Mao Vs. Marx in China

...it is neither the power hunger of the Party bosses nor the importation of Western fashions and middleclass ideals...

...Neither did they make any special efforts to stay, nor did Mao's prestige at home suffer from the "defeat...

...He must fall back on the pattern of guerilla warfare which he knows so well and which he conducted so successfully against the Japanese...

...But we also witnessed a certain rhythmic sequence of wave after wave of revolutionary ardour, vilifying, demoting, or deposing officials, Party bosses, bureaucrats, and old-timers in high office...

...As Stalin eschewed the parallels with the French Revolution, so Mao may try to do things differently from Stalin...

...In short, the army was remade into a militia which now is the powerful instrument of a quasi-military state...

...Yet to play this role, the army had to be transformed from top to bottom...

...But the terror 20 has struck in particular the editorial offices, theaters, and school administrations, the propagandists of the Party, and other purveyors of culture...

...if administrators call for experts in engineering instead of zealous cadre workers...

...I do not subscribe to Weber-Wittfogel's "hydraulic theory" of oriental despotism...

...O'Connor also recognizes that the "identification of the worker with the Revolution" occurred through the militia, not through a class organization...

...Lo Juiching, once head of the Secret Police and of the army staff...

...Hsiao Hua, once the mighty security director in the army and probably the one who first conceived the idea of making the army into an instrument of the "permanent revolution...

...If office holders use their position to oppose the plans of the leader...

...All this sug Bests that the struggle is not at all over...

...Such facile judgments should have been checked against the more detailed information that has come out of China during the last six months...

...But the enemy of this Maoist upheaval is neither the West nor the 5 per cent of the Chinese population who continue to live off their previous land and commercial holdings...

...The policy requires a certain truculence—as evident in the rejecting of the U.N...

...With the exception of Marshall Lo Jui-ching, who advocated a strong and "active" de22 fense policy, most of the disgraced officials have argued for a political approach to defense problems...

...While certain intellectuals and university administrators seem to have joined the ranks of the pulrged, neither the economic, the military, nor the scientific experts have been molested...

...It also stands to reason that Mao's isolationist policies do not sit well with those among the Party nabobs whose responsibility and loyalty is still, in whatever distorted ways, to the world Communist movement...

...In foreign policy the army's advice, to improve relations with the Soviet Union in order to improve the defense posture against the U.S., was rejected...

...Yet the parallelism is suggestive: Stalin responded to his defeats by making himself into the Great Oracle of world Communism: Mao's reply to his defeats is the adulation of "Mao's Thoughts...

...But they do not seem to constitute any organized opposition...

...great mass of the Chinese people, pea sants and workers who—in the tender sociologese of our "New Left" philosophershad to be "reorientated" because they resisted and continue to resist austerity...

...not those elites which in some countries are called Young Turks —but students, children, inexperienced, essentially apolitical, fun-seeking rowdies who were but too eager to make a holiday out of government-sponsored demonstrations...

...The "cultural revolution" is indeed so brutal because Chinese culture is so old and ineradicable...

...Goebbels ordered young hoodlums to assemble at 8 A.M...

...6 No...

...Under a certain aspect, this Red Guard movement may be nothing but a tool in the power struggle between Lin Piao's clique and those whom he has temporarily vanquished (though not liquidated and not even ousted...

...Between these councils of the Right and the Left, Mao Tse-tung has held a middle course, suppressing those who made a fetish of their expertise in a specialized field and others who would end all the regime's troubles by staging a suicidal attack on Western imperialism...

...The students sent reinforcements .. . climbed over the walls after sunset and a battle started . .. fighting continued until mid-morning .. . Some of our incorrigible ideologues needed a shock like this news item...

...Moreover, supposing that military considerations had prompted Mao to proceed ruthlessly, it still would be necessary to explain why this decision, which originally favored the Party over the Army, led to a power struggle in which the army now became the favored instrument of policy...

...No old comrade has been banished or exiled, and some who have been vilified and humiliated publicly still hold their office—only the office, not the man has been demoted...

...hence one must avoid provocation— keep the Vietnamese war just hot enough to make Johnson wary and to prevent the Russians from rapprochement with America...

...It certainly was not due to the immensity of the Chinese effort that certain African governments tried to fall into Mao's orbit, but when this was checked, the Chinese simply picked up their marbles and left...

...According to his own philosophy which requires him to "split the one into two," Mao has raised counterforces against the ruling Party, but he has not been able or willing to destroy it...

...The army today is a huge machine of conscript labor which also can be used to keep an eye on both the disgruntled peasants and "gruntled" Party bosses...

...It has been remarked that the army has gained considerable influence in recent months, and notably that it has taken onto itself a considerable part of the educational program, as well as the recruiting of leading cadres...

...The army would probably include more poor people, more young people, more farm people, more people from the provinces, and it would naturally represent that spirit of austerity which still is the moral core of Mao's revolution...

...The evidence indicates that in their restricted domain managers, scientists, and other experts are not fulfilling their assginments...

...Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao have chosen other instruments to carry the power of government...

...It may be clear from our analysis that China now has an army which is good for home use and perhaps for a quickie raid into India, but which is hardly equipped and organized for a conflict with one of the major powers...

...While this seems persuasive at first sight, I wonder how many other armies in the world would be covered by this kind of "sociological" description...

...Yet this personality cult contrasts strangely with other signs indicating 23 that the totalitarian structure is far from complete and that Mao is not in full command...

...Mssrs...

...Moreover, the army acts as planning agency and Stakhanovist in the construction of "socialism...

...IV Professor Franz Schurmann has suggested that in both the Red Guards and the new role of the army we might detect an element of class war...

...It deprives officers of their insignia of rank, teachers of their quotations from the classics, the experts in all fields of their privileged standing, and the workers of their vested interests in jobs, vacations, home, and family...

...III This development is only logical...

...This simply follows from the kind of army he has...

...But the factory closed its doors and loudspeakers ordered: "Do not let them in, shoot to kill...

...James O'Connor in Studies on the Left, Vol...

...Nothing quite like it has been seen since Dr...

...The holiday became a sacred month and it has now lasted a half year, with periods of relaxation in between, to be sure...

...For whatever it is worth, a historical parallel comes to mind—Stalin's "amalgams" in purging right-wing and left-wing leaders together, and his amalgamation of the theory of "Socialism in one country" with the theory of the "Third Period," one where allegedly class war was intensified to such a danger point that greatest care had to be taken not to expose the "socialist fatherland" to imperialist intervention...

...They still see Mao as the noble sauvage whose function it is to save the Western soul from the corruption of its civilization...

...Peng Chen, once the powerful major of Peking...

...From all this some observers have concluded that Mao's decision in favor of guerillatype "amateur" defense also entailed the return to the austere style of life, the mobilization of the entire population for amateur participation in defense-related work, the militarization of the nation, and finally the purge of those who disagreed with the strategy and with the policies it entailed...

...For as Hegel remarks, the total victory of one party is only the prelude to the emergence of factions and its eventual split...

...After all, it remains the Party which he had built himself and which is the only depository of his thoughts...

...It is a crime to deny that zeal in the propagation of Mao's word can be a substitute for knowledge and skill...

...There is another important aspect to the role of the army...

...His African adventure was much more peripheral for him than, say, the Communist defeat in China was for Stalin in 1927...

...The one class, however, that so far not only has resisted the "cultural revolution" but has met with it head-on in pitched battle has been the workers...

...2, where he clearly states that "Batista's pro-labor policies" were a hindrance to a healthy capitalistic development, but that Castro "turned to the Communists in early 1960 when the revolution required disciplined, productivity-minded labor leaders...

...the apparent isolationism of the present leadership which so patently conflicts with the "imperialistic" or world revolutionary ideas which Russian and Western propaganda ascribe to them...

...They have concluded that a decision on strategy entailed a decision on the political, government of the country...

...But Napoleon also avoided purges after he had become head of state...

