William Hinton on the Cultural Revolution
The
issues surrounding the Cultural Revolution require clarification--not just
for writing history, but looking toward the next wave of socialist
revolutions.
By Dave Pugh
Monthly Review
Posted by Bulatlat
Ever since
the major reversals of socialism in the 20th century, first in the Soviet
Union and then in China, leftists internationally have been faced with a
serious question: After the initial victory of the people's revolutionary
forces, what can be done to keep on the "socialist road"? What measures
can be taken to restrict the class differences inherited from the old
society, fend off imperialist hostility and intervention, and prevent a
new capitalist class from developing within socialist society itself?
The Cultural
Revolution was China's answer to this question. It was an historical
first— a punctuated series of mass revolutionary upsurges within a
socialist country. It took place within the space of eleven years
(1966-1976). Initiated by Mao Tsetung and his supporters in the Chinese
Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution was aimed at overthrowing
"capitalist roaders" at the highest levels of the party who were steering
China towards full-scale capitalist restoration. This unprecedented form
of class struggle engaged tens of millions of workers, peasants, students
and intellectuals.
|
William Hinton |
In a 1999
speech at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City, William
Hinton explained that the method of the Cultural Revolution was to "mobiliz[e]
the common people to seize power from below in order to establish new
representative leading bodies, democratically elected organs of power."
All over China, tens of thousands of revolutionary committees in
factories, farms and schools were built. Inspired by Mao's vision, people
developed other socialist new things which revolutionized society, such as
barefoot doctors in the countryside, and cultural works based on the rich
life experiences of
China's
workers and peasants.
Mao
understood that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a
high-stakes battle to prevent the emergence of state capitalism in China.
He had studied the political economy and social relations in the USSR and
was convinced that capitalism had been restored there. Ultimately Mao and
his allies failed, but that does not mean that they shouldn't have
launched this historic struggle. Writing in the early 1970s, Hinton made a
profound observation: "socialist revolution is much more complex and
difficult than most revolutionaries have hitherto supposed, that the
seizure of power… is only the first step in a protracted revolutionary
process…"
Many people
on the Left, in the US and internationally, have had a negative view of
the Cultural Revolution. The corporate media has played an active role
here. In the 1980s and 90s, a new book appeared every month on the theme
of "how my family and I were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution."
Of course, the context for these persecution stories is lacking. It is
impossible to tell whether the authors were incorrectly (or correctly)
targeted as capitalist roaders. Which factions of the Red Guards were
involved—those honestly trying to carry out Mao's policies,
ultra-leftists, or sham Red Guards organized by Liu Shiao-chi and Deng
Tsiao-ping, the main proponents in the party of taking the capitalist
road?
The issues
surrounding the Cultural Revolution require clarification--not just for
writing history, but looking towards the next wave of socialist
revolutions. What better person than William Hinton, who spent most of
his adult life working in China, for learning about the Cultural
Revolution and the twists and turns in his own understanding of this
historic revolution within a socialist society?
******
William
Hinton's views on the Cultural Revolution went through three periods of
development. The first is most clearly represented in Turning Point in
China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution (MR Press, 1972). In
Shenfan (Random House, 1983) Hinton is critical of Mao and the
Cultural Revolution, and supports the new government that came to power
during the 1976-1978 period after the arrest of the "gang of four."
By The
Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 (MR Press,
1990), Hinton publicly opposes the new regime and supports the goals of
the Cultural Revolution--even if it did not succeed in realizing them.
Hinton further develops this line of thinking in his speeches and articles
during the 1990s. His speech at the 1999 Socialist Scholars Convention in
New York City is particularly noteworthy. (Reprinted in the September 2004
issue of Monthly Review.)
One of Bill
Hinton's great strengths was his insistence on "seeking truth from
facts." He reported what he saw, and what others whom he trusted told
him. At the same time he maintained a critical attitude and often let the
reader decide how to evaluate key issues. Hinton was brutally honest and
let the chips fall where they may. At one time or another, he criticized
the policies or actions of just about all of the Chinese leadership—but he
never wavered in his support for the Chinese people and socialism.
