SWISS MARCH HAILS AMERICAN OPPONENTS TO WAR IN VIETNAM
Zurich
Anger over the U.S. role in Vietnam continues-to mount in Switzerland. On February 4 this city saw the biggest demonstration yet staged, some 1,200 responding to the appeal of the sponsoring group, an ad hoc committee composed of youths of various political tendencies.
A contingent of about 300 Spanish workers participated in the march. Two wellknown trade-union leaders spoke.
A proposed letter to be sent to the U.S. ambassador was read at the meeting. The letter condemned the "brutal intervention of the leading Western power in the internal affairs of the Vietnamese people" and expressed “heartfelt solidarity with the American opposition."
The letter met with enthusiastic approval.
. An Example of Maoist Double-Dealing
THE CASE OF CHOU YANG
By George Novack
The first issue of the journal Red Flag for 1967 carried an’article by Yao Wen-yuan entitled -"On the Counterrevolutionary Double-Dealer Chou Yang." Its. full text was reproduced in three installments in.the January 9-10-12 Hong Kong edition of the daily bulletin published by the Hsinhua News Agency.
Chou Yang is well known to anyone who has followed the intellectual and cultural activities of Chinese Communism. He was a deputy director of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the Chinese CP, a vice-minister of culture, vice-chairman of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles and of the Chinese Writers (Union. In 1956 he became an alternate member of the Central Committee. .
For over ‘twenty years Chou performed. the same services ‘for:.Mao’ fTse-tung in the fields of literature, art and philosophy as*Zhdanov did for Stalin. He transmitted and interpreted Mao's directives on cultural policy and:saw that they were stringently enforced. He was quoted as an authority alongside Mao himself. He has been.one of ‘thé principal exponents of the official line in the Sino-Soviet dispute.
Suddenly in the summer of 1966 Chou, who had purged the ranks of China! s writers and intellectuals in one campaign after another, himself became a victim of the “great proletarian cultural revolution." He was branded as "the big-red umbrella covering all monsters." Sincé then he has. been foremost among the villains whose influence had to be eradicated in literary and cultural circles. A wall poster put up in Peking February 26 named him as one of the "leaders who have followed an antirevolutionary, revisionist literary line."
The New Year's article in Red Flag purported to be a detailed exposure of Chou's maneuvers and misdeeds. According to the prefatory note in Hsinhua, it "traces his counterrevolutionary activities over the previous sixteen years against the party, against socialism and against Mao Tse-tung's thought in the field of literature and art.
' The indictment begins by stigmatizing Chou Yang as "typical of counterrevolutionary double-dealers. He consistently played double-dealing tricks to cover up his counterrevolutionary political features, tampered with history, ‘slipped through, waved 'red flags' to oppose the red flag and carried out a variety of criminal activities."
The propaganda campaign directed against Chou depicts the struggles in the field of literature and art since the Liberation, and even before, in a simple, clear-cut fashion. Here is how it is summed up at the end of Red Flag's review. "We can see clearly the acute struggle between the two lines. One is Mao: Tse-tung's line on literature and art, a red line. It is Comrade Mao Tse-tung who has personally led every major struggle, pushed the cultural revolution forward step by step and, after long preparations, started the great proletarian cultural revolution which is a stormy general onslaught against the bourgeoisie in which hundreds of millions of people are taking part and in which the old lair of Chou Yang and company has been smashed.
"The otheris a black line, the antiparty, antisocialist bourgeois line on literature and art. The ringleader of this black line is precisely Chou Yang. Behind Chou Yang was the counterrevolutionary clique which plotted to usurp the leadership of the party, the army and the government and which was crushed recently."
This counterposing of two irreconcilable lines certainly "tampers with history." It ‘thoroughly misrepresents what actually happened in the cultural policies pursued by the Chinese CP over the past thirty years by reversing Chou's role and his real relations with Mao.
Merle Goldman of the East Asian Research Center at Harvard University documents the perversion of facts in a piece on "The Fall of Chou Yang" which appeared in the July-September issue of The China Quarterly. The information he presents illustrates how crassly Mao's faction falsifies history in the one-sided polemics characteristic of the ongoing political conflict. This poses the question: if the truth can be so twisted in regard to Chou Yang, what credence can be given to charges against others of Mao's opponents which cannot be so readily checked by reference to the available record?
The China Quarterly article should be read together with the attack in Red Flag. Here are some instructive excerpts from them. ..
