Chapter I
Stage of Social Development in China
Correct Assessment of China's Social Development Stage(1)
An accurate assessment of the current stage of social development is an important prerequisite for the policy making of the Party and the state. Historical experiences show that we must assess the current stage of social development in a clear-minded and accurate perspective to avoid blind mistakes. Only with this perspective of the current stage of development, can we lay down a scientific basis for the great course of socialism with Chinese characteristics and formulate effective policies, guidelines, strategies and tactics. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study and discuss the issue with regard to the stage of development. The following are some of my thoughts on the matter and any criticism and suggestions are welcomed.
Retreat Is a Trend
To varying degrees, the former USSR and some countries in Eastern Europe have retreated in recent years regarding the developmental stage of socialism. Among them, Poland retreated at a faster pace, and the former USSR is the most typical example.
Poland originally regarded socialism and communism as two stages of the same communist society, while the socialist stage can further be divided into three stages, including the transition stage from capitalism to socialism, the primary stage of socialism and developed socialist society stage. Poland announced it “had stepped into the stage of building the developed socialist society” (Gierek) by the mid-1970s. However, the announcement came under criticism in the early 1980s over the fact that the mission of primary stage wasn't finally completed, especially in the agriculture sector, which had yet to lay a solid basis for socialism. Therefore, they thought that it was wrong to declare its transition to the developed socialist stage. They firmly believed that Poland was still in the second development stage of socialism, i.e. the primary stage of socialism. The Party guideline was announced in the 10th Congress of Polish United Workers' Party in July 1986 where it clearly stated that Poland “was in the final transition stage from capitalism to socialism”. In other words, they retreated from the second stage to the end of the first development stage of socialism.
With regard to the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev announced as early as in 1959 that it “entered the stage of comprehensive development of communism”, and in October 1961, Khrushchev proposed the “building up of communism in two steps”, predicting the Soviet Union “will have completed the fundamental development of communism” by 1980. When Leonid Brezhnev was in charge, he did not announce any timetable for building communism, but declared in 1967 that “an advanced socialist society has already taken shape in the Soviet Union”. From talking about communism to highlighting advanced socialism, this marks the first step back. In April 1982, at a ceremony of Vladimir Lenin's 112th birthday,Yuri Andropov firstly acknowledged that the Soviet Union “is at the starting point of a long journey to advanced socialism”. Having officially become the general secretary of the Soviet communist party's central committee, Andropov reiterated his “starting point” statement in an article in February 1983 for the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx's death. From“Advanced Socialism” to “Starting Point of Socialism”, this marked the second retreating step taken by the Soviet Union. After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, despite repeating the statement that the Soviet Union “has entered the stage of advanced socialism” at the 27th Soviet Communist Party Congress in February 1986, he emphasized that the concept of“advanced socialism” was promoted as “an easily defined term for sake of communism development paths and schedules” and “it's premature to talk about comprehensive development of communism”. Instead, he pointed out the current key tasks to be “about improving socialism and accelerating socialism development”. With such statements, Gorbachev was essentially replacing the “starting point” theory with his own theory of “improving socialism”. In October 1986, at the all-Soviet university social sciences department director meeting hosted by the Soviet communist party's central committee and attended by key figures in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev stated the need to “improve social relations in developing socialism”. The special National Day editorial on the Pravda endorsed Gorbachev's new idea.
A common mistake for many socialist countries lies in the hasty attempt to reach communism by skipping necessary development stages and ignoring real conditions of social productivity. Therefore, we should be relieved to see the aforementioned “retreats” in the assessment of social development stages. It shows that socialist country leaders and researchers are paying more attention to the reality and building their theories on more solid ground. Yet in my point of view, the “retreat” is far from being enough, for the real root cause for the aforementioned common mistake has yet to be addressed.
What's the Root Cause?
It is a widely-held belief that Khrushchev was the first to come up with the idea of “comprehensive communism development stage” and therefore should take the blame for the mistake of “skipping development stages”. In fact, according to historical facts, the root problem is not Khrushchev but Joseph Stalin.
