The Unexpectedly Short Life of the New Democracy¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The Unexpectedly Short Life of the New Democracy¶
This chapter argues that the Chinese Revolution of 1949 rapidly transcended its own official programme, the New Democracy, confirming the general tendency for revolutions in backward countries to outgrow the bourgeois-democratic phase. The New Democracy was conceived as a prolonged stage of capitalist development, protecting the national bourgeoisie and postponing socialism. Yet, within a few years, the regime was propelled toward the threshold of a workers’ state, against the inclinations of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) steeped in Stalinist petty-bourgeois ideology.
The core contradiction lay in the inheritance of the Kuomintang’s bureaucratic capital. Upon seizing state assets, the CCP found itself in control of four-fifths of heavy industry, a third of light industry, and all transport and communications—far more than anticipated. The national bourgeoisie was revealed as extraordinarily weak; banking was completely socialised by 1952, and state trading companies monopolised essentials. Mao’s predictions were overturned by events. The regime artificially bolstered the bourgeoisie, but businesses of any size had either fled with Chiang or been taken over by the four great families. Private industrial enterprises did increase from 123,000 to 150,000, with average profits reaching 29% in 1951, yet this prosperity bred defiance. The Five-Antis Campaign, initially targeting individual ‘mangy sheep’, escalated into an all-out war against the bourgeoisie after organised corruption was uncovered. By 1953, private operations had fallen from three-quarters of wholesale trade to under a third, with force used to compel conversion into joint enterprises.
The Land Reform Law of June 1950 promised a “rich peasant economy” based on private ownership, protecting rich peasants who soon re-emerged as dominant. The New Marriage Law granted women rights to divorce and property, but the CCP bowed to patriarchal pressures. By 1953, up to a quarter of a million women under 25 had been murdered or driven to suicide as a result of the backlash. Cadres presented women’s emancipation as a threat to stability, and the law was effectively abandoned by March 1953. The First Five Year Plan ignored women’s employment, confining them to low-skilled, poorly paid work. By 1955, the Party proposed women stay at home, and female employment fell sharply.
The chapter situates these events within the debate on the revolutionary capacity of the petty-bourgeoisie, concluding it cannot be revolutionary under decaying capitalism. The CCP remained a Stalinist party of class-collaboration, revolution by stages, and bureaucratic rule, taking power not by defeating the bourgeoisie but because the KMT collapsed. Practical pressures—inflation, war, embargo—forced socialist measures despite Mao’s resistance. The Three-Antis and Five-Antis campaigns ended the national bourgeoisie as a force. The chapter affirms the theory of permanent revolution: in colonial and semi-colonial countries, national unification and agrarian revolution require the dictatorship of the proletariat, not a bourgeois-democratic interlude.