In order to change Chinese feudal society towards Communist social
order, which is understood by Communists as a necessary goal of human
development, Mao developed specific methods out of Leninist concepts
which renedered special characteristics to Chinese Communism, its
strengths and shortcomings. These methods, above all
the system of organized mass movements, stress the change of social
consciousness, i.e. the creation of new men for a new society, as the
basis for changing reality, i.e. the mode of production. The concept of
the mass politics, relevant in Chinese political thought from ancient
time, plays a role as important as that of the elite cadre corps within
the Party.
The mass movement as an instrument of political communication from above
to below is peculiar to Chinese Communist organization. This phenomenon
is of utmost importance in understanding the nature and dynamics of the
governmental structure of the Communists Party of China (CPC). The
theoretical foundation of mass movement as a means of mediation between
the will of the leaders and the people presupposes that nothing is
impossible for the masses, quantitatively understood as a collective
subject, if their power is concentrated by a Party of correct thought
and action. This concept comes out of Mao's romantic faith in the great
strength the masses are capable of developing in the interest of their
own well-being. So the "will of the masses" has to be articulated by
the masses and within the masses. This the CPC calls the "mass line".
Mao's mass line theory requires that the leadership elite be close to
the people, that it is continuously informed about the people's will and
that it transforms this will into concrete actions by the masses.
>From the masses - back to the masses! This means: take the scattered
and
unorganized ideas of the masses and, through study, turn them into
focused and systemic programs, then go back to the masses and propagate
and explain these ideals until the masses embrace them as their own.
Thus mass movements are initiated at the highest level, announced to
Party cadres at central and regional work conferences, subject to cadre
criticism and modified, after which starts the first phase of mass
movement. Mass organizations are held to provoke the "people's will",
through readers' letters to newspapers and rallies at which these
letters are read and debated. The results are then officially discussed
by the staff of leading organs of the state and the Party, after which
the systematized "people's will" is clarified into acts of law or
resolutions, and then the mass movement spreads to the whole nation.
Until the Cultural Revolution, the history of Chinese politics is a
history of mass movements.
Mass movements successfully implemented Land Reform 1950-53; Marriage
Reform 1950-52; Collectivization 1953 - the General Line of Socialist
Transformation (from national bourgeois democratic revolution to
proletarian socialist revolution); Nationalization 1955 (from private
ownership of industrial means of production into state ownership). The
method against opposition was thought reform through "brain washing"
(without the derogatory connotation), which is a principle of preferring
to change the consciousness of political opponents instead of physically
liquidating them.
The Hundred Flower Movement, 1957 was launched on February by Mao with
his famous 4-hour speech; "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
among the People" before 1,800 leading cadres. In it, Mao distinguished
"contradiction between the enemy and ourselves"
from "contradiction among the people" which should not be resolved by a
dictatorship, i.e. physical force, but by open discussion with criticism
and counter criticism.
Up until 1957, the mass movement policies of Mao achieved spectacular
success. Land reform was completed, the struggle for women's
emancipation was progressing well, and collectivization and
nationalization was leading the nation into socialism. Health services
were a model of socialist construction in both cities and the
countryside. The Party's revolutionary leadership was accepted
enthusiastically by society.
By 1958, agriculture production almost doubled from 1949 (108 million
tons to 185 million tons), coal production quadrupled to 123 million
tons, steel production grew from 0.1 million tons to 5.3 million tons.
The only problem came from bourgeois intellectual rebellion.
On May 25, 1957 Mao expressed his anxiety at a session of the Standing
Committee of the Politburo, and gave his approval to those who warned
against too much bourgeois liberty.
That afternoon, Mao said at a Conference of Communists Youth League
cadres that "all words and deeds which deviate from socialism are
basically wrong".
At the opening session of the Peoples Congress on June 26, Zhou Enlai
initiated the "counter criticism" against the critics.
Mao's call for open criticism was serious and genuine, but the
discussion he had conceived of as a safety-valve reached a degree of
intensity he had not anticipated. Mao over-estimated the stability of
the political climate.
Against this background, the CPC stood at the crossroad of choosing the
Soviet model of development or an independent path.
Economy development was based on three elements:
1) Build up heavy industry at the expense of agriculture.
2) The establishment of an extensive system of individual incentives by
mean of which productive forces could be developed from a conviction
that the superiority of socialist modes of production would be
vindicated by visible rise in living standards,
3) The acceleration of the socialist transformation of society in order
to create the precondition required by the CPC for establishing a
socialist order.
Two paths were opened to the CPC leadership in 1958:
1) a phase of consolidation
2) pushing forward toward permanent revolution.
Mao was forced by geopolitical conditions (withdrawal of Soviet aid and
US embargo) to overcome the lack of capital through mobilization of
China's vast labor reservoir. The strategy was to connect political
campaigns to production campaigns.
Under pressure from orthodox Leninists within the Party apparatus, with
the failure of the "Hundred Flower Movement", Mao concluded it was
impossible to create a socialist consciousness through a gradual
improvement of material living conditions; that consciousness and
reality had to be changed concurrently and in conjunction through
gigantic new efforts at mobilization.
This led to the Anti-Rightist Campaign 1957-58 followed by "Three Red
Banner" in Spring 1958 initiating simultaneous development of industry
and agriculture through the use of both modern and traditional methods
of production under the "General Line of Building Socialism". It was to
be implemented through a labor intensive development policy by a "Great
Leap Forward" and by establishing a comprehensive collectivization by
establishing "People's Communes".
The GLP was not as senseless as some suggest. It called for the new
system of "Two Decentralizations, Three Centralizations, One
Responsibility." By this it was meant the decentralized use of labor and
local investment, central control over political decisions, planning and
administration of national investment capital and one responsibility
meant every basic unit to account for itself to its supervising unit.
The GLP was successful in many areas. The one area that failed
attracted the most attention. It was the area of backyard steel furnace
production. The technological requirement of steel making, unlike
hydro-electricity, did not lend itself to labor intensive mass
movements. Yet steel was the symbol of industrialization and a heroic
attempt had to be made to overcome the lack of capital. The attempt
failed conspicuously, but its damage to the economy was overrated.
The real test however, was in the People's Commune. Favorable weather
conditions produced high yields in 1958 in the experimental communes.
This led to a rush nationwide to follow suit, even though almost
everywhere the fundamental preconditions for successful operation were
absent. Most did not have adequate administrative offices, nurseries,
canteens, old peoples homes, hospitals, etc.
In other places, the local leadership took the transition to communism
at face value and severed all connection with supervising organs in the
name of the withering away of the state. Disorder grew into chaos
within months.
During the Wuhan Party Plenum, December 1958, Marshal Peng Dehuai
criticized the over-extended commune program which led to the Plenum
initiating a readjustment of the "Three Red Banner" policy.
Conccurrently the Central Committee approved "the wish of Comrade Mao
Zedong not to stand again as a candidate for the Chairmanship of the PRC
after the end of his term in office".
Liu Shaoqi was elected as head of state by the second People's Congress
on April 27, 1959 and became heir apparent after Mao in the Party.
In the fateful Lushan conference July 2-August 16 1959, Marshal Peng
shifted his criticism from policy to the person of the leader. On July
23, Mao in an emphatic speech, rejected the reproach of his critics and
declared that the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune had
brought about more advantages than disadvantages. Mao threatened an open
split:
"If we deserve to perish I shall go away, I shall go to the countryside
and lead the peasants to overthrow the government. If you of the PLA
will not follow me, the I shall find a Red Army. But I believe that the
PLA will follow me."
On August 16, 1959, Peng and his followers were condemned as an "anti
Party clique" by a resolution passed by the Eighth Plenum.
On September 17, Peng was dismissed as Defense Minister.
In late 1959, several natural disasters and bad weather condition were
reported in the press. Floods and drought brought about the "three
bitter years" of 1959-1962. After 1962, the economy recovered, but the
politic was shifting toward a struggle against revisionism which brought
on the Cultural Revolution four years later.
While Mao was the leader of the CPC, leadership was and still is based on mass support. The Chairmanship of the CPC before 1979 was similar to the position of Pope in the Catholic Church, powerful in moral authority but highly circumscribed in operational power. The GLF was the product of mass movement, not that of a single person. Mao's leadership was toward the organization of the Party and it policy formulation procedures, not the dictation of particular programs. To describe Mao as a dictator merely reflects an ignorance of the CPC power structure. The failures of the GLF and the People's Commune were caused more by implementation flaws rather than conceptual error. Bad luck and US embargo had also something to do with it. These programs resulted in much suffering, but the claim that 30 million people were murdered by Mao with evil intent does not deserve a courteous response.
Henry C.K. Liu
Michael Perelman wrote:
> We do not need to be calling each other ultra-rightist idiots. I do not Brad
> agree with Brad. William Hinton blames the famine on conflicts within the
> government that immobilized it, but that is beside the point.
>
> We must keep a modicum of courtesy here.
>
> "Craven, Jim" wrote:
>
> > Who is this ultra-rightist idiot Delong? First of all, the use of the
> > disingenuous Kirkpatrickian term "Totalitarian" versus "Authoritarian" is
> > the first give away. If you have a society of despots and death squads that
> > is anti-communist, monopoly or dependent monopoly capitalist and a
> > whore/toady of US imperialism, it is "Authoritarian"; if it is nominally
> > socialist, even more advanced in respect for basic human rights, it is
> > "Totalitarian."
> >
> > Next, let's explore the logic. Jews of the Warsaw ghetto employed violence
> > to resist genocide and the nazis employed violence to conduct genocide
> > therefore Jews = Nazis because they both employed "violence"? Or Mao
> > "killed" over 30 million Chinese (assumption to be summarily
> > asserted/accepted) and Hitler "killed" over 20 million "therefore" Evil of
> > Mao > Evil of Hitler?
> >
> > This is a good example of why the Cultural Revolution in China, depsite its
> > excesses and crimes, was fundamentally a sound idea--send hacks, toadies,
> > sycophants and ideologues/scholar despots like this Delong to the
> > countryside to slop hogs; get some of the scholar despot/whore profs off
> > their asses to do a decent days work. Since the poor have to work hard and
> > produce surpluses for the Philosopher Kings, it is legitimate to ask what of
> > value the Philosopher Kings and Scholar Despots are producing.
> >
> > And what makes this Delong worth even reading? Why does a long CV
> > automatically qualify someone (quantity versus quality) as an "established
> > scholar" or "notable scholar" without any reference to the quality of the
> > work or the experiencial-as well as theoretical--basis for any purported
> > quality or work.
> >
> > A Cold Warrior without an enemy is like a hooker without a motel or space to
> > sell his/her wares. And the sad part is that the universities are full of
> > these petiti-bourgeois self-appointed "scholars" and "experts" who turn out
> > even worse shit than this Delong is apparently turning out.
> >
> > As they say in Kerala: "In the land of the people with no nose, the one with
> > half a nose is king".
> >
> > Jim Craven
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu