(Repost from the struggle in Sri Lanka) How the Sri Lanka SEP bureaucracy made the concept of Self-determination a weapon of repression

(The IC's disingenuous discarding of the Leninist position in favor of the right to self-determination was correctly opposed by elements of the SEP-Sri Lanka. That such a major programmatic revision of the ideals of Bolshevik-Leninism received so little opposition is an indictment.

The road to revisionism was paved by the equation of demand for self-determination with support to bourgeois national liberation movements, which have become bankrupt. This is not an excuse to remove “self-determination” from the program, where it could be explained in a "negative" sense, ala Lenin.

Of course, abandoning the demand for self-determination was a complete betrayal of Marxism which has to this day not been provided a theoretical justification.

Originally, the ICFI provided an explanation for dropping "self-determination" as a slogan, based on the degeneration of "national liberation" movements... but it's "linguistic" argument never justified the abandonment of self-determination in the program of Marxists.

[See also 1987: The Situation in Sri Lanka and the Political Tasks of the Revolutionary Communist League - "The failure of the LTTE does not invalidate the demand for national self-determination, nor does it signify the hopelessness of such a struggle... Like all other unresolved tasks of the democratic movement, national self-determination can only be achieved through the dictatorship of the proletariat."])

By Nandana Nanneththi
How the Sri Lanka SEP bureaucracy made the concept of Self-determination a weapon of repression – Global Socialist Reviews

SEP Comrades and Friends, who stand against capitalism,

We have entered a critical phase of the class struggle. The world is fast heading towards a world war and to a situation where revolution and counter-revolution are posed against each other. It is now very clear that there is no way forward for any nationalist movement other than sharpening the counter-revolution.

But without the decisive intervention of the working class, not a single problem of the people will be solved. Without arming the working class with the international revolutionary program of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the working class cannot play a central role in the growing current of mass struggles. To do that, the fight against the existing consciousness of the working class should be intensified and accelerated.

On the part of the capitalist class, it is necessary to diffuse that battle in order to secure itself. The pressure exerted by capitalism on the working class to create a situation within the parties themselves that can slip the national sections of the International Committee from their foundations, is immense.

In Sri Lanka, the target victim of this pressure is the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). Therefore, more than ever, it is essential to be based on the history of the international class struggle and the party, and to be firm in policies and principles.

In these circumstances, the fact that the party’s current bureaucratic regime is diluting the party is a matter that needs to be discussed in depth. It is a task that calls for greater effort in theory, programme and perspectives. It is crucially important to expose and defeat the terrible lies and distortions propagated inside and outside the party by the party regime against the members who highlight that task.

On The 16 November 2021, comrade Wije Dias, the then General Secretary of the party accused me of rejecting the perspective of the International Committee on Self-Determination and banned me from party membership for three weeks from November 15, 2021, saying that the “membership ban will continue to be in effect” unless explanations were made within that period. You will understand sooner that this was the beginning of a witch-hunt launched in the party since 2015 when the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe government came to power with the backing of the United States.

However, I responded to the leadership in due time. It exposed the falsity of the leadership’s allegations and was therefore thrown out for the same reason. But as against that, the party circulated a letter dated December 20, 2021, written under the name of Wasantha Rupasinghe, with the approval of the General Secretary, which stated, “when we look carefully at all these distortions of Comrade Nandana” it appears that “the party is turned away from the internationalist foundations and surrendered to petty-bourgeois pressure by posting on Facebook pages to transform the party into an ‘ambalama’ (a wayside resting place for general public during the past) that can be used by various leftist people,”

The aim of the bureaucracy was to prevent me from attending the Congress which was to be held in March.

A letter dated February 7, 2022, signed by 17 party members and sent to the SEP Central Committee, intervened against this preparation. It states “Comrade Nandana has forwarded his reply to the Central Committee within the stipulated period. But the political committee has decided to prevent him from participating in the National Congress to be held on February 12, 13, 14 by continuing the ban without giving any reason.”

“In response to Nandana’s request to participate in the Congress, he was informed in a letter on the 29th that the Political Committee had decided with the consent of Comrade DN to allow him to participate in the conference and preparatory discussions subject to three conditions: ie. not abusing the membership mandate received; not disrupting the discussion; and acting under the agenda of the Congress and the pesidum to be appointed. Nandana has reported to the Central Committee and the International Committee that he accepts these conditions, on the 31st.”

“However, at 12.35pm on the 2nd, an email from Comrade Wije banned his participation once again.”

Rejecting the unconstitutional and undemocratic decision of the Political Committee, the members’ letter stated, “[w]e insist on the serious relevance of theoretical political discussions based on democratic centralism for political clarity.” “The attempt is made to hold the Congress in this way, in the circumstances where the political committee has made serious allegations against three party central committee members and a large group of members,” it pointed out.

Referring to the allegations made by the political committee in the above-quoted portion of Rupasinghe’s letter, it said that, due to this situation, it is necessary to resolve these issues before the Congress.

The convening of the Congress was only a ritual, carried out while retaining and maintaining the wrong practices, and the deceitful tactics, instead of preparing for the new revolutionary struggles of the class struggle. With that understanding the said article stated: “The members were informed only on 27 January that the Congress will be held from February 12…Chilaw locale was informed on February 4.”

“In accordance with paragraph 7 (b) of the constitution of the SEP, the Central Committee shall issue the notice of holding the National Congress at least 60 days in advance.”

“7 (e) Drafts of the agenda and documents shall be given to the delegates 20 days before the conference.”

“The special issue that we are focusing on here is why the constitution that the international committee is said to be taking seriously is not considered so by one of its branches.”

“Conducting the conference in this way is an invitation to go from confusion to confusion. Therefore, we, the undersigned, propose that it should be adjourned, so that the conference gets the time it needs.”

The letter had gone to the trash bin. On the next 10th, an english copy of it was forwarded to the International Committee(IC), and the very next day, consequent to IC’s discussions with the Sri Lanka section, the party agreed to postpone the Congress and allow for the participation of Nandana in the Congress and pre-Congress discussions.

But the aim of the leadership was somehow to prevent Nandana from returning to the Central Committee and to prevent the party’s political and theoretical crisis from emerging in the Congress.

The party regime continued to confuse newcomers, conservative members and members who had not been theoretically equipped for years, by uprooting the concept of self-determination from the foundations of the International Committee’s political position. Although my article refuted the allegation of violating paragraphs 30-4-5-6 of the party’s foundation document (2011) regarding self-determination, the regime concealed it from the membership, imposed its own fabrications on it and demanded that I be punished for it.

They corrupted the party membership with reactionary concepts so much so that they wrote on self-determination in Rupasingha’s aforesaid letter that, “the slogan means fighting to assert the right of self-determination of the Sinhala and Tamil working class against the Sinhala and Tamil capitalist class.” This is a distortion of history, concepts and political positions. Whatever be their thinking, such a position definitely aligns with the pressure of anti-historical, Sinhalese-Buddhist racist, reactionary position that the oppressed Tamil people are not subjected to different oppression than the Sinhalese. Within the Marxist movement, this slogan proclaims opposition to the subjugation of weaker nations by imperialism and the subjugation of minority ethnic groups by the rule of the majority group within the nation-state itself. When the International Committee reconsidered this concept and its use since early ’90s, it was not stripped of its democratic content, as the party bureaucracy claims.

SEP membership will read my answer now for the first time. It is posted below. It contains only that part of the reply titled “False Charge Sheet”, which relates to the subject in issue. Even so, bearing witness to the firm struggle waged by the SEP left faction to resolve political issues politically, it will gain, I believe, the necessary attention from the working class, in order to secure the progressive development of the party and the class struggles ahead.

False charge sheet

According to your statement, “the SEP Political Committee unanimously condemns the attempt to distort a very important policy issue of the International Committee of the Fourth International and the Socialist Equality Party – the decision to reject the demand for the right of nations to self-determination — and thereby create serious confusion about that policy.

It also states: “Your position that the SEP defends the self-determination of nations is in stark contrast to the positions especially of paragraphs 30-4 and 30-6, in the International Foundation.”

You are using a conversation that started on my page in the face book on November 5, 2021. It was based on the following excerpt from SEP Principles Statement that I have quoted there.

“Democratic Centralism

The revolutionary struggle of the working class requires organization, and organization is impossible without discipline. But the discipline required for revolutionary struggle cannot be imposed bureaucratically from above. It must develop on the basis of an agreement, freely arrived at, on principles and program. This conviction finds expression in the organizational structure of the Socialist Equality Party, which is based on the principles of democratic centralism. In the formulation of policy and the appropriate tactics, the fullest democracy must prevail within the party. No restraints, other than those indicated by the party’s constitution, are placed on internal discussion of the SEP’s policies and activities. Leaders are democratically elected by the membership, and are subject to criticism and control. Those candidates for leadership who cannot abide criticism should ponder the words of James P. Cannon, the founder of the Trotskyist movement in the United States: “The truth never hurt anyone, provided he was on the level.” But if the formulation of policy requires the broadest discussion and open and honest criticism, its implementation demands the strictest discipline. The decisions arrived at democratically within the party are binding on all members. Those who object to this essential element of centralism in the implementation of decisions, who see in the demand for discipline a violation of their personal freedom, are not revolutionary socialists but anarchistic individualists, who do not understand the implications and demands of the class struggle. “

I say that your opposition is to the basic principles of Bolshevism quoted above, such as broad discussion, genuine criticism and strict discipline.

Let me quote the relevant discussion that took place under the above post – which you are distorting, with a person named Seevali Attanayake – in the exact way it actually happened.

Seevali Attanayake: Does the SEP currently recognize the right of minorities for selfdetermination?

Nandana Nannetti: Yes. Attanayake: With regard to Sri Lanka? Nandana: Yes. Attanayake: Long live my old Kamkaru Mawatha.

Nandana: I do not understand.

Attanayake: After 88/89, I worked with the Kamkaru Mawatha at the University. Later it was learned that they did not recognize the right of the Tamil people for selfdetermination.

Nandana: The RCL and the SEP have never acted in defiance of the civil rights of the oppressed masses. But we repel the conspiracies of building up of small imperialist dependent pockets in the name of self-determination. How many examples one can find to show that such fragments of states do not protect any right of the oppressed people? All radical nationalist movements have aligned themselves with this or that imperialist group over the past few decades.

Attanayake: It is very clear that the SEP’s position has changed. Thank you. What is the party’s position on the right of nations to self-determination and the concept of homeland?

Nandana: Defending the right to self-determination of the oppressed is now a task for the working class. That position has never changed. Can you mention any such instance?

Attanayake: Is the Kamkaru Mawatha, which raised its voice against the genocidal war during the Civil War, is still holding that position today?

Nandana: Yes, today, tomorrow and forever it will mobilize the working class against the aggression of the Sinhala ruling class.

Nandana: Read the Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka -The National Question. You can read it from wsws.org (National question in Foundation document is the full text from 30-1 to 30-6 of that document.)

Attanayake: Is the SEP still advocating for the formation of a Socialist Republic of Tamil Eelam-Sri Lanka as a part of the Socialist Republic of Indian subcontinent under the leadership of the working class?

Nandana: Yes Attanayake: Thank you comrade, for patiently replying.

(from this conversation, it is shown that our position on the national question is sometimes presented before the masses in a distorted way. I think those who participated in this conversation were able to correct it.)

The next day, Nalaka Malalagama, a sympathizer of the party, made a special note in his face book as follows: “The SEP (RCL) does not stand for self-determination of the oppressed.” This is a statement hostile to the SEP’s perspective. We will no longer use the ‘right to self-determination’ as a slogan. The reason for this is, as we have affirmed in our reply to the Spartacist League, due to the fact that the new separatist nationalist movements and imperialists have distorted the meaning of the slogan, it creates confusion.

It does not mean any neglection of the self-determination which is among the most basic democratic rights of oppressed nations.

I wrote: “The LSSP entered the bourgeois government and betrayed the working class perspective on the self-determination of the oppressed nations. It was the beginning of a 30-year war and the prolongation of the existence of capitalism. In that case, knowingly tolerating Malalagama’s propaganda below is a betrayal of the unstoppable revolution. “

The lesson that the LTTE’s separatist movement is, in the final analysis, the result of LSSP betrayal; is far greater than an accusation leveled at the LSSP itself. That is, it is an accusation against Trotskyism and, was an event that raised unavoidable historical, theoretical and political issues directly linked with the life of the international working class.

The LSSP, which was rooted in the working class marked the earliest instances of a Trotskyist party entering a bourgeois government and, spearheaded the creation of a racial and religious constitution against the oppressed, creating conditions for the alienation of the oppressed Tamil nation from the working class. It also created the conditions for a generation of working class and young people to be positioned against the program of the permanent revolution.

On this basis that I have defended the positions of paragraphs 30-4-5-6, which you say I have contradicted.

For example, I can show you that there is no contradiction between this position appears in 30-4 and my comment: “The new form of nationalism promotes separatism along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines, with the aim of dividing up existing state for the benefit of local exploiters. Such movement have nothing to with a struggle against imperialism, nor do they in any sense embody the democratic aspirations of the masses of oppressed. They save to divide the working class and divert the class struggle in to ethno-communal warfare.” In the interest of unifying the working class, the international committee insisted in a critical, even hostile, attitude to the proliferation of national separatism movements and there invocation of ‘the right of self-determination’ to justify the formation of separate capitalist state.”

