WILD LILIES POISONOUS WEEDS -Dissident Voices from China edited by Gregor Benton — (Pluto Press £4.95)
Reviewed by Charlie van Gelderen reasons, keep us well informed about the dissident movement in Eastern Europe. We do not get the sine reaction about the dissident movement ... China. There is a very good reason for many of them workers and technicians.' It is only natural that in China, as in Poland, after years of bureaucratic opthe DresS on usurped banner of Marxthat people become disillusioned with the social order itself and seek solutions along different paths, ranging from Christ, Dada, Montesquieu, Toto and the young Marx to Trotsky.
Mao's Cultural Revolution, Walco was ostensibly launched to the growin of bureaucracy and ineruthlessly Cualitics. Was crushed as soon genuinely threaten that bureaucracy of which Mao, the Great helmsman, was ine pin nacle. Nevertheless, it gave the their own power which was completely eliminated when the movement was suppressed. THE capitalist media usually, and for its own the Soviet Union and this. Soviet dissidents are mainly drawn from intellectuals, highly placed. China's state-employed manual official journals in public. Driven underground, the movement, despite harassments and arrests, persistca and oegan to win support among disaffected factory The Deng-led bureaucracy responded by increased repression.
Theme Among the Marxist critics of the bureaucracy, one theme is paramount: democracy cano De guaranteed any supreme leader. The SUCCHIV goodwill that ne mades raper with the masses Mao and Deng could set millions of people into motion - is not the issue. As Yi Ming, one of the contributors to this collection, DUl 'Only democracy and a socialist legal system can bring the Four Modernisations to 'workers now realise that officials' wages are thirty times their own minimum wage. They see special Cars denvel uries to the mansions of the bigwigs..
'In China even though the economv is about to collapse, it has become for Collol DI ALLICC bureaucrats build themselves private villas is this socialism? ...Shall replace (the bureaucracv's rule) with capitalist private ship or Catholicism? Ab. solutely not!...
'The only right way is to build a system of proletarian democracy (which) organically links true public ownership with true democracy, so that each complements and guarantees other on the path to true socialism.
This book is essential happening China today and because of the lessons to be drawn for the Chinese struggles for all the existing workers states. threatened the bureaucracy · 7L Pluto A Press The cultural revolution was brutally crushed when it genuinely WEEDS edited by Gregor Benton from People's China Dissident Voices Andrew Gamble on Thatcherism Sweet Freedom, Argentina, The Falklands, July/August issue now out!
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