a state directed by the working class”. The Constitution of the CPC defined the Party as "the vanguard of the Chinese working class”. With the victory of the revolution it became possible to improve the material condition of the workers. Relying on assistance from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and drawing on their experience, the Chinese working class and the Marxist-Leninist internationalist forces in the CPC led China along the road of socialist 137 construction. In the period from 1949 to the close of the 1950s the influence of the working class in China’s political life grew substantially, the internationalist forces in the CPC won stronger positions and there was an expansion of friendly relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. In particular, this was seen in the proceedings and decisions of the 8th Congress of the CPC in 1956, which witnessed the strengthening and consolidation of the true Marxist-Leninist forces.

p Initially Mao Tse-tung and his group had to orient themselves on the Soviet Union’s experience and on assistance from the world socialist camp. The working class of China, most of the Communists and the politically conscious working people regarded this as the surest way to the country’s socialist reconstruction. However, at the same time, the Maoists sought to adapt China’s progress linked with socialist construction and with the utilisation of the experience and assistance of the Soviet Union and other fraternal countries to their Great-Power ambitions, and gradually began counterposing their own special aims to the task of building a socialist China. At the close of the 1950s the CPC leadership openly proclaimed this line in foreign and domestic policy. This signified a complete rupture with MarxismLeninism and a switch to anti-Sovietism.

p The Maoists raised every possible obstacle to prevent the working class and its representatives from occupying key positions in the Party and the Government.

p The proletariat’s leading role in the leadership of society was depreciated by the Maoists, and this was shown by the fact that its immediate vital interests and requirements were ignored. The working people’s aspiration for a higher standard of living was assessed as a syndicalist deviation and as economism. Due to the Maoist opposition, the measures to improve the working conditions and living standard of the workers were slowed down. Poverty and backwardness were declared a factor of socialist construction and the slogan "Poverty is a good thing" was proclaimed. Mao Tsetung’s attempt to implement his own “special” line in economic development (“big leap”) struck a devastating blow at the material condition of the working class. The living standard in China, which showed a marked rise during the first five-year plan period, subsequently dropped sharply. 138 The second five-year plan (1958-62) envisaged a 25 per cent rise in wages, but it was disrupted.

p Another aspect of Mao Tse-tung’s economic policy merits attention. A large number of young peasants joined the working class in 1958 mainly as apprentice workers. The “worker-and-peasant” system of labour began to be instituted on a nation-wide scale in the economy. The essence of this system is that by contract with the communes industrial enterprises hire peasants as temporary (for a term of from three to five years) or seasonal workers, while the permanent workers are compelled to engage in farming after their day’s work. The “worker-peasants” from the countryside are in a totally different position than the permanent workers. They receive considerably smaller wages for the same work; their families are not allowed to join them in the towns; part of their wages are deducted into the social fund of the communes sending them to the given factory (some factories pay them no wages at all, remunerating the commune with production waste); at the end of their term they have to return to their commune, and their place is taken by other peasants.

p This policy is giving rise to singular strata in the working class and to discriminatory distinctions and inequality in working conditions, wages, hire and everyday life, which have nothing to do with the real distinctions in the quantity and quality of the labour of workers. The stratification in the working class and the contradictions between its various groups are used to undermine proletarian unity.

p The depreciation of the proletariat’s leading role is manifested also in the Maoists’ interpretation of the substance of the world revolutionary process. They reject the thesis that the working class and its principal creation, the world socialist system, are in the centre of the modern epoch. The development of the world revolutionary process is depicted as a movement of the peasant masses, of the petty-bourgeois forces and trends in the Asian, African and Latin American countries, which surround the "world city”, as a struggle of the “poor” peoples against the “rich”, of the "world village" against the "world city”. In effect, the Maoists thereby reject the revolutionary role of the socialist countries and the hegemony of the world proletariat in the liberation movement. They accuse the working class of (he Soviet Union and other socialist countries of "bourgeois 139 degeneration”, and the international communist and working-class movement of burying the interests of the world revolution in oblivion. They belittle the role played by the working class in the developing countries and in the national liberation movement.

p The assault launched in the course of the "cultural revolution" on the proletariat’s political and economic gains is thus by no means accidental. It stems from the Maoists’ disregard of the working class, their underestimation of its revolutionary potentialities and their rejection of its leading role. This has always been the typical approach of the nationalistic, petty-bourgeois elements in the CPC.

The "cultural revolution" created a real threat to the socialist achievements in China, undermined the position of the working class and heavily affected its political and economic interests. The working class, mainstay of socialism in China, has become one of the principal targets of the "cultural revolution”.