young Red Guards that. have marked the second stage of the so-called "cultural revolution" convulsing China have startled the world. The bizarre and repellent features attending them have led many people to wonder what these events © are. all about. Have the. Chinese Communist leaders gone out of their minds? they ask. What is the meaning of this turbulent campaign | against a bewildering array of targets ranging from aged Catholic nuns and statues of Buddha, Western-style clothes, shoes and haircuts,. to noted intellectuals, educators and veteran party leaders? It is indicative that even the. Albanian Communist party leaders have been noticeably reserved in their references to the "cultural revolution.
There is a rational motivation and a consistent method discernible in this apparent madness. The People's Republic of China confronts the very real and growing threat of attack by. the United States. Secretary.of State Rusk has proclaimed that Peking is the. . prime instigator of the National Liberation Front and Hanoi in : sustaining the war in Vietnam. In the escalation of its operations the U.S. military machine is heading toward China's borders. On September 19:the State Department, in trying to answer Peking's charges: that: American planes twice bombed Chinese territory this month, wounding three peasants, could only claim that the raids may have been made: in error. :
Since the extension of U.S. intervention, Peking has been extremely careful not to give the: Pentagon war hawks pretexts for implementing their contingency plans to destroy China's nuclear ~ installations. Johnson's fabrication: ofan armed encounter inthe Gulf of Tonkin to justify the initiation of air attacks on north Vietnam shows that he, like Hitler, can trump up whatever incidents are needed for aggression. Nonetheless, the Chinese leaders are obligated to take all precautions to meet the anticipated armed assault. The well-known writer:on. Chinese affairs, Edgar Snow, who has excellent sources of information, is reported to have said that.since early -1965 Mao and his entourage have been acting as though Washington intends to wage war on mainland China.
: ‘Apart from the military moves involved, ‘the civilian population has to be prepared for resistance and possibly prolonged guerrilla warfare. The "cultural revolution" makes.sense as a device thought up. by the Maoists to promote this purpose. They thereby seek to solidify the masses around the regime and remove all | sources and traces of disaffection which might impair national unity.
Facing a comparable threat from imperialist aggression before the Second World War, Stalin.resorted to similar methods, stimulating the nationalist as well as the defensive revolutionary sentiments of the Russian people, attempting to cement their solidarity before the class enemy while tightening his bureaucratic
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grip upon the country.
The prominence given the People's Liberation Army, which is being held up as the original "school of the revolution," confirms this supposition. The country is increasingly dominated by military men from Defense Minister Lin Piao, who has been designated Mao's second in command, to the new acting Minister of Culture, who was recently a soldier. To accentuate the army's importance Mao himself appeared. at an August 18 rally in military uniform.
If the new turn in domestic policy is comprehensible as a response to this critical external danger, the ways of furthering its objectives are surely open to question.
The Chinese leaders not only fear an American attack; they evidently believe that the Soviet Union will not come to their defense if it materializes. That is why they keep accusing Moscow of collusion with Washington and Tokyo against them and why Red Guards demonstrated in front of the Soviet embassy and manhandled several of its officials. These incidents have drawn sharp protests from Moscow and deepened the Sino-Soviet rift on the state level.
Even if Brezhnev and Kosygin intend to leave China in the lurch (a possibility which cannot be excluded), does that justify the tactics followed by Peking? It is imperative for all the workers states to close ranks and act together against the fateful expansion of American aggression in Southeast Asia. Instead of inciting and applauding attacks on Soviet representatives in China, Peking should have seized upon the Russian proposals for common action, requested the convening of a conference of all Communist governments to consider concerted steps to aid the Vietnamese, and should have proposed a Sino-Soviet warning. to Washington that any further escalation would be countered: with graduated reprisals. The USSR has the deterrents to make such an ultimatum credible and give pause to the Pentagon strategists.
