ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP (01/15/84)
#N:ucbesvax:7500070:000:10372
ucbesvax!turner Jan 14 14:28:00 1984
Berkeley is poster city, and occasionally you get a good political essay
out of it. The following is a production of "The American Friends of
Wei Jing-sheng" (c/o Bound Together Bookstore, 1369 Haight St., San
Francisco CA 94117). Bound Together is an anarchist bookstore, from
what I have heard. The poster marks the visit of the latest, greatest
super-bureaucrat from the People's Republic of China to San Francisco.
It has pictures of a cadre tearing open his uniform jacket to reveal a
pin-stripe suit, and two smiling super-proles, one Chinese, the other
an ARCO field tech, gazing brainlessly into the glowing future.
This has been the introduction. The essay follows. There will be some
trailing notes on the text. There is no copyright notice--this is
characteristic of anarchist political writing. I called the bookstore
about permission to quote, and they just laughed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONSUMERISM
Highest Stage of Maoism
With the current visit of Premier Zhao Ziyang to this country, China
has once again become a hot commodity. The coincidence of national interests
and certain similarities in the internal character of the American and Chinese
regimes have drawn them into increasingly close contact. But even as these
two big brothers-in-arms exchange toasts, the compelling rationalities of
hierarchical power and commodity production make nonsense of the pretensions
of all the parties involved.
Diane Feinstein, the liberal mayor who affects a concern for "human
rights," must hope that the memory of the several hundred executions reported
to have taken place in the Peoples' Republic during September and October has
faded from the public mind as she shakes Premier Zhao's hand. Diane, who
knows the value of a political murder or two [1], knows that these things
should be handled discreetly. So, evidently, does the government of the
People's Republic, although in the case of the "Gang of Four" member Zhang,
it seems not to have succeeded. Governor Deukmejian and Ronald Reagan are
members of a political party which reality has obliged to give up its
political convictions time and again. In this they are like the Maoists who
have gravitated towards "pragmatism." Now both the leadership in Washington
and the one in Beijing are trying to encourage economic growth in an environ-
ment that remains problematical and to implement programs of social control
based on the official values of the 1950's. Both groups are encountering
institutional opposition to their economic programs at the same time that
their social programs are being met generally by indifference and cynicism.
For the Communist Party of China, faced with a million Warsaw Pact
troops on its northern and western frontiers, a hostile Vietnamese state
to its south, and uneven progress of the Four Modernizations, a closer
relationship with the United States is a necessity. Financial and technical
aid must come from the outside, and the U.S., directly or indirectly, is the
key to these resources. A deal must be struck, even at the cost of some lost
face over the question of U.S. ties and arms to Taiwan. [2]
Excluded from the festivities, the supporters of the Nationalist
regime on Taiwan and those of orthodox Maoism can only make indignant and
ineffectual gestures. Uncomprehending butts of a joke played upon them by
history, they can only shout themselves hoarse extolling the virtues of
their respective despotisms. For the American (ex-) Maoist recipients of
the Beijing franchise as well, there is little enough reward; Permier Zhao
has, after all, not come to dine with Mike Klonsky. [3]
But while the present convergence of the U.S.-P.R.C. interests is
so obvious that not even Ronald Reagan can deny it, the quality of the
changes that have occurred inside the P.R.C. is not so evident.
Since the death of Mao Zedong and the arrest of his closest sup-
porters in 1976, there has been a move away from the Maoist policies of
extreme centralization of power, regimentation of behavior, ideological
terror and the superexploitation of the Chinese workers and peasants. The
present orientation of the Party is the outcome of intra-Party struggles
which have resulted in the ascendancy of the group around Deng Xiao-ping.
It was, however, due to the actions of people mostly outside the party
that this new orientation has become necessary and successful.
Maoism did not die with Mao Zedong or with the fall of the "Gang of
Four." It died on the fifth of April 1976 at Tien An Men Square. On that
day, a crowd of 100,000 people demonstrated against the regime, attacked
Public Security Bureau vehicles and military barracks, and declared "the
Chin emperor's feudal society" gone forever. This made it plain to the
majority of the leaders of the Communist Party that things could not go on
as before. The future belonged to the group which could make concessions to
the workers, peasants, youth and intellectuals, revitalize the economy and
modernize the bases of bureaucratic power without delegitimizing the Party.
