In deconstructing the lives and legacies of Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, Doug Enaa Greene traces a shared thread of revolutionary opposition to Stalinist dogmatism.
Che Guevara and Mao Zedong in Beijing, 1960 (colorized)
The Soviet Union did not appear to be leading the way to a communist future. As time wore on, many within the international communist movement recognized that the claims of Stalinist historical necessity were not holding up. Instead of uprooting age-old class oppressions and empowering the people, there was bureaucratic rule, ruthless conformism, and the retrenchment of cultural conservatism.
Yet by and large, Stalinist historical necessity remained an unquestioned article of faith within the international communist movement until Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. For communists around the world, Khrushchev’s revelations and the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution forced them to seriously confront the meaning of Stalinism for the first time. To many, this marked their complete demoralization and the abandonment of not only Stalinism, but of any allegiance to Marxism.
However, the end of the Stalinist monolith in 1956 opened up the chance for potential revolutionary alternatives to emerge. In China and Cuba especially, there were “revolutions within the revolution” that imagined new forms of socialism that challenged many of the dogmas and practices of Stalinism. Yet despite these bold endeavors, these attempts at revolutionary renewal did not succeed in either understanding or offering a durable communist alternative to Stalinism.
Che Guevara and the New Socialist Man
An almost mythical figure, Che Guevara symbolized the liberatory spirit of the Cuban Revolution and its search for a “New Socialist Man.” A fervent internationalist, he advocated guerrilla warfare as opposed to the tepid gradualist strategies of the Latin American Communist Parties. The power of his alternative was enhanced by the fact that Che himself practiced what he preached by fighting for the revolution in the Congo and Bolivia, where he died a martyr in 1967. In addition, Che rejected the dull, gray, and bureaucratic socialist models of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European People’s Democracies. He sought a radical, egalitarian, and heroic socialism that would transform humanity and create a new man. At the time of his death, Che’s ideas on a new socialism were not a fully fleshed-out vision, appearing more as tantalizing hints still in search of a new path.
Born into an upper-class Argentine family in 1928, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was introduced to radical ideas at an early age. Despite his class background, Che’s family supported the political left and the Argentine Communist Party. His parents were resolute supporters of the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, hosting Republican veterans in their home. The young Guevara shared these Loyalist sympathies and followed the course of the war closely on a makeshift map.
Later in his teens, Che was an avid reader of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.1 However, he was not politically active and focused more on his studies.
While studying medicine, Che took a motorcycle trip around Latin America with his close friend Alberto Garando. During this trip, Che encountered first-hand abject poverty and the weight of imperialist domination on the continent. In Chile, he was enraged by the conditions that workers endured at the American-owned Anaconda mining company. He was particularly moved after spending the night talking with a couple who were members of the outlawed Communist Party of Chile: “The couple, numb with cold, huddling against each other in the desert night, were a living representation of the proletariat in any part of the world … It’s a great pity that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the “communist vermin,” is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, “bread for the poor,” was something which he understood and, more importantly, filled him with hope.”2
After completing his medical degree in 1953, Che traveled to Guatemala. He was eager to observe the left-leaning government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán that was carrying out land reform and confronting the power of the US-owned United Fruit Company. In December, he wrote to his aunt Beatriz and cited Stalin in his burning desire to fight capitalism:3
Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible the capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated. In Guatemala I will perfect myself and achieve what I need to be an authentic revolutionary.”
While in Guatemala, Che met members of the local Communist Party (Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo; PGT) who supported Arbenz’s government. While Guevara kept the PGT at a distance, he wrote to his aunt that he considered himself to be a fellow traveler: “I have taken a definite position in support of the Guatemalan government, and, within it, the PGT, which is Communist.”4 Che observed that the PGT adopted “a cautious position,” but believed that they were the only group in the country advocating “a program in which personal interests don’t count.”5
In June 1954, US-backed mercenaries led by Castillo Armas launched a coup d’état against Arbenz. Che reached out to the PGT, urging them to arm workers and defend the government, but the party refused. According to the account by his first wife, Hilda Gadea: “Ernesto told me how he constantly urged the Youth Alliance to go to the front, and that many youngsters, encouraged by him, were willing. He said that time and again the suggestion was presented to the PGT, but the only answer they got was that the army was already taking care of everything and that the people should not worry.”6 Che’s efforts were of no avail – the Arbenz government was overthrown and the PGT was outlawed.
In the aftermath of the coup, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate; he remained there for a few weeks before making his way to Mexico. The experience in Guatemala transformed Che from a mere Bohemian rebel into a dedicated revolutionary. Now he recognized that a revolution could not be made using the state and army of the bourgeoisie. Arbenz failed to understand this essential truth and it had led to his downfall. To defeat imperialism and the bourgeoisie, Che believed that it was necessary for revolutionaries to destroy the old army and state. In its ashes, they would create new institutions of popular power defended by the armed people. When the next revolution inevitably came, Che wanted to be ready for it. He left Guatemala proclaiming: “The struggle begins now.”7
His opportunity was not long in coming. In Mexico City, Che met Cuban exiles Raúl and Fidel Castro. The Castro brothers were leaders of the 26th of July Movement, and they planned to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Convinced of their sincerity, Guevara joined their cause as a doctor.8 In June 1956, mere months before their expedition was set to embark for Cuba, Castro and Che were arrested by the Mexican police. Castro was accused of working with communists to assassinate Batista, charges which he vehemently denied. By contrast, Che, who was honest to a fault, admitted to the police that he was a communist. According to Castro: “They took Che before the prosecutor, the prosecutor interrogated him, and Che even started arguing about the cult of personality, doing a critique of Stalin. Imagine Che involved in a theoretical discussion with the police, the district attorney and the immigration authorities over Stalin’s errors!”9 Eventually, thanks to the intervention of former Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, both Castro and Che were released.
Months later, the rebels departed the yacht Granma for Cuba. The expedition nearly ended in total disaster when they were attacked almost instantly upon landing. The majority were killed with only 22 survivors out of 82 regrouping in the Sierra Maestra. Despite this initial set-back, the rebel army survived. In the opening battles, Che decided that he would no longer serve as a doctor, but as a soldier:10
This might have been the first time I was faced, literally, with the dilemma of choosing between my devotion to medicine and my duty as a revolutionary soldier. There, at my feet, was a backpack full of medicine and a box of ammunition. They were too heavy to carry both. I picked up the ammunition, leaving the medicine, and started to cross the clearing, heading for the cane field.”
Over the coming months, Che proved to be an exemplary soldier. After their initial encounter, the rebels managed to evade the army by hiding in the forests and mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Their measures of land reform won the allegiance of the peasantry. However, Che believed that more radical measures would be needed: “Our revolutionary war was already beginning to acquire new characteristics. The consciousness of the leaders and the combatants was growing. We were beginning to feel in our flesh and blood the need for an agrarian reform and for profound, essential changes in the social structure that were vital to cleanse the country.”11 For the next two years, the July 26th Movement became the center of the anti-Batista resistance. Its urban wing launched actions that included assassination attempts on Batista and insurrectionary general strikes; these efforts failed to topple the dictatorship. The main battlefield of the revolution was in the Sierra Maestra, where Batista’s soldiers were defeated by Castro’s guerrillas. In late 1958, the guerrillas shifted to the offensive and a column commanded by Guevara successfully captured the city of Santa Clara, cutting Cuba in half. Seeing his rule tottering, Batista fled into exile and within days, Castro, Guevara, and their troops marched into Havana to cheering crowds.
Even though the guerrillas were in power, Che believed this was only the beginning of the revolution. It was not enough to overthrow Batista, but the socio-economic roots of exploitation had to be uprooted: “The first difficulty is that our new actions must be accomplished on the old foundations. Cuba’s antipeople regime and army are already destroyed, but the dictatorial social system and economic foundations have not yet been abolished.”12 Che knew this required the mobilization of the people. Over the next few years, the revolution radicalized as the people confronted local exploiters and their American backers. The agrarian reform struck a major blow to the latifundia. Property belonging to the wealthy supporters of Batista and American citizens was nationalized. To defend these gains and fight the counterrevolution, Committees for the Defense of the Revolution were created.
The revolutionary intransigence of the Cuban people brought down the wrath of the United States, who feared communist subversion. To arrest developments in Cuba, the American government organized terrorist attacks. Economic measures were also instituted, with the hopes of strangling the revolution, but these efforts backfired. When the Eisenhower Administration threatened to cut off Cuba’s sugar quota after Castro refused to compensate the sugar planters, the USSR stepped in and bought the sugar. From June through July in 1960, the Cuban government proceeded to nationalize all American-owned industries without any compensation. In July of 1960 at the First Latin American Congress, when asked to define the ideology behind the Cuban Revolution, Guevara proclaimed: “I would answer that if this revolution is Marxist — and listen well that I say Marxist — it is because the revolution discovered, by its own methods, the road pointed out by Marx.”13 Whether Guevara realized it or not, he was expressing the logic behind Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution.
While Che and Castro pushed for the radicalization of the revolution, their allies in the Popular Socialist Party/PSP (the Moscow-aligned CP) trailed far behind. While many of their rank-and-file members had fought bravely alongside the July 26th movement in the mountains, the party’s leadership hesitated until very late before supporting the armed struggle.14 Now the PSP said that Cuba must remain at the bourgeois-democratic stage in order to avoid antagonizing either the national bourgeoisie or American imperialism. In July 1960, the PSP published “Trotskyism: Agents of Imperialism” that condemned Trotskyist provocateurs as liars when they claimed that “the Cuban people are seizing the assets belonging to the imperialists and their national allies.”15 A month later, PSP General Secretary Blas Roca declared that the revolution remained “a patriotic and democratic revolution” and recognized that “it is necessary to guarantee the profits of private enterprise, its normal functioning and development. It is necessary to stimulate zeal and increase productivity among the workers of these enterprises.”16 A mere few weeks later, the revolutionary government launched even more sweeping nationalizations that gave them control over 80 percent of the economy.
On the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961, Fidel Castro proclaimed the socialist character of the revolution:17
What the imperialists cannot forgive is that we are here. What the imperialists cannot forgive is the dignity, the firmness, the courage, the ideological integrity, the spirit of sacrifice, and the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people. This is what they cannot forgive: the fact that we are here right under their very noses. And that we have carried out a socialist revolution right under the nose of the United States!”
