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.

Overview of the Early Years of the PRC

The CCP rode to power on a wave of popular support. Mao, the Supreme Ruler, was first in command with Liu Shaoqi, his deputy, and Zhou Enlai his Prime Minister (Premier) and head of government. Deng Xiaoping was already in the leadership mix as a junior minister who had also survived the Long March but his final ascendency would have to wait three more decades. The corrupt and virtually incompetent GMD had left China with much of its state treasure, leaving it bankrupt (and hoping to return to rule it again). The CCP wanted to remedy all of this as quickly as possible with much of the world seeming to want it to fail. They sought modernisation, strength and industrialisation.

They set to work in the country remedying vast inequalities between landlords and peasants and between men and women with much success from the beginning. Women had been regarded as chattels or slaves by their parents, then their spouses and finally their sons and this changed abruptly. Peasants gained equality (hundreds and thousands of the most despised landlords paid with their lives – in a short period, half of the then arable land in China was distributed directly to the poorest peasants) but soon surrendered it to the collective. Women too had some reversals in fortune. In the cities, workers ceased to be slaves of their bosses only to quickly become effectively the slaves of their workplaces. Everybody became slaves to development (except perhaps party bosses).

What was going on was that Mao began to seek only the advice of Moscow and Marx, virtually the only friends China seemed to have, and thus began to sacrifice the Yan’an spirit (for reasons I outlined in the last few posts). Who else could the Chinese trust (it seemed not even themselves)? Mao himself visited Moscow in 1950 (in his first trip ever outside China – he only ever took one other journey outside China in his eighty-two years before his death in 1976). In that trip he sealed a military and aid deal, though Mao and Stalin didn’t especially get on. He was playing the supplicating vassal in terms of the Chinese cultural tradition.

One further complication to the first years was the invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans and the subsequent Korean War. Once General Macarthur had become involved and began to insist into northern Korea, the US seemed to threaten to expand its efforts into northern China. Macarthur’s aim actually was apparently to provoke war with China and ultimately re-install the GMD on the mainland. The Chinese secretly added a quarter of a million Chinese to the forces opposed to Macarthur now in North Korea for a surprise attack. The US was, of course, forced into a retreat and ultimately a Korean armistice along the pre-war lines by this action. In the meantime, Mao had asked Chinese civilians for their financial support in the war effort and China had suffered around a million casualties all up but military success against a Superpower was a great fillip. Mao also used the situation as an excuse to clamp down on anti-revolutionary elements and encouraged informers. Thousands of people were denounced.

Mao’s China may have been a tough place to be for many but his doctor of the time, Li Zhisui, reported on Mao’s penchant for western dancing (which he organised for his associates and himself regularly) and other perks and peculiarities of being Mao. The peasants were performing their roles, however, and two thirds of them were already collectivised by the end of 1955. They were led to expect that the final abolition of private plots would improve their circumstances. Various grain and other production quotas proved a greater priority for Mao than ensuring the peasants were all adequately fed, however. Productivity had not in fact increased very much.

Artistic and other expression was strictly controlled from the beginning which made Mao’s apparently liberal call for ‘a hundred flowers to bloom’ in 1956 tempting for many formerly stifled artists and intellectuals. The outbursts of expression that followed the calls for them from the centre including Mao’s may have shocked Mao. Corruption and inefficiency had been major gripes in the period. Many criticisms of the party were tolerated but this proved a brief period of unfettered expression. Mao later claimed he had instituted the period simply to draw anti-revolutionary elements into the open so that he could punish them.

Punish many of those who had taken the CCP at its word the CCP duly did. Many were first denounced as class enemies from 1957 in the usual ‘struggle’ meetings. Ge Peiqi, an academic, was one well known example of a relatively mild criticism being radically dealt with. There were effectively ‘rightist’ quotas that had to be met in the crackdown period as leaders in workplaces that hadn’t denounced a sufficient number of ‘rightists’ were likely themselves to be denounced as ‘rightist’ by some radical or even an opportunist or perhaps a personal enemy. This new purge continued into 1958 and by the end of it nearly a million people had been denounced. The campaign had been partly motivated by anti-intellectualism per se.

On the international front Mao hosted Khrushchev in 1958 but failed to mention his intention to attack the GMD in Taiwan. Once he attacked and the US responded vigorously he backed down. In the following year he met Khrushchev again and in 1960 the Sino-Soviet split occurred. I’ll discuss much of this some more in later posts but suffice it to say Mao and the USSR never seemed to work as more than a short-term and pragmatic pseudo union of purpose. The USSR tended to seem to Mao as at least as imperialist as any other outside power. Also in 1959, Mao crushed a revolt in Tibet. The Chinese have always tended to regard Tibet as a rightful province of China but this strong action further harmed Mao’s international reputation.

Back at home, Mao, never satisfied with growth levels, prepared the ground for what he called the Great Leap Forward (GLF) in 1958. Everybody was asked to work day and night for the revolution and the slogan ‘catch the stars and moon’ was used to emphasise the need to work through the night to build China. The people were promised that they were a great people capable of the rapid growth Mao was calling for (and consequent rapid improvement in their conditions of living under Mao’s direction). Mao in turn was held in awe by his people as suggested by one anecdote of the time. It is said that he was in the country and happened to read aloud a sign that read “people’s communes are good”. This one action supposedly led to the immediate formation of many communes throughout the country as news of it travelled.

One of the more foolhardy but perhaps relatively benign projects of the period inspired by all this boosterism (aided by the stifling of any criticism wrought by the recent anti-rightist campaigns) was the attempt by cooperatives throughout the country to smelt new steel by melting down old scrap metal (that naturally turned out to be quite substandard steel). Such projects were seen as ‘real revolution’ and a thing of pride by the masses

There was worse to come. In the frantic process of attempting to increase yields, for example, many cooperatives planted crops too close together and over fertilized with the predictable end result of counterproductive waste.

Two features of the new China combined to create the calamity that was the Great Leap Forward: the competitive urge between collectives created by the boosterism and insufficient verification by the centre of truth telling in reporting of yields. The liars reported greater and greater yields and the centre relied upon those reports to squeeze further quotas. As a result there was soon mass starvation in parts of the countryside as the still actually quite inefficient farmers fed others as best they could (and better) before feeding themselves.

Mao first began to realise what was actually occurring on a visit to his home town of Shao Shan. Even so, he was still too ready to see any criticism of what had occurred even from personal friends as an act of treachery. His abject treatment of a long-time fellow Xiangtanese (Xiangtan being the Hunanese county they both hailed from) and formerly somewhat close friend as a result, Marshall Peng, after receiving his unpalatable advice is a case in point. Even someone as senior as Premier Zhou who sympathised with Peng’s view of the situation was not willing to speak out at the time for fear of the consequences of Mao’s wrath.

The Role of the Cadres and “Pastoral” Leadership set up by Mao at this early stage

The local CCP official or cadre (ganbu – 幹部 (later 干部 with Mao’s introduction of simplified Chinese from 1949)) was accorded great significance in Chinese Communism by Mao as a pastor and in maintaining the links required by the “mass line” discussed in earlier posts.

Each ganbu had responsibility for his or her particular ‘flock’ (e.g. an army unit, a village or a factory, or part thereof) and their ‘pastoral’ needs. The ganbus were, of course, expected to be models of ethical behaviour, selfless and devoted to the flock and the revolution, as they put party policies into effect at the local level and sought feedback. Their objective was salvation of all members of the relevant group and utopia by bringing on the arrival of true Communism (as per the model of the USSR that was held up). A called-for spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake and salvation of the group and the centrality to CCP discourse of the cult of the Communist martyr began here. This began with the eulogising of ‘the Yan’an Spirit’. Cadres in particular were expected to solve problems of individuals as counsellors and social workers up to and including providing direct help and aid to peasant families in difficulty. As pastors, they were responsible for the minds, souls and Communist education, class consciousness (and propagandising) of the whole group.

The Yan’an Period

While the CCP was still licking its wounds, recovering and regrouping at Yan’an in 1937, Japan got greedy. This proved a relatively great boon for the greatly weakened party. Japan was regarded as a hated enemy by many Chinese especially since it had been engaged in brutal occupations of various parts of China since the early 1920s (sharing the WWI ‘spoils’ of the other ‘foreign devils’ on the winning side). CCP success in fighting the Japanese would begin to rebuild their popular support and the GMD would also be too busy with the Japanese to attack Yan’an with full force. They might even be forced back into an actual alliance with the CCP, however shaky that might prove. This forced alliance provided breathing space the CCP desperately needed. In the meantime, it had a chance to practice government over around 3,000,000 people.

Jiang actually refused to fight the Japanese in 1937 and this led to his kidnapping by agents of the CCP and his being forced to resume heading a new alliance with the CCP (along with other nationalist parties). Zhou, a former colleague at Whampoa, was instrumental in bringing about his agreement to this state of affairs. The GMD was forced to re-enter into an alliance (a second ‘united front’) with the CCP for the sake of national unity. The fact was, however, that the GMD continued to prefer containing the Communists (while the latter actually fought against the Japanese) to actually fighting the Japanese themselves. For much of the war against the Japanese, around half a million of the GMD’s crack troops were occupied blockading CCP territory.

The GMD forces of the GMD 2IC in fact ran away from Japanese forces invading Manchuria in the North and even in the heartland the GMD abandoned Shanghai to them in November of 1937 (albeit after a little more of a fight than in Manchuria). Japan also took the prizes of Beijing and Tianjin to go along with Manchuria and Shanghai in 1937.

The Japanese proved a brutal occupier and committed notable atrocities in October (around the time their aerial bombardment of Shanghai was also producing mass casualties). In a few short months Japan had gained control of half of the seaboard of China and in December they commenced the so-called “Rape of Nanking”, the by then abandoned capital of the GMD, massacring an estimated 200,000 people there. Further to that, Jiang’s idea of inundating a significant region of China to halt the Japanese advance not only didn’t work, its fruition was the death by drowning of several hundred thousand more Chinese men, women and children and the homelessness of several hundred thousand more again.

Meanwhile Chongqing further west (on the Yangzi in eastern Sichuan province) became the new GMD capital. The Japanese then commenced the bombing of Chongqing. The exodus of people and infrastructure from Nanjing (Nanking) to Chongqing was phenomenal but equally noticeable was the bleeding of many people to the Communist capital of Yan’an (and to a party that was actually fighting the Japanese). People were also inspired by the relative closeness of the CCP leadership to its people (admittedly they had the advantage in this connection of ruling over a smaller population but the 'mass line' (see below) was practiced and that practice was noted and widely admired).

Mao had set up the Anti-Japanese University in Yan’an. This attracted students from all over China seeking training to become military and political/intellectual cadres of the CCP. They were then sent all over China to do the party’s work and could even belong to rural capitalist classes such as the landlord class; this was based on the idea of ‘New Democracy’ (again see below) (provided they weren’t actually collaborating with the Japanese in any way). Women were also permitted to contribute to this mobilisation for the first time in China (as women in the West were also fighting for virtually the first time).

In this war period (after the initial Japanese successes), the Red Army became a formidable fighting force, due in part to its practice at simultaneously fighting external and internal enemies (and making alliances across classes based on the Sun idea of ‘New Democracy’ (again see below - this later proved to be merely pragmatism for Mao)).

The CCP commando/guerrilla tactics proved successful against the Japanese while the GMD preferred to hold back from fighting the Japanese in anticipation of the expected later fight with the CCP, which they hoped would be severely depleted by their virtually unaided fight with the Japanese.

There were indeed also several actual GMD/CCP skirmishes in this period. One that occurred in January of 1941 actually wiped out a complete CCP unit and brought about the end of the formal coalition. Jiang noted at one point something to the effect that “the Japanese are a disease of the skin but the CCP are a disease of the heart” when discussing his attitude to his two foes.

While fighting the Japanese (and GMD) the Communists didn’t neglect home affairs at Yan’an and a style of rule developed that later came to be referred to as “the Yan’an Way”. There were five features:

1) ‘New Democracy’ as a pragmatic theory that recognised the interests of a middle class and ‘national’ capitalists as well as those of workers and peasants;

2) A “mass line” policy that compulsorily and regularly brought leaders (and all CCP members) into close contact with the masses (including a manual work requirement);

3) A comprehensive political, economic, social and military party organisational structure;

4) Ideological and educational campaigns were used to spread correct ideas; and

5) Intellectuals were required to labour with the peasants and literature, intellectualism and art were regarded as subordinate to the service of the revolution.