File spoon-archives/postanarchism.archive/postanarchism_2004/postanarchism.0409, message 48


From: Jesse Cohn <jessecohn-AT-verizon.net>
Subject: [postanarchism] Chinese anarchism
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:20:48 -0500


Another interesting take on a "non-Western" anarchist tradition:

http://www.chen-jiongming.com/English/material/paper/chen_paper4.htm

Chen Jiongming:  Anarchism and the Federalist State

 

by Leslie H. Chen

Alexandria, Virginia

 

 

Introduction

            

            Several major events occurred in China's search for modernization in the twentieth century: (1) the New Policies Reform and Constitutional movement of the late Qing period, 1898-1911; (2) the Republican Revolution of 1911; (3) the New Culture movement of the May Fourth period in 1919; (4) the Federalist movement of 1920-1926; (5) the Nationalist (Guomindang) Revolution of 1926-1949 and (6) the Communist Revolution of 1949.

            Chen Jiongming (1878-1933) played an important role in the first four of these events. He was by training a lawyer and became a Qing legislator, a republican revolutionary, a military leader, a civil administrator and a federalist who sought to reconstruct China as a democratic republic.[1]

            Chen has sunk into obscurity, however, because he disagreed with Sun Yat-sen about the direction that reform should take. Sun wanted to unite the country by force and institute change through a centralized government based on a one-party system. Chen advocated a multiparty federalism and the peaceful unification of China. Following a revolt of Chen's troops in 1922 that forced Sun to flee Canton (Guangzhou) and delayed his Northern Expedition (beifa), Sun turned on Chen. Sun's Nationalist Party (Guomindang) quickly began to publish slanderous material about Chen to discredit him.[2]  The Communists, who had entered into an alliance with Sun and who still regard him as the founding hero of the Chinese Revolution have continued to characterize Chen as a traitor and a reactionary warlord.

            The conflict between Sun and Chen was a conflict between two different concepts of nation building – centralism versus federalism (Chen 1991; Duara 1995, 177-204).  Four years later, in 1926, when the Northern Expedition of the Nationalist-Communist alliance swept across the southern and central provinces, all provincial constitutions, provincial and local assemblies, and local self-government societies associated with the vision of a federated state ceased to exist. The story of Chen Jiongming and federalism has since remained hidden behind Nationalist and Communist accounts of modern Chinese history.

            A paper by Winston Hsieh published in 1962 was the first Western scholarly work that gives a sympathetic analysis of Chen's political career with emphasis on his ideas and ideals (Hsieh 1962).  Hsieh observes that Chen had strong intellectual affinity and political connections with many Chinese anarchists and that he was a great patron of the anarchist movement whenever he was in power. Three decades later, in the 1990s, similar remarks have been made in the three definitive works written on Chinese anarchism respectively by Zarrow (1990), Dirlik (1991) and Krebs (1998). 

            Since Hsieh's work we have known much more about Chen Jiongming's lifelong political activities, including his writings in Zhangzhou during the May Fourth period and in Hong Kong in his last years. Chen was one of the founders and patrons of an anarchist assassination group during the Republican revolutionary movement of 1910-1911. The group was the most idealistic and morally-conscious among all the radical organizations in the movement.After the successful overthrow of the Qing dynasty, the group was dissolved; Chen continued to be the patron and protector of his anarchist friends and comrades who now engaged in a social and cultural reform movement in Canton. During the May Fourth period, Chen created with the help of anarchist intellectuals a "model" city of New Culture in Zhangzhou, Fujian, which won the critical acclaim both in China and abroad. Back in Guangdong in the 1920s, Chen actively promoted peaceful unification of the country through "Chinese federalism" ––– a "bottom-up" form of federalism that clearly has its anarchist origin.

            Anarchism is known in China as wuzhengfu zhuyi, meaning literally "without a government".[3]  This simplified term unfortunately leads to much misinterpretations as is also the case in the West. In the words of George Woodcock, the stereotype of the anarchist is that of the "cold-blooded assassin who attacks with dagger or bomb the symbolic pillars of established society" and "anarchy, in popular parlance, is malign chaos"(Woodcock 1962, 10). [4]

            John P. Clark defines anarchism as a political theory which must contain :(1) a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society; (2) a criticism of existing society and its institutions, based on this antiauthoritarian ideal; (3) a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress toward the ideal; and (4) a strategy for change, involving immediate institution of noncoercive, nonauthoritarian and decentralist alternatives (Clark 1978, 13). By invoking Clark's definition, Zarrow concludes that the early Chinese anarchists meet all these four requisites, "at least to a degree" (Zarrow 1990, 239)

            Chinese anarchists propagated their ideas and belief by publishing journals, books and pamphets in Paris, Canton, Zhangzhou and Shanghai. Liang Bingxian sums up where they stood:

(1) Interpret and publicize Proudhon's theories of social revolution and of private property; Kropotkin's communism and theory of mutual aid to supplement social Darwinism; and Kropotkin's philosophy of living. (2) Oppose racialism, nationalism and militarism. (3) Oppose arranged marriage and marriage for profits; advocate freedom in love. (4) Champion individual freedom, social equality and a classless but organized society. (5) Oppose imperialism and national boundaries; promote a world of Great Harmony (datong). (6) Oppose religion that stupefies people's mind; advocate mobilizing human wisdom to enrich physical world. (Liang 1978, 6)

            Chinese anarchists were among the first to condemn Confucianism, to discuss feminism, to promote language reform, and to organize modern labor union (Zarrow 1990, 2; Dirlik 1991, 128). They inherited a Confuscian philosophy of human-goodness,.and they believed that there are qualities of human beings which enable them to live together in a world of Great Harmony. Thus, they rejected the idea of a Utopia that exists outside of the existing world, and asserted that Great Harmony is achievable by commencing reforms in each community (Mo 1997, 66).

            For the anarchist, there could be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. It is on this issue of ends versus means that "anarchists and Marxists part company, rather than on their visions of the ideal society" (Clark 1978, 11; Carter 1978, 333-36). Chinese anarchists opposed class struggle to achieve a classless society. They criticized Marxism for establishing a center authority "either in the 'proletariat' or in its 'representative', the Communist party, that reproduced the very power structures that in theory it rejected" (Dirlik 1991, 9; Joll 1964, 278).

            We shall proceed to explore the influence of anarchism on Chen Jiongming's lifelong political career using Clark's definition and certain characteristics of Chinese anarchists as guidance.

 

[for full article, see link at top]

to love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh,
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave . . .

amar es combatir, si dos se besan
el mundo cambia, encarnan los deseos,
el pensamiento encarna, brotan alas
en las espaldas del esclavo . . .

--Octavio Paz, _Piedra de Sol_ (_Sunstone_, trans. Eliot Weinberger)


   

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