The Red Flag: A History of Communism

by Priestland, David

  The Yan’an region had been the cradle of Chinese civilization, but it had become one of the most isolated and poorest parts of China. The landscape was rugged, the earth yellow. Edgar Snow, the American journalist, tried to convey the effect to his distant readership, using the common references of European modernist culture:

  There are few genuine mountains, only endless broken hills, hills as interminable as a sentence by James Joyce, and even more tiresome. Yet the effect is often strikingly like Picasso, the sharp-angled shadowing and coloring changing miraculously with the sun’s wheel, and toward dusk it becomes a magnificent sea of purpled hilltops with dark velvety folds running down, like the pleats of a mandarin skirt, to ravines that seem bottomless.58

  The town of Yan’an, meanwhile, was an ancient stronghold, far from the sophistication of the cities of the eastern seaboard, with massive crenellated walls, dominated by a white pagoda on a hill. But it was precisely its distance from cosmopolitan civilization that made it ideal for Mao’s new Communist community. Mao had always been mistrustful of big cities, and felt much more at home in this provincial backwater.

  Yan’an was also an ideal place for Mao to establish himself as the prophet of a new, ‘Sinified’ Marxism.59 Mao, who had had so much trouble from Moscow-educated Communists, realized that he needed to establish a theoretical justification for his independent line; it was not enough to be a military leader and expert on mobilizing the peasantry. In the next few years he sought to establish an agreed party history that vindicated his alleged ‘deviations’, and he wrote several works of Marxist philosophy, which were to become the foundations of ‘Mao Zedong Thought’.

  Mao’s untrained Marxism was idiosyncratic, and did not stick to the rigid, dogmatic language that was taught in Moscow. Agnes Smedley commented on his style:

  Mao was known as the theoretician. But his theories were rooted in Chinese history and in experience on the battlefield. Most Chinese Communists think in terms of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and some take pride in their ability to quote chapter and verse of these or lecture on them for three or four hours. Mao could do this too, but seldom attempted it. His lectures… were like his conversations, based on Chinese life and history. Hundreds of students who poured into Yan’an had been accustomed to drawing their mental nourishment only from the Soviet Union or from a few writers of Germany or other countries. Mao, however, spoke to them of their own country and people… He quoted from such novels as Dream of the Red Chamber or All Men are Brothers … His poetry had the quality of the old masters, but through it ran a clear stream of social and personal speculation.60

  It was intrinsically difficult to translate Marxist concepts into Chinese; words like ‘bourgeois’ or ‘feudal’ could not just be imported unchanged as they could into European languages. The word ‘proletariat’ itself was rendered by the Chinese characters for ‘without property class’ (wuchan jieji), blurring the distinction between the urban and rural poor, and making it easier to treat the peasantry on a par with industrial workers. But Mao went further, and deliberately used traditional Chinese terms to describe Marxist ideas. For instance, he used the old term for ‘autocracy’ (ducai) as an equivalent for ‘[proletarian] dictatorship’;61 he also used the Confucian concept of ‘Great Harmony’ (datong) as synonymous with ‘Communism’, combining a Marxist theory of history with a traditional Chinese notion of a future golden age.62 The works of Marxist philosophy he wrote in this period were also full of Chinese concepts. His discussions of dialectics and the conflict of opposites – though central to a view of Marxism so concerned with struggle – were also reminiscent of Daoist theories on the presence of opposites, yin and yang, in all things.63 Mao read Soviet textbooks on dialectics carefully, but his annotations often showed he wanted to relate general abstractions to concrete, Chinese circumstances.64

  Yet the ‘Sinified Marxism’ of this period was less specifically Chinese than is sometimes thought.65 It was, in fact, a version of egalitarian Radical, mobilizing Communism suited to a guerrilla force that needed to gain the support of peasants. It tended to see the power of human will and ideological inspiration as important, and not just economic forces;66 it argued that peasants could be as revolutionary a force as workers (although it never denied that the industrial working class would ultimately inherit the earth); and it embraced the principle of the ‘mass line’, the notion that the party had to practise socialist ‘democracy’ and ‘learn from’ the masses (although, of course, this was far from liberal democracy; the more libertarian elements of the Marxist tradition were absent from Mao’s thought, and Chinese Marxist thought more generally).67

