What did the CR era do that had a lasting impact and wasn’t all negative?

This is a fun week because I get to praise Mao (at least to some extent) not bury him. It's also a quite conflicted week for me for the same reason. First to today's post on the CR's redeeming qualities:

Mao, of course, had correctly noted a kind of creeping elitism that the CR may have well put into its place for some years (he first suggested that the problem was within the party itself in his “twenty-three articles” discussion of January 1965). This would have been a deliberate aim of the CR and a worthy achievement of it. Grassroots activism to counter it was enhanced.

Both the Mao cult and the idea of revolutionary successors in the social life also outlived Mao (and weren’t unalloyed negatives for the future).

Another feature of the CR era is so-called “proletarian culture” and specifically the proliferation of ‘revolutionary operas', folk songs and films. Mao had made clear his interest in reforming the outputs of Chinese cultural forms since at least his time in Yan’an. There he berated certain writers and other ‘cultural workers' when they didn’t conform to this vision of the revolutionary forms.

There was a long history of debating the correct way to ‘do’ revolutionary culture and 'correct content' and as I’ve noted the Anti-Rightist campaign following the short Hundred Flowers epoch was essentially directed against cultural workers. Writers were a constant target and one non-conformist poet in the early 1950s was famously targeted. The playwright who sought to defend Marshall Peng in a veiled critique of Mao in a new play has been considered by some to be something of a catalyst for Mao’s conception of the CR (formally the Great Proletarian CR) because of the very importance for Mao of this debate. The debate continued into the CR.

Mao did recognise that the forms should be popular, though, and this was the positive aspect of this cultural development. It wasn’t elitist. It certainly was driven politically and propagandistically, however. To achieve popularity, Mao sought to use popular traditional forms of culture suitably modified. There were new lyrics and themes designed to inspire devotion to the cause. The Ministry of Culture was set up to control all media, cinema, writings, music and artworks.

The model operas (they were occasionally quite balletic as well and some were also filmed) were retellings of the heroic deeds of past Chinese heroes in the revolutionary era especially. They were thus models of socialist culture for CR revolutionaries and were themselves seen as a growing up of Chinese culture into its correct socialist form. They tended to be of two fairly distinct types: either they told of a distant revolutionary past depicting the travails and struggles of workers and peasants or they told of the recent or present heroic deeds of the revolution. They modelled both how to behave as a good revolutionary citizen and how to spot a bad one.

Seven or eight were produced beginning in 1964 or 1965 and early on a number were presented in a special festival in Shanghai. Later on Jiang Qing was at the centre of encouraging their production. These operas are again in vogue in today’s nostalgic mood in China after having fallen from grace at the end of the CR era. They were well made by talented artists.

Red Brigade of Women is a noted opera set in Hainan in the 1930s and so is of the first form. It depicts a brigade of women being moulded by the CCP. Nixon was apparently shown this opera on his 1972 visit to China. Its ballet form was quite western but this was acceptable to the Chinese as it was associated firstly with Russia, at least a recent revolutionary ally. The form was also adapted with movements from the popular and traditional Chinese opera form. The women and their leaders go on to fight the reactionary GMD and landlords.

The Port is of the form depicting more recent (PRC era) events. Workers at the port are preparing to send a gift of food to their poor brothers in Africa while a manager at the port conspires to divert the shipment to the West so that he can sell it and line his own pockets. Spies and other enemies of the people are also depicted. A struggle naturally ensues. This is more a traditional style Chinese opera than the more balletic Red Brigade of Women.

Cadres actually travelled out into the field, collected folk songs and changed their words following the above pattern. Even the new national anthem was an adapted folk tune.

The revolutionary films especially were used in the training of the revolutionary successors being from a relatively modern form and so presumably most appealing to the young of all of the art forms.

A major work in the film genre was a song and dance spectacular filmed in the Great Hall of the People called the East is Red (Dong Fang Hong). It was first intended to be shown in 1959 to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the formation of the PRC. It is a revolutionary history lesson in interpretive song and dance. Zhou was involved in its writing and it commences with a lavish song and dance routine in praise of Mao. The imagery evokes a multitude of sunflowers (the dancers) bending in the direction of their sun (Mao). What then follows is the history lesson taking the audience from the times of oppressed dock workers under Japanese and European occupations with the evil flags of the Japanese, Americans and English draped on the ships in the harbour through all the revolutionary events but especially through the Long March. We see scenes of Jing gang Shan, a mountain in the Jiangxi Soviet, and Long March scenes including scenes of the famous Battle of the Bridge. Interestingly, it has a Western orchestral score throughout. It is the purest melodrama.

Another major film of the era was called Lei Feng and told the story of the eponymous ‘hero’ that I’ve referred to in an earlier post. The movie shows that (among other wonderful things about him) even on his one day off (on Sunday) Lei helped mothers with their babies and workmen to build houses (and all anonymously). And even late at night he was always apparently to be found reading the words of Chairman Mao.

Those works give a flavour of both variety of the proletarian culture of the era and also some of the sense of sameness.

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.