End of Revolutionary Mao Era [Sam Marcy] (2025)

The Shanghai Commune and therightist reaction

Part IV: The suppression of the Left in China

January 10, 1977

This month marks the tenth anniversary of what has been popularly called theShanghai Revolution. It was a monumental event in itself and constituted aturning point in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

This January, however, there is little if any mention of the ShanghaiCommune in the Chinese press. Rather, there is a campaign going on which amountsto a veritable rehabilitation of former Prime Minister Chou En-lai, and possiblyof Teng Hsiao-ping.

Chou, of course, was never formally denounced by the party leadership duringhis lifetime. But it is well established, and events will further confirm it,that he was not merely a moderator between the factions in the course of theCultural Revolution but a strong opponent of the left. There is no question thatit was he who advanced Teng, who had been ousted in the Cultural Revolution,back into a position of preeminent importance in the government and in theparty. Chou was able to obtain the acquiescence, if not the approval, ofChairman Mao Tse-tung.

It was only after the fall of Teng and after Chou's death last year that itbecame clear that Chou En-lai himself was a principal issue in the struggle. Thecurrent articles in the Chinese press seem calculated to elevate Chou to aposition in the history of the Chinese Revolution not merely second to Mao buteven rivaling him, and with a none too vague note of preference for Chou.

All this build-up, which is bound to take on a greater momentum with thepassage of time, is promoted in an effort to reject, discredit, and disqualifythe revolutionary achievements of the Cultural Revolution, which the leftsymbolized. It is no accident that the tenth anniversary of the ShanghaiRevolution has received scant attention in the Chinese press, if at all. Andcertainly, the capitalist press is not likely to draw attention to thisgrotesquely conspicuous omission.

CONFLICT BETWEEN RIGHT AND CENTER STILL DEEPENING

It should be noted that the new governing group, which is a coalition ofmostly rightist and centrist elements, may be overdoing it. The demonstrationscommemorating Chou's death ominously point in the direction of a still deepeningconflict between the rightists and the centrists. It is significant that thewall posters for the commemoration were utilized by the more extreme of therightists to attack Wu Teh, a Politburo member who also holds a position in thePeking Municipal Committee comparable to mayor and who is regarded as an ally ofHua in the suppression of the left.

The commander of the Peking garrison, Ch'en Hsi-lien, the one who may beregarded by the revolutionary left as having betrayed their cause and havingplayed a key role in their suppression, also has come under attack by wallposters which, if they don't have official sanction, are by organized groupsdeep in the struggle.

But the fact that there has been a steady increase in the number of wallposters demanding Teng's rehabilitation shows that all this may have gone muchfurther than the present uneasy coalition in the government group would viewwith equanimity. The fact that none of the leadership as of this writingobserved Chou's anniversary is itself significant.

It may very well be that the new Hua ruling group feared that on theanniversary of Chou's death there would be a second version of the Tien An Mendemonstration of last April when the counterrevolutionary elements mobilized inlarge numbers and were well-nigh able to overwhelm the officialdom,necessitating the call-up of security troops.

Up until the January 1967 Shanghai Revolution, and particularly its singulardevelopment, the Shanghai Commune, the struggle for the Cultural Revolution waslargely confined to students. Many, of course, were drawn from working class andpeasant families. That was the day of the Red Guards, which convulsed all Chinawith mounting interest and curiosity. But participation by the working class, assuch, was still peripheral.

WORKING CLASS INTERVENED IN SHANGHAI

The January Revolution, however, marks the period in which the workingclass, for the first time in the Cultural Revolution, intervened on a truly massscale and transformed the entire political situation, not merely in Shanghai butthroughout China. For the first time vast numbers of the great industrialworking class of Shanghai seemed to take destiny into their own hands. Shanghai,it must be remembered, is not only the largest and most industrialized city inChina, but can truly be called the proletarian capital of all Asia. The seizureof the reins of power there on behalf of the Mao forces and the CulturalRevolution ten years ago to this day is scarcely an event that could beforgotten in China.

