Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

This evidence of the errors of Marxist-Leninist theories was increasingly clear to the Kremlin, although it could not be admitted, but it was quite unclear to Peking, whose leaders were almost totally ignorant of the conditions of the non-Communist world. None of the chief Chinese leaders had any firsthand knowledge of the outside world and, indeed, had in most cases never been outside China at all, except for a couple of quick visits to the Soviet Union late in life. As a consequence, the Chinese Communist leaders were ignorant, dogmatic, doctrinaire, and rigid.

These attitudes appeared clearly within China in the fading of the “Hundred Flowers Campaign” of 1957. In theory the Communist system, after the elimination of Trotsky, accepted free discussion of goals and means until a decision on these had been reached by the party machinery, when discussion must stop and the decision be carried out with full loyalty. This procedure had never been observed under the tyrannical rule of the Kremlin and was even less likely to be followed in Peking. In 1956, however, Mao Tse-tung announced a new policy of free criticism of the regime: as he said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” This was a period of ideological confusion in the world Communist movement, which looked back on the struggle in the Kremlin to establish Stalin’s successor, was still reeling from Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, and late in 1956 was called upon to face revolts against the Kremlin in Budapest and Warsaw. Although Chou En-lai, the foreign minister of Red China, rushed to Europe to extend his country’s support to Khrushchev in this power struggle, ideological confusion was everywhere within the Communist world, and Mao was undoubtedly concerned about the solid basis for his own power and the problem of establishing a rule of succession in Peking.

In February 1957, Mao gave a speech to a large conference on the subject of “The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People.” It was not published until June, but in the interval gave rise to the “Hundred Flowers” controversy. In his speech Mao invited criticism and free discussion within the structure of the existing Communist state system . He promised immunity to the critics, so long as their criticism contributed to the unity of Red China. These restrictive phrases were widely ignored and, in a few weeks, widespread and often fundamental criticisms of the regime were being voiced in meetings, the press, and especially in educational institutions. Three evils that Mao had mentioned—”bureaucracy, dogmatism, and sectarianism”—were being freely denounced, with the Communist Party cadres the chief targets. Some critics suggested that the proper solution to these problems was to permit the establishment of a legal opposition party within some kind of parliamentary system. The general consensus of the complaints was aimed at the lack of freedom to speak out, to move about, to disagree, or to publish.

On June 8th the government’s counterattack began, at first relatively moderately but with increasing insistence. The principle of free criticism was not revoked, but the publication of Mao’s February speech on June 17th set the limits that had presumably always been in effect. Within a year there had been a considerable shake-up of party and state personnel, many discontented persons (revealed by their criticism) had been removed or disciplined in various ways, and “all Rightists had been eliminated.” The chief punishment was public denunciation and personal criticism of these discontented, but undoubtedly punishment, in many cases, went much further than that.

One sequel to the “Hundred Flowers” criticism was a reorganization of the upper ranks of the party and government and the provision of a succession to Mao.

Mao Tse-tung, son of a peasant who became wealthy on speculation and money lending, was born in 1893 in Hunan Province. His father, a domestic tyrant and local miser, had less than four acres, but used the labor of his three sons and a hired hand to work them. He gave his sons a basic education, but his personal despotism drove his whole family into alliance against him. Young Mao’s early life thus was one of severe discipline, constant domestic strife, and secret dreams of rebellion. By paying for a substitute worker in his own stead on the family land, he was able to get away to study for five years in Hunan Normal School (finished 1918). There he read deeply in Chinese history, especially military history, and formed a discussion group on large social questions. Becoming an employee of the library of Peking National University, he continued his reading, discussion, and self-education, and in 1920 was one of the eleven original founders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Until 1935, Mao’s position in the CCP was that of a dissident, and he was, more than once, reprimanded and demoted, or removed from party positions. His chief difficulty was that he refused to accept the party’s official view, insisted on by Russian-trained Communist leaders, that the revolution must be based on urban industrial workers, the “real proletariat.” Instead Mao envisioned the party as a tightly disciplined group that could be raised to power on the revolutionary activities of the great mass of impoverished and discontented peasantry. Closely related to this idea were two others that ‘were equally unorthodox: (1) the role of rural guerrilla warfare in wearing down and ultimately defeating a “reactionary government” and (2) a fundamental emphasis on the distinction between “imperialist” and “colonial” nations. This last point made it possible for Mao to regard the backward and undeveloped colonial areas as possible areas of revolutionary activity, v/here, as in China, the exploited peasants could provide the revolutionary impetus and could defend their revolutionary achievements by guerrilla warfare. The more orthodox Communist line was that a revolution could be carried out only by an urban proletariat that could be found only in an advanced industrial area, and that such an industrial base was essential to provide the modern military equipment needed to defend the revolutionary achievement against the counterattacks of aggressive, capitalist countries. In a sense Mao was much closer to the realities of modern politics and to the experience of Soviet Russia itself, since it is perfectly clear that no advanced industrial nation will go Communist and that the movement must make its advances in underdeveloped areas if it is to be successful anywhere. Since the objections to Mao’s position came from the center of world Communist theory in Moscow, Mao distinguished between the Russian and the Chinese experience by calling Russia an “ex-imperialist” country and China an “ex-colonial country.” In fact, however, they both became Communist while still backward countries, and did so as a consequence of invasion and defeat of the established government in a foreign war. Thus Mao’s interpretation, while possibly erroneous in its belief that the revolutionary regime comes to power by guerrilla warfare supported by discontented peasantry, may well be correct, based on the Russian precedent, that Communist regimes are more likely to come to power in backward states and will survive there if they are able to use the state’s despotic power to direct the utilization of economic resources toward investment to provide a high rate of economic development, as Soviet Russia has done.

Red China, like Soviet Russia, is governed under a parallel structure of the party and the government in which successive layers of assemblies and committees build up from the local level to the central authority. Until 1959, Mao held the chairmanship at the peak of both party and government. As a first step toward establishing a succession that would not repeat the desperate intrigue and violence that had occurred in the Kremlin following Stalin’s death, he resigned from the chairmanship of the republic in favor of Liu Shao-chi, but retained his position as chairman of the Central Committee of the party. The third man in the system, Chou En-lai, is a member of the seven-man Standing Committee that controls the party, has been premier of the government since 1949, and was also foreign minister in 1949-1958.