Abridged text of an editorial written
for the People's Daily.
From Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages
Press, 1977), Vol. V, pp. 57-58.
The question raised by The Life of
Wu Hsun is fundamental in nature. A fellow like Wu Hsun,1 living
as he did towards the end of the Ching Dynasty in an era of great struggle
by the Chinese people against foreign aggressors and domestic reactionary
feudal rulers, did not lift a finger against the feudal economic base
or its superstructure; on the contrary, he strove fanatically to spread
feudal culture and, in order to gain a position for this purpose previously
beyond his reach, he fawned in every way on the reactionary feudal rulers
-- ought we to praise such disgusting behaviour? How can we tolerate
praising it to the masses, especially when such praise flaunts the revolutionary
banner of "serving the people" and when the failure of revolutionary
peasant struggles is used as a foil to accentuate the praise? To approve
or tolerate such praise is to approve or tolerate abuse of the revolutionary
struggles of the peasants, abuse of Chinese history, abuse of the Chinese
nation, and to regard such reactionary propaganda as justified.
The appearance of the film The Life of Wu Hsun, and particularly
the spate of praise lavished on Wu Hsun and the film, show how ideologically
confused our country's cultural circles have become!
In the view of many writers, history proceeds not by the new superseding
the old, but by preserving the old from extinction through all kinds
of exertion, not by waging class struggle to overthrow the reactionary
feudal rulers who ought to be overthrown, but by negating the class
struggle of the oppressed and submitting to these rulers in the manner
of Wu Hsun. Our writers do not bother to study history and learn who
were the enemies oppressing the Chinese people and whether there was
anything commendable about those who submitted to these enemies and
worked for them. Nor do they bother to find out what new economic formations
of society, new class forces, new personalities and ideas have emerged
in China during the century and more since the Opium War of 1840 in
the struggle against the old economic formations and their superstructures
(politics, culture, etc.) before they decide what to commend and praise,
what not to, and what to oppose.
Certain Communists who have allegedly grasped Marxism merit special
attention. They have studied the history of social development -- historical
materialism -- but when it comes to specific historical events, specific
historical figures (like Wu Hsun) and specific ideas which run counter
to the trend of history (as in the film The Life of Wu Hsun
and the writings about Wu Hsun), they lose their critical faculties,
and some have even capitulated to these reactionary ideas. Isn't it
a fact that reactionary bourgeois ideas have found their way into the
militant Communist Party? Where on earth is the Marxism which certain
Communists claim to have grasped?
For the above reasons, it is imperative to unfold discussion on the
film The Life of Wu Hsun and on the essays and other writings
about Wu Hsun and thereby thoroughly clarify the confused thinking on
this question.
NOTES
[1] Wu Hsun (1838-96), born in Tangyi,
Shantung Province, was originally a vagrant. Using the slogan of "schools
through alms", he went about cheating people out of their money,
bought land and lent money and eventually became a big landlord and
usurer. He ganged up with despotic landlords to set up a few so-called
"tuition-free schools" in which he fanatically spread feudal
culture and trained lackeys for the exploiting class, thus winning praise
from reactionary rulers of successive regimes.
—from Selected Works of Mao
Tse-tung