By the mid-1960s, the Cuban Revolution had successfully defended themselves against American efforts to overthrow them. However, the revolution was suffering major economic problems. Dependency on sugar halted the government’s ambitious plans for industrialization. Other economic issues were further compounded by the US blockade that limited Cuba’s ability to import raw materials. The alliance with the Soviet Union provided needed supplies and kept the revolution afloat, but it also came with an imported bureaucratic model of socialism. As the Minister of Industry and head of the National Bank, Che initiated a discussion over how Cuba should confront these difficulties and what path to socialism it should follow. The ensuing “Great Debate” between advocates of the Auto-Financing System (AFS) and the Budgetary Finance System (BFS) was one of the most important debates on the transition to socialism since the 1920s. The “Great Debate” touched on a wide-ranging number of issues related to socialism such as the role of consciousness, material and moral incentives, money, bureaucracy, planning, and the law of value.18
The position of AFS was aligned with Soviet orthodoxy and supported by Alberto Mora, the Minister of Foreign Trade, and Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, the Minister of Agriculture, both of whom were former PSP members. The AFS position advocated that Cuban enterprises should be legally independent and trade their products with each other through a market; thereby, their products would remain commodities. The success of enterprises would be determined by their profitability, and material incentives among workers would be used to promote efficiency and innovation.
Among the main champions of the AFS was the French economist Charles Bettelheim, then serving as an advisor to the Cuban government. He quoted Stalin to support his position, arguing that it was an “economic law that the relations of production must necessarily conform with the character of the productive forces.”19 Bettelheim argued that effective economic organization must conform to the economic structure of society. Since Cuba was an underdeveloped country, the necessity of AFS and the survival of the law of value was in conformity with the current development of the productive forces. Furthermore, Bettelheim said that the law of value was an objective law during the transition to socialism and it would remain operative in the planned sector due to the low level of development of the productive forces. An underdeveloped economy like Cuba was not in the position to either know social wants, nor plan for them. For Bettelheim, enterprises needed autonomy; the economy must rely on the law of value until the productive forces were adequately developed.
Che (supported by the Belgian Trotskyist economist Ernest Mandel) was one of the foremost proponents of the BFS position and “opposed the use of capitalist mechanisms to determine production and consumption.”20 He argued that socialism was not just an economic system but entailed a new way of life and the transformation of human beings. As he said in 1963: “A socialist economy without communist moral values does not interest me. We fight poverty but we also fight alienation. One of the fundamental aims of Marxism is to eliminate material interest, the factor of ‘individual self-interest’ and profit from man’s psychological motivations. Marx was concerned with both economic facts and their reflection in the mind, which he called a ‘fact of consciousness.’ If communism neglects facts of consciousness, it can serve as a method of distribution but it will no longer express revolutionary moral values.”21
Che did not deny the existence of the law of value in socialism, but argued that it was unsuitable as a guide for social justice; it had no role to play in the public sector. He said that enterprises in the planned sector should operate as a single whole and not produce commodities. These enterprises would be subject to strict accounting, but this was not the same as relying on the law of value. Rather, Che argued for rejecting the law of value as an economic regulator and that production must be done according to a central plan.
He believed that AFS proponents were aping capitalist institutions and mechanisms. In 1959, he had condemned a similar type of enterprise autonomy found in Yugoslavia as reminiscent of capitalism:22
They practice something like competitive capitalism, with a socialist distribution of the profit of each enterprise; that is, taking each enterprise not as a group of workers but as a unit, this enterprise functions more or less as in a capitalist system, obeying laws of supply and demand and carrying on a violent struggle over prices and quality with enterprises of the same sort. They thus achieve what is called in economics free competition.”
Che said that economic development and the pursuit of social justice necessitated limiting the law of value. Socialization of the means of production would open the road to central planning and overcoming the anarchy of the market. Che believed that the success of the Cuban Revolution proved that deterministic economic laws were false and that the revolutionary vanguard “is capable of consciously anticipating the steps to be taken in order to force the pace of events, but forcing it within what is objectively possible.”23 Moral incentives as opposed to material ones would be the main lever to promote a collective spirit. This vision of socialism would create new human beings guided by a new ethical consciousness. For Che, a voluntarist will guided by a higher morality could create socialism almost regardless of material conditions.
In 1965, the “Great Debate” ended and Che appeared to have won. Yet, if he won the public battle, then Che lost the war behind the scenes. According to Mandel’s biographer Jan Willem Stutje, the private debate lay over the direction of revolution and how the workers exercised power: “That is, along with the question of the law of value came the issue of how much freedom the proletariat would have to make its own decisions. As Mandel saw it, though Che triumphed in the public debate, he was defeated in the hidden one. Guaranteeing freedom was a political problem: it required the creation of workers’ councils and popular assemblies. Such organs were never developed.”24 Despite Che’s criticisms of the AFS system, he never truly answered the question of proletarian democracy and who should plan.
A few years later in 1968, Cuba launched a radical offensive that nationalized most of the non-agricultural businesses still in private hands, which in turn eliminated the market as a medium of exchange. At the same time, Cuba relied on sugar and agriculture as its main sector of growth. This shift to agriculture occurred just as the percentage of agricultural workers declined, leading the government to utilize moral incentives as a short-term solution to the labor shortage.25 Moreover, the whole-scale nationalizations disrupted the economy; moral incentives could not compensate for low productivity and mismanagement. In 1970, the Cubans launched a major effort to harvest 10 million tons of sugar (double the 1968 harvest). This effort diverted a significant amount of resources and led to further difficulties in the economy. The sugar harvest campaign failed, and afterwards, Cuba ended up adopting the Soviet economic model.26
Following the Great Debate, Che’s criticisms of the non-revolutionary character of the Soviet Union deepened. One of his final works, Apuntes críticos a la economía (1965-1966) was a series of unfinished commentaries on the Soviet Manual of Political Economy, the standard textbook of the time.27 In a letter to the Minister of Education, Armando Hart, Che concluded that these types of manuals were useless: “[Soviet manuals] have the drawback of not letting you think, because the party has already done it for you and you just have to digest it. In terms of methodology, it is anti-Marxist as can be and, moreover, the books tend to be very bad.”28 Che hoped his notes would be useful to both students and socialists who were interested in new ideas beyond Soviet dogmas:29
For those who view us with suspicion because of the esteem and loyalty they feel with respect to the socialist countries, we give them a single warning: the affirmation by Marx, in the first pages of Capital, about the incapacity of bourgeois science to criticize itself, falling back on apologetics instead, can be applied today, disgracefully, in the science of Marxist economics. This book constitutes an attempt to return to the correct path and, independently of its scientific value, we are proud of having tried to do so from this small developing country. Humanity faces many shocks before its final liberation but – and we are completely convinced of this – it will never get there without a radical change in the strategy of the principal socialist powers.”
Che claimed that the USSR and the Eastern Bloc were “returning to capitalism”30 due to their dependence upon capitalist methods such as material incentives:31
Individual material interest was the arm of capital par excellence and today it is elevated as a lever of development, but it is limited by the existence of a society where exploitation is not permitted. In these conditions, man neither develops his fabulous productive capacities, nor does he develop himself as the conscious builder of a new society.
He traced the current Soviet impasse back to Lenin’s introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921:32
In the course of our practice and our theoretical investigations, we have discovered the most blameworthy individual with the name and surname: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Such is the magnitude of our audacity. However, those who have the patience to continue to the final chapters of this work can appreciate the respect and admiration that we feel towards this ‘guilty’ person and towards the revolutionary motives for those acts whose final results would today shock their author . . . Our thesis is that the changes brought about by the New Economic Policy (NEP) have saturated the life of the USSR and that they have since scarred this whole period. The results are disheartening: the capitalist superstructure was increasingly influencing the relations of production, and the conflicts provoked by the hybridization that was the NEP are today being resolved in favor of the superstructure; it is returning to capitalism.”
Guevara believed that Lenin would have abolished NEP if only he had lived longer. Unfortunately, Lenin had died, and his successors had failed to “see the danger and it remained as the great Trojan horse of socialism, direct material interest as an economic lever.”33 In Che’s notes, Stalin is largely exonerated of any blame for the USSR’s predicament. In fact, he saw Stalin as better than Khrushchev, because he recognized the danger of market relations: “In the supposed errors of Stalin is the difference between a revolutionary and a revisionist attitude. He saw the danger in commodity relations and attempted to pass over this stage by breaking those that resisted him. The new leadership, on the contrary, give in to the impulses of the superstructure and emphasize commercial activity, theorizing that the total use of these economic levers will take them to communism.”34 That is not to say that Che has no criticisms of Stalin. He observed that Stalin’s “great historical crime” was to have “underestimated communist education and instituted an unrestricted culture of authority.”35 At most, one can say that Che’s comment is inadequate since he does not truly begin to grapple with the Thermidorian nature of Stalinism.
It is perhaps only a coincidence that both Che and Trotsky use the term “caste” when referring to the Soviet elite.36This does not mean Che was directly influenced by Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Union in The Revolution Betrayed. His opinion on Trotsky was both uninformed and hostile. As he wrote in 1965: “I think that the fundamental stuff that Trotsky was based upon was erroneous and that his ulterior behavior was wrong and his last years were even dark. The Trotskyites have not contributed anything whatsoever to the revolutionary movement; where they did most was in Peru, but they finally failed there because their methods are bad.”37 Yet Che believed that Trotsky was someone who should be studied, albeit as a negative example. In a letter to Hart, he suggested that Trotsky should be included in Marxist study courses for Cuban Communists alongside Khrushchev as one of the “great revisionists.”38 When Che went to Bolivia, he brought along Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, a book he praised despite his negative opinion of the author:39
This is a fascinating book, but from which it is impossible to extract a critique because the historian is also a protagonist of the events. In any case, he sheds light on a whole series of events of the great revolution that had remained hidden by myth. At the same time, he makes isolated statements whose validity still remains absolute today. In the last analysis, if one disregards the personality of the author and limits oneself to the book, it must be considered as a source of utmost importance for the study of the Russian Revolution.”
When it came to Trotskyists, Che’s views were different. Che counted individual Trotskyists such as Ernest Mandel as allies during the Great Debate. When plates to Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution were destroyed by the government, Che admitted that this was a mistake to the American sociologist Maurice Zeitlin: “It was a mistake made by a second-rate bureaucrat. They broke the plates. It shouldn’t have happened.”40 In 1965, shortly before he left Cuba, Che was instrumental in freeing the Trotskyist Roberto Acosta Hechevarria from jail. Upon his release, Che amicably told Hechevarria: “Acosta, you can’t kill ideas with blows.”41
By contrast, Che recognized that his criticism of bureaucracy, careerism, and privilege found in the Soviet Union were close to Maoist positions: “In many aspects I have expressed opinions that could be closer to the Chinese side: guerrilla warfare, people’s war, in the development of all these things, voluntary labour, to be against direct material incentives as a lever, a whole set of things which the Chinese also raise … .”42
While Che refused to take a public side in the Sino-Soviet split, he did openly criticize Moscow. At a February 1965 conference on Afro-Asian Solidarity held in Algiers, he condemned the USSR for its complicity in the exploitation of the Third World:43
If we establish that kind of relation between the two groups of nations, we must agree that the socialist countries are, in a certain way, accomplices of imperialist exploitation. It can be argued that the amount of exchange with the underdeveloped countries is an insignificant part of the foreign trade of the socialist countries. That is very true, but it does not eliminate the immoral character of that exchange. The socialist countries have the moral duty to put an end to their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.”
These public criticisms of the Soviet Union were viewed negatively in Cuba. When Che returned to Cuba from Algeria, he was accused of being both a Trotskyist and a Maoist by Raúl Castro while Fidel watched silently. Daniel Alarcón Ramírez recalled asking one of Che’s bodyguards what happened in the exchange:44
‘I overheard a very big argument between el Fifo and Che.’ So I asked him, ‘What about?’ He said: “They were discussing Chinese policy and discussing another Soviet leader”—for he was semi-literate. So I mentioned the names of several Soviet leaders. He said, ‘No, it was one that’s already dead. The one they call Trotsky, and they said to Che that he was a Trotskyist. Raúl said that. Raúl was the one who said he was a Trotskyist, that his ideas made it clear that he was a Trotskyist.’ Argudín told me that Che got up very violent, as if he were about to jump on Raúl, and said to Raúl: ‘You’re an idiot, you’re an idiot.’ He said he repeated the word idiot three times; then he looked over at Fidel, says Argudín, and Fidel did not respond. … When Che saw that attitude, he left very upset, he slammed the door and left.”
Furthermore, Che believed that both the USSR and China were guilty of failing to support Vietnam against American imperialism. As he wrote in the Message to the Tricontinental:45
U.S. imperialism is guilty of aggression — its crimes are enormous and cover the whole world. We already know all that, gentlemen! But this guilt also applies to those who, when the time came for a definition, hesitated to make Vietnam an inviolable part of the socialist world; running, of course, the risks of a war on a global scale-but also forcing a decision upon imperialism. And the guilt also applies to those who maintain a war of abuse and snares — started quite some time ago by the representatives of the two greatest powers of the socialist camp.”
Guevara’s criticisms of the Soviet Union (and China) in regards to Vietnam were more reprimands as opposed to excommunications. He hoped that through criticism and pressure the Soviet Union could change course. Unlike the Chinese, Che still believed that the USSR was a potential ally of revolutionary struggles around the world.
In Che’s call to create “ two, three, many Vietnams,” he gave voice to an open rejection of the Soviet line of “peaceful coexistence” along with the popular front stagism and the legalistic strategies advocated by the Latin American Communist Parties. Che’s revolutionary strategy of focoism involved small groups of determined guerrillas (known as focos) who would go into the mountains, launch armed actions that would rally the oppressed around them, and eventually take power. At first, he did not consider focoism to be a universal model. In his 1961 book, Guerrilla Warfare, Che argued that focos should not be used against formal democracies since conditions were unfavorable to armed struggle: “Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.”46
By the time Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (1964) was published, Guevara argued that focoism was applicable across all of Latin America. He claimed armed struggle would reveal the true class nature beneath the façade of bourgeois democracy: “The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force, so we must try to oblige it to do so, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes. This event will deepen the struggle to such an extent that there will be no retreat from it.”47 Che argued that the conditions in Latin America were already objectively revolutionary and that it would only take a small spark to ignite them: “popular forces can win a war against the army. It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.”48 All that was needed for revolutionary victory was the creation of a subjective factor, comprised of heroic guerrillas. According to Michael Löwy, Che’s strategy of a continental-wide Latin American socialist revolution harkened back to the great days of the Russian Revolution:49
This was the first occasion in a very long time that a Communist leader of world stature had tried to outline an international revolutionary strategy that was not dependent on the interests of any state. In this sense, too, Che’s ideas meant a return to the sources of Leninism, to the Comintern in the glorious years of 1919-1924, before it was gradually turned into a tool of the foreign policy of the USSR under Stalin.”
However, for all Che’s epic daring, focoism was not the theory of permanent revolution or a return to Leninism, but a voluntarist approach to revolution. The focoist strategy neglected many crucial political and military questions: 1) Consideration to the roles of a vanguard party and mass organizations (unions, general strike, etc); 2) There was no careful planning on whether the cities or the countryside were the best strategic terrain to begin armed struggle; 3) Che did not analyze the different class and political forces in Latin America; 4) the working class did not play a leading role in the armed struggle. In the 1960s, Latin American revolutionaries launched foco campaigns in countries such as Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia, and Brazil. The most famous foco was Che’s own in Bolivia. None of them succeeded.50 In the following decades, the guerrilla movements in Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere abandoned focoism and developed far more sophisticated political and military approaches to warfare such as protracted warfare and guerrilla-inspired popular insurrection.51 Like Blanqui, Che was an incorruptible figure who rejected the mediocre reformists of his day, but neither offered a viable road to power.
In the end, Che Guevara embodied the idiosyncrasy of the Cuban Revolution vis-à-vis Stalinism. He had sincere intentions and was willing to pursue a different path to socialism, but the results were decidedly mixed. His socialism failed to discuss Stalinism or the role of proletarian democracy. Che saw morality and acts of will as the main levers of socialism. After the early years of the revolution and the open atmosphere of the Great Debate, Cuba adopted a similar economic and political structure found in the Eastern Bloc. While focoism was a challenge to the ossification of the Moscow-line Communist Parties, it proved to be a cul-de-sac.
Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) represented the most far-ranging alternative to Stalinism that emerged inside the international communist movement. Reacting to the loss of revolutionary momentum and conservatism inside the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong feared that similar tendencies were taking hold in the People’s Republic of China. Mao called for mass action to overthrow “capitalist roaders” in party-state bureaucracy; this was intended to renew the revolution and keep China on the socialist road.
The Chinese Revolution, both before and after 1949, saw its share of collaboration and conflict with Stalin and the Soviet Union.52 Until Stalin’s death, criticisms by Mao and other party leaders of the Soviet Union were generally kept private. Following Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, the Chinese were placed in the position of both defending Stalin from Khrushchev while offering their own distinctive criticism. Mao said that blaming the “cult of personality” was a superficial criticism of Stalin. He also believed that it was a mistake for communists to discard Stalin wholesale. To do so meant that the USSR ceded political and ideological ground to anticommunists. According to Mao:53
I would like to say a few words about the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I think there are two “swords”: one is Lenin and the other Stalin. The sword of Stalin has now been discarded by the Russians. Gomułka and some people in Hungary have picked it up to stab at the Soviet Union and oppose so-called Stalinism. The Communist Parties of many European countries are also criticizing the Soviet Union, and their leader is Togliatti. The imperialists also use this sword to slay people with. Dulles, for instance, has brandished it for some time. This sword has not been lent out, it has been thrown out. We Chinese have not thrown it away. First, we protect Stalin, and, second, we at the same time criticize his mistakes, and we have written the article “On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. Unlike some people who have tried to defame and destroy Stalin, we are acting in accordance with objective reality.”
By the early 1960s, tensions between the Soviet Union and China had led to open rupture. In their polemics, the Communist Party of China (CPC) said that the USSR was now ruled by “modern revisionists” who “have completely betrayed the revolutionary spirit of Marxism-Leninism, betrayed the interests of the people.”54 The Chinese singled out Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign that55
aimed at erasing the indelible influence of [Stalin] among the people of the Soviet Union and throughout the world, and at paving the way for negating Marxism-Leninism, which Stalin had defended and developed, and for the all-out application of a revisionist line. Their revisionist line began exactly with the 20th Congress and became fully systematized at the 22nd Congress.”
The Chinese polemics took further aim at the “three peacefuls” and “two wholes” promoted by Khrushchev. The three peacefuls consisted of the following: the first was “peaceful coexistence” between socialist and capitalist countries; the second was “peaceful competition” whereby existing contradictions between socialism and capitalism would be resolved peacefully through economic competition; and lastly, “peaceful transition” where capitalism would give way to socialism through parliament and the ballot box as opposed to a violent revolutionary struggle.
China condemned the three peacefuls as a revisionist package, stating:56
If the general line of the international communist movement is onesidedly reduced to “peaceful coexistence”, “peaceful competition” and “peaceful transition”, this is to violate the revolutionary principles of the 1957 Declaration and the 1960 Statement, to discard the historical mission of proletarian world revolution, and to depart from the revolutionary teachings of Marxism-Leninism.”
The “two wholes,” were in reference to the program adopted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) at its 22nd Congress in 1961. The CPSU declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been superseded in the USSR, meaning that there was now a “state of the whole people” and the communist party had become “the party of the whole people,”57 representing not just the working class. According to the Chinese, this was revisionist because “the dictatorship of the proletariat will inevitably continue for the entire historical period of the transition from capitalism to communism, that is, for the entire period up to the abolition of all class differences and the entry into a classless society, the higher stage of communist society.”58 The Chinese argued that it was impossible for there to be a state of the whole people because “so long as the state remains a state, it must bear a class character; so long as the state exists, it cannot be a state of the “whole people.”59 Moreover, the CPSU line of the “state of the whole people” was similar to bourgeois arguments which claimed that their states were not class states, but representative of everyone. Contrary to the Soviets, the Chinese argued that class contradictions continue to exist within the socialist countries. Therefore, the dictatorship of the proletariat was needed because60
remnants of the old exploiting classes who are trying to stage a comeback still exist there, since new capitalist elements are constantly being generated there, and since there are still parasites, speculators, idlers, hooligans, embezzlers of state funds, etc., how can it be said that classes or class struggles no longer exist? How can it be said that the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary?”
