Mao’s Cultural Revolution Pt. 2: The Sweep of A Revolution, 1966-1976

Is revolution possible? How can the people deepen revolutionary change after seizing power? To answer those questions, it is valuable to study Mao’s revolution in China, and especially the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Kasama would like to share “Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future.” It was written by the  by the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. This comprehensive paper describes the course of the Cultural Revolution (CR) from 1966-1976, its achievements and shortcomings, and why future movements for revolution, socialism and communism must stand on its shoulders.”

This is the second of 8 articles composing a paper that was written by the MLM Revolutionary Study group.

Part 1 is available on Kasama. The other parts will soon follow.

This  Part 2 describes the arc of the Cultural Revolution, from the first dazibaos [big character posters protesting party bosses] in 1966 at Beijing University, to the January Storm in Shanghai in 1968, through to the shift to the right in the Chinese Communist Party in the early 1970s and the overthrow of the so-called “gang of four” by Deng aXiaoping nd his supporters after the death of the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong in 1976.

How it started

In May 1965, after an absence of 38 years, Mao reascended Mount Chingkang, the first revolutionary base area of the CCP in southern China. Alluding to historical events and literary themes of the past, this poem by Mao demonstrates his resolve to launch a new and victorious struggle for the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.

Mao Zedong, as the Cultural Revolution started

 

 

Reascending Chingkangshan

by  Mao Tsetung

I have long aspired to reach for the clouds
And I again ascend Chingkangshan.
Coming from afar to view our old haunt,
I find new scenes replacing the old.
Everywhere orioles sing, swallows dart,
Streams babble
And the road mounts skyward.
Once Huangyangchieh [1] is passed
No other perilous place calls for a glance.

Wind and thunder are stirring,
Flags and banners are flying
Wherever men may live.
Thirty-eight years are fled
With a mere snap of the fingers.
We can clasp the moon in the Ninth Heaven [2]
And seize turtles deep down in the Five Seas:
We’ll return amid triumphant song and laughter.
Nothing is hard in this world
If you dare to scale the heights.

Mao understood that debate and struggle in the cultural sphere could be an effective weapon in preparing the ground for political struggle. In November 1965, he commissioned an article by Yao Wenyuan criticizing “The Dismissal of Hai Jui.” This referred to a play written by a leading member of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee that implied that high officials rather than the people themselves were needed to solve the peasants’ problems, and allegorically attacked Mao as a modern-day emperor. Because the Beijing party was a stronghold of the revisionist forces, Yao’s article had to be published in Shanghai, where the Party Secretary, Ke Qingshi, was closely allied with Mao.

In February 1966, Peng Zeng, Mayor of Beijing and a leading proponent of the revisionist practices of the early 1960s, publicly attacked Yao’s article. In May, a statement of the Central Committee criticized Peng as an example of bourgeois elements who had infiltrated the party and government.

The first dazibaos—big character posters [3] —appeared in Beijing. On May 25, a dazibao at Beijing University lambasted the university president and two close associates of Peng for suppressing political debate. Mao announced his support for the rebels’ dazibaos and called on millions of students at secondary schools, institutes and universities to join the Red Guards to “rebel against reactionaries.” The view of Mao and his supporters was that, in a socialist society, new generations have to experience the process of revolution themselves, to think through for themselves what kind of society they want, who opposes that vision, and how to struggle against those forces.

During the rest of 1966, over a million students, largely middle school students from other areas, were in Beijing at any given time. They rebelled against authoritarian teachers and a revisionist educational system that was geared to produce experts with low political consciousness. Rightist administrators and teachers were paraded in the streets with dunce caps and subjected to public criticism meetings and all-night “struggle sessions.”

Red Guard organizations changed the old imperial names of streets[4] and stores and searched homes, temples and churches for evidence of counter-revolutionary activities, hoarding wealth, and the practice of feudal customs. This was not mindless violence that was portrayed in the Western press, but a political movement to uproot the old ideas and customs of the exploiting classes. However, there were excesses, including serious physical attacks on people in relatively privileged positions, which Mao and others in the party leadership recognized and sought to correct.

In order to provide guidance to the unfolding mass upsurge, a nine-member Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) was formed under Mao’s leadership. It included Mao’s secretary Chen Boda, Minister of Public Security Kang Sheng, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, and two leftists from Shanghai, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan. Together with Defense Minister Lin Biao and Premier Zhou Enlai, these forces made up the “Left Alliance” that led the early stages of the Cultural Revolution.

In the summer of 1966, State Chairman Liu Shaoqi, Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping and other high-ranking leaders of the party who were coming under fire by rebel Red Guard organizations dispatched work teams to universities and factories. These work teams organized sections of the masses to attack the rebels and stifled political debate for 50 days. They told students that “wall posters should not be put up in the streets,” and that “meetings should not hinder work or studies.” The work teams also organized “loyalist” Red Guard groups.[5]

Mao returned to Beijing in August from an inspection trip in the provinces, which he often undertook prior to a major struggle in the party. The party leadership, under pressure from members of the CCRG, withdrew the work teams and renewed its support for the rebels. The “16 Point Decision” of August 8, 1966 issued by the party’s Central Committee defined the principal target of the Cultural Revolution as party leaders taking the capitalist road—or “capitalist roaders.” It went on sale in music shops, as part of a set of 33-rpm vinyl discs that included a studio recording of a People’s Daily editorial titled. “Become Acquainted with the Sixteen Points and Put the Sixteen Points to Use.” [6]

In the fall, Mao and the CCRG encouraged rebel Red Guard organizations to “take Beijing to the rest of the country.” Large groups of Red Guards fanned out to other cities and to the vast countryside to “exchange revolutionary experiences.” A peasant from Liu Ling village in Shaanxi Province describes how the Cultural Revolution was brought to his village:

It was in the autumn of 1966 that the Red Guards came here…. They read quotations and told us about the Cultural Revolution in Beijing and Shanghai. Never before had we had so many strangers in the village. They asked us about our lives, they wanted to learn from us. They asked us how we were managing things in the brigade…. We went on reading the quotations after they’d gone. We read, and compared the quotations with what was being done here at Liu Ling village, and came to the conclusion that a lot of things needed changing.[7]

After news of the 16 Point Decision reached the villages of Shandong Province, east of Beijing, Red Guard organizations began to form in the middle schools. Soon thereafter, mass associations independent of local party control were organized by peasants, artists, and employees in factories, commercial establishments and even in the Public Security Bureau. In some villages, nearly all the adult population belonged to one association or another.[8] This process empowered peasants and workers to criticize the “local emperors” (revisionist party leaders) at mass meetings and through dazibaos plastered all over the villages.

At the same time, in Shanghai, China’s industrial center, a powerful political force was stirring. The Workers General Headquarters (WGH) under the leadership of a young textile worker, Wang Hongwen, had built up strength in hundreds of factories criticizing revisionist management practices that stifled the initiative of the workers. In the course of several days in January 1967 known as the “January Storm,” [9] these rebel workers seized power from Shanghai’s party apparatus. The mass “struggle rally” at which the Shanghai party committee was brought down was the first to be shown live on television.[10] In a desperate ploy to hold onto power, which was repeated throughout the Cultural Revolution, revisionist party leaders organized conservative factions among the workers to defend their positions and privileges. They also stirred up a wave of “economism,” which attempted to sabotage the rebellion by granting tens of thousands of workers big wage increases and years of back pay.[11]

After a short-lived experiment with a “commune” form of organization (modeled after the Paris Commune of 1871),[12] the Shanghai workers formed one of the first “revolutionary committees” composed of members of the workers’ mass organizations, revolutionary party cadre and political cadres of the People’s Liberation Army. The Shanghai Revolutionary Committee took charge of key government agencies and direction of industrial and transport work. Workers Propaganda Teams, which included members of the PLA, were dispatched to universities and schools and resolved factional disputes in factories. WGH-sponsored militia had branches in virtually every factory in Shanghai.[13]

Revolutionary seizures of power took place in other parts of China throughout 1967, removing revisionist party officials in some areas, and putting them on the defensive in others. However, in many areas intense factional fighting developed, with a confusing array of “rebel forces” each claiming to support Mao and defend Mao Zedong Thought. After ultra-left and conservative forces alike raided PLA armories, tens of thousands of casualties resulted. In Wuhan, rightist army commanders violently suppressed rebel mass organizations and kidnapped members of the CCRG who were sent to resolve the crisis. These developments threatened to derail the Cultural Revolution and push the country into chaos.

Mao and the broad Left Alliance that was leading the Cultural Revolution called on the People’s Liberation Army to intervene and support the Left forces. In Wuhan, several divisions of the PLA surrounded the army mutineers and forced their surrender. In August 1967 many mass organizations were disbanded in an attempt to halt factional fighting.

By 1968, three-in-one revolutionary committees had been organized in all of the provinces, with the PLA playing an important role. The revolutionary committees helped reconstitute the party, bringing in new revolutionary activists, including large numbers of women, in the following years.[14] The number of CCP members grew from 17 million in 1962 to 28 million in 1973.

The initial upsurges of the Cultural Revolution, which brought tens of millions of people into political motion, cleared the way for path-breaking social transformations. Universities were opened up to workers and peasants. Women broke into skilled higher paid jobs in industry and into positions of leadership.

Workers helped to manage factories, and cadre worked on shop floors. Doctors settled down in the countryside and trained 750,000 “barefoot doctors”–thereby narrowing the gap between urban and rural medical services. (See pages 23-51 for discussion of these transformations.)

In April 1969, the Ninth Congress of the CCP announced the consolidation of the victories of the first three years of the Cultural Revolution, upheld the expulsion of Liu Shaoqi from the party, and designated Defense Minister Lin Biao as Mao’s successor. However, this display of party unity obscured the development of deep political differences between Mao and Lin over a number of questions. Mao was especially concerned about the growing number of PLA commanders in the top levels of the party, and by Lin’s promotion of a personality cult around Mao that was actually meant to promote Lin himself as another political “genius.”[15]

China’s support for people’s struggles around the world increased greatly during the Cultural Revolution. China sent billions of dollars in military aid and over 300,000 troops to North Vietnam to operate anti-aircraft batteries, build roads and perform logistical work that freed up North Vietnamese regiments to engage the U.S. military in the south. The People’s Republic sent military aid and provided training to guerillas fighting against apartheid South Africa, the Portuguese colonies in Africa, neo-colonialist regimes in France’s former colonies, and against the Zionist settler state of Israel.

China denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and its expansionist aims. Millions of copies of the Red Book were distributed around the world, providing an introductory course to the strategy and tactics of the Chinese revolution and to Mao Zedong Thought.

In 1969, clashes between Soviet and Chinese forces on China’s northern border, followed by ominous Soviet movements threatening the use of nuclear weapons against China, forced the CCP leadership to reassess its position of seeing the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists as equally dangerous enemies. Mao and Zhou Enlai agreed that an “opening to the West” was necessary. Lin Biao, supported by a powerful group of generals and party leaders, opposed this new policy.

As Lin attempted to build up a factional network in the army to strengthen his hand, Mao took an inspection trip in the fall of 1971 to ensure the reliability of the regional military commanders. Realizing that he was about to lose power, Lin attempted to organize a coup d’etat. When this failed, he fled China and died in a plane crash in Mongolia.

In the wake of the traumatic “Lin Biao affair,” an influential group of party leaders and military commanders[16] who had been demoted during the Cultural Revolution were brought back with the backing of Premier Zhou Enlai. This process culminated in a key turning point, the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping, the “number two capitalist roader,” in March 1973 and his appointment as Deputy Premier.

Over the next two years, Deng worked on a 10,000 word “General Program of Work for the Whole Party and the Whole Nation” that included restoring top-down management of enterprises, factory rules to push workers harder, reorienting teaching in the universities to train a new elite of specialists, and importing Western technology—in short, a program to overturn the revolutionary transformations of the Cultural Revolution.

Deng’s policies also included advocacy of the Three Worlds Theory. This called for a strategic entente with the Western imperialists and pro-Western “third world” countries to facilitate China’s economic growth. Mao, in contrast, upheld self-reliant economic development. He argued that tactical unity with the U.S. in some areas was necessary to deal with the Soviet threat to China, and opposed efforts to reduce support for revolutionary struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America.[17]

Even though four leftists associated with Mao (Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan and Jiang Qing, the so-called “gang of four,”[18] ) received leading positions at the Tenth Congress of the CCP in 1973, the tide had shifted within the party. In factories, people’s communes and schools, the Cultural Revolution was under attack and the leftist forces were on the defensive.
Premier Zhou began to challenge the Maoist tenet of putting politics in command of enterprises, and led efforts to reinstitute the old system of entrance examinations for universities, which had been condemned as a bourgeois policy earlier in the Cultural Revolution.[19] According to an active participant in the educational reforms at a university in Fujian Province, due to the renewed emphasis on admission exams, by 1975 at least half of the student body were the sons and daughters of urban cadre and intellectuals.[20]
Nevertheless, there was considerable resistance to the rightist offensive. The Four and their supporters around the country were the most vocal and visible opponents. Dazibaos appeared in Beijing in 1974 defending the revolutionary committees as a vital achievement of the Cultural Revolution.[21] At a machine tools plant in Guangzhou, workers attacked the managers for relying solely on technical solutions without “mobilizing the spirit of the workers.”[22]

