On Socialist Democracy and the Chinese Legal System

The Li Yizhe Debates

Anita Chan, Stanley Rosen, Jonathan Unger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138194151
• eBook ISBN: 9781317272571
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 1974, a small group of young intellectuals, the Li Yizhe group, circulated their dissident manifesto, 'On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System, ' a probing critique of the leftist authoritarianism of Mao Zedong. This title examines the writings of these dissidents as a means to better understand the views of non-Party Marxists in their struggle to defy the government and construct their own vision of a socialist China. Originally published in 1985, this title remains relevant in relation to contemporary Chinese politics and will be of interest to students of Asian Studies and Politics.

PART I. The Li Yizhe Manifesto

Li Yizhe

On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System

[Editors--This famous manifesto first appeared as a wall poster in downtown Canton in November 1974, at the height of the Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius campaign. Its subject matter went far beyond what the campaign sanctioned: in particular, it contained scathing criticism of the policies associated with a radical group in the Party that remained close to Mao (the group that more recently has been dubbed the Gang of Four).

The main themes of the poster relate to the degneration of political life during the previous half decade, and the danger of a “new class” emerging within the Party bureaucracy. These themes are drawn together in the authors’ description of political life during the early to mid 1970s as marked by polarization between the masses and their leaders, with the masses denied the legal rights and democratic freedoms necessary to restrain leaders from granting themselves special privileges. Without some established, institutionalized measures of popular control, they argue, China’s socialist system would inevitably degenerate into “feudalistic fascist despotism.”]

PREFACE

(Dedicated to Chairman Mao and the Fourth National People’s Congress)

Since August of last year, people have been expecting that the Fourth National People’s Congress would be held imminently. Though the Congress has not yet convened,¹ the following essay which we dedicated to the Congress has already been regarded as our “system” [tixi].

In this enclosed essay, we took our first steps in criticizing the “Lin Biao system.” Our critique has been developed and continued in other essays which followed this. What was unexpected was that some of our friends have regarded it as a kind of frightening system and have held us to it. Perhaps in the enclosed critique we have covered so broad an area and exposed ourselves so totally that ours may indeed be regarded as a “system.” Yet this “system,” even if we are able to admit that we do have a certain system, does not necessarily contain anything heretical to Marxism. All we have attempted is to use the weapon of Marxist thought to wash away the influences and disastrous effects of the Lin Biao System. In reality, we have not yet achieved this aim.

This new exposé of the Lin Biao System does not contradict our critique of it of one year ago. On the contrary, what has surprised us is that in many respects what we said then was later confirmed. We have made only minor revisions in the first five sections of this third draft of the essay that we are pasting up on the street. As for the essay’s sixth section (that is, the section on our hopes for the People’s Congress and our proposals regarding the legal system), the developments over the past year have made us dissatisfied with what we had initially written, and we felt that a more penetrating discussion was requisite. Accordingly, we have written this section anew. Moreover, there are questions that we merely touched on briefly last year which await elaboration, as well as new questions which have been raised, and it is of these that we wish to speak in this foreword.

The first reason why our “system” alarmed certain people was that we [dared] broach this very topic.

It has been said that anyone who has even a bit of knowledge of Marxism-Leninism will not discuss the question of “Socialist Democracy and the Legal System.” Let us say that we do not even have a scrap of knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. But we do know of the occurrence of several events in the world since the sixties: First, capitalism has been restored in most of the socialist countries, and most of the hundred or more parties no longer hold fast to Marxism-Leninism.² Second, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that occurred in China is still today little understood by a great many of our people. Third, Comrade Mao Zedong has summarized the last half-century’s practice of socialism and has formulated the basic course for the entire historical stage of socialism. We copy here his declaration in its entirety:

Socialist society covers a fairly long historical period. In the historical period of socialism, there are still classes, class contradictions, and class struggle; there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, and there is the danger of capitalist restoration. We must recognize the protracted and complex nature of this struggle. We must heighten our vigilance. We must conduct socialist education. We must correctly understand and handle class contradictions and class struggle, distinguish the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy from those contradictions that are among the people, and handle them correctly. Otherwise a socialist country like ours will turn into its opposite and degenerate, and a capitalist restoration will take place. From now on, we must remind ourselves of this every year, every month, and every day so that we can retain a rather sober understanding of this problem and have a Marxist-Leninist line.³

Hence, we know that the socialist system has to be improved. It is not perfect. In many countries, it failed to combat the new bourgeois class. The restoration of capitalism in so many countries and the necessity for a “second revolution” in China is clear evidence [of socialism’s imperfection]. The proletariat must pursue many a Great Cultural Revolution during this “fairly long historical period” in order to constantly perfect the social system.

The above points cannot be considered a matter of fundamental Marxism-Leninism, but based on this we can say quite definitely that many aspects of the problems of socialism, including the question of democracy and the legal system under socialism, may and should be fully discussed. What is so frightening about “heresies”? The truth develops from the struggle with fallacies.

Lenin has stated it well: “We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.”⁴

The second reason why our “system” alarms certain people is that in this essay a year ago, basing ourselves on the inspiration of the harsh realities of the class struggle and the basic line [of the Party], we raised the question of the newborn bourgeois class, the ways it appropriates possessions, and the struggle against it.

Just when some friends were criticizing our discourse on the social foundations of the capitalist-roaders and opportunists, a young man who is of a stratum which enjoys all sorts of privileges rebelled with a courage that Jia Baoyu could not have had.⁵ This student Zhong Zhimin’s act of withdrawing from school⁶ was no other than Li Qinglin’s angry outcry.⁷ In the privileged stratum, it stirred up just a weak echo, but among the masses the echo was magnified in resonance. This rebellious act frightened some people and encouraged others. Some were gnashing their teeth with hatred; some welcomed it wholeheartedly. Do not these different responses obliquely reflect the changes in class relationships and the new class contradictions in our country?

The essence of the appropriation of possessions by the new bourgeois class is to “turn public into private” while still maintaining a system of socialist ownership of the means of production. When a leader of the state or of a state enterprise comports himself like a member of the bourgeoisie in redistributing the proletariat’s property and power, he is in reality converting such properties and power into private ownership by the new bourgeois class.

Such a redistribution of properties and power in the manner of the bourgeoisie is manifested mainly in two areas:

The most common is that certain leaders have expanded the scope of the special care that by necessity has been provided to them by the Party and people. They turn this into political and economic privileges which are extended without limitation to their family, friends, and relatives, to the point of bartering such privileges among themselves. They use channels such as “going through the back door” to transform into a de facto hereditary status the political and economic positions of their progeny. Moreover, centered upon their own private interests, they change the socialist direction of their enterprises and practice the organizational line of sectarianism. They buttress and sustain a clique of “new nobility,” a force which stands separate from the people and whose interests come into opposition with the people’s.

More importantly, in order to protect the privileges already acquired and to obtain further privileges, they must attack those upright revolutionary comrades who stand fast to their principles. They must suppress the masses who rise to oppose their privileges and must illegally deprive these comrades and the masses of their political rights and economic interests.

In this manner, they have completed a qualitative change from being “the civil servants of the people” to “the masters of the people”; they have become what we call “those in power taking the capitalist road.” This is what we meant when we mentioned in our essay that “the capitalist-roaders and opportunists in the Party have their social roots in the newborn bourgeois class which has been hatched from privileges.”

According to the warnings of the [Party’s] basic line, for the next several hundred years, generation after generation of the new bourgeoisie will inevitably emerge regardless of the will of the people. The watershed dividing proletarian revolutionaries from conservatives and the fundamental theoretical issue which leads to the affirmation or negation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is whether one recognizes or denies that this new bourgeois class (the representatives of which are the capitalist-roaders inside the Party) constitutes the chief danger leading to capitalist restoration. If you do not today recognize this, that is okay, because you can have the help of the “Qian Shouweis” and the “Huang Guozhongs,”⁸ as well as the people regularly dispatched to China by Chiang Kai-shek. Perhaps you can hold out for twenty years. You may even stretch it to fifty years. What then after a hundred years? Eventually your recognition [of the above truths] will have to be forthcoming.

The third reason why our “system” alarms people is that we have said firmly: “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has not accomplished its task because it has not led to the masses’ firmly gripping the weapon of people’s democracy.” Is this not a negation of the Great Cultural Revolution? What then are the reasons for our firm statement?

As we confront this essay for yet another time, the revolutionary mass movement in Guangdong Province has yet again been in upsurge for the past half year. What is meaningful is that the prelude to this upsurge was almost exactly the same as that in Wuhan–a struggle of tearing down and pasting up big-character posters.

In the eyes of the foreigners, there should be no such struggles at all in China. When posters with big words were pasted up in front of the palace in Ethiopia, the press agencies in the West had no hesitation in calling them “Chinese-style big-character posters.”

However, the “Chinese-style big character posters” have in China been beset by misfortunes. There is no need to speak of what happened several years back. Only in May this year, the Canton Municipal Committee’s “Political Cityscape Cleansing Corps,” equipped with hoses and brooms, was ready at any time to clean off any big-character poster appearing in any of the main streets or narrow alleys. If it should be pointed out that they never completely cleared away the posters, it was only because the big-character posters appeared one after another in an endless flood.

Is not the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution still continuing?⁹ Who has announced the end of the mission of the big-character posters? In the essay “introducing a Cooperative,” Chairman Mao said of the big-character posters that “they should be used forever.”¹⁰ Was not this section of his discourse also “the highest directive,” and should the directive therefore not be “resolutely executed” and “resolutely abided by?” But when the revolutionary masses who had been suppressed rose up from the floor and attempted to continue to use this weapon to criticize the line of Lin Biao and to struggle for their own political and economic interests, they first had to bitterly battle for such a democratic right, which had originally belonged to them! When the big-character posters on the streets of Canton were pasted up and torn off and pasted up again in a heated atmosphere of stalemated battle, Document No. 18, in which the Chairman once more manifested his stand on big-character posters, was sent down.¹¹ After the people had been silenced under the malicious suppression of the Lin Biao line for the past several years, big-character posters once again were declared legal. Until now, the far-reaching meaning of Document No. 18 has not yet been fully laid out to the people, but it would be a big mistake if people did not see its importance. The most fundamental right of the people under a socialist society is the power of the people to manage the state and society. The precise purpose of Document No. 18 was to open up a wide scope for people to exercise precisely such rights as management and criticism. Although a large proportion of the hopes that people harbored for the revived revolutionary mass movement have never been fulfilled, the people did obtain Document No. 18, and this itself should be regarded as a great victory. Were it said that we had been too quick to conclude in the second half of the seventh year of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that it “had not accomplished its task,” we should be happy to admit this; because now, toward the end of the eighth year of the Great Revolution, the right of the people to exercise the unconditional use of big-character posters as the people’s broad democratic weapon has finally been affirmed by this historic Document No. 18. But one year ago, how many people would have been prepared to admit that the Great Cultural Revolution had entered its eighth year? Even today, if Chairman Mao had not spoken, no one would be prepared to make the admission.¹² Does this not imply the presence of certain complex problems?

The fourth reason why our “system” alarms people is that we have singled out the Lin Biao System, and pointed out the fact that it was established during the Cultural Revolution.

What is a “system”? It is the totality of all the interrelationships among matters–the whole setup. The Lin Biao System is Lin Biao’s whole package of theory, program, line, direction, policies, methods, Party style, political-study style, writing style, and general work-style–how it seeks to combat the Central Committee of the Party and the Chairman in the domains of politics, law, military affairs, economy, culture and education. It is a thing that has plagued the people and harmed the entire country. Six years ago, the establishment of the entire package of the Lin Biao System undoubtedly damaged and even took the place of Chairman Mao’s line. It was only after the September 13th Incident¹³ (a manifestation of the intensity of the uncompromisable contradictions between the Lin Biao package and the Chinese people) that the people, step by step, manifestly destroyed and repudiated the Lin Biao System. Is this not an historical fact?

Let us try and recollect some of the scenes of the Lin Biao System at its zenith.

Let us recall ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. The Li Yizhe Manifesto
• Part II. The Arrest and Political Vindication of Li Yizhe
• Part III. The Evolving Thought of Wang Xizhe and Li Zhengtian
• Notes
• Bibliography