Goldman writes that "in the seventh issue of Red Flag, the party theoretical journal, published on July 1, Chou Yang was accused for the first time: 'For 24. years Chou Yang and company have consistently refused to carry out Comrade Mao Tse-tung's line on literature and art and stubbornly adhered to the bourgeois revisionist black. line on literature and art.' But in reality, Chou Yang had been the most ardent advocate of Mao's cultural ,line since the Yenan days when he declared, 'I put forth every effort to make myself an interpreter, propagandist, and practitioner of Mao Tse- ~tung' s. cultural ideas and policies. ' At no time had he failed to live up to these words."
‘The first big deviation attributed to Chou goes pack thirty years to 1936. He is accused of dissolving the party's front organization, the League of Left-wing Writers, and setting up in its stead the United Association of Chinese Writers, which sought to bring together writers of different political persuasions. This action was taken in accord with the turn made by the Comintern in 1935 toward. the Popular Front. At the. same time, in the United States for example, the John Reed Clubs were disbanded in favor .of the broader League of American Writers. :
‘In forming the new organization Chou Yang was carrying out both Comintern .and party directives. The Chinese CP was then urging the Kuomintang and other parties to stop the war against it and join together against the Japanese. It was ready to suspend the class struggle for that purpose. This conciliatory move was opposed by the noted writer, Iu Hsun, and his followers who set up their own organization, the Chinese Literary Workers, along more leftist lines.
_ Until the cultural revolution, “the official literary histories - interpreted Chou's course as in accord with the party position and Iu Hsun's-as a departure - from it. Now, in it's efforts to show that Mao never deviated from the path of class struggle, Peking contends that Chou disobeyed party orders while Iu Hsun conformed to then.
The next falsification concerns Mao's Yenan "Talks on Art and Literature." Here. is Goldman's explanation. "As with the controversy over 'Literature of National Defence,' the regime has similarly rewritten the events surrounding the presentation of Mao's 'Talks on Art and .Literature.' In the summer of 1966, the regime declared thatthe Talks were delivered as a rebuke to the cultural line represented by Chou Yang during the united front..The Talks, given in May 1942, were used in the summer of 1966 as one of the weapons to overthrow Chou Yang. .They were reprinted with great fanfare in the major newspapers and journals. Discussions on them were convened throughout the country.
"Yet, these same Talks were republished with similar fanfare in 1958 for the. opposite purpose. They were used as a weapon to overthrow Chou Yang's enemies Ting. Ling, Hsiao Chun and Ai Ch'ing who had supported Iu Hsun, not Chou Yang, in the conflicts of the 1930's. Originally, the Talks had been presented by Mao to chastise these writers for continuing Iu Hsun's critical tradition in Yenan. It was by refuting the views of these associates of Iu Hsun, not the views of: Chou Yang, that Mao laid the foundation for. the party's policy toward writers and intellectuals. In the cheng. feng movement: that accompanied the presentation of the Talks, Chou Yang played an important role in denouncing. these writers and imposing Mao's: literary doctrine not only on intellectuals _in ¥enan, but.also on intellectuals in-the non-Communist areas, particularly in Chungking. ;
"Chou Yang would not have been -one of the leaders in this drive it the Talks. had been directed against him. In fact, it was his active role in pursuing this campaign that led to his ascendancy over others in carrying out the party's thought reform movement."»
Chou is found guilty by Red Flag of hailing pourgeois intellectuals on June 30,. 1949 as “one of the leading forces of the revolution." But he did so in conformity with the CP line. After the occupation of Peking Mao proclaimed that in the new China there was a constructive role to. be played by "the petty bourgeoisie and the» national bourgeoisie." .
The Red Flag article concentrates « on tracking down Chou's “conspiratorial activities" over the past sixteen years. He is made out to be an exceedingly cunning maneuverer who succeeded in "slipping through four major struggles" by retreating each time he was in danger and feigning agreement with the party and Mao's thought. However, his rascality has finally been fully exposed in the present struggle when he was "cut to the quick by the sharp sword of the great proletarian cultural revolution."
The first of these struggles took place in 1951 around the film "Life of Wu Hsun."
After Mao criticized it as an utterly abominable counterrevolutionary production which eulogized the landlords and their flunkeys, Chou Yang feigned self-criticism "but secretly acted in defiance, seeking an opportunity to counterattack."
That chance came in 1954, according to Red Flag, when "following Stalin's death, the adverse trend of modern revisionism began to run wild" in-China's literary and art circles. "The revisionist clique headed by Chou Yang" had to be called to order at that time by Mao for "lauding the bourgeois ‘authorities' and repressing the emerging Marxist forces." Again, Chou "hastily concocted a sham self-criticism with the hope of slipping through: unscathed."
