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NOTES ON CLASS ANALYSIS IN SOCIALIST CHINA, by Róbinson Rojas Sandford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
sources:
 -CC general office ( my research in Beijing -1965-68 and 1974-77,
  my conversations with Yao Wen-yuan in 1975, and Chen Yi in 1966))
 -Chou Enlai...notes on his interview with William Hinton 1971---
  (later on published in English in China Now (London), July, September,
   and December 1975
 -Chang Chunchiao, 1975, "On The Dictatorship of The Bourgeoisie"
 -Excerpts from R. Rojas Sandford, "China, una revolucion en agonia",
  Martinez Roca, Spain, 1978
---------------------------------------------------------------------
INDUSTRIAL SECTOR 1973
URBAN SECTOR
RURAL SECTOR
CIVIL-MILITARY BUREAUCRACY
brief notes on BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM
brief notes on prevailing thoughts about development
---------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

Chinese approach:
1) old social classes that changed their economic basis but not their
ideology
2) new social classes as defined by new relations with the means of
production

They distinguished 7 categories:
1.- urban bourgeoisie
2.- rural bourgeoisie
3.- petty urban bourgeoisie
4.- petty rural bourgeoisie
5.- poor and lower middle peasants
6.- civil servants
7.- proletariat


1) urban bourgeoisie:
     gradually expropriated (with monetary compensation) between 
     1949-1956
     accounted for 1.4% of the population in 1973
     1.140.000 heads of units of production at the beginning
     compensation took the form of annual payments
     between 1956-1966 the aggregate payment amounted to 450      
     million of US$ (1973)
     in 1973: civil servants, private rentists, members of the    
     CCP
2) rural bourgeoisie:
     former landlords and rich peasants 
     their status as "intellectuals and "wise persons" didn't     
  change when integrated to the new society. (Confucius!)
     Some became members of the CCP.
     their intellectual status help them to play the role of      
  "advisers" to the rural cadres
     accounted for 6% of the population in 1973
3) petty urban bourgeoisie: 
     former small merchants, retailers, middlemen, etc.
     now they work in small cooperatives, the majority, and       
  others as individuals (peddlers), or in units of production     
 called "husband-wife shops". Others, shoe repairing,           
artisans, rubbish collectors, etc.
     accounted for 2.65 of the population in 1973
4) petty rural bourgeoisie:  
     like the petty urban bourgeoisie, they work on individual    
  or husband-wife basis, earning a living within the "pores"      
of the collective system
     accounted for 15.65% of the population
5) poor and lower middle peasants:
     former subsistence farmers and landless peasants
     all of them commune members, dividing their income from      
  collective work and private work (private plots)
     accounted for 60% of the population in 1973
6) civil servants:
     the totality of white collars workers, including             
  professionals, scientists, artists, writers, cadres, etc.
     they were the main body of what generally is described as    
  the "bureaucracy"
     accounted for 5.7% of the population in 1973
7) proletariat: 
     manual workers, both urban and rural, in factories
     accounted for 8.6% of the population in 1973
     
The above categories need some refining to fit Chinese         
reality. One step in the right direction could be introducing the
categories of member and non member of the Chinese Communist Party.
     Introducing the new categories, the Chinese social class
structure appears as follows:
1.1.-Urban bourgeoisie non-member of the CCP---around 1.4% of 
     the population
1.2.-Urban bourgeoisie member of the CCP--- negligible
2.1.-Rural bourgeoisie non-member of the CCP---almost 6% of the
     population
2.2.-Rural bourgeoisie member of the CCP--- negligible
3.1.-Petty urban bourgeoisie non-member of the CCP --- almost     
  2.65% of the population
3.2.-Petty urban bourgeoisie member of the CCP --- negligible
4.1.-Petty rural bourgeoisie non-member of the CCP --- almost     
  15.65% of the population
4.2.-Petty rural bourgeoisie member of the CCP --- negligible
5.1.-Poor and lower middle peasants non-members of the CCP ---    
  around 54.96% of the population 
5.2.-Poor and lower middle peasants members of the CCP --- around 
     5.04% of the population
6.1.-Civil Servants non-members of the CCP ---around 3.51% of the
     population
6.2.-Civil Servants members of the CCP --- around 2.19% of the    
  population
7.1.-Proletarians non-members of the CCP --- around 7.61 of the   
   population
7.2.-Proletarians members of the CCP --- around .99% of the       
  population
     
From the above percentages it follows that the presence of
conservative small-producers ideology, both in the whole of the
chinese population and the membership of the Communist Party was
very high.



