The sixteen points formulated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to guide the masses of workers and peasants in fighting the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution pointed out:
. . Comrade Mao Tse-tung said: ’To overthrow a political power it is always necessary first of all to create public opinion, to do work in the ideological sphere. This is true for the revolutionary class as well as for the counterrevolutionary class. . ’
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite; it must meet head on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole society.
During and after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, comrades in the fields of literature and art strived to create a new proletarian culture that would serve the working class and take the place of the old bourgeois art. They threw away all the old books and plays about emperors and empresses that promoted feudal and capitalist ideas. New plays and movies were written and a new revolutionary proletarian culture was encouraged. However, this new culture was, of course, attacked by the capitalist roaders including Teng Hsiao-ping. The major thrust of Teng’s attack was against the model revolutionary theatrical works, which he said were based on “one-sided thinking in terms of absolutes.” He also said the works “obstructed the development of literature and art.” (see China Reconstructs, August, 1976)
An article titled “Negating the Revolution in Literature and Art Aims at Restoring Capitalism” (PR #22, 1976) defends the revolution in literature and art:
In dishing up the revisionist programme of ’taking the three directives as the key link’ [as opposed to taking class struggle as the key link, as put forward by Chairman Mao, Teng put unity and stability and production on the same level], the arch unrepentant capitalist-roader in the Party, Teng Hsiao-ping, not only made a vindictive attack on the proletariat in the fields of education, science and technology, but also whipped up a Right deviationist wind in literary and art circles. With the spearhead directed at our great leader Chairman Mao, he frenziedly attacked Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line in literature and art, disparaged the model revolutionary theatrical works, slandered the proletariat’s leadership over literature and art, and tried to reverse the correct verdicts on the revisionist line in literature and art which held sway in the 17 years before the start of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1966. . Teng Hsiao-ping slandered that the revolution in literature and art was ’in a mess’ and said it was a ’question of line.’ Some even called for a ’reappraisal’ of the literature and art before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Is the present better than the past or is the present not as good as the past on the literature and art front? Emperors, kings, generals, ministers, talents and beauties have been driven off the stage and the heroic images of workers and peasants and soldiers have taken their place as the leading characters. . Our literature and art today reflect the militant course of the Chinese Revolution, portray the magnificent scenes in a socialist revolution and construction, depict the heat of struggle and life of the workers, peasants and soldiers, praise the sturdy growth of revolutionary new things. Amateur activities in literary and art creations among workers, peasants, and soldiers have flourished, and in giving theatrical performances, the emphasis is on the grass-roots units . .. When [Teng Hsiao-ping] saw the feature film ’Spring Shoot’, he went away disapprovingly before it ended, slandering it as ’ultraLeft’ . . Why did he fly into a rage at this film which has won acclaim from the masses? This is because it stung him to the quick, for the film sings the praises of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, successfully creates a typical image of Tien Chun-miao, one of the new generation of young people who have come to the fore during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and sharply criticizes those Party persons in power taking the capitalist road. By attacking ’Spring Shoot’ as ’ultraLeft’ Teng Hsiao-ping revealed his own ultra-Right stand. It is crystal clear that the model revolutionary theatrical works have helped bring about the blossoming of 100 flowers in revolutionary art and literature, but why did Teng Hsiao-ping regard this as ’a single flower blossoming’? Did he really want to have a hundred flowers blossom in proletarian art and literature? Not at all. He . . always harboured a bitter hatred for the flagrant flowers of socialist literature and art and prostrated himself in admiration of feudal, capitalist and revisionist literature and art. What he tried to do was to smother the fragrant flowers of proletarian literature and art and let feudal, capitalist and revisionist poisonous weeds grow instead, thereby turning literature and art into his tool for restoring capitalism. This is the very essence of the issue.
