MAOISM - A BALANCE SHEET

MAOISM

A BALANCE SHEET, By Robert Black 

MAO’S SLAVISH defence of Stalin played into the hands of the Soviet bureaucracy. The Soviet working class, youth and intellectuals hated Stalin as a symbol of repression and mass murder. 

The more Mao praised him, the easier it became for the Kremlin to drive a wedge between the Soviet people and the Chinese Revolution. 

Unable to find a road to the Soviet and East European working class, and menaced more than ever by growing American involvement in SE Asia, the Chinese leaders began to develop the so-called theory of "intermediate zones." 

Mao gave an outline of this theory in a talk with five rightwing members of the Japanese Socialist Party on August 11, 1964: 

"Japan and China must act in unity, co-operate with each other ... As a result of the war Japan came under the domination of American imperialism. American imperialism also  dominates in S Korea, the Philippines, Thailand etc."

  "The United States is reaching out to the western Pacific and SE Asia. It is reaching too far. The United States dominates over Europe, Canada and entire Latin America..."

"All peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are opposed to imperialism. Imperialism is also opposed by Europe, Canada and other countries. Imperialists too are coming out against imperialists. Is not de Gaulle an example of this?" (Emphasis added.) 

By placing oppressed colonial peoples on the same political level as America’s imperialist rivals, Mao shows how remote he is from Leninism. 

The ideas he developed in this interview can be traced back to Stalin’s "big-power" diplomacy, which tried to play off one group of imperialist states against another (i.e., the 1934-1939 ‘Popular Front’ alliance with the ‘democratic’ imperialists—France, Britain and the US - followed by the Stalin-Hitler pact. 

Turning his back on the working class of the United States, Mao looked to imperialist forces in Japan and W Europe to counter the pressure of American imperialism on China. 

"There are now two intermediate zones in the world. Asia, Africa and Latin America make up the first, and Europe, N America and Oceania the second. Japanese monopoly capital belong to the second zone. Even this monopoly capital is discon- tented with the United States, while some of its representatives openly oppose it..."

"...I do not think that the monopoly capital of Japan will allow the United States to sit on its neck forever. Nothing could be better than for Japan to become completely independ- ent and establish contact with the forces in Asia striving for national independence..." 

The working class as an independent revolutionary force capable of defeating imperialism entirely vanished from Mao’s thinking. 

Instead, he came forward as the supporter of Japanese imperialism, which he cynically presents as a potential ally of national liberation forces in Asia. 

Here indeed is the germ of the policy that we see unfolding today, as Mao moves on from alliance with France and Japan towards the prime goal of his foreign policy since he came to power in 1949 - a long-term settlement with American imperialism. 

Mao had never ruled out the possibility of such an agreement. In its first major statement of differences with the Soviet leaders (‘A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the Inter- national Communist Movement’, March 30, 1963) the Chinese Party said: 

Deal 

"The possibility of banning nuclear weapons does indeed exist. However, if the imperialists are forced to accept an agreement to ban nuclear weapons, it decidedly will not be because of their 'love for humanity', but because of the pressure of people of all countries and for the sake of their own vital interests." 

In other words, peace and disarmament serve the interésts of both the imperialists working class—a line identical to that of Moscow’s. 

The disagreements arose over the degree of "pressure" needed to force a deal with the imperialists. 

The same opportunist policies shaped Mao’s approach [the] national liberation movement, especially in Asia. 

Ignoring the bitter lessons of the Chinese revolution, Mao put forward Stalin’s programme of the "bloc of four classes," in which the national capitalist class became the anchor of an antiimperialist "broad alliance."

Slaves 

         The Chinese CP policy statement of March 30, 1963, stated that in the semi-colonial world:

"Extremely broad sections of the population refuse to be slaves of imperialism. They include not only the workers, peasants, intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie, but also the patriotic national bourgeoisie and even certain kings, princes and aristocrats, who are patriotic." 

On the basis of this Stalinist theory, Mao backed "patriotic bourgeois" leaders like President Sukarno of Indonesia, much as Stalin supported Chiang Kai-shek in China.

Following Peking’s lead, the 3 million-strong Indonesian Party subordinated itself to Sukarno, even though real power lay with his right-wing military leaders. 

When Sukarno tried to oust them by a coup based on an alliance of left-wing generals and a section of the CP leadership, the right wing struck with unbelievable savagery. 

Around 1 million communists were slaughtered in the space of a few months while Sukarno and Mao looked on, powerless to intervene. 

Pogrom 

The "bloc of four classes" had turned into an execution bloc for the Indonesian working class. They paid with their blood for Mao’s adherence to Stalinism. 

And like Stalin, Mao is prepared to overlook this unprecedented pogrom in his anxiety to win more allies in the imperialist camp. 

Negotiations are currently under way between China and Indonesia to restore diplomatic relations severed in 1967, when the Suharto regime began to attack Chinese nationals living in Indonesia.

Mao’s challenge to Moscow began with a dazzling display of leftist fireworks, but it has now spluttered out in a miserable and quite open capitulation to imperialism throughout Asia. 

For all along, Mao never understood the real nature of bureaucracy within a workers’ state. He was therefore unable to fight it effectively either in the Soviet Union - or China.

BOTH MAO TSE-TUNG’S campaigns against bureaucracy ended in ignominious defeat - the "Hundred Flowers" experiment of 1956 and the "Cultural Revolution" of 1966-1968. 

There is no doubt that unlike Stalin, Mao despised rank and privileges within the Chinese Party and state machinery. He correctly saw them as conduits for alien class pressures on the revolutionary movement. 

In a country as backward and poverty-ridden as China, even the most modest material comforts can have a corrupting influence on those who enjoy them.

As in the Soviet Union, a section of the Party leadership reacted against the privations of the pre-revolutionary years and the struggle for power, and began to settle down to a routine, bureaucratic existence as ruling party and state functionaries. 

Insofar as Mao leaned on the working class and youth to counter this conservative layer, he represented a left tendency in the Chinese Party leadership. 

It is this fact of Mao’s political make-up that has enabled revisionists to present him as some sort of left alternative to Stalinism. 

In fact Mao has always had a highly ambivalent attitude to bureaucracy. Like Khrushchev, he waited for Stalin to die before suggesting that "mistakes" had been made in the last years of the Kremlin dictator’s life. 

But unlike Khrushchev, Mao could not claim’ that his silence was imposed on him by sheer terror. 

Criticism 

In the wake of Khrushchev’s 1956 "secret speech" about Stalin’s crimes, Mao launched his "Hundred Flowers" campaign, in which workers, peasants, students and intellectuals were encouraged to say what they really thought about the Chinese Communist Party and government. 

Criticism - both left and right - rained down on Mao’s head. Capitalist and landlord elements called for the restoration of free trade, workers for the right to strike, and intellectuals for the right to interpret Marxism in their own way. 

After six weeks Mao called a halt, declaring most of the flowers to be "poisonous weeds." 

The bureaucratic lid was clamped firmly down on China, smothering - but not overcoming - all the contradictions that had been allowed to emerge during Mao’s brief campaign against bureaucracy. 

Rather than call on the working class to fight the pro-capitalist elements, Mao swung back to the Party bureaucracy and the army. 

Then came Mao’s violent reaction against the Hungarian workers’ revolution of 1956, which sought to replace the Stalinist bureaucracy by democratically-elected workers’ councils. 

Here it was not a case of pressure on the bureaucracy guided from above (as in the Cultural Revolution), but its physical destruction by the independent action of the working class. 

Mao recoiled in horror from such a prospect, and called on the Kremlin leaders to show no mercy towards the Hungarian workers, whom Peking slandered as "fascists" and "counterrevolutionaries." 

Mao crossed the Rubicon when he backed Khrushchev’s counter-revolution in Hungary. His subsequent calls for Soviet and East European workers to overthrow their bureaucratic rulers naturally fell on deaf ears, especially when linked to a nostalgic yearning for the happy years of Stalin. 

