gpcr

Prasanta Roy

Restoration of capitalism in the erstwhile USSR tremendously agonized the communists of the whole world. But this agony stopped short of utter despondency, because immediately after the 20th congress of the CPSU, the CPC led by com. Mao Tse Tung plunged headlong into defending Marxism–Leninism and lambasting the vicious revisionist line of the Khrushchovs. At the same time, drawing sustenance from the CPC, many countries including Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchia kept waging armed struggles against imperialism and its local allies. These factors enlivened the communists the world over and the serious setback of the world communist movement that was caused by the Khrushchov revisionists was compensated for. Mao’s China became the centre of the world communist movement.

The Great Debate carried on between the CPC and the CPSU (1963-1965) enthused the revolutionary communists, who shook off their initial shock and devoted themselves to the party–work in their respective countries. The cogent arguments of the CPC in favour of Marxism-Leninism shattered to pieces the anti-Marxist position of the CPSU and inspired afresh thousands of communists throughout the globe. Following this debate started the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (hence forth only the GPCR) in China. This was an absolutely unprecedented revolution in the world, a revolution in a socialist country directed against those in authority of the party taking the capitalist road. This was a revolution initiated and directly led by com. Mao, a revolution concretely meant to avert the bitter experience of the U.S.S.R i.e., to stall the restoration of capitalism in a socialist country. The communists of the world were further inspired by this great event in history. A feeling of ease was added to revolutionary zeal.

But this situation could not last very long. The GPCR after traversing a zigzag course and passing through a see-saw battle with “those in authority taking the capitalist road”, ultimately ended with com. Mao’s death in September 1976. But as history would have it, the conclusion of the GPCR did not result in the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as was the declared objective of this ten years tumultuous struggle. On the contrary, immediately after Mao’s death, the capitalist-roaders seized political power and started reversing the entire direction of the GPCR with the clear-cut objective to establish the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Within a very short span of time they successfully achieved this. It was the time when the communists of the world fell into the deepest crisis, which has been persisting till to-day. In fact, for the first time in history of the world communist movement a period of vacuity set in. The reactionaries of all hues gleefully started to propagate that ‘socialism as a system does not work’. In the absence of concrete examples of socialist states or any ongoing communist revolution, a great number of people, particularly the younger ones came to believe this. Excepting the streak of hope created by the CPN (M) of Nepal, gloom has been pervading and the communists in every country have been experiencing confusion and frustration. A mechanical denial of this state of affairs born of dogmatism will not solve the problem. The communists should bravely face the stark reality that the prevailing situation is the result of a crisis in the development of the Marxist theory. Since the present situation directly follows the fact that the GPCR in China could not prevent the capitalist-roaders from restoring capitalism almost immediately after its conclusion an objective analysis of this great event in history is an urgent task of the communists to-day. We should try and take serious lessons from it, both positive and negative. We think that efforts in this direction will go a long way to understanding the contemporary problems of Marxism-Leninism, for it involves the most crucial questions of socialism, e.g., the method of consolidating and developing the dictatorship of the proletariat, nature of class-struggle under socialism, the relation between super-structure and the base, the relation between the working class and the party of its vanguard and above all the role of consciousness in the entire period of transition from capitalism to communism.

Rationale of the GPCR

“Thus the complete victory of socialist system in all spheres of the national economy is now a fact. And what does this mean?

It means that exploitation of man by man has been abolished, eliminated, while the socialist ownership of the instruments and means of production has been established as the unshakable foundation of our soviet society.” 1

“You are making socialist revolution and yet don’t know where the bourgeoisie is. It is right in the communist party — those in power taking the capitalist road.” 2

The first quotation is from com. Stalin’s speech, delivered at the extra-ordinary 8th congress of the Soviets of the USSR in November 25, 1936. The second one is a part of the statement of com. Mao Tse Tung issued shortly before his death in September 1976. The contrast of these two different evaluations of the two great socialist countries by their two great leaders very poignantly focuses on the issues raised by the GPCR. Stalin’s speech testifies that despite his serious conviction to the cause of socialism, he grossly deviated from Marxism-Leninism so far as the understanding of ‘socialism’ is concerned, whereas Mao Tse Tung successfully hit the nail on the head and carried the legacy of Marxism-Leninism by not only emphasizing on the existence of class-struggle in socialist societies, but also, at the same time, locating the fountain-head of capitalism in a socialist society. Right from the early fifties of the last century Mao had been keenly observing the negative practice of socialism in the USSR led by Stalin. At the same time he kept a close watch on the followers of that erroneous line in his own party and their increasing strength almost to the point of seizure of political power in the mid-sixties. Mao, who was haunted by what had happened in the post-20th Congress the USSR desperately tried to forestall its recurrence in China and embarked on what became one of the most famous and controversial political movements of the world — the GPCR. The reactionaries and revisionists denigrated it in the most bitter terms, revolutionary communists generally hailed it as great a revolution as the October Revolution and there were others who critically appraised it. But there is no denying the fact that the GPCR raised the most vital questions relating to the practice of socialism. The range of the problems dealt with is considerably vast, from the simple to the complex, from the coarse to the subtle. At the same time the GPCR had its great limitations too. For those who want to carry forward the task of proletarian revolution taking lessons from the GPCR must take both its strength and weakness into account.

As has been stated earlier, learning lessons from the mistakes committed by Stalin in the process of building socialism in his country was the cornerstone of the GPCR. We shall try to study the rationale of the GPCR from this angle, i.e., how Mao tried to overcome the negative aspects of the socialism practised in USSR.

We have already seen the grossest error of Stalin in his non-recognition of class-struggle in a socialist society, which goes against the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism. Karl Marx did not have a first-hand experience of building socialism. But many years before the foundation of the first socialist state, i.e., in 1875 Karl Marx most succinctly explained the raison d’être of the existence of capitalist elements during the entire period of the first phase of the communist society, i.e., the socialist society. He wrote,

“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundation, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from the capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” 3

But it was Lenin as the builder of the first socialist country categorically put forward:

“And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat…The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms.” 4

In the same article Lenin explained the source of strength of the exploiting classes even under the dictatorship of the proletariat and how the class struggles waged by the overthrown exploiters become more bitter.

“The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until the epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts of restoration…with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold…” 5

Lenin believed that the source of strength of the bourgeoisie in a socialist state was innate in the society itself and the bourgeoisie keeps on regenerating itself taking sustenance from the society itself.

“…and whose power lies…also with force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, in the small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale.” 6

The reader might get tired of reading the oft-quoted lines of Lenin (although Lenin’s dealing with this subject is so vast that any number of quotations would appear inadequate), but it is a necessary reiteration considering the fact that the whole theme of the GPCR hangs on this particular issue, although with varied ramifications. Let us compare this recurring theme with Stalin’s report to 18th Party-Congress, held in 1939.

“The feature that distinguishes Soviet society today from any capitalist society is that it no longer contains antagonistic hostile classes; that the exploiting classes have been eliminated, while the workers, peasants and intellectuals, who make up Soviet society, live and work in friendly collaboration.”

