PincheD eadline and Display saturday ele publication. Payment in advance Statue. Organised by Merseyside ANL PICKET GARNERS: -Main London W1 s strike pay is only £6. All donation Rm 84, 12-13 Henrietta St., London Strike rund Co laVi WC2. 01-240 1056 NORTH LONDON AND in Hackney in the 30s and its lessons for Stamford Hill Library, 8pm on Tues 12 Der 'FIGHT T-shirts.
white cotton with red design.
sleeve or regular short sleeve side in cous order d dies.
Socialist Challenge 7 December 1978 page 6 -TIS with deen reore ans sadness inat socialists in Nottingham announce th orhistireless work around the strike at ascism. his honest levotion to the cause of his clas He will be greatly missed by his man comrades of all politica / Fi Litho. Must painting and production echniques especially platemaking, an advantage Apply in writing to 828er St. London Nt or ring 01-359 Good SOCIALIST CHALLENGE now nas a stock ni attractive nessian Daes WItl two designs: in black, fight racism, in -women s liberation syntool wus
language periodical in the West.
character of the article.
lack of any "Hundred Flowers' within the apparatus.
party apparatus during the Sixties.
Editorial Board.
W hy is it necessary today to put forth the issue of bringing democracy into plav consolidating the legal system? People often consider:
has the Chinese Communist Party not led the people in overthrowing the mountains of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism and in estao ising ne reone s kebuoic.
Has our democratic revolution not been successful? have achievements not been made in our socialist revolution and construction? Is it not clearly understood that people's democracy exists under the socialist system?
The disaster created by Lin Piao and the gang of four has made people think once again. With feelings of deep suffering, the people cannot help but reflect: how could the gang of four have run amok in such a way over the past several years? Why were the Chinese people tolerant of them? wicked riminals in chinese histoross were obviously the they frenziedly damaged inner-Party democracy and people's democracy. vehemently trampled upon the legal SYSUCH, wantonly persecuted revolutionary cadres and people, and led socialist China onto the path of a counter-revolutionary comeback.
However, although the gang of four and their followers seized surprisingly great power, there were only a handful of them. Why couldn't the hundred of millionsof our people have exposed prevent such a disaster and safeguard the revolutionary fruits of our decades of bloody sacrifice?
Speaking of the counter-revolutionary d'etat Bonaparte, Marx said:
French people nave Sale convincing: That their nation suffered a sneak allack... why was a naton or THE TEXT we publish below was first published in the official youth publication of the People's Republic of China, China Youth, some weeks ago. A slightly modified version was reprinted in the People's Daily on 13 November. This is its first publication in an EnglishWehave been forced, for reasons of space, to delete a few sections. We must stress, however, that these excisions in no way change the The importance of this test lies in the fact that it reveals the severe contradictions now erupting in the People's Republic. They reflect the undemocratic and bureaucratic character of the regime: the total institutionalised links between the apparatuses and the masses; the difficulties created by this absence for the bureaucracy in running a country of 800 million are obvious.
These problems are not new. They have existed in China since 1949. There have been periodic efforts to grapple with them. The campaign in the Fifties and the Revolution in the Sixties both represented attempts to involve the masses, albeit in a manipulative fashion and essentially in order to use the weight of mass mobilisations in order to resolve debates This clearly involved dangers. The mass movements could get out of hand. In both the above campaigns an independent dynamic did develop. It was stifled by the party bureaucracy in the Fifties and Nonetheless the very fact that a number of partv leaders and. in particular, Mao himself were ready to use the masses indicates two acts. First that the relationship between the party and the masses in post-revolutionary China was not exactly the same as that of Stalin and the Russian masses; secondly, a constant appeal to the masses meant a much higher degree of primitive politicisation than existed in It is in this overall context that we have to view the current debate. We have many disagreement with the document. In particular it fails to explicitly call for the right of other political tendencies and parties or independent trade unions to exist in China. But it nonetheless reflects serious divisions emerging within the apparatus. For it was not crafted on to a wall poster in central Peking, but appeared in an official journal of the party. These divisions are not unrelated to mass pressures as revealed by the recent wall-poster campaign The decision last week of the Chinese leaders to try and halt the wall-poster campaign and clamp down on criticisms of Mao and Hua is the clearest indication yet that they fear a revival of mass politics in the country as a whole. Whether or not they will be able to stop the campaign for socialist democracy is an open question. If it spreads to the provinces it could re-open many of the wounds inflicted on the 36,000,000 people put off guard and made prisoners without resistance by ted Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.1, p.608).
In other words: the viewpoint that alRe advances and setbacks in history can all be attributed to or blamed on individuals cannot stand up.
History cannot have occurred in vain. We have paid a high price but earned what we don know perore.
Wehavecometo understand: the gang China had deep social and political The incompleteness of our laws, the the absence of reliable organisations and systems to democracy gave Lin Piao and the gang of four opportunities to exploit.
When the democratic means of the Party and people were weakened and undermined, the small number of careerists and conspirators who nac come no bower were abe to do whatever they liked. They donned a "lett revolutionary cloak. waved the most signboards of the Communist Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and fooled and incited some of the masscs. particularly people.
The vast numbers of Communist Party members and the masses people at first did not consider and could not possibly exercise supervision over them; later, uncy were powertess to stop mem and without the legal This was an extremely deep, painful lesson which history taught us revolutionary people cannot help but remember this lesson and seize the weapons of democracy and the legal The people's will and rights Louis should be protected the Constitution, laws and departments; to carry out this protection and prevent it from being understate/parts *Cultural saceudru socialis!
seriously YOULLE nave acted to by the judicial to worry because their Only when the masses of people can brothers have left. truly make the final decisions on state Wher affairs and really control their own destiny will our nation no longer need COUTHY — like children who cannot consolidated. support themselves — that they might become orphans with no one to turn to fathers and elder the political power of our will really be mature and Stimulation of the Chinese people's tremendous enthusiasm and creative spirit in carrying out the general task for the new period and building a modern socialist country this is pressing semicance in ascuss ne re ssues or democracy and the legal system today.
This is thetide, the will of the people and an important sign of the new period of Chinese revolution.
----- pull-quotes -----
sincere condolences to his family ocialist Challen
crushed by the army backed by the party in the Sixties. Stalinist or Brezhnevite Russia today.
*CHINA IN TURMOIL