Cui Weiping, "The 1980s Debate on Humanism"

Cui Weiping, “Why Does the Spring Breeze Not Warm the Earth?  The 1980s Debate on Humanism in China”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by Selena Orly and David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Cui Weiping (b. 1956) is professor emerita at the Beijing Film Academy and an independent scholar specializing in cinema, literature, and all things cultural.  She is also a well-known public intellectual and an activist for liberal causes in China.  She was very close to the Nobel Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo and has been outspoken about his imprisonment and death in incarceration.  She is a signatory the Charter 08 manifesto, a document meant to be a “blueprint for fundamental political change in China in the years to come.”  She was forced into early retirement because of her support of the “Tian’anmen mothers” who continue to demand accountability for the deaths of their children in the June 4 massacre, and she now lives in the United States.[2]  Her online presence in Chinese has thus diminished considerably in recent years and none of her blogs seem to have been updated since 2015.
 
The text translated here was originally published in 2007 in the Taiwanese journal Reflections 思想, presumably because of its critical tone, although, as is very often the case, it was subsequently published online in China in 2008, and not on an obscure blog, but rather on Aisixiang, the major site showcasing the work of prominent mainland intellectuals.  The goal of Cui’s multi-layered text is to revisit the 1980s debate on humanism and alienation in China, which she does in an artfully “retro” manner that plunges the reader into a very different world, which ironically lends the text a certain contemporary significance (in 2007 and even now, Cui would surely insist).
 
This will take some unpacking.  The context for the debate that Cui revisits is an effort by certain leading figures within the Communist Chinese Party’s ideological apparatus to chart a change of course following China’s Cultural Revolution, the “ten year catastrophe” which had concluded only a few years prior to the debate.  Virtually everyone viewed the Cultural Revolution as having been a disaster; economic growth slowed, education was disrupted, political control fragmented, people were killed or languished in prison or in labor camps.  The central figure in Cui’s account, Wang Ruoshui (1926-2002), a long-time Party ideologist and deputy editor-in-chief of the regime’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, sought solutions from within the Marxist canon, returning to the “early Marx,” in fact to Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, whence he unearthed the concept of “alienation.”[3] 
 
In Marxist discourse, alienation means something different from how we generally employ the word in everyday conversation; it means that something has changed in such a way as to have become fundamentally different from what it was originally, and has taken on oppressive power.  Wang Ruoshui’s primary motivation, as well as that of his like-minded colleagues such as “culture tsar” Zhou Yang (1908-1991), was to try to salvage “Marxist humanism” from the wreckage of the manifest “inhumanity” that had characterized the Cultural Revolution.  Marx’s goal, after all, had been to save mankind from the ravages of capitalism, they reasoned; how to understand the Cultural Revolution and the abject chaos and misery it caused from the perspective of the global Marxist project?  Wang’s answer was “alienation:”  political power in China and even Mao himself had somehow become things that were alien to their original essence and oppressive.      
 
The story Cui tells is that of the failure of the “alienation” offensive.  Zhou Yang gave a speech at the Central Party School on the theme in March of 1983, and was applauded by those in attendance.  Cui cites Zhou’s report, giving the flavor of the document: 
 
“During the Cultural Revolution, the erroneous criticism of human nature and humanism by the likes of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, developed to the extreme, provided the basis in public opinion  for their carrying out of inhumane and brutal feudal-fascist policies. The past erroneous criticisms of the theory of human nature and humanism has led to serious consequences in theory and practice.  This is a lesson that we must constantly bear in mind. After the Gang of Four was crushed, there appeared an urgent need to restore human dignity and enhance human value. This was an entirely warranted repudiation of the reactionary views of the Gang of Four.” 
 
Shortly after Zhou’s speech, however, Hu Qiaomu (1912-1992), a powerful member of the Politburo in charge of ideological issues, got wind of what Zhou was up to and led a delegation to Zhou’s home to discuss the contents of the report.  Wang Ruoshui, part of the delegation, hastened to publish Zhou’s report in the People’s Daily the following day, which greatly displeased Hu Qiaomu. The short version of the story is that Zhou and Wang were defeated, and Wang, the principle scape-goat in the affair, lost his job, his party membership, and eventually his homeland; he died in exile in the United States in 2002.
 
The long version of the story is why Cui thinks the debate over alienation was and is a big deal.  In her telling, the reaction to Zhou and Wang’s viewpoint had little to do with their criticism and condemnation of the Cultural Revolution—the “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China,” published in June of 1981, already offered the Party’s mea culpa on the movement.  The problem was that, if taken seriously, Wang Ruoshui’s “alienation” could be seen to threaten the very discourse of dialectical materialism on which Chinese socialism—or any Marxist regime—is based, because alienation is not a pure product of material forces and instead follows a much more complicated logic, calling into question the supposedly “scientific” basis of Marxism.  Taking alienation seriously means looking at values and outcomes, and not just production targets and task completion rates.  Taking alienation seriously means asking the people how they feel about their lives, and not simply telling them where they are in yet another turn of the dialectic that only the Central Committee understands.
 
Thus Cui steps back and examines the debate over Marxist humanism from its inception in the late 1950s (during the Hundred Flowers campaign), through its revival after the Cultural Revolution with Zhou Yang and Wang Ruoshui, as well as the aftermath of that revival, including the Party’s “refutation” of the notion of alienation and Wang’s defense of it, much of which he composed in exile in the United States.  Her particular focus is on Hu Qiaomu’s (and thus the orthodox Party-State’s) explanation for rejecting the ideas of alienation and Marxist humanism.  
 
For Marx, Hu insisted, the starting point in understanding man is in his social relations, which leads immediately to his class nature, class struggle, and human progress—the entire Marxist scientific schema—while humanism and alienation are fuzzier concepts grounded in “values” which cannot be understood “scientifically.”  As Hu himself wrote in the key text refuting Zhou Wang:  “the measure of historical progress can only be the development of production and the mode of production,” which, as Cui put it, “excludes any other measure of historical progress such as social equality and justice and in effect completely forfeits the critical spirit of Marxism.”   
 
In Cui’s reading, insisting on “the development of production and the mode of production” is a way for Hu to defend the status quo.  In other words, despite having “turned the page” on the abuses of the Cultural Revolution, the Party-State continues to seek legitimacy in an ideology in which people are mere cogs in a machine whose workings are best understood by the Party elite.  Such an ideology led to the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and continues to offer no protection to China’s workers and peasants or to any Chinese citizen that suffers at the hand of the regime.  Although at first glance, Cui’s text seems to be a mere nostalgic retelling of a sad moment in a particular ideological battle, her argument is in fact much broader, her critique much sharper:  appearances to the contrary, the Chinese government of the reform and opening era is basically the same as that of the Maoist period in that it refuses to value human beings for their intrinsic worth.  China is richer, Cui admits, but for the people, it’s still bread and circuses.
 
Cui’s text is written in somewhat peculiar language (at least in comparison to most of the texts I read), plunging us back into the discourse of an era when ideology and doctrine were more central to intellectual concerns than they have come to be since (of course, this depends on the intellectual—but in the early 1980s, intellectual life outside the Party, and hence outside Party ideology and doctrine—was just beginning).  In fact, parts of the text read almost like a “period drama,” which is meant to remind the reader how much has changed—and yet how much has not.
 
We include Cui Weiping’s footnotes, but have not translated them, since they are all to Chinese sources.
 
Our thanks to Qian Yongxiang, editor of Reflexion, for recommending this text to us.
 
Favorite Quotes
 
“Because it was relatively close to the end of the Cultural Revolution, people easily got the impression that this discussion under the banner of humanism was basically about summarizing the lessons of the Cultural Revolution, that it was oriented towards the past, and that because the Cultural Revolution was a thing of the past, so was the significance of the debate. In fact this viewpoint was exactly that of Hu Qiaomu when he criticized Wang Ruoshui and company at the time. In Hu Qiaomu's view, continuing an in-depth theoretical discussion was unnecessary because the Central Party Committee had already employed ‘the concentrated wisdom of the entire Party to conduct a scientific summary of the unhealthy phenomena that had occurred during the Cultural Revolution, and drawn the necessary lessons to avoid repeating similar mistakes.’ After the mid-1980s, reflections on the Cultural Revolution gradually faded away. People like Hu Qiaomu, having turned the page on Cultural Revolution, were ready to march smoothly toward the future, following their predetermined line. This was not the case for people like Wang Ruoshui.”
 