Is this understanding not the precursor of the 22nd Congress thesis of Khrushchov, formulating ‘the state of the entire people’ and ‘the party of the entire people’? The question arose right there in the CPSU (B) itself ‘that, if there is nobody to suppress’ in the society why the state ‘is not relegated to the museum of antiquities?’ Stalin answers “These questions not only betray an underestimation of the capitalist encirclement, but also an underestimation of the role and significance of the bourgeois states and their organs which send spies, assassins and wreckers into our country and are waiting for a favourable opportunity to attack it by armed force.” 7

After that Stalin gave a theoretical foundation of this understanding of’ state by quoting the famous passage of Anti-Duhring where Engels discusses the withering away of the state and showed how Engels’ formulation was not applicable in the then prevailing situation of the USSR for two reasons : 1) The country concerned cannot be treated in isolation from the international situation, 2) Socialism was not then victorious in the majority of the countries, not to speak of all the countries. Ironically enough, he vindicates his position by quoting none other than Lenin himself, “We do not regard Marxist theory as something completed or inviolable;…which socialists must further advance in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.” (Lenin, ‘Our Programme ’, 1899) Stalin here updates Marxism by basing himself on a complete non-recognition of the Marxist-Leninist understanding of continuous class-struggle in a socialist society. He contradicts Engels for reasons that Engels did not want to mean — he dealt with the long-term and a general direction of the ‘State’ towards withering away, “when interference of the state-power in the social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another and then ceases of itself” (Engels, Anti-Duhring). Where this wrong understanding of class-struggle in a socialist society led Stalin will be our next centre of attention, for it had a direct bearing on the dramatis personae of the GPCR. For now, we shall see how Mao Tse Tung tried to save the communist movement of the world particularly that of his own country by repudiating Stalin’s position.

In the USSR the unprecedented development of productive forces in Stalin era made history in the annals of the progress of human civilization. The victory in the World War II was the culmination of the glory and prestige of the USSR in the decade following the conclusion of the war. It was, therefore, quite natural that the influence of the CPSU (B), of Stalin and particularly of his political thought would exercise tremendous influence over the communist parties of the world. The CPC was not an exception. The entire period from the founding of the Peoples’ Republic of China to the holding of the 8th National Congress of the CPC in 1956, was distinctly marked with general political orientation of the CPSU (B). The 8th National Congress of the CPC bears testimony to this, where the class-struggle was relegated to the secondary position. How it could happen despite Mao’s leadership is a matter that has to be discussed at greater length. But it did happen. But that Mao could, by no means, share the ideas expressed at the 8th Congress of the CPC is obvious. Mao never wavered on the basic point of continuing class-struggle during the entire period of socialism. Mao began expressing this concept in an embryonic form even before the liberation, gradually kept on developing it and culminated it in the GPCR. In the ‘Report to the second plenary session of the Seventh Central Committee of the CPC’, held in March, 1949 Mao stated almost prophetically—

“The policy of restricting private capitalism is found to meet with resistance in varying degrees and forms from the bourgeoisie, especially from the big owners of the private enterprises, that is, from the big capitalists. Restriction versus opposition to restriction will be the main form of class-struggle in the new-democratic state. It is entirely wrong to think that at present we need not restrict capitalism and can discard the slogan of “regulation of capital;” that is a right opportunist view.”

The rumbling of the ensuing struggle with the right opportunists could be heard now. In 1952 June, he issued the statement “Contradiction between the Working class and the bourgeoisie is the principal contradiction in China.” A few years later in 1957, after China was declared a socialist country, Mao was more forthright:

“Class-struggle is by no means over. The class-struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, the class-struggle between the various political forces, and the class-struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the ideological field will still be protracted and tortuous and at times even very sharp. The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its world outlook and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism is not really settled yet.” 8

Mao was absolutely clear that transformation of the ownership of the means of production by itself cannot bring on socialism.

“While we have won basic victory in transforming the ownership of the means of production, we are even farther from complete victory on the political and the ideological fronts. In the ideological field, the question of who will win out, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie has not yet really settled.” 9

With the passage of time Mao gradually increased the clarity of his understanding. In 1962, at the 10th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the CPC, he said:

“Socialist society covers a considerably long historical period. In the historical period of socialism, there are still classes, class-contradictions and class-struggle, there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, and there is the danger of the capitalist restoration. We must recognize the protracted and complex nature of this struggle. We must heighten our vigilance…. otherwise a socialist country like ours will turn into its opposite and degenerate and a capitalist restoration will take place. From now on, we must remind ourselves of this every year every month and day so that we can retain a rather sober understanding of this problem and have a Marxist-Leninist line.”

But till then the target of the class-struggle was not clearly spelt out, which was done by Mao two years later, at the end of 1964. He convened a working conference of the Central Committee and under his direction a 23 point document was issued named, “Some Current Problems Raised in the Socialist Education Movement in the Rural Areas” where for the first time he identified the target: “The main target of the present movement is those party persons in power taking the capitalist road.” The essence of the GPCR was at last brought forth, though officially the issue of “May 16, 1966 circular” of the Central Committee of the CPC is considered the beginning of the GPCR. In a talk of February 1967, Mao pointed out:

“In the past we waged struggles in the rural areas, in factories, in the cultural field, and we carried out the socialist education movement but all this failed to solve the problem because we did not find a form, a method, to arouse the broad masses to expose our dark aspect openly, in an all-round way and from below.” 10

That form was found in the GPCR. This is how Mao’s understanding of class-struggle under socialism gradually developed into the launching of the GPCR and how he firmly combated the erroneous line of Stalin. There are innumerable writings of Lenin and Mao on how and why classes and the ingredients of emergence of new exploitation remain in a socialist society. Lenin in his famous article, ‘Economics and Politics in the Era of Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, ‘A Great Beginning’, ‘The Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky’, ‘Left Wing Communism—An Infantile Disorder’ etc., has brilliantly analyzed why continuation of class-struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat is an indispensable task of the communists. After an interregnum of Stalin period, Mao once again focused on the same problem. But what was new in Mao’s understanding was that the revisionists in the party constituted the head-quarters of the bourgeoisie and that restoration of capitalism in a socialist society would be executed mainly by the capitalist-roaders in the party, although the bourgeois social forces would provide a very favourable condition for the comeback of the bourgeoisie to power. How a wrong political line becomes the decisive factor in the reversal of a socialist society is a matter of great importance to understand the guiding principles of the GPCR.

The abolition of the private ownership of the means of production is the first and the most indispensable task of the proletariat. But in itself it is not the sufficient condition for the founding and developing of socialism. Class-struggle starts right from the beginning, because ‘socialism’ is born (in the superfluous sense that the private ownership of the means of production has been abolished) taking with itself various features of capitalism. Lenin said:

“Theoretically there can be no doubt that between capitalism and communism there lies a definite transition period which must combine the features and properties of both these forms of social economy. This transition period has to be a period of struggle between dying capitalism and nascent communism—or, in other words between capitalism which has been defeated, but not destroyed and communism which has been born but is still very feeble.” 11

But if the struggle between dying capitalism and nascent communism is not properly recognized, a reversal is bound to take place. How does this reversal come about and how is this process led by a section of the communist party who are in the position of authority is a matter of serious attention for the understanding of what the GPCR tried to achieve.

