under the Hybrid Marxism thread
>Also, I hope that if Henry returns to discussing Confucianism again
>that he might explore the conflicting attitudes that Chinese Communists
>have displayed towards it. Why the Gang of Four for instance made a
>point of attacking Confucius while after their fall there seemed to be
>at least a partial rehabilitation of Confucius.
My understanding is that in the aftermath of the Lin Biao disaster, the Chinese Party internally came to the view that the social basis for the "incorrect" ideas lay with the overwhelming predominance of the peasantry in Chinese society. This could not be said publically but an ideological campaign against Confucianism was partly used as a way of criticising ideas characteristic of a peasant-feudal society.
How this panned out before and after the fall of the Gang of Four presumably may be the subject of learned study, but such an analysis seems to me to prepare the ground for the Chinese Party considering that there had been problems in trying to go immediately to socialism, and in some respects communism, but communism of a primitive type.
If there is some substance in this analysis of the significance of anti-confucianism, then that trend ultimately prevailed over the campaign more closely associated with the gang of four to restrict bourgeois right.
Chris Burford
London.