Why restrict bourgeois right?

 

Author: Angry Frown Viewpoint  Published: 2021-09-15 Source: National Revival Website

The term "bourgeois right" first appeared in Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Programme" in 1875. He argued that since socialist society was a new form of society born out of the old capitalist society, it inevitably bore many traces of the old society, and these traces were concentrated in the form of a formally equal but substantively unequal right of the capitalist class, which is called bourgeois right.

In his Critique of the Gotha Platform, he states, "This right to equality is an unequal right to unequal labour ...... but it tacitly assumes that the unequal personal gifts of the worker, and thus the unequal capacity to work, are natural privileges. So as far as its content is concerned, it is an unequal right like all rights."

On this basis, Marx concludes that "to avoid all these evils, rights should not be equal, but unequal".

What does it mean? It means simply that in a socialist society there are still differences in the individual talents of each worker, in their ability to work, in the influence of public opinion and so on, so that even if one starts from the socialist principle of equality of equal work for equal product, the consumer goods actually received by each person are still unequal.

Therefore, a socialist society should treat the same situations equally and treat different situations unequally in proportion to their inequality. If not, existing disparities will be widened and even polarised.

Why, then, did Chairman Mao not simply eliminate this bourgeois right at that time? The answer is that bourgeois right could not be completely eliminated in the newly established socialist society.

This is because, firstly, bourgeois right has certain innate characteristics. Things like working ability and intelligence, for example, are sometimes innate, and the differences between them cannot and do not have to be smoothed out; it is not humanly possible to do so. Indeed, this has existed objectively in all historical forms since the beginning of mankind, and will probably continue to do so even in a future communist society. But because of this, the impact of this on the construction of a socialist society is so small as to be almost negligible.

Secondly, since it has just been born out of the old capitalist society, a socialist society is not yet able to establish a complete and comprehensive system of public ownership of means of production for all people, and it is not possible to establish a network of production according to the distribution of labour that includes all workers in society. Due to the influence of old habits, customs and thinking in a capitalist society, private factors and a capitalist class will continue to arise to a certain extent and within a certain range.

Thirdly, bourgeois right can be transformed into substantial capital and continue to multiply itself. The second point is that in a newly established socialist society, private elements and bourgeois elements will continue to emerge, and the influence of public opinion of these constantly emerging bourgeois elements is still very widespread, and they can use this influence of public opinion to continuously appropriate the various factors of production and in turn expand their own rights, thus creating further inequalities.

Fourthly, bourgeois right has existed for so long that this old habit has inadvertently shaped the way people think and act, so that they do not want to change and do not want to make progress. As we all know, many people are slaves to their habits and are willing to accept the status quo without complaint or question, even though it might well be to their advantage to change the existing state of affairs.

In conclusion, bourgeois right cannot be completely eliminated in a socialist society, so it is of the utmost importance to limit it so that it does not proliferate and lead to a revival of capitalism.

Therefore, the question of how to limit the development of bourgeois right under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat became a question that Chairman Mao kept thinking about in his later years.

The answer to the question of why Chairman Mao wanted to restrict the bourgeois right lies in the words of the old man himself: the reactionary class, which has been overthrown, is still trying to revive itself. In a socialist society, new elements of the bourgeoisie would be created.

--Quoted in the People's Daily, 8 March 1978

(The words from Mao, above, read: "I don't want the day to come when there will be more exploitation of people in China, new capitalists, entrepreneurs, workers, prostitutes and opium smokers; if that happens, the blood of many martyrs will have been shed in vain.")

The answer is clear enough. In order to prevent the revival of capitalism, to prevent the continuous emergence of new capitalist elements, to prevent the workers and peasants from suffering a second crop of hardship, to prevent the Red Mountain from changing colour and the workers and peasants from changing sovereignty, Chairman Mao wanted to restrict the legal power of the capitalist class.

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Chinese original at 为什么要限制资产阶级法权？ (mzfxw.com)