Turning
Point in
China
(1972)
In the early
1970s, Hinton firmly supported the goals, methods and achievements of the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. After a 1971 visit to China at the
invitation of Premier Chou Enlai, Hinton wrote Turning Point in China:
“The heart
of the Cultural Revolution has indeed been a struggle for power, a
struggle over the control of state power…. But it has not been a struggle
over power for power's sake….It has been a class struggle to determine
whether individuals representing the working class or individuals
representing the bourgeoisie will hold state power. It has been a
struggle to determine whether China will continue to take the socialist
road and carry the socialist revolution through to the end, or whether
China
will abandon the socialist road for the capitalist road. (pp. 16-17)
“[S]ocialism
must be regarded as a transition from capitalism to communism (or in the
case of China from new democracy to communism). As such it bears within
it many contradictions, many inequalities that cannot be done away with
overnight or even in the course of several years or several decades.
“These
inequalities are inherited from the old society, such things as pay
differentials between skilled and unskilled work and between mental and
manual work, such things as the differences between the economic,
educational, and cultural opportunities available in the city and in the
countryside, as long as these inequalities exist they generate privilege,
individualism, careerism and bourgeois ideology… They can and do create
new bourgeois individuals who gather as a new privileged elite and
ultimately as a new exploiting class. Thus socialism can be peacefully
transformed back into socialism.” (pp. 20-21)
In
Turning Point, Hinton placed the Cultural Revolution in an
international context.
China
faced a serious threat from
US
imperialism in the Pacific and Southeast Asia (the Vietnam War was still
raging in 1971). In Siberia, the Soviet Union posed a growing and
possibly imminent threat to China's nuclear program and plants.
The primary
foreign policy issues in the Cultural Revolution were: How to deal with
military threats from the USSR and the US, how to develop modern defensive
armaments, and how to continue supporting national liberation struggles.
China
was the largest source of military aid for the peoples of
Indochina.
A key
question was what kind of "opening" or political alliance should socialist
China
develop with the West to deal with the
Soviet Union's
growing military threat to
China,
especially its nuclear program. Deng saw this opening in strategic terms,
and was able to use it to rip China off the socialist road and integrate
China
into the U.S. imperialist-dominated global economy. While these questions
"helped to define the dividing line between the contending forces in
China," Hinton emphasized that the Cultural Revolution developed as a
result of internal contradictions arising out of socialist construction in
China.
In a
breath-taking passage in Turning Point, Hinton situates the
Cultural Revolution within a protracted, perhaps centuries long, global
process of revolutionary struggle and transformation:
“In the
course of the Cultural Revolution Mao Tse-tung and his supporters, by
mobilizing a great mass movement of the people, have confronted one great
wave of capitalist restoration. Other waves are sure to follow. It will
take decades, perhaps a century or two, before the working class can
establish socialism so firmly in any one country that it can no longer be
challenged. In fact this can probably only come about when socialism is
established on a world scale.
“One can
expect more cultural revolutions in China and many cultural revolutions in
other parts of the world wherever working people take power and embark on
socialist construction….. All this indicates that socialist revolution is
much more complex and difficult than most revolutionaries have hitherto
supposed, that the seizure of power… is only the first step in a
protracted revolutionary process and may well be easier than the steps
which follow.” (p. 106)
Shenfan
(1983)
A decade
later, Hinton's views on the Cultural Revolution had shifted
dramatically. In Shenfan (1983), Hinton credits it with starting
off in a positive direction. However, he writes that it quickly
degenerated into factionalism and unprincipled contests for power at
national, provincial and local levels. In these works, Hinton bends the
stick to criticize ultra-leftism; these groupings split and wrecked mass
movements, allowing rightist forces to pick up the pieces and maintain
power. He also dismisses the seizure of power by revolutionary workers in
Shanghai in 1967. (p. 517)
Hinton
asserts in Shenfan that Mao had to take major responsibility for
these leftist excesses because he refused to initiate mass campaigns to
put an end to them. Hinton also writes that Mao was making use of China's
Confucian and feudal culture to build up a personality cult. (p. 766)
Still, Hinton supports Mao's political outlook and policies against Liu
and other leading capitalist roaders in the Party. (p. 760) In one
chapter, Hinton strongly supports the 16 Points that launched the Cultural
Revolution and explains them in detail. Hinton argues that the 16 Points
were in the main ignored; instead, factionalism and heightened antagonisms
among the people predominated.
