Anti-Confucianism: Mao's Last Campaign

Author(s): A. James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang

Source: Asian Survey , Nov., 1979, Vol. 19, No. 11 (Nov., 1979), pp. 1073-1092
Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2643955

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Asian Survey

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ANTI-CONFUCIANiSM: MAO'S
LAST CAMPAIGN

A. James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang*

THE EFFORT TO PUT TOGETHER a plausible analysis of

any discrete period of political activity in China is beset by a number
of fundamental problems. In the first instance, such activity is generally
conducted in language that employs allusions that are almost impene-
trable to foreign observers. Chinese political activity expresses itself in
a kind of "communication code" that is presumably transparent to par-
ticipants, but opaque to outsiders.' Secondly, there is a serious informa-
tion short-fall in terms of available data. We often do not know who is
doing precisely what, and where they might be doing it. Frequently it
requires years, if not decades, to collect enough information to trace the
activities of particular individuals.
Both kinds of problems beset any treatment of the Anti-Confucian
Campaign that occupied China for about two years, beginning roughly
at the end of 1973 and continuing through 1975, almost until the death
of Mao Zedong in September 1976. The campaign was conducted in the
peculiar communication code characteristic of China, rampant with ref-
erences to historical figures in the past, and veiled allusions to analogues
in the present. All of which has prompted writers to describe the cam-
paign as "esoteric," activated by motives "difficult to fathom."2
In spite of these difficulties, we are obliged to attempt to make some
sense out of what seems to have been a very important campaign. Fol-
lowing the ravages of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and

*The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and support of the Institute of
International Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Pacific Cul-
tural Foundation in the preparation of this article.
1 See Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "The Use and Abuse of Ideology in the Study of
Contemporary China," China Quarterly (CQ), no. 61 (1975), p. 138; Charles Bettle-
heim, China Since Mao (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), p. 100.
2 Richard Wich, "The Tenth Party Congress: The Power Structure and the Suc-
cession Question," CQ, no. 58 (April/May, 1974), p. 247; John B. Starr, "China in
1974: 'Weeding through the Old to Bring Forth the New,'" Asian Survey (AS), XV:1
(January 1975), p. 1.

1073

? 1979 by the Regents of the University of California

0004-4687/79/111073 + 20$00.50

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1074 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

almost immediately antecedent to the campaign against the Gang of

Four, the Anti-Confucian Campaign occupied critical political space.
During its course, it swept some of the old Party cadre from power. In
fact, when Deng Xiaoping was removed, for the second time, from his
positions of authority at the close of the campaign, one of the charges
levelled against him was his commitment to "Confucian educational
thinking," with its "respect for discipline and severe teachers," and its
elevation of "knowledge above all else."3
The Anti-Confucian Campaign seems to have been part of a pro-
gram to insinuate the Gang of Four into the power center of the nation.
At the height of the campaign, Wang Hungwen, a relative newcomer,
was elected Second Vice-Chairman of the Party, Jiang Qing acceded to
undisputed control of Chinese cultural affairs, and an attempt was un-
dertaken to have Zhang Chunqiao elected Premier. In fact, the current
charges are that the Gang of Four-Jiang, Wang, Zhang, and Yao Wen-
yuan-had complete control of the mass media during the campaign,
and manipulated it to "falsely accuse Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and
a whole group of old cadres" in its struggle to seize political power."4
To what extent Mao, himself, collaborated in any of this is difficult
to ascertain. We cannot be at all certain that a power struggle was the
central motive of the campaign. At the moment the materials available
deal largely with the doctrinal and ideological aspects of the campaign.5
aspects significant and interesting in their own right.
This article offers an interpretation of the ideological intentions of
the Anti-Confucian Campaign significantly different from that advanced
by Merle Goldman.6 Needless to say, the present interpretation is ten-
dered as one that is essentially heuristic-a working hypothesis. Any
convincing account of the campaign must necessarily await the fullness
of data that only time and an improved access to information can pro-
vide.

From the'7 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the

Anti-Conhician Campaign

In "China's Anti-Confucian Campaign: 1973-74," Merle Goldman

delivered what must be one of the best analyses of the campaign. Gold-
man conceives the campaign to have been a deliberate retreat from the

3 Chi Hsin, The Case of the Gang of Four (Hong Kong: Cosmos, 1977), p. 153.
4 CCP Central Committee Document No. 37, and Renmin Ribao (RMRB)
(People's Daily), April 19, 1978, as reported by Yen Chi and Chiang Ch'i-chi in Min
Pao Daily News, September 13, 14, and May 2, 1978.
5 Most, if not all, of the available interpretations of this campaign deal with its
ideological aspects, such as Merle Goldman, "China's Anti-Confucian Campaign,
1973-74," CQ, no. 63 (September 1975), pp. 435-462; Tu Wei-ming, "Confucianism:
Symbol and Substance in Recent Times, Asian Thought and Society: An Interna-
tional Review 1:1 (April 1976), pp. 42-66; Peter R. Moody, Jr., "The New Anti-
Confucian Campaign in China: The First Round," AS, XIV: 4 (April 1974).
pp. 307-324.
6 Goldman, "China's Anti-Confucian Campaign."

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1075

radical policies of the Cultural Revolution, an effort at retrenchment

after the surge of mobilization. The central themes of the campaign
were centralization, institutionalization, ideological unity, and an em-
phasis on economic production, themes that had been compromised by
the volcanic events of the Cultural Revolution.7
However plausible the narrative, Goldman's account is open to a
number of significant objections. In the first place, almost every parti-
cipant in the campaign conceived it not as a retreat but, in some sense,
a continuation and a consolidation of the struggle begun with the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This would include not only those
subsequently identified as the Gang of Four, but "moderates" like Zhou
Enlai as well. On February 24, 1974, for example, in a speech welcoming
Zambian President Kaunda, Zhou maintained:

within the whole country, a high tide of the struggle to criticize Lin
Biao and Confucius has been stirred up. Lin Biao and Confucius are
the reactionaries who attempt to turn back the wheels of history. This
struggle . . . has a great immediate significance and profound historic
meaning to the consolidation and development of the great achieve-
ments of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.. ."8

Clearly, one cannot take the Chinese leadership at its word because
of the prevalence of the closed communication system within which all
must operate. But the impression that all participants understood the
campaign to be a continuation of the Cultural Revolution9 in "another
form," and at "another level," seems to be borne out by the persistence
and continuity of themes common to both. While the Anti-Confucian
Campaign officially commenced with the beginning of 1974, the con-
cerns that characterized the campaign can be identified as early as the
height of the Cultural Revolution.
On January 10, 1967, for example, Renmin Ribao published two
articles contributed by the Mao Zedong Red Guard of Beijing Univer-
sity that insisted that "to struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy,
and throughly eradicate . . . reactionary Confucianism is one of our im-

