The four of China

[Ultra-Violence]

I would like to know if anybody can clear this part of chinas histry for me.
by ansering these qeustions:

1.who were the four and why did poeple hate them so much?
2.why was it considerd the end of the idealistic revolution?
3.what affects did this part in chinas history affect the china we have today?

:hammer:

[Severian]

The so-called "Gang of Four" were Mao's closest aides - his "kitchen cabinet" one might say. All were little-known, low-level officials and cops before Mao promoted them to high office. Mao chose these nonentities so they'd be totally dependent on him - the most reliable possible lieutenants. One of them was Chiang Ch'ing, who was married to Mao. All of them were associated with the "Cultural Revolution", and with highly repressive, thought-control policies. Also with opposition to any wage increases or measures to improve the living conditions of workers and peasants...these were attacked as "material incentives".

Chiang Ch'ing, for example, was responsible for the suppression of all cultural production except some propaganda films she made and so forth. She was also reported to have a very luxurious lifestyle.

After Mao's death, the four didn't stand a chance, because of the very lack of independent stature that had made Mao choose them. They had no influence or prestige except what they got from Mao, so with their protector gone....Mao's designated successor, Hua Kuo-feng, got together with Mao's factional opponents like Deng Xiao-Ping and purged the four.

All the methods of public vilification and frame-up trial, which the four had used against others, were used against them. They were accused of every possible crime without any chance to respond. Mao himself was not directly attacked even though he was the sponsor of the four and head of state during the time the "gang of four" were allegedly committing all these crimes.

"why was it considerd the end of the idealistic revolution?"

Dunno...some naive people thought Mao was idealistic?

[Warren Peace]

I know this has been here for a few days, but I want to give an alternate view.


Dunno...some naive people thought Mao was idealistic?

Mao was, actually, idealistic, and I'm not "naive". In his youth, he was an enthusiastic rebel, and when he was older, he was very wise and still had the interests of the people at heart. He was always a great leader. Read this letter (http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/mao1.html) by an english teacher who knew Mao. It's not that long and it's really intriguing once you start reading it. It really describes Mao as a person.


I would like to know if anybody can clear this part of chinas histry for me.
by ansering these qeustions:

1.who were the four and why did poeple hate them so much?
2.why was it considerd the end of the idealistic revolution?
3.what affects did this part in chinas history affect the china we have today?

1.who were the four and why did poeple hate them so much?

Just like Stalin corrupted the revolutionary government set up by Lenin, revisionists corrupted the revolutionary government set up by Mao. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, a massive upsurge of Red Gaurds (students and workers) against the corruption. The Gang of Four were the Cultural Revolution leaders who were arrested after Mao died. People hated them because of the propaganda against them by the corrupt government.

2.why was it considerd the end of the idealistic revolution?

It was. With Mao gone, Jiang Qing was the last great leader of the Cultural Revolution. Sadly Jiang Qing was imprisoned because she was the leader of the Gang of Four. She was later released from prison, but the Cultural Revolution was lone gone and she commited suicide.

I might call three of the members in the Gang of Four "nonentities", but Jiang Qing was not. When she was younger (and hotter (http://210.22.167.134:8880/tales/shanghai/images/jiangqing.jpg) :P) she was an actress in Shanghai and a communist political activist. This is when she met and married Mao, and then she became one of the main leaders in the Cultural Revolution.

3.what affects did this part in chinas history affect the china we have today?

Mao's socialist system was supposed to be a transitional stage to get to communism (no classes and no state) but with the arrest of the Gang of Four and the defeat of the Cultural Revolution, that will never be achieved under the new government. The difference between Maoism, and say, Leninism, is that Maoists believe the revolution should continue on through the socialist stage to insure that the state reaches communism and isn't corrupted. The Red Gaurds did this with the Cultural Revolution agains the corruption, but it failed. However, it still might have failed even if Jiang Qing hadn't been defeated; many Red Gaurds had fallen out of Mao's control and become little more than bandits, randomly burning and looting everything.

Read my post on Mao in the "great men" thread. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=37367&st=20) I explain the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, ect.

[TC]

Its really a lot more complicated then just that they were "mao's aides."


First of all the Gang of Four had an indepedent power base of their own in the Shanghai Commune (which was origionally organized by the second most prominant 'gang' member Zhang Chunqiao) and the party in Shanghai.

Secondly, Mao was not during his lifetime always the paramount leader in the People's Republic. In 1959 he lost the chairmenship/presidency of the PRC to Liu Shaoqi when the Great Leap Forward and relations with the Soviet Union started going badly. Liu had a more "conservative" Soviet model of development and politics that was to the "right" of Mao.

Even though Mao was still regarded as a national hero in a lot of ways he didn't have a lot of personal power (though he still had other offices) in the government and party and he didn't like how things were being run so launched the Cultural Revolution as a communist mass movement outside of the government and party against the rightwing of the party.

So Mao appointed Jiang Qing his wife and politican in her own right in the ministry of culture, to direct the 'cultural revolution' in 1966...but in a way it was also just expressing approval of an agenda that Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan had already taken in their excessive attacks on art work they took to be counter revoltuionary like the play "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office" which they interpreted as being against Mao.

Jiang Qing and Lin Biao with Jiang's collegues Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen took it as an oprotunity to form a leftist faction against the 'rightist' (by chinese communist standards :-p) faction in the government (who they feared was going to restore capitalism). So, they organized the Red Guard which was a leftwing communist youth movement and in the army against Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

They effectively took over the country by 1969 with Lin Biao as the head of the army, Jiang's red guards having taken power from the Communist Party, with the police subordinate to the red guards. Liu Shaoqi was imprisoned and Deng Xiaoping deposed from the government and purged from the party. At that point, Jiang and Lin acted quiet indepedently of Mao politically and Mao withdrew support from the cultural revolution the same year.

Lin attempted a military coup against Mao (who wasn't running the country in a day to day sense but was still on the politburo and had reserve powers in the military) which failed and he died escaping to the Soviet Union so the remaining four leading leftists denounced him and they were the 'Gang of Four.' At that point (1971) Mao began to favor the Premier, Zhou Enlai, the last prominant "rightist" in government and the politburo, and Zhou and Deng became a sort of rightwing opposition the the Gang of Four's "leftwing" leadership (with Mao conceptualized as in the political 'center' between them and real political power still with the Gang of Four).

When Zhou died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping organized (or was said to have organized) a mass rally in Tiananmen against the Gang of Four as a sort of funeral for Zhou. The Four ordered the police to disperse the rally and since Deng was blamed for it he was removed from his postiion as vice primer so at that point they'd eliminated all of their political opposition...

...but Mao supported Hua Guofeng was really not a very prominant figure to replace Zhou as premier and he did, and later becaome party chairmen after Mao died later that year. With Deng and his associates, Hua then staged a coup against the Gang of Four (supposedly because they were attempting to illigally seize more power) and they were removed from power and imprisioned.

After jailing the Gang of Four, Deng and his associates Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, turned on Hua, who was really not a "rightist" in the same way that Deng was and didn't support Deng's economic reforms as much as a more Soviet style system (more conservative then the Gang of Four's but not exactly being a 'Capitalist Roader' either). Hua Guofeng was denounced for dogmatically supporting basically everything Mao ever said (a position called the 'Two Whatevers" which is probably the dorkiest name for a political doctrine ever) and was himself removed from the Premiership, military leadership, and leadership of the Communist party between 1980 and 81 allowing Deng Xiaoping to basically consoldiate power and do all of those things that the gang of four was afraid he was going to do.

So anyways:

1.who were the four and why did poeple hate them so much?

The radical leftist leaders of the cultural revolution (minus Lin Biao) who more or less ruled China from 1966 or 69 to 1976. They were hated because they persecuted the reformist communist faction that ended up leading to Deng Xiaoping and later Jiang Zemin's leadership in China. So, they aren't popular with the current Chinese government because when they were in power they trying to purge and/or arrest most of the people who led to it.

2.why was it considerd the end of the idealistic revolution?

I'm not sure what you mean exactly but, they heavily relied on a youth movement of Red Guards which was in a lot of ways in line with the communist and leftist youth movements in north america and europe in the 60s and 70s, and while the Soviet Union was learning how to co-habitate with the West the People's Republic of China under the Gang of Four and nominally Mao was sort of the last major bulwark of socialism emphasising revolution. At leasts thats how it was interpreted.

3.what affects did this part in chinas history affect the china we have today?

It basically delayed the introduction of capitalist reforms for ten years but in a way it didn't have a lot of lasting effect because the same people the Gang of Four set out to oppose origionally ended up succeeding them in the 80s. What it did do though is that it kept the political center in China considerably to the left of the political center in the Soviet Union and it remains more limited in how much 'reform' its willing to make which might have saved it from a Gorbachev type figure or letting the Communist Party actually lose control...or maybe not it would be purely speculative.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2005, 07:00 PM
Its really a lot more complicated then just that they were "mao's aides."


First of all the Gang of Four had an indepedent power base of their own in the Shanghai Commune (which was origionally organized by the second most prominant 'gang' member Zhang Chunqiao)
And which he disbanded a week or three later. If one can even accurately say the Shanghai Commune ever existed, since the promised elections were never held.

Their alleged "independent power base" in Shanghai sure didn't do the so-called "Gang of Four" a lick of good when Hua and Deng moved against them. Didn't do much of anything, or show any sign of existence on any significant scale.

The rest of your post, and RN's, have about as much relationship to reality.

[TC]

Originally posted by Severian+Jul 15 2005, 07:37 AM--> (Severian @ Jul 15 2005, 07:37 AM)
[email protected] 14 2005, 07:00 PM
Its really a lot more complicated then just that they were "mao's aides."


First of all the Gang of Four had an indepedent power base of their own in the Shanghai Commune (which was origionally organized by the second most prominant 'gang' member Zhang Chunqiao)
And which he disbanded a week or three later. If one can even accurately say the Shanghai Commune ever existed, since the promised elections were never held.
[/b]
Zhang didn't disband it, he just changed the name to"Shanghai Revolutionary Committee" instead of "Shanghai Commune" to be consistent with the new cultural revolutionary model for organization and to appear less threatening to Mao. It was a cosmetic change. I don't know where you got "elections were never held" from.




Their alleged "independent power base" in Shanghai sure didn't do the so-called "Gang of Four" a lick of good when Hua and Deng moved against them. Didn't do much of anything, or show any sign of existence on any significant scale.

Uh, having an independent power base doesn't mean that a group is going to win a power struggle against another group with a bigger independent power base. The point was that they weren't deriving their power from Mao, which is accurate, they created their own backing in the forum of the red guard and the army and were able to pursue an agenda clearly independent from Mao who was much less radical and more or less stopped endorsing anything they did after 1969. I mean if they really Mao's aids you would think he would have supported one of them to be party chairmen after he died instead of one of their enemies. Was Lin Biao really just an aid of Mao too, um, and if so why did he try to stage a coup? Mao might not have denounced the Gang of Four directly but he didn't really denounce Zhou and Deng either, really he gave some level of supoprt to both factions.




The rest of your post, and RN's, have about as much relationship to reality.

I know that as some kindof an Anarchist the idea that Socialist states are basically just run by just one guy and there are no meaningful elections or political contests and so forth is appealing so you guys can maintain the fantasy that there can't be democracy in a socialist state...but thats what bares no relationship to reality.

[Warren Peace]

The rest of your post, and RN's, have about as much relationship to reality.

Wow, you countered my argument so well, I just don't know what to say. :P

But... "RN", I like that, good idea.


I know that as some kindof an Anarchist the idea that Socialist states are basically just run by just one guy and there are no meaningful elections or political contests and so forth is appealing so you guys can maintain the fantasy that there can't be democracy in a socialist state...but thats what bares no relationship to reality.

Of all the different communist ideologies (Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, ect.) Maoism is actually the closest to anarchism. All these ideas say there should be an authoritarian socialist state to transition to communism, while anarchists say we don't need a socialist state, and can go directly to communism/anarchism. Maoism supports a socialist state, but says it's possible for a new bourgeois to come to power in the socialist government, so the people will need to continue fighting revolution on through the socialist state (as the radical Chinese youth did in the Cultural Revolution).

[TC]

I agree maoism is definately the most anarchist-like form of marxism-leninism, especially in the most radical strain supported by Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan that wanted anarchist-like social organization within socialist states (not like, on the frontiers of colonial states though).

[Warren Peace]

I agree maoism is definately the most anarchist-like form of marxism-leninism, especially in the most radical strain supported by Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan

True. Zhang died this year. Yao is still kickin, though.

[shadows]

Hm. Somebody's been reading Avakian's And Mao Makes Five. Oh well. Anyway, anarchists have been attracted to Maoism, and not so much to Trotskyism. Maybe Trotsky's role in suppressing Krondstadt (sic?) lingers on. Anyway, the Shanghai Commune is sometimes cited as 'anarchistic' and taking the Paris Commune of 1871 as its model. Yet, the Shanghai communards were quelled! But, tell that to the ex-anarchos of Love and Rage. Some have openly embraced Maoism, joining Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

[Warren Peace]

Hm. Somebody's been reading Avakian's And Mao Makes Five.

Actually, I've never read anything by Avakian. I kind of like the RCP though, I glanced around their site and agreed with most of what I saw.


Oh well. Anyway, anarchists have been attracted to Maoism, and not so much to Trotskyism.

Maoism has a lot in common with Trotskyism, even though Mao was more of an Anarcho-Communist than Trotsky was. Although fake Maoists and dogmatic anti-Maoists will tell you Mao was a Stalinist, he was actually a Trotskyist. When Mao was an assistant at the Peking University library, Trotsky's work inspired Mao to become a communist in the first place!

[romanm]

Shadows,

_And Mao Makes Five_ is not "Avakian's".. It is an anthology of original writings from the GPCR period with an introduction by Raymond Lotta. "RcP"=u$a publishes it under the name Banner Press. Most/All of the articles are from Peking Review.

It is a nice anthology. I think everyone should take a look for example at Jiang Qing's pseudonym (?) "Chao Hua" article on Absolute music and then compare it with the RcP=u$a's liberal line in art. And then compare to Trotsky's works on art.

Revolt Now,

Real Maoism has little in common with Trotskyism. Although there are many who claim to be Maoist who are really pushing Crypto-Trotskyism.

[shadows]

RCP is crypto-Trot? Another MIM delusion!

[TC]

Maoism has a lot in common with Trotskyism, even though Mao was more of an Anarcho-Communist than Trotsky was.

Uh, maoism really has nothing in common with trotskyism. Trotskyism is elitist and confines its struggle to the first world and industrialized movements, only recognizes revolutions by strick marxist-leninist vanguard parties as 'valid' revolutions and even then denounces socialist states as degenerate when any non-trotskyist is in power (which is like, the way it is in all of them, in history, except the soviet union for a really short bit of time).

Trotskyist and Maoist attitudes on class and organization are completely different. Trotskyism is a much more dogmatic, old, 'orthodox marxist' approach to politics, Maoism is new and adaptive.

The only think Trotskyism and Anarchy have in common too is a common dislike for real socialist states...if anarchists looked at what classic trotskyist doctrine actually is they would realize that its far more 'authoritarian' and 'statist' to use their terminology then Maoism is.

[romanm]

RCP is crypto-Trot? Another MIM delusion!

Nice response - complete dogmatism. I recommend you actually read the book you mentioned earlier - although you obviously haven't read it, since you were under the impression Avakian wrote it. Check out the essay "Has Absolute Music No Class Character" by Jiang Qing (under the name Chao Hua) and then compare it to what liberals say about the subject.

"R"cP=u$a has been exposed all over the place, so, it really isn't any use to go into it here. But, anyone who is interested can check out IRTR forums - where anyone can post as a guest in the the math 101/economics section or the MIM crypto-Trotskyism page http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/crypto.html