Cuba, the Japanese CP, the editorial board of Sartre's Temps Modernes and the Fourth International have been urging some such course of action. It would serve to mobilize the maximum forces on a global scale to slow down the Washington warmakers, assist the Vietnamese revolution and north Vietnam, and defend the People's Republic of China itself. Such a line would certainly muster far more understanding and support from friends of China all over the world than the present sectarian attitude and excesses attending Mao's "great cultural revolution" which have been denounced by Communist leaders from Cuba to north Korea.
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The actions’ of .the Red Guards are unlikely to win friends for the regime at home either. Under the approving eyes of Mao and Lin Piao, detachments of young militants have been striking out wildly at "old ideas, old customs and old habits.
Whatever is foreign, "bourgeois," or associated with China's . past has been liable to indiscriminate attack. The cemetery for foreigners in Peking has been closed and renamed the "Anti-impe- : rialist, Antirevisionist Orchard." Classical Greek and Roman statues have been smashed. Goethe and Shakespeare have been blacklisted. Pravda reports ‘that a memorial to Pushkin was torn down in Shanghai and "posters eulogizing Mao Tse-tung were pasted on the pedestal.
Ancient Chinese art objects have been destroyed as "demons and monsters of the old ruling class." The Shanghai home of 75-year old Madame Sun Yat-sen, vice-president of the nation, has been ransacked. Premier Chou En-lai had to admonish Red Guards for pasting up posters against Mrs. Sun and trying to remove busts of her :dead: husband , the honored founder of the first Chinese Republic in doi, ‘from buildings.
People have been stripped of their jewelry and other ornaments, forced to take off Western clothes arid change "bourgeois" haircuts. Cosmetics have been removed from shop counters. Statues of -Bhudda have been taken out of Tibetan lamaseries. Old women have. been dragged through the streets of Peking with placards hanging around their necks reading "I oppose the revolution."
Is this how to "destroy the old world" and "establish a new: world"? Why do the party leaders feel impelled, seventeen years after the conquest of power, to encourage measures of this kind which damage the:reputation of the regime, weaken the already demoralized and:disoriented pro- -Maoist forces elsewhere, and intensify Peking’ s isolation in the Communist and colonial world?
‘According to the official explanation, these drastic steps are being taken to .extripate revisionists, right opportunists, restorationists, and bourgeois "monsters" aided and abetted by "sinister: anti-party and anti-socialist counter-revolutionary gangsters." We are told that the Red Guards are the banner bearers. of an epoch-making "proletarian cultural revolution" which will totally transform the nature of Chinese man. Let us examine these two points.
So little reliable information is available that one. can only guess: at the views and orientations of the forces now locked: in struggle. Selected capitalist entrepreneurs, who are often exhibited to foreign visitors, have been permitted to operate in == Communist China under strict supervision by. the government. One demand of the demonstrators is that these and other privileged elements be deprived of their | dividends, bank accounts and opulent living standards. Ss
However, these remnants of the old order carry little social weight compared to the widespread petty-bourgeois forces which are deeply rooted in the predominantly peasant population and among the state functionaries and intelligensia. Spokesmen for such» tendencies with rightist and even counterrevolutionary leanings may have been emboldened by China's string of reverses on the
foreign field and the domestic difficulties and errors committed by the regime to raise their heads and look about for openings and allies.
But the spectrum of dissent extends far beyond such quarters. It ‘reaches into the party, the government, the army and intellectual circles where highly placed personages are dissatisfied with Mao's policies on one ground or another. Some have reportedly been pressing to change the out-of-hand rejection of any alliance with the Soviet Union and may even have evinced sympathy for Moscow. The confluence of these variegated trends may well have presented the specter of a rising opposition from the right to Mao's general line.
It is asserted that the Red Guards are mobilized exclusively against such rightist forces. But this is only part of the picture. They are being used to suppress all dissent, whether from revisionist and "opportunist" opponents or from more radical communist voices on the left. This is the most ominous and reactionary aspect of the affair. Any sort of criticism, regardless of its aims or inspiration, is being lumped together and branded as counterrevolutionary and unpatriotic. The formula for this stringent thought control is craven obeisance to the all-sufficing thought of Mao Tse-tung who has just been elevated to an almost god-like status as "supreme commander. "*
The wave of suicides among prominent personages and the unrestrained and unfounded accusations launched against others .shows how unbearable the atmosphere of intimidation has become. Typical are the denunciations in the press of Li Ta, one of the three surviving founders of the Chinese Communist party and for the past fourteen years president of Wuhan University. According to the army paper, "Li Ta is a shameless traitor, a national disgrace, a veteran anti-Communist, a despotic landlord and anti-socialist, anti-Mao Tse-tung-in-thought shock trooper, and an extremely rabid and stubborn countér-revolutionary element." Jenmin Jih Pao called him "a landlord element who has always exploited the peasants."
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Mao and his associates have not scrupulously conformed to constitutional rules of party life. The CP has not held a national convention for a decade. This time Mao has gone further by forming battalions outside the party and its youth organizations which are conducting the purge through extralegal channels from one end of the country to the other.
The Red Guards have castigated the party figures or administrative units that the men at the top want to undermine or remove
*The Paris daily Le. Monde. reported September. 17 that placards and banners have appeared in Peking calling Mao Tse-tung. the "great leader, spiritual guide and supreme commander of the Chinese people.
from their posts. This has split the CP in many places and provoked sharp encounters between the Red Guards and local leaders and organizations. "In provinces as far apart as Shensi and Heilungkiang in the north and Kweichow and Szechwan in the south," says a September 7 New York Times dispatch from Hong Kong, "struggles are ; developing between Maoist and anti-Maoist factions using rival groups as pawns in their power play. " That same day the theoretical journal of the Central Committee, Hung Chi, declared that powerful elements within the party were waging a power struggle against Mao Tse-tung and Defense: Minister Lin. Piao. It said these "enemies" would be crushed.
The youth movement is in disarray. The Central Committee of the Young Communist League was disbanded a month ago on the ground that its leaders wanted to transform the organization into” a weapon for restoring capitalism. It was replaced by a "revolutionary group" that was then also removed. Now fresh posters call for a new youth organization to be formed under a different name. All foreign students have been asked to leave China by the end of September.
The youth cadres appear to have divided into different contingents. On one side is a minority centered in the universities which is critical of the leadership and afraid of being beaten down. On the other side are those who make up the Red Guards. These less sophisticated zealous young militants are accustomed to carry out directives from Mao and his men in whom they repose blind confidence and unlimited trust. They, have apparently plunged into this latest crusade, as they have in previous campaigns, full of fervor and intent on sweeping away all who are pointed out as open or hidden opponents of the regime.
In some cases and places the drive has gotten out of hand and passed: beyond the control of its promoters. Its participants have had to be curbed and called to account. This can be deduced from orders issued to the Red Guards not to interfere with agri- © cultural or industrial production. An editorial in Hung Chi on September 19 admonished the Guards to follow rules of obedience to orders, speaking politely, not hitting or swearing at people, not damaging crops, not taking liberties with women or maltreating captives. Such warnings would not have been given unless incidents of this kind had occurred.
Pravda has been printing more detailed and chilling accounts of brutalities. "The Red Guards beat up a worker because he happened to be in a room where they found a portrait of Mao - Tse+tung with a crack in the frame," it said. "They beat people with sticks, rifle butts, belts, chains and electric rods. One man was— tortured a whole: night until he died." - at
The "proletarian cultural revolution" is running up against resistance from workers and peasants. Japanese and other correspondents in Peking have reported numerous bloody clashes in which Chinese army troops have been forced to intervene.