The gulf between Mao and the workers of the Soviet bloc widened even more when Peking began to claim that capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union, and that it was fast turning into what Mao called "social imperialism."

By saying that everything had been lost under Khrushchev, Mao was in fact rejecting any defence of the Soviet Union. 

It was bracketed with America as an imperialist power, which (unlike Japanese, British or French imperialism) had to be fought by workers everywhere. 

Mao’s last and most determined fight against bureaucracy was of course his "Cultural Revolution."

Again leaning on the masses - principally students and youth - he summoned them in their millions to "bombar the Party headquarters" and drive those "taking the capitalist road" from their Party positions. 

Liu Shao-chi, who stood very close to Mao in the early years of power, had apparently gathered around him a group of consérvative party officials, trade union leaders and factory managers who were calling for an end to the dispute with the Soviet Union and a more moderate foreign policy generally.

They saw this as the only way to end China’s economic backwardness, the price for Soviet and imperialist economic aid being support for the status quo internationally, and the cultivation of a technical and managerial bureaucratic élite inside China. 

For two years the struggle ebbed and flowed between Mao and his Red Guards and the bureaucracy, with the army playing the role of arbiter when conflicts erupted into violent pitchéd battles, as at Wuhan. 

Red Guards began to link up with workers and developed their own anti-bureaucratic programme independently of Mao’s directives. 

According to numerous accounts reaching the West, some groups even called for the removal of Mao himself. They were dealt with ruthlessly by the army, acting under Mao’s orders. 

The youthful revolt was also playing havoc with the economy, as Red Guards. swarmed into factories to engage workers in passionate arguments about the goals of the Cultural Revolution. 

Gently at first, then with increasing severity, Mao began to apply the brakes. And as he swung the helm over to the right, towards bureaucrats patiently awaiting reinstatement in their old jobs, the working class in France, Italy and Britain took the offensive against imperialism.

In his fight against bureaucracy, Mao used weapons forged by Stalinism. He tried to combat bureaucracy as a purely national product, and not as the reflection of imperialist pressures on a workers’ state dominated by a. backward peasant population emerging from centuries of economic, cultural and political oppression. 

A bitter opponent of Trotskyism, he turned savagely on its Chinese supporters after 1949. Scores were killed despite their unconditional support’ for the gains of the revolution. Of all his betrayals, this was Mao’s greatest, because he murdered precisely those communists theoretically equipped to combat the growth of bureaucracy within a workers’ state. 

The solution of China’s basic problems still lies along the road of international revolution, which means the overthrow of imperialism in its citadels of political power and economic wealth.

CHINA's present support for President Yahya Khan is the climax of an opportunist, Stalinist policy dating back to the Sino-Indian border dispute of 1962. 

When it became clear that the Indian government was staging border incidents with the full backing of imperialism and the connivance of the Soviet bureaucracy, Mao had two alternatives. 

Either turn to the masses of the Indian sub-continent and encourage a revolutionary defence of China through a struggle against the Indian and Pakistani regimes, or indulge in back-stage diplomatic manoeuvring. 

Mao revealed his fundamental agreement with Stalin’s theory of "socialism in one country" by opting decisively for the second course. 

When Peking began its turn towards the Ayub Khan regime, Pakistan was a cornerstone of two anti-communist imperialist alliances - the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). 

Pakistan’s slavish dependence on US imperialism was reflected in Ayub Khan’s support for the American war against Vietnam. 

Nevertheless, in February 1964, Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai visited Pakistan, publicly declaring his support for Kashmiri independence, while remaining silent about the equally just struggle of the East Bengalis for self-determination.

Hatred 

Mao's support for national-liberation struggles was entirely subordinated to his big-power foreign policy. 

Ayub Khan was pretending to back the Kashmiri independence movement to embarrass India, while E Bengal’s struggle for nationhood could only triumph in bitter conflict with the Khan regime. 

So who was and who was not an oppressed nation varied according to Mao’s current diplomatic allies. 

Pakistan’s rulers were grateful for Peking's backing. It enabled Khan to present his regime as anti-imperialist, and caused enormous political confusion among left-wing groups that looked to China for leadership. 

It also worried the Americans, who increased their military support for Khan to counter the new Chinese influence in Pakistan.

To reassure his imperialist patrons, Khan declared Pakistan's continued support for the Vietnam war at a May 1965 SEATO conference in London, his Foreign Minister, Bhutto, signing a statement accusing Ho Chi Minh of invading S Vietnam.

Peking moved even closer to Ayub Khan during the Indo-Pakistan war of September 1965. Mao openly backed one pro-imperialist regime against another, purely on the basis of his own opportunist foreign policy. Workers and peasants in Pakistan were told by China to fight and die for a regime that oppressed, exploited and persecuted them, denying the masses even the right to vote. Soon the Chinese leaders were boosting the Ayub Khan regime as a staunch opponent of imperialism, despite the SEATO and CENTO membership it has maintained to this day.

Chang Chieh, vice-president of the China-Pakistan Friendship Association, commemorated Pakistan’s national day by declaring in March 1966: "After the independence of Pakistan, the Pakistani people under the leadership of President Ayub Khan have scored in, the last few years delightful achievements..."

Khan had more "delightful achievements" in store for Pakistan’s workers and peasants, when in November 1968 he turned his army and police loose against strikers and demonstrators fighting to overthrow the military regime.

But right up to the removal of Ayub Khan, the Mao leadership continued to portray him as a militant anti-imperialist. Speaking at Lahore in March 1966, Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi stated: 

"Under the leadership of President Mohammed Ayub Khan, the Pakistani people united as one and filled with a common hatred towards the enemy, triumphed over the enemy..."

Mao’s envoy was referring to the war against India. 

Giving Ayub Khan a "left" face went on at all levels. In October 1966, a Chinese trade union delegation arrived in Pakistan, where strikes were always met with vicious police and army repressions. 

This did not stop the delegation’s leader, Wang Chieh, praising the Khan regime for its economic achievements. 

He even went so far as to observe that Pakistani workers "were imbibed with a spirit of self-reliance and were determined to strengthen the economy of their [sic!] country.” 

Only a few months later, Khan was calling out his army to crush a militant strike of railway workers. One train was driven over strikers laying across the tracks.

Completely unmoved, Mao continued to heap praise on strike-breaker Ayub. He was anti-Indian, and that was all that mattered.

Ironically, the anti-Ayub revolt exploded while his successor, Yahya Khan, was in Peking.

Chinese bureaucrats drank toasts to Yahya Khan while his troops shot down unarmed workers and students in the streets of East Bengal and West Pakistan.

Mao must have been delighted when he heard that Yahya Khan was to replace the discredited and demoralized Ayub after his "retirement" in March 1969.

Yahya Khan, butcher of Bengal, had already proved his readiness to collaborate in Mao’s diplomatic horse-trading. It was, after all, the best possible insurance against a left-wing uprising in Pakistan. 

Yahya Khan was able to push back the revolutionary tide, but only for a time. By autumn 1970, with Pakistan’s first-ever general elections drawing near, all East Bengal was in political ferment. 

The time had clearly come for Yahya Khan to stake everything on Peking. A state visit to China was hurriedly arranged and Khan arrived in Peking to a hero's welcome on November 10. 

Hangman 

New China News Agency described Mao’s reception for the future hangman of Bengal:

"Several hundred thousand revolutionary people in the Chinese capital gathered at the airport and lined the streets to ive -a warm welcome to the istinguished guests from China’s friendly neighbour..." 

"Peking was alive with warm expressions of the unity and friendship between the people of China and Pakistan..." 

"Huge streamers that hung from tall buildings flanking the streets read: 'A warm welcome to you, President Yahya Khan.' 

Echoing Mao’s highly selective line on national liberation, the welcoming crowds chanted: 

"We resolutely support the Kashmiri people in their struggle for the right of national self- determination..." Naturally, nobody dared chant any slogans in support of Bengal self-determination. 

It would have been undiplomatic, to say the least. For Khan had come to Peking specifically to prepare his repressions against East Bengal. 

