Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping

Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping

by

Prairie Fire

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

A May 1st, 2007 document is circulating the internet, the Declaration to Reaffirm the Significance and Relevance of the Anti-Revisionist Struggle and the GPCR. It appears to have been signed by various organizations claiming to be Maoist. Some of the signatories are well-known fake-Maoist organizations, such as the fake-Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany. The nature of the other signatories is not fully known. One liberal social fascist grouping is complaining that people are not flocking to sign it. (1)

The document is mostly a boilerplate characterization of the struggle against Khrushchev and Liu Shaoqi-Deng Xiaoping revisionism from one type of Maoist perspective. I have no major objections to the document, as far as it goes. The document is compatible with our founding statements.

I am critical of the document on three points.

Firstly, the document skips over any hard questions about the Cultural Revolution. It fails to address why the Cultural Revolution failed to prevent the restoration of capitalism in China. The document merely states that a coup resulted from various vague structural problems — as though coups pretty much just fall from the sky. Stating that a coup was responsible for the defeat of proletarian power is hardly an explanation at all. Such an assertion, while perhaps true on the most superficial level, fails to give any useful structural or historical explanation of how the restoration process occurs.

As far as a historical account goes, the coup explanation is inadequate. It fails to account for how easily the Gang of Four, the last top leftists standing, were brushed aside after Mao Zedong’s death. Why were there no mass uprisings across China in response to their arrests? Why was there no revolutionary civil war after their arrests? In 1975, Zhang Chunqiao wrote that “proletarian dictatorship is more consolidated than ever.” (2) Subsequent events seem to indicate this statement was mere bombast. The masses were not very mobilized in the 1970s to fight revisionism. While the remaining left forces did control the propaganda organs and educational system to some degree up until 1976, they did not seem to have much support among the masses nor much of an independent institutional power-base outside of Mao’s own. What support they did have was brushed aside rather easily by the capitalists.

The Cultural Revolution was not fine in the 1970s. The left had been weakened substantially by 1976. The first major weakening of left forces was with the fall of people like Wang Li, Guan Feng and Qi Benyu when the Cultural Revolution Group was purged at the end of 1967 and into 1968. This purge represented the end of the independent mass movement power seizures by red guards and rebel workers.

The second major incident, perhaps the most decisive weakening of the left (not counting Mao Zedong’s death for the moment), was the fall of Chen Boda and Lin Biao in 1970 to 1971. In all probability, this was a continuation of the 1967 and 1968 purge of leftists for “excesses.” It was also connected to the struggle over the state chair and leftist economic policies advanced by Lin Biao’s camp. It may have also been tied to the role of the military in society. Lin Biao’s fall meant that the PLA at the center would no longer be under the control of the left. This all but made another round of left power seizures from below impossible in practical terms.

By the time the Gang of Four fell, there were no independent mass movements and the PLA was not under leftist control. Old cadres had been restored to power since the late 1960s and there was no way that the old cadres were going to allow another round of mass criticism and power seizures from below to be unleashed. In the 1970s, the policies of Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi (and later Deng Xiaoping) replaced the more revolutionary foreign policy and global strategic outlook associated with Lin Biao. Whatever Lin Biao’s real line was, the mass movement-left rallied under Lin Biao’s banner and Long Live the Victory of People’s War! in 1967 against the politics of Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi in the Foreign Ministry. The influence of Zhou Enlai, who was an earlier target of the mass movement-left and their purged leaders, grew especially in the 1970s. Deng Xiaoping was saved when his case was separated from Liu Shaoqi’s in the late 1960s. Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated in 1973 and restored as a top party leader, first vice-premier, under Zhou Enlai in 1974, every indication is that he was restored with Mao Zedong’s approval. Then, Deng Xiaoping was removed again, but not purged in 1975, allowing him the possibility of his subsequent come-back. The arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 was an undramatic endgame of a long drawn-out process whereby the revolutionary leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was weakened. Mao Zedong made various errors and did not always steadfastly support the left. Avoiding the hard questions does not advance the struggle for communism. Acting like a coup in 1976 was the main decisive event shows little historical understanding of this whole complex process; it smacks of historical idealism and the great man theory. Revolutionary scientists have no use for silly dogma.

