8th congres WPB/PVDA/PTB (2008) was in fact FIRST congress of New Belgian Social-Democratic Party

In MS 78: Peter Franssen(WPB) as revisionist as Deng Xiaoping

In Marxist Studies 78 (2007), a national cadre of the Workers Party of Belgium (WPB/PVDA/PTB), Peter Franssen is allowed to develop a point of view about the policy of “Reform and Opening” started by Deng Xiaoping, which can be considered as the point of view of the leadership of the WPB in 2007 about this subject, as it is approved by Herwig Lerouge (another national cadre of the WPB) in the “editorial” of that number 78 of Marxist Studies:

“Capitalism has to create the conditions which make socialism possible. In 1917, the Russian Communists under leadership of Lenin have forced the history. In 1949 de Chinese communists under leadership of Mao Zedong did the same. In both cases capitalism had not yet played his historical role. (...) The existing underdevelopment of the production-forces implicates that the historical role of private ownership, as Engels and Marx are describing here above are not yet fulfilled. With other words on the moment that China is beginning the reforms, the superiority of the socialist economic relations in the whole economy is a fiction, a lot of productionforces are growing faster under other forms of ownership that under the pure socialist forms, where means of productions are in the hands of the state or the community.”¹

Reference is made on Deng Xiaoping, defending him as a real Marxist, talking about “left opportunism” by ....Mao Zedong, disapproving the whole Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and leading correct communist “reforms” (the quote of Deng Xiaoping as Peter Franssen quoted him is in italic-fat)

"When you visited China in 1973, there was great unrest because of the ``cultural revolution'', which was still going on. At that time the ``Left'' ideology was predominant in our society. As a consequence social and economic development was very slow.
After the founding of the People's Republic, in the rural areas we initiated agrarian reform and launched a movement for the cooperative transformation of agriculture, while in the cities we conducted the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce. We were successful in both. However, from 1957 on, China was plagued by ``Left'' ideology, which gradually became dominant. During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, people rushed headlong into mass action to establish people's communes. They placed lopsided emphasis on making the communes large and collective, urging everyone to ``eat from the same big pot'', and by so doing they brought disaster upon the nation. We won't even mention the ``cultural revolution''. For most of the period from 1976, when the Gang of Four was smashed, to 1978, nobody knew what to do, and ``Left'' mistakes kept being repeated. During the 20 years from 1958 to 1978 the income of peasants and workers rose only a little, and consequently their standard of living remained very low. (...)
Comrade Mao Zedong was a great leader, and it was under his leadership that the Chinese revolution triumphed. Unfortunately, however, he made the grave mistake of neglecting the development of the productive forces. I do not mean he didn't want to develop them. The point is, not all of the methods he used were correct. For instance, neither the initiation of the Great Leap Forward nor the establishment of the people's communes conformed to the laws governing socio-economic development.
The fundamental principle of Marxism is that the productive forces must be developed.
The ultimate goal for Marxists is to realize communism, which must be built on the basis of highly developed productive forces. Socialism constitutes the first stage of communism and will last for a long historical period. The primary task in the socialist period is to develop the productive forces and gradually improve people's material and cultural life. Our experience in the 20 years from 1958 to 1978 teaches us that poverty is not socialism, that socialism means eliminating poverty. Unless you are developing the productive forces and raising people's living standards, you cannot say that you are building socialism.(...)
We began our reform in the countryside. The main purpose of the rural reform has been to bring the peasants' initiative into full play by introducing the responsibility system and discarding the system whereby ``everybody eats from the same big pot''. Why did we start in the countryside? Because that is where 80 per cent of China's population lives. If we didn't raise living standards in the countryside, the society would be unstable.
Industry, commerce and other sectors of the economy cannot develop on the basis of the poverty of 80 per cent of the population. (...)
So, that is a brief history of new China and of what we have done in recent years. How can people build socialism? You said you wanted to learn from China's experience. The road to socialism in China has been full of twists and turns. But the experience of the last 20 years has taught us one very important principle: to build socialism we must adhere to Marxist dialectical materialism and historical materialism or, as Comrade Mao Zedong put it, in everything we do we must seek truth from facts -- in other words, we must proceed from reality."²

These point of views of Peter Franssen as cadre of the WPB had to be fought as positions taken by a cadre who is unfaithful to the official points of view developed on the base of a by majority approved points of view on partycongresses (certainly the fourth and fifth congress of the WPB.

