Social Suffering and Political Confession: Suku in Modern China 9789814407298

Citation preview

NOTE TO USERS

This reproduction is the best copy available.

UMI

SOCIAL SUFFERING AND POLITICAL CONFESSION: SUKU IN MODERN CHINA

FEIYU SUN

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIESIN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO

JUNE 2010

1 * 1

Library and Archives Canada

Biblioth&que et Archives Canada

Published Heritage Branch

Direction du Patrimoine de l'6dition

395 Wellington Street Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada

395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-68587-7 Our file Notre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-68587-7

NOTICE:

AVIS:

The author has granted a nonexclusive license allowing Library and Archives Canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the Internet, loan, distribute and sell theses worldwide, for commercial or noncommercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats.

L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou autres formats.

The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission.

L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation.

In compliance with the Canadian Privacy Act some supporting forms may have been removed from this thesis.

Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la protection de la vie privee, quelques formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de cette th&se.

While these forms may be included in the document page count, their removal does not represent any loss of content from the thesis.

Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant.

••I

Canada

Social Suffering and Political Confession: Suku in Modern China by

Feiyu Sun

a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY 2010 Permission h a s been granted to the LIBRARY OF YORK UNIVERSITY to lend or sell copies of this dissertation, to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this dissertation and to lend or sell copies of the film, and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this dissertation. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission.

ABSTRACT

It is the aim of this dissertation to closely examine one relatively small but significant political phenomenon, largely neglected in the Western world until now. This political phenomenon is called Suku. It runs like a thread through the fabric of a series of political movements and events in China, from the Land Reform Movement of the 1940's and 1950's to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's and 70's.

Suku is the practice of confessing individual suffering in a political context and in a collective public forum. In Chinese the term "Suku" means to tell of one's suffering, or to pour out one's bitterness, in public. "Su" means to tell, to speak, to pour out, or to confess, while the term "Ku" means bitterness, pain, and suffering. Suku was invented and used as a political instrument by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a component of the above mentioned and other socio-political campaigns direcdy affecting the lives and identity of hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants.

This paper first provides the necessary descriptive outline of the social, political and historical context of the Suku Movement. Following which, this examination reflects on and interprets the Suku phenomenon through a matrix of modern western social theory: Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, and Ricoeur. By interpreting Suku from the joint perspectives of political identity and subjective psychological identity, it is the aim of this paper to postulate a new paradigm for discussing social iv

suffering, collective confession in a political context and the subjective individual suffering in narrative. This is an analysis of the transformation of identity from the traditional to the modern, both for the individual peasant and for the state of China.

It is argued then, that the use of Suku on the micro level, to forge a new identity in the individual by weaving together the public-Freudian personal experiences of confessional narrative with the ideological narrative of the state, also functioned on a macro level for the masses and for Chinese society as a whole. It is possible, this paper concludes, to synthesize a theory of China's modern identity through an understanding of Suku. And the Suku phenomenon provides a historical and theoretical opportunity for understanding the problems of identity which modern China is confronted with in an increasingly globalized world.

V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation, as the product of a reflection on China's revolution and modernization as well as my own identity, would not be possible without the help of many people. I will firstly appreciate my family for helping me choose my own way of my life, and for the love they give me. Since coming to Social and Political Thought at York University in 2005, my professors, colleagues and friends have been helping me on every aspect of my life and study. It has been my great honor and pleasure for me in last five years to work with my professors John O'Neill, Lesley Jacobs and Paul Antze. My supervisor, John O'Neill, has been a marvelous inspiration throughout my course work and research. John actually helped me on the very fundamental direction of my study and led me into the world of socio-political thought. I cannot forget your parenthood, John and Susan. I am also indebted to Lesley Jacobs on countless helps on both study and life levels. It is great happiness for me to become a friend of your whole big family—everybody is lovely.

Special thanks are due to Paul Antze for giving me an

intellectual guides and valuable reviews on my dissertation. Your insightful comments helped sharpen my analysis. In all the five years of my study at York University, the program assistant of SPTH, Judith Hawley, has provided kind and warm help on all kinds of information. I also wish to thank Professor Jay Goulding for the help and inspiration along the way. I also need to appreciate Leo Jacobs for help on my writing and revisions. All of my vi

friends and colleagues in China, United States and Canada are all appreciated for every kind of help. Special thanks are due to Feifei Gao, who helped me greatly on both my work and life. Last but also most important, I must show my appreciation and respect to all of my professors in Peking University, especially professor Yang, Shanhua, to whom I own greatly on almost everything. And it's my great honour as well to work with you again in the future in Peking University. Finally, my thanks also go to those who directly or indirectly helped me to finish my dissertation.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract

iv

Acknowledgements

vi

Table of Contents

viii

Introduction

1

Chapter I When Revolution Met Rural China

16

1.1 Historical Background: Land Reform and Traditional Society

15

1.2 Historical Background: The Implementation of Land Reform

45

Chapter II Suku: Beyond a Political Technique

66

2.1 The Development of Suku

67

2.2 Suku: More Than a Political Technique

109

Chapter III On Social Neurosis

126

3.1 Freud's Human Disease

127

3.2 From Civilized Sexuality to Civilization Disease

136

3.3 Marcuse's Social Oedipus

151

3.4 Toward a Neurosis Analysis of Revolution: China's Suku Chapter IV On Social Suffering

164 176

4.1 Radical Evil: Understanding Totalitarianism

177

4.2 From Radical Evil to the Banality of Evil

188

4.3 The Modern Age and the Holocaust

194

4.4 The Holocaust, Suku, and Modernity viii

208

Chapter V

Suku and Power

216

5.1 A Foucaultian Method of Interpretation

218

5.2 Suku, Daily Life and Power

223

5.3 State Power and Local Society

230

5.4 Local Wisdom Versus Revolutionary Truth

238

5.5 Power, Suku and Subjectivity

248

Chapter VI

Suku, Modern China and Beyond

257

6.1 Ricoeur's Theory on Narrative and Identity

258

6.2 Confession: In-between Power and Identity

266

6.3 Toward an analysis of Mass Psychology of China's Revolution

275

6.4 Comparative Notices on TRC

282

6.5 Suku, China, and Beyond

286

Appendix A:

Suku Fu-chou(Suku and Revenge)

Bibliography

(1947)

288 306

ix

Introduction During the early to mid 20th century there were a series of tremendous social upheavals and political events in mainland China which brought about enormous social and political change in the country. Although many of the largest political events and movements have been exhaustively studied, there remain many compelling and overlapping political movements which still need to be examined in order to come to a broader understanding of the "modernization" of China from other perspectives. It is the aim of this dissertation to closely examine one relatively small but significant political phenomenon, largely neglected until now, and to use it as a prism to shed some light upon the subjectivity of Chinese peasants in the context of revolutionary China as well as China's effort of modernization. This political phenomenon is called Suku. It runs like a thread through the fabric of a series of political movements and events in China, from the Land Reform Movement of the 1940's and 1950's to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's and 70's. By analyzing Suku from the joint perspectives of political identity and subjective psychological identity, it is the aim of this paper to postulate a new paradigm for discussing social suffering, collective confession in a political context and the subjective individual suffering in narrative.

Suku must be understood both as a political technique, and as a political movement. When used as a political technique, it has been implemented to further l

a wide range of purposes including mass mobilization, cultivating a specific national identity, and for political indoctrination. As a political movement, Suku has been concealed from outsiders by larger, overarching political movements. By its nature, Suku has been a movement within the movements. That's why, even today, very few people outside of China or a Chinese community are even aware of its existence. However, the Suku Movement, at its peak, was so widespread and was so emphasized by CCP that it was promoted as a nationwide movement in the 1950s, along with the Land Reform Movement that was carried out right after the founding of the People's Republic of China. And it wielded so much influence in China that the term Suku effortlessly entered and remained in the idiom of daily conversation in China.

When deliberating about the topic for this dissertation, the attractiveness of examining Suku was immediately apparent because of its uniquely Chinese nature: Suku is the practice of confessing individual suffering in a political context and in a collective public forum. In Chinese the term "Suku" means to tell of one's suffering, or to pour out one's bitterness, in public. "Su" means to tell, to speak, to pour out, or to confess, while the term "Ku" means bitterness, pain, and suffering. From its beginning, Suku had already showed us a nature of class struggle. The subjects of Suku, or those who practiced Suku, those who made the accusations, were mostly poor peasants. And the objects of Suku, or those who were accused of wrong doing, forced to admit and confess to their guilt, were mostly landlords, or 2

sometimes wealthy peasants. In a dictionary that was published in 1952 in mainland China, the term Suku is defined as follows: "Suku means to share an oral personal history about being persecuted by class enemies both for the purpose of inspiring class hatred in the listeners, while reaffirming one's own class standing. " (Chen, 1952, p. 331) As a political instrument, Suku was used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a component of various movements and campaigns. The standard format of a Suku action was first to call all the residents in a village or a community together and then to ask them individually to tell the whole community of their personal suffering and pains, of their trials and tribulations, in the "old society" and to contrast this with, and reflect upon, the virtues of the CCP and the "new government and new society". The practice of Suku was initiated in the early 1940's in local bureaus of the CCP for the purpose of mobilizing the masses for political support. It began to develop into a proper movement during China's War of Liberation within the People's Liberation Army (PLA) led by Mao Zedong. Company commanders of the PLA even wrote an instructional handbook to teach how to carry out Suku as a movement. Later on this handbook was considered so authoritative that it was commended by Mao Zedong himself, and, with his personal dedication, it was issued to each man and woman serving in the PLA. From the outset an integral part of China's War of Liberation was the CCP's pursuit of radical land reform. Both the CCP and the PLA introduced and applied the Suku technique as a political instrument within the whole, larger Land Reform 3

Movement.

So for me, Suku is a technique that can be used to understand not only China's revolutionary practices, but also Chinese society and even its modernization. By employing a specific perspective of western social and political thought, Suku is examined here as a collective ritual of political confession. At the end of her book The Culture of Confession From Augustine to Foucault, when discussing Winterson's work Lightousekeeping, Chloe Taylor defines the term confession as an act of narrative impacting on identity: "Winterson describes what is perhaps indeed the modern-day confessional experience, in which confession is no longer necessarily a speech act which serves as an expression of guilt over what one has done, but which more importantly reflects a desire to tell another who one is." (Taylor, 2009, p. 250) For the purposes of this dissertation, Taylor's definition of confession will be appropriated for the interpretation of Suku. Based on this definition, it is imperative that confession possesses a dimension of "others", regardless of the counterpart - parent, priest, judge, therapist, political officer, etc - which the concept of "others" may refer to. Secondly, this definition understands that confession contributes to a narrative about the confessor's life history. And thirdly, this concept of confessional practice is no longer considered a solicited or coerced behavior, but rather is a "desired" one. In other words, the act of confession, which is intricately and importantly intertwined with identity, is a necessary internal dimension of modern subjective experience. 4

It is nonetheless important that we not misconstrue confession solely as narrative. In the exploration and study of confession as it has been discussed by Sigmund Freud, Michael Foucault and Paul Ricoeur, it has been found that the characteristic of confession which distinguishes it specifically from "pure narrative" is the confessor's relationship with others, for example with authorities such as religious, medical, scientific and governmental figures. Thus, this examination of Suku not only focuses on its role in China's revolutionary movements, but also reflects on and interprets the Suku phenomenon through a matrix of modern western social theory. By analyzing Suku, it is the aim of this paper to postulate a new paradigm for discussing social suffering, political confession and subjectivity.

The first major concern here is to portray and define the Suku Movement as a historical phenomenon. In Chapter I, since it is necessary that Suku should be placed in a proper historical social-political context, the focus initially is on exploring two major aspects of revolutionary China: The role which mobilization of the peasant class played in the aims of the revolutionary leaders and the perspective of China's traditional rural society when confronted with such efforts. This groundwork in Chapter I outlines the fundamental political instruments and approaches which were applied by the revolutionary forces in the attempts to influence and mobilize China's traditional rural society, most specifically through the Land Reform Movement. This analysis of the social-historical conditions leads 5

to the conclusion herein that the mass mobilization of the peasants was both a critical aim and urgent necessity for the CCP in its revolutionary ambitions. This necessity, in turn, was the catalyst for the creation of a new political instrument: Suku.

Following this groundwork, Chapter I, Section 2 explores only one central question: How and why did Suku become the choice for a necessary political instrument and movement for the CCP in its revolutionary strategy? This chapter outlines how Suku was developed and, finally, how it was applied in a series of significant political movements in the history of the CCP and China. The development of Suku being the main concern, the research here focuses primarily on only the earliest period in which the movement came into existence. Related questions such as how Suku was conceived and the social reaction/reception with which it was met are also addressed in this chapter.

In chapter II, by relying on authoritative primary sources, the research focuses on a portrayal of Suku itself. This chapter attempts to describe how Suku, as a political instrument, was implemented and the movement itself integrated into China's larger revolutionary movements. Moreover, further aspects are explored such as how the Chinese people experienced and participated in the use of Suku and the historical influence and impact which it had. Of central importance to this research is a Suku handbook which was written by PLA army officers and 6

used in both the PLA and in rural political bureaus for the purpose of teaching how to effectively carry out Suku actions. At the conclusion of this chapter, with the help of other academic studies and primary sources, three further aspects of the historical role which Suku played are discussed in the context of:

Nation-building - Suku as an instrument of the power of the state exerted to regulate the rural life and identity of peasants. Local community - Suku's role in the complex relationship between the individual, local societal structures/traditions and centralized state power during the revolution. Cultural and moral transformation-

Suku's place in the adoption and

transformation of new cultural and moral values, which occurred during the early stages of revolutionary China.

The work outlined above is largely based on existing academic studies, on historical political and policy documentations from that period, and on other primary sources such as the PLA handbook, the diaries and memoirs of people directly involved and/or exposed to the Suku Movement. The close examination of these materials, by comparing and analyzing the different narratives, studies and primary sources, provides an understanding and the argument of this dissertation explaining the rise and development of the Suku Movement. By the end of these chapters, a comprehensive portrayal of Suku in the English language 7

has emerged, placing it in its socio-political and historical context.

This initial portrayal of Suku in Chapters I and II is but the foundation of this work. The next ambition of this dissertation is to provide an original contribution to the tradition of western social and political thought through the discussion and interpretation of Suku. In this interpretation, the essential constituent elements of Suku are identified, including confession, suffering and identity. The sources that are used to reflect upon and interpret Suku include those theorists who stand in the traditions of both classical psychoanalysis and phenomenology; of central importance being Sigmund Freud, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Paul Ricoeur. Through the rigorous application of their theoretical analysis, it is then argued that both essential components of Suku - suffering and confession - have been used as key terms to reflect the subjective experience of the modern age and modernity itself. Furthermore, by placing Suku in a contextual and social-historical space where traditional Chinese culture and society are confronted with the modernity of the Communist revolution, this paper addresses the complex surrounding the question of "when tradition meets modernity". This is not only a question considered worth pursuing here because it deepens our objective historical understanding of China's revolution and because it sheds much-needed light on our understanding of contemporary China. It is also of significance from the subjective perspective of the author, a Chinese male who was born and grew up in China and who has 8

studied modern western social and political theory in the west, in Canada. It is by analysis and reflection from these perspectives that this paper attempts to provide an original and unique contribution to the tradition of western social and political theory.

In chapter III, building on the foundation of classical psychoanalysis, a psychoanalytical-sociological framework is constructed for the definition and understanding of existential hardship and suffering in normal daily life of the Chinese peasants, and for the introduction and interpretation of the concept of "social neurosis" to the discussion. However, social neurosis will not just be used, in a conventional sense, as a term to "explain" the phenomenon of Suku; but rather the reverse: Through the psychoanalytical-sociological analysis of Suku, the aim here is to make a new contribution to our understanding and explanation of social neurosis itself Specifically, this chapter analyzes the suffering that the participants in Suku Movement actions expressed in their confessional narratives. By identifying the expression of suffering as representations of normal suffering in daily life, the conclusion, it is argued, on the one hand, is that the narrative portrayals by Suku action participants show their feelings to reflect an Oedipus complex, both as father and/or as son figures. In addition, by asserting and applying the logic of the psychoanalytical-sociological theories of both class oppression and Freud's concept of the repressed psyche, Suku can be said to have functioned as a technique of "modern state" by both abolishing and discrediting 9

the former social and political institutions of traditional society and by constructing a network of new highly bureaucratic institutions. Thus the concept of social neurosis can be applied not only to further the understanding of Suku's essence in its ritual of confession, which contains both sociological and psychological dimensions, but also to postulate a theory of the difficult plight of the individual in a modern state. From the perspective of social neurotically analysis of Suku, we can find that it would be oversimplified to understand revolution from a purely framework of liberation or freedom—we need a more careful discussion.

As Marcuse points out, the study of suffering is a valid method for Freud to form a theory of culture, and it is also a path to further the understanding of modernity (Marcuse, 1955, p. 17). This is the approach taken in Chapter IV, where the works of Hannah Arendt provide the basis for an interpretation of Suku and suffering

from

another

perspective.

Through

Arendt's

existentialist

phenomenological studies of the modern age, she provides the foundational theory for understanding "abnormal suffering"—the Holocaust—as a problem of modernity. This focus is also the reason why I will not focus majorly on Arendt's works about revolution—though I will quote this works occasionally. From a perspective of abnormal suffering, I try to understand Suku as a confrontation between China's tradition and modernity while Arendt's thoughts on revolution focuses mainly on French revolution and American revolution. First is an 10

elucidation of Arendt's determination that social conditions due to modernity created the "banality of evil"; the theory which she postulates. That is then followed by a comparative study of Suku with Arendt's interpretation of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem which served as the foundation for her "banality of evil" argument. Recognizing that the most singular purpose for the creation and use of Suku was mobilization of the peasant masses for the revolutionary cause, the comparison of Arendt's work concludes that the underlying logic, or belief system, of the revolutionary mobilization in China was identical. Both of them share the belief system which Arendt termed "the great development of History". Based on Arendt's theory, the argument is made in this chapter that Suku's practice of the political confession of suffering is built upon this same logical belief system which Arendt asserts to be an essential part of modernity. It is this belief in historical inevitability, according to Arendt, which can be used to explain the specter of abnormal suffering in the modern age. Thus, by comparative analogy, Suku becomes a key phenomenon to understand the whole revolutionary process in China and provides a method for interpreting the significant political movements during that process, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Nonetheless,

Arendt's

work

doesn't

address the question

of

the

social-political construction in the manifestation of people or peoples. And Arendt is also silent on the role of the individual's subjective experience in his or her 11

political manifestation. Yet, since mobilization and indoctrination were the primary aims of Suku, it is necessary to discuss these aspects as well. To this end, the work of Foucault is the focus in Chapter V. As one of the strongest modern theoretical sources on power and confession, Foucault has explored the power structure within confessional practices, most thoroughly in his research on sexuality. According to Foucault, confessional practice has been a main technique for elucidating truthfulness about sexual practices and desires and has established itself as an essential characteristic of modern society. Using Foucault's theories and arguments on power, knowledge and subjectivity, this chapter culminates in an analysis of the instructional handbook for Suku which was introduced in Chapter II.

This theoretical analysis of the Suku handbook is pursued also from three perspectives: The perspective of the regulation of individual life by state power and authorities; the perspective of confrontation between the state powers and the traditional local society; and the relationship between pragmatic local wisdom and idealistic revolutionary truth and propaganda. From these three perspectives, this chapter explores central questions such as how, individually and collectively, Chinese peasants were influenced by state authorities in their political practice of confession; how they understood and interpreted the Communists' ideological political language; and of how Suku and the public confession of personal suffering functioned in conjunction with the national political language of the 12

Communists. In conclusion this chapter addresses the question and evidence of the extent to which the Suku participants took ownership of the new political identity during the confessional narrative Suku actions. It is argued then, that the use of Suku on the micro level, to forge a new identity in the individual by weaving together the public-Freudian personal experiences of his or her narrative with the Marxist ideological language of the state, also functioned on a macro level for the masses, for the mass mobilization to the revolutionary cause, and for the Chinese society as a whole.

Finally, in the last chapter of this dissertation, the Suku Movement is discussed in its larger societal context. Following on the discussion in Chapter V which lead to the relationship between identity and Suku, this final chapter first begins with a brief review of Paul Ricoeur's theory on confession and identity and revisits the explorations and discussions of Suku outlined in the previous chapters. In an effort to provide an external or "other" perspective, a comparative outline is made of the Suku Movement versus the function and process employed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa.

While the significance of the social, political, historical and psychological effects of the Suku Movement have been presented in the previous chapters, the concluding discussion focuses upon larger issues which the analysis of Suku has made apparent. When considering the social-psychological dynamic between the 13

Communist revolutionary forces and the traditional way of life of the Chinese peasant class which Suku embodied, the argument is made here that it is necessary to re-think the theoretical framework of discussions concerning the nexus of cultural power and influence dining the formative phase of political states. It is possible, this paper concludes, to synthesize a theory of China's modern identity, both cultural and political, and the country's problem with modernity. This can be done by interpreting and contrasting the Marxist ideological language used by the institutions of the state and Communist party as a representation of the western world - most terms and theory of the new national language were appropriated from western Marxist ideology - on the one side, with, on the other side, the confessional narratives about the traditional life-world of the traditional Chinese peasants as evidenced during the Suku Movement.

Thus this conclusive analysis explores not only the transformation of identity among participants in the Suku Movement, but finds that Suku also provides a theoretical framework for understanding the problems of identity which modern China is confronted with in an increasingly globalized world. When seen from this perspective, Suku can provide, as a uniquely Chinese political practice of crucial importance in the formative stages of revolutionary nation-building, a framework and a theoretical space for further reflection on the complex relationships between confession, suffering, power, and identity. This is true both for the study of individuals as well as of societies and states. In any event, the 14

exploration of this open space which Suku defines will reveal yet more dimensions and more perspectives of these issues.

15

Chapter I: When Revolution met Rural China "There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son." Confucius'

1.1 Historical Background: Land Reform and Traditional Society

1.1.1 China's Revolution: The Role of Mass Mobilization

During the early 20th century, in the lead up to the revolution, China went through a long period characterized both by cooperation and competition between two major political players: the KuoMinTang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During much of this period, from its founding in 1921, the CCP had been the weaker of the two rival organizations. Nonetheless, in 1949, after just less than 30 years of political and military struggle, the CCP and its army emerged victorious from the Civil War and established a national Communist government on the mainland. This "stunning victory" (Perry, 2002, p. I l l ) has been the focus of much research,

1

Confucian Analects, Chapter 12. See Legge, J. (1966). The Chinese classics (Di 2 ban. ed.). Vol. I.

