Plenty of revisionist “Marxist-Leninists” like to uphold the revisionist Union of “Soviet” “Socialist” Republics (USSR) and “People’s” Republic of China (PRC) as “socialist” regimes. While both were socialist for some time, in their later years they were in fact the opposite. Here, we will briefly explain their socialist past, how they turned capitalist, and how their capitalist systems became capitalist-imperialist.
As some of our comrades don’t have a clear idea of what these terms mean, we have defined them in best accordance with Marxist Theory.
Maoists define socialism as the transition between capitalism and communism (a stateless, classless, moneyless society) characterized by the dictatorship of the proletariat in which the laboring people hold political power.
Lenin defined imperialism as is the highest stage of capitalism. Its fundamental characteristic is the formation of monopolies, big corporations that dominate their productive sectors. Often, the creation of these monopolies entials the mergindmerging of bank and industrial capital to create a class of ”financial capital” at the top of the bourgeoisie and therefore all of capitlaist society. Another characteristic of imperialism is the tying together of state power and economic power in the hands of the monopoly capitalists. With their newfound centralization of power, the financial oligarchy is able to expand their capital all around the world through the process of neo-colonialism.
Social-imperialism is simply capitalist-imperialism which claims to be “socialist”. Most of the time, political and economic power are centralized in the hands of the ruling class even more than in capital imperialist nations.
A characteristic of social-imperialism is that it evolves out of formerly socialist nations with the seize of power by the bueraucratic bourgeosie (exactly what it sounds like). Now, we can go over how socialism developed in the USSR and the PRC.
Socialism in the USSR and the PRC
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), formed in 1917 after the October Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party (later called the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)), was a socialist country. Even though it had not yet made many economic changes, the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat was established meant that socialism had begun; socialism is a transitional period, and the formation of the RSFSR meant that that period was started. In 1922, the RSFSR and other socialist countries merged into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
After Lenin died in 1924, there was a line struggle in the CPSU, with Joseph Stalin and his allies representing the proletarian line, Nikolai Bukharin and others representing the openly-rightist bourgeois line, and Leon Trotsky and co. being the ultra-“leftist” (rightist in practice) line. The proletarian line’s victory meant that the USSR remained a dictatorship of the proletariat. Under this system, the USSR engaged in rapid industrialization and improvement of life and the economy. The country engaged in class conflict, and it pushed further toward communism. The proletarian dictatorship also kicked the fascist imperialist bastards out of Europe, Africa, and Asia; they defeated the Nazi invasion of eastern Europe, supported partisans against Italian fascists in southeast Europe and Africa, invaded Manchuria to push Japan out, and backed Chinese communists to push the rest of the troops away. (Japan was forced to surrender with the excuse of the Atomic Bomb; the truth is that Japan lost many troops in Manchuria, so it could not fight an invasion, making it surrender. The atomic bomb was a convenient excuse for Japan to surrender to the US instead of the Soviets because the Soviets would have gotten Japan’s ruling family executed.)
In 1949, the Chinese communists, led by Mao Zedong, took Peking and founded the People’s Republic of China. Following the successful liberation of many large swaths of China starting in 1921, they were able to start building a new proletarian state before even founding the PRC, but the PRC’s foundation firmly established China’s socialist state. In 1956, the socialization and nationalization of industry were complete, as was the collectivization of agriculture. The PRC was moving toward socializing agriculture, making cooperatives into people’s communes, and making those communes society-controlled. However, from 1962 to 1966, Mao noticed that many party cadres and bureaucrats were corrupt and even capitalist-minded; he saw such people advocating for capitalistic measures, making them capitalist roaders. Fearing capitalist restoration, he called for a cultural revolution. This would be a revolution in which the masses would overthrow the capitalist roaders, promote proletarian culture over bourgeois culture, push further into communism, expand the productive forces more, and replace capitalist-roaders with communists. This Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was when all of this happened, continued until 1976 when Mao died.
Capitalist-Restoration
In the Soviet Union, capitalist restoration began when Nikita Khrushchev took power (1956). Khrushchev represented the interests of the state bourgeoisie, and when he and his allies purged the proletarian rulers from the Communist Party and the government, that meant that the proletariat lost power, ending the USSR’s existence as a proletarian dictatorship. Following this, Khrushchev implemented various reforms that led to further capitalist development, including weakening the central planning system, making the law of value more important, putting profit over use-value creation, rewarding time-workers better than piece-rate workers, raising bourgeois intellectuals, technicians, etc., and much more. This was capitalism in its glory! During this time, the PRC had been moving forward in socialist construction. When Khrushchev did all of this, the PRC and Albania were the only countries criticizing them for it; the other countries followed the Soviet revisionist path. This left the PRC and Albania to be the last socialist countries of the “communist” bloc.
However, the PRC had its own capitalist restoration in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping and other capitalist roaders took power. After Mao Zedong, the capitalist roaders—representatives of bourgeois interests, the state bourgeoisie, bourgeois intellectuals, etc., or whatever few of them remained—ended the Cultural Revolution and purged all proletarian leaders, particularly the “Gang of Four” (Zhang Qunqiao, Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan, and Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife), and implemented market reforms. These reforms were much like Khrushchev’s, but they were far further into capitalist development; they were even like Mikhail Gorbachev’s, to an extent. The bourgeoisie engaged in fascistic repression, with their aggressive “One-Child” Policy and the Tiananmen Square Massacre being key examples of this. The Chinese capitalists also welcomed foreign capitalists to use China’s resources, exploit its labor, and develop capital in China. When the Chinese socialist experiment died, only Albania remained as a socialist country, and even it had capitalist restoration in 1985 when Ramiz Alia allowed multi-party “democracy”; this was fraudulent because only the communist party could represent the proletariat and its allies, and power to other parties meant power to the bourgeoisie, the enemy.
The capitalist systems of the USSR and the PRC became imperialist, but they continued (and the PRC continues) to refer to their systems as “socialist”.
The Development of Capitalist-Imperialism with a Socialist Face (Social-Imperialism)
Capitalist countries either become imperialist countries or puppets of them. Both the USSR and the PRC became capitalist-imperialist, though the latter was initially a puppet or semi-colony of imperialism. Firstly, the USSR became imperialist as its capitalist system developed. Unlike in its socialist era, during which it would genuinely donate to struggling nations, in its state-capitalist period, it would give money as the export of financial capital; under socialism, the USSR encouraged cooperation, independence, and mutual aid among the people’s democracies of Eastern Europe and Asia shortly after World War 2, but after capitalist restoration, the Soviet bourgeoisie pushed for more and more Soviet dominance as well as less industrial development for certain puppets.
The Soviet capitalists needed to export capital into countries with high rates of profit, and this meant making countries develop only to a certain extent, beyond which would lead to too low of a rate of profit. Furthermore, the Soviet capitalists brought in cheap labor from puppets, and that labor could have been used to develop its home country; it simply allowed the Soviets to profitably develop while keeping their colonies poor. They even gave loans to countries like India, and then gave more loans for them to use to pay the first ones off; the cycle kept those countries in debt! All this, and more, are proof of Soviet social imperialism after the 1950s.
China became imperialist after capitalist development, too. However, it started off as a puppet of imperialism. As we stated previously, China allowed foreign capitalists to export capital to China. This allowed them to exploit China’s low-wage workers en masse, bringing in huge profits. In fact, capitalists still exploit China’s workers today, often along with other Asian countries with even cheaper labor. That does not mean that China cannot be imperialist; a lot of imperialist capitalists export capital to other imperialist countries. China does export capital, has monopoly/oligopoly capitalism, has finance capital, etc. Just as the USSR exported capital in the form of loans, China does so; many African countries have more than 25% of their GDP in debt! China has a state bourgeoisie (bureaucratic bourgeoisie) that controls over half of China’s enterprises, and it has plenty of private capitalists who rise the ranks and become oligopolies. The biggest banks and manufacturers have merged into a financial oligarchy, finance capital.
Conclusions
As revolutionary communists, we must not support blatant capitalist-imperialism; even if it has a “socialist” skin, it holds the same essence that western capitalist-imperialist nations hold. Just as we oppose Soviet social-imperialism, we recognize that Russia is an imperialist country, and we criticize Russian imperialism, too. (This does not reflect our stance on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, but it shows that we recognize the fact that Russia is imperialist.) In an inter-imperialist conflict, like World War 1, revolutionaries reject both sides and support the people, particularly the proletariat; in case an imperialist country supports a proletarian power, like in World War 2 (with American, British, French, etc. capital grudgingly supported the socialist USSR against German, Italian, Japanese, etc. capital), we could possibly give critical support to the imperialists. In the case where there is an anti-imperialist struggle that is not necessarily proletarian, democratic, or even republican, we support that struggle. As Joseph Stalin said in Foundations of Leninism:
“The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements… a revolutionary or a republican program…[or] a democratic basis of the movement. The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens… imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such ‘desperate’ democrats and ‘Socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ and republicans [who supported World War 1]… during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment…of imperialism. For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptian [bourgeoisie is]… waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle… despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British ‘Labour’ Government is waging to preserve Egypt’s dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle… despite the fact that they are ‘for’ socialism. … every step of which along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is undoubtedly a revolutionary step.”
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm
Here is what you should take from this article:
- Social imperialism is socialist in words and imperialist in deeds.
- We should oppose all imperialism.
- Anti-imperialist national liberation struggles are almost always revolutionary because they can liberate a nation or at least weaken an imperialist system.
Maoism For The Masses 
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