Read these points of views (approved by the fourth (1991) and fifth (1995)congress) as they were expressed by Ludo Martens in Marxist Studies number 29 (1996)

"Did the national bourgeoisie approve of socialism?
On the 1st of October 1949, the day of the glorious victory of the national and democratic revolution, how many leaders of the CCP had a precise idea of the passage of this revolution to the proletarian revolution, and the changes it would imply in the ideology of communists?
This is what, ten years later, Liou Chao Chi, vice-president of the Party, and president of the republic, wrote: “The triumph of the popular revolution, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, has broken once and for all the reactionary domination of Kuomintang, its bureaucratic and militarist apparatus, that crushed the people. In that way was founded, in 1949, the great People’s Republic, which is, in fact, a proletarian dictatorship. So the passage from democratic revolution to socialist revolution was realized successfully. (“Ten glorious years – 1949-1959, Complete works, Beijing, 1960, p.9). Here the democratic dictatorship of the people and the proletarian dictatorship have clearly the same content.
In the same way, in “On the right solution of the contradictions within the people”, Mao Ze Dong included the bourgeoisie within “the classes who approve of and support socialism and take part in it... In China the bourgeoisie has a double character... In the period of socialist revolution, they exploit the working class and make profits out of them, but in the same time they support the Constitution and show their willingness to accept socialist transformation.” (Part V, p.418-419). Liou Chao Chi explains this thesis: “The private capitalist enterprises came under a mixture management of State and private sector. An annual rent is accorded to the capitalists during a certain time... During this gradual transformations, capitalism has been, under certain conditions, put at the service of socialism, used in the interest of the socialist construction. In this way we have been able to liquidate capitalism totally in the field of property of means of production, and we apply ourselves to re-educate step by step the bourgeois elements in order to make of them workers who live of their own work.”(Ten years of glorious... p.13,15)
And Liou applies the same principles to the prosperous middle peasants, to whom will be paid the value of the instruments and the cattle they brought in by joining the people’s Communes.”The overwhelming majority of prosperous middle payments were very satisfied about the organisation of co-operative societies.” (Ibidem, pg 12). And Mao Ze Dong writes: “During the agrarian reform, as long as we did not touch the rich peasants, the middle peasants felt easy.” (Tome V, p.349).
Will all the classes and strata who supported the revolutionary struggle against the Japanese fascists and against Kuomintang, join up within the system of proletarian dictatorship? Deng Xiao-Ping wrote in 1959: “The unity of the Chinese people has constantly become stronger during the democratic revolution, the socialist revolution and the continuous development of the revolution.” (Ten glorious years, p.99). Are the positions of Mao, Liou and Deng then not a variant of Boucharin’s thesis about the integration of bourgeois elements and kulaks into socialism? Was one not introducing then into the socialist economic units a stratum of bourgeois elements, capable of taking power? Was the main task to “educate” these bourgeois elements? Which kind of proletarian dictatorship incorporates bourgeoisie and limits itself to educating them? Didn’t Lenin say that “the proletarian dictatorship is a harsh struggle, bloody and non-bloody, violent and non-violent, military and economic, educating and administrative against the forces and traditions of the old society ”?
And what is more, the crucial question has to be asked about the political and ideological line with which de Communist Party will “educate” the national bourgeoisie. To the extent that this party didn’t go further than a radical national and democratic revolution, an ideological fusion with the national patriotic bourgeoisie was possible. In 1956, Mao Ze Dong stated that two notorious opportunists, Wang Ming and Li Li-San, were to remain within the central committee; if not “millions of members of our party of petit-bourgeois origin, especially intellectuals, would be taken by panic.” (Part V, p.348)
There are many indications that between 1949 and 1957 the leadership of the CCP, including Mao Ze Dong, didn’t conduct a consistant ideological struggle against nationalism and against the bourgeois type of revolutionary democratism.

The transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat
We are entitled to believe that a change in the thought of Mao Zedong occured in may-october 1957. At this time, Kruschtchev’s revisionist line has imposed itself in the CPSU, violently counter-revolutionary movements have occured in Poland and Hungary, chinese reactionaries and right-wingers have launched attacks against the Communist Party and socialism. It is then that Mao spells out a certain number of new theories. “Our Party has amongst its members numerous intellectuals. Part of them are rather seriously contaminated by revisionist ideas”. Revisionism has also appeared at the head of the Party. “We are now carrying out the socialist revolution, directed against the bourgeoisie... The main contradiction is between socialism and capitalism, between the socialist path and the capitalist one. The resolution of the Party’s VIIIth Congress does not mention this at all”. Then Mao makes a very significant confession: “The socialist revolution has come about so fast, that there was no thorough discussion, in the Party and around it, concerning the general line of the Party during the period of transition”. (Volume V. P.480, 535, 505).
The questions concerning the transition from the national and democratic revolution to the socialist revolution will thereafter be a central preoccupation for Mao Zedong. From this point of view, the Cultural Revolution may be seen as an self-criticism on the part of Mao Zedong, who formulates for the first time the real terms of the passage from the democratic dictatorship to the dictatorship of the proletariat. But at this time, Mao Zedong, despite his immense popularity, was very much in minority among the leading cadres. The cultural revolution was sabotaged from the start by part of the CCP executives and by the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois currents, which were very strong in the Chinese society.
It is to be noted that in the Directive of the16th of May 1966, that set off the Cultural Revolution, Mao assumes positions that are diametrically opposite to those he upheld in 1940 in “The New Democracy” and in 1957, in “Of the correct solution”. And as if to underline the fact that there is still much confusion, these two works are given as reference material for the cultural revolution...
In 1966, Mao says: “The representatives of the bourgeoisie that have infiltrated the Communist Party... absolutely deny the necessity of the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, of the revolution led by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, they are loyal sevants of the bourgeoisie and imperialism: they plot with them to maintain the bourgeois ideology of oppression and exploitation of the proletariat, as well as the bourgeois regime... They are a band of counter-revolutionaires, opposed to the Communist Party and the people; their struggle against us is a struggle to death, without any reference to equality. Our struggle against them must therefore also be a struggle to death, our relationship with them holds no trace of equality, it is the oppression of one class by another, in other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie”. “The representatives of the bourgeoisie that have infiltrated the Party, the government, the army and sectors of the cultural field, are a band of counter-revolutionary revisionists. If they had a chance, they would seize power, and transform the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”. (The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Pekin. 1970. P.128-130, 141).

Nationalists and democratic revolutionaries
As of 1959, Kang Cheng demonstrates that some executives have entered the CCP with points of view that go no further than a consequent attitude towards the democratic revolution. “At the stage of the democratic revolution, showing to a certain degree a zealous attitude towards the democratic revolution( these democratic bourgeois and petit-bourgeois) can still approve, at least partially, the minimal action program of the marxist-leninist party; thus, aided and guided by the Party, they can still accomplish work of some utility for the revolution. But, as from the start, there existed between them and the Party differences of principle. The Party stand firmly for the leading role of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, and stands firm in its will to carry out the democratic revolution to the end, so that when the democratic revolution has been completely achieved, it can go on immediately, without discontinuing, on to the socialist revolution; they want to leave the democratic revolution in the hands of the bourgeoisie and do not want to carry it out completely, and they are even less ready for the socialist revolution”; (Ten Glorious Years. Pekin Editions. 1960. P. 275).
The same theme will be developed in 1976, during the political struggle led by Mao Zedong against Deng Xiaoping. The CCP then wrote: “In 1956, president Mao made this farseeing remark: the right-wing opportunists in the party never were proletarian revolutionaries; they are only democratic bourgeois or petit-bourgeois, infiltrated in the revolutionary ranks of the proletariat; they have never been marxist-leninists; they are only fellow-travellers for our Party” (The struggle in China against the right-wing deviationist trend that questions the correct conclusions. 1976. Foreign Language Editions. Pekin. p.189).3

Revisionist take-over in the WPB in 2004....affirmed on 8^th congress(2008)

Well this will be just one example of how the WPB after 2004 has become a party (affirmed by majority on the 8^th Congress in 2008) with a political line, an ideology and a organisation-structure which was always be fought by the EARLIER WPB (on congresses or by the analyses of its former president Ludo Martens), as being a bourgeois (reformist) political line, a bourgeois (reformist) ideology and an organisation-structure of a bourgeois (reformist) party, How is it possible that a majority of the members and cadres approved this turn on the 8^th congress of the WPB, a turn that was DISAPPROVED on earlier congresses, ALSO by a majority of members and cadres?

I will analyse this further as a warning “example of the negative teacher” for what could happen if a communist party is underestimating, - or is not aware of – a development of forms of opportunism which could be the germs of revisionism.... and how these forms of existing opportunism are USED by conscious revisionists IN the party (so or bourgeois elements infiltrated in the party, or cadres of the party who consciously change class-position) to prepare this turn to bourgeois political line, to bourgeois ideology and bourgeois organisation-structure argued in terms of Marxist-SOUNDING phraseology.

1http://marx.be/fr/content/%C3%A9tudes-marxistes?action=select&id=76 Études marxistes Revue n° 78, date de publication: 2007-11-19 Copyright © EPO, Études marxistes et auteurs — La reprise, la publication et la traduction sont autorisées pour des buts strictements non lucratifs, “Le développement du socialisme en Chine” , Peter Franssen

2http://ia700300.us.archive.org/30/items/SelectedWorksOfDengXiaopingVol.3/Deng03.pdf Selected works, Vol III, WE SHALL EXPAND POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND CARRY OUT ECONOMIC REFORM (Excerpt from a talk with Vice-President Ali Hassan Mwinyi of the United Republic of Tanzania.) April 15, 1985

3. Here the ENGLISH version of the text out of Mrxist Studies 29 (1996) on https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/belgium-1st/aspects.htm, Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line, Ludo Martens, “On certain aspects of the struggle against revisionism

For the unity of all communists, in defence of proletarian internationalism”.First Delivered: To a seminar in India, March 1995. Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba

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