An official Chinese report on talks between Khan and Chou En-lai indicated how close the two regimes were: 

"The President and the Chinese Prime Minister reviewed the international situation. They noted with satisfaction that there are no problems between Pakistan and China and their friendship and co-operation are developing very satisfactorily and to their mutual benefit." 

"They also noted that Pakistan and China had a proximity of views on the many issues concerning the world today..."

The climax of Khan’s visit came when the Sandhurst-groomed military dictator was received by Chairman Mao. National China News Agency described the scene in suitably reverent tones: 

"Our great leader Chairman Mao greeted President Yahya Khan- and other distinguished Pakistan guests at the entrance to the hall, and warmly shook hands with them..."

"The distinguished Pakistan guests clapped their hands warmly to greet Chairman Mao; Chairman Mao waved to them in acknowledgement and posed with them for pictures...” 

Khan’s triumphal visit was rounded off with the inevitable banquet, while in East Bengal, untold numbers of peasants were starving to death as Khan’s regime held up aid sent after the cyclone disaster.

THE JOINT communiqué issued as Yahya Khan set Pakistan after his November 1970 talks with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, is worth recalling in view of the subsequent developments in East Bengal. A key section reads: 

"Premier Chou President Yahya Khan held talks in a very sincere and friendly atmosphere on important international issues, further development of friendly relations and co-operation between China and Pakistan and other questions of common interest. Both sides were highly satisfied with the results of the talks."

Once again, great stress was placed on the Kashmir question, but nothing was said about Bengal. There was no mention either of national-liberation struggles in Indo-China.

Khan had no intention of upsetting his American backers more than was necessary. 

(Khan was at that time negotiating a new arms agreement with President Nixon. Some Asian observers thought the Peking trip was designed to twist the Americans’ arm!) 

Enthusiastic 

Armed with Mao’s political and, if necessary, military backing Yahya Khan returned from Peking to face the December general elections. 

Broadcasting a week before polling day, Khan told his listeners about "the enthusiastic reception accorded to me" while in China, and about his "very useful exchange of views with Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En-lai." 

He then made an observation whose full meaning only became clear three months later: 

"I believe our growing friendship with China is a positive contribution to peace, stability and progress in our region. We appreciate the abiding and sincere interests of the People’s Republic of China in Pakistan’s struggle and development, and are grateful for its generous assistance in economic and other fields..." 

Naturally, the full details of the Khan-Mao-Chou talks have not been revealed. But their political and military implications became obvious in the first days of the fight in East Bengal. 

Denied the use of Indian air-space, West Pakistan troop carriers refuelled in China before landing in Dacca, an arrangement that surely must have been agreed well before the fighting broke out in March 25. 

China’s press and radio blacked out all news of the massacres in East Bengal by Khan’s troops. After all, it was only four months previously that Peking workers had been summoned on to the streets to cheer Yahya Khan as a great ally of the Chinese people! 

When it became obvious that Bengal was not to be subdued by West Pakistan army terror, China began reproducing Khan regime reports of the situation. 

Then, on April 11, the Chinese Communist Party "People’s Daily" came out with an editorial which openly ranged Mao on the side of Yahya Khan. 

Already the leaders of British and American imperialism had declared the massacres in East Bengal to be an "internal affair" of the Pakistan government. Now Peking used this formula to justify their intervention on the side of Khan: 

"The relevant [sic!] measures taken by President Yahya Khan in connection with the present situation in Pakistan are the internal affairs of Pakistan, in which no country should or has the right to interfere..." 

This reactionary principle is used by imperialism to defend right-wing dictatorships in Spain, Greece and South Africa, to name only three examples. 

Presumably, Mao would oppose revolutionaries coming to the aid of popular forces in these countries too. 

Safeguard 

        This treacherous statement of support for Yahya Khan ended: 

"The Pakistan people have the revolutionary tradition of opposing imperialism and colonialism, and have waged unyielding strugsles against aggressors and interantionists from outside."

"The Chinese government and people will, as always, resolutely support the Pakistan government and people in their just struggle for safeguarding national independence and state sovereignty against foreign aggression and interference." 

Ironically, the only "interventionists" crossing into E Bengal from India in the early days of the fighting were Maoist peasant guerrilla leaders from West Bengal Naxalbari province. And they went in to fight for Bangla Desh against Mao’s ally, Yahya Khan. 

Sabotage 

The "People’s Daily" editorial was followed up the next day by a message from Chou En-lai to Khan, declaring once again that "what is happening in Pakistan at present is purely an internal affair of Pakistan."

Chou went further than the "People’s Daily" when he said "It is important to differentiate the broad masses of the people from a handful of persons who want to sabotage the unity of Pakistan." 

In this Maoist topsy-turvey world, 75 million East Bengalis had become "a handful of persons" and the regime repressing them "the broad masses of the people." 

Even Yahya Khan’s propaganda machine could not match this style of lying, and it is no sutprise when the West Pakistan "Morning News" stated in an editorial on April 14: 

"China has, as befits a true friend, spoken out her support in unmistakable terms..." 

Another pro-Khan paper, "The Azad," was equally outspoken in its praise for Peking:

"We extend our heartiest greetings to the Chinese government for their firm support. The way China has come forward with support deserves thanks from all patriotic Pakistanis...” 

So, too, did Peking’s attempts to portray Khan as a hero of the East Bengali people. A new China News Agency report gave the following account of a nonexistent pro-Khan rally in - of all places - Dacca: 

"A huge mass demonstration was held in Dacca, capital of East Pakistan, on April 13 in protest against the Indian government dispatching armed personnel to infiltrate into East Pakistan and interfering in the internal affairs of Pakistan..." 

Peking’s support for Khan went far beyond publishing lying reports about the situation in Bangla Desh. New China News Agency announced that Air Commodore Kamal Ahmad, Commander of the Pakistan Air Force Staff College "arrived in Peking on April 18 and attended a banquet given in his honour by Kuan Jen-nung, Deputy Commander of the Chinese Air Force." 

His arrival in Peking was almost certainly connected with Pakistan’s continued use . of Chinese air space and refuelling stations for planes flying between West Pakistan and East Bengal war zones. 

Attempts by British and other Maoists to present Peking’s support for Khan as a "mistake" are, at best, absurd. 

Treachery 

In most cases, they are a conscious cover for Stalinist treachery. For example, Peking Home Service on April 28 told the Chinese people, who had no means of finding out about the real sitaration in Bengal: 

"Pakistani President Yahya Khan pointed out that there is only one reason behind such open and shameless interference by the Indian government - that is to further aggravate the situation through instigating and materially supporting a handful of peopte to create turmoil..." 

"The barbarous interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan by the Indian expansionists and the two super-powers will definitely lead to their ignominious defeat."

Was it a "mistake" to accuse India, and not Yahya Khan, of barbarism in East Bengal? And to assert, once again, that the upsurge of the Bengali people for national liberation was the work of a "handful of people?" 

For 15 years British Stalinists have bleated about Stalin’s errors. Now the Maoists serve up the same apology for Mao - only with even less chance of fooling anybody.

For this time, the betrayal is right out in the open. 

Mao, the self-appointed champion of the national liberation movement, has ranged himself unashamedly with one of the most merciless butchers of an oppressed people the world has ever seen. 

Cut through all the phrases about revolutionary struggles, "US imperialism and its running dogs" and Soviet "social imperialism" and you are left with a regime that, like Stalin’s and now Brezhnev’s, wants only one thing: 

"Peaceful co-existence" with imperialism, while it enjoys its social and political privileges at home. 

If this demands an open alliance with reaction to strangle revolutionary movements against imperialism, then so be it. 

True to Stalin’s theory of "socialism on one country," Mao subordinates the world struggle for socialism to the preservation of bureaucratic rule in China. 

Stalinism, whether in its Moscow or Peking variants, remains the biggest single counter-revolutionary force within the workers’ movement. 

It must be exposed and destroyed if the working class and semi-colonial peoples are to win their emancipation from imperialist rule.