Marxism, as opposed to any other earlier ideology which one way or the other was inspired by the hardships of the exploited masses, is a science. From this point of view, Marxism is not a system of more or less idealist thoughts of how things ought to be and how people should behave, a doctrine of dogmas, but a system of thoughts, organised with a very well-defined scientific method using the principles of dialectical materialism. The Marxist system is a scientific system with which to unveil the objective laws of historical development. Marxism is a scientific tool in the hands of the exploited classes with which the latter take historical development into their hands and transform society on the basis of higher forms of social organisation towards the construction of communism.

Marxism as a science is not a system of frozen ideas, but a system of thoughts that evolves historically. However, while evolving, Marxism remains a unique and self-contained system, as a result of which it has a single correct interpretation, in virtue of its scientific essence. The same way the phenomena of nature and their laws of development are studied by such branches of natural science as chemistry, biology, physics, etc., social phenomena are studied and interpreted by Marxist sciences. For the same reason that there exists only one possible scientific interpretation of the phenomena of nature, that there exists only one science of chemistry, biology, physics and not two or more sciences of chemistry, biology and physics, there exists only one single scientific system that is able to study and interpret social phenomena.

The principles of Marxism-Leninism are not postulates about the laws that govern society and history. They are the result of a titanic effort to generalise the knowledge about social phenomena and they best reflect their essence. Therefore these principles are not eternal truths, the quintessence of human thought, conceived by minds of geniuses. Quite to the contrary, the principles of Marxism-Leninism do not pre-date history; they are a product of history itself and they are derived from the latter, they are a reflection of the objective laws that govern reality. The principles of Marxism-Leninism are not a mystic knowledge of the elders but the minimal expression of a full-fledged science, whose ultimate goal is to understand social processes for the purpose of changing society.

The revision of the principles of Marxism, regardless of its orientation and historical epoch, subverts the scientific basis of Marxism and turns the latter into a dogmatic set of thoughts and citations of holy texts; in other words, it turns the once scientific system of thought into a form of religious doctrine, which overtakes the superstructure of the revisionist system. From being the ideology of the exploited masses, this hollow Marxism turns into a tool of exploitation. Having reached this point, revisionist Marxism, anti-Marxist in essence, can split into different heresies, into different interpretations of what turned into some kind of Holy Scriptures, as those interpretations cease to be scientific and are moulded to fit the needs and idiosyncrasy of the new ruling classes or those who serve the old ruling classes, according to the concrete historical situation.

Revisionism retains the outward form of Marxism but rips off its scientific basis. Revisionism fosters dogmas. For instance, many (if not all) forms of revisionist doctrines uphold the commodity character of all products under socialism. Different revisionist trends (heresies) argue in favour of such a dogma in a different way, and though they agree to disagree in the form, they agree on the need for products under socialism to be commodities. While disagreeing on many issues, Bukharinists and Trotskyites arrived at the same conclusions with regard to the Soviet policies of collectivisation and the progressive curtailing of the sphere of operation of commodity-money relations. While disagreeing on many issues, Khrushchevites and Titoites agreed to condemn the basic principles of Marxist-Leninism of the transition to socialism and communism, which many revisionist and openly bourgeois ideologists have labelled as Stalinist and, hence, evil.

The political economy of socialism has been a highly debated topic for as long as the theory of Marxism has existed. Discussions over this fascinating topic have become a battle ground between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism. It is no coincidence that the process of restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and other former People’s Republics in Eastern Europe has been preceded and followed by thorough economic discussions, at the end of which the specifics of revisionism took shape and become a more or less consistent system of thought, a new doctrine, so to say. The system of economic thought developed in the post-Stalin Soviet Union became a more or less consistent revisionist system, which was propagated and became more or less accepted by the revisionist leadership of the former People’s Republics of Eastern Europe.

The revisionist essence of those trends that merged into what came to be known as post-Stalin or modern revisionism, as well as those that were derived from the latter, has been repeatedly exposed by Marxist-Leninists. Not wishing to add anything of substance to this critique, in the present article we would like to concentrate on a fascinating topic in the discussions on the political economy of socialism. In the present work we present a brief critique of what in our opinion is the revisionist essence of the principles of the political economy of socialism promulgated by the famous Shanghai political economy text-book, published in 1974 in China. The Shanghai text-book summarises and publicises the basics of what has been portrayed for many years as a development of the principles of Marxism-Leninism. In the present work we try to substantiate the view that a number of allegedly innovative ideas put forward in the Shanghai text-book are, far from a development of Marxist science, quite to the contrary, a mixture of pre-Marxist thought and openly Bukharinite-Khrushchevite thinking. While adopting a somewhat different form of revision of the principles of Marxist-Leninist political economy, the authors of the Shanghai text-book basically come to similar conclusions as the Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite clique with regard to the basic guidelines for the construction of socialism, the roles of the plan, commodity-money relations, interrelations between industry and agriculture, collectivization, etc. Moreover, the new principles of political economy of socialism advocated by the authors of the Shanghai text-book are postulates which are not the result of a thorough analysis of the concrete economic conditions of revolutionary China. These postulates are rather a reflection of the ‘change of mood’ among economists after the death of Stalin, and do not add anything of substance to revisionist postulates formulated by the revisionists in the Soviet Union. It is important to note that a number of the principles and formulations presented by the Shanghai text-book do display certain formal differences from those adopted in other countries. While pointing the reader to the major similarities we will try to emphasise the specifics of the reasoning used by the authors of the text-book.

It is most fortunate for the economic history of revolutionary China and for our analysis that Chinese economists were indeed aware of and very much familiar with the basic Marxist-Leninist principles for the transition to socialism. After a brief period of brisk economic recovery (1949-1952), the Chinese government launched a very successful First Five-Year Plan (1953-57) whose excellent economic results were praised even by bourgeois economists. This five-year plan followed closely what bourgeois ideologists usually refer to as the Soviet or Stalinist model for the transition to socialism, which had produced very successful and at times even almost spectacular results in the People’s Republics of Easter Europe during the post-war period.

Indeed, by virtue of the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance signed in January 1950 by Mao and Stalin and valid until 1980, the Soviet Union rendered significant financial and technical assistance to modernise Chinese industry. The Soviet Union provided thousands of engineers to boost China’s industry and therefore her economy as a whole. Large numbers of Soviet engineers, technicians, and scientists assisted in developing and installing new heavy industrial facilities, including many entire plants and pieces of equipment purchased from the Soviet Union. Soviet planners helped their Chinese counterparts formulate the plan, as a result of which the period of 1949-1957 could be regarded as the most successful economic period that China ever had, not only from the point of view of sustained, steady and well-balanced economic growth as a whole, but also from the perspective of the resolution of class contradictions, the liquidation of the capitalist mode of production and feudal domination.

In the present work we concentrate on the most prominent tenets advocated by the authors of the Shanghai text-book, which liquidate the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with regard to socialist construction that were materialised in the main by the first Five-Year plan: the postulate about agriculture as the foundation of the economy, the violation of the Marxist principle of the leading role of the development of heavy industry, the right-wing stand on the role of commodity-money relations and collectivisation, and the idealist character of the definition of the role of politics in the economy.

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