Shenfan
picks up from Hinton's classic Fanshen. Hinton compiles a mainly
oral history of Long Bow village during socialist construction. He
demonstrates the viability of Mao's socialist road in agriculture in Long
Bow, and in the Dazhai brigade in southern Shanxi province. This model
brigade was hailed for its ability to "grasp revolution, promote
production." On the basis of new collective forms of organization and the
stronger unity and heightened revolutionary consciousness of its members,
the Dazhai brigade built new infrastructural works and made big gains in
agricultural production from formerly barren hillsides.
The book
also describes in detail the unprincipled factional strife and civil war
from 1966-71 that left at least 800 dead in southern Shanxi. This must
have come as a huge shock to Hinton, and no doubt made him much more
critical of the Cultural Revolution.
After Deng
came to power in 1978, Hinton sought and received permission from the
Chinese government to live and work in China in the 1980s. He served as
an agricultural consultant, and some of his reports and proposals (such as
a UN-funded model collective villages project) are included in The
Great Reversal. His presence in China enabled Hinton to witness and
write about the process of capitalist restoration in the countryside "up
close and personal." However, it also helped prevent him from drawing
correct conclusions about the nature of the new regime for 10 years.
During these years, Hinton tended to be pragmatic and he
uncharacteristically lost sight of the bigger picture.
On one
occasion, Hinton wrote about his post-1978 thinking:
“I did not
leap from defender to critic overnight however. As an old friend of New
China living abroad, I was certainly free to speak out. But at the
beginning of the reform period, I consciously avoided passing hasty
judgment. I decided, with uncharacteristic forbearance, to wait and see
what the new regime, with most of the old heroes gone, would do. My
particular concern, was of course, the countryside.” (The Great
Reversal, p. 13)
Hinton was
more detailed and self-critical in his forward to the Chinese edition of
Shenfan, which appeared in 1993. He even considered rewriting the
book. (See Mao Zedong Thought Lives (1995), pp. 163-168)
When Hinton
summed up what had happened to socialism in China in the 1980s, he came
out with guns blazing.
The Great
Reversal
(1990)
As many MR
readers know, The Great Reversal is a detailed study of how Deng
and his fellow capitalist roaders dismantled collective agriculture in the
1980s through the imposition of the "family responsibility system." This
included a frontal attack on the model brigade in Dazhai. Hinton's visits
and talks with knowledgeable people inside China allowed him to refute the
lies of the regime about the smashing "successes" of the so-called
reforms. Hinton was also in Beijing during the Tienanmen crackdown in
1989, in which the army killed at least 2,000 civilians and injured
thousands more.
By the time
he came out with The Great Reversal in 1990, Hinton's view of the
Cultural Revolution reaffirmed his position in the early 1970s. He refuted
the claims of the new rulers that the Cultural Revolution was a
"catastrophe":
As things
have turned out, it seems clear that Mao correctly appraised the
opposition in regard to what he stood for and what it wanted to do with
power. Since Mao's death and the dismissal of Hua Guofeng from office,
Deng and his group have dismantled, step by step, almost the whole of the
economic system and the social and political superstructure built in the
first thirty years following liberation, and they are rushing to finish
off what remains.
Mao foresaw
this, called it the "capitalist road," and called Liu and Deng "capitalist
roaders." He launched the Cultural Revolution in a major, historically
unprecedented campaign to remove them from power and prevent them from
carrying out their line. In the end he failed.
The Cultural
Revolution unleashed action and counteraction, initiative and
counter-initiative, encirclement and counter-encirclement, all sorts of
excesses, leftist and rightist, and an overall situation that spun out of
anyone's control. To blame Mao alone for the disruptions caused by this
struggle, for the setbacks and disasters that ensued, is equivalent to the
Guomindang blaming the Communists for the disruptions of China's
liberation war. …(p. 156-57)
Whereas
Hinton in Shenfan was dismissive of the idea of a "bourgeoisie in
the party," by The Great Reversal he had come to a deeper
understanding of the decisive nature of class struggle within the
Communist Party:
“Due to
historical circumstances peculiar to China, all the politics of the
postwar era—all the forces that mattered, all the issued that
counted—tended to concentrate inside the Communist Party. Thus the
struggle took the form of an internal contest for control of the party and
through it for control of the country. Mao saw this phenomenon pretty
clearly and began a struggle against the opposition very early. As time
went on the struggle escalated, reaching a climax in the Cultural
Revolution.” (p. 158)
Hinton also
came to a more balanced understanding of the role of the gang of four.
