Marxism in Asia (RLE Marxism)

Colin Mackerras, Nick Knight

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317501404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Marxism is a theory which originated in the context of nineteenth-century industrialised Europe. Despite its European origins, Marxism has actually found greatest significance as a doctrine for change in the context of the underdeveloped peasant societies of Asia. This paradox has only been resolved through adaptation of Marxism to suit the specific features of particular Asian societies. There has consequently been a differentiation of Marxism along national lines. In this book, first published in 1985, the theoretical and practical implications for this national differentiation of a 'universal' (European) theory are explored, followed by a more detailed analysis of the manner in which Marxism has developed during different historical periods in particular Asian contexts.

1

INTRODUCTION: MARX AND EUROPE, MARXISM IN ASIA

Nick Knight and Colin Mackerras

In the century since Marx’s death, there has been a profusion of interpretations by Marx’s critics, adherents and scholars as to what constitute the essential elements or themes of Marxism. This continuing process of differentiation within the Marxist tradition has involved theoretical disagreements over key concepts of Marxism and how Marxism should best be employed in the analysis of social and historical development. It has also involved disagreements which have sprung from the national differences among the various societies in which Marxism has become an ideological force of political importance.

The differentiation of a doctrine or ideology in this manner is of course not without precedent. The 2000-year history of Christianity is a good example of a doctrine which has experienced schism and fragmentation to produce a multiplicity of creeds and organisations all claiming allegiance to a common source of inspiration. While Marxism is a much younger doctrine than Christianity, its history suggests an even more volatile predisposition to manifest very varied formulations concerning ‘true’ or appropriate interpretations.

The differentiation of Marxism along national lines and the hostility which has resulted between rival national interpretations of its political implications is one of the great ironies of history. One of the dominant themes of Marx’s thought has usually been considered to be internationalism, a hope that common class interests could unite individuals across national boundaries and that the parochialism of the nation would be transcended by the strength of common identification of members of the same class. In Marx’s view, the modern working class (proletariat) was the ‘universal class’, the class which possessed an international character because of the common condition of exploitation shared by its members regardless of national origins. This presumption of shared class interest would, Marx hoped, constitute the basis for the decline and eventual disappearance of the nation and the establishment of an international socialist order.¹ Class identification was, from this perspective, a more powerful force than national identification.

Marxism has also been perceived and proclaimed as a universal theory by its adherents. Marx wrote extensively on a wide variety of subjects for more than four decades, but his interest focussed primarily on countries dominated by the capitalist mode of production which had emerged in Western Europe with the decline of feudalism, allowing the onset of the Industrial Revolution. This intense interest in the development and internal dynamics of capitalist society did not, however, lead Marx to ignore other modes of production which have characterised human societies. Nevertheless, many of Marx’s followers believe his analysis of capitalism represented the centrepiece of Marxism, and that the conclusions Marx arrived at through intensive study of capitalism and its development bore implications for the development of human society in general. Marx’s analysis of capitalist society was perceived, therefore, as having an application over and above the specific historical context which Marx had analysed. In other words, the generalisations which emerged from Marx’s study of Western European capitalism came to be regarded as a ‘universal’ theory of history and society.

Several such generalisations were to bear important implications for the forms of Marxism which emerged in the various national contexts of Asia. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, was Marx’s analysis of the dominant structure of class relations which characterised capitalism. As capitalism emerged from the disintegration of the feudal order, the bourgeoisie replaced the land-owning aristocracy as the owning or ruling class, and the industrial proletariat replaced the peasantry as the principal producing class. In this relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the proletariat was economically dependent upon the bourgeoisie for it possessed nothing except its own labour power. It was precisely this which the bourgeoisie required, and within the context of industrial production, the bourgeoisie proceeded to extract surplus value from the proletariat, this being achieved by paying the workers far less than the value they had actually produced. It was this discrepancy which was the origin of an entirely new category of income—capitalists’ profit. With the displacement of feudal rent as the dominant form of unearned income, the capitalist mode of production came into existence. From his analysis of the nature of capitalist society and especially the sociological conditions under which the industrial proletariat worked and lived, Marx suggested that this class would eventually rise in revolution, overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish a socialist society. Marx gives several accounts of how this might happen. His major claim is that on economic grounds a society dominated by a capitalist mode of production cannot last indefinitely. Market relations need eventually to be replaced by more explicitly political ones—thus undermining capitalist social relations. This process presumably would take place over a long term but would not on that account cease to be a revolutionary one. The emergence of a conscious political struggle to usher in a socialist society was understood by Marx to be both desirable and inevitable.

Marx’s predictions were not, he believed, based on wishful thinking. On the contrary, several important characteristics of capitalist society suggested to him that the proletariat was the ‘universal class’ whose task was the abolition of all classes.² These characteristics included:

(i) The cooperative form characterising labour under the capitalist system. The nature of labour at the point of production under capitalism involved a division of function which necessitated cooperation and organisation to produce a finished commodity.

(ii) This could lead to the possibility of an increased unity and class identification by the industrial proletariat. The fact that its mode of work brought members of the working class into close contact (both geographically and occupationally) suggested that a greater unity of class outlook could be achieved.³

(iii) The advanced forces of production which characterised capitalism could potentially, under the control and guidance of the working class, serve to liberate rather than enslave mankind.

(iv) A concomitant of the advanced forces of production was the scientific nature of modern inquiry which could for the first time indicate to the working class the true nature of society. The knowledge which resulted from such scientific social investigation could inform the working class about its own condition, and the way out of the impasse of class society. In practical terms the most significant example of this development of working class knowledge would be the seizure by it of the right to determine the content of production and thereby the direction of societal development. Control over production is the means by which any class stamps its impression upon society and helps to create an accepted complex of understanding and social behaviour.

The second generalisation that Marx believed he had isolated concerned the internal mechanisms within capitalist society which would lead to the socialist transformation by means of which the working class would displace the bourgeoisie from its position of political and economic dominance. Marx asserted that the development of capitalism was characterised by the incessant accumulation of capital under the control of the bourgeoisie, a process which was accompanied by increasingly fierce economic competition. The consequence of this competition would be the liquidation of inefficient capitalists and members of intermediate classes such as the petit-bourgeoisie who would be forced into the ranks of the working class. The concentration of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists would be thus accompanied by a growth in the size of the working class. As the numbers of the working class swelled, so its bargaining position with the bourgeoisie would worsen, because of increased competition for the available number of jobs. This competition would be exacerbated by the creation of a large body of unemployed who could not obtain work. (Marx referred to periodically produced unemployed groups as the ‘industrial reserve army’.) The effect of competition for employment within the working class would be a lowering of wages for labour. The growth in the numbers of the working class and the lowering of wages means that the working class would become progressively more ‘immiserated’ as the bourgeoisie became a smaller and wealthier class.⁴ This increasing polarisation between the working class and the bourgeoisie would lead to a point at which the contradiction between the antagonistic classes would reach an extreme level, one which could be resolved only through a process of social revolution in which the proletariat would become the dominant class, and the bourgeoisie no longer a constraint upon further social and economic progress. From his fragmented comments on the subject of socialism it seems that Marx believed that in the wake of such a successful socialist revolution, the working class would establish a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ whose function would be the prevention of counterrevolution and the administration of the needs of society during the transitional period between capitalism and communism. Following this transitional period, society would enter the higher phase of communism whereby class divisions would disappear and in which there would be an equitable distribution of society’s wealth and resources on the basis of need.

As already indicated, Marx’s suggestions concerning the eventual demise of capitalism were only incompletely formulated. The most reasonable interpretation seems to be his expectation that the full maturity of capitalist economic development would portend such immense pressure on the underlying social arrangements that a very different basis for political and economic progress, one based on post-bourgeois or socialist principles of allocation of resources for production, would be necessary. Hence a proletarian revolution to displace bourgeois hegemony seemed to Marx to be, in the long run, very likely. Such a process would be revolutionary, no matter how long it took.

Despite the manifest ambiguities in his incomplete scenarios, Marx unambiguously assigns to the industrial proletariat a key role in this transformation from capitalism to socialism; hence the sometimes vulgarised accounts of socialist revolution that are associated with Marxist thought and the often repeated idea that a future era of socialism could be ushered in only by a revolution led by the proletariat. As Marx was to point out in his ‘Conspectus of Bakunin’s “Statism and Anarchy”’ (1874),

A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its pre-condition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people.⁵

For both objective and subjective reasons, then, revolutionaries would need to take cognizance of the stage of social and economic development reached in their particular society. Revolutionary consciousness is not enough. Marx is referring to the more active role the working class can be expected to play in capitalist production decisions at some stages of capitalist development compared with other stages where this involvement is likely to be less emphatic.

The centrality of the proletariat in Marx’s schema of revolution and social change was accompanied by a general lack of enthusiasm for the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. The peasants were, Marx believed, unable to constitute the class vehicle for radical change because of the conditions of existence which characterised their class. In Marx’s view, any society which retained a significant peasant population would be unlikely to possess a developed industrial economy; the forces of production would probably not be well developed. These conditions would not be propitious for any revolutionary transition to the higher mode of production which was Marx’s conception of socialism. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx was to assert a relationship between these conditions of existence and the peasantry’s inability to produce a unity of class consciousness or organisation:

The small peasant proprietors form an immense mass, the members of which live in the same situation but do not enter into manifold relationships with each other. Their mode of operation isolates them instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. This isolation is strengthened by the wretched state of France’s means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants. Their place of operation, the smallholding, permits no division of labour in its cultivation, no application of science and therefore no diversity of development, variety of talent, or wealth of social relationship… In so far as these small peasant proprieters are merely connected on a local basis, and the identity of their interests fails to produce a feeling of community, national links, or a political organisation, they do not form a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name…⁶

Elsewhere, Marx was to refer scathingly to the ‘idiocy of rural life’⁷ and the ‘crudity of the peasants’.⁸

This low estimation of the peasantry as a class and Marx’s emphasis on the revolutionary potential of the proletariat were to create significant problems for the employment of Marxism in Asia where the peasantry constituted the large bulk of the population and where the proletariat was often diminutive in size or even non-existent. How were Asian Marxists to resolve this dilemma? Should they attend patiently on the development of modern industry and the gradual growth of a working class which might lead a socialist revolution? Should they ignore the rural unrest engendered by problems of land ownership, poverty, rural unemployment, and the economic dislocation which accompanied imperialism? Or should they adapt this fundamental element of Marxism to conform more closely to the social realities of their own societies?

In five of the countries examined in this book – China, Kampuchea, Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia – the size of the peasant population has constituted a considerable stumbling block to the ready employment of Marxist ideas in their undiluted European form, and has necessitated certain innovative theoretical formulations to specify the role of the peasantry vis-a-vis the working class in the process of revolution and socialist construction in a largely peasant society. The attempt to adapt this aspect of Marxism to a form of class society very different from that about which Marx wrote will constitute one of the themes explored in this book.

A feature of Marx’s analysis which necessarily must have important implications for Marxism in Asia was the role he ascribed to the various modes of production through which Western European society had progressed prior to its capitalist stage. Marx c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Marx and Europe, Marxism in Asia
• 2. Leninism, Stalinism and the Comintern
• 3. Mao Zedong and the ‘Sinification of Marxism’
• 4. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Road to Socialism
• 5. Chinese Marxism Since Mao
• 6. The Juche Idea and the Thought of Kim II Sung
• 7. Marxism in Japan: Theory Versus Tradition
• 8. The Application of Marxism-Leninism to Vietnam
• 9. Kampuchea and Stalinism
• 10. The Indonesian Marxist Tradition
• 11. Conclusion: Continuity and Change of Marxism-Leninism in Asia
• Index