By successful I mean in maintaining relative party unity, work with the masses, and thus the masses trust in the party, and political and economic stability.

With the exception of the latter years of the Cultural Revolution, the CPC has been remarkably stable, ideologically consistent, and have maintained power and dominance over the Chinese state and economy. All of this is even more impressive given the fall of communist states in Europe and the rise of western/American unipolarity.

While similar tendencies have been found in the CPSU, the rise of figures like Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and especially Gorbachev, and of course their supporters within the party, makes the CPSU appear less stable and ideologically consistent compared to the CPC. Added onto this the fact that the CPC has a much larger and diverse membership, including the national bourgeoisie.

Rather than viewing this question through great man theory, I want to know how the structural formation and process of the CPC itself maintains stability, and how it’s party structure is different from the CPSU. While both parties are founded on democratic centralism, how does this manifest differently between the two? In an interview with Marxist Paul, Hakim said the ban on factions within the CPSU, while imperative during the civil war and early years of the revolution, ultimately hurt the party. He then praised the informal factionalism of the CPC: Dengists, Maoists, liberals, etc. From the outset it would appear that such a situation of factionalism should rip the party apart, but it doesn’t. Why,?

Looking at the relatively young history of communist movements and parties show that many, for material reasons, were/are unable to be stable and ideologically consistent. Again, outside factors and capitalist sabotage are of course a major contributing factor, but could there be structural elements within various parties which explain, to a certain extent, their successes or failures?

Seeing the immense progress the CPC has brought their own people and, increasingly, the people of the rest of the colonized world, means we must understand how they operate. Every party and movement will be different and adjusted to their particular circumstances and material conditions, and thus copy and pasting the CPC anywhere else will not yield positive results. However, could/should the structural basis of the CPC be applied and modified to other countries and contexts?

  • @ImnecomradeEnglish
    12•9 months ago

    Just finished my meeting with PSL last week over this article, and I thought this could help with context of Deng (I am not a fan of him in regards to how his wing overthrew the other wing and enacted their own reforms at the cost of millions of poorer, rural workers forced to work for the capitalist enterprises without the safety net and protections offered by state jobs):

    Note: Take this article with a grain of salt. This is an older article (2007-05-31) from the PSL that paints the Cultural Revolution in an overly positive light while omitting the corruption that occurred from Mao’s wing. I apologize for my ignorance on this topic. Thank you, @muad_dibber and @qwename, for enlightening me.

    What do socialists defend in China today?

    https://www.liberationschool.org/what-do-socialists-defend-in-china-today/

    Immediately after its victory in 1949, the leadership of the Communist Party, by necessity, focused on the question of China’s economic development. Affecting the day-to-day lives of more than 500 million people, no task was more urgent than economic and social development. On this all wings of the Communist Party agreed.

    How this development would take place in the context of the continued class struggle, however, became the pivot for what became known in China as the “two-line struggle” between elements of the party centered around Mao Zedong and those led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. The Mao grouping advocated socialist methods for development, including nationalized public property in the core industries and banking, centralized planning, collectivized agriculture, mobilization of the workers and peasants, and a monopoly of foreign trade. The wing led by Liu and Deng was essentially pragmatic rather than Marxist in their approach, utilizing material incentives, capitalist-style accounting methods and elements of the capitalist market—all while professing allegiance to the goal of building socialism.

    In 1966, this struggle led to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a mass campaign initiated by Mao and his allies that aimed to rally the poor and the young to dislodge from positions of authority Liu, Deng and thousands of others castigated as favoring the “capitalist road” for China’s economic development.

    Contrary to the presentation by bourgeois historians, the two-line struggle was not primarily over the pace of economic development in China, with Mao favoring a slower approach and Liu and Deng favoring a faster tempo. Both sides in the two-line struggle put the rapid economic development of China as a top priority.

    …

    Despite the historic achievements on the road to socialism during this period, a series of international events and their reflection within the Communist Party weakened the strength of the revolutionary wing of the party. The defeat of the Indonesian Revolution in 1965, the escalation of the Sino-Soviet split and the ultimate rapprochement between China and U.S. imperialism, the corresponding death of People’s Liberation Army leader Lin Biao, and the purge of other leftists—all these events laid the basis for the reemergence of the “capitalist road” grouping following Mao’s death in 1976.

    At the time, some observers of the Chinese Revolution considered the accusation that certain party leaders were “capitalist roaders” to be one more rhetorical flourish or excess of the Cultural Revolution. But the accusation, as it turned out, was not overheated rhetoric at all. It was a precise and accurate description of Mao’s political opponents inside the leadership of the Communist Party.

    Following Mao’s death in 1976, the left wing of the party was routed and its leaders were arrested. By 1978, the “capitalist roaders,” galvanized under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, introduced sweeping economic reforms under the newly concocted and theoretically unfounded label of “market socialism.”

    These reforms led over the course of several steps to the “opening up” of China to imperialist banks and corporations. The development strategy was premised on a strategic assumption: The lure of super profits from the employment of low-wage labor in China would lead to massive capital investment by the industries and banks that possessed the most advanced technology. China would benefit in its “development” by accessing and acquiring the latest technologies.

    The Chinese commune system of collectivized agriculture was also dismantled. The Chinese countryside, known throughout Asia in the decades prior to the 1970s for its egalitarian achievements and social gains for the poorest peasants, became severely stratified again.

    While millions of more well-to-do peasants saw a sharp rise in their living standards, a huge mass of rural dwellers lost everything. Left to fend for themselves, they migrated by the tens of millions to urban areas seeking employment in newly created factories—many in special economic zones set aside for foreign capitalist investors. This migrant labor force, uprooted from the land, became the source of human material necessary for the establishment of a new market-based private capitalist sector.

    Within 25 years, the People’s Republic of China was fully integrated into the capitalist world economy. Foreign direct investment skyrocketed as U.S., European and Japanese capital set up in China to take advantage of the huge labor pool. Transnational corporations helped create the largest industrial work force in the world.

    At the same time I am disgusted by this event, I also wonder if it was unfortunately necessary to help China reach to its current state today. If events had played in a different way where Mao’s wing would have been dominant over Liu and Deng’s, could China have suffered the same fate as the USSR? In the end, the West is responsible for creating a divide between the USSR and China, hurting their relations so the West could use one enemy against the other to their advantage.

    • Muad'DibberA
      14•9 months ago

      To claim that SWCC is “pragmatic, and not Marxist”, typifies the ultra-left stances of most western leftist orgs, in their standard condemnation of actually existing communist formations on the basis of a selective and dogmatic interpretation of Marxism, and their obsession with martyrdom and failure. PSL should have dropped this “gang of four” leftism a decade ago.

    • @qwename
      8•9 months ago

      This is the second time I’m seeing the Cultural Revolution put in a good light in this post, get off your high horses you naive idealists!

      The Cultural Revolution was hijacked by ultras, Lin Biao tried to assassinate Mao.

      This is the Constitution of the CPC in 1969: https://fuwu.12371.cn/2014/12/24/ARTI1419387596442272.shtml, it includes this paragraph in the preamble:

      林彪同志一贯高举毛泽东思想伟大红旗，最忠诚、最坚定地执行和捍卫毛泽东同志的无产阶级革命路线。林彪同志是毛泽东同志的亲密战友和接班人。

      (DeepL translation) Comrade Lin Biao has consistently held high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought and has most faithfully and resolutely implemented and defended the proletarian revolutionary line of Comrade Mao Zedong. Comrade Lin Biao is Comrade Mao Zedong’s close comrade-in-arms and successor.

      Utterly disgusting.

      • Muad'DibberA
        12•9 months ago

        Ultra-lefts love appointing kings for some reason, and think socialism is when one guy controls everything, and hand picks a sucessor. Look at the history of int’l trotskyist movement squabbles, or their historical attachment to the myth that “Lenin appointed trotsky king of the USSR”.

      • @ImnecomradeEnglish
        9•9 months ago

        I’m sorry, but I believe I am in agreement with you. I am disgusted by the hijacking of the Cultural Revolution and the attempted assassination of Mao by his own close comrade. I am also open to different perspectives and want to improve my own to help humanity reach its best possible future. I intend to be a dialectical materialist and not an idealist. If my message came across as otherwise, I apologize. I am also still learning, and I only mean well. I appreciate your response as it helps me improve my understanding of China’s history. I am an American, so please forgive me if I make a bad take and/or miss important context regarding different countries’ histories. My goal is to avoid misinforming people.

        • @qwename
          8•9 months ago

          Sorry I got heated up after reading the article you linked, the strong words are directed at that. I personally wish the Cultural Revolution had succeeded but alas here we are.

          There will always be the risk of reactionaries sneaking into the party and climbing up to the higher ranks, or former comrades turning corrupt and endangering the the socialist cause. But that doesn’t mean we should destabilize the country just to deal with them, that only helps the reactionaries further their cause.

          What everyone should learn from the Cultural Revolution is how NOT to handle internal contradictions.