By 1973, Mao had become more critical of Zhou, whose authority and prestige in the party was only second to that of Mao. Zhou’s espousal of the “four modernizations” along with Deng–which made economic development the primary task for the country—was in opposition to Mao’s view that socialist economic growth required bringing forward the political initiative of the masses of people to consciously direct production in their interests, overcome social inequalities, and continue to wage class struggle against revisionist party leaders and their policies.[23]

Zhou had also steered the nationwide campaign to “criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” into a campaign against ultra-leftism. Mao saw this is a direct attack on the Cultural Revolution and its supporters.[24] In the course of this campaign in 1973-74, the Four linked Confucius with Zhou, comparing Confucius’ defense of established authority with Zhou’s support for the rehabilitation of party leaders who had opposed the Cultural Revolution.[25]

During these years, even while in declining health, Mao sought to consolidate the gains of the Cultural Revolution and prepare for the next round of struggle. Though he did not appear to have full confidence in the ability of the Four to assume leadership of the party and government, he generally supported them in their back-and-forth struggle with Deng and Zhou over the direction of Chinese society. With Mao’s backing, Deng was removed from power a second time, but made a rapid comeback.

A month after Mao’s death in September 1976, army commanders supported by Deng and the centrist Hua Guofeng staged a coup, first arresting the Four[26] and then proceeding to purge those members of the CCP who continued to uphold the political objectives and achievements of the Cultural Revolution.[27] This initiated an inexorable process of dismantling socialism and building a new form of capitalism with “socialist” trappings. According to Dongping Han, “The complete negation of the Cultural Revolution following Deng Xiaoping’s return to power in 1978 was like a quick deep frost on tender spring crops.”[28]

While the Western press raves about Dengist China’s rapid economic growth and the development of a “new middle class” (composed of only 10% of the population), the bitter fruits of capitalist restoration can be seen today in the brutal exploitation of Chinese workers in plants owned by multinational corporations, the creation of an unemployed mass of 150 million former peasants who travel from city to city in search of work, the collapse of the rural health care system, the reappearance of female infanticide, and the fouling of air and water throughout the country. Chinese state-owned enterprises are also exporting capital, investing billions of dollars to grab control of oil and other natural resources in Africa and Latin America. And to project its power abroad, the government is rapidly building up a modern military.

Part 3: Coming soon.

