"The Peasant Associations' Own Slogan" was Re: Reply to Doug

[Carrol Cox]

>From *Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan*


We must combat the counter-revolutionary talk of a "movement of
riffraff" and a "movement of lazy peasants" and must be especially
careful not to commit the error of helping the local tyrants and evil
gentry in their attacks on the poor peasant class. Though a few of
the poor peasants leaders undoubtedly did have shortcomings, most
of them have changed by now. They themselvesd are energetically
prohibiting gambling and suppressing banditry. Where the peasant
association is powerful, gambling has stopped altogether and banditry
has vanished. In some places it is literally true that people do not
take
any articles left by the wayside and that doors are not bolted at night.

According to the Hengshan survey, 85 per cent of the poor peasant
leaders have made great progresds and have proved themselvesd
capable and hard working. Only 15 per cent retain some bad habits.
The most one can call these is "an unhealthy minority," and we must
not echo the local tyrants and evil gentry in undiscriminately
condemning
them as "riffraff." This problem of the "unhealthy minority" can be
tackled only under the peasant associations' own slogan of "strengthen
discipline," by carrying on propaganda among the masses, by educating
the "unhealthy minority," and by tightening the associations'
discipline;
in no circumstances should soldiers be arbitrarily sent to make such
arrests as would damage the prestige of the poor peasants and feed
the arrogance of the local tyrants and evil gentry. This point requires
particular attention.
                        *Selected Works*, Vol. I, pp. 23-24.

Kelley merely despises democracy and therefore sneers at all the
methods by which democracy can be made an actuality rather
than of leaders swaying through advertising and *her* kind of
manipulative slogans rather than the leninist slogan which summarizes
and gives focus to the practice of the people themselves. Her
boorish sneering at slogans while utterly ignorant of the history of
their political use gives the lie to her claims of extensive political
practice. She has rather engaged in bureaucratic dominance based
on intellectual charisma.

The comparison of political slogans to tv advertising or to the campaign

slogans of a political party is mere historical ignorance. Slogans
*summarize*
practice, and cannot be formed except in the context of a particular
practice
at a particular time and place. They are the polar opposite of naive
attempts
to "reach people" who aren't listening through the brilliance of one's
individual command of smart rhetoric. They express in corrigible form
the practice of those already to some extent involved in the struggle.

U.S. slogans are apt to be poisoned by the spontaneous identification of

slogans with advertising. Fore example, the proto-slogan, "Nix don't
fix" is clever, but it does not even contain a gesture towards
formulating
the experience of those whose practice generated it. If the movement
it sort of summarizes continues to grow, growth will both come through
the debate over reformulating that slogan and in the forging of more
complex slogans in the course of expanded practice. But even this
primitive slogan, with its rhyming echo of the ad jingle, can serve to
remind people acting on their own intiative in this or that particular
locality and context of what can connect their action with that of
unknown thousands around the nation or the world.

Carrol