Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  Liu Shao-ch’i

  “AT ALL TIMES and on all questions, a Communist Party member should take into account the interests of the Party as a whole, and place the Party’s interests above his personal problems and interests,” wrote Liu Shao-ch’i in 1943. He went on to say:

  If a Party member has only the interests and aims of the Party and Communism in his ideology, if he has no personal aims and considerations independent of the Party’s interests, and if he really is unbiased and unselfish, then he can show loyalty and ardent love for all his comrades, revolutionaries and working people, help them unconditionally, treat them with equality and never harm any one of them for the sake of his own interests.

  He will worry long before the rest of the world begins to worry and he will rejoice only after the rest of the world has rejoiced.... Both in the Party and among the people he will be the first to suffer hardship and the last to enjoy himself. He never minds whether his conditions are better or worse than others, but he does mind as to whether he has done more revolutionary work than others or whether he has fought harder.... He is capable of possessing the greatest firmness and moral courage to resist corruption by riches or honors, to resist tendencies to vacillate in spite of poverty and lowly status and to refuse to yield in spite of threats of force....

  He is never afraid of truth. He courageously upholds truth, expounds truth to others and fights for truth. Even if it is temporarily to his disadvantage to do so, even if he will be subjected to various attacks for the sake of upholding truth, even if the opposition and rebuff of the great majority of people forces him into temporary isolation (glorious isolation) and even if on this account his life may be endangered he will still be able to stem the tide and uphold truth and will never resign himself to drifting with the tide. So far as he himself is concerned he has nothing to fear.

  He takes care not to do wrong when he works independently and without supervision and when there is ample opportunity for him to do all kinds of wrong things....

  If for the sake of certain important aims of the Party and of the Revolution he is required to endure insults, shoulder heavy burdens and do work which he is reluctant to do, he will take up the most difficult and important work without the slightest hesitation and will not pass the buck.*

  Such were the standards set for all Communists by the leaders of the Party. Communists were expected to give serious attention to these standards, not merely lip-service. If it could be said that few attained the level of selflessness and objectivity described, still hundreds of thousands strove to live up to these ideals and honored those individuals who most closely embodied them in real life.

  Raw recruits from China’s isolated countryside quite naturally fell short in many important ways. In examining the motives which brought these peasant recruits to the Party Liu Shao-ch’i found some who from the beginning wanted to “fight for the realization of Communism, for the great aim of emancipating the proletariat and mankind.” But others had a variety of more personal, more selfish reasons for taking this important political step. As Liu Shao-ch’i wrote:

  Some peasant comrades regarded as “Communism” the striking down of the local despots and the distribution of the land which we carried out in the past, and they did not understand genuine Communism as meaning anything more when they joined the Party. At the present time quite a few people have joined the Party chiefly because of the Communists’ determined resistance to Japan and because of the anti-Japanese national united front. Certain other people have joined the Party as a way out because they could not find a way out in society—they had no trade, no job, no school to attend, or they wanted to escape from their families, or from forced marriages, etc. Some came because they looked up to the prestige of the Party, or because they recognized, though only in a vague way, that the Communist Party can save China, and finally there were even some individuals who came because they counted on the Communists for tax reduction, or because they hoped to become influential in the future, or because their relatives and friends brought them in, etc. It was very natural that such comrades should lack a clear and definite Communist outlook on life and world outlook, should fail to understand the greatness and difficulties of the Communist cause, and should be unable to take a firm proletarian stand.**

  A more apt analysis of the motives of the Communist Party recruits in Long Bow could hardly be drawn up. “Striking down the local despots and the distribution of the land” were no doubt the main things that drew these young people to the Party, but other motives were also prominent. Some saw in Party membership a chance to become influential. Militiaman Wang Man-hsi said when his reasons for joining the Party were later questioned; “I thought to join the Party was glorious. If one joined the Party one could get position and power. I went to the District Secretary to fill out the form but really I knew nothing about the Party at that time. The Secretary explained the requirements—serve the masses, devote your life to their interests, never compromise with the enemy or submit to difficulties—but, after I joined I was proud. I thought I had found a screen to protect myself and I did every bad thing.”*

  Chao Ch’uan-e, an attractive young woman with a willowy figure, joined the Party primarily to protect her husband and her brother-in-law at a time when they were in danger of attack from the Peasants’ Association. She was a daughter-in-law in a well-to-do household that owned land both in Long Bow and in the Western Mountains many miles away. Because the family hired at least one year-round laborer, its members were regarded at the time as rich peasants. To ward off the attack Chao Ch’uan-e sought out the young cadres of influence, carried on affairs with several of them, and was invited by them to join the Party. By the time she actually did so, there is no doubt that her motives had undergone a subtle change. She had unintentionally caught some of her suitors’ enthusiasm for the Revolution. Her desire to protect her family remained basic in her decision to become a Communist, but it was tempered by the hope of something better for China and especially for China’s women—a free choice in marriage, the right to own property, the right to be treated as a person and not simply as some man’s chattel.

  Among the Long Bow Communist Party members were also those who joined simply because their relatives and friends brought them in. This was certainly the main reason why militia captain Li Hung-er’s wife, Wang Man-ying, militiaman Shen T’ien-hsi’s wife, Chen Tung-erh, and militiaman Hsiao Wen-hsu’s wife, Jen Ho-chueh, originally made application. Nevertheless, they all answered questions as satisfactorily as Hu Hsueh-chen and were potentially as good Communists as she.

  The relative shortsightedness, subjectiveness, even opportunism of the Long Bow peasants’ motives should not be exaggerated, however, for there were in the village a substantial number of young men who had had industrial experience and hence some knowledge of and sympathy for working class concepts of solidarity—the all-for-one, one-for-all basis of trade unionism. These men were semi-proletarian not only by virtue of being propertyless poor peasants who had worked much of their lives as hired laborers, but also by virtue of the fact that bankruptcy, famine, and war had forced them to leave home and seek employment in distant parts of the country where they became for a time either members of the industrial working force or employees closely associated with this group.

  Ten of the early members of the Long Bow Party branch had, at one time or another, worked in industry, transport, or large-scale construction jobs far from home.

  T’ien-ming’s father was a bronzesmith who labored for wages in Peking. T’ien-ming himself had worked out as a carpenter in a railroad center in Southwestern Shansi, and he first heard of the Communist Party from a fellow carpenter on the job. Hsin-fa, forced to flee from home in the famine year, worked for two seasons as a coal hauler in a Taiyuan steel mill. Chou Cheng-lo, a Communist recruited from among the village militiamen, had worked as a shepherd from the age of six, but he too spent two years as a steel worker when drought destroyed Long Bow’s crops. Cheng-k’uan, the ex
-Catholic chairman of the Peasants’ Association, was employed for years as a teamster by the Cathedral in Changchih where he came into contact with iron workers and railroad men. Li Hung-er, who became captain of the militia when Chang Chiang-tzu, the organizer of the corps, joined the army, served as an apprentice in a spinning and weaving factory starting when he was 11 years old. Fu-yuan worked in a carpentry shop in Taiyuan that employed 90 men.

  All of these men knew what it was to work for wages. They had travelled on trains, seen modern mines and mills, and heard something of unionism. When the Party leaders spoke of the working class, its unity and discipline, these men recognized what they were talking about, admired it and tried to emulate it.

  What then of the “idiocy of village life” and the shortsightedness and lack of social experience of its victims which were stressed in an earlier chapter? The answer is that the isolation of thousands of out-of-the-way rural villages such as Long Bow was modified to some extent by the crisis of the 1920’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s. The setting up of large-scale industries along the coast and the Yangtze River and even in hinterland capitals like Taiyuan, the penetration of internal markets by manufactured goods, the ten-year Civil War in South and Central China, and above all the Anti-Japanese War, imposed an unwanted, a violent, and often a tragic mobility on a basically stagnant society, but a mobility that was nevertheless invigorating. The great famine of 1942-1943 also played a major role. This famine probably did more to lay the groundwork for a revolution in the Taihang Mountain region than any other single event or influence—first, because the terrible toll of lives it took reinforced widespread doubts as to the viability of the old way of life, and second, because it drove so many of the poor and dispossessed onto the roads. It forced them to travel to distant places, there to meet and talk with other disaster victims and persons of entirely different backgrounds. It forced them to hear new ideas, to open their eyes and ears, and eventually to return home remolded to a degree by their own experiences. When county leaders talked of Marxism, these returnees recognized that their words touched reality. They welcomed what seemed to them good sense and were eager to hear more.

  Those who had traveled and worked in industry greatly influenced those who never left home. At least some of the broader outlook they brought back rubbed off on friends and neighbors. In this sense they acted as the yeast that causes the dough to rise.

  Regardless of whatever motive or motives loomed largest in the decision of any given individual to become a Communist, all of the Long Bow recruits were influenced, at least to some extent, by the extraordinary prestige of the Eighth Route Army, which they identified with the Communist Party, and the even more extraordinary prestige of the Party’s national leader, Mao Tse-tung, who appeared to them as nothing less than the savior of the nation. They wanted to be Communists because they admired Mao Tse-tung and trusted his leadership. If they won victories they attributed them to Chairman Mao. They said, “Chairman Mao gave us land,” even though they themselves had built the Peasants’ Association, manned the militia, and actively dispossessed the gentry. Failures and injustices they also attributed to Chairman Mao. “Chairman Mao should not be like this,” said a man who had been beaten because he continued to go to church after the local priest had fled. In either case, it was taken for granted that Chairman Mao, whose name was synonymous with that of the Revolution, was responsible for every facet of the government, great or small. It was an enormous compliment and an equally enormous responsibility.