The employment of teen-age militants in this fashion is risky for the leadership. Their eagerness in attacking certain sections of the party apparatus betrays a hostility toward its officialdom which may later boomerang. In any event, the regime is at fault for abusing and misdirecting the ardor and idealism of these youth. —
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fao has exceedingly ambitious ends in view. In his twilight years he aspires to shape the youth and remold their elders into incorruptible soldiers of communism, as he understands it, who will be armored against all temptations to relapse into the old ways. This accounts in part for the Spartan severity and ruthlessness of this new "leap forward" which is being carried out in the now familiar extreme "Maoist" manner.
Is this campaign an authentic "proletarian cultural revolution," as Peking and its followers contend?
A thoroughgoing reconstruction of human relations, customs and habits, art and culture, is the logical sequel and eventual culmination of a profound popular revolution like that in China. However, this can only be the ripened achievement of a wholly renovated social order, based not only on new economic foundations but on an unprecedented flow of wealth, a reduction of compulsory labor, an end to state coercion, and harmonious human relations. This is the collective work of a succession of generations. It cannot be produced on command from above in obedience to the edict of an all-powerful individual. Such an arbitrary conception could only emanate from the heads of autocrats who travesty the aims of scientific socialism.
In any case, such a profound transformation of life cannot be consummated in an impoverished, backward and besieged country, with immense unsolved economic problems, like China today. It cannot be accomplished amidst fierce social conflicts. The socialist cultural revolution in the Marxist, not Maoist sense, is not a weapon or a phase in the class struggle. It will have to grow out of the dying away of social differentiations, cleavages and antagonisms in a stateless and classless society of equals elevated high above the standards yet attained anywhere. China is very far from that.
Nor can the coming socialist culture be created within the boundaries of a single country, as the Maoists, imitating Stalin, proclaim. It will not bear a class imprint even of a proletarian character. It will be the first classless and universal culture, built on the highest technology and science, to which each country and people will contribute its distinctive gifts and proper share.
To be sure, these radically new human relations and its appropriate art-and culture will have to be prepared.in the trans-~ itional period leading from class society to socialism. But its
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short rations, any more “han the” ‘roots | of” religious belief can be eliminated by government edict or desecration of churches. Such tactics reinforce anticommunist prejudices, cast discredit upon socialism, and. ‘repel people from its principles. :
At. the “very least a proletarian campaign ‘and culture ‘should . serve ‘ta.enlarge the democratic control of the workers. and peasants over their economy, their party and their government. The very methods employed ensure that the masses and the communist ranks will emerge from this upheaval not-with more but with less of a role in decision-making ona local, regional and national level. Dos
The recent meeting of the ‘Central Committee —- the first. in four years (aside from possible secret ones) -~ consolidated all powers around Mao and Lin Piao, the.army chief. The ousting of all dissidents, right and left, right or wrong, should further tighten the hold of the Maoist bureaucracy over.all spheres of Chinese life.
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During the campaign a sign outside a pedicab depot in Peking read that vehicles may still be hired but the passenger is to do the work while the-driver sits in the passenger. seat behind. (The pedieab is a tricycle pedaled by a man. This kind of coolie transportation was a-symbol of personal and national degradation under imperialist domination.)
Superficial observers might interpret this as a sign that the privileged elements are being overturned in Communist China as the toilers move into the driver's seat: This is what the official promoters of the purge would have us believe.
However, the very absurdity of the innovation should put us on guard against so simple a conclusion. The reversal of roles between the passenger and the _chauffeur-pedaler 1 has not worked. in practice. — .
So, whatever is being knocked topsy-turvy, the powers and political influence of the working masses are not being augmented. On the. contrary, autonomy of .the bureaucracy is being buttressed by the smothering of the rights of expression within the party. . and the country. Regardless of the motives of its initiators,. ‘the. "ereat cultural revolution" testifies to the hardening of pureaucratic rulership, not to any: revolutionary replenishment from below or extension of workers and peasants. democracy in China.
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