7 Ibid., pp. 436f., 439. There are, of course, a number of alternative accounts
that take a position significantly different from that of Goldman. Characteristic of
these is Joseph WV. Esherick, "On the Restoration of Capitalism," Modern China,
V:1 (January 1979); the "Symposium on Mao and Marx," ibid., 11:4 (October 1976),
111:1-2 (January and April 1977); Charles Bettelheim, "The Great Leap Backward,"
Monthly Review, XXX:3 (July-August 1978) and his China Since Mao; and the in-
troduction by Raymond Lotta to And Mao Makes 5 (Chicago: Banner, 1978).
8 Beijing Ribao (Beijing Daily), February 25, 1974.
9 In an interview with a Yale University delegation in 1974, Yang Rongguo,
regarded by many as the chief ideologue for the Anti-Confucian Campaign, said that,
"The objective of the Cultural Revolution was to replace the old with the new, to
defeat the capitalists in power, the Anti-Lin Biao, Anti-Confucian Campaign is the
continuous development and deeper penetration of that movement." See Chao Hao-
sheng, "A Visit with Yang Jung-kuo to Discuss the Criticism of Lin Piao and Con-
fucius" ("Fang Yang Jung-kuo t'an p'i-Lin p'i-K'ung"), The Seventies (Ch'i-shih
nien-tai), No. 55 (August 1974), p. 11.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1076 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

portant tasks in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."10 Through-

out 1969, 1970, and 1971 a number of articles attacking the Confucian
tradition appeared in the Jiefang Junbao, Guangming Ribao, and Ren-
min Ribao.1"
When Zhao Jibin's On the Question of Confucius' Execution of
Sho Zhongmao (Guanyu Kongzi zhu Shao Zhongmao di wenti) was pub-
lished in 1973, the title page indicated that the materials had been col-
lected in draft form in October 1969, four years before. Similarly, the
Symposium of Opinions Concerning the Worship of Confucius and the
Restoration of Antiquity by Scholars of the Reactionary and Landlord
Bourgeois Classes Since the AMay Fourth Movement (Wusi yilai fandong-
pai dizhu zuchan fieji xuezhe zunkong fugu yanlun jilu), published by
the People's Publishing House in January, 1974, when the campaign had
officially begun, was a collection of essays put together (as indicated on
the title page) in November 1969. All apparently had been part and
parcel of the intellectual efforts made to support the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution. Such evidence suggests that the Anti-Confucian
Campaign had begun to take on shape during the Cultural Revolution
and that while its association with the anti-Lin Biao campaign gave it
particular salience, the association was more contingent than essential.'2
On July 13, 1972, for example, Zhe Zhun published an essay di-
rected against "The Reactionary Nature of the Theory of Innate Genius
as Seen from the FHistory of Philosophy (Cong zhexueshi kan tiancailun
di fandongxing)," in the Guangming Ribao. While adherence to the
theory of innate genius was later to become a standard objection to Lin
Biao, the charge was not advanced in Zhe's article.13 Only in November
1972, a full year after the death of Lin Biao, with the publication of
Apriorismn in the History of Chinese Philosophy, was the connection
firmly established.1'4 Both Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao had worshipped at

10 "The 'Confucius Study Conference' is a Black Association by Which the

Demons and Monsters Attacked the Party" ("'Kongzi taolunhui' shi niugui sheshen
xiangdang gongji hehui"), and "What Poison Did the Demons and Monsters Spread
in the 'Confucius Study Conference'" ("Niugui sheshen zai 'Kongzi taolunhui' shang
fangle xie shenmo du"), RMRB, January 10, 1967.
1I "The Ghosts of the Confucius Shop and Today's Class Struggle ("Kongjiadian
di youling yu xianshi di jieji douzheng"), Jiefang Junbiao (Liberation Army Daily),
June 13, 1969; "Carry the Battle of 'Down with Confucius' Shop' Down to the End"
("Ba 'dadao Kongjiadian' di zhandou jinxing daodi"), Guangming Ribao (Guang-
ming Daily), January 19, 1970; "Criticizing Confucius' Educational Thought" ("Pipan
Kongqiu di jiaoyu sixiang"), RMRB, July 19, 1971.
12 Presumably, Lin Biao's "worship" of Confucius is evidenced in his plan for
an armed coup, the "Outline of Project '571'," and in his allusions to Confucian
aphorisms in his personal notes and handwritten verses to his wife and son. See
Chinese Law and Government, V:3-4 (Fall-Winter 1972-73), pp. 43-57; "CCP Central
Committee Document No. 1 (1974)," Issues and Studies (IS), XI:4 (April 1975),
pp. 91-114.
13 See Su IKuang-ming, "The Theory of 'Genius' is Pure Deception," Workers,
Peasants and Soldiers Critize Lin Piao and Confucius (Peking: Foreign Languages
Press, 1976), pp. 58-62.
14 Apriorism in the Histo-y of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexueshi shang
di xianyanlun), edited by the Philosophy Department of Peking University (Peking:
People's Publishing House, 1972).

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1077

the shrine of Confucius and had thus irretrievably given themselves

over to "counterrevolution," a counterrevolution directed against the
achievements of the Cultural Revolution.
What seems to have occurred as the Cultural Revolution drew to
a close was a hardening of the Maoist position with respect to the Con-
fucian tradition. Given their ideological predispositions, of course, the
Chinese Communists have always been tendentially anti-Confucian. But
at least until the advent of the Cultural Revolution, they had remained
ambivalent with respect to Confucius. For example, Hou Wailu wrote
in 1958 that there were "some progressive ideas in [the] teachings [of
Confucius]."15 Liu Shaoqi's How to be a Good Communist, a handbook
for the training, of Communists until the Cultural Revolution, referred
to both Confucius and Mencius with some regularity.1 And as late as
1961-1962, the Chinese Communists still convened Confucius Study
Conferences (Kongzi yanjiiuhui) because some "progressive ideas" could
still be discovered in the tradition of Confucianism.
Mao himself said in 1938 that "we should sum up our history from
Confucius to Sun Yat-sen and take over this valuable legacy."17 In 1964,
Mao lamented that the Party had "cast aside the mainstream of Con-
fucianism." Confucius, in fact, "understood something of the suffering
of the masses."'8 He went on to recount how at one time he himself had
"believed deeply in Confucius. . ." and affirmed that "Confucius . . . was
rather democratic."'9 In the course of the Cultural Revolution, how-
ever, Mao's ideas seemed to have undergone some significant change. By
the time of the Lin Biao affair he began to address himself explicitly to
certain theoretical questions, namely, "idealist apriorism" and the "ques-
tion of genius," both themes that were to surface and resurface in the
subsequent Anti-Confucian Campaign.20
Between 1965 and 1974, there transpired a massive revision in the
Maoist assessment of the Confucian tradition. In 1974, Yang Rongguo
published his Confucius: "Sag-e" of the Reactionary Classes, which iden-
tified Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, and all the reactionaries in Chinese history
as worshippers of Confucius. Yang specifically abjured his earlier sug-
gestions that anything progressive could be found in the thought of
Confucius and the Confucianists. Everything in Confucius was reac-
tionary. He was a parasite who "stubbornly defended slavery," an ideal

15 Hou Wai-lu, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Peking: Foreign Lan-

guages Press, 1959), p. 6.
16 Liu Shao-ch'i, How to be a Good Communist (Peking: Foreign Languages
Press, 1965), pp. 6, 13, 17, 20, 48, 49, 50.
17 Mao Tse-tung, "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National
War," Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Languages, 1965-77), II, p. 209.
18 Mao Tse-tung, "Remarks at the Spring Festival: Summary Record. 13 February
1964," Chairman Mao Talks to the People, edited by Stuart Schram (New York:
Pantheon, 1974), pp. 206, 208; see pp. 203f.
19 Mao, "Talk on Questions of Philosophy. 18 August, 1964," ibid., pp. 213, 215.
20 Mao, "Summary of Chairman Mao's Talks with Responsible Comrades at
Various Places during his Provincial Tour. From the Middle of August to 12 Septem-
ber, 1971," ibid., p. 293.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1078 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XD(, No. 11, November 1979

ist and a fraud, a purveyor of poison, the wielder of an "invisible knife

that killed without leaving a trace of blood."21
There was no longer any ambivalence in the Party's position. Con-
fucianism, in its entirety, was to be explicitly rejected in the defense of
the Cultural Revolution. The entire tradition, including Confucius
(551-479 B.c.), Mencius (circa 371-289 B.C.), Tung Chung-shu (circa
179-104 B.C.), and Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529), was subjected to the
most exacerbated criticism. In an article that marked the official com-
mencement of the Anti-Confucian Campaign, Renmin Ribao identified
both Confucius and Mencius as the reactionary ideologues of slavery.22
Wang Yang-ming, who lived more than two millenia after Confucius,
was the philosopher of a decadent landlord class.23 And Tung Chung-
shu was the principal architect of a retrograde regime, in the service of
a reactionary autocracy, and one of the principal sources of Lin Biao's
revisionism.24
Defending a slave system that had collapsed, Confucianism lodged
itself in the new feudal system as "reactionary poison." Throughout the
long, transition from one economic system to another, Confucianism
continued to serve reaction. In the modern world, reactionaries of all
kinds have sought its assistance in obstructing the long march from
social revolution to communism. Just as the first Confucianists had
sought to restore the moribund slave system in the face of feudal revolu-
tion, the modern Confucianists defended the "bourgeoisie" in its re-
sistance to the gains of the Cultural Revolution. The socialist revolution
must successfully face the challenge of a reactionary "line" represented
by Confucianists if the advances of the Cultural Revolution were to be
consolidated.
It seems reasonably clear that the anti-Confucianism of the Anti-
Confucian Campaign had begun to manifest itself at the time of the
Cultural Revolution, and in that sense a certain theme and conceptual
continuity linked them together. If there were discontinuities between
them, these would have to be sought elsewhere.

The Anti-Confucianism of the Campaign

In her essay, Merle Goldman identifies the "anti-Confucianism" of

the campaign with certain substantive policies, rather than any ideo-
logical concerns. She argues that the central preoccupations of the cam-
paign involved efforts to recentralize, reinstitutionalize, restore ideo-
logical unity, and augment economic production. In other words, the
Anti-Confucian Campaign was designed to foster a retrenchment against

21 Yang Jung-kuo, Confucius: "Sage" of the Reactionary Classes (Peking: Foreign

Languages Press, 1974), pp. 65, 14, 19, 20, 23, 30, 33, 35.
22 RMRB, February 2, 1974.
'23 Apriorism in the History of Chinese Philosophy, p. 26.
24 RMRB, January 31, 1974; "Why Lin Biao Praised Tung Chung-shu" ("Lin
Biao weishemo chuipeng Tung Chung-shu"), RMRB, February 27, 1974.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1079

the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. "Confucianists" were identified

as those who sought to obstruct such a retrenchment.
In making her case, for example, Goldman cites an article by Yang
Rongguo, written in 1972, in which he castigated the modern "Con-
fucianists" for their neglect of practical economic realities. Their in-
difference to economic growth was invidiously compared to the anti-
Confucian Legalists of antiquity who advocated that the people should
"fully tap the productivity of the land," and "bring their strengths into
full play to become rich and to work to become noble."25 According to
Goldman, all this implies a retreat from the Cultural Revolution, and
from its rejection of material incentives in favor of ideological and
moral incentives.
Such a construction of Yang's account seems perfectly plausible.
What it does not answer, however, is the question of why, in order to
retreat from the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, it was necessary to
attack the Confucian tradition. A case can be made that the Confucian-
ists did not neglect the question of economic productivity. On the con-
trary, the Confucian tradition is alive with admonitions that the "peo-
ple's livelihood" be protected and enhanced. For example, in Ta-hsueh
(The Great Learning), the Chinese were admonished to "let there be
activity in production, and economy in the expenditure. Then the
wealth will always be sufficient."26 Mencius repeatedly insisted that
rulers must assure the husbanding of resources and the mobilization of
collective energy so that "the people may be made rich . . . [and] their
wealth ... be more than can be consumed.... A sage governs the em-
pire so as to cause pulse and grain to be as abundant as water and fire."'7
In effect, there are as many enjoinments to productivity in the
Confucian as there are in the non- and anti-Confucian traditions of
China. One finds Maoist injunctions concerning productivity and econ-
omy in the very Confucian tradition that the campaign attacked.
Similarly, if the protagonists of the Anti-Confucian Campaign were
seeking philosophical justification in their search for ideological unity,
they need not have searched outside the Confucian tradition. For the
Confucianists, the central notion of 1i (propriety) implies the prevalence
of a collective ethical and behavioral code sustained and enforced by
social tradition and public sanction.28 This code can be found in Ch'un-

25 Yanog Rongguo (Jung-kuo), "Struggle Between Two Lines in the Ideological

Sphere During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period-
Social Changes During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period
as Seen From the Struggle of Views Between the Confucian and Legalist Schools,"
Hung-ch'i (HC, Red Flag), no. 12 (1972); abridged in Peking Review (PR), no. 9
(1974).
26"Commentary of the Philosopher Tsang," The Great Learning (Ta-hsueh),
in The Four Books, translated by James Legge (Taipei: Culture Book, 1975), chap.
10, section 19, p. 37.
27 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, in The Four Books, bk. 7, part 32, chaps.
23, 27.
28 See Leonard S. Hsfi, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism (London:
George Routledge and Sons, 1932), pp. 35, 48f.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1080 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

ch'iu (The Spring and Autumn Annals), which was calculated to show
"the distinctions between right and wrong. It avoids indecisions. It
points out the good as good, the bad as bad, the worthy as worthy, and
the unworthy as unworthy.... It is the keynote to the royal doctrine."29
In effect, the Confucian tradition could easily be pressed into the
service of both ideological uniformity and political unity. In Lun-yu
(The Confucian Analects), government was characterized as the "north
star which keeps its place while all other stars turn toward it."30 The
ruler was the yuan-shou (the source, the chief), the fountainhead of all
authority. The entire conception of government turned on the convic-
tion that the absence of a central authority would promote confusion
and anarchy.31
And if the Anti-Confucian Campaign was directed against the
Confucian tradition because "Confucians inhibited the development of
science and technology" while anti-Confucians appreciated "science and
technology, improved the techniques of agricultural production, water
conservation, and canal and dam building,"32 one is again puzzled. Con-
fucian texts are alive with the approval of the "hydraulic monarchs"
who brought China's vast water systems under control.33 There are
regular admonitions to "plow deep" and increase agricultural yield.
Carson Chang had even characterized the Confucian philosophy of
Wang Yang-ming as "scientific in attitude."34 In fact, the Confucian tra-
dition is so rich in elements that it would not be difficult to patch to-
gether a collection of allusions to the necessity for centralization, insti-
tutionalization, ideological unity, technological improvement, and an
emphasis on economic productivity.

Sun Yat-sen, Confucianism, and Anti-Confucianism

Sun Yat-sen, whom Mao identified as a "precursor" of revolutionary

China,35 specifically employed Confucianism to put together a political
program of national unity, ideological integrity, mass discipline, scien-
tific advancement, and accelerated economic development. These were
precisely the ends that Goldman claims to have animated the Anti-
Confucian Campaign. Yet Sun's program, substantially the same as that
of the "anti-Confucianists," was legitimatized by appeal to the Confu-
cian tradition.

29 Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Historical Records (Shih-chi), vol. I, preface, as cited, ibid

p. 56.
30 Confucian Analects, in The Four Books, bk. 2, chap. 1.
31 This finds particular expression in Shu-ching, the Book of History, part 4,
bk. 4.
32 Goldman, "China's Anti-Confucian Campaign," p. 449.
33 See The Works of Mencius, bk. 3, part 1, chap. 4, para. 7; bk. 3, part 2, chap.
9, para. 4, 11.
34 Carsun Chang, Wang Yang-ming: Idealist Philosopher of the Sixteenth Cen-
tury (New York: St. John's University, 1962), p. 14.
35 Mao, "China's Great Leap Forward: December 1964," Chairman Mao Talks
to the People, p. 131.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1081

There can be little doubt that Sun conceived his revolutionary pro-
gram inspired by traditional Confucian philosophy. Shortly before his
death in 1925, he was asked to identify the intellectual inspiration of
his revolutionary doctrines. Without hesitation, and apparently with
complete conviction, he responded that his thought was a "development
and continuation of the ancient Chinese doctrines of Confucius."36 His
references to Confucius and Mencius were copious, and he specifically
invoked the works of Wang Yang-ming in "the hope of leading China
up the steps of progressive modern science."37
In The International Development of China,38 Sun had put to-
gether an ambitious program for the economic modernization and in-
dustrialization of the new China he saw rising out of the wreckage of
the Manchu dynasty. It was a program for infrastructural development,
fossil fuel excavation, communications articulation, agricultural mod-
ernization, and accelerated industrial growth and expansion. His plans
included the construction of 100,000 miles of railways, one million miles
of macadamized roadways, a network of waterways, and a scheme for
water conservancy. I-le anticipated the development of commercial har-
bors comparable in capacity with that of New York City. He addressed
himself to a program for hydroelectric power generation, and the con-
struction of iron and steel works to supply the needs of such vast de-
velopmental projects. He spoke of reforestation and irrigation plans that
would stabilize and render arable enormous regions of northern and
central China. All this he conceived as compatible with his commitment
to the Confucian tradition. As early as his "Reform Memorandum" to
the Manchu government in 1894, when he bruited the first outlines of
this program, he had alluded to the support of the Confucian tradition
as its warrant.39
And when Sun reorganized his followers into the Chinese Revolu-
tionary Party (Chung-hua ko-min-tang), after his revolutionary efforts
had been thwarted, he conceived the new party to be the embodiment
of unity, without factions or internal dissention.40 It was to have an
ideological integrity that would insure unanimity in strategy and tac-
tics. All members must take a personal oath of loyalty to Sun and to
his "Three Principles of the People."
Once again, Sun held all this to be fully compatible with the Con-
fucian tradition. He maintained that China's "ancient morality" had

86 As cited in Wou Sao-fong, Sun Yat-sen: Sa Vie et Sa Doctrine (Paris: Les

presses universitaires de France, 1929), p. 41.
37 Sun Yat-sen, Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary (London: Hutchinson, in.d.),
p. 7.
38 Sun Yat-sen, The International Development of China (Taipei: China Cul-
tural Service, n.d.).
39 Sun, "Memorandum to Li Hung-chang on Saving the Nation" ("Shang Li
Hung-chang ch'en chiu-kuo ta-chi shu"), Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen (Kuo-fu
ch'uan-chi) (Taipei: Kuomintang Party History Committee, 1973), III, pp. 1-11.
40 For an effective account of this period, see Edward Friedman, Backward
Toward Revolution: The Chinese Revolutionary Party (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974).

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1082 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

sought to inculcate loyalty, obedience, and sacrifice unto death if need

be.41 The ancients had taught that internecine competition weakened
the body politic. If the nation was to prevail it must suppress "unre-
strained license."42 China, therefore, would have to be a unitary state
guided by a unitary party43-a special kind of Chinese democracy, in-
spired by the ancient tradition of Confucian ideology.44 Thus, in his
final ideological exposition, Sun advocated a revival of this tradition:
"China has a specimen of political philosophy so systematic and so clear
that nothing has been discovered or spoken by foreign statesmen to
equal it. It is found in the Great Learning,"45 one of the Confucian
Four Books.
In substance, Sun Yat-sen's program was remarkably similar, in in-
tention, to that which presumably prompted the Anti-Confucian Cam-
paign. Yet Sun never found it necessary to abandon Confucius, Mencius,
or Wang Yang-ming.46 It may well have been the case that the substan-
tive goals of the Anti-Confucian Campaign included unity, centraliza-
tion, political stability, ideological conformity, increased economic pro-
ductivity, but their advocacy hardly required attacks on the Confucian
tradition.
Why the Chinese Communists chose to attack the Confucian tradi
tion with such vehemence cannot therefore be explained by a simple
concern with such substantive issues. For about half a century the
Chinese had subjected the Confucian school to a standard "Marxist"
critique, but never felt it necessary to denigrate the entire tradition as
irremediably and irretrievably retrograde. Clearly, the decision to un-
dertake such an enterprise cannot plausibly be explained by the concern
for unity, discipline, science, and increased economic activity.

Class Struggle and the Problem of Chinese Social History

Actually, beneath the surface concerns with substantive problems,

the literature of the Anti-Confucian Campaign contains the elements
of a much more fundamental argument. It is an argument that turns on
the issue of how Chinese history is to be understood. Its origins are to
be discerned as early as the 1950s when Chinese Communist historians,
in their treatment of China's social history, accepted the periodization

41 Sun, San Min Chu I (The Three Principles of the People) (Taipei: China
Publishing, n.d.), pp. 39, 44.
42 Ibid., pp. 64, 75f.
43 Sun, "Statement on the Formation of National Government: Address De-
livered at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, January 20, 1924," in
Fundamentals of National Reconstruction (Taipei: China Cultural Service, 1953),
pp. 161-163.
44 Sun, San Alin Chit 1, pp. 107, 111, 129, 137f; see lecture five on "The Prin-
ciples of Democracy."
45 Ibid., pp. 41f.
46 Gottfried-Karl Kindermann speaks of Sun Yat-sen's political program as a
form of modern Confucianism. See Kindermann, Konfuzianismus, Sunyatsenismus
und chinesischer Kommunismus (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1963), chap. 3.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1083

implicit in Marxist formulations, particularly some of the suggestions

found in the work of Friedrich Engels. In The Origins of the Family,
Private Property and the State, Engels chose to abandon Marx's notion
of an "Asiatic mode of production," and substitute a new formulation.
For Engels, "slavery" occupied the historic space between "primitive
communism" and "feudalism," a unilinear evolutionary conjecture ac-
cepted by Chinese intellectuals. History was conceived as having trav-
ersed epochs of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism before attaining the
anticipated socialism.47
Thus, in 1952 Guo Moruo, in conformity with Engels' schematiz-
ation, argued that China had endured a "slave society" before entering
a protracted period of "feudalism."48 In 1956, Yang Rongguo tendered
a similar reconstruction of Chinese social history.49 And in 1957, Wang
Zhonglao argued the same thesis when he maintained that from the
period of the Shang Dynasty (circa 1751-1112 B.C.) to the period of the
Warring States (403-222 B.C.), Chinese society was characterized by a
slave economy.50
When the question of the periodization of Chinese social history
was reinvoked on the eve of the Anti-Confucian Campaign, both Guo
Moruo and Yang Rongguo reaffirmed their stand of the 1950s,51 but
with a significant new emphasis.52 W"hat had transpired in the interim,
particularly during the Cultural Revolution, was a focusing and em-
phasis on the ideological components of the "superstructure" during
the period of transition between China's slave and feudal economies.
For Yang Rongguo, the transition began during the Yin and Chou
dynasties and culminated in the Warring States period, involving some-
thing like five hundred years. Chinese ideological thought was torn be-
tween "progressive" thinkers who wanted to move society from a retro-
grade slave economy to the more advanced feudal mode of production,
and the reactionary ideologists who sought to restore the old system.53

47 See K. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University, 1957),

pp. 284-386.
4S Guo Moruo, Nulizhi shidai (The Era of Slave Society) (Shanghai: Xinwenyi
Chubanshe, 1952).
49Yang Rongguo, Selected Works on the Demarcation of Chinese Slave System
and Feudal System (Beijing: Joint Book Store of Life, Reading and New Knowledge,
1956), pp. 74-82.
50 See Wang Zhongluo, Questions Concerning the Disintegration of Chinese
Slave Society and the Formation of Feudalistic Relations (Guanyu Zhongguo nuli
shehui di wvajie ji fenjian guanxi di xingcheng wenti), (Wuhan: Hubei People's Pub-
lishing Homse, 1957).
51 Guo Moruo, "The Problem of Periodization in Ancient Chinese H-listor
("Zhongguo gudaishi di fengi wenti"), HC, July 1, 1972, pp. 56-62; Yang Rong
"The Struogle Between the Two Lines in the Thought Sphere during the Spring and
Fall and Warring States Period" ("Chunqiu zhanguo shiqi sixiang lingyunei liang-
tiao luxian di douzhengr"), HC, December 1, 1972.
52 For an excellent exposition of the evolution of Chinese historiography, and
the significance of "class restoration" in the Anti-Confucian Campaign, see Wang
Gungwu, "Juxtaposing Past and Present in China Today," CQ, no. 61 (March 1975),
pp. 1-24.
53 See Moody, "The New Anti-Confucian Campaign in China"; Chiang Hsin-li,
"A Refutation of the Maoists' 'On Slave Society,'" IS, 10:15 (December 1974).

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1084 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XI(, No. 11, November 1979

The defenders of slavery, advocates of "restoration," collected around

the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius and made every effort to retard
the movement of history. The advocates of the new social order were
the anti-Confucianists-the Legalists.
Thus, for over five centuries, a class struggle had been conducted
in Chinese society. An ideological conflict was the central issue of Chi-
nese social life. For five hundred years the issue between the "progres-
sive" and "revisionist line" was never fully resolved. AltIhough a feudal
system was established, the struggle between the contending lines was
often obscured by compromise and opportunism. The progressives failed
to win a decisive victory. The consequence was that Chinese society
lapsed into a historic somnolence, stagnant and irresolute for two thous-
and years.
In the People's Republic of China, historical studies seldom re-
main academic. On the contrary, historical studies are occasions to com-
municate and inculcate Marxist truths. Jian Bocan had maintained that
"our studying ancient history is for the purpose of better understanding
modern history."54 Guo Moruo, too, insisted that "the purpose of study-
ing ancient history is to elucidate the law of historical development and
let the people grasp this law so they can reform the objective world."55
As the Anti-Confucian Campaign moved into high gear these injunc-
tions were reaffirmed in the popular press,56 and ancient history was
scoured to discover the "laws" governing class struggle. The lessons
learned from the study of ancient Chinese society quickly translated
themselves into strategic and tactical directives for the present.
It was argued that because of the peculiarities of its history, China's
past was characterized by only two major social revolutions: that which
attended the transition between slavery and feudalism, and that which
accompanied the advent of Mao. China's "bourgeois revolution" that
transformed feudalism into capitalism was telescoped into the first phase
of the Communists' seizure of power. The "bourgeois democratic rev-
olution" and the socialist revolution had therefore overlapped. Thus
Liang Xiao argued that "except for the revolution led by the proletar-
iat, only the replacement of the slave system by the feudal system ac-
tually constituted a social change in China's history... .57 The revolu-
tion of feudalism and the revolution of socialism were thus analogous
historic events. The circumstances and consequences of the class strug-
gle in the first illuminate the nature and implications of class struggle
in the second.
What the history of the transition from slavery to feudalism re-

54 Jian Bocan, "The Struggle between Two Lines on the Front of the History
of Science" ("Lishi kexue zhanxian shang liangtiao luxian di douzheng"), Journal
of Beijing University, no. 3 (1958).
55 Guo Moruo, "On the Question of Laying More Stress on the Present than on
the Past," ("Guanyu houjin bogu di wenti"), ibid.
56 Ta-kung Pao, May 25, 1974; Wen-hui Pao, June 2, 3, 6, 7, 1974.
57 Liang Hsiao, "Study the Historical Experience of the Struggle between the
Confucian and Legalist Schools," PR, no. 2 (January 10, 1975).

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1085

vealed was an "objective law of class struggle," a "general law of the

two-line struggle in history." For centuries after the seizure of political
power by the landlord class, there was a constant, at times acute, strug-
gle between two "lines" of political conduct-the reactionary Confu-
cianists and the progressive Legalists.58 At times the struggle was so
violent that it was necessary to "burn books and bury unregenerate
Confucian scholars alive."59 Confucius, Mencius, Tung-Chung-shu, and
Wang Yang-ming, separated by two thousand years, were all representa-
tive of a reactionary line that resisted and ultimately compromised the
movement of history. Conjoined with some "objective contradictions"
between peasants and landlords, the failure of Legalism to prevail meant
that China would be condemned to stagnation and retrogression for
centuries. The reactionary superstructural elements of ideology, law,
and custom had negatively influenced the growth and development of
the productive base of Chinese society.
Like the transition from slavery to feudalism, China's transition to
socialism would involve centuries of conflict between two "lines," one
progressive and revolutionary, the other retrogressive and counterrev-
olutionary. The Chinese Communist victory in 1949 was simply the be-
ginning of a class struggle destined to endure not "several decades," but
"anywhere from one to several centuries."60
Thus it was that Hong You in 1974 said: "Revolutions in the past,
be it the replacement of the slave system by the feudal system, or the
replacement of the feudal system by the capitalist system, involved
dozens or hundreds of years of repeated and tortuous struggles centering
around progress and retrogression, restoration and counter-restoration."
The socialist revolution "will be even more tortuous and protracted
than those of any previous revolution," particularly in the realm of
ideas, in the superstructure. If it took centuries to decide the issue be-
tween slavery and feudalism, it would take no less time during the epoch
of socialism "to decide the question of which will win out, the prole-
tariat or the bourgeoisie." One could only anticipate "tortuous" and
"tremendous" struggles for decades, centuries, and perhaps millennia.6'
Thus, by the formal commencement of the Anti-Confucian Camn-
paign its rationale had been articulated. It was a rationale formulated
during the Cultural Revolution. It remained for Yao Wenyuan and
Zhang Chunqiao to draw out its immediate practical implications for
Chinese society. Yao's On the Social Basis of the Lin Piao Anti-Party
Clique, and Zhang's On Exercizing All-Round Dictatorship Over the
Bourgeoisie appeared in the spring of 1975, about a year after the official

58 See "Mencius-A Trumpeter for Restoring the Slave System," PR, no. 37
(1974).
59 See "Clarifying 'Burning Books and Burying Confucian Scholars Alive,'" PR,
no. 19 (1974).
60 This was insisted upon as early as 1964 when the Cultural Revolution was
brewing. See "On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and its Historical Lessons for
the World, PR, no. 29 (July 17, 1964).
61 Hong You, "History Develops in Spirals," PR, no. 43 (October 25, 1974).

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1086 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

commencement of the Anti-Confucian Campaign. They constitute the

transliteration of what radical Maoists took to be the lessons of history
for the practical politics of contemporary China.
Both Yao and Zhang emphasized the necessity of a "life-and-death
struggle . . . between two major antagonistic classes, the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie, [in] a struggle that will go on for a very long time."62
Both exploited the evidence of China's history, provided by Maoist his-
torians, to support their assessment. Confucius was the negative model
of the counterrevolutionary whose philosophy exudes a pernicious in-
fluence at the superstructural level. The modern Confucianists, Liu
Shaoqi, Lin Biao, and Chen Boda among others, like the ancient Con-
fucianists, represented the retrograde revisionists who attempted to ob-
struct the course of history by restoring superseded social relations after
the political victory of a rising class.
What was new in all this was the introduction of a new element
into the class base understood to support modern efforts at restoration.
In addition to the traditional categories of the comprador, bureaucrat,
capitalist, and landlord, Yao Wenyuan and Zhang Chunqiao introduced
the "new bourgeoisie"-members of the Communist Party of China it-
self who enjoyed special privileges and material advantages in a system
that still allowed differential wages and differential access to the levers
of power. Although revolutionary China had abolished private owner-
ship and had destroyed the economic foundation of the old bourgeoisie,
the new bourgeoisie operated from positions of strength within the jur-
idical structure of the new system. The biological passing of the old
bourgeoisie would only be a matter of time. But the new bourgeoisie,
the Party bureaucrats, were "being engendered daily and hourly" and
"on a mass scale."63 The fact that China still employed differentials in
wages and in the distribution of power meant, in fact, that it "differed
very little from the old society."64 All of which meant that the class
struggle in China was destined to continue for the foreseeable future,
since capitalist restoration would be "quite easy" to accomplish under
such circumstances.
What was required to resist such an eventuality was a very acute
class struggle to destroy the "fortified villages" held by the bourgeoisie
within the Chinese Communist Party. The dictatorship of the prole-
tariat must employ an "iron broom" to sweep away the retrograde bour-
geois elements65 who sought to serve the same reactionary and anti-
historical function discharged by the Confucianists throughout the peri-
od of transition between the slave and feudal modes of production.
China had an exemplary case of modern retrogression in the Soviet

62 Yao Wen-yuan, On the Social Basis of the Lin Piao Anti-Party Clique (Peking:
Foreign Languages Press, 1975), p. 3. See Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, On Exercising All-
round Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975),
pp. 13f.
63 Chang, On Exercising, p. 4; Yao, On the Social Basis, p. 4.
64 Chang, ibid., p. 5.
65 Ibid., p. 14.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1087

Union where the dictatorship of the proletariat had devolved into a

"fascist dictatorship" and an "open betrayal of Marxism." Socialism in
Russia had failed because the struggle at the superstructural level had
been lost. Soviet revisionists had succumbed to the "theory of the dying
out of the class struggle."66 Unless class struggle was pursued with dedi-
cation, socialism in China might also be lost. Only by strict adherence
to a continued class struggle lasting decades and perhaps centuries,
might China escape such an unhappy fate.
For this reason Confucius was chosen as the anti-model for the Anti-
Confucian Campaign. Confucianists may or may not have advocated
centralization, institutionalization, ideological unity, and economic pro-
duction, but it is manifestly clear that neither Confucius nor the Con-
fucianists ever advocated class struggle. The indisputable core of the
Confucian tradition was its advocacy of jen, the doctrine of benevolence
and collective harmony.67 Confucius represented, therefore, all expo-
nents of any form of class harmony, collaboration, compromise, and
accommodation. He represented the overt opposition to the "Marxist
philosophy of struggle." Only a resolute rejection of the notion of col-
lective harmony and a "ruthless struggle against class enemies" could
insure the ultimate victory of socialism.68
Rather than an effort at moderation, "a counter-movement to the
disorder and excesses of the Cultural Revolution,"69 the Anti-Confucian
Campaign gives every evidence of having been an attempt to defend and
consolidate its ideological purposes. However much it may have altered
some specific policies, it was an ambitious attempt to sustain and foster
the continuing class struggle, begun with the Cultural Revolution, as
the key to the survival of the Maoist revolution.70 It attempted to dem-
onstrate "that only in [a] violent and repressive manner was it possible
to fend off the counter-revolutionary activities" of the "new bour-
geoisie," the contemporary analogues of the "scholar-minister represen-
tatives of the old system" exemplified in history by Confucius and his
followers.71 Finally, it would seem that the Anti-Confucian Campaign,
however ineffectual it might have been,72 represented something of the
final thoughts of Mao, himself, on the subject of class struggle.

66 Ibid., pp. 19f.

67 See Chan Wing-tsit, "The Evolution of the Confucian Concept Jen," in Neo-
Confucianism, Etc. (Hanover, New Hampshire: Oriental Society, 1969); Wu An-chia,
"Disputes over Interpretations of Jen in the Criticize-Confucius Movement," IS,
12:7 (July 1976).
68 Chian Yu-ping, "The Philosophy of the Communist Party is the Philosophy
of Strug-le," PR, no. 12 (March 22, 1974).
69 Goldman, "China's Anti-Confucian Campaign," p. 435.
70 See Jo Yung-hwan, "The Cultural Revolution and the Anti-Confucius Move-
ment in China," Asia Quarterly, 3 (1975), pp. 239-253.
71 Thomas W. Robinson, "China in 1973: Renewed Leftism Threatens the 'New
Course,'" AS, 14:1 (January 1974), pp. 9, 11.
72 There seems to be some evidence that the mass campaign against Confucius
never succeeded because of resistance within the Party itself. See K'ung Te-liang,
"The Maoist Mobilization for Criticizing Lin Piao and Confucius," IS, 10:10 (July
1974), and the comments by Hsieh Chen-ping, "Another Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution?" Asian Affairs, 6 (July-August 1974), pp. 390-401.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1088 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

Mao Zedong and Class Struggle

Observers have long recognized that one of the major, if not the
major, strain of Mao's thought was his emphasis on struggle, on mili-
tary virtue and the employment of the language of war and conflict.73
As early as 1927, Mao took issue with the Confucian doctrine of the
mean-of "not going too far"-when he insisted that class struggle in a
period of revolutionary action must necessarily create terror for it woul
otherwise be "impossible to suppress the activities of the counter-revolu-
tionaries.. . Proper limits have to be exceeded in order to right a
wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted."74 In 1940, Mao identified
Confucius and his "old ethical code" with "a slave ideology" with which
Communism was "locked in a life-and-death struggle."75 By 1949, he
had specifically isolated the Confucian doctrine of jen (benevolence) as
the object of his scorn. It was not benevolence, but violence, that would
be applied as a policy toward "reactionaries and towards the reactionary
activities of the reactionary classes." The policy of benevolence would
be "applied only within the ranks of the people, not beyond."T7
In 1957, Mao went on to warn that although socialist transforma-
tion had been completed with respect to the system of ownership, and

although the large-scale and turbulent class struggles of the masses ...
have in the main come to an end . . . the class struggle [was] by no means
over. Class struggle in the ideological field between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will
even become very acute.... In this respect the question of which will
win out, socialism or capitalism, is still not really settled.... Marxism
must still develop through struggle, and not only is this true of the
past and the present, it is necessarily true of the future as well.77

But in 1957, the struggle, although "acute," was understood to be essen-

tially nonviolent. It was only after 1964 as the Cultural Revolution be-
gan to take shape that the nature of the class struggle during the transi-
tional period to socialism began to take on more and more ominous
features.
By 1964, class struggle had become the "most important subject . ..
a compulsory subject." "Class struggle is everywhere . . . everywhere
there is counter-revolution."78 Mao now took objection to any sugges-

73 See the comments of Stuart Schram, "Introduction," The Political Thought

of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Praeger, 1969. Revised and enlarged edition), p. 125,
and S. Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967), pp. 41f.
74 Mao, "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,"
Selected Works, I, p. 29.
75 Mao, "On New Democracy,' ibid., II, p. 369.
76 Mao, "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship," ibid., IV, p. 418.
77 Mao, "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," ibid.,
V, p. 409.
78 Mao, "Talks with Mlao Yuan-hsin (1964-66)," Chairman Mao Talks to the
People, pp. 243, 246.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1089

tion that a conflict between classes could be resolved by anything other

than one class being "eliminated" and another rising. "One thing de-
stroys another, things emerge, develop, and are destroyed, everywhere is
like this. . One thing eating another, bit fish eating little fish."79 He
urged revolutionary dissidents to "take up arms to rebel" and spoke of
the class struggle as involving "destruction."80
As late as 1957, Mao's conceptions had a reasonably clear oper-
ational implication. Conflict and class struggle would obtain between
revolutionary and reactionary classes. Between 1957 and 1966, however,
the notion of class struggle gravitated from one between classes-the
proletariat and peasants against the comprador and bureaucratic capi-
talists-to one between the superstructure and the productive forces.
The class struggle, seen increasingly as acute and violent, had become a
struggle between bourgeois and reactionary ideas and attitudes. Mao be-
came increasingly preoccupied with the pervasiveness of old values,
ideas, and attitudes among the highest ranking Communist Party mem-
bers. The focus of the class struggle was now on the Communist Party
itself.
Mao saw China threatened by the same involutionary process he
identified in 1964 within the Soviet Union.81 The Soviet Union consti-
tuted an object lesson of "retrogression," of an historic instance in which
communist party leaders, managers, technicians, administrators, and a
variety of professionals and experts had lodged themselves in what had
been a socialist system, enjoying all the advantages of economic priv-
ilege, status, and power. This "contradiction between the Soviet people
and the privileged stratum . . . was an irreconciliable and antagonistic
class contradiction."82
In his informal talks with his nephew, Mao Yuanxin, later identi-
fied with the Gang of Four, Mao spoke candidly of the "bourgeoisie in
power" employing their positions within the Chinese Communist Party
to further their reactionary intentions. He saw representatives of the
bourgeoisie in production brigades, factories, district and provincial
committees, as deputy heads in public security departments and leading
the Ministry of Culture. The mass media of China was in their grip. He
saw these bourgeois factions as corrupt, venal, and bureaucratic "re-
visionists" who required "cleaning out."83 There are factions every-
where, within and outside the Party, within and outside the people.
Although classes as such may not exist, there are "vested interest groups"

79 Mao, "Talk on Questions of Philosophy, 18 August, 1964," ibid., pp. 223, 225,
226, 227.
80 Mao, "Talk on the Questions of Philosophy," ibid., p. 216 and "Speech at a
Meeting with Regional Secretaries and Members of the Cultural Revolutionary Group
of the Central Committee, 22 July, 1966," ibid., p. 258.
81 James Peck, "Introduction," to Mao, A Critique of Soviet Economics (New
York: Monthly Review, 1977), p. 25.
82 "On Krushchev's Phoney Communism."
83 Mao, "Talks with Mao Yuan-hsin," pp. 243f.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1090 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

that must be remolded or liquidated. Revolution must continue.84

Thus, in the decade between 1957 and the advent of the Cultural
Revolution, Mao became increasingly convinced that class struggle in-
volved the transformation of men's minds, and the men to be trans-
formed occupied prestigious positions in the Communist Party itself.
In 1960 Mao maintained that one could not talk of "one class over-
throwing another" during the transition to communism. It was a mat-
ter of rooting out interest groups and remolding their life-styles.85 But
by 1967 he was speaking of the Cultural Revolution as "one class over-
throwing another."86 Any alternative interpretation was understood as
an effort to "liquidate class struggle." The transition between socialism
and communism would be marked by a "life-and-death struggle between
the two big opposing classes" without which the "Marxist-Leninist
party, a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its color."87
All the acuteness of struggle originally reserved for class conflict
had been transposed to the conflict between factions within the party
and among the people. And that conflict was conceived as millenial.
The period required to effect the transformation of men's minds began
to extend further and further into the future. In 1960 Mao spoke of
it as enduring half a century.88 After the Lin Biao affair in 1971, he
spoke of the struggles going on into the epoch of communism and
talked of "millenia."89
The Anti-Confucian Campaign, conjoined with the last weak efforts
of the "Criticize Water Margin Campaign," probably marked Mao's
final efforts to shape Chinese society to his own image of perpetual and
increasingly violent class struggle. The Anti-Confucian Campaign was
a popular rationale for these conceptions. Confucius represented an
ideological commitment to collective harmony, a celebration of pro-
priety, and an insistence that all men and all classes share some funda-
mental and abiding collective interests that might make the potential
for stable social unity a reality. It was not that Confucianism was anti-
scientific, anti-centralization, or anti-institutionalization that made Mao-
ists anti-Confucian. It was that Confucius and the Confucianists were
advocates of social harmony.
If there was one distinction between the social philosophy of Sun
Yat-sen and that of Mao, it would be Sun's insistence on the ultimate
harmony of interests that united all Chinese. For Sun, all Chinese of
whatever class, status, or social origin, shared a common interest in the

84 Mao, A Critique of Soviet Economics, pp. 60f, 62-64.

85 Ibid., p. 62.
86 Mao, "Talk at a Meeting of the Central Cultural Revolution Group," Chair-
man Mlao Talks to the People, pp. 297f.
87 See Three Major Struggles on China's Philosophical Front (1949-1964) (Peking:
Foreign Languages Press, 1973), pp. 53, 59.
88 Mao, A Critique oj Soviet Economics, p. 41.
89 Mao, "Summary cf Chairman Mao's Talks with Responsible Comrades,"
pp. 297f.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MAO'S ANTI-CONFUCIANIST CAMPAIGN 1091

realization of China's potential in a world of competitive nation-states.90

For Mao, by the time of the Cultural Revolution and more emphatical-
ly, perhaps, by the time of the Anti-Confucian Campaign., the notion
that all Chinese irrespective of origin, class, or social orientation, shared
some common interest, was anathema. The Confucian emphasis on
propriety, reciprocity, obedience, tolerance, and collaboration could only
signal the advent of "revisionism" and the decline of Marxism-Leninism
into "fascism."

Conclusions

The central theme of Maoist ideology, the Cultural Revolution,

and the Anti-Confucian Campaign was not decentralization, a relax-
ation of ideological unity, or a rejection of "experts" in favor of the
"Reds." Their central theme was the advocacy of perpetual class strug-
gle, the "overthrow of one class by another." Their legacy was on-going
class conflict, and their principal opponent wras Confucianism, in what-
ever guise, for Confucianism advocated collective harmony, propriety,
and benevolence.
The enemies of all this were men like Deng Xiaoping, "pragma-
tists" who are unconcerned about the color of cats as long as those cats
caught mice. Deng was the pragmatist who complained that the Cul-
tural Revolutionary Left, the subsequent Gang of Four, insisted on
"engaging in factional fights . . . permanently entangled in the strug-
gle between this faction and that faction, between the so-called rebel-
lious faction and conservative faction, between the so-called new and
old cadres, and between the so-called 'Confucian school' and 'Legalist
school.' "91 It is no wonder, then, that he was identified by those he
criticized as one who "does not understand Marxism-Leninism" because
he does not "comprehend the class struggle."92
But in July 1977, irrespective of Mao's last injunctions, the third
plenary meeting of the Tenth Communist Party Central Committee
announced that Deng, the man who neither understands Marxism-
Leninism nor comprehends the class struggle, had been restored to his
position in the hierarchy. And in August 1977, Hua Guofeng reported
to the nation that finally, after almost eleven years of strife, the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution had concluded.
On March 9, 1979, Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) proclaimed that
"it had not been necessary" to have the Cultural Revolution at all. Such
large-scale campaigns were already "outdated" and obsolete by 1957.

90 See Sun Yat-sen, "The Disabilities Suffered by Chinese Workers Under the
Unequal Treaties," ("Chung-kuo kung-jen suo-shou pu-p'ing-teng t'iao-yueh chih
hai") Complete Works, II, pp. 183f.
91Teng Hsiao-ping, "On the General Program of Work for the Whole Par
and the Whole Nation," in Chi Hsin, The Case of the Gang of Four, p. 209.
92 HC, no. i; (May 1976), p. 1.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1092 ASIAN SURVEY, Vol. XIX, No. 11, November 1979

"After 1957, they had been directly responsible for the creation of in-
stability and retarded economic development in Chinese society."93 The
following day, an editorial echoed the same theme. Party unity had been
injured because of "exaggerated" class struggles in the past. Party unity
must now be strengthened for the peaceful unity of the entire nation.
"Any struggle which does not promote party unity is mistaken. ...
Factions and factional activities are all illegal.''94 Presumably, then, the
necessity for perpetual class conflict has also been left behind, and with
that, the motives that inspired Mao's last campaign. The Anti-Confucian
Campaign is to be laid to rest.
It is probable that the present rulers of the PRC are more con-
cerned with economic and industrial development than with class strug-
gle, more preoccupied with defense capabilities than with rooting out
Confucianists in their ranks. It is probable that the present leadership
is more involved with laying the foundation for collective effort than
with factional strife. But Mao's conception of perpetual class struggle,
his anti-Confucianism so to speak, offers so many tactical and political
advantages to the leadership of an exclusivist and hegemonic party that
the notion of periodic class struggles against any dissidence may recom-
mend itself. Under some set of easily imagined circumstances, the pres-
ent leadership of China might very well find themselves prepared to
reinvoke the practical stratagems of class struggle and anti-Confucian-
ism.
That they may choose to keep such an option may be revealed in
their treatment of Confucius and the Confucian tradition. A rehabilita-
tion of Confucius, grudging or otherwise, may signal an increasing con-
cern for the maintenance and fostering of collective harmony and mu-
tual tolerance in the effort to mobilize energies necessary for the arduous
program of modernizing and industrializing China. Silence on the issue
of Confucius, on the other hand, may well suggest that the present
leadership wishes to retain "class struggle" in strategic reserve for any
occasion when they conceive their political power threatened by "re-
actionaries."95
The Anti-Confucian Campaign may have been the close of a tur-
bulent era in Chinese history, or it may conceal the promise that Chinese
politics will continue to be characterized by internal struggle and con-
flict. How the present leadership treats Confucius in the immediate fu-
ture may provide a key to the mystery of Chinese politics after Mao.

93 Reported in Min Pao Daily News, March 14, 1979, p. 1.

94 RAfRB, March 10, 1979, as reported in Min Pao, March 13, 1979, p. 1.
95 See the employment of the notion of "class struggle" against political op-
ponents like the Gang of Four in Chen Yung-kuei, Thoroughly Criticize the "Gang
of Four" and Bring About a New Upsurge in the Movement to Build Tachai-Type
Counties Throughout the Country (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1977).

A. JAMES GREGOR is Professor of Political Science at the University of California,

Berkeley; MARIA HSIA CHANG is Lecturer in the Department of International
Relations, San Francisco State University.

This content downloaded from

78.172.202.234 on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:27:52 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms