Destabilizing Contradictions and Implosions I: Synchronic Contradictions

Abstract

This chapter explains the concept of “synchronic contradictions” that can make an entire enterprise of ideationally driven codification fragile. A case analysis of the “background theory debate” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution is used to illustrate the implosive processes brought forth by the “synchronic contradictions” that were built into the idea system

Let us now consider why the revolutionary idea system came to fall apart.

A successful idea system runs on a state of minimal equilibrium, a balance between cohesiveness and contradictions. The revolutionary idea system had its strength in being ideationally cohesive, encompassing, adaptative, and meaningful. But it also had a characteristic: it repeatedly allowed “contradictions” to accumulate and multiply and could not resolve them internally, satisfactorily, and speedily.

Such contradictions seemed to be internally irresolvable by design. Often, the internal means of resolution met their limitations, upon which external means were called for to “resolve” a dispute. A typical scenario is an external authority intervening to impose one definition upon the situation, taking a clear side, or to deescalate a confrontational situation before it got out of hand. But when the power of these external agents became fragile or unstable, previously unresolved contradictions would resurface, and the idea system would exist in a state of strain and weakness, facing challenges of the present as well as of the past.

Such patterns recurred cyclically, and intensified over time, during the years 1948–1979. Initially, contradictions could be contained internally or by an external authority. Over time, however, it became ever more challenging to contain the idea system’s internal contradictions; even on the “aggregate” level, the idea system failed to cohere. When the external epistemic authorities were factionalized, they created aggregate-level attacks, often leading to definitional collapse on the aggregate level, alongside the extreme negation of epistemic authorities of all sides by one another. Near the end of Mao’s era, neither definitions within, nor authorities upon, the idea system easily cohered, regardless of the work and effort put into “stretching” the boundaries of elastic codes. The core propositions were affected. Although Mao successfully maintained control of his reign, the strength of the idea system that guided the revolutionary movement had weakened considerably.

A Catalogue of Elastic, Approximated Categories

To trace the problem of implosive contradictions, let us reconsider the proliferation of elastic codes in China during the Mao era. Parts of these codes had predated the founding of the PRC, while others were fine characterizations that developed after 1949.

The most widely read publication during the heyday of the Chinese Revolution was Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (1964), commonly known as the Little Red Book, prepared by Lin Biao. A casual search in the quotation book would reveal a shocking number of “-isms,” reproduced in Table 11.1.

Table 11.1 A collection of intermediary ideas, as elastic codes, in the Little Red Book

This catalogue of words that end with an “-ism” constituted a scheme of categorization. They constituted a stock of intermediary ideas (or intermediate ideas) introduced into the populace and polity; epistemologically, they are elastic codes that enable social actors to bridge pre-coded information (filtered or unfiltered) into categorized things to more effectively service the making of ideas. They are elastic in that each “-ism” had very concrete symbols to signify it, and one could apply these codes to new information, given effortful interpretations.

Each code connotates a level of gradation in the spectrum of revolutionary-counterrevolutionary significance. “Tail-ism”—the idea of abasing yourself to the enemies like dogs who wag their tails—would be less serious than “Revisionism,” but of course the two can be combined.

The uses of words were often artful and measured. An insider who had participated in a factional battle made this statement to an interviewer, explaining:

To write a good poster you first planned it out on typing paper. You decided the target and the tone of the poster. It was essential to decide the tone, how high to go. This was called ding diaozi [定调子] (setting the tone). We’d compile a list of X’s crimes and then decide what he should be: a “contradiction among the people,” a “counterrevolutionary element,” a “three-anti element,” and so on. If the target was a cadre, we usually called him “a capitalist roader,” but we also had other labels, such as “royalist,” “opportunist,” or a “refuge for ghosts, freaks and monsters.” Two or three of us planned the poster, and then we got the best character writer to write out the text of the poster. Every faction has its own xiucai [秀才], a scholar who had great command of the Chinese language and of Mao’s writings. We used Chinese brushes, paper and ink from the office, finished the poster, and then sought out the proper spot to paste it up. Some of the posters were true works of art, both in appearance to the eye and in content. Too bad they have all been destroyed.¹

Even the aesthetics of the poster were made to visually coincide with the perceived crime of the individuals. The matter of which gradational category (a potentially fitting image) to assign was not just a question of evidential information. “Evidence” was readily available; the same behavior could be fitted into a broad spectrum of “tones.” Although there were institutionalized pathways and precedents to follow, they were still very subjective, artful decisions.

This quote stresses the role of competence in taking part in the revolutionary discursive institutions.² A speaker knew how to assess particular acts of particular targets, deciding which “definitions” and “gradations” fit, and how to form linkages between ideas and “facts.” The phrase xiucai [秀才] historically refers to a kind of local, scholarly student with semi-professional status in feudal society. In this case, the xiucai was analogized by the interviewee to those who have above-average competence to participate in revolutionary discourses.

Basic Origins of Unresolvable, Built-In Contradictions

A main origin of the revolutionary idea system was that, owing to the repository of elastic categories that were in place, there were increased possibilities for making multiple possible, reasonable, logical deductions that were incompatible with one another.

Take Kuai Dafu, the student leader in Tsinghua University, and his followers as an example. After Mao took a stance on the issue, a question immediately followed: Exactly how guilty should he and his followers be, and what label and gradation should be applied? Kuai was a rather militant figure in Tsinghua, a violent and overt defender of Mao and the Revolution. Most of Kuai’s followers executed covert orders from Kuai and did not know the exact goals, except that they were intended to defend against Chairman Mao against the powerful “reactionaries” who were “encircling” him. One accuser called Kuai a “counterrevolutionary schemer”; this accusation was in reference to the allegation that Kuai took out a pistol on the day of the major incident at Tsinghua University, where shooting and armed conflict involving grenades had taken place. The main idea was that Kuai Dafu’s order had deliberately incited the events. Another accuser said: “Kuai couldn’t hide his hatred of Mao Zedong Thought.”³

Kuai Dafu was also accused of being a counterrevolutionary based on his order to denounce Premiere Zhou Enlai and propagate the idea that everyone else besides Mao and Lin Biao could be overthrown. The accuser’s logic, somewhat creative, was this: “If all of Mao Tse-Tung’s real support could be undermined, the Chairman would be isolated and the Cultural Revolution wrecked.” Suddenly, attacking Zhou Enlai became encoded into an act of undermining Chairman Mao’s real support. Likewise, Kuai was also charged by another accuser with starting “a new campaign to overthrow revolutionary committees everywhere,” thus attempting “a second seizure of power in the country.” Others saw him as transforming from an honest revolutionary in 1966 to a counterrevolutionary later on, developing dissatisfaction with Mao and the Cultural Revolution headquarters’ approaches.⁴

Kuai Dafu did the deeds that he did; but how should he as a person and his acts be “summarized”? Using elastic categories and filtered information liberally, the opposite summaries could be reached.

Like all categories, each elastic category, which possesses core meanings, also has a broad and wide proximal zone of meaning. The meaning of a code could thus be “stretched” from the core to the outer boundary of the proximal zone, and then subsequently equated. After an act or a person is successfully encompassed by the category (by theoretical labeling or forceful assignment, for example), the act or the person is then treated as resolutely, clearly, and perpetually belonging to that category “all along.” The very process of approximation or aggregation—which would reveal potential nuances and ambiguity—disappears from sight. The fitted image (as a coded thing) presents itself with clear, unambiguous meaning, therefore inviting the use of social and emotional forces associated with that code.

Consider Fig. 11.1. It would have been ideal, albeit unlikely, if someone could distinguish “Left” and “Right” in the same way as they could distinguish between “ants” and “elephants,” given that the relations between the two are discrete and unambiguous (Scenario #1). Things that do not fit into left or right would be “Neither Left nor Right”—even if their proximity to each category of things was close.

Fig. 11.1

Exclusive categories; nonexclusive categories; approximated categories

It would also not be particularly problematic if a society inherently accepts that two categories overlap (Scenario #2). A simple example would be that the offspring of parents from two families represent a member of both families, or two religious denominations with a set of shared beliefs. In this nonexclusive arrangement, the distance between the two sets of core meanings may be closer than exclusive ones, and certain overlapping and intertwining relations are acknowledged. But during heated scenarios in the Revolution, if something was observed to be “Both Left and Right,” it was deemed to be a negative, and dangerously unacceptable, classification. Per the purity-driven dynamic, the idea system favors the eradication of rightist elements altogether.

The contradictions increased dramatically in Scenario #3, where elastic categories were employed. Completely discrete categories were assigned for things (people, events, patterns, etc.) that were roughly approximated; patterns that are fuzzy or ambiguous were processed through a discrete mode of thinking. Gradational mechanisms, while helpful in smoothing out the rough edges, were not sufficient in containing the contradictions.

Consider the contradictions that could surface during inferencing in Scenario #3.

If equivalences were allowed to be drawn liberally—and challenging equivalences were sanctioned—then the coded things within Zone #1 are both Left and Right. And if Left and Right are considered exclusive, then a contradiction occurs.

Assigning discrete, gradational categories could be a mechanism to minimize contradictions. Suppose a person exhibiting Zone #1 qualities is assigned the gradational status of being “easily reformable,” then an open self-criticism could probably resolve the issue. Being classified into Zone #2 would imply a much more serious intervention, and being classified into Zone #3 crosses into the dangerous category of potentially non-reformable, even if the person is not yet classified as the extreme Right.

However, the main problem lies in the liberal drawing of equivalences. Equivalence means a state of things being equal. When things are equated liberally—often by people without an ethic of measure and proportion, perhaps drawn in successive steps in a portal-like structure within a chain-complex of ideas—the “mathematics” or “logic” in the calculation or deduction could easily fall apart.

Table 11.2 represents a sequence of calculation and deduction in six steps. Let us presume category A is associated with the meanings of good and meritorious, and category B with the bad and criminal. A reasoner seeks to categorize things (people, events, patterns, etc.) that are normally placed in category A into category B.

Table 11.2 Sequential equivalences with elastic categories and resulting contradictions

The first step the reasoner could make is effortfully stretching and thus expanding the boundary of a category A. The second step could be to equate certain things in an opposite category, B—the boundary of B may or may not be expanded—asserting that those things fall within category A. The third step could be to assign a concrete gradation as to how wrong or criminal that thing or person is, perhaps on a scale of 1–10. Through this inferencing strategy, a reasoner can make positive aspects look as negative as possible. While a criminality scale of 8–10 may be unrealistic to achieve, the classification of criminality scale 1–3 may be a tangible task.

Parallel to the aforementioned sequence, another reasoner might seek to make certain things (people, events, patterns, etc.), otherwise considered as bad and criminal look as good as possible. Through a similar strategy but in a reverse direction, this reasoner could fit the things to effortfully stretch or expand category B, drawing broad equivalences, and then fit things into category A. On the concrete gradation of goodness, the bad, criminal elements could perhaps receive a new classification of 1–3 on a scale of goodness and merit.

The exact skills and efforts put into stretching and equating as a whole determined what conclusions are to be reached, at least temporarily. I am not discussing all the things in pragmatic circumstances that determined the reaching of final conclusions, such as power and certain subtleties of details. Instead, I am seeking to point out how it is always very plausible, with a normal level of skills and effort, to derive oppositional conclusions. It was an even greater challenge to classify subtypes and concrete gradations stemming from the same set of original information.

The nightmare scenario could easily be imagined, before we cover some real, historical cases.

Imagine there is an intense contestation over “leftist” and “rightist” labels in factional battles—between faction X and faction Y; the debate would involve at least the following possibilities.

• X is a leftist (of various gradations) and Y is a rightist (of various gradations).

• Y is a leftist (of various gradations) and X is a rightist (of various gradations).

• Both X and Y are leftists (of various gradations).

• Both X and Y are rightists (of various gradations).

• Neither X nor Y is a leftist (of various gradations).

• Both X and Y are leftists (of various gradations) and rightists (of various gradations).

Adding to the difficulty of the precise assignment of categories and gradations, committing a “mistake” in such an assignment could have conspicuous implications for oneself and for others. Interactive expressions at a given moment could be “evidential facts” (pre-coded information with evidential value) about one’s attitude and identity—on which other social actors could create an image fit. In other words, much pre-coded information was created in the moment of interpretive discourses; this potential evidence self-multiplies during the process of discourse. The level of challenge could best be illustrated in concrete, historical cases, and the intelligent and artful discourse participants played a colorful role in exacerbating contradictions.

The Case of the Background Theory Debate

As soon as the Cultural Revolution was set in motion in 1966, Mao had to adjudicate between different factions—not only for political reasons but also for intellectual ones. To describe how challenging these political and intellectual tasks were, I will analyze a particular case revolving around “background theory.”

The debate revolved around a policy-related question that could be expressed as follows: To what extent, if at all, should class background be considered a factor for advancement? Rather than manifesting itself as a technical, bureaucratic matter to be resolved, in 1966, this question incited ideological conflicts in which many of the participants took a side.

At first, the intense debate pertained to “bloodline theory,” “Background Theory” (as an essay), and “solely-background theory.” The major participants were Yu Luoke [遇罗克] who wrote a piece titled “Background Theory” [出身论], and Tan Lifu [谭力夫], who had taken credit for having written a couplet [对联], which may be awkwardly translated as “Father Hero Son Good Man; Father Anti-Movement Son Bad Guy” [老子英雄儿好汉, 老子反动儿混蛋].⁵ This couplet aroused considerable conflict. It implied that the individuals whose family backgrounds were classified badly (e.g., having a “landlord” class background) would also be “bad,” thus warranting inferior treatment. And, conversely, those whose families were classified to be good (e.g., a “red” class background, or a “red” element) would also be good, thus warranting superior treatment. This couplet provoked intense infighting among the youth, who inevitably came from different family backgrounds.

On August 6, 1966, Jiang Qing,⁶ at Tianqiao Theater [天桥剧场], suggested correcting the couplet as: “父母革命儿接班, 父母反动儿背叛”; this new couplet may be awkwardly, literally translated to “Father Mother Revolutionary Son Continues; Father Mother Anti-Movement Son Betrays.” The idea was that even the children of counterrevolutionary parents may be willing to betray and go against their parents. Jiang further claimed that part of the previous phrase, “Father Hero Son Good Man” [老子英雄儿好汉] actually originated from an old Beijing opera titled Liánhuán Tào [连环套], probably alluding to its ties to outdated, feudal cultures. More critically, Chen Boda⁷ remarked a couple months later that those who advocated this theory were akin to the exploitative individuals who sought to perpetuate their position by adopting a bloodline theory [血统论] to suppress those from the working and peasant classes. It was an attempt to use “school-ism” [宗派主义] to replace the Party’s principle of classlessness—throwing out the latter principle “beyond the clouds in the nine-level sky” [抛到九霄云外]. Jiang Qing clarified her position on November 14, 1966. She explicitly criticized labels such as the “Five Red Types” and “Black Seven Types,” asserting that they endangered the Revolution. She was clear that the old slogans were wrong.⁸ However, she was more ambiguous regarding the possibility as to whether class background should be relevant at all, saying that “we need to see their ingredient-composition, but not rely too much on them.” Her view involved two further “theories”—“has-ingredient theory” [有成份论] and “not-only-ingredient theory” [不唯成份论]—but she reconciled them into one, asserting that ingredients can be considered but should not be the sole, exclusive basis for consideration. By the end of 1966, the original couplet was equated with bloodline theory, and therefore more or less defined as “anti-movement.” Tan Lifu was arrested on December 18, 1966.

A twist appeared when Yu Luoke published an essay titled “Background Theory” on January 18, 1967, under the name “Beijing Family Background Problems Research Group,” in a secondary school newspaper.⁹

Both Tan Lifu and Yu Luoke received a rapid boost in fame, and then quickly became targets and were delegitimized and arrested.

Tan Lifu, first arrested on December 18, 1966, was released on May 29, 1967. He was relatively lucky, as he managed to join the Red Army as a command officer in 1970, after being assigned to a reeducation farm in 1969. By defending family lineage and background, Tan Lifu was associated with protecting privileged cadres and anti-Cultural Revolution elements, which were, by implication, anti-Mao.

Yu Luoke was arrested on January 5, 1968, and put to death on March 15, 1970. By defending social mobility by individual actions, Yu was associated with muddling class-consciousness and being anti-movement.

On April 14, 1967, Qi Benyu [戚本禹] labeled Yu Luoke’s “Background Theory” essay a “big poisonous weed” [大毒草]. His reasoning was that it erased class route-lines, preventing discourses about the existence of exploitative classes, preventing people from forming the “outer ring” of the movement that encircled the enemy, therefore thwarting the war precipitated by the Revolution. (Qi Benyu was himself removed from office on January 13,1968, due to a prior offense.) More details of this will be discussed later.

So why were the debates so vicious, and the definitions given to others so exaggerated? To answer this, we need to look at the nuances in the discursive activity.

The first activity was how positive and negative images were created by both sides. For Tan, those who sought to equalize relations between people of all backgrounds were more or less vengeful descendants of the previously oppressive classes. These classes were rightfully persecuted during the early Liberation and became part of the underclasses thereafter. They were the antagonists of the revolutionary situation—now seeking to regain their status and power by undermining the current prestigious classes largely consisting of Party cadres. For Yu, the opposite was true: many existing Party cadres who sought to prevent equalization were the antagonists. The children whose parents had previously been persecuted and had therefore been oppressed since birth were the protagonists. They now sought to topple the current oppressive class, primarily consisting of Party cadres who wished to protect their own positions.

Second, creative “equivalences” were aggressively made in speech and writing during the period, a few of which we have already cited. Tan equated the antagonists with being representative of the landlord and the capitalist classes; they were children who inherited the habits and tendencies of their revolutionary-less parents, tending to go against the descendants of those who were more Red. Tan also equated existing cadres with active, authentic revolutionaries. In complete contrast to this, Yu equated the existing cadres with corruptness, with Peng Zhen, and with a revisionist class that sought to corrupt the Party and erode the movement from inside. The protagonists sought to counteract these actors, and were therefore the active, authentic revolutionaries (see Table 11.3).

Table 11.3 A model of aggressive equivalences in the background theory debate

Third, both sides constructed the identities of the attackers, citing details of what their attackers did and said at the moment as a form of evidence. While the quarrel started with mere implications, they soon became overt depictions. One such common depiction was to depict their attackers as attacking the Revolution itself, and therefore—per further equivalencing—attacking the accomplishments of, or even actively undermining, Mao. By the end, it was not that one side was pro-Mao and the other against, but rather that both sides had been constructed as anti-Mao actors, whereas they had constructed themselves as pro-Mao. The diametrically opposite but dually present identities were elaborately constructed; they were contradictions that called for urgent clarifications and resolutions.

In an original essay published on January 18, 1967,¹⁰ Yu used statistics to elaborate—though it is understood that these are aggregated statistics, a form of filtered information. The argument was as follows: Suppose the Black Five Types—the landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists [地主、富农、反革命分子、坏分子、右派; abbreviated as 地富反坏右]—constituted approximately 5% of the Chinese population, then their descendants would be several times more prevalent. The majority of the people had an ambiguous status and did not specifically belong to the Red Five Types—workers, peasants, business people, students, revolutionary soldiers [工人、农民、商人、学生、革命军人; abbreviated as 工农商学兵]. They might have been the sons and daughters of intellectuals, having a convoluted family history, middle-class family, and so forth.

A provocative escalation then took place. Yu argued that the system, “influenced by look-left-actual-right anti-movement route-line” [由于形“左”实右反动路线的影响], precluded youths with such backgrounds from joining the military or any central part of the bureaucracy. They assumed those of a different class to be born guilty, considering them “little dogs” [狗崽子]—thus depriving opportunities for those who “betray one’s own family, protect the Central Party, protect Chairman Mao, and join the Red Guard.” During this period of their rule, many innocent youths had “died in an unnatural death, drowned in the solely-background theory’s abyss” [溺死于唯出身论的深渊之中]. Responsible parties must pay attention to the matter, and expose those who “appeared like they have adopted a calm, comprehensive Eclecticism are actually cruel and hypocritical” [而那些貌似冷静和全面的折衷主义观点实际上是冷酷和虚伪].

Yu further argued that the people claiming that both background and performance factors were taken into account were, in practice, making an excuse to advocate the importance of backgrounds. He said that there were few correlations between background and performance. This statement might make more sense if we consider a “fact” (pre-coded information) cited in an editorial remark of the document that, for certain agricultural villages, when selecting students to advance from elementary to primary school, backgrounds could account for as much as 60%, with performance only 20%, learning achievement 5%, and other aspects at 15%.¹¹

Later in the statement, the argument became increasingly extreme. Yu called those in power to be “counterrevolutionary revisionists”—they are “animals in the same hill” [一丘之貉]. They have used an extreme-left facial appearance to eradicate the class route-lines [阶级路线]. They brought in “old lord of capitalist-class authority” [资产阶级权威老爷] into the Party, giving the Red Five Kinds special privileges while prosecuting innocent, property-less classes (or proletariat) of bad backgrounds. This was akin to engaging in a “acute, complex class struggle” [尖锐复杂的阶级斗争]. They deepened and expanded the problems and contradictions, engaged in the cruel acts of “uprooting,” humiliating “debates,” as well as “bodily searches, insulting scolding, detention, beatings,” and so forth. Their actions had demoralized many youths, dissuading them from joining revolts; they “could not invest all their energy into the movement,” having neither the capital to be in the Revolution nor the condition to revolt. They generally reduced the scale of the revolutionary team, which “fit into the intention of the anti-movement route-line” [正中了反动路线的下怀].

In another statement,¹² Yu sought to engage with counterarguments made by other texts. One argument was interesting, and a similar version was later, to a large extent, legitimized by the authorities when Yu was prosecuted. The argument was that the point of class divisions and hierarchy was to move and organize the property-less classes [無産階級, which is also commonly translated as “proletariat class”] into the class camp; “it is at the political level, not the body level, eradicating the sons and the grandchildren of the exploiting class” [在政治上, 而不是在肉体上, 使剥削阶级断子绝孙].

Yu argued that if they were to retake power, it was from that of the capitalist or revisionist class-lords [如果真的是夺权, 那也是向资产阶级老爷夺权]. These people positioned themselves as the real “left”—even more left than anyone in “class route-line” battles—because “the left” was defined by the Party, but they never yield the proper rights to authentic revolutionary youths [都不给真正革命的青年以权利]—so that others never had the equal political opportunity to become part of “the left,” putting them into a ready-to-surrender position [让他们处在准备投降归顺的地位上]. They merely labeled some individual youths who were not them as enemies and then engaged in a so-called “class struggle.” Many of those who prosecuted were from a class with capital, and who now also had power. By “only acknowledging human-made class struggles,” neglecting the objective formation of new classes, those people practically supported “a classic model of class-struggle-eradication theory” [典型的阶级斗争熄灭论].

Using a mock dialogue format,¹³ Yu contended that even Tan Lifu and those who opposed his essay acknowledged the existence of many incidents of oppression and the deprivation of opportunities, but they still insisted that they were reasonable. A contrast was made in the end that, although everyone’s thinking was essentially anti-movement, those who acknowledged the facts were at least honest, while those who denied such realities lacked courage; they were “thorough, double-sized, big hoodlums” [透顶加双料的大混蛋].

In an article he published on February 27, 1967,¹⁴ Yu drew further linkages, particularly drawing equations to Peng Zhen and feudalist, bloodline theory, charging that the oppression of those with bad class backgrounds most frequently occurred during the era under the reign of the Pang Zhen group, before the Cultural Revolution commenced. He further argued that old committees had practiced the anti-movement, “solely-background theory” line—which “in an undebatable manner explains the kinds of un-releasable knot tied by revisionists and bloodline theory” [這都無可辯駁地說明了修正主義集團和血統論結下了怎樣的不解之緣].¹⁵ Therefore, the attempt to create this line of linkages and equivalencing may be represented as follows:

• Peng Zhen Group = Solely Background Theory = Revisionists = Bloodline Theory

Further equivalences were subsequently drawn.

Yu stated that most of them “refused to admit the Peng-Zhen Group had discriminated against youths with bad backgrounds,” and those who reluctantly admitted to it only did so to a limited extent—that they were only discriminated against at the onset of the Cultural Revolution. And if no one had brought it up, they probably would not even concede to that point in “a year or so.” He alluded that, regardless of intention, these people had once been the “ghosts that serviced the tigers” [为虎作伥]—a Chinese idiom alluding to the myth that if a tiger eats people, they would turn into ghosts that service the tiger.

Yu elaborated his argument with visual details pertaining to bloodline theory. He said it was “very fashionable” in slave societies. He cited a story in Ancient Greece wherein the two sons of an old man acquired two victories in the Olympics, and then both sons carried their father to parade around Olympia. Many people yelled at the father: “Hey, you are so fortunate, why don’t you die? Do you want greater fortune? Do you want to be a god?” Upon hearing the remarks, their aged father was so happy that he died. This anecdote was meant to portray the absurdity of bloodline theory; Yu editorialized: “Your sons are the champions. What does that have to do with your business [你儿子是冠军, 碍得着你的事吗]?” This equivalence was made to a slave society [奴隶制社会].¹⁶

Yu then related the discussion to historical Chinese examples, such as an emperor called Shun [舜], who kept covering up the fact that his own father had tried to kill him several times. Implicitly bridging to the present, Yu said: “Probably he was afraid of people knowing that his father was anti-movement, and then concluded that he was a hoodlum. It was therefore better not to say anything.” Yu moved on to use examples from feudalism, which he said institutionalized and elevated “family connections”—such as the connections between monarchs and officials and between fathers and sons—to the realm of high-principled morality. One story was of a son who knew that the father had stolen a sheep and then reported him to the governmental authority. A sage who knew about it then wildly shook his head [大摇其头] and said that doing so was not correct. In another story, an emperor, Liu Bang [刘邦], who had founded the Han Dynasty, was actually once a bandit. When he visited his brother’s house, he often duplicitously obtained meals from him. However, one time, his brother insisted that the rice was not yet fully cooked and refused to share it with him. While debating whether to grant his brother a feudatory lord position, even though he was never really qualified, eventually bloodline theory prevailed, so he granted it to him but with the contemptuous feudal title “Leftover Rice Lord” [剩饭侯].

Yu further cited a Ming Dynasty penal practice, literally called “Eliminate Door Ten Clans” [灭门十族], reserved for the most exceptional offenses; it meant that a particular person’s father, mother, all relatives, even relatives of relatives—spanning ten levels of personal connections—have to be put to death along with that person. Alongside cruel measures of social control, feudalist societies also promoted a pamphlet called Twenty-Four Filial Relations [二十四孝]. The basic content consisted of twenty-four stories of past precedents that highlighted the meaning of filial relations. Yu related this to the Communists today. The logic was that if the father is not a good man, the son has to nonetheless say that he is, and then respect him as though he is a hero. Some of them were “studying the Twenty-Four Filial Relations too much.” Those who promoted bloodline theory should use history as a mirror and look at themselves, to see if “there is a bit of similarity between them and historical relics.” Again, he reiterated that “today the son of the capitalist is no longer a capitalist, and those who had a revolutionary family background have inversely become the animals who share the same hill with the five blacklisted types.”

These acts of extrapolation and processing—much of which involved building specific image resemblances and equivalences—became “evidence” of Yu’s counterrevolutionary activities. Among other things, they indicated the conflation of “background” and “solely background” theories.

Through the use of a few quotes from Marx and Engels, Yu summed up his denunciatory remarks on bloodline theory, and then advocated that “we must use class theory to substitute bloodline theory.” In so doing, he created a dichotomous, either-or distinction: the actors who supported the “Background Theory” thesis were on one side, and the actors lining up from the other side, in whatever guises or names they used, attacked class theory and appeared to accept bloodline theory. Yu took a clear side in this battle: the meanings of family, lineage, and family virtues should be largely dismissed and replaced by (revolutionary) virtues of the person. The lines of equivalence Yu construed of the two theories may be laid out as follows:

• (1) Bloodline Theory = Privileging Family over Revolution = Feudalistic

• (2) Anti-Bloodline Theory = Privileging Family over Revolution = Revolutionary

A very telling problem emerged when both camps equated their opponents with Peng Zhen. Let us consider the two main lines of reasoning mapped out by Yu, who authored the “Background Theory” article, and those who were criticizing that article. Admittedly, the use of terminologies by these actors could appear to be very convoluted to today’s reader, as indeed was the case for discourse participants back then.¹⁷ The important point, however, is to recognize how the symbolic meaning of “Peng Zhen” was stretched so liberally to the point of him being equated with oppositional meanings, and, relatedly, how one could elevate “being just like Peng Zhen” to the level of revolutionary crime through incremental, step-by-step discourse processes.

Author(s) Attacking the “Background Theory” Essay, Exemplified by Tan Lifu

  Peng Zhen = A cadre who was secretly “recruiting from the surrendered and taking in traitors” (pre-coded information) = Over-privileging children of former capitalists = De-emphasizing class backgrounds = Acting against Party and Revolutionary objectives = People who are Pro “Background Theory” [Essay]

Author(s) of the “Background Theory” Essay, Exemplified by Yu Luoke

  Peng Zhen = A corrupt cadre who looked left but perpetuated unjust class dominance (pre-coded information) = De-emphasizing performance [= Solely-Background Theory = Revisionists = Bloodline Theory]¹⁸ = People who are Anti “Background Theory” [Essay]

Yu first sought to establish this pre-coded information into a fact: that Peng Zhen—or more precisely, Peng Zhen’s group—was serving the interests of corrupted cadres, that “Peng Zhen’s group had discriminated against youths with bad class background” [彭真集团歧视过出身不好的青年].¹⁹

Once this “fact” was established, it would then be “reasonable” to link—by aggregation—an unspecified group of people who had secretly joined Peng Zhen’s private camp. Who were the people being recruited in this way? In this context, Yu was referring to many current cadres who previously came from the “prior capitalist classes”—the Five Black Kinds; they had made their way into the organizational ranks through the assistance of Peng Zhen. They continually attempted to preserve their privileges. They favored the de-emphasizing of individual performance and instead accentuating backgrounds in institutional considerations. This position, as we have explained earlier, was linked and equated with bloodline theory in a stepwise sequence. Therefore, those who attacked his essay “Background Theory” resembled the supporters of bloodline theory, hence being anti-movement in their own way.

Because of their official “left” appearance—being associated with the Party—Yu used an expression of “Looked Left Actual Right” [形“左”实右] to describe such people: “What appearance may resemble such people who were actually right—a leftist appearance!” He further accused the critics of his essay to be trying to “reverse Peng Zhen’s case”—or, more vividly, “crying innocence and injustice on behalf of the Peng Zhen line” [为彭氏路线喊冤叫屈].²⁰

One piece of aggregated, pre-coded information played a key role in the formation of such ideas. Yu countered his attackers’ assertion that Peng Zhen’s group “treated those with youths with bad backgrounds discriminately well” [优待出身不好的青年]. Yu did not simply dispute this “fact” (pre-coded information in an aggregated form), he also asserted the opposite by claiming that Peng Zhen oppressed such people.

Yu’s opponents alleged that after the initial land reform, Peng Zhen was “recruiting from the surrendered and taking in traitors” [招降纳叛], a common Chinese idiom.²¹ Yu claimed that the critics misinterpreted the original Politburo document containing the wordings, arguing that such critics were swapping the concept of “ingredients” with “family backgrounds.”

Who told you that the Peng Zhen Group favored young people of bad backgrounds? Is it reality? Not so! Is it a Politburo document? The Politburo has indeed published a leading article about Peng’s resignation. However, the surrender and betrayal referred to here is not about family background, but about ingredients. It was pointing to Peng Zhen having recruited some shameless traitors, anti-movement authorities, metamorphic elements, slaves and running dogs—where is the reference to backgrounds? [可是, 这里指的降和叛, 不是出身, 而是成分。指的是彭真招降了一些无耻叛徒, 反动权威, 蜕化分子, 奴才走狗, 哪里说的是出身?] Therefore, the flower-ridding warriors’ simple minds are confused again [头脑简单的除花勇士们又迷惘了]. Peng Zhen is recruiting some capitalist class elements; how could he oppress and persecute the sons and daughters of the exploiting classes? If you are confused about this, then you can answer this a bit from this: the capitalist class anti-movement line carrying out the “Father Anti-Movement Son Bad Guy” scene. This has not been forgotten, right? Is it true that the children of the exploiting classes have indeed been oppressed and persecuted, right? Let me tell you that this just proves that the revisionist group and the vast number of sons and daughters of the exploiting classes are not in the same class domain, just as the majority of good-background youths and the revisionist group are not in a class domain [恰好证明了修正主义集团和广大的剥削阶级子女不是一个阶级范畴的, 正和广大的出身好的青年与修正主义集团不是一个阶级范畴的一样]. So, who told you that the Peng Zhen Group favored young people who had bad backgrounds?

It is not any others: it is the Liu-Deng route-line [刘邓路线]. It is Liu-Deng’s route-line directing their mouths and tongues [指使他们的喉舌]. The so-called newly reorganized Beijing Daily, tells you that when one opens the newspaper, did not Beijing University’s Kong Fan [孔繁] yell loudly about Liu Ping’s²² privileging “little dogs”? The first sound has been made since then. ²³

In this quote, Yu first sought to flip his opponents’ aggregate, empirical depiction on its head. He claimed that the document wording specifically referred to Peng Zhen having recruited certain “ingredients” into his camp and not certain “backgrounds.” These ingredients were not based on class but rather on certain actions. “Shameless traitors,” for example, were not a class; they could come from any of the social classes. Peng Zhen was recruiting shameless traitors into his group, not people from particular backgrounds. Viewing this issue more broadly, we can see that Yu was questioning the critics’ way of aggregating information as well as their subsequent acts of idea-building based upon such mistakenly aggregated information.

At this point, Yu merely depicted his opponents as being stupid and confused. He used an apparent contradiction to prove his argument: that the opponents were saying that Peng Zhen was recruiting some capitalist class elements [资产阶级份子] to actively “oppress and persecute the sons and daughters of the exploiting classes.” If “exploiting classes” are equivalent to “capitalist classes,” then it would indeed seem contradictory that Peng Zhen would recruit members as a class just to oppress and suppress the sons and daughters who belong to their own class. It made much more sense that Peng Zhen was recruiting certain ingredients, and they acted as a group to oppress and suppress populations to their own benefit. And the demographic was precisely those youths with good performance but bad backgrounds, a population which Yu sought to defend.

After pointing out the contradiction in the opponents’ claim, Yu identified the original culprits as the followers and supporters of the Liu-Deng route-line. By using the phrase “mouths and tongues,” Yu implied that those who sided against him (and the Background Theory essay) to be part of the Liu-Deng route-line; the lead critics were self-conscious propagandists, and their supporters were helping them. Implicitly, then, Yu was creating a gradation of “coded things” for his opponents, with the mastermind being a more active counterrevolutionary and the helper being a lesser one.

To make the next idea-building step, Yu likened (or equated) the people in his camp to those of Lenin and Mao, by saying:

Lenin was born in a landlord’s family, but he received good revolutionary influences from his brother and sister. Chairman Mao, citing his memory, also said that although his father was a rich peasant, he had many good influences from his mother and the employees at home.²⁴

The equation here helps to build an even direr consequence for his opponents, by implication. If this premise is established successfully, then attacking children from bad class backgrounds would potentially be akin to attacking Lenin and Mao!

Another gradation within elastic categories could be inferred. Being fooled into attacking Yu’s essay temporarily might be forgivable. They might serve as the mastermind’s mouths and tongues unknowingly. Consciously doing so, after the program is revealed, however, would make them look like a central idea-maker in the Liu-Deng route-line. Further nuances and cognitive distinctions could also be inferred. For example, if a case of resemblance with elastic categories could not be drawn with complete success, a less aggressive double-negative category might be applicable. In semiotic terms, something that is “not not an apple” cannot automatically be taken to mean that it is an apple.²⁵ His opponents might not be counterrevolutionary or anti-movement, but their actions—based on the way Yu depicted them—could plausibly be classified into the double-negative categories of “counter-counterrevolutionaries” or “anti-anti-movements.” Without stating specific events and scenarios—by just using ideational encoding, aggregate depictions, and step-by-step inferencing—Yu succeeded in subjecting his opponents to these plausible, unfavorable classifications and cognitive positioning.

Yu offered to use an alternative set of elastic categories that also conformed to the revolutionary code. Instead of family backgrounds, he favored the scheme made up of left, middle, and right—which mirror Mao’s distinctions.²⁶ Saying that “Worker-peasants’ sons and daughters have left, middle, and right distinctions,” and those “stubbornly execute capitalists’ anti-movement line” should be attacked by all children of all classes. He said to his opponents that “You all are treating striking at the anti-movement route-line as striking worker-peasants’ children” [你们把打击反动路线当成打击工农子女].²⁷

After establishing this intermediary idea, Yu used it to make an elevated claim of his opponents’ crime. Near the end of the essay, Yu observed that the opponents acted “with the intention of continuing the persecutions of those youths who come from bad backgrounds, to incite conflicts among people of good and bad family backgrounds, to turn history upside down, to reverse the case on behalf of Peng Zhen, and to erase and kill the rhythm of class struggle” [它是要广大的出身不好的青年继续受血统论的迫害, 它是在挑拨广大的出身好的革命青年与广大的出身不好的革命青年的关系, 它是在颠倒历史, 替彭真翻案, 它是在抹杀阶级斗争的规律].

His opponents were also attackers of Jiang Qing. The concrete expression Yu used was them “attacking comrade Jiang Qing by filling the mouth with sand and shooting it at the shadow” [含沙射影炮打江青同志]. The idiom used here refers to a particular mythical creature that can shoot sand from its mouth at human shadows and cause sickness in people. It is commonly used to refer to those who make indirect verbal attacks against others. Combining with the expression “cannon-firing” [炮打] was a clever choice of words, because it was much more vivid than simply “indirectly” attacking Jiang Qing—conveying the serious implications and the dynamic actions of its opponents. At the same time, these assertions were just simultaneously both broad and constricted enough to be defensible based on the available information. In addition to emphasizing the agency of his opponents, Yu concluded that they had the intention all along—“they were totally not only fantasizing about destroying the one ‘Background Theory’ essay but were holding wolf’s son wild heart, conspiring to realize the aforementioned series of ugly, malevolent objectives” [他们完全不只是妄想消灭一篇《出身论》, 而是怀着狼子野心, 企图实现上述一系列丑恶目的]. To summarize, after a long series of equivalences, boundary extensions, stepwise inferences, as well as pauses and interruptions, Yu finally built complex and comprehensive linkages—cognitive and visual—between the attackers of his essay and the active enemies of the Revolution.

Countering Yu Luoke’s Essay. Some attackers of Yu might have indeed confused background theory with bloodline theory, just as Yu described. But they also had some counterpoints based on creative, and seemingly valid, associations.

First, the opponents brought up some empirical depictions made by Yu:

Please listen [from the “Background Theory” author]: “The current Revolutionary cadres’ sons and daughters in terms of school performance are average and right-leaning [中等而且偏右的]. The most proactive ones are often those with bad backgrounds. Regardless of whether their proactiveness is real or fake, the heavy responsibility of the Revolution [is not falling] on their shoulders.” These words are truly one needle see blood; indeed, the human world has the Green Frost Sword! [真是一针见血, 真是人间还有青霜剑呀!].²⁸

The opposing authors quoted how Yu used class backgrounds to make aggregate depictions. All children of the current cadres were depicted as if they were one homogenous group—all of them “right-leaning” and not performing exceptionally well academically. This classification approach contradicted how he sought to de-link class background (family socialization) and revolutionary elements, as previously cited. The expression one needle see blood [一针见血] highlighted the concise and pointed character of Yu’s attack, just as using just one needle can draw blood from an opponent. The Green Frost Sword reference is somewhat unclear. On the one hand, it can generically refer to a legendary ancient Chinese sword. But on the other it can also refer to a classical Beijing opera in which a bride used her family sword, the Green Frost Sword, to assassinate a villain responsible for the death of her former husband. If the latter reading is accurate, this reference is likely a sarcastic remark about how Yu was conducting class revenge just as the bride had conducted revenge.

Class revenge is the intermediary idea Yu’s opponents tried to develop: it would be an act that targeted current cadres in order to reverse the ruling relations before the current set of cadres had assumed power. To bolster this idea, Yu’s opponents also picked up on a statement by Yu, which allegedly, verbatim, stated: the sons and daughters of the exploitative class are oppressed by Revisionism “the most” [剥削阶级子女是受“修正主义”压迫最深的].²⁹ The wording “the most” was the incriminating part, since it portrayed their oppression to be worse than others.

The opponents conceded that those whose parents are high-level cadres have “unforgivable weaknesses,” a consequence of which was that they became “seriously separated from the masses.” But they welcomed the Cultural Revolution that made them see the weaknesses. However, rather than being constructive, the opponents stated that there was a minority of people—here implicating Yu Luoke—who disagreed with the Revolution and took this opportunity to “scrape the Yin wind, let off the sneaky arrows, instigate divisive relations everywhere, spread rumors and incite events” [刮阴风, 放暗箭, 到处挑拨离间, 造谣生事]. To suppress the Red Guards and children of the revolutionary cadres, they were leading certain organized groups that had an unclear vision of the truth, “ransacking, confiscating, killing, beating, and scolding, wishing them die so they can then be happy.” They are “using the name of criticizing capitalist anti-movement line to actually enact class revenge” [他们这是借批判资产阶级反动路线之名, 行阶级报复之实].³⁰ We could see how the author, based on conceptual and empirical aggregations and other chain-like equivalencing processes similar to the ones used by Yu, stretched the meaning of Yu’s acts until the ideas linked to the highest state of emotional and moral implications were reached.

There was a further way in which the opponents effectively subverted the purportedly innocent, enthusiastic, and pro-Revolution image of the “Black Five Types” painted by Yu. They asked, if the Black Five Types’ children were the true revolutionaries, and they were oppressed in the school the most, then it should follow that they should be the first ones—not the Red Five Types—to fight the capitalist classes—by which Yu’s opponents most likely were referring to the Black Five Types (including their own parents). However, during such moments, it was the Red Guards, primarily formed by Red Five Types,³¹ who took the most initiative. And if the Black Five Types’ children were refrained from doing so only because they had such low self-esteem due to being oppressed and persecuted, then why was it that when they encircled and struck at [打击围剿] the Red Guards, they were so proactive and confident?³²

In truth, perhaps some children of the Black Five Types were indeed grouping together, and engaged in some form of strategic, collective action to advocate for their interests. But these acts were liberally escalated into the most severe crimes using a series of inference processes, based on a few logical inconsistencies and discursive choices that surfaced during the debate.

In another critique,³³ Yu’s opponents explicitly pointed out that it had only been seventeen years since the liberation. Given this context, suggesting the previously revolutionary cadres—and their sons and daughters—to be non-revolutionary could be seen as “extreme efforts to smear and kill the impact of class background, spending particularly bitter-hearted efforts on wording like ‘elements’ and ‘backgrounds.’” Yu’s opponents asserted a “fact” (pre-coded, but filtered information): that even after the Liberation, although those with Red backgrounds were proportionately much better off, in actuality there were still plenty of sons and daughters of former landlords and capitalists going to college and leading a select lifestyle. And they even attended college in higher numbers than the sons and daughters of working-class workers and middle-poor peasants [工人和贫下中农]—who had a significantly larger population size. These inequalities endured because of the influence of their backgrounds. Casting the author of the “Background Theory” essay as an opportunist, Yu’s opponents stated: “‘Background Theory’ uses the name of criticizing ‘solely-background theory’ to actually sell ‘no-class-difference theory’ [无阶级差别论], ‘no-class-contradiction and no-class-struggle theories’ [无阶级矛盾和无阶级斗争论], openly and pointedly opposed to Chairman Mao’s great mobilization call of ‘never forget class struggle’ [千万不要忘记阶级斗争], and use it to desensitize the caution of the property-less class toward the capitalist class, in order to make a call to all those with bad backgrounds, using the name of actively participating in the Cultural Revolution to wage a new, savage attack against the property-less class.”

The debate came to a close with Qi Benyu’s intervention. Qi was a secretary of both Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing and a member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group [中央文革小组]. His authoritative statement on April 14, 1967, expressed that the “Background Theory” essay had the quality of a “big poisonous weed.” Specifically, it involved using “a capitalist point of view to attack bloodline theory, as a means to arouse anti-party sentiment and actions against the party.” Qi claimed that people were equating background theory and bloodline theory, and by doing so were seeking to “muddy the water to catch fish, doing so to incite people” [混水摸鱼, 进行煽动]. Here, Qi was using a common Chinese idiom, referring to a scenario where when the water was muddy, the fish would close their eyes and swim randomly, thus providing a greater opportunity to catch them. Qi stated that the actual position by the Party was to only partly consider background to be the case, and always offer people the prospect of advancement. The essay conflated the policy with bloodline theory deliberately, with anti-Party intentions.

Interestingly, Qi Benyu linked Yu Luoke to Peng Zhen—that “Background Theory” essay in essence represented “Peng Zhen Anti-Party Group’s distorted idea about ‘emphasizing performance’” [它实际上就是彭真反党集团所歪曲的“重在表现”]. It swayed people against joining the encirclement [煽动不要做外围] of the enemy, but in actuality they used the capitalist-class perspective to attack bloodline theory in order to sway a portion of youths toward being dissatisfied with the Party and into attacking the Party [煽动部分青年对党不满向党进攻]. “It is a big poisonous weed. I hope comrades will not be deceived!”³⁴ He further urged that attacks should be directed toward the “Liu-Deng Route Line” [刘邓路线] in a unified fashion. Thus, the process should be open to the majority of ordinary members who were fooled and could be changed by processes of criticism. They could use a different approach toward the leaders [头子] and the stubborn elements [顽固分子]. This gradational distinction, as we can see, mirrored Yu Luoke’s.