Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  “We did our best,” said Little Li, turning toward the Secretary with both hands flung wide in a gesture of despair. “We went without food and sleep. We visited the peasants day and night. We went to no end of trouble. And now we are all wrong.” He was at a loss for words.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said finally in a voice choked with feeling. “If Wen-te and Hung-er are not kicked out of the Party, I myself will lead the people of Long Bow to petition the Subregional Bureau for redress.”

  ***********

  That night the Long Bow team members sat in their favorite spot amidst the rubble. The bell tower, with its ghostly slogan, “The Japanese Army Forever Remains,” loomed above them. The air was warm and moisture laden. A full moon was so bright that the bricks strewn on the ground cut shadows as sharp as any made under the noonday sun. The shrill cantata that poured from the countless dark hiding places of the cicadas merged with the surging hum of voices rising from discussion groups in neighboring courtyards and served as treble to the latter’s base.

  After 16 solid hours I found it hard to concentrate. My eyes wandered to the moon, to the wispy clouds that crossed it at irregular intervals, then back to the rubble-pocked yard. Sitting in the ruins of a building that had collapsed, I could not help but notice the grotesque symbolism of our surroundings. Like the bricks on every side, the old society had been knocked apart. The new edifice which was to take its place seemed still more plan than fact, more dream than solid substance.

  Little Li was in no mood to build. To him it seemed that all roads were blocked. He had thrown himself heart and soul into the work only to be accused of leftism. So be it. If Left he was, then Left he would remain. He agreed with Little Ch’uer—in order to get anything done one had to go Left; one had to violate policy.

  “Anyhow,” said Little Li, “no one can punish us for it. The worst that can happen to us is love, protect, educate, remold, and unite” He paused to let the irony of his remark sink in, then added, “There, I have said everything now.”

  “Ai,” exclaimed Ch’i Yun. “This is a regular ‘speak bitterness’ meeting.”

  Extreme though Little Li’s response to the sudden shift in course was, it was not different in kind to the reaction of many others. Hurt by censure, beset by self-doubt, their confidence in the Party shaken, many cadres saw only wrong and no right, only bad and no good in the past. As a consequence, the future also looked black. Viewed from the vale where they now sat, the myriad small obstacles yet to be tackled loomed up as insurmountable barriers.

  How, for instance, would they introduce the about-face in land reform policy to the villages? How explain the absolute necessity of paying back middle peasants and resettling landlords to poor peasants who had heard nothing for months but, “We are here to help you fanshen”! And suppose they succeeded in convincing the peasants that these steps were necessary—where were all the worldly goods to come from? Where would any village find the wherewithal to pay all injured parties? What about those people who were sure to demand not only goods equal in value to those they had lost, but the actual goods themselves? And what about those who had lost their lives?

  “You can give the struggle objects back their things, but what about their sons? Will you give them a doll? A doll can’t walk,” said Ch’uer.

  “The difficulties are tremendous. Our discussion is no use,” said Little Li, sighing as he tried to imagine how fair restitution could ever be carried through in Long Bow.

  Actually, neither the embarrassment which a reversal of policy entailed nor the scarcity of worldly goods which made that reversal so difficult, nor even the total inadequacy of restitution where lives had been erased were problems so immense as to overwhelm the cadres under ordinary circumstances. In the last analysis it was not these objective difficulties but subjective disorientation that dissolved their morale and nourished their despair. Inevitably therefore, the discussion veered in the direction of introspection, but introspection only deepened the gloom.

  “In the past we followed the leaders much too blindly,” said Han Chin-ming, breaking the silence that had settled upon the whole group. “Perhaps they said something about shielding landlords. We rushed around to collect material on it. No one wanted to come up with a different opinion. If anyone did speak out he met only ironic words such as ‘What a hero!’ ‘Such good ideas!’ It was better to lie down and sleep.”

  What then gave a person the courage to speak out? What caused any individual to keep on working when others became disillusioned, turned against him, or spoke sarcastic words? What upheld him when policies went awry and the way was lost?

  In the absence of any deeper understanding the group fell back, as they had before, on greater dedication, deeper faith in the ultimate Tightness of their cause.

  “Because our difficulties are great, we have all the more reason to study them,” said Cadre Han in reply to Little Li. “How can you say it’s no use discussing them?”

  “We must find a way out,” said Liang, as if talking to himself.

  “Though it is difficult there is a way. The leaders do not order a cock to lay eggs.”

  “A sense of responsibility to the people, that’s what we lack,” said Ch’i Yun. “And our problem is not simply to explain the mistakes of the past, but to inspire the people with a vision of the future worth fighting for. Orders can never do it. We have to make our dreams clear to the village cadres. How can we make them see that they are the builders, not simply the cogs of the new society? That the future depends on them? How can we tap their revolutionary heroism?”

  No one answered her. It was clear that they must first see a way out themselves. They must first tap their own revolutionary heroism. Perhaps that was why Ch’i Yun, in her quiet way, had asked the question.

  ***********

  The meeting in Lucheng County was important enough to bring Secretary Wang, of the Third Administrative District of the Taihang Subregion, to the county for a few days. He spent one long afternoon with the cadres of the Fifth District. This included those from Long Bow and Chia Village. I remembered him well from the visit he had made to the Long Bow team many weeks before. Looking back, it was clear that he, more than most, had long been aware of a strong Left bias in the work and had already rescued the team from some of its worst errors. Now he concentrated his remarks on an evaluation of basic policy. Was it true, as some were saying, that policy changed every few days and that the Party leaders did not know where they were going?

  As he discussed this problem, Secretary Wang sat on a brick in the middle of the group. His faded blue tunic was unbuttoned at the top and his soft visor cap pushed back on his shaven head. He spoke softly but persuasively, taking first one cadre, then another, into his confidence.

  “The land reform policy laid down by Mao Tse-tung has not only been consistent, it has been correct,” Wang said. “Is there anything wrong with the formulation, ‘Depend on the poor peasants, unite with the middle peasants, join with all anti-feudal forces to destroy the feudal land system and institute the system of land to the tiller’? No. That has always been the policy, is still the policy, and will be the policy wherever the feudal system has not yet been uprooted.

  “Our problem is that we have applied this policy to a county and to villages where the feudal system no longer exists. In such places, to promise more material fanshen is misleading. To plaster all over our county at the present time such slogans as ‘Equally Divide the Land,’ and ‘Make Sure That All Poor-and-Hired Peasants Fanshen’ is formalism of the worst kind. In the Fifth District in 1948 such slogans can only raise hopes among the poor and make the middle peasants fear for their land and chattels. They hold a promise of still further expropriation, still further equalization which would only further aggravate the real mistakes of the past.

  “‘Throw out all the bad Party members’ is another fine sentiment. But in areas where the vast majority of Party members are working peasants loyal to the Revolution and potentia
lly, if not actually, good leaders, organizers, and servants of the people, such a slogan can only give the Communist Party a bad name, confuse people, and undermine morale both inside and outside the Party branches.

  “Who then is to blame for the wrong estimate and for the policies which flowed from this estimate?” asked Wang. Without pausing for a reply he answered his own question. “The county and regional leaders are responsible. But the cadres in the field must also be self-critical. Is it not on their reports of conditions that the leaders in the county seat make their estimates? And have not the local cadres sometimes interpreted policy carelessly? Have they not been prone to seize on a single aspect that suited their prejudices and thus neglect the whole? ‘Depend on the Poor Peasants’ is part of our agrarian policy, but it is certainly not the whole of it. Yet the cadres in the villages have emphasized it out of all proportion.”

  Wang’s listeners were willing to grant that the slogan had been unduly emphasized, but many of them rejected the idea that they themselves were responsible for this emphasis. A cadre from Chia Village complained that he had done nothing in the course of his work that had not been written up in the People’s Daily or suggested in that paper as the valuable experience of some other place.

  This seemed to confirm the point that Secretary Wang was trying to make. “The daily paper,” he explained, “reports conditions and experiences from all over North China. But an experience that is valid in some distant village that has just been liberated does not necessarily apply to Long Bow or Chia Village or the Fifth District of Lucheng County.

  “In any case,” he continued, “the newspaper is not the body directing our work. Why then do so many of you read it as if it were exactly that? Why are you so prone to pick out something you find interesting from the paper and use it as a model even when conditions in your area are not the same?”

  That this had indeed happened nobody could deny. But why? That was another question.

  In order to make the assumption of responsibility easier to bear, Secretary Wang went on to analyze the roots of “leftism.” He explained how naturally it flowed out of the conditions of the past. In the course of the revolution, whenever and wherever the enemy had been especially strong and the battle bitter, sentiment in the countryside had swung to the Left. He reminded his listeners that during the Anti-Japanese War the Taihang Mountains had been one of the most ferociously contested regions in all China. The villages in these mountains had suffered a whole series of “Burn all, Kill all, Loot all” campaigns. These, in turn, had been superimposed upon two terrible famine years. The strength of the Japanese and consequently of the landlord forces who collaborated with them had thus been enormous. Lucheng, on the edge of the Taihang Range, had always been a storm center, and of all the districts of Lucheng, the Fifth had always been the most turbulent. Why was this? Because in the Fifth District the Japanese had built their largest base and set up their strongest puppet apparatus. Because in the Fifth District also, there had always been a large Catholic minority of doubtful loyalty. Was it any wonder then that the class struggle in the Fifth District had been sharp and sometimes Left? Was it any wonder then that they had all been carried along with the tide?

  To make this point still clearer, Secretary Wang reviewed the various slogans so well known to every peasant in the county. Had they not been plainly written on a thousand village walls? “He who has taken half a catty must pay back eight ounces!” and “The masses can do anything they want.” These had been adopted by a tenants’ rally held in 1944. But were they not slogans of Left anarchy? During the Anti-Traitor Movement of 1945, the Party had called on the peasants to “Beat the dog’s leg to find the head.” Had this not led directly to attacks on middle and even poor peasants? Later the Party adopted the slogan “Do everything bravely,” and began the “Three Things Thorough Movement.” Was not the standard for “thoroughness” in this movement one of absolute equality? Leftism finally reached a climax at the time of the “Reinspection of the Land Movement” when propagandists wrote in bold strokes, “Beat down the drowning dog” and “The landlords won’t lower their heads because their stomachs are full of oil.” All of these slogans reflected the one-sided demands of the poor peasants, and all of them were Left.

  “If, after considering all this, you still are not satisfied,” said Secretary Wang, “if you think that the self-criticism made by the county secretaries is not thorough-going enough, you certainly have the right to say so and to ask for deeper criticism on their part. But at the same time, you should think over your own work and consider whether or not you too have made mistakes.”

  ***********

  Wang’s patient explanations failed to satisfy the majority. Most of his listeners felt that there was something lacking in his analysis, something unfair. He was putting too much responsibility on shoulders unable to carry it. After all, it was not they who had formulated those slogans. What they believed in their hearts was that the county leaders should accept the lion’s share of responsibility. Few were sanguine that this would be done, however. They had all heard Secretary Ch’en curtly reject a criticism made of him by the team leader from Ke Shu Village.

  Before a mass meeting in the temple the Ke Shu leader had said, “When we departed for our work in the village, Secretary Ch’en told us, The cadres are the oxen of the people. If they work hard, they will be well treated. If not, they will be sent to the slaughter house.’ “

  As soon as he heard this the Secretary’s face flushed red. He jumped to his feet and interrupted the man.

  “I never said that,” he protested.

  “Well anyway,” said the speaker from Ke Shu, still calm, “I feared the ‘slaughter house’ and you did say, ‘If you can’t find any poor peasants you had better not eat.’”

  “Yes,” said Secretary Ch’en. “I did say that. It was wrong. I criticize myself for making such a statement. But about the slaughter house? No. I never said that. I have notes. I want to set the record straight on that.”

  Ch’en’s denial was so abrupt and so heated that many wondered whether he was telling the truth or not.

  “If that’s the way he is going to react, what’s the use of criticizing him,” said Little Li in disgust.

  But Secretary Ch’en confounded the skeptics. The next day he delivered a long report which dwelt on the basic policies of the Chinese Revolution and on the successful foundation which had been laid as the result of these policies. Each change in policy, he said reflected a change in the total situation and each, in its turn, helped to advance the Revolution. Not these policies, but the distortion of them locally, was the root of the problem in Lucheng County. “And who should be criticized for these distortions? Of course, both the upper and the lower cadres. But the upper cadres must bear the greater part of the responsibility because the mistakes of the leaders carry much greater weight than the mistakes of a few comrades in the villages. Primary responsibility rests with us here at county headquarters.”

  Secretary Ch’en’s admission of primary responsibility cracked the atmosphere of gloom that had dominated the proceedings. As the mass meeting adjourned, many cadres said, “He lifted the stone from our backs.” Men who up until that point had only complained, men who had blamed everyone but themselves, suddenly began to examine their past thoughts and acts. No longer afraid of bearing the sole blame for leftism they found themselves able to assume a measure of responsibility for this serious mistake. That afternoon the team leader from East Portal expressed the thinking of many when he said:

  “Just as we receive and carry out policy from the county and sub-region in a slightly different way than it is presented to us, so they in turn receive and carry it out in a way that differs from the policy as it is presented to them. Thus, even though Chairman Mao and the Central Committee lay down a proper policy, it is or can be distorted and misapplied on every level until it reaches the bottom. Hence we cannot lay aside all responsibility and blame only those above. What if they did the
same thing and those above them the same? It would fall back on Chairman Mao. On him alone would rest the entire burden of the Revolution. No, each locality, each level of leaders must do its best to understand basic policy, apply what is useful locally, correct mistakes as they come up, and help to shape new policies. No one can expect the leaders to tell them exactly what to do.”

  From this statement it was evident that the conference was establishing among the cadres a new concept of the relationship between leaders and led, a new concept of the role of each individual in the ranks of the Party. Face to face with widespread mistakes, all the participants were forced to leave the safe haven of implicit faith, of automatic instructions coming from above. They were forced to think for themselves, to broaden their knowledge, to investigate and study carefully, and to assume individual responsibility for their acts.

  As soon as the acceptance of a degree of responsibility became palatable to the cadres, it became possible to evaluate the past in more realistic terms and to understand on a new level everything that had happened, not only in recent months but in the whole period since the Japanese surrender. This evaluation softened that first involuntary cry of pain, “We are all wrong!” and gradually replaced it with a realization that what had been done was fundamentally right. If the feudal land system had been destroyed, if the fanshen of the landless and the land poor had been basically completed, if the Party branches were in truth sound—then the first great battle of the revolution had been won, at least locally. That which they had striven to realize so long and so arduously—“Land to the tiller”—was already a fact. That which they had feared so much—a peasantry betrayed by an infiltrated Party—turned out to be nothing but fantasy, a nightmare of the mind. This was the tremendous, satisfying conclusion that had emerged from months of investigation and mobilization in the 11 “basic villages.” This then must be the starting point for any examination of progress on the home front, just as it was obviously the starting point for that long series of military successes won on the battlefront since mid-1947.