Leys, Simon;
The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics
H. Holt, 1987, 257 pages
ISBN 0805002421, 9780805002423
topics: | china | history | essays
A fascinating look at totalitarianism.
A convenient and generally acceptable definition of totalitarianism is provided by Leszek Kolakowski in his essay "Marxist Roots of Stalinism": I take the word "totalitarian" in a commonly used sense, meaning a political system where all social ties have been entirely replaced by state-imposed organization and where, consequently, all groups and all individuals are supposed to act only for goals which both are the goals of the state and were defined as such by the state. In other words, an ideal totalitarian system would consist in the utter destruction of civil society, whereas the state and its organizational instruments are the only forms of social life; all kinds of human activity-economical, intellectual, political, cultural-are allowed and ordered (the distinction between what is allowed and what is ordered tending to disappear) only to the extent of being at the service of state goals (again, as defined by the state). Every individual (including the rulers themselves) is considered the property of the state. In 1971, when [emigrated author Chen Jo-hsi] was living in Nanking, she was forced with thousands of other people to attend and participate in a public accusation meeting. The accused person's crime was the defacing of a portrait of Mao Zedong; the accused had been denounced by his own daughter, a twelve-year-old child. On the basis of the child's testimony, he was convicted and sentenced to death; as was usually the case in these mass--accusation meetings, there was no right of appeal, and the sentence was carried out immediately, by firing squad. The child was officially extolled as a hero; she disclaimed any relationship with the dead man and proclaimed publicly her resolution to become from then on "with her whole heart and her whole will, the good daughter of the Party." This episode was neither exceptional nor accidental... It should be remarked that whatever feeling of scandal a Westerner may experience when confronted with such an incident, it is still nothing compared with the revulsion, horror, and fear that it provokes among the Chinese themselves. The episode not only runs against human decency in general, but more specifically it runs against Chinese culture - a culture which, for more than 2,500 years, extolled filial piety as a cardinal virtue. A second useful definition of totalitarianism is George Orwell's (in his postface to Homage to Catalonia). According to his description, the totalitarian system is one in which there is no such thing as "objective truth" or "objective science." There is only, for instance, "German science" as opposed to "Jewish science," or "proletarian truth" as opposed to "bourgeois lies": The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event 'It never happened' - well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five, well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs. How does this definition square with Peking reality? Let us glance at Maoist theory. In one of its key documents (the so-called May 16 Circular) we read precisely:
(from the so-called May 16 Circular) The slogan "all men are equal before the truth" is a bourgeois slogan that absolutely denies the fact that truth has class-character. The class enemy uses this slogan to protect the bourgeoisie, to oppose himself to the proletariat, to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. In the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between Marxist truth and the lies of the bourgeois class and of all oppressive classes, if the east wind does not prevail over the west wind, the west wind will prevail over the east wind, and therefore no equality can exist between them. In the book, Le Bonheur des pierres (1978), C. and J. Broyelle produce an interesting quotation from Mein Kampf and show that by merely substituting in Hitler's text the words "bourgeois" and "antihumanism" for the words "Jews" and "antisemitism" one obtains orthodox, standard "Mao Zedong Thought."
[Consider] the predicament of the wretched curators of the History Museums, who in recent years have been successively confronted with, for instance, the disgrace, rehabilitation, re-disgrace, and re-rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping. These political turnabouts can be quite bewildering for the lower cadres, whose instructions do not always keep up with the latest shakeup of the ruling clique. As one hapless guide put it to a foreign visitor who was pressing him with tricky questions: "Excuse me, sir, but at this stage it is difficult to answer; the leadership has not yet had the time to decide what history was." Objectivism - the belief that there is an objective truth whose existence is independent of arbitrary dogma and ideology - is thus the cornerstone of intellectual freedom and human dignity, and as such, it is the main stumbling block for totalitarianism. p.122
The most masterly analysis of totalitarian psychology is certainly the one provided by Bruno Bettelheim in his book The Informed Heart , which was rightly hailed as "a handbook for survival in our age." The great psychiatrist observed the phenomenon firsthand in Buchenwald, where he was interned by the Nazis. The concentration camp is not marginal to the totalitarian world; on the contrary, it is its purest and most perfect projection, since there the various factors of resistance to the system - -the familial, emotional, and sexual relationships mentioned by Kolakowski - have all been removed, leaving the subject totally exposed to the totalitarian design. Bettelheim noted that prisoners were subjected to a "ban on daring to notice anything. But to look and observe for oneself what went on in the camp - while absolutely necessary for survival - was even more dangerous than being noticed. Often this passive compliance - not to see or not to know - was not enough; in order to survive one had to actively pretend not to observe, not to know what the SS required one not to know." Bettelheim gives various examples of SS behavior that presented this apparent contradiction - "you have not seen what you have seen, because we decided so" (which could apply precisely to the blatantly falsified photo of the Chinese leaders) - and he adds this psychological commentary: To know only what those in authority allow one to know is, more or less, all the infant can do. To be able to make one's own observations and to draw pertinent conclusions from them is where independent existence begins. To forbid oneself to make observations, and take only the observations of others in their stead, is relegating to nonuse one's own powers of reasoning, and the even more basic power of perception. Not observing where it counts most, not knowing where one wants so much to know, all this is most destructive to the functioning of one's personality.... But if one gives up observing, reacting, and taking action, one gives up living one's own life. And this is exactly what the SS wanted to happen.
Bettelheim describes striking instances of this personality disintegration - which again are of particular relevance for the Chinese situation. Western apologists for the Peking regime have argued that since the Chinese themselves, and particularly those who recently left China, did not show willingness to express dissent or criticism (a questionable assertion...), we had better not try to speak for them and should simply infer from their silence that there is probably nothing to be said. According to Bettelheim, the camp inmates came progressively to see the world through SS eyes; they even espoused SS values: At one time, for instance, American and English newspapers were full of stories about cruelties committed in the camps. In discussing this event old prisoners insisted that foreign newspapers had no business bothering with internal German institutions and expressed their hatred of the journalists who tried to help them. When in 1938 I asked more than one hundred old political prisoners if they thought the story of the camp should be reported in foreign newspapers, many hesitated to agree that it was desirable. When asked if they would join a foreign power in a war to defeat National Socialism, only two made the unqualified statement that everyone escaping Germany ought to fight the Nazis to the best of his ability. Jean Pasqualini - whose book Prisoner of Mao is the most fundamental document on the Maoist "Gulag" notes a similar phenomenon. He confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came. if not exactly to love the system that was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the patience and care with which the authorities were trying to reeducate worthless vermin like himself. Along the same lines, Orwell showed premonitory genius in the last sentence of Nineteen Eighty-four: when Winston Smith realizes that he loves Big Brother, that he has loved Big Brother all along.... Totalitarianism is the apotheosis of subjectivism. In Nineteen Eighty-four, the starting point of Winston Smith's revolt lies in this sudden awareness: "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." (Once more, see the falsified photos of the Chinese leadership on Tian'anmen!) "His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him.... And yet he was in the right! The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth's center.... If that is granted, all else follows."
... Actually, Solzhenitsyn's unique contribution lies in the volume and precision of his catalogue of atrocities - but basically he revealed nothing new. On the essential points, information about Soviet reality has been available for more than forty years, through the firsthand testimonies of un-impeachable witnesses such as Boris Souvarine, Victor Serge, Anton Ciliga, and others. Practically no one heard of it at the time because no one wanted to hear; it was inconvenient and inopportune. In the foreword to the 1977 edition of his classic essay on Stalin, originally published in 1935, Souvarine recalls the incredible difficulties he had in finding a publisher for it in the West. Everywhere the intellectual elite endeavoured to suppress the book: "It is going to needlessly harm our relations with Moscow." Only Malraux, adventurer and phony hero of the leftist intelligentsia, had the guts and cynicism to state his position clearly in a private conversation: "Souvarine, I believe that you and your friends are right. However, at this stage, do not count on me to support you. I shall be on your side only when you will be on top (Je serai avec vous quand vous serez les plus forts)!" How many times have we heard variants of that same phrase! ... I would like to examine successively the various methods that have been adopted in the West to dodge the issue of human rights in China. The first line of escape is the one I have just mentioned. It is to say, "We do not know for sure, we do not have sufficient information on the subject." The second line of escape (and possibly the most sickening one) is to say sadly, "Yes indeed, we know; there have been gross irregularities-even what you might call atrocities - committed in the past. But this is a thing of the past: it was all due to the evil influence of the 'Gang of Four.'" Pretending shock and indignation, they now come and tell us horrible stories-as if we did not know... it all, as if they had not known it all-the very stories we told years ago, but at that time they used to label them "anti-China slander" and "CIA lies." The third line of escape: "We admit there may be gross infringements of human rights in China. But the first of all human rights is to survive, to be free from hunger. The infringement of human rights in China is dictated by harsh national necessity." The fourth line of escape is articulated in several variations on a basic theme: "China is different." "Human rights are a Western concept, and thus have no relevance in the Chinese context."