On the Chinese side of the polemics, there were warnings about the continuing dangers of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union. In Long Live Leninism! (1960), modern revisionists were described as “the agents of imperialism and the enemies of the proletariat and working people of all countries.”61 Yet this did not necessarily mean the restoration of capitalism. As late as 1964, Mao stated that the USSR was ruled by modern revisionists, but they only faced the “unprecedented danger of capitalist restoration.”62 By 1967, China publicly declared that the USSR had in fact restored capitalism: “The Soviet revisionists can never cover up these hard facts of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union no matter how much they may resort to their propaganda machine to produce volumes of lies about the ‘achievements’ of the ‘new system.’”63 After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Chou En-lai declared that the Soviet Union was now a “social-imperialist power.”64 Finally, in 1970, China announced that the Soviet Union had become fully-fascist: “The Soviet Union today is under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the German fascist type, a dictatorship of the Hitler type.”65
The Chinese position on capitalist restoration in the USSR can be traced back to Mao’s view on the continuation of contradictions under socialism. Whereas the USSR claimed that antagonistic contradictions no longer existed under socialism, Mao said that they did. In his 1957 work, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People, Mao argued that not only did contradictions continue to exist under socialism, but that class struggle continued as well, where it took on new forms:66
The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the various political forces, and the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the ideological field will still be protracted and tortuous and at times even very sharp. The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is not really settled yet.”
In another work, A Critique of Soviet Economics, Mao criticized Stalin’s methods of planning for focusing strictly on developing the economic base and ignoring the superstructure. He said that the Soviets denied the role of contradictions under socialism and failed to combat bourgeois survivals in the superstructure that conflicted with newly emerging socialist political, cultural, and ideological ideas. Soviet economism and its inability to recognize and deal with contradictions meant that their planning was bureaucratic and commandist with a focus on heavy industry that distorted the economy and failed to achieve a more balanced approach particularly when it came to light industry and agriculture.67
Mao’s critique was not just focused on the USSR, but on parallel developments he saw within China. As he said in 1964, there were those in China who wanted to return to capitalism:68
The bureaucrat class on the one hand and the working class together with the poor and lower-middle peasants on the other are two classes sharply antagonistic to each other…Those leading cadres who are taking the capitalist road have turned, or are turning, into bourgeois elements sucking the blood of the workers; how can they possibly realize fully the imperative need for socialist revolution?”
Mao’s understanding on the continuing class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dangers of capitalist restoration offered a more “revolutionary” summation of Stalin’s achievements and mistakes than was provided by the USSR. On the one hand, China defended Stalin as a “great Marxist-Leninist, a great proletarian revolutionary.”69 He was praised for many achievements that include building socialism in one country, defeating oppositionists such as Trotsky and Bukharin, and leading the Red Army’s victory in the Second World War.
On the other hand, Mao believed that Stalin failed to stop the rise of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union. He observed that Stalin did not recognize that the ideological and political struggles inside the communist party were an expression of the internal contradictions of socialism. As Mao said in October 1966: “In 1936 Stalin talked about the elimination of class struggle, but in 1939 he carried out another purge of counter-revolutionaries. Wasn’t that class struggle too?”70 Since Stalin mistakenly believed that socialism contained no antagonistic contradictions, he saw all opposition as originating from external counter-revolutionary forces. To combat these oppositional forces, Stalin used administrative and repressive methods as opposed to relying on the people. This meant he struck blindly and failed to see the internal contradictions that were the true source of capitalist restoration:71
Are there any contradictions in socialist society? Lenin once talked about this question and thought there were contradictions. But Stalin did not admit this for a long time. During Stalin’s later life, people were neither allowed to speak ill of the society nor to criticize the party or the government. In fact, Stalin mistook contradictions among the people for those between ourselves and the enemy, and consequently regarded those who bad-mouthed [the party or government] or who spread gossip as enemies, thus wronging many people.”
Elsewhere in On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People, Mao noted that a distinction should be made between “contradictions among the people” and “contradictions between the people and the enemy.” The former should be handled “non-antagonistically” by political means and listening to the issues being raised by the people: “The only way to settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by the democratic method, the method of discussion, criticism, persuasion and education, and not by the method of coercion or repression.”72 Antagonistic contradictions with the enemy were different and could be dealt with by violent means. Mao warned that there was a danger when “people fail to make a clear distinction between these two different types of contradictions – those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people – and are prone to confuse the two. It must be admitted that it is sometimes quite easy to do so. We have had instances of such confusion in our work in the past; In the course of cleaning out counter-revolutionaries good people were sometimes mistaken for bad, and such things still happen today.”73 While not directly named, this passage could easily be considered a rebuke of Stalin.
In another speech, Mao was clear that Stalin failed to distinguish between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions. In On the Ten Major Relationships, Mao spoke about Stalin’s practice of mass terror and executions. He noted that Stalin was “absolutely right to execute those counter-revolutionaries,” but held that the practice of China was better in this regard.74 While defending the suppression of the Guomindang and landlords, Mao believed that going forward “there should be fewer arrests and executions in the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in society at large.”75 He preferred the Yenan policy “of killing none and arresting few.”76 Mao noted that mass executions were damaging to production and the revolution. He said that if someone was killed by mistake, then this could never be undone: “Once a head is chopped off, history shows it can’t be restored, nor can it grow again as chives do, after being cut. If you cut off a head by mistake, there is no way to rectify the mistake, even if you want to.”77 To handle incorrect attitudes, Mao argued for a different approach: “The correct attitude towards them should be to adopt a policy of “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing the sickness to save the patient”, help them correct their mistakes and allow them to go on taking part in the revolution.”78
In the CPC’s 1963 document, On the Question of Stalin, the Soviet leader’s error in regard to contradiction is stated as follows:79
In his way of thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government organization, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling relations with fraternal Parties and countries, he made some mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement.”
This criticism of Stalin meant that Mao rejected the monolithic character of the Communist Party. He argued that there was an ongoing “two-line struggle” within the party. Struggle between two lines was inevitable inside the party since it was not homogenous. People joined the party to pursue different goals and at each victory or bump in the road, a struggle would erupt over where to go next. At these instances, the two lines of the bourgeois and proletarian headquarters represented opposed directions.80 The proletariat headquarters wanted to continue pressing the revolution forward down a socialist road.
When it came to the bourgeois headquarters, they represented those in the Communist Party who pursued a capitalist road. According to Zhang Chunqiao:81
There are undeniably some comrades among us who have joined the Communist Party organizationally but not ideologically. In their world outlook they have not yet overstepped the bounds of small production and of the bourgeoisie. They do approve of the dictatorship of the proletariat at a certain stage and within a certain sphere and are pleased with certain victories of the proletariat, because they will bring them some gains; once they have secured their gains, they feel it’s time to settle down and feather their cozy nests.
As for exercising all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, as for going on after the first step on the 10,000-li long march, sorry, let others do the job; here is my stop and I must get off the bus.
We would like to offer a piece of advice to these comrades: It’s dangerous to stop half-way! The bourgeoisie is beckoning to you. Catch up with the ranks and continue to advance!”
During the Chinese Revolution, the proletarian headquarters pushed for going past New Democracy and building socialism. This provoked resistance from the bourgeois headquarters who wanted to stay at a non-socialist stage and solidify capitalism instead. According to Chih Heng, these bourgeois-democrats in the Communist Party (such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping) turned into capitalist roaders:82
With the victory of the new-democratic revolution, the character and principal contradiction of the Chinese society changed. The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie became the principal contradiction in our country. This contradiction not only exists in society at large but is also reflected in the Party.
The socialist revolution we are carrying out is a revolution waged by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. The spearhead of the revolution is directed mainly against the bourgeoisie and against Party persons in power taking the capitalist road. Its task is to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat, use socialism to defeat capitalism, and through protracted class struggle gradually create conditions in which it will be impossible for the bourgeoisie to exist, or for a new bourgeoisie to arise, and finally eliminate classes and realize communism.
The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 marked the beginning of the socialist revolutionary stage.
If one’s ideology still remains at the old stage and views and treats the socialist revolution from the stand and world outlook of bourgeois democrats, one will become a representative of the bourgeoisie, a capitalist-roader and a target of the socialist revolution.”
According to the Maoists, the material origin of the new bourgeoisie in socialism lay in the survival of “bourgeois right.” This bourgeois right was embodied in “the commodity system and the principle of distribution according to work provide an important economic foundation out of and upon which capitalism and new bourgeois elements are engendered.”83 In order to achieve communism, Mao believed all these inequalities needed to be narrowed and ultimately eliminated. Otherwise, these contradictions provided the material basis for a new bourgeoisie. According to the Shanghai Textbook:84
If leadership of the socialist economy is usurped by those in power taking the capitalist road, they will turn the responsibility of serving the people that is given to them by the Party and the state into special privileges serving their own private interests and gain. They will utilize the traditions and birthmarks of the old society that still exist in the socialist economy to restore those bourgeois rights in the system of ownership that have already been abolished and to erode the system of socialist public ownership.”
For Maoists, the contradictory nature of socialism meant that old capitalist social relations clashed with emerging socialist ones. This struggle resembled a battlefield with all that metaphor implies. Two armies take the field – led by the bourgeois and proletarian headquarters – where they engage in fierce combat characterized by daring offensives and desperate rearguard actions. The raging battle cuts across all aspects of society – politics, economics, culture, etc – until finally the dust clears when one side emerges victorious and follows either the capitalist or the socialist road.
Mao’s stress on struggle can be found in his major work of philosophy, On Contradiction. Here, Mao emphasized the role of contradictions for societal development as lying at the heart of communist dialectics: “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.”85 He argued that states of equilibrium between the opposed contradictions were “only temporary and relative,” while “absolute struggle constitutes the movement of opposites in all things.”86 In other words, Mao saw struggle between opposed contradictions and not a reconciliation between them as a basic law. Or to put it in Chinese parlance, one divides into two is revolutionary while two merging into one is revisionist.87 In the 1964 Talks on Questions of Philosophy, Mao rejected Engels’s three laws of dialectics and claimed that the unity of opposites was the only law:88
Engels talked about the three categories, but as for me, I don’t believe in two of those categories. (The unity of opposites is the most basic law, the transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites quality and quantity, and the negation of the negation does not exist at all.) The juxtaposition, on the same level, of the transformation of quality and quantity into one another, the negation of the negation, and the law of the unity of opposites is “triplism,” not monism. The most basic thing is the unity of opposites. The transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites: quality and quantity. There is no such thing as the negation of the negation. Affirmation, negation, affirmation, negation… in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation.”
As Slavoj Žižek argued, Mao’s emphasis on the primacy of contradiction meant he rejected “enforced reconciliation” and saw “eternally ongoing division” as the basis of radical change.89 It does not take much to see this as the philosophical foundation of the Cultural Revolution.
In the struggle against the capitalist roaders, Mao wanted to train a new generation of successors who would carry on the revolution:90
In the final analysis, the question of training successors for the revolutionary cause of the proletariat is one of whether or not there will be people who can carry on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary cause started by the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not the leadership of our Party and state will remain in the hands of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not our descendants will continue to march along the correct road laid down by Marxism-Leninism, or, in other words, whether or not we can successfully prevent the emergence of Khrushchevite revisionism in China.
In short, it is an extremely important question, a matter of life and death for our Party and our country. It is a question of fundamental importance to the proletarian revolutionary cause for a hundred, a thousand, nay ten thousand years. Basing themselves on the changes in the Soviet Union, the imperialist prophets are pinning their hopes on “peaceful evolution” on the third or fourth [sic] generation of the Chinese Party. We must shatter these imperialist prophecies. From our highest organizations down to the grass-roots, we must everywhere give constant attention to the training and upbringing of successors to the revolutionary cause.”
For Mao, a conscious effort was needed through mass campaigns and actions “to arouse the broad masses to expose our dark aspect openly, in an all-round way and from below.”91 That is precisely what Stalin had failed to do. Rather, his methods deadened mass enthusiasm for socialism and failed to stop Khrushchev’s rise to power and the restoration of capitalism.
Mao’s ideas on the importance of culture were different from Stalin. In Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Stalin said that a transformation in the base inexorably led to change in the superstructure: “First the productive forces of society change and develop, and then, depending on these changes and in conformity with them, men’s relations of production, their economic relations, change.”92 As opposed to Stalin, Mao argued that the ideological superstructure could play the principal role in changing the base:93
that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.”
This meant that the continued reproduction of bourgeois ideology was a major source for the restoration of capitalism. These cultural survivals remained in the superstructure where they conflicted with socialist ideas. If people’s outlook remained unchanged, then all bourgeois relations would be reproduced, threatening the future of socialism in China:94
Ideological and political work is the guarantee for the accomplishment of our economic and technological work; it serves the economic basis. Ideology and politics are the commanders, the soul. A slight relaxation in our ideological and political work will lead our economic and technological work astray.”
Mao’s thinking on the contradictions of socialism culminated in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, officially launched on May 16, 1966. The GPCR sought to rally the masses inside and outside of the party to overthrow the capitalist roaders and root out old ideas and culture:95
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavor to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic “authorities” and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.”
Ultimately, Mao’s answer to Stalinism was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Yet did Maoism and the GPCR succeed as an alternative to the Stalinist Thermidor? As we have seen, while the People’s Republic of China was built on the Soviet model, Mao recognized its many problems: bureaucratization, stagnation, and regression. He envisioned a new road to socialism that would transform ideas, culture, and consciousness. He hoped that by mobilizing the masses that he could defeat the “capitalist roaders” and continue the revolution.
The role of Mao himself during the Cultural Revolution was contradictory to say the least. Unlike Stalin, Mao encouraged mass involvement to “bombard the headquarters” and potentially bring down both the state and party that he had created – yet he did not want that to happen; Mao wanted to keep the Cultural Revolution within clearly defined limits. Events took an unexpected turn since the factionalism of the Red Guards went beyond anything he had anticipated. There were disruptions of production and the possibility of civil war. This came at the worst possible time, since China faced the danger of war from the United States and Soviet Union.96
Communiques explaining the aim of the GPCR posed the need to replace the existing party and state with new institutions modeled on the Paris Commune.97 When the Shanghai People’s Commune was created in February 1967, Mao opposed it. He argued that a commune could not sustain itself on a national level without the leading role of the party.98 Instead of a commune, Mao advocated a “grand alliance” and the creation of new “revolutionary committees” composed of cadres from the party, army, and the new mass organizations. These “three-in-one” committees marked the decisive end to the power of the mass organizations that were the driving force behind the GPCR’s radicalism up to that point. In a case of dialectical irony, the “grand alliance” became a vehicle for the army (who stressed the maintenance of social peace) to unite with anti-Maoists in the party against the rebel groups. Radicals such as the Shengwulian with their program of an anti-bureaucratic revolution were disbanded.99 This laid the groundwork for the return of Deng Xiaoping, the anti-Maoist par excellence. After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng rose to power and proceeded to reverse the Cultural Revolution. Ultimately, no new forms of proletarian democracy were institutionalized during the GPCR.
Despite his willingness to challenge Stalinism and the existing Chinese state, Mao believed it could be revitalized without being overthrown. According to Alain Badiou, this left Mao at a stalemate since he remained100
a man of the party-state. He wants its renovation, even a violent one, but not its destruction. He knows full well in the end that by subjecting the last outpost of young revolting “leftists,” he liquidates the last margin left to anything that is not in line (in 1968) with the recognized leadership of the Cultural Revolution: a line of party reconstruction. He knows it, but he is resigned. Because he holds no alternative hypothesis—nobody does—as to the existence of the state, and because the large majority of people, after two exalted but very trying years, want the state to exist and to make its existence known, if needed with rude force.”
In addition, we see one of the ironies of the Cultural Revolution – while calling for mass mobilization, it relied on one of the most odious aspects of Stalinism: the personality cult. For Mao, personality cults were not inherently bad, but could serve as useful tools in the class struggle. At the 1958 Chengdu Conference, he made a distinction between good and bad personality cults:101
There are two kinds of cult of the individual. One is correct, such as that of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the correct side of Stalin. These we ought to revere and continue to revere for ever. It would not do to not revere them. As they held truth in their hands, why should we not revere them? We believe in truth; truth is the reflection of objective existence. A squad should revere its squad leader, it would be quite wrong not to. Then there is the incorrect kind of cult of the individual in which there is no analysis, simply blind obedience. This is not right. Opposition to the cult of the individual individual may also have one of two aims: one is opposition to an incorrect cult, and the other is opposition to reverence for others and a desire for reverence for oneself. The question at issue is not whether or not there should be a cult of the individual, but rather whether or not the individual concerned represents the truth. If he does, then he should be revered. If truth is not present, even collective leadership will be no good. Throughout its history, our Party has stressed the combination of the role of the individual with collective leadership.”
Undoubtedly, Mao saw his own personality cult as being of the correct kind. In fact, Mao’s cult was a useful tool for circumventing the party and state bureaucracy to implement his own policies. During the 1955 Socialist Offensive, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, Mao used his cult to appeal directly to regular cadre and the people themselves.
This use of his cult against the bureaucracy showed a crucial difference between Stalin and Mao. It even led foreign supporters of Mao such as Maria Antonietta Macciocchi to say that the cult surrounding Mao was a different species than found in Stalin since ideas were being promoted, not the man:102
The question of the omnipresence of Mao, which in the eyes of many people appears as a ‘cult-dogma’ with overtones of Stalinism, must be cleared up. A preliminary distinction must be made between Mao and Mao thought. The thought is distinct from the man; it will survive him, as Marxism survived Marx and Leninism survived Lenin….Mao’s thought is the opposite of Stalinist dogmatism. Mao is the Marxist theoretician who possesses to the highest degree a feeling for differences in situations, for combinations of circumstances, for reality, for inequality.”
Reverence for Mao reached a fever pitch during the Cultural Revolution, where allegiance to Mao’s ideas determined the correct line. Edgar Snow advanced the idea that one of the central struggles of the Cultural Revolution was over Mao’s cult of personality. Would the cult be used by the party elite to exalt Mao as a genius and make him a “figurehead on a pedestal”, or by Mao himself and the Red Guards to popularize his teachings to ideologically mobilize the people in order to attack the “capitalist roaders”?103
For figures like Lin Biao and Chen Boda, Mao was promoted as a genius where his work and thought was presented in a religious manner as the pinnacle of communist thinking. In official statements, Mao was referred to as the Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander, and Great Helmsman. Respect for Mao was turned into enforced public rituals of adulation and deference. Charles Bettelheim claimed that this use of the cult of personality undermined Mao’s authority and “encourage[d] blind obedience to any directive allegedly emanating from him. This approach would in the long run have led to extensive manipulation of the masses.”104 Mao himself rejected this “genius theory” in 1971:105
The question of genius is a theoretical question. Their theory was idealist apriorism. Someone has said that to oppose genius is to oppose me. But I am no genius. I read Confucian books for six years and capitalist books for seven. I did not read Marxist-Leninist books until 1918, so how can I be a genius? …I wrote ‘Some Opinions’, which specially criticizes the genius theory, only after looking up some people to talk with them, and after some investigations and research. It is not that I do not want to talk about genius. To be a genius is to be a bit more intelligent. But genius does not depend on one person or a few people. It depends on a party, the party which is the vanguard of the proletariat. Genius is dependent on the mass line, on collective wisdom …
You should study the article written by Lenin on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Eugene Pottier. Learn to sing ‘The Internationale’ and ‘The Three Great Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention’. Let them not only be sung but also explained and acted upon. ‘The Internationale’ and Lenin’s article express throughout a Marxist standpoint and outlook. What they say is that slaves should arise and struggle for truth. There never has been any supreme saviour, nor can we rely on gods or emperors. We rely entirely on ourselves for our salvation. Who has created the world of men? We the labouring masses. During the Lushan Conference I wrote a 700-word article which raised the question of who created history, the heroes or the slaves.”
In fact, promotion of the genius theory was officially repudiated after 1971 with the death of Lin Biao. While Mao was still the center of adulation, ‘excesses’ of the cult of personality were now blamed on Lin Biao.106 Whatever its ‘excesses’ though, the cult of personality was a substitute to any genuine political challenge against established institutions and to the detriment of radical and democratic change. For all Mao’s reasoning that his cult represented the “good” kind as opposed to Stalin’s “bad” one, it fell into the same problems. He was transformed into a figure larger than life. His writings and ideas were canonized almost like a new religion. Truth was made identical with Mao’s thought. Mao’s cult of personality may have served as an effective tool of mass mobilization, but it was also an instrument of dogmatism, abuse, and Stalinism.
When it comes to Mao’s theory of capitalist restoration, he saw the issue primarily determined by ideology and political line. For Mao, Khrushchev represented “revisionism” as opposed to the “revolutionary” Stalin. If revisionists come to power, then they can overturn the socialist economic base. Yet the change from Stalin to Khrushchev did not mean the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. There was a basic continuity between Stalin and Khrushchev, whatever their many differences, since the planned economy remained and the law of value was not dominant. Nor is there any basis for describing the Soviet Union as fascist. According to Livio Maitan, a Trotskyist who was sympathetic to the Cultural Revolution,107
the Maoists attribute the degeneration of the USSR to ideological and political rather than economic and social causes… [the privileged Soviet administrators] are not strata of the traditional industrial or commercial bourgeoisie…but new strata that spring from the new society itself and acquire a position of privilege not by virtue of an economic mechanism but thanks rather to the exercise of political power at the different levels … [their higher living standards and privileges] stem not from their appropriation of the means of production, but from the functions they perform and the control they exercise in the distribution of the surplus product.It is entirely possible in theory that this situation might generate or revive a process of capitalist accumulation. But it is necessary to analyze whether this has actually happened, whether the privileged strata manage to acquire means of production, make investments, etc. The Maoists have failed to prove – or rather, they have not even tried to prove – that this has happened in the USSR.
What Maitan is describing is the fundamental flaw of the Maoist theory of capitalist restoration. Maoism focuses on superstructure and ideas while giving scant attention to the economic base. As Maitan noted, the Maoist position presented little in terms of theoretical, historical, or empirical evidence on the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Finally, the Maoist theory of capitalist restoration departs from Marxism and finds itself embracing extreme idealism.
The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin noted: “Maoism offered a critique of Stalinism from the left, while Khrushchev made one from the right.”108 Certainly, Mao offered a far more comprehensive critique of Stalinism than Khrushchev. Yet this was a contradictory critique that failed to break with many aspects of Stalinism. In the end, the Cultural Revolution did not involve the overthrow of the inherited bureaucratic system, but an impossible effort at its revitalization.
Conclusion
The “revolutions within the revolution,” championed by Che and Mao did not offer alternatives to Stalinism. Che’s conception of a “new man” and socialism was highly voluntarist and disregarded objective conditions. At best, Che’s own writings on Stalinism and the Soviet Union were impressionistic, but his ideas are far from being fully-worked out. To an even greater degree than Che, Mao shared a voluntaristic approach to Stalinism. Mao believed that if the masses of Red Guards were motivated by correct ideas, then they could not only overcome the capitalist roaders but every material obstacle. Ultimately, Maoism’s whole understanding of capitalist restoration and Stalinism was suspended in the air and could not find its feet on solid ground.
- Later, Che told his second wife Aleida March that he “hadn’t understood a thing” from his earlier readings of Marx. See Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 37. For the young Che following the progress of the Spanish Civil War, see Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Guevara, Also Known as Che (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 6.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey (New York: Ocean Books, 2004), 78.
In Cuba, Che reflected on his trip and how it developed his political ideas:
“In the way I traveled, first as a student and afterward as a doctor, I began to come into close contact with poverty, with hunger, with disease, with the inability to cure a child because of lack of resources, with the numbness that hunger and continued punishment cause until a point is reached where a parent losing a child is an unimportant accident, as often happens among the hard-hit classes of our Latin American homeland. And I began to see that there was something that, at that time, seemed to me almost as important as being a famous researcher or making some substantial contribution to medical science, and it was helping those people.”
Quoted in Ernesto Che Guevara, “Speech to medical students and health workers,” in Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution, ed. David Deutschmann (New York: Ocean Books, 2003), 112. - Quoted in Anderson 1997, 121.
During his time in Guatemala, Guevara met Hilda Gadea, a Peruvian Communist, who became his first wife. She helped deepen his study of Marxism, which included reading Marx, Engels, Mariátegui and Mao. She wrote later that he developed an admiration for the Chinese Revolution: “When he had read [Mao Tse-tung’s New China] and we talked about the book, he expressed great admiration for the long struggle of the Chinese people to take power, with the help of the Soviet Union. He also understood that their road toward socialism was somewhat different from the one followed by the Soviets and that the Chinese reality was closer to that of our Indians and peasants. Since I also admired the Chinese Revolution, we often talked about it.” When they had their daughter Hilda in 1956, Guevara nicknamed her “my little Mao.”
Quotes in ibid. 129 and 196. - Paul J. Dosal, Comandante Che: Guerrilla Soldier, Commander, and Strategist, 1956-1967 (The University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 39.
- Quoted in Jorge G. Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 69.
- Hilda Gadea, My Life with Che: The Making of a Revolutionary (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 72.
- Ibid. 81.
- In a letter dated December 1957 to René Ramos Latour, Che explained that he viewed Fidel Castro as a genuine leader of the bourgeois left.
“Out of ideological conviction, I belong to those who believe the solution to the world’s problems lies behind the so-called iron curtain and consider this movement one of many provoked by the bourgeoisie’s urge to rid itself of the economic shackles of imperialism. I have always considered Fidel to be the authentic leader of the bourgeois left, although he himself has personal qualities of extraordinary brilliance that place him well above his class. This was the spirit in which I entered this struggle: honorably in the hope of going beyond liberating the country, prepared to go away when the conditions of the following struggle shift to the right (toward what you people represent).” Quoted in Taibo 1997, 154. - Fidel Castro, My Life: A Spoken Autobiography (New York: Scribner, 2009), 180.
Carlos Franqui says that when he first met Che that he was avidly reading Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism, considered Khrushchev’s secret speech to be imperialist propaganda, and defended the Soviet invasion of Hungary. See Castañeda 1997, 86. - Ernesto Che Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (New York: Ocean Books, 2006), 18.
- Ibid. 159.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, “An Old New Che Guevara Interview,” in Che: Selected Writings of Ernesto Guevara, ed. Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), 372.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, “Speech to the Latin American youth congress” in Deutschmann 2003, 232.
Renzo Llorente notes that Che’s ideas are markedly close to Trotsky on permanent revolution, which led him to be considered a “Trotskyist” by the Soviet Union:
“The resemblance between Guevara’s theses and Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution is, then, undeniable. It also has quite significant implications: as Tamara Deutscher has rightly observed, “The cornerstone of Trotskyism has been and remains the theory of permanent revolution.” This is one reason that it should not surprise us that Soviet authorities would come to suspect Guevara of being a “Trotskyist”—though one must bear in mind, of course, that after the rise of Stalinism the Soviets used the term, always meant as a slur, quite loosely—or that students in Moscow would level the same accusation during a meeting with Guevara in November 1964.”
Renzo Llorente, The Political Theory of Che Guevara (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 78. - See Steven Cushion, A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas’ Victory (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016)
- Quoted in Michael Löwy, The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution (New York: Verso, 1981), 147.
- Quoted in Michael Löwy, Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present (Amherst NY: Humanities Press, 1992), xxxviii.
- Fidel Castro, “The Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Socialist Character of the Revolution,” in Fidel Castro Reader, ed. David Deutschmann and Deborah Shnookal (New York: Ocean Books, 2008), 192.
- Portions of this were drawn from Doug Greene, “Charles Bettelheim and the Socialist Road,” LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, July 7, 2016. http://links.org.au/node/4745.
- Joseph Stalin, “Economic Problems of the USSR,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch02.htm
See Charles Bettelheim, “On Socialist Planning and the Development of the Productive Forces,” in Man and Socialism in Cuba: The Great Debate, ed. Bertram Silverman (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 38.
- Helen Yaffe, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: a rebel against Soviet Political Economy,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/yaffeh/che-critic.htm
- Quoted in Carlos Tablada Pérez, Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism (New York: Pathfinder, 1990), 77.
Georg Lukács describes Che’s ascetic approach to socialism as reminiscent of Jacobinism:
“But this does not mean that the aspirations towards socialist democracy should ever be dealt with by administrative methods. The problem of socialist democracy is a very real one, and it has not yet been solved. For it must be a materialist democracy, not an idealist one. Let me give an example of what I mean. A man like Guevara was a heroic representative of the Jacobin ideal —his ideas were transported into his life and completely shaped it.”
Georg Lukács, Record of a Life: An Autobiographical Sketch (New York: Verso, 1983), 171. - Quoted in Michael Löwy, The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 49.
Che viewed the Liebman reforms in the USSR negatively as potentially foreshadowing the restoration of capitalism:
“The latest economic revolutions in the USSR reassemble those that Yugoslavia took when it chose the path which would gradually take it back to capitalism. Time will tell whether this is a fleeting accident or entails a definitive reactionary current. This is all part of an erroneous conception of wanting to construct socialism with capitalist elements without really changing their meaning. This results in a hybrid system that arrives at a dead end with no exit, or with an exit that is difficult to perceive, that obliges new concessions to economic levers, that is to say retreat.”
Ernesto Che Guevara, Apuntes críticos a la Economia Política (La Habana: Ocean Sur, 2006) 112–13. Quoted in Helen Yaffe, Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 250-251. [Her translation] - Ernesto Che Guevara, “The Meaning of Socialist Planning,” in Silverman 1971, 102.
- Jan Willem Stutje, Ernest Mandel: A Rebel’s Dream Deferred (New York: Verso, 2009), 152.
Oliver Besancenot and Michael Löwy concur that a major failing of Che is an undeveloped sense of proletarian democracy: “Che Guevara never worked out a theory of the role of democracy in the transition to socialism. Perhaps this is the greatest lacuna in his work.” Oliver Besancenot and Michael Löwy, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 72. See also Löwy 2007, xxvi–xxvii and Michael Löwy, “Che Guevara in Search of a New Socialism,” Marxists Internet Archive.Contra Besancenot and Löwy’s position, Llorente argues that Che did have a commitment to socialist democracy, but that he lacked the time to write extensively on the topic:
“Furthermore, it seems clear that Guevara was committed to political democracy as he understood it (i.e., in fairly conventional Marxist terms), and he plainly identified socialism with democracy. Perhaps Guevara could have devoted more time and thought to the question of democracy. But given the fact that his very considerable political responsibilities and commitments scarcely left him time to write on other topics he considered of great importance (such as revolutionary strategy, political economy, or guerrilla warfare), and the fact that he died before reaching the age of forty, one could reasonably wonder whether it is entirely fair to take Guevara to task for failing to reflect on questions pertaining to democracy.” - See Bertram Silverman, “The Great Debate in Retrospect: Economic Rationality and the Ethics of Revolution,” in Silverman 1971, 16-21.
- See Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 240-243; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 222-223; Silverman 1971, 22-26.
- These observations draw heavily on Yaffe 2009, 233-256. As she writes, these were incomplete notes by Che:
“However, it is vital to remember that these notes were not written for publication, nor brought together as text. They were comments written in response to specific paragraphs of the Manual – notes to himself, including indications of areas for further study. It would be disingenuous to present these private commentaries as a comprehensive critique, rather than the preliminary sketch of a more long-term study. Guevara demonstrated an awareness of the relative historicity of both the Manual and his own critique. Readers of the notes should do likewise.” Ibid. 240.
See also John Riddell, “Che Guevara’s final verdict on the Soviet economy,” John Riddell: Marxist Essays and Commentary. https://johnriddell.com/2008/06/06/che-guevaras-final-verdict-on-the-soviet-sconomy/ and Michael Löwy, “After a long wait…”Critical Notes” from Che,” International Viewpoint, 20 June 2007. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1218 - Quoted in Ernesto Che Guevara, Self-Portrait (North Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2004), 212.
- Guevara 2006, 32. Quoted in Yaffe 2009, 242. [her translation]
- Yaffe, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: a rebel against Soviet Political Economy.”
- Quoted in Yaffe 2009, 237-238.
- Guevara 2006, 31. Quoted in Yaffe 2009, 241. [her translation]
- Quoted in Yaffe, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: a rebel against Soviet Political Economy.”
- Guevara 2006, 214. Quoted in Yaffe 2009, 250. [her translation]
- Guevara 2006, 214. [my translation]
- Ibid. 235. Observed by Besancenot and Löwy 2009, 75.
- Guevara 2006, 402.
- Ibid.
- In his diary entry for July 31, 1967, Che was angry that the guerrillas had lost important supplies that included a book by Trotsky:
“We lost 11 backpacks with medicines, binoculars, and some potentially damaging items, such as the tape recorder onto which we which we copied the messages from Manila, Debray’s book with my notes in it, and a book by Trotsky; all this does not take into account the political value that this haul has for the government and the confidence it will give the soldiers.”
Ernesto Che Guevara, The Bolivian Diary (New York: Ocean Press, 2006), 202. See also remarks by Besancenot and Löwy 2009, 76. - Quoted in Taibo 1997, 230. Elsewhere, Che says that one day Trotskyist literature would become legal in Cuba. See Löwy 2007, 129.
- Quoted in Löwy 2007, 124.
- Quoted in Yaffe 234.
According to Llorente, while Che was a fervent admirer of Mao, his ideas on several issues ranging from guerrilla warfare to socialism were very different:
“To begin with, one might cite Guevara’s views on economic development: Mao’s Great Leap Forward, for example, involved a practice and degree of decentralization wholly at odds with Guevara’s thinking on planning under socialism. Guevara would also surely reject Maoism’s approach to ideological struggles, the problem of bureaucracy, and the evil of inequality, at least to the extent that the principles and practices of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution exemplify this approach.”
Llorente 2018, 108.During the war against Batista, PSP leader Carlos Rafael Rodríguez went to the Sierra and let Che Mao’s On Guerrilla Warfare.
Reflecting later, Che said that he admired Mao and copied his methods.
“We have always looked up to Comrade Mao Tse-tung. When we were engaged in guerrilla warfare we studied Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory on guerilla warfare. Mimeographed copies published at the front lines circulated widely among our cadres ; they were called “food from China.” We studied this little book carefully and learned many things. We discovered that there were many problems that Comrade Mao Tse-tung had already systematically and scientifically studied and answered. This was a great help to us.”
Guevara, “An Old New Che Guevara Interview,” in Bonachea and Valdes 1969, 368. See also Castañeda 1967, 125. - Ernesto Che Guevara, “At the Afro-Asian conference in Algeria,” in Deutschmann 2003, 342.
- Castañeda 1997, 296.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, “Message to the Tricontinental,” in Deutschmann 2003, 352-353.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,” in Guerrilla Warfare, ed., Brain Loveman and Thomas M. Davis, Jr (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2001), 51.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” in Loveman and Davis 2001, 154.
- Ernesto Che Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,” in Loveman and Davis 2001, 50. See also the “codification” of focoism in Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America (New York: Verso, 2017).
- Löwy 2007, 103.
- For criticism of focoism, see Dosal 2003; Richard Gott, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (New York: Doubleday, 1971); and the case studies in Davis and Loveman 2001. Focoism is not even an adequate description of how the Cuban Revolution unfolded which included an important urban component, see Cushion 2016. For a Trotskyist criticism of focoism, see Joseph Hansen, The Leninist Strategy of Party Building: The Debate on Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1979). A Maoist critique of focoism can be found in Lenny Wolff: “Guevara, Debray, and Armed Revisionism,” Bannedthought. http://bannedthought.net/Cuba-Che/Guevara/Guevara-Debray-Wolff.pdf
- In addition to sources cited above, see Doug Greene, “Machiavelli and the Primacy of Politics,” LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. http://links.org.au/node/4717.
- For Mao’s record as an oppositional figure to Comintern plenipotentiaries, see John E. Rue, Mao Tse-Tung in Opposition, 1927-1935 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1966).
In a 1936 interview with Edgar Snow, Mao said: “We are certainly not fighting for an emancipated China in order to turn the country over to Moscow!” See Mao Tse-Tung, “Interview with Edgar Snow on Special Questions,” in Mao Tse-Tung Selected Works, vol. 6 (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 92 (henceforth MSW). - “Speech at Second Session of Eighth Central Committee,” in MSW, vol. 5, 323-324.
For the first Chinese responses to the Secret Speech, see “On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and “More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” in Documents of the Communist Party of China: The Great Debate, Volume I: 1956-1963 (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 1-45. - “Long Live Leninism!” in The Great Debate Volume I 2021, 199.
- Communist Party of China, “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement: The Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Reply to the Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of March 30, 1963,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/cpc/proposal.htm ; this section draws on Doug Greene, “The final aim is nothing: The politics of revisionism and anti-revisionism,” LINKS The International Journal of Socialist Renewal. http://links.org.au/node/4677 ;
Mikhail Suslov, one of the chief ideologues of the CPSU condemned the CPC polemics as Trotskyism:
“Yes, comrades, it must be said frankly: the burden of the political views of the CPC [sic] is on many points a repetition of Trotskyism, which was rejected long ago by the international revolutionary movement.”
Quoted in K. S. Karol, The Second Chinese Revolution (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), 101-102. - “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement.”
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- “Long Live Leninism!” in The Great Debate Volume I 2021, 203.
- Mao Zedong, On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964), 47.
While Mao is not listed as the author in the original release, Rebecca Karl makes a case that he was behind this work.
“While the author was always given as the Editorial Committees of the People’s Daily and Red Flag (both mouthpieces of the CCP), it is generally agreed that Mao was the motivator behind this pamphlet and its release to the public.”
Rebecca Karl, Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century World: A Concise History (Durnham: Duke University Press, 2010), 110. - How the Soviet Revisionists Carry Out All-Round Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1968), 4.
- Total Bankruptcy of Soviet Modern Revisionism (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1968), 4.
- Renmin Ribao, Hongqi, and Jiefangjun Bao, Leninism or Social-Imperialism? — In Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of the Great Lenin (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1970), 14. Mao is alleged to have made that remark in May 1964. See ibid. 60.
- “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” MSW, vol. 5, 393.
- Mao Tse-tung, A Critique of Soviet Economics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977).
- Renmin Ribao, Hongqi, and Jiefangjun Bao, “Build the Party in the Course of Struggle,” Peking Review Vol. 19, No. 27 (July 2, 1976): 7.
- “On the Question of Stalin,” in Documents of the Communist Party of China: The Great Debate Volume II – 1963-1964 (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 53.
In On the Ten Major Relationships, Mao said that the Chinese verdict on Stalin was 70 percent good and 30 percent bad:
“It is the opinion of the Central Committee that Stalin’s mistakes amounted to only 30 per cent of the whole and his achievements to 70 per cent, and that all things considered Stalin was nonetheless a great Marxist … This assessment of 30 per cent for mistakes and 70 per cent for achievements is just about right.”
However, Mao hastened to add that among the “30 percent” bad was Stalin’s approach to the Chinese Revolution:
“Stalin did a number of wrong things in connection with China. The “Left” adventurism pursued by Wang Ming in the latter part of the Second Revolutionary Civil War period and his Right opportunism in the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japan can both be traced to Stalin. At the time of the War of Liberation, Stalin first enjoined us not to press on with the revolution, maintaining that if civil war flared up, the Chinese nation would run the risk of destroying itself. Then when fighting did erupt, he took us half seriously, half skeptically. When we won the war, Stalin suspected that ours was a victory of the Tito type, and in 1949 and 1950 the pressure on us was very strong indeed. Even so, we maintain the estimate of 30 percent for his mistakes and 70 percent for his achievements. This is only fair.”
See “On the Ten Major Relationships,” MSW, vol. 5, 287.
At the Chengdu Conference in 1958, Mao said that the Chinese Revolution won by acting contrary to Stalin:
“If we had followed Wang Ming’s, or in other words Stalin’s, methods the Chinese revolution couldn’t have succeeded. When our revolution succeeded, Stalin said it was a fake. We did not argue with him and as soon as we fought the war to resist America and aid Korea, our revolution became a genuine one [in his eyes].”
“Talk at the Chengdu Conference,” MSW, vol. 8, 44-45. - “Talk at the Report Meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee,” MSW, vol. 9, 299.
- Mao Zedong, “Speech at a CPC Cadres Meeting in Shanghai, March 20, 1957,” in The Writings of Mao Zedong: 1949-1976, Volume II: January 1956-December 1957, ed. John Leung and Michael Kau (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 465.
See also “On the Ten Major Relationships,” MSW, vol. 5, 267-290. - “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” MSW, vol. 5, 373.
- Ibid. 376.
- “On the Ten Major Relationships,” MSW, vol. 5, 281.
- Ibid. 282.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 284.
- “On the Question of Stalin,” The Great Debate Volume II, 92.
- The Maoist understanding of the party being split into rival headquarters representing opposed class interests differs markedly with the position of Trotskyism on the bureaucracy. From Trotsky onward, Trotskyists have viewed the ruling bureaucracy as a parasitic caste upon socialism and the agent of capitalist restoration. For Trotsky, the whole bureaucratic caste was to be overthrown by the workers in a political revolution. The Maoist position is that there is no single bureaucracy with common interests. Rather, cadre in the party and state have different interests with some committed to following either the capitalist or socialist roads. Hence some cadres were viewed as potential allies, while the enemy were only those taking the capitalist road.
- Zhang Chunqiao, “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie,” in And Mao Makes Five: Mao Tse-tung’s Last Great Battle, ed. Raymond Lotta (Chicago: Banner Press, 1978), 217.
- Chih Heng, “Bourgeois Democrats to Capitalist-Roaders,” in Lotta 1978, 352-353.
- Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism: The Shanghai Textbook (New York: Banner Press, 1994), 9.
- Ibid. 63.
Mao said that much of China was already dominated by capitalist social relations, so it would only take the seizure of power by a capitalist roader for socialism to be overthrown:“Our country at present practices a commodity system; the wage system is unequal, too, as in the eight-grade wage scale, and so forth. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, such things can only be restricted. Therefore, if people like Lin Piao come to power, it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system. That is why we should do more reading of Marxist-Leninist works.” Quoted in ibid. 9.
- “On Contradiction,” in MSW, vol. 1, 283.
- Ibid. 303 and 313.
- On this philosophical debate see Communist Party of China, Three Major Struggles on China’s Philosophical Front (1949-1964) (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973), 31-47. E. L. Wheelwright and Bruce McFarlane, The Chinese Road to Socialism: Economics of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 88-89. According to Alain Badiou, the two rival headquarters during the GPCR represented the philosophical camps of one dividing into two (Mao) and two merging into one (Deng):
“In order not to be a conservative, in order to be a revolutionary activist in the present, it is instead obligatory to desire division. The question of novelty immediately becomes that of the creative scission within the singularity of the situation.
In China, particularly during 1966 and 1967, and in the midst of unimaginable fury and confusion, the Cultural Revolution pits the partisans of these two versions of the dialectical schema against one other. When it comes down to it, there are those who follow Mao – at the time practically in a minority among the Party leadership – and think that the socialist state must not be the policed and police-like end of mass politics, but, on the contrary, that it must act as a stimulus for the unleashing of politics, under the banner of the march towards real communism. And then there are those who, following Liu Shaoqi but especially Deng Xiaoping, think that – since economic management is the principal aspect of things – popular mobilizations are more nefarious than necessary.”
Alain Badiou, The Century (Malden MA: Polity Books, 2007), 60-61. - “Talks on Questions of Philosophy,” in MSW, vol. 9, 126. By contrast, Nick Knight argues that Mao remained an orthodox Marxist in terms of philosophy and never abandoned “the negation of the negation.” See Nick Knight, ed. Mao Zedong on Dialectical Materialism: Writings on Philosophy, 1937 (New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1990), 15-24.
- Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes (New York: Verso, 2008) 188-189.
- Mao Zedong 1964, 72-73.
- Quoted in Writing Group of the Heilungkiang Provincial Revolutionary Committee, “Strengthen Further the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” Peking Review No.15 (April 10, 1970): 29.
- Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism & Concerning Questions of Leninism (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 20.
- “On Contradiction,” MSW, vol. 1, 306.
- “Red And Expert,” MSW, vol. 8, 26.
- “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33g.htm.
- It is beyond our scope to discuss the theory of “Three Worlds.” Suffice to say, once declaring the Soviet Union to be the main danger, China pivoted toward the United States and embraced a counterrevolutionary foreign policy. For Mao’s role in normalizing relations with the United States see Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 238-276.
For a Maoist criticism of the three worlds theory, see “Declaration of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement,” Bannedthought. http://www.bannedthought.net/International/RIM/Docs/RIM-Declaration-1984-A.pdf. - “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33g.htm.
- For Mao’s thoughts on the Shanghai Commune see Mao Zedong, “Talks at Three Meetings with Comrades Chang Ch’un-ch’iao and Yao Wen-yuan,” in Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956–1971, ed. Stuart Schram (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 277-279. For background on the Shanghai Commune see Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun, Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 1997); Neale Hunter, Shanghai Journal: An Eyewitness Account of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1971); Victor Nee and James Peck, China’s Uninterrupted Revolution: From 1840 to the Present (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 348-355 and 359-363; Yiching Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 95-141.
- The Shengwulian’s document “Whither China” was written in September 1967 and argued that the only way to build communism was to overthrow the whole bureaucratic bourgeois dictatorship in China and create a People’s Commune of China:
“We publicly declare that our object of establishing the ‘People’s Commune of China’ can be attained only by overthrowing the bourgeois dictatorship and revisionist system of the revolutionary committee with brute force. Let the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie tremble before the true socialist revolution that shakes the world! What the proletariat can lose in this revolution is only their chains, what they gain will be the whole world!The China of tomorrow will be the world of the ‘Commune.’
Shengwulian, “Whither China?” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1969/no037/shengwulien.htm
For background on the Shengwulian see Wu 2014, 142-189;
Richard Kraus argues that the Shengwulian offered the boldest attempt to challenge class stratification in China:
“Mao and his radical associates were even less supportive of Red Guard efforts to move beyond the admitted inequalities of the work-grade stratification to seek out an underlying system of class relationships. The boldest such attempt was made by the Hunan group, Shengwulian (a shortened version of the “Provincial Proletarian Revolutionaries’ Great Alliance Committee”). The few documents which survive this radical organization date from late 1967 and January 1968, when it was suppressed. Their tone is one of frustration at the limitations of the Cultural Revolution, which Shengwulian faulted for holding back from a structural solution to China’s political problems. The Hunanese radicals complained that the Cultural Revolutionary emphasis upon exposing the crimes of individual officials left untouched the social foundation from which these purged cadres had arisen. “Political power is still in the hands of the bureaucrats, and the seizure of power is only a change in appearance.””
Richard Kraus, Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 148.
Livio Maitan from a Trotskyist position argues that despite the limitations of the Shengwulian’s program that they represented forces who understood that the Cultural Revolution required overthrowing the entire ruling party-state bureaucracy.
“Although we disagree with many of the authors’ political formulations and characterizations and would criticize some of their attitudes (it is hard to say whether they are naïve or tactical) documents of this kind show that the cultural revolution generated forces capable of understanding its dual nature, its contradictions and its intrinsic limitations and capable of showing the way forward to the revolutionary struggle necessary to overthrow the rule of the bureaucracy.” Livio Maitan, Party, Army and Masses in China: A Marxist Interpretation of the Cultural Revolution and Its Aftermath (London: New Left Books, 1976), 239.
For a defense of Mao’s approach to groups like the Shengwulian, see: Philip Corrigan, Harvie Ramsay, and Derek Sayer, For Mao: Essays in Historical Materialism (London: Macmillan Press, 1979), 87-88. - Alain Badiou, “The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?” in Polemics (New York: Verso, 2006), 317.
- “Talk at the Chengdu Conference,” MSW, vol. 8, 41-42.
- Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, Daily Life in Revolutionary China (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 481.
- Edgar Snow, The Long Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 66.
- Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China: Changes in Management and
the Division of Labor (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 119. - “Summary of Talks with Responsible Comrades at Various Places During Provincial Tour,” in MSW, vol. 9, 414-415, 418.
See also “Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future,” (p. 61) Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Revolutionary Study Group. (note 252); “Talks With Responsible Comrades At Various Places During Provincial Tour,” MSW, vol. 9, 411-24. See also Jaap van Ginneken, The Rise and Fall of Lin Piao (New York: Penguin, 1977), 61-63. - Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic (New York: Free Press, 1999), 386-387.
- Maitan 1976, 252-253.
Ernest Mandel claimed that Mao’s theory of capitalist restoration focused on ideology as opposed to its material sources:
“Besides this contradiction is an inherent characteristic of Mao’s thought. Insofar as he may be accorded an element of sincerity, his thought has a clearly tragic character. Mao calls for rebellion and the seizure of power. This must mean that the primary power no longer is an incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in its pure state. But he does not look for the origins of its degeneration or danger of degeneration in the material infrastructure of society, in the inadequate development of productive forces, or the contradictions between this degree of development and the relationships of production. No, the origins of the danger of degeneration, according to him, are ideological. If revisionism is not extirpated at the roots on the theoretical, scientific, artistic and literary levels, the dictatorship of the proletariat must inevitably be overturned and the Chinese Communist Party will become … a fascist party. It is hard to believe that an experienced Marxist could utter such enormities; nevertheless, they are spread in millions of copies throughout China.”Ernest Mandel, “The Cultural Revolution: An Attempt at Interpretation,” Marxists Internet Archive.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1967/xx/cultrev.htm.
- Samir Amin, Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016), 48.
Elsewhere, Amin argues that Maoism never adequately theorized its strategy, leaving a gap in its theory of revisionism:
“Why hasn’t the Chinese Communist Party explicitly theorized this strategy? Undoubtedly, this is due to the fact that the Maoist model emerged spontaneously out of the class alliances that underpinned the CCP’s rise to and consolidation of power. The polemics which the Chinese Communists exchanged with the Soviets never touched on this crucial theoretical issue. That they didn’t explains the Maoists’ ambiguous relationship with the Third International and Stalinism, the de facto autonomy of their party, their apparent pragmatism, and their refusal either to follow or forsake the Soviets. The inadequacy of the Maoist critique of revisionism was the price paid for this silence.
Even after the schism in the 1960s the Chinese did not push their critique of revisionism to its logical limit: thus their inconsistent appraisal of the Stalin period.”
Samir Amin, The Future of Maoism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), 111-112.