NOTES ON CLASS ANALYSIS IN SOCIALIST CHINA, by Róbinson Rojas Sandford
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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
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INDUSTRIAL SECTOR 1973
URBAN SECTOR
RURAL SECTOR
CIVIL-MILITARY BUREAUCRACY
brief notes on BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM
brief notes on prevailing thoughts about development
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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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