This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

The Political Economy of Counterrevolution in China: 1976-88


Table of Contents


Introduction

	Maoist Method and Theory

	Counterrevolution as Reverse Social Revolution

	State Capitalism

	Predicted Social Outcomes in State Capitalist Revolution

	Socialism

Political History of the Counterrevolution

	Post-Liberation Origins of the New State Capitalists

	The Cultural Revolution Political Spectrum

	The Cultural Revolution as Proletarian Democracy in Action

	The Cultural Revolution: Twists and Turns for the Capitalist-Roaders

	1976: Triumph of the Capitalist-Roaders

	1976-88: Consolidation and Advancement of State Capitalist Class Power


Science and Technology

	Counterrevolution in the Philosophy of Science

	Technocrats: the Resurgent Middle Class

The New Class Polarization and Class Relations

	The Ownership Counterrevolution in Agriculture

		The Importance of the Central Government in Rural Appropriation

		Evidence of the New Exploitation in the Countryside Itself

		Samir Amin's Statist Mode of Appropriation

	The Ownership Counterrevolution in Industry

		Profit in Command

		The New Profit Sharing and Local Interests

		Barriers to Competition: Local Party Officials and Inflation

		Centripetal Forces: The Undertow of the Concentration of State Capital

		Centrifugal Forces: Marketization

		Trade Union Farce

	The Coercion of Labor out of Labor-Power as a Whole

		Unemployment, Firing and Contracts

		Sexism and the Division of the Working Classes

The Implications of the Counterrevolution in China's Economy

	Exacerbation of the Division of Labor

	The Anarchy of Production

		"Competitive Socialism"

		Problems in Investment

		Production of the Wrong Goods

		Overproduction

		Unemployment

		Crime 

		Mental Illness

		Partnership with Imperialism

Conclusion

1st draft 1984

2nd draft, Feb. 1985

3rd draft, Dec. 1986, 

4th draft, May 1988 

5th rewrite August-Nov, 1988.

By Henry Park

[mim3@mim.org comments in transcription January 2005:
This book came out before the events of June 4 1989 in Beijing deflated many international supporters of Deng Xiaoping. Subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union killed many of the feelings among alleged communists in the world in favor of a Deng Xiaoping line mixing Marxist rhetoric with Liberalism ideologically and capitalism economically. Gorbachev’s brief burst into the spotlight of popularity was soon to seem like a distant memory. So what we have to understand about the early and mid-1980s is that Maoists were saying that both the Soviet Union and China were state-capitalist, a minority position in the imperialist countries among those calling themselves communist at that time. For example, the idea that China had 8 digit unemployment still came as a shock. Since then, some of the conflict over the facts has died simply for political reasons. In the process of piecing together this document, I have done some light editing and I may have misunderstood, disorganized or botched the previous rewriting process mentioned above, the five rewrites. I also definitely screwed up some minor formatting. Another problem is that this document will read differently in different browsers. Bubbles or boxes appearing in the text are footnotes and should be clicked on. Nonetheless, no errors I may have made that I know of detract fundamentally from the meaning of the text.]
Back to China page [Home] Next book section