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✪ 李陀
In the last century, the socialist movement had a profound impact on the whole world and had a tendency to compete with capitalism. However, as the practice of socialist countries encountered their own crises and setbacks, people lost confidence in the prospects of socialism for a time. Since the 80s, under the socialist system, China has undergone continuous reforms, developed into an industrial power, and in the context of the deepening of the global capitalist crisis, it has shown a different vitality and injected new content into socialism. On the other hand, the capitalist countries represented by the United States are facing crises such as shrinking industries, declining technological innovation, social fragmentation, and democratic failure. In this historical context, socialism has once again gained attention in the competition of global political discourse and has become a possible direction for people to deal with the crisis.
However, there has always been a fierce debate in various circles about what socialism is and how to realize it. In order to respond to these questions, Li Tuo considers the history of China's socialist revolution, construction, and reform from the perspective of the history of the world socialist movement. Starting from the repeated setbacks of socialist experiments in history, this article illustrates that the realization of socialism is a long process full of attempts and circuits. Among them, whether it is possible to implement the coexistence of multiple ownership systems under the socialist system has been explored and experimented since Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy in 1921. In March 1949, Mao Zedong also put forward the idea of the coexistence of five economic components. The practice of this idea went through a process of twists and turns, and it was not until the beginning of the reform in the 80s that it was gradually established in the form of an institution.
For true socialists, encouraging the coexistence of multiple economic sectors is not an abandonment of principles, but an arduous effort to experiment with the integration of multiple economies into the socialist economy and then integrate them into a new economic system at a specific stage of construction. Lenin pointed out a hundred years ago that one should not "expect history to produce 'complete' socialism smoothly, calmly, easily, and simply", and that "it will become a reality only after a series of various and imperfect concrete attempts to build a socialist state of one kind or another".
Today, China's reform is still a major experiment in the history of the world socialist movement. The construction of China's high-speed rail network, the "West-to-East Power Transmission" and the construction of integrated economic zones all offer great prospects for the restructuring and reorganizing of the economy in accordance with socialist ideals on a larger scale, which would not have been possible under a purely capitalist system. The coexistence of different economic forms under the socialist system has not only brought vitality to the economy and society, but also made the ideological field full of contradictions and conflicts. Therefore, in the course of the future development of the world socialist movement, there will certainly be complex and fierce ideological struggles. Therefore, we should be soberly aware of the complexity, experimentation, and risk of socialism.
This article is based on the author's speech at the academic seminar on "The 'Two Movements' in the Eighties and Socialism in Contemporary China" held by the magazine "Cultural Perspective", and was originally published in the third issue of "Culture Perspective" in 2024, originally titled "Some Thoughts on the Complexity of Socialism and Reform", on the occasion of the 103rd anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
Some reflections on the complexities of socialism and reform
Li Ling suggested that I could say a few words about intellectuals in this discussion, but to be honest, this topic is too big for me to talk about. However, there is indeed a lot of intellectual-related content in the interview on the "Two Movements", so let's go on with some of the aspects covered in the interview. I am a literary critic and pay more attention to reality, so what I want to talk about today is also a more practical question: how should intellectuals view socialism and the socialist movement, and what kind of attitude should they take?
But this time we will go far and start with history, from Lenin.
▍ 1
In the interview with the "Two Movements", I had a view that to understand the complexity of socialism, it is better to be more macroscopic and pay attention to the actual development of the history of the socialist movement, especially to study an aspect of this actual development that is often overlooked—the history of the socialist movement has always been accompanied by continuous social experiments, some of which have succeeded and some have failed. In retrospect, however, it is clear that uninterrupted social experimentation is in fact an integral part of socialist practice.
However, in the interview with the "Two Movements", this idea was not developed, and now I would like to take the opportunity of this discussion to expand this idea and say a few more words.
This cannot but involve history, especially the history of the practice of socialism.
To recall, this social "experiment" took place as early as the very beginning of the socialist movement, in the stage of utopian socialism. Among them, Owen went to the United States in 1824 and bought 1,214 hectares of land on the banks of the Wabash River in southern Indiana, and carried out a social experiment of the "New Harmony Commune" that caused a sensation in the world. Although this dream paradise failed after only four years, it was, after all, the first attempt to build an ideal society in the capitalist world, so we should still regard it as the beginning of a great new history.
Half a century later, the Paris Commune carried out an even greater experiment.
The victory of the Paris Commune lasted only 72 days. In these short 72 days, the Parisian proletariat not only established the first working-class government, but also introduced a series of political, economic and cultural measures, such as the abolition of the standing army and state officials, the abolition of high salaries for officials, the abolition of parliamentarism, and the introduction of democratic universal suffrage for civil servants at all levels, which were not only unprecedented in the historical development based on private ownership, but also from the perspective of the practical history of human society, all the revolutionary measures of the Commune were the first, and for this reason they were naturally of an experimental nature. Revolutionary experiments.
Although the experiment lasted only 72 days before it was drowned in a pool of blood by the bloody repression, Marx pointed out in the Resolution of the Congress on the First Anniversary of the Paris Commune: "The heroic March 18 movement was the dawn of the great social revolution that emancipated mankind forever from class society." "Under the light of this dawn, the socialist movement, which later had the revolutionary goal of overthrowing the capitalist system, developed with twists and turns, but all kinds of revolutionary experiments continued one after another and never stopped—one of the most precious legacies left by the Paris Commune for the socialist revolution.
▍ 2
One example of this is the reform experiment of the famous "Red Vienna" in urban construction.
Between 1918 and 1934, the Austrian Social Democratic Party was in power in Vienna for a period known as "Red Vienna". Taking advantage of this opportunity, the SPD carried out a series of reforms in the city of Vienna, which can also be described as an experiment in democratic socialism. The most prominent of this experiment was the construction of public housing in response to the poor living conditions of the working class in Vienna: by 1934, nearly 65,000 public housing had been built in Vienna, constituting 348 new residential areas with strong socialist characteristics; One of the most famous large buildings is the Karl Marx Compound, which was completed in 1924. The "compound" is a huge public housing unit, including not only 1,400 apartment houses that can provide housing for 5,000 people, but also large and large public facilities such as large laundry rooms, public baths, dental clinics, obstetrics and gynecology hospitals, public libraries, pharmacies, and other large and small public facilities. Due to the reasonable adjustment of public and private space in the design, the workers living in this apartment enjoy good living conditions and public services.
Everything had an end: since the Austrian Social Democratic Party was a reformist party that followed the parliamentary path, this socialist experiment, which was largely confined to urban construction, came to an abrupt end when the Nazis came to power in 1934.
▍ Three
However, looking back at the reformist social experiment of "Red Vienna" today, it has another effect - using it as a frame of reference, we can reconsider the significance of Lenin's announcement in the spring of 1921 of a "strategic retreat", abandoning war communism and switching to the New Economic Policy from the perspective of "experimentation" -- it not only fundamentally changed the traditional Marxist understanding of socialism, but also provided a new direction for the socialist movement.
For Lenin to make such a significant transformation at the end of his life, previous studies have formed a special field, and many treatises have been written. For this reason, there will be no restatement of review, analysis and discussion as to why Lenin declared that "we have to admit that our whole view of socialism has fundamentally changed" and that he had abandoned the "direct transition" to socialism in favor of a detour, "retreating to the position of state capitalism, from 'storming' to 'siege'".
Today, however, it is worth noting that these combings, inquiries, and writings, while numerous in their significance and ambiguity, all ignore one point: for the Soviet power, which had only been born for only three years and had not yet established itself, it could be said that such an astonishing shift in revolutionary tactics was in fact quite experimental in practice—Lenin's "series of retreats" for the "roundabout" transition to socialism were also in a certain sense a series of "experiments".
If we look at it more macroscopically, the October Revolution of 1917 itself was a revolutionary experiment: the implementation of a proletarian revolution in a backward agricultural country that could not be said to have achieved industrialization and was based on serfdom was impossible from the perspective of classical Marxist theory, and it was also completely contrary to the practical experience of the proletarian revolution in Europe since the 19th century. For this reason, the theoreticians of the Second International did not buy Lenin's theory of starting with the weakest link in the world capitalist system. For this reason, it goes without saying that the orthodox theoreticians of the Second International had always had a negative attitude towards the Bolsheviks and the revolution led by Lenin, and even among the Marxists who basically agreed with Lenin's line but had doubts about Lenin's concrete practice, there were not a few who took a critical position out of confusion. Moreover, the ideological and theoretical debates that have arisen from this have never stopped for more than a hundred years. The situation is similar in China's theoretical and intellectual circles, especially in the post-"Cultural Revolution" and reform and opening up period, when thinking and arguing about the history of the October Revolution has always been a very hot field of study, but again, there is not much discussion about the experimental nature of the Russian Revolution led by Lenin. This situation has also affected our understanding of the major strategic pivot that Lenin began in 1921 (abandoning the "frontal attack" and the "direct transition" in favor of a "roundabout approach" to achieve the transition to socialism), so much so that we tend to ignore the difficulties and difficulties in this "roundabout approach" and how serious the challenges it posed in theory and in practice.
▍ Four
Lenin made clear statements about these challenges, especially in the important documents written in his later years, such as "On the Grain Tax", "Report on the New Economic Policy at the Seventh Party Congress of the Moscow Province", "The Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution", "Report at the Second Congress of the All-Russian Committee on Political Education", and "On Cooperatives". He also repeatedly pointed out that the new Soviet regime will encounter more difficulties and more challenges in the future socialist construction. For example, in On the Grain Tax, a document of particular relevance to the NEP, Lenin explicitly states that "it is not to be expected that history will produce 'complete' socialism smoothly, calmly, easily, and simply", and that "it will become a reality only after a series of concrete and varied attempts to build this or that socialist state". Moreover, Lenin sharply attacked the absurd public opinion that the economic and political forces in Russia were not commensurate with each other, that the historical conditions for a socialist revolution were not at all met, that the Bolsheviks should not have seized power, and that the October Revolution had made an incorrigible mistake: "They have forgotten that 'proportionality' can never exist, and that in the development of nature, as in the development of society, such proportionality is impossible, only after many attempts— Each of these individual attempts would have been one-sided, and there would have been some disproportionate fault in order to establish victorious socialism from the revolutionary cooperation of the proletarians of all countries. ”
These ideas of Lenin, together with other writings on the general theme of the "roundabout" socialist transition, form a coherent ideological thread, very rich and complex. But on a practical level, the key can be concentrated in one point: the construction of socialism does not dream that a "complete" socialism will be realized at some point.
The inability to pursue the direct realization of a "complete" socialism is a new strategic idea put forward by Lenin on the socialist revolution and socialist construction, and it is of great significance.
If we systematically look back at the "series of retreats" implemented by Lenin around 1921, although the tactics were varied, and each of these "retreats" had specific policy measures, such as the introduction of a grain tax, the restoration of small industry and the small peasant economy, the resumption of commodity exchange and money circulation, the encouragement of a market economy and free trade, etc. They are all concrete practices that no longer require the direct realization of the general strategic idea of "complete" socialism, and they are all concrete steps in the implementation of this general strategy.
These "retreats" have serious political consequences.
Voices of criticism and negation come from all directions.
The first was ridicule and attacks from the leaders of the Second and Semi-International, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries. For example, Powell, the leader of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, directly criticized: "They are retreating to capitalism; We have always said that their revolution was a bourgeois revolution. The magazine "Conversion of Road Signs" attacked: "You are rolling into the usual bourgeois quagmire", and in the Bolshevik Party there was also a great deal of ideological unity, and many people resisted the "retreat", and some old party members protested directly to Lenin: "What are you talking about state commerce? No one in prison taught us to do business! "Even in the Party Central Committee there was no unity of thought, and there were fierce debates between Lenin and Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev at all levels of theory and tactics. This made Lenin's implementation of the NEP very difficult.
Moreover, around 1921, on the one hand, "Russia was like a man half-beaten to death" just after the end of the civil war, and on the other hand, the wave of proletarian revolution in the European countries, on which Lenin and many Marxists had pinned their hopes, failed one after another, leaving the Russian revolution completely isolated and helpless. What is even more serious is that all kinds of dangers in the country are taking place at once: industrial development has stagnated, agricultural production has been reduced, there has been a severe famine, the peasants' discontent against the surplus grain collection system has intensified, and in some areas there have even been riots. Soviet power can be said to be in the midst of many crises. However, it was in such a grim situation that Lenin and the Bolshevik Party finally decided to carry out a major reform in the economic sphere, carrying out a series of revolutionary actions that had never been achieved by the traditional Marxist and socialist movements, which was not only a major challenge in theory, but also a great risk in practice.
There has been a great deal of research in the world and in domestic theoretical circles about Lenin's efforts to unite the whole party in meeting such challenges and overcoming crises in concrete practice, and I will not repeat them here. But the experimental nature of the practice of opening up a new road to socialism by means of "circuitous methods" is particularly rugged and bumpy, and I think it should not be overlooked—Lenin did not fail to anticipate the great risks and even the possible failure of this new road.
▍Five
Did Lenin fully estimate the risk of defeat?
Or look at Lenin's thoughts.
On April 21, 1921, Lenin said in On the Grain Tax: "It is not for nothing that the teachers of socialism say that there will be a whole transition period from capitalism to socialism, and that it is not for nothing that they emphasize the 'long pains' of the birth of a new society, and that this new society is still an abstraction, which can only become a reality after a series of various and imperfect concrete attempts to establish a socialist state of one kind or another." ”
On October 14, 1921, in his speech on the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin said: "The former revolution can be transformed into the next. The latter revolution can solve the problems of the previous revolution by the way. The latter revolution can consolidate the cause of the previous one. Struggle, and only struggle, can determine how far the latter revolution can go beyond the first."
Half a month later, on November 3 and 4, Lenin, in his Report on the New Economic Policy at the Seventh Party Congress of the Moscow Province, further emphasized: "In the war to decide the fate of the entire class, to decide the question of socialism or capitalism, is there any reasonable basis for supposing that the people, who for the first time solve this question, will find the only correct way at once? What is the basis for such an assumption? Unfounded! Experience has shown the opposite. There is no single task we have accomplished all at once without repetition. If you fail, you will do it all over again".
A year later, on March 27, 1922, in the Political Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia (CPR) at the Eleventh Congress, Lenin once again reiterated: "On the question of state capitalism, both our press and our party have made the mistake of becoming intellectual, falling into liberalism, pretending to be clever enough to understand state capitalism and looking at old books. But what those books write about is something else entirely, about state capitalism under capitalism, and none of them are about state capitalism under communism. Even Marx did not think to write a single word on the subject, and he died without leaving any clear words to quote and irrefutable instructions. So now we have to figure it out for ourselves. ”
In January 1923, in the face of his deteriorating illness, Lenin dictated "On Cooperatives", an important essay on the innovation of the state system, in which he once again emphasized: "Our enemies have told us more than once that it is reckless for us to promote socialism in a culturally underdeveloped country. But they were wrong, we didn't start from the end of the theory (all nerd theories), and our political and social changes became the precursors of the cultural change, the cultural revolution that we are currently facing. ”
When we revisit these theses of Lenin today, we cannot but link them with the history of the socialist movement after Lenin's death, re-examine the concrete practices in this period of history, and note that the many twists and turns and failures in this period of history are related to Lenin's repeated point of view that there can be no direct transition in order to achieve "complete" socialism -- if we are not afraid of detours and retreats, if we do not pursue "the only correct method", and if we do not "look at the old books" to determine the path and direction, Rather, it is the fulfillment of "various and imperfect concrete attempts", then, when it comes to practice, many "concrete attempts" are inevitably experimental in nature.
That is to say, uninterrupted social experimentation is an inseparable part of socialist practice and an indispensable part of the practice of socialist revolution.
▍Six
In the socialist history of New China after 1949, what kind of connection and development relationship between Mao Zedong's theory and practice and Lenin's theory and practice in the New Economic Policy is an important topic in the study of Marxism, and there have been many discussions and writings. However, I think that in some aspects, such as on the question of the "transition" of socialism, Lenin's idea that "'complete' socialism" cannot be simply and directly realized, and the implementation of specific policies in practice, how it was inherited in the practice of the Chinese revolution, how Mao Zedong creatively developed and developed, and the successes and failures in it, can be explored in more detail.
For example, if "'complete' socialism" is not directly realized, it will inevitably face one of the core problems of socialist ownership: what Lenin called "state capitalism under communism". How should this be achieved in practice? What might or should be the form of its system? Although these problems were expounded in "On the Grain Tax" and other works, they did not have time to be implemented, tested and solved in practice, and Lenin died in 1924. The subsequent Stalinism, completely departing from Lenin's ideas and line, not only compiled another script of its own, and finally directed the tragedy of the complete failure of the socialist revolution in the Soviet Union, but also left the socialist movement with great problems.
So, how did Mao Zedong, the staunchest successor of Lenin, deal with and solve this dilemma?
In order to understand the Chinese revolution today, especially the socialist revolution in China, it is essential for us to enter and think about this question.
Both the Chinese Revolution and the Russian Revolution were socialist revolutionary movements, but reading Mao Zedong's relevant works, especially "On the Ten Major Relations", "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People", "Conversation on Reading the Soviet Union's 'Textbook of Political Economy'", and the relevant works in "Mao Zedong's Collected Works", as well as "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" written under his auspices, as well as Bo Yibo's "Review of Several Major Decisions and Events" and other historical documents, We cannot ignore the fact that although there is a clear inheritance between Mao Zedong's theory and practice and Lenin's theory and practice in the New Economic Policy, there is a huge difference between the two revolutions. In contrast, the practice of socialist construction carried out in New China after 1949 faced a wider range of difficulties and problems, its practical activities were more complex, and it had the most successful experiences and the most failed experiences, which was not only a more creative revolution in the history of the socialist movement, a revolution that emphasized the vividness and flexibility of the "movement", but more importantly, it was also a revolution that left more possibilities for the future of socialism.
This is something that we must not ignore when we look at the succession of the two revolutions.
For this reason, how to solve the difficult problems left by Lenin is naturally a very important aspect of our understanding of the Chinese revolution and Chinese reform.
▍ Seven
In March 1949, at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong put forward the idea of an ownership structure (economic system) in which five economic components (ownership) coexist, namely, the state-run economy, the cooperative economy, the individual economy, the private capitalist economy, and the state capitalist economy. These are the main economic components of the People's Republic, and these constitute the economic form of the new democracy. This is the first time that Mao Zedong has comprehensively put forward the idea that multiple forms of ownership can coexist and parallel in the socialist system (this idea is often summarized by the economic profession as "pluralism of ownership" or "mixed ownership" in the context of reform and opening up in recent years, which is not rigorous enough in theory, and it is more accurate to take Lenin's statement). At the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was a great deal to put forward so clearly that the social ownership of the People's Republic would coexist in the structure of the five economies; Even if we look at the entire history of the socialist movement, it is a major event of far-reaching significance. However, this idea did not come out of thin air, and many of its budding thoughts and experimental practices can be traced back to some economic policies and activities in the Chinese Soviet period and the base areas in the liberated areas. One of the sources that should be paid special attention to is Zhang Wentian's research on this issue for many years.
Also in 1922, Zhang Wentian, a work-study student in the United States, noticed that an English-language journal had published an article entitled "The Development of Soviet Russian Policy," which was a text that had been personally approved by Lenin and gave a detailed explanation of the background and theory of the implementation of the New Economic Policy. The perceptive Zhang Wentian immediately realized its importance, immediately translated the text into Chinese, sent it back to China, and published it in Shanghai's "Republic of China Daily". This was probably the first introduction of Lenin's NEP rhetoric in China, and at a time when the great turning point was just beginning. Later, whether during the long period of the agrarian revolution or the War of Liberation, even after leaving the central leadership post of the general secretary, Zhang Wentian still maintained his research on Lenin's new economic policy, and did a lot of investigation and research, not only wrote papers such as "Developing New Capitalism," but also put forward to the party Central Committee several times the idea that rural capitalism could be vigorously developed under the revolutionary regime. In the section "Blueprint for the Construction of New China Drawn by the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee" in Bo Yibo's book "A Review of Several Major Decisions and Events", it was specifically pointed out that Zhang Wentian, then a member of the Standing Committee of the Northeast Bureau of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, submitted to the Central Committee the "Outline of the Economic Composition and Basic Principles of Economic Construction in Northeast China" to the Central Committee on the occasion of the plenary session. guide private capital to be included in the track of 'national economy and people's livelihood'".
At the enlarged meeting of the Politburo in 1956, after Mao Zedong made an important report entitled "On the Ten Major Relations", Chen Yun made a report on "New Issues After the Upsurge of Capitalist Industrial and Commercial Transformation" at the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, putting forward the famous viewpoint of "three subjects and three supplements", holding that on the basis of adhering to the public ownership and planned economic system, the development of individual economy and free market can be allowed to supplement the socialist economic system. After the Second Five-Year Plan was decided, Zhou Enlai also proposed to establish a free market in some areas in a planned way under the unified leadership of the state. It can be seen from this that the idea that multiple ownership systems can coexist and coexist in the socialist system has been brewing, pondering, and discussing for a long time in the Communist Party of China. It is no accident that this idea was solidified and affirmed at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee, and was later revived and discussed during the Eighth National Congress.
However, the realization of this idea in concrete practice has been full of twists and turns.
Looking back today, the formulation and implementation of the specific policies of agricultural cooperation in the early 50s, the attention paid to uniting the national bourgeoisie in the "three antis" and "five antis," the peaceful transformation of industry and commerce in the form of "public-private partnerships" around 1956, and the successive transformation of the nation's handicraft industries, it should be said that the formulation and implementation of these specific policies were basically ideas in which multiple ownership systems could coexist and coexist, and they were very successful. When looking back on these successes, many people will ignore that they solved the big problems of socialist construction - compared with the Soviet Union, these problems were not properly solved in the socialist practice of the CPSU, and the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union was actually the bane planted at that time. However, in the second half of the 50s, Chinese socialism suffered a serious setback: after the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress in 1958 formulated and adopted the general line of "mustering up all the energy, striving for the upper reaches, and building socialism as quickly and efficiently as possible," the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement, as well as other mass movements subordinate to this movement, developed vigorously and vigorously, making the whole party and the people of the whole country believe for a while that communism is not far away, and it will be tomorrow. However, in just over a year, these campaigns have failed one after another. Especially during the "Cultural Revolution", Mao Zedong took the opportunity of establishing "temporary revolutionary institutions" throughout the country to make another attempt, and once again experimented with the establishment of revolutionary communes (Shanghai Commune and Beijing Commune) modeled on the Paris Commune, but this last effort also failed.
▍ VIII
Today, how to understand the successes and failures that are intertwined in this historical stage, to explore the reasons for them, and how to have their long-term impact on the socialist movement have become major issues in the history of the Chinese revolution and the world socialist movement. Research on this topic has spread across many theoretical and academic fields on the left and right. Among them, the failure of the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement was the most discussed and the most acutely criticized, but there was a general ignorance: the earliest criticism and review of this failure actually came from within the Communist Party. In 1959, after only about a year of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong pointed out and criticized the famous Zhengzhou Conference on February 27, 1959, when "after the establishment of the Commune in the autumn of 1958, there was a 'communist wind'." After that, in the three years from the beginning of 1959 to the beginning of 1962, Mao Zedong successively made about 10 self-examinations and self-criticisms at different levels and within different scopes within the party. What is particularly noteworthy is that it was during this period of time that Mao Zedong not only carefully read the Soviet Union's "Textbook of Political Economy" to review the past practice of socialist construction, but also theoretically proposed: "The stage of socialism may be divided into two stages, the first stage is underdeveloped socialism, and the second stage is relatively developed socialism. This is not just a reflection on the Great Leap Forward.
Similar to Lenin's decision to strategically "retreat" immediately after the defeat of wartime communism in 1921 and the immediate implementation of the "New Economic Policy", the "retreat" after the failure of the "Great Leap Forward" began in 1960. Moreover, in the Regulations on the Work of the Rural People's Communes (draft amendment) enacted in 1962, it was clearly stipulated that "the production team is the basic unit of accounting in the people's communes" and that "after this system is settled, it will remain unchanged for at least 30 years" - the speed of this "retreat" is also reminiscent of Lenin.
However, if we consider and review some of Mao Zedong's ideas and practices in the mid-50s, such as the "leftist" mistakes that have received the most criticism, should we adopt a more historical attitude due to the passage of time and the fact that it is not what it used to be? At that stage in the mid-50s, Mao Zedong did not insist on the way of economic development by coexisting with the five economic components (ownership) proposed by the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, but wanted to go beyond the "detour" through the experiment of the "people's commune" and find another road to socialism. Doesn't it distinguish it from some other "leftist" mistakes in the history of the Chinese revolution? Is the necessary historical analysis missing? From the time when he set up the Peasant Movement Training Institute in Guangzhou in 1924, Mao Zedong began to constantly explore the particularities of the Chinese revolution - these long reflections and explorations could not but continue after the founding of New China, and affected his understanding of socialism, especially the road taken by Chinese socialism. If we carefully study the "Great Leap Forward" and the preventious advance of the People's Communes, as well as the theoretical reflections and various complex thoughts expressed in practice, we cannot help but connect with the fact that since the 60s, he has always placed more emphasis on the class struggle in the ideological field, and has repeatedly pondered how to avoid the possibility of capitalist disintegration and subversion of socialism from within – is this related to Mao Zedong's constant emphasis on the Chinese revolution taking place in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society? It has to do with the emphasis that "the peasant question is the basic issue of the Chinese revolution" and that "the Chinese revolution is essentially a peasant revolution"? Also, has it to do with the ideological differences between the Chinese and Soviet parties that began in the 50s, and the open polemics between China and the Soviet Union that began in the 60s? Of course it is. It is precisely the convergence of all these historical and practical factors that has formed the historical environment in which the "Three Red Flags" and the "Great Leap Forward" emerged.
If we link history with reality in this way, we should not only study the specific mistakes of the "leftist" issues, but also consider their intrinsic relationship with Mao Zedong's unique socialist thought and theory, and further place them in the context of the history of the world socialist movement and study their intrinsic relationship with the constantly developing socialist thought and theory. For example, if we look at the practice of the People's Commune today and obviously have a certain relationship with Lenin's idea that "it will become a reality only after a series of various and imperfect concrete attempts to establish this or that socialist state", can it be regarded as an "imperfect concrete attempt"? Or is the People's Commune movement actually an experiment in trying to achieve "'complete' socialism" without detours or detours? Or did the failure of the People's Commune, in turn, prove the infeasibility of a direct transition to "'complete' socialism"?
This is worth thinking about.
Not only do we need to cherish the successes in the history of the socialist movement, but the failures in them, as valuable experiences and signposts in future practice, are actually of great significance and precious to us if we can have sufficient review and reflection.
▍ Nine
Much of the material mentioned above is not unfamiliar to those concerned with the reflection and review of the rise and fall of the "Three Red Flags" in 1958. The reason why we repeat them again here is just to emphasize that we can look at them from a different perspective -- not to confine them to the specific historical time and space of China, and not to regard them as specific histories of making mistakes and correcting mistakes, but to examine them from the perspective of the larger history of the socialist movement, and to link all the successes, failures, advances, retreats, turns, and repetitions in them with certain inevitability inherent in the socialist movement, and with the experimental nature inherent in the socialist movement. Lenin said in a categorical tone: "There is not a single book written about state capitalism under communism. Even Marx did not think to write a word on the subject, he did not leave any clear words to quote and irrefutable instructions. This is not only to say that socialism has no blueprint designed in advance, but it is also to warn the latecomers of the October Revolution that socialists can only start from scratch. Since practice has proved that it is impossible for either Russia or China to achieve "'complete' socialism" through a direct transition in a backward industrialized environment, but must take a detour, must make a detour, and must carry out "a series of various and imperfect concrete attempts to build this or that socialist state" in order to explore a road to socialism, then experiments of one kind or another along the way are inevitable.
The socialist movement is a movement full of experiments.
This experimentation was fully demonstrated during the perestroika of the 80s.
▍Ten
In 1985, Deng Xiaoping stressed to the visiting Algerian and Japanese delegations that our entire policy of opening up to the outside world is an experiment, and from the perspective of the world, it is also a big experiment.
Kissinger once told Deng Xiaoping: "No one has ever tried to carry out such a large-scale reform as China, and no other country in the world has tried to combine the planned economy with the market economy." …… If you succeed, you will philosophically ask both the planned economy and the market economy the question. ”
If it was said back then that we wanted to "take a look", today it is already clear: the Chinese reform that began in the 80s – an experiment unprecedented in human history – was not a sudden explosion of Chinese wisdom, let alone a forced search for a way out of the crisis, it was a reasonable development of the socialist movement. This is particularly manifested in the fact that China's reform, through a series of explorations and experiments, has established a basic socialist economic system with public ownership as the mainstay and the common development of economies under various forms of ownership, and it has been repeatedly proved in the economic miracle that has lasted for decades since then—the experiment has been successful.
This opened a new stage in the history of the socialist movement.
Since the mid-50s, Poland, Hungary, the GDR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Albania, and Yugoslavia have all carried out reforms with different contents and methods. While most of the immediate aim is to break free from the shackles of the "Soviet model" and enter into the historical process of industrialization that the Western capitalist countries have already entered, objectively they all inevitably have to carry out some kind of reform experiment on the core issues of political system and economic ownership, which have failed before and after. Moreover, these failures eventually led to the fall of red flags in these countries – and the socialist movement in the 20th century has since reached an unprecedented ebb.
Looking back at this history, we cannot help but think again and again, why only China's reforms have succeeded? Why is it only China that has completed the reform of ownership? Moreover, why is it that China, which entered the global capitalist relations of production economically after the 90s, has not fundamentally changed the main features of its ideological system, nor has it fundamentally changed its political and economic system, and is not only still a continuation of a new form in the history of the world socialist movement, but also experimenting with a new socialist practice that has never been seen in the history of the socialist movement in the new historical environment of great division, turmoil, and reorganization formed by great changes unseen in a century?
▍Eleven
With regard to the reforms that began in the 80s, China's ideological and theoretical circles have continued to conduct follow-up studies and summaries for decades, and there have been many articles and writings. However, if we place it more in relation to the tortuous development of the socialist movement, in the history of successes and failures, and in the experimental nature of socialism, which is often overlooked in this history, can we evaluate and examine them in a more detailed, concrete, and complex way?
That is, in terms of the relationship between the reforms launched in the 80s and Lenin's New Economic Policy of that year, China is clearly the successor of Lenin's thought; However, a careful comparison shows that China's reform is very different from Lenin's practice in those years, so much so that in concrete practice, there are naturally various differences in how to carry out "retreat," how to carry out "detours," and how to reform and experiment with past mistakes or improper practices. Taken together, there are profound historical reasons for these differences: if we compare Lenin and Mao Zedong, there are obviously many differences in their revolutions in terms of paths, principles, methods, and tactics, and it is precisely these differences that have historically formed the organic component of the complexity of the Chinese revolution and the complexity of contemporary China's reform. Therefore, to understand this complexity, it is necessary to link it with the historical development of Mao Zedong's thought and theory, and to study in detail some differences in his ideas and tactics with Lenin on the question of the transition to socialism, as well as in the fact that they each have their own creative differences in integrating Marxism with the revolution in their own countries. For example, there have been many studies on Mao Zedong's "On the Ten Major Relations", but many of Mao Zedong's creative ideas expressed in this document have rarely been analyzed in the light of the differences between the October Revolutionary Road and the revolutionary road that gradually developed from the Jinggangshan period—the differences sprouted as early as the Jinggangshan and early Soviet Red Regime eras—and this difference is by no means only a difference in revolutionary tactics and methods, but in fact an implicit difference in the understanding of socialism. If we investigate further, today's reform is actually secretly or directly related to the "On the Ten Major Relationships." If at the beginning of the reform in the 80s, this point was not obvious, then today, when the reform and development are getting deeper and deeper, the connection between them is quite clear. However, that clarity is not a simple inheritance relationship, but both acceptance and non-acceptance, and the dialectic of affirmation and negation is quite complex.
In short, the Chinese revolution is complex, and so is China's reform, and this complexity has been formed historically, and it is inseparably closely related to the long and tortuous history of socialist practice. Today, if we want to understand socialism in China, we cannot fail to pay attention to this complexity.
Ignoring this complexity, we risk making big mistakes in our perceptions.
▍ Twelve
However, when we look at socialism in reality today, we tend to ignore this complexity, especially intellectuals, who are more likely to ignore it.
Thinking and studying this complexity head-on or holistically is a big undertaking that is beyond my reach. However, in the face of China's current reality, especially in the face of the fact that the current reform (including all kinds of experiments) has not stopped and is still developing in a new way, I think it is still possible to talk about some of the problems that are most prone to mistakes or one-sided understanding.
One of the prerequisites for Chinese reforms – inherited from Lenin's reforms – is that the idea of not pursuing "'complete' socialism" through a direct transition is often under-understood, or completely ignored. Not only that, but because of the preconceptions they have formed over the years, the blueprint for socialism in their minds is actually a "complete" socialism, a socialism that can achieve the ideal of "attaining the standard" in all aspects as long as it carries out reforms. Therefore, the reform they understand is like pruning a big tree that grows unregularly and substandardly, and although it is not easy to prune, as long as the method is correct, the big tree of socialism will be restored and vigorous in one fell swoop. Therefore, although at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong clearly put forward the idea that "the state-run economy is socialist in nature, the cooperative economy is semi-socialist, and the private capitalist economy, plus the individual economy, and the state capitalist economy of state and private cooperation are the main economic components of the people's republic, and these constitute the economic form of new democracy." However, many people do not link these ideas with the actual reform, and do not think that today's reform is to go back and re-implement the coexistence and development of the five types of economy within the socialist system. Nor is it realized that this is not to achieve "'complete' socialism" through a direct transition, but to take a "roundabout", to make a detour, and it is likely to take a very big detour (the process of which inevitably requires a lot of experiments) to explore a new road to the realization of socialism in China – it can be said that many people are basically unprepared for such a path of reform, or completely unprepared.
Therefore, in the face of the various problems that do not conform to the spirit and principles of socialism in the present society, such as the increasingly serious tendency of class solidification, the widening gap between the rich and the poor (China's Gini coefficient once surpassed that of the United States), the uneven distribution of opportunities and resources, the serious "involution" of society, the monopolistic development of large private enterprises, and the serious erosion of power by widespread corruption, those who have always believed in and always aspired to the realization of "'complete' socialism" will have all kinds of doubts. As a result, they wonder whether the reform is in the right direction, and even doubt that China is still not a socialist country.
However, we cannot simply attribute these doubts to cognitive errors. Because among the "five types of economy", the four types of economy, namely, the cooperative economy, the private capitalist economy, the individual economy, and the state capitalist economy of state and private cooperation, are more easily integrated with the market economy in the actual reform, and moreover, through this integration, great energy is released, and even all kinds of miracles are created - Marx said in the "Communist Manifesto" that "the bourgeoisie has created more productive forces in less than a hundred years of its class rule than all the productive forces created in all previous generations", It's an affirmation of that energy. Therefore, when those socialists who are still pursuing the immediate realization of "'complete' socialism" in their hearts see the release of such energies, but also see that they are in serious contradiction with the ideals, values, and demands of fairness of socialism, and thus adopt a negative attitude towards them, it is not appropriate to simply regard this attitude as a mistake, because what people see is the objective facts, the actual changes that have taken place in Chinese society today. Moreover, the situation is more complicated for some intellectuals who are familiar with Hayek's writings or similar criticisms of socialism, and who identify with their neoliberal theories, the idea of spontaneous order and individual freedom; Because they are ideologically chosen to turn a blind eye to what they see and what they are, the meaning of "facts" is completely different for them.
In short, it is not easy to understand reform, and it is even more difficult to understand the complexity of socialism.
▍ Thirteen
I don't know much about economics, so I can't understand the complexity of socialism, even if I talk about it from a relatively rudimentary level of knowledge. I just want to make some observations from a more common sense and practical perspective.