     The introduction of the concept "small-producers ideology"
call for further elaboration:
What was the significance of small production in China at the time?
____________________________________________________________
INDUSTRIAL SECTOR 1973
                         ASSETS    EMPLOYMENT     OUTPUT
      state industry       97%         63%          86%
      collective units      3%         36.2%        14%
      artisans              -           0.8%         -
______________________________________________________________
     The above figures show that 37% of the industrial (manual)
workers in China were small producers, either in cooperatives or
individually. Furthermore, one indicator of differences in
productivity is this:
          Industrial Sector
     Productivity of the state sector: 1.0
Productivity of the collective sector: 0.28%
     In the commercial sector, the units breakdown as follows:
     state shops     92.5%
collective shops      7.3%
        peddlers      0.2%

     Finally, in the rural areas, selecting the most developed
region, that of Shanghai, we have that, in 1973, the income from
business in the people's communes there, was as follows:
commune level    30.5%
brigade level    17.2%
   team level    52.3%
      A second variation introduced to our analysis, is looking at
the social structure from the point of view of ownership-use of the
means of production:
a) urban bourgeoisie non-owners of means of production     1.4%
b) urban small-owners (those working in cooperatives and as
                       individuals)                        2.65%
c) rural small-owners (those working in people's communes and
                       as individuals)                    81.65
d) bureaucracy (managers of industrial means of production) 5.7%
e) proletariat (non-owners of means of production)          8.6%
     
Thus, by and large, from here it follows that chinese society,
after 24 years of building socialism ( or, better, attempting to 
carry over socialist revolution), was overwhelmingly a society
of small-producers.
     A clearer picture emerges if we look at the urban sector and
the rural sector separately:

URBAN SECTOR
 bourgeoisie   9.80%----   9.8    
 small owners  18.56%----  18.6
 bureaucracy  29.94%----  29.9
 proletariat  41.74%----  41.7

RURAL SECTOR
 small owners  95.25%----  95.3
 bureaucracy   1.66%----   1.7
 proletariat   3.08%----   3.0
     summary: a socialist revolution taking place in a rural
               society at a very low level of technology...
               a socialist revolution led by a political
               organization that was a coalition of nationalist,
               populist and marxist forces, the former having 
               broader social basis than the latter...
     
From above: a one-party dictatorship is bound to lay the breeding
grounds for the creation of a new ruling class, if the marxist
ideology shows itself unable to pass its points of view to the
majority of the population (goals)

     By now, we can draw a draft of the composition of that new
ruling class:

CIVIL-MILITARY BUREAUCRACY AS % of the POPULATION
1.-    Bureaucrats members of the CCP    2.19%
2.-       Peasants members of the CCP    5.04%
3.- Manual workers members of the CCP    0.99%
4.-Bureaucrats non-members of the CCP    3.51%
------------------------------------------------
TOTAL CIVIL-MILITARY BUREAUCRACY        11.73%
___________________________________________________

     That was the social group dominating Chinese society by the
1970s after defending victoriously their privileges against a
popular insurrection in the 1960s (the cultural revolution).

     Last, but no least, one can end up with the following crude
class structure in China:

A) Civil -military bureaucracy         11.73%
    (this stratum possessing authoritarian ideology)   11.73%
B) Urban bourgeoisie (non-owners)       1.40%
C) Urban Petty bourgeoisie (owners)     2.65%
D) Rural Petty bourgeoisie (owners)    76.61%
    (these strata possessing small-producers ideology)  80.66%
E) Proletariat                          7.61%
     (this stratum having a potential for socialist 
      ideology)                                           7.61%
                                                       (100.00)


[note: for the sake of a simplified analysis I grouped under the
heading "rural petty bourgeoisie" the following sectors:
former landlords and rich peasants     6%
petty rural bourgeoisie (chinese definition) 15.65%
poor and lower middle peasants (chinese definition) 54.96% ]
[the inclusion of former landlords and rich peasants makes sense
because they do not own land any more, and because
their aspirations coincide with that of the small owners:
conservative, individualistic, and constrained by
their attachment to individual property of the land]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Another type of classification was a mix of occupational and political
status:

