| New Democracy | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 新民主主义 | ||
| Traditional Chinese | 新民主主義 | ||
| New Democratic Revolution | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 新民主主义革命 | ||
| Traditional Chinese | 新民主主義革命 | ||
New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a concept based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a decisively distinct path to that in any other country. He also said every Third World
country would have its own unique path to democracy, given that
particular country's own social and materialist conditions. Mao labeled representative democracy in the Western nations as Old Democracy, characterizing parliamentarianism as just an instrument to promote the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie/land-owning class through manufacturing consent. He also found his concept of New Democracy in contrast with the Soviet-style dictatorship of the proletariat which he assumed would be the dominant political structure of a post-capitalist world. Mao spoke about how he wanted to create a New China, a country freed from the feudal and semi-feudal aspects of its old culture as well as Japanese imperialism.
Mao wanted to create a new culture through Cultural Revolution,
a new economy free from the land owners and in order to protect these
new institutions a New Democracy of the four revolutionary classes,
namely peasants, proletariat, intelligentsia and petite bourgeoisie. He said that in the Third World only these four classes can lead a thorough enough united front against the imperialists
as the national bourgeoise of China must take counter-revolutionary
measures to protect its own feudal practices of slavery through land
rent, violently shutting down any anti-imperialist revolutionary
movement that threatened the interests of the land owners.
Regarding the political structure of New Democracy, Mao said in Section V
of his piece called "On New Democracy", written in January of 1940, as
follows:
China may now adopt a system of people's congresses, from the national people's congress down to the provincial, county, district and township people's congresses, with all levels electing their respective governmental bodies. But if there is to be a proper representation for each revolutionary class according to its status in the state, a proper expression of the people's will, a proper direction for revolutionary struggles and a proper manifestation of the spirit of New Democracy, then a system of really universal and equal suffrage, irrespective of sex, creed, property or education, must be introduced. Such is the system of democratic centralism. Only a government based on democratic centralism can fully express the will of all the revolutionary people and fight the enemies of the revolution most effectively. There must be a spirit of refusal to be "privately owned by the few" in the government and the army; without a genuinely democratic system this cannot be attained and the system of government and the state system will be out of harmony.
As time passed, the New Democracy concept was adapted to other countries and regions with similar justifications.
Concept
The concept of New Democracy aims to overthrow feudalism and achieve independence from colonialism. However, it dispenses with the rule predicted by Karl Marx that a capitalist class would usually follow such a struggle, claiming instead to seek to enter directly into socialism through a coalition
of classes fighting the old ruling order. The coalition is subsumed
under the leadership and guidance of the working class and its communist party,
working with the communists irrespective of their competing ideologies
in order to achieve the more immediate goal of a "new democratic order".
This was a view actually shared by Vladimir Lenin who had broken with the Mensheviks
over the idea that the working class could organize and lead the
democratic revolution in an underdeveloped country like Russia where the
objective conditions for socialism did not yet exist. The Chinese communists hoped that the working class in a similar fashion could then build full-blown socialism and communism in spite of the competing class interests of the social classes of the bloc.
The bloc of classes reflecting the principles of New Democracy is symbolized most readily by the stars on the flag of China. The largest star symbolizes the Communist Party of China's leadership and the surrounding four smaller stars symbolizing the Bloc of Four Classes, i.e. proletarian workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie (small business owners) and the nationally-based capitalists.
This is the coalition of classes for Mao's New Democratic Revolution as
he described it in his works. Mao's New Democracy explains the Bloc of
Four Classes as an unfortunate but necessary consequence of imperialism as described by Lenin.
Comparisons with core Marxism
The classical Marxist understanding of the stages of economic and historical development of the modes of production under which a socialist revolution can take place is that the socialist revolution occurs only after the capitalist bourgeois-democratic
revolution happens first. According to this, the bourgeois-democratic
revolution paves the way for the industrial proletarian class to emerge
as the majority class in society, after which it then overthrows
capitalism and begins constructing socialism. Mao disagreed and said
that the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution
could be combined into a single stage, rather than two separate
back-to-back stages. He called this stage New Democracy.
Marx himself is often misunderstood on this topic as he did not
postulate that strictly only after a bourgeois society has formed, a
socialist revolution would become possible. Instead, most notably in a
letter to Vera Zasulich, Marx suggested a form of revolutionary change in Russia at the time that is very much akin to Mao's thesis of New Democracy:
In dealing with the genesis of capitalist production I stated that it is founded on "the complete separation of the producer from the means of production" (p. 315, column 1, French edition of Capital) and that "the basis of this whole development is the expropriation of the agricultural producer. To date this has not been accomplished in a radical fashion anywhere except in England... But all the other countries of Western Europe are undergoing the same process" (1.c., column II).
I thus expressly limited the "historical inevitability" of this process to the countries of Western Europe. And why? Be so kind as to compare Chapter XXXII, where it says:
The "process of elimination transforming individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated means of production, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, this painful and fearful expropriation of the working people, forms the origin, the genesis of capital... Private property, based on personal labour [...] will be supplanted by capitalist private property, based on the exploitation of the labour of others, on wage labour" (p. 341, column II).
Thus, in the final analysis, it is a question of the transformation of one form of private property into another form of private property. Since the land in the hands of the Russian peasants has never been their private property, how could this development be applicable?
— Karl Marx, First Draft of Letter To Vera Zasulich, 1881
Effects of establishment
Once
New Democracy has been established in the way Mao's theory outlines,
the country is subsequently claimed to be ideologically socialist and
working towards communism under the leadership of its leading communist party and its people are actively involved in the construction of socialism. Examples are the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution for what Mao viewed as the participatory democracy inherent in the New Democracy concept.
Because of New Democracy's nature as an "intermediate stage", it
is considered a stepping-stone to socialism—an essentially two-stage
theory of first New Democracy, then socialism, given that the
self-proclaimed ultimate goal of socialist construction; the creation of
a stateless, classless and moneyless communist society; has not yet
been reached in the period of New Democracy.
Examples
Currently, the Shining Path, the New People's Army of the Philippines, and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) pursue similar actions pursuant to similar ideas, conducting active guerrilla warfare (people's war) with the intent of establishing New Democracy. In 2006, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) entered the government of Nepal
using similar New Democratic reasoning and methods. However, it was
expelled from the coalition in 2009 and its leader (who had been elected
Prime Minister) was deposed, so since then the CPN(M) has oscillated between threatening to return to armed struggle and leading general strikes in Nepal using its still-considerable influence in the Nepalese labour movement.
Some have argued that the Fast Track Land Reform Program in Zimbabwe represents the culmination of New Democracy there and these same people usually also say that ZANU-PF remains a genuinely socialist party.
Criticism
Some criticise New Democracy as class collaborationism or as a stage to
replace the dictatorship of the proletariat, but Mao completely rejected
this by saying:
"Firmly establish the new-democratic social order." That's a harmful formulation. In the transition period changes are taking place all the time and socialist factors are emerging every day. How can this "new-democratic order" be "firmly established"? [...] The period of transition is full of contradictions and struggles. Our present revolutionary struggle is even more profound than the revolutionary armed struggle of the past. It is a revolution that will bury the capitalist system and all other systems of exploitation once and for all. The idea, "Firmly establish the new-democratic social order", goes against the realities of our struggle and hinders the progress of the socialist cause.— Mao Zedong, "Refute Right Deviationist Views That Depart From the General Line", p. 93–94
