Production by the masses, the interests of the masses, the experiences and feelings of the masses – to these the leading cadres should pay constant attention.
Mao Zedong 8th Route Army Headquarters – Yenan – 24.11.1943
When it comes to emancipating our minds, using our heads, seeking truth from facts and uniting as one looking to the future, the primary task is to emancipate our minds. Only then can we, guided as we should be by Marxist-Leninist and Mao Zedong Thought, find correct solutions to emerging as well as inherited problems… Just imagine the additional wealth that could be created if all the people in China’s hundreds of thousands of enterprises and millions of production teams put their minds to work. As more wealth is created for the state, personal income and collective benefits should also increase somewhat… Otherwise, we won’t be able to rid our country of poverty and backwardness or to catch up with – still less surpass – the advanced countries.’
Deng Xiaoping – Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth from Facts and Unite as One in Looking to the Future – 13.12.1978
Communist China is a Socialist State founded in late 1949. At that time, the Communist Party of China (led by Mao Zedong) over-threw the Western-supported government of Chiang Kai-Shek, eradicated feudalism and over-threw the bourgeoisie and the predatory capitalism they represented, and seized the means of production. Chiang Kai-Shek and his capitalists invaded the island of Taiwan and seized power there (committing many atrocities in the process), with the remnants of his US-supported regime still occupying that island today, with its exploitative class system still intact. Taiwan is the only part of Mainland China where US-style capitalism still holds sway. Within Taiwan, the small middle class dominates and oppresses the masses of workers – who are forced to eke-out a living in oppressive conditions – whilst this rogue regime is held together through US Christian missionary work (that converts the masses and turns them against Chinese culture by stating it is evil and backward), and by continuous US threats about invading Mainland China, or false US fears about Communist China invading Taiwan. This is the standard ‘divide and conquer’ tactics used by the Eurocentric forces of imperialism for centuries. Add to this the fact that the US government uses billions of dollars of its own tax-payer’s money to artificially prop-up Taiwan’s ‘false’ economy, and the true ‘fake’ status of Taiwan is revealed, showing it to be nothing but a US colony.
Every utility and business in China is ‘nationalised’ and owned by the Communist Chinese State. In other words, the Communist Party of China (CPC) – as the organised representative of the working class – having ceased full control of the means of production in 1949, now administers the entire business and service economy to benefit the people. All generated profit is immediately fed back into building a stronger and more efficient Workers’ State. This includes a fully comprehensive Welfare System, and free at the point of use National Health System. China uses both Western and Chinese medical systems provided free by the State. Science and technology is given unlimited funding to progress human understanding of the universe, and to develop advanced technology, medicines, treatments, communication systems, satellites and space travel. The Chinese legal system guarantees ‘equality’ throughout China, and unlike its bourgeois counter-part, a Chinese person receives full and free legal support. Communist China has rapidly developed both psychosocially and materiality since 1949, and has not only caught-up with the capitalist US, but is now surpassing this ruthless and capitalist country that uses its massive prison population as a form of slave labour.
The US has initiated a relentless anti-China campaign since 1949, bearing all the hall-marks of that country’s predictable ‘anti-Communist’ propaganda. Common accusations without any evidence include bizarre allegations that China is despotic, undemocratic, an invader of Tibet, a deceptive ‘capitalist’ country, and a dog-eating abuser of human rights, etc. What is remarkable about these views and many similar misrepresentations of China, is that they are shared equally across the Western political spectrum – both left and right. Underlying all these views are Eurocentric racist interpretations of the Chinese ethnicity, its political system, its history and its culture. These derogatory ideas about China are just as likely to manifest in India, as they are in the US, and often serve as the basis of both Western fascist and Communist critiques of China. The Western mainstream is just as racist as the fascist rightwing – but the Communist and Socialist left should know better. The problem with the left is that it has become riddled with Trotskyite racialised rhetoric that seeks to undermine any and all Marxist-Leninist regimes. Trotskyism dove-tales nicely with fascist ideology and is nothing but a racist misrepresentation of the leftwing perspective. Trotskyism also serves as the basis for the British Labour Party leftism – with even Jeremy Corbyn criticising China’s Yulin Dog Festival in Parliament in 2015 – with no Chinese-based evidence informing his views. This is the same Labour Leader who says nothing in Parliament about 24 hour slaughter houses in the UK, etc.
Communist understanding should be a continuous process of dialectic development and should not be stuck in the past, or congeal around a set of dogmatic ideals. When a Communist government seizes control of the means of production, capitalism is over-thrown with exploitative capitalist market forces replaced by working class representative Socialist market forces. Whereas in the former all profit is concentrated into the hands of a small and privileged group, in the latter all profit is radically re-distributed throughout society to directly benefit the majority of the ordinary people. Obviously China has rejected the former and embraced the latter. Today, China seeks to master and over-come the Western capitalist system by learning its method from a Socialist perspective, and turning its method against the capitalists. The Western powers dominated China for hundreds of years and in that time ruthlessly exploited its people and stole its considerable wealth – leaving China thoroughly impoverished by 1911. By engaging the capitalists and beating them at their own game does not make China a ‘capitalist’ country – as even the USSR traded with the capitalist West. What it demonstrates is not the failure of Marxist-Leninist ideology, but rather its success. In just over 60 years, a backward and impoverished country has been completely transformed through the leadership of the Communist Party of China. This fact flies in the face of the false US propaganda that Socialism equals poverty. What capitalists and fascists either conveniently forget, or just do not know, is that Karl Marx stated that Socialism (and then Communism) emerge out of a very well developed and successful capitalist system – he never taught that Socialism is ‘anti-capitalist’. Marxists are anti-bourgeois and anti-exploitation, but they take economic market forces and re-define their uses so that society is benefited rather than oppressed. In 1949, 90% of China’s population were impoverished and illiterate – today, after just over 60 years of CPC guidance, this situation has been completely reversed, with 90% of the population being able to read and write, and live a life of greatly improved economic circumstances.
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 