First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 3, No. 5, July 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
The fall of the “Gang of Four” from power in China – what does it mean in terms of the direction of the Chinese Revolution? If you read the capitalist newspapers all you are likely to learn is that Chiang Ching idled away her time watching Greta Garbo movies and “henpecked” Mao on his deathbed.
But beyond the sensational revelations about the personal behavior of the “gang” lie major issues of principle and policy. The present campaign against the Gang of Four is a continuation of the struggle that has been going on in China since the launching of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960’s. At the heart of this intense debate and conflict is the question of the approach to building socialism and making the transition to communism, most directly in China, but by way of extension, in other societies as well.
While China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc., are popularly called “Communist” countries, this is, from a Marxist, scientific point of view, true only in the sense that they are led by Communist parties. Strictly speaking, these are “socialist” but not yet “communist” societies.
This distinction is more than a quibble over words. Marxist-Leninists see communist society being divided into two distinct historical phases. The first, or lower phase of communism (called “socialism”) is, as Marx put it, “in every respect, economically,’ morally, and intellectually, stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”
In this first-phase the legacy of capital is such that the guiding principle of communism “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” cannot be realized. Neither the material abundance nor the consciousness necessary for such a social order has yet been created.
The character of socialism as a transition lies precisely in that its historic task is to develop the. productive forces and with them the ”all around development of the individual” to the point where it is possible to enter the higher phase of communist (classless) society. The experience of the revolutionary working class since the October Revolution in 1917 has demonstrated that this task is neither smooth nor simple, particularly in the given historical circumstances of economic underdevelopment and capitalist encirclement in which virtually all the socialist countries have had to face.
There is an inevitable tension under socialism between the overriding need to develop the productive forces – the industry and technology that is essential to improve the lives of the masses and ultimately create the kind of abundance on which a communist society can be realized – and the simultaneous need to root out old habits of bourgeois thinking inherited from capitalism.
These two tasks are interdependent. Without rapidly developing the forces of production, the attempt to transform consciousness becomes a harmful, Utopian idea. Without consciously and systematically waging a struggle against the old ideas and developing the initiative and creativity of the masses, the fight for production is compromised and the ultimate aim of the all-sided development of the individual is lost.
These tasks are not simply a matter of diligence, hard work, and education, although all of these are involved. More fundamentally, these tasks represent a continuation of class struggle under conditions of working class rule (the dictatorship of the proletariat), initially the working class must contend with the defeated but still present exploiting classes who seek to sabotage socialism in hundreds of ways. It must contend with the often substantial survival of capitalist production relations (small scale private farming, for example) which constantly regenerate and reinforce a capitalist outlook.
Finally, and perhaps in the long run most importantly, the working class must contend with bourgeois ideas and practices that arise within the ruling party and state apparatus, among party and state officials who have become isolated from the masses and acquired bureaucratic privileges and an outlook to match them.
In facing these tasks, the Chinese Revolution, in spite of the immense obstacles posed by the backward, semi-feudal character of Chinese society, was to bring definite advantages. First of all, the Chinese Communists had the Soviet experience, both negative and positive, to draw upon. Secondly, the Chinese Revolution, developing as it did in a protracted fashion over some 20 odd years, had accumulated a wealth of valuable experience of its own. And thirdly, Mao Tse Tung and the Communist Party of China gave the revolution creative, independently minded leadership that would not hesitate to find its own path forward.
The whole motion of the Chinese revolution can only be understood against the backdrop of the break with the Soviet Union. In the USSR following the death of Stalin, a revisionist trend basing itself on privileged elements in the party and state apparatus gained the upper hand in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Soviet revisionism represented an accommodation to imperialism abroad and bourgeois ideology at home. The Soviet revisionists preached “goulash” communism – a one-sided emphasis on production of consumer commodities. The policies encouraged individualism and the development of bureaucratic privilege and power.
The Chinese Communist Party recognized that Khrushchev and Co. represented a deviation from Marxism-Leninism. From 1956 on, the CPC waged an ever more intense struggle against their influence, a struggle that was to lead to a complete break between the two parties and states.
At the same time, the Chinese Party itself was diverging over precisely the same questions of how to carry out socialist construction. In the view of Mao Tse Tung and the revolutionary-minded section of the party, a clique (personified by Liu Shao Chi, then President of the People’s Republic) had arisen that, if left unchecked, would move China down the path of revisionism. In 1966, a sharp struggle led by Mao but involving millions of workers, peasants and students was launched with the aim of purging the party, state apparatus and mass organizations of revisionism’s influence. This mass upheaval was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
What was the result of the Cultural Revolution? Mao himself characterized it as 70% good, 30% bad. The Cultural Revolution, by rousing and educating millions in the nature of revisionism and how to fight it, deepened the revolutionary understanding and will of the Chinese masses. The Cultural Revolution did not just result in the throwing out of a few bad apples in the Communist Party. It introduced important changes in policy which countered revisionism.