30-5 as stated, “For the masses, they hold out the prospect only of ethnic bloodbaths and intensified exploitation.”

30-6 declares that, “support for the right of ‘self-determination for the Tamil people’, which in practical political terms could only mean support of the national separatist project of the LTTE, no longer had any progressive content.” But “The RCL continued to intransigently oppose the Sri Lankan government efforts to forcibly maintain the island’s unity by military means.” ( The emphasis is mine )

I am convinced that I have expressed a very clear hostile attitude to the right to ‘selfdetermination’ which is emphasized in black letters here. As the final sentence states; “The RCL’s demand for the unconditional withdrawal of armed forces from the North and East did not imply support for a separate Eelam. The idea is to unite the working class and the oppressed masses in a revolutionary struggle.” Instead, the RCL’s expectation in opposing the military repression against the Tamil masses was to unite the working class and the oppressed masses in a revolutionary struggle for a Sri Lanka Eelam Socialist Republic. “The meaning of this is that, the struggle for working class dictatorship is waged on the basis of the unity built upon the foundation of accepting democratic rights including the right to self determination of the oppressed nations.”

Removing its all-essential adjectives and declaring that the SEP does not stand for the right of the self determination of the oppressed nations is hostile to the unity of the working class that emerges from this perspective.

In my understanding, the concept of the transitional program in the Question of selfdetermination is still valid today.” It is impossible merely to reject the democratic program; it is imperative that in the struggle of the masses outgrow it. The slogan for national (or constituent) Assembly preserves its full force of such countries as China or India. This slogan must be indissolubly tide up with the problem of national liberation and agrarian reform. As a primary step the workers must be armed with this democratic program.” ‘The Death Agony of Capitalism and Task of the Forth International’ (The emphasis is mine)

“The truth is that the essential progressive content of self-determination –the eradication of national oppression- can be realized only through the SEP’s program for the socialist united states of Sri Lanka and Elam.“ ‘The SEP and the fight for the socialist united states of Sri Lanka and Elam 1998’

“The outbreak of the first word war vindicated Trotsky’s insistence on the primacy of the international situation over national factors “comrade Dave stated “The imperialist war signified in essence, the impossibility of peaceful reconciling the productive force of world capitalism with the outmoded national state. Both the working class in the advance as well as backward countries faced a common dilemma: The solution to all the fundamental problems of human society was to be found only at the level of word economic development and through the medium of international revolutionary struggle”, (Commemoration of comrade Keerthi Balasuriya’ 1993)

“Trotsky argued very clearly on this question; even in his lifetime, when the demand for self-determination still retained a progressive content, it did not stand above the struggle to establish the unity of the working class on the basis of socialist program. The demand for self-determination did not then, no dos it now, signify the reconciliation of Marxism and nationalism. Above all, it does not oblige the Marxist party to give support of any kind to separatism” Ibid

As Trotsky says “Only the question of power by the world proletariat can assure a real and lasting freedom of development for all nationals of our planet”

‘For socialist, self-determination means nothing if not opposition to the use of state coercion to force national minorities remain within the confines of given state. This was the essential democratic content of the demand when it was posed at the beginning of this century and remains so today” in ‘Marxism, opportunism and the Balkan crisis’, ICFI’1984

The unprecedented geographical integration of capitalist production unleashed two major trends on the national question.

1) The old nationalist regimes attracting geographically circulating capital by providing all the factors of cheap labor and unbridled exploitation.

2) In areas where natural resources and industries are set aside to repay foreign debt, as well as in areas with international transport capabilities, public works structure and cheap labor, the ruling parties have seceded from the influence of all previous governments and put forward separatism to racket themselves with foreign capital and gain more profit.

Our struggle against these tendencies is the mobilization of all nations under the revolutionary leadership of the working class, and there is no easy way to achieve that struggle, disregarding the national question.

I must now say that you are working with the attitude that there is no special thing called a national question. You define that all people face in the crisis of capitalism, dismissing its contradictions. That leads you to a pragmatic approach which is against the dialectics. It is not the policy of the working class. This stance abandons the theory of permanent revolution.

I think this provides a clear answer to your charge sheet. We need to work together to understand the roots of the problem. I will provide the rest of this article within the next two weeks.

Fraternally,

Nandana Nanneththi

06.12.2021

Brief Critique of Dan Lazare on Gender: For a Revolutionary-Critical Attitude Towards Gender, Not Ambiguous Polemic

I - (2/3/26)

(A response to Dan Lazare)

Daniel Lazare's article raises important concerns about the postmodern roots of contemporary gender theory and its dangerous results (including uncritical medical interventions for youth) and highlights its contradictions with scientific materialism. The critique of Judith Butler's performative framework as ultimately unscientific is poignant and necessary. So too is the exposure of silencing tactics, uncritical adaptation to the liberal mainstream in some leftist groups (e.g., Spartacists/Internationalist Group/ICFI pushing puberty blockers & surgeries without engaging evidence contradictory to the new gender orthodoxy), and the political costs - including how the Democratic mishandling of the issue contributed to Trump's 2024 victory and the failure of radical groups to establish a solid Marxist position for the working class.

However, it is not only (limited) Marxists but traditionalists and "TERFS" that have made (often valid) criticisms of the contradictions of "gender ideology." A Marxist text targeting the same issues therefore demands critical clarity. However, the piece as written risks political ambiguity at best, and at worst alignment with right-wing narratives.

This one-sided polemic downplays dialectical nuance, simplistically overemphasizes gender as a biological phenomenon, and fails to advance a revolutionary-critical stance that transcends both liberal "gender ideology" and reactionary "biologism."

By framing trans-related developments predominantly as a bourgeois-radical train wreck and devastating bourgeois deviation and not clarifying a Marxist attitude towards gender - and through phrases like "invasion" of women's sports/changing rooms, "vicious hate campaigns" against (ultimately right-wing) TERFs, and emphasis on "horror stories" (e.g., the reference to JK Rowling), it can read as echoing right-wing narratives that portray trans existence as inherently threatening. This risks tailing reaction rather than advancing a revolutionary-critical stance that defends trans dignity against bigotry while exposing the limits of "gender ideology" and the contemporary trans movement.

Unlike proponents of "gender ideology" who - despite the supposedly "subversive" character of their anti-scientific theories - objectively accept the framework of gender as formed within class society and seek only the freedom to maneuver within it, expand its horizons, etc., Marxists adopt a revolutionary-critical attitude toward the social forms of gender as they exist under class society. This is part of the broader struggle to abolish all the outmoded, reactionary "muck of ages" sustained by capitalism and class society. It also means resolute opposition to reactionary forces that exploit the contradictions in "gender ideology" to advocate "turning back the clock" and who propagate bigotry and chauvinism.

None of the legitimate materialist critique of gender theorists should be taken to mean that Marxists "defend" the social forms of gender that have taken shape under class society. Rather, we defend a scientific and materialist understanding of their roots. Nor should it be taken to mean that the current chapter in the evolution of thought on gender and the parallel changes in social forms of gender taking place - despite being bound up with real contradictions, including inappropriate "gender-affirming" medical procedures and social/political confusion - has been reactionary "through and through." To the extent that archaic, rigid gender roles have been objectively undermined - the latest stage in a long process of transformation stretching back generations - this is a progressive development that revolutionaries seek to push forward. Lazare's narrative omits these important points.

Lazare rightly points to capitalist decay as a factor fueling the surge in gender dysphoria, but the deeper issue is class society as such and the gender framework to which it gave rise. Strictly economic pressures are not the only factor. The very existence of gender roles - developed over thousands of years of human history as part of the cultural superstructure - establishes the framework in which gender dysphoria emerges. This is why gender dysphoria is not a new phenomenon (though the recent explosion is) but one that has appeared across time periods and cultures. A dialectical analysis must take into account the complex interaction of base and superstructure, without reducing gender dysphoria to the stresses and strains of capitalist decay.

The solution is not retreat into "biologism" or reaction, nor liberal half-measures, but socialist revolution to overturn the social forms of gender formed through class society and its legacy of oppression.

The Spartacists' and Internationalist Group's uncritical calls for "hands off trans kids" and affirmation for minors - based on the "facts" of "men and women" and "society as it is currently organized" (what Trotsky called "worshipping of the accomplished fact") - illustrate the dangers of tailing liberal ideology. But Lazare's framing veers too close to employing the same method, only with opposite results: amplifying fears of "invasion" or taking an ambiguous attitude towards gender in ways that can play into right-wing narratives and disorient the working class.

A genuine Marxist analysis must defend trans people against reactionary assaults, critique bourgeois gender ideology's scientific and political limits, and fight for transcendence through class struggle. The article raises vital questions that must be built on with radical, dialectical clarity - not ambiguity or simplicity.

Examining the Russian Revolution on its 108th Anniversary

(This piece is based on a lecture delivered by Cliff Slaughter in the 1960s)

As we celebrate the 108th Anniversary of the October Revolution, the world stands on the brink of a situation more explosive than that which led to the eruption of World War I and eventually the Revolution itself. It is necessary to draw the lessons of the October Revolution as our class confronts the breakdown of the world capitalist system in the 21st century. 

The Revolution did not fall from the sky. Eight months prior to the October Revolution, Russia had experienced another revolution, the February Revolution. Tsarism, the most despised and brutal autocracy on Earth which had ruled for 300 years, was overthrown by a massive movement of workers, peasants and soldiers. The Russian workers, who had toiled in destitution and misery under the bloody rule of the Tsar, were surrounded by a mass of peasants living in almost medieval conditions. The February Revolution led to the establishment of a "democratic" provisional government and the creation of Workers' Councils (Soviets), and in the conditions then existing in Russia this gave the impression of massive victory and produced a significant wave of euphoria.

This sentiment overcame many Russian socialists, including Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd such as Stalin and Kamanev, who demanded critical support for the new bourgeois government and nearly provoked Lenin to resign from the Party. However, after eight months of “liberal” government lack of action and compromise in the face of an escalating threat of a counterrevolutionary coup, by October, the working population had overthrown the provisional government and the ruling class standing behind it and installed their own socialist workers' government! 

In April, Lenin had shocked the crowd that gathered to welcome the famous revolutionist when he exited the "sealed train" upon his return to Russia from exile in Switzerland. After the February Revolution, he didn't celebrate the beginning of a new era; instead, he started a new struggle: "Down with the Provisional government! All Power to the Soviets!" At that time, even many of his comrades believed that the presence of workers councils were a guarantee of a truly "democratic" development. But this situation was not sustainable. Given the power of the working class and its organizations, Lenin saw this "democratic" stage as a situation of "dual power" and a priceless window of opportunity for socialist revolution. The organized power of the working class and its allies could not co-exist with the state of the reactionary Russian capitalists and landlords - the former would either smash this machine or be trampled by the counter-revolution of the latter. 

The most important lessons in the history of the global workers' movement can be found in Lenin’s bold attempt to readjust consciousness to the objective situation. The uncompromising revolutionism of Lenin and Bolshevism led workers and peasants through the necessary experiences that proved to the masses that the seizure of state power was necessary. 

The global working class came to achieve its greatest victory during the 1917 Russian October Revolution and forever altered the course of world history. It was unequivocally demonstrated that the working class could rule and begin the creation of a new society while abolishing the capitalist class. Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the working class had gained and held political power for the first time in history over 1/6 of the world. The course of the Russian Revolution had vindicated the strategic approach initially developed by Leon Trotsky, the theory of permanent revolution, which had foreseen the outbreak of a socialist revolution in backwards Russia as a manifestation of the international working class’s struggles to take power and overturn over-ripe capitalism on a world scale.

Lenin

When Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks in the middle of 1917, Lenin remarked that "from that time there was no better Bolshevik." Together Lenin and Trotsky oversaw the alliance of workers with the masses of the peasantry and soldiers and ultimately victory in the Russian Civil War. As Lenin later said, “Could any one point out to me another man who could organize an almost model army in a year and even win the respect of military experts? We have such a man!”

Trotsky

The Bolshevik Party was, ultimately, not a party like other parties. It was an organization steeled in the struggle against all opportunism, and steeped in the theoretical traditions of Marxism. Following the start of World War I, the Marxist Internationalists, most significantly the Bolsheviks, fought against the Second International's betrayal of socialist internationalism and support for war. The rise of Bolshevism and the role it played in the turbulent events of 1917 were prepared by and vindicated the centrality of this fight.

The Bolshevik Party demonstrated through its struggle that socialist internationalism is the fundamental element of the real struggle for power. The fate of the Russian Revolution, which resulted from the systemic global contradictions of capitalism, was inseparably connected to the progression of the world socialist revolution.

The Bolshevik Party was different in other ways. The Bolsheviks were a Party based ultimately not on the "labor aristocracy" and the intelligentsia, but a dynamic movement connected to the young and most exploited sections of the working class. As Trotsky noted:

"Bolshevism when underground was always a party of young workers. The Mensheviks relied upon the more respectable skilled upper stratum of the working class, always prided themselves on it, and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Subsequent events harshly showed them their mistake. At the decisive moment the youth carried with them the more mature stratum and even the old folks."

There was a meaningful and vibrant interplay of viewpoints between the various layers of the movement within and around the Bolsheviks. There were numerous disagreements within the party, befitting an organization that knew how to turn to the revolutionary masses. Lenin frequently found himself on the losing end of such disputes, which occasionally became public despite party discipline.

The essential element in the victory of the Revolution was ultimately the Marxist leadership of the most far-sighted and intransigent Bolsheviks. It is the approach of this leadership that the international working class must deepen our understanding of. However, it is not enough to imitate the Leninist "combat party" as an empty formalism. As Trotsky put it: 

"The moral qualities of every party flow, in the last analysis, from the historical interests that it represents. The moral qualities of Bolshevism - self-renunciation, disinterestedness, audacity and contempt for every kind of tinsel and falsehood - the highest qualities of human nature! - flow from revolutionary intransigence in the service of the oppressed. The Stalinist bureaucracy imitates in this domain the words and gestures of Bolshevism." [emphasis added]

Today Marxism and Internationalism must become wedded to the most militant and oppressed sections of the international working class, on the basis shown to us by Lenin and Trotsky: one that combines the utmost revolutionary intransigence against capitalism, against imperialism and against all sorts of nationalist and anti-Marxist revisionism, with the necessary degree of organizational flexibility and connection to the aspirations of the most revolutionary layers of the working class!

Study the lessons of the October Revolution! 

Forward to the world socialist revolution!

(Repost) The WSWS writes a fairy tale about China's zero-Covid policy: Response from a Chinese Trotskyist

(The following article by Chinese Trotskyists is a great article. However, we would address two things:

First, the article says: "The author of that statement endows that one moment of 1949 with the special status of being the handmaiden of China’s economic growth."

The foundation of the infrastructure developed during China's previous period as a deformed workers state is essential to explaining China's rise. The explosive growth of basic infrastructure is what enabled the import of advanced productive capital from the West.

Secondly, the article quotes a book about China produced by the RCI. Writings from this tendency can only produce confusion on the question of the nature of China and similar states. They hold to an objectivist analysis like Pabloism, one in which a disembodied "permanent revolution" was working itself out through whatever forces were available, instead of a conscious working class. They took this as far as to call Kampuchea, Burma, Syria, Angola, Mozambique, Aden, Benin, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan - and God knows which others - as all being "workers' states." Suffice to say this is nonsense of the highest order.

Finally, we wish to emphasize the conclusion that appeared in earlier drafts of this article [see the Chinese Trotskyist website]: 

The International Committee is behaving today like Gerry Healy's support for the Middle Eastern countries, but unfortunately the International Committee, which has been through this once, has not learned the lessons of its previous experience, and today the International Committee of the Fourth International is approaching infinitely closer to the International Committee under Gerry Healy in all of its behaviors. Perhaps the next collapse of the International Committee is just around the corner to be the next lesson of history. The same history will happen twice; the first time will be a tragedy, while the second time will be nothing more than a farce.

See also: ➡ ICFI (1953) : For a Proletarian Pandemic Policy!)

by a Chinese Trotskyist
Permanent Revolution: The WSWS writes a fairy tale about China's zero-Covid policy: Response from a Chinese Trotskyist

On March 24, the online journal of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), published an article titled “Five Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Response of the World Socialist Web Site.”[1] In it, the WSWS reiterated its long-held view that the Chinese government initially sought to contain the pandemic but abandoned its public health measures under the pressure of capital from the United States and other countries. To quote the WSWS article,

On January 23, 2020, facing growing pressure from a restive working class, Chinese authorities initiated the first Zero-COVID elimination policy in the world, with 13 million people in Wuhan beginning the first mass lockdown in human history. This policy expanded throughout Hubei province and was combined with a program of regular mass testing, rigorous contact tracing, the safe isolation of infected patients, travel restrictions and universal masking, a comprehensive suite of public health measures designed to stop viral transmission. Seventy-six days later, all of Chinese society exited from these lockdowns and largely resumed normal life.

Until China abandoned its zero-Covid policy in December 2022, the WSWS never wrote a word of criticism of the response of the Chinese government to the pandemic. For instance take this statement from an “inquest” published by the WSWS in December of 2021:

epidemic control measures in Chongqing and elsewhere in China, based upon basic principles of epidemiology and modern technologies, such as PCR testing and smartphone-based contact tracing, have proved to be effective. It is imperative that scientists, workers, and students push for similar life-saving policies to be adopted around the world.[2]

But the WSWS never conducted any serious investigation into what was really happening in China during the pandemic. Instead, it manufactured a fairy-tale of China heroically resisting the neglect and incompetence of the capitalist powers by projecting its own unique zero-Covid policy. Now a zero-Covid policy is indeed a laudable goal, but the real life implementation of this policy by a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy inevitably shipwrecked those goals.  In what follows we will examine how this policy came into being, how it was implemented by an authoritarian bureaucracy and how it finally ended.

China’s zero-Covid policy as seen from the ground
1. A Government that missed the best timing

In the 1980-84 British TV series “Yes Minister,” we are told what the attitude of a qualified bureaucratic government should be in the face of an event:

1. First, refuse to acknowledge that anything has happened.
2. Second, admit that something has happened, but insist the situation is under control.
3. Third, acknowledge that the matter is serious, but claim that nothing can be done.
4. Fourth, declare that the incident is already in the past.

This pattern of delay, obfuscation, and willful forgetting unfolded in China from the moment the virus was first discovered as Chinese bureaucrats tried to cover up the pandemic and muddle through. It took nearly two full months from the discovery of the coronavirus until the Chinese government officially began implementing protective measures. During this period, many patients paid for their own tests and found this new virus, which was very similar to the SARS coronavirus.[3] Yet once these test reports were issued, the Chinese government immediately forced them to be revised after they were released, and then banned their further dissemination.[4]At the end of December, an ophthalmologist named Li Wenliang privately warned his friends on his personal account that a novel coronavirus had been discovered. He did not intend to spread this information to the broader public. Nevertheless, he was arrested and detained by local police for more than ten days. In the end, he died during the massive outbreak in Wuhan that spring.

Li Wenliang

After two months of suppression, news of the outbreak finally surfaced just as China’s Spring Festival travel rush began in January 2020. The virus quickly spread nationwide. It must be noted that as the Lunar New Year migration started, a vast number of workers returned home from the factories. Most of them came from small cities or poor rural areas, forced to leave their hometowns for work in large cities. With absolutely no protective warnings, the virus was carried across the entire country. Even routine preventative measures like those for avian influenza in China, or policies such as wearing masks in public during periods of heavy pollution, could have significantly slowed the spread of the pandemic.

Map showing spread of coronavirus infections in China as of Feb.2020.

With the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Chinese government began large-scale epidemic control measures as Wuhan's medical system was completely overwhelmed by the virus. All hospital beds in Wuhan were full, even forcing some patients from other wards to vacate their beds. The medical system collapsed under the impact of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of patients. The elderly died in droves, and large numbers of working-class people lost their families.

We do not grant any credibility to the official death toll statistics published by the Chinese government. Officials reclassified a huge number of deaths as being caused by “underlying conditions worsened by COVID-19.” Countless patients with chronic illnesses died without access to medication. If it were not for the spontaneous solidarity exhibited by China’s working class, many would not have survived through that spring.

2. Crude, One-Size-Fits-All Controls

After the outbreak spread, the Chinese government quickly imposed nationwide lockdowns forcibly closing factories, halting business operations, and shutting down schools

Abrupt control measures left countless chronic patients unable to obtain their medications. With Wuhan sealed off, China’s working class showed the most united, spontaneous spirit of mutual aid by sending essential medicines into Wuhan from outside.[5] No matter how harshly the government tried to suppress the strength of the working class, no matter how propaganda distorted their role, workers followed their conscience.

Many doctors, facing dying patients, defied government lockdown orders and secretly performed life-saving surgeries. Workers from every sector donated money to help Wuhan overcome the crisis. Doctors and nurses voluntarily registered to go to Wuhan to ease the medical shortage. Volunteers across industries offered to work in logistics companies to maintain a minimal flow of supplies nationwide. They carried medicines across city walls with their bare hands and feet. Thanks to such selfless volunteers, many chronic patients survived. Without these heroes, countless patients and elderly people in China would likely have faced death.

But unreasonable policies also appeared. To implement central orders, local bureaucrats often doubled down on enforcement. During this period, more than ten pregnant women were refused entry to hospitals because they lacked a 24-hour nucleic acid test certificate, leading to miscarriages or even deaths. Long-haul truck drivers were blocked at highway entrances and exits and spent more than a month in their trucks deprived of the most basic living conditions. A large number of hospitals closed down except for fever clinics, resulting in many patients losing treatment options. 

Yet the working class did not initiate  a critique of the epidemic control policies themselves. This was due to the influence of traditional Chinese culture where emperors are often portrayed as wise but deceived by corrupt ministers. Local officials may exploit the people, but once an imperial envoy from the central government arrives, problems are expected to be swept away. Influenced by this tradition and decades of government propaganda, most workers blamed only local officials in Wuhan and elsewhere, while believing that the policies originating from the leadership of the CCP were correct. In other words: “The central government had good intentions; it was only local officials who distorted the policy.”

3. Profits of the Medical-Industrial Complex

At the start of the outbreak, demand for masks skyrocketed. Fortunately, since winter and spring are both peak flu seasons and periods of high air pollution, most Chinese people were already in the habit of stockpiling masks. As a result, the early stage of the pandemic did not cause a complete collapse in mask availability. Moreover, because workers traditionally stockpile about half a month’s worth of supplies for the Spring Festival—what we call “New Year goods”—there was some buffer. But once the lockdown orders were issued, large numbers of workers who had returned home for the holiday were unable to return to their factories.

As the epidemic was gradually brought under control, various industries were about to return to normal. But China's medical conglomerates came to the forefront and became even more greedy in their pursuit of profit. In their eyes, epidemic prevention and control measures were not about saving the lives of the poor, but creating new avenues of profit for the rich.

Chinese medicine has long been divided into three categories:

1. Western medicine (xiyao 西药) — modern pharmaceuticals developed through scientific methods.
2. Traditional Chinese medicine (zhongyao 中药) — herbal remedies passed down from ancient times.
3. Patent medicines (zhongchengyao 中成药) — preparations derived from Chinese herbs.

This last process generally involves decocting the herbs, concentrating the decoction into granules, and sealing them in plastic packaging. When patients buy the medicine, they open the packaging, pour out the granules, and reconstitute them with water to make a medicine for consumption. Some traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparations are made by adding excipients (often starch) to the decocted soup and concentrating it into tablets, packaged like modern pharmaceuticals.

From a modern medical perspective, the effects of Chinese herbal remedies can often be explained by their active ingredients. But patent medicines are more dubious: during production, the specific active compounds are rarely identified. In clinical double-blind trials, the vast majority of patent medicines have been proven ineffective. Yet, paradoxically, patent medicines are often the most expensive products on the market—typically costing five times more than equivalent Western medicines. Many “effective” patent medicines secretly contain Western drug ingredients.

A typical example: a course of cefixime (a Western antibiotic sold under the brand name Suprax) costs about 40 renminbi, while a course of Pudilan Koufuye (a patent herbal remedy) costs around 200 RMB and is far less effective than cefixime  or the simple and reliable roxithromycin. Moreover, the side effects of most patent medicines are vaguely described in labels as “not yet clear.” Despite this, the government still allows them on the market.

Furthermore, in ancient Chinese medicine, heavy metals were frequently used directly in medicinal materials. Ancient Chinese medicine believed that mercury sulfide could treat insomnia, arsenic sulfide could treat leukemia, enhance male sexual function, and even treat oral ulcers and some colds. They even believed that herbs containing aristolochic acid could promote urination. These drugs are still sold at drug prices today, and no one has to pay the price for patients who died due to misleading government advice about the value of traditional Chinese medicines.

As the pandemic spread, the Chinese government, instead of massively expanding the production of modern medicines, aggressively promoted traditional Chinese medicine and patent remedies. From central to local levels, large-scale promotions extolled their alleged antiviral effects, allowing the medical-industrial complex to reap staggering profits. For instance, a box of ibuprofen costs no more than 15 RMB, while a course of Chinese medicine treatment could exceed 200 RMB and still be ineffective. A box of the patent drug Lianhua Qingwen was speculated up to 200 RMB, yet its effectiveness was virtually nil. When the epidemic prevention and control measures were suddenly and completely lifted, the public discovered that the efficacy of these drugs was almost zero.

The producer of Lianhua Qingwen, Yiling Pharmaceutical, saw its owner Wu Yiling become the richest man in Hebei province. By 2020, he had amassed a fortune of $1.5 billion, earning the nickname “the Academician Billionaire.”

Wu Yiling, the 'Academician Billionaire'

Meanwhile, nucleic acid testing also became a tool for profiteering. The Chinese government mandated that all public places nationwide require a nucleic acid test report within one week for entry. In areas with even a single case of COVID-19, a nucleic acid test – known in the west as a polymerase chain reaction or PCR test – within 24 hours was required, infinitely amplifying the profits from nucleic acid testing. China's nucleic acid testing also pioneered a new method: collecting samples from five to ten people together for testing, and then conducting separate nucleic acid tests on those individuals after a case was detected. Over the years, nucleic acid testing providers have reaped enormous profits, and many have discovered that some testing institutions did not send the collected samples to professional testing facilities but instead destroyed them directly.

4. Terror and Repression

As more and more workers began questioning the harsh epidemic control measures, people generally believed that only reasonable precautions—such as wearing masks and taking temperature checks—were necessary. But the Chinese government thought otherwise. Through epidemic prevention measures, the state gained access to the complete movement records of nearly every individual. This gave officials the most direct and crude means to suppress any worker or mass movement.