Yet the Hua regime has managed to overlook it. It is small wonder. Theproblem that the Hua regime faces is that the principal leaders of the ShanghaiRevolution were none other than Chang Chun-chiao, Yao Wen-yuan, Wang Hung-wen,and, of course, Chiang Ching. It is impossible to write about the Januaryrevolution without writing about them. But they are precisely the ones who arenow being slandered and vilified beyond recognition.

Chang Chun-chiao was the chief party propagandist in the Shanghai PartyCommittee and subsequently the leader of the Shanghai Commune. Yao Wen-yuan isthe famous literary critic whose attack on Wu Han's play, The Dismissal ofHai Jui, initiated the Cultural Revolution. Both of these leaders werelater drawn into the leadership of the GCCR (Group in Charge of the CulturalRevolution) in Peking.

Wang Hung-wen, who was less well-known at the time, was the youthful textileworker who organized the first revolutionary workers' committee in Shanghai tocombat the anti-Mao revisionist forces. He is most famous as the one who put upthe poster in the Shanghai mill where he worked which attacked the rightistparty leaders as "capitalist readers." This was the signal to theShanghai proletariat to take another look at their "superiors" in themills and factories of Shanghai.

It scarcely need be added that Chiang Ching contributed greatly to theShanghai Revolution, especially in the early work of collaborating both withChang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-yuan. Their attacks on Wu-Han's play ultimatelyresulted in the fall of Peng Chen, the principle leader in the Peking MunicipalCommittee and a key promoter of the Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping rightistfaction.

AIMED AT RIGHTISTS IN PEKING

It was impossible to topple Peng from his powerful post from within Pekingitself. Peking was a stronghold of the rightists.. It is an administrativecenter. Shanghai, on the other hand, is the greatest industrial center and thecity where the Maoist forces had their strongest base. The Cultural Revolutionwas launched in Shanghai with the attack on Wu Han's play, but was aimed firstand foremost to dislodge the rightists from their power base in Peking.

The tremendous importance of the first victory in Shanghai can scarcely beoverestimated. Mao called it decisive precisely because it freed the CulturalRevolution from the narrow confines of the student and youth movement. That wasthe first great revolutionary and proletarian manifestation of the CulturalRevolution.

It is impossible to understand the later defeat of the left and the currentascendency of the rightist forces unless we examine, even if only in outlineform, the meaning of the Shanghai Revolution, the subsequent development of theShanghai Commune, and its supersession by the Triple Alliance.

It must be understood that the Cultural Revolution was inspired and directedfrom above. All such efforts directed from above, no matter how progressivetheir social and political content, have a limited character unless they areaccompanied by or awaken the revolutionary involvement of the masses. Previousreforms from above throughout all of history have faltered, precisely becausethey were unable to arouse the participation of the masses.

It was the good fortune of the Cultural Revolution that in Shanghai it founda ready, really tremendous, spontaneous response and involvement of the workingclass itself. Therein lies one of the fundamental and unique features of theShanghai Revolution. It is therefore no accident at all that after a period oftime the Shanghai Commune was set up there. It had the backing of the workersthrough its principal organization, the Shanghai Workers General Headquarters,headed by none other than Chang Chun-chiao.

The Shanghai Commune, brief though it was, spread terror in the camp of therightist revisionist forces. The Commune idea held out the prospect ofeventually dislodging the rightist forces more effectively than the form ofgovernment which later superseded it.

MODELED ON PARIS COMMUNE

It is to be remembered that the Commune idea, modeled on the Paris Commune,had tremendous revolutionary appeal. Although the great Paris insurrection isnow more than a hundred years old, it has never ceased to be a source ofinspiration, as well as a hoped-for model for the construction of arevolutionary workers' state.

Whenever there is a genuine revolutionary crisis in capitalist society, theCommune idea immediately becomes a source of controversy. Everyone knows thatLenin's State and Revolution is based on a popular exposition of thesignificance of the Paris Commune and how Marx evaluated it in his day. Theolder generation in China knows also of the Canton Commune, which ended sotragically as a result of its destruction by the counter-revolutionaryKuomintang forces headed by Chiang Kai-shek. Mao's early polemics againstKhrushchevite revisionism, in which he condemned the bourgeois parliamentaryroad and showed how the seizure of power must be based on destroying the oldstate apparatus of the bourgeoisie, were full of allusions to the Paris Commune.