“Only when we get to this point can we truly see the difference between Wang Ruoshui and Hu Qiaomu:  when Hu insists that ‘everything begins with social relations,’ he means everything begins with existing social relations; Hu Qiaomu’s insistence on clinging to ‘social relations’ reveals his unwillingness to set aside existing social relations. He is finding ways to maintain those existing relations, not to question and challenge them. Therefore, ‘social relations’ become a reason for suppressing ‘man’ and a powerful defense of the status quo. This goes far beyond a theoretical debate. It is a difference in attitudes about how to deal with reality. Wang Ruoshui's argument can certainly be developed, and the definition of ‘human’ can be further discussed (whether its essence is ‘freedom’ or something else), but unless we start with ‘real people’ it is impossible to establish a basic critical perspective. Only that which appears at the starting point will appear at the end point. This is precisely what history teaches us. The fact that Hu Yaobang stepped down in 1987 clearly showed that behind this debate was the struggle between reformist and conservative forces within the Communist Party, that is, the struggle between two roads: Chinese social democracy and autocracy.”
 
“This passage from Hu’s text can be regarded as a model of positivist ‘historical materialism,’ in which the key words are: (1) productivity, (2) development, and (3) progress, all flaunting the victory of material forces and regarding this victory as the ‘triumph of history.’ Emphasizing that ‘the measure of historical progress can only be the development of production and the mode of production’ excludes any other measure of historical progress such as social equality and justice and in effect completely forfeits the critical spirit of Marxism. One of the main charges against Liu Shaoqi during the Cultural Revolution was that he championed the so-called ‘theory of productive forces.’ Now this same argument has made a comeback, none the worse for wear.”
 
“Strictly speaking, this is not a real debate, because the two parties do not have an equal position and the same right to speak. This is not only manifested in the fact that the more powerful party can mute the other’s voice at any time, but also that there are some things that only the powerful person can say, and when he says them you can’t answer back, even if you are both right. For example, Deng Liqun can say that Wang's opinion is not ‘an academic or theoretical issue’ but a ‘political issue,’ which is in fact true, but Wang Ruoshui cannot answer ‘of course it’s political!’ because ‘political issues’ are not open for discussion. The right to use the word ‘politics’ is in the hands of those who have more power. Similarly, for example, Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun call the term ‘humanism’ ‘abstract’ saying that the current discussion ‘makes no mention at all of current phenomena, or mentions them in a one-sided manner, only touching on a few points.’

In this regard, Wang Ruosui expressed his confusion as follows: ‘I do not understand the logic of Hu Qiaomu’s thinking. He says: “if abstract discussion of humanism may lead people to oppose socialism, isn't it even more so when talking about the violation of humanism in a socialist society in concrete terms?" People in the future must remember this when reading Wang Ruoshui's words. He was boxed in and had a lot of things that he could not say. It is impossible to understand the difficult circumstances, the theoretical insight, and the extraordinary courage of these pioneers solely by reading them, without recognizing the role that oppressive power relationships played behind the scenes.” 
 
Translation
 
A strange shadow roams the Chinese land...
                 
"Who are you?"
                 
"I am Man." 

——Wang Ruoshui, “A Defense of Humanism”
 
Remembering the Presentation on Marx that Caused the Storm
 
On March 7, 1983, on the cusp of spring, as one hundred flowers waited to bloom, in the auditorium of the Central Party School in the western district of Beijing, a lively academic lecture is underway. The presenter is Zhou Yang (1908-1989), former Deputy Minister of the Central Propaganda Department and a current advisor to the same department. In attendance are: Wang Zhen (1908-1993), President of the Central Party School, and Deng Liqun (1915-2015), Secretary of the Central Secretariat and the Head of the Central Propaganda Department. Zhou Yang was once a gifted speaker, but age spares no one, and a female broadcaster takes over after Zhou reads the opening statement. The strength of a professional broadcaster is the ability to read a never-before seen document with proper rhythm and cadence.  The applause lingers long after the presentation is over. Wang Zhen and Deng Liqun both come forward to shake hands with Zhou Yang, and Wang Zhen asks, out of curiosity: “I have one more question for you:  what are the characters for 'yihua'?”  He was referring to the word "alienation." 
 
This was an academic conference commemorating the 100 year anniversary of Marx’s passing. In his report, Zhou Yang reviewed the “17 years” leading up to 1966, claiming that in his "study of humanism and problems of human nature" and in his evaluation of literary works, he had “followed a torturous path:”
 
“At that time, human nature and humanism were often objects of criticism, and could not be taken up as subjects of scientific research and discussion. For a very long time, we have criticized humanism as revisionism, thinking that humanism and Marxism are absolutely incompatible. This kind of criticism is extremely one-sided, and some of it is simply wrong. Some of the ideas I developed in my previously published articles and speeches on this subject are incorrect or not entirely accurate. During the Cultural Revolution, the erroneous criticism of human nature and humanism by the likes of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, developed to the extreme, provided the basis in public opinion for their practice of inhumane and brutal feudal-fascist policies. The past erroneous criticisms of the theory of human nature and humanism led to serious consequences in theory and practice.  This is a lesson that we must constantly bear in mind. After the Gang of Four was crushed, there appeared an urgent need to restore human dignity and enhance human value. This was an entirely warranted repudiation of the reactionary views of the Gang of Four.”[4]
 
It is easy to understand why this report was so warmly received. The admission of the major mistakes of the past was not only a reflection of Zhou Yang's own painful remorse, but also a sign of the courage and determination of the Communists, forged during the period of the War of Resistance, to correct their mistakes and become once again a symbol of progress for the people and for society as a whole. I am afraid that none of the participants, basking in the excitement brought about by the report, could foresee that a new and unexpected cold spell was soon to take form as a result of this report, and that history was about to take another torturous turn.
 
Hu Qiaomu (1912-1992), a powerful Politburo member in charge of ideology, who did not participate in the presentation, made short work of reading it. On the morning of March 9, the academic conference in memory of Marx was postponed. On March 10, Hu Qiaomu, who was in the hospital, led a delegation to Zhou Yang's home that included: Xia Yan (1900-1995), former Deputy Minister of the Culture Department and current Vice Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles; Yu Wen (1926-2013), Executive Deputy Minister of the Central Propaganda Department; Deputy Minister He Jingzhi (b. 1924); and Wang Ruoshui (1926-2002), Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the People's Daily.

According to Wang Ruoshui's memoirs, Hu Qiaomu did not explicitly say during that meeting that Zhou Yang's report should not be published in the People's Daily, and on March 16, the People's Daily published the full text of Zhou Yang's report, which offended a certain authority. Among the opinions under consideration in the Central Propaganda Department about how to handle the situation was that Wang Ruoshui should be sanctioned by the organization and that Zhou Yang should carry out a self-criticism. But this decision did not immediately go out in the form of a Central Committee document, because, some say, Hu Yaobang wanted to prepare the materials and the opinions and speak in person with the people in question. And so on March 26, Hu Qiaomu convened a meeting in the Central Propaganda Department that was attended by Deng Liqun, Zhou Yang, Qin Chuan (1920-2003) (Editor-in-Chief of the People's Daily), and Wang Ruoshui.

At the meeting, a heated argument broke out between Hu Qiaomu and Zhou Yang. Zhou Yang threw down the materials prepared by Deng Liqun of the Central Propaganda Department in front of Hu Qiaomu, and repeatedly rebuked him, saying: "This is not the right way to do things!” Hu Qiaomu replied: "What are you saying? That the Party Center is not doing things right?" Zhou Yang replied: “You’re the one not doing things right.” Hu Qiaomu retaliated: "You are against the Party Center!” In the end, no punishment was handed down, and some said that "Hu Yaobang was protecting them" and that the real conflict was between Hu Qiaomu and Hu Yaobang.[5]
 
This controversy, which seems to have erupted out of nowhere, went through a series of changes and became a new topic of a different nature. In the fall of that year, in October, the Second Plenary Session of the Twelfth CPC Central Committee was held. It had been decided a year before that the central theme of this meeting would be Party rectification, but Deng Xiaoping’s October 12 report to the plenary session, featured another important theme in addition to the original plan: "Combatting spiritual pollution on the ideological front." Things soon evolved into a nationwide campaign.

Gu Xiang (1930-2015), one of those who drafted Zhou Yang’s report and an official in the Literature and Art Department of the Central Propaganda Department, wrote in his book: “In the second half of October 1983, the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign wave suddenly spread throughout the country. In a short while, all kinds of reports, opinion pieces and critical articles filled the pages of the newspapers. The press, publishing, broadcasting, and television were all required to sort through articles, speeches, books, and programs that had already been published and broadcast. University textbooks and works by academic research institutions were also checked and cleared. The headlines of the People's Daily published the news that the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign called for active criticism of and struggle against humanism and the theory of alienation.”[6] The storm was approaching and people were scared.

