Social classes under bureaucratic socialism: theoretical discussions
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ON EXCERCISING ALL-ROUND DICTATORSHIP OVER THE BOURGEOISIE
by Chang Chun-chiao, published in Hongqi, No. 4, 1975)
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ON THE SOCIAL BASIS OF THE LIN PIAO ANTI-PARTY CLIQUE
by Yao Wen-yuan
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ON THE SOCIAL BASIS OF THE LIN PIAO ANTI-PARTY CLIQUE
by Yao Wen-yuan
[ 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.]

....What is the class character of "people like Lin Piao"? What is the
social basis that engendered the Lin Piao anti-Party clique? Beyond
doubt a clear understanding of this question is essential for the
consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and prevention
of capitalist restoration...It is rather clear that the Lin Piao anti-
Party clique represented the interests of the overthrown landlord and
capitalist classes and the desire of the overthrown reactionaries to
topple the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore the 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie...

...All of this demonstrates the life-and-death struggle, under the
dictatorship of the proletariat, between the two major antagonistic
classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie...As long as the 
overthrown reactionary classes still exist, there will emerge within
the Party (and in society) representatives of the bourgeoisie who turn
their hopes for restoration into attempts at restoration...But 
understanding this fact does not exhaust the issue. Not only did the 
Lin Piao anti-Party clique represent the desire of the overthrown
landlord and capitalist classes for a restoration; it also represented
the desire of the NEWLY ENGENDERED BOURGEOIS ELEMENTS IN SOCIALIST
SOCIETY to usurp power...

....The existence of bourgeois influence, and of the influence of
international imperialism and revisionism, constitutes the political
and ideological source of the new bourgeois elements. And the 
existence of bourgeois right provides an important ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
for their emergence.

    Lenin said, "...in the first phase of communist society (usually
called socialism) 'bourgeois right' is NOT abolished in its entirety,
but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far
attained, i.e.,only in respect of the means of production." "However,
it continues to exist as far as its other part is concerned; it
continues to exist in the capacity of regulator (determining factor)
in the distribution of products and the allotment of labour among the
members of society. The socialist principle: 'He who does not work,
neither shall he eat,' is ALREADY realized; the other socialist
principle: 'An equal amount of products for an equal amount of 
labour,' is also ALREADY realized.But this is not yet communism, and
it does not yet abolish 'bourgeois right', which gives to unequal
individuals, in return for unequal (actually unequal) amounts of
labour, equal amounts of products."

   Chairman Mao tells us, "...China is a socialist country. Before
liberation, she was much the same as a capitalist country. Even now
she practises an eight-grade wage system, distribution according to
work and exchange through money, and in all this differs very little
from the old society. What is different is that the system of
ownership has been changed." "Our country at present practises a 
commodity system, the wage system is unequal, too, as in the eight-
grade wage scale, and so forth. Under the dictatorship of the
proletariat such things can only be restricted."

    In socialist society, we still have two kinds of socialist
ownership: ownership by the whole people and collective ownership.
This determines our practice of the commodity system at the present
time.The analyses by Lenin and Chairman Mao both tell us that 
bourgeois right, which inevitably exists in distribution and exchange
under the socialist system, should be restricted under the 
dictatorship of the proletariat, so that in the long course of the
socialist revolution THE THREE MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WORKERS AND
PEASANTS, BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY AND BETWEEN MANUAL AND MENTAL 
LABOUR WILL GRADUALLY BE NARROWED, as will the discrepancies between
the various grades, and so that material and ideological conditions
will gradually be created for closing up all these gaps.
 
    If we do not act in this way, but instead call for the 
consolidation, extension and strengthening of bourgeois right and the 
partial inequality it entails, the inevitable result will be 
POLARIZATION, i.e., in the matter of distribution A SMALL NUMBER OF 
PEOPLE WILL APPROPRIATE INCREASING AMOUNTS OF COMMODITIES AND MONEY 
through some legal and many illegal ways; stimulated by "material 
incentives" of this kind, capitalist ideas of making a fortune and 
craving for personal fame and gain will spread unchecked; phenomena 
like THE TURNING OF PUBLIC PROPERTY INTO PRIVATE PROPERTY, 
speculation, graft and corruption, theft and bribery will increase; 
THE CAPITALIST PRINCIPLE OF THE EXCHANGE OF COMMODITIES WILL MAKE ITS 
WAY INTO POLITICAL AND EVEN INTO PARTY LIFE, UNDERMINING THE 
SOCIALIST PLANNED ECONOMY; acts of capitalist exploitation such as 
the conversion of commodities and money into capital, and labour power 
into a commodity, will occur; changes in the nature of the ownership 
will take place in certain departments and units which follow the 
revisionist line; and instances of oppression and exploitation of the 
labouring people will arise again. 