  ***********

  The small-producer social origin and outlook of the new Party members, their subjective, shortsighted, often selfish, and certainly mixed motives for joining the core of the revolutionary movement did not discourage the Party leaders. “That certain people come to rely upon the Communist Party, come to the Party to seek a way out, and give support to the Party’s policies—all this cannot be regarded as wrong. They are not mistaken in having sought out the Party. We welcome such people,” said Liu Shao-ch’i.* He made it quite clear that the non-proletarian social origin of so many of its members and their subjective, one-sided motivation did not determine the class character of the Party as a whole. The Party remained a working class Party which transformed its non-working class recruits rather than allowing them to transform it. “The determining factors are our Party’s political struggles and political life, its ideological education, and its ideological and political leadership. … Through Marxist-Leninist education, Party members of petty-bourgeois (peasant) origin have undergone a thorough-going ideological reform, which changes their former petty-bourgeois (peasant) nature and imparts to them the qualities of the advanced fighters of the proletariat.”**

  The principal problem in building the Party in the village was thus frankly recognized as a problem of “ideological remolding”—the education and reformation of revolutionary-minded peasants. The first duty of every Party member, as laid down in the Constitution of the Party adopted in May 1945, was therefore to “endeavor to raise the level of his consciousness and to understand the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the Chinese Revolution.” The other three duties were:

  (1) To observe Party discipline strictly, to participate actively in inner-Party political life and in the revolutionary movement in China, to carry out in practice the policy and decisions of the Party, and to fight against everything inside and outside the Party which is detrimental to the Party’s interest.

  (2) To serve the mass of the people, to consolidate the Party’s connection with them, to learn their needs and report them in good time, and to explain the policy of the Party to them.

  (3) To set an example in observing the discipline of the revolutionary government and the revolutionary organizations, to master his own line of work and to set an example in various fields of revolutionary work.†

  In the long run, the educational program of the Communist Party—the patient, reiterated efforts to reform, remold, and inspire the peasant recruits—was effective. Regardless of their social origin, regardless of their original motives for joining, the overwhelming majority of Long Bow’s Party members ended up wanting to be and trying to be good Communists.

  It was a long, hard road.

  To want to be a good Communist and actually to become a good Communist were two different things. Chairman Mao wrote that it took ten years to remold an intellectual of peasant, small business, or professional origin, ten years to rid him of conceit, personal selfishness, individualism, and contempt for manual labor. Peasants, according to this view, had less to overcome than intellectuals—at least they were not strangers to manual labor—but even peasants found that it took years to remold themselves.

  To master Marxism-Leninism, to expand each individual’s political consciousness, to overcome subjectivism, reduce unprincipled vindictiveness, uproot that small producers’ tendency to take advantage of others for personal profit, and unite to build a new world—this was the struggle that began in April 1946 in Long Bow with the founding of the Communist Party branch there. The struggle continued year after year, with varying intensity and success; no doubt it still goes on.

  The vitality of this effort was due to the fact that at all times the transformation of the Party members’ outlook was linked to the actual struggle going on in the village to transform the peasants’ miserable way of life and forge something better. From the very first day that the branch was set up its members undertook to lead the village to fanshen; and lead they did, for better or worse, therafter—not in isolation, of course, but as a basic unit in a nationwide Party of over a million members. The District Committee, the County Committee, the Border Region Committee, and the Central Committee with Chairman Mao at its head, all gave them guidance, but in the last analysis they had to do the work and they were responsible for its success or failure.

  The leadership exercised by the Communist Party in Long Bow was not of the kind that most people in the West imagine. The Party could not and did n
ot simply issue orders that the peasants had to obey, even though at certain times and on certain issues a strong tendency toward this type of “commandism,” as it was so aptly called, arose among the leading cadres, Communist and non-Communist alike. The Party led the village by virtue of the fact that its members held leading posts (but by no means a monopoly of them) in all the village organizations, won considerable prestige by the example they set, seriously studied problems collectively, and spoke and acted together once they decided on a solution. All this, it should be made clear, must be taken as having been accomplished in a relative sense, for not all the members of the Party were able to win prestige; some won notoriety instead. Also, the decisions of the Party branch were not always taken collectively, the whole membership did not always carry out the decisions when made, and sometimes the decisions that were made were quite wrong—as will be seen. Nevertheless, the Party branch was the best organized, the most active, the most serious and dedicated group in the village, and it tried to lead by example and persuasion, not by force.

  The branch itself was divided into five groups, each with its own leader. Before any decisions were taken, before any campaign was launched, these groups first met, discussed the matter at issue, and formulated their estimate of the situation in the village and the temper of the people. The five group leaders, who made up the executive committee of the branch, then met to work out policy. When they agreed on a course of action they took their decision back to their small groups. In case of need the whole branch could be called together for a general membership meeting, but since this was likely to arouse the curiosity of the whole village and expose the existence of the Party, membership meetings were not lightly undertaken. Most of the work was done by the small groups and the executive committee.