Vol. 5, No. 4 January 27, 1967
ECONOMIC BENEFITS AT ISSUE AMONG CHINESE WORKERS
The January 1 issue of Red Flag, one of the publications of the Red Guards in Peking, carried an attack on a well-known figure in China -- Shi Chuan-hsiang. He was accused of being a "protégé of Liu Shao-chi," the head of the People's Republic of China, who himself but recently stood at the side of Mao Tse-tung to receive the homage of millions marching through Tien An Men Square, yet who is today reviled as the chief of a "handful" seeking to restore capitalism in China.
Only last September Shi Chuan-hsiang was still one of the figures held up for emulation in the Chinese press. As "the all-China model night-soil collector," his efforts to advance the "cultural revolution" were cited everywhere. The story about how he took Red Guards on his round of duties and showed them by example how to "uproot capitalism and revisionism" was featured on the front pages. His approval of these Red Guards was widely quoted: "You are really good revolutionary fighters, educated in the spirit of the thought of Mao Tse-tung."
The January 15-16 issue of Le Monde confirmed the fall of this luminary from favor. According to the Paris daily, Shi Chuang-hsiang was taken through the streets of Peking in a truck, a dunce's cap on his head as a sign of infamy. A placard hanging from his neck read: "Worked insufficiently. Supported Liu Shao-chi. Shook Liu Shao-chi's hand when the latter made him an elite night-soil collector and a deputy in the National Assembly."
The fate of Shi Chuan-hsiang epitomizes that of others. A January 16 Reuters dispatch from Peking said: "Today, three persons, rigged out in dunces' caps and bearing notices were driven through the city in a truck loaded with Red Guards. They had
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slogans scrawled even on their faces and it was impossible to distinguish who they were."
The same dispatch reported big crowds in Peking gazing "at poster photographs showing the humiliation of purged Communist leaders and intellectuals at the hands of the Red Guards." The pictures taken at recent meetings "showed 20 men, most of them over 60, kneeling or standing with heads bent." The posters, the work of Red Guard propagandists from the Peking Law Institute, were titled, "We show these counterrevolutionaries to the masses.
The Toronto Globe and Mail, in an account from Peking reproduced in the January 21 New York Times said that a special newspaper called Fighting News printed photographs of purged leaders at a meeting at which they were humiliated. "In a photo of Peng Chen, the one-time Mayor of Peking and member of the party Politburo stared blankly ahead of him as two Red Guards held his arms pinned behind his back. A three-foot placard showed his name crossed out."
The same account said that wall posters in Peking reported the suicide of Lo Juiching, who was dismissed as chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. He, too, was shown in one of the photographs. "Mr. Lo, now dead, who recently broke his leg when he jumped from a window, was shown in a cast. He was permitted to have a chair but one of the troopers he had once commanded was shown twisting his arm behind his back.
"Other prominent leaders photographed included the former propaganda chief, Lu Ting-yi, and a former party Secretariat member, Yang Shang-kun. The wives of Mr. Lo and Mr. Lu went through the same ordeal as their husbands as Red Guards leveled accusations at then."
Did figures like these "worm their way into the party and into positions of power" in order to spearhead a movement to restore capitalism? It seems unlikely. This is one of the elements that make it so difficult to decipher the meaning of the "cultural revolution."
But if the charges leveled by the Mao faction are not true, or are grossly exaggerated, what are the real issues that have split the leading cadre into warring factions? Even more important in analyzing the meaning of the political crisis, what social forces are represented by the various contending groups or the figures that come to symbolize them?
This has not been easy to determine, for even if a tentative identification is made; this may soon be upset as the case of Shi Chuan-hsiang rather dramaticaily illustrates. Other shifts are even more puzzling. The very figures in charge of purging old officials in the name of the "cultural revolution" are themselves purged in the name of the same cause within weeks.
The new stage in the "cultural revolution" that opened in December has begun to involve the workers on an increasing scale and this has provided more intimations of some of the real issues at stake in the struggle.
Thus a January 14 Hsinhua dispatch speaks about the “intrigues and tricks of the enemy" and his "many disguises." We are able to deduce that two tendencies oppose the Mao faction. One is called "a handful of those within the party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road." This apparently refers to the tendency headed by Liu Shao-chi. The other tendency is called “an extremely few die-hards who are stubbornly pursuing the bourgeois reactionary line." This tendency is apparently attempting to straddle between Mao and Liu Shao-chi. Among the top figures of the regime, this tendency may center around Chou En-lai.
