My personal view is as follows: If one simply regards the restoration of capitalism in China as a mere accident, seeing it as a “palace coup” that succeeded with just a sudden move by a few military leaders, then obviously one has fallen into the quagmire of historical idealism. The reason capitalism was able to be restored in China could fill a whole book if discussed rigorously and in detail from a Marxist perspective. So, what I say certainly has gaps, and everyone can use it as a reference.
First, the capitalist roaders appeared as representatives of a class; they represented the interests of the bourgeoisie and were the bourgeois representatives within the party. Their existence was due to the fact that capitalist forces still existed, and the people were not dead in heart. After the establishment of socialist China, a group of bourgeoisie infiltrated and blended into the revolutionary ranks. Some within the revolutionary ranks also gradually degenerated and became privileged bourgeoisie due to the lack of ideological struggle. They first demanded to vigorously promote capitalism in China, because without this, their class interests could not be satisfied. Therefore, when Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and others promoted revisionism and whipped up a black wind, they immediately followed suit, suppressing the masses and cadres who wanted revolution. For example, the deputy director Xia in the film “Joyful Little Lianghe,” Zhang Jinfa in “Golden Avenue,” and the hospital director in “Spring Seedling” are typical reflections of such figures in literary and artistic works.
The capitalist roaders and bourgeois forces have been in fierce struggle and confrontation with the revolutionary faction and the proletariat. At that time, there were still some middle and rich peasants domestically, many intellectuals and “industry experts,” some backward peasants whose thoughts had not been transformed, and some masses who, under the black wind whipped up by the capitalist roaders, failed to see clearly and did not grasp the string of class struggle. Therefore, it can be said that in socialist China at that time, although it was not a vast sea of petty bourgeoisie, the existence of petty bourgeoisie was widespread. And the petty bourgeoisie was constantly spontaneously generating capitalism, so the task of winning over and transforming these petty bourgeoisie was very necessary. Moreover, there were theoretical weapons for transformation at that time; during the Cultural Revolution, Marxism-Leninism was developed to a new height, and Chairman Mao pointed out the path of continuing the revolution and the direction forward. However, in just ten years, the theoretical weapons and the masses were not thoroughly combined, the spontaneity of the petty bourgeoisie was not completely eliminated, and the bourgeoisie was still frantically retaliating. The struggle remained severe—even many capitalist roaders carried the red flag to oppose the red flag, going crazy to the extent of promoting armed conflict and killing people; Li Da was killed by them.
Relatively speaking, although the Red Guards and rebel factions at that time wanted revolution and launched sharp struggles against capitalist forces, black guards, and revisionists, and achieved many results, the rebel faction itself did not overcome the petty bourgeoisie’s bad traits. A considerable number of comrades in the rebel faction used the method of “only my revolution is right, only I am the most revolutionary,” did not emphasize unity among comrades, but rather caused division and factional fighting, failing to unite to complete the task of thoroughly overthrowing the capitalist roaders. This petty bourgeois fanaticism (actually dual-natured) later manifested in the Shanghai Commune disarmament incident.
Later, in 1976, Chairman Mao passed away, and the proletariat lost the leadership of the revolutionary leader; the situation changed. The capitalist roaders wanted to restore capitalism completely through a coup. At that time, although capitalism was counterattacking and the spontaneous petty bourgeois forces were still strong, the proletariat had been tempered by ten years of the Cultural Revolution and was also very strong. After education against revisionism and anti-revisionism, the Chinese people were not so easily taken down by counter-revolutionary gangs. So it was not like the Soviet Union’s revisionist path, where Khrushchev’s secret report and Zhukov’s military action could easily overthrow the old Bolsheviks. The gang leader Ye Jianying himself admitted “there was no absolute confidence” about whether they could “crush” Jiang Qing and other revolutionaries in one stroke.
Although the revolutionary rebel faction inside the central leadership still persisted in struggle, they did not cultivate a great proletarian leader like Chairman Mao who could unite everyone. The spontaneity of the petty bourgeoisie was still constantly at work, and the basis for the capitalist roaders’ existence was still “broadly” present. Therefore, under various conditions, Ye Jianying and others brazenly launched a coup and arrested Jiang Qing and other leaders of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. After the incident, revolutionary factions across the country immediately organized. However, due to the reasons mentioned above, many revolutionary factions in various places ultimately failed to mobilize revolutionary forces to oppose the revisionist gang. Rebel factions in places like Hubei, due to historical reasons, were still “waiting and watching” and ultimately failed to rise up; Shanghai, as the revolutionary bridgehead, initially, under the leadership of Zhu Yongjia and others, said they would fight for at least a few weeks to let the world know that a revisionist coup had occurred in China, aiming to establish a Shanghai Commune like the Paris Commune, and even mobilized tens of thousands of militia. However, because Zhu Yongjia himself was a petty bourgeois intellectual, as Marx pointed out, the petty bourgeoisie “when it has not perceived any danger, always boasts and talks prettily, sometimes even insists on the most extreme positions verbally; but when facing slight danger, it becomes timid, cautious, evasive, and when other classes seriously respond and participate in the movement it initiated, it becomes terrified, full of worries, and wavering; when matters develop to armed struggle, to preserve its petty bourgeois survival conditions, it is ready to betray the whole movement, and finally, due to its irresolution, when reactionaries achieve victory, it is especially deceived and humiliated.” Therefore, after the petty bourgeois fanaticism, he immediately became a coward, unwilling to shed blood or sacrifice, unwilling to oppose the revisionist countercurrent, and finally humiliatingly surrendered, losing Shanghai without firing a shot.
After losing the revolutionary bridgehead and many regions, although militia and armed struggle against the revisionist group were organized in Yunnan, Fujian, and other places (even workers’ uprisings occurred in Fujian in the 1980s), because there was no central leadership, because revolutionary factions and revolutionary masses had been purged and arrested (clearing out the “three types of people,” remnants of the “Gang of Four,” etc.), because many masses with petty bourgeois thoughts were indifferent to politics, just wanting to live their lives and build warm nests, and because rightists strongly supported capitalist restoration and were busy speculating and making money, the revisionist group ultimately succeeded in restoring capitalism. (But even if they succeeded, their reactionary actions continuously provoked the anger of the masses, eventually leading to the outbreak of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, but that is another story.)
