Article from JLO #18 March 97

The Journal Socialist Opinion # 29 publishes a report entitled "Deng Xiaoping leads China to Capitalism" where the PSTU maintains that "the Chinese case is the most successful example of transition controlled towards capitalism. The secret: the capitalist restoration was planned and controlled by iron arm from Stalinist dictatorship of Communist Party." The restorationist processes, that took place in the USSR and European East and threaten to take place in other states where the bourgeoisie was expropriated through social revolutions, have been a divisory line among the leftist parties in world-wide level and, particularly to those what claim to be Trotskyists.

Presenting the restoration as a mere measure of successful bureaucracy, the PSTU sponsors, at least where it can do it, that is, in pages of its press, the early restoration of capitalism in China and they hands over for nothing to the counterrevolution one of the last and the largest worker’s state in the planet, yielding to the same illusions that a peaceful restoration (counterrevolution) would be possible. Delusions showed off by world bourgeoisie and by bureaucratic sectors anxious to become well-adapted new bourgeois mandarins. About them, we will debate again further on.

Without indicating how or when it took place the passage of a regime of bureaucratised worker's state to a "capitalist regime controlled by Stalinist dictatorship", the PSTU holds back hesitant of drawing inferences of its own positions. As in the case of the PT (Brazilian Worker’s Party) and all world left, the Morenists are not left out intense ideological campaign against communism increased starting from the end of last decade by imperialism with the retaking of workers states from East and the USSR to the clutches of the capitalists. Trotsky would define as a counterrevolutionary process the defeat of the Stalinist bureaucracy by blows of imperialism or of internal counterrevolution; and as political revolution, the popular insurrection organised by a defensist revolutionary party. The disciples of Nahuel Moreno (founder of the current that give rise to the PSTU), in order to justify the fact of his current (the LIT) to have completely abandoned defensism — the unconditional defence of worker's states — call "democratic revolutions" the capitalist restoration given in the end of 1980s. All demonstration "caudilled" by nationalists at service of imperialism on behalf of fragmentation of the USSR and, later, of Yugoslavia (in the first stage of Balkans War) starts being identified as progressive. When in August 1991 Yeltsin is sponsored by imperialism for promoting a counter blow in order to dissolve the USSR destroying the conquests of the October Revolutions (control of foreign trade, planning, full employment, free health, education and housing) and turning it into colony of international capital, the LIT welcome the counterrevolution as "a historic victory of the democratic phase of the political revolution"(Great Revolutionary Triumph, Declaration of the LIT August 1991)

No doubt, with the restoration in European East and the USSR, the worker’s states that still stand up are being harshly threatened by bolder and bolder attacks of imperialism. The reactionary policy of its bureaucracies that refuse to elevate the revolution to international scale at the same time that intend to maintain "peaceful coexistence" with the lethal enemies of revolution, lead to still greater fragmentation of surviving worker’s states. However, this only served to increase the petty bourgeois eagerness of Morenists for restoration starting from their anti-Marxist view as a struggle between democratic versus totalitarian regimes.

In the magazine Correio Internacional # 7, the LIT would state that it "continues the combat for bringing down of totalitarian regimes of China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba (independent of way that takes the political revolution in each one)." That is, the Morenists place for bringing down bureaucratic regimes, including for possibility more feasible that, by lack of a genuine revolutionary party, would assume in their place capitalist regimes (bourgeoisie's dictatorship) eager to liquidate the condition of life of the masses. But, as is it was not sufficient such a great demonstration of anti-defensism, they claim this counterrevolutionary via "independently" of barbaric form that come to assume the new totalitarian regimes, that will make use of all means (Mafia's terror, fratricidal wars, privatisation, removals in mass, etc.) in order to regain the expropriated space of capitalists several decades ago. In fact, on the contrary to real Trotskyists who unconditionally place themselves in defence of worker 's states, the Morenists are unconditionally of the side of the capitalist restoration, that is, against the worker's states. Different from the petty bourgeoisie only interested in their own navel and careless of whether the class struggle unfold or not in the heart of the worker's states, the revolutionaries, who have deep commitment with the world worker's class, used to know for more than 50 years that "the fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture" (Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed).

From then on, the adaptations of the Morenists to anti-workers-state campaign of imperialism have acquired a frantic pace, whether it is for counterrevolution of Yeltsin or for "humanitarian aid" to Bosnians when the former, led by Bosnian and Croatian nationalists armed by German and European capital place themselves as cannon fodder in fratricidal share of the Yugoslavian worker's state and after helping imperialism to throw hundreds of bombs over the Serbs from Bosnia.

In February-March 1996 when Yankee imperialism dislodged to the Chinese coasts the largest military contingent ever seen since the Vietnam War, mobilising the aircraft carrier Independence, a nuclear submarine, six war aeroplanes and over 100,000 North American soldiers billeted in South Korea and in Japan and, on top of all that, put on the alert the very armies from its puppet countries on the pretext of defending Taiwan from Chinese threats — the PSTU remains in a sepulchral silence in the course of all conflict.

