p This question is fundamental to the principal distinctions between the two conceptions of classes and the class struggle in socialist society, the Marxist-Leninist and the Maoist.

p According to the Marxist-Leninist theory, classes are large social groups whose existence is determined by definite historical phases in the development of production. The emergence and existence of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is connected with the emergence and development of the capitalist mode of production. That is why the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are antagonistic classes which emerge and can exist only on the basis of capitalist relations of production. Once capitalism has been eliminated and socialism built, i.e., once all the means of production have been taken over from private into social, socialist property, the two classes that existed under capitalism become extinct. In carrying out the socialist revolution, the victorious proletariat eliminates not only its class enemy but itself as well, changing into a totally different working class, the leading force of socialist society. As the antagonistic classes disappear, objective prerequisites are created for a gradual disappearance of the class struggle in socialist society. Such, in general outline, is the Marxist-Leninist concept.

p Mao Tse-tung’s concept is total revision of the MarxistLeninist theory of classes and the class struggle. He maintains that even after socialist society has been built, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat continue to exist within it as antagonistic classes, waging a bitter class battle up to the time communist consruction is complete. The question here is whom the Maoists rank among the bourgeois and the proletarian class in socialist society. An answer to this question shows very clearly that Mao Tse-tung’s concept is absurd.

p Under socialism, the Maoists say, the bourgeoisie consists of two main groups: 1) the old bourgeoisie and 2) the new bourgeoisie. The first is said to include all those who once belonged to the capitalist class, the landowners, or the bourgeois intelligentsia. This means that bourgeois affiliation under capitalism is regarded as the main “objective” evidence of the existence of that bourgeois group under socialism. Moreover, the bourgeois class is now said to include persons who once belonged to different classes.

p Since the existence of any class is due to definite historical relations of production, its existence comes to an end once these relations of production are eliminated. Once a slave-owner has lost his slaves and property, he is no longer a member of the slave-owning class, and a slave who has won his freedom and acquired means of production is no longer a member of the class of slaves. This proposition is also entirely true of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as classes in general. If some members of the bourgeois class in a capitalist country are ruined and lose their capital, they, naturally, cease being members of the capitalist class, and join another class—the proletariat or, provided they retain some of their capital, the small bourgeoisie. It can also happen that under exceptional circumstances some individual proletarians move into the class of the petty and then of the big bourgeoisie. Why is it that whereas under capitalism any bankrupt capitalists, who lose all their means of production, cease to be members of the captalist class, under socialism, where all the former members of the capitalist class have lost their means of production, they should still be regarded as capitalists solely on the strength of their prerevolutionary class affiliation? The Maoists’ absurd and 189 utterly unscientific ideas stand out most clearly in their vicious and altogether groundless anti-Sovietism and their attempts to prove the existence of a bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union. As everyone knows, the landowner class in the first socialist country was completely expropriated more than 55 years ago. The bulk of the urban bourgeoisie was expropriated more than 50 years ago, and the rural bourgeoisie—shortly thereafter. This means that the bulk of those who belonged to the old exploiting classes have by now died, whereas the rest have changed their class affiliation. But the Maoists ignore this and insist that not only this first but all the succeeding generations will belong to the capitalist class right up to the full construction of communism.

p Moreover, the Maoists maintain that in socialist society a new bourgeoisie keeps emerging in these five main ways:

p First, the heads of many state enterprises and institutions abuse their official powers, steal and plunder state property, in effect accumulating profits which go to improve their personal welfare. The Maoists believe that the heads of such state enterprises are converted into capitalists, and their workers—into proletarians. One pamphlet says: “The relations between these categories of men and the workers are converted into relations between exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed."^^5^^

p To back up the Maoist theses, the pamphlet quotes various items from the Soviet press about individual instances of the disclosure and punishment of criminals guilty of stealing social property. Such abuses, the Maoists say, have always happened and will continue to happen not only in the Soviet Union, but also in all the other socialist countries. These facts, however, show that those who abuse their official powers are prosecuted and punished by law. In the capitalist countries, on the other hand, the capitalists are owners of enterprises, and as such they employ workers, rule over them and exploit them. The capitalist state, far from punishing them for that, is even called upon to protect their class interests. The heads of enterprises and institutions in socialist society do not own the enterprises they manage and, as all the other employees, get a fixed state wage for their work. Any abuses by officials are brought to light and the culprits prosecuted and punished by the socialist state. Those whose 190 crimes have yet to be detected are not and cannot be considered capitalists, for the money they have amassed cannot be turned into capital, since all the means of production are held solely as socialist property.

p Second, the Maoists cite the instances of collective farms whose executives together with their “accomplices” steal collective farm funds, thereby exploiting the farmers and becoming kulaks, while the rest of the farmers are turned into proletarians. There is no need to deaf specially with this case for it is essentially no different from the first.

p Third, the Maoists also rank among the new bourgeoisie various declassed elements, like thieves, bandits and swindlers who make money by illegal means. Of course, these criminal elements, like those under the first head, are prosecuted and punished by the socialist state, and those criminals who have yet to be exposed cannot turn into capital the valuables they have amassed.

p Fourth, the Maoists ascribe the emergence of a new bourgeoisie to commodity-money relations, the existence of a private market and the fact that collective farmers and small handicraftsmen can sell their products and render small everyday services on the basis of freely fluctuating prices. One must bear in mind that in the socialist countries the private market plays an insignificant role, its prices are in effect regulated economically by the prices of stateproduced goods, and the earnings from sales on this market are no more than supplementary to wages or workday earnings. In other words, this is more like the survival of some petty-bourgeois, rather than bourgeois elements, which cannot develop into a real bourgeoisie because they exist under socialism instead of capitalism.

p The Maoists believe that a fifth—and the most important—source of the new bourgeoisie are the higher functionaries, whose privileged status, they say, is bound to make them bourgeois. This section of the bourgeoisie is said to include the higher functionaries of Party, state and collective farm establishments and enterprises. The pamphlet mentioned above, Khrushchovian Pseudo-Communism and Its World Historical Lesson, says: “This privileged section is the chief, basic section of the Soviet Union’s bourgeoisie. The contradiction between this section and the Soviet people 191 is now the Soviet Union’s chief contradiction—an irreconcilable antagonistic class contradiction.”

p What are the grounds for ranking among the bourgeoisie the leading Party, state, economic, scientific and cultural cadres of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries? The usual Maoist argument is that they are paid more than the average worker and carry out administrative functions. This particular question is interesting not only from a scientific, but also from a political standpoint, for it is not only the Maoists but also the bourgeois ideologists of the capitalist world who make demagogic use of this “argument” in their smear campaign against the Soviet Union, the socialist countries and the world communist movement. Although the “argument” is, of course, slanderous and untenable, the question needs to be analysed and elaborated in fuller detail; apart from criticism of the Maoist concept of classes in socialist society, this question requires an allround and deep-going scientific elaboration on the basis of the general principles of Marxism-Leninism and the socialist countries’ historical experience. Let us here confine ourselves to a few general remarks.

p Any direct collective production or social activity inevitably requires men to perform the functions of overall administration and management. The same holds true for socialism, even more so than for all earlier social formations, for production here acquires much greater scope. As the productive forces and socialist relations of production go on developing, the role of leading personnel is bound to become increasingly important. The principle of the socialist mode of production—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his work"—as well as the socialist countries’ historical experience, requires that in view of the particular importance of administrative functions, some functionaries, whose work calls for especially high skills, should be placed in more favourable conditions in respect of wages than other employees. Does that mean, however, as the Maoists claim, that the top functionaries are turned into a bourgeoisie, and the workers, collective farmers and intellectuals they administer—into proletarians? This is an utterly erroneous, unscientific proposition and has nothing to do with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of classes. The basic distinction 192 between socialism and all the antagonistic class formations is that the men who perform all the administrative functions in production and society as a whole do not make up a privileged social class antagonistic to the rest of the population. This distinction stems from the very nature of socialist relations of production, under which top functionaries do not and cannot own any means of production. Their activity is systematically controlled by society, and those who fail to do their duty or abuse their powers as responsible office holders can be replaced by others.

Here the Maoists’ main argument is totally subjective, for it is only where the top functionaries in China and other socialist countries do not agree with “Mao Tse-tung thought" that the Maoists rank them among the bourgeoisie, regardless of their wages. The socialist countries that do not look to Mao Tse-tung’s “thought” are declared to be capitalist, and all their leaders—bourgeois. On the strength of this faulty, unscientific and subjective-idealistic method, the Maoists say that China and Albania are the only two socialist countries. In their opinion, the leading Party, state, executive and cultural cadres in the two countries belong to the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, depending on their views. The Mao group in China is proletarian, and those who hold different views are bourgeois. The struggle between the two is declared to be a bitter, antagonistic class struggle. In other words, the objective criterion (difference in wages) is in the final count totally obliterated, an.d the “bourgeois” nature of the top functionaries in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries is established solely on the strength of their rejection of “Mao Tse-tung thought”.