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”

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At their 22nd congress, the KKE outlines the situation within the international communist movement. The war in Ukraine (i.e., Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022) is causing a clear split between communist parties.
You have those that are in favour of revolution, without an intermediate stage (which relegates a formal perspective on revolution to a “distant future”), and so advocate FIRST revolution against their “own” bourgeoisie, which envisages dictatorship and thus advocate socialism as the first stage of communism. They are separating themselves from those communist parties that are now effectively opting for an “intermediate stage” in the form of a “united front” with the bourgeoisie of Russia and China against US imperialism. For them, this intermediate stage of “anti-fascism”/“anti-imperialism” comes BEFORE the mobilization for revolution.
The KKE on their 22thcongress :

The imperialist war in Ukraine has caused new ideological and political divisions and deepened existing ones. Communist parties, which previously identified imperialism solely with the aggressive foreign policy of the USA and certain powerful capitalist states in Europe and glossed over the role of other capitalist states, now see Russia, China and Iran as supposed “anti-imperialist forces” or even an imaginary “anti-imperialist axis”.(….)
Two issues are of great importance:
a) The character of China: Communist parties that do not recognize its capitalist nature —due to the extensive state sector in its economy and the title of the ruling party— view China’s rivalry with the USA for supremacy in the international capitalist system as a struggle between “socialism and capitalism”.
b) Parties whose strategy is based on the notion of stages in the revolutionary process, which posits a supposed pro-people stage before socialism, treat fascism as a “deviation from bourgeois democracy” rather than as a product of capitalism, and are prone to “anti-fascist” rhetoric, which translates into notions of “anti-fascist fronts”, “anti-fascist war” utilized by bourgeois forces and governments to promote their anti-popular objectives, political alliances, and even military operations. Maintaining the strategy of stages leads these parties to consider a series of bourgeois (social democratic) governments as “anti-imperialist” and “progressive”. (…)
The situation of the IMCWPs (International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties) is very problematic; issues of joint action and solidarity have significantly weakened, (….)
In this difficult and complex situation, our Party supports the Communist Parties with which it cooperates and disseminates its positions on imperialist war and other crucial issues. (…)
In particular, we seek joint action and cooperation with Communist Parties and communist forces that meet the following criteria:
a) Defend Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism, and recognize the need to form a communist pole at an international level.
b) Fight against opportunism and reformism, rejecting the centre-left or any form of bourgeois management of capitalism, participation in or support of bourgeois anti-popular governments, and any variation of the strategy of stages.
c) Defend the scientific laws of the socialist revolution, based on which they assess the course of socialist construction and seek to research and draw lessons from the problems and mistakes. Reject positions on “market socialism” or any negation of the laws of socialist construction due to national peculiarities.
d) Condemn the imperialist war and highlight the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes on both sides. Maintain a clear ideological front against erroneous views on imperialism, particularly those that detach military aggression from the economic content of imperialism. Oppose any imperialist alliance and refuse to take sides in the imperialist conflict.
e) Establish ties with the working class, are active in the trade union movement and the movement of popular sections of the middle strata, seeking to integrate the daily struggle for workers’ and people’s rights into a contemporary revolutionary strategy for workers’–people’s power
f) Do not detach anti-war and anti-fascist struggle from the struggle against capitalism, which gives rise to war and fascism. Reject the phony “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist forces to entrap the peoples in their plans.

Within the ideological and political diversity of parties in what is the international communist movement, the KKE attempts to group the more authentic and consistent communist parties apart based on a list of criteria and “ seek joint action and cooperation with Communist Parties and communist forces that meet the following criteria”:

Defend Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism,(…) Fight against opportunism and reformism, rejecting (...) any variation of the strategy of stages.(…) …. seek to research and draw lessons from the problems and mistakes. (of socialist revolution and socialist construction in the past) (..) Condemn the imperialist war and highlight the responsibilities of the bourgeois classes on both sides. (… which include recognizing the capitalist nature of China ….) Establish ties with the working class,(...) seeking to integrate the daily struggle for workers’ and people’s rights into a contemporary revolutionary strategy for workers’–people’s power …. not detach anti-war and anti-fascist struggle from the struggle against capitalism

Formally meeting the “criteria” of a Communist party is no guarantee against the development of opportunism WITHIN that Communist party

In my opinion, a communist party meeting the criteria does not mean that opportunism cannot develop within that party. And if those criteria are (formally) met and the development of opportunism is not noticed and combated, there is a danger of revisionism developing within that party, which could then degenerate into a party that no longer meets those criteria...
I give an example here of a communist party that (formally) meets the criteria of the KKE and is therefore opposed to intermediate stages or steps before mobilization for the revolution occurs, but nevertheless “suggests” the possibility of an “intermediate stage” or “stage” in that strategy through an unclear (opportunistic) formulation in the strategy. It does not matter which party the following formulation belongs to; there are similar ambiguous formulations in various parties (from the group that formally meets the criteria established by the KKE):

“International and national developments show that the contradictions of capitalism are intensifying. The working class and other oppressed segments of the population face a mountain of problems that prevent them from living well, developing their potential, and contributing to society with their talents and skills. More and more people feel the need to fight for a world without poverty, discrimination, war, and exploitation.
The solution can only lie in the struggle for the abolition of capitalist exploitation, in the perspective of a society in which the economy and society are not subject to profit, in which profit is not the goal of production . A socialist society, in which the means of production are social property, so that production can be centrally planned, where the needs of the population are no longer a 'cost' at the expense of capital's profits, but where meeting the needs of the population is the goal of production. (…)
The basis is company work, in which we, as communists, take root on the shop floor, are active there, talk to colleagues, and raise issues, put forward demands …,fighting for a radicalization of the demands made to enforce improvements in employment terms and working conditions. Foremost are demands aimed at permanent jobs for structural work, dignified jobs with sufficient hours, a reduction in the retirement age, improvement of unemployment benefits so that accrual is faster and the unemployed receive more and longer unemployment benefits, as well as a shortening of the workday while maintaining pay. (…)
The development of practical struggle for economic demands and other demands that meet the needs of the working class must be linked to the ideological struggle in the workplace and within the movement.(...) It is important that our corporate and trade union work is not limited to fanning the flames of the economic struggle, but is linked to strengthening class consciousness—the awareness that workers as a class have common interests that are diametrically opposed to the interests of the bosses, or the capitalist class. In this way, we work on the conditions to strengthen the level of organization, the collective struggle, and the class-oriented line.’

Thus, although formally the destruction of capitalist exploitation is set as the goal, at the same time the need is seen for the communist party to propose demands for “immediate improvement”, with the sole prospect of “strengthening class consciousness”. In my opinion, this unclear (opportunistic) formulation makes it possible for “intermediate stages” to creep into the party's strategy.
Likewise, in my opinion, formally “defending Marxism-Leninism” and “combating opportunism and reformism” is in itself no guarantee for a communist party that it is safeguarded from the development of opportunism or from the danger of revisionism that could mean the degeneration of that communist party. That party will then no longer be the organization of the vanguard of the working class, which takes it upon itself to mobilize the working class as a whole for a struggle to overthrow bourgeois society and the capitalism upon which it is based.

In Germany, former members of the DKP, finding it impossible to continue discussing a revolutionary strategy and the organizational principles corresponding to it within the DKP, founded the “Kommunistische Partei” (Communist Party – CP).
The group that left the DKP initially formed the Kommunistische Organisation (Communist Organization), from which a part split off based on differences in views regarding the war in Ukraine and founded the “Kommunistische Partei” (Communist Party).
By now, there had long been internal discussions regarding the existence or non-existence of the “intermediate stage” strategy.
For instance, since 2005-2006, there had been discussion WITHIN the DKP regarding whether or not there was an “intermediate stage” of “anti-monopolistic democracy” or “anti-monopoly strategy,” which was in fact a strategy of struggle for “democracy,” “social rights,” and “peace,” whereby the overthrow of capitalism/imperialism and socialism was relegated to the distant future. The withdrawal from the DKP in 2017 (of the group that founded the KO at the time) occurred because there was no longer any possibility to conduct that internal discussion within the DKP. (to be read in “ZumVerlauf der Debatte” )

Where there was no ongoing internal discussion, and where there was more or less unity (at least BEFORE one read the analysis of the KKE that she made regarding China) was “the socialist character of China” ….
In a message to the CCP at the 2011 celebration of the CCP’s 90th anniversary by Bettina Jürgensen – Chair of the DKP:

“…we, the members of the German Communist Party, send you our warmest greetings on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the People’s Republic of China has accomplished true miracles in recent decades. Even after the great crisis of socialism at the end of the 1980s, it has been possible to find a way to strengthen socialism and improve the living conditions for large segments of the population in your country. (...) The CCP of China has demonstrated how, under very different circumstances, it has repeatedly found ways to solve problems that have arisen and to address important socio-political questions for the future. Today, the word socialism is inextricably linked with the People’s Republic of China….”¹

Before the KKE made its analysis in 2010 regarding the current capitalist/imperialist character of China, there was much uncertainty about this among many Communist Parties.

Now, before 2010, there was much uncertainty within many communist parties regarding the class character the Chinese state had acquired and regarding the restoration of capitalism (in its imperialist stage).
A concrete example is the NCPN (but it was certainly not the only one in this regard...).
The NCPN, which did not produce an analysis itself at the time, had the PVDA, or the CCP itself, prepare an analysis for them in their party newspaper ( Manifest  see Archive):

Manifest in 2003 no 15
Rolf Berthold, the GDR ambassador to China, spoke on August 22 in Deurne at the Marxist summer university of the Workers Party of Belgium:
China is socialist. Unlike Cuba, but just like that country, it provides proof of the survival and viability of socialism, albeit in a different form than in the Soviet Union.
The proclamation of the People's Republic in 1949 was of great importance to Asia and to the world. We must never forget that between 1949 and now, China accounts for a quarter to a third of the world's population. The Communist Party (CPC) made mistakes between 1957 and 1978 , causing it to squander almost all its achievements during the Cultural Revolution, for example. The corrected course since 1978, on the other hand, brought about continuous development with an average annual growth of nine percent and a steadily rising standard of living. In absolute terms, the country is now the sixth largest economy with the fifth largest foreign trade, which we must of course put into perspective by taking into account the size of the population (..)
The economic demands imposed by the first phase of the road to socialism force China to rely (now for about one-third of its production) on capitalist companies that are either wholly or partially Chinese or foreign. These provide capital, technology, and employment. These enterprises are under control and are not permitted in certain strategic areas. This situation will not be permanent, although this is not openly declared (…)
Furthermore, China shows us that it is possible to achieve success and remain true to its principles. Time and again, the CPC reiterates that its work is built on four foundations: the socialist ownership of the means of production; the leadership of the Communist Party; a solid socialist state; and Marxist ideology.

Manifest in 2005 no 19
The CCP itself:
What are the most important lessons communists can draw from the 80 years of socialist construction practice?
Deng Xiaoping's answer to this, regarding the question of what exactly socialism is and how it should be constructed, is that it is not yet really clear. He said that we must draw many lessons from the history of socialism, one of the most important of which is insight into the following problem: revolutionaries are inclined to act hastily. Admittedly, this is done with good intentions, in order to reach the stage of communism sooner, but this has often hindered us from analyzing subjective and objective situations in a rational manner, thereby violating the objective laws of the development of the world. (…)
The socialist world movement suffered a serious setback at the end of the 20th century and will need a long period to recover. We must try to do our work well and build a prosperous and good/fully-fledged socialism in China. If we do our best to further develop socialism in China, that will, as Deng Xiaoping emphasized, not only pave the way for the Third World, where three-quarters of the world's population lives, but (even more importantly) will prove to humanity that socialism is the only way and that it is superior to capitalism .

Manifest in 2005 no. 20
CCP itself:
Socialist systems within which reforms take place and which open themselves up bear witness to great vitality. Clear proof of this is provided by the development of socialism, with Chinese characteristics, over the past two decades in China, a country where one-fifth of the world's population lives.
Socialism began in China 50 years ago; since then, the country has achieved glorious accomplishments, but has also sometimes made missteps and even suffered from major periods of decline, such as during the 'Cultural Revolution'. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC, the Chinese communists made a proper summary of historical experiences, integrated Marxism with Chinese national conditions, and took the second major step in the development of Marxism by creating the Marxism of contemporary China: Deng Xiaoping's theory. (…)
Looking both backward and forward, the socialist movement worldwide at the turn of the century noted that the great backlash against socialism stemmed from the drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and was left behind in the 20th century. What actually broke down is a rigid old model of socialism. What is reviving is a great oasis of scientific socialism. Reforms have added new strength to the great ship of socialism.

Manifest in 2006 no. 02
The WPB/PTB/PVDA via their Marxist Studies (here no. 64):
The Chinese CP does not say at all that socialism already exists in China, let alone that there is communism. China, it says, is in the early stages of socialism.
(...) In the wake of the policy of reforms and opening up to the West, a strong private economy has developed. This forms an important part of the Chinese economy in the early phase of socialism because it provides employment and brings many products to market, generates significant tax revenue for the state, and promotes global economic development. Experiences in the development of China, but also of other socialist countries (certainly those countries that today once again belong to the capitalist world system), have shown that it is not a good thing if the entire economy is in the hands of the state in the early phase of socialist development. That does not benefit the socialist path. Naturally, the decisive components of the economy must be in the hands of the state, and that is indeed the case in China.(…)
China can hold its own as a socialist state in globalization because it is such a large country with such a strong economy. The most important thing is that the socialist character of the mode of production in China is preserved and strengthened, and that foreign attacks against the socialist economic system are resolutely repelled. The entire policy of the Chinese Communist Party is aimed at this. We must assess that strategic orientation and not immediately start shouting that China is abandoning socialism at every problem.”

Chinese Socialism , the latest edition of Marxist Studies, featuring texts by the former German ambassador to China, Rolf Berthold, whom we interviewed in this article, and by Boudewijn Deckers, who is responsible for the international relations of the Workers Party of Belgium . You can order this issue via www.pvda.be/shop or via www.marx.be, or by depositing 8 euros (7.50 plus 0.50 shipping costs) into account 001-1660379-09 of Imast, Kazernestraat 68, 1000 Brussels, mentioning 'China number MS'.

Manifest in 2006 no 19
The NCPN mobilized its members for the formation of the WPB/PTB/PVDA:
Marxist Summer University 2007 - from August 21 to 26
A WORLD IN MOTION
(...) Registration: Marxist Summer University, IMAST, Kazernestraat 68, 1000 Brussels (Tel.: + 32 (0)2/504 01 44 Fax: + 32 (0)2/513 98 31 E-mail: imast@marx.be). It is also possible via the NCPN party office.
(..)
Where is China Heading? (2 days, August 22–23) → This training was given by Peter Franssen (WPB), who wrote Marxist Studies No. 78 in 2007: “ Which Path Is China Taking? ”

Manifest in 2007 no 5
MARXIST STUDIES
Quarterly journal, publisher IMASTvzw, Brussels (www.marx.be)
to order at lectuur@ncpn.nl or 020 6825019
Each issue costs 7.50 euros, except double issue 67-68 = 15 euros.
(…)
No. 64. Chinese Socialism

Finally in 2011 …:

Manifest in 2011 no 12
China is an enormous country. Developments there involve many complex contradictions that necessitate thorough investigation before drawing conclusions. Manifest has therefore begun publishing articles that aim to increase insight into these developments.
This is the fourth and final part (see earlier Manifest 2011 numbers 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 ) of an in-depth analysis of China by the Greek CP.
The international role of China
Elisseos Vagenas - Member of the CC of the KKE, responsible for the international section of the CC. Published in Communist Review 6 (2010), translation by Frans Willems.

I give the example of the NCPN, because the CP (of which Thanasis Spanidis is a part) has only existed since 2022, as a split from the KO, which itself consisted of a large group that had left the DKP in 2017.
It was upon the withdrawal from the DKP that the (then still unified) Communist Organization took a clear stance on the matter. The position of the (then still unified) KO is articulated by Thanasis Spanidis², as he wrote in 2017:

As is well known, the construction of a socialist society requires not only subjective but also objective prerequisites, above all a sufficient development of the productive forces and an advanced socialization of production and transportation. These conditions were hardly met in China in 1949 : the country was among the poorest in the world, industry existed only in rudimentary form on the east coast, and vast swathes of land remained mired in profound backwardness. Nevertheless, even at that stage of development, the objective contradictions already pushed the country toward socialism. Capital had already reached a relatively high degree of concentration and was closely intertwined with the landed gentry and foreign capital, so that overcoming pre-capitalist modes of production and national dependency was only possible through the struggle against capital. Therefore, after a relatively short transitional phase ( the New Democratic Revolution ), decisive steps toward socialism were already being taken at that time: the construction of state-owned industry began, infrastructure was developed, agriculture was collectivized, and institutions for healthcare, public education, and social security were established throughout the country. The sometimes rampant voluntarism of the Chinese leadership and failures should not obscure the fact that the socialist construction process in China was, on the whole, a great success: For the first time, hundreds of millions of people had access to education and basic healthcare, the food situation improved dramatically, and employment was linked to social security. Average life expectancy increased by about a year every year during the Mao era. Industrial growth was not as astronomically high as after the capitalist restoration, but even during the chaotic phase of the Cultural Revolution, it is estimated at a remarkable 10% per year ( Hart-Landsberg, Martin/Burkett, Paul 2005, p. 37). During this period, the foundations were laid for the rapid economic boom that began in the 1980s by creating a functioning central state, expanding infrastructure, developing a modest industrial base, and raising the educational level of the masses . The CCP's "theory" that the "market economy" creates the conditions for future socialism thus distorts the facts: In reality, it was the socialist phase of development that created the economic, cultural, and political conditions that enabled the rapid development of today's Chinese capitalism. At the same time, the Mao era also saw serious misdirections with destructive consequences, especially during the Cultural Revolution. At Mao's death in 1976, the Chinese leadership faced serious problems that urgently required a solution: The crude control mechanisms were increasingly unsuitable for a differentiating economy, Wages had stagnated for two decades, leading to waste and shortages (ibid., p. 38).
However, given the overall positive balance, there were few objective reasons to doubt the correctness of the fundamental orientation toward socialist construction: China was in a much better economic position than 30 years earlier, living conditions had improved considerably despite persistent widespread poverty, and the masses, by and large, supported the Communist Party and the socialist project. A hegemonic crisis of socialism, such as was beginning to emerge in some Eastern European countries, especially Poland, was far off. The assertion that an alternative to the counter-revolutionary process initiated by Deng was impossible thus remains implausible. It is the uncritical acceptance of the official Chinese historical narrative, which honors Mao as an important figure in national liberation and state foundations, but tacitly sweeps his ideas of social liberation under the rug or tends to discredit their implementation in the past .
The Chinese Communist Party's strategy after 1978 certainly unlocked new resources for economic development that would not otherwise have been available to this extent, especially the utilization of exiled Chinese capital and access to foreign markets. However, in doing so, it sacrificed the socialist objective and the interests of its working class to the goal of growth. The rising standard of living and the reduction of poverty, often cited as arguments for the correctness of the current course, are undeniable. But they are accompanied by exploding social inequality, the unbridled exploitation of large sections of the working class, devastating environmental destruction, the disorganization and disempowerment of the working class, and, more generally, the destruction of any hope for a socialist future based on solidarity, equality, and freedom. For some years now, resistance among the Chinese working class and peasantry against the government's policies has been growing, often explicitly invoking the revolutionary traditions of the past. Rapidly growing strike movements, enormous by European standards, were complemented by mobilizations of small farmers and a growing interest in Marxism and the Maoist era among opposition students . The ruling party, however, did not respond to these movements with sympathy and solidarity, but rather with brutal police violence, prison sentences, and support for the employers.³

I would like to briefly point out a development in the analysis of China that Thanadis Spanidis makes HERE in 2017 and the later analysis in 2024 (more on this later).
Thus, in the 2017 analysis, there is still clearly a BREAK between “the correctness of the fundamental orientation toward socialist construction” and the line “in the 1980s” that led to the restoration of capitalism, which was “opposed to the line of Mao”.
In 2024, a continuity is assumed between the essentially "counter-revolutionary and revisionist" line of Mao and the line of Deng Xiaoping that led to the restoration of capitalism AFTER 1978.
However, it is clear that for the NCPN as well as the KP (CP), their position regarding the current (capitalist/imperialist) character of China is determined by the extensive analysis the KKE produced in 2010. In the extended version of the 1917 analysis of Thanadis Spanidis, that appeared in Offensiv no. 5 in 2016 on p. 24 , there is already a reference to the KKE regarding this:

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not seek alliances with class-conscious sections of the working class and the communist parties of its partner countries, but rather negotiates with representatives of governments and capital. For the CCP, international cooperation among communist parties is only one of several ways to gain recognition for the Chinese development model abroad. Another is rapprochement with the Socialist International or social-democratic bourgeois parties such as the Greek SYRIZA. During a visit to Greece in 2010, Liu Jieyi, Deputy Head of the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, not only welcomed the austerity and privatization policies of the then PASOK government, but also commented on China's fundamental stance toward the Socialist International: "We consider the continuation and coordination of the exchange of views and the strategic dialogue between the Socialist International and the Communist Party of China to be very important. Our intention is to continue this dialogue because, as we have noted in our discussions over the past few days, there are many commonalities between the Socialist International and the political orientation of the Communist Party of China.⁴"

Developments in Greece that had severe consequences for the working class led the KKE in 2010 to adopt an unambiguous position on the current capitalist character of China.

In 2010, there were developments in Greece that had consequences for the working class there:

On 4/10/2010, in a statement of the Press Office of the CCC of the KKE concerning the agreements with China
The package of agreements that were signed between the Greek and Chinese governments which are a treasure trove for certain sections of the plutocracy and nothing more. The popular strata should not believe the government’s propaganda and the celebrations of the plutocracy.
The notorious Chinese investment plan of 5 billion is nothing more than a shot in the arm for the Greek ship owners by the Chinese government in order that they have hundreds of ships built in China, and that Greece becomes China’s stepping stone into Europe.
The concession of infrastructure, ports, railways, shipbuilding facilities to Chinese transnational corporations so that they can be used to transport goods, will create very few jobs in the face of the unemployment which the mass elimination of medium and small businesses will cause. The expansion and strengthening of the activity of transnational capital in vital areas of infrastructure has as a result even cheaper workers without labor rights, with wages at Chinese levels.
The big businessmen who control the olive oil exports will be the ones who profit from the export of this product to China and not the poor farmers whose position will continue to deteriorate.
The people must learn from this. Development which benefits big capital is the bearer of poverty and unemployment for the people. It undermines the productive capabilities of the country, and entangles it in dangerous inter-imperialist rivalries.

The CP of China and its strategic dialogues with PASOK and the Socialist International 22 11- 2010
Comment of the Newspaper «Rizospastis”-Organ of the CC of the KKE (19/12/2010)
It is well-known that the KKE has come to the conclusion that capitalist relations are developing in China today, with the peculiarity that this is happening under the political leadership of the governing party which bears the title “communist”.
The consequences of this development are well-known: the elevation of China to the top of the countries with the fastest rates of capitalist development and the largest number of billionaires, the abolition of important workers’ gains, such as free health care and education, which the workers have to now pay for, and the existence of millions of unemployed and low-paid workers.
It was not by accident, then, that Liu Jieyi, Deputy Director of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, in his meeting (16/11) with G. Papandreou, Greek Prime minister and President of PASOK and the Socialist International stated that “ The relationship between PASOK and the Communist Party of China is exceptional and we have every intention of working more closely together, in order to promote our inter-party relations and through inter-party dialogue to reinforce the exceptional strategic cooperation between our two countries, especially now as we face many challenges”. Liu Jieyi did not forget to congratulate G. Papandreou on the “excellent election results”. It could not be otherwise, as the political representatives of the monopolies (such as COSCO), regardless of their packaging, (“socialist” in Greece or “communist” in China), understand their common class interests.
The anti-people choices of the PASOK government are saluted and supported by Chinese officials, as long as they are combined with the opening of the road for the Chinese monopolies.

It was clear that for the workers in Greece an elaborated analysis of the ACTUAL character of China has to be made in order to take away each doubt as “is THIS a possible form of socialism where the KKE would be mobilising for???”.

So the analysis is written and could be red on their international site on march 11 2011:

The International role of China
by Elisseos Vagenas, member of the CC of KKE, responsible for the international section of the CC
published in Communist Review 6th issue 2010

The rise of a new global power, China, has provoked a great deal of interest from analysts and ordinary workers all over the world. This interest is even more intense amongst politicized people, who understand the era of social revolutions which began with October 1917 in Russia and which led to a series of important socio-political struggles and revolutions in the entire world, among them the Chinese revolution. The interest concerning the rise in China’s power is contradictory, as the increase of its power is taking place under the red flag and with the CP of China in power.
Nevertheless, one of the “lessons” of the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union is that communists should not have accepted unquestioningly whatever the CPSU said but that every CP, while remaining true to the principle of proletarian internationalism, should study with its own resources the developments, the experience of the international communist movement and must attempt to form its own opinion concerning these things, utilizing Marxist-Leninist theory as its tool. The KKE reserves its right of criticism within the international communist movement with the aim of strengthening it and the strategy of the communists. The KKE confronts deviations from the principles of Marxism-Leninism and the laws of socialist construction, while maintaining bilateral relations with communist parties which have different approaches.
On this basis the KKE, while it continues to maintain bilateral relations with the CP of China, systematically follows developments and forms its own assessments which it expresses both publicly and to the CPC. As is well-known, the KKE already from its 17th Congress (2005) noted the expansion of capitalist relations in China. In the period since then this tendency has been reinforced and is even more evident. …

This was NOT an analysis about the Chinese revolution and the construction of socialism, neither that of way that lead to the restoration of capitalism (in its ultimate stadium of imperialism)
The analysis only stated (briefly and “summarizing) that “in the sixties and seventies”:

“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 subjective “summary” which is not totally correct (the sentences in italic bold) as far as CONCRETE historical FACTS are concerned.
Then, without saying that this is AFTER the death of Mao:

“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 government⁵.
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”⁶. In this article there were also references to the types of weapons that China gave for the strengthening of the counterrevolutionaries.” “

But these were not “needed arguments” to prove the ACTUAL bourgeois and capitalist character of China, so the “summarising” comments about the “sixties and seventies”, allthough being incorrect, it did not detract from the accurate and just analysis of the current character of China.
The essentials of the “summarizing” but subjective views of the KKE:

“….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 KKE has not yet produced a detailed analysis of the Chinese Revolution and the construction of socialism. However, the view stated above, which assumes a continuity of the CCP line BEFORE 1978 and AFTER 1978, is incorrect.
The remarks regarding the CCP line and strategy AFTER 1978 are correct and, moreover, proven (see the references).
These views, which at that time were NOT a fundamental analysis of the Chinese Revolution and the construction of socialism, nor an analysis of the strategy developed by Mao and the struggle between two lines within the CPC FROM the beginning, but merely a number of reservations, became simply the biased positions of certain communist parties, which they then “prove” through selected quotes and/or paraphrases of texts, taken out of their concrete historical context. In fact, an opportunistic (dogmatic) view (I speak of a petty-bourgeois attitude of “intellectual laziness” regarding the application of Marxism-Leninism... or if this were to happen CONSCIOUSLY, one could speak of revisionism. There is certainly a case of HISTORICAL revisionism when one presents a subjectivist view of a historical event or development as a “historical fact”.

A concrete example of this petty-bourgeois “intellectual laziness”, with the danger of developing revisionism, is Thanasis Spanidis, who works “commissioned by the CC of the Communist Party”.

In agreement with the CC of the CP, or “commissioned by the CC of the CP”, Thanasis Spanidis produced an analysis of the Chinese revolution and the construction of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in China, which was to become the party position on the matter. At the same time, he produced an analysis of “Maoism,” indicating that the CP would reject and combat this “Maoism.” By linking these analyses, he makes the content of the concrete strategy for the revolution and the construction of socialism in the concrete historical situation of China, as developed primarily by Mao Zedong, the content of what “Maoism” supposedly is.
Thanasis Spanidis, as a cadre of the CP, or as he himself writes, “commissioned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party”, “narrows” that struggle against opportunism/revisionism as a struggle solely against a singular form of dogmatism – Maoism.
He is also unclear in this regard regarding the character of opportunism and/or revisionism.
For instance, he refers to Maoism as a “communist current with errors”.
Or is there perhaps a difference, according to Thanasis Spanidis, between opportunism/revisionism …. and “Maoism”?  

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” 
In the “introduction⁷”, Thanasis Spanidis states:

A critique of Maoism – isn't that just another intellectual exercise in hairsplitting, far removed from our pressing current tasks as communists? Isn't it primarily about historical details that have little to do with the realities of modern capitalism? And shouldn't we instead be concentrating on building a powerful communist party and developing the strategy and tactics for overthrowing German imperialism?
We believe we can demonstrate in this book that such a contrast is false – the construction of a communist party requires clarity of content on all questions of class struggle, and Maoism, which is regaining influence in parts of the communist movement in Germany today, systematically gives false answers to a whole range of these questions . Whether a political organization aligns itself with Marxism-Leninism or with "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" is not a matter of personal preference; these are not simply variations on the same path to socialist revolution and communism. Claiming that there are no fundamental differences between Mao's ideas and Marxism-Leninism, and that therefore cooperation as "revolutionary allies" is seamless, avoids any substantive debate. The Maoist orientation permeates virtually all areas of political practice.
We are convinced that mutual, serious, and incisive, yet also objective, criticism of communist currents is essential for correcting errors and thus for progress in the class struggle . One of the main reasons for the great weakness of the international and German communist movement today is the lack of serious debates and confrontations with false ideas . (….)
The principle of "clarity before unity" is fundamental to the composition of the Communist Party and a prerequisite for the unity of communists in an organization and in practice. Of course, such a condition cannot be imposed on the working class as a whole. We strive for the unity of action of the working class, its common struggle independent of ideological differences. However, this broad orientation towards the entire working class presupposes precisely that the communist party implementing it stands on a programmatic basis that is as well-developed and collectively permeated as possible. These principles must also determine the relationship we adopt with other currents of the communist movement.

First, a brief word on “Maoism”

In my opinion, Maoism is a form of opportunism. It is a form of dogmatism in which one manages to “confirm” certain strategic lines or positions by means of selected quotations from Mao’s texts, without context, or by “inventing” a “new context.” Those quotations from Mao’s various works largely correspond to those in the Little Red Book (originally compiled by Lin Piao, with a “preface” by Liu Chaochi).

Mao’s texts are the strategic guidelines for the revolution and the construction of socialism, valid within the context in which they were drafted.

Dogmatism consists in adopting quotations from texts that were analyses or guidelines for a concrete historical situation—namely, as strategic guidelines in the revolution and the construction of socialism in China—whereby those quotations appear to confirm “guidelines” or “strategies” for situations that either had nothing to do with the original “context,” or for situations that were considered “analogous to those of the past.”
By applying this dogmatism, which is “Maoism,” the organization develops a social-democratic strategy instead of a revolutionary strategy, to which the organizational principles will also “adapt.”
Thus, for example, “the application of the mass line” leads to the obscuration of the revolutionary role of the working class and the vanguard character of the party. It is then assumed that the political consciousness of “the masses” is homogeneous. In which “masses” and “working class” are used interchangeably, until one speaks primarily of “masses” and “working class” is simply a formally meaningless concept.
The mandate regarding the necessity of developing the consciousness of ever-larger parts of the working class to a revolutionary level is obscured... in which the unequal development of consciousness within the working class (which – schematically - consists of a vanguard – a differentiated “middle section” and a differentiated “rearguard”) is no longer taken into account.
One then speaks of “masses” as something homogeneous and undifferentiated; the concepts of “classes” and “working class” become formal concepts. There is no longer even talk of the “vanguard”. The strategic goal becomes directing the “masses” towards “objectives of struggle” (considered by those organizations as “feasible within capitalism”).
The “objectives of struggle” then correspond to program points from the ELECTION program of those organizations. “Maoism” ultimately leads the organization, which perhaps once started as a revolutionary, Marxist, communist, towards a social democratic line.
Examples are the SP in the Netherlands, the WPB/PTB/PVDA in Belgium, and the KOE within Syriza (where the organizations move in a “Maoist” direction towards moving away from Marxism-Leninism and transitioning to social democracy).

