Introduction¶
Core Argument¶
The introduction establishes the Chinese Revolution as second only to 1917 in historical significance, arguing that its victory under a Stalinist party was possible only through a unique conjuncture of circumstances. The core claim is that the CCP rode to power not through revolutionary Marxist strategy but atop a wave of peasant revolts against starvation and landlordism, aided by the existence of the USSR as a bordering workers’ state providing crucial military aid, and by the inability of American and British imperialism to intervene due to domestic anti-war sentiment. The Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek is presented as utterly corrupt and degenerate, incapable of mobilising resistance.
The chapter advances a sustained polemic against the Stalinist theory of Socialism in One Country, which it argues gave the CCP a narrow nationalist outlook. A revolutionary Marxist perspective would have demanded a Socialist Federation of China, Russia and Eastern Europe with an international plan of production. Instead, this nationalism produced the damaging Sino-Soviet conflict. The introduction also polemicises against those who romanticised Mao — including sections of the Trotskyist movement — who concluded that the CCP’s victory must have represented a break with Stalinism. Mao is described as having been prettified as an Asian Fidel Castro, a poet rooted in Chinese history, when in reality he constructed a state in the image of Stalinist Russia: a bureaucratic caricature of a workers’ state, deformed from birth, lacking Soviets, workers’ control, or independent unions.
The central theoretical challenge posed is whether the Chinese Revolution confirmed Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution or the Stalinist theory of stages. The CCP came to power espousing a bourgeois republic and attempted to privatise state-owned banks; yet it was pushed by events to take objectively socialist measures. The book promises to assess whether Popular Frontism was necessary or whether it delayed the workers’ state and laid the basis for the later restoration of capitalism.
The introduction traces the degeneration: the Great Leap Forward caused famine killing up to 20 million; the Cultural Revolution slashed industrial production by 15%. Bureaucratic control became a fetter on the productive forces, and the CCP’s refusal to countenance workers’ democracy meant each empiric solution became a step towards capitalism. By 1980-89, the CCP had abolished state planning, ended the monopoly of foreign trade, and privatised state enterprises, becoming a bourgeois party in all but name. The task for revolutionaries is now social revolution.
A distinctive claim is that the CCP’s policies towards women provide a direct measure of its revolutionary commitment. The revolution made substantial gains for women, but the more the CCP embraced Popular Frontism, the more it sacrificed women’s liberation to the interests of the male peasant. With the return to capitalism, those gains are being taken away.