Two Roads Defeated Part 3: Proletarian Jacobins
(llco.org)
The defeat of socialism in the People’s Republic of China was not the result of the
lack of a social program or the lack of struggle as diverse critics ranging from
Slavoj Žižek to Philip Short have implied. (1) These critics re-cycle the claim that
communism is heavy on criticism of the status quo, but short on practical
answers. The Cultural Revolution was an attempt to reach a higher level of
socialism, to move closer to communism. And, there were two currents, the roads,
that had a chance at certain junctures of moving the Cultural Revolution forward
on a communist axis: the spontaneous, mass movement road and the road of the
Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Proletarian Jacobins
Head of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group (CCRSG), Chen Boda, one of
the architects of Maoism as a system, quoted Lenin’s teaching on the split within
the revolutionary movement:
“By our comparison we merely want to explain that the representatives of the
progressive class of the twentyieth century, of the proletariat, i.e., the SocialDemocrats, are divided into two wings (the opportunist and the revolutionary)
similar to those into which the representatives of the progressive class of the
eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie were divided, i.e., the Girondists and the
Jacobin.” (2)
“The Jacobins of contemporary Social-Democracy — the Bolsheviks, the
Vperyodovtsi, Syezdovtsi, Proletartsi, or whatever we may call them — wish by
their slogans to raise the revolutionary and republican petty bourgeoisie, and
especially the peasantry, to the level of the consistent democratic centralism of
the proletariat, which fully retains its individuality as a class. They want the
people, i.e. the proletariat and the peasantry, to settle accounts with the
monarchy and the aristocracy in the ‘plebeian way,’ ruthlessly destroying the
enemies of liberty, crushing their resistance by force, making no concessions
whatever to the accursed heritage of serfdom, of Asiatic barbarism and human
degradation.” (3)
As early as 1954, by focusing on these quotes, Chen Boda implied that the
Maoists are the real proletarian movement and their rightist opponents, while
physically a part of the proletarian movement, were something else.
Revolutionary science, and the dialectical philosophy upheld by the Chinese
Maoists, sees the world in constant motion. There is no static world. Rather, the
world is understood through motion metaphors, as a becoming. It follows that a
revolution is never at rest, the revolutionary tide must either be advancing or
retreating. The Jacobin trends represented forward motion toward communism.
On the other hand, the new capitalists led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, the
Girondists, the revisionists, represented regression back to capitalism.
Describing the revolutionary currents as “Jacobin” captures the tone of the
revolution within the revolution. It captures the tone of the most advanced, the
most revolutionary within the broader Communist movement. In invoking Lenin’s
teaching on the split in socialism, Maoists abandon the metaphysical view that the
Party is a monolithic entity that is the source of all authority, that the Party is
always right. Today, such a view is found within so-called Marxist-Leninists:
Hoxhaites, “Stalinists,” “Anti-revisionists,” and so on. Instead, the Communist
movement, and Party, is always already itself splintered into the revolutionary
and, ultimately, counter-revolutionary wings. And, eventually, the revolutionary
wing itself splits, and on and on. This splitting process is what Maoists referred to
as “one becoming two.” Class struggle continues throughout the period of
socialism until communism. The proletarian jacobins correctly understand this
process of division and class struggle as a bridge to communism. The revisionists,
the Girondists, seek to achieve a static order or retrogression. Underscoring this,
current revisionist leaders in China are seeking to re-christen their Party a “ruling
party” as opposed to a “revolutionary party.” By contrast, the proletarian
Jacobinism from 1966 to 1971 is associated with supposedly “going too far,”
revolutionary “terror,” dictatorship, authoritarianism and democracy,
egalitarianism and utopianism. These were important aspects of the Cultural
Revolution led by the Maoists.
Two and a half Jacobins defeated
There were two opportunities for the Cultural Revolution to possibly move
forward along a communist axis. The first of these opportunities was expanding
the movements to seize power from below in 1967 and 1968. This meant
expanding the power seizures into the “pillar of the dictatorship,” the right wing
PLA in the provinces to take down the Adverse Current. This also meant targeting
Zhou Enlai and the Foreign Ministry. Mao criticized this line when he criticized
Wang Li’s line as advocating “all out civil war.” In addition, Mao criticized Guan
Feng’s drag-out campaign against the PLA as a “poisonous weed.” Later, Qi
Benyu would meet the same fate, he would fall with Wang Li and Guan Feng.