The revolutionaries are not favourable that Taiwan is bureaucratically and military annexed to worker's state, but that the revolution enters in this country of eastern Asia impelling the insurrectional mobilisation of Taiwanese proletariat against their bourgeoisie. Neither we are supporters of annexation proposed by bureaucracy to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, where two opposing economic regimes were supposed to "peacefully live together" in inner of the worker's state. But, despite reactionary policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy, we neither got hesitant as regards which military side to take before imminent conflict nor maintained coward silence as the Morenists did. Rather, we claimed the immediate withdrawal of imperialist fleet from the Chinese coast, the unconditional defence of Chinese worker's state, taking its military side in view of any aggression by Taiwan or imperialism, independent of causes that motivated the conflict.

In every possible moments, the Stalinist clique that used to lead the PCCh (Chinese Communist Party) prevented the class struggle from advancing toward taking power in the hands of the proletariat and, even after victory over the forces of the Kuomintang (KTM), Maoism refuses to expropriate the capital, which only took place one year later. All massacres that the bourgeoisie perpetrated against the exploited, including the big massacre of Shanghai in 1927, where over 5,000 communist militants were assassinated, were not sufficient for persuade the Stalinist to not try again a popular front with the bourgeoisie. Even when Mao refuse to follow the orientation of Stalin messing up the military forces controlled by the PCCh in 1946 in behalf of a national-front government with Chiang Kai-shek, his general policy stopped being Stalinist. But those who used to claimed to be Trotskyist in the International Committee (CI) and who used to criticise Pablo as deserter from Trotskyism when he began entering and dissolving of the Trotskyist parties into the PCs, would believe this tactical disagreement between Stalin and Mao was sufficient for which the latter would stop being Stalinist.

Even knowing the policy of the anti-Pablists (who, in his turn, also capitulated before Stalinism) used for the Chinese question, Nahuel Moreno joins in this group, starting to be its chiefly leader in Latin America. It was not by mere change that the members of a centrist group — deluded with the idea that the Mao's fleet could progressively evolve into socialism, refusing from the first moment to form a conspirational party of the Fourth International in China in order to make in fact the Chinese revolution to attack the reactionary policy of the bureaucracy — are the very same who today, disappointed with their old idols, turn their backs on the worker's state when they see that the parasitic caste not only is incapable of advancing the revolution but also generally leads to decline and bankruptcy. Seeing their enthusiasm frustrated for currents unfamiliar to the revolutionary party, namely, Maoism, the centrists go from one extreme to another of politics. Engrossed now in reactionary campaign of the pos-USSR imperialism, start adopting a sectarian posture with reference to the worker's states. Condemning the revolution before that it has been defeated, these groups convert objectively into allies of capitalist restoration.

The revolution took place despite the Stalinist policy of the PCCh and not because of it. It took place under exceptional conditions: unwillingness of the bourgeoisie in negotiate a government of coalition; siege of white troops armed by British imperialism; economic boycott through capital avoidance; loss of control by the PCCh of radicalised peasant base that exceeded the Mao's initial program of land reform; positive disorganisation of transports; hyperinflation; dismantling of production, etc. And it were these factors that compel Stalinism to "go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie" (Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program).

The revolution operates transformations in the country never contemplated by any previous capitalist government (national unification, land reform) and impossible of being realised under any bourgeois government. In no capitalist colony or semi-colony where the worker population only know the blemish of capitalism and the systematic attack to the most elementary living conditions as well as in the advanced capitalist countries where the poorest and constantly threatened rights of the proletariat are made contingent on pillage and barbarism of the backward countries, the exploited population knew as great improvements in the ground of health, education, housing and employment as in People's Republic of China (PRC).

The expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the state-isation of heavy industry, the control of foreign trade and the economic planning, even under the protection of the bureaucracy, brought about surprising improvements of living conditions for the workers, peasants, including women who were free of the medieval habits that they were submitted. These changes, no capitalist regime would be able to promote them.

During centuries damaged by England, Germany, France, the United States and Japan, China was condemned until middle of 20th century to be one of the most plundered semi-colonies in the world. Sixty percent of the population used to go hungry and 40 percent of Chinese was reckoned to be illiterate. When compared with those figures, famine and illiteracy are insignificant in China today.

A backward, hungry semi-colony worm-eaten by double pillage of foreign and native bourgeoisie succeeded in rising, freeing more than 1/5 of population of Earth from capitalist barbarism, thanks to economic planning that urged an unprecedented development of productive forces. Only a worker's state would be able to grant full employment and access to health, education and housing for 1,23 billions of Chinese. It is these conditions and social conquests that differentiate China from capitalist countries. It is these differences that the revolutionaries unconditionally defend not only against capitalist restoration but also against the growing parasitism of the bureaucracy. It was the intervention of the Chinese worker's state that makes possible the victory of North Korea in 1953 against Yankee imperialism and its puppet in southern peninsula that would promote violent colonisation.