  In practice, the Communism that prevailed in Yan’an combined idealism and pragmatism. It was a strongly egalitarian system: everybody, even leaders, was expected to perform some form of manual labour, and lived in the draughty caves outside the town. New arrivals at Yan’an were housed eight to a cave, and life consisted of productive work, military training, theatrical performances and, perhaps most importantly, long, intense political discussions in study sessions. There were inequalities: Mao’s cave was larger than most and had excellent views, and salary differences did exist.68 These hypocrisies attracted criticism from some of the more idealistic urban intellectuals who had flocked to Yan’an, hoping to find the radical equality they had demanded during the May 4th movement. Some complained of the absence of political principle and passion amongst Yan’an’s officials; others – especially the writer Ding Ling – protested at officials’ attitude towards women: despite claims to the contrary, women were not treated as equals in Yan’an.69 Although Ding Ling did not say so openly, the promiscuous Mao, who had a callous attitude towards his many wives and girlfriends, was a major culprit. However, compared with its Soviet Communist counterpart of the later 1930s, Yan’an’s culture was puritanical and egalitarian, as was fully on show in the Yan’anites’ dress: men and women wore either military uniforms or the Sun Yat-sen suit, a military-style outfit based on the Japanese student uniform, and popular amongst both Communists and Guomindang officials (it later came to be known as the ‘cadre suit’, or the ‘Mao suit’ in the West).

  Nevertheless, the Communists, whilst puritanical, could not be doctrinaire, because they needed the support of the peasantry as a whole. They therefore made every effort to avoid alienating local elites. The ‘three-thirds’ system of government allowed traditional bosses to retain some influence, giving Communists only a third of seats on village councils, with the second third reserved for non-Communist ‘progressives’, and the final third open to anybody, as long as they were not Japanese collaborators. Most of the richer peasants were also allowed to keep their land. The poorer, meanwhile, benefited from lower rents and taxes, and seem to have welcomed the guerrillas who were sent to live and work amongst them to improve the local economy. Yan’an’s combination of ideological flexibility and activism seems to have attracted support among both peasants and elites.70

  Initially the atmosphere amongst the Communists in Yan’an itself was also relatively tolerant. But with the outbreak of the Japanese war in 1937 and the influx of new recruits from widely diverse backgrounds, Mao insisted on greater ideological unity, and he became especially suspicious of the bourgeois ‘individualism’ of intellectuals from Guomindang areas. From 1939 onwards he followed Stalin’s example in using ideological texts as tools to make party officials conform, ordering the translation of Stalin’s 1938 Short Course of Communist party history and writing his own supplements on the Chinese experience. Senior officials were then expected to read and learn the texts. However, by 1942 Mao had decided that the whole party had to be trained, to ‘rectify’ their thoughts. Only if Communists truly internalized the ideology would they have the commitment to win the war and establish Communism.

  ‘Rectification’ was a Chinese variation on the Soviet party ‘purge’, though it was much more elaborate, probably reflecting a Confucian belief in the importance of moral education and correct thinki
ng.71 Party members were instructed to study twenty-two texts of ideology and party history, most of them written by Mao himself, which members were told to relate to their personal experience. They filled out questionnaires, which asked them to give accounts of any instances of ‘dogmatism’, ‘formalism’ and ‘sectarianism’, and to describe their plans for thought reform. They were also expected to denounce others in so-called ‘short broadcasts’. These documents were then checked by leaders, and the group then held a session in which individuals were publicly criticized and confessions made. Eventually most errant party members were received back into the fold, their thoughts supposedly reformed.

  As in the Soviet Union, some accepted that purges were necessary, and that their thoughts had needed reform. Dou Shangchu, a regimental commander of the People’s Liberation Army, admitted that the rectification had forced him to change his old-fashioned attitudes to marriage; his future wife would have to be politically reliable and somebody he loved, not just an obedient homemaker.72 Others found it deeply unpleasant. As one Yan’an veteran reminisced: ‘You had to write down what X or Y had said, as well as what you yourself had said that was supposed to be not so good. You had to dig into your memory endlessly and write endlessly. It was most loathsome.’73

  The rectification soon escalated into a more violent campaign of repression.74 This was partly because the Communists were under increasing military pressure from the Guomindang, following the effective end of the alliance in 1941, and paranoia reigned. But Mao and his own Ezhov – Kang Sheng – were also responsible. The sinister Kang – Mao’s ‘pistol’ as he was sometimes called – came from an elite background and was a cultivated man: a poet, calligrapher, connoisseur of erotic literature and Song dynasty pots. He had lived in the Hotel Lux throughout much of the 1930s, and had worked with the Soviet secret police to spy on the Chinese in Moscow. He was one of the Returned Students flown to Yan’an with Wang Ming, and had an unusually cosmopolitan appearance, wearing a moustache, a Soviet-style black leather jacket, and with a preference for high black leather boots and riding crop. He also had a fondness for black Pekinese dogs and employed the chef who had prepared delicacies for the last emperor.75 Yet despite his Soviet connections and pantomime-villain habits, Kang enjoyed a close relationship with Mao, whom he helped with his poetry and calligraphy. He soon became the head of the security service in Yan’an, the euphemistically named ‘Social Affairs Department’. Kang claimed that the rectification campaign had exposed the presence of spies in the party’s ranks, and with Mao’s support he launched a ‘rescuing the fallen’ campaign, which used torture, round-the-clock interrogations and terrifying mass ‘struggle’ meetings to force confessions. This was no repetition of Stalin’s Terror – there were relatively few executions – but the campaign, which Mao had promised would be educational, not repressive, caused deep anxieties amongst some leaders. Ultimately Mao was embarrassed by the episode and apologized for ‘excesses’.

  The ‘rescue’ campaign may have done more to damage Mao within the party than help him, but by 1943 his power was secure. After years of expert manipulation of party politics, he had emerged triumphant, and he had established a new charismatic form of leadership – the first leader to rival the status of Lenin and Stalin.76 ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ was declared to be the ideology of the party, and the famous anthem ‘The East is Red’ was adapted from an old love song:

  The East is Red, the sun rises.

  In China a Mao Zedong is born.

  He seeks the people’s happiness.

  He is the people’s Great Saviour.77

  It is important to remember, though, that despite his pretensions Mao was not the only guerrilla leader during the period, and Yan’an was not the only Communist base. Chinese Communism was a polycentric movement, and the Long Marchers left behind a number of smaller armies scattered throughout Southern and Central China which succeeded in tying down many of Chiang Kaishek’s forces. Their experience was very different to that of the Yan’anites, and they were forced to adopt different tactics, eschewing peasant mobilization and relying on traditional ‘feudal’ and clan networks.78

  It was the Yan’an experience, however, that was ultimately to prove most influential on the party. In future years Mao was to try to resuscitate its spirit, most notably during the Cultural Revolution, but in the shorter term it gave the party the cohesion to exploit the chaos of the war. But the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 was perhaps most crucial in delivering ultimate victory to the Communists. The Communists could present themselves to the peasants as defenders of their localities against the Japanese.79 They therefore enlisted the support of some Chinese in guerrilla actions, whilst avoiding head-on military confrontations. Meanwhile, the conventional military machine of their Guomindang rivals was worn down by the superior Japanese forces.80

  The Communists had used the war against the Japanese to expand the areas under their control, but when the Japanese were defeated in 1945 they were still in a relatively weak position, largely confined to the north-western periphery of China. The Guomindang controlled most of China, including the urban centres, had the support of the United States and was recognized by the USSR, which tried to force the Communists to forge another United Front with the nationalists. When the Soviets withdrew from Manchuria in the spring of 1946, fighting for control soon broke out between the Communists and the Guomindang, and the Chinese civil war began. The Communists played a weak hand well. They benefited from renewed Soviet help, but they also had some success in mobilizing peasants against landlords with promises of rent reductions, though it did take some time to persuade them to break with tradition and challenge their landlords.81

  From 1946, Mao pressed for radical land redistribution in Communist-occupied areas, and this undoubtedly helped the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to secure support and recruits in some areas, especially the North. Communist ‘work teams’ arrived in villages and set up Poor Peasant Associations, with whose help they would try to determine the class of the villagers. They would then encourage poor and middle peasants to participate in ‘struggle meetings’, in which they would ‘speak bitterness’ against, and often physically attack, their landlords. In one village in the northern Shanxi province the main target was Sheng Jinghe, the wealthiest man in the community, who had grown rich from money-lending and skimming from gifts to local temples:

  When the final struggle began Jinghe was faced not only with those hundred accusations but with many many more. Old women who had never spoken in public before stood up to accuse him. Even Li Mao’s wife – a woman so pitiable she hardly dared look anyone in the face – shook her fist before his nose and cried out: ‘Once I went to glean wheat on your land. But you cursed me and drove me away…’ Jinghe had no answer to any of them. He stood there with his head bowed.

  That evening all the people went to Jinghe’s courtyard to help take over his property… People all said he must have a lot of silver dollars… So then we began to beat him. Finally he said ‘I have 40 silver dollars under the kang [brick bed].’ We went in and dug it up. The money stirred up everyone… We beat him again and several militia-men began to heat an iron bar in one of the fires. Then Jinghe admitted that he had hidden 110 silver dollars… Altogether we got $500 from Jinghe that night.

  All said: ‘In the past we never lived through a happy New Year because he always asked for his rent and interest then and cleaned our houses bare. This time we’ll eat what we like’, and everyone ate his fill and didn’t even notice the cold.82

  As this episode shows, long-festering resentments could explode into violent anger, and peasants sometimes behaved in a more radical way than the Communists intended.83 In areas occupied by the Communists, richer peasants were often influential supporters, and the Communists could not afford to lose them. And in Southern China, where the Communists were weaker, there was much less conflict between rich and poor. Other leaders – and especially Mao’s number two, Liu Shaoqi – pressed, successfully,
for a less divisive approach.84 Liu was born near Mao’s native village in Hunan, and knew him as a youth. But he was better educated and more cosmopolitan than Mao, and went to study in Moscow at the Stalin School in the early 1920s. Like Mao, he had had his arguments with Moscow in the 1930s, but he remained on the Modernist side of the Marxist divide. He saw the rational, bureaucratic state he had witnessed Lenin trying to build as the model for the new China, not Mao’s sect-cum-guerrilla band. By late 1947 Mao himself agreed that class struggle had to be moderated in the name of national consensus: rent reductions could be more effective in dividing the peasantry from the Guomindang.85

  The peasantry, then, was difficult to mobilize, and the party’s propaganda, featuring serried ranks of peasants marching to power, red banners aloft, was far from the truth. Most peasants were observers of, not participants in, revolution, and many obeyed the Communists because they were punished if they did not.86 Much more important in Mao’s victory were the Communist fighters themselves. It was youth, rather than poverty, that predicted peasants’ willingness to join the Communists, though the party itself discriminated against the wealthier, and by the end of the civil war the ranks of the party largely comprised poor peasants.87

  The most systematic contemporary study of Chinese Maoist guerrillas was carried out by the American anthropologist Lucien Pye, who interviewed sixty Chinese former Communist insurgents, most of them party members and low-level officials, in British Malaya in the early 1950s.88 The Communists he encountered were ‘an exceedingly alert group of people with very active minds’.89 Most were from a lowly background, though they were not from amongst the poorest. They were better educated than the norm (though only to school level), and were eager to better themselves. Yet their prospects were limited. Most were skilled workers, many on foreign-owned rubber plantations, and had little chance of betterment.90 They were dissatisfied with their status and the way their superiors treated them. They were also trying to realize their ambitions in a rapidly changing world. This led them, like the May 4th generation of urban intellectuals, to question their parents’ Confucian values. They were convinced that their parents’ world of filial piety and ritual would condemn them to low status and poverty; they wanted to be modern. They therefore relied more on peers than elders. Friends and male comradeship were important to them, and they often had charisma, becoming the informal leaders of their peer-groups.