Initially, Jiang Qing, Chen Boda, and Lin Biao gave their nods to the First Road,
but quickly distanced themselves from it when Mao turned against it in late 1967
into 1968.
After the First Road was defeated, the Second Road, Lin Biao’s trend, remained as
the most influential Jacobin trend. This group continued its attacks against the
right wing and Zhou Enlai, the Adverse Current, even as Mao shifted right after
the Ninth Congress in April of 1969. They continued to push forward with the
Cultural Revolution. They attempted to introduce a Maoist reorganization of the
countryside. Their newFlying Leap sought to bring back the mass participation
and social experiment of the early Great Leap. This economic initiative was
combined with efforts to unify the population with Maoism. Lin Biao’s group
resisted the move by Mao toward closer relations with the United States. This led
to the downfall of the Maoist leadership within the PLA. According to one source,
after his fall, some defenses of Lin Biao were made in the Chinese press. These
defenses took the form of allegorical discussions about Robespierre. They upheld
the necessity of Robespierre’s actions in defense of the revolution. (4)
The remaining Jacobin trend was the Gang of Four. They had followed Mao’s line
closely, and when Mao turned against the mass movement and, later, the left
wing of the PLA, so did they. Throughout the 1970s, they stood as a symbolic
opposition to the growing power of the revisionists. Although they did manage to
dislodge Deng Xiaoping temporarily, their power appears to have been mostly
dependent on Mao’s own. When the Gang of Four were overthrown, there was
virtually no resistance to their arrest, even in Shanghai, the heart of their power
base. (5) (6) By the time the Gang of Four fell, socialism had suffered huge blows.
By the time of Mao’s death in 1976, there were no spontaneous Maoist street
movements. Through most of the 1970s, the PLA, the “pillar of the dictatorship” is
in the hands of the revisionists. In addition, the verdicts had been reversed for
many of those deposed in the 60s. Lin Biao had provided the social space,
protected by military authority, where the street movements could carry out their
power seizures from below. Without the PLA in Maoist hands, there was little
hope of another Cultural Revolution of the type witnessed in 1967. In addition,
the population was demoralized after Mao shifted away from the radical, utopian
promise of the early Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was restored to power to
help run the state following Lin Biao’s death. Much of the old bureaucracy was
restored. The Chinese foreign policy was moving toward an alignment with the
West through the 1970s. The key junctures where socialism had the best chance
for advancing was in 1967 with the expansion of the power seizures and, later,
from 1968 to 1971, Lin Biao’s efforts.
Leading Lights, the new proletarian Jacobins
Maoism developed fully as Maoism in the Cultural Revolution years. Chen Boda
had worked on elevating and systematizing Mao’s works for decades. And, it was
Lin Biao who announced that Maoism was a new stage of Marxism. Others, like
Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao, also expanded revolutionary science throughout
the Cultural Revolution decade. To go forward, it is necessary to take a step back
and study the development of Maoism at its origins. Today, Leading Light
Communism has been elevated to the fourth stage of revolutionary science as part
of the rebirth of the international communist movement. The recovery of the
Jacobin tone is an important part of this rebirth. All of the critiques and slurs
thrown at the Leading Light movement are the same ones thrown at Lenin and
Mao when they made their radical breaks with the past. The Leading Light
movement will go as far as it has to, even if this means being criticized as extreme
and “going too far.” Nothing is as radical as reality itself.
Notes.
1. Two Roads Defeated. Monkey Smashes Heaven Journal. 2008
2. Chen Po-ta. Notes on Mao Tse-Tung’s “Report of an Investigation into the
Peasant Movement in Hunan”. Foreign Language Press. Peking, People’s
Republic of China: 1954. pp. 35.
3. Chen Po-ta. Ibid. pp. 34.
4. I am unable to find this source at the moment. As soon as I find it, I will add it
here.
5. Perry, Elizabeth J. and Li Xun. Proletarian Power in Shanghai. Westview Press
USA: 1997 pp 184-187.
6. Unite! Info 310en. The author of this online journal quotes passages from
foreign visitors in Shanghai. The authors gives the following as his source: ”Klaus
Mehnert: “Kampf um Maos Erbe” (’Struggle over the Heritage of Mao’), Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt GmbH,1977. The excerpt is translated from a Swedish translation
of the book, 1979. pp 38-39.” Also Jan Myrdal’s account, “The day when Tsingtao
ran out of liqour,” “published in Swedish liberal evening paper Expressen on
29.12.1976.”