Professional Documents
Culture Documents
REVIEW
A N I N D E P E N D E N T S O C I A L I S T
M A G A Z I N E
At first, Lenin distanced himself somewhat from the dominant theory of the
Second International and successfully led the revolution in the “weak link”
(Russia), but always believing that this revolution would be followed by a wave
of socialist revolutions in Europe. This hope was disappointed; Lenin then
moved toward a view that gave more importance to the transformation of
Eastern rebellions into revolutions. But it was up to the Chinese Communist
Party and Mao to systematize that new perspective.
The Russian Revolution had been led by a Party well rooted in the working
class and the radical intelligentsia. Its alliance with the peasantry in uniform
(first represented by the Socialist Revolutionary Party) ensued naturally. The
consequent radical agrarian reform finally fulfilled the old dream of the Russian
peasants: to become landowners. But this historic compromise carried within
itself the seeds of its own limits: the “market” was, by its own nature, fated, as
always, to produce a growing differentiation within the peasantry (the well-
known phenomenon of “kulakization”).
The Chinese Revolution, from its origin (or at least from the 1930’s), unfolded
from other bases guaranteeing a solid alliance with the poor and middle
peasantry. Meanwhile its national dimension—the war of resistance against
Japanese aggression—likewise allowed the front led by the Communists to
recruit broadly among the bourgeois classes disappointed by the weaknesses
and betrayals of the Kuomintang. The Chinese revolution thus produced a new
situation differing from that of post-revolutionary Russia. The radical peasant
revolution suppressed the very idea of private property in farmland, and
replaced it with a guarantee to all peasants of equal access to farmland. To this
very day that decisive advantage, shared by no other country beside Vietnam,
constitutes the major obstacle to a devastating expansion of agrarian
capitalism. The current discussions in China largely center on this question. I
refer the reader to the chapter on China in my book Pour un Monde
Multipolaire (Paris, 2005) and my article “Théorie et pratique du projet chinois
de socialisme de marché” (Alternatives Sud, vol VIII, N· 1, 2001). But in other
respects the going-over of many bourgeois nationalists to the Communist Party
would necessarily exert an ideological influence favorable to the support of the
deviations of those who Mao termed partisans of the capitalist path (“capitalist-
roaders”).
The post-revolutionary regime in China does not merely have to its credit many
more-than-significant political, cultural, material and economic accomplishments
(industrialization of the country, radicalization of its modern political culture,
etc.). Maoist China solved the “peasant problem” that was at the heart of the
tragic decline of the Central Empire over two decisive centuries (1750-1950).