Today I didn’t write my reading notes in order to rest early, so I am sharing some of the better reading notes I made during the winter vacation.
The working class needs to organize into an independent political party to act as a class; spontaneous workers’ movements can only reach syndicalism because spontaneous movements are of capitalist nature, essentially not opposing capitalist society but merely demanding to change their own status.
The contradiction between China’s semi-colonialism and imperialism, and the contradiction between semi-feudal society and feudalism are actually the same contradiction, because the latter is actually an agent of the former — in rural areas, large landlords; in cities, large comprador (bureaucratic capital). Different imperialist powers have different agents in China, and the remnants of feudalism allow rural areas to be independent of cities. The uneven political and economic development across regions has led to warlord fragmentation and continuous warfare, which also creates conditions for armed peasant and worker uprisings.
Imperialist invasion on one hand destroys certain feudal production relations; on the other hand, it turns China from an independent country into a semi-colony.
Old democratic revolution
Although national capitalism has developed somewhat, feudal production relations and feudal land ownership still form the basis of society.
The struggle of the masses
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement: lacked proletarian party leadership, lacked advanced worldview and theoretical guidance.
Bourgeois democratic revolution: these emerging bourgeoisie are still closely linked with the old feudal forces and are also exploitative classes, making it impossible for them to carry the democratic revolution to the end. Even the most radical bourgeois far-left and petty-bourgeois united dictatorship — the Jacobin democratic dictatorship — collapsed after only a year.
The revolution urgently needs new forces; the proletariat has undertaken this historical task.
Advantages of China’s proletariat: appeared earlier than the national bourgeoisie; originated from peasants, conducive to the worker-peasant alliance; oppressed and exploited most deeply by the three mountains (imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism), with no means of production; without private property, which is a burden.
Question: Why does the working class lack an economic foundation for reformism?
Communist ideas can only be instilled from outside; spontaneous struggles cannot form a communist ideological system, and can only reach syndicalism at most.
“How to Proceed?” and the Chinese revolutionary movement
The revolutionary spirit of students comes from oppression; apart from a few opportunists who treat knowledge as capital, there are unrealistic fantasies in schools: immediately becoming bourgeois or their lackeys after graduation.
Intellectuals with communist ideals contrast with today’s students in China (parasitic, detached from practice, obsessed with opportunistic studies, indulging in spiritual opium) and previous students (working while studying, economically independent, relying on subsidies but still concerned with the revolution).
The May Fourth Movement erupted, students protested in the streets and were suppressed, while the working class launched a general political strike forcing the Beiyang government to yield. Moreover, the May Fourth Movement was a great ideological and cultural movement, fiercely attacking old morals and literature, and vigorously promoting new culture and new morals.
After the May Fourth Movement, communist intellectuals turned towards the path of integrating with the workers and peasants (dividing into revolutionary, non-revolutionary, or counter-revolutionary intellectuals).
Chairman Mao led students in patriotic anti-imperialist movements and published “The Great United Front of the People.”
The so-called new policy is to rescue the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie, but instead it strengthens the control of the monopoly bourgeoisie, taking advantage of the bankruptcy of many petty bourgeoisie to strengthen monopolies. The continuous outbreaks of economic crises accelerated fascism in Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the appeasement policies of Britain and France.
The more severe the economic crisis, the weaker the bourgeoisie; the weaker the bourgeoisie, the more reactionary it becomes. Economic crises inevitably lead to political crises, and they are also periods when monopoly capital strengthens its monopolies.
Classes become increasingly reactionary, and politics and culture will be equally reactionary.
