Chinese writers partially a Communist
Party in power, the largest Communist Party in the world, is going much further than Nikita rehabilitate Trotsky
Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU.
This party is no longer content to pillory Stalin in general terms for his crimes against the communists. It is rehabilitating the most eminent of those victims. What Khrushchev either did not dare to do, or could not,
LI XIANRONG, a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has recently published a book entitled Critical Biography of Trotsky. The work, which was commissioned by the Institute for Research in
World History, a subsidiary of the Academy of Sciences of the
People's Republic of China, has not yet reached the West.
But another important member of the CCP has just published a review of the book in the journal, Shijie Lishi (World History), No.
7, 1985 which has shown up in Europe, the United States and Hong
Kong. The article, "My View of the Critical Evaluation of Important
Figures in World History," constitutes a complete juridical rehabilitation of Leon Trotsky in relation to the "crimes" attributed to him by Stalinist historiography, as well as his partial political rehabilitation as the founder of our movement.
The authors of the book and the article are not obscure individuals but important cadres of the CCP, and these publications should be seen in the far broader context of a critical examination of the entire past of the international communist movement. The rehabilitation indicated by the lifting of the bans on the publication of such texts, then, undoubtedly represents the opinions of at least some, if not all, of the CCP's leadership.
We are publishing below an analysis of these documents, as well as a translation of the article that appeared in Shijie Lishi.
ERNEST MANDEL
Zhu
Tingguan's article, judging from this translation, and Li Xianrong's book, according to Chinese readers, are for the moment our only who reject the references, categorically at the Moscow accusations made
Trial against Leon Trotsky and his they were spies, comrades, that agents, counterrevolutionary renegades, or even objective tools of imperialism and counterrevolution. These authors condemn his assassination for what it was — a murder - and implicitly attribute the responsibility for it
"persecutors,"
Stalin and his to his accomplices.
They also categorically reject the version that is to be found in The of the Communist Party.
History
(Bolshevik) of the USSR: a Short
Survey, of Trotsky's role in the Russian and international workers' movements, in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and
1917, as well as in the building of the Soviet state.
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
This book was officially adopted by the Central Committee Union (CPSU) in 1938 and has been the international Stalinist bible on the question of Trotsky and Trotskyism for more than two decades. It inspired the Maoists in China even as recently as the 1970s. It is now judged contemptuously to be a falsification of history, pure and simple.
Completely at odds falsitication Li Xianrong the writings of CCP Tingguan, characterize Leon Trotsky as one of the CPSU's chief leaders, who prepared and initiated the Petrograd insurrection during the October revolution, who then created the Red Army and ensured its victory in the civil war, thanks to a correct strategic
The publication of these writings, then, constitutes an important political event for the entire international despite the implicit promises made at the Twentieth and Twenty-Second Congresses of the CPSU, the Chinese Communist leaders are doing today. Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev and their comrades are again presented as authentic communists.
The conflict between the Stalinist faction and the other factions within the CPSU and the Communist International is presented as a clash inside the party, not as a battle with an enemy and/or agents. All of the blood let by the Stalinist faction - a million communists murdered — and all of the mud slung at the victims is thus losing all of its adhesiveness, all of its class justification.
Although Zhu Tingguan does not explicitly recognize it, the conclusion is inevitable: the massive and barbaric repression carried out by Stalin against his political adversaries inside the communist movement was criminal. (1) It delivered a terrible blow to the interests of communism, to the workers in the USSR and to the world proletariat.
It is, moreover, a conclusion already reached by some of the leaders and ideologues of Eurocommunism and by some other parties such as the Mexican one, which had, on this point at least, agreed with the Eurocomuse of the formula, struggle," to characterize the political struggle between the Stalinist Left Opposition - and the Bukharinist faction, is not accidental. It harks back to two famous articles by Mao Tse-tung: On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and On the Contradictions the People, written shortly after the Khrushchev revelations to the CPSU Twentieth Congress.
In these articles judgement implicitly supporting the denunciation of Stalinist methods.
seems that Li Xianrong may have been even more explicit on this point in his book by describing Trotsky's assassination as a "vile crime. But verification of this point will have to wait until the book becomes available.
11
In the same vein, he violently opposed
Army's intervention in Wladyslaw returned to power in October 1956.
Later, the Chinese leader changed Was that because of the impact of the Hungarian revolution? Was he influexplosion of critical and oppositional opinion in China itself at the time of the Flowers" experience in 1957? Was it a function of the exigencies of his factional struggle inside the CCP? To analyze the stages and the motivating forces of this about face in greater depth would strain the limits of this article.
In any case, the defence of Stalin profoundly branded Maoism for two
1957 to 1977. The stance now taken by Li Xianrong and Zhu Tingguan constitutes at the very least a return to Mao Tse-tung's initial attitude toward the Khrushchev revelations - and, indeed, goes far
Not only is the denunciation of Stalin's cult of personality vigorously seconded. But from the methodological point of view, the writers have reestablished two principles that were which are close to the very heart of
First of all, the Chinese authors the primacy truth above any considerations of state, of party or of realpolitik. They reiterate that one must "fight thought," superstition," rigorously verify the facts, in order to be able to speak authoritatively about the building of socialism. In other words, they are sending us back to that basic principle, so often affirmed by Marx and Engels, that only the truth is revolutionary. From the Marxist point of view it is absolute nonsense to try to defend the revolution while suppressing or falsifying historical truth. Out of the dusty archives with the 1920s debates
Then, the Chinese authors refer explicitly to the international character of the revolution and the revolutionary experience. The debates that took place inside the CPSU during the 1920s are not just literary phenomena, masses of dusty archives to be classified and studied. The experience of those debates is a source of political enlightenment for all countries and parties, for all leaders, cadres and activists, who are today confronted with the problems of the survival of the revolution in the midst of a hostile capitalist environment, who are faced with class relationships 12 specific to the conditions of relative underdevelopment in their countries and with the problem of the timing and the forms necessary for building
The rigorously scientific study of this experience is therefore indispensible to better equip the communist movement to solve the problems confronting it today.
For all of these reasons we must salute the partial political rehabilitation of Trotsky by the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party as an event of great importance, one that continues the tradition of the Khrushchev report to the Twentieth Congress. In spite of all the reservations that we have and the criticisms we can offer in regard to the limits and contradictions of this rehabilitation - in spite of our overall judgement of the political and social nature of the present Chinese bureaucracy, which we are not modifying one iota - it is apparent that taking such a position greatly favors the development of critical thought in all those who look to communism and Chinese
All assaults on obscurantism, on the falsification of history, on lies and calumny, all explicit the use of violence and terror to settle differences inside the workers' movement objectively toward the liberation of that movement from the bureaucratic straitjacket that keeps it from achieving the worldwide victory of socialism.
Leon Trotsky (DR) That these blows are more necessary now than ever before is shown by experiences of Grenada and South Yemen - citing only the most obvious recent cases. They suffice to justify this programmatic
The publication of the "Critical Biography of Trotsky" and the favorable commentary accorded it by the revue Shijie Lishi are not isolated phenomena. Since 1978 in the People's Republic of China, a partial thaw has occurred where literary and ideological pluralism concerned. It has increased the latitude accorded to publications without, however, establishing complete freedom or removing censorship. Some critical Chinese authors - notably those in the New Democratic Movement - continue to be victims of banning and suppression; some of them are stagnating in prison. The possibilities for public debate remain very limited, but they are nevertheless more extensive than at the time of the cultural revolution or during the first decade after the victory of the Chinese socialist revolution in 1949.
After the "liberalization" instituted by Deng Xiaoping, some of the authors banned in the USSR and in most of the other workers' states -once again with the honorable exception of Yugoslavia - began to be published in China, albeit on a limited scale. Contrary to the periods of "liberalization" in the USSR (the International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
Socialist in and partially • in and specific Kro-
This
My Life, and Results and in The Permcommunism, (published in a run of 6,000 and with a favorable commenTheories of Transitional
The Political Economy Bureaucracy), of which 10,000 copies were published. Publications thaw necessary for modernization
This thaw belongs in the political context of Deng Xiaoping's overall orientation. The policy of modernization and accelerated growth implies repressed during the cultural revolution, and a strengthof the technocratic layers of bureaucracy, as well as of the "scientific" currents. It is impossible to carry out such a rapprochement and to succeed in a policy of modernization without increasing the latitude consequently the variety of publicagenerally, since the rupture with the "gang of four" and orthodox Maoism, the leadership of the Chinese CP has been facing a serious problem of historical identity. (2) It no longer considers itself either Maoist or Stalinist, but only Marxist. Between Marx and contemporary reality there obviously a gap that the leadership somehow or other to fill up with a critical investigation of the contributions made to Marxism not only by Lenin, but also by Luxemburg, Gramsci, Mao and the principal
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986 tion. of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Academy an of literature deleted of the previous ascertain reassess economic policy,' Stalin's road to and his revolution from top to bottom, the truth of the magnification of the scope of the struggle against the counterthe historical role of the Third International, the relationship between Trotsky and the Fourth International and the theories of Rosa
Nikolay Bukharin and
"The publication of the works Lenin wrote shortly before his death and the related background material has all the more aroused the interest of people in his thinking in the evening of his life. During later years Lenin found that, despite the great successes of the cause initiated by the October Revolution, it suffered from quite a few defects and inadequacies, and that is why he raised the questions of democratizing the organs proletarian dictatorship and the Soviets, of opposing bureaucratization and over-concentration of powers and of giving full play to the role of coopera-
Stalin deviated from Lenin's thinking on these questions and this led to serious tragedy for the Soviet party and state as well as for Stalin himself." (3)
At the same time, this course is fraught with danger for the bureaucratic faction in power. There is the danger of ultraleft reactions from conservative layers and/or Maoists, stress that such openings may unleash differentiations that run the risk of ending up in explosions. And there is also the danger of popular rebellions (both urban - by workers and students - and rural, on the part of the poor peasants) against the growing inequality brought on by the "economic liberalization."
Under these conditions, in order to protect the bureaucracy, the trend toward freedom of discussion, of publication and of opinion is, then, still very limited. Deng Xiaoping adroitly applies the old adage: "Cover your left; cover your right." But at the same time, especially in a country like China, it is impossible for the central apparatus to exercise absolute control. Because of that, the limited thaw, following its own logic, is partially autonomous from the not always clearly expressed intentions of "removed hesitant. CP, one he believed had Marxism as its logical outcome. In this sense he can be considered the "ancestor" of Deng
2. The members of the "gang of four" including Mao's widow, Jiang Qing, were OTOVERTZO trial in the early 1980s as part of the process of the reevaluation of Mao's role and ideas that the Chinese Communist party was engaged in at that time.
Su Shaozhi, "Developing Marxism under Contemporary Conditions, published in commemoration of the centenial of the death of Karl Marx and translated in
"Marx ism in China, edited. and with a preface by Ken Coates, Nottingham, England, The Spokesman, 1983, pp. 33-34.
13
publication of all of his main works and those of his principal allies would be viewed by Peking as a major obstacle on the road to normalization of its relations with Moscow.
an intermediate solution has been chosen.
Zhu Tingguan's article reveals once contradictions inherent in all attempts to step back
AM D79 proto-Stalinist that gained currency in 1923-27 under the impetus, first of Zinoviev and Radek, and later of Bukharin and Rykov.
Such attempts insist on the necessity of basing judgements of Trotsky and Stalin on rigorously and scientifically verified documents and historical reproach Trotsky for being opposed to the building of socialism in the
Mao's portrait still hangs even after "deMaoisation" (DR) Xiaoping in the intense struggle between the "Occidentalists" and the "traditionalists" that took place within the progressive Chinese intelligentsia throughout the twentieth century.
But Chen Duxiu was more than a theoretician. He was first and foremost the real founder of the Chinese Chinese Communist Party, which he for eight years secretary. It is impossible to discuss
Trotskyism without at the same time taking up Chen Duxiu and Chinese Trotskyism. And it is impossible to carry out an objective evaluation of Chen Duxiu -just as of Stalin, Bukharin and Trotsky - without making a critical judgement about the second Chinese revolution of 1925-27 and of the course imposed on the Chinese CP by the Communist International during that revolution, and without assigning exact responsibility for the April 1927 defeat in Shanghai.
This is explosive material for the leadership of the CCP. Of course, while appearing to maintain a general continuity with Mao, the party is not necessarily incapable of undertaking this critical examination of second Chinese revolution; the future Maoist faction was not directly implicated in the events that led to the disaster of April 1927.
It is also significant that although the article by Zhu Tingguan continues formed a "liquidationist clique in opposition to the correct line of struggle defended by Mao this accusation relates to debates concerning the period after the 1927 events and not to the events same article abandons the long directed at the 14
Chinese Trotskyists that they were agents of Kuomintang even spies for Japanese imperialism. The CCP cadres today explicitly reject this charge brought against Chen Duxiu and attribute it to Kang Sheng, a famous factional adversary
Moreover, two works by Trotskyists have also been published in China, albeit in strictly limited editions and with circumscribed disof Zheng Chaolin and Wang Fanxi's Memoirs of a Revolutionary.
also a partial rehabilitation of Chinese Trotskyists implied in the recent positions taken on the question The place of Trotsky in Chinese-Soviet talks the international aspect of this process, that of the relationship between Peking and Moscow. The Deng leadership team is engaged in delicate, protracted negotiations with the leaders of the Soviet bureaucracy. The question of Trotsky also takes its place in that context. rehabilitation of Trotsky and the old The Chinese bureaucracy is reminding Moscow that with the resources at its disposal, it could make a real nuisance of itself to the Gorbachev team inasmuch as the latter did not, contrary to some expectations, announce a return to the Khrushchev policies in this area at the recently held CPSU Twenty-Seventh Congress.
