rectification campaign." In contrast to the model bureaucrats who are now called on to lead the cultural revolution "more smoothly" in seizing power from themselves, the revolutionary students who were previously entrusted with this task are suddenly discovered to be full of faults. If you don't believe this, then you must read what they themselves say.
"The purely military viewpoint is fairly rampant among | some comrades (including certain leading comrades) of the Iu Hsun Corps." These comrades make the grievous error of concentrating "attention and energy solely on ‘overthrowing so and so' and 'dismis-— sing so and so from office.'" They also mistakenly hold “that the ultimate purpose of this great proletarian cultural revolution is merely to pick out a number of counter= revolutionary resivisionists." Thus they have "neglected their own ideological revolu-_ tion, neglected political and ideological education among the cadres and the masses, and havé slackened their efforts in political’ study and ideological renoulding."
Still worse, "obsessed by the purely military viewpoint," they fail to understand what the cultural revolution is really about. True, the fundamental task is to “oppose. revisionism, prevent the rise of revisionism, thoroughly uproot revisionism"™' and so on;but the "purely military viewpoint would make this great proletarian‘cultural revolution just a matter of formality..." The revisionists would be dismissed from office “organi-. sationally, but not ideologically." As one revisionist went down, another would rise in his place. And where do you think thése new revisionists would come from? Why froin those doing all the purging and overthrowing! "...we ourselves might even follow the bourgeois reactionary line....our comrades have been more or less influenced by revisionism unconsciously and our heads are more or less filled with bourgeois ideas of all kinds."
How can you expect such uncertain elements to spearhead the cultural revolution? But even this is not all. There is worse to come. “An evil wind of counterrevolutionary economism has also risen within our revolutionaries. Some comrades have been conquered by the sugar-coated bullets of the enemy and have begun to rest content with their past achievements. They chase after motorcycles, telephones and bicycles and seek a high standard of living and material benefits. Many facts proved that this wrong trend exists in the Iu. Hsun Corps."
Some of the members of the Corps "have become conceited." They "look down upon others and adopt a closed-door attitude toward those people who made mistakes yet have the determination to correct them..." The correct attitude, as Chairman Mao has pointed out, is to be a "proletarian statesman" and "be @ good at uniting with those who disagree and even with those who formerly opposed them..." Again a warning is issued: a conceited attitude is "extremely dangerous."
The Lu Hsun Corps, let it be noted, is in position to speak with authority. They were in the forefront of the struggle to seize power. "The requirements of the struggle brought members of the Iu Hsun Corps close together in October when the Corps was suppressed, encircled and attacked. The struggle between two different ideas and two different world outlooks within the corps did not manifest itself in the face of the major contradiction [between Mao and his factional opponents]. Now, as the ranks have been expanded and victories have been won [including taking over Shanghai], closed-doorisn, liberalism, mountain-stronghold mentality, sectarianism, ultrademocracy and the tendency to seek the limelight, all of which existed below the surface in the Corps are gradually coming to light. These all run counter to Mao Tse-tung's thought and are as inconmpatible with the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao as fire with water. In the final analysis, it is the word 'self-interest' that has been the root of all these evils." One can scarcely disagree with that final sentence, although it would seem advisable to include the leaders of the Maoist faction among the humans of whom this could be said.
The article concludes with the statement that "We of the Iu Hsun Corps must put our house in order ideologically and organisationally....At present, the Iu Hsun Corps badly needs to put things in order, badly needs an ‘open rectification. '"
Other moves were afoot in Shanghai at the same time. On February 24 the Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee, the highest organ of power in the city, held an en-
larged meeting that unanimously adopted a draft resolution on the present situation and tasks in Shanghai. It recognized that the “armed core of the militia, the People's Liberation Army and the armed people are the strong pillars of the temporary organ of power at each level." It called for close coordination with units of the army stationed in Shanghai. It opposed "anarchism, ultrademocracy, sectarianism, guild mentality and small group mentality [the tendency to set up new organizations having distinctive political colorations]." And it recommended that "all. revolutionary organisations openly carry out rectification campaigns." This, obviously, was an important step in widening the turn and giving it momentum.
By February 28 in Shanghai "open-door rectification" was in full swing and a dispatch from that city associated. it with "a new stage" in the cultural revolution.
A few general observations appear in order. If we leave aside Mao's campaign propaganda.with its promises about an "extensive" democracy modeled on the "Paris Commune," the aim of the "cultural revolution" from the beginning boiled down to placing . "politics in command." Sufficient citations can be adduced to show quite conclusively. that what was meant by this was the Mao faction in. command.
In the factional struggle that waged over this question and the more obscure associated issues at stake, it was evident that Mao was in a minority in the Communist party and the Communist Youth League. Without bothering about the procedures of democratic centralism to which he pays lip service, Mao appealed directly to the masses, but not as a whole and not on a clear programmatic basis.
First the school youth were mobilized and organized into Red Guards. The real power behind the Red Guards was the army which opened the way for them and checked actual or potential countermoves by Mao' s factional opponents.
» As the factional struggle. came to a head, appeals went out to the workers. Simultaneously the army intervened openly inthe struggle to one degree or another wherever it was felt necessary; and its intervention appears to have been decisive, although in face of the paucity of hard information, a very. tight censorship and news deliberately distorted by many interested parties, not least of all the Maoists, this conclusion can only be advanced tentatively. In addition, the internal strains in the army, as well as those in the peasantry, remain unknown ; and these are extremely important in reaching an accurate assessment.
In the process of bringing the factional struggle to a head, broad forces were set in motion. These, particularly the working-class sectors, tended to move against the bureaucratic structure as a whole much in the pattern of the Hungarian workers although only in an incipient way up to now. Were this movement to continue, it would tend to develop into a political revolution that would retain and reinforce the big gains of the revolution, above all the new property forms, while instituting some form of proletarian democracy in the example set by the soviets that appeared in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. :
Mao and the leaders around him are well aware of this as can be gathered from their repeated references to "Petofi clubs" and "“anarchistic" elements who want "ultrademocracy." -
In face of this threat to their "self-interest," the bureaucratic factions had much to gain by closing ranks, if necessary even settling for an arbiter, whether a sector of:the -bureaucracy or an individual, around which.a modus vivendi could be reached.. Both the advance of the army in the factional dispute and the subsequent "rectification campaign" reflect this.
There is considerable speculation in the bourgeois press about a "sag" in Mao's drive, about the army not having succeeded in taking over in some areas, of suffering reverses and even being torn internally. There may be some substance to the speculation; it.is more likely, however, that this is incidental phenomena.
If the weight of the army has proved decisive in the scales, it is in the logic of the situation for immediate moves to be made to show that its aim in its new role is not to bring chaos and disaster but on the’ contrary to serve as a responsible stabiliz-— ing force. Aside from the objective of winning over the opposition (one of the main themes in the "rectification campaign") or at least neutralizing it, the regime is faced with an imperious need to bring order into the situation. Dangers are pressing from all sides, ranging from the threat of an imperialist attack to a dip on the agricultural front that could entail acute scarcities in the near future if not worse.
Besides this, a breathing space is required to consolidate the factional gains
and sift things out. Whether it is Mao or a new combination’ in the leadership, the exact lineaments ‘of which. cannot yet be determined exactly, the immediate need facing the ruling group 'is‘to relax tensions. ~~
To accomplish this,:concessions are required, — particularly to those sectors of» the bureaucracy which have ‘been under -heaviest pressure and upon which the regime after all résts. This is one:of the main purposes of the present "rectification campaign." Other moves, suchas gétting the Réd* Guards back home; opening the schools and dealing’. some educational blows to those elements who had begun to hope for a bit of proletarian’ democracy and. an improvement in diving Standards , fall naturally into the same pattern.
A big ‘question remains. “Can the forces unleashed ‘Dy the appeals. to" the revolutionary-minded youth and vanguard sectors of the workers be bottled up again? The question is fateful for the Chinese Revolution, tHe defense of thé Chinese workers state and the possibility of a truly-giant stride forward; for it will determine whether: a mere shift has: occurred inthe relative positiotis of the various sectors of the bureaucracy or whether a rift-was opened of such proportions as to permit the masses to-surge forward in the political arena with ‘innovations of their own aimed at bringing the® bureaucracy as a whole under democratic control. ‘As yet it is impossible to say how soon an answer will be forthcoming.