SolidarityEconomy.net

This is the first on two articles assessing

classes and class struggle in China’s past
and present day. The second, an exchange
with Yi Ching Wu by David Schweickart,
will appear tomorrow.

Yesterday’s Class Enemy:
Class Ideology and the Politics
of the Cultural Revolution

By Yi Ching Wu
University of Chicago

It is not so much of an exaggeration to say that the Cultural Revolution was all about class-it was, in any case, officially self-defined as “a great revolution in which one class overthrows another.” The notion of class framed the experiences and practices of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. Class and class struggle constituted the very political framework of the movement, and defined its main objectives. A highly elaborate vocabulary of class pervaded the everyday life of the entire Chinese population. But what did it really mean to talk about “class” during the Cultural Revolution? What was the meaning of “class struggle,” and who were its primary targets?

These apparently innocuous questions have no self-evident answers. In the contemporary Chinese context, the meanings of such political terms as “class,” “class struggle,” and “revolution” have been largely evacuated. They belong to this class of words which, by virtue of having been used so much and so often, have come to mean almost completely nothing at all. Yet these are by no means trivial questions. My purpose of probing the meaning and character of class politics during the Cultural Revolution is to explore two broad questions with regard to the internal complexity as well as the historical significance of the Cultural Revolution. First, in what sense was the Cultural Revolution cultural? And second, to what extent was it revolutionary? (more…)