Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (46 page)

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Authors: Geremie Barme

Tags: #History, #Asia, #China, #Literary Criticism, #Asian, #Chinese, #Political Science, #Political Ideologies, #Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, #World, #General, #test

BOOK: Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader
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clared themselves to be revolutionaries or were branded counterrevolutionaries. They all believed there was only one Mao and they belonged to him. Even today there are probably many people who still do not realize that in his later years Mao was schizophrenic. Mao was, on the one hand, ordering them to rebel while, at the same time, he called on them to protect the proletarian Motherland. It was nothing less than a black comedy. . . .
During those years, anyone who had a modicum of power as a rebel leader would turn into a mini-Mao. The way they talked, their enunciation, speech patterns, and even grammar were all à
la
Mao. The most convincing evidence of this was the use of Mao quotes by both sides as a weapon during every debate and bloody skirmish. They all cried, ''We swear an oath to protect Chairman Mao with our lives." The Chinese were not fighting with one another; two Mao Zedong's were locked in mortal combat. . . .
It is a truism to say that you get the government you deserve. The collective stupidity of the Chinese meant that they got, and they deserved nothing more than to get, a ruler like Mao Zedong. Here we should point out that the Mao Cult in the Cultural Revolution was not a metaphysical phenomenon, as it is understood in Western religious history. It was not simply a spiritual phenomenon, a religious haven for those who were in crisis. Rather, it was a practical political and ethical choice, a form of emotional hysteria resulting from the collapse of rationalism. Chinese feudalism had finally reached an apogee; in the Mao Cult a perfect symmetry was achieved between politics, ethics, morals, and psychology. If we take Qin Shihuang to be the progenitor of this style of feudal culture, then Mao Zedong is its historical conclusion. He marks the completion of a perfect historical cycle. Mao Zedong used the most extreme methods to bring to an end this form of historical extremism.
Of course, once he had reached this point Mao imploded in on himself. . . .
The cultural ramifications of the personality split Mao suffered in his last years have only been fully realized in the 1980s. Mao came to embody the moral and political icon (sage-emperor) so dear to the hearts of the Chinese. The moment that the living icon Mao and the worship of him came to an end, the Chinese lost all cultural coherence. The Chinese of the 1980s are a discombobulated people. Their icon has crumbled and with it their psychological linchpin has disappeared. Extreme mental imbalance has either turned them into unprincipled louts or forced them to search for a new spiritual goal. With the death of the tyrannical father his ignorant progeny survive as a dark and brooding mass. They have no self-confidence and readily abandon any vestige of self-respect. What others possess they lack entirely; their very existence is little different from that of most primitive animals. Their sole criterion for thought and action is a passive response to

 

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external material stimulation plus a crude need to gratify the senses. . . .
Mao's philosophy of struggle cast the Chinese into the abyss of feudalism and now forces them to reascend the peak of humanism. Mao could destroy the Chinese, but he can also save them; the path they choose is entirely up to the Chinese themselves.
Sadly, in the 1980s, the Chinese seem to have forgotten the historical lessons Mao taught us (or perhaps we have not even bothered considering them). Most people are too busy struggling for power, making money, or fleeing the country with their families to care. Few have the time to consider the desperate need we have to change the cultural and psychological state of China today. Mao may have made us all enact his philosophy of political struggle, but his is a rare and important historical legacy.
. . . Mao Zedong conquered the Chinese and their society. To what extent they understand this and can overcome it is hard to say. It is entirely up to the Chinese themselves, for they have to use their intelligence and talents to start from where Mao left off: with the Cultural Revolution. The situation is similar to that of Western culture following World War II when new things had to grow out from the rubble left by Hitler. . . .
Mao was a very rare revolutionary leader. We can compare the significance of Mao Zedong in Chinese history to the importance of Hitler in world history. It is a creative thing. In a sense, modernism would not have come about without Hitler. Similarly, Mao created the conditions for modernism and postmodernism in China. . . .
Of course, Mao Zedong left other indelible impressions on the life of the Chinese. In both the villages and cities of China in the 1980s, Mao's shadow can be seen everywhere. Whenever you see a shop assistant rudely ask a customer what he wants; whenever a concierge shouts at a visitor; whenever a policeman lectures in an imperious manner someone who has violated traffic regulations; whenever an official makes a report in front of a microphone in a droning monotone . . . you can always make out the shadow of Mao in the background. People may have learned nothing of Mao's "art of struggle" but they all know the rude and arbitrary style he would adopt when he was out of sorts. To use an expression current in the Cultural Revolution, they all "can give attitude just like a Revolutionary Rebel." . . .
Mao Zedong has left us with many riddles. Some are obvious like the abiding need the Chinese have for the mother-fixation as expressed in terms of the culture of small farm production. But it is more layered and complex than that. There is, in particular, a need for self-awakening and self-reconstruction. The Chinese, in particular Chinese intellectuals, still probably have not realized that they have more than a basic right to exist. They also

 

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have the right to live as human beings. Whenever this right is abused, they should arouse themselves in self-defense. It is a defense that should not come in the form of carnivalesque mass movements; rather, it should find expression in independent activities such as finding recourse in the law [when you are wronged]. Only when the Chinese have learned their right to such a life and their need to protect it will the Mao Zedong era truly draw to an end. Only then will China's feudal history be over.
The phenomenon of Mao Zedong has not disappeared; on the contrary, its covert influence continues to inveigle itself into the society and the soul of every Chinese. . . . Regardless of whether we view it historically or in terms of our present predicament, we should think of the Mao phenomenon not as a beginning but as a full-stop.
January10 February 1989, Shanghai-Guiyang
Notes
1. See Richard H. Solomon,
Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture
; and Lucian W. Pye,
Mao Tse-tung: The Man in the Leader.
2. See Liu Xiaobo, "Hunshi mowang Mao Zedong," 11; and Barmé and Jaivin, eds.,
New Ghosts, Old Dreams,
p. xxvi, for a quotation from Liu's article.
3. See, for example, He Xin quoted in Barmé and Jaivin, eds.,
New Ghosts, Old Dreams,
p. 213.
4.
The Dream of the Red Chamber
studies (
Hongloumeng xue,
or simply
Hongxue
) refers to the academic and journalistic industry devoted to the dissection of the famous mid-Qing novel
The Dream of the Red Chamber
(or
The Story of the Stone
) written by Cao Xueqin and Gao E, a book regarded as depicting a microcosmic Chinese world. Lu Xun studies (
Lu Xun xue
or
Luxue
) have made a major cultural industry out of the analysis of the writer Lu Xun (d. 1936). Both are sponsored by the state.
5. This is a reference to Lu Xun's fictional tale "The True Story of Ah Q" (
A Q zhengzhuan
) published in the early 1920s.
6. Mao Zedong, "Snow," see Mao Tsetung,
Poems,
pp. 23-24.
7. Qin Shihuang, Han Wudi, Tang Taizu and Song Gaozu were prominent rulers of the Qin, Han, Tang and Song dynasties respectively.
8. For more on Mao and Lu Xun, see "Chairman Mao Graffiti" below.

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