However, despite enormous economic improvements that it gained even under the bureaucratic planning (superior to anarchy of production), it engenders its own strangulation. Because of deviations imposed by the Stalinist caste that was obsessed with meeting their parasitic interests, deviations that could cherish dangerous proportions between branches of production, the city and countryside and increase the debts, fragilising the worker's state and laying the basis of capitalist restoration.

The bureaucracy is not an independent social class, but a cancer that corrodes an isolated and backward worker's state. The bureaucrats do not own means of production; their power is in to monopolise the political control of the state-owned array. The privileges of the bureaucrats are abuses. High officials cannot and must not bequeath to their children their "rights" of exploiting the state. The relations of property established by revolution are indissolubly connected with the state, with predominance of socialist tendencies over the petty bourgeois ones. This predominance is secured not by economic automatism apart but above all by political power of the dictatorship. The character of economy is entirely dependent of character of power. "The downfall of Soviet regime will cause the downfall of the planning economy and, consequently,the liquidation of state-ised property." (Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed).

Without independent existence in new relations of production established by revolution, the bureaucracy is obliged to adapt their interests to correlation of forces between the world proletariat and bourgeoisie. These are the factors that contributes to the transitory character of its political domination and the double role of the bureaucracy (defence of worker's state and political expropriation of the proletariat), resulting constant lack of stability of bureaucratised worker's states.

Presented as a disclosed "top secret", the theory of the PSTU that capitalist restoration was realised by state-owned bureaucracy, is not at all original; it is a shameful plagiarism of theory for "state capitalism" presented by renegades from the Fourth International nearly a half century ago. The PSTU did it when tried disguising, at least in the first moment, the real orientation of its policy. Trotsky waged a hard battle against all centrists who stopped defending the worker's state, pleading that the policy of "peaceful coexistence" of the bureaucracy would have modified the character of the worker's state that would start constituting "state-capitalist" regimes. Centrists such as Hugo Urbans and after Tony Cliff adopted this juggling. The latter, leader of the British SWP, was thrown out the Fourth International in 1950 during the Korea War, when he publicly oppose to military defence of the distorted North Korean worker’s state against the genocidal attacks of Yankee imperialism. Cliff develop his theory of "state capitalism" in order to justify his adaptation to anti-Sovietism of imperialism and its satellites in the worker movement, the British labour party members.

It is in fashion — and this was positively evident in the reports on the perspectives of the pos-Xiaoping China — to compare the Chinese state to the bourgeois dictatorships that promote a supposed capitalist development at the expense of a violent intensification of paces of production, exploiting the proletariat and suppressing civil, democratic and labour rights. It is glaringly obvious that imperialism cheers for this perspective that the bureaucracy becomes capitalist class, restoring the private property and capitalist exploitation in a controlled process, without the inevitable costs and risks of the counterrevolution.

This analogy is an old tactics from the bourgeoisie, ideologically shared with the petty bourgeois philistines for demoralising the worker’s state before attentive eyes of world proletarian vanguard. Thus, Stalin is level with Hitler; Deng Xiaoping is level with Pinochet; and "Fidel Castro is level with Cardoso" (according to thesis of young current of the PSTU in the latest the UNE [National Union of Students] congress). This ideological pressure on the world vanguard proved to be very useful in the recent six years so that the capital could advance in economic and social ground over the historic conquests of worker in all over the word, in field of almost complete ideological prostration and deep political confusion, facilitated by capitulation of centrist currents to this pressure. They compare China to Spain of Franco, to the South Korea of Park Ching-hee or to the Chile of Pinochet. Though tempting, this analogy is thousands of light-years away from the materialist analyse of the Chinese question.

The possibility of a peaceful transition of a worker’s state to a capitalist economy (called or not state capitalism) is only a fiction. If for the reformist Karl Kautsky, it was possible to pass from capitalism to socialism through reforms without necessity of revolution or use of revolutionary violence; according to new reformist theory of the PSTU, would be possible the contrary, that is, to retreat from relations of production of the worker’s state to capitalism through market reform without that the owner new class (in this case the capitalist bureaucracy) would need have recourse to crushing the proletariat by a social counterrevolution that snatch away the bulk of conquests of revolution — which it was made yet.

It is not possible to restore capitalism in China reintroducing the regime of the anarchy of production and the capitalist control of the state without destroying the web of social relations and relations of production that exist at the expense of the worker’s state.

In their turn, those who use the massacre of Tiananmen Square for justify that the masses were defeated, they previously deny and underestimate the colossal capacity of the Chinese exploited of recomposing their forces in order to defend their conquests that anyway were not grabbed by any capitalist class, just like what is taking place in the USSR and European East. "The Marxist thesis relating to catastrophic character of the transference of power from hands of one class to other ones not is applicable not only to revolutionary epochs in which history advances crazily sweeping away everything, but also to counterrevolutionary epochs in which society back down. Whoever states that the Soviet government was changing gradually from proletarian to bourgeois limit oneself, so to speak, to project the film of reformism from front to rear" (Leon Trotsky, The Nature of Class of the USSR, emphasis added).

Other idea enough disseminated into the circles of pseudo-Trotskyist left in the final period is the pure and simple idea that to adopt measures of market by the bureaucracy is synonym of immediate capitalist restoration. Every concessions, opening of market and commercial transactions between the worker’s state and the private capitalists is right away considered as irrefutable evidence of change for capitalist state. Combined with the idea of gradual or peaceful counterrevolution, this other anti-defencist deception transform immediately the worker’s states into capitalist ones. In addition, it give to its authors full freedom for adapt themselves how they find better to imperialist campaign of recapturing the regions of the planet where it had been expropriated, becoming these authors, under the same dynamic, leftist allies with recolonisation of the late worker’s states.

"After all, Deng Xiaoping was the helmsman who, with strong arm, guided China to capitalist seas. Already in the end of 1970s, the Chinese leader started promoting reforms that would introduce mechanisms of market in local economy." (PSTU’s newspaper, Opinião Socialista, #29). In idealistic conception of these editors, the worker’s state were as a Garden of Eden until the day in which the original sin (the measures of market) entered in it. With the same arguments used for condemning the introduction of mechanisms of market in China, the centrist of nowadays would take the side of ultraleftists that used to condemn the Leninist NEP (New Economic Policy) in 1921.The problem of the Chinese bureaucracy to adopt measures of market is not connected to measures themselves, but in strategic orientation of the parasitic caste turned to "peaceful living together" with world imperialism, on the contrary to the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky that used to promote the world proletarian revolution decidely. "If, as pseudo-Marxist philistines think, the dictatorship (of the proletariat) disappeared with the beginning of the NEP, then it is can said that it never existed. To these gentlemen, the proletariat dictatorship is merely an imponderable concept, a ideal unrealisable standard in this sinful world" (Leon Trotsky, The Nature of Class of the USSR).

Arguing with the ultraleftists, Lenin explains, "Have the Soviet power got behaved correctly when, after throwing out the Russian landowners and capitalists, call now the foreign capitalists? Yes. Though the worker revolution has been late in other countries, we must suffer certain sacrifices to obtain the fast and immediate improvement of the situation of the workers and peasants. The sacrifice consist in which we deliver to capitalist ten millions of products during several years; and the improvement of situation of the workers and peasants will consist in which we will obtain complementary quantities of oil, kerosene oil, salt, meat, etc.

"Is it not dangerous to resort to capitalists? Is this means development of capitalism? Yes, this is its signification; but it is not dangerous because power continues in the hands of workers and peasants and it is not restoration of property of landowners and capitalists. The concession is similar to a lease. The capitalist converts into lessee of a part of the estate-owned property for a determinate time, but he do not become owner. The property continues being of the state. The Soviet power keeps watch over that the lessee obey the contract in order that it results us beneficial in goal to get better the situation of workers and peasants and the benefit for them become manifest in the increase of quantity of products. . . When it pays to the concessionaires a part of products of great value, the worker’s state is paying undoubtedly a tax to the world bourgeoisie. It is not intention to hide this fact, for we must understand clearly that is convenient for us to pay this tax in order to accelerate the restoration of great industry and to improve considerably the situation of the workers and peasants." (V.I. Lenin. The Tax in Cash).

Before Deng carry out reforms of market, Mao had left Chinese economy enough fragiled not by introduction of mechanisms of market, but by reactionary illusion of building a socialist economy in isolated quango through utopian Maoist theory of "socialism only in China".

Among the blows that deeply weakened the revolutionary forces in Asia and, consequently, the proletariat and the Chinese worker’s state, the greatest one was Mao’s policy of "peaceful living together" with Yankee imperialism, when in 1927, after having broken with the USSR, diplomatically and militarily approached USA, falling in love with Nixon and Kissinger, while Yankees would massacred the heroic Vietnamese people. But it stopped at this. The Chinese bureaucracy actively collaborated with imperialism, joining the CIA and the criminal government of South Africa to train and direct the puppet Jonas Savimbi and the UNITA troops in order to crush the rebellion of Angolan black masses supported by the Cuban worker’s state in 1975.

The populist-front policy of Chinese Stalinism also killed thousands of other victims, provoking the bloody defeat of the Indonesian proletariat, where the greatest of communist party in a capitalist country, follower of Maoist line, was oriented to yield to nationalist President Sukarno. The result was the massacre of 500,000 communists in Indonesia by the Sukarno government, which contributed to permanence of despotic regime of Suharo (who was general of Sukarno’s army and who took power taking advantage of crisis of nationalist government) up to now.

Both the submission to world market and reactionary utopia of its isolation are part of zigzags of the Stalinist centrism that aims at not that world revolution, but the maintenance of material conditions of bureaucratic parasitism. When they repel measures of market, the pseudo-Trotskyist philistines share same reactionary thesis from Stalin, Mao and the whole of Stalinists that would be possible the development of productive forces independent of relations of world market. The use of market mechanisms is not merely a caprice of this or that ruling group in the leadership of the worker’s state. In reality, the bureaucratic NEP became a pressing necessity of Chinese degenerated worker regime and the unique policy possible to the bureaucracy after Mao’s failures.

If the right of deciding were given to the Morenists, they certainly would prefer to maintain the pace of economy in slowness and backwardness used by Mao than got involved with the sinful world of economy of market. It is need to bear in mind the experience of the Russian proletariat in the middle of 1920s, wisely caught by the revolutionary Bolsheviks. "In one of his last addresses, Lenin warned the party of next experience that would have to carry out in the Russian market and in the international market, to which we are subordinated and from which we cannot extricate ourselves. That is why the idea of Bukharin according to which we must advance even if be at ‘snail’s pace’ towards socialism is a mere necessity of petty bourgeois. . . The purpose of economic orientation should be not an economy close to exterior and self-sufficient at the expense of a inevitable reduction of its level of production and its technical knowledges, but exactly the opposite one: an expansive economy that exerts its influence over all over the world, elevating productive capacity to the utmost" (Leon Trotsky, The Real Situation in Russia).

Let us take as example the North Korean worker’s state. Besides this country cannot afford to so great labour such as the PRC, the current extreme fragility of its economy is greatly aggravated by isolationist policy of the bureaucracy led by Kim Jong Il. If Mao’s policy will continue so, China would be in very worse situation than today, showing itself to be infinitely more vulnerable to counterrevolution by economic isolation and competition of foreign trade. As the great founder of the Red Army demonstrated, it is more probable that the counterrevolution manifest itself initially and more sneakily through the entrance of goods from imperialism with cost inferior to internal market than through an invasion of foreign armies. "We cannot despise surrounding capitalism by mere fact that it develops an exclusively national economy. Precisely because of this exclusivism, this economy would find itself compelled to advance in extremely slow pace, and it would have, therefore, to face a formidable menace, not only by capitalist armies and navy (intervention), but also especially by dropping in price of the capitalist articles." (Leon Trotsky, The Real Situation in Russia).

Though policy of bureaucracy is submitted to interests of Stalinist caste from Beijing one of factors that has delayed the agony of the worker’s state is the surprising development of productive capacity of the country. Today the PRC controls the world market of toys and shoes and 85% of textiles.

Today the Chinese gross national product (GNP) is among the five greatest in the world. In the recent sixteen years the GNP quintupled passing from US$ 93 millions in the end of 1960s to current US$ 425 millions. In the recent twenty years the agricultural production trebled from 150 billions of tons of grains (1960) to 450 billions (1997). Two crops of rice are gathered a year (the double of Brazil). In this period, 200 millions of persons came out of its state of absolute poverty. Without planning, it would be impossible to feed 22% of world population with only 7% of the arable lands of the planet. And even so agriculture only is responsible for 21% of the GNP while industry keeps 42%.

If the bureaucratised worker’s state come to become extinct, China is destined straight away to own over one billion of hungry, helpless persons subject to robbery superior to one that the Indian exploited suffer. The predatory action of imperialism, mediated for blackmails of the bureaucracy, would find itself immediately free for wrecking the living conditions of the population. The end of the social relations, even if under the yoke of parasitism, would result in immediate marginalisation of all Chinese people. The China of the capitalist pos-restoration would be only a semi-colony such as India or Indonesia, immersed in a deep barbarism.

Of course there is an immense abyss between the Leninist NEP and "socialism with capitalist methods" of Deng Xiaoping. Let us not forget that the bureaucracy defends with its own methods the dictatorship of the proletariat, though these methods make easy the future victory of the enemy. Therefore, though the Chinese bureaucrats have started this policy swearing that it would be transitory, the reforms imply a series of concessions that end up by laying the bases of restoration (increase of social and regional inequalities, discrepancy in the heart of the bureaucracy itself, foreign debt, arising of a class of Chinese kolkhozes, corruption, etc.). Since it is a question of a policy concerned with preservation of the parasitic caste and, therefore, of its conditions of existence, the measures seek not the strengthening of the country as a tool towards world revolution, but the maintenance of the conditions that nurture the bureaucracy, that is, the construction of "socialism" in the national limits and, therefore, the strangulation of economy nationalised by the world capitalist market.

If the bureaucracy deals in immense consumer market and chiefly in mighty Chinese workforce aiming at blackmailing the private capital in exchange for technologic concessions and foreign investments, in rebuttal the strengthening of deal with the bourgeoisie favours the reformist tendencies of the PCCh and of People’s Chinese Army as well as the increase of corruption within state-owned apparatus.

The means of production in China belongs to the state; and the state belongs to the bureaucracy. Though enjoying privileges and luxuries such as capitalist dominant classes, every bureaucrat knows that his conditions of existence are connected with his political control over the worker’s state. In order to the bureaucracy take definitely possession of the state-owned property, it will firstly have to destroy the revolutionary conquests of the proletariat and the state-owned apparatus with which these conquest are connected. But the Chinese proletariat does not still tell its last word or the bureaucracy succeeded in constructing a solid social base for its control and, therefore, it is obliged to defend the state-owned economy, source of its power and privileges. The relations of property created by the Chinese Revolution were still not liquidated; the proletariat continues being the ruling class; and from viewpoint, China is a dictatorship of the proletariat yet.

Without the economic planning and the state-owned control over fundamental branches of economy, China would be condemned to be other India. It is said that everything is possible thanks to a wild exploitation of hand labour, numerous and cheap. But in India, or even in Brazil, the hand labour is numerous and cheap too. It is pleaded that in China the average wage of population varies between 30 and 60 dollars a month. However, on the contrary of Brazil or India, Chinese workers has full employment and spend so little with food, education, transport or housing. "The house where they live has the symbolic rent of two, three or six dollars. The public services charge minimum fares such as, for instance, five to six cents of dollars for an underground ticket. Food as well as clothes is very cheap if compared with our prices" (Cadernos do Terceiro Mundo # 192, Dec. 95). In several kinds of individual spending, the worker’s state seeks to snatch away the maximum from the foreign capitalists. "The investors pay over 5,000 dollars of rent a month, while one Chinese hands over four or five dollars for his monthly payment in the estate-owned condominium" (Veja, 13 December 1995).

Have the advancement of reforms and Special Economic Zones (ZEEs) made possible that private capitalists take possession of economy? Have the transformation of collective farmers into a regime of familiar economy caused a mercantilisation of the countryside relations, making the capitalists to determine the price of foods and of seeds on the point of leaving the workers at the mercy of news owners of lands? Only the figures and facts will be able to answer these questions. We will cite only data of economy more important and essential to this evaluation.

The railroad has 53,9 km and road mesh, 1 million of km, being 86% paved. Both are state-owned. The credit system and tax apparatus are entirely in the hands of the worker’s state.

Every main companies are property of the estate. It is certain that a sector was leased and it maintains a system of the mixed economy with the private capital. Besides, China does not own any commercial legislation that gives any guarantee to businessmen who establishe there.

The capitalist who desire to set up a company in the Special Economic Zones (ZEEs) from China will have to associate with an estate-owned company and supply the formula of his products, and chiefly to transfer technology. What is the relation between the estate-owned companies that the state continues managing and the leased ones? "Apart from the special zones, 100,000 estate-owned companies form the spinal column of the Chinese economy, untouched by modernisation" (Veja, 26 February 1997). Seventy millions of workers work in theses. There are about 22 millions of companies connected with the private capital (Idem). "According to evaluation of some international observers, in the end of 20th century 70 millions of Chinese will take part in the private sector of economy in quality as foreign small businessmen, employees or investors whose interests are regulated and whose enrichment is marked out by permits and income taxes" (Cadernos do Terceiro Mundo #192, Dec. 95).

What these data means? Even if we take in account an expectancy of growing of numbers of people connected with the private economy towards the end of this century, the private companies will prove to have on average and roughly about 3, 18 persons, between workers and bosses. Meanwhile, nowadays, the 100,000 estate-owned industries employ about 700 worker each. The explanation is simple: only companies of second-rate or third-rate or of light industrial sector were leased. It is ridiculous to speak on capitalist restoration before such data. The "transition for capitalism" of the PSTU, based on petty bourgeois impressionism with the propaganda of imperialism for the end of the worker’s state on the one hand and in a bourgeois Stalinist hate on the other hand, does not resist to proof of real data.

It is certain that the estate-owned companies are managed a slapdash way and that, under the policy of the estate-owned bureaucracies, are deeply in debt, swelling the numbers of bankruptcies. This situation gets worse with the competition of the private companies. Besides, the bureaucracy has sought to adapt them to reforms, measure that collides with the social conquests of the proletariat.

One of greatest fears of the bureaucracy is in the uprising of a mass of dismissed proceeding from the state-owned companies. It is not without reason that current president Jian Zeming, former mayor of Shanghai and connected with more reformist sectors of the bureaucracy, insists on declaring to the four winds that "the state-owned companies go on being the spinal column of the Chinese economy" (Veja 13 December 1995). Statements like this are conveyed daily in official press from Beijing.

