Thoughts on Cultural Revolution and Comparative Studies

Abstract

Those who have thought much about the recurrent abuses and injustices in all human societies have inevitably reflected on solutions. If the reflection is comprehensive enough, and if the social evils are seen on balance to outweigh the social possibilities of solution, revolution becomes a viable consideration. Unfortunately, however, the thought of revolutionary change in either group or individual behaviour has been for the most part utopian, simplistic, and instrumentally traditional. The idea of revolution has rested intellectually on a hope rather than a plan, politically on authority rather than consensus, functionally on the effect of change in one institution rather than on concerted dynamic processes. The act of revolution has rarely if ever lived up to the ideal, largely because of the absence of a pragmatics of revolution which might connect the vision to the institutional and behavioural outcome and moderate the transfer of power in the interest of the people to be served by such transfer. The idea of 'cultural revolution' is attractive today. To radicals, it connotes totality of change. To liberals, it suggests a moderation of political excesses through change processes anchored by recognized values and instruments of popular will; it implies immediate cultural changes within the culture. To educators, it seems to emphasize the connection between a traditional concern with culture and a modern concern with change; it delivers the educator from his dilemma on the question of leading or following society, and seems to allow him to join in the vanguard while carrying his cultural baggage. If these statements on the attractiveness of the term seem to defy a definition of the term, it is because there is no definition. There are, to be sure, interpretations agreed upon within certain groups, and there are local stipulative processive definitions, notably that adopted in contemporary Chinese history, but as a theoretical term, 'cultural revolution' has no meaning. 'Culture' is cumulative; it is material, behavioural, institutional, and valuational; it is growing and dying with every change in population, idea, agreement, and instrument. Revolution, connoting immediate and drastic change from one human order to another specified order, is incomprehensible as a cultural phenomenon, affecting simultaneously all dimensions of individual and collective experience. To consider 'cultural revolution' then, is to consider either fantasy or interpretation. The latter may be more fruitful. In this paper, I will attempt to move from interpretations, which are sometimes indistinguishable from motivations, to the actual social meaning of appeals for cultural revolution, and finally to the question of education as a component of generalized change processes. Throughout, my concern is with the basis and conduct of comparative studies. My frame of