Qian Changming: How to Achieve "Let the People Supervise the Government"? –On the question of proletarian democracy.

 

Qian Changming - 2022-01-06 - Source: Original

(Translator’s preface: Another careful piece by Qian Changming which avoids criticising the capitalist-roaders running China today, but which certainly damns them particularly through the quote from Mao: "We cannot understand the question of the rights of the people to mean that the state is run by only a section of the population, and that the people enjoy the rights to labour, education, social security, etc., under the administration of these people." The wording on the image above reads “Mao Zedong’s “big democracy” and “small democracy” and shows workers utilizing the big character poster format to speak out freely and supervise the Party and government.)

In July 1945, Chairman Mao said in his "Cave Conversation"[1] on "Breaking the Cycle of History": "We have found a new way, and we can jump out of this cyclical law. This new path is democracy. Only by letting the people supervise the government will the government dare not relax. Only when everyone stands up and is responsible will there be no 'death' of the new regime”.

By "democracy", Chairman Mao undoubtedly meant "us" - the proletarian democracy that was introduced under the conditions of the Communist Party taking power.

In October 1949, when New China was established, under the leadership of the Party, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which represented people from all walks of life, was set up; immediately afterwards, the National People's Congress (NPC) was elected by democratic universal suffrage, and the government was organised, establishing a people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. This is the political system of proletarian democracy.

In theory, the purpose of a proletarian democratic political system is to "serve the people", and as long as this system is perfected, proletarian democracy can be fully developed and the people can become the masters of their own house. However, as a matter of fact, proletarian democratic political institutions are also made up of human beings, and human beings can make mistakes; moreover, due to historical limitations, even in socialist countries, bourgeois right still existed for a long period of time, which inevitably led some cadres to become bureaucratic and even "alienated" into a bureaucratic class. This requires that "the people should supervise the government", that "everyone should be held accountable", that a certain balance be maintained in the relationship between "the government" and "the people, to ensure that the people's power will never be "alienated" or degenerated.

Chairman Mao was undoubtedly the first person to implement proletarian democracy.

As early as March 1949, in his report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chairman Mao warned the Party to be on guard against the corruption of power. He stressed: "We have criticism and self-criticism, the weapons of Marxism-Leninism. We are able to remove the bad style and maintain the good style." In April 1950, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made another decision on the launching of criticism and self-criticism in newspapers and publications.

In order to "let the people monitor the government", the people must be allowed to speak. Only when the people are allowed to speak through various channels can there be "supervision" by the people.

To let the people speak, the bureaucracy cannot be allowed to suppress mass criticism.

In January 1953, Chairman Mao launched a struggle within the Party against "bureaucracy, commandism and lawlessness". He gave instructions on one of the materials that "suppressing criticism will lead to expulsion from the Party or a public trial by the people", which led to one case of retaliation against someone who suppressed mass criticism. Huang Yifeng, a veteran revolutionary who joined the Party in 1925, was severely punished with "expulsion from the Party and withdrawal of all administrative posts", which greatly educated all Party members.

"The handling of the Huang Yifeng case was a manifestation of Chairman Mao's idea that Party members must be openly supervised by the people, regardless of their position, in order to prevent them from being corrupted by power.

In order to "let the people supervise the government", Chairman Mao encouraged the people to write big-character posters to expose problems as early as 1958, realising the "Big Speaking Out, Big Airing of Views, Big Character Posters and Big Debates". Later on, these "four major" rights of the people were written into the 1975 Constitution.

Chairman Mao has repeatedly stressed: "In short, let other people speak out. The heavens will not fall and you will not be thrown out. If you do not let others speak, then the day will surely come when you are thrown out." (Speech at the Enlarged Central Working Conference, 30 January 1962)

To "open the door to the Party" and let the non-Party people judge Party members together is also a manifestation of "letting the people supervise the government". The proletarian democratic political system is led by the Communist Party, and supervision of the Communist Party is, in essence, supervision of the government.

Chairman Mao not only implemented proletarian democracy in practice, but also perfected it from a theoretical point of view. from December 1959 to February 1960, when he gathered several Party comrades in a collective study of the Soviet Textbook of Political Economy, he made a profound observation on the question of perfecting proletarian democracy.

"We cannot understand the question of the rights of the people to mean that the state is run by only a section of the population, and that the people enjoy the rights to labour, education, social security, etc., under the administration of these people." "The right of workers to manage the state, to manage the army, to manage all kinds of enterprises, to manage culture and education, is in fact the greatest right, the most fundamental right, of workers under the socialist system. Without this right, the workers' rights to work, to rest, to education, and so on, are not guaranteed."

This is the deepening of the idea that "only when everyone rises up and takes responsibility will the government not be destroyed". How can the people directly exercise their rights as "masters" and supervise the government by "everyone rising up and taking responsibility"? In the final analysis, it is the people themselves who must participate in the management, otherwise it will not be put into practice.

How can we achieve direct participation of the people in the management of state affairs, and how can we realise that "the people must manage the superstructure themselves"? Obviously, this is a brand new subject, which depends on the exploration and practice of proletarian democracy. In fact, this exploration and practice can begin with the implementation of the electoral system of the Paris Commune.

The comprehensive electoral system of the Paris Commune had several major features: firstly, all leaders were directly elected by the people; secondly, elected leaders had to be accountable to the people and subject to their supervision; thirdly, the electors could remove the elected at any time; fourthly, all elected public officials received only a salary equivalent to a worker's wage and all privileges enjoyed by bourgeois state officials were abolished.

On the basis of the introduction of the electoral system of the Paris Commune, the concrete practice of direct participation by the people in the management of state affairs and all areas of the superstructure should be further explored. This should be a long process of practice and only persistent exploration will bear fruit.

To perfect proletarian democracy, the central question has always been: how best to let the people speak and "let the people supervise the government"!

钱昌明：怎样实现“让人民来监督政府”? ——兼谈无产阶级民主问题 - 乌有之乡 (wyzxwk.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] The “cave conversation” refers to a conversation about democratic China between Mao Zedong and Huang Yanpei in the cave living room of Mao Zedong's residence in Yan'an in July 1945. Asked by Huang Yanpei how to change the law of the dynastic cycle, according to which a dynasty existed until it lost the mandate of Heaven and was replaced by a new dynasty, Mao Zedong said, "We have found a new way, and we can jump out of this cyclical law. This new path is democracy. Only by letting the people supervise the government will the government dare not relax. Only when everyone stands up and is responsible will there be no 'death' of the new regime”.