China's Masquerade

Mao died on this day in 1976 and it seems appropriate therefore to offer this Socialist perspective on China's Constitution.

The present Constitution of The People's Republic of China was adopted on December 4, 1982 [and later revised in 1988,1993, 1999 and 2004] by the Fifth National People's Congress at its Fifth Session...It states that " ... there has been formed under the leadership of the Communist Party of China a broad patriotic united front..." and makes reference to " ... all patriots who support socialism and all patriots who stand for reunification of the motherland." Such sentiments are anathema to a socialist. Socialist philosophy expunges all forms of patriotism which must of necessity reflect a nationalistic approach towards society. With the international unification of all the peoples of the world, which would occur in socialism, "motherlands" would be defunct.

Article 1 reads as follows:

"The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited."

The expression "socialist state" is a favorite contradiction in terms used by the Communist Party to justify their positions of power within China and Russia. The existence of the state presupposes a ruling class that uses this coercive instrument, comprising the armed forces and governmental bodies, to maintain their ability to exploit the majority in order to preserve their own separate privileges.

In the Appendices of the Critique of The Gotha Programme, a manuscript by Karl Marx which incidentally the Communist Party delight in misquoting and distorting, Frederick Engels in a letter to August Bebel written in March, 1875, states:

"...it is pure nonsense to talk of a 'free people's state;' so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist."

The Chinese state has served the Chinese ruling class, as represented by the Communist Party, with ruthless efficiency becoming the new landlord and exploiter of the peasants and workers, replacing the warloads, feudal landowners, wealthy merchants and burgeoning bourgeoisie of previous eras.

The concept of socialism existing within the boundaries of one country, or even two or three or more, is an economic and social impossibility. In order to properly implement "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," all the technology, productive and distributive forces that exist today will have to be co-ordinated and utilized to their fullest extent and capacities to satisfy the sensible and practical requirements of the world's 5 billion population. Obviously, no one country can embark on such a program on a unilateral basis. Proclamations that pay lip-service to socialist phraseology by Governments claiming to represent the interests of the workers are practicing deception in order to selfserve their own ruling class. And the Communist Party are past masters at this devious art.

The expression "people's democratic dictatorship" is an insult to the language, to say the least. The very integrity of a socialist society will depend upon the quality of its democracy in all spheres, carried possibly to certain extremes, as long as they remain within the realm of practicality. But one thing is for sure -"leaders" and "dictatorships" of any kind, be they individual or operating as organized social bodies, will be non-existent.

One does not need a Harvard law degree to realize that the reference to the "sabotage" of the system and its prohibition contains the necessary ingredient for enabling the Chinese Communist Party to snuff out all opposition and freedom of expression under the guise of its cloak of protection for the status quo. This Article I covertly reflects the C.P.'s dictatorship over the Chinese working class.

Article 6 claims:

"The basis of the socialist economic system of the People's Republic of China is socialist public ownership of the means of production, namely ownership by the whole people and collective ownership by the working people.

The system of socialist public ownership supersedes the system of exploitation of man by man; it applies the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

If the people residing in China were in fact the true owners of the means of production and distribution they would logically be entitled to complete free access to all goods and services. The original Marxian socialist tenet, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," has been corrupted, turned upon its head to read, "... to each according to his work." Here we have the employer's typical misrepresentation of what occurs when the worker sells his labor power for wages. Workers never receive payment for what they produce. They only receive an amount sufficient to enable them to survive as workers, together with their children, who will some day be replacing their parents at the benches, etc. Even when wages are predicated on so-called "piecework," this method is based upon a time-factor and is used as a means of intensifying the rate of exploitation. The wages system itself presupposes a non-owning working class, a ruling governing class, and economic exploitation.

Article 9 claims that all the natural resources are owned by the state and equates the state with "the whole people." This assertion is completely false but is made by governments throughout the world in reference to nationalization. When states assume ownership and control of industries in order to serve the interest of the capitalist class as a whole, the working class are misled into the pernicious belief that this procedure is an example of socialism. It is, of course, nothing of the sort.

Article 13 relates to the rights of citizens "to own lawfully-earned income, savings, houses and other lawful property." In addition "The state protects by law the right of citizens to inherit private property". Such jargon succinctly confirms the presence of familiar capitalist precepts - completely alien to socialist thinking.

Article 18 "... permits foreign enterprises, other foreign economic organizations and individual foreigners to invest in China and to enter into various forms of economic co-operation with Chinese enterprises and other economic organizations in accordance with the law of the People's Republic of China."

"Investments" guarantee the exploitation of wage labor by capital. The capital can be either domestic or foreign but the working class will fare in similar fashion regardless as to the origin of the capital. This capital, in conjunction with labor power, will help create surplus values for those making the investments, be it a Chinese state or another, domestic or foreign corporations or individuals.

On the other side of the coin, it is interesting to observe that China itself is emerging as a source of capital in the world markets. An artice on February 3, 1984 in the Wall Street Journal, tells how China's London bankers - in an unobstrusive, grimy-windowed building, in an alley near the Bank of England - are doing well in the area of high finance. They have been active in the syndicated-loan market, as bond underwriters, and as purchasers of government bonds.

Article 24 once again reiterates "the civic virtues of love of the motherland" and espouses patriotism.

Article 35 has the effrontery to claim that the "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."

One might assume, from a report published in the Wall Street Journal on July 24, 1980, that a certain brash and naive young man by the name of Wei Jingsheng, had read The Constitution and had taken this specific Article literally. Jingsheng was foolhardy enough to state his political views openly in wall posters and in a magazine he founded. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for "supplying a foreigner with Chinese military intelligence" and "carrying out counter-revolutionary agitation." The Wall Street Journal stated, "The world was shocked by the case because both the right to put up wall posters and freedom of the press are enshrined in China's constitution. Leaving aside the merits of the first charge, the second charge was specifically based on Mr. Wei's political writings." The same Wall Street Journal report makes reference to a certain Fu Yueha, a woman who led a peasant demonstration in Peking and had her sentence doubled to two years in prison, after appealing her case to a higher court in December, 1979.

Mao Zedong, the now-deceased former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, had already clearly expressed his Party's position:

"As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speeeh."

The Communist Party of China administrate an oppressive, dictatorial regime that sup presses all forms of freedom of expression and punishes those who transgress its edicts or who attempt to put into practice the outlandish promises of The Constitution.

Article 42 informs the poverty-stricken, deprived population that they are "masters of the country."

Article 51 informs the citizens that " ... their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens." Such a clause allows the state to exercise its power to eliminate all opposition under the pretext that the interests of the state are in jeopardy.

Article 55 bodes ill for aspiring conscientious objectors:

"It is the sacred obligation of every citizen of the People's Republic of China to defend the motherland and resist aggression. It is the honourable duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to perform military service and join the militia in accordance with the law."

A Conscientious Objector in China could well face summary execution. During World War I and II, Conscientious Objectors in the U .S.A. and Great Britain were either recognized as such or otherwise. Special Tribunals decided on the C.O.'s fate, meting out prison sentences if they saw fit, stopping short of capital punishment. Such "tolerance" could not be expected in China. After all, the history of the Chinese Communist Party is rife with untold numbers who have been murdered or imprisoned for the crime of political disagreement with the state.

Article 56 admonishes that "It is the duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to pay taxes in accordance with the law," Yet another well-known feature of a society based upon private property relationships.

The State Council, euphemistically known as the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, is the highest executive organ of state administration and power. Article 91, which indirectly refers to all revenues and expenditures, under the direction of the Premier of the State Council, authorizes the auditing body to independently exercise its power "to supervise through auditing in accordance with the law, subject to no interference by any other administrative organ or any public organization or individual" (my emphasis). This is an examplc unbridled dictatorial administration effected within an area where it really counts - income and expenditures and their approved allocations.

Article 125 states:

"All cases handled by the people's courts, except for those involving special circumstances as specified by law, shall be heard in public. The accused has the right of defense" (my emphasis).

Once again, an obvious legal device for avoiding the so-callcd "due-processes" of the law, enabling the state to override any semblance of open, public hearings should it so desire.

The Chinese Communist Party help to rationalize the existence ol the state, wages, dictatorships, patriotism, investments, savings, inheritance, money, taxes and so forth, by apparently bestowing the title "socialist" as an implied prefix to all these evidences that conspicuously characterize capitalist society.

(Part II of China's Masquerade, Chapter 14 of 'The Futility of Reformism' by Samuel Leight, 1984)