Before the advent of capitalism, within the womb of a society new productive forces and new production relations corresponding to them used to develop. In the capitalist system of production, on the other hand, productive forces kept on developing with an unprecedented force and scale. But it did not allow any new production relation to grow within it. It imparted social character to production and created the proletariat who by means of social revolution would in future unleash the enchained productive forces by converting the private ownership of the means of production into social ownership of them. Although there was no precedence of socialist relation of production, conditions in a nascent socialist country were created by which “social production according to a predetermined plan now becomes possible.” 12 Without going through any previous experience of a socialist production relation, the powerful development of capitalist production system and the assumption of the social character of production provided the material basis for generation of the ideology and politics of the era of socialism. After the seizure of power by the proletariat (which itself was essentially an act of consciousness), it was the consciousness that started to determine the production relations and productive forces. So long it was the base that determined the superstructure; now a period set in when mainly the superstructure began to determine the base. After the seizure of political power, the proletariat by dint of its consciousness set out to build a new production relation which in turn did away with the hurdles of the development of productive forces. Thus a qualitative leap took place in the entire course of the development of society.

But this newly created production relation started its journey very totteringly, under constant pressure of capitalism which has been defeated but “the energy of their resistance has been increased a hundredfold and a thousand fold.”13 If the constant class-struggle in a socialist society is not recognized, the production relation under socialism will gradually turn into capitalist production relation and the dictatorship of the proletariat will ultimately be replaced by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This happened in the USSR and post-Mao China.

Abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and to transform them into state property is the primary and the basic task of the proletariat. It is a precondition of socialism, but it cannot be equated with socialism. The second most important task of socialism is to do away with the alienation of labour and thereby to replace gradually capitalist production relation with the socialist one. We shall see later on how this problem of alienation becomes pivotal in our discourse. However that only the state ownership cannot achieve socialism is evident from the soviet experience. In the USSR, right from the period of Stalin, it was believed that since the exploiting classes had been abolished from the society and there was no class-struggle, the principal contradiction in the society was between advanced production relation and backward productive force.

It was thought, since the basic prerequisite for a socialist economy had been fulfilled and production process had been freed from capitalist competition, market and profit. The planned economy would lead to unhindered development of productive forces. To accelerate this process emphasis was laid on heavy industry, at the expense of light industry and agriculture. Stalin thought that in a backward country like the USSR, socialism required to achieve a powerful material base for furthering the course of socialism and therefore the use of the most modern technique and developing cadres who would be able to use it, was the prime need of society. Consistent with this outlook, one man management, use of piecework, dependence on experts, even bonuses were introduced. The aspect of production relation was ignored. Relation between the leadership and the masses, between the management and the working people and between the expert cadres and the general cadres began tilting towards capitalist relationship. Central planning excluded local initiative. Policy-making in respect of production and administration was monopolized by a few people belonging to the upper echelon of the party and the masses of the workers and peasants were kept in total darkness. Individual workers or peasants turned into cogs of the machine as it happens in the capitalist production. It is to be noted that all this started taking place in a general structure of ‘socialism’ where formally the toiling people were the owners of the means of production. Stalin neglected constant revolutionizing of the production relation and the superstructure because, since he found no class-struggle in the society, he sensed no danger coming from the superstructure, that in turn might vitiate the production relation and the human part of the productive forces The result was the alienation of the producers from the means of production — a course essentially characteristic of capitalist production. Capitalism can abolish (and actually has abolished) private ownership of the means of production in some countries. But what it can never achieve is to terminate the alienation of the workers from the means of production. So the question of ‘alienation’ can be called the most important distinguishing feature separating socialism from capitalism.

Karl Marx was the first person to discover the problem of alienation as early as in 1844:

“He (the worker) is at home when he is not working and when he is working he is not at home. His labour, therefore, is not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification.” 14

Engels envisaged that in socialism “productive work will become a delight instead of blight.” 15

A worker can never have delight when he is in complete darkness about the commodity he is producing, why it is being produced, where and how the income generated from the production is distributed. His personal skill and creativity is hardly of any use in the completely mechanical and monotonous capitalist production process. This is what befell the workers of the USSR particularly in the later period of socialist practice. (Why in the early period this problem was not so acute is a matter of separate study). Mao took great lessons from this negative experience of the USSR and tried to set things aright, which we shall see later, became one of the major thrusts of the GPCR.

It was from the early fifties of the last century that Mao Tse Tung became fully conscious of the overwhelming influence of the soviet model on the CPC. He realized that if it was not fought back, China also would go the soviet way. Continuation of class-struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat would be discarded; the theory of the productive force would take the center-stage and base, production and productive force would take precedence over superstructure, politics and production relation respectively. He was afraid that planned economy would mean only centralization without combining it with decentralization and as a result there would be only central authority and no local authority. A few months before the holding of the 8th National Congress of the CPC, Mao wrote in his signal work, ‘On the Ten Major Relationships’:

“…. our attention should now be focused on how to enlarge the powers of the local authorities to some extent, give them greater independence and let them do more, all on the premise that the unified leadership of the central authorities is to be strengthened… Our territory is so vast; our population is so large and the conditions are so complex that it is far better to have the initiative come from both the central and the local authorities than from one source alone. We must not follow the example of the Soviet Union in concentrating everything in the hands of the central authorities shackling the local authorities and denying them the right to independent action.”

Mao urged the party to avoid the mistakes committed by Stalin in respect of giving one-sided emphasis on the heavy industry. In the same article he said:

“Their (of the Soviet Union and East European Countries) lopsided stress on heavy industry to the neglect of agriculture and light industry results in a shortage of goods on the market and an unstable currency. We, on the other hand, attach more importance to agriculture and light industry.”

There is no reasonable ground to believe that Mao was altogether against heavy industry and use of technique. All he was concerned about was to stall the tendency of monopolization of the economic and administrative power by a handful of party men in the upper rung of the party. To break this monopolization and the resultant bureaucratization he suggested some measures. In his 60 points of directives on working methods, he said in January 1958:

“The technological revolution is designed to make everyone learn technology and science. The rightists say that we are small intellectuals incapable of leading the big intellectuals…. We must summon up our energy to learn technology so as to accomplish the great technological revolution history has left to us [to accomplish].” 16

Mao combated Stalin’s stress on developing a group of experts to accelerate production, generally at the cost of their politics. He wrote in ‘The 60 Points on Working Methods’:

“Red and expert, politics and business—the relation between them is the unification of contradictions. We must criticize the apolitical attitude. [We] must oppose empty-headed ‘politicos’ on the one hand and the disoriented ‘practicoes’ on the other.”

By all these measures Mao tried in a way to grapple with the problem of alienation of the producers from the means of production. He summed up the whole problem and gave an outline of the solution in his “A Critique of Soviet Economics” which is worth quoting in this context:

“After the question of the ownership system is solved, the most important question is administration—how enterprises owned either by the whole people or the collective is administered. This is the same as the question of the relations among the people under a given ownership system, a subject that could use many articles. Changes in the ownership system in a given period of time always have their limits, but the relations among people in productive labour may well, on the contrary, be in ceaseless change. With respect to administration of enterprises owned by the whole people, we have adopted a set of approaches: a combination of concentrated leadership and mass movement; combination of party leaders, working masses, and technical personnel; cadres participating in production; workers participating in administration, steadily changing unreasonable regularities and institutional practices.”

These are some of the measures Mao exhorted his party to adopt to address the problem of alienation and the widening chasm between the leaders and the led. Unlike Stalin he clearly understood that the contradiction between the forces of production and production relation cannot be correctly resolved unless the party takes upon itself the task of correctly handling the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (which follows the recognition of continuing class-struggle in a socialist society), unless the party keeps politics in command and unless it can retain the dominating role of the superstructure over the base. With great anguish Mao wrote, “Stalin mentions economics only, not politics.” “Stalin’s book, (Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR) from first to last says nothing about superstructure. It is not concerned with the people; it considers things, not people.” 17

After Stalin’s death, taking advantages of the errors committed by Stalin, the Khruschovs in the Soviet party jumped at the opportunity of unabashed restoration of capitalism. Mao keenly observed the course taking place in the first socialist state of the world and clearly came to the conclusion that if a communist party deviates from Marxism-Leninism, it is the party leaders at the highest level who become instrumental in bringing about capitalism in a socialist country. As we have already seen, in a socialist society (in the broad sense) capitalist elements remain and remain very powerfully. Private ownership still exists, for it is never possible for the proletariat to expropriate all capitalist enterprises at one stroke. Small-scale production, the breeding ground for capitalism still remains. Major capitalist characteristics of capitalist income and distribution still persist. Mao has put it in this manner:

“China is a socialist country. Before liberation she was much the same as a capitalist country. Even now she practises an eight-grade wage system; distribution according to work and exchange through money, and in all this differs very little from the old society. What is different is that the system of ownership has changed.” “Under the dictatorship of the proletariat such things can only be restricted.” 18

In such a society both the possibilities, one of gradual consolidation of socialism and the other of gradual restoration of capitalism are, so to speak, evenly poised. In these societies, born of violent and painful social revolutions, working-class believes that it wields its political power through its own party. It would brook no bourgeoisie to intervene and take over power as a class. It is the leaders of the party that control the key positions in economic and administrative spheres. Now, it is up to the leaders to decide the future course of the society. If the leadership has the correct understanding of Marxism-Leninism and the political will to implement socialism, it will keep on developing the ‘elements of communism’ in that particular society. If it is the other way about, i.e., if the leadership adopts policies of monopolizing management and administration, if the distinction between manual and intellectual labour is not gradually eroded, if the difference in wages, instead of being narrowed down, keeps increasing, if profit motive is initiated, the production relation between the leadership of the party and the workers and other sections of the toiling people begins turning into capitalist one very slowly, silently and without any jerk. To a certain point this restoration of capitalist relationship continues to take place within the frame of what can be called broadly socialist. But a time comes when this framework becomes a hindrance to furthering capitalism. Then it is broken and the classical system of capitalism with the market of capital and labour once again emerges, as it has been in the erstwhile USSR. Thus, it is the leadership of a communist party, being in command of the whole production system, administration and a corresponding superstructure that brings about capitalism in a socialist country. To enter into this process of reversal what is most important is to start it by changing the superstructure. So if the Marxist-Leninist section of a communist party resolves to stick to the path of socialism, it has to constantly keep revolutionizing the superstructure. At times this struggle assumes the proportion of a social revolution involving the entire masses of the people and maintaining the intensity for a considerable period of time. Such a revolutionary period has been termed ‘Cultural Revolution’ by Mao. This is what the GPCR is all about. Mao says:

“The transition from socialism to communism need not be made a reality through social revolution in which one class overthrows another, but there will be a social revolution in which new production relations and social institutions supersede old ones.” 19

Thus Mao not only brought to surface the question of continuing class-struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also discovered and earmarked the core of the bourgeoisie operating through the leadership of the communist party. This explains why Mao with great concern and anguish uttered a few months before his death, “[The bourgeoisie] is right in the communist party — those in power taking the capitalist road. The capitalist roaders are still on the capitalist road.”

Mao’s Struggles in the Party before the launch of the GPCR

These capitalist roaders, although described by Mao as ‘handful’ in number, were very powerful, in fact more powerful than is generally thought to be, in the CPC. They were ‘people in authority’; they showed tremendous clout to tilt the balance of forces in their favour on many occasions and had a nationwide network of organization. All this explains why the battles fought by Mao to champion his proletarian line were so difficult, and the paths traversed by him so tortuous and complex. Let us first of all have a glance at the forces that Mao had to fight against and then enter into the concatenation of events leading to its culmination, the GPCR. When ‘Party People in Authority’ is reduced to ‘Party Person in Authority’ obviously Liu Shao Chi is meant. Next only to Mao, he had long been the most powerful leader of the CPC since 1945. When Mao flew to Chungking in August 1945 for peace negotiations with Chiang Kai Shek, Liu acted in his place for several months and was the head of the Organization Department. From 1945 to 1955, he was the general secretary of the CC secretariat and looked after the administration of the domestic affairs. In September 1956, he delivered the most important political report to the Eighth Party Congress. He was elected the Chairman of the People’s Republic at the Second National People’s Congress on April 20, 1959. Apart from this key man, “Other people in authority” included the Secretary-General of the party Teng Hsiao-Ping, the Chief of Staff of the Army Lo Juiching, the man who replaced him Yang Cheng-wu, Marshall Ho Lung, head of the All China Sports Commission; Lu Teng-yi, head of the Propaganda Department; Chon Yang, deputy head of the Propaganda Department; and Vice Premiers Tan Chen-len and Po yi-Po. Added to this long list were mayors of Peking, Shanghai, Tientsin, Wuhan and Canton, President of Peking University, Lu Ping. William Hinton in his ‘China—An Unfinished Battle’ cited an estimate of the proportions of the capitalist-roaders in different hierarchies of the party, given by the CIA. Hinton asserts that since the CIA always comes forward first and with the most data, their summary is probably more accurate than any other available to us. According to this estimate, ‘Capitalist-Roaders’ made up at least two-thirds of the political Bureau of the CC of the CPC and about one-half of the CC. They led all regional bureaus, held three-quarters of the provincial governorships and headed three-quarters of the provincial party committees.

