Economics, Ideology and the Cultural Revolution

Abstract

Introduction: The Cultural Revolution Group in Peking has accused Liu Shao-ch'i of being the Khrushchev of China, plotting to restore capitalism. This accusation raises a number of different, albeit related, issues which will be explored in the present paper. First, although the revisionist conspiracy headed by Liu is supposed to have led a covert, and sometimes not so covert, existence for a long time,1 why had the issue not been raised earlier, before the onslaught of the Cultural Revolution? Did the winter of 1965-1966, when the Cultural Revolution first broke out, possess some special significance in terms of China's economic system and its development? Secondly, if the timing of the campaign against Liu's policies was significant, what would have happened had these policies been allowed to be carried out? Speaking objectively, can one really equate Liu's policies with an effort to restore capitalism? Would they have had such an effect, and if so, would the effect have been intended? In this connection, we do not of course have to take the accusations against Liu at their face value. For it is conceivable that Liu had chosen to pursue certain policies which could be interpreted by doctrinaire ideologues as revisionist without in the least intending to subvert Communist rule in China. (Surely, to assume the opposite, as is literally implied in the accusations, borders on the preposterous.) But if this is the case, one must then question the rationale of going beyond a mere accusation of unintentional deviation in ideology on Liu's part. To charge him of unintentional subversion of Chinese Communism requires additional explanations. One suspects that these explanations may shed light on another side of the Cultural Revolution, namely, the political struggle for succession. While a great deal has already been written on the Cultural Revolution, what will happen in the post-GPCR and, sooner or later, the post-Mao period is an issue on which there still is room for speculation. What constitutes the best economic institutions and policies for China at this stage of her development looms large in the ideological rectification which the Cultural Revolution attempts to perpetrate. Economics, however, is not simply a topic on which serious differences in attitude and policy are registered. As we shall see, there are reasons to believe that eco-