The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics)

by Leys, Simon

  Mao’s anti-intellectualism was deeply rooted in his personal experiences. He never forgot how, as a young man, intellectuals had made him feel insignificant and inadequate. Later on, he came to despise them for their perpetual doubts and waverings; the competence and expertise of scholarly authorities irritated him; he distrusted the independence of their judgements and resented their critical ability. In the barracks-like atmosphere of Yan’an, a small town without culture, far removed from intellectual centres, with no easy access to books, amid illiterate peasants and brutish soldiers, intellectuals were easily singled out for humiliating sessions of self-criticism and were turned into exemplary targets during the terrifying purges of 1942–44. Thus the pattern was set for what was to remain the most characteristic feature of Chinese communism: the persecution and ostracism of intellectuals. The Yan’an brigade had an innate dislike of people who thought too much; this moronic tradition received a powerful boost in 1957, when, in the aftermath of the Hundred Flowers campaign, China’s cultural elite was pilloried; nine years later, finally, the “Cultural Revolution” marked the climax of Mao’s war against intelligence: savage blows were dealt to all intellectuals inside and outside the party; all education was virtually suspended for ten years, producing an entire generation of illiterates.

  Educated persons were considered unfit by nature to join the party; especially at the local level, resistance to accepting them was always greatest, as the old leadership felt threatened by all expressions of intellectual superiority. Official figures released in 1985 provide a telling picture of the level of education within the Communist Party, which makes up the privileged elite of the nation: 4 per cent of party members had received some university education—they did not necessarily graduate—(against 30 per cent in the Soviet Union); 42 per cent of party members only attended primary school; 10 per cent are illiterate . . .

  The first casualty of Mao’s anti-intellectualism was to be found, interestingly enough, in the field of Marxist studies. When, after fifteen years of revolutionary activity, the party finally felt the need to acquire some rudiments of Marxist knowledge (at that time virtually no work of Marx had yet been translated into Chinese!), Mao, who himself was still a beginner in this discipline, undertook to keep all doctrinal development under his personal control. In Yan’an, like an inexperienced teacher who has gotten hold of the only available textbook and struggles to keep one lesson ahead of his pupils, he simply plagiarised a couple of Soviet booklets and gave a folksy Chinese version of some elementary Stalinist-Zhdanovian notions. How these crude, banal and derivative works ever came to acquire in the eyes of the entire world the prestige and authority of an original philosophy remains a mystery; it must be one of the most remarkable instances of mass auto-suggestion in the twentieth century.

  In one respect, however, Mao Zedong Thought did present genuine originality and dared to tread ground where Stalin himself had not ventured. Mao explicitly denounced the concept of a universal humanity; whereas the Soviet tyrant merely practised inhumanity, Mao gave it a theoretical foundation, expounding the notion—without parallel in the other communist countries of the world—that the proletariat alone is fully endowed with human nature. To deny the humanity of other people is the very essence of terrorism; millions of Chinese were soon to measure the actual implications of this philosophy.

  At first, after the establishment of the People’s Republic the regime was simply content to translate and reproduce elementary Soviet introductions to Marxism. The Chinese Academy of Sciences had a department of philosophy and social sciences but produced nothing during the 1950s, not even textbooks on Marxism. Only one university in the entire country—Peking University—had a department of philosophy; only Mao’s works were studied there.

  When the Soviet Union denounced Stalin and rejected his History of the Communist Party—Short Course, the Chinese were stunned: this little book contained virtually all they knew about Marxism. Then, the Sino–Soviet split ended the intellectual importations from the USSR, and it was conveniently decided that Mao Zedong Thought represented the highest development of Marxist-Leninist philosophy; therefore, in order to fill the ideological vacuum, Mao’s Thought suddenly expanded and acquired polyvalent functions; its study became a reward for the meritorious, a punishment for the criminal, a medicine for the sick; it could answer all questions and solve all problems; it even performed miracles that were duly recorded; its presence was felt everywhere; it was broadcast in the streets and in the fields, it was put to music, it was turned into song and dance, it was inscribed everywhere—on mountain cliffs and on chopsticks, on badges, on bridges, on ashtrays, on dams, on teapots, on locomotives; it was printed on every page of all newspapers. (This, in turn, created some practical problems: in a poor country, where all paper is recycled for a variety of purposes, one had always to be very careful, when wrapping groceries or when wiping one’s bottom, not to do it with Mao’s ubiquitous Thought—which would have been a capital offence.) In a way, Mao is to Marx what Voodoo is to Christianity; therefore, it is not surprising that the inflation of Mao’s Thought precluded the growth of serious Marxist studies in China.[2]

  No tyrant can forsake humanity and persecute intelligence with impunity; in the end, he reaps imbecility and madness. When he visited Moscow in 1957, Mao declared that an atomic war was not to be feared since, in such an eventuality, only half of the human race would perish. This remarkable statement provided a good sample of the mind that was to conceive the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution.” The human cost of these ventures was staggering: the famines that resulted from the “Great Leap” produced a demographic black hole into which it now appears that as many as 50 million victims may have been sucked. The violence of the “Cultural Revolution” affected 100 million people. If, on the whole, the Maoist horrors are well known, what has not been sufficiently underlined is their asinine lunacy. In a recent issue of the New York Review, Jonathan Mirsky quoted an anecdote (from Liu Binyan, Ruan Ming and Xu Gang’s Tell the World) that is so exemplary and apposite here that it bears telling once more. One day, Bo Yibo was swimming with Mao. Mao asked him what the production of iron and steel would be for the next year. Instead of replying, Bo Yibo told Mao that he was going to effect a turn in the water; Mao misunderstood him and thought that he had said “double.” A little later, at a party meeting, Bo Yibo heard Mao announce that the national production of iron and steel would double the next year.[3]

  The anecdote is perfectly credible in the light of all the documentary evidence we have concerning Mao’s attitude at the time of the “Great Leap”: we know that he swallowed the gigantic and grotesque deceptions fabricated by his own propaganda, and accepted without discussion the pleasing suggestion that miracles were taking place in the Chinese countryside; he genuinely believed that the yield of cotton and grain could be increased by 300–500 per cent. And Liu Shaoqi himself was no wiser: inspecting Shandong in 1958, and having been told that miraculous increases had been effected in agricultural output, he said: “This is because the scientists have been kicked out, and people now dare to do things!” The output of steel, which was 5.3 million tons in 1957, allegedly reached 11 million tons in 1958, and it was planned that it would reach 18 million in 1959. The grain output which was 175 million tons in 1957, allegedly reached 375 million tons in 1958, and was planned to reach 500 million in 1959. The Central Committee solemnly endorsed this farce (Wuchang, Sixth Plenum, December 1958)—and planned for more. Zhou Enlai—who never passed for a fool—repeated and supported these fantastic figures and announced that the targets laid in the Second Five Year Plan (1958–1962) had all been reached in the plan’s first year! All the top leaders applauded this nonsense. Li Fuchun and Li Xiannian poured out “Great Leap” statistics that were simply lies. What happened to their common sense? Only Chen Yun had the courage to remain silent.

  Graphic details of the subsequent famine were provided in the official press only a few years ago, confirming w
hat was already known through the testimonies of countless eye-witnesses.

  As early as 1961, Ladany published in China News Analysis some of these reports by Chinese travellers from all parts of China:

  All spoke of food shortage and hunger; swollen bellies, lack of protein and liver diseases were common. Many babies were stillborn because of their mothers’ deficient nutrition. Few babies were being born. As some workers put it, their food barely sufficed to keep them standing on their feet, let alone allowing them to have thoughts of sex. Peasants lacked the strength to work, and some collapsed in the fields and died. City government organisations and schools sent people to the villages by night to buy food, bartering clothes and furniture for it. In Shenyang the newspaper reported cannibalism. Desperate mothers strangled children who cried for food. Many reported that villagers were flocking into the cities in search of food; many villages were left empty . . . It was also said that peasants were digging underground pits to hide their food. Others spoke of places where the population had been decimated by starvation.

  According to the Guang Ming Daily (27 April 1980), in the north-west the famine generated an ecological disaster: in their struggle to grow some food, the peasants destroyed grasslands and forests. Half of the grasslands and one-third of the forests vanished between 1959 and 1962: the region was damaged permanently. The People’s Daily (14 May 1980) said that the disaster of the “Great Leap” had affected the lives of 100 million people who were physically devastated by the prolonged shortage of food. (Note that, at the time, China experts throughout the world refused to believe that there was famine in China. A BBC commentator, for instance, declared typically that a widespread famine in such a well-organised country was unthinkable.)

  Today, in order to stem the tide of popular discontent which threatens to engulf his rule, Deng Xiaoping is invoking again the authority of Mao. That he should be willing to call that ghost to the rescue provides a measure of his desperation. Considering the history of the last sixty years, one can easily imagine what sort of response the Chinese are now giving to such an appeal.

  Deng’s attempts to revive and promote Marxist studies are no less unpopular. Marxism has acquired a very bad name in China—which is quite understandable, though somewhat unfair: after all, it was never really tried.

  1990

  *Review of Laszlo Ladany: The Communist Party of China and Marxism 1921–1985: A Self-Portrait (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1988).

  THE CURSE OF THE MAN WHO COULD SEE THE LITTLE FISH AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN

  SINCE the Peking massacres,* the question has already been put bluntly to me several times: Why were most of our pundits so constantly wrong on the subject of China? What enabled you and a tiny minority of critics to see things as they really were, and why did hardly anyone ever listen to you?

  At first I declined the invitations to write on this theme. The idea of sitting atop a heap of dead Chinese bodies to cackle triumphantly “I told you so! I told you so!” like a hen that has just laid an egg is not particularly appealing. Furthermore, for the first time in many decades, there is a remarkable and truly moving unanimity on the issue of China. This should be a cause for some comfort—actually it is the only heartening aspect that can be found in the present nightmare. With such unanimity, it should even become possible to exert some useful influence on public opinion, and then also on our politicians. Thus, this is certainly not the time to settle old accounts or to revive ancient polemics. In fact, there never should be a time for such a mean and destructive exercise; when it is a matter of finally arriving at the truth, there can be no latecomers, and we know from the Gospel that the workers who come only at the end of the afternoon are entitled to the same reward as those who have been labouring in the vineyard since daybreak.

  If we consider it from a more universal and philosophical angle, however, one question might be of real interest: How and why do we usually endeavour to protect ourselves against the truth?

  It would be grossly unfair to ask, for instance: Why did Shirley MacLaine or Professor Fairbank make their notorious statements about China? (One will remember, for example, that at a time when China had sunk into an abyss of misery, oppression and terror, the distinguished historian from Harvard wrote: “The Maoist revolution is, on the whole, the best thing that has happened to the Chinese people in many centuries.”) A more pertinent question would be: Why are we forever willing to vest Shirley MacLaine and Professor Fairbank with so much intellectual and moral authority? For, in the end, the only authority they can ever possess is the one we are giving them.

  What people believe is essentially what they wish to believe. They cultivate illusions out of idealism—and also out of cynicism. They follow their own visions because doing so satisfies their religious cravings, and also because it is expedient. They seek beliefs that can exalt their souls, and that can fill their bellies. They believe out of generosity, and also because it serves their interests. They believe because they are stupid, and also because they are clever. Simply, they believe in order to survive. And because they need to survive, sometimes they could gladly kill whoever has the insensitivity, cruelty and inhumanity to deny them their life-supporting lies.

  When I am told that I was dead right all along on the subject of communist China, such a compliment (for it is generally intended as a compliment) can hardly flatter my vanity; indeed, forcing me as it does to re-examine the reasons for which I had to adopt my rather lonely stand, the results of such an examination give me little cause for self-satisfaction, and even less reason to be sanguine about the future. As far as I am concerned, I could already foresee my fate many years ago; the writing is on the wall (and ironically, it may not be in Chinese).

  Let us not kid ourselves. The facts which I have been describing during these last twenty years may have been distasteful and unpalatable—they were also public knowledge. They were all too easy to collect—there was no need to search for them, they kept coming at you; their evidence was as plain and direct as a punch on the nose. My first encounter with communist political practice was in 1967 in Hong Kong, when I found on my doorstep the dying body of a courageous Chinese journalist—seconds after he had been horribly mutilated by communist thugs. After that first elementary introduction to communist politics, the rest was clear sailing. For the next few years, I merely listened to the conversations of a few Chinese friends and every day I read a couple of Chinese newspapers over breakfast. This modest intellectual equipment eventually enabled me to write four books on Chinese current affairs, which apparently were quite sound and reliable, since their contents have been confirmed by the subsequent developments of history and by countless testimonies of unimpeachable Chinese witnesses.

  Yet I dare affirm that, in these four books—even though they passed for a while as shocking, scandalous and heretical—it would be impossible to find a single revelation, a single original view or personal idea. From beginning to end, I merely translated and transcribed what would have appeared at the time, to any reasonably informed Chinese intellectual, as mere common sense and common knowledge—tragic, yes, but also utterly banal. The only technical competence required for this task—an expertise that could hardly be deemed exceptional, since it is shared by more than 1 billion people on earth—was a good knowledge of the Chinese language. In a way, with my modest transcriptions, I was turned into the ultimate Bouvard and Pécuchet of Chinese politics.

  It seems rather apposite to evoke here the image of Flaubert’s diligent and earnest imbéciles. If indeed a man of middling intelligence (whose courage is, alas, well below average) could perform a task which most of his equally well-informed and much brighter colleagues would never have contemplated touching, it is quite obvious that, in order to do this, besides the basic prerequisite of language which I have just mentioned, only one qualification was necessary: an uncommon degree of foolishness.

  Among primitive tribes, idiots and madmen are the objects of particular respect and enjoy certain
privileges; since their condition frees them from the normal constraints of prudence and wisdom, they alone can be forgiven for speaking the truth—an activity that would naturally not be tolerated from any sane person. For Truth, by its very nature, is ugly, savage and cruel; it disturbs, it frightens, it hurts and it kills. If, in some extreme situations, it is to be used at all, it must be taken only in small doses, in strict isolation, and with the most rigorous prophylactic precautions. Whoever would be willing to spread it wildly, or to unload it in large quantities, just as it comes, is a dangerous and irresponsible person who should be restrained in the interest of his own safety, as well as for the protection of social harmony.

  Ancient Chinese wisdom already expounded this notion; there is in the book of Lie Zi (third century BC) a parable about a man whose particular talent enabled him to identify thieves at first sight: he only needed to look at a certain spot between the eye and the brow, and he could recognise instantly whether a person was a thief. The king naturally decided to give him a position in the Ministry of Justice, but before the man could take up his appointment, the thieves of the kingdom banded together and had him assassinated. For this reason, clear-sighted people were generally considered cripples, bound to come to a bad end; this was also known proverbially in Chinese as “the curse of the man who can see the little fish at the bottom of the ocean.”