It seems almost unbelievable that the party that successfully carried on the most heroic and fierce class-struggle in history and achieved liberation from the yoke of imperialism and feudalism and then achieved considerable progress in its journey to socialism, can still be filled with hundreds of topmost leaders of the party intent on changing the country into a capitalist one. But this is the reality. Marxism itself has taught us that the two-line struggle in a communist party is a reflection of the class-struggle in a class-divided society. The more backward a society is, the more intense and pronounced will be the reactionary influence on a communist party. Even when the society enters into the socialist stage, that influence continues and the contradiction may be even sharper, because the victory in socialism is supposed to eliminate the system of exploitation altogether, inciting the hidden traitors in the party to wage a life and death struggle. In China the traditional national bourgeoisie still survived in the sixties of the last century. There were plenty of bourgeois intellectuals thoroughly imbued with capitalist world outlook. A section of these bourgeois intellectuals sided with the CPC in its anti-feudal anti-imperialist struggle. But after the liberation of 1949, they, too, clung to their capitalist bastion with even more ferocity. Although very few in number, the intellectuals played an important role in China, at times for bringing about a social change, more often for defending their own class-interest. In the vast rural areas of China, the peasants numbering hundreds of millions were petty owners of productive property. Thus they were the hunting ground for bourgeois ideology. These in-built social forces and the ideology they generated continued to exert their influence even at the stage of socialist revolution in China. As a result, even a section of the product of revolution constituted new managerial and administrative stratum in the Chinese society, enjoying the privileges that the revolution itself had bestowed upon them. There were a large number of party members who fought valiantly in the period of democratic revolution, but when faced with the socialist revolution they began retreating. There others who did not understand what ‘socialism’ actually was. Such petty-bourgeois revolutionaries abounded till the mid-sixties of the 20th century. There were remnants of landlord elements too, in the society who were a hidden force, but still exercising their extremely reactionary ideological influence, not only on the masses, but also on the party people. According to William Hinton, on the eve of the GPCR these elements totalled about 20 million in China. 20 Loving their land, the ex-feudal lords had to live a life of an ordinary peasant. They waited impatiently for the restoration of the old order. There were expropriated Compradors, foreign imperialist powers, particularly the U.S. and the Soviet revisionist rulers always giving their counterparts in China, political and ideological support. All these forces combined together to form a formidable force to topple socialist China and as has been explained earlier, it was the ‘party people in authority’ who could most conveniently form the nucleus of the bourgeoisie that was to restore Capitalism in the country. This also explains why the capitalist roaders could occupy such a strong position in different strata of the party, particularly in its upper stratum, with Liu Shao Chi being the indisputable leader of them althroughout the course of struggle between the two lines in the CPC.

In an article of Red Flag and People’s Daily published in 1967, named ‘Along the Socialist Road or the Capitalist Road?’ 21 a detailed history of Liu Shao Chi’s political career has been given. It shows that from the early twenties of the 20th century, he was with Chen Tu hsiu opposing the seizure of political power by the ‘juvenile proletariat’. After the counter-revolutionary camp of Chiang Kai Shek in April 1927, he followed Chen Tu-hsiu in ordering thousands of rifles over to the Kuomintang. After the publication of ‘On New Democracy’ by Mao Tse Tung he sharply reacted by saying “Why don’t we say that we are carrying out the three people principles instead of obstinately working out something else?” Liu’s role from the time of war of resistance against Japan is better known to us. Liu strongly advocated compromise with Chiang to avoid war while Mao insisted on preserving the ‘gun’ and territory even if it meant war. Liu, surrendering the ‘gun’ wanted in return a chance to enter some elections and win some posts in a coalition government. Another central issue that the CPC had to deal with at that time was the question of an all-out land reform. Now it was a time when Liu peddled an ultra-left line to sabotage the land-reform movement which became a pre-condition for rallying the peasant masses in the civil war. The poor and hired peasant line advocated by Liu upheld extreme equalitarianism, exhorting the peasants to expropriate everyone better off than themselves in a bid to give middle peasant status for all. The idea was utopian, for there was no such wealth existing in the villages. This line caused great chaos in the land-reform movement until Mao intervened and corrected the line in 1948. The continuing struggle between Mao and Liu became sharper after the founding of People’s Republic of China. While Mao declared that the founding of Peoples’ Republic of China marked the conclusion of the new democratic revolution and the beginning of the stage of socialist revolution. Liu raised the slogan of “struggle for the consolidation of the new-democratic system” 22 He went on to say, “In China, there is not too much capitalism, but too little.” 23 “It is necessary to develop capitalist exploitation, for such exploitation is progressive.” 24 Repudiating Mao’s theory of restriction of capitalism, he asserted, “There must be no restrictions for seven or eight years. This is beneficial to the state, the workers and production.” 25 Following the land-reform, another debate came into focus, which although apparently revolved round the question of individual versus collective production in agriculture, was in essence a struggle between capitalist and socialist roads of development. According to Liu Shao Chi, New Democracy with its mixed economy should be a protracted stage, when land reform will promote rich peasant economy. With this purpose in mind, Liu advocated four ‘freedoms’—freedom to buy and sell land, freedom to hire labour, freedom to loan money at interest and freedom to establish private business for profit. As to the socialist programme of collectivization, he categorically ruled out its possibility until industrialization of the country developed to a great extent. Only when modern factories would acquire the capacity to produce tractors, pumps, fertilizers and other equipments of modern agriculture, it would be meaningful to pool land and till jointly. He avers that “when 70 per cent of the peasants have become rich peasants, it will be time to talk about collectivization.” It was very fortunate for the Chinese peasantry that after waging a very tough battle Liu’s line was defeated. Mao succeeded in organizing collectivization on a class basis. It is to be noted, during this entire struggle fought between Mao and Liu, the emphasis laid by Liu all along was on economic prosperity (of course at the individual level), on productive forces, only on the base. For Mao revolutionary politics had to be in command, because the co-operative movements of the peasantry depended on the conscious will of the millions of producers which on the other hand, could be developed only by the application of consciousness of the party-leadership. The whole of this period is a classic demonstration of the contradiction between the theory of productive forces and the theory of class-struggle which demanded the decisive role of the superstructure, i.e., consciousness, politics and ideology to be played on the base for furthering the cause of socialism.

‘The theory of Productive forces’ scored a decisive victory in the 8th Party Congress of the CPC held in September 1956. The Resolution adopted at the congress declared :

“A decisive victory has already been won in this socialist transformation. This means that the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has been basically resolved, that the history of the class-exploitation, which lasted for several thousand years in our country, has on the whole been brought to an end, and that the social system of socialism has in the main, been established in China.

However, the major contradiction…is between the advanced socialist system and the backward productive forces of society.” 27

It is very strange that despite Mao who clearly stated as early as in 1952that “the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie has become the principal contradiction in China” and a few months after the publication of ‘Ten Major Relationships’ (April, 1956) the party congress could have passed such a resolution! Roderick Macfarquher in his research work ‘The Origins of the Cultural Revolution’ points out that Liu Shao Chi revealed in his confessions during the GPCR that Mao had taken exception to certain sentences (quoted above) in the political resolution. He quotes Liu as having said, “There was no time to revise them and it was passed in this form”. Another explanation is that the resolution was drafted by Chen Po Ta, a close confidant of Mao and therefore Mao did not insist on vetting the resolution before it was distributed. Macfarquher assumes that Moscow-trained Chen felt obliged to depict China following the Soviet road. But such explanations are too naïve to be believed, particularly when the occasion was a party congress. A more convincing explanation is that given the balance of forces prevailing in the mid-fifties, Mao was outmanoeuvered by Liu, as had happened on several occasions. We should not forget that in the midst of a successful movement led by Mao throughout the rural China, Liu could show the clout of dissolving 200000 agricultural cooperatives. It was a neck-to-neck battle between Mao and Liu at that particular phase of Chinese history. The sweep of the rightist politics in the 20th congress of the Soviet Union and Hungarian incident by which “certain people in our country were delighted” became two major international events that strengthened Liu and his ‘comrades’. Mao was too alert to miss the danger-signal. He delivered a long speech at the eleventh session (enlarged) of the Supreme State Conference on 27th February 1957 by which he tried to set the proper direction of correctly handling the contradiction among the people and to defeat the rightists’ attempt at confusing the antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions and the right and the wrong. At that very speech he raised the slogan, “Let a hundred flowers blossom, and let a hundred schools of thoughts contend.” The purpose was to facilitate the emergence of truth by free contention of thoughts as well as to let the rightists give vent to their repressed thoughts. This speech signaled the start of the rectification movement of 1957, the first harbinger of the GPCR. Mao clearly spelt out the objective of the rectification movement in his article, “Things are beginning to change” written in May 1957, to be circulated among party cadres. The principal target of this movement was Right opportunism, because, “They pose the bigger danger because their ideas are a reflection of bourgeois ideology inside the party and because they yearn for bourgeois liberation, negate everything and are tied in a hundred and one ways to bourgeois intellectuals outside the party…. Now it is time to direct our attention to criticizing revisionism”. Mao recounted the areas where the Rightists posing as real communists spread their influence—”…. In the democratic parties, in the fields of education, literature and art, the press, science and technology, or in industrial and commercial circles.” Mao admits, “They know that in these fields the communists are not as strong as they are, which is actually the case.” This preponderance of the Rightists in all the above-mentioned fields can explain, in retrospect, how at the 8th Congress of the CPC Liu’s line could score a crucial victory on the question of the principal contradiction, the all important issue concerning the road to socialism.

After the rectification movement of 1957, Mao lost no time to start implementing the socialist road in China. The year 1958 was the most crucial year in this respect, the year of ‘Three Red Banners— general line for socialist construction, the Great Leap Forward and the People’s Commune. The essence of the general line was, “going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results.” By the first two slogans Mao underlined the predominant role of consciousness, i.e., ideology and politics in the process of socialist reconstruction as opposed to Liu’s line of ‘Productive Forces’. The last slogan was meant to unleash people’s initiative from below to augment production. This general line was translated into action in the Great Leap Forward announced at the second session of the 8th National Congress, in May 1958, and the People’s Commune which started in the spring of 1958 and got the CC approval on 30th August the same year. The main objective of the Great Leap was to fully utilize the huge human resources and natural resources at a hurricane speed, absolutely depending on the initiative and creativity of the masses. In the process, Honan peasants created communes on their own as a means for concentrating labour for big projects. “He (Mao) saw them as a way to unleash human potential, and set the stage for continuing revolution. Through the creation of new, non-bureaurocratic, self-governing institutions that combined industry, agriculture, commerce, education and military affairs in one autonomous local unit, the peasants had taken up a step forward supplementing traditional state power.” 28 How much successful the communes were to supplant traditional state power is a subject of closer examination; but that the Great Leap and the People’s Communes dealt a heavy blow to Liu’s revisionist line and set the tenor of socialist reconstruction for the subsequent years, is beyond doubt.

Liu took devious tactics to undermine the Great Leap and the People’s Communes. He hardly ever opposed them directly. He himself announced the Great Leap programme on behalf of Mao, but at the same time adopted two dangerous methods to upset these programmes. The first one was to sabotage them by carrying the plan of action to excess, reminiscent of the ‘Poor and Hired Peasants line’. When a policy was adopted, he one-sidedly emphasized only one aspect of it and made a mess of the whole programme. The other was a concerted ideological onslaught in the fields of philosophy, economic studies, historical studies, literature, education and journalism. Particularly vicious were the attacks on the philosophical fields by Yang Hsien-Chen. His notorious theories of ‘synthesized economic base’ and ‘combine two into one’ provided the philosophical basis of the ‘dying out of class-struggle’, the most cherished political line of Liu Shao Chi. Although in those tumultuous days of peoples’ growing aspiration for socialist reconstruction, the ideological attacks by Liu’s cohorts could not make any deep inroads into the peoples’ mind, some errors which were actually committed during this period created some problems which the revisionists seized upon to discredit Mao’s line. Deliberate excesses committed by Liu’s men apart, there were other problems, too, associated with the Great Leap and the People’s Communes. Much of them were inherited from the past practice or the Soviet tradition. There was ‘commandism’, imbalance between consumption and investment because of excessive accumulation rate in certain areas and for certain period, some inevitable exploitation of agriculture for the accumulation for industrial sector, (taking negative lessons from the USSR. China tried to lessen the discrepancy between agricultural and industrial prices as much as possible), some environmental damage done by too hasty water-conservancy projects, some problems in transport, shortage of certain supplies and of course certain ‘left’ errors. Amidst these chaotic conditions, it was now the turn of Peng Teh-huai, the Defense Minister to strike hard at Mao. In the Lushan meeting of the CC in 1959 Peng Teh-huai demanded that army be transformed into a ‘modern’ army that emphasis should be laid absolutely on heavy industry and military construction. For 20 days on Peng continued his criticism of ‘petty bourgeois fanaticism’ in a series of caucuses. But Mao had kept his composure “The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility”, he said, throwing down the gauntlet to the rightists. 29 On August 2, Mao turned the enlarged politburo meeting into a final CC plenum; confident of support from his ‘reinforcements’, he launched a counter-attack.

“Peng Tehuai’s letter of opinion constitutes an anti-party outline of rightist opportunism….It is by no means an accidental or individual error, bur it is planned, organized, prepared, and purposeful.” 30

Mao likened the Great Leap with Paris commune and referred to Marx who did not assess the Paris commune from a point of view bothered only about immediate result. Mao exhorted his comrades to view the Great Leap and the People’s communes as Paris commune, which ‘was first proletarian dictatorship, he (Marx) thought it would be a good thing even if it only lasted three months. If we assess it from an economic point of view, it was not worthwhile’.31 It is obvious from this statement of Mao that he envisaged the Great Leap and the people’s commune more as a political programme than an economic one. Mao’s seriousness in these essentially political programmes is borne out by the fact that in his speech at the eight plenum of the CC he expressed his resolve to organize guerrilla bands, “if the PLA chooses to follow Peng Te- huai.” 32

Significantly enough at Lushan plenum Liu played a conciliatory role, with an air of supporting Mao, but at the same time urging for leniency in dealing with Peng. Peng and his followers in the CC and politburo were dismissed from their executive posts, but retained membership in the politbureau and the CC. After the end of the Lushan plenum a nationwide rectification movement was launched against right opportunism. The Great Leap policies which were shelved in vast areas were restored and Mao’s line clearly triumphed over revisionism. But at the same time, in collusion with their Chinese counterparts, the ruling revisionists of the Soviet Union unilaterally withdrew all the technicians and blue-print of projects that were under way, causing severe damage to China’s economy. This was followed by grave natural disasters continuing for three successive years. The economic crisis that was prevailing in China was a fertile ground for the revisionists to thrive on. Liu and his men once again seized the opportunity. In November, 1960, the party dispatched a secret ‘Urgent Directive on Rural Work’ (12 Articles) to cadres which restricted the powers of the Commune. This was followed by a more detailed ‘Draft Regulations Concerning the Rural People’s Communes’, approved by a central work conference in Canton in March, 1961. Drafted by Teng Hsiao-Ping and Peng Chen, the Regulations tried to roll back the policies of the Great Leap. Initiatives were unleashed by Liu in industrial sector too. In his ‘70 articles’ for the regulation of industry he once again upheld the primacy of market and profit. He demanded an end of political struggles in the factories. In January 1962, in a conference of 7000 cadres he cast off his ambivalence regarding the Great Leap and described the painful experience of those years and how the people suffered starvation for two years. Liu who posing himself an ardent supporter of the People’s Commune carried the movement far to left, now, by 1962 more ardently introduced San zi yi bao, (the extension of the free market, expanded private plots, production quotas based on individual households and a free hand for private enterprise), a programme attacking Mao’s line from a rightist angle. It should also be noted that, in August 1962 itself, he again issued his infamous book, ‘Self Cultivation’ which became a handbook of all revisionists to create public opinion for the restoration of capitalism.

By now Mao Tse Tung perceived that the revisionists led by Liu were trying to come back to the controlling position of the party with a vengeance. From January 1962 he began to warn the comrades against the concerted onslaughts of the rightists in the party. At the leading bodies in the party, he issued the call “Never forget class-struggle”, a call that reverberated throughout the GPCR. At that historical juncture, at the 10th plenary session of the 8th CC, held in September, 1962, Mao put forward the basic line of the CPC for the entire period of socialism.

From 1963 to 1965 Mao spearheaded the socialist education movement that immediately preceded the GPCR. Mao believed that ideology and politics would be the deciding factors in building up of socialism in China, as in any other country. That is why he always put great emphasis on the class-struggle on the ideological and cultural fronts. He correctly understood that the education system and the educational institutes were the grounds where the basic outlook whether revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, took shape and flourished to a great extent. On various occasions he admitted that in the sphere of education, the revisionists of the party were more dominant than the Marxists. Mao was keenly aware of this problem in the superstructure right from the days of New Democratic Revolution. In his famous articles, ‘On New Democracy’ and ‘Talks at the Yenan Forum’, he deals brilliantly with the struggle between two-lines in the cultural front. The same concern for revolutionary ideology, literature and art is reflected in his several writings during the socialist period, e.g., ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions’, ‘On Propaganda Work’ etc. All these writings fell on deaf ears of the diehard revisionists of the party. They spread the bourgeois and revisionist ideology on the ideological fields as the press, radio broadcasting, periodicals, books, text books, the literary and artworks, the cinema, the theatre, ballads, music and dancing. It all started in the early fifties of the 20th century with ‘The Life Of Wu Hsun’, ‘Dream of the Red Chamber’ and culminated at the time of Lushan meeting in 1959 when the group called ‘Three-Family Village’ started bringing out one after another such anti-Marxist books as ‘Hai Jui Scolds the Emperor’, ‘Hai Jui Dismissed from Offices’, ‘Evening Chats at Yenan’, and ‘Notes from the Three-Family Village’. To reverse the victorious advance of the revisionists during 1960-1962, Mao first and foremost concentrated on socialist education movement. In May 1963, under the direction of Mao the ‘Draft Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Certain Problems in our Present Rural Work’ (Ten Point Decision) was worked out which chalked out the basic principle of the movement. But Liu Shao Chi was not to accept it tamely. He tried to misdirect mass criticism of rightist cadres by shifting the focus of attention. To divert the attacks on the revisionist leadership by the people and the cadres, he turned them against the lower level cadres, demanding that everyone make a self-examination in regard to “being clean and being unclean in relation to four questions” (Politics, Ideology, Organization and Economy). This led to the confinement of criticism at the lower rungs of the party and the leadership got off. But Mao did not give in to the tactics of this arch revisionist. At the end of 1964 he convened, once again, a working conference of the CC and issued a document named “Some Current Problems Raised in the Socialist Education Movement in the Rural Areas” (23 point document) .In this document Mao for the first time specifically pointed out :

“The main target of the present movement is those party persons in power taking the capitalist road.” With this clear statement, the orientation of the approaching GPCR was firmly set. So long the two-lines struggle was centred round the rural programmes, one the proletarian line of collectivization and public interest and the other bourgeois line of private enterprise and self-interest. In 1965, the two-lines struggle shifted to Peking University, the most important educational field in China. The powerful revisionist clique in Peking Municipality led by Wu Han, the Vice Mayor, turned the Peking University into a base from which to wean the young generations away from the proletariat and proletarian culture. Lu Ping was the head of this clique. He together with his followers used to admire the bourgeois academic authorities and systematically spread the bourgeois and revisionist ideology in the university. These people who had nothing but scorn for the socialist education movement desperately resisted it. The revolutionary teachers and students, on the other hand, firmly kept the movement a-going bringing to light a vast amount of material showing how Lu Ping and his associates implemented revisionist policies in the sphere of education movement. The attacks and counter-attacks lasted for seven months and became the most serious event in the socialist education movement. This set the stage for the start of the GPCR.

An Outline of the History of the GPCR

The GPCR, one of the most important and significant events in the international communist movement spanned more than ten years, till the death of Mao and criss-crossed with innumerable episodes. Here we shall describe in brief the course of events of this unique political experimentation in the history of the world communist movement. While the socialist education movement was being carried out in 1964, the CC of the CPC formed the group in charge of the Cultural Revolution under the party central committee. The group consisted of five members, led by Pen Chen, Mayor of Peking and a member of the politbureau of the CC. Historically speaking this was the first organizational formation of the ensuing GPCR. But the first salvo of the GPCR was fired by an article written by Yao Wen-Yuan and published in Shanghai Wenhuipao on November 10, 1965, entitled ‘On the New Historical Play Hai Jui Dismissed from Office’. The play was written by the vice-mayor of Peking, Wu Han. It is the story of an honest and upright official of the Ming Dynasty, named Hai Jui who dared to speak openly to the emperor about his faults. Yao Wen-yuan claimed that the drama alluded to Peng Tehuai’s (Hai Jui) dismissal by Mao (the emperor) in 1959. In a talk in December 1965, Mao also said, “The crux of ‘Hai Jui Dismissed from Office’ lies in his dismissal. Emperor Jiajing dismissed Hai Jui; in 1959, we dismissed Peng Tehuai. Peng Tehuai is presented as another Hai Jui”. 33 Yao Wen-Yuan’s article created a great furore in political circles of China. Peng Chen gagged its circulation. But Liberation Army Daily reprinted it in Peking. By early 1966, a full-scale criticism campaign in academic and literary circles was launched. The group in charge of the Cultural Revolution called a meeting to study the play. In their ‘Outline Report on the Current Academic Discussion’, the five member group tried to keep the debate at an academic level, expressing disapproval of any attempt to turn it into a political debate. It also stated that “one should convince others through reasoning and must not be dogmatic and intimidate people with one’s power, like an academic overlord”. Attempts by the Peking party writers to channel the debate away from its political content and confine it to academic discussion only was countered by more articles by Yao Wen-Yuan criticizing ‘Notes from Three-Family Village’ written jointly by Wu Han, Teng To and Liao Mo-Sha and ‘Evening Chats at Yen Shan’ by Teng To. At the same time Chiang Ching and Lin Piao started a forum on literature and art criticizing the prevailing literary and art circles as “following an anti-party and anti-socialist line that have exercised dictatorship over us and discredited the achievements in progressive literature and art of the 1930s and those in the seventeen years since the founding of New China”. The summary of the minutes of the forum after being revised by Mao was distributed throughout the country as a CC document. Till then the struggles did not exceed the limits of battles in the press only, hardly giving an inkling of what was to follow soon after.

