The fall of Chiang Ching, Yao Wen-yuan, Chang Chun-chiao, and Wang Hung-wen marks the end of the Mao era in general and the end of the Cultural Revolution in particular. There might be minor turns of an episodic character in the ensuing period.
Everything, of course, will be done under cover of Mao's name, and the employment of virtually the same terminological armor will continue. But there can be absolutely no doubt that what we are witnessing is the final triumph of the Thermidorian reaction over the Jacobin revolutionary dictatorship.
Just as the Jacobin dictatorship enraged and terrified the possessing classes of both Europe and America, so did the Cultural Revolution bring down the wrath of all the forces of bourgeois reaction as well as of the ruling revisionist regimes in the socialist countries.
Only when the Cultural Revolution was already in decline, only when Mao began a series of efforts at an accommodation with the U.S. and swung sharply and violently in an anti-Soviet direction, did the bourgeois publicists begin to take note of some of the accomplishments of the Cultural Revolution. Only then did they really begin to recognize People's China, without, of course, letting down in the least their relentless effort to favor the so-called moderates against the radicals, the rightists against the revolutionary left.
There isn't an easily definable line of demarcation between the right and left in China and much of the struggle may have been obscured by the nature of the controversy itself, and by the fact that individual leaders, as is often the case, go from one camp to another. But there is absolutely no question that there have been, for many years, and certainly from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, two lines of struggle represented by two divergent political groupings. The battle has raged over a period of more than a decade, the lines have gone through a series of changes, but now in the end the rightist camp has triumphed.
"LAW AND ORDER" GROUP HAS WON OUT
The "law and order" group is now in authority. It clearly stands for "stability," an end to experimentation with mass struggle, an end to evoking and involving the masses as the fundamental lever in the social evolution lifting China from poverty and backwardness into the socialist future.
The Cultural Revolution was the high point of the Chinese Revolution, its distinctive feature -- that is, the feature which distinguishes it from the socialist transformations in other countries since the Second World War.
The suppression of the left, that is, of Chiang, Wang, Yuan, and Chang, marks the end of a ten-year-old struggle to avoid the so-called Soviet model. In the context of a vast and industrially underdeveloped country, it may have proved unavoidable. This is the true significance of the final denouement, the ouster of those now referred to as the "gang of four."
In our previous articles we have characterized the Cultural Revolution as an attempt to thrust back the forces of neo-bourgeois restoration and as a heroic attempt to storm the heavens in advancing and promoting the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
PRIVATE PROPERTY VS. THE COMMUNES
The very first attempt, the very first shot fired to hurl back the forces of political and social reaction came in the form of a now famous literary criticism of a play, "The Dismissal of Hai Jui," on Nov. 10,1965, in the Shanghai newspaper Wen Hui Pao. Not accidentally, the criticism was written by Yao Wen-yuan. In it he went far beyond mere literary criticism and made the following political point:
"China, as everyone knows, ran unto temporary economic difficulties caused by three successive years of natural calamities. The imperialists, the reactionaries of various countries, and the modern revisionists launched wave after wave of attacks on us, and it was at this time that evil people in China started clamoring for 'individual farming.' ... They played up the 'superiority' of 'individual farming' and called for the restoration of a private economy and the 'return of the land.' In other words, they wanted to demolish the people's communes. ..."
Leaving aside polemical exaggerations here and there, this is the basic issue that runs like a red thread throughout the entire ensuing period and through all the stages of the Cultural Revolution to the present day.
When, for instance, the new Constitution of the People's Republic of China was adopted in January 1975, key provisions (contained in Articles VII and IX of the Constitution) were clearly victories for the rightists and a partial confirmation of the charge made by Yao almost ten years ago.
CHANGES IN 1975 CONSTITUTION
These provisions, which were of course endorsed and approved by the National People's Congress, affirmed, among other things, the right of the peasants to farm private plots. They also endorsed so-called side line production and vigorously approved the so-called principle of income distribution -- to each according to his or her work, that is, abiding by bourgeois norms of distribution. Finally, they guaranteed to all citizens the right of private ownership of personal possessions (but not of the means of production).
These provisions in and of themselves do not signify retrogression in a workers' state. It is very important to understand this. Under certain conditions they could even operate as a healthy temporary spur to economic development and alleviate the general conditions of the workers, the peasants, and the mass of the population. Lenin's New Economic Policy, for example, was a much more drastic change than these relatively mild provisions. But Lenin frankly and bluntly explained the NEP was a step backward. He called things by their right names.