The bankruptcy of the state-owned companies signify, straight away, the marginalisation of its employees: "It was easy to privatise shops, restaurants and so on. The small business were simply sold to first interested party or handed over co-operatives. With the industrial conglomerates is different. . . . According to Chinese model, factory does not pay only wage. It supply housing, hospital, children school and even some leisure too. It is also the factory that takes responsibility for pension of its employees. To close these immense DSS, would produce a social outcry of proportions subatomic. The perspective is politically unacceptable" (Idem).

Other relevant factor stressed by Trotsky in his analyse of the Soviet bureaucracy was the independence that it used to expect regarding private capital and bureaucracy of the capitalist state. In the bourgeois society, whether under the Hitler government or the Clinton government, the capitalist state-owned bureaucracy represents the interests of owner class to whom give explanations and it submit economically. "With reference to peasants and to small owners, the bureaucracy intervenes like the powerful lord; with reference to capital magnates, it intervenes like its first mandatary of power." (Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed). The car multinationals Peugeot, Volks, Audi and GM have already established in the ZEEs forming companies of mixed capital with the state-owned ones. The GM was the last one. It established this year and divides in 50% the costs of capital of the mixed company with the state-owned company Shanghai Industrial Co., after having gained the competition against the Ford. "The Chinese philosophy for accepting foreign investments is to gain the greatest with them. For two years China set the GM against the Ford waiting for better conditions to choose one of them. The winner promises to transfer technology, to give management training with the Chinese, to bring modern machinery and up-to-dating car spare. . . The traditional Chinese factories concentrate on producing small and cheap estate cars, light lorries and minibuses" (Veja, 13 December 1995).

In the countryside "today China is almost self-sufficient and since a long time ago that one hears of hungry people in the country. . . The farmers received plots of land and one recommendation: they should produce basic foods for being bought by the state, having permission to sell in the market the surplus production. . . Before the reform, one Chinese out of four used to live in misery. These relations, today so better, are in one for twelve. But the transition for the market did not manage to concretise in agriculture. The grains more consumed have their prices controlled yet. The control increase when the prices rise in the urban market places, because what the government more fears is a rebellion of the population of cities, as ones that have already took place. So, it back down in previous attempts of releasing the agricultural prices." (Idem).

The Chinese government buys, controls and distributes the foodstuffs of the first necessity. In capitalist countries, it is existence of the profiteer who in an end provokes the speculation over the prices of essential food and raw material, hindering the urban consumers and, in the other end, causing the small farmer to go bankruptcy. In the People’s Republic of China, the state "encourages the use of more elaborated techniques" (Idem) and supplies the raw materials at prices that do not strangle the small rural economies. Here is one of the motives why a country that keeps only 75% of arable lands of the planet is capable of feeding 22% of the world population.

But the central tendencies of economy point not to the strengthening of China like a superpower, but to its debacle as worker’s state and to economic and cultural chaos. The bureaucracy is in the dead end. If it bet on the reforms, the estate-owned bankruptcy increase; the number of persons belonging to floating population, unemployed or subemployed, most of them allocated temporarily in the civil building, sustained by unemployment insurance and informal market.

The discrepancies between the city workers and country workers increase and in terms of development in regions of the country. Ten years later the urban workers used to earn 70% more than rural ones. Nowadays this difference is in 160%. In the most developed region in the country, the average income reaches 800 dollars a year. This is the case of Shanghai and of the more urbanised cities situated chiefly in the Pacific Coast. In the more backward regions (west) where agriculture predominates, this value reaches little more than 200 dollars. "The ‘neo-conservatives’ who go to manage the transition after the death of Deng have, among other difficulties, the growing unemployment of 140 millions of peasants and 240 millions of persons who must join in labour market in the next fifteen years" (La Nación, 20 February 1997). The way of the reforms lead implacably to destruction of the social conquests and, consequently, stimulates the social convulsion. "Though information is scarce and fragmentary, a series of riots and strikes broken out all over the country. The most griveous and frequents uprisings have been in provinces of Szechan (Southwest), Kwngtung (south) and Ahnwei (centre), but many other proliferate in the course of recent years" (Idem).

On the other hand, to retreat in the reforms signifies to go on feeding with high subsidy the state-owned company in the competition against the private capital, such as, for instance, protectionism against the entry of foreign products. "A foreign businessman may establish in Beijing or Shanghai to produce what he want. But to bring in (goods or materials) from a foreign country for trade or sale within China, so that the Chinese products is submitted to competition with foreign ones — this never!" (Veja, 13 December 1995). In order to maintain 100,000 estate-owned companies, the government has to enlarge the tax deficit and to borrow to the IMF and World Bank, increasing the foreign debt that already amount to 70 billions of dollars. In this way, the dependence of the country to imperialism that makes demands of cut off in expenses with social services. This other tendency also leads to attack of living conditions of population and, consequently, encourages the social convulsion.