Almost all of the left-wing in the Cultural Revolution were enthusiasticabout the Commune idea -- the idea of setting up or restructuring the state sothat it would be based on the dictatorship of the proletariat with the ParisCommune as a model. Chang Chun-chiao was, of course, in favor of it. So were YaoWen-yuan, Lin Piao, and Chen Po-ta. The truth of the matter is that it was hardnot to be in favor of the Commune.

The bourgeoisie have charged that the Commune was a form of irrationalviolence, chaos, and anarchy. But despite what its detractors say, the Communeidea was not one which arose spontaneously or germinated in the heads of theleft as a response to an uncontrollable anarchist current in the working class.The idea itself was sanctioned in the most authoritative document of theCultural Revolution, popularly called the Sixteen-Point Decision and undoubtedlywritten by Mao himself. It was adopted Aug. 8, 1966, at the 11th Plenum of theCentral Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Point Nine specifically states that "it is necessary to institute asystem of general elections, like that of the Paris Commune, for electingmembers to the cultural revolutionary groups and committees, and delegates tothe cultural revolutionary congresses. The list of candidates should be putforward by the revolutionary masses, after full discussion, and the electionsshould be held after the masses have discussed the lists over and over again.

"The masses are entitled at any time to criticize members of thecultural revolutionary groups and committees and delegates elected to thecultural revolutionary congresses. If these members or delegates proveincompetent, they can be replaced through election or recalled by the massesafter discussion."

It also states that the cultural revolutionary groups, committees, andcongresses "should not be temporary organizations but permanent, standingmass organizations." Nor are they to be confined to "colleges andschools" but are also to include, and this is of key significance, "governmentand other organizations and factories, mines, and other enterprises, urbandistricts and villages."

A NEW STATE BASED ON PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY

It is clear that what is aimed at here is a restructuring of a deformed,degenerated, and bureaucratized workers' state into a genuine proletariandemocracy based on the Paris Commune model. It is no wonder that the Communeidea spread so rapidly and enlisted such popular support as well as theendorsement of the left-wing leaders. It was not something that the left-wingleadership had set up against Mao or went beyond Mao, but was a practicalapplication of what was codified in a principal party directive.

But it ran up against a strong opposition of the rightist forces who weredeeply entrenched in the party and government and who would not easily yield towhat appeared to be a medium to completely dislodge them. Why then were theShanghai Commune and the very idea of the Commune soon superseded by the TripleAlliance or the Three-in-One Combination, as it is more often called?

According to one of the latest versions, inspired by official Chinesesources, it was "Mao who had second thoughts about it." So writes HanSuyin in Wind in the Tower (1976). "Mao Tse-tung called YaoWen-yuan and Chang Chun-chiao, then busy in Shanghai with the communeestablishment, to discuss the matter in Peking." According to her, Maowarned that "'ultra-democracy' can be the seedbed of Bonapartism," andwas upset that "Chen Po-ta was calling for communes of the Paris type to beestablished everywhere and in Taiyuan, and Peking, posters and leaflets wereproclaiming the imminent formation of communes with 'all power to theproletariat.' "

Mao told Chang and Yao, says Han Suyin, "that the Shanghai victory hadbeen brilliant and decisive for the cultural revolution by bringing the workingclass to its proper role as the main force, but the working class was stillbeing split and divided, it had to clarify its ideology and unite. There werestill seven hundred or more organizations in Shanghai's factories" whichwere not yet in the Commune.

Mao is also quoted as denouncing as "extreme anarchism and downrightreactionary" an alleged demand by the Shanghai People's Committee (not tobe confused with the Shanghai Commune itself) that Chou En-lai do away with allheads of departments in government offices.

"Communes of the Paris type," Han Suyin quotes Mao as saying, "aretoo weak when it comes to suppressing counterrevolutionaries." Thereforethe Triple Alliance, based upon the mass organizations, the People's LiberationArmy (PLA), and the party cadres, was more suitable and appropriate both forbroadening the mass support and for successfully prosecuting the struggleagainst the rightists.

First of all, it should be noted that the reasoning attributed to Mao forsuperseding the Communes with the Triple Alliance can not be documented and doesnot lend itself to credibility. Both Han Suyin as well as Jean Daubier in hisHistory of the Chinese Cultural Revolution are too solicitous of ChouEn-lai and have fully committed themselves against Lin Piao and Chen Po-ta, bothof whom were strongly for the Commune along with Chang Chun-chiao and YaoWen-yuan.

The reasoning attributed to Mao for preferring the Triple Alliance asagainst the Commune does not go to the essence of the matter. It is true thatthe Shanghai Commune had not yet obtained the full endorsement of most of theworking class in Shanghai, but there is absolutely no reason why, with the helpof the central party leaders, the support would not broaden. Most of theorganizations opposing the Commune, which were adhering to the revisionist linein the first place, were beginning to fold up. And there is no authenticconfirmation, historically, of why a strongly established Commune should not beable to cope with counter-revolutionary efforts or should succumb to anarchismor Bonapartism.

In the light of what has happened since the supersession of the Commune bythe Triple Alliance and the defeat of the left, it becomes more necessary thanever to examine the basic difference between the Commune and the TripleAlliance.

TRIPLE ALLIANCE LIMITED

Historians friendly to the Cultural Revolution, such as Daubier or WilliamHinton, in addition to Han Suyin and others, neglect to point out, if they areaware of it at all, that there was a fundamental difference between the TripleAlliance and the Commune. The Triple Alliance is based upon three categoriesonly: representatives of the people designated by them through massorganizations, representatives of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), and partycadres. The Triple Alliance was in reality only a coalition.

The Commune is not merely a coalition. In a Commune there can be severalcoalitions. It is not restricted but is based on the workers, peasants, and massof the people. The Shanghai Commune had the potential for this had it been giventhe opportunity to develop and broaden out.

The Triple Alliance presupposes as its nucleus and principal instrument thethree forces in the struggle: mass organizations, the army, and the partycadres. The Triple Alliance, therefore, narrows the participation of the broadmasses to these three categories.

It is otherwise with the Paris Commune-type of state. For instance, duringthe era when Lenin was alive, the Soviets were composed of workers, peasants,and soldiers. There was no such thing as a Soviet restricted to massorganizations, army, and cadres.

The Triple Alliance owes its composition first of all to the forging of acoalition from the top. Therein lies a fundamental difference with the Commune,which presupposes elections by workers, peasants, and soldiers, and theinstitutionalizing of this form, as the basic medium for consummating aproletarian democracy.

The truth of the matter is that the Commune idea was shelved because therightist forces in the party, who in reality had engulfed the party and thegovernment, were too strong. Therefore a compromise was made whereby the forceswhich were to be combatted, that is, the rightist, revisionist, bureaucratic,and elitist elements, were really included in the new form of state. The doorwas left wide open for them to come in through the use of the term "cadres." This vague formulation meant that the bureaucratic right-wing and theentire governmental apparatus, including the apparatus of the party, couldregain entrance simply by affirming that they were for the Mao Tse-tung line.

APPARATUS SUBORDINATE TO THE COMMUNE

In a Paris Commune-type of state, that is, in a workers' parliament, as wasoriginally explained by Marx and used as a popular exposition of the nature ofthe Commune by Lenin in his State and Revolution, the administrators,the bureaucrats, the technical intelligentsia, and so on, were to be employeesof the workers' parliament to be hired or fired in accordance with the wishesand policy of the government. The entire administrative apparatus, including theparty apparatus, was subject to the will of the Commune, of the Soviets, asunder Lenin. That was, in a general way, what the left-wing during the CulturalRevolution had envisioned and it must be assumed that that was Mao's position aswell, if we are to take the Sixteen-Point Decision as an authentic document,having his approval if not wholly written by him.

In a Paris Commune-type state, the military is subordinate to the Commune.The specter of Bonapartism is if anything less of a danger than in abureaucratized form of workers' state. The Red Army during Lenin's time wassubordinated to the will of the Soviets. During the Paris Commune, the NationalGuard was subordinated to the Executive Committee and the Commune.

