No Celebration of Cultural Revolution?

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Can May 1996 really be ending without any celebration on
this l'st of the 30th anniversary of the generally accepted
start date of the (Great Proletarian) Cultural Revolution?

This quite unprecedented event in a (would-be?) socialist country,
even if you regard it as mainly or totally  a disaster,
was an extraordinary historical event.

Have I missed a homage? Or was it overshadowed by the anniversary
one day later of the declaration of Peoples War in Peru?

The May 16th Circular of the Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party was the decisive ratchetting up of the
level of the struggle.

It denounced a statement of a previous report
for saying 'Everyone is equal before the truth' as a bourgeois slogan.

It called for a dictatorship of the proletariat over the
bourgeoisie in the field of ideology and not just
politics.

One of its most remarkable phrases on rescanning,
seems to me "Put destruction first, and
in the process you have construction."

So I would like to ask committed Maoists on the l'st,
whether they would accept Mao's verdict in the 70's that
the CR was 30% bad. If so, what would they say were the bad
elements? And further, if on the limited perspective
that was available to Mao at that time it was 30% negative, in
retrospect is it now perhaps more clearly like 40% of 50% negative?
Particularly when you bear in mind what it opened the door
to?

Alternatively though, loyal Maoists might want to argue
that Mao and the CPC were shocked by the defection of
Lin Biao, and the CR was only 10 or 20% negative.

So not just a dogmatic thumbs up or thumbs down, an
analysis please. Preferably at least commenting on
the CPC's Resolution on CPC History, June 1981,
which is quite specific about the nature of the problems
and mistakes.

If you can't do it this month, could you do it before
August 8th, the 30th Annivesary of the more considered
and balanced guidelines on the CR, which are perhaps
a more reasonable basis for evaluation?

But I feel it is  only fair to put the
challenge of the CR also to followers of Trotsky.
The whole thrust of the Trotskyist analysis of
"Stalinism" is about the distortions of the revolution
through a self-serving bureacracy. Though they would not
express this in Maoist terms, nevertheless it is clear
that for them it is this group that needs to be shaken up and
to be prevented from becoming a self-serving stratum, if
not a class.

So, followers of Trotsky, if you ever had influence in a socialist
revolution, how would your prevent such tendencies occurring?
(Where you have set up revolutionary organisations, how did
you ensure that a self-serving bureacracy did not emerge in
them?)

Even if Mao had some distorted personal motives also in
calling it, would not a Cultural Revolution, perhaps in
a more moderate form, and on a continuing basis, be exactly
what you would want in a socialist state?

Chris
London.


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