China since Mao by Charles Bettelheim & Neill G. Burton

Author:Charles Bettelheim & Neill G. Burton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0853454752
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Published: 1978-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Relations Between Agriculture and Industry, and Between Heavy and Light Industry

The same abandonment of Marxism in favor of a caricature of Marxism is shown in connection with the relations between agriculture and industry, and between heavy and light industry. It proceeds in an extremely confused way owing to the formal “fidelity” proclaimed by the present leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to the political line of Mao Tse-tung, a “fidelity” which contradicts its actual practice.

The result is more or less as follows (shown, for instance, by the report of the third conference devoted to On the Ten Major Relationships, which was broadcast by Radio Shanghai on February 10, 1977). On the one hand, the priorities accepted by the Chinese Communist Party under Mao’s leadership are reaffirmed, in this order: agriculture, light industry, heavy industry. On the other hand, emphasis is placed on the “objective economic law of priority growth of the means of production” (which is, in fact, a law of capitalist development), whereas the development of agriculture is seen mainly from the standpoint of its contribution to the accumulation of capital. These points were repeated and accentuated in the report of the fourth conference (Radio Peking, February 3, 1977), devoted to the Soviet path of industrialization. This path is praised, with criticism confined to the “one-sided” character of the priority given to heavy industry at the expense of agriculture. Completely neglected is the problem of equilibrium in exchange between agricultural and industrial products.

In short, here too we come back to an economistic and productivistic conception which is the “theoretical” expression of the present line. In this domain there is a return not merely to what prevailed before the Cultural Revolution, but even to conceptions that prevailed in China as far back as 1956.

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