Is Thanasis Spanidis (“commissioned by the CC of the KP”) trying to submit the International Communist Movement to his opportunist and subjectivist historical revisionism?

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NOTE: when I am talking here about Communist Party, I am talking about the “Kommunistische Partei” (of Germany)

In my previous article “Opportunism resulting from petty-bourgeois intellectual laziness, if not noticed and combated, can lead to revisionism. CONCRETE example: Thanasis Spanidis “commissioned by the CC of the CP”….” , I wrote about the analysis that Thanasis Spanidis made regarding the Chinese revolution and the construction of socialism .… and regarding the restoration of capitalism “commissioned by the CC of the CP” has been posted on their website and is therefore now a party position: “Der Große Sprung Zurück”.
My position which I developed in my previous article was: If this analysis, which Thanasis Spanidis produced “commissioned by the CC of the Communist Party”, now becomes a “party position”, you get the effect of an WRONG conception of the application of Marxism-Leninism “creeping” INTO the Communist Party.
Here, I will now discuss the analysis that Thanasis Spanidis produced, in which he addresses the International Communist Movement.
Thus, one cannot escape the impression that the analysis Thanasis Spanidis disseminated: “The Rule of Capital in China” is meant to resemble, both in title and execution, an “improved and updated version” of the analysis produced in 2010 by the KKE (The International Role of China)

Both texts concern an analysis of the current capitalist character of China. However, where Thanasis Spanidis's text differs from that of the KKE is that Thanasis Spanidis simultaneously analyses the revolution in China and the construction of socialism, stating that there were already “fundamental errors” as early as 1949, meaning that the line of the CCP (as formulated by Mao) already contained “continuities” that would lead to the restoration of capitalism. In other words, Mao would be just as responsible for the restoration of capitalism in China as Deng Xiaoping.
The KKE's analysis in 2010-11 was intended to clarify the CURRENT capitalist character of China to the workers of Greece, who were directly subjected to the practices of Chinese capitalists and where there were close ties between the PASOK government and the Communist Party of China.
The KKE made NO analysis—except for a few remarks—of how the restoration of capitalism would have happened.

The “summarizing” remarks of the KKE in her text of 2010-11:

“It is important to remind ourselves of certain facts from the past. As long as the Soviet Union existed, Chinese foreign policy was coordinated with that of the USA against the USSR. This stance initially was presented as criticism of the opportunist turn of the CPSU at its 20th Congress. Of course, we know today that in the beginning the CPC did not actually differentiate its position, openly or in essence, from the directions of the 20thCongress of the CPSU. Its disagreement was published later, motivated by Sino-Soviet border disputes. The stance of the CPC had some impact on CPs, due to the opportunist sliding of the USSR into positions concerning “everlasting peace and competition” with the imperialist powers within the framework of “peaceful coexistence”. Nevertheless after the 20th Congress the CPC did not restrict its criticism to the opportunist positions, but chose a strategy which in practice led on many occasions to a hostile stance in relation to the international communist movement and the USSR, and in coordination with the USA, to a position against the interests of the world revolutionary movement.”

This is a subjectivist and, as far as CONCRETE historical FACTS is concerned, incorrect “summary”. (the phrases in italic-fat)
The remarks further, without mentioning that it was AFTER the death of Mao ( the “theory of three worlds” is from 1977!):

“The CPC proceeded on the basis of its analysis concerning the “three worlds”: the “first world” was made up of the “superpowers” (indeed the USSR was labeled a “social-imperialist power”), the “second world” made up of the wealthy allies of the superpowers, and the “third world” made up of the developing countries, including China.”

And then without saying clearly that AFTER de 3th session of the 11th CC in 1978:

“A typical example is the attitude of China in relation to the internationalist assistance which the USSR gave to the People’s Revolutionary State Power in Afghanistan.
On this occasion China was a part of the “bloc” of forces formed by the USA, together with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others, bankrolling the most reactionary social-political forces in Afghanistan, which were waging an armed struggle against the newly-established people’s government¹.
In an article of the “Washington Post” of 19th July 1992 concerning the tactics of the CIA in relation to Afghanistan in 1980, it is mentioned that China sold weapons to the CIA and donated a smaller number of weapons to Pakistan. At the same time the article stresses:“ To what extent China played a role constitutes one of the best kept secrets of the war”². In this article there were also references to the types of weapons that China gave for the strengthening of the counterrevolutionaries.” “

Due to the “condensed” manner of phrasing, it is “suggested”—but nowhere CONCRETELY proven—that there was a “continuity” between the political line or strategy that Mao developed BEFORE his death in 1976 and the line or strategy that Deng Xiaoping developed AFTER 1978, which led to the restoration of capitalism.

Thanasis Spanidis apparently wants to “improve” or “supplement” that analysis by the KKE….

His text, “The Rule of Capital in China”, is in English on the KP website and is thus also directed at other communist parties. Moreover, the text is translated and adopted by other communist parties on their respective website. In this way, this – at the very least – opportunistic view of applying Marxism-Leninism can spread within other communist parties.
In his “more extensive” and “improved” analysis … he even goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, thus the period BEFORE the revolution … and links what he judges to be “mistakes” committed at that time to Mao Zedong:

a. Problems and Mistakes During the Revolutionary Period of the People’s Republic
While the great achievements of the Chinese Revolution are evident and must always be defended against distorting anti-communist propaganda, it should not be overlooked that many problematic developments, which contributed to the reintroduction of capitalism after 1978, had their origins in earlier decades. Even though a profound rupture in the relations of production and ownership took place after 1978 – the dissolution of the socialist planned economy and the transition to capitalist social relations – there are certain continuities in the policies of the CCP both before and after 1978, without which the transition to capitalism is difficult to explain. The leading figures of the counterrevolution, such as Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang, had, unlike the Soviet counterrevolutionary leaders Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Yakovlev, or Gaidar, fought in the revolution. Now they were pioneers of the dismantling of socialism. How was such a thing possible? This immediately raises the question: Did the CCP already previously adopt positions that later facilitated a departure from the socialist path?
The problematic, revisionist tendencies of the CCP before 1978 can only be briefly examined here and will be dealt with in more detail in another text.(…)
The tasks facing the CCP were therefore manifold: national and anti-colonial liberation, overcoming pre-capitalist relations of oppression and large landownership, and, of course, building a socialist society.
In the theory of the CCP, and especially in the thinking of Mao Tse-tung, the national rebirth of China and socialism were interconnected and mutually reinforcing. This was not wrong in itself – of course, it was correct that the CCP led the struggle for China’s liberation from its semi-colonial status. However, what was problematic from the beginning was the idea that a part of the bourgeoisie could participate in the revolution – because, according to Mao, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie in China, if handled correctly, was not an antagonistic contradiction, but rather a “contradiction among the people.”³ Contained within this was an understanding of socialism as a joint struggle of the entire Chinese people (from which only the “compradors”, who were linked to foreign imperialism, were excluded) against foreign powers.
Mao analyzed social and political conflicts using the terminology of “primary and secondary contradictions”, which he developed himself.
According to this, in a specific phase of development, one particular contradiction is always the principal contradiction, by which Mao simply meant the predominant, most important conflict, while the others were secondary contradictions. The principal contradiction was thus determined relatively arbitrarily by whichever political struggle happened to be dominant in the country at the time. As a category for analyzing the societal foundation, this concept was not as suitable as the term fundamental contradiction used by Engels, which refers to the basic contradiction of society from which all other contradictions develop. However, Mao went even further and emphasized that principal and secondary contradictions frequently switched places, so that a particular conflict that had just been the principal contradiction could suddenly become a secondary contradiction, and vice versa.⁴ Thus, it was possible that during the fight against Japanese occupation, the CCP defined the struggle of the Chinese nation against Japan as the “principal contradiction”⁵, in 1952 the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie⁶ and from 1956 the contradiction “between the needs of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the inability of our economy and culture to meet these needs.”⁷ Ultimately, by seeing the most important task of socialism as the development of the productive forces rather than the development of new production relations, an idea was already laid out that Deng Xiaoping would later adopt and make the centerpiece of his worldview: for Deng, as we will see later, socialism was equated with economic growth.

Without evidence and without a CONCRETE analysis of the CONCRETE HISTORICAL facts, Thanasis Spanidis states in the title of the short chapter, very biasedly:

a. Problems and Mistakes During the Revolutionary Period of the People’s Republic

He then presents a biased “position”:

… there are certain continuities in the policies of the CCP both before and after 1978, without which the transition to capitalism is difficult to explain.

