By Livio Maitan by LIVIo Maltan
Between 1965 and 1969, Lin Piao was Mao's main collaborator in the group directing the "cultural revolution." At the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist party he was even formally designated as Mao's succes-
Now he seems to have been sor.
included, although not explicitly, in
"renegades, enemy the gang of agents, and opportunists who sneaked into the party in order to usurp its leadership, seize power, and restore capitalism."
The meaning of this precipitous fall has so far not been very well illuminated by the official sources (nominally the polemics are still being aimed primarily against Liu Shao-chi). Buteven when the present reticence is dropped, it can be easily predicted that Lin Piao will become the object of stereotyped denunciations and placed in the traditional role of the scapegoat, responsible for all failures and all deviations. It will not be easy to extract from this kind of material the elements needed for making a precise analysis of the episode.
What can be done now, however, is to define the overall political framework in which this newest grave crisis in the leadership broke out and to distinguish the essential issues that were at the root of the conflict that arose in 1970-71 in the small group that emerged victorious from the cultural revolution.
That Peking has made a turn in its international policy no longer needs to be demonstrated. The main motive for this shift was the Chinese leaders' desire to take advantage of the margin for maneuver opened up by the difficulties in which U.S. imperialism found itself, even if they had to pay a high price to do it, in order to break out of their isolation and at least postpone a military conflict with the United States for a long time. The basis for serious feelers in this direction was provided by Washington's need to find a new balance of power in Asia that could compensate at least partially for its failure in the Vietnam war or camouflage this defeat to some extent.
The results obtained so far are 1090
known to all. China has entered the UN. It has established or is about to establish normal relations with the major capitalist powers. The United States itself has been forced to end its anachronistic policy of ostracism by sending its president to Peking. A whole series of neocolonial coun tries have renewed, or are renewing, economic and political relations with China, relations whose significance cannot be underrated. There is no doubt that all this has had, and will continue to have, an important effect in bringing China into international trade, which will probably have positive consequences for the economic development of the country.
The price that China has paid or will pay for this cannot yet be gauged precisely inasmuch as many things remain fluid (Nixon's meeting with Mao itself was only a first step and decisive questions are still up for discussion). But a perceptible deterioration has already been noted in China's relations with the Vietnamese leaders (who have not concealed their negative appraisal and other of Nixon's meeting with Mao and Brezhnev and of the pressures that have been brought to bear on them to accept a disastrous compromise). It is also evident that Peking has lost prestige in the eyes of the masses in a series of countries that have directly experienced the concrete consequences of its orientation. Likewise, the Chinese have lost credibility in the eyes of more or less recently formed groups that have seen the collapse of the illusion that Peking represented a new center of inspiration for revolution throughout the world.
The changes in internal policy have been less spectacular, but there have been unquestionable rectifications in trends, methods, and emphasis. We might say, as regards economic policy above all, that there has been a return to greater realism, with the lines of discussion more reminiscent of the phase of readjustment in 1961-64 than of the Great Leap Forward and the cultural revolution. A leader of the Chinese CP-who was not unaware that his statements would be quoted - said recently to a Le Monde reporter who certainly cannot be counted among the detractors of China: "We put too much emphasis on politics. ... All the exaggerations must be eliminated. It is necessary to return to practical work, and the emphasis will be put on efficiency, on production, on science, on technology."
The space reserved in Chinese publications for developments and problems in production and the fact that they have started once again to provide data supporting claims of advances confirm this indication. It is symptomatic, moreover, that the
Chinese are beginning to talk once more about the need for individual incentives and that for the first time in a long while there has been an across-the-board wage increase. 1
As regards the countryside, two articles have been given a significant spread recently in the People's Daily, criticizing past cases of abolishing family ownership of livestock. It was stated that "sow-raising on a collective basis must go hand in hand with sow-raising on an individual basis; neither method can be dropped."
