FINDS IT DIFFICULT TO CONSOLIDATE HIS POSITION
By Livio Maitan
The violent struggle in China, now in its second year, is still far from ended. The most recent official documents themselves reveal -- in their explicit admissions and their not less meaningful omissions -- that the attempts of the Mao-Lin Piao group to crush all opponents and to establish tight control through the so-called triple alliances [coalitions of Red Guard, municipal and army "cadres"] have only had partial results.
It was already clear last spring that the role of the army was becoming more and more important. On one hand it had to solve the problem of rallying many of the cadres; on the other, it had to orient various sectors of the "Red Guards" and the "Revolutionary Rebels" in the desired direction.
This summer's events seem to indicate that while the struggle at the top has continued with extreme violence, the army has often found itself shaken by deep divisions and in conflict with sectors of the popular masses.
Also to be taken into account are the recurring allusions by the Chinese press to multiple and opposing organizations (some of which, like the so-called May 16 Movement, are now denounced as counterrevolutionary and are forced to work at least partially underground) and the continuous political fire against anarchistic and "left extremist" tendencies. These propaganda attacks confirm the existence -- and perhaps even the growth -- of a phenomenon which we noted in September a year ago, a phenomenon that is a striking feature of the "Cultural Revolution." This is the emergence of "orthodox" Maoist tendencies operating outside the teachings and perspectives of Mao.
The polemics have become ever more voluminous and ever more explicit in their attacks on opponents, especially on Liu Shao-chi, and have increasingly exposed deep divisions on fundamental problems -domestic and international ~- which have existed in the Chinese Communist party for many years.
Behind these vicissitudes, it is clear that solutions for the problems really exist: from the problem of industrial development to the problem of factory management, from the problem of the rate of agricultural collectivization to that of prices and the limits of individual peasant property, from the problem of the orientation of military strategy to the way to meet the problems of art and culture, from the problem of the united front against imperialism to the strategy of revolutionary movements, especially in the colonial or former colonial countries. It is the proposed solutions to these problems that are involved in the current conflict, just as they were involved in the conflicts of the preceding decade.
In the factional presentations of the Mao group things are extremely clear: it is a matter of choosing between the capitalist road and the socialist road, between Liu Shao-chi and Mao. The technique of the whole polemic against Liu -which only incurable simpletons or those who applaud for pay or out of zeal could take for good coin -- is too transparent, too strongly reminiscent of the wellknown Stalinist technique.
Liu is presented not as a Communist with different ideas but as an agent of the bourgeoisie who infiltrated the party from the earliest years in order to defend the interests of this same bourgeoisie. Resorting to the method of truncated quotations and the most grotesque distortions, the Mao group tends on one hand to charge Liu with responsibility for the actual rightist attitudes assumed by the entire party and by Mao in the first place. On the other hand, it charges Liu with the most disparate positions that are probably held by different tendencies and by various persons. The result is that the struggle is presented to the masses as opposition between the infallible Mao, converted into a "magic" symbol (the word appears frequently in the Maoist press) of the forces of good, and the degenerate Liu, the personification of the Evil One. And the masses, whose sovereignty is proclaimed in words, are actually subjected to a continuous barrage of one-sided propaganda and are deprived of the most indispensable information.
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