Kasama

This is the final installment of “Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future.” It was written by the by the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. This comprehensive paper describes the course of the Cultural Revolution (CR) from 1966-1976, its achievements and shortcomings, and why future movements for revolution, socialism and communism must stand on its shoulders.”

This is the sixth of 8 articles composing a paper that was written by the MLM Revolutionary Study group. Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are available on Kasama.

This final installment sums up the MLMRSG’s view of socialist society, and contains the conclusion to the pamphlet. It also includes an extensive bibliography of works on the Cultural Revolution.

* * * * * * *

Evaluating the Cultural Revolution (9): Conclusion.

“Our attitude toward ourselves should be to be insatiable in learning and towards others to be tireless in teaching.” – Mao Zedong

In our view, the ability of socialism to thrive and advance towards communism involves several dialectically-related tasks. The principal tasks are to keep the Communist Party revolutionary; to continually unleash the initiative of the masses of working people to strengthen their ability to rule—to master the complex questions involved in running the economy, education, culture, international affairs and other areas of society; to thoroughly transform the relations of production [1] and social relations [2]; to restrict the operation of the law of value [3]  and of bourgeois right [4]; to proletarianize all classes in society ; and to be a firm support and nourishment for revolution throughout the world.

Working people cannot rise to these challenges and make new advances under socialism if their world outlook remains the same. As people learn to express themselves and organize in various political formations, they will find that this is not only a right, but a responsibility.

An essential point is that a socialist society cannot stay on the socialist road without a leading Communist Party that maintains a revolutionary orientation. As the experiences in the Soviet Union and China demonstrate, if this is lost, the proletariat loses state power. The party is decisive because of its role directing the political and economic trajectory of the society. Therefore, the party’s internal life must be characterized by vigorous political struggle against bourgeois ideology, against the development of new bourgeois elements in the party, and by the encouragement of critical thinking within the party. The last thing you want in a party—or in socialist society generally–is a membership of yes-men and women.

In the course of political struggle and socialist construction, the most advanced elements from the working class and other strata should be brought into the party and developed as leaders. The party must practice democratic centralism and the mass line in order to concentrate the most advanced understanding of the situation in society and the world, and develop a political line and policies that keep society on the socialist road and support the world revolution.

Mass organizations that are directly led by the party may take a wide variety of forms, such as the workers’ soviets in the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary committees that were organized at the local and provincial level during the Cultural Revolution. One guiding principle is elective institutions which enable the people’s voices to be heard and their interests to be represented. In general, the institutions of proletarian power are historically conditioned; they will evolve and take new forms as the political consciousness of the people changes along the socialist road.

At the same time, the masses must have the right to criticize and supervise the party and its policies. As we have seen, this was a core element of the Cultural Revolution. In addition, people must be able to organize themselves into mass organizations and opposing parties—as long as they do not openly oppose socialism or attempt to overthrow it.

It is better to allow the class struggle in socialist society to take place out in the open, where the party and the masses can debate the political line, direction, priorities and policies of the whole society–and struggle with those who have differences with the communist party. This is part of fostering a critical spirit in socialist society, which will strengthen proletarian rule, not weaken it. Working people, intellectuals and other non-proletarian class strata must be encouraged to play an active role in this process without fear of retaliation. People generally must have ease of mind in socialist society. As Mao put it, “We must not make things such that everybody feels as if he has a thorn in his side.”

In China, there were a number of democratic parties that supported the 1949 Revolution, and they continued to function in a limited way alongside the CCP during the new democratic stage of the revolution. In 1957, Mao explained the policy of the CCP towards these parties:

It is the desire as well as the policy of the Communist Party to exist side by side with the democratic parties for a long time to come. But whether the democratic parties can long remain in existence depends not merely on the desire of the Communist Party but on how well they acquit themselves and on whether they enjoy the support of the people. Mutual supervision among the various parties is also a long-established fact, in the sense they have long been advising and criticizing each other. Mutual supervision is obviously not a one-sided matter; it means that the Communist Party can exercise supervision over the democratic parties, and vice-versa. Why should the democratic parties be allowed to exercise supervision over the Communist Party? Because a party as much as an individual has great need to hear opinions different from its own. We all know that supervision over the Communist Party is mainly exercised by the working people and the Party membership. But it augments the benefit to us to have supervision by the democratic parties too.

In our view, Mao’s reasoning may be relevant to the socialist stage of the revolution. While each country will have its own freedom and necessity after the seizure of power, it may be beneficial to allow parties and organizations which do not oppose socialism, and have popular support, to function in socialist society.

The right to organize politically is especially important if more than one party and army play a leading role in the struggle to overthrow the old order. This will be a feature of the revolutionary struggles in many countries. This may often be the case in the imperialist countries where the period of armed struggle and the battle for state power are telescoped, making it more difficult for one party to establish political hegemony. This may also be true in societies which encompass several nations or people in various stages of national development, and who have developed separate revolutionary parties or organizations.

In all such societies, the victory of the struggle for state power will be contingent on the leadership abilities of the parties involved, including their ability to join and coordinate their efforts. And after the conquest of power—under new democracy, where applicable, or socialism—there needs to be a concerted effort to win these parties, or as much of them as possible, to join together and develop a cohesive line and a single leading Communist Party.

Conclusion

Given the uphill nature of the battle, the lack of historical experience, the development of an unfavorable objective situation in the early 1970s, and the substantial difficulties encountered by Mao and other revolutionaries in leading the Cultural Revolution, it was not possible to consolidate it and keep China on the socialist road. More important, what is remarkable about the Cultural Revolution is that it accomplished so much in a few short years.

We should ask what the world would be like without the experience of 1966 to 1976 in China. We would not have the experience of a revolutionary socialist society, of millions of people awakening to political struggle and the achievement of many “socialist new things.” Today’s revolutionaries around the world would not have the necessary tools to explain the reversals of socialism, first in the Soviet Union, and then in China. Without the divergent roads of revisionism and revolution having been clearly marked, the difficulties of charting the course forward from here would be daunting, and the pull toward discarding the socialist project would be massive.

Instead, the Cultural Revolution has passed down a precious legacy of theoretical understanding and revolutionary practice for future generations. Future socialist societies will reach for a higher level of revolutionary consciousness and efforts by the working class to exercise more direct control over all of society.

Just as successful revolutions never repeat themselves, future cultural revolutions in socialist societies, even in China itself, will not simply replicate the Chinese experience from 1966-1976. In the future, informed by the historic lessons of the GPCR, genuine communists will be more aware of this threat and will exert every effort to mobilize the masses to expose and remove bourgeois elements in the party before they become strong enough to challenge proletarian rule.

As a result of the Cultural Revolution, we know that in every socialist society there will be intense class struggle, and there will be repeated tests of strength between those who seek to stay on the socialist road and revisionists who advocate policies that will restore capitalism sooner or later. The forms that these periodic tests of strength will take will be varied and complex, but they will undoubtedly include mass upheavals such as the Cultural Revolution.

In addition, fundamental principles of the Cultural Revolution remain relevant in today’s revolutionary movements, such as continuously revolutionizing the party, encouraging the masses to criticize mistakes made by party members and leaders, and the importance of society-wide struggle over culture and ideas, including the study of revolutionary theory to guide practice. Finally, the polemics of the Chinese Communist Party against the Soviet revisionists before and during the Cultural Revolution, especially refuting the notion of a peaceful transition to socialism, hold critical lessons for revolutionaries today.

Serious revolutionary parties and groups battling against imperialism and reactionary regimes around the world today are studying and debating these questions.

It is a real advance for the oppressed worldwide that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, including the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, has been upheld, developed and creatively applied today by Maoist parties and organizations in India, the Philippines, Turkey, Nepal, Greece, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Brazil and other countries.

The struggle for proletarian revolution, socialism and communism cannot inspire billions of people without answering difficult questions about the reversals suffered by the first wave of socialist revolutions, and what will be done differently in the future. One of the bourgeoisie’s most potent ideological weapons against revolutionary movements is the ubiquitous and suffocating claim that socialism is a “failed system.” This must be answered with a serious analysis of the roots and process of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and China, and how the masses of people in socialist countries can use the lessons of the Cultural Revolution to stay on the socialist road. With a deeper understanding of the positive and negative lessons of socialist revolutions in the 20th century, communist ideology will emerge as a stronger and more vibrant force in the 21st century.

* * * * * * *

Footnotes

[1] “Transforming the relations of production” refers to changes in all three parts of the relations of production—in ownership, in the division of labor (including management and decision-making, mental/manual labor, training and special programs to overcome traditional privileges and discrimination), and in the distribution of goods and wealth.

[2] “Transforming the social relations” refer to changes in the relationships between people in society, including the broad range of inequalities in accessing and wielding power, wealth, education, culture and influence. Such inequalities are often described in terms of class, caste, gender, ethnic and national/national minority, city vs. countryside, and mental and manual labor. In The Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850, Marx referred to these unequal social relations when he wrote that the transition to communism requires the abolition of the Four Alls: “the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, and to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.”

