The Proletarian Cultural Revolution is Deep Criticism of the Doctrines of Confucius and Mencious by Fang Hai

Democracy and Class Struggle continues with its examination of Lin Biaoism and Confucius, many of the ideas of Soviet Revisionists on Confucius were later applied by Deng Xiaoping. 

In fact there were projects started in 1980's funded by hundreds of millions of dollars by the Chinese State to create Confucian Studies Departments at Universities which attracted some of the elite's children but the general population had little time for this academic neo confucianism.

 

Confucianism was explored anew after the 1980s.

 

The first indication of this
was the establishment of certain institutions authorized by the party and government,
for instance, the China Confucius Foundation (CCF).

In  1984 and the International Confucian Association (ICA ) was formed.

 

 The CCF was established and financially supported by the central government. International activities related to Confucianism are still strongly promoted by the ICA. This is different from the CCF.

 

In any case, until now, the ICA and the
CCF are still the most influential organizations of Confucian studies in China

 

 

The promotion of "Confucian Harmonious Society" was Hu Jintao's ruling philosophy.

Near the end of his tenure in 2011, Hu appeared to extend the ideology to an international dimension, with a focus on the international peace and cooperation, which is said to lead to a "harmonious world". 

The administration of Hu's successor, Xi Jinping, has used the philosophy more sparingly. See Xi Jingping and his approach in documents below.

Document No 9 and Document No 30 of the Chinese Communist Party in the 21st Century are reflections on the Communist Party of China's ideological failures since Mao and an attempt to hijack some features of Maoism to solve their current political problems has Confucianism or Neo Confucianiam has been an abject ideological failure.

The Proletarian Cultural Revolution is Deep Criticism of the Doctrines of Confucius and Mencious by Fang Hai


The party's basic line

tells us that socialist society covers a considerably

long historical period and that throughout this historical

period, there are classes, class contradictions

and class struggle, there is the struggle between the

socialist road and the capitalist road, there is the

danger of capitalist restoration and there is the

threat of subversion and aggression by imperialism

and social-imperialism.

Struggles between two 1ines

within the Party, which reflect these contradictions,

will also continue for a long time, and may

occur ten, twenty or thirty more times.

 

In China, ever since the proletariat appeared on

             the political stage as a class-conscious, independent
             political force, the revolutions it led have invariably
             been closely linked with criticism of the reactionary
                           Confucian and Mencian doctrines.

 

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution initiated

           and led by Chairman Mao is a great political revolution'

                It is also a profound criticism of the doctrines of
                                 Confucius and Mencius.

 

            The reactionary doctrines of Confucius and Mencius
                                are doctrines of restoration.

Every reactionary ruling class in Chinese history

                has made use of them in an attempt to hold back
                     social progress and restore the o1d order.

Representatives of opportunist lines within the

Communist Party are agents of the landlord class

and the bourgeoisie.

 

In order to turn back the wheel of history and oppose

the proletarian revolution, they inevitably pick

weapons from the trashy ideological arsenal of the

decadent slave-owning and landlord classes to

attack the proletariat and so are bound to be diehard

defenders and frenzied peddlers of the reactionary

doctrines of Confucius and Mencius.
'

During the

Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, we have

smashed the two bourgeois headquarters, one

headed by Liu Shao-chi and the other by Lin Biao.

The struggle against Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao is

also a struggle between opposition to and worship

of Confucius.

The criticism of their revisionist lines involves

widespread criticism of the reactionary

doctrines of Confucius and Mencius. Like all

other ringleaders of opportunist lines within the

Party, Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao were worshippers

of Confucius.
 

The reactionary doctrines of Confucius

and Mencius constitute one of the main ideological

sources of their revisionist lines.
 

The sinister book on "self-cultivation" by the

renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi

stemmed from the reactionary doctrines of Confucius

and Mencius and was directed against the

proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the

proletariat.
 

Most of the vicious views he spread were new

versions of these doctrines. Confucius

and Mencius preached "loyalty and considerateness"

and "accord among men," and Liu Shao-chi

on his part urged people to "learn from Confucius

in practising the principle of considerateness," to

show "magnanimity, forbearance and the spirit of

conciliation and compromise"; all of which he did

in order to promote his theory of "the dying out

of class struggle" and of "peace within the Party."

 

Confucius and Mencius preached that "only the

highest who are the wise and the lowest who are

the stupid cannot be changed," and that "the common

people should be directed to do things but not

made to comprehend them."
 

Liu Shao-chi sang the same tune;

he slandered the working class as

"having developed to a considerable extent the

mentality of the guildsmen and of the hooligans,"

and "lacking a sense of social responsibility," and

accused the peasants of thinking of nothing except

"keeping cool and sleeping at their homes." All

this he did in order to peddle his theory of "docile

tools" and his thesis that "the masses are backward."
 

Confucius and Mencius spread such

fallacies as "those who work with their minds

govern, while those who toil with their hands be

governed," and that "he who excels in learning

can be an official."
 

Correspondingly, Liu Shao-chi peddled the ideas

of "joining the Party in order to climb up

," "studying in order to become an official"

and "going to the countryside to gild oneself." Liu

Shao-chi proved himself a worthy disciple of Confucius

and Mencius by parroting their canons and

imitating their actions.
 

The bourgeois careerist, conspirator, double dealer,

renegade and traitor Lin Biao was likewise

an out-and-out Confucian. He used the reactionary

doctrines of Confucius and Mencius to oppose

and sabotage the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

in a bid to subvert the dictatorship of the

proletariat and restore capitalism in China.

 

The adage "restrain oneself and return to the rites

preached by Confucius, was taken up by Lin Biao

as his reactionary programme for the restoration

of capitalism. Confucius and Mencius spread the

notion that some people are "born with knowledge,"

and other fallacies of idealist apriorism.
 

Lin Biao used these as reactionary ideological weapons

for a "return to the rites."

In their slanders against the labouring people

and contempt for manual labour, Liu Shao-chi and

Lin Biao were entirely at one with Confucius and

Mencius. Confucius engaged in demagogy and

swindling wherever he went.

Lin Biao emulated him by playing double-faced tricks

, and saying all the fine-sounding words

while doing everything

evil. Lin Biao and Confucius not only used the

same language, but their politics, ideology and

tactics ran in the same vein.
 

Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao were adherents of

Confucius. In the cultural revolution and the

struggle to consolidate and develop its rich achievement

 it is necessary for us to criticize Confucius

along with criticism of Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao'

 

Although Confucius was a spokesman for the slave owners

of more than 2,000 years ago, that binds

all three together indissolubly is their essence - a1l

representing reactionary exploiting classes and

manifesting a common ideology and behaviour, i'e',

the effort to turn back the wheel of history' Therefore,

we must criticize Confucius while criticizing

Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao.

The current struggle to criticize Lin Biao

and Confucius has the purpose

precisely of consolidating and carrying forward the

major achievements of the Great Proletarian Cultural

Revolution, strengthening the dictatorship of

the proletariat and opposing the restoration of

capitalism in China.

As Lenin pointed out, if we want to expose

the counter-revolutionary inner

nature of revisionism to the full, we must lay bare

its origins.

In criticizing Bogdanov, a revisionist

who had sneaked into the Russian Bolshevik

Party, Lenin traced his revisionism back to the

Englishman Berkeley, father of reactionary bourgeois

idealism.
 

Lenin pointed out: "The 'recent' Machians

have not adduced a single argument

against the materialists that had not been adduced

by Bishop Berkeley."

Now, in criticizing Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao and their counter revolutionary revisionist lines, we are stripping them

right down to their origins in Confucius.

 

Can we not see that the "latest" goods

hawked by these

political swindlers are the time-worn stock-in-trade

of the Confucian Shop?

Can we not see that their

whole sinister system of thought, their entire reactionary

ideology constitutes a black line linked

with that of Confucius and Mencius?

 

Chairman Mao teaches us: "There is no construction

without destruction, no flowing without

damming and no motion without rest." Put

destruction first, and in the process you have construction.

In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

, both Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao have been

exposed as faithful adherents of Confucius. Their

counter-revolutionary revisionist lines have been

scathingly criticized alongside the reactionary

doctrines of Confucius and Mencius.

During the fierce struggle to smash

the two bourgeois headquarters

of Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao, the masses

of people engaged in large-scale destruction of the

traditional ideologies of the reactionary classes

which were stubbornly defended by those two and

built up proletarian ideology on a large scale.

The decadent ideologies

upheld by Li Shao-chi and

Lin Piao had as their main source the doctrines of

Confucius and Mencius, which made up the most

reactionary part of China's feudal culture and

ideology.

 

The Chinese bourgeoisie was feeble

politically and economically, and moreover was

closely linked with the feudal forces, so it could

not, and did not oppose the feudal culture in a

thoroughgoing way.

At all times, its culture and

ideology retained many feudal dregs. Liu Shaochi

and Lin Piao were representatives of this bourgeoisie

within the Party.

In practising revisionism,

they were bound to employ the doctrines of Confucius

and Mencius to oppose proletarian culture

and ideology. It was for the sole purpose of creating

public opinion to prepare for the overthrow of

the dictatorship of the proletariat that they spared

no effort in seizing upon the field of ideology,

assiduously preached the reactionary doctrines of

Confucius and Mencius, frantically exercised a

counter-revolutionary dictatorship over the proletariat

in the departments under their control and

fostered a lush growth of poisonous weeds.

The

aim of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

is to oppose and prevent revisionism, seize back

that portion of power usurped by the bourgeoisie,

exercise all-round proletarian dictatorship in the

superstructure including all fields of culture, consolidate

and strengthen the socialist economic basis,

and prevent capitalist restoration, thereby enabling

our country to continue its advance along the socialist.

road. In the final analysis, this revolution

is aimed precisely at destroying the ideology of the

declining exploiting classes and transforming the

world according to the world outlook of the proletariat.

During the cultural revolution a multitude of

brand-new things emerged in the course of the up and-

down struggle against the revisionist lines

pushed by Liu Shao-chi and Lin Biao. Their

appearance also came about as a result of penetrating

criticism of the doctrines of Confucius and

Mencius were so stubbornly upheld by Liu

Shao-chi, Lin Biao and other political swindlers.

Literature and art began to portray and serve the

workers, peasants and soldiers who took over those

realms, so that the emperors, kings, generals,

ministers, scholars and beauties who for centuries

had personified Confucian and Mencian values on

stage were swept from the boards. This in itself

was a penetrating criticism of the reactionary

idealist conception of history - "only the highest

who are the wise and the lowest who are the stupid

cannot be changed" - preached by Confucius and

Mencius, in which the people were regarded as

mere chaff.

On the educational front, the cultural

revolution wrote an end to the situation in which

education was divorced from the masses of workers

and peasants and from productive labour, and to

domination of the schools by bourgeois intellectual

Workers, peasants and soldiers now attend universities,

run them and are transforming them with

Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse tung Thought. Millions

of educated young people are going to the countryside

to integrate themselves with the peasants. Al1

this constitutes a deep criticism of the reactionary

thinking that "he who excels in learning can be

an official," peddled by Confucius and Mencius,

with its contempt for the working people. Cadres

in state organs and other parts of the superstructure

are taking the "May 7" road - they are able to

work well at whatever job they are given to do,

either as officials or as rank-and-filers.

This again

is a deep criticism of the reactionary view of Confucius

and Mencius that "those who work with

their minds govern." Lin Piao and his crew were

consumed with fear and hatred of these socialist

new things born in the course of criticizing Confucianism,

and by the breakaway of more and more

people from the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius.

They left no stone unturned to undermine

the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and

negate everything new.

In their plan for a counterrevolutionary

armed coup d'etat, known as Outline

of Project "571," they attacked the Great Proletarian

Cultural Revolution in the most vicious

language. They slanderously described the excellent

situation emerging after the Great Proletarian Cultural revolution

In line with Chairman Mao's directive of May 7, all

cadres go' to "May 7" cadre schools in rotation. There they

do serious reading and study linked with the present-day

struggle, take part in collective productive labour as

ordinary working people and go to live and work in agricultural

production brigades to temper themselves. Thus they

remould their world outlook. This is a strategic measure for

carrying out the basic line of the Party in the historical

period of socialism, opposing revisionism and preventing its

emergence and consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in which the socialist

cause is flourishing as "beset with growing crises"

and "fallen into stagnation," the practice of

opposition to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

and to the newborn things, the more we

should expand and deepen our criticism of Confucius

and Lin Biao so as to consolidate and develop

the tremendous achievements of the cultural revolution

and promote the speedy and healthy growth

of the new things.
 

The facts of Chinese history show that only a

cultural revolution carried out and led by the proletariat

they could not be thorough in this' As

Chairman Mao has pointed out: "In past history'

before they won state power and for some time

afterwards, the slave-owning class, the feudal

landlord class and the bourgeoisie were vigorous'

revolutionary and progressive; they were real

,Tigers. But with the lapse of time, because their

opposites - the slave class, the peasant class and

the proletariat - grew in strength step by step,

struggled against them more and more fiercely,

these ruling classes changed step by step into the

reverse, changed into reactionaries, changed into

backward people, changed into paper tigers. And

eventually they were overthrown, or will be overthrown,

by the people."'


 When the landlord class

and the bourgeoisie (including the intellectuals in

their service) were ascending, they stood for transformation

and progress and opposed and criticized

the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius which

advocated restoration of the o1d order and blocked

their way forward.


But after these classes had

seized political power, and held it for a time, they

changed over to worship for Confucius in order

to consolidate their own rule and preserve their

own interests, and in their turn promoted a counterrevolutionary

ideological and political line for the

maintenance of the old order.

When a class or a person changes from

opposition to Confucius to

worship of Confucius, it marks the change in that

class or person from revolutionary to reactionary

and from progress to retrogression. Such changes

of stand are determined by the interests and nature

of the exploiting classes and represent a law of class

struggle independent of man's will.
 

The proletariat is different from all the exploiting

classes. Representing the most advanced relations

of production, it is the greatest class in the history

of mankind, the most powerful revolutionary class

ideologically, politically and in terms of strength'

It is a class which, from first to last, stands firmly

for the progress and transformation of society and

works for the interests of the vast majority. Only

a cultural revolution Ied by this class, the proletariat,

is up to the task of thoroughly opposing and

criticizing Confucius. When the proletariat of

China mounted the political stage, history placed

this task upon its shoulders.

The great May 4th Movement of 1919 raised the

slogan "Down with the Confucian Shop!" and thus

began to break down the 2,000-year-old cult of

Confucius. "The May 4th Movement was uncompromising

in its opposition to feudal culture."

For that time on our country's democratic revolution

entered a new stage.

And as the new democratic

revolution led by the proletariat

developed in depth, the struggle against Confucian-

ism also became ever fiercer and deeper. In the

course of the socialist revolution the economic base

of the bourgeoisie has already been smashed. But

this exploiting class refuses to quit the stage of

history and, turning its attention to winning the

battle in people's minds, is attempting to use the

ideology of the exploiting classes and the reactionary

doctrines of Confucius and Mencius to corrupt

the masses, undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat

and restore capitalism
 

Ever since the founding of the Peop1e's Republic

of China, the great leader Chairman Mao has paid

close attention to the class struggle in the sphere

of ideology and repeatedly issued instructions and

Iaunched criticism against the reactionary Confucianism.

In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

and the current criticism of Lin Piao and

Confucius, both initiated and led by Chairman Mao,

Confucianism is being criticized more penetratingly

and on an incomparably wider scale than in any

of the previous cultural revolutions in China's history.

The May 4th Movement belonged in its

nature to the bourgeois-democratic revolution,

so it was not possible for it to oppose the ideologies

of all the exploiting classes.

The current movement

to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius, however,

is a political and ideological struggle in which

Marxism is triumphing over revisionism, and the

proletariat over the bourgeoisie in the realm of the

superstructure - a more profound revolution in the

ideological sphere.
 

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

we have smashed the two bourgeois headquarters

headed by Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao, and deeply

criticized the counter-revolutionary revisionist

lines which they pushed and the doctrines of Confucius

and Mencius which they touted. Their attempt

to imitate Confucius in conspiring for

restoration was thwarted. This is a great victory

of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line.

But we cannot say that the struggle between the

criticism and the worship of Confucius has come

to an end with this great movement. On the one

hand, Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao were not two

isolated persons, but representatives of a class and

a political line; and although they have been overthrown,

we must continue to examine thoroughly

and repudiate politically and ideologically the revisionist

lines they acted upon and the doctrines of

Confucius and Mencius which they advocated. On

the other hand, we must see that the struggle between

criticism and worship of Confucius has all

along been an important component of the struggle

between the two classes and the two lines, and is,

therefore, a long-term fighting task.

Although Liu Shao-chi, that worshipper of Confucius,

was overthrown during the Great proletarian

Cultural Revolution,, Lin Biao came out to

unfurl the tattered banner of Confucius-worship.


 

This fact shows vividly that the followers of Confucius

will not disappear as a result of just one or

two cultural revolutions. The party's basic line

tells us that socialist society covers a considerably

long historical period and that throughout this historical

period, there are classes, class contradictions

and class struggle, there is the struggle between the

socialist road and the capitalist road, there is the

danger of capitalist restoration and there is the

threat of subversion and aggression by imperialism

and social-imperialism. Struggles between two 1ines

within the Party, which reflect these contradictions,

will also continue for a long time, and may

occur ten, twenty or thirty more times.

Lin Biaos will appear again and so will persons like

 

Wang Ming, Liu Shao-chi, Peng Teh-huai and Kao Kang.

Doctrines of Confucius and Mencius are doctrines

for restoration, as long as there is anyone attempting

restoration there will be reverence for

Confucius and utilization of his doctrine"to push the

revisionist line and oppose the proletarian revolution

and the dictatorship of the proletariat. There_

fore, the criticism of Confucius and Mencius will

continue throughout the entire historical period of

socialism in the struggle between the two classes,

two roads and two lines and will at all times be

one of the main contents of the socialist revolution

in China.

 

We must stick to the Party's basic line

for the historical period of socialism, persist in making

revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat,

deepen the class struggle and the two-line

struggle and carry the struggle of criticism of Lin

Biao and Confucius through to the end.

Only so

can we consolidate and develop the victorious

achievements of the Great Proletarian Cultural

Revolution, strengthen the dictatorship of the
proletariat and carry the proletarian revolution constantly

forward.

　　

 

 

Further Study :

http://www.bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/Lin-Confucius/CriticizingLinPiaoAndConfucius-2-1975.pdf

 

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/mao-and-lin-biao-refuting-anti-maoism.html