The substance of Chou! s crimes can be gauged from the following odd accusation. "In November 1955 Chou Yang wrote an essay entitled ‘In Memory of Leaves of Grass and Don Quixote.' At that tifie China's rural areas were experiencing a great socialist upsurge. Comrade Mao Tse-tung called on literary and art workers to go to the countryside to take part in the fiery struggles of the masses and to write in volume about ‘thousands and tens of thousands' of heroes.
"Chou Yang, in direct contravention of this, chose that moment wildly to advocate the ‘lofty ethical principles' of Don Quixote, that is, bourgeois ethical principles; and his praise of the nineteenth century American bourgeois poet Walt Whitman was fulsome, urging writers to emulate Whitman as an ‘example * of ‘taking part in struggles.
"Was this not open opposition'to Mao Tse-tung's thought?" the writer asks. "Was this not a fierce counterattack on the world-shaking socialist revolution of the 600 million workers and peasants? Was this not encouragement to the bourgeoisie in towns and villages and: right opportunists within the party firmly to resist socialist trans-— formation and persist in taking the capitalist. road?"
If praise of Cervantes or Whitman can be construed as "a fierce counterattack" on the socialist revolution, then many celebrated Marxists, starting with Marx, will have to be enrolled among the counterrevolutionaries.
"In the same way that Chou Yang was held responsible for the moderation of the united front, he was blamed for the intellectual ferment and criticisms of the party that occurred during the Hundred Flowers period," writes Goldman. "Here again, he was attacked for faithfully implementing Mao's policy. In an effort to show that it never encouraged far-ranging debate on academic subjects nor tolerated criticism, the party declared in 1966 that the Hundred Flowers policy had been introduced .to oppose liberalization, not to encourage it, as Chou Yang had done. Similarly, it asserted that instead of intensifying the class struggle, Chou Yang had diluted class struggle during the Hundred Flowers period."
Chou is most vehemently denounced: by Red Flag for his role in the relaxation of the. intellectual and political atmosphere ‘which followed the revérses of the Great Leap Forward and preceded the current drive against any signs of nonconformism. He is accused of fostering tendencies which led to the creation of “many Petofi clubs of all sizes."
The Petofi.Club was the association of dissident Communist writers and intellectuals in Budapest which became the rallying center for the voicing of ‘grievances. against the Rakosi regime in the months before the outbreak of the Hungarian revolt in 1956. Although Chou was merely following out the party line, the more tolerant attitude toward intellectuals between 1961 and 1964 may have inadvertently afforded some cover for similar nuclei of dissidents who were regarded as a threat by Mao and his men. Red Flag gives no details on this point. It. is content to conclude with the injunction that "we must now smash all their 'Petofi clubs' and destroy their underground kingdoms! We must take over, thoroughly take over, the leadership of all literary and art organizations from the hands of the bourgeoisie!"
Goldman points out that Chou has become the scapegoat for the party's inability to drive all intellectuals into line and make them kowtow before Mao's thought. He believes that Chou may have been marked for disgrace, not because he resisted Mao's line for thirty years, but rather because he resisted the intrusion of Defense Minister Lin Piao and the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army into his bureaucratic domain.
"The showdown between the Propaganda Department and Lin Piao occurred in the spring of 1966," he says. “In the past when Chou Yang clashed with other groups like those of Hu Feng and Ting Ling for power in the cultural sphere, Mao sided with Chou Yang. In this struggle between the faction to which Chou Yang belonged and Lin Piao, Mao obviously sided with Lin. The Liberation Army Daily editorial of April 18, 1966,
'Hold High the Great Red Banner of Mao's Thinking,' presented the same cultural line that Chou had helped to make literary dogma. It called for art that was more ideal than life, the creation of heroic characters, the reflection of revolutionary. optimism, and the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism.
"But,whereas in: the past Chou Yang and his group. had.imposed. these doctrines, the Liberation Army. Dail Daily served notice that henceforth it would be Lin and his followers who would set the line in the cultural realm." In any case, the Army has since taken the cultural organizations. under its wing. . Chou's downfall casts a lurid light on the recesses of Mao's regime. According to its main slogan, the cultural revolution aims. to do away with "old customs and habits." If we may judge from Chou's treatment, it has certainly not. broken with the old Stalinist custom of falsifying chs past for purposes of factional warfare. Here, at least, anything goes.
Chou Yang is being execrated for "his double-dealing tricks." There are, as has been indicated, no lack of such tricks involved in his case. But, on the record, it is Mao and the men still in his service who are guilty of them.
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