By Richard Baum, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
The Maoists, while spreading Chairman Mao’s thoughts among the younger generation, also began to attack what they called ‘unhealthy tendencies’ in cultural and literary circles. Mao also criticized China’s education system, and his critique included an attack on the existing school curriculum.
Mao’s Style of Socialist Realism
During the revival of the Hundred Flowers campaign in the early ’60s, while Mao was in retreat on the second line of leadership, a large number of new literary works had been published, many of them in apparent violation of Mao’s cherished style of socialist realism.
The chairman’s absolutist views on culture, which dated back to the 1942 Yan’an Forum, mandated that all writers and artists should be unambiguously reflecting the class struggle and the standpoint of the proletariat in their works, glorifying the heroic qualities of workers, peasants, and soldiers, while vilifying the evil deeds of counterrevolutionaries, reactionaries, and rightists.
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Era of Intellectual Liberalization
However, in the new era of intellectual liberalization that characterized the reign of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping in the early ’60s, many writers populated their works of fiction with ordinary characters, characters who were neither perfect prototypes of the ‘new socialist man’ nor degenerate, bloodthirsty villains.
Unlike the simplistic cardboard cutout figures of the socialist realism school, these flawed, yet recognizably real ‘middle characters’, as they were called, struggled on a daily basis with complex political situations and moral ambiguities. Heroic solutions were seldom available to them, so they did the best they could. Indeed, their imperfect behavior gave them a distinctly human quality with which many readers could readily identify.
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Mao’s Objections
Mao strongly objected to the ambiguous portrayal of the everyday lives of ordinary people. And in 1964, he launched a counterattack against authors who wrote approvingly of ‘middle characters’ in their works.
In Mao’s view, the favorable literary depiction of moral uncertainty and compromise served to undermine the proletarian will that was essential to achieving victory in the struggle against revisionism.
The Theory of ‘Two Combine into One’
In a parallel attack on intellectuals who urged adoption of a relaxed attitude toward class struggle in the philosophical realm, Mao lashed out at a group of educators who had popularized a school of thought known esoterically as ‘two combine into one’.
In philosophical circles, the principle of peaceful class reconciliation was known as ‘two combine into one’ (er he he yi), while its dialectical opposite, the principle of unremitting class struggle, was known as yi fenwei er (‘one divides into two’).
In the language of modern-day game theory, ‘two combine into one’ was a formula for achieving a win-win, or positive-sum outcome, while “one divides into two” was a formula for zero-sum, winner-take-all struggle and conflict resolution.
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Yang Xianzhen
The man who bore the main brunt of the Maoist attack was a veteran Communist Party philosopher named Yang Xianzhen. Yang was a Central Committee member who had made the mistake in his academic lectures of placing roughly equal emphasis on both struggle and reconciliation in the handling of contradictions under socialism.
In his lectures, Yang Xianzhen showed no particular preference for one as opposed to the other of these contrasting principles, which he viewed as complementary rather than antagonistic. But it was Yang’s great misfortune to have supported Peng Dehuai’s critique of the Great Leap Forward back in 1959. Mao hadn’t forgotten; and he clearly hadn’t forgiven. Now it was payback time.
In the summer of 1964, Mao was shown a newspaper article summarizing Yang Xianzhen’s lectures. In March of 1965, Yang Xianzhen was denounced as a “representative of the bourgeoisie inside the party, a tool of Peng Dehuai, and a mini-Khrushchev.”
No matter that the case against him was grossly exaggerated, if not wholly fabricated, the wording of the denunciation embodied a perfect Maoist ideological trifecta, lumping together the ‘revisionist’ Khrushchev, the ‘anti-party’ Peng Dehuai, and the ‘bourgeois power-holder’ Yang Xianzhen into a single, one-size-fits-all conspiracy.
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Mao and China’s Educational System
Next, Mao turned his celebrated wrath upon China’s educational system.
Back in the mid-1950s, during the first five-year plan, China had modeled its educational system closely upon that of the Soviet Union. It was a hierarchical system, based on rigorous competitive examinations at every level. And it offered two distinct educational tracks: an elite academic track for high-achieving students and a broad-based vocational track for ordinary students.
But now, in the mid-1960s, the Soviet model had fallen into Maoist disrepute, and the chairman began to severely criticize the ‘erroneous methods’ being used to educate China’s children.
Complaining that the Soviet system stressed book learning at the expense of more practical forms of education, Mao urged a shortening of the school curriculum from 12 years to nine, with formal classroom education melded in with two years of hands-on vocational training in a factory or a farm or in a military unit. The idea was to put all students—not just the less talented ones—in direct, daily contact with the day-to-day hardships and struggles of ordinary workers and peasants and soldiers.
Mao’s critique of the educational system also included an attack on the existing school curriculum, which, he said, required students to study too much.
Common Questions about Chairman Mao’s Attack on China’s Intellectuals and Education System
In Mao’s view, the favorable literary depiction of moral uncertainty and compromise served to undermine the proletarian will that was essential to achieving victory in the struggle against revisionism.
In the language of modern-day game theory, ‘two combine into one‘ was a formula for achieving a win-win, or positive-sum outcome.
Mao urged a shortening of the school curriculum from 12 years to nine, with formal classroom education melded in with two years of hands-on vocational training in a factory or a farm or in a military unit.
