ABOUT THE EVENTS IN SHANGHAI
The January 23 issue of Hsinhua's "Selected News Items" carries the full text of the "Urgent Notice" published in the Shanghai Wen Hui Pao and Chieh Fang Daily January 9 after the two newspapers had been taken over and reorganized by the pro-Mao "revolution-— ary rebel" forces. The "Urgent Notice" was part of the propaganda barrage opened up to allay unrest. among the workers of Shanghai and bring their demonstrations: to an-end after several weeks of strikes and other actions. The "Urgent Notice" is of -unusual importance because of the support it received from ‘the Haolat forces: in Peking» and because” of the. line it projects..°- : mo = aaa aa
The first paragraph indicates the issues*°as they flared up in-Shanghai and as they may still be posed despite the subsidénce: of workers demonstrations. "At present, " declares the "Urgent:Notice,".: “when the great proletarian cultural revolution in Shanghai is entering the moment of decisive’ battle between the two’ lines, when the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, which stubbornly clings to the bourgeois reactionary line, is being defeated, the handful: of persons‘within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist.road.are once again hatching-new schemes. In collusion with the capitalist forces in society they are using the question of economic benefits to divert the general orientation of the struggle and to incite one group of people against an- . other, causing breakdowns in factory production and railway and road traffic. They have even incited dockers to stop work, causing difficulties in. running the port. and damaging the. international. prestige of China, They.are wasting the state's money and property, arbitrarily increasing wages and material benefits, and granting all.kinds-of allowances without limit, stirring people up to take over public buildings by” force.. These are the latest forms under which the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee is persistently carrying out the bourgeois reactionary line." —
To be noted in this is that the workers sought immediate improvements in- ‘their standard of living, that they went so far as to engage in strikes and other actions to obtain ‘them, evidently in the belief that they were being urged to-do this under the "esreat proletarian cultural revolution." Likewise. to.be noted is the fact. that such. de— mands, and actions to enforce them, constitute a "bourgeois reactionary line" in the eyes of Mao and those who agree with him. (The Chieh Fang Daily said in an accompanying editorial: "Economism and material incentives are outright reactionary revisionist wares." ; : .
The "Urgent Notice" states that in "resorting to such base and sinister tricks," the "handful...taking the capitalist road" aim at setting themselves "against Chairman Mao and the Party's: Central Committee" and also aim at using “the question of economic. benefits to divert the general orientation of the struggle in an attempt to lead the serious political. struggle onto the bad road of economic. struggle..." ; -
The "shifting of the line of struggle" from Mao's political objectives ‘to economic objectives of particular concern to the workers and peasants particularly exercized the authors of the "Urgent Notiee.". To "retrieve the grave situation," they proposed. ten measures.
. Several of them are of special interest. Point No..2, for instance, asks the "revolutionary rebel. groups" in Shanghai to."appeal to all revolutionary rebels throughout the country to take prompt action to persuade and mobilise those workers.,. function= aries, staff members of enterprises and apprentices from Shanghai who are exchanging revolutionary experience in other parts of the country to return to Shanghai immediately, so that the great. cultural revolution in their own units.can proceed effectively and the 1967 production plans can be overfulfilled."
Again two items are to be noted: {1)::So many persons responded to what they thought was the line of the woul tural revolution" to: travel about the. country "exchanging revolutionary experience" as to seriously affect production. (2) Mao puts. the workers in a category completely different from:that of the:Red Guards. The workers are to stay in their plants, producing without benefit. of any economic incentives, while the Red Guards are sent about the country like political shock troops, their.transportation and food guaranteed by the government.
Point No. 3 goes even further along this line declaring "pull and voia" ‘all. certificates issued to workers "to leave:.and exchange revolutionary experience in other
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arts of the country" and holding those who issued them "responsible for the repayment toy instalments if necessary) of the big sums of money to cover exchanges of experience (excluding fares)..." -
Point No. 4 freezes all the "circulating funds of all offices, organisations and enterprises..." This evidently aims at blocking any opposing groups from utilizing their funds to advance their factional objectives and also to further tighten controls over the workers so as to better tie them to their jobs.
Point No. 5 reads: "To avoid shifting the general orientation of the struggle, natters related to the readjustment of wages, back payment of wages and. material benefits, shall in principle be dealt with at a later stage of the movement. (Special cases shall be handled otherwise after asking the central authorities for instructions. )"
Obviously the Maoists, at the time the "Urgent Notice" was written, felt under heavy pressure to make some kind of concessions to the workers. They hoped, evidently, that a vague promise to do something in the future would prove sufficient.
The relation between the students and the workers and peasants is touched on in point No. 6: "In order to stir up dissatisfaction among the workers against the students, to sabotage the integration of the students with the workers and. to practice ‘peaceful evolution' among the students, some persons in authority have gone to the length of paying the students higher wages for labour. This is a revisionist practice pure and simple, and should be stopped as from the day this notice is published."
One of the mcst interesting is point No. 7: "All public buildings and the houses confiscated from capitalists are the property.of the whole people, and shall be handled in a unified way by the state at a later stage of the movement.-No one is allowed to seize public buildings by force. After investigation, any offender shall be punished by the Public Security Bureau. Those who incite citizens to seize public buildings shall be dealt with by law in accordance with the gravity of the offence. Those who have moved into houses seized by force must move back to their original lodgings within one week."
As yet, objective accounts of what happened in Shanghai are not available. It would seem legitimate to deduce from point No. 7, however, that one of the problems felt acutely by the broad masses is a shortage of lodgings, or extremely bad lodgings. It would also seem that the lodgings of the capitalists in Shanghai are a tempting target. (Of the 300,000 capitalists protected by the Mao regime in China,.a large number are loéated in Shanghai.) Putting things together, it seems very likely that at the end of December and beginning of January, the Shanghai workers, taking Mao's propaganda about attacking the capitalists at face value, took over some of the sumptuous. dwellings of their exploiters and prepared to settle accounts with them. But this was "shifting of. -the line of struggle." Hence the order in the "Urgent Notice" giving the squatters one week to "move back into their original lodgings." :
In short, against the revolutionary action of the Shanghai workers, Mao came to. the rescue.of the capitalists who still remain in Shanghai. =. , -