Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 21:17:55 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: UNITE! Info #61en: 2/? Reply on Cultural Revolution


UNITE! Info #61en: 2/X Reply on Cultural Revolution
[Posted: Date not decided yet, nor how many parts in all this
Info will have, but this part goes to (ex)M-G on 31.01.98]

[Continued from part 1/X]


4. A QUESTION TO ROB L., AND A NOTE ON HOW
   TROTSKYITE "THEORY" MAKES IT DIFFICULT FOR
   THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN IT TO UNDERSTAND THINGS

Before going into some of the bourgeois lies about the Cultural
Revolution, Rob, I'd like to ask you a question on that book you
mentioned and make a note on how Trotskyism, which I've gathered
you're an adherent of, mixes things up. You wrote, on 26.01:

>I am reading a very interesting book by Jan Wong, the foreign 
>correspondent for Canada's Globe and Mail.  In 1972, she went 
>to China as a Maoist, and was one of two westerners to be 
>enrolled in Beijing University at this time.  She in detail 
>describes all of her experinces during the Cultural Revolution, 
>and then later as a journalist the 1989 Tiennamen Square 
>Massacre.

Did Jan Wong witness the events on Tiananmen on 05.04.1976, or
write anything about those that followed immediately upon them?
In later parts of this reply, I shall quote at length one eye-
witness. Jan Wong's account on this would be of interest too.

And since you used the term "Stalinism" in your posting, I think
it should be pointed out (once more) how confusing that term is,
as used in Trotskyite "theory". In you're to understand the 
basic facts about the Cultural Revolution (among other things),
you need to make that distinction, which Marxists do, which 
Lenin and Mao Zedong of course always did but which the Trotsky-
ites precisely *don't*, between what's proletarian, Marxist, on
the one hand, and what's bourgeois, openly so or revisionist, on
the other. 

When Trotskyites and other people are calling a state "Stalin-
ist", one doesn't really know what they mean. Perhaps some of
them don't know that themselves. Trotsky himself in the 1930s
called the Soviet Union - a "Stalinist" state according to him -
a "deformed workers' state". Well, in such an assessment 
Marxists today might concur. A socialist state, though with de-
formations, it was. But at the same time, Trotsky from 1936 on
called for the *overthrow of the government* of that state, thus
helping the reactionaries including the fascists. He wasn't con-
sistent - since he wanted to fool people and pose as a "revolu-
tionary". Marxists call for the overthrow only of *bourgeois*
states (including revisionist ones), *not* that of workers'
states, proletarian ones. 

A similar double-think and double-speak is engaged in, in va-
rious forms, by Trotskyites today, who're calling *both* the 
earlier socialisms in the Soviet Union and China *and* the later
revisionist states in those countries "Stalinist systems", "de-
formed workers' states", not saying whether they by this really
mean that the proletariat is (was) in power or the bourgeoisie.
It must be one or the other. Mao Zedong pointed out: "Revisio-
nism's coming to power means that the bourgeoisie comes to 
power." Preventing this was what the Cultural Revolution in 
China was all about. Instead of calling things "Stalinist" it's
better to specify what one means: Marxist, proletarian, good
things? Or revisionist, bourgeois (or feudal), bad ones? The
term "Stalinism" is being used for brainwashing people, clouding
up their thinking.

Now for some lies about the Cultural Revolution in the (openly-)
borgeois media today:


5. THE STUPID LIE ABOUT CHINESE "BEING
   HERDED LIKE SHEEP" IN 1966-76 

They're saying: "Things were *imposed* on the Chinese people",
and some other primitive stuff, which you seem to believe:

(Rob L., 26.01:)
>My History prof at University, seems to think the Cultural Re-
>volution was Maos' attempt to create the perfect "socialist 
>person", and was an experience equalled in death and insanity 
>by the experiences in Germany from 1933 - 1945, and the USSR 
>from 1929 to 1953.  The level of propaganda, totalitarian con-
>trol, and the doctrine imposed upon the people of China were 
>all at fanatical levels. 

That's a rather typical piece of today's fanatical and menda-
cious bourgeis propaganda; comments on it in my points 5-8.

The last sentence here is ridiculous, to begin with. It can only
be "sold" to people who know practically nothing about what took
place. Well, those today must be rather many, I guess. But there
were *hundreds of millions* of people in active political mo-
tion. Nobody could "control" such a force, or "impose" things on 
those people which they didn't want. Also it's true and an im-
portant fact what Abraham Lincoln once said: "You can fool all 
the people for some time, and you can fool some of the people 
all the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time."

