Chinese bureaucrats resort to bloody repression
CHINA
N • GOVERNMENT can main-
tain its control over society for long by violence alone, however ruthless. Even the regime of the Polish bureaucracy, which for a period forced workers to work at gunpoint, had to finally recognize this and try to survive through a deal with a section of the leadership of the anti-bureaucratic masses. That was reflected by the elections that took place in Poland at almost the same time as the massacre in Peking. The leadership of the Soviet bureaucracy has also recognized this, and is trying by various means to regain some sort of democratic legitimacy.
The bureaucratic rulers in the so-called socialist states find themselves in a more and more impossible situation. They did not gain their power and the privileges that derive from it from organizing economic development, as the capitalists did. They gained it as a result of the struggles and sacrifices of the masses in whose name they rule. But they robbed them of their political rights.
These bureaucracies cannot organize a collective economy efficiently without democracy. But that would quickly sweep them away, as a long series of anti-bureaucratic uprisings — from East Berlin in 1953 to Hungary in 1956, from Czechoslovakia to Poland, and finally the vast mobilizations in Peking - have shown. They would like to be accepted as partners by capitalists at home and abroad, and legitimize and perpetuate their privileges in the form of private property.
But their attempts to reintroduce capitalist market mechanisms undermine their political authority, increase inequality and thereby build explosive social resentments, as well as further disorganizing the economy. This was seen in the 1970s in Poland, where it fueled the explosive development of Solidarnosc in 1980. It is now being seen in China on vast scale.
The Western authorities that are today loudly condemning the bloodbath in Peking and declaiming evils of Communism" only yesterday were praising the Chinese bureaucrats for their economic policies. Deng Xiaoping's China was supposed to be an example of the benefits that a free market could have for countries deprived of it by collectivism. The 28 impressed. Before bachevs visite Soviet authorities at least International Viewpoint #165 • June 12, 1989
THE BUREAUCRATIC regime in China has demonstrated that it is anti-popular and has no future. No government representative of the people would send troops to open fire indiscriminately on crowds packed together in city streets, or tanks to roll over them. Such slaughter can have no purpose except to terrorize the population in general. Only a group enjoying privileges at the expense of the masses would have reason resort to this sort of terror.
### GERRY FOLEY
Peking in mid-May, Pravda published approving articles about the Chinese economic reforms, and in particular about their success in attracting capitalist investment.
Singing the hymn of the world workers' movement
The forces fighting for change in China, however, are not the ones that capitalist West looked to - the rich farmers, the new businessmen and the advocates of market reforms in the Communist Party. The vanguard have been students singing the hymn of the revolutionary world workers' movement, The Internationale. And the masses of working people in Peking and other cities have joined them.
The correspondents of the Paris daily Libération (June 5) described an insurgent crowd at a flashpoint in Peking as follows: "The fury of the crowd, in which there were few students at the time, was unleashed against the [army] vehicles. Windows were broken, tires flattened, the bodies ripped open. Between Xidan and Xinhuamen, two army buses, three jeeps, a minibus and two trucks could be seen abandoned.
"Arms seized in one of these vehicles were displayed. The crowd had neither slogan nor organization nor clear goal. A great part of it was young
"'We are not going to let ourselves be intimidated,' a youth said. 'We don't have weapons, but we are not going to sit by and do nothing. We will fight with whatever is at hand.' 'Without violence we will not get change,' another worker said. 'We have to prepare ourselves. We are not afraid of violence.' "
Later on, they picked out a figure among the young people resisting the military: "He is 18, and belongs to the independent workers' union. He has a red flag around his head. He is wearing a long back jacket, which he opens with a triumphant smile to show the four Molotov cocktails in his belt."
It hardly likely that this is what Western business circles were hoping would come out of the Chinese regime's belated recognition of the beauties of the capitalist market and imperialist investment. Some Western explain away the problem by saying that the Chinese made the mistake of introducing free-enterprise reforms without an increase in democratic rights, without glasnost.
But even Gorbachev's glasnost does not as yet seem to have been applied to the events in China. The official Soviet press, reportedly, has repeated the Chinese regime's Stalinist-style slanders against those resisting the military takeover.
What has happened in China is the nightmare of Gorbachev and the Soviet bureaucracy. It could (and will) be their future. That is why they have tried by a number of means to suppress independent mass mobilizations
Whatever the outcome of the present crisis in China, it is now glaringly obvious that bureaucratic rule in that country - or in the other so-called socialist countries or "people's democracies" -has no future. And their future is not capitalism either. These regimes cannot be reformed. They have to be overthrown. And it is the workers and youth who will overthrow them, like the fighting young workers of Peking, who are unlikely builders of capitalism. They will build a system that genuinely reflects their aspirations. *