Nothing is clear in this, since all three tendencies are devotees of the cult of Mao, disciples of "Mao's thought," and ardent advocates of the "cultural revolution." To find hints of the differences it is necessary to study the descriptions of the “intrigues and tricks" used by Mao's foes and their "many disguises."
In the January 14 article, we are told, "In every conceivable way, they slander and undermine this alliance [of the "revolutionary workers, revolutionary students and revolutionary masses], deceive part of the masses by hoisting 'red flags,' and bribe them with material benefits in an attempt to divide and break up the alliance, so as to attain their own ends."
This probably means that Mao's opponents, while speaking in favor of the "cultural revolution," actually go against it by offering material incentives to the workers. In other words, as advanced by Mao, the "cultural revolution" is opposed to a raise
in the standard of living of the workers. His opponents, or some of them, favor it.
Apparently Mao's opponents were not totally unsuccessful, since the article speaks about the need for "painstaking ideological work with those comrades who have been temporarily hoodwinked..."
The line of offering material inducements to the workers; i.e., an immediate boost in their standard of living, is called "economism" by the Maoists and they say it is a "bourgeois reactionary line," one that has been adopted by "counter-revolutionary revisionism."
A different dispatch from the same source on the same day gives an example of the indignation of the "young Red Guards" at the Foochow high school because the two enemy tendencies "had incited workers and peasants to wage ‘economic struggle.'"
In the same area, the same enemy forces "had incited large numbers of the workers Red Guards to go to Peking to ‘voice their resentment’ and had supplied them with money for their fares. This was an act of defiance of Chairman Mao's policy of ‘taking firm hold of revolution to stimulate production.'" Since millions of Red Guards have been given free transportation to and from Peking, with meals and lodging also supplied, it is difficult to see why ~~ on the level of principles, and particularly equalitarian—. ism -- it is an act of defiance to pay the way for workers to go to Peking to voice their grievances.
Control of financial matters is mentioned in the same article as an issue in dispute. in various factories in Harbin. In other areas it was likewise in dispute. In one. instance the payment of "bonuses" to workers is specified as the counterrevolutionary act. In Fukien and Foochow the foe "gave a large amount of money to the workers' and peasants' Red Guard army on the Fukien front with the purpose of undermining the great proletarian cultural revolution.
Besides "“economism" and "state finances"; i.e., wage boosts, bonuses, "welfare services" or other forms of material benefits for the workers, "sabotage" is frequently cited in the latest press dispatches released by Hsinhua. This refers to strikes or other forms of action undertaken by the workers. As an example, a January 15 Hsinhua report on trouble in the famous Taching oil field, where the workers have been held up as models for all of China, can be cited:
"Revolutionary rebels [approved followers of Mao] in the Taching oil field said that at the beginning these persons used 'grasp production' as a pretext to suppress the masses who wanted to rise up to make revolution; later when the revolutionary masses had seen through their schemes, these same people pretended that they 'supported' the revolution and used material incentives to lure large numbers of workers to leave their production posts; in doing so they attempted to use economism as a bait to shift the general orientation of the struggle, maintain their positions by using state money, sabotage production and hit hard against the revolution. The workers have revealed the tricks of these people opportunely and defeated their schemes."
One of the most interesting items is the indication that at the beginning of the “cultural revolution" in the Taching oil field, there was an effort to change its general orientation. One wonders if the workers at first took the slogans of the "cultural revolution" for good c¢ coin and began to rectify long-standing grievances.
Is an expansion of democracy involved? An article in Red Flag, the journal of the Central Committee, reported in a January 15 Hsinhua dispatch from Peking, would indicate that caution is advisable before accepting the claims at face value. "Shanghai's experience," says the article, "proves that the extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutely not ultra-democracy...".
Another January 15 Hsinhua dispatch, this time from Shanghai itself, can be taken perhaps as evidence on how Mao's. promise about instituting democracy like that followed by the Paris Commune is to be made good: The "rebel group" of true Maoists "talked things over" with the workers in a factory. "In accordance with the election system of the Paris Commune, they set up revolutionary production committees for work teams, workshops and administrative offices, in order to successfully carry out both the revolution and production, and to fulfill state production plans."
The limitations of this democracy can be gathered from the goal specified in the final phrase. The dispatch continues with obscure intimations on how the struggle continued. The "rebel group" pointed out how "these activities were affecting production." At this "the masses of workers became incensed," rejected the "bourgeois reactionary line" and "pledged to carry out production well..."
HUGO