"The Four" & events in China 1976 (3): 2 posts again

[rolf.martens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rolf Martens)]

"The Four" & events in China 1976 (3): 2 posts again   [Sent:13.05.96]

This is part of a discussion on the Jefferson Village Virginia
Marxism list and is also sent to newsgroups.


In this third posting I simply repeat, now under this subject, my
first two postings where this matter was raised (and caused two
replies by comrade Jay Miles of the Detroit Peru Support
Committee). They were originally posted under the subjects
"Re: Luftmensch on maoism" and "Re: The mass line....". and
as replies to "Chris, London". For those who might want to follow
this debate, these first statements may be of interest.


FIRST REPLY TO CHRIS:

Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 23:57:00 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Re: Luftmensch on maoism


Hello Chris,

Here you're touching on something important (I hope you won't mind
my saying, for once!):

>They were receptive to "public opinion" expressed also in indirect ways.
>The spontaneous mass mourning at the death of Zhou Enlai, who very
>significantly died just before Mao, was treated by all sides in the
>Chinese leadership as a signal of hostility towards Chiang Ching and Co.

>Chris

The mass protests on Tienanmen Square on 05.04.76, essentially,
*were* a protest against Jiang Qing's and the other "G 4" peoples'
*suppressing* the manifestations of mourning for Zhou Enlai. There
were some other forces mixed up in the whole thing also, some
supporters of the *other* anti-Mao fraction, that of Deng Xiaoping,
which tried to take advantage of the situation, but, if you read the
issues of Peking Review from that time carefully, you can confirm
the above pretty well. (Btw, *are* those issuses available to
you, for instance? I have them, in English and in German. Does
anybody know where to get issues 1973-77 in Spanish? *Please* in
that case tell me about it, and how to get copies of articles!)

I read about the events at the time but didn't then understand them
although I had already been enaging in political activity for some
years. There was one thing in PR that made me wonder, even at that
time, however: The people in Beijing were asked over the radio *not*
to go out into the streets; it was said that there "were disturbances
by some bad elements, which were being taken care of by some
militia units". Today I realize how this *stank*: The masses
of course must have supported the revolution, so why would the
people then controlling that radio station want them to stay home
instead of going out - in which case they of course would have seen for
themselves what was really going on and would have supported the
correct line; "bad elements" of one kind or another would not have
been able to fool them.

Funny business; obviously a "Gang of Four" controlled station.
On 07.04.76, after that incident, there were two decisions by the
CC of the CPC: 1) Dismissal of Deng Xiaoping from all posts
2) Appointment of Hua Guofeng (*not*, for instance, the "G 4"
meber Zhang Chunquiao, who had "higher rank") as First Vice
Chairman of the CPC - effectively, as successor to Mao. Both decisions
were on Mao Zedong's proposal. Here it can be seen that he combated
*both* groups, both the Deng group *and* the "Gang".

However, the incident on 05.04. was proclaimed by the CC of the
CPC to have been "counterrevolutionary". IMO, that must have been
a mistake. *In the main*, they must have been revolutionary, with
pro-Deng forces only playing a *secondary* part. Other information
supports such an analysis, too.

This whole subject, as one of the important points in the history of
the years 1973-1977, i.e. the history of the overthrow of socialism in
China, is an important subject for further investigation today.

Those who maintain that the "Gang of Four" were *real* leftists,
and not phoney ones, at least are dead wrong, as many facts show,
not only those mentioned above.

There's a brief discussion on this in my "UNITE! Info #3en" posting.
Much more will have to be written on that subject.

The line of the "Gang of Four" correspond very closely to
that of the recently exposed Avakian-Quispe-TP impostor gang!

The PCP comrades should be advised on this point, too, and this
whole matter discussed with them; they're certainly making a
big mistake in supporting Jiang Qing as a consistent revolutionary,
and not as the hypocritical Rightist she turned into at least in
the 1972-76 period, for which she was also rightly criticized by
Mao Zedong. All information show how *jubilant* were the masses
in China, and in Shanghai in particular, when the "G 4" fell in
October 1976. Only, shortly later, in November, the Deng people
started to take advantage of the masses' hatred for the
"G 4" and *now* were joined by Hua Guofeng who then commited his
treason. In October, he still had said: "We also must continue
criticizing Deng Xiaoping".

These historical issues have a not unimportant bearing on the
political issues of today.

Rolf M.


SECOND REPLY TO CHRIS:

Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 01:34:35 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Rolf Martens <rolf.martens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: The mass line, the correct line and the closed circle


Hello Chris & others,

>Chris:

(I hope)
>Rolf could engage in ever more detailed discussions of the moment
>at which China went revisionist. But he himself implies a weakness
>in the Maoist model of two line struggle. He quotes, convincingly
>IMO, evidence that Mao was balancing the two wings and looking
>for a third way, and he seems to support this. That in itself
>suggests that "Two Line Struggle" may at least at times
>be a dangerous simplification even from a Maoist point of view.

I do intend to write more about this, when I find the time
for it. Among other things, there was an imoprtant analysis
in 1977 by the German party KPD/ML(NEUE EINHEIT), which only
much later (end of '80:s) degenerated. I published a Swedish
translation of this article of theirs in early 1979.

But: Mao was *not* "balancing" the two "wings". He was
*opposing doth *deviations*. Not out of a desire for
"popularity" either, but aiming for what was in the
interest of the great majority of people, both in
China itself and internationally.

"Two-line struggle" - should it be called "three-line
struggle" instead? No, both deviations were expressions
of the bourgeois line within the communist party. So
saying "two-line struggle" is not an oversimplification.
It's important to see, though, and it was stressed very clearly
at the important Tenth Congress of the CPC in August 1973:
There is often the phenomenon of "one tendency covering another".
I quote from Zhou Enlai's report (which I quoted in my "UNITE!
Info #3en", too, 01.01.96) (here the old-style transcription
of names was still used):

"It is imperative to note that one tendency covers another.
The opposition to Chen Tu-hsiu's Right opportunsm which
advocated 'all alliance, no struggle' covered Wang Ming's
'Left' opportunism which advocated 'all struggle, no
alliance'. The rectification of Wang Ming's 'Left' deviation
covered Wang Ming's Right deviation. The struggle against
Liu Shao-chi's revisionism covered Lin Piao's revisionism."
(Peking Review No. 35-36 / 1973 p. 21)

It was a similar struggle precisely at that time and in the
next 2-3 years, with the Right opportunism of Deng Xiaoping
and the "Left" opportunism of the "Gang of Four" (named so
by Mao in 1974) covering each other and in the end, with
the international support of US imperialism, which backed
*both* of them, and Soviet social-imperialism, which above
all backed the "Gang", leading to the overthrow of socialism
in China.

Some people whom I deeply respect IMO are wrong on the entire
history of this, which I think I essentially understand mainly
because I was told by my then comrades in Germany about their
analysis of it, in April 1978. They had been watching developments
closely in particular since early 1975, when they saw certain
reasons for suspicion against two of the "Gang" members, in the
form of their participating in receptions for forces in Germany
whom they (my then comrades) well knew to be quite reactionary
phonies.

But as I've already said, it will be necessary for me to
write some longer article about this, with proof of the
various details.

Rolf M.

[So far a repeat of the first two postings.]













     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---