In 2021, local banks in Henan province embezzled all the deposits of their clients. Although we lack direct evidence linking these banks to government officials, the actions of those officials made the connection obvious. Faced with furious depositors, they did not attempt to arrest the culprits or compensate the victims. Instead, they used epidemic prevention measures to forcibly quarantine all the protesters, repeatedly restricting their ability to leave Zhengzhou or travel to Beijing.

We called the Henan official involved in this case the “Red Code Secretary,” because they weaponized the digital health-code system—turning protesters’ codes red to confine them. When this was exposed, public outrage erupted nationwide. The official in question received a stern warning and was demoted from her administrative positions.  Hardly a severe punishment but even this slap on the wrist proved to be a fraud.  Just last year, netizens discovered that this very same official had once again assumed a leadership post in Zhengzhou.[6]

Zhang Linlin, the 'Red Code Secretary'.

This convinces us that the incident was a clear example of government officials themselves embezzling citizens’ property and then covering for each other within the bureaucracy.

5. The Reluctant Reopening

How to explain China’s abrupt abandonment of epidemic control measures?

In 2022, Shanghai’s epidemic lockdown left tens of thousands unemployed. The vast majority were migrant workers who had left their hometowns to work in Shanghai. Not only did they lose their jobs, they still had to shoulder extremely high rent and living costs. The same was true across the country: as overzealous control measures dragged on, mass unemployment and economic depression spread across industries. Unlike the well-dressed gentlemen sitting in offices, China’s working class has no unemployment insurance. Losing one’s job simply meant starvation.

And yet these gentlemen, dressed in fine suits, demanded that we obey the government’s epidemic control measures. If we refused, they denounced us as agents of capitalist manipulation!

Furthermore, bureaucratic rule always operates in a crude, one-size-fits-all manner. When the outbreak began, they banned everyone from traveling—even the gravely ill. But when they decided to reopen, they lifted all restrictions at once, without leaving any middle ground. Bureaucrats never consider the so-called interests of the masses; they only seek to achieve their own goals, even by the most brutal means. If a building catches fire, the deaths of a few dozen people mean nothing to them—just numbers in a report. But if the survivors escape, then the officials start fearing for their own positions.

We must also responsibly point out that the government’s decision to abandon epidemic controls was not primarily due to workers’ protests, nor due to “intervention by imperialist transnational capital,” as the World Socialist Web Site claims. The real reason was that after medical-industry capitalists had extracted all possible profits, local governments across China fell into chronic and widespread fiscal deficits. No state can sustain such high levels of spending for years on end, even if held hostage by medical conglomerates. That is why epidemic prevention measures were suddenly abolished in their entirety—rather than gradually eased in response to working-class demands.

For the past 20 years before the pandemic, China had relied on what was known as “land finance.” Governments would first build infrastructure such as subways and high-speed rail, which raised land prices in the area, and then sell the land to real estate companies. When these developers built and sold large housing projects, the government would collect taxes on the transactions, gaining further revenue. At that time, China’s population was still growing rapidly, and people believed cities would keep expanding. Even if a newly-purchased home wasn’t in a prime location, it was assumed that its value would still rise. This expectation sustained the land-finance model.

But once people lost faith in the future—especially with plummeting birth rates during the pandemic—the model collapsed. The result was unfinished construction projects all over the country. This crisis even led to the downfall of Xu Jiayin (Hui Ka Yan), once China’s richest man, who became the world’s most wanted debtor and a global laughingstock.

The collapse of land finance, combined with years of enormous pandemic-control spending, forced the government to abruptly abandon its controls. Overnight, epidemic prevention disappeared. Almost everyone in the country was infected at least once. The sudden reopening caused hospital overcrowding, allowing the medical-industrial complex to seize one last windfall of profits from the pandemic.

6. Criticism of the ICFI

The ICFI once described China’s implementation of a zero-Covid policy as a legacy of the 1949 revolution. [7] But this is utterly absurd.  The author of that statement arbitrarily selects one moment, the triumph of the revolution of 1949, out of the last 100 years of Chinese history, strips it out of genuine history and collapses all the other moments of Chinese history. Forgotten is the “Great Leap Forward” of Mao Zedong that resulted in the starvation of 20 million people. The author of that statement endows that one moment of 1949 with the special status of being the handmaiden of China’s economic growth. One can respond that another moment in recent Chinese history, the 1989 massacre of Tien An Men Square might be a more appropriate moment if one wants to pinpoint when Chinese economic growth was ensured, for it was in that moment that the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy demonstrated that it would follow the road to capitalism and hold onto power regardless of the toll on the Chinese working class.  Furthermore, the author contrasts, favorably, China’s handling of the pandemic with India’s, noting that the pandemic, “…was contained by China early on, even as it spreads uncontrollably in India, pushing its death toll past the 400,000 mark.” It’s true that the Modi government’s criminal policies were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and it’s also true that the zero-Covid policy of the Chinese government was superior to India’s approach even when counting the corruption and incompetence inherent in its implementation.  But what happened in the end?  It is impossible to get accurate statistical data from official Chinese sources but according to one study, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC), when China finally abandoned its pandemic containment measures approximately 1.4 million Chinese died in a short period of time.[8]  Should those deaths also be credited as one of the legacies of the 1949 revolution?

In discussions of China in this and other articles on the WSWS, it is frequently emphasized China had a successful revolution in 1949. But what is left out is that China also went through many different historical phases, eventually leading to the restoration of capitalism.  Some of the policies carried out during Mao Zedong’s era actually set the infrastructure of China back by decades. This was particularly true of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. To quote John Peter Roberts, from his major study of China, ‘China: From permanent revolution to counter revolution’,

Famine was a hallmark of the GLF [Great Leap Forward], rural death rates leapt from 11 to more than 28 per 1,000 people/year in 1960. Population growth rate in Henan, for example, went into reverse and dropped from +22.8% in 1958 to – 4.3% in 1961. Only in 1980 did the CCP admit that at least 20 million people had starved to death during the great famine.

The famine was due to the combination of severe natural disaster and, possibly more importantly, the bureaucratic system itself. The bureaucracy had reduced the area of land sown with grain and insisted that a vast amount of unnecessary work be carried out on the blast furnaces, but a third and important factor was the Anti-Rightist Campaign which scared lower level bureaucrats into exaggerating the harvest to please their superiors. In late August and September, Mao himself, uncritically accepted boastful provincial reports that state grain purchases had been fully met and accomplished in record time. Mao ordered the publication and distribution of these falsehoods with his accompanying observations containing a blistering attack on ‘rightists’, further increasing the pressure on lower rank cadres. Grain procurement by the state based on these false figures played a major causal role in the famine. [9]

It is evident that the Chinese government’s manipulation of and fabrication of false information, so prominently employed during the pandemic has a long pedigree.  It played and continues to play a particularly pernicious role in covering up the economic and social catastrophes that could be directly attributed to the policies of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy.

The point was nicely summarized by a resident of Wuhan on the one year anniversary of the lockdown, as quoted in the New York Times,

“It has always been this way in China. How many tens of millions died in the Great Leap famine? How many in the Cultural Revolution,” says Ai Xiaoming, a retired professor in Wuhan who, like quite a few residents, kept an online diary about the lockdown. “Everything can be forgotten with the passage of time. You don’t see it, hear it or report it.” [10]

The WSWS fails to point out that Chinese society today is fully privatized, and that its medical-industrial complex is part of international capital. This is an extremely serious and crucial point, because it determines for whom the state’s measures are carried out.

China’s state apparatus and medical conglomerates whether classified as privately held or “state-owned” exist to serve the interests of Chinese capitalism, not the health and lives of the working class. China’s zero-Covid policy during the pandemic was no exception to this sober truth. When examined from the ground up, China’s highly touted zero-Covid policy looks much different that the fairy tale disseminated by the WSWS.

7. Afterword: A note on sources.

I am not entirely sure how the coronavirus outbreak of 2003 in China should be referred to in the English context. In Chinese, we generally call the 2003 outbreak “atypical pneumonia” (非典型冠状病毒) or SARS, while the virus of 2019 is called the “novel coronavirus.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20200131074029/http://china.caixin.com/2020-01-31/101509761.html

This is an interview with a doctor who was punished by the Chinese authorities at the time. The doctor had merely posted on his private social media account to warn his friends that he had discovered a virus similar to the 2003 SARS coronavirus. It was only meant as personal advice to friends and was never intended for public dissemination. Nevertheless, he was arrested by local police and detained for more than ten days.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquiry-exonerates-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-li-wenliang

This article reports that after the doctor tragically contracted the coronavirus and died, the CCP exonerated him posthumously and honored him as a martyr. But responsibility was shifted entirely onto the grassroots police, without holding higher government officials accountable for labeling his warning as “rumor-mongering.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities

This piece concerns a female doctor who, after realizing that the virus could be transmitted between humans, publicly refuted the official claim that human-to-human transmission was impossible. In the early stage, however, most doctors believed the virus’s structure was very similar to the SARS coronavirus of 2003.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200227094018/https://china.caixin.com/2020-02-26/101520972.html

This news report describes how the government ordered testing institutions to suppress information once the coronavirus was detected. Some severely ill patients had even paid for genetic sequencing tests themselves. As soon as these institutions identified the pathogen as a coronavirus, the authorities forced them to destroy the samples and forbade publication of the results. In fact, as early as December 25, 2019, laboratories had already found the virus to be extremely similar to the 2003 SARS coronavirus. Yet the Chinese government insisted that the similarity was only discovered on January 7.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200213042126/http://www.xinhuanet.com/renshi/2020-02/13/c_1125568253.htm

This is the official report that the mayor and Party secretary of Wuhan were dismissed for mishandling the epidemic response.

Many key materials about the outbreak have since been permanently erased from the Chinese internet. I asked friends and many still vividly recall a massive Spring Festival banquet held in a Wuhan residential community (the so-called “Ten-Thousand-People Banquet”), but we can no longer find reliable records of it. During this period, my main focus has been searching for materials on how the Chinese government used epidemic prevention both as a means of profit-making and as a tool for suppressing protests.

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1808052327181584499&wfr=spider&for=pc&searchword=%E7%BA%A2%E7%A0%81%E4%B9%A6%E8%AE%B0

I am still organizing more related materials. The Chinese government deleted vast amounts of pandemic-related content, making it very difficult to find sources. I am also currently searching for evidence regarding monopolistic control by certain enterprises during the epidemic.

---

[1]  5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic: The response of the <em>World Socialist Web Site</em> - World Socialist Web Site

[2] The misunderstood—and misrepresented—Zero COVID policy in China - World Socialist Web Site

[3]  In Chinese, we generally call the 2003 outbreak “atypical pneumonia” (非典型冠状病毒) or SARS, while the virus of 2019 is called the “novel coronavirus.” The information from these tests should have been a huge warning to Chinese authorities that a new and potentially extremely dangerous form of the coronavirus was being spread to humans.

[4]  https://web.archive.org/web/20200227094018/https://china.caixin.com/2020-02-26/101520972.html

Some quotes from this important piece of investigative journalism in China

An individual from a gene sequencing company revealed that on January 1, 2020, he received a phone call from an official of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, informing him that if any COVID-19 case samples were sent for testing in Wuhan, they could not be tested; existing case samples must be destroyed, and sample information, related papers, and data could not be disclosed to the public. "If you detect any in the future, you must report to us."

Looking back at those days from the end of December 2019 to the beginning of January this year, it should have been a crucial moment that determined the fate of countless people. But at that time, the public was completely unaware of the consequences that this virus would later cause.

　　An individual from a gene sequencing company revealed that on January 1, 2020, he received a phone call from an official of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, informing him that if any COVID-19 case samples were sent for testing in Wuhan, they could not be tested; existing case samples must be destroyed, and sample information, related papers, and data could not be disclosed to the public. "If you detect any in the future, you must report to us."

[5]   How a Social Self-Help Network Was Formed to Save Wuhan

[6] https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1808052327181584499&wfr=spider&for=pc&searchword=%E7%BA%A2%E7%A0%81%E4%B9%A6%E8%AE%B0

[7] See 100 years since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party - World Socialist Web Site, where the author writes

“That they are compelled to still speak of socialism and even proclaim that their capitalist policies are guided by Marxism is testament to the enduring identification of the Chinese masses with gains of the 1949 revolution. China’s staggering economic development over the past three decades reflect in a contradictory way the impact of the Chinese revolution. It would not have been possible without the far-reaching social reforms introduced by that revolution.

To understand the significance of the Chinese revolution, one only has to ask the question: Why has such development not taken place in India? The contrast between the two countries has found sharp expression in the COVID-19 pandemic, which was contained by China early on, even as it spreads uncontrollably in India, pushing its death toll past the 400,000 mark.”

[8] Estimate of COVID-19 Deaths, China, December 2022–February 2023 - PMC

[9]  John Peter Roberts, China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution, Wellred Books, 2016,  13.5.1 Famine in the Communes, available online at https://marxist.com/china-permanent-revolution-to-counter-revolution-book/china-under-mao-the-great-leap-forward.htm

[10]  A Year Later, Wuhan, the First Post Coronavirus Pandemic City, New Yor Times, Jan. 22, 2021,  

       A Year Later, Wuhan, the First Post Coronavirus Pandemic City - The New York Times