Published: Challenge, Vol. 13, No. 24, November 11, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Many important lessons can be learned by revolutionaries from the recent events in China. The working class doesn’t need “infallible Gods” as Mao Tse-tung was and is still being built up to be. Mao was a revolutionary who made many mistakes. The cult of the personality built around him will only lead to the repetition of his rightwing errors.
If he was so infallible, why did all his comrades-in-arms (Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, Teng Hsiao-ping, Chen Po-ta) turn out to be traitors? And now his own wife, Chiang Ching, turns out to be a traitor and a histrionic egotist.
More important than Mao’s slip on personnel were his errors in politics. In a previous editorial in CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, many of his political errors were pointed out. However, his most serious error revolved around the question of state power. His biggest distortion of the dictatorship of the proletariat was developed in his foolish piece called “On New Democracy.” In this tortured work Mao tries to rationalize prior unity of action with segments of the Chinese ruling class in the war against Japan. Based on this unity, Mao attempts to justify alliances with parts of the ruling class in setting up something other than the dictatorship of the proletariat.
After the revolution, based on Mao’s concept of unity with the “progressive bourgeoisie,” hundreds of thousands of former agents of the old ruling class were brought into the party and the government. Because of their influence and weaknesses in the Communist Party under Mao’s leadership, various distortions of socialist development took place. Here are a few:
– Material incentives were quickly elevated over political incentives.
– The old system of choosing who was entitled to higher education was maintained. Primarily, students were chosen based on family background and academic skills. (Sound familiar?) Thus, mainly students from middle-class backgrounds and upper-level Party functionaries found their way into the universities.
– Technical training was raised over political training.
These contradictions, and many others, eventually prompted a great deal of criticism and unrest, especially with students. Using the big wall poster method, among others, political demonstrations developed against capitalist tendencies in the Party. Mao at that time, was somewhat on the decline in authority in the Party leadership. Partially, this was because of his mis-leadership about the “big leap forward” which led to a sharp drop in production. So, he co-opted the leadership of this growing mass movement, and called it the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). His scheme was to pose as a great leftist and depose his more right-wing opposition in the leadership. Essentially, this was a classic center-vs.-right battle in which* the center made use of the left against the right.
One of the problems Mao had was that most of the old leadership of the Party was in the hands of Liu-Shao-Chi and other top leaders of the party. So, he directed the GPCR against the party leaders in order to topple them. Additionally, he had to build another center of leadership on which he could rely. This group was a combination of center forces grouped around Chou-En-Lai, and a few newer leaders who emerged. This newer group was called the “radicals.” They included Mao’s wife, Chiang Ching, and others, many from Shanghai. Shanghai had emerged as a militant center of anti-rightist leaders. And in Shanghai the workers assumed much of the leadership of the GPCR.
At the point that Mao was able to topple his opponents and reassume the leadership of the party he began to curtail radical activity and programs. During the GPCR Mao was made into the supreme authority on everything and anything. This device of the “cult of the personality” was used by him and the group around him as a weapon in their fight for political power for themselves. Mao already had great prestige in China, but this new level of godliness made him the supreme arbiter in political matters. So, the cult of the personality was used in the first place in his fight to get rid of his enemies on the right, and later to crush the left. The “radical” leaders who had emerged, centered somewhat around Chiang Ching, fell in line with Mao’s actions to stop the left. These “radicals” sold out the movement on the afore mentioned issues, and even went along with bringing many of the right-wing leaders back into leadership, provided they kissed Mao’s behind. This process was called “rehabilitation.” According to Mao and Chou, only these old leaders were capable of running the affairs of state. This was a throw back to the old days, when Mao and others brought or kept elements of the old ruling class in power, because only these “experts” could “make the trains run on time.”
The “radicals’” sellout of the militant masses in Shanghai would explain why the Hua leadership was able to turn out millions in Shanghai and elsewhere to the wooden anti-radical demonstrations that were reported.
(The turning point in the GPCR was when Mao opposed the development of the shanghai Commune, patterned on the Paris Commune. And he opposed the proposal of the Shanghai workers for worker’s communes all over China.)
Basically, the development of the cult of the personality around Mao wiped out political struggle of any sort amongst the masses. After all, if Mao knew everything, and if “everything he ever said was true,” then all one needed was to go over the new bible, called the “Red Book,” edited by Lin-Piao. This book was distributed by the hundreds of millions. The masses were to read and wave it, and all truth would be known. Huge Mao posters beamed down on all of China “God was in heaven; all was right in Peking.” The cult of the personality showed the utter contempt that Mao and his clique had for the workers of China and the world. However, behind the mindless idolatry of the Mao cult a struggle for power raged among the small number of leaders, all of whom abandoned the masses behind the facade of Mao worship. Even though many of Mao’s sycophants in China and around the world claimed Mao “would live forever” (Anna Louise Strong’s Newsletter, 1967), the more rational-cynical Chinese leaders realized he would die, sooner or later.
A tug-of-war went on between the so-called moderate leaders around Chou-En-Lai, and those around Chiang Ching. In this battle both groups were, basically, isolated from the masses. But the moderates had a larger base among the Party functionaries-cadre. The left was separated from the militant elements in the mass movement because of their sell-out, and because they allowed Mao and Chou to dismember the left by strewing them all over the country so they could work with their hands, and be amongst the masses. This latter ploy was one of their more cynical ways of getting rid of leftist students behind the facade of anti-intellectualism.
When Mao died, the “moderates” were easily able to get rid of the “radicals” who were a thorn in their side. The moderates had the larger base in the Party and especially in the army. The charges against the “radicals” whether true or trumped up, are a disgrace. The charges boil down to “nagging, giving interviews, plotting, etc.” Perhaps the only serious charge that has leaked out is that the radicals were soft on the Soviet Union. Probably, the current leadership around Hua will persist in Mao’s nonsense that one must unite with anyone who is opposed to the Soviets. This wrong strategy is the one Mao devised to fight the Japanese. It was the plan that brought the communists in China into an alliance with sections of the ruling class in the first place. Now Hua and Co. are the sole experts on the “thoughts of Mao.” Hus is to be the editor of Mao’s writings. Again, using the cult of Mao, we are treated to the politics of, absurdity and contempt. Top leaders of the Party are removed and accused of deviltry—something akin to witchcraft—without serious polemic. This is what Mao wanted, we are told.
While we can appreciate the Chinese concern about the Soviet imperialists, uniting with the U.S. is like being between “the devil and the deep blue sea”, or out of “the frying pan and into the fire.”
Thus as Mao died articles appeared in the New York Times marking China’s current direction. The article entitled: “China, Despite Death of Mao, Opens Plants Built By The U.S. On Time” says: “Displaying evidence of economic normalcy following the death of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, officials in Peking and Houston announced the start-up on schedule of three agricultural complexes that are part of the largest contract ever awarded by China to a U.S. company.” ($290 million contract—Pullman Kellogg involved). More recently, the Ford administration approved the sale to China of an advanced computer that could be “used for military purposes.”
Apparently, Mao’s great legacy is to do business with the U.S. imperialists whom Mao previously described as “worse than Hitler.” Has the U.S. ruling class changed? We think not!