They included two Politbureau members from
Shanghai,
Chang Chun-chiao and Wang Hung-wen, writer
Yao
Wen-yuan, and Mao's wife, Chiang Ching. In Shenfan Hinton wrote
approvingly of the arrest of the gang of four by the combined forces of
Deng and Hua Guofeng in 1976.
In The
Great Reversal, Hinton doesn't mention the 1976 coup; instead he
focuses on Deng's coup against Hua in 1978 and the subsequent dismantling
of socialism. By the end of the 1980s, Hinton concluded that Liu, Deng
and other leading capitalist-roaders had been the most serious threat to
the Chinese revolution, not ultra-leftists such as the "gang of four."
Nevertheless, Hinton believed that the gang of four helped produce the
"virtual stalemate" in which the Cultural Revolution ended:
“The result
was immeasurably complicated by the ultraleft ideology and activity of the
gang of four. I do not subscribe to any "gang of five" theory that lumps
Mao with his wife and her three cohorts politically, though he certainly
was responsible for their coming to prominence to start with. They
grossly distorted Mao's policies and directives, carried sound initiatives
to extremes that turned them inside out and upside down, and succeeded in
wrecking whatever they touched. Although in previous periods Mao had been
able to correct both right and "left" excesses, in the 1960s he found
himself on ‘Liang Mountain’ in regard to ‘leftism’—that is, virtually
immobilized by a contradiction with the right that he felt tied his hands
in dealing with the ‘left.’” (158)
Two Important Speeches in the 1990s
In a 1991
speech at Harvard, published in Monthly Review ("The Chinese Revolution"),
Hinton explained the very real obstacles faced by the Cultural Revolution:
“In the
Cultural Revolution, Mao mobilized millions of citizens to confront
powerholders, particularly capitalist roaders, to overthrow the
traditional hierarchy from below, and to build a new government structure,
starting with revolutionary committees composed of citizens, cadres and
soldiers. But every effort in this direction generated a counter-effort
from the establishment under attack. Core functionaries were able to
delay, divert, misdirect, or carry to absurd extremes every initiative
from Mao's side. Far from creating a new, more democratic form of
government, the movement bogged down in unprincipled power struggles that
exhausted everyone and led nowhere. The failure of the Cultural
Revolution laid the groundwork for a great reversal of policy in all
fields.” (p.10)
On the
post-1949 period as a whole, Hinton wrote in this 1991 article about the
systematic attempts of the rightist forces to oppose and sabotage every
revolutionary initiative taken by Mao and his supporters:
“A regular
pattern of right-wing obstruction alternating with ultra-left wrecking
made it very hard for those building socialism to consolidate any new set
of production relations, any new social structure, or any new ideology.
For thirty years after 1949, those who were trying to create, develop and
consolidate socialism faced fierce opposition from those who wanted to
block, undermine, and cripple it in order to pursue a capitalist
alternative.
“….[A]t no
time did Mao and his supporters have a free hand to take initiatives,
deepen and consolidate them, learn from mistakes, and move forward. Every
step had to overcome not only the inertia of custom and tradition but also
the determined opposition of a large, powerful and cleverly led faction of
the party itself. ‘Never forget class struggle’ was no idle Maoist
slogan. Intense struggle between social classes over basic policy
permeated the whole period. That struggle continues to this day.” (p.13)
In this 1991
speech, Hinton pointed to the devastating consequences for China as it
became increasingly integrated into the imperialist-run global economy,
and its inevitable return to being a semi-colonial country dominated by
the Western powers and Japan. (This period of rapid capitalist expansion
internally and abroad is documented by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul
Burkett in the July-August 2004 edition of Monthly Review: China &
Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle.) While tending to
underestimate the ability of China to stave off crisis by garnering export
markets with its brutal strategy of low-wage primitive accumulation,
Hinton's analysis has been borne out since then.
In his
speech at the 1999 Socialist Scholars Conference, Hinton eloquently
described the necessity, goals and historical legacy of the Cultural
Revolution:
“[T]he
Cultural Revolution, after generating a tremendous storm, wound down
without consolidating its goals. However, in my opinion, the movement as
a whole was a great creative departure in history. It was not a plot, not
a purge, but a mass mobilization whereby people were inspired to
intervene, to screen and supervise their cadres and form new popular
committees to exercise control at the grass roots and higher.
“The whole
idea that the principal contradiction of the times, the class struggle
between the working class and the capitalist class, expressed itself in
the Party center, and that unless it was resolved in the interest of the
working class, the socialist revolution would founder, the whole idea that
the method must be mobilizing the common people to seize power from below
in order to establish new representative leading bodies, democratically
elected organs of power - these were breakthroughs in history summed up by
the phrase ‘Bombard the Headquarters’. They constituted, in my opinion,
Mao's greatest contribution to revolutionary theory and practice, lighting
the way to progress in our time.
“Had Mao
succeeded, I think there is no doubt we would have today a burgeoning
socialist economy and culture in China with enormous prestige among the
people. The economic advance might be slower than the current one, but it
would be much more solid and much more useful as a development model for
all Third World peoples now living in abysmal poverty and exploitation.”
Mao and The Cultural Revolution's Enduring Legacy
In The
Great Reversal and his speeches in the 1990s, Hinton marshals facts to
demonstrate why Chinese agricultural production is already stagnating and
in some areas is in acute crisis as a result of the capitalist "reforms."
He points to high levels of unemployment, migration, social ills, and open
political unrest. He points to growing social polarization and a greater
vulnerability of the Chinese economy to crises in the world capitalist
economy. His conclusion: The future does not look bright for Deng's
successors.
Throughout
the 80s, it appears that Hinton believed that the political direction of
the new regime could still be reversed within the party by honest cadres.
By 1989, in the wake of the Tienanmen Massacre of several thousand
students and workers by units of the erstwhile People's Liberation Army
from Sichuan (Deng's home province), Hinton had reached a new view.
“My estimate
is that there are large numbers of dedicated communists in the Chinese
Communist Party and also in the army. I foresee the possibility of change
brought about by the mobilization of such people—perhaps through an army
coup led by radical officers who can rally all the revolutionary elements
in the army, in the party, and in society.” (p. 191)
Putting
aside the wisdom of a "change" strategy based on the party and army,
Hinton believed that the new regime COULD no longer be reformed by means
of non-antagonistic struggle within the Communist Party. Hinton would be
very pleased to hear of the case of the Zengzhou Four, veteran workers
from Henan who passed out flyers titled "Mao Zedong Forever Our Leader" on
December 26, 2004, Mao's birthday. The flyers denounced the Party
leadership and called for a return to the socialist road. Tens of
thousands of people from all over China attended their trial, and news of
their courageous actions spread over the Internet.
In this
article's concluding words, Hinton writes poetically about China's future:
“The Chinese
are an energetic, dynamic, creative people. They have a long
revolutionary history and large reserves of revolutionary consciousness
and motivation. New waves of rebellion and revolution will come. In
France, after the Thermidor, came 1848, and after 1848, 1870. Events in
our era move ever more quickly. One can say with confidence: ‘The
revolution is dead. Long live the revolution.’” (p. 15)
In the last
decade of his life, Hinton drew on his prescient writings during the
Cultural Revolution about its historical significance for the people of
China and the world. Revolutionary movements that succeed in defeating
reactionary regimes and undertake socialist construction will be able to
draw on Hinton's body of writings on the decisive struggle to stay on the
socialist road.
Like the
development of Marxism itself, William Hinton's understanding of this
earth-shaking event went through twists and turns, steps back and steps up
to higher levels of understanding. At the end of the day, William Hinton
concluded that he had to defend the Cultural Revolution in order to stand
with the Chinese people, oppose the oppressive state capitalists in China,
and support people's struggles against imperialism and for socialism
around the world. Posted by Bulatlat
March 2005
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