In the Vanguard of History -the Beijing Democracy Wall Movement 1978-1981 and Social Mobilisation of Former Red Guard Dissent
Lauri Paltemaa
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2021042720344
Tiivistelmä
The work employs the new social movement approach to explain and analyse the
ways the Beijing Democracy Wall Movement 1978-81 constructed itself as a social
actor and thereby justified itself and the reforms it proposed. As the author argues,
the approach provides a fruitful conceptual framework to analyse the emergence and
behaviour of the Democracy Wall Movement as a social movement. The author
argues that earlier Western research (there is no mainland Chinese research on the
movement to speak of) has neglected the movement-side of the Democracy
Movement and concentrated too much on the issues of the proposed forms of
democracy and human rights in the movement’s argumentation. The focus has
caused confusions both in the historical nature of the Democracy Movement, the
protest it presented and the individual activists, which the new social movement
approach helps to clarify.
In the thesis the author elaborates the following findings: First of all, the Democracy
Wall Movement was connected to the Cultural Revolution which preceded it not
only as a negation of its policies, but in a more complicated manner through the so
called new ‘trends of thought’ (xin sichao) or the ‘theory of a bureaucratic class’ that
the radical Red Guards developed during the Cultural Revolution. The thinking went
through notable transformation in the late Cultural Revolution and the Democracy
Wall Movement, but the eradication of the structural causes of a bureaucratic class
remained the theoretical rationale of democratic reforms for the Democracy
Movement and served as the basis of the movement’s social analysis.
Second of all, the Democracy Movement activists offered their debates on
democratic reforms as their contribution to Marxism and a way to solve the problem
of political superstructure obstructing the realisation of socialism and, finally,
communism. Democratic institutions were offered as the necessary condition of
realising socialism and a great majority of the theoretical articles and essays in the
movement’s journals should be understand as voices in a debate to this end. A
sizable part of the movement activists returned to Marxist classics and the Paris
Commune type of democratic institutions in their proposals. Western notions of
liberal democracy and human rights also attracted wide attention, but were mostly
used eclectically as providing structural models for socialist democracy.
Furthermore, the activists founded their defence of these institutions through
arguments that they were the historical progressive heritage from earlier
developmental phases – a notably Marxist view of world history. Only a small
minority of the activists used anti-Marxist arguments when defence of democracy.
Third, the Democracy Movement justified itself through presenting it as a
historically progressive and necessary manifestation of the people’s interests and its
activists as the ‘awoken generation’ who had the moral stamina, courage and high political awareness to lead the people as the vanguard in their struggle against the
‘feudal fascist dictatorship’ of Party bureaucrats. The Communist Party, however,
did not come under criticism as an institution except from a small minority of the
Movement. To define and defend their credentials the activists reconstructed a
narrative of the Cultural Revolution as the period, whence they had grown to
political maturity and learned to see through the Maoist doctrines the Party Left used
as deception to hide its naked lust for power and privilege. The Democracy
Movement was portrayed as the movement of the political aware youth assuming the
vanguard position in revolution. Connected to this also the identities of socialist
citizens using their legal rights and enlighteners of the people were used to justify the
movement. The way the collective and individual activist identities were framed
helped to keep the otherwise fractured and loose movement together.
The thesis brings new light to the relations between the Cultural Revolution and the
Chinese Democracy Movement as well as post-Mao social protest in China. It shows
that at least for the Democracy Wall Movement there was more continuity with the
Cultural Revolution and discontinuity with the later phases of the Democracy
Movement than earlier has been suggested. It also shows that native Marxist ideas of
democracy and communist lore on protest had substantial influence on constructing
the Democracy Wall Movement as a legitimate social actor, more than the liberal
notions of democracy and human rights, although also they played their role.
Keywords: Democracy Wall Movement, Protest, Social Movement, Cultural
Revolution, China, Collective Identity, Red Guards
Kokoelmat
- Rinnakkaistallenteet [19207]