This is a reflection of the position the KKE supposedly adopted, which Thanasis Spanidis makes the starting point of his analysis... he refers directly to the “continuity” that is “suggested” in those few limited “summarizing” remarks, which, incidentally, contain a number of erroneous views (see my previous article...).
According to the “analysis” by Thanasis Spanidis in “Der Große Sprung Zurück”  — to which he consistently refers, incidentally, in “The Rule of Capital in China” — Mao was supposedly “un-Marxist” and even “counter-revolutionary” — “... a traitor to the communist cause and an objective servant of the counter-revolution.⁸“
To achieve this, he jumps from the “policy or/and politics or/and strategy” of “the CCP as a whole” (“the policies of the CCP”) to the development of strategy by Mao in particular.
By speaking of “THE CCP,” he does not proceed from the CONCRETE reality that a bourgeois tendency existed within the CCP FROM THE BEGINNING. ( see the text by William Hintotn at the end)
There was thus a CONTINUOUS “struggle between two lines,” and it is due to the occasional dominance of that bourgeois tendency (to which Liu Chaochi and Deng Xiaoping ultimately belonged) that Mao was often placed “in the minority.”
For Thanasis Spanidis, “they all fought in the revolution,” and Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang in fact embodied the “continuity” of the development of socialism towards the restoration of capitalism.
And thus he can “prove” his preconceived thesis by applying historical IDEALISM:

“The leading figures of the counterrevolution, such as Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang, had, unlike the Soviet counterrevolutionary leaders Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Yakovlev, or Gaidar, fought in the revolution. Now they were pioneers of the dismantling of socialism. How was such a thing possible? This immediately raises the question: Did the CCP already previously adopt positions that later facilitated a departure from the socialist path?”

With the rhetorical question above, Thanasis Spanidis “suggests” that the CCP as a whole (thus including Mao) was already defending positions that undermined the development of socialism. By suggesting it in a question, Thanasis Spanidis does not have to demonstrate it based on a CONCRETE analysis of the CONCRETE facts.

From “the policies of the CCP” so the CCP as a whole and no notion of “two lines”… to “the line of Mao”

Then Thanasis Spanidis suddenly makes a distinction between “the CCP as a whole” and “the line of Mao”.
Were there other lines within the CCP after all, Thanasis Spanidis?

“ In the theory of the CCP, and especially in the thinking of Mao Tse-tung, the national rebirth of China and socialism were interconnected and mutually reinforcing. This was not wrong in itself – of course, it was correct that the CCP led the struggle for China’s liberation from its semi-colonial status. However, what was problematic from the beginning was the idea that a part of the bourgeoisie could participate in the revolution – because, according to Mao, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie in China, if handled correctly, was not an antagonistic contradiction, but rather a “contradiction among the people.”⁹

Thanasis Spanidis does not make a CONCRETE analysis of the CONCRETE historical course of the revolution. Mao’s line in the revolution, which in the first phase was therefore the liberation from occupation, would be governed, according to Thanasis Spanidis, by the line of “non-antagonistic contradiction with the national bourgeoisie”, which Mao developed only AFTER the revolution, namely in 1957 in “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”¹⁰.
BEFORE the revolution, the CONCRETE situation was to achieve as much of a united front as possible with the Kuomingtang against the Japanese fascist occupation.
AFTER the revolution, where power was in the hands of the working class (in alliance with the peasants), whereby the capitalists were either expropriated or still bound by the power of the working class (in alliance with the peasants), and the bourgeoisie was mainly still “present” in the form of its ideology, which had to be combated through discussion, setting the right example (collectivization in agriculture for example, later the development of the communes, ...), thus by developing a proletarian consciousness among the majority of the people, insofar as there was no clear sabotage or subversion ...
Thanasis Spanidis “proves” his vague ambiguous thesis “that the bourgeoisie could participate in the revolution” by using a “quote from Mao” from a text he wrote only in 1957, a quote moreover without providing any context.... (typical of the dogmatism of Thanasis Spanidis!)

The only “historical” analysis of Thanasis Spanidisis the general thesis:

“Contained within this was an understanding of socialism as a joint struggle of the entire Chinese people (from which only the “compradors”, who were linked to foreign imperialism, were excluded) against foreign powers.”

Here, Thanasis Spanidis creates much ambiguity between “the fundamental contradiction” that exists and continues to exist (until the classes will no longer exist) between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and how that contradiction is addressed in an “antagonistic” manner (with violence and coercion, for example in the case of “expropriation” or against sabotage or subversion…) or in a “non-antagonistic manner” (through discussion, setting a good example within the framework of the cooperative and/or communes, for example...).
MAO’s position was already clear in 1927 (Thanasis Spanidis must know this too, as he himself refers to the text in “Der Große Sprung Zurück”, in the footnote “ Mao Tse-tung: Analyse der Klassen der Gesellschaft, in Ausgewählte Werke Bd. 1, 1926, S.9“):
In ANALYSIS OF THE CLASSES IN CHINESE SOCIETY - March 1926

The modern industrial proletariat numbers about two million. It is not large because China is economically backward. These two million industrial workers are mainly employed in five industries--railways, mining, maritime transport, textiles and shipbuilding--and a great number are enslaved in enterprises owned by foreign capitalists. Though not very numerous, the industrial proletariat represents China's new productive forces, is the most progressive class in modern China and has become the leading force in the revolutionary movement. We can see the important position of the industrial proletariat in the Chinese revolution from the strength it has displayed in the strikes of the last four years, such as the seamen's strikes,¹¹ the railway strike,¹² the strikes in the Kailan and Tsiaotso coal mines,¹³ the Shameen strike¹⁴ and the general strikes in Shanghai and Hong Kong¹⁵ after the May 30th Incident. The first reason why the industrial workers hold this position is their concentration. No other section of the people is so concentrated. The second reason is their low economic status. They have been deprived of all means of production, have nothing left but their hands, have no hope of ever becoming rich and, moreover, are subjected to the most ruthless treatment by the imperialists, the warlords and the bourgeoisie. That is why they are particularly good fighters. The coolies in the cities are also a force meriting attention. They are mostly dockers and rickshaw men, and among them, too, are sewage carters and street cleaners. Possessing nothing but their hands, they are similar in economic status to the industrial workers but are less concentrated and play a less important role in production. There is as yet little modern capitalist farming in China. By rural proletariat we mean farm labourers hired by the year, the month or the day. Having neither land, farm implements nor funds, they can live only by selling their labour power. Of all the workers they work the longest hours, for the lowest wages, under the worst conditions, and with the least security of employment. They are the most hard-pressed people in the villages, and their position in the peasant movement is as important as that of the poor peasants.
Apart from all these, there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all. In every part of the country they have their secret societies, which were originally their mutual-aid organizations for political and economic struggle, for instance, the Triad Society in Fukien and Kwangtung, the Society of Brothers in Hunan, Hupeh, Kweichow and Szechuan, the Big Sword Society in Anhwei, Honan and Shantung, the Rational Life Society in Chihli¹⁶ and the three northeastern provinces, and the Green Band in Shanghai and elsewhere¹⁷ One of China's difficult problems is how to handle these people. Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.
To sum up, it can be seen that our enemies are all those in league with imperialism--the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right-wing may become our enemy and their left-wing may become our friend but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

And to stubborn people with blinders, like Thanasis Spanidis, Mao repeats this once again in 1952:

THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE WORKING CLASS AND THE BOURGEOISIE IS THE PRINCIPAL CONTRADICTION IN CHINA - June 6, 1952 

[Written comment on a document drafted by the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Comrade Mao Tsetung criticized the head of this department for his error in regarding the national bourgeoisie as an intermediate class.]

With the overthrow of the landlord class and the bureaucrat-capitalist class, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie has become the principal contradiction in China; therefore the national bourgeoisie should no longer be defined as an intermediate class.

And because the fundamental contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat still exists under socialism, even in the situation where the (expropriated) capitalists and the bourgeoisie are under the control of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is primarily the influence of bourgeois ideology that must be combated (in a non-antagonistic way if possible, in an antagonistic way if necessary….). Mao in THE SITUATION IN THE SUMMER OF 1957 - July 1957 :

During the period of socialist revolution in our country the contradiction between the people and the bourgeois Rightists, who oppose the Communist Party, the people and socialism, is one between ourselves and the enemy, that is, an antagonistic, irreconcilable, life-and-death contradiction. (…)
Don't be afraid of the violent storm, toughen yourselves and bear it. In each unit, the crest of the torrent will pass in two or three weeks, and the unit can then switch to the new stage of counter-attack on the Rightists. Faced with the Rightists' wild attacks during these two or three weeks, the leading cadres of various units should toughen themselves and hear them out without rebutting, concentrate on analysing and studying the situation, muster strength for the counter-attack, and unite with the forces of the Left, win over the middle, and isolate the Rightists -- all this makes an excellent set of Marxist tactics

And regarding the kind of contradictions—antagonistic or non-antagonistic—even those in which the contradiction does not FUNDMENTALLY change in character, and the concept of the application of Marxism-Leninism herein, Mao says in “MORE ON THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT¹⁸”:

The first type consists of contradictions between our enemy and ourselves (contradictions between the camp of imperialism and that of socialism, contradictions between imperialism and the people and oppressed nations of the whole world, contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the imperialist countries, etc.). This is the fundamental type of contradiction, based on the clash of interests between antagonistic classes. The second type consists of contradictions within the ranks of the people (contradictions between different sections of the people, between comrades within the Communist Party, contradictions between the government and the people in socialist countries, contradictions between socialist countries, contradictions between Communist Parties, etc.). This type of contradiction is not basic; it is not the result of a fundamental clash of interests between classes, but of conflicts between right and wrong opinions or of a partial contradiction of interests. It is a type of contradiction whose solution must, first and foremost, be subordinated to the over-all interests of the struggle against the enemy. Contradictions among the people themselves can and ought to be resolved, proceeding from the desire for solidarity, through criticism or struggle, thus achieving a new solidarity under new conditions. Of course, real life is complicated. Sometimes, it is possible that classes whose interests are in fundamental conflict unite to cope with their main common enemy. On the other hand, under specific conditions, a certain contradiction among the people may be gradually transformed into an antagonistic contradiction when one side of it gradually goes over to the enemy. Finally, the nature of such a contradiction may change completely so that it no longer belongs to the category of contradictions among the people themselves but becomes a component part of the contradiction between ourselves and the enemy. Such a phenomenon did come about in the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Communist Party of China. In a word, anyone who adopts the standpoint of the people should not equate the contradictions among the people with contradictions between the enemy and ourselves, or confuse these two types of contradiction, let alone place the contradictions among the people above the contradictions between the enemy and ourselves. Those who deny the class struggle and do not distinguish between the enemy and ourselves are definitely not Communists or Marxist-Leninists.

But Thanasis Spanidis says very generally and without reference to CONCRETE FACTS, just as where Mao himself speaks above (which is in fact the context that Thanasis Spanidis completely ignores and conceals with his general remarks):

Mao analyzed social and political conflicts using the terminology of “primary and secondary contradictions”, which he developed himself. According to this, in a specific phase of development, one particular contradiction is always the principal contradiction, by which Mao simply meant the predominant, most important conflict, while the others were secondary contradictions. The principal contradiction was thus determined relatively arbitrarily by whichever political struggle happened to be dominant in the country at the time. As a category for analyzing the societal foundation, this concept was not as suitable as the term fundamental contradiction used by Engels, which refers to the basic contradiction of society from which all other contradictions develop. However, Mao went even further and emphasized that principal and secondary contradictions frequently switched places, so that a particular conflict that had just been the principal contradiction could suddenly become a secondary contradiction, and vice versa.¹⁹ Thus, it was possible that during the fight against Japanese occupation, the CCP defined the struggle of the Chinese nation against Japan as the “principal contradiction”²⁰, in 1952 the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie²¹ and from 1956 the contradiction “between the needs of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the inability of our economy and culture to meet these needs.”²² Ultimately, by seeing the most important task of socialism as the development of the productive forces rather than the development of new production relations, an idea was already laid out that Deng Xiaoping would later adopt and make the centerpiece of his worldview: for Deng, as we will see later, socialism was equated with economic growth.

First of all, once again, NO CONCRETE analysis of CONCRETE historical facts, but a global and general “assessment” by Thanasis Spanidis.
Secondly, this reveals Thanasis Spanidis’s lack of insight into the application of scientific socialism, as he attempts precisely to “prove” that Mao lacked insight into the application of scientific socialism.
I will return to this specifically and in detail in a subsequent article, but I can already say that Thanasis Spanidis fails to distinguish between the GENERALITY of a contradiction and the (CONCRETE) PARTICULARITY of the contradiction.
For instance, Engels spoke of the special contradiction in (capitalist) society, namely the FUNDAMENTAL contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the working class.
Mao spoke in the GENERAL about the existence of “primary and secondary contradictions”. Moreover, Mao emphasized, in contrast to the attitude of Liu Chaochi for example, that under socialism the FUNDAMENTAL contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the working class still existed.
Incidentally, in the text “On Contradiction,” to which Thanasis Spanidis himself also refers—albeit very selectively—Mao states that failing to see the difference between the generality of contradiction and the particularity of contradiction demonstrates the dogmatists’ lack of knowledge of scientific socialism.

Out ON CONTRADICTION - August 1937 :

Where our dogmatists err on this question is that, on the one hand, they do not understand that we have to study the particularity of contradiction and know the particular essence of individual things before we can adequately know the universality of contradiction and the common essence of things, and that, on the other hand, they do not understand that after knowing the common essence of things, we must go further and study the concrete things that have not yet been thoroughly studied or have only just emerged. Our dogmatists are lazy-bones. They refuse to undertake any painstaking study of concrete things, they regard general truths as emerging out of the void, they turn them into purely abstract unfathomable formulas, and thereby completely deny and reverse the normal sequence by which man comes to know truth. Nor do they understand the interconnection of the two processes in cognition— from the particular to the general and then from the general to the particular. They understand nothing of the Marxist theory of knowledge. (..)
Lenin meant just this when he said that the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.²³ Our dogmatists have violated Lenin's teachings; they never use their brains to analyse anything concretely, and in their writings and speeches they always use stereotypes devoid of content, thereby creating a very bad style of work in our Party.
In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. To be subjective means not to look at problems objectively, that is, not to use the materialist viewpoint in looking at problems.
… in studying the particularity of any kind of contradiction—the contradiction in each form of motion of matter, the contradiction in each of its processes of development, the two aspects of the contradiction in each process, the contradiction at each stage of a process, and the two aspects of the contradiction at each stage—in studying the particularity of all these contradictions, we must not be subjective and arbitrary but must analyse it concretely. Without concrete analysis there can be no knowledge of the particularity of any contradiction. We must always remember Lenin's words, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
Marx and Engels were the first to provide us with excellent models of such concrete analysis.

Thanasis Spanidis “proves” his view on Mao by SELECTIVELY quoting from a CCP text from 2021 (…. 2021, when for the KKE as well as for Thanasis Spanidis himself, the “communist” and thus “Marxist” character of the CCP no longer existed)

That Mao allegedly stated in 1956 that the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the working class was now “secondary” to the contradiction that had now become primary between the people’s needs for rapid economic and cultural development and the economy’s “lag” in meeting these “needs”, Thanasis Spanidis “proves” (in his dogmatic historically idealistic manner) with a reference to a CCP resolution from 2021 .....
The passage in Resolution of 2021 to which Thanasis Spanidis SELECTIVELY refers:

… the Party propounded at its Eighth National Congress that the main contradiction in China was no longer the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie, but rather that between the demand of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the reality that the country’s economy and culture fell short of the needs of the people. Therefore, the major task facing the nation was to concentrate on developing the productive forces and realize industrialization in order to gradually meet the people’s growing material and cultural needs. The Party called on the people to redouble their efforts to build China step by step into a strong socialist country with modern agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology, and it led them in carrying out large-scale socialist construction across the board.

Now is it so that 2021 resolution in itself is a historical-revisionist text, in which the CCP of that moment (in 2021) falsifies its own history.
The idealism and metaphysics of Thanasis Spanidis are once again evident in his method of analysis.
Not based on CONCRETE historical facts, but on carefully selected quotes from texts in which ALL CONTEXT is concealed, as well as in the selection of the texts.

It is impossible to conclude otherwise than that Thanasis Spanidis does this CONSCIOUSLY.
Thanasis Spanidis refers to a CCP resolution from 2021(!) to “prove” by means of a SELECTED quote that Mao:

- allegedly had no knowledge of the application of scientific socialism: with the “own invention” of primary and secondary contradiction, which he then arbitrarily “swapped up”. Thanasis claims to “prove” in this way that Mao was not a Marxist or could not apply it
- that there would be a continuity or a connection between Mao’s “erroneous views” since the revolution and the construction of socialism and the final line of Deng-Xaoping, which then led to the restoration of capitalism.

The resolution of 2021 speaks of “the fundamental correct line of the 8th Congress,” which states that the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the working class would no longer be primary, and that the primary antagonism now lies between the needs of the people and the economy’s lagging behind in meeting those needs (the “lagging development of the productive forces”).
This was indeed the line of the 8th Congress that Liu Chaochi managed to impose on the party (“to have accepted by majority”).
This was NOT Mao’s view. Correcting this erroneous line was a problem for Mao: He could not oppose a line accepted by the Congress by a majority.
He spoke about this at Talk in the Enlarged Third Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CCP – October 7, 1957.  It is impossible that T did not know this; he is very well documented, and this speech can be found openly on, for example, marixists.org :

Consequently this was reflected in the resolutions of the 8th Party Congress, which said that the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat had been fundamentally resolved. This statement was not incorrect, but fundamental resolution is not equivalent to complete resolution. Once the problem of political authority was resolved, the problem of ownership was fundamentally resolved, but in the economic and political spheres there was not a complete resolution.
(...) At the Qingdao Conference this year²⁴ we saw clearly and pointed out that in the urban and rural areas there was still a struggle between the two roads. As this sort of class struggle has not been eradicated and the rightist elements at this time are wildly advancing, it must be said that there is a primary contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But strategically the Qingdao documents have said it well; it is all right if those at the meeting know what is primary and what is secondary. We have not talked about this for a long time. If we now add on to it, shaking heaven and earth, it would be bad. Now we must continue with the Qingdao method of expression for three months.
There is also bourgeois ideology among the workers. Within the party the three big “isms” have also been unfurled over the bourgeoisie. The two roads — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, socialism and capitalism — are the primary contradictions of the transitional era; for the time being we will not discuss them in the report. Have we discussed whether or not it is possible to mitigate the contradictions among the great mass of the people? On the other hand there are internal bureaucratism, sectarianism, and subjectivism; we can write about this problem theoretically. (…)
When we say that large-scale class struggle has fundamentally ended and that contradictions have been fundamentally resolved, we are speaking of the political system and the problem of ownership. But in building the superstructure, the question of ideology and political power in large measures has not been resolved. Individualism, bureaucratism, idealism are also a matter of building the superstructure and must be resolved. (….)
The first road is to assert that during the transitional period the primary contradiction is the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. (…)
Three classes are included among the people: the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the petit bourgeoisie. A contradiction exists among these three segments of the people. This contradiction is a contradiction among the people, and it is also a class contradiction. There is a distinction between class contradictions and contradictions between the enemy and ourselves. Generally speaking, a contradiction among the people is non- antagonistic, while a contradiction with the bourgeoisie has an antagonistic side. The central question is the contradictions among the three segments of the people. Among these a portion are covertly antagonistic. (….)
The work On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People²⁵ was not mistaken, but it was not as complete as the Qingdao document²⁶. (…)
Now it is clear-cut: in proceeding through the transitional era from capitalism to socialism, the main (or fundamental) contradiction is the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between socialism and capitalism. (…)
The resolutions of the 8th Party Congress declare that the main contradiction is the contradiction between the advanced social system and the backward productive forces. Speaking reasonably, one cannot speak in that manner. Now there are contradictions, and in the future there will also be contradictions. When cooperatives have all been transformed into state farms which pay out wages there will still be contradictions. Socialism is comprised of two sectors: public ownership and collective ownership. In the future, contradictions will also arise between the two. The socialist system and the productive forces are fundamentally in conformity, but they also have areas where there is not total conformity. There are still shortcomings and it is incorrect to say that there is perfect conformity. When Stalin mentioned perfect conformity (official report, page 14) there arose a problem. The ideology of religion is not in accord with socialism, but we still want to repair temples. Repairing temples is done to achieve the goal of tearing down temples. Why do we say this is by and large in accord? Because it can develop the productive forces. India undertook a five-year plan and increased its steel output by 300,000 tons. We raised our output by 94 million tons. Our system does not impede the development of the productive forces. After several tens of years the contradiction between the collective and the state-owned sectors will be resolved, but there will still be new contradictions. When we have arrived at communism, we will not need the law of value and we will not need an army, the international environment permitting of course. Marx, Engels, and Lenin never said this sentence, which is in the resolutions of the 8th Party Congress, but there is no harm in it. The meaning is that we must hurriedly develop production, strengthen the material foundation of socialist society; it is only that this was not said clearly. The essence of the stylistic faults is that we have not seriously talked about contradictions. It has drawn comparisons with foreign countries and with the future.
It is not necessary to change this sentence now; there is no need to discuss this question now. Lenin said that there is a contradiction between Soviet power and backward technology. We will not talk about this now. Afterwards it will be all right to explain it more clearly. Strictly speaking, it is of course incorrect to say that the socialist system and the productive forces are not in accord. We are a socialist system developing its productive forces. A good many economists say that there is a contradiction between our system and the productive forces and that the productive forces of a socialist system are backward. This sort of talk is bad.²⁷

Thanasis Spanidis “proves” with selected quotes, without context, and then paraphrases of texts containing views supposedly from Mao, but which turn out to be from Liu Chaochi, that Mao was in fact a revisionist who “developed his own Marxism”:

Mao analyzed social and political conflicts using the terminology of “primary and secondary contradictions”, which he developed himself.
(…) Mao went even further and emphasized that principal and secondary contradictions frequently switched places, so that a particular conflict that had just been the principal contradiction could suddenly become a secondary contradiction, and vice versa.²⁸ (….)… in 1952 the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie²⁹ and from 1956 the contradiction “between the needs of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the inability of our economy and culture to meet these needs.”³⁰

What, then, could Thanasis Spanidis’ assessment be of how Marxism is being applied by .....Stalin .....?
In “Economic Problems of socialism in the USSR” (Stalin, 1951)³¹, a book to which Thanasis Spanidis refers in “Der Große Sprung Zurück”( “ Stalin, Josef W. 1952: Ökonomische Probleme des Sozialismus in der UdSSR, Dietz Verlag Berlin“):

The immense assistance rendered by the socialist town, by our working class, to our peasantry in eliminating the landlords and kulaks strengthened the foundation for the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, while the systematic supply of first-class tractors and other machines to the peasantry and its collective farms converted the alliance between the working class and the peasantry into friendship between them. Of course, the workers and the collective-farm peasantry do represent two classes differing from one another in status. But this difference does not weaken their friendship in any way. On the contrary, their interests lie along one common line, that of strengthening the socialist system and attaining the victory of communism. (…)
As to the socialist system, where "antagonistic class contradictions" no longer exist ….

Nowhere here does Stalin speak of the bourgeoisie and the continuation of the struggle against her (in a non-antagonist way if possible, but in an antagonistic way if necessary...).
Is it the case that the “elimination of the landlords and the Kulaks” implies that the bourgeoisie no longer exists IN the Soviet Union?
What could Thanasis Spanidis tell us about this?

Thanasis Spanidis is SELECTIVE in his quoting. Regarding what might harm the proof of his biased view, … he simply remains silent.

So in the resolution of 2021 indeed is said as T put it: “from 1956 the contradiction “between the needs of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the inability of our economy and culture to meet these needs.”³² …
But Thanasis Spanidis quotes (or paraphrases) in a way as if the resolution reflected a continuity between Mao's original positions and the post-1978 politics that led to the restoration of capitalism. Due to the selective citation, it indeed appears as if this is also stated in that 2021 resolution.
Thus, would Thanasis Spanidis see the view “suggested” by the “summarizing” remarks in the KKE’s 2010 analysis as “confirmed” by this?
But a MORE COMPLETE citation from the 2021 resolution actually indicates that there is a FUNDAMENTAL BREAK between those views of Mao and the views of Deng Xiaoping.
Thanasis Spanidis must have read this as well. We cannot help but see a DELIBERATE deception by Thanasis Spanidis here.
That part of the Resolution of 2021 that Thanasis Spanidis is concealing from us (because it does not suit him):

In light of the domestic situation following socialist transformation, the Party propounded at its Eighth National Congress that the main contradiction in China was no longer the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie, but rather that between the demand of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the reality that the country’s economy and culture fell short of the needs of the people. Therefore, the major task facing the nation was to concentrate on developing the productive forces and realize industrialization in order to gradually meet the people’s growing material and cultural needs. The Party called on the people to redouble their efforts to build China step by step into a strong socialist country with modern agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology, and it led them in carrying out large-scale socialist construction across the board. (…)
Regrettably, the correct line adopted at the Party’s Eighth National Congress was not fully upheld. Mistakes were made such as the Great Leap Forward and the people’s commune movement, and the scope of the struggle against Rightists was also made far too broad. Confronted with a grave and complex external environment at the time, the Party was extremely concerned about consolidating China’s socialist state power, and made a wide range of efforts in this regard. However, Comrade Mao Zedong’s theoretical and practical errors concerning class struggle in a socialist society became increasingly serious, and the Central Committee failed to rectify these mistakes in good time. Under a completely erroneous appraisal of the prevailing class relations and the political situation in the Party and the country, Comrade Mao Zedong launched and led the Cultural Revolution. (….) ... the Political Bureau of the Central Committee resolutely(...) putting an end to the catastrophic Cultural Revolution.³³

The line AFTER 1978– and thus according to Deng Xiaoping and also according to the 2021 resolution – “condemned Mao’s mistakes” and would “correct those mistakes”.

