national bourgeoisie
민족부르주아지
In colonial and semi-colonial countries, the bourgeoisie representing national capital, distinguished from the comprador bourgeoisie allied with foreign imperialist capital. In Marxist usage, while the comprador bourgeoisie is defined as a class serving imperialist interests, the national bourgeoisie was held to oppose imperialism and, under certain conditions, to be a possible ally of revolutionary forces. It formed one component of Mao Zedong's four-class bloc of New Democracy, workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie, and was redefined after 1953 as the target of the socialist transition.
In depth
The national bourgeoisie is a category distinguished from the classical Western bourgeoisie and counterposed, in Marxist usage, to the comprador bourgeoisie. Whereas the comprador bourgeoisie is defined as a class serving the interests of foreign imperialist powers, the national bourgeoisie was held to oppose foreign imperialism and to pursue national independence, and could therefore become a short-term ally of socialist revolutionaries under specific conditions.
In Chinese New Democracy theory, this class was one component of the four-class bloc opposing imperialism and feudalism (the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie), while the comprador bourgeoisie was explicitly excluded from that bloc. The four-class bloc is symbolized by the stars of the Chinese flag: the large star stands for the leadership of the Party, and the four small stars around it for the four class blocs (proletarian workers, peasants, intellectuals, and national capitalists).
In his 1940 essay "On New Democracy," Mao Zedong formulated the dual character of the Chinese national bourgeoisie. As a bourgeoisie in a colonial and semi-colonial country, it suffered imperialist pressure and so displayed, at certain times, a revolutionary character opposing imperialism and the feudal forces, and could ally with the workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Yet it was extremely weak economically and politically, inclined to compromise, unable to break completely with imperialism, and tied to the countryside through rent extraction, and so could not thoroughly carry out the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal tasks. It thus had a two-sided nature: the possibility of participating in the revolution, and a tendency to compromise with the revolution's enemies. Mao assessed that this class had shown a revolutionary character against imperialism and the bureaucrat-militarist government in the 1911 Revolution and the Northern Expedition, while writing that in 1927 and after, the big bourgeoisie centered on the Guomindang colluded with the imperialists and feudal forces and joined the counter-revolution. From the Leninist standpoint, the task of the proletariat was to form an anti-imperialist united front with the national bourgeoisie.
New Democracy aimed at overthrowing imperialism and feudalism while permitting limited national capitalist development, in contrast to the Bolshevik revolution, which targeted the national bourgeoisie. With Mao's line change of 1952–53, the national bourgeoisie was redefined from an ally of New Democracy into the target of the principal contradiction in the transition to socialism. After the landlord class and the bureaucrat bourgeoisie were defeated following the founding of the PRC in 1949, Mao, after consultations with Stalin, declared officially that the principal contradiction had shifted to that between the working class and the national bourgeoisie, and no longer treated the national bourgeoisie as an intermediate class. In June 1952 Mao asserted that the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie had become the country's principal internal contradiction.
The Five Antis (五反) campaign launched in January 1952 targeted the private industrial and commercial sector and sought to discipline the national bourgeoisie, mobilizing workers' supervision over capitalists while uniting with law-abiding capitalists and isolating and punishing "illegal" elements. In 1953 the Chinese Communist Party adopted a new general line accelerating the transition to socialism, aiming to complete industrialization and socialist transformation within ten to fifteen years, and in 1954–1956 the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce was carried out comprehensively through the policy of "peaceful redemption" (赎买, state purchase of private shareholdings rather than a literal redemption or atonement) and forms of state capitalism.
New Democracy discourse declined from 1953, as Mao stressed that China was advancing to the socialist stage, and with the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce effectively completed in 1956 the national bourgeoisie became an object of transition. The Eighth Party Congress (1956) noted that after the completion of socialist transformation the principal contradiction in the country was no longer that between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
After the Second World War, Soviet theorists developed the theory of national democracy to analyze the liberation movements of newly independent countries, and in that process used the national bourgeoisie as a category distinguished from the classical Western bourgeoisie. Soviet Marxist-Leninists held that the national bourgeoisie of the Third World were not capitalist owners and were engaged mainly in trade, services, and finance, and analyzed that discrimination by foreign capital and the colonial state pushed them into the national liberation struggle. In 1960, at the Moscow meeting of communist and workers' parties, "national democracy" became official policy.