The bureaucracy is incapable of offering any progressive way out to crisis. Only the advancement of world revolution can take the PRC from this crossroad. But the parasitic caste work against. Among the measures of nearness with imperialism used in the recent period, was the remittance of money of the country for financing the campaign of Clinton in the last year and of more six high senators from U.S. Democrat Party. In addition, it sponsored the visit of Al Gore, American vice-president, to Beijing in order to make a deal of interests of Boeing and GM and try persuading the bureaucrats to reduce the production and sale of arms (from tanks and missiles to rifles AK-47) to countries non-allied to USA. The ultimate capitulation of the bureaucracy was to help the bureaucrat North Korean Hwan Jang-yop to flee for South Korea in March. The deserter was high official of the North American worker’s state. The denunciation of military secrets and weaknesses of that puppet country and archenemy of North Korea to South Korean will only make possible the stirring up of the attacks of imperialism against the North Korean worker’s state and, consequently, against the PRC itself.

To the Marxists (on the contrary of dilettanti) the characterisation of social phenomena serves to point to tasks necessary to a revolutionary intervention in the class struggle. Before their new discoveries, what propose the circle of pseudo-Trotskyist, who leave consciously the defencism to Chinese masses?

The Marxists are contrary of creating a fetishism about a theory. They understand that, if new historical facts indicate a necessary revision, it must be done. This will not prevent us from, starting from a revision based on method of dialectic materialism, establishing new tasks or the combination of new tasks still non-realised by class struggle with other new ones. But it is true that, besides Chinese events ratify with deep solidity the analyse of the Fourth International on disaggregation of the worker’s state and the measures to combat them, these gentlemen do not succeed in proposing NO TASKS, starting from their "new discoveries", in face of threat and growing attacks to living conditions of millions of Chinese workers, peasants and young people. They limit to pen comments about the events. They share with the same bourgeois anti-Stalinism, being, therefore, incapable of waging a consistent battle against the gravedigger–bureaucrat of the revolution and end up by bury the revolution still alive. They only bring ideological confusion while they establish objetively a unique front with imperialism, just like they did in the USSR. Trotsky used to teach that those who are incapable of defend the positions won they also incapable of struggle for any new conquest.

The Chinese workers saw what took place in the USSR and European East and express a great disposition to fight for defend their revolutionary achievements. Only the construction of a Trotskyist party that acquires mass influence can stop the shady future of the counterrevolution. "The great fear of Beijing is the popular dissatisfaction, that can increase until a dangerous level. In a country of one billion of persons, it is understandable that this cause insomnia in their leaders." (O Estado de São Paulo, 16 March 1997). Everybody knows that, under the regime of private property, without the relations of production proceeding from the revolution, without free health, housing, education, leisure and transportation, the popular displeasure of workers would be uncontrollable. So, the bureaucracy reminds in publicity campaign that "in China, the main way of property is the public one. The sectors that have strategic important for the country and for the people got in hand of the estate" (Cadernos do Terceiro Mundo #192, Dec. 95).

But, to the construction of a Trotskyist party in China, capable of cheating there Stalinist repressive apparatus and preparing the political revolution, it is need that it have a Leninist conspirational character. This party has to own as main programmatic orientation the uncompromising defence of social conquest of the proletariat (combat to dismissals, bankruptcies, closure of state-owned companies and reduction of living quality) and fomentation of the proletarian insurrection as the only way of sweep away the bureaucratic caste of ruling posts of the state. Wages equal to work equal! Economic planning and control of the foreign trade submitted to the worker democracy of Soviets. Freedom of organisation for the Soviet parties.

As for the role that the market should play in the worker’s state, the workers should have clear in their mind, starting from the experience of the Leninist NEP, as the whole of transitional measures, that, though they can do concessions to capital, these should be connected with to collective effort for intensive development of the productive forces, fight for world revolution and submitted to decision of the worker and peasant councils. So that the workers from the ZEEs have the same level of life, social conquests and wages gains equal to state-owned companies and agricultural workers. For break with the IMF and international bankers and for not pay the foreign debt! For industrialisation of countryside! Let the worker’s state be an instrument of active solidarity in struggle against US military interventions in any part of the planet! Let it serve of material support and impulse the struggles for national release of nations oppressed by imperialism, and unconditional defence of other worker’s states. Not to policy of "a country of two economic systems" of the bureaucracy for the ZEEs, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. For expropriation of great financial and industrial capital of these zones!

It is worth for China what Trotsky stated on the USSR, "Notwithstanding that the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward preparing a bourgeois restoration, the new regime would have to introduce in the matter of forms of property and methods of industry not a reform, but a social revolution. . . As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown. It has a great power of resistance, coinciding with the established property relations, with the living force of the proletariat, the consciousness of its best elements, the impasse of world capitalism, and the inevitability of world revolution." (Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed)