China and Trotskyism

This collection of articles from the Trotskyist tradition about Maoist China provides a unique and original perspective that has long been buried in the archives.

The Chinese Communist Party was an authentic workers’ party in the 1920s, until misguided by Stalinism and physically exterminated by the nationalist Guomindang.

These leading communists became Trotskyists after reflecting on the failed Chinese revolution (1925-27). They were the sharpest critics and opponents of Maoism, and of the Guomindang, from the beginning. The Maoists ultimately repressed the Chinese Trotskyists in 1952, stamping out independent working-class politics in China.

The best of the internationalist Trotskyists developed their own realistic assessment of Maoism.

However, the bulk of the “orthodox” Trotskyists capitulated to Maoism, characterising the overturn in 1949 as a socialist revolution, even though the working class was absent as a social actor. They thus consistently mischaracterised the Chinese state, its ruling class and mode of production. Despite the Cultural Revolution and the disastrous Maoist repression, they clung to these mischaracterisations up to and after the terrible Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

While most would now regard China as a state capitalist regime, none have accounted for their mistakes during the Maoist period.

These texts can help the new generation of socialists orientate our politics on China.