Thoroughly Expose Ba Jin’s Counterrevolutionary True Face

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. This is a reference to Liu Shaoqi. From the early 1960s until the Cultural Revolution, Liu was the Chairman of State and Chairman Mao’s designated successor; he was ultimately purged and humiliated during the Cultural Revolution. Liu died in prison of pneumonia due to maltreatment in 1969.2. See [Li] Feigan, “Liening—Gemingde pantu” (Lenin: Traitor to the Revolution), Xuehui supplement to Guofeng ribao (National Customs Daily), February 20, 1925. One could speculate that because this article in particular was used against Ba Jin in the Cultural Revolution, and due to its inflammatory title, it was made inaccessible to scholars when Ba Jin’s political supporters were in power, that is, before and after the Cultural Revolution. That is also perhaps why, despite the editors’ best efforts, we have been unable to locate that article to use in this issue.3. See the first selection in this issue, Li Feigan’s “On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (Makeside “wuchanjiejizhuanzheng”), which was originally published in Makesizhuyi de pochan (The Bankruptcy of Marxism) (Shanghai: Ziyou shudian, 1928), pp. 105–125.4. This refers to the Kuomintang (KMT) government’s signing of the so-called He–Umezu Agreement, under which the KMT agreed not to conduct party operations in Hebei Province, in effect starting to cede control of northern China to Japan.5. See Mao, “On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism,” Selected Works (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 153–178.6. See the fifth selection in this issue, Ba Jin, “‘Afterword’ to Peter Kropotkin’s Blood of Freedom.” Unlike their other charges that he had a past association with anarchism and criticized both Marx and Lenin, which were basically true, one could argue that the authors are being very unfair to Ba Jin in claiming that he opposed the revolution and supported the Kuomintang. Even though he chose to live in areas under Kuomingtang control during the war rather than join the Communists in Yanan, Ba Jin continued to oppose capitalism and supported socialism and communism in general. Paul Pickowicz argued further that by depicting the dark and dreary side of life in the Kuomingtang-controlled areas during the war with Japan, Ba Jin “did a great deal to undermine the legitimacy of the nationalist state.” See Pickowicz, introduction to Cold Nights by Pa Chin [Ba Jin] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003), p. xxxii. Also, as we noted in the introduction to this issue, although it is true that he did criticize the tactics of the Communists in this afterword, unlike older Chinese anarchists, Ba Jin did stay in China after 1949.7. Ba Jin, trans., “Shehui biange yu jingji de gaizao” (Social Change and Economic Transformation), by Kropotkin (Kelupaotejin), Shijie yuekan 1 (May/June 1947): 9–10; really a translation of Kropotkin’s 1919 postscript to the Russian edition of his Words of a Rebel (St. Petersburg and Moscow: Golos-Trouda, 1921). See bibliography in the guest editors’ introduction to this issue.8. The authors are conveniently ignoring here the fact that Kropotkin wrote these comments long before Stalin’s rise to the top leadership posts in the Soviet Union, though it could certainly be true that the Nationalist regime during the Chinese civil war gladly reprinted Ba Jin’s translation for its own purposes.9. Refers to different kinds of problems related to poorly allocated production and consumption quotas, especially for consumer goods, under the nationalized industry of the Stalinist central planning system of the 1950s.10. Perhaps the authors failed to realize here they were admitting that Ba Jin’s critique resonated with readers around the country, even though they imply later in the essay that the resonance was with foreign countries.11. Chen Pixian was first party secretary of Shanghai until his purge in the “January Storm” of the Cultural Revolution in 1967; he rehabilitated in the mid-1970s.12. That is, “conciliation with imperialism, revisionism and reactionaries of all countries” and “annihilation of world revolution.” This refers to the Cultural Revolution charge that Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping led a supposed “pacifist” line in foreign policy that opposed the Maoist line of support for wars of national liberation abroad. See Michael B. Yahuda, “Chinese Foreign Policy After 1963: The Maoist Phases,” China Quarterly 36 (October/December 1968): 106. Many scholars writing since the Cultural Revolution, however, find little evidence that these leaders really acted in foreign policy matters without Mao’s approval.