First Published: Challenge, Vol. III, No. 11, February 1967
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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(Editors’ Note: An insider’s account of how China’s cultural revolution works has been received by CHALLENGE. The account is contained in a number of letters written at the end of December by a Chinese speaking Westerner working as a teacher in Peking. Excerpts from the letters follow.)
Various units of Red Guards wax and wane. There are many different units, each with its own name, though the main ones are grouped under one or another of the Peking headquarters. A unit can set up a headquarters in a school as long as it can get hold of a telephone, a mimeograph machine, a few bicycles (or preferably motorbikes) and a part control of the school public address system. Besides that they have to get a big seal carved (which they always keep tied up in a big square of red silk). Of course they have to also have their patrols to protect their headquarters so that they don’t lose their mimeo and other equipment...
The most famous center is the Peking “Third Headquarters” of the Red Guards. This headquarters is a joint one for those Red Guard units in various organizations who were in the minority at the beginning of the cultural revolution. They were the ones that fearlessly exposed manifestations of the black line in the leadership of their own organizations and opposed the work teams sent by the Central Committee (mistakenly it turned out). The majority of the Red Guard units supported the leadership and the work teams...
I think this highlights the problem Mao Tse-tung is trying to solve. If we are to prevent revisionism, what are the qualities that must be inculcated in the younger generation? Selflessness (i.e. a proletarian world outlook) is essential. But selflessness and loyalty to the party aren’t enough. The young people must dare to rebel against the party and the state apparatus if they discover that the policy they are carrying out is not proletarian.
The party and state apparatus must be under the supervision of the revolutionary masses. If a new generation with selfless rebellious qualities can be produced then the chance of revisionism taking over will be thoroughly done away with...
We rounded up seven long-marcher Red Guards who are staying in our school and brought them over to have a talk with us. What an experience it was’. Three were young middle school kids, aged 12, 15 and 15. Two were older middle school boys. Two were primary schoolteachers (a man and a woman). They took from 13 days to 45 days, walking all the way, doing propaganda on Chairman Mao’s thinking, and learning from the peasants and workers.
The two older boys belonged to a party of seven who walked down through Inner Mongolia to Peking. The thing that impressed them most was the tremendous love the people everywhere had for Chairman Mao. Along the road young kids would write letters and ask them to deliver them to Chairman Mao...
They air got involved in all sorts of activities. The older school boys went through an area where the “four clean-ups” movement hasn’t been carried out yet. They came upon an old man who told them that at the time of the land reform he had been given a house that belonged to the landlord. Some months ago he had fallen ill and the landlord had come and demanded rent. He paid for three months. The boys were most indignant and took up the matter and the landlord was forced to repay the three months rent.
When the school teachers were passing through Lingyuan county they stayed in the county middle school and talked with the students and found that the cultural revolution wasn’t going well. The Party-secretary-cum-principal was on the cultural committee and all Red Guards had to be okayed by him. Most of the Red Guards were the former student cadres, so actually the masses hadn’t been mobilized at all. So the visiting school teachers mimeographed speeches of leading members of the Revolutionary Cultural Committee and posted them everywhere and encouraged the students to rise up...
The cultural revolution is now surging into the factories and enterprises. The prediction is that this will be very tempestuous. There have already been mass meetings on who was behind the policy on temporary workers. I can remember a couple of years ago, someone pointing out that in contrast to capitalism, under socialism .workers can’t be fired, no matter how lazy or incompetant, and that this was one of the problems that had to be “solved.” But I can’t remember who said it. And I can’t even remember that I was aware of the reactionary implication of such an outlook. In some factories in various parts of the country this problem was “solved” on a purely administrative basis by having some workers taken on on a permanent basis...
A ten point decision on how to carry on the cultural revolution in the factories and enterprises has been published as has another on carrying out the cultural revolution in the countryside...
Another thing that has struck me as very significant is the importance of absolutely prohibiting the use of violence in this present proletarian cultural revolution. I had thought the stress on avoiding violence simply reflected proletarian humanism. But that is not the main thing. It is not primarily kindness but protection for the revolutionaries.
The enemy is not willing to be overthrown and is going to resort to violence. It wants to use violence against the revolutionaries. It wants to disguise its violence as “revolutionary” violence. To cover its own counter-revolutionary violence it will do its best to get revolutionary masses into situations where they will resort to violence so that it can get away with violence against the revolutionaries. So avoiding the use of violence is a top priority task. If, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolutionaries can avoid violence the counter-revolutionaries will expose themselves whenever they use it and so put themselves in the hands of the law.