Bureaucracy crushed opposition in Tienanmen Square But a number of indications emerged at the October 14th Congress, and their background is in the Tienanmen events or 190% Pacca with we student revol and the wavering of the Zhao Ziyang faction, Deng was forced to appeal to veteran party 'conservatives", especially in the leadership of the PLA, to win support for the military crackdown. Indeed, for nearly two weeks in May 1989, the CCP leadership seemed paralysed in face of the student upsurge -dication of the political struggle over whether to crush the student movement.
Aghast
These events brought especially Long March veteran Yang Shangkun, now state president, and his brother, general Yang Baibang, to the fore. Deng was also forced to enlist support from the ancient veterans of the Central Advisory Commission to his side.
Many of these members of this over80s Stalinist club are probably aghast at the thought of capitalism, and despite its advisory rofe, the Commission had been used as a platform by 87-year old Chen Yun -an advocate of central economic planning and often regarded as Deng's most powerful rival.
At the 14th Congress Deng had the Central Advisory Council abolished, leaving the party's elders politically adrift and powerless. At the same time, Yang Shangkun was forced out of the olitbureau, and his younger brothe ost his position of general secretary of the Central Military Coundi and director of the PLA. In these two moves, potential sources of conservative op position to Deng were thwarted.
Purge
Although the PLA was rewarded by the promotion of CMC vice-chair Liu Huaquing to the politbureau, officer loyal to the Yang brothers (or suspected of such are being demoted throughout a decade.
However, despite the congress rhetoric being staunchly Dengist, the overall outcome of changing 50 per cent of the members of the central Committee is not so clear. Vice premier Tian Jiyun, who attacked the concept of spe cial economic zones in a widely dis. tributed document, retained his place on the politbureau, as did other leading conservates many of these differences within the bureaucracy could indeed be issues of tempo, and not of fundamental direction. But as in every post-capitalist and the drift towards capitalism poses enormous questions for the bureaucracy. While some sections see a future for themsel and their influence and wealth capitalsay, omers see it as d direct threat. As a unified caste, the bureaucracy cannot survive capitalist The influx of foreign capital, often from expatriate Chinese, is indeed a ion. In 1990 alone foreign investment was S6 billion. The special economic zones, which in effect exchange cheap labour for foreign capital, inevitably create a layer of comprador elements in. side and outside the bureaucracy. These emerging bourgeoisie based on their links with foreign capital, and their role as middlemen, fixers, and organisers of foreign production.
his is a big factor in the bureaucracy. Deng has been fighting hard. especially through his publicised national tour, to win the allegiance of party barons in the coasta areas where the special economic zones are located. ine new poutourcau u reflecting the increased power of the Restoration.
These are among the factors which make Deng's political project of authoritarian marketisation utopian and will certainly lead to massive political explosions in the coming years. Different sections of the bureaucracy will fight among themseives.
Workers will resist the smastung or the iron nice bowe as class differences widen in the cities and the countryside. And sections of the new middie classes not directly linked the bureaucracy will demand the right to influence political through democratisation, just as they have against the succession of de facto military goverments the emergence of the national on the same scale as he ex-Soviet Union, con Chinese national repression in Tibet and the huge province of Kazakhstan) will be an additional de stabilising factor.
But above all there is in China the process of formation of an indigenous lie in the restoration of capitalism per se ana not in the maintenance of a capitalist sector within a statised Red flags During the 1989 Tiananmen protests the students marched under the red flag and sang the Internationale'. For the most part, the statements of the students themselves rejected any attempt to link the demand for democracy to restoring capitalism.
It is hard to make judgements about the consciousness of opponents of the regime and young people today. However numerous dissidents and recent exiles, including socialists, speak of wholesale rejection of the party by the young. and near-universal cynicism about 'socialism', identified with the regime. It is not obvious that the next wave of student protestors will march under the red flag.
If these accounts of the attitude of young people are true, it is of course the direct result of the Tienanmen massacre, and the spectacle of a self-proclaimed 'Communist party venerates the market, is mired in corruption and represses any dissent. A democratic socialist alternative in China faces a long march before it becomes any kind of significant force. THE OUTBREAK of communalist violence in India after the destruc tion of the mosque at Ayodyha cast Hindu Janata Party. This extreme reactionary organisation, its building of a mass base, demonstrates the failure of two traditions - the bourgeois nationalism of the Congress Party, and that of the two mass communist parties, the CP and the CPIM).
Mass support for the BJP is just one aspect of communalist politics dividing the country; the other key struggle is the prolonged Sikh insurgency in the PunThe social basis of communalism is the mass poverty of the country. This in turn is a reflection of the failure of the of bourgeois nationalism, historically represented by Congress party the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty, to make any Impact on the legacy of under-development left by British imperisa.
Under successive Congress governments, for three decides attempts were made to bolster industry through a 'state big state economic sector, combined with aid from the Soviet Union succeeded in developing some heavy industry in the big cities, but on nothing like the scale needed to move India towards becoming an industrialised country The absence of sucossful land reform left the hundreds of thousands of indian villages in dire poverty, worsened by the massive population growth. Without security structure, the pressure on peasants to have large families provide for the future is relentless Birth control campaigns make little imact against this economic pressuri his is compounded by the high il literacy rates, and the subservient status of women.
in the struggle for independence the Congress Party deployed Hindu myths and symbolism. Independent Indian capitalism retained the archaic caste structure, worsening class divisions Against the background of terrible mass poverty, socialist aspirations have been largely in the hands of the two mass Stalinist parties, the CP and the CPIM). Both these parties are dyed-in-the-wool popular frontist organisations capitulating the Congress bourgeois nationalism at every turn.
Communist state governments, in Kerala and Bengal have become a fixture of the Indian political scene. Educational and welfare reforms have been implemented, including the building agricultural co-operatives. But all this is a drop in the ocean of Indian poverty and misery.
In the world economic recession India's economy has slumped. the Soviet Union has disappeared, disruptinga key source of trade and technology, and the state economic sector is in huge deficit. Prime minister Narasimha Rao has embarked on a wide-ranging privatisation programme agreed with the IMF.
Poverty and misery, combined with the corruption and economic failure of bourgeois nationalism, has opened the door the religious fundamentalism. Without a mass revolutionary alternative which can inspire the hundreds of millions of dispossessed, nothing stands in the way of a descent into communalist reaction.