Wang Ruoshui noted in his memoirs that: “The phrase ‘spiritual pollution’ was used so much that even the People's Daily's typography press ran out of printing tiles for these characters. On October 28, the Central Secretariat convened a meeting of the People’s Daily leadership and announced that it ‘accepts Hu Jiwei's (1916-2012) request to resign, and removes Wang Ruoshui from the post of deputy editor-in-chief’."[7] It was not until the end of the year, when Hu Yaobang summoned the leaders of the People's Daily, the Xinhua News Agency, and the Ministry of Broadcasting and Television to a meeting on December 14 and suggested that the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign might have gone too far, raising eight points of specific concern, that “this movement that was not a movement” (in the words of Gu Xiang) subsided, having lasted a total of "28 days."[8]
 
On January 3, 1984, Hu Qiaomu himself delivered a speech entitled "On the Question of Humanism and Alienation" at the Central Party School, the very same place where Zhou Yang had given his report. Like Zhou Yang’s, his report was also read by a professional radio broadcaster (Zhou Yang's report had been read by one person, while Hu’s was read by two announcers taking turns). This lecture was later published in Red Flag magazine, and also quickly published as a pamphlet by the People’s Press, creating a significant impact. It totally rejected all attempts to merge Marxism and humanism, fundamentally rejected the term "Marxist humanism," and described the debate as “a fundamentally wrong viewpoint, which will not only cause ideological confusion, but also produce negative political consequences” "creating distrust in socialism”[9], at which point this great debate, which had started in 1979, basically came to an end. Afterwards, only some “marginal” journals were able to publish the odd article discussing Hu Qiaomu’s views.
 
A Corrective Viewpoint from within Marxism
 
Because it was relatively close to the end of the Cultural Revolution, people easily got the impression that this discussion under the banner of humanism was basically about summarizing the lessons of the Cultural Revolution, that it was oriented towards the past, and that because the Cultural Revolution was a thing of the past, so was the significance of the debate. In fact this viewpoint was exactly that of Hu Qiaomu when he criticized Wang Ruoshui and company at the time.

In Hu Qiaomu's view, continuing an in-depth theoretical discussion was unnecessary because the Central Party Committee had already employed “the concentrated wisdom of the entire Party to conduct a scientific summary of the unhealthy phenomena that had occurred during the Cultural Revolution, and drawn the necessary lessons to avoid repeating similar mistakes.”[10] After the mid-1980s, reflections on the Cultural Revolution gradually faded away. People like Hu Qiaomu, having turned the page on Cultural Revolution, were ready to march smoothly toward the future, following their predetermined line. This was not the case for people like Wang Ruoshui.
 
Another problem that emerged after the end of the Cultural Revolution was the decline of previously held values. This was prominently reflected in the “Pan Xiao debate” that began in the middle of 1980. In May of that year, the China Youth Daily published a reader’s letter, signed “Pan Xiao,” titled “Why Does Life’s Road Grow Increasingly Narrow?” In the article she expressed her strong suspicion of the ideology she had been taught since childhood and concluded that “everyone is working subjectively for self and objectively for others” which is fundamentally different from the previous expressions of “devotion to the collective” or “selflessness.”

The publication of the letter quickly sparked a nationwide debate about the meaning of life. Letters from readers from all over the country flooded the newspaper's editorial office, reflecting a widespread sense of emptiness and confusion. This debate had nothing to do with the end of the Cultural Revolution, but rather suggested that, when society enters a new era, it requires a new set of values .

As a responsible Party theorist, Wang Ruoshui understood this point very clearly: “The current ongoing reform must bring about and indeed is bringing about changes in values. The new values that suit the needs of socialist modernization must promote and indeed are promoting the development of reform. In this context, raising the issue of human value and socialist humanism is of practical significance and in step with the reforms.”[11] In the context of this debate, Wang Ruoshui and company asked what values meet the new conditions. Whether they in fact "fit" in with or instead created some kind of rift in the country's path toward modernization is a separate question.

What is absolutely clear, however, is that the endpoint of this discussion was not a reflection on the Cultural Revolution; instead this reflection facilitated a further engagement with the new issues raised by the times and with the new challenges posed by reality. If in the process of national modernization some other perspective were needed—or to use Marx’s language: if, at the same time as we achieve a high level of material productivity, we encounter the need to establish a new set of social relations and an "overarching superstructure" compatible with these new social relations, and especially a set of modern values such as freedom, equality, and human rights—then this debate will have provided a very important starting point and angle of attack.
 
During the period from 1979 to 1983, in addition to the People's Daily, publications such as Wenhuibao, China Youth Daily, Literature and Art Studies, Philosophical Research, Study and Exploration, Study and Research, and other national and provincial social science magazines and literary journals, all of which were influential at the time, participated extensively in the debate. Wang Ruoshui's view was absolutely correct: unlike other ideological movements since 1949, including the recent debate on "practice is the sole criterion of truth," that were all officially initiated and carried out under instructions and in an organized manner, this debate was "spontaneous," or in today's terminology "grass roots."

Although the participants in this debate were all from within the system, and some were even high-level propaganda officials, when they published articles they did so in their own names. The debate addressed the compatibility of Marxism and humanism, the nature of Marxist humanism, and the legacy of modern Western humanism, including issues surrounding alienation in Marx's early work, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, as well as related literary and aesthetic issues. It is not difficult to imagine that given the severe limits on freedom of expression at the time, any such debate could only take place under the banner of Marxism, using the language of Marxism and speaking in ways that would resonate with Marxism. These ideas were going to be expressed in one way or another, whether they were called Marxist or not. But in fact, they were Marxism, and nothing else.
 
We can understand the reflection as being composed of three historical waves. The first wave might be referred to as "those who prepared the way.” They had been criticized on related issues before. For example, Zhu Guangqian (1897-1986), Professor of Aesthetics in the Department of Philosophy of Peking University, who was criticized for "aesthetics idealism" in 1956, was the first to publish an article, "On the Problem of Human Nature, Humanism, Human Feelings, and a Common Sense of Beauty” in 1979. Qian Gurong (1919-2017), Professor of Literature and Art at East China Normal University, was the subject of organized nationwide criticism for his 1957 article “On ‘Literature is the Study of Man’” and in 1980 he published his "A Self-Criticism of the Article ‘On ‘Literature is the Study of Man’’,” written in 1957, which was essentially a self-defense even the word “self-criticism” figures in the title.

There was also Gao Ertai (b. 1935), a scholar who was very young when he was criticized and who reemerged after a theoretical makeover. After being labeled as a "rightist" and barely surviving his period of “sent down” labor, he was rehabilitated in 1978 and took up a position in the Department of Philosophy of Lanzhou University. Having experienced the "enhanced state apparatus," the problems he seized upon were all the more acute, and his explorations of them all the more thorough.
 
The unusual thing about the "rethinking" era was that not only did those who had been criticized in the past resurface to speak out yet again, but some of the critics of the same period, namely those who denied humanism, also changed their position and stood on the side of humanism after experiencing the painful lessons of reality. It should be said that the role played by this second wave was particularly important, and Zhou Yang, whom I mentioned above, was among the most typical and influential players. In the spring of 1983, he was determined and well-prepared to produce his "trouble-making" report. Ru Xin (b. 1931), a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who had already been included in Zhou Yang's "Critical Humanism" writing project in the 1960s, published an article in the People's Daily in August 1980 entitled "Is Humanism Revisionism? – Rethinking Humanism,” in which he noted: “Humanism proposes that human beings should be treated as human beings, that they are their own highest purpose, and that their value lies in themselves.”[12]

There was also Dai Houying (1938-1996), a novelist and  lecturer on literary theory at Shanghai University at the time. This Cultural Revolution rebel, very outspoken in those days, wrote a novel, Stones of the Wall, which added a strong emotional dimension to the discussion.
 
The real force behind the discussion was a group of people that we might call “the young Bolsheviks.” They were only in their early twenties when New China was established in 1949, but were already "old revolutionaries." In their youth, they joined the revolution out of conviction. Later, after witnessing the "brutal struggle and relentless attack" within their own ranks and the damage this had caused inside and outside the Party, they became determined to examine the source of the problems. In fact they were still young, and had the drive and courage to explore the truth.

As for their general standpoint, they consciously located themselves within the framework of Marxism, seeking out new departures and resources from within the Marxist canon, hoping, from the perspective of “socialism with a human face” to inject a new energy and a new charisma into Marxism, so as to respond to the needs of the moment. At the same time, their work can be seen as an attempt to save the fate of Marxism in China, in the hope that the nation could still continue on the Marxist path despite all its trials and tribulations.

The most prominent among these was Wang Ruoshui, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the People's Daily. Born in 1926, he entered the Department of Philosophy at Peking University in 1946 as a student and subsequently fled to one of the base areas to join the revolution. In 1964, he published "The Philosophy of a Table," an article praised by Mao Zedong. In the 1960s, he was in working contact with Zhou Yang in the context of the criticism of humanism. Another example is Xue Dezhen, the Chief Editor of the People's Press. He was born in 1932 and joined the Communist Party at the age of 15. Although his writings were not as prominent as Wang Ruoshui's, his book Man is the Starting Point of Marxism, which was put together and edited by the People’s Press in early 1981, occupied the commanding heights in the debate. The articles included in it were all published for the first time. The book took its title from a Wang Ruoshui piece of the same name, and Xue Dezhen's own research results were also included. A year and a half later, under pressure, the press published another book, On Philosophical Explorations of Theories of Man, which, though not as sharp as its predecessor, nevertheless carried forward the discussion of a meaningful topic.

Gu Xiang, who drafted the section of Zhou Yang’s report titled “Humanism,” was born in 1930, and joined the New Fourth Army of the Communist Party during the Anti-Japanese War. For these Party members, their Marxist beliefs were linked to their experience as soldiers in the revolutionary war, and thus even when discussing theoretical issues, they did not forget the constraints of being a revolutionary in terms of organizational discipline. This is reflected in the fact that Wang Ruoshui’s and Xue Dezhen’s articles quoted from the original classics of Marx and Engels, with 90% of the citations coming from the Chinese edition of The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, and occasionally from The Complete Works of Lenin. Wang Ruoshui also cited The Selected Works of Mao Zedong and The Selected Writings of Deng Xiaoping in a few places.
 
Other, even younger people were not burdened by this history and experience. Although they had lived through the closing of the schools during the Cultural Revolution, with their passion for truth, awareness of problems, and hard work, they mastered the most important knowledge of the era, Marxism, outside of the classroom. Youths like these were not on the radar of senior ideologues and they paid little attention to them, which allowed them to develop their thought independently.

Born in the 1950s, Ding Xueliang (b. 1952), was one of the most prominent of these. Within just two or three years he wrote an article that was one hundred thousand characters long. For Ding, Marxism was both the center of his intellectual commitment and the hub of his inquiry, and his explorations of Marxism led him to open up other magnificent and powerful elements in the history of Western thought. In this sense, Marxism become a window that showcased Western philosophical and social thought, and of course, the representative of its highest achievements. This was also the thinking of many young people at the time, myself included.

Given these circumstances, Marxism was the only way for us to come into contact with liberal and critical Western thought. Compared with the intellectuals in the Communist Party, one of the biggest differences in Ding Xueliang’s work was that he referred to a large number of foreign language materials found at the Academy of Social Sciences, and in addition to quoting the original works of Marx and Engels, with which he was very familiar, he also quoted extensive passages from authors whose work was considered  bourgeois or revisionist. One of the footnotes to his article that aroused my great interest was to a grey paperback titled Revisionism, edited by an Englishman named Leopold Labedz, published by New York Press in 1962 and translated in-house by a number of experts at the Commercial Press in 1963.
 
In terms of intellectual resources and theoretical orientation, we should note that this debate about humanism and the problem of alienation, led by intellectuals within the Communist Party, was in fact very much in line with the efforts to craft a “socialism with a human face” that began in the mid-1950s in Eastern Europe, and was also an attempt to find new possibilities within Marxism, and thus was a corrective vision from within Marxism.

In terms of theoretical background, in addition to Chinese internal publications, there was also the Yugoslav scholar Milovan Djilas’s (1911-1995) The New Class: an Analysis of the Communist System, which systematically discussed the problem of bureaucratic alienation that emerged in the Soviet Union, and the Polish philosopher Adam Schaff’s (1913-2006) A Philosophy of Man, that was primarily a response to the "moral crisis" brought about by the "mistakes and errors of the previous period" of the international communist movement. Adam Michnik (b. 1946), a Polish historian from a later generation, used the metaphor of “the Bible” and “the church” to describe the efforts to create a humanist Marxism in the 1950s in Eastern Europe: Schaff and others still believed in "the Bible" (Marxism itself) but opposed "the church" (the institutions in charge of ideology and their senior officials).

This metaphor could be fully applied to Wang Ruoshui and his fellow believers. In this sense, we can view the debate that took place in China in the early 1980s as a kind of "Reformation." It marked the transition from an old age to a new age, a quiet preparation of the ideological and theoretical ground for the birth of this new age, while retaining the authority and forms of the old age. Only with such preparation could we have the spiritual protection to endure the turmoil that the social change will bring.
 
Noting that the intellectual resources of "Marxism with a human face" came from Eastern Europe also serves to clarify one point: some people have used the general term “Western Marxism” to describe the background to the ideas framing the Chinese discussion. In fact, the external resources used by Wang Ruoshui's group were completely different from those used by Hu Qiaomu and his experts, the latter being more what was called "Western Marxism," i.e., derived more from the writings of the French structuralist thinker Louis Althusser (1918-1990), as will be discussed below.
 
In January 1987 Hu Yaobang (1915-1989) stepped down as General Secretary. The astrophysicist Fang Lizhi (1936-2012), the journalist Liu Binyan (1925-2005) and the writer Wang Ruowang (1918-2001) were subsequently expelled from the Party. In August of the same year, Wang Ruoshui was advised to resign from the Party, and he was eventually expelled from the Party when he refused.
 
The Focus of the Debate, or Changing Perspectives
 
The report that Hu Qiaomu delivered in the auditorium of the Central Party School in early 1984 was the work of a team of ideological experts, the members of which included: the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University, Renmin University, the Central Party School, Red Flag magazine, People’s Daily, the Central Bureau for Compilation and Translation, and the Central Office for Party Documents.  From today’s perspective, Hu’s report was not merely a “summary” opinion designed to put an end to the discussion. It actually performed a guiding and programmatic role for the subsequent development of ideology within the Chinese Communist Party. One might say that even today this guiding ideology still operates within this framework.

This text is therefore an important “historical document.” It provided the basic vision and framework for the country's ideology after the 1980s. Wang Ruoshui, Gao Ertai and others wrote their own articles refuting Hu’s text. Wang's rebuttal article, "My Views on Humanism," circulated in Hong Kong magazines before it was published in China, becoming his main "crime." The article was later included in his 1986 book A Defense of Humanism. After being passed around a bit, Guo Ertai’s rebuttal, “Memorandum on the Humanism Debate,” was published in the issue number 4 of the Journal of Sichuan Normal University in 1986. What distinguished Wang Ruoshui and Gao Ertai from the others is that they were consistently on the radar screen of the ideological authorities. They were considered very dangerous, requiring strict precautions, and much of the content of Hu’s report was aimed directly at them. Therefore their arguments and subsequent replies to those who criticized them also collectively represent the main viewpoints, achievements and theoretical breakthroughs of one part of Marxist humanism.
 
Should the Starting point be “Social Relations?”  Or “Real People?”
 
In response to Wang Ruoshui’s proposition that “man is the starting point of Marxism,” Hu Qiaomu’s article offered a critique, pointing out that “this is a typical argument that confuses the boundaries between Marxism and bourgeois humanism, historical materialism and historical idealism.” After repeating what Marx said in his 1845 volume, Theses on Feuerbach, Hu’s text pointed out that: “human society, people's social relations (and first and foremost, relations of production), are Marxism’s new starting point.” And “ever since Marx found a new starting point for his view of history, he never again, when studying the history of mankind, spoke about people in an abstract, generalized way. The people he spoke about were all bearers of different social relations, that is, personifications of different social relations.”[13]
 
Highlighting Marx's "new starting point" after 1845 actually hinted at a distinction between the "two Marxes"—one younger and one older. This adopts the basic distinction made by the French structuralist Althusser in his 1965 book For Marx, some parts of which had just been translated into Chinese at the time. Western Scholars on “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” published by Fudan University Press in February 1983, included more than half of the chapters of Althusser’s book, including the preface to the English edition of the article "Why I Oppose the Reinterpretation of Marxism" and "On the Young Marx," "Marxism and Humanism," and others. Althusser used the idea of an "epistemological rupture" to show how Marxism had broken with the previous ideology and had become a "science."[14] This statement from a “Western Marxist” clearly gave a boost to Chinese ideological experts.
 
Deciding what belongs to Marxism is an important question of principle. Of course, Wang Ruoshui had to prove that his viewpoint also came from Marxism. His initial argument was concessive: “We shouldn’t think of ‘starting from real people’ and ‘starting from social relations’ as antagonistic.” In response to Hu Qiaomu’s practice of quoting large numbers of passages from Marx’s original texts in his essays, Wang Ruoshui, who was familiar with Marx’s work, had his own collection of original quotes from Marx to prove his point. But some of the quotations that were meant to be meaningful did not have the power he had hoped, because they came from early texts, such as the 1844 Manuscripts. One example is “Above all we must avoid postulating ‘society’ again as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual. The individual is the social being.”[15] Judging from the quotations, it would seem that on different occasions and at different times Marx indeed had two different arguments. Which, after all, was the real starting point for Marxism: social relations or real people? On the surface, the debate appeared to be an internal theological issue.
 
Actually that was not the case. In the fullness of time, Wang Ruoshui eventually managed to make clear his views on the truth concerning these supposed differences in Marx’s viewpoint. In 1988 he wrote an essay entitled “On Human Essence and Social Relations” especially for this purpose. In this text, he boldly argued that, for decades, people’s understanding of “human nature is the total sum of social relations” had been “wrong.” This is because even though people find themselves in certain social relations, it cannot be concluded that there is a complete overlap between these "social relations" and the "people" themselves.

He took Ibsen’s Nora, a familiar figure to the Chinese for many years, as an example, stating that "for Nora, it is precisely her family relations that deny her human essence and make her feel like she's not a real human being.” Therefore, "it is not the case that any social relation is the realization of human nature," it is instead the opposite: “alienated social relationships not only are not the realization of human essence, but instead make it impossible for human essence to be realized, they prevent man from becoming man.” Marx’s critique of capitalism is precisely that. What Marx criticized was the existing “social relations” of capitalism: All relations that leave people humiliated, enslaved, abandoned, and despised must be overturned.”[16] It should be noted that although Wang takes "freedom" as the "essence of man" which produces the conflict between "human essence" and the existing "social relations," still, achieving freedom and liberation does not merely occur at the subjective level, but has to be achieved within social relations, which means that only within social relations can freedom be realized. This is an authentic Marxist way of reasoning.
 
Only when we get to this point can we truly see the difference between Wang Ruoshui and Hu Qiaomu:  when Hu insists that “everything begins with social relations,” he means everything begins with existing social relations; Hu Qiaomu’s insistence on clinging to “social relations” reveals his unwillingness to set aside existing social relations. He is finding ways to maintain those existing relations, not to question and challenge them. Therefore, “social relations” become a reason for suppressing “man” and a powerful defense of the status quo.

This goes far beyond a theoretical debate. It is a difference in attitudes about how to deal with reality. Wang Ruoshui's argument can certainly be developed, and the definition of “human” can be further discussed (whether its essence is “freedom” or something else), but unless we start with “real people” it is impossible to establish a basic critical perspective. Only that which appears at the starting point will appear at the end point. This is precisely what history teaches us. The fact that Hu Yaobang stepped down in 1987 clearly showed that behind this debate was the struggle between reformist and conservative forces within the Communist Party, that is, the struggle between two roads: Chinese social democracy and autocracy.
 
 
Interpreting History and Evaluating History
 
 
But things had changed, after all. Against the backdrop of “eliminating chaos and returning to normal,” Hu Qiaomu and his team of experts could not completely return to the position of denying humanism as the regime had done for its first 17 years. They were willing to make certain concessions, and allowed more than one viewpoint on humanism. On the one hand, there was the interpretation of  humanism as a “worldview or a historical perspective,” as “idealism,” as “incapable of scientifically explaining human society.” They argued further that “Marxism and humanism, historical materialism and historical idealism, are completely incompatible. They cannot be completely or even partially reconciled.” But on the other hand, they also allowed that there was “humanism as an ethical principle and a moral norm.” The latter contained some rational elements that could be of use, giving rise to the idea of “socialist humanism.”

This is “humanism as a set of ethical principles and moral norms, based on the economic basis of socialism and compatible with the political system of socialism.”[17] If you were not paying attention, you might have overlooked the fact that the objective of these adjustments and rearrangements was to get rid of the reference to "Marxist humanism." After this, the distinction in Hu’s text between the two kinds of humanism was touted by some as a "major breakthrough" and an "important contribution".
 
Wang Ruoshui expressed profound doubts about this. He argued that “humanism is essentially a value.” No worldview can exclude values, they instead “must include values,” because “values are an aspect of a worldview.” This is because man “does not merely interpret the world itself in a purely objective way; he also asks whether the world is good or bad from a human standpoint (including a class standpoint) and makes value judgments about the world.” Since Marx said that “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it,” then to change the world one cannot stop at "interpreting" the world, but must “evaluate” it: “Is the world good? Is it satisfying? What is it supposed to be like? How do people want it to be? Without this kind of evaluation, the desire to change the world will not arise at all.”

In response to Hu Qiaomu’s criticism that humanism “cannot provide a scientific explanation of the history of human society,” Wang Ruoshui replied: “It is true that humanism cannot explain, because that is not its task; its task is to make an evaluation. When the author of the article [i.e., Hu Qiaomu] says that one aspect of the meaning of humanism is a worldview and a historical outlook, he excludes values; when he says that the other aspect of humanism is ethics and morality, values are set aside again. No wonder the author believes that there is not much in the history of humanism to be carried forward, because the most core elements and the most precious things about humanism fall outside of his vision.”
 
This is a position that should be cherished. Because what has been practiced for many years is precisely a practice devoid of human values. Under the name of so-called “scientific truth,” certain people claim to have mastered the laws of historical development, allowing them to know the way forward, and on this basis remove all constraints in order to achieve this goal. But the results show that it is only the lust for power of a few that has been realized, that a few have climbed to the peak of power while the majority remains crawling on the ground. In the process of recklessly grabbing power, these people are willing to crush anything under foot. Nothing can stop their turning the “wheels of history.” As the Russian philosopher Nicolay Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) said more than a century ago: “He who makes history is not afraid to get his hands dirty.”

It is the "scientism" in this view of history that in some way leads to cruelty and brutality, or at least provides them with an excuse. Although the focus of the later Marx's work has shifted somewhat, there is no evidence that Marx abandoned his earlier criticism of capitalism from the standpoint of values. Otherwise Marx would be a simple empiricist rather than a thoughtful critic. Wang Ruoshui concluded his discussion by affirming that: “We need a scientific explanation of the world, and we need an appropriate value assessment of the world. Therefore, we need both materialism and humanism, both of which are worldviews.”[18]
 
Earlier, in 1981, in his article “Marx’s Humanism: A Completely Different Interpretation,” Ding Xueliang expressed his opposition to Western “Marxism” which “creates an opposition between science and values,” and also emphasized the commonality of the two: “Marx does not eliminate value judgments in the name of science, just as he does not substitute values for scientific research.”[19] He also adamantly opposed the division of Marx into early and late. In the debate, Gao Ertai similarly pointed out: the problem of humanism is a philosophical problem, and philosophy “is primarily a value system (this is what distinguishes it from science, which is primarily a cognitive system). Its mission is to inspire and motivate people to be conscious of how they transform the world, to create value.”[20]
 
The Value of Things and the Value of People
 
Having excluded the human perspective and the perspective of values, “history” in Hu Qiaomu’s essay becomes an objective process “independent of man’s will,” a mysterious evolution driven by productivity. Therefore, on the whole, it is “forward and progressive” even if there are “historical setbacks and wrong paths.” But the article does not further specify what are the “setbacks” and by what yardstick it determines that something is a “wrong path.” After leaving the fetters of “man” behind, this kind of history proclaims: “from primitive society to slavery” is seen as “a tremendous advance in human society, the result of a great development of the productive forces, that marks the emergence of mankind from obscurity and barbarism and his passage through the gates of civilization; only at this point did the history of human civilization begin.” And “Marx and Engels were the most thorough-going critics of the evils of the capitalist system, but they still stated clearly in The Communist Manifesto that ‘capitalism played an extremely revolutionary role in history.’ As for the replacement of capitalism by communism, it even more signals a great advance in human productivity and social relations.”[21]
 
This passage from Hu’s text can be regarded as a model of positivist “historical materialism,” in which the key words are: (1) productivity, (2) development, and (3) progress, all flaunting the victory of material forces and regarding this victory as the “triumph of history.” Emphasizing that “the measure of historical progress can only be the development of production and the mode of production” excludes any other measure of historical progress such as social equality and justice and in effect completely forfeits the critical spirit of Marxism. One of the main charges against Liu Shaoqi during the Cultural Revolution was that he championed the so-called “theory of productive forces.” Now this same argument has made a comeback, none the worse for wear.
 
This sounds rather ironic:  in a region with particularly underdeveloped material conditions, is such an emphasis on the role of “things” something we have to do to catch up? This is one factor, but not the only one. In fact, these “things” also perform a function that is entirely outside of themselves, that is, as a means of “controlling” power, as a way of maintaining existing power. Just as Foucault said that "power" and "sex" are two sides of the same coin, in this instance, "things" and "power" are two sides of the same coin.

Placing all of their emphasis on the fact that material standards were so low allowed them to focus solely on that, gave them a reason to refuse to keep pace with the world, to reject the various demands of cultural modernity, especially the realization of constitutional democracy in the political system. Here’s how the logic works: the relations of production are dependent on productivity—the social relations are dependent on the relations of production—state power is dependent on social relations—everyone is dependent on state power. So if the level of productivity is low, we can pretty much ignore everything else.
 
In different stages of the discussion, Wang and others expressed different understandings of “human values.” The earliest formula recalls the kind of awakening that occurred in the Western Renaissance: that having gone through the period of “infinite worship” of and “infinite loyalty” to Mao during the Cultural Revolution, people’s consciousness came back to life: “The billions of small stars in the cosmos ‘all revolving around the red sun’ have suddenly become themselves again…Man, in fact, is a living cosmic subject with self-creativity, self-purpose, self-awareness and self-respect. Man is resurrected.”[22] 

At the end of 2006, the liberal economist Liu Junning (b. 1961) similarly called for a Renaissance, but the “liberation” he was looking for was that of China’s export capacity. Others, such as Liu Binyan, disagreed with the use of “divine nature” to explain some of the practices during the Cultural Revolution, thinking that it is more accurate to call them “an outpouring of bestiality.” After Wang Ruoshui was criticized in 1984, in his rebuttal of Hu Qiaomu’s article, he further phrased it in terms close to “human rights” although the term could not appear at the time: “The ten-year disaster (i.e., the Cultural Revolution), in particular, was an even greater affront to human values, violating and trampling on the personal freedom and dignity of the citizens.”
 
Affirming the safety and security, personal independence and freedom of human life is the first meaning of "human value." The second meaning of "human value" has to do with the basic rights of "workers." In his 1981 essay "Man is the Starting Point of Marxism," which was included in the aforementioned People's Press collection, Wang Ruoshui clearly stated as much under the subheading: “the workers must be treated as human beings.” This was obviously influenced by the Manuscript's account of “labor alienation,” but Wang related this issue to the reality of socialist China, which was a very bold gesture at the time.

He pointed out: “If there are people in our socialist country who treat workers as insignificant, who think production goals are everything, forgetting that people are not the means but the end, forgetting that people not only need to work but also need the betterment of material life and cultural standards, then is this not a betrayal of the principles of socialist humanism?”[23] Gao Ertai also acutely pointed out in his article: "The more the world of things increases in value, the more the world of humans decreases in value. People used to work hard for seventeen or eighteen hours a day without getting the reward they deserve.”[24] This includes the economic income that workers are entitled to, cultural and educational conditions, discretionary free time etc., that concretely make up the meaning of human values and are not at all “abstract” or “empty” as some critics have said. These are the very issues that Hu Qiaomu did not address.
 
The third meaning of "human value" refers to that part of the human being which is above or beyond material needs, including people’s "creative activity" and the "full development of the personality," which are within the scope of the classical German philosophy and aesthetics familiar to Marx. Gao Ertai and Ding Xueliang both expressed similar views. Ding Xueliang has a brilliant article that reads: “The purpose of Marx's theory of communism is the complete and free development of man.” Wang Ruoshui, on the other hand, pointedly noted that the reduction of human beings to the level of mere “things” is precisely the capitalist vision that Marx criticized. “It is a common misconception that a communist society is one in which everyone gets whatever he wants, that is, a society in which everyone lives the material life of a millionaire. Its mistake is not overestimating communism, but on underestimating it, because the scale of values used here is still the scale of capitalism.”[25]
 
Wang Ruoshui denounced all the more stridently those who use their privilege to create another set of “value standards:” “There is a small number of people who use their privilege, seize their ill-gotten gains and amuse themselves to their heart’s content. Such people do not talk about human values, and there is a great need to educate them about human values. They do not know what human values are. They only know the value of things, of commodities, of money.”[26] Such frank words sealed Wang’s fate. At the same time, the expelling of a steadfast and pure Communist Party member like Wang Ruoshui indicates that the Party itself had already experienced its own “color revolution” long before society moved in that direction.
 
 “Materialist ears” like these may not really understand the expression "human values," or they may already have a ready-made framework of values which makes it impossible for them to get to the level of the issues discussed by Wang Ruoshui. What does Hu Qiaomu say about "human values" in his article?   He seems to miss the point completely:  "In terms of the relationship between the individual and society in a socialist society, human values consist of two aspects, namely, the respect and satisfaction that society accords to the individual, and the responsibility and contribution that the individual makes to society.”[27]

Here, the question of "value" is really presented as a question of the "individual," and the so-called "value realization" is merely a question of personal gain or loss, personal position, personal profits, and how to realize personal ambition and satisfaction, and all of these various solutions should be realized within "society," that is, in the collective and "the ranks of the revolution.” Undoubtedly, this is the path to personal advancement that the ideological officials themselves followed. They start by controlling and monopolizing power and all other resources of the country, and then they say that this is the only solution available. Hu’s text, which embodies the "collective wisdom" of the ideologues, also shows that when these theorists make their “individual” contribution to "society," they are doing nothing "worthwhile" for either one or the other. Who is responsible for the confusion of logic in this text? 
 
Strictly speaking, this is not a real debate, because the two parties do not have an equal position and the same right to speak. This is not only manifested in the fact that the more powerful party can mute the other’s voice at any time, but also that there are some things that only the powerful person can say, and when he says them you can’t answer back, even if you are both right. For example, Deng Liqun can say that Wang's opinion is not "an academic or theoretical issue" but a "political issue," which is in fact true, but Wang Ruoshui cannot answer “of course it’s political!” because "political issues" are not open for discussion. The right to use the word "politics" is in the hands of those who have more power. Similarly, for example, Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun call the term “humanism” “abstract” saying that the current discussion “makes no mention at all of current phenomena, or mentions them in a one-sided manner, only touching on a few points.”

In this regard, Wang Ruosui expressed his confusion as follows: “I do not understand the logic of Hu Qiaomu’s thinking. He says: ‘if abstract discussion of humanism may lead people to oppose socialism, isn't it even more so when talking about the violation of humanism in a socialist society in concrete terms?"[28] People in the future must remember this when reading Wang Ruoshui's words. He was boxed in and had a lot of things that he could not say. It is impossible to understand the difficult circumstances, the theoretical insight, and the extraordinary courage of these pioneers solely by reading them, without recognizing the role that oppressive power relationships played behind the scenes.  
 
"Alienation" Highlights the Political Dimension
 
All of these discussions relate to the few pages of Marx’s early manuscript and, especially to the problem of “alienation.” That such a strange term could enter the public consciousness, or even the newspapers, was only possible during this period of deep reflection. Within this apparently obscure expression, the greatest political energy was galvanized and released.
 
For Wang Ruoshui, this was a tiny “legacy” from the 1960s, when Wang and others, under the leadership of Zhou Yang,  were ordered to write a pamphlet criticizing Soviet Revisionist humanism titled “Criticizing Humanism.” Wang Ruoshui was assigned to write two chapters: "Alienation," and "Human Nature." The booklet was never completed. On October 26, 1963, Zhou Yang used the word “alienation” in his report at the enlarged meeting of the Committee of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (the predecessor of the Academy of Social Sciences). Zhou Yang's speech was reviewed by Mao Zedong[29], and when Wang later said that Mao himself had singled this word out for praise, it was probably this instance he was referring to.
 
When the “spring breeze of ideological emancipation” suddenly sprang up, Wang Ruoshui published his "old manuscript" about the problem of alienation from the 1960s, titled “On the Concept of Alienation,” in the first issue of the 1979 Journal of Research in the History of Foreign Philosophy, which received a fair bit of attention. In 1980, he was invited to give a lecture at the Journalism Department of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Someone handed him a note asking what “alienation” meant. Wang’s explanation aroused a great deal of interest and this led to his article “Discussing the Problem of Alienation,” which defines the odd term as follows: “Something that you yourself had originally created or done, which, because of the consequences of its development, turned into a force external to yourself and out of everyone’s control, and which as a result instead came to dominate and oppress you.”[30]

This definition has basically become the classic definition of the term. The notion of “something that man created turning against man himself” reveals a perspective—“the idea of man himself” —that was previously quite unfamiliar to people. This is not only a philosophical expression of "returning to oneself 返身" and " introspection;" it is particularly advanced in that it recognizes that each person has his or her own “human self”, meaning that each person is equal in the sense of demanding equality. It is markedly different from the class struggle theory that highlights differences in family backgrounds, and even more different from a small privileged class riding herd over the “human selves” of others. This message was accurately seized on by the people. 
 
At the time when Gao Ertai was mulling over his very influential piece, “A Closer Look at the Phenomenon of Alienation,” he was still “atoning for his sins” in Jiuquan, Gansu. This article was first published as fragmented notes in 1977 and then as an “unfinished manuscript” in 1979 in Internal Publications of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Lin Wei, was dismissed for publishing this article. After having endured an inhuman existence for more than a decade, Gao Ertai took a real political stance from the outset, rather than limiting himself to an academic discussion: “The complex and dynamic meanings of the concept of alienation and its place in the development of Marx's thought, are issues of diverging views and controversy in the international academic community. We are not here to explore those issues, nor to study the historical development of Marx’s thought, but to use the concept of alienation that Marx once employed to analyze our own problems.”

“A practical humanism will not be satisfied with a discursive recognition of human rights, but is committed to changing the historical conditions of the reality that leaves people alienated.”[31] Wang Ruoshui noted that Gao Ertai’s article was “the first time that the existence of the phenomenon of alienation in the Chinese socialist society was pointed out.” Ruan Ming's (b. 1931) "From Human Alienation to Human Liberation” also directly discussed the problem of alienation from a political perspective."[32] To this day, Gao Ertai's article "A Closer Look at the Phenomenon of Alienation" has not lost its critical effect. The article pointed out various kinds of “alienation” phenomena, most of which have only worsened over time. That is because the basic structure of the society that he depicted has not fundamentally changed and the basic core that constitutes the power of social integration remains the same.
 
Among these expressions of alienation, "power alienation" and "political alienation," as well as "power fetishism" and "political fetishism," were the ones that stung the ideological officials the most. The text stated bluntly: “The power that the people as masters entrusted to their representatives, in turn became the power to oppress and enslave their opponents. The ‘master’ became the ‘servant,’ the ‘servant’ became the ‘master.’ What should have done away with alienation became instead its direct cause. This inversion is a typical expression of the alienation of power, and constitutes a clear reaction against Marxism and socialism.”[33]

In a situation where he could only beat dead tigers, Gao Ertai pointed the finger at Lin Biao and others: “Lin Biao and the Jiang Qing gang used the power they had stolen to create an invisible state within the socialist state. Through layers of control, and to the best of their abilities, Lin Biao and the Jiang Qing gang established a bureaucracy to enforce their ‘power of suppression.’ This bureaucracy formed a particular, closed, and self-contained group within the state, a fake state alongside the actual socialist state. It believed that it was the reason and purpose of the existence of the state. … For them, the socialist aims of the state itself disappeared and became the personal aims of Lin Biao and the Jiang Qing gang, it became the capital and the power basis for their claims to be the king and the hegemon, or it became a means of promotion and a ladder of advancement for them and their gang.” Applying the term "commodity fetishism" from Marx's critique, Gao Ertai linked "capital" in a capitalist society to the "power" of "Lin Biao and the Jiang Qing gang,” and pointed out the existence of "power fetishism.”

“Commodity fetishism and money fetishism become power fetishism here. The more value we accord to the world of power, the less value remains to the world of man. Countless people have died for no reason other than to ‘pay their dues.’ This is the most common manifestation of this situation.” In response to the “Three Loyalties” and the “Four Boundless Loves” that abused the state’s name to fan the flames of religious fanaticism, Gao Ertai also applied Marx’s thinking: “The political system has all along been the domain of religion. It is the religion of the people’s lives. It is the heaven of the universality of people’s lives as opposed to the reality of their interpersonal existence.” He further pointed out that this worship of the state was a manifestation of "political fetishism." At the time, would it have been possible to say something like this without using a convoluted word like “alienation,” or in any case, could we have expressed the idea so clearly in any other way?
 
Under the conditions of "power alienation" (in a socialist society), the status of the people has plummeted: “The abstract people became gods. The concrete people, on the other hand, were objectified and became sacrifices to the gods.” Gao Ertai was concerned not only with the economic status of working people, but also with their actual political identity, their political status. Political participation, of course, was out of question; the people were actually treated as nothing, reduced to a tool for realizing the rulers’ personal ambitions:  “Directly in the name of state and class, the people are required and even forced to make constant sacrifices for them, thereby turning every human being into a tool in their hands to be exploited and manipulated at will.” Gao Ertai called this the re-implementation of the private "possession" of the people: “in the name of opposition to the concept of private ownership, they carried out a large-scale private ownership movement.”

The specific method was through “class struggle:”  “The absolutization of class struggle extended not only to every family but to every person’s heart, forcing every person to become their own enemy, oppose themselves, insult themselves, track their every thought and every action like a spy, expose themselves and criticize themselves, not relenting even for a minute. Their purpose was to disarm the people of any capacity of self-defense and to compel them to sacrifice themselves as tools.” In other words, having gone through all kinds of struggles, which severed the ties between people, their existence became one in which they simply obeyed the “highest power,” in which they were in no way “masters of their own fate.”
 
And the depreciation of workers is connected to raising the privileges of a minority—the cheaper the former, the more extravagant the latter:  “You are required to suffer great hardships, endure great hardships, you are required to work with all your might, but you are not given enough to eat, enough clothing, enough rest, and you are required to hold meetings every day to criticize and fight, while not being allowed to sleep at night. As for the overcrowded houses, abandoned schools, environmental pollution, and split families, they are an even more common phenomena. The saving of state funds is manifested as a waste of workers’ personal material, as a condition that is alien and absolutely irrelevant to workers. And this same condition is one that allows the minority to maintain their own rule, enjoy unlimited indulgence and pleasure, and live a life of extravagance and dissipation without working.” Gao Ertai, who was himself facing the adversity, obviously imitated the obscure style and syntax of the Manuscripts.
 
On this basis, Gao Ertai further raised the question of "democracy." Unlike the "productivity theory” which treats "democracy" as a mere means of developing productivity, Gao Ertai further argued that: “The question of democracy is not only a question of the method of developing productivity; democracy is also the goal of developing productivity. This is of even more fundamental significance for a socialist society. Because the cause of socialism itself is the common cause of the proletariat and the working people as a whole, in which the development of the individual human being is manifested as the basis and purpose of the social movement, and in which ‘the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all.’”  He emphasized Marx’s affirmation that: “Any kind of liberation is the return of man's world and his relations to himself.”
 
Hu Qiaomu’s response to Gao Ertai’s charges of "political alienation" and "power alienation," was to advance that his claim “the public servants of society had become the masters of society" is too similar to the "theoretical basis of the Cultural Revolution, «with its themes such as “continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat” and "the ruling faction within the party takes the capitalist road." But does Hu intend that the "privileges" usurped by the Gang of Four will be returned to their original owners?

Hu’s rebuttal of democracy is conclusive and only too clear: “The one-sided worship of democracy and autonomy while denying centralization and authority, and the belief that democracy itself is centralization and thus fundamentally opposed to democratic centralism, presumably assumes that any problem, large or small, can be solved by a vote of the masses, based on the views of the majority. Then the masses would be lining up to vote every hour of every day, and every person would have to be an encyclopedia, as well as have the ability to correctly understand and judge any issue that requires voting. This kinds of absurd 'democracy' is not only impossible to imagine today, it is unimaginable even in the distant future.”[34] This means depriving the masses of their vote just because they are not an "encyclopedia" and because the whole thing is too much trouble.
 
Compared to Gao Ertai's writing, which is full of emotion and passion, Wang Ruoshui's expression is clearer. In his essay "Discussing the Problem of Alienation," which was based on an oral presentation, Wang Ruoshui argued that there are three types of alienation in socialist society: ideological alienation, political alienation, and economic alienation. Ideological alienation means “personal superstition, modern superstition,” which of course refers to the superstition in dealing with the cult of Mao that developed to the extreme during the Cultural Revolution.

He pointed out:  “Originally the leader is born among the people, and nurtured by the people. … As a result of propagating personal superstition, the leader is detached from the people. Isn’t this the same as with God?”[35] Political alienation means alienation of power.  It is the people that give power to the leadership. Why did they give him this power? So he will serve the people. But once this power is handed over, there is the danger that some will not serve the people, but will instead serve themselves. As a result, the servants of the people became the masters of the people." As a Party intellectual, Wang Ruoshui also considered “the alienation of the Party:”  "What was originally an oppressed party has become the ruling party. When the status of the party changes, there is a danger that it may become detached from the masses, detached from the people, and may become alienated."[36]

“Economic alienation” firstly refers to a kind of “voluntarism” that does not understand the laws of economics, that spends a lot of money which not only does not yield returns but also "places a huge burden on the backs of the people."  In situations like this, the harder the people worked, the greater their suffering. Second, economic alienation refers to the environmental problems we talk about today. Wang mentioned the deforestation and the opening up of agricultural land in Yunnan, all of which “upsets the ecological balance.” A chemical plant is built without taking into account the fact that it "produces pollution, which in turn harms people.”
 
Without a doubt, “alienation” is an odd expression, a way of thinking that allows you to take revenge by turning your opponent’s logic back on himself. It really hit a sensitive nerve among powerful and senior ideological officials. Hu Qiaomu’s article refutes "political alienation" and "alienation of power" as follows: "They completely violate Marxist political theory, distort objective facts, and run counter to the joint efforts of the Party, the government, and the people."[37] There is no longer any room for facts or reasoning when so many frightening "labels" are thrown at us.

Conclusion

In 1980, Wang Ruoshui raised the environmental issue as a problem of alienation, once again powerfully reminding us of the early rethinking of state-led social modernization in China. In his articles from the late 1980s, with the advent of the market economy, Wang Ruoshui continued to express ideas like these: “With the development of the commodity economy, as people's living standards rise and their independence develops, the phenomenon of enslavement of the people by commodities and money also develops.”[38] There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Wang Ruoshui's return to themes of humanism in the early 1980s was the result of China’s embrace of capitalism or a reaction to the general optimism surrounding capitalism at the time.

Quite the opposite, he first inherited Marx's critique of capitalism, and on that  basis further proposed a critique of the “socialist society” in which he lived and the ideology of that society:  a sharp condemnation of the privileged group of bureaucrats, a profound reflection on "impersonal" "historical progress," a vigilant rejection of the "money fetishism" and especially a strong protest against the tragic and powerless political and economic situation of workers.” He called Marxist humanist thought a "practical humanism" that “provides us with a value standard and a methodology that can be used to criticize capitalism as well as socialism as it exists in our country. This kind of thinking also enables us to maintain our independence in a society full of the alienation of power and the alienation of money, so that we don't lose ourselves or lose sight of human values.”[39]
 
At present, the face of this state-sponsored "modernization" is becoming increasingly clear. Its insoluble problem lies in the lack of a set of values related to a modern society and in the rejection of any expression of value concepts that a modern society must possess. As a result, the problems identified and criticized by Wang Ruoshui and Gao Ertai later on expanded and deepened at an alarming rate. However, over the past 20 years, people have not only failed to remember and develop the profound meaning of the discussion of "alienation," but have even discounted and forgotten it. In this sense, the New Left thinker Wang Hui's (b. 1959) view of this discussion in his masterpiece “Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity” (2000) is a clear example. He simply believes that the key divide in the discussion lies in "the conflict between idealistic socialism and pragmatic socialism."

​However, as mentioned above, to call Wang Ruoshui's vision "idealistic socialism" is groundless and merely repeats the language of Hu Qiaomu. Wang Hui also states that “Marxism itself is an ideology of modernization and therefore it is almost impossible to analyze and criticize the social crisis generated by modernization and the capitalist market itself. In the Chinese context, where the market society and its rules have increasingly become the dominant form, critical socialism, whose main goal was to criticize the historical practice of traditional socialism, has declined.”[40]  
 
My view is precisely the opposite: Not only should Marx’s critique not be simplified in this way—the full capacity of the reflective and critical thought of Wang Ruoshui and others like him has not yet been properly released. The perspective on values they developed is still urgently needed in today’s China which is market-oriented and where the powerful are increasingly shaped by capital. This perspective requires more effort and further development, and it certainly has not lost its meaning.  What some have called "reflecting on modernity" appeared before the word “modernity” itself.  Otherwise, Marxism would not be a criticism of capitalism. To take an example from the case at hand, if we don't regard our own Marxist tradition as a tradition, we will wind up making even longer detours.
 
Notes
 
[1] 崔衛平, “為什麼沒有春風吹拂大地？中國八十年代人道主義論戰,” published originally in the Taiwanese journal Reflection 思想, issue 7 (2007), pp. 19-52, also available online at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/17609.html .
 
[2] For Cui’s writings that have been translated into English, see Cui Weiping. “Self-initiated and Idealistic Thinking and Action.” China Digital Times. 11 Apr. 2009; Cui Weiping. “I Am a Grass-Mud Horse.” China Digital Times. 1 Mar. 2009.; Cui, Weiping. “My Humanity is Frozen and Numb.” China Digital Times. 25 Sept. 2008; Cui Weiping. “Why Do We Need to Talk About June 4th?”. China Digital Times. 29 May. 2009.
 
[3] In fact, much of Cui’s article seems to have been drawn from Wang’s reminiscences.
 
[4] 顧驤,《晚年周揚》(文匯出版社, 2003), p. 200.
 
[5] Ibid., pp. 62-67.
 
[6] Ibid., p. 97.
 
[7] 王若水,《人道主義在中國的命運》, 該書在香港以《胡耀邦下臺的背景》的書名出版(明鏡出版社，1997), pp. 168-170.
 
[8] 顧驤,《晚年周揚》p. 100.
 
[9] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷(人民出版社, 1993), pp. 643, 646.
 
[10] Ibid., p. 628.
 
[11] 王若水,《為人道主義辯護》(三聯書店，1986), pp. 272-273.
 
[12] 顧驤,《晚年周揚》p. 19.
 
[13] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷, pp. 589-591.
 
[14] 《西方學者論〈1844年經濟學—哲學手稿〉》(復旦大學出版社, 1983), p. 212.
 
[15] 王若水,《人道主義在中國的命運》,  p. 260.
 
[16] 王若水,〈論人的本質和社會關係〉,《新啟蒙》第2輯(湖南教育出版社, 1988).
 
[17] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷, pp. 596, 611.
 
[18] 王若水,〈我對人道主義問題的看法〉, 見《為人道主義辯護》(三聯出版社, 1996), pp. 242-245.
 
[19] 見《關於人的學說的哲學探討》(人民出版社, 1982).
 
[20] 高爾泰,〈人道主義——當代爭論的備忘錄〉,《四川師大學報》1986年第4期。
 
[21] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷, p. 595.
 
[22] 李鵬程,〈四個現代化與人〉, 見《人是馬克思主義的出發點》(人民出版社, 1981), p. 17.
 
[23] 《關於人的學說的哲學探討》(人民出版社，1982),  pp. 10-11.
 
[24] 高爾泰,〈異化現象近觀〉, p. 76
 
[25] 王若水,〈關於馬克思主義的人的哲學〉,《新華文摘》1986年 第 9 期.
 
[26] 王若水,〈我對人道主義問題的看法〉,《為人道主義辯護》p. 269.
 
[27] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷, pp. 602, 603.
 
[28] 《關於人的學說的哲學探討》(人民出版社, 1982), p. 51.
 
[29] 王若水,〈論人的本質和社會關係〉,《新啟蒙》第2輯(湖南教育出版社，1988).
 
[30] 王若水,〈談談異化問題〉, 見《為人道主義辯護》p. 191.
 
[31] 高爾泰,〈異化現象近觀〉, pp. 72, 73.
 
[32] 《新時期》雜誌1981年第1期。
 
[33] 高爾泰,〈異化現象近觀〉.
 
[34] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷, p. 630.
 
[35] 此處與以下未特別表明出處的引文, 均來自《為人道主義辯護》中〈談談異化問題〉一文.

[36] 《為人道主義辯護》, p. 194.
 
[37] 《胡喬木文集》第二卷, p. 629.
 
[38] 王若水,〈論人的本質和社會關係〉,《新啟蒙》第2輯(湖南教育出版社, 1988).
 
[39] 王若水,〈我的馬克思主義觀〉, 見《北京之春》, 紐約，1996年第1期（總第32期）.
 
[40] 《天涯》雜誌1998年第5期。