Contrary to misinterpretation in some American quarters, Mao never advocated terror, although, as Napoleon would observe: "there is a general rule that there can be no revolution without terror."
As sad a commentary as that fatalistic observation is on the nature of human affairs, its validity would be repeatedly borne out by history. Every revolution is by its nature a revolt which success and the passage of time legitimize, but in which terror is one of its inevitable phases.
Mao was Confucian in the sense that he believe that all people are good and what needed to change was the social system, and that one strand of Confucian social theory conforms closely to socialism (see below on Da'tong).
A revolution is like a volcanic eruption. It can neither be started prematurely nor stopped before it has run its full course. Like a volcano, when it erupts, its burning lava runs in all directions, destroying indiscriminately the decayed as well as the healthy. Mao Zedong would insightfully point out that a revolution is not a dinner party. It is not a parlor game of the liberal rich or academic intellectuals. A revolution is a momentous event of gigantic dimensions where powerful historical forces clash. Millions of people die for it and generations are affected by it afterwards. Its occurrence is caused by irresistible social forces against unyielding established resistance. It creates general disruption and massive destruction. Its molten lava, however, produces rich minerals for future generations when it finally cools and a solid platform on which to build.
In the name of saving the revolution, a reign of terror will strike at both the radical left and the reactionary right in order to hold the center against counterrevolutionary slippage. Paradoxically, while a reign of terror is the ultimate weapon against the counterrevolution, popular reaction against terror inevitably heralds the ultimate triumph of the counterrevolution. For terror, like all emotions of intensity, cannot be maintained permanently. It is the most agonizing affliction of the metabolism of revolutions.
All political systems dislike dissidents. The degree to which a government tolerates dissidents is a function of its perceived security. A revolutionary government, insecure by nature, generally takes no political prisoners, frequently resorting to political terror.
A few words about revolutionary political terror. A political terror in early Tang history (7th century) had been staged by the secret police (kushi) which, like roaches, normally infesting only the subterraneous world, flourished into an open epidemic, fed by the apprehension of a court haunted by the mentality of a garrison state.
At first, the victims of political terror are bona fide seditious reactionaries and other deserving criminals whose downfall delights the public, particularly the representatives of the emerging social forces. Later, the complexity of revolutionary politics gives rise to ideological polemics and esoteric sophistry that can be twisted at will to implicate anyone not popular with the secret police. Innocent men are then persecuted at the mirth of their political enemies and the frightened acquiescence of their friends. Finally, indiscriminate arrests becomes commonplace. As has been wisely said, all it takes for evil to triumph is for enough good men to keep silent.
Typically, a reign of terror begins as a temporary political necessity. In time it inevitably degenerates into a dark age of arbitrary mass arrests amid an atmosphere of witch hunt. As the social destructiveness of the terror intensifies, the political purpose of the terror would become diffused and unfocused, while unbridled personal ambition and runaway greed of the secret policemen become its main driving forces. The reigns of terror follow the same predictable pattern across cultural and political borders.
Chinese political ideology has a history of protracted contest between the vision of Da'tong (General Harmony) and the pragmatism of Xiao'kang (Individual Contentment). In contemporary political terms, it is a struggle between the noble grandeur of communal socialist vision and the utilitarian efficiency of individual private enterprise.
Mao's political rise had been predicated on his ability to skillfully manipulate the contention between these 2 ideologies for the benefit of an evolving new social order, and his post-humous fall was related to his failure to balance the same in a changing social-economic post-revolution context. Deng Xiaoping's ideology is officially based on xiao'kang. When Mao accused Deng of being a capitalist roader, he was not wrong.
Henry C.K. Liu
Charles Brown wrote:
> >>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 06/10/99 12:18PM >
> I entirely agree that secret police have no place in my utopia, and that
> the brutal idiocies of Stalinism are a betrayal of Marxism. But Kerensky or
> any other democrat you want to name would have faced the implacable
> hosility of the domestic foreign bourgeoisie. For a more recent example,
> look what happened to Allende. How do you keep the CIA at bay without jails
> and firing squads? I really don't know the answer to that, but it's not
> just a matter of making good or bad choices.
>
> Insane seems an odd word to apply to Lenin.
>
> (((((((((((((((((((((
>
> Charles: Interesting your mention of the concept of "secret police" . I was thinking recently about this standard concept from the Cold War era. Communist countries have secret police and capitalist countries don't , is the notion one gets from U.S. big brother. Here are two common sense criticisms of that mindset.
>
> Do people really think the plainclothes police in the socialist countries are unknown or SECRET to the people in those countries ? Couldn't the average person with common sense in a socialist country "spot" a cop ? (Wojtek ?) What exactly was perniciously _secret_ about the police forces in those countries ? It seems that a contrary caricature would be that the force of the police was open and intimidating, the opposite of secret.
>
> This "pernicious secretness" seems part of the fictional stereotype from the novel Big Brother, "Big Brother is watching" (when you don't know it). Yet, open threat of police force is just as pernicious; and the U.S. has as much Big Brother watching people in secret and in the open as anybody.
>
> Secondly, aren't the FBI and local "detectives" or plainclothes police, American secret police ? Doesn't America have as many secret police as anybody , undercover cops and all of that ? The Black Panthers, Communist Parties, Labor movement , Peace movement have been overrun almost with police spies, provocateurs and disruptors for decades. J Edgar Hoover was an unelected , vicious Secret Police Czar for over 50 years, longer than Beria in the Soviet Union. What could be more dictatorial and secret police controlling than that ? So much of Hoover and the FBI's political work was probably secret , that we probably don't know it all, and we know of a whole lot, in for example, COINTELPRO. What about secret paramilitary organizations such as the KKK ? The KKK are a secret, terrorist police force.
>
> Furthermore, the U.S. has numerous private police spies in the pay of the corporations. Henry Ford , the father, had an infamous internal , open and secret police force. The Biggest Brother is really watching you at work, openly and secretly, with hidden cameras and private detectives.
>
> Charles Brown