[Translation]: The Near Impossible Road of the Chinese Revolution (4)

Original link: https://wmdpd.com/zhuan-zhong-guo-ge-ming-de-jin-hu-bu-ke-neng-zhi-lu-si/

Continue to talk about the uniqueness of the Chinese revolution.

The particularity of China’s revolutionary path No. 11 Chinese revolutionaries have created a new complex strategy for dealing with different types of people.

As I have said before, since we have chosen the most difficult and protracted line of mobilizing the broadest masses of the people for revolution, we must unite and mobilize the masses . But there are two serious problems here.

first question. The masses have never been united, and because of the scarcity of living resources and the serious injustice in their distribution, the internal contradictions in China are very acute. How can we unite the masses?

second question. Revolutionaries can choose the masses, but why should the masses choose revolutionaries? The consciousness of ordinary people is definitely not as good as that of revolutionaries. When you are doing ideological work with him, can you say, “Rising up with hundreds of millions of people and starting the revolution is the only way to achieve complete revolutionary victory, so join me in making the revolution”? How many ordinary people can this kind of ideological work do?

Chinese revolutionaries created a three-cycle compound strategy, which solved the above two problems in one fell swoop .

The first is to realize that the fact that the contradictions among the Chinese people are very fierce is itself a favorable factor for mobilizing the masses. Since survival resources are scarce and the distribution is highly unfair,

If a large amount of benefits can be squeezed out from the vested interests and handed over to the common people, the great enthusiasm of the masses can be mobilized in a short period of time. At this time, coupled with the leadership, dedication and even sacrifice of the Communists who have firm ideals and steel discipline, the masses may feel that these people are not ordinary people, and the redistribution may really be done.
Then the fire of revolution may be ignited.
And after the masses who have tasted the sweetness and saw hope are mobilized, the strength of the struggle against the very few vested interests will be greatly enhanced, thus making the struggle more handy. In this way, it is easy to establish a cycle of mobilizing the masses and fighting the enemy. With this cycle, the fire of revolution has a chance to burn.

But this step is far from enough , because there are still extensive and complex intermediate groups in Chinese society. If the strength of the cycle cannot be properly controlled, the struggle may become excessive and lead to a serious loss of revolutionary work. At this time, it needs to be matched with United Front work to form a three-cycle.

What is the object of the united war? Those who cannot be mobilized and should not be targeted.
It is easy to understand that it should not be the target of attack. What are the criteria for not being able to mobilize? I think it just can’t be integrated into the military-political mobilization system I mentioned earlier. Of course, many times there is no clear boundary between the united front personnel and the enemy being fought against. For example, struggle is often used to promote transformation.
Transform them into united front personnel or even mobilized masses (think of the transformation of KMT prisoners). The United Front will be further analyzed below.

What is the mechanism of the three cycles? It is based on the cycle between the two links of mobilizing the masses and fighting the enemy, and then adding the third link of united front work, which can both catalyze and inhibit and also be catalyzed.
If the United Front work in the middle is done well, it will be more effective to fight against a small group of enemies, and it will be more conducive to achieve the dividends needed to mobilize the masses from fighting against a small group of enemies (this is the catalytic cycle of the United Front process); If some people are listed as friends, the intensity of the cycle can be controlled and not too high (this is the united front link suppressing the cycle);
If the work of striking a small group of enemies is done well, it is easy to induce some ex-reactionaries whose reactionary stance is not firm to transform into a group who can unite the front (this is the catalysis of the united front itself); The centrists in the group will feel that the revolution is overwhelming and irreversible, and it may also be transformed into a mobilized mass (this is the United Front link from the other direction in catalyzing the cycle while being catalyzed by itself), and so on.

When the three cycles of mobilizing the masses, uniting the front, and fighting the enemy are realized, the fire of revolution may take on a controllable prairie prairie.

To realize this three-cycle, first of all, in terms of ideas, we must get rid of simple thinking, especially simple thinking in classification (such as the dichotomy of good and evil). You have to distinguish what is an enemy, what is a comrade, and what is a friend (the intermediary to be united). To make things a little more complicated, there are also two transition types between these three types. If the intermediate types are further divided into easy-to-transform, extremely difficult-to-transform, and subtypes that can be transformed through struggle according to the difficulty of transformation, the number of types will be greatly increased.

The above reasoning is not difficult to understand, but it is difficult to implement it in reality . For example, we can clearly find that some Western countries are often caught in the extremely rigid dichotomy of good and evil, or they can divide into different types, but it is not easy to accept the transformation of types. Are they stupid? I don’t think so, because this rigid situation reflects group strategy rather than individual strategy .

Of course, individuals can be very flexible, but it is difficult for groups to have complex collective analysis and action capabilities . If the faction type is complicated and time-varying, not to mention the external game, the internal may be messed up first.

Chinese revolutionaries can make groupthink so rich, layered and flexible, I think it is essentially because of the leadership of the revolutionary elite. To a large extent, this depends on continuous adjustment based on top-level design (according to experimental results), which is essentially a scientist or engineer thinking . To establish such a way of thinking from the top and drive the collective to follow this logic, the process is also tortuous, and a lot of hard work has been spent in the middle to correct the drag of various simple thinking people (including those based on class positions and those based on nationalist positions). .

A complex strategy consisting of mobilizing the masses, uniting the front, and fighting the enemy is often used until now. Of course, due to changes in the environment, the specific measures are also different. For example, in terms of mobilization, sometimes only a part of the party organization and mass public opinion need to be mobilized. In terms of combat, physical destruction is often not carried out, and priority is given to promoting transformation through struggle, and so on. But the core idea is the same. For example, when the hit person is hit, there is always a small group (although it once seemed very powerful), such as a strong united front while hitting, and so on. Everyone can experience it.

Particularities of the Chinese Revolutionary Road No. 12 Chinese revolutionaries have excellent united front work ability

It has already been said that the united front work is very important, but it is not easy to do the united front work well. There are at least two tricky issues here. The first aspect is the leniency and strictness of the division of the scope of the United Front. If the scope is too wide, the targets of the united front will be too many and chaotic, which may interfere with your decision-making or penetrate into the elements that affect your core team; if the scope is too strict, the targets of the united front will be too few, and the purpose of the united front will not be achieved. Another aspect is policy stability and change . The nature of the united front object is likely to evolve with the changing times. If your United Front policy changes too quickly, it will not be easy for the United Front target to be united by you; but if your United Front policy changes too slowly, it may not keep up with the change in the nature of the United Front target caused by environmental changes.

Let us look at the situation of the modern revolution in China.
At the beginning, I felt that the united front work of the Communist Party was still good. They united the front to the Kuomintang, started the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the cause of opposing the warlords was thriving. But soon the Communists were given a bloody education.
This time, the united front work has obviously not been done well, underestimating the ferocity of those who cannot unite the front, and the performance of their own side is too loose and too soft at the critical moment. On the other hand, during the Agrarian Revolution, there were many problems in the base areas where the struggle was too fierce and even the means were too extreme for their own comrades. The United Front work has been made too tight and too strict. Of course, we can understand the high degree of distrust and hatred of class enemies by many revolutionary comrades after the defeat of the great revolution.
But it is also extremely unfavorable for the development of the revolution to continue in this way.

After one united front mistake that was too lenient and too strict, the united front work of the revolutionaries has generally been on the right track since the period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. So what is the core of this united front strategy? I think there are three elements: a strong and rigid core, a broad united front periphery, and an unswerving united front around the main contradiction.

A strong and rigid core means that the core force of the revolution, that is, the Communist Party, must first be built into a group with iron discipline and strict political rules guided by correct ideology . Power is hard to damage your core or mislead your decisions. And with a strong rigid core, you have considerable room for expanding the scope of the united front. Even a little wider is not prone to disruptive mistakes. “Unswervingly engage in a united front around the main contradiction” ensures that the United Front policy can be adjusted in a timely manner or maintain its long-term stability according to changes in the situation . To do this, a strong core is needed, which can unify internal understanding and maintain strategic focus when long-term empathy is required, and can quickly turn around when sharp adjustments are required.

Let us still look at the experience of the revolutionaries. During the Anti-Japanese War, two things happened at the same time. One is that the integration of the Communist Party has reached an unprecedented height, which is marked by the establishment of the rectification movement and Mao Zedong Thought. This is to create a rigid core. At the same time, the scope and intensity of the party’s united front is unprecedented. Landlords, who were previously regarded as class enemies, were also the targets of the united front.
Bandits with an anti-Japanese heart, Japanese soldiers with a Marxist-Leninist heart, and warlords with a neutral intention can also join the united front.
Even at the beginning, he took off the Red Army hat and cooperated with the Kuomintang, which had a bloody feud with him. This in itself was a united front that many Red Army could not understand.
These two things must be advanced at the same time, and it will be difficult to do a good job if any one of them is neglected.

In what ways does “unswervingly engage in a united front around the main contradiction”? Take the landlord as an example. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, they were not the objects of struggle, but as soon as the war of liberation came, they were quickly transformed into objects of struggle, because the nature and tasks of the Chinese revolution at different stages had undergone fundamental changes.
There are many more such cases. For example, work in Tibet is like this. The first united front is unacceptable from the perspective of revolutionary ideals and even the morals of ordinary people, because you are uniting the front against brutal slave owners.
But the main contradiction at that time was the extremely serious frontier ethnic issue that China faced in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Solve this problem first and then consider others, so a very flexible united front strategy was used at this time.
But when the overall political and economic security situation in the country has been consolidated, when the Qinghai-Tibet Sichuan-Tibet-Xinhai-Tibet Highway has been repaired, when military and political personnel have been in Tibet for several years to find out a lot about the situation, and when the PLA has gained a certain prestige among ordinary Tibetans.
Then we can quickly change the United Front policy and engage in land and democratic reforms.

The united front principle centered on these three elements has been passed down to this day and is widely used.

Major Achievements of the Chinese Revolution

After analyzing the difficulty of the Chinese revolution and the particularity of the road to victory, let’s analyze the main achievements of the Chinese revolution.

(1) The first achievement of the Chinese revolution The Chinese people’s self-rescue movement achieved a great victory

Self-help is a more general term. If you think about it carefully, it is mainly divided into the following goals.

First, the establishment of a strong political organization and a stable social order is the basis for all peaceful development work.

Second, to pave the way for China’s transformation from a pre-industrial society to an industrialized society . It includes not only the establishment of a political organization that can lead this matter, but also a certain preliminary economic work experience, and the necessary cultural innovation of the whole society.

Three, to obtain the country’s political independence .

Fourth, to solve their own national defense and security issues.

Fifth, on the premise of solving the first four goals, try to make the price you pay not so high that it affects the stamina of development . If too much territory is lost in this process, or the proportion of the dead population is too high, or the internal ethnic relations are broken and long-term hatred is left, then even if the first four goals are achieved, there will be long-term hidden dangers or insufficient stamina. question.

Now let’s analyze how these goals were achieved in 1953, the end of the Chinese revolution.

The first and second goals are clearly achieved, and needless to say. Regarding the third goal of independence, after 1949, China has abolished various unequal treaties of Western powers and started to completely collect the assets of bureaucratic capitalism and imperialism. It can be said that the investment of the powers in China for more than 100 years has been reduced to one. Sweep away (except for some special windows such as Hong Kong) . But there is one exception here, and it seems that Sino-Soviet relations still seem to be unequal. Western observers are highly skeptical of Beijing’s independence from Moscow, and there may be some people in Moscow who take a similar position. But after the astonishing Korean War, clear-headed people can see that China’s complete independence and its emergence as a major chess player on the world stage are a foregone conclusion. Then the Soviet privileged legacy in China quickly disappeared, and a few years later China also proved its absolute independence in the most extreme form of Sino-Soviet split.

On the fourth aspect of national defense security. Since the victory of the Chinese revolution is only the starting point of China’s large-scale industrialization, it is unrealistic to demand that the national defense and security issues be resolved at the time of the victory of the revolution, only from the perspective of the extremely weak military industry . But the establishment of the Republic as a unified power itself greatly enhanced China’s self-defense capabilities. On this basis, the Korean War, which shocked the world, and the correct choice of a foreign policy that is one-sided to the Soviet Union at least in the short term have raised China’s national defense security to a new level. Most importantly, China has won perhaps no less than a generation to catch up with military technology that is too far behind . As we all know, China has indeed made a leapfrog breakthrough in the most deterrent field of two bombs and one satellite within a generation, and it has lived up to the foundation laid by the revolutionaries in modern history.

Now look at the fifth aspect.
China’s major territorial losses are Outer Mongolia. It can be said that there are regrets but the overall loss is acceptable.
But even this relatively small loss in Outer Mongolia caused great distress to China in the 1960s and 1970s. It is conceivable that if the frontier issues were not solved extremely quickly and cheaply in the late period of the Chinese revolution, the troubles would have been great in the future. In terms of population losses, the losses during the Anti-Japanese War were relatively large, but considering the power of the CCP when the all-out war of resistance broke out, to be honest, the CCP was powerless to do anything about it.
Fortunately, the war of liberation was not only short, but also the proportion of population losses was quite low. It is particularly worth mentioning that many large cities with important industrial and commercial assets have also suffered relatively low damage in the process.
This is very important to preserve the momentum of development. In terms of domestic ethnic groups, as analyzed above, the frontier issue was resolved without causing serious ethnic conflicts, and the political regionality was largely wiped out. In addition, in the process of consolidating the regime from 1949 to 1953, correct measures were taken to punish the first evil without expanding the scope of the attack. By 1953, the level of solidarity among various ethnic groups, strata, and regions in China had improved by leaps and bounds compared with the period of the Republic of China. To sum up, it can be said that the Chinese revolutionaries also handed in satisfactory answers in the fifth aspect.

Let’s do a side-by-side comparison. Many countries in modern times have also undergone revolutions and civil wars or at least great changes, but can they handle several of the above goals at the same time? England and France are too old to say. Japan and Russia took shortcuts in the 19th century, and they did not destroy the imperial power, and their national strength increased greatly, which made many Chinese feel very envious. However, the incompleteness of their revolution led to serious problems in the operation of the country with illness.
Especially the political issues are big. And these faults finally broke out in the most intense general battle of industrialization in the first half of the 20th century.
The most prominent are the various collapses of the Tsar in the late World War I and the incredible chaos of Japan before and during World War II. In the end, both regimes ended in disastrous failure.

The rise of the Soviet Union was rapid and its achievements were astonishing.

But because it seizes power too fast, the foundation is very unstable. Although the situation has been stabilized through amazing governance capabilities and great construction achievements have been made, the side effects brought about are also very large, including but not limited to the system design flaws of the republics, Stalin’s great purge and the far-reaching policies of some ethnic oppression damage, etc.
In addition, it was unlucky to meet the extremely ferocious German fascists. In World War II, young and middle-aged people lost too much, which also seriously affected the stamina of development.

The United States appears to be the biggest winner on Earth in this historical period of Chinese modern history.

But if we stretch our horizon a little further, to the scale from the mid-19th century to the present, we will also see that the American Civil War was not completely fought and the consequence of avoiding the most intense game in the Eurasian continent was that it played a major role in domestic politics. There are serious flaws in institutions and ethnic relations.

In politics, there are problems of insufficient centralization ability and too much internal friction. In fact, this system does not match the status of world hegemony. Of course, after World War II, his hard power advantage was too great, so this ineffective system could also keep him going. The flaws in ethnic relations are even more regrettable. It had a progressive performance of liberating black slaves in the Civil War, but it did not solve the serious racism problem for about 100 years after that, and it was later than the Soviet Union and China in many aspects of legal equality. It is actually a bit late to address the racial issue.

When you compare the performance of Japan, the Soviet Union, the United States, and other countries that China once regarded as a teacher, with the achievements of the Chinese revolution, you will realize how great the success of the Chinese revolutionaries was.

(2) The second achievement of the Chinese revolution created an exceptionally powerful system

The Communist Party, an organization forged by the modern revolution, has many rare advantages in the system. I’ll talk about two points that I think stand out the most.

One of the characteristics is that party organizations can maintain low-cost and high-efficiency mobilization capabilities for a long time

I have already analyzed the institutional guarantee of this matter in the previous article, especially the part on military-political relations and the economic part, so I won’t repeat it here. I used to call it the military-government system in the key political articles.

Note that there are three key words here: long-term retention, low cost, and high efficiency. Many countries cannot talk about high efficiency at all, and some countries cannot have both high efficiency and low cost. There are individual ones that are both low-cost and high-efficiency, but difficult to maintain for a long time due to too many side effects. The last example I have in mind is the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is already very powerful, and the mobilization from the civil war to industrialization to the Great Patriotic War is also amazing, but the disadvantage is that the side effects are too great. This is inseparable from the fact that it has not established a very solid party-military relationship from the very beginning.
We have also seen the final result. Starting from Khrushchev, the Soviet Union gradually lost its ability to mobilize at low cost and high efficiency. After Brezhnev’s late period, the Soviet workers’ laziness and collapse are probably no less than that of Western countries.

It is worth noting that this organizational system has been challenged by both the left and the right in the history of the republic, but fortunately it has not been shaken in the end. The reason, I think, in the final analysis is because the roots of the revolutionary stage are too deep. Why do I think the cause goes back to the revolutionary era? Because no matter whether the challenge is from the left or the right, in the end, it is the old comrades who take action to stabilize the overall situation, and these old comrades are people who have experienced the revolutionary era to build and run this organizational system.

Again, the above-mentioned achievements of the revolutionary era are only the first stage of the development of mobilizing and organizing forces. Later, in the era of peace, especially in the era after food and clothing were solved, China made another major breakthrough, creating a model of normal operation and abnormal mobilization alternately appearing one after another, which I have discussed in other key political articles. Under the combination of the military-political system and the alternate model, China’s political and social mobilization power has already opened up with other countries in the world, and there is a generational difference .

The second characteristic is that the party organization does not represent any interest group and at the same time does not separate from the people

The Party leads everything, the whole Party obeys the Central Committee, and the Central Committee comes from the cadre group. The military-political-style cadre group training mechanism is : join from a young age, it is difficult to return once you leave, and it is difficult to get promoted if you join halfway (unless you have great achievements). Hardworking and highly obedient. Going to the top requires various tests and accountability pressures, and the work resume requirements are often complex.
The assessment depends on the opinions of the departments and the grass-roots level, but promotion is entirely determined by the higher-level party committees. Being a cadre and making a fortune cannot be both. As a senior cadre, the whole family is subject to considerable constraints.

The above set of mechanisms ensures that the party does not need to use any specific interest group as the “basic disk” of power or resource provider. Therefore, no interest group is the party’s opponent.

Using economic means to infiltrate and control is basically impossible. It is possible to corrupt some people, but it is impossible to seize power. Corrupt people are in danger in this system, which is very different from the legalization of political and economic interests in many Western countries. In addition, as long as the system is not subverted in the Western system, the greater the political and economic collusion (“corruption” as the Chinese understand it), the greater the security, because it means greater power; and the greater the corruption in China’s system, the greater the security. Dangerous, because it means that the threat to power is also greater and thus more likely to be attacked by political power.

The above analysis has long been proven by the facts. I think this is also the correct understanding of “corruption may destroy the party and the country”. That is, with the existence of the party’s organizational system, in the long run, specific corruption is difficult to maintain and grow (although emerging corruption may continue to breed); if corruption wants to obtain fundamental security, only by seeking to destroy the party. Therefore , the main threat of corruption is not to jeopardize economic order or political clarity, but to be anti-Party and counter-revolutionary. On the other hand, the idea of ​​relying on corruption to maintain the interests of the party organization has no future.

At this point, it has been great, but it is not enough . There are historically small groups of power that can do this in a short period of time. The fundamental difference between the Communist Party and them is that the cadre group of the Communist Party is open to all the people.

If you are not open to the people, there are basically three outcomes.
The first is that the circle is too small and the power is too large, which leads to an unstable state (there are too many such examples), the second is the degeneration of co-governance by interest groups (there are many such examples), and the third is that you can use powerful means It has effectively maintained the position of this small power group that overwhelms all other interest groups for a long time, but the price paid is that the vitality of the whole society has been greatly affected (due to the high level of requirements for the rulers, there are not many such examples, and the Qianlong era is one of them. ). Of course, there are also states in between, for example, Putin Russia is in the second and third states.

The Communist Party avoided all three of the above outcomes by completely opening up the ascendant to the masses. So not representing any particular interest group becomes sustainable and healthy. The stability of the Western political system is based on the separation of powers, checks and balances and the transfer of responsibilities (such as transferring a lot of political responsibility to voters through election rotation), while the stability of the Chinese system is based on strict political rules (the above-mentioned military-political style mechanism) plus the broadest mass base source of cadres. Western systems are relatively easy to build and maintain. It is difficult to establish a Chinese system, but once it is established, it is not difficult to maintain it . The organization itself will replicate and continue.

So to understand China’s model of political organization is to understand how a particular revolutionary process led to its establishment. The most important factors here are two. The first is the question of the choice of the line of the Chinese revolution as mentioned earlier. First, the revolutionary advanced elements took the initiative to choose the broadest masses of the people, and then the people chose the Communist Party. The second is that the two severe setbacks suffered by the Chinese revolution resulted in the sacrifice of a large number of early comrades, and only a very small part of the revolutionary ranks survived to the victory of the revolution .
These two factors determine: First, the Chinese Communist Party’s ranks cannot be highly elitist.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the complete opening of the ascending channel to the people. Second, it is impossible for the party ranks to establish an unusually high standard of political rules in the brutal struggle. Although some aspects of the military-political-style cadre group training mechanism mentioned above were gradually stabilized after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, these seemingly extremely demanding rules that are even unreasonable in the eyes of Westerners can be accepted. The experiences of the older generation shaped the first generation of cadres who were tested to very high standards, thereby laying the foundation for the mechanisms that would later maintain and develop a high-standard military-political style.

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