Education under Liu Shao Chi had been weighted toward technical matters at the expense of politics, and promoted the notion of the superiority of intellectuals and intellectual activity, and had drawn a disproportionate share of students from the old privileged classes. The reforms introduced as a result of the Cultural Revolution subordinated technical to political education, taught respect for manual labor and changed the composition of student bodies so that the preponderance of students were of worker and peasant background. In many spheres of Chinese life revisionist policies were reversed.
The bad aspects of the Cultural Revolution were its excesses. In some areas the campaign to criticize the revisionists degenerated into violence. Many party cadre were unjustly mistreated. But in the long run the most serious negative result of the Cultural Revolution was the rise of an ultra-left trend within the party, a trend for which the Gang of Four, along with Lin Piao, were the leading spokespersons.
The ultra-leftists stood revisionism on its head. Both violated Mao’s dictum “Grasp Revolution, Promote Production”. The revisionists one-sidedly promoted production, while ignoring class struggle. The ultra-left pursued the class struggle with a vengeance, while belittling the struggle for production or assuming it would spontaneously go forward if only revisionist ideas were routed.
This one-sided understanding of the relationship between class struggle and the fight for production led the Gang of Four and the ultra-left to seek to lead the Cultural Revolution beyond the boundaries defined by Mao. The ultra-left urged a violent and disruptive campaign summed up by Chiang Ching in the slogan: “To beat, wreck, and loot for Revolution is fine.”
As a result of their activities, there was much armed fighting between factions. Production was seriously disrupted and trains with ammunition and weaponry for Vietnam were held up. The Gang of Four’s attitude toward these disruptions was expressed as “it is better to have socialist trains that run late than capitalist trains that run on time.”
The Cultural Revolution did not end the struggle between the right and the “left”. Liu Shao-Chi and many revisionist elements were purged from the party. Within a short time, however, many of them, including Teng Hsiao-Ping, a former Lieutenant of Liu, were brought back to leadership having criticised their errors. Lin Piao, a leader of the ultra-left and at one point the heir apparent to Mao, was also purged following the Cultural Revolution along with many of his followers. The Gang of Four disassociated themselves from Lin and – apparently with Mao’s blessing – continued to occupy positions of responsibility in the Party.
The Gang was particularly strong and influential in the fields of propaganda and cultural affairs. Their influence made for a dry and dogmatic rigidity in the arts. According to the present Chinese leadership, they distorted the Party’s theoretical and policy directives in a “leftist” fashion. Under the cover of the campaign to criticise Teng (Teng was once again removed from positions of authority in 1976) the Gang promoted its ultra-left line and attacked the effort to move the Chinese economy forward with a new five year plan.
The Gang opposed efforts to improve efficiency on the grounds that it was “punctuality taking command over politics”. They accused those who promoted foreign trade of “serving the bourgeoisie”. Allegedly, they even disrupted the earthquake relief efforts, charging it was a diversion of the campaign against Teng.
The Gang’s penchant for accusing all who disagreed with them or who simply sought to promote production of “revisionism” had a chilling effect on both the party and the masses, stifling ideological struggle and hampering the fight for production. According to the Chinese leadership, the Gang sought to organize a coup following the death of Mao and after Hua Kuo-feng became Party Chairman. The coup attempt was defeated and Hua and the party leadership launched a full scale campaign to criticise the Gang and their ideas.
While there are many questions that remain to be answered about this whole series of events, the main outlines are clear. An ultra-leftist current in the Chinese Party sought to extend and consolidate its influence. It was instead routed, and the present leadership appears to be dealing effectively with the excesses associated with the Gang.
The most serious question associated with the campaign against the Gang is the characterization of them as “capitalist roaders” and “ultra-rightists”. Some accounts have maintained the Gang were rightists in the usual sense that all ultra-leftists are objectively right – that is, the real content of their ideas and behavior strengthens the right. Others have ignored this distinction, and thus have the effect of liquidating dogmatism and ultra-leftism as a particular form of opportunism.
The Gang of Four very clearly represented a departure from Marxism Leninism, but it was not revisionism of the right opportunist variety. In their ignoring of the role of production and in their “class struggle is everything” line, the Gang departed from Marxism-Leninism and fell into bourgeois idealism and voluntarism. It would seem that this distinctive and particular character of their error should be the focus of the campaign to root it out. The glossing over of this particularity by branding them as capitalist roaders pure and simple does not serve this end.
Perhaps this weakness is a reflection of a larger weakness, a tendency toward idealism shared by Mao and the present leadership as well. This tendency manifests itself in the habit of equating ideas with material forces. . . .thus the Gang of Four or Liu Shao Chi or Lin Piao were all variously part of a “new bourgeoisie” because they put forward bourgeois ideas. These elements may have been bourgeois in outlook, but the lacked the material character of that class, that is a group which owned the means of production and exploited labor. The most serious manifestation of this tendency is the CPC’s line that the USSR’s economy is capitalist or social imperialist because of the bourgeois line of its leadership.
Nevertheless, the Chinese Party and masses continue to show an amazing vitality in moving their revolution forward along a road with many twists and turns. The defeat of the Gang and the ambitious promotion of the new five year plan under the leadership of Hua Kuo-feng hold bright promise for the future of communism in China.