Secondly, the boilerplate coup story does not give any kind of adequate structural explanation of the process of restoration. This is the best the statement offers:

There are ideological, political, socio-economic and cultural causes of modern revisionism. The major causes include deviation from materialist dialectics, abandonment or waning of the proletarian class stand and class struggle, worship of outdated or revisionist Soviet examples and the degeneration of a great number of bureaucrats and intellectuals due to their petty bourgeois social conditions and ways of thinking, which are the gateway to modern revisionism as full bourgeois ideology.

Hankering for personal privileges, nepotism, careerism, abuse of power, enrichment and other forms of self-interest, those afflicted with the petty bourgeois mode of thinking gain the upper hand among the leading functionaries in the party, state, economy and cultural institutions and give rise to modern revisionism as bourgeois ideology and as platform for bourgeois policies. (3)

Of course, I generally agree with the above, however, such vague assertions are shallow and tedious. How exactly do these realms interact in the restoration process. What is the exact connection between the super-structure and restoration? What kind of cultural policies should be embraced? Is there a dual power process that occurs to oust capitalists within the party and state? Should the mass movement always be kept at a boil? Are power seizures from below the best option? Is an egalitarian militarization of society an option? What is the right balance to strike between advance and consolidation? How is the growth or restriction of bourgeois right related to restoration? How should we evaluate the cult? Of course, greed, corruption and nepotism are bad, but how are they defeated? “Never forget class struggle!” is a good moral imperative, but says little about how class struggle should actually be carried out. What forms should the continuation of revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat actually take? Structurally speaking, how should proletarian power be defended against the new bourgeoisie and how should proletarian power be expanded under the dictatorship of the proletariat? Most of what is thought of as the Cultural Revolution lasted from 1966 to 1969 or 1971. The Cultural Revolution was not a single event lasting from 1966 to 1976. Any serious account of the Cultural Revolution is going to have to address the successes and failures of the various social experiments from 1966 to 1976 in a serious way. The statement seems completely unaware of or unwilling to weigh in on any of these complexities.

Thirdly, the statement says that the international communist movement must draw lessons from the defeat of socialism. Yet it says little that is concrete and useful. Those who really want to draw lessons from the past are those actually doing the research on these issues and asking the hard questions. Anyone can cheer the Cultural Revolution in a vague way. However, actually supporting the Cultural Revolution means asking hard questions, studying it and drawing real lessons from the past. This document does not seem very serious about learning lessons about the past. Rather, this document is more concerned about cultivating a certain image for those who sign it. Signing such a document is more about opportunism than supporting the Cultural Revolution. Opportunism was a big problem within the left forces during the Cultural Revolution. Supporting opportunism is not drawing the correct lessons from the past.

IRTR and post-IRTR groupings have done plenty of real work trying to deepen people’s understanding of the reversal in China during the 1970s. For example, IRTR created a huge Cultural Revolution Archive of primary sources, original research in the form of discussions, original papers on Maoist culture struggle and reviews , and Shubel Morgan has produced three movies on the subject. The lack of serious investigation into the Cultural Revolution by groups claiming to be Maoist is not surprising considering how the so-called international communist movement is populated by fakes of all varieties. Rather than joining a chorus of opportunists and fakes, revolutionary scientists choose to deepen our understanding of the Cultural Revolution. Our work speaks for itself.

Notes.

1. http://burning.typepad.com/burningman/2007/08/declaration-to-.html
2. Chang Chun-chiao, On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie. 1975 http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zhang/1975/x01/x01.htm
3. http://burning.typepad.com/burningman/2007/08/declaration-to-.html

 

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Also see: Two Roads Defeated part 1; Two Roads Defeated part 2; Two Roads Defeated part 3; Mao Declassified; Some of Us reviewed (Part 1); Some of Us reviewed (Part 2);Some of Us reviewed (Part3); A Maoist-Third Worldist Review of Mobo Gao, The Battle for China’s Past; In memory of the great Lenin..; Some lines within the CCP in the Maoist period; Shubel Morgan video On the Theory of Productive Forces; The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution; The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray!; Lin Biao excerpt on the TOPF with important commentary by Prairie Fire; Mao’s Bloody Revolution Revealed (with Philip Short, 2007); Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping;Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé); Subel Morgan’s Series On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces”