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Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution – The Background
Mao’s revolutionary policy was to advance the process of Socialist transformation by utilizing the National Capitalist (Private) industries, controlling and changing it, after the New Democratic Revolution accomplished in China in 1949. On the contrary Li Shao Chi brought forth a bourgeois opportunistic policy. He said, ‘Capitalism in China is still in the beginning stage. It must have an unlimited expansion. In such a situation capitalist exploitation would be a characteristic of development but not a crime’. There were large scale revolutionary land reforms in 1950. Li Shao Chi group opposed these land reforms. In 1951 a movement of criticism took place against narrow views regarding five kinds of personal relationships. There was a movement against Economism and Bureaucracy of the leaders in the Trade Unions. There was a movement against the three evils of corruption, waste expenditure and bureaucracy in the government.
In 1952there were movements against the five evils and to implement a few rules on private companies. In the guidance of Mao the CPC took up the policy of ‘three years of preparation, ten years of planned economic construction’ and achieved remarkable successes in the initial period. So by 1956 individual ownership basically ended in agriculture, handicrafts, capitalist industries, trade and instruments of production. Collective method in agriculture came into practice all over the
country. The New Democratic Revolution became the Socialist Revolution. Primary Socialist society formed. The Eighth Congress of CPC in September 1956 synthesized this success. When revisionism arose in CPSU (B) revisionist trends started gaining influence in the topmost levels in CPC. In the Eighth Congress the revisionist understanding of the General Secretary Li Shao Chi was dominant. The resolution of the Congress on the Political Report said thus – ‘The major contradiction in our country…is in essence that between the developed Socialist society and the backward forces of production in the society’. This Congress could not provide a clear understanding about the class contradictions of the Socialist society. Taking chance of this weakness the bourgeois opportunism of Li Shao Chi strengthened much more. He brought forward the revisionist theory of ‘forces of production’. He argued that since there were no classes in China, there was no need for class struggle and that there would not be a two line struggle in the party as its reflection. After the Eighth Congress of the CPC, Li Shao Chi took up capitalist restoration more nakedly in the foot steps of Khrushchev, the traitor of revolution. He brought many bourgeois representatives favourable to him in a subtle manner into important positions in the Party and the government and conspired to establish his control. After the campaign ‘Let hundred flowers blossom and hundred schools of thought contend’ for two months in 1956 (from April to June), Li Shao Chi clique stopped it intentionally. In 1957 Mao wrote the great article, ‘Solving the contradictions among the people’. In this writing he explained that although dictatorship of the proletariat is under the leadership of the Communist Party, contradictions, classes and class struggle would continue to exist. In Socialist society there are two different kinds of contradictions – between the masses and the enemy and those among the masses. In the same article Mao brought forth six standards to help the masses distinguish ‘flagrant flowers’ from ‘poisonous weeds’. In the Third Plenum of the Eighth CC in 1957 October, Mao said that the contradiction between the bourgeois class and the proletariat would be the major one in Socialist society. He also said that it would express in the politics and ideological fields. He challenged the concepts of Li Shao Chi and Deng that the major contradiction would be between the backward forces of production and the advanced Socialist society. In 1957 the movement for Great Leap Forward took place depending on the concept of self-reliance. It brought forth the understanding that we have to advance through class struggle, struggle for production and scientific experiment, in coordination with and depending upon agriculture and industries. There were revolutionary changes in the development of agricultural and industrial sectors. In 1957 there was a fight against the bourgeois rightists. The anti-Party clique of Peng Te Huei was exposed in Lu Shan meeting in 1959. In the Movement for Socialist Education that started in the beginning of 1962, there were ten points like the importance of class struggle, four cleans, participation of Party activists and leadership in production and so on. In order to achieve unity in the party, Mao formulated the basic line for the whole period of Socialist society, in the Tenth plenum of the Eighth Congress in 1962. This stood as the guideline for CPC until the demise of Mao. Supporting the capitalist roaders hid in the Party Li Shao Chi got down to repressive measures on the Movement for Socialist Education. He directly pounced upon the worker-peasant-soldier and oppressed masses. In the beginning of 1964 Mao formulated two slogans, ‘Learn from TaChai in the agricultural field’, and ‘Learn from TaChing in the industrial field’. In the end of 1964 CPC reviewed the movement for Socialist Education in Mao’s leadership and formulated a twenty-three point document with the name of ‘Immediate problems that arose in the Movement for Socialist Education that took place in the rural areas’, for solving the immediate problems. For the first time this movement aimed at the capitalist roaders hid in the Party. The internal struggle between the capitalist and socialist lines took a much intense form and a mass form in the end of 1964. In the CC meeting in 1966 October, Li Shao Chi and Deng Hsiao Ping tried to escape with a self-criticism. But the CC rejected it. Finally this clique conspired to seize power on the 7th September 1968. Finally the Twelfth Extended Plenary meeting of the Eighth Congress of the CPC in October 1968 announced Li Shao Chi as a traitor, disrupter of revolution in the guise of Party and the leader of capitalist roaders. He was expelled from all the positions inside and outside the Party. Since the establishment of Chinese People’s Republic, all main theoretical struggles in the political and ideological fields were related to either highlighting or opposing the basic line of the Party in the direction of Socialism. Criticism on a reactionary cinema, ‘the life of Yu Sun’, criticizing bourgeois idealism in studying the Dream of Red Chamber, criticizing reactionary Hu Feng clique, fighting against the rightists, criticizing the reactionary metaphysical theory of Yang Hsian Chen, ‘Two combine as one’, against the revolutionary dialectical concept of ‘One divides into two’ of Mao are part of this movement. So the CPC in the leadership of Mao faced the problem of solving the main problems that arose in Socialist construction. The first was in the transformation of the whole masses having ownership on the mode of production to Socialist ownership. If this is achieved the forces of production would advance. But there arose a gap between these advanced forces of production and backward relations of production. If the relations of production were not revolutionized much more, they would come in the way of further development of the forces of production. If the relations of production are to be revolutionized, if the people are to accept Socialist relations in the Communes, Factories, Universities, Government, Army and Homes, it is necessary to revolutionise the superstructure constantly. For this, it is necessary to eradicate the strongly rooted influence and remains of the old exploitive classes; to solve the contradictions between the proletariat and peasantry, between the urban and the rural areas, between mental and physical labour; to deal properly with the bourgeois class that develops coincidentally from the production of small scale products; to change the old habits and customs. To do this, the bourgeois rights must be controlled; ‘value concept’ must be stopped. In the process of solving these problems the great Marxist teacher Mao made many experiments and finally found the form of Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
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