    AS A RESULT, A SMALL NUMBER OF NEW BOURGEOIS ELEMENTS AND 
UPSTARTS WHO HAVE TOTALLY BETRAYED THE PROLETARIAT AND THE LABOURING
PEOPLE WILL EMERGE FROM AMONG THE PARTY MEMBERS, WORKERS, WELL-TO-DO
PEASANTS AND PERSONNEL OF STATE AND OTHER ORGANS. As our worker-
comrades have aptly put it, "If bourgeois right is not restricted, it
will restrict the development of socialism and promote the growth of
capitalism." WHEN THE ECONOMIC STRENGTH OF THE BOURGEOISIE HAS GROWN
TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, ITS AGENTS WILL DEMAND POLITICAL RULE, DEMAND
THE OVERTHROW OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND THE SOCIALIST
SYSTEM, DEMAND A COMPLETE CHANGEOVER FROM SOCIALIST OWNERSHIP, AND
OPENLY RESTORE AND DEVELOP THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM. 

    Once in power, the new bourgeoisie will start with sanguinary 
suppression of the people and restoration of capitalism in the 
superstructure, including all spheres of ideology and culture; then 
they will conduct distribution to each according to how much or little 
capital and power he has, so that the principle of "to each according 
to his work" will become an empty shell, and the handful of new 
bourgeois elements monopolizing the means of production will at the 
same time monopolize the power of distributing consumer goods and 
other products. SUCH IS THE PROCESS OF RESTORATION THAT HAS ALREADY 
OCCURRED IN THE SOVIET UNION...

....On the surface, they advocated using money as an "incentive" for 
the workers; actually they wanted to widen without limit the 
differences in grade among the workers in order to cultivate and buy
over a small section of the working class, TURN IT INTO A PRIVILEGED
STRATUM WHICH WOULD BETRAY THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP AND THE
PROLETARIAT'S INTERESTS, AND THUS SPLIT THE UNITY OF THE WORKING
CLASS. They tried to corrupt the workers with the bourgeois world
outlook and to use the small number of workers deeply influenced by
the ideology of bourgeois right as one of the forces supporting their
opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat...

....Under the cloak of "showing concern" for the young workers, these
persons are actually putting out "incentives" to lure them onto the
capitalist road, and hence can be termed political "abettors of
crime". The inexperienced newly engendered bourgeois elements break
the law openly while cunning old-time bourgeois elements direct them
from behind the scenes - this is often observed in the class struggle
in society today...

....By spreading the slander that the peasants "lack food and 
clothing", it aimed at inciting the peasants to "eat up and divide
everything" in order to undermine and liquidate the socialist 
collective economy. If things were done along this line, a small
number of people would turn into the new bourgeoisie while the
overwhelming majority would fall prey to capitalist exploitation. In
short, the situation yearned for by the landlords, the rich peasants
and the section of the well-to-do middle peasants taking the 
capitalist road in the countryside would come to pass...

...Why would it be quite easy for people like Lin Piao to rig up the
capitalist system if they come to power? SIMPLY BECAUSE IN OUR 
SOCIALIST SOCIETY CLASSES AND CLASS STRUGGLE STILL EXIST, AND SO DO
THE SOIL AND CONDITIONS THAT ENGENDER CAPITALISM...(we must) 
consolidate and extend socialist ownership by the whole people and 
socialist collective ownership by working people, prevent the
restoration of the bourgeois right that has already been liquidated
in the system of ownership, and continue to fulfil, gradually and
over a fairly long period of time, the still unfulfilled part of the
task of transformation of ownership; and with regard to the two other
aspects of the relations of production, namely, the mutual relations
between people and the relations of distribution, it requires that
we restrict bourgeois right and continually weaken the basis that
engenders capitalism.It requires that we persevere in the revolution
in the superstructure, deepen our criticism of revisionism and of the
bourgeoisie and achieve the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat
over the bourgeoisie.

    In his talks given during an inspection tour of various places in
the country in August and September 1971, Chairman Mao said: "We have
been singing THE INTERNATIONALE for 50 years, yet on 10 occasions 
certain people inside our Party tried to split it. As I see it, this
may happen another 10, 20 or 30 times.You don't believe it? You may 
not believe it. Anyhow I do. Will there be no struggle when we get to
communism? I just don't believe it. There will be struggles even then,
but only between the new and the old, between what is correct and what
is incorrect. Tens of thousands of years from now, what is wrong still
won't get by, it won't stand up."...