Daubier in a footnote touches on the vital difference between the members ofthe revolutionary committees, that is, the Triple Alliance, and the ParisCommune. The difference, he says, is that "in the Chinese setup thoseelected must belong to one of the three categories and only a third of themembers can come from any one category." (Daubier, History of theChinese Cultural Revolution, p. 160.) That in itself nullifies the veryconception of a Paris Commune-type state. It explains why the Chou En-lai forceswere so vehemently opposed to the Commune and why their target was precisely therevolutionary left-wing elements who were for it.

Daubier stresses the unquestionable value of the Three-in-One Combination inthat it gave impetus to the trend toward centralized leadership in the CulturalRevolution through a method that was democratic and that the revolutionarycommittees (Triple Alliance) gave the Chinese population greater control overtheir future leaders. Unfortunately, events following the writing of his bookhave not borne out his prediction. The purge of such leaders as the heads of theCultural Revolution group, Chen Po-ta, and Lin Piao completely demolished thelimited revolutionary character of these committees led to the ultimate demiseof the Group in Charge of the Cultural Revolution itself.

TRIPLE ALLIANCE A RETURN TO THE OLD ORDER

The change from the Commune to the Triple Alliance was seemingly anorganizational move to broaden popular support, but in reality it was aqualitative change backwards. Under the Commune-type of organization, thebureaucracy was under the thumb of the Commune. Under the Triple Alliance, thebureaucracy became an indispensable pillar of the new state form. The masseswould ultimately be shut out.

Once again it was a return to the old order. Once again the intractable,elitist managerial and governmental apparatus was "in authority." Thefull implementation of the Triple Alliance meant the triumph of a radicallydifferent conception from that of the Paris Commune-type of state. It was asubtle but nonetheless real shift in class forces.

The Commune idea didn't necessarily mean a violent struggle on a mass scaleagainst the bureaucratic elements. But it did not preclude it. It was a questionof a transition to a new form of proletarian democracy in which the managerialelite would be subordinated to the workers' government and where the overallpolitical authority would be exercised over the administrative, technical andacademic elite rather than by them.

If we are to seek the roots for the defeat of the left-wing and theascendency of the current rightist, Thermidorian reactionaries, certainly one ofthe fundamental reasons must be sought in the shift away from the ParisCommune-type idea and back to a much more restrictive, in fact a liberalizedversion of the old type of workers' state which steadily degenerated and becameoverwhelmed by the influx of bourgeois forces into the state and the party.

The very term "seizure of power," used so frequently during theentire course of the Cultural Revolution, can only be understood in light of thefact that a Commune-type of state was an objective of the Cultural Revolution,as validated in the Sixteen-Point Decision. The very idea of the seizure ofpower is comprehensible only in light of the Marxist conception of the ParisCommune which taught that it was inadequate to purge the old state apparatus,that a new state form based upon the proletariat and its allies had to beerected. Under such a state the "cadres," which is for the most part aeuphemism for the bureaucratic, elitist, and privileged social grouping whichheld the reins of government in China after the victory of the 1949 Revolution,would be held in tow by a workers' parliament.

Under the Shanghai Commune-type of state, the administrators, the managerialelite, and the bureaucratic elements whom the workers' government may need for atime would be under the control of a workers' government. As Lenin said, under aParis Commune-type of state every cook would be able to run the government. Themore classes begin to disappear, the less need would there be for the specialtype of bureaucratic, managerial elite which in one degree or another dominatesthe socialist countries today.

Under the Triple Alliance, on the other hand, no matter how well therevolutionary elements strive, in the words so frequently used in the last fewyears in Chinese party literature, to "keep the bourgeoisie out of theparty," to "fight the bourgeoisie within the party," theascendency of the rightist reaction becomes inevitable.

All this must be seen within the context of the workers' state. While theascendency of the bureaucracy can, of course, lead to further degeneration andpave the way back to capitalism, the other possibility is the regeneration ofproletarian democracy through the resumption of a revolutionary offensive by theproletariat newly inspired by a new Marxist-Leninist leadership.

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