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Old May 15th, 2013 #34
Alex Linder
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Jing Lin's study of the political, psychological and eduational factors which prepared the Red Guards for the violence they inflicted on their fellow Chinese durign the "ten-year calamity" (shinian haojie), as the cultural revolution is now referred to, confirms the extreme emphasis on all types of correct behavior and thought in Maoism. Communist ideology was sancrosanct, 'the only correct official ideology' (Lin, 1991, 40)[17] As in the case of its Soviet counterpart, the Chinese mass media's main task was to indoctrinate the masses with "correct attitudes, ideas and beliefs" (Lin, 1991, 57). And the main task of the highly centralised education system was to inculcate 'the correct political orientation' (Lin, 1991, 79). Another parallel with Soviet Russia (and National Socialist Germany) was the party propaganda machine's use of young role models specifically aimed at the Red Guards (see, for example, Pavlik Morozov in the Soviet Union and Horst Wessel in Nazi Germany). The Chinese exemplar was Lei Feng, a young communist whose diary inspired the learn-from-Lei-Feng movement in which the Red Guards would keep diaries and hand them in to teachers 'for help in correcting possible deviations' (Lin, 1991, 122). Attitudes among the Red Guards were comparable to those identified by Berger regarding istina/pravda: 'While being absolutely obedient to Mao and aggressive against the "class enemies", the Red Guards treated the proletariat as embodying a concept of "justice", and idea that represented correctness' (Lin, 1991, 156).

Extracts from Important Documents on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was published in 1970 at the peak of the cultural revolution, as well as those from other official Chinese sources, confirm Lin's conslusiosn and, again, the absolutely central role of correctness in all fields of Maoist thought and Chinese communism.[18] If anything centrality understates the emphasis. We are dealing here with a fanatical faith which is impervious to reasoned argument and evidence. The following citations -- many more could be cited -- require no explanation. They demonstrate an even greater obsession with correctness than that found in Lenin and his interpreters:

[...] 'our Party will always forge ahead victoriously along the correct course charted by Chairman Mao' (FLP, 1970, 75);

'Under the guidance of Chairman Mao's correct line' [...] (FLP, 1970, 65);

[...] 'the great, glorious and correct Party' (FLP, 1970, 66);

'Long live the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China!' (FLP, 1970, 106);

[...] 'the correct kind of leadership' (FLP, 1970, 134);

'Without correct literary and art criticism it is impossible for creative work to flourish' (FLP, 1970, 230);

'China is a great socialist state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and has a population of 700 million. It needs a unifying thought, revolutionary thought, correct thought. That is Mao Tsetung Thought. Only with this thought can we maintain vigorous revolutionary drive and keep firmly to the correct political orientation' (FLP, 1970, 240);

'Red Guard fighters, revolutionary students, the general orientation of your struggle has always been correct' (FLP, 1970, 257);

[...] 'the correct line of Chairman Mao and the bankruptcy of the bourgeois reactionary line' (FLP, 1970, 274);

'Only by thoroughly criticizing and repudiating the bourgeois reacionary line and eradicating its influence can the line of Chairman Mao be carried out correctly, completely and thoroughly' (FLP, 1970, 276);

teachers are to understand the 'correct line' of Chairman Mao (FLP, 1970, 279);

'Long live the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China' (FLP, 1970, 290);

'Not to have a correct political orientation is like not having a soul' (FLP, 1977, 405);

'Mao Tse-Tung's thought is the life-line of our Party, the sole correct supreme guiding thought of our Party, also the sole correct supreme guiding thought of the international communist movement' (Union Research Service, 1968, 121);

'Incorrect expressions must be eliminated from newspapers and journals', Editor's and Writer's Friend, 1984 (cited in Schoenhals, 1992, 76).[19]

Political correctness in Chinese communist ideology must also be interpreted against the background of the Sino-Soviet split. Chinese communists found it unforgivable that Khrushchev could denounce Stalin and promulgate a doctrine of peaceful coexistence with the West which implied either a suspension of, or a retreat from, the class struggle. Scandalised by such ideological revisionism -- though this did not prevent China from welcoming President Nixon in 1972 -- the Chinese communist party saw itself as the one true bastion of ideological purity. Khrushchev was a dire warning of where incorrect thinking would lead. Extreme ideological vigilance was needed if China was not to lapse
into revisionism as well. Some sense of what Soviet revisionism meant for communist China can be understood in the Communique of the 11th Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party 8th Central Committee (August 12th 1966). According to the communique, 'the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] has betrayed Marxism-Leninism, betrayed the great Lenin, betrayed the road tot he great October Revolution, betrayed proletarian internationalism, betrayed the cause of the international proletariat and of the oppressed peoples and oppressed nations, and betrayed the interests of the great Soviet people and the people of the socialist countries' (Documents, 1971, 223). So concerned was the Chinese Communist Party leadership with the Soviet line that in the 1960s it established an Anti-Revisionist Writing Team whose specific task was 'to compose authoritative denunciations of Soviet-style "revisionism" in the name of the CCP Central Committee' (Schoenhals, 1992, 63).

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[18] Note, for example, the title of Mao's work published in 1957, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People. We are told that the Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art gave artists the 'correct orientation' (FLP, 1970, 235).

[19] An example of incorrect formulation among a majority of Western scholars would be the use of "totalitarian" to refer to the Soviet Union. To quote Martin Malia: 'In the introduction to each new monograph, the totalitarian model was ritually excoriated, and the "T-word" was banished from polite academic discourse, its use viewed as virtual incitement to Cold War hostility towards the "Evil Empire". By the onset of perestroika in 1985, a pall of political correctness had settled over the field' (Malia, 1994, 12).

Last edited by Alex Linder; May 15th, 2013 at 12:36 AM.