More on the Origins and Theory of the CR

So it officially began in the early 60s with its most intense period in the mid to late 60s and had virtually petered out with the help of the PLA by the late 60s but let’s consider it some more. The official CCP position is that it was only ended with the death of Mao in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four. Historians generally see it as lasting from around 1966 to 1969. But what was it?

The view of the party famously expressed in 1981 is that the CR was the “most severe setback” of the PRC, that “Mao was in error” in causing it and “confused the people with the enemy”. Essentially the claim is that the error was being confused about classes. The party still acknowledges the correctness of much of Mao’s original contribution to Marxism by taking the stand that his errors occurred in a finite period.

The view of the Belgian ANU Sinologist, Pierre Ryckmans (penname Simon Leys) is that it came down to a personal political conflict at the very upper echelons of the party. Harry Harding, another well known Sinologist, views it more as a struggle by Mao to be true to the revolution by seeking its continuation.

I will consider four factors that may explain its origins somewhat in some more detail: the political effects of the GLF, the political role of the PLA, the significance of how revisionism came to be defined and why it was thought that the issues of the day (essentially revisionism) needed to be and could best be dealt with by the CR. I’ll then do a bit of a brief and schematic outline of what actually happened in the next post (the form it all took).

We remember the waste of resources that the GLF involved. Exaggerations were produced in part by a general overconfidence and led (along with mild drought conditions) to shortages and a major humanitarian tragedy that was then capped off by the withdrawal of soviet support. Per capita grain production didn’t recover really until the mid to late 1970s.

Mao accepted some of the blame so that was the major political result along with the accession of Liu and Deng to relatively powerful positions and the return of soviet methods and incentivisation. Nevertheless Mao’s theory as a whole was not yet publicly rejected – his practice of the late 1950s was what was really deemed at issue – and that was an equally important political outcome to note when considering how the CR came about.

The main political role of the PLA in bringing about the CR was its contribution to the deification of Mao that I mentioned in an earlier post. Lin Biao had actually benefited directly from the ouster of Peng Dehuai (that I also noted earlier resulted from his well-meant critique of the GLF direct to Mao as a friend) as Lin took Marshall Peng’s place as Defence Minister.

One of the other things Lin produced that Mao approved was the 1963 “Learn from the PLA” campaign. A soldier called Lei Feng, who may not have actually existed, was the extremely selfless and heroic role model held up by the campaign. An alleged inspiring diary of his was ‘found’ and published after his alleged death and at least one movie was made about his alleged selfless and heroic exploits. Even martyrdom was what being a good socialist citizen called for evidently (shades of the spirit of Yan’an for those who’ve been paying attention). Lei was completely dedicated to Chairman Mao.

This was all tied in with the idea being promoted that Mao Zedong Thought (MZDT) would nurture ‘new’ people who would fit this mould and that everyone was but one tiny screw in the great socialist machine of the PRC. That was where the Mao cult, started spontaneously decades before but now enlarged and manipulated by the PLA, began to come into its own.

The ‘little red book’ was specifically edited to make Mao look infallible – traditional emperor worship was being replaced by Mao worship. Lin’s introduction lauded MZDT to the skies (“an inexhaustible source of strength and a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power”). Zhou also said in 1966 that effectively MZDT equals Truth – it was “the sole criterion for truth” (although he probably secretly leaned a bit on the side of Liu and Deng in relation to what was really truer, MZDT or other thinking, when it came to running a country – he was well practiced at keeping his secret leanings secret).

Now let’s get to revisionism, an orthodox Marxist theory that revolved around the expectation of backsliding of the socialist revolution into capitalist ways of thinking, and how fear of it contributed to the CR. It was feared socialism would thus be ‘revised’ leading to a new bourgeois class within the government and the entire system – even within the party structure. Mao’s view was that Khrushchev and the soviet leadership had begun to lead the Soviet Union down the revisionist road. In Mao’s theory people such as Khrushchev were bourgeois and ‘bad’ elements that had to be fought. In addition he saw that (misguided by the ‘bad’ soviet elements) China had begun policies that had produced such elements and that since the rise of Liu and Deng they had consequently assumed the vanguard of the party. This was how Mao explained the split with the Soviet Union and argued the need for further action (even within the CCP).

As Mao was slightly more than a figurehead at this time he was permitted to begin a new campaign called the Socialist Education Movement that took place in 1962 and 1963. The aims were stated to be countering the influence of bureaucracy and revisionism within the CCP. All cadres were intended to be individually examined to determine whether they were colluding in revisionism in any way. The party limited Mao’s campaign’s scope and sent ‘work teams’ to inspect the work of local officials. This attempt at attenuation (by Liu and Deng especially in order to protect themselves or so they hoped) was thwarted by the influence of the PLA that I’ve already outlined.

Mao saw renewed class struggle as inexorable and inevitable (and not to be attenuated) and of course, he saw himself on the side of the angels in that struggle. He thought a CR was needed to eliminate the old ideas and culture that in his view had led to the revisionism. He was thus looking over a precipice preparing to jump with the hope that he would reach the far side safely. How to control the CR was the issue for Mao. He thought that the support of the PLA and the people had virtually been secured so the time was probably as ripe as it was going to be. For him, as this was something he probably truly believed in, there was no option but to root out the revisionism (and hence institute a CR). In the new socialist ‘classless society’, Mao would attempt to have class defined by attitude. He had already begun the process in his theory of the permanent revolution and he now continued it with a new theory of ‘continuous revolution’ which envisaged not mere stops and starts but actual backsliding in the progress towards Communism.