Thanasis Spanidis is a cadre of the Communist Party and bases his analysis of the Chinese revolution and the construction of socialism and the subsequent restoration of capitalism (“commissioned by the CC of the CP”) on biased positions that correspond to the “summary” remarks of the KKE in The International Role of China. He has those that he does not investigate, otherwise he could have known that those “summary” remarks are incorrect:

“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 disagreement was published later, motivated by Sino-Soviet border disputes. (….) ... 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 what Thanasis takes as the basis for the preconceived positions he adopts regarding the CCP BEFORE 1978. The core of the positions he adopts BEFORE 1978 is that “Mao’s revisionism and counter-revolutionary views” contained the elements that formed the basis of Deng Xiaoping’s line, which led to the restoration of capitalism in China.
Added to this is the view that the CCP was actually responsible for the “split” with the CPSU.
In doing so, Thanasis Spanidis manages to minimize Khrushchev’s “opportunism” in order to accuse MAO of “a much worse revisionism.”
If one compares the accusations with texts from the CPSU, one notices that the content of his accusations corresponds to those leveled by Khrushchev against the CCP and later Brezhnev against Mao. Contrary to what he wrote in 2017, he now proceeds (following what he read at the KKE?) from a continuity of the line and strategy of the CCP (and/or Mao) from the 1960s and 70s, which already contains elements of the line that led to the restoration of capitalism after 78.
Because he worked “on behalf of the CC of the CP,” the conclusions Thanasis Spanidis draws—“Mao is a revisionist and counter-revolutionary,” of course—become party line.
His analysis (which he produced together with Jakob Schulze and Fatima Saidi, but he unequivocally led the final editing of that analysis): “Der Große Sprung Zurück” 
In the introduction, he outlines the framework of that analysis:

1.Introduction
(…)
The fundamental differences between Marxism-Leninism and Maoism became apparent early in history. In the early 1960s, the communist world movement split between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and their affiliated parties . This division deepened steadily, bringing the two socialist powers to the brink of nuclear war. This conflict resulted in a devastating weakening of the global working class and the socialist state system; imperialism was the clear beneficiary. The course of this conflict has been described in more detail elsewhere ⁸. Whether and to what extent the leadership of the Soviet Union and the right-opportunist shift at the 20th Congress of the CPSU contributed to this would have to be examined elsewhere. However, it is clear that the position of the Chinese Communist Party and the Maoist parties associated with it, which defamed the Soviet Union as "social imperialist" and, in some cases, "fascist," made overcoming the split impossible. Maoism's use of these terms was more than just a polemical exaggeration in the heat of the moment. To this day, the entire spectrum of Maoist currents has not distanced itself from the thesis of "social imperialism." It becomes clear that fundamentally different views on the economics and politics of socialism, but also on revisionism, the course and the causes of the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union are represented here than in Marxism.
We now want to show that Not only was the revisionism that spread under Khrushchev's leadership in the Soviet Union and the allied communist parties a recipe for defeat, but so too was the revisionism of Mao Zedong, which in many respects is more the hostile twin of Khrushchev's revisionism than its true adversary. But if we want to comprehensively examine, to learn from the mistakes of actually existing socialism, it is not enough to critically examine the resolutions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its 20th Congress. A critique of Mao's flawed ideas is equally necessary if one wants to avoid falling into other mistakes – or often the same mistakes in a different guise.

Thanasis Spanidis is therefore referring here to those (erroneous) assumptions in the KKE’s analysis in “The International role of China”.
It is true, however, that the KKE ONLY analyzed the current capitalist/imperialist character and NOT the developments in China (in the revolution and the establishment of socialism) that would then have led to the restoration of capitalism.
Thanasis Spanidis uses these “summarizing remarks” (which are in themselves not entirely correct – see above) as a starting point for his analysis. In this, Thanasis Spanidis is idealistic (non-materialistic). He connects this with other preconceived viewpoints, which he then proceeds to “prove” later in a dogmatic and idealistic manner.
A good example of dogmatism (the subjective and selective search for arguments for preconceived viewpoints), but which simultaneously demonstrates the CONSCIOUS character of his method, is his reference (see footnote): “Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan 2022: Open conflict between the USSR and the PRC of the 50s-70s, International Communist Review 12/2022, “
Thanasis Spanidis makes (DELIBERATELY/CONSCIOUSLY?) no reference to an article FROM THE SAME ISSUE of the International Communist Review: “TheSpeech of Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU: Socialismrendered defenceless”, by Kemal Okuyan, TKP General Secretary van de Communist Party, Turkey. 
This article would not allow Thanasis Spanidis to relativize Khrushchev's revisionism in this way compared to a "revisionism" of Mao named by Thanasis Spanidis (which was according to him, even WORSE) ...
In contrast to the analysis Thanasis Spanidis made in 2017 (see above), the 2024 analysis assumes a continuity between Mao's "counter-revolutionary and revisionist" line of in principle and the restoration of capitalism AFTER 1978 (he adopts this view from the "summary" remarks of the KKE in The International Role of China from 2010-2011 and links this to his judgment of Mao.
Thanasis Spanidis writes:

We now want to show that not only the revisionism that spread under Khrushchev's leadership in the Soviet Union and its allied communist parties was a recipe for defeat, but also the revisionism of Mao Zedong, which in many respects is more the hostile twin of Khrushchev's revisionism than its true adversary. However, if we want to comprehensively learn the lessons from the mistakes of actually existing socialism, it is not enough to critically examine the resolutions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its 20th Congress. A critique of Mao's flawed ideas is equally necessary if we are not to fall into other errors—or often the same errors in a different guise. However, if we want to avoid falling into other errors—or often the same errors in a different guise—we must also consider the implications of Mao's approach. (…)

How did it come about that the Chinese Revolution, this magnificent act of liberation for the greatest people on earth, degenerated after only two decades, and under the same leadership that had spearheaded the revolution, into a state that conspired with imperialism against the world communist movement and acted as a provocateur against the international communist movement? At least part of the answer lies in Mao's fetchling of “national particularities.” Mao proceeded from what he considered to be China's national interests, rather than those of the international working class, and followed an understanding of contradictions that were more or less arbitrarily interchangeable, making it possible to emphasize, at times, the struggle against imperialism, and at other times, the rivalry with the Soviet Union. These fundamental ideological positions first led the Chinese Communist Party, under his leadership, to abandon the necessity of an international communist movement, then to abandon the international communist movement itself, and finally to ally itself with US imperialism and the Western European imperialists against the Warsaw Pact states. Mao, who as a young man had resolved to wage war against imperialism and fight for socialism in China, died in 1976 as a traitor to the communist cause and an objective servant of the counter-revolution.⁹

If Thanasis Spanidis (“commissioned by the CC of the Communist Party”) is not refuted in the Communist Party, an incorrect application of Marxism-Leninism will creep into the Communist Party through his analysis.

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. Formally, it can still be said that it must first be approved at a congress BEFORE it becomes a “party position”. But a refutation or an “amendment” is already very difficult, for the reasons I cited above.
Thanasis Spanidis adopts the position IN ADVANCE (=idealism instead of historical materialism) of: Maoism = the line of Mao (from the 1920s up to and including the 1960s) = the same line (only a difference in accents) in the CCP from its founding to the present.
To “prove” this, he employs a similar dogmatism as the Maoists do themselves, whom he claims to combat.
This dogmatism (in order “to prove” preconceived positions) signifies opportunism in the application of scientific socialism, which normally serves to develop a strategy to change the world and to arm the working class with a strategy to do so.
I now wish to demonstrate this dogmatism CONCRETELY by addressing a few points from the entirety of Thanasis Spanidis’s analysis and to demonstrate CONCRETELY that this involves opportunism at the very least (in the case of ignorance, flawed research, or a petty-bourgeois attitude of “intellectual laziness”). But in the case of a DELIBERATE disregard of proper sources, or of a historical-materialist investigation of the concrete historical situation, it constitutes REVISIONISM.
In any case, it involves historical revisionism (and thus idealism) ….
If this analysis were first to be submitted (for amendment) to the members of the Communist Party BEFORE it became the “party position,” the problem arises that EVERY SENTENCE and EVERY REFERENCE can and must be called into question. The members would have had to have made a thorough study of the Chinese Revolution and the construction of socialism themselves in advance, in order to be able to reject the entire analysis instead of merely amending certain points.
In this way, for example, they could acquire insight that Thanasis Spanidis withholds from them in his analysis, namely of the development WITHIN the CCP – from the BEGINNING by its foundation.
In contrast to the formation, based on a political and ideological struggle PREVIOUSLY since 1904, of a politically, ideologically, and organizationally unified “Bolshevik” party in the Russia of 2012, there was in the CCP FROM ITS FORMATION in 1921 a revolutionary “wing” and a bourgeois “wing”, whereby the bourgeois “wing” was sometimes divided into mutually opposing “left” and “right” lines.
I am not going to refute EVERY sentence and EVERY point of analysis made by Thanasis Spanidis and EVERY reference or source in this regard.
Therefore, I will only present here the main lines of (at least) the opportunism of Thanasis Spanidis.
For his argumentation is so extensive (based on countless dubious references in footnotes), I will now demonstrate this in a few cases. Due to his method of working, but also due to his own acquired knowledge, which he should have obtained through extensive study, one can hardly avoid the assumption that this is not merely “opportunism” (due to a lack of education or lack of insight), but a CONSCIOUS practice and thus … revisionism.
Because this analysis—based on dogmatism—aims to become a party position, this dogmatism will creep into the Communist Party via this method of analysis by Thanasis Spanidis as a flawed conception of the application of scientific socialism (Marxism-Leninism).

Not a total refutation, but a number of opportunistic (if CONSCIOUS, then REVISIONISTIC) points of analysis by Thanasis Spanidis

- Is Tanasis Spanidis' dogmatism the result of petty-bourgeois intellectual laziness or a deliberate method by which T refers to ANT-COMMUNISTS?

IN Der Große Sprung Zurück - Eine marxistische Kritik an Theorie und Praxis des Maoismus (March 29, 2024)¹⁰ Thanasis Spanidis writes:

“...the disaster of the 'Great Leap Forward' is generally known, even though its truly devastating consequences are grossly exaggerated by anti-communist propaganda, which blames socialism for 'millions of extra deaths' ¹¹. What is undisputed, however, is that the Great Leap Forward has exacerbated a famine that had already been caused by natural disasters and has caused enormous economic damage…..”

Here he align himmself with general bourgeois and anti-communist “analysis” of the impossibility of socialism as a transition to communism. Communists investigate the achievements for the working class following a revolution that has taken place and that follows a strategy for the development of a new production and distribution system. They examine how the working class, under the leadership of its vanguard organization, has taken the organization of the new society into its own hands. The communists also investigate what failures, defeats, and/or errors exist (but from the perspective of the objective interests of the working class). They also investigate the cause of those failures, defeats, and errors, … in order to arm themselves for the moment when they will organize and mobilize the working class to wage the revolution and build a new society.
Without study, investigation, or analysis (in the footnote T says: “This subject cannot be explored further here”… yet speaking of “the disaster of the Great Leap Forward” is viewing the construction of socialism from the perspective of the bourgeoisie, which speaks primarily of the breakdown of ITS society, which for them is, in any case, “a disaster.”
So, a footnote states:

“This subject cannot be explored further here, so it suffices to point out that the figures of 30 million or more deaths from starvation, often cited by anti-communist historians, have no factual basis and are most likely based on statistical errors. Contemporary observers, including the CIA, did not speak of a famine of such magnitude around 1961. See Gao 2018, pp. 170-189; Joseph Ball: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?, Monthly Review, 2006, online: https://mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/.”

Reference is made here to Joseph Ball: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?
I do not know if Thanasis Spanidis has read this article himself and in its entirety? If so, then surely he would also have read the following passage:

There are authors such as Roderick MacFarquhar, Jasper Becker and Jung Chang who certainly do assert that the evidence they have seen proves the massive famine thesis. It is true that their main works on these issues¹² do cite sources for this evidence. However, they do not make it sufficiently clear, in these books, why they believe these sources are authentic.
It therefore remains an open question why the accounts presented by these authors should be treated as certain fact in the west. In his famous 1965 book on China, A Curtain of Ignorance, Felix Greene says that he traveled through areas of China in 1960 where food rationing was very tight but he did not see mass starvation. He also cites other eyewitnesses who say the same kind of thing. It is likely, that in fact, famine did occur in some areas. However Greene’s observations indicate that it was not a nation-wide phenomenon on the apocalyptic scale suggested by Jasper Becker and others. Mass hunger was not occurring in the areas he traveled through, although famine may have been occurring elsewhere. Why are the accounts of people like Becker believed so readily when the account of Felix Greene and the others he cites is discounted? Of course, the sympathy of Greene for Mao’s regime may be raised in connection with this and it might be suggested he distorted the truth for political reasons. But Becker, MacFarquhar and Jung Chang have their own perspectives on the issue too. Could anyone seriously doubt that these authors are not fairly staunch anti-communists?
Before addressing the question of the authentication of sources, the context for the discussion of these issues needs to be set. Communism is a movement that generates a massive amount of opposition. Western countries waged an intensive propaganda war against communism. In power, communist governments dispossessed large numbers of people of their capital and land. The whole landlord and business class was robbed of its social power and status across much of Asia and Europe. Unsurprisingly, this generated much bitterness. A large number of well-educated people who were born in these countries had and still have the motivation to discredit communism. It is not “paranoia” to ask that those who write about the communist era take pains to ensure that their sources are reporting fact and are not providing testimony that has been distorted or slanted by anti-communist bias.

Regarding the environment in which Roderick MacFarquhar would (and “was allowed”) to write his “analysis” of China, we can read in The China Quarterly, 238, June 2019, pp. 291–308, “In Memoriam Roderick Lemonde MacFarquhar, 1930–2019” (  ) which is extremely complimentary towards him:

Rod worked from 1955 to 1961 as a journalist with the Daily Telegraph in London, where he followed Chinese developments as part of his reporting responsibilities. Working under David Floyd, an experienced Soviet watcher, he covered the 20th Congress of the CPSU and its implications for China, an early assignment that would serve him well when he decided some years later to undertake an in-depth study of the origins of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
In early 1959, at age 28, Rod was invited by Walter Laqueur to launch The China Quarterly. Laqueur was editor of Soviet Survey, a journal established by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a Cold War union of Western intellectuals intended to counter the ideological influence of the Soviet Union. Rod had contributed an article to a special issue of Soviet Survey devoted to China’s Hundred Flowers Campaign. Laqueur was much impressed with the article and, believing that Communist China was important enough to warrant its own journal, asked Rod to serve as founding editor.
Rod approached this new opportunity with gusto. In preparation for the first issue to be published in 1960, he visited leading China specialists in Europe and the United States to learn about the field and solicit manuscripts. At the time, however, very few China specialists could claim any serious knowledge of post-1949 developments. Fewer still were writing research articles suitable for publication in an academic journal. For the inaugural issue, Rod tapped several former and current government officials with insider knowledge to write brief overviews of the first ten years of the People’s Republic of China. The lead article was by Howard Boorman, who had been a US Foreign Service officer in Beijing in 1947–50.

Does Thanasis Spanidis realize that, in his attempt to prove his preconceived positions regarding the construction of socialism in China, he is in fact basing himself on “testimony that has been distorted or slanted by anti-communist bias.”?
Elevating analysis(es) to such an extent, with so many (unverifiable) references, thereby “suggesting” conclusions as irrefutable. When those conclusions are then presented as the “party line,” it is for members who themselves likely have not studied the historical facts beforehand and receive an answer to every objection, impossible to assess the accuracy of that analysis. The method of overwhelming the reader with unverifiable references is a method that Thanasis Spanidis copied from an anti-communist such as Roderick Lemonde MacFarquhar. It leads to similar positions regarding “the Great Leap Forward” and the Proletarian Cultural Revolution ...
Several works, from which Thanasis Spanidis also eagerly quoted and which provided him with the “proofs” or “arguments” for his PREVIOUSLY adopted positions. Whereby they effectively fulfill their role of “counteracting the ideological influence of the ideology of communism” ….

MacFarquhar, Roderick. 1966. Chinese Ambitions and British Policy. London: Fabian Society.
MacFarquhar, Roderick 1974. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: Contradictions among the People, 1956–1957. Oxford: Royal Institute of International Affairs and New York: Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University.
MacFarquhar, Roderick 1983. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: The Great Leap Forward, 1958–1960. Oxford: Royal Institute of International Affairs and New York: Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University.
MacFarquhar, Roderick 1997. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961–1966. Oxford: Royal Institute of International Affairs and New York: Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University Press.
MacFarquhar, Roderick, with G.F. Hudson and Richard Lowenthal. 1961. The Sino-Soviet Dispute.
New York: Praeger.MacFarquhar, Roderick and Michael Schoenhals. 2006. Mao’s Last Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Edited and Compiled Volumes
MacFarquhar, Roderick (ed.). 1960. The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals. New York: Praeger.
MacFarquhar, Roderick and Timothy Cheek, Eugene Wu (eds.). 1989. The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

So Thanadis Spanidis “proves” a number of his PRE-established positions (e.g. regarding Mao) with “evidence” he derives from the works of MacFarquhar, who was recruited by the “the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a Cold War union of Western intellectuals intended to counter the ideological influence of the Soviet Union” omdat hij blijkbaar de geknipte man is om te zorgen dat de “ideologische invloed van de Volksrepubliek China” because he is apparently the perfect man to ensure that the “ideological influence of the People’s Republic of China” would be countered (from 1959 to 1966).
This strikes me as a DELIBERATE choice, because Thanadis Spanidis nowhere refers to, for example, William Hinton or Han Suyin, who are nevertheless privileged witnesses, as they LIVED in the China of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
But then again, they would undermine his PRE-established positions, which he sells as Marxist analysis.
And in fact, Joseph Ball writes in his article: DidMao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?, Monthly Review,2006,  which Thanasis Spanidis apparently has not read ENTIRELY, or which he hopes the reader-party members he addresses will not read either:

MacFarquhar stated when questioned by me that:
When I was asked to be the founder editor of the CQ [China Quarterly], it was explained to me that the mission of the CCF was to encourage Western intellectuals to form a community committed to the free exchange of ideas. The aim was to provide some kind of an organizational counter to Soviet efforts to attract Western intellectuals into various front organizations…All I was told about funding was that the CCF was backed by a wide range of foundations, including notably Ford, and the fact that, of these, the Farfield Foundation was a CIA front was not disclosed.(…)
… MacFarquhar, who worked for periodicals connected with the CCF. It is also alleged that other magazines received funding that emanated from the CIA more generally. For example, Victor Marchetti, a former staff officer in the Office of the Director of the CIA, wrote that the CIA set up the Asia Foundation and subsidized it to the tune of $8 million a year to support the work of “anti-communist academicians in various Asian countries, to disseminate throughout Asia a negative vision of mainland China, North Vietnam and North Korea.”¹³

So is Thanasis Spanidis reading those texts with dogmatic blinders on, thus only looking for quotes he can use as “proof” for his PRE-estimated positions? ….
Or does he belong to “A large number of well-educated people who (…) still have the motivation to discredit communism. It is not “paranoia” to ask that those who write about the communist era take pains to ensure that their sources are reporting fact and are not providing testimony that has been distorted or slanted by anti-communist bias.”

- Is Thanasis Spanidis’ dogmatism "intellectual laziness," or does he CONSCIOUSLY select the information in the reference that PROVES his positions, while CONSCIOUSLY NOT citing in that same reference what could CONTRADICT his positions?

His subjectivity is also evident, moreover, from the way they study the source (or DO NOT study it WELL) when he writes in the footnote; ”.. the figures of 30 million or more deaths from starvation, often cited by anti-communist historians, have no factual basis and are most likely based on statistical errors. Contemporary observers, including the CIA, did not speak of a famine of such magnitude around 1961. See Gao 2018, pp. 170-189 ...”
In *Constructing China - Clashing Views of the People’s Republic” (by Mobo Gao in 2018), you can read how “anti-communism” is NOT so much manifested in exaggerating the number of “millions of starvation deaths,” but rather in TALKING ABOUT “millions of starvation deaths” and pointing to Mao as the main culprit. There was hunger, there was serious malnutrition, but NO “millions of starvation deaths.” Incidentally, Mobo Gao also provides an explanation for the so-called “statistical errors”…. In doing so, Mobo Gao demonstrates that IF errors in the Great Leap Forward occurred, it is PRECISELY NOT Mao’s fault…. (more on this later). For instance, Mobo Gao states:

Snow, who popularized Mao in his in his book Red Star over China (1937), could be said to be a biased witness and a partial reporter in this case. But “In general, it appears that the indications of hunger and hardship did not approach the kinds of qualitative evidence of mass famine that have accompanied other famines of comparable (if not equal) scale, including earlier famines in China” (Riskin 1998: 120). In its 1961 secret report on the rural situation in China, the CIA does not seem to support the wildest claims either when it summarizes: “Widespread famine does not seem to appear at hand, but in many provinces many people are at a bare subsistence diet and bitterest suffering lies immediately before June when the first 1961 crops will be harvested” (CIA 1961: 3). It is also interesting to see how the CIA interpret the cause and course of the GLF: “As a result of two successive years of poor harvests, the withdrawal of the Soviet technicians, and the dislocation created by the ‘Leap Forward’ the country’s leaders have been forced sharply to slow down the pace of the country’s economic development program” (CIA 1961: 1).
Of course, one should not and would not take the CIA as a reliable witness. But if anything one would expect the CIA to say the worst about China since the GLF happened during the height of the Cold War, with which the CIA was closely engaged. The CIA summary is remarkable in many ways. First, it mentions the Soviet withdrawal as one of the reasons for the slowdown of China’s economy, as claimed by the Chinese government. Second, it admits to not having seen widespread famine when the report was written in April 1961. Finally, it points out “poor harvests” and “dislocation”—the latter is exactly the source of explanation offered by Sun Jingxian for the population discrepancies in the 1983 registered population report. Yet 30 million people are supposed to have died of starvation “without anyone knowing at that time that a famine took place” (Patnaik 2002, 2011).

In the same book, Thanasis Spanidis could read the following, somewhat ironic, passage by Mobo Gao, which could have aroused his vigilance against deception:

For his award-winning book Tombstone, published in Hong Kong in Chinese, the first edition of which appeared in 2008, Yang Jisheng is highly acclaimed in the West after an abridged English version appeared in 2010. Introduced by Edward Friedman, once a member of the Concerned Asian Scholars, and Roderick MacFarquhar, a veteran scholar on China, Yang was praised for his courageous work on the GLF.(….)
Yang Jisheng was a devoted Communist or else he would not have become a senior CCP journalist. What has made him a fierce fighter for “journalist integrity,” as he claims to be in his late life, in writing about the “truth” of the GLF? (GLF= Great Leap Forward, NICO) Yang says that he became critical of the CCP regime during the CR (CR= Cultural Revolution, NICO) when big posters exposed the official privilege of party officials (Yang 2008: 11). He then began to examine the GLF critically—linked to the fact that his father was starved to death— whereas before he had defended GLF policies.
Let us step back a little. Let us say that it is true that Yang’s father died of starvation. But did Yang know of any people other than his father in his hometown village who died of starvation at that time? Did he witness other deaths or mass graves? In my village study I describe how hungry my family and I were, but there was no death from starvation. If the figure of 30 million famine deaths were true, one in every 20 Chinese at that time was starved to death; famine of this scale must have left physical evidence. Yang Jisheng (2008: 15) mentions that Felix Greene, in his Curtain of Ignorance (1964), and Edgar Snow did not record seeing any sign of mass starvation because they were deceived by the Chinese.

- Thanasis Spanidis employs metaphysics and dogmatism in his analysis of the construction of socialism in China

Thus, Thanasis Spanidis attempts to find proof, confirmation, and arguments (here, therefore, with the anti-communist Roderick MacFarquhar, see footnotes) for a number of positions adopted IN ADVANCE by him:

Mao's concept of socialism is fundamentally that of a planned economy in which the state only sets general performance indicators for enterprises, but in which the enterprises enjoy extensive autonomy, in which market distribution carries significant weight, and in which capitalist tendencies are tolerated for extended periods. The fact that he advocated this concept not only for China, due to its perceived backwardness, but also for the economically far more advanced Soviet Union, and that he even supported a return to a market-based, commodity-based economy within the Soviet Union, demonstrates that this was a fundamental Maoist view. This is further evidenced by the following statements :
“Quite a few people worry on the road to communism when commodity production is mentioned because they think it’s something capitalist. They don’t see the essential difference between capitalist and socialist commodities. (…) I think that during the period of socialist construction, once the people’s communes exist, commodity production and commodity exchange must be continually developed.” ¹⁴“Commodity production should not be confused with capitalism. Why should one fear commodities if not out of fear of capitalism? (…) Don’t be afraid: I think (commodity production) must be greatly expanded. (…) Commodity production depends on the type of economy with which it is associated. Commodities associated with capitalism promote capitalism, but when they are associated with socialism, they promote not capitalism, but socialism. Commodity production has existed since antiquity ¹⁵.” “We shouldn’t expropriate the villages. Letting the municipalities run industries is bolder than Stalin was. Will that lead to capitalism? No. Because there is political power, (…) the party, the regional (party) committees, and the hundreds and thousands of party members ¹⁶. ”
Mao wanted to leave the fragmented property of the villages untouched; communal ownership was to be established only within the village itself. Mao refused to acknowledge the obvious danger that commodity production would lead to capitalist restoration, blaming the Party for this – but he ignored the fact that an underdeveloped socialist economy or an expansion of commodity production would also affect the consciousness of Party members.
Like Deng Xiaoping and the capitalist reformers in the Chinese Communist Party later on, Mao believed that commodities and markets in themselves had nothing to do with capitalism, but that there was also a "socialist commodity production ." He did not view commodity production in socialism as a relic of capitalism that would disappear with the development of the socialist mode of production, but ultimately as a neutral form of distribution of goods that could be expanded indefinitely under socialism without hesitation, thereby not weakening socialism but actually strengthening it. The argument that markets and commodity production have existed for millennia is also frequently used by the current Chinese Communist Party. This argument ignores the central Marxist insight that goods only assume the character of commodities under very specific social conditions, namely only when producers produce separately from one another and therefore must socialize their labor through exchange. Socialism, on the other hand, does not establish the social nature of the work of individual people indirectly through exchange, but directly through the central plan. Mao's position is evidently based on the fact that he never understood the economic laws of socialism . When Mao nevertheless writes of overcoming commodity production, which he claims will only be possible in the distant future under conditions of absolute abundance ¹⁷, it sounds more like lip service. For at the same time, he freely admits that he is not at all convinced of the complete socialization of production under socialism: "I fear that at least (!) some part (of commodity production) cannot be abolished ¹⁸." "Centralization is necessary above all in steel and machinery (...) Plans cannot be completely accurate; it is impossible to plan everything in advance. ¹⁹"
Mao, therefore, doesn't truly understand that labor products only become commodities under very specific social conditions—namely, when individual producers produce independently and must therefore exchange their products among themselves. In a society with comprehensive social ownership—socialism/communism—exchange of commodities is impossible, since the products are already the common property of the entire society, and the only remaining question is how consumer goods are distributed among individuals. The goods then no longer possess a dual character (a value according to which they are exchanged on the market and a use value that determines their usefulness to people), but are merely use values, i.e., socially useful things.
Mao, on the other hand, says: “Marx’s Capital began with the analysis of the dual nature of commodities. Our commodities also have a dual nature. In a hundred years, commodities will still have a dual nature. Things that are not commodities also have a dual character ²⁰. ” With this, Mao declares the historically specific commodity character of the products of labor to be a general, transhistorical, and metaphysical characteristic. Just as everything has a dual nature, so do commodities. Because Mao tends to understand contradictions as an eternal oscillation between two poles and fails to see that contradiction tends toward self-resolution, the overcoming of commodity production is no longer a consistently pursued goal of socialism for him .

Thanasis Spanidis’ views on Mao are ALL (see the footnotes) “confirmed” and/or “proven” here with quotes attributed to Mao, which Thanasis Spanidis claims come from “Secret speeches of Mao”. The CHOICE of the quotes, however, was already made in advance (and not by Thanasis Spanidis himself..., but by MacFarquhar, Roderick/Cheek, Timothy/Wu, Eugene (eds.) 1989, in the 1989 book, “From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward”, where they list the following as “sources”: “The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao”. But those “secret speeches” themselves cannot be read ANYWHERE, and the CONTEXT to this also remains a great secret. Stuart Schram was an associate of Rod MacFarquhar and had to translate all of Mao’s texts. In his books, Schram makes NO mention of so-called “Secret Speeches”. Perhaps those “new references” were in the material that “became available” AFTER the third session of the 11th CC in 1978!!
This can be read in “In Memoriam Roderick Lemonde MacFarquhar, 1930–2019” (In The China Quarterly, 238, June 2019):

Shortly after arriving in Cambridge, Rod assumed the directorship of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard’s principal hub for the study of modern China. For the next six years, 1986–92, he threw himself into this administrative assignment with exceptional energy and initiative, spearheading a development drive that resulted in the creation of several new China/social science faculty positions (...) One team, under the supervision of Rod’s former SOAS colleague, political scientist Stuart Schram, set to work on a definitive multi-volume translation of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary writings; (…)
A major challenge in writing the trilogy was the ever-expanding number of primary documents. Even as he was reviewing page proofs for Volume one, two important volumes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution writings became available.
Following the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978, additional new “internal” material became available just as he was finalizing the draft for Volume two. The problem of proliferating source material was even more acute in the preparation of Volume three. A treasure trove of new memoirs added depth and breadth to the story, forcing Rod to modify his view of Mao (unfavourably) ….

Similarly, Thanasis Spanidis apparently hasn't read Mobo Gao (In Constructing China - Clashing Views of the People’s Republic, from which he extracts just one quote – see above) either, or he hopes that the CC or the party members who are supposed to judge the analysis as the “party line” do not read this book themselves:

I aim to reinforce two arguments: (1) the post-Mao construction of the CR and the GLF in particular, and the Mao era in general, is always selective in including and excluding information and data; and (2) the conceptual framework adopted by the producers of knowledge dictates their selection. The anti-Communist conception automatically excludes any information or data that shows the CR in a positive light, and the neoliberal economic rationalist conception excludes the historical context of the Third Line industry. Such a conception will lead one to think that the Third Line industry was a waste of resources which could have been much better used to develop light industries for consumer products that benefited the livelihoods of the Chinese people, or that it would have been more efficient to invest them in the first-tier areas along the south-east coast.
In hindsight, both conceptualizations—anti-Communist and neoliberal economic rationalist—will lead one to conclude that Mao was not only a bad economist but also a paranoid, bellicose and power-hungry mad man who did not care about human life, as indeed Chang and Halliday (2005) and Dikötter (2010) claim.

Thanasis Spanidis indeed bases his judgment of Mao’s view on a planned economy on an “anti-communist and neoliberal economic rationalist” such as MacFarquhar:

“Mao's concept of socialism is fundamentally that of a planned economy in which the state only sets general performance indicators for enterprises, but in which the enterprises enjoy extensive autonomy, in which market distribution carries significant weight, and in which capitalist tendencies are tolerated for extended periods. The fact that he advocated this concept not only for China, due to its perceived backwardness, but also for the economically far more advanced Soviet Union, and that he even supported a return to a market-based, commodity-based economy within the Soviet Union, demonstrates that this was a fundamental Maoist view.”

We can read about Mao's view on the planned economy by Mao himself in Talk On The Third Five Year Plan: 

In the past, the method of planning was essentially learned from the Soviet Union and comparatively easy to do. First you determine how much steel is needed, then on this basis estimate how much coal, electricity, transport force, and so on are needed; and then based on these assumptions estimate the expected increase in urban population and the livelihood benefits. This is the method of using the calculator. Once the output of steel is reduced, all other items are correspondingly reduced. This kind of method is impractical and unworkable. This type of calculation cannot take into account what the Lord in Heaven will do to the plan. Suppose a natural disaster comes and you just won’t have such a quantity of foodgrains, support to the urban population cannot increase to the extent desired and then everything else comes to naught. Besides you cannot figure in what war will do. We are not the chief of staff of the U.S., so we don’t know when they will strike against us. Furthermore, revolutions in various countries cannot be figured into the plan. Suppose in some countries the people’s revolutions have succeeded and they need our economic assistance. How can this be foretold?
It is necessary to change the method of planning. This is a revolution. After we learned the Soviet method, it has become a force of habit with us and it seems hard to change.
In the last few years we have been groping our way and found some other method. Our policy is to take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor. Pursuant to this policy, when we map out a plan we first see what quantity of foodgrains can be produced, then estimate how much fertilizer, pesticides, machinery, iron and steel, and so on are needed.
How do we plan for an annual harvest? It will be determined by the assumption that in 5 years there will be 1 year of good harvest, 2 years of ordinary harvest, and 2 years of poor harvest. This is more practical and dependable. It should first be ascertained what quantity of foodgrains, cotton and other economic crops can be produced under such conditions and then how much industry can be planned for on this foundation. If the harvest of the year is better, so much the better.
Moreover, we should consider war and make strategic plans. Party committees in various localities should not manage civil affairs alone and ignore the military, should not manage money alone and ignore guns. As long as imperialism exists, there is always the danger of war. We must build up the strategic rear. . . This does not mean that we no longer care about the sea coast which must also be well-guarded so that it can play the role of supporting the construction of new bases.
Two fists and one rear end. Agriculture is one fist, and national defence is another fist. To make the fist strong, the rear end must be seated securely. The rear end is basic industry.
At present, the main problem of basic industry is one of variety and quality which must be solved. Last year although the output of steel was less, it had more variety and better quality and consequently more uses than in the past. The key does not lie in the quantity of output. The Soviet Union takes quantity as the criterion. If they fail to fulfil the quantity target of steel output, it looks as if their total socialist construction is lost. They have kept on raising their quantity target every year and they have been making empty boasts every year. As a matter of fact, a state will not collapse simply because a planned quantity target has not been fulfilled. Given a definite quantity of output, variety will increase, and thus the foundation will be strengthened.
In agriculture we must mainly rely on the spirit of Ta-chai and self-reliance. This is not to say that it does not need the support of industry. Water conservancy, chemical fertilizer, and pesticides all need the support of basic industry.
We should take hold of the objective relationship of proportions in mapping out any plan.
Planning should not be done merely by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. As soon as calculations have been completed, all departments and all localities will be fighting four figures, personnel, and money and engaged in litigation. . . We must let politics take command, entertain an over-all viewpoint, and formulate a plan not in accordance with the desire of any particular locality but with the laws governing the objective existence of the things themselves.

- Thanasis Spanidis defends THE SAME views on Mao as those of the CCP in 1981 in the Resolution of the 6th session of the 11th CC: “At the same time: ‘ultra-left’ voluntarism and ascetic concept of socialism”

Thanasis Spanidis writes:

While Mao did not consider China's overall economic development ready to be organized within a framework of strictly centralized planning, he apparently believed that communist principles of distribution could already be implemented in the people's communes—even though Mao himself repeatedly emphasized material abundance as a prerequisite for communism. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proclaimed in 1958: "The realization of communism in China no longer seems to be a question of the distant future. We should actively use the form of people's communes to test a concrete path for the transition to communism ²¹." Mao himself said: "Three years of hard struggle and then twelve more years, fifteen years is the time it takes to transition to communism (...) Henan Province is talking about four years. That is perhaps a little too short. Let's double that, so eight years ²². "
This obvious discrepancy – the national economy as a whole was developed only according to very broad planning guidelines and, in practice, largely regulated by the market, while communism was already being implemented at the local level – was an expression of a utopian understanding of socialism that did not employ the methods of historical materialism. Mao made no secret of his borrowings from utopian socialism: “We should implement some of the ideals of utopian socialism. The life of the Protestant Puritans was very hard. ²³”
Communism, however, requires a high level of development of the productive forces, which was certainly not the case in China during the 1950s and 60s – at the time of the 1949 revolution, China was considered one of the poorest countries in the world . Without developed large-scale industry, transportation, and communication systems, comprehensive planning of the national economy is difficult – although, as we have seen above, the Chinese Communist Party hardly pursued such planning, since the prevailing understanding was that of decentralized socialism with people's communes as the basic units. In the worldview of Mao and the majority of the Chinese party leadership, the material prerequisites for communism were to be established within a very short time through a gigantic exertion of force, that is, through the collective will of the people. This voluntaristic (i.e., based on subjective will and ignoring objective conditions) orientation found its expression in the policy of the “three red banners” – 1) The “general line of socialist construction” with simultaneous development of industry and agriculture, 2) The “Great Leap Forward” and 3) The establishment of the people’s communes .
This voluntarism was systematic and is repeatedly expressed in Mao's statements about the relationship between subjective will and the transformation of objective reality : "Under the leadership of the Communist Party, as long as there are people, every miracle on earth can be accomplished ²⁴." ... Here, Mao unilaterally emphasizes the will and discipline of the individual, but not the objective conditions; therefore, this passage can ultimately only be interpreted as a justification of the voluntarism generally advocated by Mao. (...) The Marxist view is directly opposed to voluntarism...

The “view of Mao” is presented by selected quotes, first of all by a quote supposedly originating from the CC in 1958. This quote was already “selected” for Thanasis Spanidis in 2008 by a certain Felix Wemheuer. No context is given, as we have come to expect from Thanasis Spanidis, … but in 1958 Mao was quite often CONTRADICTED by a majority in the CC, “led” by Liu Chaochi. So that could be that context, and then NOT a view of Mao, but perhaps …. of Liu Chaochi.
In the second footnote and third foutnote reference to a quote by Mao – naturally without context and with the anti-communist MacFarquhar as the “source”.
In the fourth footnote, a quote is provided from the text Mao Tse-tung from 1949: The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History*, Selected Works Vol IV,  to prove this “systematic voluntarism”.

It now becomes very difficult to see NO CONSCIOUS practice in the dogmatism Thanasis Spanidis employs here. For it is through truly conscious searching (subjective selection) and conscious isolation of a quote from its context that Thanasis Spanidis can use the quote as “proof”.
The quote Thanasis Spanidis provides was Mao’s answer to Acheson’s Malthusian thought. The entire text of Mao is about the fact that insofar as the Communist Party succeeds in “arming” the people with the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, historical materialism, it is capable of conducting the revolution and building up socialism:

Acheson, spokesman of the U.S. bourgeo:isie, not merely because he has explicitly confessed to the fact that the United States supplied the money and guns and Chiang Kai-shek the men to fight for the United States and slaughter the Chinese people and because he has thus given Chinese progressives evidence with which to convince the backward elements….(….)…., says:
“The population of China during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries doubled, thereby creating an unbearable pressure upon the land. The first problem which every Chinese Government has had to face is that of feeding this population. So far none has succeeded. The Kuomintang attempted to solve it by putting many land-reform laws on the statute books. Some of these laws have failed, others have been ignored. In no small measure, the predicament in which the National Government finds itself today is due to its failure to provide China with enough to eat.
A large part of the Chinese Communists’ propaganda consists of promises that they will solve the land problem.
To those Chinese who do not reason clearly the above sounds plausible. Too many mouths, too little food, hence revolution. The Kuomintang has failed to solve this problem and it is unlikely that the Communist Party will be able to solve it either. “So far none has succeeded.” (…)
It is a very good thing that China has a big population. Even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution; the solution is production. The absurd argument of Western bourgeois economists like Malthus 3 that increases in food cannot keep pace with increases in population was not only thoroughly refuted in theory by Marxists long ago, but has also been completely exploded by the realities in the Soviet Union and the Liberated Areas of China after their revolutions. Basing itself on the truth that revolution plus production can solve the problem of feeding the population, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has issued orders to Party organizations and the People’s Liberation Army throughout the country not to dismiss but to retain all former Kuomintang personnel, provided they can make themselves useful and are not confirmed reactionaries or notorious scoundrels. Where things are very difficult, food and housing will be shared. Those who have been dismissed and have no means of support will be reinstated and provided with a living. According to the same principle, we shall maintain all Kuomintang soldiers who have revolted and come over to us or been captured. All reactionaries, except the major culprits, will be given a chance to earn their living, provided they show repentance.
Of all things in the world, people are the most precious. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, as long as there are people, every kind of miracle can be performed. We are refuters of Acheson’s counter-revolutionary theory. We believe that revolution can change everything, and that before long there will arise a new China with a big population and a great wealth of products, where life will be abundant and culture will flourish. All pessimistic views are utterly groundless. (….)
The Chinese Communist Party “had been organized in the early twenties under the ideological impetus of the Russian revolution”.
Here Acheson is right. This ideology was none other than Marxism-Leninism. This ideology is immeasurably superior to that of the Western bourgeoisie, which Acheson calls a “high order of culture which had not accompanied previous foreign incursions into China”.
The clinching proof of the effectiveness of this ideology is that Western bourgeois culture, which the Achesons can boast of as a “high order of culture” compared with China’s old feudal culture, was defeated the moment it encountered the new Marxist-Leninist culture, the scientific world outlook and the theory of social revolution, which the Chinese people had acquired. In its first battle, this scientific and revolutionary new culture acquired by the Chinese people defeated the Northern warlords, the running dogs of imperialism; in the second, it defeated the attempts by another running dog of imperialism, Chiang Kai-shek, to intercept the Chinese Red Army during its 25 , 000 -li Long March;²⁵ in the third, it defeated Japanese imperialism and its running dog, Wang Ching-wei; and in the fourth, it finally put an end to the domination of China by the United States and all other imperialist powers as well as to the rule of their running dogs, Chiang Kai-shek and all the other reactionaries.
The reason why Marxism-Leninism has played such a great role in China since its introduction is that China’s social conditions call for it, that it has been linked with the actual practice of the Chinese people’s revolution and that the Chinese people have grasped it. Any ideology — even the very best, even Marxism-Leninism itself — is ineffective unless it is linked with objective realities, meets objectively existing needs and has been grasped by the masses of the people. We are historical materialists, opposed to historical idealism.
Oddly enough, “Soviet doctrine and practice had a measurable effect upon the thinking and principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, particularly in terms of economics and Party organization”. What was the effect produced on Dr. Sun by the “high order of culture” of the West, of which Acheson and his like are so proud? Acheson doesn’t say.
Was it an accident that Dr. Sun, who devoted the greater part of his life to seeking from Western bourgeois culture the truth that would save the nation, was finally disappointed and turned to “learning from Russia”? Obviously not. Of course it was no accident that Dr. Sun and the long suffering Chinese people he represented were all infuriated by the “impact of the West” and resolved to form an “alliance with Russia and the Communist Party” in order to wage a life-and-death struggle against imperialism and its running dogs.
Acheson dare not say here that the Soviet people are imperialist aggressors and that Sun Yat-sen learned from aggressors. Well, then, if Sun Yat-sen could learn from the Soviet people and the Soviet people are not imperialist aggressors, why can’t his successors, the Chinese who live after him, learn from the Soviet people? Why are the Chinese, Sun Yat-sen excepted, described as “dominated by the Soviet Union” and as “the fifth column of the Comintern” and “lackeys of Red imperialism” for learning the scientific world outlook and the theory of social revolution through Marxism-Leninism, linking these with China’s specific characteristics, starting the Chinese People’s War of Liberation and the great people’s revolution and founding a republic of the people’s democratic dictatorship? Can there be such superior logic anywhere in the world?
Since they learned Marxism-Leninism, the Chinese people have ceased to be passive in spirit and gained the initiative.

- Thanasis Spanidis DENIES (thus aligning himself with the small army of bourgeois and anti-communist “analysts” with this view) the achievements of the construction of socialism in China in the 1960s. The only difference: instead of speaking of the “monster” Mao, he speaks of Mao, the “revisionist and counter-revolutionary”

Thanasis Spanidis writes:

Organizing society along the lines of an army, according to the principle of command and execution, without improving living standards, driven solely by the will of politically mobilized masses—such an approach can only be suitable for defending socialism in exceptional situations like war. It has nothing to do with deepening and expanding the socialist character of the relations of production. Mao actually confuses the organizational form of the military with the overcoming of commodity production in socialism. Communism, however, is not achieved solely through discipline and willpower, even though these elements play a role, but primarily through the inclusion of all individuals and units of production in the comprehensive planning of economic and social development. Communism is not an ascetic poverty socialism, as many utopian socialists envision, but rather corresponds historically to the highest stage in the development of the productive forces, the socialization of labor, and the satisfaction of needs. The attempt to achieve it solely through willpower was doomed to failure.
And he failed: The catastrophe of the "Great Leap Forward" is widely known, even if its truly devastating effects are greatly exaggerated by anti-communist propaganda in order to blame further "millions of deaths" on socialism ²⁶. It is undeniable, however, that the Great Leap Forward exacerbated a famine already erupting due to natural disasters and caused enormous economic damage. The most famous example was the initiative to cast iron and steel in makeshift furnaces throughout the countryside, producing gigantic quantities of unusable steel.

 “ It is undeniable, however, that the Great Leap Forward exacerbated a famine already erupting due to natural disasters and caused enormous economic damage."

NO, with the expansion of the communes under the Great Leap Forward, they actually prevented worse!

Quote Han Suyin (Thanasis Spanidis will not quote her, although SHE was in China in the 50s, 60s, and 70s; Thanasis Spanidis prefers to refer to anti-communists or bourgeois “analysts” from the 90s and 2000s):
Out of “The Wind in the Tower”, chapter 10 The Years of Endurance: September 1959 to September 1962”:

The year 1960 began badly: an iron-hard winter without snow, fol-lowed by two hundred days of drought. The Yellow River shrank until it was a pencil thread lost in sand. Forty million hectares of cultivated land were affected. In Shantung peasants replanted grain five times. Townspeople came to help, including schoolchildren, forming long chains to carry water to the fields. The South was flooded, immense seas drowning the crops. Summer hail killed off the wheat in Hopei and Honan.²⁷
And then the communes showed their worth. Fifteen million people in Shantung planted turnips and sweet potatoes to make up for the destroyed wheat crop. Eighteen million in Honan formed an anti-drought army, with four hundred thousand cadres from the cities joining in.
Mao insisted there should be no procurement of grain or other staple food from the affected regions. As a result, there were shortages in the cities and stringent rationing. Pig cholera took its toll of the depleted pig population, and the staple diet in Peking that winter was cabbages.²⁸
Purchases of wheat from abroad for the cities began: 2,5 million tons in 1960, 5,8 million tons in 1961-1962, and 5,6 million tons in 1962-1963. The foreign exchange required amounted to 33 to 39 percent of China's total foreign exchange earnings, yet the shortfall amounted to only 3 to 4 percent of the total harvest, and China continued to export rice, one to two million tons, to Albania and to North Vietnam.

This concerns the extensive analysis that Thanasis Spanidis & co produced “commissioned by the CC of the CP”
In a subsequent article, I will 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 Spanidi disseminated: The Rule of Capital in China ( https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/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)

1„90 Jahre Kommunistische Partei Chinas - Der Osten leuchtet ROT”, https://www.dkp-rheinland-westfalen.de/index.php/politik/partei/1178-90-jahre-kommunistische-partei-chinas

2 Spanidis: Die Diskussion um den Klassencharakter der VR China. Auf https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/die-diskussion-um-den-klassencharakter-der-vr-china-ausdruck-der-weltanschaulichen-krise-der-kommunistischen-weltbewegung/

3 https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/die-diskussion-um-den-klassencharakter-der-vr-china-ausdruck-der-weltanschaulichen-krise-der-kommunistischen-weltbewegung/. Die Diskussion um den Klassencharakter der VR China: Ausdruck der weltanschaulichen Krise der kommunistischen Weltbewegung - 4. Dezember 2017

4 KKE (2010): Die Kommunistische Partei Chinas und ihre strategischen Gespräche mit der Sozialistischen Internationale, online: http://deold.kke.gr/news/2010news/2010-11-22-kina.html, abgerufen 23.6.2015

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

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

7 https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/der-grosse-sprung-zurueck/#maostrat , “1 Introduction”, by Thanasis Spanidis

8Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan 2022: Open conflict between the USSR and the PRC of the 50s-70s, International Communist Review 12/2022, online: https://www.iccr.gr/en/issue_article/Open-conflict-between-the-USSR-and-the-PRC-of-the-50-70s/#A6, accessed February 28, 2024.

9https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/der-grosse-sprung-zurueck/#maostrat 29 maart 2024 Der Große Sprung Zurück - Eine marxistische Kritik an Theorie und Praxis des Maoismus

10https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/der-grosse-sprung-zurueck/#maostrat 29 maart 2024 Der Große Sprung Zurück - Eine marxistische Kritik an Theorie und Praxis des Maoismus

11 (NOTE by THANASIS SPANIDIS): This subject cannot be explored further here, so it suffices to point out that the figures of 30 million or more deaths from starvation, often cited by anti-communist historians, have no factual basis and are most likely based on statistical errors. Contemporary observers, including the CIA, did not speak of a famine of such magnitude around 1961. See Gao 2018, pp. 170-189; Joseph Ball: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?, Monthly Review, 2006, online: https://mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/.

12see R. MacFarquhar The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Oxford University Press, 3 vols, 1974, 1983, 1997, J. Becker 1996 and J. Chang and J. Halliday Mao :The Unknown Story, Johnathan Cape, 2005.

13V. Marchetti, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Johnathan Cape, 1974.

14Translated from English: "Not a few people get all worried on their march towards communism whenever commodity production is brought up, because they think this to be something capitalist. They disregard the essential difference between capitalist and socialist commodities (…). I think that during China the period of socialist construction, once there are people's communes, commodity production and commodity exchange must be ever more developed", quoted by MacFarquhar et al. (red.) 1989: The Secret speeches of Chairman Mao: From the hundred flowers to the Great Leap Forward. Harvard contemporary serie 6, p. 472.

15Translated from English: "Commodity production should not be confused with capitalism. Why fear commodities if not from fear of capitalism? (…) Don't be afraid: I think [commodity production] has to be greatly expanded. (…) Commodity production depends on the kind of economy to which it is linked. Commodities linked to capitalism give rise to capitalism, whereas linked to socialism they give rise not to capitalism, but to socialism. Commodity production has existed since old times", ibid., p. 476.

16Translated from English: "We should not expropriate the villages. [Having] the communities run industries is bolder than Stalin. Will that lead to capitalism? No. Because there is the political power that depends on the power and lower middle peasants, there is the party, there are the county [party] committees and hundreds and thousands of party members.", ibid, p. 475.

17Ibid., p. 478.

18Translated from the English: “I’m afraid at least a part [of commodity production] can’t be abolished”, ibid., p. 473.

19Translated from English: "Centralization is needed mainly in steel and in machinery. (...). Plans can't be completely accurate; [it's] impossible for everything to be planned ahead of time", ibid, p. 419f

20Translated from English: "Marx's Capital started with the analysis of the dual nature of commodities. Our commodities also have a dual nature. In a hundred years' time commodities will still have a dual nature. Things which are not commodities have a dual nature too", ibid., p. 239.

21Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: People's Communes as Bridges to Communism (1958), in: Felix Wemheuer 2008 (ed.): Maoism. History of Ideas and Revolutionary Spirit, Promedia Verlag, Vienna, p. 92

22Translated from English: "Three years of hard struggle, and then twelve more years, fifteen years is the transition to communism. (…) Henan province talks about four years [for the transition to communism]. That's perhaps a bit short; double it, eight years.", MacFarquhar et al. (ed.) 1989, p. 444.

23Translated from English: "We should put into practice some of the ideals of utopian socialism. The life of Protestant Puritans was very hard.", Ibid., p. 414.

24Mao Tse-tung 1949: The Bankruptcy of the Idealistic Conception of History, Selected Works Vol. IV, p. 484.

25 In October 1934 the First, Third and Fifth Army Groups of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (that is, the First Front Army of the Red Army, also known as the Central Red Army) set out from Changting and Ninghua in western Fukien and from Juichin, Yutu and other places in southern Kiangsi and started a major strategic movement. In traversing the eleven provinces of Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwang-tung, Hunan, Kwangsi, Kweichow, Szechuan, Yunnan, Sikang, Kansu and Shensi, crossing perpetually snow-capped mountains and trackless grasslands, sustaining untold hardships and frustrating the enemy’s repeated encirclements, pursuits, obstructions and interceptions, the Red Army covered 25 , 000 li ( 12 , 500 kilometres) on this march and finally arrived triumphantly at the revolutionary base area in northern Shensi in October 1935

26This topic cannot be discussed in detail here; therefore, it should only be noted that the figures of 30 million or more deaths from starvation, commonly cited by anti-communist historical revisionism, have no factual basis whatsoever and are most likely based on statistical errors. Contemporary observers and even the CIA did not speak of a famine of such proportions around 1961. (See Gao 2018, pp. 170–189; Joseph Ball: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?, Monthly Review, 2006, online: https://mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/.)

27 The Times, London, November 9 and December 30, 1960, China's Long Bat-tle Against Record Drought. The article quotes the areas affected as 230,000 square miles, half the cultivated land in China. See also Far Eastern Economic Review, September 19, 1960.

28 Author's personal experience while in China in 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962.