However, in China the incorporation of the above provisions in the Constitution by a triumphant rightist majority under conditions of a fierce factional struggle against the left invest them with exceptional significance. They were clearly intended as a thrust at the revolutionary innovations of the Cultural Revolution and as an attempt to turn the clock of history back, to reinvigorate the chase after material incentives, sanctify the growth of bureaucratic privilege, heighten the standing of the managerial elite, and enliven the growth of neo-bourgeois elements.
It is not to be forgotten that this period marked not merely the reemergence of Teng Hsiao-ping, but his virtual assumption of the powers normally exercised by Chou En-lai, who unquestionably pushed Teng forward as his own health began to fade rapidly.
It is precisely for the above reasons that Mao demonstratively stayed away from the January 1975 meetings of the Central Committee and the Fourth National People's Congress.
In retrospect his de facto boycott of these meetings was indicative of the fact that the Maoist supporters were clearly in the minority and that the rightists were in fact trying to reverse earlier "correct verdicts."
MAO AND THE LEFTISTS
If there is any grain of truth at all in the report that Chairman Mao had warned his grouping of Chiang, Wang, Yao, and Chang against forming a faction, as is alleged in an editorial in the People's Daily of Oct. 25, it could only be because he felt that the left was vastly outnumbered and weakened. There had been all the "rehabilitations" of right-wing figures and their reemergence under the aegis of Teng's leadership as well as the campaign of "rectifications" which was directed against the left and inspired by Teng.
Nevertheless, the struggle that was actually launched against Teng was clearly led by Mao and carried out by his close supporters -- Chiang, Wang, Yao, and Chang. It is they who, unquestionably under Mao's direction, initiated the campaign to "beat back the right deviationist wind which," as they said, "seeks to reverse correct verdicts."
It was they who were responsible for a highly authoritative article reflecting their, and of course Mao's, view in the Peking Review of March 1976.
"Around last summer," it said, referring to 1975, "a right-deviationist wind trying to reverse previous correct verdicts was whipped up in society at large. Its aim was to negate the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution personally initiated and led by Chairman Mao ten years ago and the socialist new things that have emerged during the Cultural Revolution, to reverse the correct appraisal of the Cultural Revolution and practice revisionism. ... The bourgeois representatives who whipped up the right-deviationist wind to reverse correct verdicts were mainly those capitalist-roaders who were exposed and criticized during the Cultural Revolution but refused to mend their ways."
It can now clearly be seen against whom it was directed: Teng and his "rehabilitated" supporters as well as the whole right-wing.
The only question that remains to be answered apropos the victory of the rightists at the Central Committee session and the NPC is how and why Mao had tolerated, if not acquiesced, in the rehabilitation and the reemergence with such vast political authority of Teng, admittedly an "unrepentant capitalist roader," as he had been called. Here again, it can only be explained by the erosion of revolutionary left support and the waning of Cultural Revolution enthusiasm in the popular masses. To this must be added, of course, the intractability and stubborn persistence of those social trends based on pre-existing broad social and economic conditions which are a continuing source for the sustenance of the rightist social grouping. The latter do not yield in this period to mere continual purgations and least of all to exhortatory revolutionary polemics.
FROM CULTURAL REVOLUTION TO FALL OF LIN PIAO
The Cultural Revolution may be divided into stages, the first lasting from November 1966 until the attempt to set up the Shanghai Commune.
This phase probably marked the period when enthusiasm for the Cultural Revolution was at its height. The apparent inability to set up the Shanghai Commune on the basis originally conceived, that is, like the Paris Commune with its broad participation and conflicting tendencies, opened up a period of disillusionment. It was slow and gradual, but nevertheless discernible. All the same, the Cultural Revolution was still marching on.
The next phase, however, ended in the fall of Lin Piao and his associates, and this properly marked the beginning of the Thermidorian ascendency.
The revolutionary left -- the Maoist grouping -- was weakened tremendously by the fall of Lin Piao and his associates. Lin, after all, was one of the top leaders of the Cultural Revolution. His fall meant a split in the left wing of the party.
This is a crucial point to bear in mind in what is happening now. The split was in Mao's grouping and could not but have delighted and emboldened the rightists.
At the same time, it weakened the morale of the People's Liberation Army. Whatever one may say about Lin, he was no Peng Teh-huai, his predecessor as head of the PLA and a man identified the revisionists. It would take little to convince the rank and file on that point.
LIN INCIDENT USED AGAINST LEFT
The rightists thereafter used the Lin incident to discredit the left. It was one thing when members of the same left faction, like Wang Hung-wen, attacked Lin. It was another thing when Chou En-lai, in his report to the Tenth Congress, pulled out all the stops in one of the basest attacks on Lin, accusing him not merely of an attempted coup and assassination of Mao, but of trying to restore capitalism, trying to install a feudal, compradore, fascist dictatorship, of capitulating to Soviet revisionism and social-imperialism, of allying himself with imperialism, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
In reality, Chou with his enormous skill was deflecting the struggle onto the left wing at the Congress. It's hard to believe that his harsh rhetoric composed of amalgams of rightist and leftist charges was not deliberately calculated to undermine the left.
Inevitably, the fall of Lin was followed by the reemergence of some of the rightist figures and attempts at "rectification" to undo aspects of the Cultural Revolution were begun. Soon this took on formidable proportions.
But just as inevitably, the counter-attack on the rightists was also in full swing under what certainly must now be considered a fruitless campaign against Confucius and Lin. This was really directed against the rightists -- but the rightists also used it to undercut the Maoist supporters with whom Lin was, after all, long associated, having been a top leader in the Cultural Revolution.
LEFT LOSES SUPPORT OF PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY
It seems that from then on, the People's Liberation Army could not be counted on to come to the aid of the Maoists against the right. If, as we raised earlier but which we strongly doubt, Mao warned his close supporters Chiang, Wang, Yao, and Chang against opening an attack, it was because he well knew also that they could not succeed because the PLA was no longer an ally as it was in the early Maoist struggle for the Cultural Revolution.
In the final analysis, it was the PLA's role in the Cultural Revolution which made its triumph possible. Without the PLA, the victory of the right was inevitable.
The PLA has never been just a military force. It has always been a political force, an instrument for the preservation of the proletarian revolution, and a pillar of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but not necessarily allied with the Maoists.
LAST CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE RIGHT
The campaign launched by Mao's supporters to beat back the "right deviationist wind" in early 1976 enabled the Maoist grouping to hold on to the trappings of office, and provided a cover for their seemingly remaining in power -- but in reality power was no longer in their hands.
The death of Chou En-lai seemed to have completely shifted power to the rightists. But in the light of the fact that Mao was still alive, the Teng-rightist forces either overreacted, that is, acted too rapidly, or were overconfident and had completely discounted the ability of Mao to launch one more campaign directed at them.
But the success of the campaign against Teng, and especially against the rightists as a whole, was illusory, even with Teng's ouster.
The death of Mao really returned the situation to the status of January 1975. What abruptly put an end to the apparent dominance of the Mao forces was the reactionary Tien An Men demonstration, which more than anything else showed how isolated the left had become. Nevertheless, they thought they were able to rally the people's militia behind them. But that, too, proved to be an illusion.
WHAT LIES AHEAD
What now?
The Cultural Revolution was an unsettling element for all the possessing classes in contemporary capitalist society, and appeared as a danger to the peaceful accommodationist ruling groups in the socialist countries. At bottom they all hated the Cultural Revolution, although some, of course, had to pay homage to it. Its passing is regarded by them as a favorable omen. With it China has now entered fully into "respectable society." Now it is seemingly "acceptable," assuming, of course, that imperialism ever really accepts the existence of a socialist country.
The reactionary foreign policy fearers of Maoist ideology, especially in the last couple of years with the utterly unwarranted attacks on Angola and Cuba, not to mention the USSR, have obscured the monumental revolutionary domestic achievements of the Cultural Revolution.
Now that the rewriting of history by the new Hua regime has begun, as can be seen with the vilification of Mao's closest supporters, it is more than ever necessary to bear in mind that while the reaction has triumphed, it is strictly Thermidorian in character -- that is, within the framework and on the social foundations of the new class power, in this case, of a workers' state. Both revolutionary revival as well as further regression are possible.
But a social counter-revolution, that is, a full-scale counterrevolution which would entail the restoration of a possessing class, is totally excluded for the coming period.
CHAPTERS:
Index
Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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