Much has since been written of the reforms [of] Deng's group as a
"return to capitalism." But is this what has really happened? The actual
adjustments made included bonuses and wage increases for workers, the expan-
sion of private garden space and legalization of public market places for
peasants, the official recognition of the "urban communes" organized by youth
returned from the countryside, a loosening of the orthodoxy imposed upon
intellectuals, and a shift of economic emphasis from heavy industry to light
industry and consumer goods. These measures are a tangible improvement in
the living conditions under bureaucratic rule, but not a fundamental change
in the relationship between Chinese producers and the officials who give them
orders and accumulate social wealth in their name. The bureaucratic capital-
ism of the Party and the capitalism of private owners both share the same
principles of domination and the same international marketplace.
"Practice is the sole criterion of truth." The social truth of
liberalized Maoism can be found in the social facts: with an elevation in
the standard of living comes a new emphasis on "discipline," with the
rehabilitation of thousands of victims of the Cultural Revolution comes
the deportation of thousands of young people involved in the Democracy
Movement or possessed of "spiritual pollution" or in violation of the
Party's dress code, with the increase in foreign trade comes the contraction
of freedoms accorded intellectuals and the silence of the Xidan wall [4].
Even as the line of "readjustment" changes the history of Maoism to conform
with its latest directives, it reaffirms its identity with Mao.
For a number of years now, the Party has admitted a crisis of faith
in Marxism among China's youth. The generation that was used as cannon
fodder and then sold out during the Cultural Revolution by Mao, sent down
to the countryside and then bypassed by the Four Modernizations, has had to
live outside the law in great numbers--illegally returning to the cities,
forming unsanctioned cooperatives for survival, maintaining clandestine
information networks and libraries, and in several celebrated instances,
publicly posting manifestoes and waging open war against the authorities.
This generation has seen dialectics put to an abundance of uses. That
Marxism, which once contained revolutionary components, is now the religion
of academics and bureaucrats, is due to its own inherent flaws. Much of
this, China's youth already recognizes. People elsewhere should be so wise.
All around the world the Left, as anything that offers a real alternative to
the world as it now exists, is finished. The time has come to push it into
the ditch and press on.
It is not that China's youth are rejecting Marxism because they are
becoming so conservative. They are rejecting the Marxism they have known
because it doesn't live up to its revolutionary promises. Chinese radicals,
like their American counterparts, are in the early stages of developing a
modern anti-authoritarian project which will aim no less at the destruction
of authority than at the destruction of capital. The Democracy Movement was
only a beginning.
This leaflet is being done in an attempt to make the practice of
statecraft embarassing. It is the intention of its writer and those who
help him to contribute towards the creation of a situation in which the
practice of statecraft is impossible. However successful we may be, one
thing is certain: the more difficult we make it for governments to conduct
their activities in secret, the more we confront them with the possibility
of retaliation for their persecution of those who fight for freedom, the
better the circumstances for those carrying on this struggle will be. [5]
---
[1] "...the value of a political murder or two,..."--allusion to the
political opportunities presented to Diane Feinstein by the
assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk; Feinstein
had lost to Moscone in the previous election.
[2] "...the question of ... Taiwan." Actually, it appears that Zhao
is even at this moment lobbying for American tolerance of PRC
reunification schemes. How Reagan is taking it this time is
not yet clear--but the old dog has learned new tricks before.
[3] "...Mike Klonsky." Chieftain of some U.S. Maoist splinter faction,
no doubt.
[4] "...the silence of the Xidan wall." Referring to a wall in Beijing
where political dissidents could post manifestos and expressions
of discontent.
[5] "...secret...retaliation...fight for freedom...struggle..."--slightly
wimpy closing passage that still doesn't avoid certain leftist
cliches. But still pretty good, compared to "Death to the Fascist
Insect that Preys on the Life of the People." [6] S.F. is improving,
believe me! I can hardly wait for Bound Together's reaction to the
Democratic Convention ("...dizzying spectacle of hierarchical
power....the rottenness at the core....fear and loathing at the
George Moscone Convention Center....")
[6] "...Death to the Fascist Insect..."--slogan of the Symbionese Liberation
Army, abductors of Patricia Hearst. Where *have* you been all these
years?
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)