Lenin said: “All past revolutions have made the state machine more complete, but this machine must be broken and destroyed.”
And the standing army of socialist states serves both the purpose of dictatorship of the proletariat and contains remnants of the old social division of labor. Therefore, it should not be expanded indefinitely. In socialist countries, the dictatorship over class enemies should rely on the broad masses of workers and peasants, handing over the judgment and supervision of saboteurs to them, and raising their class consciousness so that they can consciously act to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat. If reliance is placed on strengthening the standing army to suppress class enemies, then class enemies will also have the opportunity to seize control of the large armies, forming warlords, which would undermine the stability of the proletarian dictatorship. Laws can be used to suppress class enemies, but there is also a risk that class enemies will use laws to suppress revolutionaries; laws also protect small producers, but this essentially allows the existence of private ownership. Therefore, the continuous increase in legal provisions will also give the bourgeoisie inside and outside the party opportunities to serve their own interests and maintain their benefits.
Therefore, ultimately, the most important aspect of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to rely on the proletariat and the broad masses of workers and peasants, to hold power in the hands of the proletariat, rather than relying on establishing various laws and expanding the standing army to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. After all, all policies and routes must be implemented by people.
Standing armies and police forces in past bourgeois states, especially imperialist countries, were used for internal suppression and external invasion. For socialist countries, suppressing internal class enemies should certainly not be done with standing armies in the same bloody manner as bourgeoisie suppressing the proletariat. I agree with the author that “if reliance is placed on strengthening the standing army to suppress class enemies, then the class enemies will also have the opportunity to seize control of the large armies themselves, forming a series of military leaders, which instead undermines the stability of the proletarian dictatorship.” Socialist countries abroad do not need to invade; they also make early preparations against possible imperialist invasions, maintaining readiness and reserves. Militia trained during peacetime can be organized into combat units during wartime.
Class dictatorship and limited military size are not contradictory. The standing army is just one of the tools to implement dictatorship, not the only one. However, during the socialist China period, there was a trend of gradually increasing the size of the standing army. At its largest, it had over 6 million personnel.
However, this post discusses the issue of the standing army, not the legal issues.
Under socialism, the standing army is twofold: it contains elements of communism as the direct armed force of the people, but also bears traces of the old social division of labor. If not vigilant, it could turn into private armies of capitalist warlords. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the military and civilian efforts, with the army participating in production and helping the people to transform themselves. Of course, the fundamental method is to arm the people thoroughly, replacing the standing army with militia. Expanding the standing army ultimately remains a method of dictatorship by the old state machinery; it cannot solve the problem and will only increase the power of military leaders.
Before 1976, the consistent policy was that the people should organize armed forces, the standing army should focus on production, the masses should support the Liberation Army, and the Liberation Army should “support the left, support industry, support agriculture.” “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is forever a fighting force, but also a work team, and also a production team.”
The law is the same situation; adding legal provisions only gives the bourgeoisie more room for opportunism because the establishment of complicated legal provisions in capitalist society is precisely to make various laws contradict each other and find a law that suits their own interests according to their needs. In this way, the laws of capitalist society are arbitrarily interpreted and selectively extracted to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, which is why they become extremely complicated. Ultimately, this is because the bourgeoisie is detached from the people; it cannot rely on the people to uphold the law but can only rely on a few people to enforce violence to maintain the law, thus strengthening legal restrictions to suppress the people. Socialism is different; socialism is the dictatorship of the majority over the minority, and maintaining the law mainly does not rely on the dictatorship institutions of a minority but on the conscious participation of the masses. Therefore, there is no need for so many legal provisions; in most cases, the people can analyze and judge counter-revolutionaries according to specific circumstances. According to Lenin, socialist countries are “states without bourgeoisie,” and Chairman Mao also believed this, thinking that “there is not much difference from capitalism,” so if people like Lin Biao come to power, it would be easy to establish capitalism. The state of the proletariat is actually twofold and has two aspects. On one hand, it contains elements of communism, meaning it is the dictatorship of the majority over the minority, and it has already taken on the social nature; the state has, to some extent, become a true administrative organization serving the whole society. But on the other hand, the state is ultimately a product of private ownership; its existence indicates that there are still hostile classes, meaning class struggle still exists, and private ownership still exists. Therefore, when a socialist state enacts laws, it can confiscate the means of production of big capital and stipulate that these means of production are owned by the state, but it cannot and does not intend to confiscate the means of production of small producers. Instead, it enacts laws to protect the private rights of small producers and the cooperatives formed by small producers, which is the protection of collective ownership. This is a form of bourgeois legal rights. Furthermore, besides some laws inherently protecting private ownership, some laws also involve practical application issues. For example, socialist laws stipulate the need to suppress counter-revolutionaries, but who is a counter-revolutionary is not something that can be judged in advance; it is not a simple matter to judge in reality. The proletariat can use this to suppress counter-revolutionaries, but revisionists who have seized some power can also label good people as counter-revolutionaries and suppress them. This is beyond the power of law itself. Therefore, socialist China does not formulate complex criminal codes like capitalist countries but allows the masses to analyze specific cases and judge themselves, without being restricted by rigid rules. This is why it is necessary to smash the public security, procuratorate, and law enforcement agencies because these things are too complicated and only serve to promote bourgeois legal rights and strengthen bourgeois power.
