10101/ 3112 34002 0a.u3sa 0a2022 of the third Chinese revolution, the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the landowners in the most populous country of the world, the oreaking or une ment of the USSR, and amental transformation of the balance of forces on a world scale. However much we recime that exists todav in the Peop le's Republic of China, we must judge ine role or mao in ine nistory of tne twentieth century primarily basis of his relationship fundamental classes of the contemoorary world.
The victory of the third revolution, of which he was the most important architect, was the most event of the twentieth century since the October socialist revolution in Russia. China is not Just any country It is a country, once the richest and most advanced in the world, where the interference of foreign capitalism in the nineteenth century had prevented ine development or an imperialist power like that which the ruling classes of Japan managed to create at the last minute. the fundbureacratic with the important to Chiang Kai-shek. autonomous famine and misery.
Mao.
in the third revolution.
organisatNina. The Chinese revolution bureaucraliste was Stalin, Victory in the 'third' Chinese revolution came with vao s rerusal in practise to subordinate the Peoples Liberation Army No subsequent event can wive our ine oraise fraters due to Mao for his role in the victory of the socialist revolution in China. He The third Chinese revolution was not a 'normal' socialist revolution. occurred aner a long and destructive war waged by Japanese imperialism against China — a war that destroyed the economy and disintegrated urban proletariat. This objective fact, together with the deliberate stifling of the struggles of that proletariat TaCK any autonomous role by the working class The leadership of the revolutionary process was in the hands of a highly Party which prevented the development soviets and workers councils inChWds Mao was not Lenin, but nor was he precisely because he led revolution and not a counter-revolution. However, the revolution he led was not in its forms or organisation al authentically proletarian revolution, although it had the historical and content: the destruction of bourgeois power and property. te destruction or tne bourgeois stare Bureaucratic But if Mao was not Lenin or Stalin, the bureaucratic regime that he set up in the People's Republic of China hac a number of similarities Stalinist regime in the USSR: the suppression or proletarian democra cy, the lack of workers management in the factories, the pragmatic distortion of Marxism, the cult of the personality of Mao, the material privileges of the bureaucracy. To explain these phenomena exclusively in terms of the backwardness obviously one of the roots of bureaucratisation, is to underestimate the importance of the subjective factor and the dynamic of the mass movementin enina It is there that the really tragic dimension of the ageing Mao appears worried about the effect the bureaucratisation of the party and politicisation of the masses, in the image of what had happened in the USSR. Finding himself in a minority on the leadership of the party after the failure of the 'Great Leap Forward', he by-passed the party apparatus address himself to the masses. was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, which had similarities with the youth radicalisation in the rest of the world It was launched under the slogan: in the final analysis, the lessons of history come back to this: revolt is justified.' But when the mass mobilisations increasingly went beyond the UM 102s 021681010 TU00 they led to the appearance of left opposition tendencies, when started to involve workers, even to the and Which is dethey extent of strike action, Mao made a complete turn and reunited with the majority of the leadership.
The 'Red Guards' were disciplined and reorganised. The slogan became: Any revolt Is justified. revolt against Mao Tse-tung ought' the Kruschevite except the appeared at The Sino-Soviet conflict (for which bureaucracy must bear the main responsibility for having stopped its economic and military aid to the People's Republic of China) and then the Cultural Revolution had exerted a real attraction for the new vanguards on a world scale. Maoism same time as a leftist and Third Worldist (and even libertarian) alternative to the official