A Privileged Bureaucracy

So far in this talk, by tracing through the cause and effect of the latest event against the "Gang of Four" I have attempted to highlight the nature of the Chinese bureaucracy. It is a bureaucracy that enjoys special privileges, higher pay and monolithic power. It is a parasitic social formation that concerns itself with the maintenance of its interest at the expense of the toiling masses. It tries to perpetuate the myth that the nationalised economy has been collectively administered by the people.

To this end, it has to stifle any opposition or even discussion on a rational, political basis. The same sterile atmosphere prevails in the CCP apparatus. Its members do not make decisions or elect their leadership. But in order that the bureaucracy may survive they have to unite around a supreme arbiter.

Mao has been able to play this role during his lifetime because of his almost divine image that was continuously reinforced since the founding of the People's Republic Since there is no such omnipotent figure among the present leadership, the power struggle within the bureaucracy is very likely to intensify.

At the same time, a new pattern of intervention is emerging among the masses which threatens to break out of the traditional constraints of the bureaucracy. Examples of this can be seen in the strike wave of Hangchow in the summer of 1975 and the massive spontaneous demonstration of the Tien An Men incident.

Recent visitors to China have noted a certain breakdown in social discipline. There are reports of arguments between citizens and police; and wall posters which touch on tabooed subjects. For the first time since the CCP victory in 1949, ordinary citizens are seen to approach Western correspondents to volunteer information and opinion on the latest events.

Such actions are particularly encouraging to revolutionary socialists when we realise that China is not the only country that is plagued by an increasingly critical public; dissident movements are also growing and becoming more vocal in other workers' states of the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and East Germany.

For socialists, these workers' states represent a historic advancement in social organisation. In China, especially, the establishment of a planned economy has proved conclusively its superiority over the anarchy of the capitalist system.

No underdeveloped capitalist country has solved or has the hope of solving the problems of industrialisation, the eradication of illiteracy, the creation of a national healthcare system or the achievement of agrarian revolution needed to feed an expanding population. China has made tremendous progress in all these fields in a relatively short time.