The Minister of Culture, Yu Hui-yung, was purged in October and his place was taken by Hua Shan, a former journalist who was criticized during the Cultural Revolution (N.Y. Times, Oct. 17 and Oct. 29). The Vice-Minister of Culture was also purged and all signs indicate that the Ministry of Culture has been reorganized completely. Visitors report that in the months following the purge of October all the model theatrical works showing in Peking were cancelled, revolutionary ballets, operas, and plays. The Peking Review indicates that the major movies made last year have also been suppressed. An article which completely exposes the nature of the new government states:
A hue and cry to ’create works with themes on the struggle against capitalist-roaders’ was suddenly raised in the spring of 1976 in literary and art circles which were then under the thumb of the ’gang of four’ . . At that time, some people justifiably questioned: ’Chairman Mao said that over 90 per cent of our cadres are good or fairly good. Does writing about so many capitalist-roaders conform to Chairman Mao’s teaching?’ Others penetratingly pointed out: Creating so-called works with themes on struggling against capitalist-roaders in such a way actually is negating the Party’s leadership . . . Moreover, the ’gang of four’ said that the stress should be on writing about ’big capitalist-roaders’. . (PR #5, 1977, pp. 19-22)
The article goes on to say that in writing the plot for the film “Counterattack” the “gang of four” said:
We should answer the question: What should we do if revisionism emerges in the Central Committee of our Party?’ Added to the revised script were these words in the dialogue: ’From the central authorities to the various localities, they [the capitalist-readers] still have a fairly big portion of power. ’, .. They [the ’gang of four’] hoped in vain to use the film to fan up dissension and topple the first secretaries of every province and direct the spearhead of attack at the central authorities. . The spring thunder has smashed their fond dream. The Central Party Committee headed by Chairman Hua Kuo-feng, carrying out Chairman Mao’s behests, squashed the scheme of the anti-Party ’gang of four’ to usurp Party and state power. Their plot to ’create works with themes on the struggle against capitalist-roaders’ thus added up to zero.
Mao Tse-tung recently said “With the socialist revolution they themselves come under fire . . when it comes to criticizing bourgeois right, they resent it. You are making the socialist revolution and yet you don’t know where the bourgeoisie is. It is right in the Communist Party. . those in power taking the capitalist road. The capitalist-roaders are still on the capitalist road.” The present leaders have revealed in their criticisms of revolutionary works in literature and art that they do indeed resent being criticized for bourgeois right. They imply that capitalist-roaders do not have a fairly large portion of power, and that revisionism cannot emerge in the central committee. They, just like Teng Hsiao-ping, are saying that the capitalist-roaders should not be attacked, or should not be attacked “so much”. They minimize the danger of revisionism and direct the spearhead of their attack not only against those who have been the vanguard of opposing revisionism, but against all ideological struggle against capitalist-roaders.
The latest movie “Counterattack” was suppressed before it was released, but here in the USA we have seen one of the movies produced by the Ministry of Culture last spring to attack capitalist-roaders, “Breaking with Old Ideas”. It was produced to support the revolution in education. The other, “Spring Shoot,” was produced to support the struggle in healthcare. These are the only films that have been produced specifically to support the struggles against capitalist-roaders in the current period. Both were released in the spring of 1976. Reviews of these movies appear in PR #24, 1976, PR #18, 1976 and in China Pictorial and China Reconstructs (April, 1976). Scenarios were printed in the magazine Chinese Literature in 1976.
We suggest that anyone who can should see these films (as of this writing, “Breaking with Old Ideas” is being shown around the United States by the October League, M-L). The film “Breaking with Old Ideas” shows that most of the Party cadres and the people are good, and provides two strong examples of how people taken in by the bourgeois line in education can reform, but it uncompromisingly shows how to battle the bourgeois line in education and its proponents and, in a very real, concrete, and powerful way, portrays the most important aspects of that struggle. Analyze the film for yourself. If it correctly portrays capitalist-roaders and the struggle against them, why don’t the new leaders use it to educate the people and expose the “gang of four” whom they call “capitalist-roaders”? Why do they suppress films that attack capitalist-roaders?
We see the denouncement and suppression of these movies in China as another clear as day indication of the true nature of the new leaders. To take the place of these movies, the new Ministry of Culture has re-released several movies about the revolutionary war including one designed to criticize Wang Ming’s “Left” dogmatist line in the Red Army days. The obvious purpose of these movies is to try to take the peoples’ attention off the current struggle in which the principal enemy is neither Chiang Kai-chek nor “Left” dogmatism but the capitalist-roaders inside the Communist Party.
The present leaders have also re-released a score of “outstanding pre-Cultural Revolution movies” (PR #7. 1977) made by the Ministry of Culture that Chairman Mao aptly renamed “the Ministry of Emperors, Kings, Generals, and Ministers, the Ministry of Talents and Beauties, or the Ministry of Foreign Mummies.”
Further exposing their revisionist line in literature and art, the present leaders published in PR #4, 1977, the transcript of a big-character poster that lambasted the Ministry of Culture declaring that the policy of literature and art should be “adjusted”. It criticized the “gang of four’s” brazenness in the Ministry of Culture, telling them:
How many veteran cadres [who have committed errors, but have made self-criticisms]] have been used [employed in the Ministry of Culture”]? . . Ma Ke, for instance, has been subjected to investigation for 9 years and no evidence has been found that he is an enemy, special agent, or renegade. His case is roughly one of following the erroneous line. . He committed some error, admitted it, and was resolved to correct it . . Why don’t you give a little consideration to his entreaties?
Later, lambasting the “gang of four” for criticizing the film “Pioneers”:[1]
In some of your articles, which are beyond comprehension, even the rudiments of grammar and sentence structure and the basic concepts of language are ignored. For instance, the ’ten points’ criticizing “Pioneers” has the phrase ’serious errors in art’. A work can be good or bad, refined or crude artistically, and so on and so forth. But what is right or wrong in art?
“What is right or wrong in art?”!!! This is the same “liberal” denial of political content in art, the same denial of class struggle that revisionists have always made. Of course politics and art are inseparably linked and there is always political content in all aspects of art. The movies the new leaders choose to produce will show their real class nature in full color.
The main point of the big-character poster reprinted in Peking Review #4, 1977, as well as all the articles that have appeared recently in the Peking Review about literature and art, is that the art before the Cultural Revolution was better than that since, that the literary and art workers that presented classical, revisionist, and bourgeois propaganda before the Cultural Revolution should be brought back along with these works. Peking Review #7 (p. 22) included an article that declared that a “new spring” had come to literature and art and that “with the hated ’gang of four’s’ demise, the fetters shackling China’s literary and art workers have fallen off.” Was the policy of creating model revolutionary theatrical works with worker-peasant-soldier heroines and heroes fighting for the proletarian revolutionary line and against the capitalist-roaders a “fetter” on true Marxist-Leninist literary and art workers? Or was it a fetter, or rather an attack, on the bourgeois elements in the Party who would rather see works attacking “ultraLeft” lines, works that have underlying bourgeois messages, or works which avoid the actual context of the struggle between Marxism and revisionism?
Some Western observers, ranging from N.Y. Times reporters to leading members of the U. S-China Peoples’ Friendship Association, have applauded the “new spring” in literature and art, suggesting that the model revolutionary theatrical works developed since the Cultural Revolution have been boring and monotonous. Even if this criticism may have validity in some cases, it is certainly not that emphasized by the present Chinese leaders their motivation and thrust in criticizing these works is based on political content. Certainly “monotony” would be grounds to further advance the proletarian revolutionary works, not grounds for suppressing them or for bringing back the old works and artists, “Monotony” is not a cause for antagonistic contradiction in art and literature. The present conflict is between the proletarian and the bourgeois lines, not between “monotony” vs. “high art.”
The ideological fronts of the superstructure. .. education, the press, culture, literature and art, and the Marxist theoretical contingents of workers, peasants, and soldiers (study groups) are extremely important in continuing the socialist revolution and consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat. These were the primary tasks of three of the “gang of four” . . Yao Wen-yuan, Chiang Ching, and Chang-Chun-chiao.
Articles in the Peking Review now say that the “gang of four” made a mess of, and twisted and distorted, the functions of the press, education, literature and art, and the theoretical contingents. Premier Chou is not accused by the new leaders of conspiring with the “gang of four” (in fact the present leaders use his name consistently, after he has died, to attack the “gang of four”), yet he defended the way the revolution in education, literature and art, (healthcare), and the theoretical contingents were being advanced:
The proletarian revolution in art and literature exemplified by the model revolutionary theatrical works is developing in depth. The revolution in education and health work is thriving. The cadres and workers, peasants, soldiers, students commercial workers are preserving the May 7th road. Over a million ’barefoot doctors’ are becoming more competent. Nearly 10,000,000 school graduates have gone to mountainous and other rural areas. With the participation of workers, peasants and soldiers, the Marxist theoretical contingents are expanding. The emergence of all these new things has strengthened the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie in the realm of the superstructure, and this helps further to consolidate and develop the socialist economic base. (from Premier Chou’s address to the Second Plenary Session of the Tenth Party Congress in 1975, PR #4, 1975, pp. 21-22)
The present campaign against the “dictatorship” of the “gang of four” in the cultural and ideological front is an important part of the new leaders’ attempt to reverse the correct verdicts of the Cultural Revolution, and not an attempt to advance proletarian culture in China. As time goes on, developments in the field of literature and art will be among the most dramatic evidences of the revisionist line of the new leaders.
[1] Regardless of what criticisms Chiang Ching and Yao Wen-yuan may have had of the film “Pioneers”, it was released by the Ministry of Culture and given very favorable publicity by the Chinese press (both the Ministry and the press were “under the thumb” of Yao, Chiang, and their supporters at that time).