...The new bourgeois elements who arise as a result of corrosion by
bourgeois ideas and the existence of bourgeois right generally have
the political traits of double-dealers and upstarts. In order to carry
out capitalist activities under the dictatorship of the proletariat,
they invariably display some sort of socialist signboard; and since 
the aim of their restorationist activities is not to seize back means
of production of which they have been dispossessed but to grab hold
of the means of production which they have never possessed, they are
particularly greedy and anxious to swallow at one gulp the wealth
belonging to the whole people or to the collective, and transfer it
to their private ownership...
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on the economic basis for class differentiation in China, as seen by
some members of the CCP in the 1970s:
excerpts from

ON EXCERCISING ALL-ROUND DICTATORSHIP OVER THE BOURGEOISIE    
by Chang Chun-chiao, 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.

    Lenin's remarks are not out of date at all.These comrades may
look up Chairman Mao's "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
Among the People" published in 1957. There Chairman Mao shows by
concrete analysis that after the basic victory in the socialist
transformation of the system of ownership, which includes the
achievement of agricultural co-operation, there still exist in China
classes, class contradictions and class struggle, and there still
exist both harmony and contradiction between the relations of
production and the productive forces and between the superstructure
and the economic base...

...let us look at the changes in the system of ownership in China and
the proportions of the various economic sectors in China's industry,
agriculture and commerce in 1973.

    FIRST, INDUSTRY. Industry under ownership by the whole people
covered 97 per cent of the fixed assets of industry as a whole, 
63 per cent of the people engaged in industry, and 86 per cent of the
value of total industrial output. Industry under collective ownership
covered 3 per cent of the fixed assets, 36.2 per cent of the people
engaged in industry, and 14 per cent of the total output value. 
Besides these, individual handicraftsmen made up 0.8 per cent of the
people engaged in industry.

     NEXT, AGRICULTURE. Among the agricultural means of production,
about 90 per cent of the farmland and of the irrigation-drainage
machinery and about 80 per cent of the tractors and draught animals
were under collective ownership. Here ownership by the whole people
made up a very small proportion. Hence, over 90 per cent of the 
nation's grain and various industrial crops came from the collective
economy. The state farms accounted for only a small proportion. Apart
from these, there still remained the small plots farmed by commune
members for their personal needs, and a limited amount of household
side-line production.

    THEN COMMERCE. State commerce accounted for 92.5 per cent of the 
total volume of retail sales, collectively owned commercial 
enterprises for 7.3 per cent, and individual pedlars for 0.2 per cent.
Apart from these, there still remained the sizable amount of trade
conducted at rural fairs.

....The dominant position of ownership by the whole people has been
greatly enhanced and there have also benn some changes in the economy
of the people's communes as regards the proportions of ownership at
the three levels -commune, production brigade and production team. On
Shanghai's outskirts, for example, income at the commune level in
proportion to total income rose from 28.1 per cent in 1973 to 30.5
per cent in 1974, that of the brigades rose from 15.2 per cent to 17.2
per cent, while the proportion going to the teams dropped from 56.7
per cent to 52.3 per cent. The people's commune has demonstrated ever
more clearly its superiority, consisting in its larger size and higher
degree of public ownership.

   In so far as we have, step by step in the past 25 years, eliminated
ownership by imperialism, bureaucrat-capitalism and feudalism, 
transformed ownership by national capitalism and by individual 
labourers and replaced these five kinds of private ownership with the
two kinds of socialist public ownership, we can proudly declare that
the system of ownership in China has changed, that the proletariat
and other working people in China have in the main freed themselves
from the shackles of private ownership, and that China's socialist
economic base has been gradually consolidated and developed...

....However, we must see that with respect to the system of ownership
THE ISSUE IS NOT YET FULLY SETTLED. We often say that the issue of
ownership "has in the main been settled"; this means that it has not 
been settled entirely, and also that bourgeois right has not been
totally abolished in this realm.

    The statistics cited above show that private ownership still 
exists partially in industry, agriculture and commerce, that
socialist public ownership does not consist entirely of ownership
by the whole people but includes two kinds of ownership, and that
ownership by the whole people is still rather weak in agriculture,
which is the foundation of the national economy...

....Moreover, we must see that both ownership by the whole people and
collective ownership involve the question of leadership, that is, the
question of WHICH CLASS HOLDS THE OWNERSHIP IN FACT AND NOT JUST IN
NAME.

