Communist countries is planned, and a miracle and with the remains of peasant masses. Every farm was to Soviet Union, the second industrial is no secret police in China. Morethe plans are the expression of the his small army undertook the famous produce a small quantity of steel. power in the world, reduce its pace over, inasmuch as the purge was purely student affairs — university The average student approves of regulations and facilities - much this minority, but is inhibited by more than the other organisations, violence and feels that the student whose raison d'être is more overtly leaders have become more revolupolitical. This explains why they tionaries than students and are out have a large following-at least on of touch with the rest. aper-of Students' Self-Governing Councils. But in fact, many of the The real test will come in 1970 nembers scorn the J.C.P. Zengaku- when the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty en's passivity in off-campus politics. may be revised. The students are Of the 829 student councils in the radically opposed to the treaty and apanese universities and colleges, their pacism is shared by most only 510 are committed to the sup- Japanese. It has been predicted that ort of any of the Zengakuren fac- over 100,000 will take ions; and of these 330 support the action in protest against continua.C.P. Zengakuren. tion of the treaty. Vot all Nigerians eat Ibos. Beware of capitalist propaganda. Ojukwe ind Gowan represent West Africa's bourgeoise elite and the same ested interests that their feudal predecessors did. The people in con ersation are uncompromisingly militant, not to be duped by the West iny more. Local heroes take second place to Nkrumah, Patrice umumba, Seku Toure, King, Carmichael and Otis Reading. Black 'ower is swiftly coming to West Africa. And as this photograph shows o is the Cultural Revolution.
3.D. CORRESPONDENT. Alberto Moravia event that has taken place in the Communist world since deStalinization.
It is common knowledge that in the the personalized character of vicCommunist world there are various tories and defeats in the economic levels of economic development be- field, almost as if the development cause of the various periods in which of an economy were not a collecthe industrial revolution began in tive but an individual phenomenon. different areas. Corresponding to In China the identification of the will the Soviet Union and that consethese various economic levels there of the head of state with the ecoare, obviously, various levels of en- nomic and social condition of the thusiasm, freshness, and revolution- people is more marked, I should say, ary romanticism. Now the Chinese than in any other Communist counCuitural Revolution not only has try. The personal history of Mao is, mistake was that, no matter how sensationally revealed these dif- as a matter of fact, indivisible from terences but, because of the conflict that of the Chinese revolution, to done through party bureaucracy and Union, with whơm he and ruptures it has provoked, also such a degree that to narrate the life by means of party party bureauseems to have created within the of Mao, as one can see from Edgar cracy. What happened has already Communist bloc an internal dialectic Snow's book, is equivalent to narratwhich until now not even the revolting the history of the last fifty years in the infallibility of Stalin, he piled in Budapest, or Yugoslavian dissi- of the Chinese people. dence, had succeeded in establishing.
The fact that Soviet Russia has had what has happened in China since turned to the noteworthy industrial development June 1966, one must go back to since 1917 and that China, on the remote 1927. In general, one can other hand, was still, in 1949, pre-say that the disagreement between dominantly a country of peasants Mao and the Soviet Union-which, mediate. Most important of all, he has suddenly appeared, thanks to the in my opinion, is at the root of the must have felt that his feet were Cultural Revolution, as the main Cultural Revolution-goes back to finally on solid ground. cause of the ideological conflict be- that vear. At that time the Chinese tween China and the Soviet Union. Communist Party, which had only brought What does this mean It means that recently been formed, was com- years later, in 1957, challenging the explain what Is happening in pletely under the influence of Stalin.
China today one must not look for Mao himself-who was one of its personal and individual causes, such leaders-with a revolutionary innoas Moa's age, the for cence that was shared at the time power, the influence of Mao's wife, by many in the West, probably did etc.; rather, and correctly so, one not doubt that the remote dictator in occurred, the attempt to transform must look behind the ideological Moscow was somehow infallible. But backward Chinese conflict for the material causes. Stalin, through a series of mistaken The personal element, however, instructions and false moves resulting Russian or American type, and to COntrary what is generally from an abstract and infatuated saddle state agricultural thought, is more important in Com- ignorance of real conditions of munist countries than in capitalist China, provoked a terrible political countries, at least at the level of and military catastrophe. For tactigovernment In the West economic al rencons Stalin at all costs differences between countries are wanted Mao and the Communists to steel furnaces — inevitably rudimenonly mildly translated into ideolo- collaborate with Chiang Kai-shek tary and unsatisfactory gies, both because of the predomi- and the _notianeliet Kuomintang. nant empiricism, especially in the Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomin- was industrial competition with the Anglo-Saxon world, and because the tang suddenly turned on Mao and Soviet Union and the West. Western economies are less planned wherever possible massacred his fol- solution, typically Maoist, and consequently lace willed than lowers.
Eastern economies. It is common were slain in Canton, Shanghai, and or three large factories but also. knowledge that the economy of Peking. Bao survived the disaster by will of limited governing bodies or march north. even of an isolated leader. Hence The Chinese cultural revolution is the most important political describe Stalin's errors in detail. Suf- itself. But, this time, turning to the fice to say that among them were masses enthusiastic, yes, but inextwo basic mistakes that Mao cer-pert and backward brought disastainly must have remembered, when ter. Steel production fell, and beforty years later he unleashed the cause of the disorder created by so Cuntural Kevolution. The first mis- much change, agricultural productake was to think that China, in its tion also fell. social composition, was similar to In the face of the failure of the personal Great Leap Forward, Mao should quently it had to be the labouring perhaps have blamed himself, or, peasants in the country that would as when the fault is shared by many, masses In the cities and not the blame no one. But Mao had a difmake the revolution. The second ferent reaction. What was at the root of the error, at the root of the things went, everything had to be disaster? The fact that the Soviet wished to compete, was a revisionist country, a country on the road to prosperity, been told. As long as Mao believed that is, to capitalism.
up one defeat after another. When This reflection found unexpected To understand, at least in part, he shook off his awe of Stalin and and bitter confirmation in the Soviet Union's behaviour in the face of peasants and the China's difficulties. The wilful and country and, bypassing party bureaucracy and ideology, acted directly populist romanticism of Mao found and in person, his success was im- no understanding or solidarity in the Soviet Union. Right away there were admonitions and ideological insinuations. Then came KhrushObeying the Soviet Union in 1927 chev's sarcastic public remarks about the Great Leap. And finally-a very Mao misfortune: thirty serious step, in fact equivalent to an act of cold warhesudden and Soviet Union bright him misfortune.
complete withdrawal of Russian It is always Soviet Union, after all, in the adverse times of Mao's -life. technical advisers. What happened in 1957, that year By these measures the Soviet of years? The Great Leap Forward Union probably hoped to restore its own authority in China, reduce Mao peasants into to obedience, and prevent economic modern agricultural workers of the development in China that would conflict with the totality of the Comconcerns munist bloc. But Mao only saw in with the greater part of steel pro- them the obtuse and satiated hostiduction. I am referring here to lity of a country headed towards Mao's irrational, wilful, and, in a prosperity for a poor country; of a they were thought to represent (ie. word, romantic decision to set up country, in Lin Piao's formula, that was already part of the urban world -in the com- against a country that was still part munes or state farms. The problem of the peasant world. Thus Russia absurdly, but, it should be emphaThe sized, with perfect logic-was rewas Thousands of Communists have steel produced not just by two try.
and principally, by the Chinese change his mind? Only this: that the by a Stalinist secret police.
China is immense: production could to that of China, still a predomi- designed to strike It is beside the point here to not but be immense, like China nantly artisan and peasant country; bureacracy like all the others. No short, its prosperity. Obviously this and nostalgically, to the strenuous was not possible, though Mao later years civil war, and he considered it a logical sequence. appealed, as he had then, to the Thus through a rationalization of masses, particularly to the young disappointment and and the very young among them. He national failure, the Soviet Union no longer seemed to stand on solid became in Mao's eyes just another ground, or to have the strength he Western power, nothing more or less. had before. But with the Cultural The United States, England, Revolution, through contact with France, and Germany did not have the masses, he once again planted technical advisers, political and eco- his feet firmly on the ground and nomic missions or interests in China, recovered his strength. In one year, much less an element within the fifty million Red Guards surged, in Chinese party and state bureaucracy a new Children's Crusade, from that supported their view of the one end of China to the other. Milworld and worked for its fulfilment. lions of poster newspapers appeared. Russia did. And that, I think, is There were hundreds of thousands why so many things in China are of parades, demonstrations, meetor seem to be Soviet: the many ings. More than ten million Red boulevards of Peking, the nineteenth- Guards were received personally in century style of the modern build- Peking. And all China was turned ings and their interior decoration, the upside down: agricultural and indusvery mixture in everyday Chinese trial production diminished, the state life of drastic austerity and popular bureaucracy was overturned, party patriotism. In the same way, there bureaucracy was destroyed. Several must have been many Chinese who provinces were in the hands of wittingly or unwittingly believed in Maoists; others, in the hands of Soviet ideology and wished that anti-Maoists and this is only a China would imitate it and model partial list of the explosive results itself on the Soviet Union. These of Mao's appeal to the masses. But people were excellent Communists, the barrier of bureaucracy and the of course, who had always believed party had fallen. And, even more that Russia was the guiding state of important, the ground had been prewas a friend of Russia. Many of them had been personal friends of be able to compete with the Soviet Mao's since the years of the Long ideology. More important still, the March and even earlier. They occu- foundations may also have been laid pied responsible posts in the state for an egalitarian and technologiand party bureaucracy. It was cal society in which social advanceagainst them and against everything ment does not come through consumption as the result of profit as Soviet revisionism and Western in- in the United States. or through terests and milture that Mao's prosperity as the prize of power as romantic and populist fury was un- in Russia, but through the diversity leashed. and the quality of technical capabilities — a technocracy consisting of masses in which evryone is stance, also a gigantic purge provided with the necessary but not What could have made Mao purification) was not carried out the superfluous.
There (This is an extract from a forth. coming book by Albert Moravia, THE RED BOOK AND THE chiefly at the GREAT WALL, Secker & War. bura, 25s.)
HE BLACK DWARF 13.6
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that Russia in revolutionary soli- Mao on this occasion, as on many darity share with China its techni- others, followed his heart, which its resources, its means-in had remained faithful, innocently
the Communist bloc and that China pared for a universal revolutionary ideology that tomorrow perhaps may
Characteristically, the great purge diversely qualified cadres and work- jected as a Western, capitalist coun- (the Cultural Revolution is, in sub- ing