1.- Intelligentsia
    (a) high-ranking members of the communist party -addressed as the
        ruling elites during the cultural revolution;
    (b) high-ranking non-communist party intelligentsia, including
        governmental, economic, military and cultural civil servants;
    (c) professional and technical specialists in high-ranking
        managerial personnel (mainly in big units of production)
    (d) the middle-ranking professional and technical personnel, the
        middle-ranking civil servants, managers of medium and small
        enterprises, junior military officers and members of the foreign
        office, and artists;
    (e) the white-collar workers, including accountants, clerks,
        bookkeepers, technical personnel;

2.- Working class
    (a) the skilled workers and workers in special industries like
        Daching (oil) and aerospace;
    (b) the rank-and-file workers with lesser skill grades or those
        whor are not politically active;

3.- Peasants
    (a) the well-to-do peasants who profit at different times either
        through the accumulation of greater private profit or through
        black marketeering. In the majority of cases, advantages are
        gained because of the geographical location or the nature of
        the crop raised, or because of some particular function they
        perform in the people's communes. This group may constitute
        about 5 per cent of the total rural population;
    (b) the average peasant with several shadings of productivity and
        political involvement. This includes poor peasants (about
        75 per cent of the rural population) and what may be called
        middle peasants (10 to 15 per cent of the rural population).
----------------
The above description is mainly from "Some Concrete Policy Decisions
on the Rural Socialist Education Movement", promulgated by the
Chinese Communist Party Central Committee in 1965 (at that time I was
living in China with my family. R.R.)
________________________________________________________________________


**********brief notes on BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM*********
after the triumph of the revolution, the social aim is SOCIALIST
REVOLUTION: that is a process leading to a classless society, 
* what was happening in societies like the Chinese after 1949
  and the Russian after 1917, among others?
* what happens in the process of building socialism the Soviet Way
  and the Chinese Way?
-new social groups with different access to economic, political and
 social resources develop, this process  as a creator of yet another
 socially stratified society...ruling class, etc.
-what are the foundations here?: the social relations of
 production, as underpinned on the USE (management) of means of
 production and not on the OWNERSHIP of means of production like it
 was when private property of them was the rule (USE as different from
 MANIPULATION, etc)
-from above a new elite, ruling elite of managers is created
they are managers at
#the social level
#the economic level
#the political level
#the cultural level
-the core of that new ruling elite is the communist party, around
 which the civil-military bureaucracy is formed
*for China, the environment was as follows:
     economic---rural society
     cultural---the weight of Confucianism
     political--- one-party dictatorship (here elaborate)
historical background since 1949, permanent blockage, permanent
state of siege as related to USA, to JAPAN, to Soviet Union

**********brief notes on prevailing thoughts about development*****
because bureaucratic socialism did collapse, the failure of socialism
as a "tool for development" at the technical level is declared, and
it follows that the other tool, "capitalism", is the only one that
has proved itself feasible...
therefore, socialism is no longer an alternative for the Third World
societies
*flaw in the above analysis:
-there was no failure of socialism as a tool because bureaucratic
 socialist societies never reached the stage of socialist societies
-the failure has been the defeat of the revolutionary forces within
 bureaucratic socialist societies during the process of building
 socialism
-that, because during building socialism new classes arise, a new
 type of class struggle appears, and, so far, social socialist
 forces have been defeated, and socialism is still not built
 anywhere...we don't know yet if socialism is feasible or not, what
 we do know, for sure, is that during the process of building
 socialism the outcome of the class struggle can end up in
 counter-revolution...but that is a political problem and not a
 technical problem (at the level of economic -centrally planned
 economy versus free market economy, etc), therefore, the analysis
 must be addressed mainly as a political one
-People's Republic of China is my case study to prove that
 new social classes generate from within the society undertaking
 building of socialism during this century
-economic, social, political, cultural and international
 environments were analyzed...etc 
( as elaborated in R. Rojas Sandford, "La Guardia Roja Conquista China", 
published in 1968, and R. Rojas Sandford, "China: una revolucion en agonia", 
published in 1978)                                 
====================rrojas research unit ====china2==========
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