Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 18:12:21 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: "The 4" & events in China '76 (14): J. Q. on culture, '66


"The 4" & events in China '76 (14): J. Q. on culture, '66 [Sent: 31.08.96]


This is part of a discussion on the Jefferson Village Virginia
Marxism list and is also sent to newsgroups. 


[I'm reposting the below as another item of this series, since it 
i.a. contains a brief quote showing the standpoint of Jiang Qing, 
the later leader of the "4-Gang", in 1966 concerning some matters 
of culture, as reported in the 1977 book by US historian Roxane 
Witke "Comrade Chiang Ching". I commented on that standpoint,
comparing it also to another quote and to some facts of mid-late
20th century civilization.

This quote IMO is rather typical of a certain negative ideological
current within the Cultural Revolution in China, a current which by 
no means was the principal aspect of that great revolution but
which was also present in it and which later found a political
representative precisely in the "4-Gang". 

In particular since there still today, on the part of certain forces 
in the world, is being made propaganda for the "4-Gang" as "the 
real revolutionaries in China", these matters too are among 
those which the Marxists today need to discuss. Only very 
briefly are they touched on in the below, which was originally 
posted on 04.08.96 as an appendix to item {4} of my series 
'Why "reds are "nukes" - Debate with Louis N. P.' 

In that debate, it i.a. had turned out that I and Louis N. Proyect, 
who had suggested it, shared a taste in music, while having
opposing views on, for instance, nuclear energy and also the 
Cultural Revolution. (Indeed, my co-debater later accused me 
of being "obsessed" with the two last-mentioned subjects.) This
was one reason why I then brought the following, under the
subject line:

"Science, society, culture, as reflected in two quotes".  - RM]


At approximately the same point in time when there were the
initial developments, in the scientific-technical field, of jet 
aircraft, computers and nuclear energy, there was also, in the
cultural field, in the USA that development, within the already 
very popular form of music blending originally African culture 
together with European/American, which its originators from the 
late 1940:s on thought was appropriate to call "modern music".  
It spread to many countries as another "new wave".

Is there a connection between the simultaneous developments 
in these different fields? I think there is. The whole social 
background to the development of this modern music of course 
is a complicated thing, which I shall not try to analyze here. But 
the reason why it was and is enthusiastically liked by so many 
and in so many countries, while at the same time it was also 
>from the start disliked and spoken ill of by some, must certainly 
have something to do with its being an expression both of the 
enormous possibilities which there are in our age and of the 
sharp conflicts which accompany those possibilities.

In this connection, I think it may be of interest to note and
compare two things which were said by two persons of
widely different background.

The first one was some years ago by orchestra leader Leroy Jones, 
USA, who held that "Charlie Parker's music is the music of the 
nuclear age, in which we still live". With this, he IMO correctly 
pointed at one of many aspects of it, and not so badly 
characterized the present age either.

The second one was stated in a public speech by one of the 
political leaders in then socialist China, Jiang Qing, on 18.11.
1966, i.e. during the Cultural Revolution in China (according to 
U. S. historian Roxane Witke, from whose 1977 book 
"Comrade Chiang Ching" [p. 325] I quote:)

"Capitalism has a history of several countries; but it has only 
a pitiful number of 'classics'. They [capitalist writers] have 
created some works modeled after the 'classics', but these are 
stereotyped and no longer appeal to the people, and are
therefore completely on the decline. On the other hand, there
are some things that really flood the market, such as rock-and-
roll, jazz, strip tease, impressionism, symbolism, abstraction-
ism, Fauvism, modernism - there's no end to them... In a word,
there is decadence and obscenity to poison and corrupt the
minds of the people."

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966-76) 
was an earth-shaking and on the whole extremely positive 
event, which not by chance enthusiasmed many people also 
outside China, including people in the industrially more highly-
developed countries. But it's clear that it couldn't but have its 
limitations and even negative aspects too, since China, despite 
the modern nature of its system of society, on the whole still 
was a comparatively backward country as far as industry, 
technology and science were concerned.

In the above, Jiang Qing mixed together and mixed up many
different things which in reality have little to do with each 
other, and ignorantly and erroneously slammed the stamp of 
"decadent" etc on the lot. In retrospect, there IMO is no
particular reason to criticize her lack of knowledge of some 
of the things she mentioned. This was not so unnatural in the
circumstances. But as a political leader she should at least
have realized this fact, that she knew very little about them.

Mao Zedong, as far as the documents show, always avoided
making judgements on matters about which he had no deeper
knowledge. In his last years, he correctly found it necessary to
criticize Jiang Qing, for her having turned into a phoney"leftist"
and a bourgeois carreerist, just as much as he also criticized
the more openly bourgeois deviation of the later No. 1 traitor
and revisionist dictator, Deng Xiaoping.

Today, there are some people among those calling themselves
"Marxists" who still acclaim Jiang Qing as a "standard-bearer"
of the Cultural Revolution. In my opinion, this is a very doubtful
judgement, in view of such standpoints of hers as the above.

It's a historical fact that in our century, socialism first has had
breakthroughs in some relatively less developed countries,
in Russia in 1917 and in China in 1949. Some people at these
points in time even spoke out against the Russians' (etc) 
respectively against the Chinese's venturing to make
socialist revolutions, on the grounds that "their countries
weren't advanced enough for that". They were wrong of course.

But it's also wrong to think that if we're to get an approxima-
tively correct understanding of the world of today - which in part 
of course is a "hi-tech" world - it would be sufficient to lean on
only that political experience which you can get from studying 
the documents from those earlier socialist countries, Russia 
(respectively the Soviet Union) and China. That experience is
important enough, but not sufficient for this.

Why, for instance, have the main rulers in the world today so 
desperately, in the last 20-30 years, been trying to *get out of* 
"the nuclear age" (at least, as far as the *peaceful* use of 
nuclear energy is concerned)? Why have they more and more in 
the last decade even tried to "get out of" the age of oil? Why are 
some of their media just now quite busy "discovering" some 
"very detrimental environmental side effects" of hydropower? 

On these and some other rather important questions in the world
today, you'll get little guidance from the writings emanating from
the earlier revolutionary Russia or China. These need to be
complemented by some others in the political field (and I have
in earlier postings already pointed at one important source of
such experience) and also by some study of the natural sciences, 
something which Marx, for instance, certainly did not neglect
and a point on which no doubt many of his present-day adherents 
need to improve.

Rolf M.

[So far the reposted debate appendix from 04.08.96. ]




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