My idea is relatively simple: can we look at what our reformed socialism has done from a different perspective that capitalism cannot and cannot do today? This is a stupid solution, but it has the advantage of starting from the actual situation and starting from the specifics.
In this way, we will be able to gain a new understanding of today's China.
I would like to start with "If you want to get rich, you must first build roads" -- this sentence has become a mantra, but in fact it is not simple, and in the practice of reform, its meaning has evolved with the implementation of various capital constructions, and in fact it has become not only a national consensus, but also a symbolic slogan embodying the reform strategy.
Let's start with the road.
Yes, the length of existing railways in the United States is as high as 250,000 kilometers, which is nearly twice the length of China's railway lines, but China's high-speed rail has been completed about 36,100 kilometers, while the mileage of high-speed rail in the United States is 0 - on the surface, each seems to have its own strengths and weaknesses, but there is one major difference: these railways in the United States are privately owned, and an objective manifestation of their separate policies is that there are many terrible accidents. According to the data of the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics from 1975~2021, there are an average of 1,704 train derailments per year, that is, an average of 4.7 per day. Of course, there is a specific reason for the backwardness of American railways today - the vast land and sparse population, which determines that air transportation is the first choice of contemporary Americans in transportation. As of 2018, there were 19,627 airports and 5,099 public airports in the United States (compared to 814 airports on the mainland), according to the NPIAS in the United States. However, if you do some analysis, not to mention that private airports account for 14,528 of them, and there are only a few hundred airports where you can buy tickets directly on the website, the problem is that most of these airports are very old and in urgent need of renewal. What's more, not only airports, but also many of the equipment and infrastructure supporting airlines are also quite old and in urgent need of updating. What's even more troubling is that since the outbreak of the epidemic, the aviation industry in the United States as a whole has fallen into various crises, and accidents have occurred frequently, which has repeatedly appeared in the news, has become commonplace and has become the norm. But the problem is that, as in the case of the railways mentioned above, these urgent problems need to be solved urgently, but they cannot be solved quickly, and there is no prospect of solving them for a while. Why is it so bad? The answer is the same: the vast majority of market players entering the aviation industry are privately owned companies – and they do not have a package solution, or even no solution, to the pressures of profits, costs, competition and other economic factors in the market. Speaking of transportation in the United States, as a country living on the wheels of a car, its huge highway traffic certainly cannot be ignored. But if you look at one number, there are 617,000 bridges in the United States, 42% of which were built 50 years ago, and most of the infrastructure has a lifespan of about 50 years. And that's just the bridge, but the entire U.S. infrastructure system is in dire need of repair or rebuilding because it's outdated. According to ASCE estimates, by 2025, the U.S. infrastructure funding gap will exceed $2 trillion. If you look at the recent financial situation in the United States, everyone will worry about them: Where will the $2 trillion come from?
I may be a little verbose about the transportation situation in the United States in recent years, but this has the advantage of providing a general background for us to compare and refer to when we focus on China's grand strategy of "building roads if you want to get rich". In this comparison, a prominent question is: why can't the so-called "advanced countries" do many of the public works we implement, especially large-scale projects? Even the richest superpower, the United States, can't do the same?
In contrast, it's easy to see why they can't.
The first is the construction of "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed rail.
From the perspective of capital (in order to avoid some boring economic concepts, such a term is used, a bit lazy, but vivid), it is a loss-making business. The construction of high-speed rail not only requires huge investment, but the cost per kilometer of railway construction alone is as high as 120 million ~ 150 million yuan, and the operating cost is also very high. What's more, not every "vertical" and "horizontal" of "eight verticals and eight horizontals" can produce economic benefits in a short period of time; On the contrary, many of these routes are located in economically underdeveloped areas, and it is impossible to make a profit and absorb gold. Therefore, if we look at it from the standpoint of a pure market economy, the "eight verticals and eight horizontals" are very unreasonable and violate the law. However, our country has resisted all kinds of criticism, carried the notoriety of not understanding the economy, resisted the huge economic pressure of just burning money and not making money, and has been insisting on doing it, and it is expected that it can be basically completed by around 2030.
Compared with the construction of high-speed rail, what is more "unreasonable" is the bridge in Guizhou - Guizhou Province has built 28,023 highway bridges in recent years, connecting 210,000 kilometers of highways. Half of the world's top 100 high bridges are in Guizhou, and there are 4 of the top 10 highest bridges. In the past, Guizhou has always had the reputation of "no three feet of flat land, no three sunny days", and is one of the poorest, most backward and least developed regions in China; Even some time after the start of the reforms, it was still a very economically backward province. So, we can't help but ask, why are so many bridges built in Guizhou? More than 28,000 bridges! What is necessary and for what reason? Is it reasonable to make such a large investment in the development of the economy of a relatively remote and impoverished area? Perhaps, those who are more concerned about geopolitics and geoeconomics and are familiar with the big political situation in Southeast Asia will cite some reasons to explain the importance of Guizhou's strategic position and the necessity of building these bridges. However, this is obviously not convincing enough. We still have to ask, if we look at it from the eyes of capital, for what reason will a huge investment do such a thing that will not return on it for a long time, and may even be wasted in the end? Of course not, because this is fundamentally contrary to the operating mechanism of the market economy - if there is no pursuit of profits, the rate of return on capital can be ignored, then what reason is there for the so-called market players, the so-called free competition necessary for the market?
Perhaps I have said too much about the construction of bridges in Guizhou, but there is a reason for this, and we should face up to this reality: In China's economic construction and economic development today, although the development of the market economy is the basic principle of reform and the major policy of the country, there are many practical deeds that do not conform to the concepts and rules of the market economy, especially the free market economy.
There are profound contradictions here, and we cannot but face up to these contradictions, and we cannot but give corresponding explanations at the theoretical level, and they are convincing explanations.
Here we can take another large-scale construction project as an example - "West-to-East Power Transmission".
Strictly speaking, the "west-to-east power transmission" is only a part of the country's large-scale power supply, power grid, and power construction projects. However, it is still independent of the "West-to-East Power Transmission", which is also a great project and a world miracle. "West-to-east power transmission" focuses on "transmission": three power channels of several thousand kilometers, the transmission network formed by ultra-high voltage transmission technology, from south to north, from west to east, across the mountains and deserts and the vertical and horizontal rivers, from the north, the middle and the south to the west of the energy supply to the whole country. To this end, the cumulative investment in the project has reached 4.4 trillion yuan for more than 30 years. Here, the same question needs to be answered, if it is a pure free market economy, will there be investors investing in such a project? The answer is the same: it is not possible to consider the return on capital. "West-to-East Power Transmission" enables the rational allocation of national economic resources in a "game of chess", so as to promote the coordinated development of the east and west, so as to realize the economic vision of "common prosperity" in the whole country. These visions and concerns are impossible for any investor or market entity to care about in a free economic market, and as long as it is unprofitable, they will of course stand by and watch it. As for another remarkable consequence of this project: the vast rural areas of China, where hundreds of millions of peasants live, are now connected to electricity, water and the Internet – and its significance goes far beyond the project itself, and it is not only a great event in modern history, but also a kind of testimony that utopia is not exactly a dream.
And all this, I would like to stress again: they are all things that cannot be achieved by a pure market economy, and even more so by capitalism.
I will not be too verbose about the above examples, but I will be more specific, because in today's very active market economy, these projects are not easy to be "seen", not easy to enter the "Chinese story", and not easy to become a daily topic that people talk about. The reason is actually very simple: the economic benefits they lock in are big and public; However, economic activities led by the word "public" are not as easy to trigger various social effects as the activities of the market economy, and are so easy to be related to "my" daily life such as clothing, food, housing, transportation, daily consumption, wage income, living environment, culture and entertainment, etc., and are directly related to "my" interests. Of course, the news media is not completely devoid of coverage of these major projects, but they are often quite brief, with no details, no stories, no characters, and no specific analysis of how they affect and determine the reality and future of each of us at a deeper level. I remember that in the 50s and 80s, "reportage" was very popular, and it was actually a kind of non-fiction writing that is very popular today. As a literary critic, I miss the "reportage writers" of that era, who were like a group of hard-working miners, always digging into the depths of the most everyday and ordinary lives, exploring the secrets hidden in the emotions and hearts of ordinary people. Now that non-fiction writing is heating up, and literary writing has once again turned its attention to real daily life, can writers turn some of their attention to people and things in the field of contemporary economic construction? There, there is no need for "fiction" at all, there are the loveliest people and the most beautiful stories of our time - as long as the writer can see and write.
With regard to the economic activities led by the word "gong", we can also cite another example that is less likely to be felt by our daily experience, that is, the "experiments" of various economic comprehensive zones that the state has been carrying out since the reform and opening up. Experiments are emphasized not only because they take various forms, such as special economic zones, economic and technological development zones, coastal economic development zones, pilot free trade zones, and high-tech industrial development zones, which are all new and innovative things in the economic field, but also because they are all forms of economic activities that have not been seen in the history of modernization. Although the so-called "comprehensive zone" has the same function as the economic zone in traditional economics, it has a certain function of rational organization and allocation of resources, but under the strong intervention of the national force, its spatial organization function has been greatly expanded and transformed in both qualitative and quantitative terms: the economic activities and production activities in many fields such as industry, agriculture, trade, finance, insurance, transportation, tourism, real estate, culture, education, science and technology, etc., are all in accordance with the different functions of the comprehensive economic zone. The factors of production and the elements of resources have been integrated in different forms -- this kind of integration is not a match, but a top-down process, with governments at all levels creating suitable conditions to form a certain combination, reorganization and construction in accordance with the laws of the market. From a macro point of view, the innovation and importance of this integration lies in the fact that it is actually a comprehensive reorganization and re-structuring of all the economic and production components in these economic spaces. In the face of such a scale and such a drastic "rectification", we tend to turn a blind eye as if it were a "natural" process, which, however, has never been and cannot be seen in the history of capitalist development – how can such a reform be understood?
If we look at the three economic constructions of the "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed railway, the "west-to-east power transmission" project, and the establishment of various economic comprehensive zones, they are objectively all at different levels and in different spaces, and the economic factors, production factors, and resource factors have been recombined in one way or another, and their objective effects have greatly spilled over the respective spaces of these projects, expanding or affecting other economic organizations or regional economic spaces (as large as urban economic circles, It is as small as the ecosystem centered on the development of the industrial chain, and even affects the daily social living space with the "community" as the unit). Considering that China is not only a big country on the historical axis, but also a big country that has a significant impact on the development of the world today, especially considering the significant impact of the current "Belt and Road" opening up to the outside world in recent years, these practices of recombining the constituent elements in the economic region have gained new significance: they are not only ideological, but also in concrete practice, in order to be in a larger space. The restructuring and reorganizing of the economy in accordance with the ideals of socialism offers a grand prospect.
To be sure, this opens up new possibilities for the future development of the world socialist movement.
Come to think of it, isn't all this an unprecedented experiment in modern history?
What are the results of this big experiment? I think it goes without saying more, socialism with Chinese characteristics has already given the answer.
▍ XIV
I've said a lot about "if you want to get rich, build roads first", but I want to extend it a little more.
Why are high-speed railways, "west-to-east power transmission" and the construction of comprehensive economic zones (in fact, in the reform, economic actions of a similar nature, large and small, there are many) so important, but they have not attracted enough attention in society, including in intellectual and cultural circles? Why can't they be seen as a new thing in economic development, an important mark and achievement of reform, like Jack Ma's invention of Taobao, Ant Financial, or Tencent, founded by Ma Huateng? One of the very important reasons is still that the current society generally does not pay enough attention to the complexity of socialism presented in the reform, or even completely ignores it. This has a serious consequence: in the eyes of many, what does "reform" change? Isn't it just to go all out to develop a market economy? Isn't it just that some people get rich first? Isn't it to realize China's modernization through the development of a market economy? -- This is a purely economic outlook on development and reform, but it has become quite popular in recent years, and the more successful the reform, the more popular it becomes. Looking back at the history of the socialist movement, we are no stranger to economism, and we do not need to go any further, the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed all at once in the 90s is that the entire Stalin era failed to fundamentally get rid of economism, and that it began to intensify and intensify from the Khrushchev period, so that the so-called "500-day program" completely evolved into an economism reform with the imprints of Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin. This period of history is actually an alarm bell that has been echoing in contemporary reality, and it reminds us that for communists who "do not forget their original aspirations" and for genuine socialists, such vigorous development of the market economy is only a "detour" of last resort, and it is an arduous effort to experiment with the integration of the market economy into the socialist economy and then integrate them into a new economic system in a specific stage of building socialism that is not "complete."
For the socialist movement, this opened a new history.
It is impossible for this history not to be fraught with complexity, nor can it be without being reflected in reform.
However, it is not easy to look at reform in this way.
This is because integrating the market economy into the socialist economy and then integrating them into a new economic system is not a purely economic reform program, nor is it a pure economic practice. Once we get rid of economism and link reform with social reality from a different angle, with the various trends of thought that rise and fall in society, and with all kinds of open and private controversies in the ideological and intellectual circles, it is not difficult to see that closely related to this practice, and with each other, there are some ideological systems and knowledge systems full of antagonisms, conflicts, and contradictions competing with each other in the course of reform, and they all want to "realize themselves" through reform. Therefore, they can also be expressed as the fact that these systems of thought and knowledge are not willing to be lonely in the reform, and they all try to find and realize their own material forms in the reform.
It is difficult for those who see reform as a purely economic practice to understand such a view.
In recent years, the theoretical circles have done a lot of research on the practice of reform, especially on socialism with Chinese characteristics. However, not enough attention is paid to the ideological conflicts and turbulence implicit in the practice of reform. However, it is even more inadequate to pay attention to the existence of an ideological system and knowledge system full of antagonisms, conflicts and contradictions in conflicts. I am very pleased to have two scholars, Chen Yue and Wu Zifeng, for today's discussion. For some time, the two of them had been translating and researching Althusser. In particular, Chen Yue, since publishing Philosophy and Politics: The Althusser Reader at Jilin People's Publishing House in 2003, has not only edited the "Althusser's Collected Works" for more than 20 years, but has also been working hard to promote the systematization and scale of Althusser's research in China. It is a pity that Althusser has not been paid enough attention in our theoretical circles, even in left-leaning intellectual circles.
From the perspective of the development of contemporary Marxism, Althusser's thought has a distinctive feature, that is, while making a resolute and sharp criticism of all the "profound" traditional philosophies in the history of philosophy that are divorced from the masses and political practice, "the eyes are not fixed on the earth, but at the sky of ideas," he has also consistently and repeatedly emphasized the integration of theory with practice and theory with practice. This makes his theory qualitatively different from the Western Marxist studies that have emerged since the 50s of the 20th century, especially from the various left-wing theories that have developed and developed in the "postmodern" ideological environment. It is precisely this difference that enables his thinking not only to help us gain a critical perspective when reviewing the history of the socialist movement, but also to help us pay attention to the down-to-earth and seek truth from facts when reviewing the concrete practice of contemporary socialism.
Such a theoretical attitude is important for understanding the complexity of reform.
In the map of contemporary Marxism, Althusser's "On Reproduction" occupies an extremely important position, which reconstructs the Marxist theory of the state and completely puts forward the theory of the ideological state apparatus and the theory of the reproduction of production relations that are one and the same as it. In contrast to Marx and Lenin's discourse on the question of the state, the key concept in Althusser's theory of the state is ideology. After analyzing, criticizing, recognizing, and reinterpreting various traditional ideological concepts in the past, including the classic ideological concepts in the Marxist tradition, he put forward a new understanding of ideology: ideology is not purely a spiritual activity, not the existence of ideas, but a material existence, which always exists in some institutions, especially in the state/state apparatus, and becomes an indispensable structural component that enables the state apparatus to operate, that is, the ideological state apparatus.
This has pushed the Marxist theory of the state into new practice under the new historical conditions.
If we want to criticize the economicalist concept of reform that has become popular in recent years, and understand the ideological struggle that exists in the practice of reform through this criticism, Althusser's theory, especially his theory of the ideological state apparatus, is not only a valuable theoretical resource for us, but also an ideological weapon that can produce immediate power.
▍ Fifteen
Within Althusser's theoretical framework, ideology is practical, so the relationship between ideology and economic production is not a yin and yang world. On the contrary, they exist in one world. It can even be said that in modern society, there is neither economic production completely divorced from ideology, nor ideology completely divorced from economic production. Of course, this is different from all historical interpretations of ideology, in which Althusser not only denied the spirituality of ideology, but also no longer regarded ideology as a "superstructure"—as an ideological state apparatus, ideology exists in all the activities of the state. He has a famous metaphor for this: if the state and society are regarded as an edifice, ideology is very much like cement, and there is no corner, no level, and no space in this edifice that is inseparable from the element of cement - ideological cement permeates all parts of the state edifice, including not only the real life of people, but also the practical activities of all people in this edifice, and even more permeates the relationship between economic practice and political practice. Therefore, compared with the classic Marxist exposition on the relationship between the superstructure and the economic base, Althusser's thought can help us to look at reform from a fresh perspective, the role of the market economy in reform, the role of the state in economic reform and the development of the market economy, and of course, what ideological factors are playing a role in reality at all levels of economic life at present. For example, the successful construction of the "West-to-East Power Transmission" project has enabled our country to have sufficient electricity, and has the conditions to realize the realization of electricity, water and network connections in every village. On the surface, this seems to be very natural, the so-called "the world is bustling, all for profit; The world is crowded, all for the sake of profit", whether there is a return on investment is a practical problem. But behind this "reality", it is the strict control of people's economic behavior by "economic rational people". What quietly hides behind this strict discipline and allows the establishment of the "economically rational man" is a vast and orderly body of knowledge that includes classical economics, sociology, and modern philosophy, and is an out-and-out ideology that the "economically rational man" is a giant.
There is no purely economic act.
This can also be further analysed in the context of some of the specific economic activities reformed.
From the point of view of the continuity of the history of the socialist movement, in order to develop the new democratic economy, Mao Zedong put forward the line of coexistence and development of five economic components (ownership) of the state-run economy, the cooperative economy, the individual economy, the private capitalist economy, and the state capitalist economy. However, what are the five types of economy? Are there just five forms of economic activity? Any Marxist, or anyone who knows Marxism to some extent, knows that there are five forms of ownership, each of which represents a relation of production. That is to say, our reforms are carried out in a network of five relations of production, but we have seldom paid attention to this environment in the past, and seldom pondered how complex such an environment is; In the theoretical and economic circles, in the study of reform, few people have listed it as a research topic. This is understandable, because in the past history of socialist construction, it is rare for several relations of production to become entangled for so long in the economic development of a socialist country. In the past, the study of socialism did not deal with such a theoretical object, and even agonized with not knowing how to ask questions. However, if we use Althusser's eyes and his theory of the reproduction of production relations to do some analysis, we can find a way to explain and think about this complexity.
According to Althusser's theory of the state, socialist China, having established a revolutionary regime and mastered the ideological apparatus of the state, would of course use the capacities of the state apparatus, including schooling, family life, religious propagation, culture and correspondence, and the necessary political governance, to ensure the reproduction of socialist relations of production. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the reform policy of our actual market economy allows the survival and development of the cooperative economy, the individual economy, the private capitalist economy, and the state capitalist economy, so it is natural for them to carry out the reproduction of certain relations of production. At the same time, it is impossible for their respective "reproductions" not to compete with each other, and it is also impossible for them not to compete with the "state economy" to a certain extent. Whether from the theoretical level or from the practical level, on the one hand, these competitions have brought their own enthusiasm into play, brought a new environment for the overall economic development, and brought various flexible and changing factors to the reform; On the other hand, they will also use many forms of state apparatus, even the ideological apparatus, in addition to the political apparatus (which is firmly in the hands of the socialist state, which, in Althusser's words, is the "hard kernel" of the state) to achieve their own reproduction. To this end, we can ask the following question: Does this multi-level, multi-space, and multi-directional reproduction constitute an important reason for the complexity of economic development in reform? It is also an important reason for the existence of various opposing and conflicting ideological systems and knowledge systems in the current reform? At the same time, what makes it difficult for us to see the prevailing view of economic reform in society?
These are all new issues that deserve our serious pondering and study.
Some of the thoughts caused by the three topics of high-speed rail, Guizhou bridges and the construction of comprehensive economic zones, I didn't expect to say so much.
Finally, I would like to stress that the difficulty in understanding today's socialism is often due to insufficient understanding of the complexity of today's reforms, the history of the socialist movement and the experimental nature of socialism that runs through it, and in particular, we are still in a roundabout stage and are not yet building a "complete" socialism. However, the practice of China's reform has proved that facing up to these complexities and understanding them from the historical development of Marxist theory is precisely a historical condition for us to continuously advance reform in the complex reality of "great changes unseen in a century," thus opening up new possibilities for the realization of socialism.
China's reform is by no means a purely economic reform, but an unprecedented revolution.
However, from the perspective of the world socialist movement as a whole, socialism is not only at an unprecedented low ebb, but also in a serious crisis. More troublingly, many of these crises come from within the movement, from the so-called "socialist left" intellectuals, who often present themselves as neo-Marxist or post-Marxist ideologues, such as Laclau and Murphy, who are at risk of actually canceling or undermining the socialist movement. Therefore, the actual development of socialism is not without risks, it will not be without struggle, but this is already a big topic for another time.
That's all there is to it, thank you!
This article is based on the author's speech at the academic seminar on "The 'Two Movements' in the Eighties and Socialism in Contemporary China" held by the magazine "Cultural Perspective", and was originally published in the third issue of "Cultural Perspective" in 2024, with the original title "Some Thoughts on the Complexity of Socialism and Reform", which only represents the author's views for readers' reference.
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