MAO AND
LINCOLN Part 1: Demon and
deity By Henry C K Liu
Chairman Mao Zedong, the greatest revolutionary
in modern Chinese history, has been unfairly vilified by
the neo-liberal West, but he set a decaying China on the
path to renewed greatness and provided a vision for a
new China that will survive for centuries to come. In
fact, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United
States, is deified, while Mao is demonized.
Lincoln's assault on due process was decidedly
more violent than Mao's alleged autocratic leadership
style. The difference between Lincoln and Mao is that
Lincoln's high-minded quest for equality in practice
allowed a few to monopolize the resultant national
wealth, while Mao tried to distribute it to all equally.
A look at the two great leaders - one of them a
great revolutionary - is instructive:
The
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
(CPCCC) held a seminar at the Great Hall of the People
on December 30, 2003, to mark the 110th anniversary of
Mao Zedong's birth. Hu Jintao, Chinese president and
CPCCC general secretary, called for carrying on the
great cause of the older generation of Chinese
revolutionaries as the best way to commemorate Chairman
Mao. The great cause is to build a socialist China that
is prosperous, peaceful and strong, with equality for
all its citizens, to carry on the grand tradition of
Chinese civilization with friendship and goodwill toward
all around the world.
The neo-liberal West goes
so far as to accuse Mao of being a ruthless dictator,
allegedly murdering 30 million of his fellow citizens
with his radical programs, such as the controversial
Great Leap Forward. Such propaganda bears little
relation to the reality of Mao (as the greatest
revolutionary in modern Chinese history who set a
decaying China on the path to renewed greatness). Mao
was neither perfect nor a superman. Like all humans, he
made mistakes as a leader, but he provided a vision for
a new China that will survive for centuries to come. Mao
was demonized by the neo-liberal West simply because he
was a communist. It is also a mistake for the Western
left to interpret post-Mao China's strategic response to
changing global geopolitical conditions as an
ideological deviation from Mao's revolutionary vision
for China.
Some libertarians vilify
Lincoln Lincoln, a great leader, is also vilified
by his libertarian detractors as the US president who
suspended civil liberty and destroyed free markets.
While there is historical evidence of Lincoln being
accountable for these partisan charges, there is also
evidence that he did such with a higher purpose. Elected
by narrow pluralities, Lincoln is known as the US
president who preserved the Union. Under his leadership,
and largely because of it, the United States moved
closer to the full implementation of the promise that
was contained in the Declaration of Independence: that
all men are created equal; and toward fulfillment of the
potential of the US constitution, which is the
commitment to equality under the law.
Stopping
in Philadelphia in 1861 on the way to his inauguration,
Lincoln visited Independence Hall, where he said in a
speech, "I have often inquired of myself what great
principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so
long together. It was not the mere matter of the
separation of colonies from the motherland, but
something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone
to the people of this country, but hope to the world for
all future time. It was that which gave promise that in
due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders
of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.
This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of
Independence." Lincoln aimed to give hope to the world
for liberty by example, not by foreign wars.
Lincoln scholar Harry Jaffa argues in The
Crisis of the House Divided that Lincoln was a model
statesman who stuck by high-minded principles as he
fought to promote liberty, even though he had to suspend
liberty temporarily to achieve his higher purpose. Gore
Vidal's Lincoln: A Novel views Lincoln as a
heroic figure who moved to change the very nature of
American government and society, aiming toward greatness
against the tide of popular opinion in sympathy with the
South. Preserving the Union was decidedly an
undemocratic undertaking.
And there are more
dissenting critical views. Lincoln critic Tom DiLorenzo
argues in The Real Lincoln that Lincoln was a
calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in
American history, not to free the slaves, but to build
an empire of corporate welfare. DiLorenzo points out
that there were incidents of war-waging on innocent
civilians at the very beginning, in 1862-63. The town of
Randolph, Tennessee, was burned to the ground because
Confederate sharpshooters sniped at Union ships. Not
being able to find the sharpshooters for punishment
individually, Union troops retaliated by burning down
the whole town.
This kind of wholesale atrocity
also was perpetrated by the Nazis eight decades later,
but only in occupied lands and not on fellow ethnic
Germans, unless they were communists. And this sort of
wholesale atrocity went on all through the American
Civil War, because in a war between brothers, there is
usually no honor code. It is a sad testimony to the
ascendance of inhumanity that wholesale slaughter of
innocent civilians continues to this day in the name of
a holy war on terrorism. And although preemptive
self-defense may be justifiable, it is hardly a
high-minded principle.
Lincoln sacrificed
individual freedoms In another book, The Great
Centralizer, DiLorenzo documented much
centralization of power in the first 18 months of the
Lincoln administration, at the expense of individual
freedom and states' rights, the founding principles of
the American republic.
Regarding internal
development, Leonard Curry wrote in Blueprint for
Modern America that constitutional scruples against
government subsidy for private monopolies disappeared
after Lincoln, ending seven decades of constitutional
resistance against corporate welfare prior to Lincoln's
presidency. And money was nationalized under Lincoln.
Senator John Sherman said of the National Currency Acts
and the Legal Tender Acts: "These will nationalize as
much as possible, even the currency, so as to make men
love their country before their states. All private
interests, all local interests, all banking interests,
the interest of individuals, everything should be
subordinate now to the interest of the [central]
government." The New York Times editorialized on March
9, 1863, that "the Legal Tender Act and the National
Currency Bill crystallize a centralization of power such
as [Alexander] Hamilton [the first US treasury
secretary] might have eulogized as magnificent."
The tariff was tripled by Lincoln and remained
at that high level for decades after the war ended.
Harvard professor David Donald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
Lincoln biographer, wrote: "Lincoln and the Republicans
intended to enact the high protective tariff that
mothered monopoly, to pass a homestead law that invited
speculators to loot the public domain, and to subsidize
a transcontinental railroad that afforded infinite
opportunities for jobbery [political-patronage jobs]."
One not-so-high-minded reason Lincoln and the
Republicans gave for their opposition to the extension
of slavery was that they wanted to preserve the new
territories for white labor, not opposition to an
immoral institution. They said clearly that they wanted
the political support of white laborers who did not want
competition from black slave labor. In practice,
democracy often thrives on the lowest instincts of
impassioned voters while ignoring the rights of the
disfranchised. Representative democracy, as practiced in
the United States, is an electoral power game in which
the rich and the powerful have an overwhelming advantage
over the weak and the poor, which is objectionable
enough by itself, and it becomes absolutely repugnant
when vaunted as a universal standard for a global holy
war.
Lincoln a dictator? In many
scholarly works, such as Constitutional Problems
under Lincoln by James Randall, Freedom under
Lincoln by Dean Sprague, The Fate of Liberty
by Mark Neely and Constitutional Dictatorship by
Clinton Rossiter, Lincoln is labeled a dictator because
he launched a military invasion of the Southern states
without consent of Congress and suspended habeas
corpus, with the result that at least 13,000
Northern citizens were imprisoned without arrest
warrants being issued. For that matter, the last war
declared by Congress, constitutionally the sole
authority for war declaration, was World War II, after
which all wars had been executive wars. Lincoln censored
all telegraph communication to control developing news
on the Civil War; nationalized railroads for war
transport and ordered federal troops to interfere in
Northern elections. David Donald writes also that the
Republican Party won New York state by 7,000 votes in
1864 "under the protection of Federal bayonets".
Clement Vallandigham, Ohio congressman and
leader of the Copperheads, Northern sympathizers with
the South, accused Lincoln of continuing the Civil War
after the Union had already been saved militarily in the
Battle of Bull Run, simply to enslave white labor by
freeing black slaves to compete unfairly in tight labor
markets in the North. Lincoln deported Vallandigham
after General Ambrose E Burnside, then commanding the
Department of the Ohio, accused Vallandigham of
violating General Order No 38, which threatened
punishment for those declaring sympathy for the "enemy".
Vallandigham was arrested, court-martialed, and
sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of the war.
