4. The Great Socialist Destiny
of China and Viet Nam
February 21, 1979
Now that hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the Peoples Republic of China are pouring into the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam in a brazen adventure to subdue a sister socialist country, one must inevitably ask oneself: Does it mean that the Chinese Revolution, which by virtue of universal agreement has been regarded by not only all socialists and communists but all progressives in the anti-imperialist struggle as the second greatest development in breaching the imperialist front and in establishing a socialist republic -- has that been turned into its opposite?
Has the monumental achievement in overthrowing the landlord-capitalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek and in breaking the chains to imperialism now been converted into its opposite? Has the wine turned to vinegar?
Is the assault upon Viet Nam a reflection of such a development?
It would be both foolish and inaccurate from the point of view of objective social development and the plain facts of life to draw any such wild and unfounded conclusion.
For a long time, the leaders of China have persisted in making the false and utterly spurious accusation, also altogether unfounded, that the Soviet Union has become a "social-imperialist" state and that capitalism has been restored there.
Subsequent history will verify that both accusations are equally unfounded and the result of excessive, false, and violent political polemics which have run their course. They no longer have any validity as a normal ideological struggle because they have been converted into a destructive, internecine, fratricidal, state-to-state struggle.
What then has happened, first of all in China, to bring about such a dastardly deed as an attempt to subdue a small sister socialist state with whom it has just recently been in a solid alliance against a common enemy?
What happened in China is what has happened in all great, truly profound social revolutions. The political pendulum, which swings from right to left and vice versa, during the course of all the great social and political transformations, has also swung in China as it did earlier in the Soviet Union.
Following a stormy period of revolutionary development, the pendulum has swung sharply and wildly to the right and has ushered in a politically and socially regressive tendency at the pinnacle of state power. Political reaction is in the saddle in China, and it is supported by all that is old, regressive, and downright rotten.
Such developments have proven absolutely inevitable in almost all revolutions, as history attests by past experience. The socialist camp is not immune from it. In one degree or another, almost all the viable socialist states have either experienced it, succumbed to it for a while, made speedy recoveries, or are in the process of a life and death struggle for survival. One must consider that it is still a fact of contemporary life that the dominant mode of production in the world is capitalist.
In the long struggle among the socialist countries, as a whole, against the forces of imperialism, heavy blows have been inflicted on the declining fortunes of monopoly capitalism. The latter, however, is by no means dead and has retained strong recuperative powers. Like any organism that is struggling to survive, it seeks out the vulnerabilities of its adversaries. The Sino-Soviet dispute disclosed to the class enemy a deep and abiding vulnerability which the latter exploited and utilized, and in the course of a long struggle it was able to bring within its orbit one of the principal contestants in the ideological struggle.
These among others are the principal features behind the larger struggle which has convulsed the socialist countries.
REACTION IS A TEMPORARY SETBACK
What has triumphed in China, however, is that which is temporary, conjunctural, and not of lasting and enduring significance.
The expansionism of Napoleon, which almost brought France to ruination, nevertheless did not nullify the revolutionary significance of the new social system which Napoleon's rule consolidated politically for the bourgeoisie. Nor did the succeeding restoration of the monarchies of the Legitimists and the Orleanists turn out to be anything more than the domination of different groupings, namely the industrial and financial sections, of the bourgeoisie.
Where Napoleon's expansionism rooted out feudalism, its contribution was lasting. But its reactionary aspects elsewhere as a war of conquest brought France to the brink of ruin.
If China's leaders had sought by a revolutionary intervention, however unwise that may have proven tactically, to intervene militarily in Thailand or in Burma, that would be one thing. And wouldn't the whole world support a revolutionary intervention to free Taiwan from the clutches of American finance capital?
Alas, this is not the case, precisely because it is not revolutionaries who are at the helm of the Chinese socialist state but reactionaries. The intervention in Viet Nam is a war of conquest and as such must be condemned as a crime against a sister socialist state.
What then is one supposed to do?
Even where there is no other choice for the Vietnamese people than to try to beat back their would-be conquerors with arms in hand, as there is no other choice for progressive humanity but to support them, it would be tragic if the socialist perspective on both sides of the battlefield were to be blurred, or worse still altogether lost. All the more so, because it is the only abiding element which will surely emerge after the ruination and destruction of lives and property have taken their toll.
In the final analysis, the irresistible pressure from the social foundations in both countries to carry on with socialist construction will mean that it will have to be resumed, no matter how long it takes. That is the inevitable wave of the future. The present dark interlude is a temporary detour from the fundamental course of the inherent social evolution of both countries.
Viet Nam cannot be conquered. The reactionary group at the helm of the Chinese state will not be able to set the clock back long, either at home or in its sister socialist state.
The Deng-Hua grouping will prove to have an ephemeral existence. Its social roots are in the past and not in the present or the future. China needs socialist construction as a living organism needs air to breathe, which in turn means peace and harmony with its socialist neighbors. The wrong turn away from the socialist course will have to be reversed, even if it first takes a huge toll in life and property.
In the long run, it can only be the workers, the peasants, and the revolutionary vanguard elements in China who can right what is wrong with both the domestic and foreign course of current Chinese policy. It is in them as well as in the Vietnamese people that the greatest confidence must be put.
In the meantime, the battle rages, but even as we all must gather worldwide support to help the Vietnamese push back the counter-revolutionary assault we must bear in mind that such a military solution, vital as it is to free Viet Nam from aggression, would merely contain the reign of reaction in China to its borders, it would not solve the problem.
The destiny of socialism in China depends on the inner forces still inherent in the Chinese Revolution, on its tremendous gains, on its ability to recuperate from its self-inflicted wounds and move forward, hopefully the sooner the better, in the spirit of fraternal and socialist solidarity with all the socialist countries against the fundamental enemy of our time, decadent monopoly capitalism.