REMARK: In my previous article , I show the striking similarities between what Deng Xiaoping and what Thanasis Spanidis judged as “Mao’s mistakes”.

If Thanasis Spanidis had read “On Contradiction” carefully, he could have read that Mao actually says:

Some people think that this is not true of certain contradictions. For instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are the principal aspect; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.

… and those “relations of production” that must change so that the productive forces can develop are connected with the “fundamental contradiction that still exists under socialism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat”. (see above what Mao says about THAT.

(For the time being) only one example of the historical idealism of Thanasis Spanidis from his analysis of the Cultural Revolution

Thanasis Spanidis about the Cultural Revolution in “The Rule of Capital in China”:

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, whose mastermind and leading figure was Mao, can be seen as an attempt to correct this one-sided prioritization of the development of productive forces. However, the method chosen for this – the mobilization of the masses against the party apparatus, the development of an absurd personality cult, the largely indiscriminate rejection of the entire previous culture, and the paralysis of the education system – weakened socialism instead of strengthening it. It did not lead to a correction of the opportunistic tendencies in the party but rather enabled them, after the end of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s death, to achieve a breakthrough. However, this must be discussed in more detail elsewhere.

Typical Thanasis Spanidis again: he spouts all sorts of “truths”, here IN ADVANCE, that sometimes look suspiciously like anti-communist clichés,
IN ADVANCE, because any proof will be presented “elsewhere” ...
“Elsewhere” (I assume he means in “Der Große Sprung Zurück” ….) Thanasis Spanidis says about the Cultural Revolution, among other things:

The main event of this second phase was the so-called " January Storm " in Shanghai in January 1967. In Shanghai, as in many other parts of the country, workers lived in abject poverty. Nominal wages in 1966, partly due to the disaster of the "Great Leap Forward ," were 5% lower than in 1957, while the cost of living had risen by 10% ³⁴. This led to considerable discontent among the working class, which in the months leading up to January joined newly formed organizations en masse. The largest of these, thanks to the support of Maoist leaders, was the General Workers' Headquarters (AAHQ) ³⁵. Around the turn of the year, the conflicts in Shanghai exploded: open warfare broke out between the AAHQ and its main rivals, the Scarlet Guards, each boasting hundreds of thousands of members.
Following its victory in the street battles against the Scarlet Guards, the AAHQ turned its attention to the local party apparatus . On January 6, the responsible party official in Shanghai, Chen Pixian, was denounced by a mass assembly, and the Shanghai party leadership was declared deposed. The Communist Party in Shanghai was powerless against the mass uprising supported by Mao and his followers and collapsed within a very short time. Mayor Cao Diqiu later recalled: “ The leadership of the old city party committee was largely paralyzed. The offices of the city party secretariat and various government departments had been occupied or captured, and reception offices were stormed. Most of the city's leaders were scattered and had to act on their own, and it was even difficult to convene meetings of the Standing Party Committee. ”³⁶
At that time, Mao still fully supported the "January Storm," the crushing of the Communist Party in Shanghai. " Internal rebellions are fine (...). This is the overthrow of one class by another. This is a great revolution ," Mao said. And: " The rise of revolutionary power in Shanghai has given hope to the whole country . ³⁷"

Thanasis Spanidis bases this on (see footnote) “Wu 2014, : The Cultural Revolution at the Margins. Chinese Socialism in Crisis, Harvard University Press”.
In the text “Der Grosse Sprung Zuruck” (of which I reproduce only a small part here), he constantly refers to this source from 2014 when discussing the Cultural Revolution.
What he NEVER refers to, either as sources or as references, are, for example, Han Suyin or William Hinton, who WERE IN CHINA in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (Hinton even in the 80s too)!
Specifically regarding the “January Storm” (to mention just one example), Han Suyin, who was therefore in China at that time (I think that “Wu” was not yet born then…), is reporting:

Out of “The Wind in the Tower” by Han Suyin, in Part 2, chapter 4:
The "January storm" in Shanghai was the rise of the Chinese working class to its true role of leader in the state.
The Shanghai working class is the largest and most skilled in China, with educated young workers in considerable numbers by 1965. Contact between workers and the Red Guards was early; nuclei of "rebels" formed quickly in factories. But the work teams of Liu Shao-chi and also the trade union leadership persecuted them and turned the other workers against them, calling them "anti-Party," docking wages, expelling or even jailing them. Nevertheless, the cultural revolution was making inroads, and the Red Guards of Shanghai were particularly active among the factories after September 1966. Yao Wen-yuan, whose attack on Wu Han had started the cultural revolution, and Chang Chun-chiao, at the time secretary of the Propaganda Department in the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, were both from Shanghai; co-opted into the GCCR in Peking, they traveled back and forth between the two cities.
Although the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee resisted the cultural revolution, it could not go against Mao's December directive extending the revolution to industry and agriculture. No leading Party member in industry or mining enterprises was allowed to retaliate against mass criticism, dock wages, fire workers, or revoke the contracts of temporary laborers. Tao Chu fell that month, and the "black material" collected against students and workers was now exhumed from the Party files and burned publicly. At the same time, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions was suspended as a "revisionist" organism.
The first revolutionary workers' committee was formed by Wang Hung-wen, the young worker (now vice-chairman of the Party) who on June 12 put up a poster in the Shanghai cotton mill where he worked, attacking the "capitalist-roaders" in his factory. Wang was ostracized, went to Peking in October, and was encouraged to continue. He recruited, organized, and set up a Rebel Revolution Headquarters, attempting a coalition among scattered worker groups.
Then arose a wave of "economism." To sabotage worker rebellion, the right wing incited strikes which paralyzed the docks and public services. This was against Mao's recommendation that the way to make revolution was by "grasping production"; that is, that in each factory the revisionist line and management should be criticized, but work should not stop.
Factory managers revised scales of pay upward, issuing back pay for ten years. Sums for winter clothes were paid out, and large amounts to foremen, who were now exhorted to travel with their staffs to "ex-change revolutionary experience," abandoning production. Bank accountants were to honor any chit presented by a worker, and this caused a run on banks. A spending spree set in, with stores emptied of bicycles, radios, watches, food. "Economism" spread to rural areas; landlords and rich peasants led bands to rifle stores, to loot the banks and commune funds.
Wang Hung-wen distinguished himself in the battle against economism. With Chang Chun-chiao he succeeded in grouping eleven main organizations of workers, won the adherence of Shanghai University and middle school Red Guards. This was no mean feat, when one realizes how difficult it was to get two groups of Red Guards to merge in other cities. Wang and Chang would reach four hundred thousand workers, versus the eight hundred thousand the Municipality had fostered in its "Red defense detachments" to "protect the Party." The Rebel Revolutionary Headquarters then proceeded to "seize power" as Mao Tsetung had recommended, first at the newspaper Wen Hui Pao on January 4, and at Liberation Daily on January 6. With the press in their hands, the Headquarters issued messages and an open letter to the people of Shanghai, denouncing "economism," disruption and losses in the factories, calling on the workers to rally to Mao's line, to promote production while making revolution, to renounce material demands. A First Front Command for production was set up. Workers, students, and the PLA manned the docks and kept utilities going. Within a month the "deluded" workers returned, and newspapers published eulogies of those who voluntarily returned radios, bicycles, or the funds issued to them. "We understood then that it is not money but power which the working class must wield... we began to see how money was a way to corrupt us." Shanghai's events were a breakthrough; for this was, within the Chinese revolution, a revolution from below, with the working class seizing power and creating new institutions. The Headquarters' success in organizing a grand alliance of workers, Red Guards and revolutionary cadres created the first functioning representative proletarian power.

Without further discussing, just one point: out of the reporting (almost of the moment when it was happening) of Han Suyin it becomes clear that, what Thanasis found by Wu in 2014 (“workers lived in abject poverty. Nominal wages in 1966, partly due to the disaster of the "Great Leap Forward ," (...) ³⁸. This led to considerable discontent among the working class,..”), RESULTED out of what Han Suyin reported: “Then arose a wave of "economism." To sabotage worker rebellion, the right wing incited strikes which paralyzed the docks and public services. (…) Factory managers revised scales of pay upward, issuing back pay for ten years. (...) "Economism" spread to rural areas; landlords and rich peasants led bands to rifle stores, to loot the banks and commune funds.”

Thanasis Spanidis refuses—because it would contradict his analysis—to use sources from those who were IN China (1950s-1970s), who were eyewitnesses and spoke with workers, peasants, soldiers, and party cadres themselves at the time.

Thanasis Spanidis (see the beginning of this article) is very unclear about what Mao's true line actually was and to what extent it coincided with the line of the CCP (“in its entirety”), or was sometimes contested by her.
He relies on sources from after 1980.
Hinton was IN China in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. So both BEFORE and AFTER 1978.
Thanasis Spanidis regularly refers to the Monthly Review. Here is Hinton IN the Monthly Review (in 2004) regarding the contradiction WITHIN the CCP between the revolutionary line and the bourgeois line and regarding the fact that Mao was regularly placed “in the minority”:
Out of On the Role of Mao Zedong by william Hinton:

With the Communist Party assuming leadership in the revolution, mobilizing both workers and peasants by the millions and threatening to confiscate not only all the land of the landlords but all the property of the imperialists and their comprador and bureaucratic allies, the first goal of the revolution could hardly be capitalism. Mao projected a new national form, a mixed economy heavily weighted on the side of public and collective ownership with joint state-private and wholly private enterprises of the national capitalists playing a minor supporting role. Hence this led to the concept of a New Democratic Revolution and a New Democratic transitional period and the eventual establishment of a New Democratic state, with a mandate to carry land reform through to the end and to nationalize the wealth (industrial, commercial, and financial) monopolized by the four great bureaucratic families of China and, within certain limits, to help the national capitalists to get on their feet. The great victory of l949 brought all this about as projected. It resolved the old contradiction with feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism backed up by imperialism on the mainland and brought a new contradiction to the fore—the Chinese people versus the bourgeoisie. The character of the revolution from that point on was socialist, even though many New Democratic tasks remained to be completed—such as land reform in the newly liberated areas. So the character of the political struggle had changed.
Now Mao was not responsible for this. It was built into the fabric of Chinese life and into the fabric of the Chinese Communist Party and into all of Chinese politics by the existence of classes—especially the emerging new classes, workers and capitalists—and by the existing economy at its stage of development. The Communist Party, confronted by these contradictions, had developed into two main streams—one an open party governing the liberated areas with Mao Zedong as the primary leader, and the other an underground party growing up primarily in Guomindang dominated cities where Liu Shaoqi was responsible, under the overall leadership of Mao. The party stream under Mao developed into a proletarian headquarters and the stream that Liu led became the core of a bourgeois headquarters all within the overall umbrella of the party itself. That does not mean that everyone on either side was either proletarian or bourgeois. There were many degrees of mixture and admixture.
But the two headquarters, with their contrasting class character, developed out of this history and these circumstances and out of the isolation of the two streams from each other.
The Shanghai bourgeoisie, through the student movement of the 1930s and ’40s contributed heavily to Liu’s forces. After Deng’s reforms began, whenever anyone reached a high post, people always asked, Which branch of the Shanghai Youth league did he or she belong to? The big reform leaders that Deng Xiaoping brought forward, first Hu Yaobang, and then Zhao Ziyang, were both products of the Shanghai Youth League. Of course, there were many Maoists among the league members and there were workers and left-wing intellectuals who identified with the working class in the underground branches of the party. But under Liu’s guidance a bourgeois headquarters emerged nevertheless.
After victory, after the liberation of China in l949, the two streams of the party merged as one organizationally, but they never did merge ideologically. Meanwhile the bourgeois stream received constant reinforcement from the degeneration of once-dedicated cadre under the bombardment of silver bullets that greeted them on assuming office at all levels, silver bullets being the perks and privileges that society or independent capitalists could offer a man or woman in power. Successive rectification movements stemmed this seepage but could not close it off entirely, nor was it easy to screen closet opportunists from among the new recruits to a party suddenly empowered and in a position to allocate the wealth of by far the largest mass of laboring people the world has ever seen.
Mao’s proletarian stream, in order to serve the long-term interests of the workers and peasants, had to struggle for a socialist future and the eventual elimination of class exploitation. That Mao truly had the future interests of the common people in mind in struggling for this goal is demonstrated by the crisis and stagnation now pervading large parts of rural China. This is leading to the proletarianization of scores of millions of peasants chronically underemployed on the ubiquitous noodle strips of soil allocated to them by the family responsibility system.
In sharp contrast, representatives of the bourgeoisie in the party, in order to save a future role for themselves, and to save China as a sphere of operation for the bourgeoisie as a class, had to struggle for, at the very least, a prolonged period of mixed economy with an ever widening role for private entrepreneurs leading to a capitalist future. To weight the dice in this direction Deng’s government redeemed scores of millions of dollars worth of bonds once issued to China’s independent entrepreneurs to compensate for government expropriations, bonds on which interest had been paid for ten years prior to their cancellation in l966. Bond redemptions began around 1980.
Can Mao be blamed for the struggle, this split over policy? No. This struggle was built in and inevitable. Initiatives arising on either side had to be challenged and defeated or at least stalemated by the other side. The contest was bitter, protracted, and hard-fought. Tragedies and casualties on both sides were many. Extreme friction between the two class factions contributed hugely to policy failures. No policy, from either side, could be applied without contest.
From the bourgeois side the bitterness was rooted in an inexorable truth: in the long run, just as the peasants of old China could get along without the landlords, but the landlords could not get along without the peasants who labored; the workers and peasants of revolutionary China could get along without the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie could not get along without the labor of workers and peasants and the surplus value they created. I am not talking here about intellectuals. The working class can win support from and train intellectuals devoted to socialism just as the bourgeoisie can win support from and train intellectuals devoted to capitalism.
To blame Mao, then, for the struggle that ensued and for its outcome is unwarranted, unrealistic, and unhistorical. Mao did what needed to be done given his social base, while Liu did what he had to do given his social base. After a decade of conflict things came to a head in the Cultural Revolution. Mao won some victories early on, but, unfortunately could not consolidate them under the hammer blows of the Liu-Deng counteroffensive reinforced, as it was, by the dead weight, inertia, and tenacity of all the old customs, old habits, old beliefs, and superstitions that made any and all change difficult, not to mention such radical changes as socialist relations of production and a matching socialist superstructure demanded. Mao had the upper hand politically. He was able to speak directly to and mobilize hundreds of millions of peasants and workers. But Liu had the upper hand organizationally because his group, his stream coming from the underground controlled, by virtue of its existing network in l949, the organization of the party nationwide and had the power to appoint, remove, promote, and educate the middle level of cadre throughout the whole country. At the heart of Liu’s educational program lay his tract How To Be A Good Communist. This advocated self-cultivation that would, when conducted according to his directives, enable one not to serve the people better, but to be an obedient tool, and thus win promotion to ever-higher positions in the party. These philistine minions, their careers dependent on Liu, were the shock force of the bourgeoisie in the party, and there was a consistent pattern to the way they operated. In every new situation, when Mao was proposing a socialist solution, they first dragged their feet and tried to slow down the change or disrupt it. At one time, for instance, they dissolved 30,000 village farming cooperatives in one stroke. But when any movement reached a high tide and couldn’t be stopped by foot dragging, then they jumped in, active as could be, and pushed things to extremes that were equally if not more disruptive. From Liu’s headquarters there came always, consistently, in stage after stage of the revolution, a move, a shift from rightist obstruction to leftist destruction. Whether conscious or not this was the pattern. It showed up during land reform as illustrated in my book Fanshen (University of California Press, 1997). It showed up with a vengeance during the anti-rightist movement of 1958. After the shocking events in Hungary in the late 1950s, Mao suggested that there might be as many as 4,000 rightist reactionaries among the intellectuals and academics of China. Deng Xiaoping, later the key figure in China, took charge of handling the rightist problem then and did tremendous damage by targeting 500,000!
The same right-left swing plagued the Socialist Education Movement in 1964. Cadres at the bottom suddenly found themselves under wholesale attack from Liu’s headquarters. In just one county alone, Xiyang in central Shanxi, 40 village level leaders committed suicide. Before that a similar swing showed up during the Great Leap after the bourgeois forces failed to head it off. The way they responded was to push extremes such as blowing the “Communist Wind,” a wind of political excesses that included a gale of gigantism. If a township was good as a single production unit, then a whole county was even better. It included a hurricane of blind directives—if digging one foot deep is good for the soil, digging three feet deep is better. It included an exaggeration wind—if you harvested 100 bushels to the acre, then I harvested 200 bushels to the acre. And a leveling and transferring wind—if you have a tractor that the commune needs send it over, it’s all for the common good. At the height of the euphoria generated by the great crop in the making in 1958, all these winds blew and fanned up severe disruption that coupled with very bad weather in 1959, ’60, and ’61, to produce a shortage of crops, hunger, and even starvation. Mao’s initiatives failed temporarily but they were well conceived.
The inspiration for the Great Leap, the commune form of cooperative federation and the industrial projects such as backyard iron smelting came from the very successful wartime industrial cooperative movement—Indusco. After suitable retrenchment and reorganization China successfully revived much of the original vision. There is a good description of this background for the cooperatives and the commune movement in Jack Gray’s book, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s (Oxford University Press, 1990). During the Cultural Revolution similar extremes arose. After Mao called for power seizures from below, everybody, and especially the capitalist roaders, formed factional support groups to seize power. Unprincipled and often violent free-for-alls ensued which no one, neither Mao nor Liu, could control. And thus the Cultural Revolution, after generating a tremendous storm, wound down without consolidating its goals. However, the movement as a whole was a great creative departure in history. It was not a plot, not a purge, but a mass mobilization whereby people were inspired to intervene, to screen and supervise their cadres and form new popular committees to exercise control at the grassroots and higher.
The whole idea, that the principal contradiction of the times was the class struggle between the working class and the capitalist class, expressed itself in the party center, and unless it was resolved in the interest of the working class the socialist revolution would founder. And the whole idea that the method must be to mobilize the common people to seize power from below in order to establish new representative leading bodies, democratically elected organs of power was a breakthrough in history summed up by the phrase “bombard the headquarters.” They constituted, in my opinion, Mao’s greatest contribution to revolutionary theory and practice, lighting the way to progress in our time. Had Mao succeeded, I think there is no doubt we would have today a burgeoning socialist economy and culture in China with enormous prestige among the people. The economic advance might be slower than the current one but it would be much more solid and much more useful as a development model for all third world peoples now living in abysmal poverty and exploitation. Where Mao was particularly prescient was in his exposure of the capitalist road tendency and in making the target of the Cultural Revolution “party people in authority taking the capitalist road.”

Thanasis Spanidis tries to “improve” the analysis of the 2010 KKE in a historical-idealistic manner

Thanasis Spaniis in “The Rule of Capital in China” will base himself on the INCORRECT comments in the entirety of the “summarizing” comments of the KKE (in their 2010 analysis).
As I stated at the beginning, the “summarizing” comments in the otherwise correct analysis of the KKE contain 2 WRONG positions: (“As long as the Soviet Union existed, Chinese foreign policy was coordinated with that of the USA against the USSR. (…)…. we know today that in the beginning the CPC did not actually differentiate its position, openly or in essence, from the directions of the 20thCongress of the CPSU. Its agreement was published later…”)
Thanasis Spanidis develops his analysis on this, in a completely historical-idealistic manner:

Another factor that facilitated both the rise of pro-capitalist forces and the growth of the capitalist economy was the extremely problematic foreign policy of the PRC during the Mao era. After the rupture in relations with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union was, first of all, discredited as a model of socialist development within the CCP. While Mao and the party leadership argued that the Soviet Union had supposedly reintroduced capitalism after Stalin’s death – a completely anti-Marxist claim, which was never seriously substantiated by the Chinese Communist Party – it paradoxically made it easier for the right-wing group around Deng Xiaoping later on to suppress Soviet experiences and the debates on socialist economic planning from the discourse and thus to present the use of the market as the only solution to economic problems.
At the same time, beginning around 1971, China moved significantly closer to the United States. The fact that the United States, as the leading power of capitalism, was now effectively China’s ally, while the Soviet Union, as the leading power of the socialist camp, was seen as the enemy, weakened the forces within the CCP that sought to maintain socialist relations of production. Moreover, this alignment opened the possibility of using the inflow of foreign capital to catch up technologically in key areas and to develop the fledgling Chinese capitalism relatively unbothered by the United States – which was initially preoccupied for another decade with the Soviet Union as its main adversary – and to benefit from growing trade with them.³⁹

Well, the position the CCP took THEN (and to which Mao was now “allowed” to contribute) and we refer to a text to which Thanasis Spanidis himself refers, (in “Der Große Sprung Zurück”) albeit very selectively …:

In On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU, july 1964 ⁴⁰:

As a result of Khrushchov’s revisionism, the first socialist country in the world built by the great Soviet people with their blood and sweat is now facing an unprecedented danger of capitalist restoration.
The Khrushchov clique are spreading the tale that "there are no longer antagonistic classes and class struggle in the Soviet Union" in order to cover up the facts about their own ruthless class struggle against the Soviet people.
The Soviet privileged stratum represented by the revisionist Khrushchov clique constitutes only a few per cent of the Soviet population. Among the Soviet cadres its numbers are also small. It stands diametrically opposed to the Soviet people, who constitute more than 90 per cent of the total population, and to the great majority of the Soviet cadres and Communists. The contradiction between the Soviet people and this privileged stratum is now the principal contradiction inside the Soviet Union, and it is an irreconcilable and antagonistic class contradiction.
The glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was built by Lenin, and the great Soviet people displayed epoch-making revolutionary initiative in the October Socialist Revolution, they showed their heroism and stamina in defeating the White Guards and the armed intervention by more than a dozen imperialist countries, they scored unprecedently brilliant achievements in the struggle for industrialization and agricultural collectivization, and they won a tremendous victory in the Patriotic War against the German fascists and saved all mankind. Even under the rule of the Khrushchov clique, the mass of the members of the CPSU and the Soviet people are carrying on the glorious revolutionary traditions nurtured by Lenin and Stalin, and they still uphold socialism and aspire to communism.
The broad masses of the Soviet workers, collective farmers and intellectuals are seething with discontent against the oppression and exploitation practised by the privileged stratum. They have come to see ever more clearly the revisionist features of the Khrushchov clique which is betraying socialism and restoring capitalism.
Among the ranks of the Soviet cadres, there are many who still persist in the revolutionary stand of the proletariat, adhere to the road of socialism and firmly oppose Khrushchov’s revisionism. The broad masses of the Soviet people, of Communists and cadres are using various means to resist and oppose the revisionist line of the Khrushchov clique, so that the revisionist Khrushchov clique cannot so easily bring about the restoration of capitalism. The great Soviet people are fighting to defend the glorious traditions of the Great October Revolution, to preserve the great gains of socialism and to smash the plot for the restoration of capitalism.

I let it, without further explication, to the judgment of the reader, if the concrete facts are other than as Thanasis Spanidis is claiming…:

Further in On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU, july 1964 ⁴¹:

ANTAGONISTIC CLASSES AND CLASS STRUGGLE EXIST IN THE SOVIET UNION
In announcing the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, the revisionist Khrushchov clique base themselves mainly on the argument that antagonistic classes have been eliminated and that class struggle no longer exists.
But what is the actual situation in the Soviet Union? Are there really no antagonistic classes and no class struggle there?
Following the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in the Soviet Union, capitalist private ownership was destroyed and socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership were established through the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture, and great achievements in socialist construction were scored during several decades. All this constituted an indelible victory of tremendous historic significance won by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin.
However, the old bourgeoisie and other exploiting classes which had been overthrown in the Soviet Union were not eradicated and survived after industry was nationalized and agriculture collectivized. The political and ideological influence of the bourgeoisie remained. Spontaneous capitalist tendencies continued to exist both in the city and in the countryside. New bourgeois elements and kulaks were still incessantly generated. Throughout the long intervening period, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the socialist and capitalist roads have continued in the political, economic and ideolgical spheres.
As the Soviet Union was the first, and at the time the only, country to build socialism and had no foreign experience to go by, and as Stalin departed from Marxist-Leninist dialectics in his understanding of the laws of class struggle in socialist society, he prematurely declared after agriculture was basically collectivized that there were "no longer antagonistic classes"⁴² in the Soviet Union and that it was "free of class conflicts"⁴³, one-sidely stressed the internal homogeneity of socialist society and overlooked its contradictions, failed to rely upon the working class and the masses in the struggle against the forces of capitalism and regarded the possibility of restoration of capitalism as associated only with armed attack by international imperialism. This was wrong both in theory and in practice.
Nevertheless, Stalin remained a great Marxist-Leninist. As long as he led the Soviet Party and state, he held fast to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist course, pursued a Marxist-Leninist line and ensured the Soviet Union’s victorious advance along the road of socialism.
Ever since Khrushchov seized the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, he has pushed through a whole series of revisionist policies which have greatly hastened the growth of the forces of capitalism and again sharpened the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the roads of socialism and capitalism in the Soviet Union.

For Thanasis Spanidis, it is “proven” that Mao could not properly apply Marxism, and he accuses Mao of “revisionism.” Well, in the following article, we will see how Thanasis Spanidis stands regarding HIS knowledge of applying Marxism.

1 Nikita Medkovitch : “The financial dimension of the war in Afghanistan (1979-1989)” http://afghanistan.ru/print/?id=18319.

2 Steve Coll: «Anatomy of a Victory CIA s Covert Afghan War», «Washington Post»,19 July 1992, http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/anatomy.htm.

3 Mao Tse-Tung (1957): Über die Richtige Behandlung der Widersprüche im Volke, 1957, in: vier philosophische Monographien, Verlag für Fremdsprachige Literatur Peking 1968, p. 92

4 Mao Tse-tung (1937): Über den Widerspruch, Ausgewählte Werke Bd I, p. 365-408

5 Ibid. p. 389

6 Mao: Der Widerspruch zwischen der Arbeiterklasse und der Bourgeoisie ist der Hauptwiderspruch in China, Ausgewählte Werke Bd V, p. 353

7 ZK der KP Chinas 2021: Resolution des ZK der KP Chinas über die großen Erfolge und historischen Erfahrungen des hundertjährigen Kampfes der Partei, online: http://german.china.org.cn/txt/2021-11/17/content_77877415.htm , last access 15.3.2023.

8https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/der-grosse-sprung-zurueck/#maostrat 29 maart 2024 Der Große Sprung Zurück - Eine marxistische Kritik an Theorie und Praxis des Maoismus

9 Mao Tse-Tung (1957): Über die Richtige Behandlung der Widersprüche im Volke, 1957, in: vier philosophische Monographien, Verlag für Fremdsprachige Literatur Peking 1968, p. 92

10ON THE CORRECT HANDLING OF CONTRADICTIONS AMONG THE PEOPLE - February 27, 1957, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm .

11 The seamen's strikes were staged by the seamen at Hongkong and by the crews of the Yangtse River steamers early in 1922. The Hongkong seamen held out for eight weeks. After a bitter and bloody struggle, the British imperialist authorities in Hongkong were finally forced to raise wages, lift the ban on the Seamen's Union, release the arrested workers and indemnify the families of the martyrs. The crews of the Yangtze steamers went on strike soon afterwards, carried on the struggle for two weeks and also won victory.

12 Immediately after its founding in 1922-23 the Chinese Communist Party set about organizing the railway worker. In 1922-23 strikes took place under the Party's leadership on all the trunk lines. The best known was the general strike on the Peking-Hankow Railway which began on February 4, 1923. It was a fight for the freedom to organize a general trade union. On February 7 the Northern warlords Wu Pei-fu and Hsiao Yao-nan, who were backed by British imperialism, butchered the strikers. This became known as the February 7th Massacre.

13 The Kailan Coal Mines was an inclusive name for the large contiguous Kaiping and Luanchow coalfields in Hopei Province, then employing over fifty thousand workers. During the Yi Ho Tuan Movement of 1900 the British imperialists seized the Kaiping mines. Subsequently the Chinese organized the Luanchow Coal Mining Company, which was later incorporated into the Kailan Mining Administration. Both coalfields thus came under the exclusive control of British imperialism. The Kailan strike took place in October 1922. The Tsiaotso Coal Mines, situated in Honan Province, are also well known in China. The Tsiaotso strike lasted from July 1 to August 9, 1925.

14 Shameen, a section of the city of Canton, was held on lease by British imperialism. In July 1924 the British imperialists who ruled it issued a new police regulation requiring all Chinese to produce passes with photos on leaving or entering the area. But foreigners were exempt. On July 15 the workers in Shameen went on strike to protest against this preposterous measure, which the British imperialists were finally forced to cancel.

15 Following the May 30th Incident in Shanghai, general strikes broke out on June 1, 1925 in Shanghai and on June 19 in Hong Kong. More than 200,000 workers took part in Shanghai and 250,000 in Hong Kong. The big Hong Kong strike, with the support of the people throughout the country, lasted sixteen months. It was the longest strike in the history of the world labour movement.

16 Chihli was the old name for Hopei Province.

17 The Triad Society, the Society of Brothers, the Big Sword Society, the Rational Life Society and the Green Band were primitive secret organizations among the people. The members were mainly bankrupt peasants, unemployed handicraftsmen and other lumpen-proletarians. In feudal China these elements were often drawn together by come religion or superstition to form organizations of a patriarchal pattern and bearing different names and some possessed arms. Through these organizations the lumpen-proletarians sought to help each other socially and economically, and sometimes fought the bureaucrats and landlords who oppressed them. Of course, such backward organizations could not provide a way out for the peasants and handicraftsmen. Furthermore, they could easily be controlled and utilized by the landlords and local tyrants and, because of this and of their blind destructiveness, come turned into reactionary forces. In his counter-revolutionary coup d'etat of 1927 Chiang Kai-shek made use of them to disrupt the unity of the labouring people and destroy the revolution. As the modern industrial proletariat arose and grew from strength to strength, the peasants, under the leadership of the working class, gradually formed themselves into organizations of an entirely new type, and these primitive, backward societies lost their raison d'etre.

18 This article was written by the Editorial Department of Renmin Ribao on the basis of a discussion at an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It was published in Renmin Ribao on December 29, 1956.

19 Mao Tse-tung (1937): Über den Widerspruch, Ausgewählte Werke Bd I, p. 365-408

20 Ibid. p. 389

21 Mao: Der Widerspruch zwischen der Arbeiterklasse und der Bourgeoisie ist der Hauptwiderspruch in China, Ausgewählte Werke Bd V, p. 353

22 ZK der KP Chinas 2021: Resolution des ZK der KP Chinas über die großen Erfolge und historischen Erfahrungen des hundertjährigen Kampfes der Partei, online: http://german.china.org.cn/txt/2021-11/17/content_77877415.htm , last access 15.3.2023.

23 See "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War", Note 10, p. 251 of this volume.

24 The Qingdao Conference was held in July 1957, it was attended by the secretaries of provincial and municipal party committees. See The Situation in the Summer of 1957, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume V.

25 See On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume V.

26Volgens mij The situation in the summer 1957”

27 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-7/mswv7_477.htm , Talk at the Enlarged Third Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CCP – October 7, 1957

28 Mao Tse-tung (1937): Über den Widerspruch, Ausgewählte Werke Bd I, p. 365-408

29 Mao: Der Widerspruch zwischen der Arbeiterklasse und der Bourgeoisie ist der Hauptwiderspruch in China, Ausgewählte Werke Bd V, p. 353

30 ZK der KP Chinas 2021: Resolution des ZK der KP Chinas über die großen Erfolge und historischen Erfahrungen des hundertjährigen Kampfes der Partei, online: http://german.china.org.cn/txt/2021-11/17/content_77877415.htm , last access 15.3.2023.

31https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/index.htm

32 ZK der KP Chinas 2021: Resolution des ZK der KP Chinas über die großen Erfolge und historischen Erfahrungen des hundertjährigen Kampfes der Partei, online: http://german.china.org.cn/txt/2021-11/17/content_77877415.htm , last access 15.3.2023.

33Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century Adopted at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on November 11, 2021. http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2021-11/17/content_10108612.htm

34Wu 2014, : The Cultural Revolution at the Margins. Chinese Socialism in Crisis, Harvard University Pressp. 99.

35Ibid., p. 97.

36Translated from English: "The leadership of the old Municipal Party Committee had largely become paralyzed. The offices of the municipal party secretariat and various government departments had been occupied or seized, and reception offices were assaulted. Most of the municipal leaders were dispersed and had to operate on their own, and it was difficult even to convene meetings of the Standing Party Committee.", quoted. Wu 2014, p. 110.

37Translated from English: "Internal rebellions are fine (...). This is one class overthrowing another. This is a great revolution"; “The upsurge of revolutionary power in Shanghai has brought hope to the whole country”, Mao: Talk at a Meeting of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, January 9, 1967, in: Schram 1974, p. 275f.

38Wu 2014, : The Cultural Revolution at the Margins. Chinese Socialism in Crisis, Harvard University Pressp. 99.

39 Ten Brink, Tobias: Chinas Kapitalismus. Entstehung, Verlauf, Paradoxien, Campus Verlag: Frankfurtam Main 2013, p. 176.

40https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm, MAO TSE-TUNG July 1964, On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IX)

41https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm, MAO TSE-TUNG July 1964, On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IX)

42 Stalin, "On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R", Problems of Leninism, FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 690.]

43 Stalin, "Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) on the Work of the Central Committee", Problems of Leninism, FLPH, Moscow, p. 777.]