By the end of the 1950s some leftist scholars in Latin America ( alongside a
section of the Chinese Communist Party leaders ) characterised the
Soviet Union political system as "bureaucratic
socialism" which represented
the failure of the process of building socialism in that country, and leading to
what them also characterised as "social imperialism". This section in my archive
is dedicated to gather literature on this political phenomenon, focusing in the
collapse of the socialist revolution in People's Republic of China and the USSR.
Dr. Róbinson Rojas.
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Róbinson Rojas
From "China, una revolución en agonía", Martínez Roca, Barcelona, 1978
Excerpts from Una Explicacion Necesaria
(English)
"...a new ruling class is dominant in the Chinese society. This
new ruling class is a civil-military bureaucracy created
during the process of building socialism, and it will impose
its power upon the whole of society if the working class is
unable to consolidate its political dominance..."
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Róbinson Rojas - 1968
Prologue to "La Guardia Roja Conquista
China" (English)
...This book analyses the meaning of the cultural revolution, which can be
summarized as follows:
1) Politicaly, it is an attempt to get rid of
that section in the Chinese society which form a new bureaucratic class,
a new ruling class, whose core is constituted mainly by the high
and medium rank membership of the Chinese Communist Party and the
so-called "intelligentsia". The political target of the cultural
revolution are the Chinese counterpart of the new ruling class dominating
already societies like the ones in Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and the rest
of Eastern Europe. In short, one section of the Chinese people is trying
to get rid of what we call in Latin America "bureaucratic
socialism".
2) Ideologicaly, the cultural revolution is an attempt to
create social mechanisms able to fight and defeat those ideological
manifestations that help in the creation of successors for the new
bureaucratic ruling class. That is why the political struggle is
currently so fierce in a wide range of places where ideas are created and
developed - the literature, art, media, schools, universities and
academic research centers.
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Róbinson Rojas - 1979
Class Stratification in the Chinese Countryside
In this paper I will discuss social structure in rural China after
1949. Therefore, the analysis will not deal with social structure
in the Chinese society as a whole. Nevertheless, as the rural
sector in China accounts for about 80% of the total population,
the importance of rural social stratification is self-evident.
I will focus in the organization of labour, or, the relations
between labourers and means of production, and, as derived from the
above, relations between direct labourers and non-labourers (if
there are any).
Firstly, I will look at the material mode of production. Next, the
social and economic inequalities created by that particular
organization of labour, and, last but not least, the political
inequalities generated by the social and economic differentials.
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Róbinson Rojas - 1978
Class Analysis in Socialist China
What follows are crude notes made by me in the attempt to elaborate
on social stratification, social differentiation and creation of a
new ruling class in China during the period 1949-1978. Crucial to this
attempt is my work with chinese scholars (all members of the Chinese
communist party) during the middle sixties and middle seventies in
Beijing. The latter provided the "Chinese communist" point of view
about classes in "socialist China", which became the ideological
justification for organizing a "revolution within the revolution"
as unleashed in 1966 (the so called "cultural revolution").
(In my book "China: una revolucion en agonia"(1978) there is a fully
developed analysis based on the notes you are going to read)
The role of ideology as derived from the relations of production is
underlined in the notes.
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Róbinson Rojas - 1997
Notes on China's painful path to capitalism
Between October 1976 and late 1978 the Chinese socialist path to
development was stopped and then dismantled by the counter-revolutionary
members of the Communist Party who staged a coup-d'etat in late 1976
to reverse the revolutionary process evolving since 1950. This
coup d'etat was the last battle in a civil war started in 1966, when the
new communist ruling class in China was challenged by part of the
industrial workers, students and peasants and a section of the Central
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Leaders of the new ruling
class were Liu Shao-chi (then president of China), Chou En-lai (then
Prime Minister of China), and Deng Xiaoping (then second in command
in the political bureau). Between 1966 and 1976 this civil war was
known as the "cultural revolution".
(See
Róbinson Rojas, "La Guardia Roja Conquista China", Ediciones ML, Santiago,1968, and
Róbinson Rojas, "China: una revolucion en agonia", Martinez Roca, Barcelona, 1978)
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Andy Blunden - 1993
Stalinism: its origins and future
Short history of Stalinism 1917 - 1991, with an analysis of the workers
bureaucracy
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Literature on bureaucratic socialism
Communist Party of China
Etienne Balibar
Georgi Dimitroff
Communist Party of
the Soviet Union
Charles Bettelheim
Enver Hoxha
Party of Labor of Albania
Chang Chun-chiao
Martin Nicolaus
Comintern
Chou En-lai
(Zhou Enlai)
Racism Research
Project
Deng-Yuan Hsu and
Pao-Yu Ching
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The
polemic China-USSR on the international communist movement
The above-titled text is a collection of eleven documents (contents) published by
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China between June 1963 and
November 1964 in response to two critical letters directed at that body from the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These documents
constitute a further development in the struggle against modern revisionism
initiated in the explicit critique of "Titoism" in the 1960 publication of Long Live Leninism! and
extending here to the practice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that
began to take shape at the 20th Party Congress of the C.P.S.U. in 1956. Included
in the appendices to the Chinese documents are the two letters from the CPSU.
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D. McNally - 1984
Socialism
from Below
Socialism is a new society of freedom--or it is nothing. This is the
central argument of this pamphlet. Tracing the fate of revolutionary socialism
through the past 100 years, David McNally shows that there are two currents in
the socialist tradition. One is "socialism from above," that of the "leave to
us" reformers in the West and the anti- democratic bureaucracies of the East.
Neither has brought the world any closer to socialism. The other is socialism
from below, the living tradition of workers' struggle which has been hidden
in the years of compromise and betrayal. With world capitalism again in deep
political and economic crisis, humanity stands in desperate need of this
tradition, of a transformation of the world order from below.
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Róbinson Rojas - 1997
The Chinese attempt to build a socialist society
From 1950 to 1958, after reorganizing labour and ownership of land
in the rural areas with the land reform and cooperativization, the
Chinese communist party created two types of units of production that
were going to be the foundation of their quest for building
socialism:
1) in the industrial sector, what was conceptualized as "small and
complete, large and complete", meaning that each enterprise,
regardless of size, would produce all parts on-site, so that
production could be carried on independently (this was the
military side of the concept), and the political side was that
"enterprise and society are closely knit", that enterprises are
to serve society. Because of that, when a large enterprise was
established, it had to form subsidiaries to provide
nurseries,
schools -from primary level to
university level;
hospitals,
stores, and
houses
The ideological tenet for the above was that units of production
are social tools to give individuals a secure environment in which
to work and develop as human beings -health, education, shelter, etc.
At the same time, this "social units of production" were going to
provide employment to every able citizen. In a nutshell, the new
units of production ( in the industrialized countries' media and
academy stupidly described as "state-owned enterprises" as if they
were the same than in a mixed capitalist economy) were a political
solution to an economic problem...
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Decision concerning the great proletarian cultural
revolution
(Adopted on 8 August 1966, by the CC of the CCP)
...Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying
to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting
classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to
stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must
meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological
field and use the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the
proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At
present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those
persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize
and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic 'authorities' and
the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and
to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the
superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base,
so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the
socialist system.
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Chang Chun-chiao - 1975
On exercising all-round dictatorship over the
bourgeoisie
published in Hongqi, No. 4, 1975)
...We must be soberly aware that there is still a danger of China
turning revisionist. This is not only because imperialism and social-
imperialism will never give up aggression and subversion against us,
not only because China's old landlords and capitalists are still
around and unreconciled to their defeat, but also because new
bourgeois elements are BEING ENGENDERED daily and hourly, as Lenin
put it ( here Chang refers to the following passage from Lenin's
"Left-Wing communism, an Infantile Disorder -April/May 1920:
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is a most determined and most
ruthless war waged by the new class against A MORE POWERFUL enemy,
the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased TENFOLD by its
overthrow (even if only in one country), and whose power lies not
only in the strength of international capital, in the strength and
durability of the international connections of the bourgeoisie, but
also in the FORCE OF HABIT, in the strength of SMALL PRODUCTION. For,
unfortunately, small production is still very, very widespread in
the world, and small production ENGENDERS capitalism and the
bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass
scale. For all these reasons the dictatorship of the proletariat is
essential".). Some comrades argue that Lenin was referring to the
situation before collectivization. This is obviously incorrect.
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Yao Wen-yuan - 1975
On the social basis of the Lin Piao anti-party clique
...this article was published in Hongqi, No. 3, 1975. The author
was criticizing Deng Xiao-ping and the right wing of the Communist
Party using the label "Lin Piao anti-Party clique". (Excerpts)
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Róbinson Rojas:
Una explicacion necesaria |
Róbinson Rojas (1978)
China. Una revolución en agonía |
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