...I could have mentioned the military state of the Taiping uprising in the last century...

...Significantly, he revived the slogan "everyone a soldier" in 1965 and assured the Chinese that they would be "spiritual and moral atom bombs...

...In our last issue, I tried to show how in this process the revolution loses support and the leader, precariously balancing on a shrinking pinnacle, must seek a new power basis...

...In this case the "people" whom Mao chose were The Young...

...Instead of a system that operates through the organizational channels of the Communist party, the Red Guards symbolize a return to spontaneity and to the importance of ideological purity rather than party loyalty...

...The so-called "cultural revolution" strikes at the mighty ones and forces them to return to the simplicity of the Yenari days...

...its officers had to be placed under the supervision of political commissars, privates were given political rights they have in no other army...

...It is now a crime in the People's Republic to deny that Mao is the greatest teacher of all times for all nations...

...Teng Hsiao-ping, Secretary General of the Party...

...They based their objections on technical grounds, or they pleaded for more aggressive policies that would rule out experiments with the patience of the people...

...Alvin Gouldner and Irving Louis Horowitz declare that the Red Guards may . . . break the legitimation system of orthodox Communism...

...if the achievement of revolutionary goals is left in the hands of mandarins who look backward instead of forward...

...And these people pretend to speak for the Left...

...Or perhaps since the Children's Crusade...

...insignia were abolished...

...after the bureaucrats and administrators had been fired, it was the turn of the Party bosses, and after the bosses came, or rather went, the turn of the propaganda directors...

...We must explain why the Party itself came under attack...

...It has happened that the Red Guards were called to assemble and then were sent home without having seen the leader...

...the present case shows that this type of government needs no "materialistic substructure...

...Some arguments stressed the military situation, some the need to catch up with Western technology, and others the operational needs of administrating any new program...

...But in voicing their opposition the mandarins used different arguments, some "rightist" and others "leftist...

...Mao's reasoning, however original in other respects, follows Stalin's very closely on the question of war and peace: the most immediate task is the construction of "socialism" in the only country where, according to the Chinese, the leadership has given it a chance...

...On the contrary, identification of the poor with th.2 head of the state through the army is precisely what characterizes the totalitarian mentality and mode of operation...

...inquiry about possible membership—but forbids active immersion in world politics...

...the demotion of some of the oldest comrades-in-arms who had gone with Mao Tse-tung through the most difficult stages of his career and had consistently been on the "Left...

...The Americans are hell-bent on intervention...

...What Mao Tse-tung is trying to bring off at this moment, indeed, can be compared only to those great moments in history when a leader chose a people and led it into the wilderness, inflaming it with the divine spirit of redemption and salvation...

...In China the interests of the people have been neglected and overridden, but its resistance has been so strong that eventually the administrators and Party bosses themselves had to call a halt...

...My analysis would rather start out from the nature and structure of the state in which that army plays a key role...

...and in defense policies, the army is not preparing to encounter an invasion...

...Parents and professors, everybody who represented tradition and authority in authoritarian, traditionalist China came under attack, often with symbolically administered violence or ritualistic acts of desecration...

...Those who have emphasized Mao's "idealism" or "voluntarism" are aware that Mao's revolution can no longer be understood in Marxian terms...

...The organization of the army is not in the hands of its chiefs of staff but in those of a powerful Military Affairs Committee with branches in each echelon...

...In keeping with these conceptions, the army was told to place "politics first," and the professional officers were overruled on all three counts: organization, defense, and foreign policy...

...Such an explanation, however, really explains nothing: why could they not conduct the power struggle inside the Party...

...The following quote from the New York Times was based on a report from a Tokio paper whose Peking correspondent had quoted from the Red Guard newspaper The East is Red (this is the way we get information from Peking under the non-recognition policy) Students of an engineering school went to a tool factory to mix with the workers and try to stimulate greater production by propounding the thought of Mao Tse-tung...

...The civil war in China is by no means over, 17 years after the defeat of the Kuomintang...

...This information points in quite a different direction, or rather in a number of conflicting directions: • the involvement of the army in the newest stage of the revolution and the down-grading of the Communist party...

...only its locus has shifted...

...In 1959 the "Great Leap" was halted because the people were exhausted, and this year they probably opposed a new adventure of this type...

...or that Mao appeared in public with one group of leaders, while another group, comprising all the disgraced persons, also appeared ceremonially, and neither group uttering a word...

...In totalitarian countries military decisions always are a function of politics, who ever heard of a government that deliberately destroys the effectiveness of its army because it expects an invasion...

...While Mao follows the example of Stalin in the isolationist period of his foreign policy, in another area he anxiously eschews the example of his great teacher—the purges so far have not been bloody...

...Indeed, they have intelligence that Mao's strategy again will rely on "close combat" in tactics, on "defensive warfare" in strategy, and on the "amateur war" in propaganda...

...For over a year now, we have witnessed this process, and the spiral of power still is contracting in China...

...the virtual disestablishment of the entire propaganda apparatus which, one should think, has been more concerned with the ideology and revolutionary morale than any other element in the Party...

...it would apply notably to Spengler's model of "Prussian socialism...

...Marx in China To those who force all political shadings into a Right-Left spectrum, China's "cultural revolution" looked like a further move to the "Left," a more radical expression of Communism...

...he would be a very reluctant Bonaparte...

...Mao's strategy in case of that American attack which he so fears, therefore, is indicated...

...Perhaps they now will credit Mao Tse-tung's claim that his 18 "thought" is not just a Chinese version of Marxism-Leninism, but is a new, original departure which asks for world-wide application and recognition.* Two ideologists of the American "Left," writing in the journal TransAction, embroider on the totalitarian and militaristic trend in the "thought of Mao" with the glorious reminiscences of Puritan austerity...

...Some observers, however, have seen the connection in the reverse order...

...Whoever has a function, which demands consideration for people, suddenly finds himself at odds with the leadership that wants to whip the reluctant dragon to make a new "big leap...

...Liu Shao-chi, the President of the Republic...

...The revolution does not move to the Right or the Left...

...Chou Yang, once deputy director of propaganda and a member of the Central Committee which itself has been demoted from its strategic position to be a minor wheel in the complicated apparatus of revolutionary command—they have all been deprived of their ranks and influence, or their offices no longer are considered prestigious...

...if propagandists declare that the people will not hear of Mao Tse-tung's teachings...

...The enemy is simply the * The claim has been recognized, at least in its application to Cuba, by Mr...

...Finally, there is no evidence to support the assumption that the dismissed leaders were opposed to Mao's defense conceptions...

...it spins off the so-called "deviations" to the Right and Left, forcing Mao Tse-tung to liqui19 date his oldest friends who are unfortunate enough to become the organizational focus of interests...

...for the conflict is now being fought out between the Party and other organizations...

...Nevertheless, since the Chinese probably tend to exaggerate among themselves the danger of an immediate invasion or attack by the U.S., it stands to reason that factions, once they have arisen and have been identified, also will tend to adopt distinctive lines in defense policy, and that such deviations then will tend to precipitate their fall...

...if urgent tasks are delayed because bourgeois sentimentalists fear to burden the people instead of inciting them to harder efforts—if all these deplorable elements of retardation develop in the very body of the Communist party, then, as Bertolt Brecht said in a comparable situation, it is time for the government to elect a new people...

...Perhaps nothing less will convince them that Mao's revolution has nothing to do with the liberation of the people or, despite its continued use of Marxist language, with the class struggle and the emancipation of the proletariat...

...spontaneously" to attack synagogues...

...It seems to me that this is an inversion of cause and effect...

...21 Indeed, a totalitarian state may use the peasant's ferocity or the illiterate's resentment when it orders him to terrorize urban intellectuals, but that does not make him into a participant of class war nor that army into a proletarian militia...

...In China the reminiscences of oriental despotism are not dead.* I have already mentioned Shi Huangti, the builder of the Great Wall...