Lincoln also confiscated firearms from the
public, depriving the American people of their
constitutional right to bear arms. Ministers in the
South were imprisoned for not praying for Abraham
Lincoln. Lincoln's secretary of state, William Seward,
set up a secret police force, and famously boasted to
Lord Lyons, the British ambassador, that he could ring a
bell and have any man in America arrested without due
process. The Journal of Commerce, early in the Lincoln
administration, published a list of 100 newspapers in
opposition to Lincoln's administration, and Lincoln
ordered the postmaster general to stop delivering the
mail for those papers, putting the government squarely
in the business of violating freedom of the press. And
these newspaper owners and editors were imprisoned for
opposing Lincoln. All were justified as necessary to
stop the secession.
Lincoln's famous Gettysburg
Address resolution of not letting "government of the
people, by the people and for the people" perish from
the Earth was not kept by actual events after the Civil
War, nor the resultant United States that emerged. A
2004 poll conducted by a non-profit organization shows
that only 20 percent of Americans believe that their
government works for them, ie, for the people in
general; 56 percent believe that it works for
special-interest lobbyists; and 80 percent believe that
it works for large corporations.
Unlike
Lincoln, Mao was dedicated to equality Yet unlike
Lincoln, Mao is not given credit in the West as a
revolutionary of high-minded principles who fought for
equality with all necessary means. In the context of the
strong US tradition of civil liberty, Lincoln's assault
on due process was decidedly more violent than Mao's
alleged autocratic leadership style, since such is
natural in Chinese political tradition. The difference
between Lincoln and Mao is that Lincoln's high-minded
quest for equality in practice allowed a few to
monopolize the resultant national wealth, while Mao
tried to distribute it to all equally.
Like
Lincoln, Mao's tenure as leader of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) was
entirely under wartime conditions, first a civil war
with the Nationalists and, after the founding of the
PRC, with more than two decades of total embargo imposed
by a hostile US with extreme prejudice. Garrison state
was not merely a mentality during Mao's time, it was a
reality. Most of his policies, like those of Lincoln,
must be viewed in the context of wartime exigencies.
Still, it was Mao who engineered the US-China
rapprochement in 1972, and it was Mao who rehabilitated
Deng Xiaoping to carry on socialist construction with
Chinese characteristics.
In March 2004, Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to live up to the people's
expectations and commented on many issues related to
China's political, economic and social development at a
press conference shortly after the conclusion of the
National People's Congress. The premier also highlighted
the goal of maintaining a balanced and sustainable yet
still relatively fast economic growth and he identified
agriculture, rural areas and the welfare of farming
peasants as the most pressing problems. He identified
issues related to people as being those he cares about
most. Wen pledged to continue reform, innovation and
forging ahead with political courage, quoting verses
from poems of Chairman Mao and the ancient Chinese
patriotic poet Qu Yuan, the father of Chinese poetry and
a national cultural hero, to express his determination
to work harder for the people in spite recognized
difficulties.
The premier identified as the
first goal the establishment of a "scientific and
democratic decision-making mechanism", including a group
decision-making system based on the people's will and
consultations with experts and professional people. The
second goal is to administer the country according to
law: "We must prompt the government to administer the
country in line with law, build a clean and honest
government, and pursue the combination of the
government's power and responsibility." The third goal
is to accept supervision from every corner of the
society, including the supervision from the National
People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference, and governments, both central
and local, must solicit mass opinion and listen to
diverse views from the people.
Party to lead
the people in respecting law Wen also urged
leading officials of the CCP and all party members to
abide by the constitution and the country's laws. The
constitution and laws will not be changed according to
changes of state leaders or changes in the leaders'
attention. The premier also stressed two principles:
that the party, as the people's vanguard, leads the
people in making the constitution and laws, and leading
party officials and all party members should play an
exemplary role in implementing the constitution and
laws.
The amendment to the constitution is of
great significance for China's development, he said,
adding that it had just been passed at the national
legislature's annual session with overwhelming support,
reflecting the will of the entire people. He highlighted
the incorporation into the constitution the important
thought of the "Three Represents" along with
Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping
Theory as the guiding ideology for the party and the
nation.
(The Three Represents, the CCP's modern
mission statement, say that the party must always
represent the development trend of China's advanced
productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced
culture and the fundamental interests of the
overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. It is now
considered the distillation of the party's collective
wisdom and is to be the party's guiding ideology for
many years to come.)
These goals are not new in
Chinese communist political culture. Mao, while always
placing his faith in the power of the people, was also a
vocal admirer of statesman Shang Yang (died 338 BC) of
the Kingdom of Qin in the Warring States Period (408-221
BC). Shang Yang built the state's legal system upon the
Book of Law, introduced a legalist government and
propelled the Qin state to prosperity that enabled it to
unite all of China, ushering in the Qin Dynasty. He
introduced a new, standardized system of land allocation
and reforms to taxation, he encouraged the cultivation
of new frontiers and favored agriculture over commerce.
Shang Yang burned books by Confucians in an effort to
curb the philosophy's pervasive influence. Shang Yang
was credited by Han Fei-zi with putting forth two
precepts: Ding Fa (fixing the standards) and
Yi Min (all people as one). Han Fei was a prince
of the state of Han who joined the state of Qin, but
eventually he ran afoul of Qin's chief minister, Li Si
(died 208 BC), and was forced to commit suicide in 233
BC.
Legalism, Confucianism,
Taoism Legalism is one of the three main schools
in Chinese philosophy, the other two being Confucianism
and Taoism (also transliterated as Daoism). Legalists
believed that a nation should be governed by law, which
must be clearly written and made public. All are equal
before the law. Under the previous Zhou Dynasty
(1122-256 BC), laws had been loosely written and
controlled by tradition based on social classes.
Legalism advocates that laws should reward those who
obey them and punish those who break them. In addition,
the legal system rules the state, not the officials. It
is only through the impartial administration of law that
a ruler can rule the state effectively.
In
contrast to Confucianism, Legalism restricts moral
issues to the making of law, not the administering of
the law. Strict enforcement of the law is the foundation
of a stable society. Still, the term "rule of law" has
distinctly different meanings in Chinese political
culture than in the West. Critical theory views the
Western concept of the rule of law as merely a method by
which the ruling class can justify its rule, as it alone
determines what laws get passed based on its own narrow
interests.
Legalism places importance on three
aspects. The first is shi (influence) or
legitimacy, the legal basis of power based on the
legitimacy of the sovereign and the doctrinal orthodoxy
of his policies. In a socialist society, legal
legitimacy is inseparably tied to the interests of the
people as represented by the socialist party. The second
is shu (skill) in manipulative exercise of power
in order to respond to the highest aspirations of the
masses. The third is fa (law) which, once
publicly proclaimed, should govern universally without
exceptions. These three aspects Legalists consider the
three pillars of a well-governed society.
This
concept of the rule of law is different from that used
in the US legal system, in which laws are made by
lobbyists, manipulated to serve special interests and
applied by courts dominated by high-priced lawyers. The
US legal system is blatantly undemocratic, with its
courts packed with politically appointed judges and a
legal-fee structure unaffordable by the average citizen.
The so-called Gang of Four distorted Legalist
politics in China toward the end of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. For their
power-usurping game, they used as shi (influence)
for legitimacy; rote resuscitation of Marxist orthodox
doctrine, reinforced by a co-opted Maoist personality
cult that negates the very nature of Mao; party
factionalism as shu (skill) for exercising power;
and dictatorial rule as fa (laws) to be obeyed
with no exceptions allowed for tradition, ancient
customs or special relationships and with little regard
for human conditions. These self-styled Legalists
yearned for a perfectly administered state, even if the
price was the unhappiness of its citizens. They sought
an inviolable system of impartial justice, without
extenuating circumstances, even at the expense of the
innocent or the wrongly accused. Worst of all, they put
themselves above the law.
Feudalism with
fascist, socialistic, democratic
characteristics Feudalism in China has concurrent
aspects of what modern political science would label as
fascist, socialist and democratic. As a socio-political
system, feudalism is inherently authoritarian and
totalitarian. However, since feudal cultural ideals have
always been meticulously nurtured by Confucianism to be
congruent with the political regime, social control,
while pervasive, is seldom consciously felt as
oppressive by the contented public. Or more accurately,
social oppression, both vertical, such as sovereign to
subject, and horizontal, such as gender prejudice, is
considered civilized self-restraint and natural for lack
of a socially acceptable alternative vision. Concepts
such as equality, individuality, privacy, personal
freedom and democracy, are deemed antisocial, and only
longed for by the mentally deranged, such as radical
Taoists.
This would be true in large measure up
to modern times when radical Taoists would be replaced
by other radical political and cultural dissidents. A
distinction needs to be made between genuine indigenous
dissent and dissent from those merely playing
opportunistically for foreign imperialist favor.
Dissidents who hide under foreign imperialist patronage
and protection, conveniently enjoying bogus martyr
status without the inconvenience of martyrs' fates, will
pay for such free rides with loss of credibility.
Economic self-interest, the foundation of market
fundamentalism, is viewed in Chinese culture as a
character flaw. Until modern times, merchants were
ranked in social status below prostitutes in feudal
society.
The imperial system in China took the
form of a centralized federalism of autonomous local
lords in which the authority of the sovereign was
symbiotically bound to, but clearly separated from, the
authority of the local lords. Unless the local lords
abused their local authority, the emperor's authority
over them, while all inclusive in theory, would not
extend beyond national matters in practice, particularly
if the sovereign's rule was to remain moral within its
ritual bounds. This tradition continues to the modern
time. This condition is easily understood by Americans,
whose federal government is relatively progressive on
certain issues of national standards with regard to
community standards in backward sections of the union.
Confucianism (Ru Jia), through the code
of rites (li), seeks to govern the behavior and
obligation of each person, each social class and each
socio-political unit in society through self-constraint.
Its purpose is to facilitate the smooth functioning and
the perpetuation of the feudal system. Therefore, the
power of the sovereign, though politically absolute, is
not free from the constraints of behavior deemed proper
by Confucian values for a moral sovereign, just as the
authority of the local lords is similarly constrained.
Issues of constitutionality in the US political
milieu become issues of proper rites and befitting
morality in Chinese dynastic politics. To a large
extent, this approach continues to apply to the modern
Chinese polity. The legitimacy of the dictatorship of
the proletariat (defined in Chinese political
nomenclature as the property-less class) lies in its
intrinsic moral validity, upon which the CCP assumes its
leadership role in government. Criticizing the CCP for
not subjecting itself to election challenge is a debate
that lies outside the range of its discourse. Morality
is not an elective issue.
The party must lead
the people The Three Represents is a newly
adopted theory put forward by former Chinese president
Jiang Zemin. The official formal statement of the theory
is as follows: "Reviewing the course of struggle and the
basic experience over the past 80 years and looking
ahead to the arduous tasks and bright future in the new
century, our party should continue to stand in the
forefront of the times and lead the people in marching
toward victory. In a word, the party must always
represent the requirements of the development of China's
advanced productive forces, the orientation of the
development of China's advanced culture, and the
fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of
the people in China."
The correct interpretation
of the theory is still under study. Logic dictates that
the "Three Represents" must be of equal priority. The
ultimate test is "the fundamental interest of the
overwhelming majority of the people" without which the
first two "Represents" would be irrelevant. And the
overwhelming majority in China is the Chinese peasant.
The inclusion of capitalists and entrepreneurs in the
party and the legitimization of private property in the
constitution remain ideologically problematic in a
political party of the proletariat.
The ideal
Confucian state rests on a stable society over which a
virtuous and benevolent emperor rules by moral
persuasion based on a Code of Rites, rather than on law.
Justice would emerge from a timeless morality that
governs social behavior. Man would be orderly out of
self-respect for his own moral character, rather than
from fear of punishment prescribed by law. A competent
and loyal literati-bureaucracy faithful to a just
political order would run the government according to
moral principles rather than following rigid legalistic
rules devoid of moral content. The interest of the
masses is the highest morality in politics.
Confucian values, because they were designed to
preserve the then-existing feudal system, unavoidably
ran into conflict with contemporary ideas reflective of
new emerging social conditions. It is in the context of
its inherent hostility toward progress and its penchant
for obsolete nostalgia that Confucian values, rather
than feudalism itself, become culturally oppressive and
socially damaging. When Chinese revolutionaries
throughout history, and particularly in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries, rebelled against the cultural
oppression of reactionary Confucianism, they
simplistically and conveniently linked it synonymously
with political feudalism.
Mao aimed to smash
Confucian dominance These revolutionaries
succeeded in dismantling the formal governmental
structure of political feudalism because it was the more
visible target. Their success was due also to the
terminal decadence of the decrepit governmental
machinery of dying dynasties, such as the ruling house
of the three-century-old, dying Qing Dynasty
(1583-1911). Unfortunately, these triumphant
revolutionaries remained largely ineffective in
remolding Confucian dominance in feudal culture, even
among the progressive intelligentsia. Mao understood
this reactionary aspect of Confucian culture. He aimed
to reform not only the polity of the Chinese state but
also the culture of Chinese society.
Almost a
century after the fall of the feudal Qing dynastic house
in 1911, after countless movements of socio-political
reform and revolution, ranging from moderate democratic
liberalism to extremist Bolshevik radicalism, China has
yet to find a workable alternative to the feudal
political culture that would be intrinsically
sympathetic to its aspirational social tradition of
populist government. Chinese revolutions, including the
modern revolution that began in 1911, through its
various metamorphoses over the span of almost four
millennia in overthrowing successive political regimes
of transplanted feudalism, repeatedly killed successive
infected patients - in the form of virulent governments.
But these revolutions failed repeatedly to
sterilize the infectious virus of Confucianism in its
feudal political culture. The modern destruction of
political feudalism produced administrative chaos and
social instability in China until the founding of the
People's Republic in 1949. That is the undeniable
contribution of Mao Zedong to Chinese political history.
But Confucianism still appeared alive and well
as cultural feudalism, even under communist rule, and
within the CCP. It continued to instill in its victims
an instinctive hostility toward new ideas, especially if
they were of foreign origin. Confucianism adhered to an
ideological rigidity that amounted to blindness to
objective problem-solving. Almost a century of recurring
cycles of modernization movements, nationalist or
communist, liberal or Marxist, did not manage to make
even a slight dent in the all-controlling precepts of
Confucianism in the Chinese mind. In fact, in 1928, when
the CCP attempted to introduce a soviet system of
government by elected councils in areas of northern
China under its control, many peasants earnestly thought
a new "Soviet" dynasty was being founded by a new
emperor by the name of "So Viet". Mao Zedong recognized
this feudal mentality as the central obstacle to China's
revitalization.
Confucianism considered
Legalism an aberration During the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, the debate
between Confucianism (Ru Jia) and Legalism (Fa
Jia) was resurrected as allegorical dialogue for
contemporary power struggle. Legalist concepts such as
equal justice under law for all and none being above the
law are considered by Confucians aberrations of social
morals and corruption of moral governance. At the dawn
the 21st century, Confucianism remained alive and well
in Chinese politics regardless of ideology in political
economy. Modern China was still a society in search of
an emperor figure and a country governed by feudal
relationships, but devoid of a compatible political
vehicle that would turn these tenacious, traditional
social instincts toward constructive purposes, instead
of allowing them to manifest themselves as
rationalization for corruption.
Of the three
great revolutions in modern history - the French (1789),
the Chinese (1911) and the Russian (1917) - each
overthrew feudal monarchial systems to introduce
idealized democratic alternatives that had difficulty
holding the country together without periods of terror.
The French and Russian revolutions both made the
fundamental and tragic error of revolutionary regicide
and suffered decades of social and political dislocation
as a result, with little if any socio-political benefit
in return.
In France, regicide did not even
prevent eventual restoration of monarchy imposed
externally by foreign victors. The Chinese revolution in
1911 was not plagued by regicide, but it prematurely
dismantled political feudalism before it had a chance to
develop a workable alternative, plunging the country
into decades of warlordism. Worse still, it left largely
undisturbed a Confucian culture while it demolished its
political vehicle. The result was that almost a century
after the fall of the last dynastic house, the
culture-bound nation was still groping for an
appropriate and workable political system, regardless of
economic ideology.
Next: Mao's glory will outshine neo-liberals
Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New
York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
