Discontinuing the Revolution: Recent Political Thought in China
| Author | John Bryan Starr |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207903400402 |
| Date | 01 December 1979 |
| Published date | 01 December 1979 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
JOHN
BRYAN
STARR
Discontinuing
the
revolution:
recent
political
thought
in
China
Although
the
shifts
in
political
discourse
in
China
since
the
death
of
Mao Zedong
have
been
subtle
and gradual, their
cumulative
effects
have
been
to
alter
in profound
ways
certain
central
princi-
ples
in
Mao's
political
thought
while
maintaining
intact other
equally
important
principles.
In
the
pages
that
follow
I
will
des-
cribe
briefly
what
I
see as
four
stages
in
the
way
Mao's
successors
have
chosen
to
treat
him and
his
ideas
since
his
death.
The
body
of
the
discussion will
then
be
devoted
to
exploring
four
themes
that
have
appeared
frequently
in
ideological discourse
in recent months.
With
regard
to
two
of
these
themes
-
the
relationship
between
theory
and
practice,
and
the
relationship
between
economic
base
and
political
and
cultural superstructure
-
it
is
my
interpretation
that
Mao's
ideas have
not
been significantly modified.
With
regard
to
the
other
two
-
the
concepts
of
self-reliance
and
of
class
and
class
struggle
-
I
see
a
more
profound
movement
away
from
Mao's posi-
tion.
Because
I
take
Mao's
treatment
of
the
concepts
of
class
and
class
conflict
as
having been
central
to
what
is
referred
to
as
his
'theory
of
continuing
the
revolution
under
the
dictatorship
of
the
proletariat,'
I
see
his
successors
as
having,
on
balance, taken
a
theo-
retical
position
significantly
different from
that
taken
by
Mao
dur-
ing
the
last
fifteen
years
of
his
life,
despite the
continuities
alluded
to
earlier.
Executive
Director
of
the Yale-China
Association.
The
author
spent
the past
year
as
project director,
United
Nations
Association
of the
United
States
National
Policy
Panel
to
Study
United
States-China
Relations,
and
as
a
lecturer
in
the
Department
of
Political
Science,
Yale
University. He
has
written
extensively
on
contemporary
politics
and
political
thought
in
China, including
Ideology
and
Culture
(New York
1973)
and
Continuing
the
Revolution:
The
Political
Thought
of
Mao
(Princeton
1979).
DISCONTINUING
THE
REVOLUTION
547
STAGES
IN
THE TREATMENT
OF MAO
AND
HIS
IDEAS
Without
excessive
distortion,
the
movement
away
from
treating
Mao
as
infallible
and
his
ideas
as
a
kind
of
immutable
truth
can
be
seen
as
having
moved
through four
roughly
chronological
stages.
The
first
began
with
Mao's
death
in
September
1976
and
extended
for
two
or
three
months
until
the
campaign
to
criticize
the
Gang
of
Four
1
was
fully
under
way.
During
this
first stage
the
dominant
approach
was
one
that
took
the
former
chairman's
ideas to
have
been
correct
and
immutable.
Hua
Guofeng,
the
legitimacy
of
whose
position
rested on
Mao's
allegedly
having
designated
him
as
his
successor
with
the
words,
'with
you
in
charge,
I
am
at
ease,
'2
could
ill
afford to
be seen
to
violate
the
late
chairman's
ideas.
Class
struggle
as
the
'key
link'
in
Chinese
political
life
was
much
em-
phasized,
and
Deng
Xiaoping
continued
to be
criticized
for
having
failed
fully to
support
this
crucial
point.
3
A second
stage
began in
the
winter
of
1976-7,
spurred
on not
only
by
the
initiation
of
the campaign
against
the
Gang
of
Four,
but
also
by
the
re-emergence of
Deng,
who
had
been
removed
from
office
a
second
time
in
1976
at
the
insistence
of
the
Gang.
4
During
this
second
stage
Mao
was
treated
as
having been
misled
and
his
thought
distorted
by
the Gang of
Four
in
his
latter
years.
His
writ-
1
The
'Gang
of
Four'
includes
Mao's
widow,
Jiang
Qing,
the
former
vice-chairman
of
the
Chinese
Communist
party,
Wang
Hongwen,
and
two
ideologues
whose
base
of
operations
was
the
municipality
of
Shanghai, Zhang
Qunqiao
and
Yao
Wenyuan.
A
month
after
Mao
died
the
four
were
arrested
on
charges
of
plotting
to
seize
power
from
Hua
Guofeng,
who
was
allegedly
designated
by
Mao
as
his
successor.
2
The
comment
was
said
to
have
been
made
by
Mao
at
a
rare
meeting
the
two
had
alone
in April
1976
-
a
time when
the
former
chairman's
visitor's
were
closely
screened
by
those loyal
to
the Gang
of
Four.
It was
passed
to
Hua
in
written
form,
since
Mao
had
at
that
point
all
but
lost
the faculty
of
speech.
3
Among the
last
of
these
references
is
found in
the
speech
of
Chen
Yongguei
(a
model
peasant
from
the
Dazhai
Production
Brigade
who
had
been
elevated
to
Central
Committee membership
during
the
latter
stages
of
the
Cultural
Revolu-
tion)
to
the
Second
National
Conference
on
Learning
from Dazhai
in
Agriculture,
2o
December
1976,
translated
in
Peking
Review
(hereafter
PR),
xx
(7
January
1977),
9.
4
Starr,
'The
Phoenix
Restored:
Reflections
on
the
Career
of
Deng
Xiaoping
from
the
Fourth
to
the
Fifth
National
People's
Congress,'
Asian
Thought and
Society,
In (1978),
118-25.
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