    Speaking at the First Plenary Session of the Ninth Central 
Committee of the Party on April 28, 1969, Chairman Mao said, 
"Apparently, we couldn't do without the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, for our base was not solid. From my observations, I am
afraid that in a fairly large majority of factories - I don't mean
all or the overwhelming majority - leadership was not in the hands
of real Marxists and the masses of workers. Not that there were no
good people in the leadership of the factories. There were. There were
good people among the secretaries, deputy secretaries and members of
Party committees and among the Party branch secretaries. But they
followed that line of Liu Shao-chi's, just resorting to material
incentive, putting profit in command, and instead of promoting 
proletarian politics, handing out bonuses, and so forth"..."but there
are indeed bad people in the factories"..."this shows that the
revolution is still unfinished".

...but it is incorrect to give no weight to whether the issue of
ownership has been resolved merely in form or in actual fact, TO THE
REACTION UPON THE SYSTEM OF OWNERSHIP EXERTED BY THE TWO OTHER ASPECTS
OF THE RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION - THE RELATIONS AMONG PEOPLE AND THE 
FORM OF DISTRIBUTION - AND TO THE REACTION UPON THE ECONOMIC BASE
EXERTED BY THE SUPERSTRUCTURE; these two aspects and the 
superstructure may play a decisive role under given conditions. 
POLITICS IS THE CONCENTRATED EXPRESSION OF ECONOMICS. Wether the
ideological and political line is correct or incorrect, and which
class holds the leadership, decides which class owns those factories
in actual fact...Wasn't this the way Khruschev and Brezhnev changed
the system of ownership in the Soviet Union?...

...So long as we still have these two kinds of ownership, commodity
production, exchange through money and distribution according to work
are inevitable. And since "under the dictatorship of the proletariat
such things can only be restricted", the growth of capitalist factors
in town and country and the emergence of the new bourgeois elements
are likewise inevitable...In THE CLASS STRUGGLES IN FRANCE, 1848-1850,
Marx deals in more specific terms with this dictatorship of the
proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of CLASS
DISTINCTION GENERALLY, to the abolition ALL RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION on
which they rest, to the abolition of ALL THE SOCIAL RELATIONS that
correspond to these relations of production, and to the 
revolutionizing of ALL THE IDEAS that result from these social 
relations. In all the four cases, Marx means ALL. Not a part, a 
greater part, or even the greatest part, but all!...

....There are undeniably some comrades among us who have joined the
Communist Party organizationally but not ideologically. In their world
outlook they have not yet over-stepped the bounds of small production
and of the bourgeoisie. They do approve of the dictatorship of the
proletariat at a certain stage and within a certain sphere and are
pleased with certain victories of the proletariat, because they will
bring them gains, they feel it's time to settle down and feather their
cosy nests...

....this is exactly what Khruschev and Brezhnev have done. They 
changed neither the name "Soviet", nor the name of the party of Lenin,
nor the name "socialist republics". But, accepting these names and 
using them as a cover, they have gutted the dictatorship of the
proletariat of its actual content and turned it into a DICTATORSHIP
OF THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS that is anti-Soviet, opposed to the
party of Lenin and opposed to the socialists republics. They put
forward the revisionist programme of "the state of the whole people"
and "party of the entire people", which is an open betrayal of
Marxism. But when the Soviet people stand up against their fascist
dictatorship, they hoist the flag of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat in order to suppress the masses...

....Old China was a vast sea of small production. Conducting socialist
education among several hundred million peasants is a serious question
at all times and requires the endeavour of several generations...
....we would rather call the attention of comrades to the fact that it
is another kind of wind that is now blowing -the "bourgeois wind". 
This is the bourgeois style of life Chairman Mao has pointed to, an 
evil wind stirred up by those "parts" of the people who have 
degenerated into bourgeois elements. The "bourgeois wind" blowing from
among those Communists, particularly leading cadres, who belong to
these "parts", does us the greatest of harm. Poisoned by this evil
wind, some people have got their heads full of bourgeois ideas; THEY
SCRAMBLE FOR POSITION AND GAIN AND FEEL PROUD OF THIS, INSTEAD OF
BEING ASHAMED. SOME HAVE SUNK TO THE POINT OF LOOKING AT EVERYTHING 
AS A COMMODITY, THEMSELVES INCLUDED. They join the Communist Party
and go to work for the proletariat merely for the sake of upgrading
themselves as commodities and asking the proletariat for a higher
price...(they) are Communists in name but new bourgeois elements in
reality...
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