democracy and class struggle
by Harsh Thakor
Comrade Chang Chun Chiao
INTRODUCTION
Today on his 10th death anniversary on April 21st,
2015 we dip our blood in memory of Comrade Chang Chun Chiao, the most
prominent member of the gang of four who fought every inch to light the
torch of Marxism Leninism –Maoism and illuminate it’s light in ever
corner he traversed.
He engaged in a tooth and nail criticism of the capitalist roaders and revisionist line .Chang played an instrumental role in some of the greatest achievements of the Cultural Revolution. Although serious errors were made he stood like a rock to defend the proletarian revolutionary headquarters and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought which is Maoism today.
Today when the world bourgeoisie are gloating over the advent of globalization and leaders in China are celebrating the triumph of the bourgeoisie ,Zhang’s death anniversary has all the more significance.
He was a thorn in the flesh to those very forces.. Chang Chun Chiao’s life is an example of a great Communist revolutionary who could withstand the most turbulent of tides like a rock withstanding the most powerful of gales.. He exhibited the very qualities needed in a leader to sustain a Socialist Society and continue a revolution within it. Few leaders exhibited such outstanding capability as Chang who could handle the most complex of situations.
His death radiated a red flame in the hearts of all revolutionaries. No doubt Chang was one of the outstanding revolutionaries of the last century.
Zhang Chunqiao (张春桥, 1917-2005) was born in Juye County, Shandong Province. Zhang joined the Shanghai chapter of the League of Chinese Left-Wing Writers in 1936 and joined the Party around 1940. During the war against Japan, he was a cadre of communist guerillas operating behind enemy lines in north and east China. After the founding of the PRC, he started his carreer in literary and propaganda work.
He served as deputy director of the East China branch of the New China News Agency (1950), managing director of the PLA Daily [Jiefangjun bao] (1954), member of the Shanghai Party Secretariat (1958) and director of the Propaganda Department of the Shanghai Party branch (1963) .
In October 1966, Zhang became deputy head of the Cultural Revolution Group, headed by Jiang Qing and Chen Boda, which directed the developments in the first half of the Cultural Revolution. Together with Jiang, Wang Hongwen and Yao Wenyuan, Zhang would form what became know as the Gang of Four.
He was one of the initiators of the demonstrations that led to the founding of the Shanghai Commune, of which he was the chairman and Wang Hongwen the second-in-command. The organization was reorganized into a revolutionary committee on Mao's orders, but Zhang remained in charge.
He was arrested along with the other members of the Gang of Four in October 1976, as part of a conspiracy by Ye Jianying and newly anointed party leader Hua Guofeng.
Chang resisted the trial in 1980 with courage defending the revolutionary line like a boulder thwarting a bulldozer. Few comrades in world history could have faced a court trial with such tenacity and ideological commitment.
He virtually did not utter a word. Zhang was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, together with Jiang Qing, in 1984, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, and in December 1997 the sentence was further reduced to eighteen years.
In 1998, Zhang was released from prison to undergo medical treatment. He then lived in obscurity in Shanghai for the remainder of his life. Zhang died from pancreatic cancer in April 2005.[2]
ACHIEVEMENTS
Zhang was one of the founding members and principal leaders of the
Shanghai Peoples Commune formed in January 1967.Later it became known as
the revolutionary committee. His guidance played a major role in it’s
successful functioning in accordance with the Maoist line.-the 1st experiment in copying the Paris Commune.
He balanced the role of the party leadership with the masses with
mastery of Marxism –Leninism in the most innovative form of economic
development ever built in a Socialist Society and one of the most
creative forms in the history of mankind.
Never had such depth of proletarian revolutionary control been ever
developed. Chang displayed meticulous patience and endurance in holding
joint discussions at great personal risk.
In Shanghai in a suburb the rightist forces surrounded a train and
Chang Chun Chiao went directly on the scene. He signed the demands of
the rebels and demanded that the municipal committee hold a meeting.
He then persuaded the workers on the train to return to Shanghai to
implement the struggle. Chang Chun Chiao stated “We used to hold joint
discussions. We would ask the rebels to come to our meeting to discuss
each problem. One day forty organizations may be represented, the next
day hundred. Nobody knew anyone else.
Although we were very busy and in a state of chaos we thought that this
kind of thing was liable to happen in a revolution, and this was the way
of getting problems solved.”After the Shanghai revolutionary communes
formation which later became a revolutionary committee, the building of
revolutionary committees took place all over China.
It made a most incisive analysis of the prevailing conditions and the root cause of revisionism.
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