On the other hand, a complete rehabilitation of Trotsky and the
USSR. And they do this without referring to the many documents written by him, alone or in association with his political allies between 1923 and 1928, which clearly demonstrate that he was the principle proponent - and with his allies, principle author - of the country's modernization and industrialization.
The dispute with the Stalin and Bukharin factions in the CPSU did not turn on the necessity for the building of socialism, but on its time scale, the most adequate forms for it to take and its outcome in the medium term. A resolute advocate of the commencement and even of the acceleration of the building of socialism in the USSR, Trotsky was an determined adversary of any capitulation to the international bourgeoisie and to all precapitalist tendencies in the USSR. At the same time, he defended the classical Marxist. premise that this process was not going to result in the advent of a classless society within the narrow national framework of Russia alone. This result could only be achieved on the international scale.
In other words, the dispute was not between the advocates and the opponents of building socialism in the USSR. It was between the advocates and the opponents of the revisionist hypothesis that the building of socialism could be brought to fruition in one country. Implicit in this dispute, debate over the definition of socia-
Is socialism simply the suppression of the private ownership of the means totally opposed to the Marxist tradition, in which the suppression of the private ownership of the means of production is only one characteristic - necessary but insufficient - of the advent of socialism, the fin International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
phase of a communist society. The latter is the disapprearance of society's divi. characterized further sion into classes, by the withering away of the state, the disappearance of commodity production and social inequality - particularly in regard to effective access to the means of production and of subsistence - and the consequent eradication of the alienated and alienating character of debates continue burning immediacy. It is impossible to deal with them responsibly without the publication of all the important of the period in question as well as of the later period in which the earlier events are discussed.
The ascribes to the of historical sources, he advocate the publication in China of all those documents originally appearing both in the USSR and abroad. He would begin with: The New Course and Whither Russia: Toward Capitalism or Toward Socialism? by Leon Trotsky, The New Economics by Preobrazhensky, Professional Dangers of Power by Rakovsky, the principal speeches and articles of Zinoviev, Kamenev and socialism in one country; the principal articles and speeches of Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Yakolev and others who replied to the Opposition; the chief works relating to the workers' struggles (including strikes) and the differentiation of the peasantry in the between 1923
Chu Tingguan asserts that Irotsky "degenerated into an anti-Soviet exile" after 1928. But he recognizes at the same time that Stalin had "excessively broadened the inner-party struggle." By stating this he has said both too much and too little. Does this "broadening" imply the use of inadmissible methods of repression in 1924 against the Opposition - methods that were never employed in Lenin's long before the bloody purges of 1936-38, or does it not? Questions that must be answered
This wife and son exiled from the USSR by Stalin and despite their vehement protests, or were they not? How reproached under these with his exile for which he bears no responsibility? How can he be charac-
"anti-Soviet" specifying the political and analytical positions on the nature of the USSR that he held after 1928; without making clear particularly remained a stalwart supporter of the military defence of the Soviet Union until the end of his days; without publishing all of his writings on the USSR beginning with The tion Betrayed, The Fourth International and the USSR and The Defence of Marxism?
For the same reasons the accusation of "anti-party factional activities" charge that he had "split" the Russian international communist moverepression and his crimes - crimes not only against those in opposition but against all communists and against the entire Russian and international proletariat? That is the real question!
Let us remember that Trotsky nor the Opposition ever refused to recognize the discipline of the party or of the Communist Interthey never the majority the party within the been self-evident in Lenin's time. made (enough the Fifteenth The Opposition obliged to found unacceptable was not the demand to respect discipline, but the requirement that they declare themselves mistaken, although to do totally at odds with their convictions. This organizational and political innovation — to oblige to take positions inside the party that were contrary to their convictions - could lead to duplicity, to the destruction lithism, to obscurantism and to the demoralization of the That is exactly what happened. A thousand times Trotsky had reasons spirit and the practice of Marx and
The Chinese Communists are in a
Deng Xiaoping (left) with Hua Guofeng (DR)
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986 this regard. For Stalin and Khrushchev had many a time demanded of them -beginning with Mao Tse-tung himself - the same sort of capitulation. It is to the credit of the Chinese that they refused, and, indeed, without making such a stand, they could not have been victorious in the Chinese revolution of 1949. It was for this reason that the Soviet bureaucracy economic and military pressure against the People's Republic of China. In this "factional struggle" the Chinese CP has been 100 per cent right to oppose this pressure. We were, and we continue to be, completely on
But has not the CCP contributed through that stand to "dividing the international communist movement"? Rather, does not the responsibility for such divisions fall upon those
15
China's Communist Party repudiates both Maoism and Stalinism (DR)
who would impose such shackles, not on those who are defending themselves against such inadmissible practices? Why would the resistance of the Chinese CP be legitimate, despite the "divisions" that it "broadened" and that of Trotsky be illegitimate solely on the basis of "divisions" and "factionalism"? Chinese charges against Soviets have far outstripped Trotsky's
Has not the CCP leadership long waged an anti-Soviet campaign of propaganda and agitation more virulent than that which Trotsky led? Has it not accused the Soviet government and state of "imperialism" and even of "fascism"? Has it not placed Soviet "expansionism" on the same plane as American "imperialism, speaking even-handedly of the two "superpowers," and viewing the USSR as the more aggressive and the more dangerous of the two? These are wild charges of which Trotsky was never guilty. Even if the present leaders of the CCP challenge these excesses, would they be ready to accuse Mao Tse-tung of "anti-Soviet agitation" and of "division of the international communist movement? What right have they, then, to hurl these same accusations at Trotsky?
In the light of historical materialism, a more fundamental question must finally be posed. The "excessive broadening" of the struggle within the party and of the repression inside the USSR has not concerned only the oppositional tendencies, which are rather limited even if the tens of thousands of Communists are included. It has concerned entire layers of Soviet society. It has brought 16 about structural modification of the state and of a part of the relations of production. Leaders of industry have been proclaimed the only captains of the ship by the application of the principle of "one-man leadership."
The workers and the trade unions control over economic management. The right to strike has been suppressed. One of the most repressive bodies of labor law in the world has been in effect for more than 15 years. bloody repression has been launched the workers and peasants. At the same time, the bureaucracy has been provided with enormous material privileges, which continue to exist
Obviously, these profound political and social transformations cannot be solely or even chiefly explained by superstructural phenomena such Stalin's cult of personality or methods. These transformations signal a genuine counterrevolution.
Contrary to the former Maoist theory, the Chinese leadership today with Trotsky and the Fourth International that there is no question of a restoration of capitalism, that is, USSR, but, at least from that time on, is a political counterrevolution, that is a Soviet Thermidor.
If one does not at least acknowledge this hypothesis - explicitly considered possible by Lenin from 1922 on - one is forced to pull back from historical materialism in favor of historical idealism to explain the evolution of the USSR since the 1920s. But if one allows the existence of a Soviet Thermidor, then Trotsky's fight against this Thermidor, far from being a sin of factionalism, was an elementary duty of a proletarian revolutionary; it was an indispensable struggle to defend the immediate and historical interests of the proletariat.
And when Zhu Tingguan asserts that "such methods of struggle (used by Trotsky) are not normal in a country under proletarian leadership," that is, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, he obscures the real problem: that is, that the USSR from 1923 or 1927, to say nothing of the USSR under the Stalin dictatorship, was no longer a country ruled by a proletarian leadership, the normal dictatorship of the proletariat. While it was a dictatorship of the proletariat, it was a proletarian leadership with strong bureaucratic deformations = once again to use Lenin's formulation. The forms of struggle employed by Trotsky in the interests of the proletariat corresponded to the precise nature of the Thermidorian power in the USSR.
The contradictions in the positions of the Chinese leadership question of Trotsky are difficult to resolve bureaucracy is not addressed in a critical scientific manner. Now the question of the bureaucracy turns back on China just as much as on the USSR. social basis for the inadequacies in the stands taken by Li Xianrong and Zhu Tingguan. But that in no way diminishes the importance of their having taken a stand. It represents a constructive contribution in the battle of communists to restore historical truth. This battle is indispensable to the cleaning up of the political situation in all of the workers' states, indispensable to the struggle for socialist democracy, indispensable for the elimination of all bureaucrati roadblocks in the path of the building of socialism and the world revolution International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
CHINA joined up with Kuomintang antiand
Communist diehards special agents to engage in anti-Communist