Another change concerns the style of leadership and propaganda. The cult of Mao has been scaled down considerably. The Little Red Book seems to have gone out of style, and it has been recommended that overly prolix to readies or too hard-to-digest articles not be offered to readers. There has even been an attempt to put the blame for the cult of the leader, which began to take hysterical forms in 1966, on Liu Shao-chi-and implicitly on Lin Piao (see, for example, Tien Chesong's article in Peking Review, No. 30, 1972). Some incorrigible apologists have even tried to argue that Mao was hostile to his own cult.
The reality is that magnifying the cult seemed to be the indicated method for the cultural revolution phase - both to whip up an atmosphere of fanaticism and to set up an infallible supreme authority. But for a period in which, to repeat the phrase of the official already quoted, "all exaggerations must be eliminated," even the exaltation of Mao has to be toned down.
Finally, a more important decision has been made as regards the instruments of leadership, the structures of political power. The traditional conception and practice always involved the absolute primacy of the party, concretely of its leading bodies and its apparatus. But during the cultural revolution, as a result of the profound crisis that shook the apparatus of the party and the state, the military apparatus was acquiring a decisive weight and in the crucial phase the army emerged as the backbone of the regime. This was expressed concretely in the preponderance assumed by officers in the so-called revolutionary committees and in the positions they won in the party bodies themselves at the Ninth Congress in April 1969 and in the period immediately following.
As I explained in my book Partito, esercito e masse nella crisi cinese ['Party, Army, and Masses in the Chinese Crisis"],2 it would be absurd to try to draw a clear dividing line between politicians and military officers in a country like China that has gone through decades of civil war under the leadership of the party. However, a distinction has been gradually developing between the political apparatus in the strict sense and the military apparatus, in view of the difference in their functions and needs, especially in specific situations.
At the conclusion of the great crisis, it was logical, therefore, that some would consider that the status quo in which the army held de facto primacy should be maintained. And the international context, with the continuation of the Vietnam war and the resulting dangers to China itself, could be taken as an argument in favor of such a solution. At the same time, it was logical for others to press for a return to the traditional practice, which had become possible once again since the party apparatus was in the process of being rebuilt. It is clear that at least in principle the second tendency won out.
It was inevitable that all these acute questions that 1 have listed briefly would produce a new crisis-less clamorous but in some respects no less profound than the one in the preceding years. It was inevitable also that the clash would occur on various levels, including the new Political Bureau and its new Standing Committee, which once again have been completely turned upside down. It is impossible to say- at least for the present-to what extent conflicts have taken place at lower levels, all the way down to the local cells. But if we consider that for three years the Mao group itself used revolutionary-democratic and internationalist themes to win the support of broad sectors of the masses and that in the same period tens of thousands of youth underwent an indisputable process of political education, it is reasonable to assume that even though the 1970-71 turn did notencounter any organized resistance it still must have provoked profound unrest in substantial sectors of the rank and file, the final result of which will be to stimulate the development of critical elements.
It would be an error to consider that the positions taken by the Chinese leaders in the most recent period have a definitive character. First of all, the new policy has not yet been sufficiently defined on all levels. Secondly and most importantly, it has always been a characteristic of the Chinese bureaucracy to adapt pliantly to the changes in situations on the basis of an underlying empiricism. In the same way as it shifted gears in 1970-71, it may do so again in the future. For example, if on the international front new dramatic tensions arose in Asia, if the Vietnam war were to be prolonged for an entire period with all the dangers this entails, reducing the room for coexistence-type the maneuvers,
Chinese leaders might be forced back to a "hard" line, impelled by the need to stay the hand of imperialism by other means.
In any case, the shift has been a rather profound one, and it is likely that the motion in this direction will continue for at least a few years. If the Vietnamese conflict is ended, the turn could be accentuated by the signing of a general agreement with American imperialism itself.
The news that has been officially leaked about Lin Piao suffering a defeat in a plot against Mao and being killed in the course of a daring escape should offer valuable food for thought to all those who came under the spell of Maoism and fell prey to the myth of the cultural revolution. Those who tried to see in the recent events a kind of right-wing reaction led by Chou En-lai defeating the left, represented by the trio of Mao, Lin Piao, and Chen Po-ta, should be the first to consider how arbitrary their speculations were. Mao is now being presented as the intended victim of a plot by Lin Piao and as the mastermind-along with Chou-of Lin's overthrow.
Of course, we do not know to what extent the official version corresponds to the truth. But it is clear that Mao is continuing to play his special role as the balancer, as well as the symbol, of the bureaucratic leadership. When a conflict arises, the way he shifts his weight is decisive in determining the winning bloc-the line of which can differ according to the circumstances. Thus, he is presented as the mastermind and guarantor of the line adopted, while the role inevitably awaiting the losers is the unenviable one of scapegoat, of the very personification of error and betrayal. I hope I will not offend sophisticated Maoists if I point out that this practice is fundamentally Stalinist, even if in Stalin's time the losers usually ended up facing firing squads, while in Mao's time the losers generally wind up in a reeducation camp.
The support the Chinese have given to the bloodstained Pakistani dictatorship; Peking's openly siding with the Ceylonese government at a time when it was drowning a revolutionary movement of young intellectuals, students, and peasants in blood; the profuse praise for such figures as the emperors of Iran and Ethiopia, touted as defenders of national independence; the disconcerting positive assessments of the Common Market and Great Britain's joining it; and, the culminating episode, the cover the Peking meeting gave to Nixon at a time when he was escalating his devastating onslaught on Vietnam, have destroyed the myth of the revolutionary intransigence and incorruptibility of the Maoists. These developments have starkly exposed the fact that, like the Soviet leadership, the Chinese leaders are always ready, when they deem it necessary, to sacrifice the needs of the revolutionary struggle of the peoples oppressed by imperialism to their own diplomatic and military requirements.
The recent reorientations in economic policy show how feeble and fanciful the theories were of those who thought they had discerned in China an entirely original method of building socialism, based on a qualitatively different scale of values and priorities. One example speaks louder than dozens of articles to refute these apologists: A few weeks ago China decided to buy some models of the Concorde supersonic passenger plane, the symbol of the irrationality of certain economic choices in advanced capitalist societies!
The Lin Piao affair has demolished the myth of the revolutionary democracy that was supposed to have resulted from the cultural revolution and to be based on a dialectical relationship between the masses and the leaders, guaranteeing the masses themselves the real exercise of power. A portentous conflict has occurred at the highest levels of the party and the state. The main figures involved were leaders that emerged victorious from the preceding agony. The No. 2 person in the regime has been defeated and removed, even physically from the scene. And the Chinese people have not even been informed of all this! 3
According to the accredited official version, the conflict between different
3. It is significant that the first official reports were supplied to foreigners or disseminated abroad. The Chinese leaders were obviously interested primarily in international policy objectives.
lines took the form of a plot, foiled thanks to the skill of the leader and ending in an unsuccessful attempt by the master connivers to flee to the Soviet Union. It may be that this version is untrue. The fact remains that the struggle was conducted in an atmosphere of palace intrigue and the whole affair was decided within a small elite. This is quite a different thing from revolutionary democracy! Quite a different thing from self-government of the masses!
In China also a fight must be waged for genuine proletarian democracy. And in the leadership of this struggle will be those Chinese militants who were able to draw the correct lessons from the Lin Piao episode, breaking definitively with the myth of Maoism.
Notes
1. See the articles by Robert Guillain in the August 1, 2, and 3, 1972, issues of Le Monde. According to the same source an effort has been made to reinforce discipline in the factories through the party or through trade-union-type organizations. I should note that there was no qualitative change in the structure of wages during the cultural revolution, but the propaganda constantly stressed the need for rejecting material incentives and not demanding wage increases.
2. Samona e Savelli, Rome, 1969.