Whether it is the law, the standing army, or the prison system, they all have a practical issue of leadership. An increase in laws can be used against the bourgeoisie, but more often they become rigid and mechanical, exploited to escape punishment or used specifically to suppress the proletariat. An expanded standing army can better crush bourgeois rebellions, but more often it is used by the revisionists to suppress the masses. Building more prisons can detain more counter-revolutionaries, but it can also imprison more rebels. Chen Zaidao of Hubei, and later Liu Feng and Zeng Siyu, as well as Wei Guoqing of Guangxi, all used the standing army to suppress rebels. Sending rebels to ‘study classes’ for torture and abuse also became a routine method for the revisionists under Lin Biao’s line to persecute opponents. Similarly, the Soviet Red Army’s expansion of armed forces primarily strengthened figures like Zhukov, and the internal affairs department’s expansion mainly strengthened figures like Beria. Meanwhile, the proletariat found it harder to resist their restoration efforts due to their increased strength. After Stalin’s death, Beria first attempted a coup relying on the internal affairs department, then Khrushchev relied on Marshal Zhukov’s support to suppress Molotov, Kaganovich, and others. The history of Soviet revisionism and the Cultural Revolution has already proven that if the dictatorship continues to follow the old bourgeois methods (increasing laws, expanding the standing army, building more prisons, etc.), it will strengthen not the proletarian dictatorship, but the capacity of the revisionists to overthrow the proletariat. Only when the masses are broadly armed and counter-revolutionaries are subjected to democratic discussion and open trial can the revisionists lose their opportunities. This has not been fully realized for a long time (public security organs, procuratorates, courts, standing armies, etc., will still exist for a long time during socialism and cannot be abolished directly), but they should be restricted and gradually replaced by methods that mobilize the masses more extensively.
The core issue is that within socialist countries, it is inevitably not a monolithic proletariat, but rather a combination of the proletariat and various bourgeois elements mixed within the state apparatus. Therefore, strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot rely on mechanically increasing the size of the state machinery (otherwise, the proletariat can exploit it, and the bourgeoisie can, and even more effectively, because such old methods of dictatorship are more suitable and familiar to them), but must depend on establishing new types of state machinery to resolve this. The main way to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat is to broadly mobilize the masses to participate in the dictatorship. For example, laws should not be increased with more articles, but there should be more local people’s tribunals like people’s courts that handle public trials, allowing the masses to participate in judging counter-revolutionaries. The standing army should not be expanded infinitely and should even be reduced in some cases (except in special situations like war), but more militia units should be formed, arming the masses. This can reduce the economic burden caused by the standing army and also weaken the power of military leaders. Prisons should not be built excessively, but counter-revolutionaries can be placed under the supervision and control of the masses (except those with particularly malicious nature, who may rebel at any time), and they can be reformed through labor locally. This can check the power of the capitalists who abuse their authority to arbitrarily arrest and kill counter-revolutionaries. When the masses are broadly involved in the dictatorship activities, the state increasingly loses its nature as a violent organization controlled by a minority, and the old divisions of state officials will gradually fade. Ultimately, the state will disappear when the dictatorship of the proletariat develops to its strongest stage, and the socialist society of the dictatorship of the proletariat will directly transform into a highly conscious communist society where everyone is self-aware.
Why did this situation occur?
Is it to prepare to fight the Soviet Union, so the standing army was expanded?
Does this thing have a source?
At that time, it was necessary to prepare for the possible occurrence of a world war, especially to counter the strong threat of the Soviet Union in the north, so the military had to be strengthened.