Mao's Socialist Education Movement

[The Vegan Marxist]

From 62-65, a program was implemented called the "Socialist Education Movement", in which intellectuals were drafted to do manual labor. Of course, they still went to school, but it had to fit with their working schedules within the factories and communes. In 68 as well we begin to see the educated urban youth being sent to work in the countryside for re-education with poor peasants. Although I undestand somewhat the significance behind this, but I've gotta ask, what good came about from these education-work drafts?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Why are there two threads on this?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Yeah, sorry bout that. Just realized it myself. Im using a phone to make this thread and posting now. So it could have been because of that. But, again, can any maoist help me understand these events pointed out better?

[Uppercut]

Well, the main motive behind this movement was to have the intellectuals learn more from the masses and to integrate their acquired skills with the common needs of the people. China was a very backwards country at the time and the intelligentsia (reactionary as well as revolutionary) made up a minority in a country filled with mostly simplistic peasantry. The goal was to intellectualize the workers and peasants and combine intellectual thought with everyday tasks, to get the masses to look at their work as an art, so to speak and to get them to think of things in a broader view. While a good number of intellectuals (mostly the former bourgeoisie and privileged elite resisted) many of the revolutionary ones had no problem going into the countryside to exchange values and ideas with the common man, and to learn from each other.

Later on during the GPCR, this helped to motivate people to participate in the sciences, such as archaeology and medicine, as well as art. Well known artists were sent to teach the masses artistic value and expression.

"During the Cultural revolution years of 72' to 75', China held four national fine arts exhibitions, with more than 2,000 pieces of art selected from 12,800 works recommended from all over China. The exhibits in Beijing attracted an audience of 7.8 million, a scale never reached before the GPCR. The four exhibitions showed three characteristics: new ideological content, new subject matters and the rise of amateur artists (65 percent of exhibited works were created by amateurs). These artworks included oil paintings, Chinese traditional painting, print paintings, sculpture, Spring Festival paintings, picture storybook paintings, charcoal drawings, watercolors, and paper cuts. Among the educated youth sent down to the countryside were several accomplished artists who found inspiration in their lives and work in rural China. These include Liu Borong, Xu Qunzong, He Shaojiao, Shen Jiawei, Zhao Xiaomo, Li Jianguo, You Jingdong, Zhao Yancho, Chen Xinmin, He Boyi and Xu Kuang. In addition to the much-publicized Rent Collection Sourtyard-which was conceived before 1966 but finalized during the Cultural Revolution- large-scale group sculptures of revolutionary subject matter also reached its peak of artistic form during this period. Works of this type include Song of praise of the Red Guard, Family history of an Air Force soldier, Long live the victory of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, and Anger of the slaves." - The Battle for China's Past, page 28.

The book does mention the uncovering of the terrachota army burial grounds during the GPCR as well, but I can't find it at the moment, as I must not have highlighted the material. I'll include some more in a future post when I find it.

[Shokaract]

Lee Feigon gave a nice rundown of what happened:

He shifted resources to rural education, in the process radically expanding China's educational system. Since Mao's death, his successors have gutted the rural education system he put in place—once again discriminating against people from poor rural backgrounds. This despite the fact that almost everywhere resources devoted to rural education remain the most efficient way to promote economic development.

Mao first attacked this problem indirectly in 1962, when he launched the Socialist Education campaign. Although this was a movement to eliminate corrupt cadres and restore revolutionary idealism, it had the word "education" in its name because Mao wished to use the campaign to teach the peasants how to recognize and root out corruption for themselves. He was deeply distressed over "degenerate elements" who had worked their way into the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and he wanted the people to know how to prevent a similar phenomenon from engulfing China. The 1964 party document "On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism" asserted: "The Soviet privileged stratum has gained control of the Party, the government, and other important organizations. The members of this privileged stratum have converted the function of serving the masses into the privilege of dominating them. They are abusing their powers over the means of production and of livelihood for the private benefit of their small clique." Although "revisionism" was not yet the problem in China that it was in Russia, "desperate forays by embezzlers, grafters, and degenerates" had corrupted the party. Mao believed it was necessary to "conduct extensive socialist education movements repeatedly in the cities and the countryside."

In 1962 the goal of educating the peasants to learn how to recognize corruption was apparent when Mao supervised Peng Zhen, later the first prominent victim of the Cultural Revolution, and Chen Boda, for a time one of the most prominent promoters of the Cultural Revolution, in preparing what became known as "The Former Ten Points" document. The writers sought to organize a "revolutionary class army" that would "bring into full play the function of the poor and lower-middle peasant organizations in assisting and overseeing the work of the commune and brigade administrative committees." Peasants were to learn to keep track of how cadres allocated work points, kept accounts, handed out supplies, and took care of warehouses and granaries, so they could make sure the transactions of the state were honest.

Mao warned that without renewed "class struggle, production struggle, and scientific experiment, the day would not be far off…when the resurgence of a counter-revolution becomes inevitable." Although concerned, he was optimistic. He ruled out physical punishment for crimes and prescribed education to deal with cadres who had strayed from the virtuous socialist path. He personally told provincial leaders to be lenient with miscreants.

Liu Shaoqi, who in the early 1960s shared the official party leadership with Mao, enthusiastically backed this campaign. But Liu was dissatisfied with its slow pace and ineffectiveness, especially after Liu's wife reported seeing widespread corruption during an inspection visit to the countryside. In 1964 Liu issued a "Revised Later Ten Points" document. This pessimistic program showed little trust in China's local rural administrators. Liu emphasized the need for the "sending of a work team from the higher level." He cast aside Mao's earlier instructions to deal leniently with rural officials and increased the role of the central leadership in the campaign. Liu wanted even the slightest complaints from peasants to result in serious investigation by the central government, and he preferred that middle and rich peasants be treated more harshly than before.

Liu caused hundreds of thousands of local cadres to be targeted and expelled from the party, and for months purges and attacks disrupted the countryside. But the Socialist Education campaign never received as much attention as the Cultural Revolution because it involved peasants, not intellectuals.

Mao stepped into the Socialist Education campaign to stop the violence. Although he is often considered vicious for the way he attacked his enemies, and though he was often ruthless, the fact is that time and again it was Mao who tried to check the violence that others encouraged.


And his focus on educating the masses was not evidenced only in this one movement. Developing a program for mass education had been a topic of vital concern to Mao since his earliest days in Hunan. The former teacher and school principal continued throughout his life to see himself in one form or another as an educator. Few of his speeches and even his letters to colleagues do not display the tone of a teacher lecturing a pupil. He constantly berated party members on their need to improve their grammar and writing style. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he continually promoted the education of the peasantry. He fretted that while reestablishing track schools that favored urban youths from privileged backgrounds, the party was cutting back and sometimes even eliminating rural schools.