As early as in 1936, Stalin declared in the report of About Soviet Union Constitution Draft that “the Soviet society has completed the development of socialist fundamentals and a socialist system, or the first stage or the primitive stage of communism as described by Marxists. In other words, we've completed the first stage of communism, namely socialism.”(2) Stalin didn't mention how to revise the Marx doctrine of scientific socialism, nor did he specify the resemblance between the then Soviet Union society and the socialist society envisaged by Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, he made an abrupt declaration that the Soviet Union had built up the first or primary stage of communism, or socialism. In his The Problems of Socialist Economy in U. R. S. S. in 1952, Stalin still claimed that the “current economic system”belonged to the “first stage of communism”.(3) In early 1950s, the publication of The Problems of Socialist Economy in U. R. S. S. and the Political Economics Textbooks provided a theoretical framework for Stalin's argument, and the key features of a socialist system included: socialist ownership of production means, including state ownership and collective ownership; termination of an exploiting class and the associated system; and the principle of “to each according to his contribution”.
According to Stalin's theory, any country with the aforementioned socialism system can be regarded as being in the first stage of communism, even if the actual productivity level remains low; the public ownership is a result of “Forced Collectivization”; the state ownership and collective ownership are both at very basic level; class and class differences as well as commodity production and trade and commodity-based relationship still exist. Under the influence of Stalin's theory, many countries had taken the completion of socialist transformation of the private ownership as the symbol of building up a socialism society – just as stated by Stalin in 1936.
In fact, Stalin's theory of building socialism and the promotion of this theory had caused serious consequences. Stalin's theory was actually an idealization of the real situation and a mistake of trying to surpass certain stages of social development. On the contrary, Lenin, as a true Marxist, had quickly spotted and corrected the mistakes of military communism. Lenin made public declarations on the matter, admitting that it was wrong to implement communist principals in an essentially small-scale peasant economy. Meanwhile, he had made relentless efforts in both theory and practices to bring the Soviet Union down to earth from the “communist utopia”. However, after the death of Lenin, Stalin hastily declared that the Soviet Union had already completed the first stage of communism by idealizing the situation and dragging the country back into the utopia. In the Soviet Union's 3rd Five-Year Plan, Stalin boasted that the Soviet Union would “complete the development of classless socialism and start gradual transition to communism” within five years starting from 1933. Shortly before his death in early 1950s, Stalin declared the Soviet Union to be in the“transition to communism”. Therefore, the timetable of “comprehensive communist development” and “completion of communism society”announced by Khrushchev in 1959 and in 1961 respectively was merely the continuum and development of Stalin's theory.
The second impact of Stalin's theory lies in the theoretical confusion it had caused, which left people lost in the mismatch of theory and practices. According to the scientific foresight by Marx and Engels, commodity or money relationship should not exist in the first stage of the communism, or socialism. However, the Soviet Union and other socialist countries which had declared the first stage of communism all embraced production and exchange of commodities and the associated social relations. Unable to outrightly declare Marxist doctrine outdated or deny the practical role of commodity economy, people in these countries were stuck in a constant dilemma. The mismatch between theory and practices had shackled people's thoughts and actions, and plagued economic growth for years, seriously hindering the development of productivity in these countries.
The third impact is the decline of the socialist criteria. Faulty theories, along with other failures, had lowered the world's expectations on socialism.
Now, it's time to abandon Stalin's theory of “built-up socialism” once and for all.
Back to the Original
Marx and Engels had made a lot of widely-known predictions about the two stages of communism and the future of socialist and communist societies in their major works, including Das Kapital, Critique of the Gotha Program and Anti-Duhring. The following are a few characteristics drawn from these works about the first stage of communism, or a socialist society:
All means of production are owned by society;
All production and labor are conducted in socialist ways;
Production is organized in accordance with unified plans;
Direct social distribution – to each according to his contribution;
Disappearance of class and class distinctions;
Disappearance of commodity production and associated relations, etc.
In order to resume the original scientific definitions of socialism, the above points must be reviewed as scientific and correct.
It is quite well-known that Marx and Engels were not in favor of detailed description of a society in the future and had repeatedly warned people to stay away from illusions of a utopia. Their predictions and thoughts of the future were based upon conclusions from thorough analysis of capitalist development. As Engels put it, “it's a solid conclusion based on historical facts and development process.”(4) Far away from being pure imagination, their ideas about socialism are the very core theories that will turn socialism from fantasy into science.
Marx and Engels were serious about their socialist ideas, and their view of socialism had preconditions. For example, while Engels noted in Anti-Duhring that “with the seizing of the means of production by society, the production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer”, he made it clear that “since the historical appearance of the capitalist model of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by various groups, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible and a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realization exist. Like every other social advance, it becomes practical, not by those understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions.”He added that the separation of society into a ruling and an oppressed class “was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times” and “will be swept away by the complete development of modern production forces”. He noted that “abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism”, meaning socialization of production must be realized upon advanced productive forces.(5) Marx wrote in the Das Kapital that the termination of Fetishism of the Commodity required a certain social material foundation, which was a natural product of long-term, painful and historical development.(6) However, on the ground, most countries starting a socialism system were plagued with under-developed economic conditions and were far from owning advanced productive forces as imagined by Marx and Engels. A refusal to see the situation on the ground or an idealistic approach in social development would only result in being punished by history. The teachers were right, it was just unfortunate some of the students were wrong.
Current Stage of Social Development
Having abandoned Stalin's theory and gone back to the original criteria of Marxist socialism, we are not quite clear about the current stage of social development, which is listed as follows:
I would like to focus on the following key points of the table above:
1. The first line in the table is about historical stages, and according to Marxism, there will be a transition period between capitalism and communism. However, it should be noted here that, due to the previous restrictions, Marx and Engels had perceived the transition period to be quite short. However, according to practical experiences and new developments, as socialist victories happened mostly in less developed countries, the transition from capitalism to communism will definitely take a long period of time. Only by acknowledging the long transition period, can socialist countries avoid being hasty, making premature decisions and skipping stages of development.
2. The second line is about developmental stages of communism, namely, primitive and advanced communism according to Marx doctrines. The key issue is to understand the stages in the historical transitional period from capitalism to communism. The basic task of the period is to build up socialism as the primitive stage of communism, for which I defined the period as “socialist in-development”. Due to the length of time, it can be divided into several stages further. In accordance with decades of historical development and the arguments of Engels, I believe the “socialism in-development” period can be divided into four stages. The first is the preliminary stage, or the transition period from capitalism to socialism, and many socialist countries have made the error of being too hasty in this stage, which led to serious consequences. Even up to today, many countries are paying the price for their mistakes. It's safe to argue that a socialist country, after revolutionary victory, should arrange a long period for this stage to complete necessary tasks in laying the solid framework in political, economic and social fields to pave the way for future development. Then it can take a step-by-step approach to develop socialism according to the country's comprehensive conditions, including political readiness, economic level, industrial and agriculture production, technological power, public ownership, economic system, people's living standards as well as cultural and moral standards, to move towards socialism as envisaged by Marx and Engels.
3. The third line is devoted to the nature of social system. Undoubtedly, the primitive stage of communism is the socialist society in the common sense, while the advanced stage is the communist society. The key issue is to define the nature of a socialist society. With a people's democratic dictatorship as a political system, a dominant state-owned sector in economy, a macro plan for the overall commodity economy, and a distribution principle of “to each according to his contribution” or a combination of the exchange of labor and the exchange of equal value, the current stage of development, in essence, is socialism, although society has yet to reach the primitive stage of communism. Some Eastern European socialists labeled the current stage in their countries as “realistic socialism”, a different concept from the socialism described by Marx which I agree with. As such, I regard the “realist socialist society” as the next stage of “socialism development”, or “a socialist society in development”.
4. The last line of the table focuses on the economic system, a topic widely discussed in China. In the first stage of communism in the future, commodity economy will be replaced by product economy, yet such a change is not realistic at present. The biggest mistake in skipping necessary development stages is the premature abolishment of commodity economy, for commodity economy is an inevitable stage in social and economic development. In the socialism in-development stage, a planned commodity economy must be developed to solve the long-existing conflict between theory and practices – development of a planned commodity economy can promote social productivity to accelerate the process towards product economy and communism, as envisaged by Marx and Engels. In short, we must embrace commodity economy in order to smooth the transition towards the development of socialism.
A Big Retreat Is in Need
Further retreat is needed in recognizing current development stages, from the grand stage of communism to the transition period between capitalism and communism.
China's history tells us that we must make a thorough retreat. Only by doing so, can China find a production relation system fit into production process and be freed from the theory-practice contradiction. As China loosens its ideological shackles, China can vigorously develop a commodity-based economy, a diversified economy which shall lead to the superiority of a socialist system within China. In short, a retreat from ideology is to enable the survival of socialism and the development in China to serve the country's growth and national rejuvenation, of which we are currently on the verge of beginning.
(1)The article was written in 1986.
(2)Selected Works of I. V. Stalin, Book I, Chin. ed., p. 90.
(3)Selected Works of I. V. Stalin, Book II, Chin. ed., p. 588.
(4)Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Vol. 36, Chin. ed., p. 420.
(5)Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Vol. 3, Chin. ed., pp. 439–440.
(6)Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Vol. 23, Chin. ed., p. 97.