1 One of five strategic passes in the area.
2 This refers to a famous poem from the Tang dynasty.
3 “The big character poster was a very flexible, effective and convenient political instrument. All it took was some ink, some paper, a brush, and the ability to write. Even if a person could not write, he or she could always find somebody else to help write a poster.” Dazibaos were one of the “four bigs” employed during the Cultural Revolution. The others were daming “great airing of opinions), dafang (great freedom), and dabianlun (great debate). Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Educational Reforms and their Impact on China’s Rural Development, 2000, pp. 59, 60.
4 The street on which the Soviet embassy was located was renamed Anti-Revisionist Street, and the British colony of Hong Kong was renamed Expel-the-Imperialists City.
5 While most Red Guard organizations targeted revisionist authorities and feudal customs, rival groups of Red Guards, often children of high-ranking party cadre, organized themselves to defend their privileges and the positions of their parents. In many schools and campuses, sharp struggle broke out between revolutionary and “loyalist” Red Guard organizations.
6 Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, 2006, p. 92. This book contains some useful detail. However, it omits any discussion of the Cultural Revolution’s achievements, and claims that the Cultural Revolution was an unnecessary upheaval characterized by “murder and mayhem” that led to the capitalist restoration under Deng Xiaoping.
7 Jan Myrdal and Gun Kessle, China: The Revolution Continued, 1970, pp. 106-107.
8 Dongping Han, pp. 55-56.
9 Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution, by Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun (1997) has a detailed description of the January Storm, but is marred by its misunderstanding of the important differences between the contending workers’ organizations and the social transformations that took place during the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai.
10 MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 165.
11 A separate issue was the treatment of the temporary and contract workers, whose numbers expanded rapidly in the early 1960s as part of Liu Shaoqi’s efforts to cut costs and maximize profit. These workers received no medical insurance, had no job security and were paid less than workers in the state enterprises. Due to the immediate need to focus on the task of seizing and reconstituting political power in Shanghai, their demands were not addressed until several years later. In 1971, many temporary workers were converted to permanent status, and differences between union and non-union members in medical and other welfare provisions were abolished. Perry and Li, pp. 100, 116.
12 The Paris Commune called for democratically elected leaders subject to immediate popular recall, and for the abolition of a standing army. In his discussions with Zhang Chunqiao, a member of the CCRG from Shanghai, Mao rejected the commune model. He argued that the working class still needed an advanced political leadership in the form of a Communist Party, and that a socialist country composed of federated communes could not survive in a world dominated by imperialism. Schram, p. 277-278. http://www.marxists.org
13 Perry and Li, pp. 156, 162.
14 In a speech in 1969, Mao placed emphasis on rectifying the party by the masses as it was being rebuilt: “Every branch needs to be rectified among the masses. They must go through the masses; not just a few Party members but the masses outside the Party must participate in meetings and in criticism.” “Talk at the First Plenum of the 9th Central Committee of the CCP,” Schram, p. 288.
15 As far back as 1966, Lin claimed that “Chairman Mao’s sayings, works and revolutionary practice have shown that he is a great proletarian genius…. Every sentence of Chairman Mao’s works is a truth, one sentence of his surpasses ten thousand of ours.” In a private letter to Jiang Qing, Mao’s responded, “I would never have thought that the few books I have written could have such magical powers.” Jaap van Ginneken, The Rise and Fall of Lin Piao, 1977, pp. 61-63. Lin once said, “We must firmly implement the Chairman’s instructions, whether we understand them or not.” MacFarquhar and Schoenthals, p. 98. For a description of Zhang Chunqiao’s opposition to Lin’s attempt, at a 1970 Central Committee plenum, to insert a reference to Mao’s genius in the party constitution, see ibid., pp. 328-332.
16 Several of these military commanders, including PLA Chief of Staff Yeh Chien-ying, led the military coup that ended the Cultural Revolution in 1976.
17 See “Chinese Foreign Policy During the Maoist Era and Its Lessons for Today,” pp. 28-31.
18 They were first referred to as a “gang of four” after Mao’s death and their arrest. Thus, we will refer to them as “the Four.”
19 Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Zhou Enlai: A Political Life, 2006, pp. 276-77.
20 B. Michael Frolic, Mao’s People: Sixteen Portraits of Life in Revolutionary China, 1980, p. 85.
21 In one dazibao, six mass representatives from the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee asserted that the committee had not met in session for four years and that of the original 24 workers, only one remained on the committee. Leijonhufvud, p. 123.
22 Ibid., p. 116.
23 In 1974, Mao issued three directives concerning class struggle, stability and unity, and economic growth. When Deng tried to twist them so economic development became the main task, Mao insisted that class struggle was of primary importance and should be taken as the “key link.” Deng’s is reported to have replied, “How can we talk about class struggle every day?” Deng knew all too well against whom, and whose political program, class struggle was being waged.
24 Barnouin and Yu, Zhou Enlai, pp. 301-303; Barnouin and Yu, Chinese Foreign Policy During the Cultural Revolution, 1998, pp. 35-37. In these books the authors describe the development of political differences between Mao and Zhou in the early 1970s.
25 Barnouin and Yu, Zhou Enlai, p. 301; Han Suyin, Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1994, p. 395. While Mao was critical of Zhou in the early 1970s, especially in the area of foreign policy, he did not want to remove Zhou from power. Mao is reported to have opposed an attempt by Jiang Qing to launch an “eleventh line struggle” against Zhou in December 1973. Barnouin and Yu, p. 300.
26 After showcase “trials” in 1980-1981, Zhang, Wang and Jiang received life sentences in prison, and Yao was sentenced to 20 years.
27 In China Winter: Workers, Mandarins and the Purge of the Gang of Four (1981), Edoarda Masi, an Italian teacher at the Foreign Languages Institute in Shanghai during 1976 and 1977, reported on resistance to the coup by workers organizations and local militia. In early 1977, she visited a machine tool factory where the revolutionary committee had been purged and the workers’ productivity scores were kept on a large scoreboard. pp. 291-92. According to provincial radio broadcasts monitored abroad, strikes and attacks on party offices took place in some areas. And Mao Makes Five, ed. Raymond Lotta, 1978, p. 49.
28 Dongping Han, p. 157.