This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 10, April 17-23, 2005
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
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.
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 © 2004 Bulatlat
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