CHINA WIDENS
By George Novack
The: dragnet of the preventive political purge within the ace echelons of the Chinese Communist party is being cast far and wide. It has spread southward from the capital at Peking, where it was initiated, to Shanghai and Canton and now covers most of the principal provinces. Party branches, newspaper staffs and cultural organizations | have gone through big shake-ups in many parts of the | country."
The highest official thus far implicated is Peking's mayor, Peng Chen, member of the Politbureau and one of the top ten in the party hierarchy. He has been dismissed as first secretary of the party's. Peking Municipal Committee. With him went Iu Ping, president of Peking University, and two other officiais of the country's leading educational institution, who were accused of protecting | disgraced intellectuals guilty of bourgeois and revisionist heresies.
The entire editorial boards of the Peking Daily, and Peking Evening News and the fortnightly magazine Front Line were cashiered for aublishing articles by men who, thovgh holding top party posts, had committed "heinous. antiparty and anti-Socialist crimes." All staffs had compounded their guilt by not showing enough repentance when caught red-handed, it was said.
An unnamed director in the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee who is most probably the noted author, Chou Yang, was accused of encouraging the: production of ‘an allegorical opera by a "gangster's den" of the arts in Shanghai which was really intended to urge party leaders to give up office in favor of the revisionists. Since 1951, Chou. has served as vice-minister of Cultural Affairs, and vice-chairman of the Al1l-China Federation ‘of Literary and Art Circles. He is a well-known exponent of official views in philosophy. Lu Ting- -yi, director of the Propaganda Department, has not been seen in. Peking since the end of February.
If official statements are taken at face value, the situation is grave. A June 4 editorial in Jenmin Jih Pao, the Communist party's central newspaper, declared that even the oldest and topmost leaders would be removed if they opposed Mao's policies. "Anyone who opposes Chairman Mao Tse-tung, opposes Mao Tse-tung's thoughts, opposes the ‘party: central leadership, opposes the proletariat's dictatorship, opposes the correct way of socialism, whoever that may be, however high may be the position and however old his standing, he will be struck down by the entire party and by the entire people," the editorial said.
‘The party magazine Hung Chi warned June 10 against the risksof a bourgeois counterrevolution and asserted there would be bloodshed unless steps were taken to stop it. The editorial called
on the Chinese. ‘peopte. to. guard against a "counterrevolutionary" _ uprising. on: the 1956 Hungarian model. It said bourgeois: elements. in China remain unreconciled and "there may be a spontaneous outburst of: bourgeois: strength" at any moment. It declared that, those who wanted toi disrupt the party from within would have ‘to be. crushed , "because? the. ‘danger in disguise.is the most serious danger.’ .
| Such: ominous statements indicate that the ruling group | eee around Mao, and very likely the army chief, Defense Minister Lin” Piao, are resolved to eliminate all those dissidents within the party and its high command who have any question about its current course or the wisdom and: authority of the infallible premier.
Recent reverses in the foreign field extending from the Sino-Soviet dispute to Indonesia would seem to call for an "agonizing reappraisal" of Peking's international orientation. Changes at home are also projected.
According to the usually well-informed Toronto Star . correspondent, Mark Gayn, a fierce dispute is in progress over agrerian policy, the most sensitive of domestic issues. Dissidents have suggested that the peasants. be allowed to sell in the open > market the produce grown on their tiny private plots. He writes. that the government plans to introduce some unpopular measures in*the next two months, involving the socialization of the peasant plots, which may in good years provide up to half a family' s income, and revisions in the system of payment for work done in the commune fields.
Whatever is contemplated in the rural economy, it is obvious that the repressive measures against the intellectuals is the regime ' s reply to the desire for more freedom of thought and expression among writers, dramatists, moviemakers, historians, philosophers’ and journalists. This is the darkest hour for China's literati since the crackdown following the short-lived "hundred flowers bloom a episode" in 1957. They are so far the chief sacrificial victims to the idolatrous cult of Mao's omniscience.
If the Peking regime was democratic and scrupulously internationalist in outlook, it would, as Castro and his associates have so often done on similar occasions, have come before the nation and stated what problems were involved, what the essential divergences were, and why the course adopted was preferable and necessary.
If the Chinese Communist party operated on the principles of democratic centralism along Leninist lines, its members would be fully informed about the contending views and arguments so they ~would be able to discuss, criticize, and decide upon them. In this way party democracy and the control of the ranks over the leaders would be exercised and guaranteed.
What prevails is quite different. Instead ‘of a dialogue between the government and people and a give- -and-take discussion
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within the party, a screeching, deafening monologue is blared out upon the country like martial music from a loudspeaker. Only the line of the officialdom which is conducting the purge is heard.
_ Yet no clear and compretiéisible explanation of the areas or . issues in dispute is given. ‘They hurl far-fetched accusations, . imprecations, threats, and other kinds of verbal violence as morally” broken individuals engage in humiliating recantations and selfcriticism which dishonor the regime that requires them.and discredit the name. of. socialism.
“Instead of reasoned debate; noisy demonstrations of students take place in front of professors’ offices. Culprits are stigmatized in the press as "rattlesnakes" and as class enemies who are no better. than counterrevolutionary landlords and capitalists. And there are no means of verifying the charges. -
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Despite their disagreements on other matters, the Chinese Communist leaders show themselves to be the same as their Soviet counterparts in their manner of dealing withdivergences in their. own circles. When Khrushchev ousted the Molotov—Kaganovich team in 1957, they were not allowed to utter a word in public or to the | party in their defenSe nor have they attended any subsequent party congresses, despite their long tenure in the leadership. :
When Khrushchev was thrown out overnight in 1964, he, too, was given no chance to answer his opponents. He abruptly became, like Stalin, a political and historical "unperson." Hailed as the illustrious herald of the coming Communism at the twenty-second party congress, he was not present at the recent twenty-third congress, or even mentioned by name in its proceedings. Who. among the present luminaries. We may ask, will get similar treatment at the next congress? ~
In their polemics during the Sino-Soviet controversy, the Chinese Communists averred, in defiance of Stalinist custom, that the majority could be wrong and the minority right. Yet they refuse so admit or opply this excellent axiom to their own party life today.
isn't at possible that certain persons in the minority may be right, at least on certain points, against the present positions of the ruling cadre and shouldn't that be taken into account in the conduct of the controversy? This possibility was one of the major reasons for Lenin's organizational method of democratic centralisn.
a However, no one can be right’ against the sagacity of Mao. This is so all-sufficient that the Chinese CP has not had to hold a national congress in at least eight years. Its record is worse than that of the Soviet Communist party. Since it lost Stalin, the CPUSSR has held congresses much more often, even though these have
been largely bureaucratic parades of cut—and- dried policy decisions.
Outside of the top. ‘bureaucratic circles, ‘the ‘rank and file. of the. -party and friends and allies in other countries have no way of knowing the score. They are reduced to groping in the dark for clues and hints of what is at issue in the ruling summits.
- Such monolithism is a baneful heritage of Stalinism. It is the mode of operation favored by irremovable bureaucrats who grow accustomed to working out their policies and arriving at decisions without prior submission to the Judgment of their own ranks and rectification by then. .
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The Soviet authorities have yet to comment on the internal conflict in China. We do not know the reasons for this restraint. But if they were genuine disciples of Lenin, and. not of Stalin, they would be suffering a case. of bad conscience. a
‘One of ‘the main points of controversy - in the party and army is reported-to revolve around relations with the USSR. This isa complex problem from: Peking's vantage point. --
“Moscow has carefully refrained from giving an unequivocal “-pledge to-Peking or letting Washington and the world understand that, in case of attack by the U.S., it is ready to come.to China's defense. Peking has observed how sluggishly the Kremlin reacted against Johnson's bombings of north Vietnam.
The Mao leadership is wrong in refusing to participate ina united front with other workers states against U.S. imperialist intervention because of its differences with the Soviet revisionists. But it has cause to suspect Moscow's good faith and intentions and accusing it of collusion with Washington against the People's Republic of China.
At this juncture of peril to Vietiam end China, it is. imperative that the Soviet government,'which has the military might to make its promise "credible," make it plain that it would not and could not stand aside if China is attacked:*°On the other side, Peking should alter its intransigent attitude and enter into the broadest united front of workers states to strengthen the defense of the revolution in southeast Asia. These should be twin pillars of a correct internationalist policy in the present eritical situation for world peace.
One further consideration might’ be brought to the attention of Mao's mind and its interpreters. The National Liberation Front, Hanoi and Peking have all expressed appreciation of the American antiwar movement and recognized the role it can | play in deterring or halting Johnson's war drive. oe
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The impermissible methods employed by the Mao regime against its Communist critics inside the party makes a very unfavorable impression upon the best elements among the antiwar forces. These young rebels value truth, honesty, plain dealing above all else. That has been one of the sources of Castro's magnetism for then.
They detest lies and equivocation by political leaders of any type and consciously reject the deceitful policies of Stalinisn, as the American CP leaders have found out. Monolithism is antipathetic to the democratic ‘spirit of their radicalism and idealism.
They not only spark the expanding "bring the troops home ... now" movement which is unprecedented in twentieth century American experience. They have been foremost in demanding U.S. diplomatic recognition of China, an end to the boycott and blockade, and admission of China into the United Nations.
As the firmest partisans of ‘revolutionary China and the Vietnamese freedom fights, they occupy within the bastion of imperialism a decisively important sector of the anti-imperialist and antiwar front. Bureaucratic methods of dealing with political dissenters depresses these militants and makes their task of defending China and the colonial revolution more difficult.
‘Isn't their situation worth taking into account by the Maoists for the sake of the security of China itself against further aggressions by the U. Ss. imperialists?
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