Zhang Chun Quiao 20th death anniversary tribute - for debate

50 years since writing of ' On Exercising the All-Around Dictatorship of the Proletariat’

 

Veteran Chinese communist Zhang Chunqiao died of throat cancer on April 21, 2005, at the age of 88. Thus we next month commemorate His 20^th death anniversary. Marxists also commemorate the 50^th anniversary of historic document d ‘On Exercising the All-Around Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, wriiten in January 1975.

Despite Zhang’s distinguished career as a communist theoretician and organizer, his death was given no official fanfare in China. He was in prison from 1976 to 1998, and lived his final years in obscurity.

Zhang Chun Qiao’s life is an example of a relentless Communist revolutionary who could withstand the most perilous conditions., handling the most complex of situations Till the last drop of his blood he waved the banner of Maoism in waging a revolutionary struggle within a Socialist state He ordained a shape to Mao’s orientation in his era at scale unsurpassed., devising a perfect blending of polemical mastery with revolutionary creativity.

Zhang was a Shanghai journalist who had joined the party in the late 1930s. He fought as a guerrilla fighter behind enemy lines in the war against the Japanese occupation,the Party’s main organ. Shanghai was China’s working-class center.

In 1967, as the Cultural Revolution progressed , he led an groundshaking event known as the January Storm.,making a most invocative speech underlining the motive of the uprising. After months of intense débâte to resolve the issues, rebels from Shanghai’s factories, as well as the neighbourhoods and schools, toppled the old city administration, a stronghold of the capitalist-roaders. Led by revolutionary party members, at first they tried to establish the Shanghai Commune. This was based on the model of the 1871 Paris Commune, the first, short-lived working class revolution, where there was no professional army and all officials were elected and subject to immediate recall at any time.

The Cultural Revolution

Zhang’s most a phenomenal political contribution during the period known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, beginning in 1966.

He waged 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 unflinchingly defended he proletarian revolutionary headquarters and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought which is Maoism today.

In November 1965, one of the publications that Zhang edited published an essay by Yao Wenyuan criticizing a play that had been published four years earlier. The critique of the play was to politically counterpose elements within the Communist Party that advocated using elements of capitalism—for example, private ownership of land—to develop the economy.

The essay was the precursor in triggering an intense struggle against who were termed as “capitalist roaders” within the CCP. Those in the party who believed in the socialist road of the Chinese revolution—Mao included—launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as a means of bringing the masses into the fold of what had been up to that point an inner-party struggle.

Zhang traversed different phases and circumstances when providing leadership to the complex battles that kept the capitalist-roaders at bay while working to eradicate the social remnants inherent from the old society . On the basis of the study on Chinese and world expérience and the problems at hand under Mao’s leadership, he made path breaking contributions to exploring and deiagnosing t the Maoist understanding of socialism.

Zhang played a key role in this struggle as one of the key members of the Group in Charge of the Cultural Revolution. The GCCR was formally responsible to the CCP’s Central Committee, charged in August 1966 with carrying out the party’s “Sixteen Point Decision.”

The crux of the Cultural Revolution was marshalled by the Red Guards. These groups were organized at schools and colleges encompassing entire China. They were responsible for criticizing teachers, administrators and Communist Party officials who bore bureaucratic tendencies or wee orienting towards path of “capitalist roaders.”

Based in Shanghai, Zhang Chunqiao played an integral role in expanding the base of the Cultural Revolution from a student-based movement to the working class.

The extent of slandering and lies ,the Western and Chinese media piled on Zhang when he died is atestament to his revolutionary stature. The accusations charge on him were strongest by those who were the targets of the Cultural Revolution The Maoist diagnosis of Zhang’s life and work was based on the understanding of why the Cultural Revolution was absolutely impérative . 

Shanghai Commune and Revolutionary Commitees

 

In late 1966, Zhang was deputed wit task of setting up the “Shanghai Commune,” modelled after the Paris Commune of 1871. The Paris Commune had been recognized as a new form of state by revolutionary leaders Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin.

The students and workers who had mobilized to push forward the Chinese revolution were to be the base of a new type of government. No longer would bureaucratic elements administer the party and state from behind closed doors, separate from the masses.

Zhang embarked on work in Shanghai organizing the Workers Headquarters, bringing factory committees into the forefront of the Cultural Revolution mobilization.

In 1967, as the Cultural Revolution progressed , he led an groundhaking event known as the January Storm. After months of intense débâte to resolve the issues, rebels from Shanghai’s factories, as well as the neighbourhoods and schools, toppled the old city administration, a stronghold of the capitalist-roaders. Led by revolutionary party members, at first they tried to establish the Shanghai Commune. This was based on the model of the 1871 Paris Commune, the first, short-lived working class revolution, where there was no professional army and all officials were elected and subject to immediate recall at any time.

Zhang synthesised the role of the party leadership of the masses with of Marxism –Leninism to plant the most innovative form of economic development ever built in a Socialist Society

In Shanghai to subvert 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.

Mao classed this uprising,as a turning point in the Cultural Revolution with working people storming onto the political stage. However, after carefully examining the situation, he pointed out that a commune was not a powerful enough way for the proletariat to govern under existing circumstances. Unlike the situation in which Marx foresaw socialism would arise, China was encircled by an imperialist-dominated world and would collapse without a standing army.

 .

Mao suggested that the rebels set up, a city-wide three-in-one combination of representatives of the rebel organisations, revolutionary party leaders and People’s Liberation ArmyBy late 1968, revolutionary committees based on similar methodology had sprouted throughout China.

 

After the Shanghai revolutionary communes formation which later became a revolutionary committee, the building of revolutionary committees took place all over China.

Mao classed this uprising,as a turning point in the Cultural Revolution with working people storming onto the political stage. However, after carefully examining the situation, he pointed out that a commune was not a powerful enough way for the proletariat to govern under existing circumstances. Unlike the situation in which Marx foresaw socialism would arise, China was encircled by an imperialist-dominated world and would collapse without a standing army.

Ironically after a decade of struggle, the army China eventually arrested Mao’s followers, and the capitalist-roaders who took over the party overturned the revolution and seatblished their own power.

‘On Exercising the All-Around Dictatorship of the Proletariat’,

In 1975, as the struggle was crystallisng at a new height ,he published ‘On Exercising the All-Around Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, a short but dense text, that had an explosive political effect.

It explored the contradictory nature of socialism, the manner it investigated by the contention of elements of the old society and the new. Zhang diagnosed Mao’s understanding of socialism as a society in transition.

It made a most comprehensive analysis of the prevailing conditions and the root cause of revisionism.

Above all it lucidly explained Mao’s concept of continuing the dictatorship of the Proletariat was an extension of Leninism. It penetrated most deeply into every aspect from the proletarian party to production, masswork and mass line. Another notable fact is that he explored and diagnosed the roots of the ideology of both Marx and Lenin and explained how Lenin himself advocated this very concept of combating the bourgeoisie within the party and morally supported a cultural revolution.

 He illustrated how figures like Deng Xiaoping or Lin Biao could re-capture power and the importance of consolidating the gains of the Cultural Revolution. and how people in production had to undergo continuous transformation.

It explored the contradictory nature of socialism, the manner it investigated by the contention of elements of the old society and the new. Zhang diagnosed Mao’s understanding of socialism as a society in transition.

 

 First of all, he wrote, socialist ownership had not been completely established , especially in the countryside, and it could be easily lost. Secondly, the relations between people in production also had to continuously change ,with working people having to be increasingly drawn into the management of production and, the administration of the entire society,. Further, the relations of distribution also had to change, so that in stages society could begin to leave behind the principle of paying people according to their work.  

It analysed how in the absence of persistent struggle to advance in all the relations between people and not just ownership, and struggle in the sphere of culture and ideas against the outlook and habits inherited from the old society, socialist ownership would be overturned and the old relationships, instead of being gradually wiped out, would be restored with vengeance.

 

It investigated how the most vital contradiction in socialist society was within the party itself, between those patronising ideas and policies representing the interests of a new bourgeoisie, and the representatives of the proletariat, the working class that cannot emancipate itself without revolutionising all relations among people throughout the globe. This manifests itself in a struggle between two ideological and political currents that would drive society in opposite directions.

 Weaknesses.

Zhang was unable to properly establish a united front to combat the capitalist roaders, with powerful left sectarian tendencies surfacing.

Insufficient focus was placed on establishing or correcting errors in practising massline,

No effective fortified infrastructure was built to insulate the movement and replenish forces

Broad based mobilisation of the working class was ineffective in the struggles and for a considerable period the revolutionary Committees were defunct.

Influence of rightist forces in the Army was not repealed.

Excesses were not checked.

Powerful instances of factionalism appeared.

Mass organisation of people ceased to have enough independence from the party.

Over emphasis was place on condemning Lin Biao clique rather than examining inherent weaknesses in political practice of struggle during Cultural Revolution.

Harsh Thakor