The fate of Marxist democrats in Leninist party states.

The article examine the thought of a minority group in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who tried to justify political reforms in China and even democratization, by resurrecting the question of Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP). The debate over AMP in China, reflects both the common and potentially diverging interests of fractions of the Leninist state elite. For analyzing politics in China, a new communist theory is needed, given the failure of the totalitarian model to explain the growing change and divergence within and between Communist systems. In China, the present situation can be viewed as one in which a new coalition of state elites came to dominate the mainstream of the CCP under leader Deng Xiaoping. This coalition formed after an extreme lack of social cohesion had led elements to defect to Deng's side from the previous mainstream coalition. Deng's coalition differed radically from the mainstream under the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, when elites favoring ideological and coercive incentives were dominant in previous ruling coalition.