The official launching of the GPCR, however, took place at the enlarged meeting of the politbureau of the CC held from May 4 to 26, 1966. From this meeting was issued the most famous document of the GPCR, namely the 16th May circular, 1966. In that circular the CC revoked the ‘Outline Report on the Current Academic Discussions’ mentioned earlier and dissolved the ‘Group of Five’ and its offices and set up a new Cultural Revolution Group directly under the standing committee of the politbureau. The circular declared, “Our country is now in an upsurge of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which is pounding at all the decadent ideological and cultural positions still held by the bourgeoisie and remnants of feudalism”. Virulently criticizing the ‘Outline Report’ submitted by the ‘Group of Five’, the May 16 circular stated, “Far from being a minor issue, the struggle against the revisionist line is an issue of prime importance having vital bearing on the destiny and future of our party and state, on the future complexion of our party and on the world revolution”.

The upsurge of the GPCR as envisaged by Mao started with big character poster put up by Nieh Yuan-Tze, the cadre of Peking University on May 25, 1966. In that poster Nieh and her comrades asked why a mass political debate on Wu Han’s play had been suppressed at the Peking University. They blamed Lu Ping directly by name and accused him of diverting a political debate into an academic one. Lu Ping reacted. He mobilized a large number of students to attack Nieh and her comrades as anti-party elements who showed the audacity to question the authority of the party, for Lu Ping himself was the secretary of the party unit of the university. For a week, Nieh and her colleagues were surrounded by the students who stood by their party leaders thinking that those leaders represented the CPC and Mao. But on June 2nd, Nieh’s poster was published in The People’s Daily, the official paper of the CPC and broadcast to the whole of the nation by Peking Radio. This sparked off the nation-wide students’ upsurge in support of Nieh’s call:

“all revolutionary intellectuals, now is the time to go to battle! Let us unite, holding high the great banner of Mao Tse Tung’s thought, unite round the party’s central committee and chairman Mao and break down all the various controls and plots of the revisionists………..”

Lu Ping sent ‘work teams’ to suppress and divert the rebel students. The members of the ‘work teams’ shouted left slogans, almost similar to those raised by the rebels. But this was a ploy to protect the conservative party leaders, by setting one group of the masses against another and creating great confusion about who were the rebels and who were not. The in-fights amongst the masses started right then and as we shall see later on, they were waged very often at the cost of the real issues. For fifty days on end, the “work teams” dominated the scene throughout the institutions of the nation except Peking and Tsinghua Universities. On August 8, 1966, at the 11th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee, “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concerning the Great Proletarian Revolution” was adopted. This session was very important in the entire course of the GPCR, for the objective of the meeting was to work out a programme for the Cultural Revolution, eliminate resistance and further boldly arouse the masses. The most significant call of the ‘Decision’ was ‘Let the Masses Educate themselves in the ovement in thely Movement’. “In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the only method is for the masses to liberate themselves and any method of doing things on their behalf must not be used”, the ‘Decision’ explained. The “Decision” clarifies how the cultural revolutionary groups, committees and other organizational forms “are the organs of the power of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” As regards the system of elections of the cultural revolutionary groups and the committees, it refers to the Paris Commune.

It is to be noted that in this plenary session Liu Shao Chi was demoted from the second position to the eighth position of the party’s command and Lin Piao was promoted to the second position. Even while the eleventh plenary session was going on, on August 5, Mao Tse Tung wrote ‘Bombard the Headquarters—My Big Character Poster’, directly raising the issue of a bourgeois headquarter in the party. He charged that “In the last 50 days or so, some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels….adopting the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the Great Cultural Revolution of the Proletariat”. The slogan of bombarding the headquarters by the chairman of the same party has been regarded since then as something innately self-contradictory by some or extremely revolutionary by others and remained the most controversial slogan in the International Communist Movement.

In the tumultuous situation that prevailed throughout the nation, the rebel groups taking the name Red Guard came up everywhere. From their ranks The Red Guard movement got under way. On August 18, six days after the conclusion of the plenary session, Mao stood on the Tiananmen rostrum in military uniform, wearing a Red Guard armband and reviewed one million people from all over the country who assembled there. This personal support of the chairman of the party set off a large-scale mass movement with an unprecedented vehemence in the entire nation. The Red Guards came out on the streets shouting slogans, making speeches, distributing leaflets and putting up posters. They resolved to repudiate and overthrow ‘old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes’. They pledged to “struggle against and overthrow those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic ‘authorities’ and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.”

The followers of Liu Shao Chi who were called ‘loyalists’ also plunged into the Red Guard Movement, only to confuse the ranks of the cadres and to protect the conservatives thereby. These units took names almost similar to those adopted by the real rebel organizations. Both sides swore by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung thought. At times it became very difficult for the masses to discriminate between these two opposing forces. The essentially rightist Red Guard units adopted the tactics of showing off an ultra-left face to hoodwink the masses, while the red rebel Red Guards also raised the slogan of overthrowing people in power at all levels and thus they also very often slipped into left deviation. This could happen because most of the Red Guard units were made up of students and youths, with distinctly petty-bourgeois leanings. The students and youths brought up in socialist China had deep regard for the party as a whole and wholeheartedly relied on every section of it. Many of them were at their wits’ end unable to grasp the real issues. When this struggle between the rebels and loyalists spread out to the factories and rural communes, the same problem cropped up. Rebel groups started to form units in factories and communes with great speed while their opponents countered this move, sometimes with greater speed, with militant names and masquerading as the genuine disciples of com. Mao Tse Tung. The people at the grassroots were much confused and very often failed to understand who actually represented Mao and his thought. Taking advantage of this situation, the ‘loyalists’ won a wide following among the masses, who took their slogans at the face value and identified their leaders with the CC and chairman Mao.