----- Original Message -----
From: ���ӹ� Henry C.K.Liu ���l�� <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The following is a report of a meeting held recently in Beijing among
"leftists".
The report was written in Chinese. My less-than-adequate translation of
excerpts of it follows:
On September 28, 1999 (on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the
establishment of the PRC), an analytical seminar was held in the Beijing
Municipal Party School by cadres working on ideology and party affairs.
The seminar was also attended by senior theorists and writers and high
level party members.
The subject included the loss of political power by the Soviet Communist
Party and poltical dissolution of the former USSR, and their lessons for
China.
To begin with, we must firmly adhering to Marxist positions, to
thoroughly understand the historical lesson of the loss of power by the
Soviet Party and the mutation and dissolution of Soviet Revionism.
There are those scholars who support Gorbachev's "new thinking", that
the most basic causes of the loss of power by the Soviet Party and the
mutation and dissolution of the Soviet Union are "the failure to manage
the economy", excessive Stalinist concentration of power, and the
fundamental "shartcomings" of collective ownership. Thus the solution
should be the abolition of economic planning and collective ownership,
and one party rule, and to adopt free markets, privatization,
multi-party political structure with alternating governments, and speed
up linkage with the West. In fact, taking Russia as a teacher,
transforming socialism to capitalism. On the question of relationship
among nationalities, adopt the "Two States Theory" and the "Seven
Entities" of spearatist Lee Denghui (former Taiwan President). These
are the goals of the China Democratic Party and also the goals of the
"democratic faction" of the CCP.
The Seminar attendants asserted that no one with a clear understanding
of Marxism and the history of Soviet Communism and the USSR would reach
such conclusions or support such Westernization and sparatists
doctrines. As for so-called "failure to manage the economy", the
mismanagement of the Soviet economy came after the publication of the
1978 book by Gorbachev;s "Reform and New Thinking". The Soviet
Communists' loss of power and the mutation of the USSR occurred after
Gorbachev's rule which continued the Revionist policies of Kruschev. It
is the natural result of the betrayal of Marxist ideology and political
paths, the abandonment of the "dual swords" Lenin and Stalin, cutting
down the banner of Marxism and raising in its place the banner of Social
Democracy, and the release of the "Openness" and "democratization"
tigers, and the implementation of total de-Stalinization, and wholesome
denial of the historic contributions of Soviet communism and the
historic role of the USSR.
The fall of the banner lead to the dissipation of personnel. The loss
of people leads to political collpase. That is the evolutionary path of
history. Even the director of Harvard's International Studies Institute
acknowledges that the collapse of the USSR was caused by a confidence
crisis of Soviet communism. "The fate of the USSR is a sobering
reflection for the US. If political unification and liberal democracy
have fundamental conflict, then the US may follow the USSR to the
garbage heap of history."
All can see that the USSR was one of the two superpowers when it
experienced rapid dissolution. If the cause of its collapse was poor
economic conditions, why did it not collpase after the October
Revolution when economic conditions were dismal? How is it that Cuba
and North Korea, with their poor economic situations, can still exist?
How could China have recovered from its bad economy of the 1960s. The
fundamental reason is the existence of a common belief of high ideal,
the Party and government jointly followed a realistic political road
that enjoyed the support of the masses. The reason why China did not
follow the demise of the USSR is mainly beacuse of Mao Zedong and the
Party central's clear policy and correct ideology and that it carried on
a decade-long struggle against Kruschev Revisionism.
II We must comprehensively understand and propagandize the Party's
Basic path and Deng Xiaoping Theory.
Now in China, there is a tendency to describe the Party's fundamental
path in the early stage of socialism as "one center" and "two basic
foci", and seldomn mention the need to struggle in "leading and uniting
the masses of all nationalities in the country", "revitalization through
self reliance", work hard against difficulties to be enterprising, to
building the nation into a strong and prosperous, democratic, civilized
and modern conuntry of socialism. This tendency has led to deviation
from the Party's basic path, letting the Four Principles become empty
slogans. A book by a professor of the Party School sums up Deng
Xiaoping Theory as "development", distorting Deng's theory as no
different than Bernstein, Kruschev Revisionism and Gorbachev "New
Thinking", dropping Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
III We must correctly understand and propaganize Deng Xiaoping Theory as
a heir to the development of Mao Zedong Thought.
There is now a loud slogan that Mao led the Chinese people to stand up
while Deng led the Chinese people to prosperity." The slogan creates
the misconception that Mao only led the Chinese people to a successful
new democratic revolution, and the socialist revolution and socialist
construction under Mao's leadership only led to poverty and not
prosperity. Only under Deng did the people become properous. Moreover,
this slogan differentiates Deng's open and reform policy as opposing
Mao's allegedly close policy of anti-reform, and to put the policies of
the past two decades as opposing the policies of the previous three
decades. This view of hostile opposites is erroneous and misleading.
This is similar to the view that only the introduction of capitalism can
make the Chinese people rich and that socialism will make the Chinese
people poor. In fact, the view is not based on historical fact. There
were reform and open policies in the first 30 years, to build good
foundations for a rich nation and prosperity for the people. It is only
that the content, direction and degree of the reform, open policies were
different reflecting different conditions. Without the foundation of
the first 30 years, there would be no result of today.
IV. We must comprehensively understand and propaganize that facts are
the only standard for examining truth and firmly support collective
ownership, the main structure of Marxism-Leninism as principles of
socialism.
A Party historian wrote that Marx, Engle, Lenin, Stalin, Mao all did not
solve the problem of abstract and scientific socialism, only Deng theory
manage this challenge. In his attempt to elevate Deng theory, he
managed only to distort it. One high level theoretician even claimed
that Deng Theory is the only correct measurement of true Marxism. Then
may we ask what standard we can use to measure if Deng Theory itself is
the correct measure?
Some call for theory to be verified by facts. But what constitutes
facts? Some theories talk most about respecting facts, but are in fact
total fantasy. Fakery and falsehood are not only limited to material
production, but are rampant in the spiritual arena. Those who talk the
most about accountability leave traces of irresponsibility and
unaccountability everywhere. Those who talk the most about rule of law
are guilty of lawlessness; those who talk the most about civilized
spirit are guilty of breakdowns in social ethics and morals. Leading
cadres talk about studying politics, morality for years, yet
bureaucratic corruption increased unchecked. We even created a Falun
Gong organization inside the Party.
A friend from Belgium expressed delight at China's economic progress,
but he cried at the sight of decline of Chinese social morality. We as
leading Chinese cadres cannot tolerate these conditions as busuiness as
usual. This is a problem of political ideology and cadre organization.
The basic question is what people should be relied upon to work for the
interest of whom? Are we to rely on the greatest majority to work for
the benefit of the greatest number, or to rely on a small minority to
work for the benefit of a small minority? To let which group of people
be rich first and can those who are poor, powerless, and without
influence become rich after them? This is a question affecting the
character of our Party and nation and cannot suffer high level neglect.
One Minister even proposes to change "in service of the people" to "in
service to the tax-paying people." This is against the very foundation
of our Party.
As to how to evaluate the success and failure of the open reform
policies, Deng Xiaoping in 1987 has called for three issues: "the key is
to look at three issue: 1) if a measure helps stabilize the political
situation in the nation, 2) if it promotes unity among the people and
improve people's livelihood, and 3) if it promotes production. Now many
are stressing and distoring the remarks by Deng in 1992 to argue that
collective ownership is a main obstacle to the "three advantages", even
the leadership of the CPC is now considered an obstacle, and that it
requires a "breakthrough." They promote a distorted version of the
"cat" slogan and the "feeling one's way crossing a stream" as high
philosophy. This is not Marxism, but to replace Marxism with
prgamatism. This distortion aims to blur the line between capitalism
and socialism, denying our historic past. These people propaganize
that human nature is selfish, that it is right to "look to money" as the
sole motivating social force. We must draw a line of principle and
ideology against such views.
V. There exist dangers of "cutting down banners" in Chinese political
debate. We must seriously and firmly uphold Marxist politics.
Seminar attendants agree that the most worrisome problems are
"Westernization" and "spearatism". Starting with the 11th Party
Congress, there had been moves to smear the image of Mao, distort
Marxism Leninism Mao Thoughts, referred to in the West as De-Moaism.
The most ruthless tactic is to split socialism into contemporary
socialism and traditional socialism as two opposing movements, using
contemporay socialism as a cover for refuting Marxism. Some scholars
even suggest Mao was a national socialist. One provincial level high
cadre promoted theoreticians who lectured in Party schools and wrote in
economic journals that China is a pre-capitalist socialist society.
These theoreticians advocate corporatization, privatization through
share ownership. Many local cadre believe mistakenly that the spirit
of the 15th Party Congress was the sale of State owned enterprises. One
theoretician began advocating "State to withdraw for people to enter" as
the prerequsite of reform. Other proposals call for SOEs to lead, but
non SOEs to be the main structure of the Chinese economy and share
holding as the main structure of non SOEs. Another theoretician proposed
that socialism is social justice plus market economy and baosted that in
three years, Beijing will have no SOEs. Bejing is the nation's capital,
if Beijing gets rid of SOE's, will there be any in the rest of the
country?
In the past decade and more, numerous Phds trained in the West have
become addictive to liberalism, calling for economic and political
globalization. They advocate that state sovereignty should be diluted
in favor of internationalism, liberal thoughts, to allow US to station
troops on Chinese soil so that China's resources can be devoted to
economic construction free of the burden of military expenses. China
cannot be exemption to the fact that all rich economies of the world are
free market with non-state owned enterprises. One even claimed that the
Chinese economy needs the creation of thousands of billionaire
entrprenneurs. Many openly decalred the defeat of socialism and
advocate social democracy. Are these the heirs of the revolutions or
the grave-digging undertakers of the revolution?
