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Deng Tuo: Culture, Leninism and Alternative Marxism in the Chinese Communist Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

Deng Tuo was a Party member in good standing, a veteran cadre from the 1930s, former editor of the People' Daily and in 1965 secretary for culture and education in the Beijing Party Committee. Then suddenly in the spring of 1966 attacks on Wu Han, a vice–mayor of Beijing, swelled to include Deng and by May drove him to death under an avalanche of accusations. Deng Tuo and his protector, Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen, together with most of the city' Party Committee fell in the first flashes of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution that finally spread throughout China and claimed its head of state, Liu Shaoqi.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1981

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References

* The author wishes to thank John Israel for his supervision and encouragement.

1. Chen Kenan and Li Yun, “ Zhandou zai sixiang lilun zhanxie di zui qianxian dao Deng Tuo tongzhi,” Renmin ribao (RMRB), 6 August 1979, p. 3; a convenient review of the rehabilitation in English is, “ Reversal of earlier verdicts on the ‘ Three Family Village ’ case,” Issues and Studies (Taipei), September 1979, pp. 9–12.

2. The best accounts are: Goldman, Merle, “The unique ‘Blooming and contending’ of 1961–62,” China Quarterly, No. 37, (1969), pp. 5483CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Ahn, Byung–joon, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976);Google Scholar the only full outline in English of Deng Tuo's work is by Chuang, H. C., Studies in Chinese Communist Terminology, 14 (Berkeley, 1970), see note 30 below.Google Scholar

3. Ma Nancun, Yanshan yehua heji (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1963 and 1979), hereafter YSYH.

4. The author wishes to acknowledge and thank Dr. Pierre Ryckmans at the Australian National University for suggesting this point to him. In YSYH Deng Tuo repeatedly calls on this model, e.g. pp. 9–11.

5. Moody, Peter, Opposition and Dissent in Contemporary China (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1977), pp. 168et seq.Google Scholar The significance of Chinese Leninism was discussed in Carol Hamrin's 1975 PhD. (see note 94 below), and its continuity demonstrated in the rehabilitation of Shaoqi, Liu, Beijing Review, No. 21, 26 May 1980, p. 21.Google Scholar

6. Teiwes, Frederick, Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms 1950–1965 (New York, M. E. Sharpe, 1979)Google Scholar and Starr, John Bryan, Continuing The Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao (Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 300308.Google Scholar

7. Yao Wenyuan, “ Ping ‘ San jiacun ’ – ‘Yanshan yehua,’ ‘ San jiacun zhaji’ de fandong bensuan,” Wenhui bao (Shanghai), 10 May 1966. Glaubitz, Joachim, Opposition gegen Mao: Die Abendgespracheam Yenshan (Freiburg, Breisgau, 1969), p. 7.Google Scholar

8. Yilan, Ding, “Yi Deng Tuo,” Xinwen Zhanxian (Beijing), No. 1 (1979), pp. 2526 and Li Tuozhi, “ Daonian wangyou Deng Tuo,” Rongshu wenxue congkan (Banian Tree Literature, Fuzhou), Vol. 1, September 1979, p. 241. Western and Taiwanese sources disagree, giving Deng as a Shandong native born in 1911;Google ScholarZhonggong renming lu (ZGRML) (Taipei, 1969), p. 647Google Scholar and Klein, and Clark, , Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism (Harvard, 1971). On Deng's early life I follow Chinese sources.Google Scholar

9. “ Memorial meeting for Deng Tuo in Beijing,” Beijing, Xinhua Domestic Radio Broadcast, 5 September 1979; translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Daily Report: China, 6 September 1979, pp. L1–L3; and Li Tuozhi, “ Daonian Wangyou Deng Tuo,” p. 244.

10. ZGRML, p. 647; Li Tuozhi, “ Daonian wangyou Deng Tuo.”

11. ZGRML, p. 647 says that Deng Tuo attended Zhaoyang University in Beijing, but Li Tuozhi, “ Daonian wangyou Deng Tuo,” p. 242, says he attended Guanghua University in Shanghai and by 1933 was in jail.

12. Israel, John, Student Nationalism in China, 1927–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), p. 123 andGoogle ScholarIsrael, and Klein, Donald, Rebels and Bureauerats: China' December 9–ers (Berkeley: University of California Press 1976), pp. 26, 87. ZGRML, p. 647, says Deng Tuo was wanted by the Nationalist government for his participation in the 1935 movement.Google Scholar

13. Yunte, Deng, “Xingshi luoji haishi weiwu bianzheng fa?,” Xin Zhonghua (Shanghai), Vol. I, No. 23 (1933), pp. 5258. It was a rebuttal to an article by Zhang Dongsun in Vol. I, No. 18.Google Scholar

14. Essay topics by Deng in the Sun Yat–sen Quarterly (see note 16, below) in order: Vol. 2, No. 4,1935; Vol. 3, No. 2,1936; Vol. 4, No. 1, 1937, and the book, Zhongguo jiuhuang shi (Shanghai: Shangwu shudian, 1937).Google Scholar

15. Dirlik, Arif, “Mirror to revolution: early Marxist images of Chinese history,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXIII, No. 2 (1974), pp. 194–95 and 174.Google Scholar

16. Zhongshan wenhua jiaoyuguan jikan (Shanghai/Nanjing); Sun Fo and Cai Yuanpei both wrote in the inaugural issue, Vol. 1, No. 1,1935, pp. 1–7.

17. Zhongguo jindai zibenzhuyi fa zhan de guocheng jiqi texing,” Sun Yat–sen Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1937, pp. 103117.Google Scholar

18. Ibid.. p. 116.

19. Ibid.. pp. 110–111. In the essay Deng makes 35 citations, mostly to Western histories and especially to the work of Soviet Sinologist, Georgii Ivanovitch Safarov, Classes and Class Struggle in Chinese History (Moscow: 1928) which was curiously translated as Zhongguo shehui fazhan shi (A History of Chinese Social Evolution) in 1933.

20. Ibid.. p. 109.

21. Ibid.. p.117.

22. See note 14; the book was denounced during the Cultural Revolution in “ The counter–revolutionary face of Deng Tuo as seen from his History of Famine Relief in China” by Shi Xiangnong in Zhongguo Qingnian, 16 June 1966; translated in Selections from China Mainland Magazines (SCMM) 541.

23. Shina Kyu ke shi, translated by Kawosaki, Maso (Tokyo: Seikatsu sha, 1939); reprinted in Beijing by Sanlian shudian and in simplified characters with Deng's revisions in May 1958 and June 1961; the Commercial Press on Taiwan made simple photolithographic reprints in 1970, unknown and 1978. All maintain the name Deng Yunte.Google Scholar

24. Zhongguo jiuhuang shi (1937), pp. 2–3 and 81.

25. Harrison, J. P., The Communists and Chinese Peasant Rebellions (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 95.Google Scholar

26. Ding Yilan, “ Budan shi weile jinian – xie zai Yanshan yehua zaiban de shihou,” YSYH(1979), p. 1.

27. Wen Jize, “ Douzheng riji,” Jiefang ribao (Yan'an), 28 June 1942, p. 4.

28. For Lenin's view, see Fokkema, D. W., Literary Doctrine in China and Soviet Influences 1956–1960 (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1965), p. 9. Stalin's use of Leninism suggests that even Leninism may have carried the seeds of its own destruction.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. See his defence of sobriquets in YSYH, pp. 299–302.

30. Chuang, H. C., “ Evening Chats at Yenshan, or the Case of Teng T'o, “ Studies in Chinese Communist Terminology, 14 (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1970), p. 18.Google Scholar

31. FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” L1–L2 and Klein and Clark, Biographic Dictionary.

32. Jin–Cha–Ji bianju genjudi, cited in Dongfang hong, 19 May 1967 (published by Association of Representatives of the Capital University and College Red Guards at the Beijing Mining Institute). This is reprinted in Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Red Guard Publications, Vol. 13, p. 4084.

33. Ibid..; Peng Zhen was responsible for the CPS in the 1942 Rectification Movement, see Harrison, J.P., The Long March to Power (New York: Praeger, 1972), p. 325.Google Scholar

34. “ Gaizao women de tongxun yu baodao fangfa,” Xinvwen gongzuo jinan (Kalgan, Xinhua shudian, 1946), pp. 46–56.

35. FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” L2; RMRB, 6 August 1979, p. 3.

36. From September 1949 to 1952 Deng Tuo was Deputy Managing Director, from 1952 to July 1957 he was editor–in–chief, and from mid–July Wu Lengxi replaced him in that post and Deng served as Managing Director until February 1959: UR1, Who's Who and Klein and Clark, Biographic Dictionary. FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” L2,*says Deng was editor from 1950.

37. Zhengfeng yundong zai guojia jianshe gongzuo de zhongyaoxing,” Xuexi, Vol. 2, No. 11, pp. 35; also published as a pamphlet. A year later he published another endorsement in Xuexi, Vol. 4, No. 9.Google Scholar

38. Tuo, Denget at., He Qingnian yuanmen chunzhong luxian wenti (Beijing: Qingnian chubanshe, 1951 and 1952); Deng wrote the title essay and “ Chedi pipan mingling zhuyi” (Thoroughly criticize fatalism).Google Scholar

39. ZGRML, p. 647 and FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” L3.

40. See MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: 1 Contradictions Among the People (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 193et seq.Google Scholar

41. “Yao fandui baoshou zhuyi, ye yao fandui jizao qingxu,” RMRB, 20 June 1956; translated in Survey of China Mainland Press (SCMP), 1327, pp. 11–14.

42. The Confession of Wu Leng–hsi,” Hongse xinhua (Red New China), May 1968; translated in Chinese Law and Government, Vol. II, No. 4 (19691970), p. 72.Google Scholar

43. RMRB, 20 June 1956.

44. MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, p. 217.

45. RMRB, 17 July 1957.

46. MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, pp, 201–202; in fact, Mao complained of the delay, see Peking Review, No. 37, 13 September 1968, p. 22.

47. “ Feiqi ‘ Yongren zhengzhi,’ ” RMRB, 11 May 1957, p. 8; Deng was accused of writing this article in RMRB, 12 May 1966.

48. MacFarquhar, , The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, p. 270 and Richard Soloman, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 2223.Google Scholar

49. Wu Lengxi confession, pp. 73–74 and Ying, Yuan, “Bumie de shihun – huai Deng Tuo tongzhi he tade shi” in Deng Tuo shi ce xuan (Beijing, Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979), p. 158.Google Scholar

50. “ Xinwen gongzuo hong zhuan de daolu,” Xinwen Zhanxie (Beijing) (1958), No. 8, pp. 2–7 and 54; “ Makesi zhuyi zhexue he xinwen gongzuo,” Ibid.. (1959), No. 9. pp. 1–10.

51. Tuo, Deng, Xinwen zhanxie shang de shehui zhuyi geming (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1958), also printed in Xuexi (1958), No. 8 (18 April 1958).Google Scholar

52. Ibid.. pp. 12–13.

53. Ibid.. p. 19.

54. Deng Tuo, “ Nongye shi wo guo guomin jingji fazhan de jichu,” Xin Jianshe, No. 2, 7 February 1960, pp. 1–5; translated in Extracts from China Mainland Magazines (ECMM) 206.

55. ECMM 206, p. 12.

56. Ibid.. pp. 12–14.

57. Deng Tuo, “ A few words of advice,” translated in SCMM 214, p. 22.

58. A representative collection of Deng's historical essays and poetry is reprinted in Deng Tuo xuanji which is Vol. 2 of Wang, Ding, Zhonggong wenhua da geming ziliao hubian (Hong Kong: Mingbao Monthly, 1969), pp. 223279.Google Scholar

59. FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” L3.

60. Deng Tuo, “ Lun ‘ Hong Lou Meng’ de shehui beijing he lishi zhuyi.” RMRB, 9 January 1955, p. 3, and “ Cong Wanli dao Qianlong – guanyu zhongguo ziben zhuyi menyao shiqi de yige lunzheng,” Lishi yanjiu: (1956), No. 10, pp. 1–31.

61. Tuo, Deng, Lun Zhongguo lishi de jige wenti (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1959, 1963, and 1979).Google Scholar

62. Mao Zedong sixiang kaipile Zhongguo lishi kexue de daolu,” Lishi yanjiu (1961), No. 1, pp. 112; translated in SCMM 264, pp. 1–13.Google Scholar

63. SCMM 264, pp. 2–3; Xianjun, Huang says Deng read English, Rongshu wenxue congkan (Fuzhou), Vol. 1, September 1979, p. 237.Google Scholar

64. SCMM 264, pp. 10–11.

65. SCMM 264, p. 11.

66. Ibid.. pp. 10–11.

67. Ibid. p. 6; Mao, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 209.

68. Deng Tuo shi cexuan contains 160 of his poems.

69. Tuo, Deng, ed., Xinbian Tang shi sanbai shou (Beijing: Zhonghua shuchu, 1958); a denunciation of Deng's editorship appeared in Guangming ribao by Gao Wen'ge on 24 May 1966.Google Scholar

70. Tang shi sanbai shou edited by Sun Zhu, which had most recently been reprinted in Beijing in 1956.

71. Xinbian, pp. 1–2.

72. Mao had stressed the literature of peasant tales and simple vernacular in this famous lecture on the role of literature in Party–run society, Selected Works (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), Vol. III, especially pp. 7579.Google Scholar

73. Beijing wenyi, No. 6; reprinted in Deng Tuo shufa xuan (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1980), pp. 89.Google Scholar

74. For example, “ Jiangdian shufa,” YSYH, pp. 375–78.

75. Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China, Chapter 9, especially pp. 421–39.

76. Ibid.. pp. 421–23.

77. Lu Xun's model has been called upon by a certain Wang Shiwei who crossed Mao over literary freedoms in 1942, and lost, see Goldman, Merle, Literary Dissent in Communist China(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). Wu Han had again raised the zawen banner in 1960,CrossRefGoogle Scholarsee Pusey, James R., Wu Han: Attacking the Present through the Past (Harvard East Asia Monographs, No. 33, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78. Klein and Clark, Biographic Dictionary. FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” L2, says 1960, but on this point I am with Klein and Clark.

79. YSYH, frontpiece; yanshan (swallow hill) is an old name for the Beijing area.

80. “ Bupa tian,” YSYH, pp. 6–8; Deng wrote on this topic before, see footnote 14, above.

81. “Huanying zajia,” Beijing wanbao, (BJWB), 26 March 1961 (YSYH, p. 9).

82. “ Shishi guanxin,” BJWB, 8 October 1961 (YSYH, p. 158). Fortunately, this important article is conveniently available, with valuable gloss, in Tung, Robert, Proscribed Chinese Writing (London: Curzon Press, 1978), pp. 6669.Google Scholar

83. Ding Weng, Zhonggong wenhua da geming, p. 202 is wrong; see Chang duan lu (Beijing: Renmin ribao chubanshe, 1980), p. 1.Google Scholar

84. Weida de konghua,” Qianxian, No. 21 (1961); reprinted in Deng Tuo shiwen xuan, pp. 112–14. This section is roughly translated in Current Background (CB), 792, though I follow the version in the English edition of Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness, pp. 401–402, see note 86, below.Google Scholar

85. The Ximing chapter of the Dingwan by Zhang Zai, quoted by Zhu Xi in Jin Si Lu and printed in the collection, Sibu beiyao (Taipei: 1966), p. 19B. It is conveniently available in Wing–Tsit Chan's translation, Hsi, Chu, Reflection on Things at Hand (New York, Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 76.Google Scholar

86. Bauer, Wolfgang, China and the Search for Happiness, translated by Shaw, M. (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), p. 402; CB 792, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

87. “ ‘ Chang Guan Lou’ fan geming shijian de qianqian houhou” (Before and after the Broad View Tower counter–revolutionary incident), Dongfang hong (Beijing kuangye xueyuan, 20 April 1967), reprinted in Ding Wang, Zhonggong wenhua da geming, pp. 548–566 and translated as part of Counter–revolutionary revisionist P'eng Chen in SCMM 640, pp. 18–31.

88. This is the same conclusion Deng reached about the causes of famine in his 1937 book, Zhongguo jiuhuang shi.

89. SCMM 640, p. 23.

90. Ibid.. pp. 24–27.

91. Ibid.. p. 23.

92. “ Liangze waiguo yuyan,” BJWB, 26 November 1961 (YSYH, p. 519).

93. Moody, Peter, The Politics of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1973), p. 154Google Scholar and Joffe, Ellis, Between Two Plenums: China's Intraleadership Conflict: 1959–62 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 22), pp. 3336.Google Scholar

94. Hamrin, Carol, “Alternatives within Chinese Marxism: 1955–65. Yang Hsien–chen's theory of dialectics,” Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1975, pp. 403404.Google Scholar

95. Munro, Donald, The Concept of Man in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977), gives an empathetic analysis of the Maoist philosophy, particularly on the clustering of knowledge and value, pp. 40–45; see also, Starr, Continuing the Revolution, pp. 157–62.Google Scholar

96. Munro, Donald, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 5559.Google Scholar

97. Ahn, Chinese Politics, p. 177 and RMRB, 12 May 1966, p. 2.

98. Indexed in Ding Wang, Zhonggong wenhua da geming, pp. 575–80.

99. FBIS, “ Memorial meeting,” p. LI; Chen Kenan and Li Yun say he died during the night of May 17.

100. See Note 7, above; it was translated in CB 792.

101. Mao, SW, Vol. III, pp. 88–94 and Yao, in CB 792, p. 39.

102. Kuriyama, Kurt Y., Humanists and Technocrats: Political Conflict in Contemporary China (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979), pp. 4446.Google Scholar

103. Unity, Party building and Party leadership were the central points in Deng Xiaoping's commemorative speech, Beijing Review, No. 21 (26 May 1980), p. 21. See Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 628–33.Google Scholar

104. “ Beijing shiwei jueding wei ‘ San jiacun’ yun'an chedi pingfan,” RMRB, 3 August 1979, p. 1.

105. Zhang Yide, “ It is no crime to criticize idealism, it is meritorious to propagate materialism – refuting Yao Wenyuan's false charges in his article ‘ Against Evening Chats at Yanshan and Notes from a Three Family Village,” translated in FB1S, 9 February 1979, pp. E2–E8.

106. Ibid.. pp. E3 and E5.

107. Su Shuangbi, “Two good books that pinpoint the defects of the era,” translated in FB1S, 9 February 1979, pp. E8–E11, and Shuangbi, Su, “Ping Yao Wenyuan de ‘ Ping San Jiacun,’” Hongqi (1979), No. 2, pp. 4148.Google Scholar

108. See note 26, above.

109. Chen Kehan and Li Yun, RMRB.

110. See notes 8 and 9 above; the other memorial article in Banian Tree is by Huang Xianjun, pp. 233–39.

111. Beijing Review, No. 21, 26 May 1980.