[3] “Restricting the operation of the law of value” refers to the repeated and ongoing struggles under socialism to re-orient economic production from seeking the highest return on investment in the marketplace, to addressing social needs and concerns. This re-prioritization of production is done through various mechanisms– quotas for necessary goods; stimulating and subsidizing the production of goods and services which are not profitable, but which are necessary for the social and political goals of socialism; curtailing production of highly profitable luxury goods; and waging political campaigns to enlist broad volunteerism for special projects as well as on an ongoing basis. Examples may be everything from the subsidizing of school and hospital construction, or producing food products to overcome malnutrition in rural areas; and production of educational materials and other material support needed by revolutionary struggles in other countries. This also requires sharply focused struggle to combat the line that everything should be reoriented to profitable production. Through repeated campaigns on these issues, the entire society becomes involved in the reorientation of production to meet social needs and goals.

[4] “Restricting bourgeois right” refers to transformations that narrow differences in wealth and social resources from capitalism to socialism to communism. Under capitalism, most of the wealth gained from the production and distribution of goods goes to the owners of capital, and only secondarily to the maintenance and reproduction of the workers who have produced the wealth. The socialist revolution re-directs this wealth to the producers themselves, so that now, for the first time, workers receive most of what they have produced. This is referred to as “from each according to their ability, to each according to their labor,” which is a great advance over capitalism. But this still contains many inequalities. Because workers possess greatly different capabilities both physically and technically, they have the right to receive payment at different rates according to the different values of their labor, and can therefore accumulate wealth at different rates. This is often referred to as “bourgeois right” because it rewards and reinforces self-interest, not collective interest, as the motivation for labor. It becomes the harbinger of unequal accumulation of both material and social resources, including decision making power, education, culture and access to information.

Under socialism, as campaigns are waged to further transform the relations of production and the social relations, restricting bourgeois right becomes a crucial part of staying on the socialist road and advancing toward communism. This often involves narrowing wage differences and equalizing access to social resources of all kinds. Eventually, this process will lead to placing social needs at the highest priority. As Marx described this step (in The Critique of the Gotha Program), “In the higher phase of communist society, only then can the narrow horizons of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: ‘From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs!’

Through the Cultural Revolution, the campaign to “restrict bourgeois right” also meant the struggle to curtail the accumulation of wealth, political power and privileged access to other resources by not only the old, traditional bourgeoisie, but also by the newly developing bourgeois forces inside the party who, due to their positions of authority, could offer such wealth and privileges to allies and supporters. The development of a new bourgeoisie in the party was a clear danger to the socialist project, and became the primary target of the struggle against revisionism, against those “persons in power taking the capitalist road.”

[5] The process of the proletarianization of all classes in society, which began with the capitalist challenge to feudalism, is completed only through the long period of socialist transformation. This period is marked by the changes in the relations of productions, great educational movements, reduction of the gap between city and countryside, of mental and manual labor, and of all social inequalities. Through this process, former peasantry, former intelligentsia and former capitalists and bureaucrats become both mental and manual workers: proletarians. The result is, as The Internationale proclaims, “The international working class shall be the human race.”

[6] “Conversation with High-Level Cadres and Leaders of Democratic Parties,” Autumn 1956, Leung and Kau, p. 142.

[7] “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” Section VIII. www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5. See also “On the Ten Great Relationships,” (The section on the relationship between Party and non-Party), April 1956, in Schram, p. 75 and the preceding website.

[8] This is the same attitude that Marx, Engels and Lenin took to the Paris Commune of 1871, the world’s first proletarian revolution. Even though it was crushed by the French bourgeoisie with the backing of the German army after only two months, Marx wrote that it was correct for the Communards to “storm the heavens”; Lenin observed that the success of the October Revolution was due in part to correctly summing up the strengths and weaknesses of the Commune’s policies.

[9] For a detailed and uplifting report on the resurgence of workers’ and peasants’ struggles in China today, see Robert Weil’s article, “A New Revolution? Chinese Working Classes Confront the Globalized Economy.” http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/?q=node/view/371

Selected Bibliography

(1) Writings of Mao Zedong

• Jerome Ch’en, Mao Papers: Anthology and Bibliography, 1970.
• John Leung and Michael Kau, eds., The Writings of Mao Zedong: 1949-1976, Volume II: January 1956-December 1957, 1992.
• Mao Tse-tung, A Critique of Soviet Economics, 1977. Mao’s writings and reading notes from 1958 to 1962 on Soviet economic theory. http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html
• Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handing of Contradictions Among the People,” Section VIII, Selected Works, Volume 4, 1957, p. www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5. Mao’s Selected Works, Volumes 1-9, are posted on this website.
• Mao Zedong, “On Contradiction,” Selected Works, Volume 1, 1937.
• Stuart Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, Talks and Letters: 1956-1971, 1974. Also published as Mao Tsetung Unrehearsed by Penguin. This is an invaluable compilation of many previously unpublished works by Mao.

(2) General Accounts of the Cultural Revolution

• Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Zhou Enlai: A Political Life, 2006. This recent work explores the differences that developed between Zhou and Mao in the early 1970s.
• John and Elsie Collier, China’s Socialist Revolution, 1973.
• Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, China! Inside the People’s Republic, 1972.
• Based on a trip by American scholars in 1971, this book has valuable chapters on the cities, communes, factories, education, medicine, the arts, women and foreign policy.
• Jaap van Ginneken, The Rise and Fall of Lin Piao, 1977. A useful book by a Dutch writer on the twists and turns of the Cultural Revolution, including the “Lin Biao affair.”
• William Hinton, Turning Point in China, 1972. The author of Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, wrote this short book after a trip to China in 1971.
• Roger Howard, Mao Tsetung and the Chinese People, 1977, George Allen & Unwin.
• Goran Leijonhufvad, Going Against the Tide: On Dissent and Big Character Posters in China, 1990.
• Maria Macciocchi, Daily Life in Revolutionary China, 1972. Account by a leader of the Italian CP and member of the Chamber of Deputies.
• Edoarda Masi, China Winter: Workers, Mandarins and the Purge of the Gang of Four (1981). The author was an Italian teacher at the Foreign Languages Institute in Shanghai during 1976 and 1977.
• Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, 2006. This book contains some useful detail, but claims that the Cultural Revolution was mainly characterized by “murder,” “mayhem” and other excesses that led to the dismantling of socialism under Deng.
• Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After, 3rd Edition, 1999. This often cited book provides a helpful overview of the Maoist era, but it has several flaws. Meisner considers China to have been a non-socialist “bureaucratic state,” and opposes the leading role of a Communist Party. While he describes and supports many of the important social transformations of the Cultural Revolution, he considers it to have been a failure.
• Nancy and David Milton, The Wind Will Not Subside: Years in Revolutionary China—1964-1969, 1976. The Cultural Revolution as viewed by two American teachers at the First Foreign Languages Institute in Beijing.
• New China’s First-Quarter Century, FLP, 1975. www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/lifeundermao/newchina1975.html
• Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun, Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution, 1997 has a detailed description of political forces in the January Storm, but is marred by its misunderstanding of the important differences between the contending workers’ organizations and the social transformations that took place during the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai.
• Ruth Sidel, Families of Fangshen: Urban Life in China, 1974.
• Han Suyin, Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976, 1994.
• Han Suyin was a liberal friend of the Chinese revolution but after Mao’s death became an apologist for Deng’s regime.
• Han Suyin, Wind in the Tower: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution, 1949-1975.

(3) Documents of the Cultural Revolution

• CC-CCP, Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 11th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, August 8, 1966. This is considered to be the political “charter” of the Cultural Revolution. http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/cpc/cc_res_11p.html
• Raymond Lotta, ed., And Mao Makes Five: Mao Tsetung’s Last Great Battle, 1978. This book has an explanatory introduction that supports the political line of the so-called “gang of four.” It includes major documents from the Left and the Right that appeared in the early 1970s.
• Raymond Lotta, ed., Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism: The Shanghai Textbook, 1994. The Shanghai Textbook was originally published in 1975 under the title of Fundamentals of Political Economy.
• David Milton, Nancy Milton and Franz Schurmann, editors, People’s China: Social Experimentation, Politics, Entry Onto the World Scene, 1966 through 1972, 1974. Contains many key documents from the Cultural Revolution.
• Zhang Chunqiao, “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie,” 1975. http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/ARD75.html Influential article by leading member of the Four.

(4) Agriculture and Industry

• Stephen Andors, China’s Industrial Revolution: Politics, Planning and Management, 1949 to the Present, 1977. The best single volume on social transformations in industrial enterprises during the Maoist era.
• Anita Chun, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village, 1984. An intriguing (though partial and empirical) look at the changes in a rural village through the Cultural Revolution and its subsequent dismantling in the Deng years.
• Stephen Endicott, Red Earth; Revolution in a Sichuan Village, 1989.
• Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Educational Reforms and their Impact on China’s Rural Development, 2000. Jimo County in Shandong Province.
• Janet Goldwasser and Stuart Dowty, Huan-Ying: Workers’ China, 1975.
• William Hinton, Through a Looking Glass Darkly, U.S. Views of the Chinese Revolution, 2006. The author’s last book refutes recent studies that distort the process of land reform and the collectivization of agriculture.
• Mobo Gao, Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China, 1999. Jiangxi Province.
• Mobo Gao, “Debating the Cultural Revolution: Do We Only Know What We Believe?” Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2002.
• Jan Myrdal and Gun Kessle, China: The Revolution Continued, The Cultural Revolution at the Village Level, 1970. Liu Ling Village in Shanxi Province.

(5) Women

• Phyllis Andors, The Unfinished Liberation of Chinese Women: 1949-1980, 1983.
• Joan Hinton, “Politics and Marriage,” New China, June 1976.
• Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s, 1988.
• Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China, 1983,
• Ruth Sidel, Women and Child Care in China, 1972.
• Marilyn Young, “Chicken Little in China,” in Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism, eds., Kruks, Rapp and Young, 1989
• Marilyn Young, ed., Women in China, 1973.
• Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng and Bai Di, eds., Some of Us; Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era, 2001. Articles by Chinese women who experienced the Cultural Revolution and are teaching in U.S. universities today.

(6) Education and Health Care

• “Breaking With Old Ideas,” 1975. This film describes contending political lines at a new peasants and workers college. Available at www.archive.org/details/Breaking_With_Old_Ideas
• Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Educational Reforms and their Impact on China’s Rural Development, 2000.
• Ruth Gamberg, Red and Expert: Education in the People’s Republic of China, 1977.
• Mobo Gao, Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China, 1999.
• W. Hinton, Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University, 1972.
• Victor Nee, The Cultural Revolution at Peking University, 1971.

(7) The Restoration of Capitalism and China Today

• William Hinton, The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989, 1990.
• Robert Weil, “A New Revolution? Chinese Working Classes Confront the Globalized Economy,” 2006. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/?q=node/view/371
• Robert Weil, Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of “Market Socialism,” 1996.

(8) The Struggle against Revisionism in the 1960s

• Cheng Yen-Shih, Lenin’s Fight Against Revisionism and Opportunism, FLP, 1965.
• Long Live Leninism, FLP, 1960. http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/LLL60.html
• On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1956 http://www.marx2mao.net/Other/HEDP56.html#s1 and
• More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1956 http://www.marx2mao.net/Other/HEDP56.html#s2
• The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, FLP, 1965. This is a compilation of the polemics between the CCP and the CPSU, written by or under the direction of Mao between 1963 and 1964 over questions such as peaceful transition to socialism, war and peace, neo-colonialism, evaluation of the role of Stalin, and the nature of the Soviet Union. www.marx2mao.com/Other/Index.html#CPC

(9) The Struggle against Revisionism Today

• Armando Liwanag, Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines, “Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism,” 1992. One of the documents from the Second Great Rectification Movement, which reaffirmed the CPP’s revolutionary line from attacks by revisionists and social democrats in the party. www.philippinerevolution.net/cpp/index.shtml
• Communist Party of India (Maoist), “Without a Struggle Against Revisionism It Is Impossible to Take Even One Step Forward in the Revolution,” Senior Member of the Politbureau of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), in People’s March, August-September 2006. www.bannedthought.net
• MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S., “Assessing Recent Developments in Nepal: A Bibliography on the State, a Peaceful Transition to Socialism, Democracy and Dictatorship, Negotiations and Their Relevance to the International Communist Movement in the 21st Century,” (January 3, 2007) Write mlm.rsg@gmail.com to request a copy.

* * * * * *

On the MLMRSG

The MLM Revolutionary Study Group is not affiliated with any revolutionary party in the U.S. We advocate the development of a broad and dynamic anti-imperialist struggle that is closely connected to the most exploited and oppressed sections of people in the U.S. Additionally, we anticipate that serious revolutionaries who share an internationalist perspective and mass orientation will undertake the building of revolutionary organization to concentrate and develop leadership for such efforts, and to chart the pathways for revolution in the U.S., with a significant section of the working class and oppressed nationalities in the lead.

We encourage such a project and will work to assist its development in every way we can, which includes drawing on the rich lessons of struggle of the 1960s and 70s and on the experience of revolutionary forces in the world today, especially revolutionary Maoist parties and organizations. To reach us, please write to mlm.rsg@gmail.com.