If you read e.g. the documents from the 10th Congress of the
CPC (1973), Rob, in my Infos #13en and #44en, you can see that
what the leaders in China then particularly stressed in their 
propaganda was such things as "To go against the tide is a 
Marxist-Leninist principle". Not exactly the thing to say if
you're after controlling the masses, imposing stuff on them or
fooling them, is it?


6. ONE SMALL THING CLEARLY SHOWING - IN 
   FIGURES - A BIT OF THE IMPACT THAT
   THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION HAD ABROAD

As just one small phenomenon on the outskirts of that large
youth and student movement which arose in many "Western" coun-
tries from 1967-68 on, and which to an important part was in-
spired precisely by the Cultural Revolution in China, I shall
show again here, since it's a thing that comes in figures:
The development of the number of members in the Swedish-Chinese
Friendship Association in the years 1962-1982. I had this too 
in my first posting to M-G, 16.10.96; look:

1962-1968: 500 members; 1969: 1000; 1970: 1500; 1971: 2000;
1972: 3000; 1973: 4000; 1974: 5000; 1975: 7500; 1976: 9500

- a *19-folding* in 8 years, after the number had been on the 
same low level during the preceding 7 years; then in 1977
it remained constant and from 1978 fell almost as rocket-
like as it had earlier risen; today that Association is gone:

1977: 9500; 1978: 8500; 1979: 8000; 1980: 6500;
1981: 5000; 1982: 4000.

That of course reflects the revisionist overthrow of socialism
in China in 1976/78. The bourgeois media all lauded Deng Xiao-
ping and his "sensible reforms" to the skies then, supporting to 
the hilt precisely the regime which later perpetrated the 05.04.
1989 Tiananmen massacre, but many in Sweden saw through this.


7. THE ADVOCATES OF DEATH AND INSANITY
   TRYING TO TURN THINGS UPSIDE-DOWN

Death and insanity, that's the hallmark of that social system
which that university professor supports (if quoted approximate-
ly fairly by you, Rob) and doesn't want people to prepare revo-
lutionary war against: Present-day imperialism. The number of 
children dying of undernourishment each year in the world is 
some six million: One "Holocaust" per year. The utter insanities
of today's international social system I probably don't even 
need to mention one of. So many of them are obvious to all. 

In the Cultural Revolution, there were few deaths. None of the 
deposed revisionist leaders were executed. In some places there 
was armed fighting at some times, caused by reactionaries or due 
to some people's mistaking non-antagonistic contradictions to 
each other for antagonistic. But bloodshed was slight; a smaller
percentage of people died than that due to suicides, for instan-
ce, in the capitalist countries such as ours "at peace" during 
the corresponding period, caused by the pressure of the bour-
geois dictatorship in those countries on people in general.


8. MAO ZEDONG AS "PERFECT FOOL" - OR 
   RATHER, A "PIOUS HOPE" THAT SOME
   STUDENTS MIGHT BE SUCH?

An attempt by Mao to create a "perfect"(!) "socialist person"?
How stupid does that prof think you students are; he or she at
least must know perfectly well that Mao or Lenin or Marx never
preached such nonsense as "perfect persons". All who read half a
page of their writings will see that they always spoke of things
constantly *developing* from lower to higher stages. 

Of course "your" bourgeois professor *would* refer to proleta-
rian ideology as "insanity". This was precisely the same here
on the (ex-)M-G list just a couple of weeks ago, when it was
described by some as a "lunatic" list, to justify the clampdown.

The thinking and actions of people such as that professor it is 
too, and by no means those of the Cultural Revolution, that may 
rightly be compared to the ones of the 1933-1945 Nazi fascism in
Germany. In China there were calls (see quote in part 1) for 
*always standing by* the oppresssed peoples and nations; Hit-
ler's "Master Race" was called on precisely to subjugate or ex-
terminate them, and here in Sweden and Canada etc today, what 
are such professors advocating else than that one should accept 
such peoples' being exploited to the extent of millions of 
deaths each year? 

That "perfect person" stuff is a piece of idealism, metaphysics,
of the same kind as personality cult, which you also mentioned,
Rob. Yes, there was such in the Cultural Revolution, and has
been elswehere too. Mao once said to Edgar Snow that the pheno-
menon even had its advantages during a certain period, though
he was against it. Like all Marxists he combated it. There e.g. 
was an explicit ban by the CPC against naming streets and places 
etc after living leaders. Some carreerists and phony-"leftits" 
such as the big traitor Lin Biao were the ones who engaged in 
fostering a personality cult.

[Continued in part 3/X]

[For (ex-)M-G: This posting measured by me at 9.7 kB]



     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---