Comprador Class and the Comprador Capital

Comprador, also known as compradore, a word borrowed from Portuguese comprador (“buyer”). A middleman or manager in a colonial or semi-colonial country who works for foreign capitalists in the home market of a country. It originally referred to the local stewards employed by Europeans in colonial India. In China, refers to managers with Chinese origin employed in merchant houses, companies, banks etc. set up by foreign capitalists in the old China. Comprador capital is the capital accumulated by comprador or middleman businessmen in the process of acting as employees or agents of foreign capitalists. Its main sources are the commission income of compradors, income of compradors concurrently operating enterprises and profits from their investment in the foreign owned enterprises.

In China, comprador capital was developed by relying on foreign capital. It was the capital that depended on foreign imperialist capital. It directly served foreign capital-imperialism. So that the comprador capital of China was the vassal of the foreign monopoly capital, which cruelly plundered and exploited the broad masses of the people of the country.

After the Opium War in 1840, with the invasion of foreign capitalism and the development of its influence in China, China's comprador class began to nurture and gradually formed. China's comprador bourgeoisie was formed and developed under the direct support of foreign capital-imperialism to meet the needs of foreign capital-imperialism invading China.

From 1895 when China was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki after its defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 to 1927 and when the Nanjing national government was founded, international capitalist-imperialist forces further invaded China, and the comprador bourgeoisie of China developed greatly.

After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, the new warlords of the KMT established a counter-revolutionary rule throughout the country.

The combination of the old Chinese comprador class with the reactionary state power caused the bureaucratic comprador capital to expand dramatically, and the comprador class developed and became the comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie. As a result, the comprador class became the class controlling the state power of the whole country. The bureaucrat-comprador bourgeoisie was the highest stage of the development of the comprador class, and also its death stage.

During the Great Revolution, Mao Zedong pointed out in his article "An Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society": "In economically backward and semi-colonial China the landlord class and the comprador class are wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon imperialism for their survival and growth. These classes represent the most backward and most reactionary relations of production in China and hinder the development of her productive forces. Their existence is utterly incompatible with the aims of the Chinese revolution. The big landlord and big comprador classes in particular always side with imperialism and constitute an extreme counterrevolutionary group. Their political representatives were the Étatistes (The Youth Party) and the right-wing of the KMT.

In December 1939, Mao Zedong pointed out more clearly in his article "The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China": "The comprador big bourgeoisie is a class which directly serves the capitalists of the imperialist countries and is nurtured by them; countless ties link it closely with the feudal forces in the countryside. Therefore, it is a target of the Chinese revolution and never in the history of the revolution has it been a motive force.” "However, different sections of the comprador big bourgeoisie owe allegiance to different imperialist powers, so that when the contradictions among the latter become very acute and the revolution is directed mainly against one particular imperialist power, it becomes possible for the sections of the comprador class which serve other imperialist groupings to join the current anti-imperialist front to a certain extent and for a certain period. But they will turn against the Chinese revolution the moment their masters do.”

After the founding of New China, on September 25, 1956, Mao Zedong further elucidated the above understanding in his talks with representatives of some Latin American communist parties who participated in the Eighth National Congress of the Party. He stressed: "The comprador-bourgeoisie belong to the monopoly capitalist groups of different imperialist countries such as the United States, Britain and France. In our struggle against the various comprador groups, it is necessary to exploit the contradictions between imperialist countries, first coping with one of them and striking at the chief immediate enemy.”