IN DEFENSE OF MADAME MAO
Leys, Simon
Without Mao there could have been no Madame Mao. This elementary truism is now being sysematically obliterated by Chairman Hua's Propaganda Department. In order to legitimize his earlier coup...
...Flimsy and spurious clues are now being fabricated, alleging Mao's earlier displeasure with his wife and with the small group of people who were in fact his only faithful followers among the top leadership...
...yet, we cannot deny that many debates were terminated arbitrarily, and that many "inner contradictions" were abusively identified as "antagonistic contradictions...
...If the Central Committee persists in hiding at all cost the errors and mistakes of Chairman Mao, not only will the prestige of the Party decline among the masses, but socialist initiative too will be further weakened and corrupted . . . Chairman Mao used to brand as "class enemies" all the comrades who dared to criticize him...
...Yet, among Western audiences, there is generally enough ignorance to allow this conjuror's trick to be pulled off without challenge—specially when the performing artists happen to be, as is too often the case, respected political, diplomatic, or academic authorities...
...Even concerning Lin Piao and Liu Shao-chi, some comrades remain sceptical...
...This improbable message is now being dutifully broadcast everywhere...
...The swiftness and ease with which they were disposed of, as soon as Mao breathed his last, were but a final demonstration of this fact...
...WITH CHINESE AUDIENCES, however, it does not go down so easily...
...On the occasion of the anti-Lin Piao campaign, then in full swing, he dared to ask the 233 only relevant question: what is the point of attacking a dead individual, if we do not attempt to identify the mechanisms by which he came into power—what is the point of denouncing Lin Piao, if we do not endeavor to denounce the Lin Piao system...
...May I confess that I find their performance singularly tasteless...
...Of course, he was right most of the time...
...It is imperative that the truth be reestablished wherever it has been distorted...
...To ensure a smooth transition, Mao's successor is now confronted with a delicate task: it is necessary for Hua to claim that, by destroying Maosim for all practical purposes, he is actually faithful to Mao...
...In order to legitimize his earlier coup d'etat, Hua must create, against all evidence, a myth according to which his purging of Madame Mao and of the Maoist Radicals was entirely in harmony with Mao's own original intentions...
...But now the news has just reached us from Canton that he has been arrested once again...
...I myself can hardly be suspected of being an admirer of Chiang Ching—I did not wait until her downfall to begin criticizing her--but when I see how she is attacked now by people who professed nothing but respect for her as long as she was in power, I somehow wish to take up her defense...
...Since that manifesto was actually aimed in part at the "Gang of Four," the persecution to which Li Yi-che was being subjected since its publication relented somewhat for a while following Chiang Ching's downfall...
...If we do not have the courage to criticize these, we will not help the progress of the revolutionary cause...
...The large-scale sufferings, crimes, and ruin that we now associate with her name derived not from any evil genius of hers but from the latitude and impetus deliberately given her by Mao...
...of her own, she had nothing—neither intelligence nor talent, nor even elementary shrewdness and basic political acumen, as recent events have made all too plain...
...It would be sheer impudence to denounce the "Gang of Four" while covering up the decisive and demiurgic role played by Mao in this matter...
...How should we evaluate chairman Mao's position in History...
...By herself, she was nothing but a failed actress and a barely literate demimondaine...
...Some comrades consider that the second decade of the People's Republic was not as good as the first and the third was worse than the second...
...In Europe, in America, even in Australia, we can already hear the usual Peking sycophants zealously denouncing Madame Mao and exposing all the evils of the "Gang of Four...
...To ascribe to Madame Mao the main responsibility for the senseless violence and cruelty of the "Cultural Revolution," for the destruction of Chinese culture, and for the ruthless cretinization of the most sophisticated nation on earth—which have all taken place during the last ten years—would be akin to crediting the ass whose jaw Samson borrowed in battle with the ability of destroying the Philistines...
...It is only when answers will have been provided to those qudstions that the Party, the army, and the masses will be ablet o dedicate themselves unreservedly to the construction of socialism...
...Popular reaction against such cynical tampering with historical evidence became so strong that recently the Party committees of Kwangtung province and of the Canton garrison felt moved to send a message to Hua Kuo-feng, demanding that a new critical evaluation of Mao's role be at last authorized...
...They had no support from the Party, no support from the army, and—needless to say— no support from among the masses (a point of much less importance, however, since in a totalitarian state, the masses have no say in the selection of their rulers...
...Hua Kuo-feng obviously cannot afford to let such a man go free: one of these days, he might well have come to ask where the "Gang of Four" had drawn its power from . . .0 234...
...The backing of Mao's prestige alone could maintain them in power, 232 against the tremendous hostility and hatred that their own political ineptitude had earned them from all quarters...
...IN CANTON, at the end of 1974 under the pen name of Li Yi-che, a courageous young revolutionary wrote a political manifesto of historical momentum...
...The people have shart eyes: everyone can see for himself...
...However great his achievements, during the long period when he was leading the Party, the army, and the state, Chairman Mao was not always infallible or without shortcomings...
...We must face the truth which is contained in this observation...
...For instance, such cases as Peng Teh'huai's and Teng Hsiao-ping's belong to that category of abuses...
...Here are some passages of this extraordinary document, which was leaked to the outside world, probably at the initiative of its very authors: . . . In the Party, in the army, and among the masses, there still linger a number of unanswered questions whose accumulation is somewhat hampering the full development of socialist initiative...
...The truth, of course, is that Chiang Ching and her friends owed everything to Mao: they had obtained their exalted position entirely thanks to his personal initiative, and retained it only through his continuous and active protection...
...The devastating effects of this unusual weapon derived from the hand that swung it: the very enormity of Madame Mao's havoc should not induce us to forget her own essential mediocrity...
...They would have been toppled much earlier, had it not been for this peculiar immunity afforded them by the "Great Helmsman's" private favor...
Vol. 24 • July 1977 • No. 3