(p 256.). Taibei: Wen xing shu dian. 16

analysis and debate among academic scholars during the past 60 years who have studied China's revolution. The general consensus in the academic literature, regardless of the sometimes vastly different perspectives of the scholars, is that two ideological aspects, or strategies, of the CCP's long revolutionary campaign were ultimately responsible for the victory. These two centerpieces of the CCP's successful campaign, distinctly and in combination, were nationalism and the Land Reform Movement. (Snow, 1973; Taylor, 1940; Johnson, 1962; Hinton, 1967; Selden, 1971; Kataoka, 1974; Pepper, 1978; Shue, 1980) There are other scholars, who have argued that the organizational superiority of the CCP versus the KMT was an important contributing factor (Hofheinz, 1977; Chen, 1986), as well as some scholarly research which has explored the significance and powerful role which symbolism and mythology played in the revolutionary victory of the CCP. (Wasserstrom, 1991; Apter & Saich, 1994)

Beyond this mainstream thought, there have been some other academic scholars who have studied the importance and effectiveness of the CCP's mass mobilization strategies. In a study published in 1964, the Chinese scholar Yu provides a unique perspective on the revolution when discussing the "mass persuasion" technique used by the CCP. This technique, according to Yu, encompasses both the mobilization efforts and the identification and manipulation of political sentiment among the people by the CCP: Mass persuasion "is designed not only to produce among the masses the particular thoughts and attitudes desired by the Party, but also to provide 17

the Party with a continuous flow of information concerning the sentiments of the people. It is a communication system that is conscientiously administered and vigorously utilized by the Party so as to assure itself that what ought to be known by the people is known and that what should be felt by the people is felt"(Yii, 1964, p. 4). Burns argues that, in contrast to the KMT, "the most significant change" in the tactics of the CCP's mass mobilization strategy was "in the nature of village leadership and its links to authorities outside the village" because the CCP relied upon new local leaders which it recruited from the stratum of "poor and lower-middle" class peasants (Burns, 1988, p. 8).

At the turn of the millennium, around 2000, the differing approaches to mass mobilization taken by the CCP and the KMT attracted the attention of scholars interested in better understanding the success of the CCP in competition and in contrast with the KMT (Perry, 2002; Li, 2007). In her work, Perry comments on a preponderance of research which appeared in the late 1990's and after 2000 which points to the "substantial emotional engagement" aimed at the "translation of radical ideas and images into purposeful and effective action" used by the CCP (Perry, 2002, p. 11). Perry emphasizes that this "emotion work" was a cornerstone of the revolutionary strategies and instruments employed by the CCP and provides a valuable key for understanding the eventual success of the CCP. Although the KMT also strived to mobilize the masses for their campaign, a fundamental difference between the approach taken by the CCP and that of the KMT was that the KMT didn't 18

focus on such "emotion work" but rather promoted their revolutionary ambitions in moral and ethical terms, such as their attempts to cultivate a "high-minded character" and "a resolute will" among the people (Perry, 2002, p. 115).

From the outset, the effective mobilization of the peasant masses for radical social and political change has been identified by many, including some revolutionary leaders at the time, as the most challenging hurdle facing China in the early 20th century. As Eisenstadt has pointed out, the middle and lower class peasants which constituted "the largest part of the rural population" are "as a rule, politically the most passive and inarticulate, and the least organized, stratum" (Eisenstadt, 1963, p. 207). Thaxton also concluded from his research in the rural villages of northern China that traditionally the "peasants generally have not pursed revolutionary modes of protest" (Thaxton, 1983, p. 1). This is not just the view taken in retrospect by academic researchers; it was also shared by Chen Duxiu, one of the founding members and earliest leaders of the CCP, who voiced his skepticism at the likelihood of success for mass mobilization efforts at that time. Chen wasn't convinced that the majority of the Chinese people, which is to say the rural class of Chinese peasants, would either join the revolutionary movement, or accept the non-traditional revolutionary ideology: "The peasants are scattered and their forces are not easy to concentrate, their culture is low, their desires in life are simple, and they easily tend toward conservatism...These environmental factors make it difficult for the peasants to participate in the revolutionary movement." (Meisner, 1967, p. 242) 19

However, heavily influenced by Lenin's classic theory on imperialism, Li Dazhao, another of the key early leaders of the CCP, proposed that the Chinese peasants had to be organized in support of the revolutionary goals (Meisner, 1967, p. 237). His proposal had a major influence on Mao Zedong, who became convinced that the support from the Chinese masses was imperative for the success of the revolution (Meisner, 1967, pp. 234-256 & xii-xiii). In clear recognition that the rural peasants were the crucial force for bringing about change in China, the precept that Mao himself devised for the CCP's revolutionary strategy was predicated on their support: "Rely on the peasants, build rural base areas, and use the countryside to encircle and finally capture the cities" (Lin, 1967, p. 20). From the perspective of Mao, China's revolution was actually "a peasant war led by the party" (Tse-Tun Mao, 1967, pp. 596, 600). Mao believed fervently in the power of the peasants and even in 1927, when the revolutionary forces and fervor were perhaps at their weakest levels, Mao continued to adhere to this belief: "In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will arise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane; a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation." (Tse-Tun Mao, 1927, pp. 23-24) Thus the key issue was how to get the support from the hundreds of millions of peasants. In Mao's opinion, in order to draw the masses onto the side of the CCP, it was imperative that the traditionally feudal distribution of land ownership in rural China be abolished. 20

This radical land reform was a central and fundamental political aim of the CCP almost from its inception and the policies of expropriation, re-distribution and communal re-organization pursued by the party-led Land Reform Movement continued on a massive scale until the mid-1950s.

As broadly outlined above, successfully instilling nationalism and mobilizing the peasants were the key factors which led to the CCP's revolutionary victory. The promise of land reform and the policy enactment of same through the Land Reform Movement are of tremendous historical significance when attempting to understand the revolution from this perspective. In addition to the research referenced above, during the past twenty years a large number of Chinese academics have studied the process and causes of China's revolution and of the Land Reform Movement in particular. Many of their studies have pointed out the manipulative psychological dimension of the activities, actions and instruments practiced during this period in the rural villages and communities by the revolutionary forces. In the efforts to educate and mobilize the peasants support for land reform and instill nationalist fervor, the techniques included fostering a sense of collective memory; the oral and public recitation of personal history; and, ultimately, the construction of a new political and social identity among the peasants. (Cheng, 1999; Fang, 1997; J. Guo, 2001; Y. S. Guo, Liping, 2002; F. Li, 2000; K. Li, 1999; L. Li, 2007; Ren, 2002; X. Zhang, 2004)

21

1.1.2 A Brief History of Land Reform

Because land reform and the Land Reform Movement in China were not just one starkly defined historical event, it is a challenge to provide a brief and comprehensive historical outline. Nonetheless, during the first half of the 20th century there were a series of significant land reform policies enacted by the CCP which, in essence, can be seen to have comprised the Land Reform Movement of that time. In 1927 the CCP split militarily and politically from the KMT and established its own sovereign government in the Jiangxi province of China. Soon after, the CCP government issued and implemented its first land reform policy. The core characteristic of this policy was that the CCP expropriated lands both from landlords, on whose land peasants toiled, as well as from such wealthy peasants who possessed their own land. In late 1934, after losing the Civil War with the KMT, the CCP regrouped and initiated the Long March which eventually led the CCP forces to an area of Northwest China where they consolidated and established an operations base. Later, in 1937, the Sino-Japanese war broke out and the CCP and the KMT agreed to a truce so as to present the "United Front" against the invading Japanese forces. The implementation of land reform was suspended and the CCP adopted a "united" policy which was extended to include the landlords and the wealthy land-owning peasants. Shortly after the Sino-Japanese war ended, the Civil War with the KMT broke out again. By this time the CCP leadership had clearly realized, based on field experience and success, that mobilizing the strong and steady support of the peasants, the largest percentage of the population in China, 22

was the key not only to victory in the war, but also was necessary to secure and pacify the newly conquered territories as they moved forward. Mobilizing support from the peasants became the most important political and strategic mission for the CCP and the creation and expansion of the Land Reform Movement was identified as the most important method for achieving this mission. An editorial in the CCP newspaper "Liberation Daily" of December 14th of 1946, clearly sums up the necessity and utility of the strategy: The CCP's efforts to mobilize for the war "are in urgent need of a powerful revolutionary force and land reform is the crucial source of this powerful force." In retrospect, the editorial continues, "experiences of the past five months have already proved that the will of the people to participate in the patriotic war of self-defense has been stronger in those areas where the Land Reform Movement has been enacted and we will achieve more and greater victories there." (C. Archives, 1981, pp. 37-38)

In 1946 the CCP once again resumed land reform in the territories which it controlled based on the "May Fourth Directive of 1946" issued by the party's Central Committee. In outlining the policy in this directive, the Central Committee emphasized the important status which land reform had for the revolution: "Party committees on every level must clearly understand that the problem of land redistribution in the liberated territories is the fundamental historical work to be accomplished; it is the most fundamental part of all our efforts. The greatest will and exertion must be made to achieve this historical work." (C. Archives, 1981, p. 2) 23

As the CCP continued to achieve territorial military victories, the policies of the Land Reform Movement could be extended to larger and larger areas of the country. However, at the logistical levels of execution, there were many fundamental, often ideologically rooted, problems which the Central Committee had to face, such as when the local party committees misunderstood the policy goals, when peasants were incorrectly classified, or simply the abuse of power and authority by local officials. In cognizance of the problems occurring in the "struggle" to implement land reform during 1946-1947, the Central Committee issued a series of directives intended to correct the "left deviation" of work at the local level.2 Additionally, in 1947 the Central Committee held a "National Land Conference" where the Outline Land Law of China was formulated.

3

The enactment of this law resulted in "a wave of

'deviations'" not only because the law didn't clearly define a method for the re-distribution of land and resources but also because "the structures for implementation of the Outline Land Law which accompanied it were weak"(Wong, 1973, p. 3).

The following year, in 1948, the CCP issued another revised land reform policy: The Direction from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

2

Actually, in the documents on Land Reform from the Central Archives, most of the Central Committee's directives to local bureau from 1946 through 1949 were about correcting various kinds of "mistakes" in the practice of land reform efforts, and most of these mistakes were considered "left deviations". See Central Archives, 1981, Selected Documents on Land Reform During the War of Liberation. See Central Archives, (Eds). (1981). Selected Documents on Land Reform during the War of Liberation. Beijing: Central Party School Press, pp. 85-89. 24

Concerning Differentiating Classes and Different Treatments (Draft)4. This new policy rejected the all-encompassing practice of egalitarian land re-distribution, and turned away from the use of sudden and radical "shock methods". One requirement which the new policy introduced was that significant preparatory work "such as the establishment of law and order" had to be done "before starting the process of land re-distribution." (Wong, 1973, p. 5)

After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Land Reform Movement executed

a policy, nation-wide, which was considered

instrumental in building the "new" China. The CCP government issued The Agrarian Reform Law of People's Republic of China5 with the explicit goal of eliminating the "feudal forces" and this law and policy document can be seen as a culmination of all the land reform efforts of the CCP in the late 1940's: "The land ownership system of feudal exploitation by the landlord class shall be abolished and the system of peasant land ownership shall be introduced in order to set free the rural productive forces, develop agricultural production and thus pave the way for New China's industrialization. " 6

To reiterate what was pointed out previously: The Land Reform Movement in China was not a singular historical event which can be precisely pinpointed and the 4

Selected Documents on Land Reform during the War of Liberation, Central Archives, 1981. Beijing:

Central Party School Press. 5 6

Current Background 42: 2-9. 1950. Hong Kong: American Consulate General. Current Background 42,1950. Hong Kong: American Consulate General. 25

aim here is not to deny or gloss over the fact that there were many other significant milestones in the history of land reform after the People's Republic of China came into existence in 1949. However, for the sake of this examination, the focus is concentrated upon the time period from 1945 to 1952 while still recognizing that land reform has played a major role in China's historical, social and political development beyond this time frame, and still does, even today. An examination of land reform during the early 20th century provides us with an important perspective for understanding the CCP's revolution historically and for understanding modern China. Around the year of 1952, the revolutionary government confiscated the lands from former landlords and bureaucrats and allotted them to everyone, even including those former landlords. (Yaoqi Zhang & Shashi Kant, 2005, p.255) This had already wiped out all prior class dynamics in the countryside of China. Ultimately, the Land Reform Movement altered the economic and social structures in rural China and directly impacted the daily lives of most of the Chinese population at that time in a material and measurable way: By the mid-1950's "about 300 million peasants with little or no land - 60 to 70% of the nation's agricultural population - had received 47.2 million hectares of arable land, most of which had previously belonged to landlords." (Lippit, 1974, p.95)

26

1.1.3 Class and Classification

Nonetheless, land reform, at its most fundamental level, cannot just be viewed as an economic event involving the material re-distribution of wealth and property. Land reform did change the economic structure, but it also altered the social structure, the traditional culture, and the nature of political processes in rural China. The key factor

for understanding

such

immense

changes

was

the

state-mandated

differentiation of the population into defined classes. (Cheng, 1999, p. 9) The mission and the achieved result of the Land Reform Movement and its implementation policies were to construct a "class society". The assignment of each and every individual to an economic and political class was the mission of the Land Reform Movement, and it was a necessary prerequisite for the creation of the CCP's "class society". The formal differentiation of the population into essentially Marxist classes became the central preparatory work before the practical execution of land reform and re-distribution was carried out. It is necessary, Mao proclaimed, because it is the only way to know "Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?" Determining this, Mao continued, "is a question of the first importance for the revolution." (Tse-Tung Mao, 1926, p.13)

In the revolutionary history of land reform in China there have been four major and formal policy and law directives formulated by Mao, the CCP, and later by the governing Central Committee of the CCP, which are broadly concerned with the 27

issues of classification:

- In 1937 Mao himself issued the directive How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas.

- In 1948, as referenced here previously, The Direction from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Concerning Differentiating Classes and Different Treatments (Draft) was proclaimed.

- This was followed in 1950 initially by The Agrarian Reform Law of the People's Republic of China.

- Finally, again in 1950, the Central Committee issued Decisions Concerning the Differentiation of Class Status in the Countryside.1

In addition to these major policy documents there were numerous directives concerned with the procedure of classification which were issued by local bureaus of the CCP during this time period specifically for the work teams actually conducting the practice in the field. These included guidelines such as the CSMAC Supplementary Regulations Concerning the Differentiation of Class Status in the Countryside,8 An examination of both the major and minor directives shows that, from one document to another, there is negligible difference in the standards used for defining and

7 8

Current Background 42: 12-20. 1950. Hong Kong: American Consulate General. Ch'ang Chiang Jih Pao, 29 October 1951. 28

determining class status. Evidence of this consistency in policy can also be seen in that, in November of 1947, the Central Committee issued a directive which ordered the re-publication and dissemination of Mao's original directive How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas (as well as a related document for the promotion of land reform) which had originally been issued ten years prior, in 1937.

According to these documents, the population in rural Chinese society could and would be differentiated as belonging individually to one of five class categories: The landlords, the wealthy peasants, the middle peasants, the poor peasants and the workers. (Tse-Tun Mao, 1965a) Beyond this, the standards for classification also defined two preliminary and overarching class categories determined more by an ideological yardstick than by economic or social status. These two overarching categories were defined as, first; the "good" class, or "the people" and included the poor peasants, the hired peasants, the middle peasants, and all those people who were members of, or worked for, the CCP. The second category, literally translated, was defined as "the non-people", which is understood here to include both those "reactionaries" and other kind of people—this category encompassed the landlord class, the bourgeois/bureaucratic capitalist class, and members of the KMT as well as KMT henchmen and sympathizers. The classification policy explicitly espoused radically different treatment for these two categories of "good people" and "non-people". The former, the "good" people, were the category which the CCP mobilized, relied upon and supported; whereas the latter, the reactionary "non-people", 29

were systematically denied participation and membership in any CCP action or organization. Mao made the distinction between the two categories of people in his writings very explicit: "Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism- the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplicessuppress them, allow them only to behave themselves and not to be unruly in word or deed. If they speak or act in an unruly way, they will be promptly stopped and punished. Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship. "Why must things be done this way? The reason is quite clear to everybody. If things were not done this way, the revolution would fail, the people would suffer, the country would be conquered." (Tse-Tun Mao, 1965b, pp. 417-418) At the practical local level, the successful implementation of land reform was predicated on instilling an ideological understanding of the meaning of land reform among the class of poor and hired peasants so as to gain their mass support. Land reform was presented as an act of class struggle and the peasants needed to be "awakened" to their "class consciousness". Necessarily, these efforts were closely related to the practice of class differentiation itself: "The CCP had made it abundantly clear that land reform not only aimed at attacking the exploitative acts of the 30

'feudalists' but also the 'feudal class' itself. Its basic philosophy in implementation was that land reform was not the affair of the state or the party, but of the peasants and for the peasants" (Wong, 1973, p. 7).

A fundamental ambition of Land Reform Movement was to overturn and abolish the feudal land system of traditional rural China. According to Huang, the chief characteristic in pre-revolutionary China is "the axis of rent relations" which "distinguishes between those who paid one-half of the produce of their farms in rent and those who lived off such rent without farming themselves (as well as owner-cultivators who worked their own farms)" (Huang, 1985, p. 15). This "axis" defined "production relations in the pre-revolutionary peasant economy." (Huang, 1985, p. 16) The economic relationship of the feudal system had already classified the traditional rural society into a duality with landlords and wealthy peasants on the one side, and the middle peasants, poor peasants and agricultural workers on the other. Thus it can be said, as Huang argues, that implementing land reform was actually a process of changing the "good" poor peasants from a "class in itself' into a "class for itself' - changing them from an economic category into a political category. However, the actual execution of this change process is anything but a simple semantic redefinition. The lessons to be learned from the history of this complicated process need to be more carefully examined because, for one thing, the CCP was not attempting this modulation of class identity in a vacuum or laboratory, but imposing it upon a traditional rural society which had been in relatively cohesive existence for 31

thousands of years. And furthermore this rural society in which the CCP pursued their experiment was a politically entrenched and self-sufficient society. (H.-t. Fei, Park Redfield, Yung-teh, & Redfield, 1968; H.-t. u. Fei, 1939; X. Fei, 1983; X. Fei, G. G Hamilton, & Z. Wang, 1992; Thaxton, 1983)

1.1.4 Traditional Rural Society and Change in Early Modern China

From our conclusive description above, we can find that land reform had nothing to do with the so called mass democracy. Not only because they have nothing in common in terms of content, purposes but also because of the fundamental differences on basic social-historical contexts. What the Land Reform Movement met, was a traditional rural Chinese society.

Historically, rural and agricultural society in China had turned back or defeated attempts by nationalist governments to exert political control of the countryside. Burns concluded that the national policy towards the rural territories of the government in pre-revolutionary China, before 1949, was formulated in pro forma terms of "self-government", limited autonomy and democracy, In truth and in practice, however, the "political power in China's rural pre-1949 communities was wielded by the landowning 'local elites'." (Burns & University of California Berkeley. Center for Chinese Studies., 1988, p. 4)

These "local elites" held the most powerful social rank in traditional rural China, 32

and according to Burns, Alitto, and a number of other scholars including Fei (1953, 1992), Bradley K. Geisert (1979) and Philip Huang (1985), the local elites held this power in rural China throughout the period of nationalist governance preceding the revolution. These elites had attained control and influence over local affairs because of numerous factors such as their age, wealth, education, family pedigree, personal prestige and military power. As Alitto bluntly describes it, they were a "symbiotic coalition of bandits, militarists, officials, functionaries, landlords and local bullies and evil gentry." (Alitto, 1979, p. 225)

Reform efforts were undertaken to confront and change this power structure by nationalist governments beginning in 1929. One such political reformation insisted upon by the central government was the formal election of village leaders and elders, but nonetheless the power structure in China's countryside remained unchanged. (Gamble, 1968; Huang, 1985; Yang, 1948) As Burns study has concluded, the political power structure in pre-revolutionary China's countryside was still dominated by the "informal local elites" and the central government authority's attempts to mobilize and affect political change were a failure. (Burns & University of California Berkeley. Center for Chinese Studies., 1988, p. 8)

Besides the power resting with local elites, another characteristic of traditional rural China was a particular form of community. According to Fei9, who is considered 9

Xiaotong Fei (1910-2005) was the most famous and influential archeologist and sociologist in 20 th century China. His studies have been widely recognized as the most important sociological works on 33

"the finest social scientist" in 20th century China (H.-t. Fei, G. G. Hamilton, & Z. Wang, 1992), rural society of pre-revolutionary China can be described as "Chaxugeju", a term which means "differential mode of association" in English. Fei argues that the ingrained concept of Chaxugeju was the foundation around which Chinese rural society was organized. In essence, Chaxugeju describes how individuals in a community are linked to each other by their different social relationships and these, in turn, construct a series of overlapping social networks. While acknowledging that there are comparable "differential modes of association" in Western societies, Fei asserts that in Western societies the Chaxugeju concept is not as crucially important as it was for China's traditional rural society. In rural China, according to Fei, the "self' was embedded in social relationships and the village is a whole community: "No matter what the reasons, the basic unit of Chinese rural society is the village...People in rural China know of no other life than that dictated by their own parochialism. It is a society where people live from birth to death in the same place, and where people think that this is the normal way of life. ...Every child grows up in everyone else's eyes, and in the child's eyes everyone and everything seem ordinary and habitual. This is a society without strangers, a society based totally on the familiar." (X. Fei, etal., 1992, p. 41) In this society the most important pattern of social organization, Fei writes, was according to what the Chinese call "Jia". In rural China, the word "Jia" refers both to the immediate family and to the family lineage: past, present and future. In the most common sense, Jia describes the extended family and the degree of kinship in the

traditional rural China in the 20th century. 34

family tree. Jia is the central organizing principle throughout the history of Chinese civilization (Bellah, 1965, p. 94) and it is based on Jia, or kinship lineage, that the community of social relationships which Chaxugeju encompass is first made possible. As Fei describes this: "In Chinese society, the most important relationship - kinship - is similar to the concentric circles formed when a stone is thrown into a lake. Kinship is a social relationship formed through marriage and reproduction. The networks woven by marriage and reproduction can be extended to embrace countless numbers of people - in the past, present, and future. The same meaning is implied in our saying 'Everyone has a cousin three thousand miles away,' with three thousand miles indicating the vastness of kinship networks. Despite the vastness, though, each network is like a spider's web in the sense that it centers on oneself. Everyone has this kind of a kinship network, but the people covered by one network are not the same as those covered by any other... Therefore, the web of social relationships linked with kinship is specific to each person. Each web has a self as its center, and every web has a different center." (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 63) In addition to the function of providing social organization, the extended family networks denoted by Jia also have a significant economic function: "The members of this group possess common property, keep a common budget and cooperate together to pursue a common living through division of labor." (X. Fei, 1983, p. 24) In the traditional rural society of China these were the deeply ingrained conditions, structures and circumstances into which individuals were born and grew up. It was their world, their daily life, which they knew, understood and unquestioningly accepted.

Fei's discourse on the important role of Jia, or kinship lineage, actually builds 35

upon and extends a series of scholarly studies concerned with the power structures in China's rural territories, not just his own (H.-t. u. Fei, 1939; X. Fei, 1983; X. Fei, et al., 1992) but also including Burns (1988), Huang (1985), Rawski (1979), Crook & Crook (1979), and Esherick & Rankin (1990). The last of the aforementioned studies, by Esherick and Rankin, came to this conclusion: "We see lineage not just as a kinship organization but as a socioeconomic institution growing out of elite strategies to maintain local power." (Esherick, Rankin, & Joint Committee on Chinese Studies (U.S.), 1990, p. 317)

Chaxugeju, the community-constructing pattern described above, is not solely reliant on Jia, or kinship lineage, as an organizing principle for the society. Fei argues that the pattern of Chaxugeju can also be observed in the nature of "spatial relationships" in traditional rural China: "Every family regards its own household as the center and draws a circle around it. This circle is the neighborhood, which is established to facilitate reciprocation in daily life." (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 64) From the perspective of spatial relationships, physical proximity plays a role in how a village becomes a community, and, in turn, which system of power structures develops. Fei describes it thus: "(1) In the traditional Chinese power structure there were two different layers: on the top, the central government; at the bottom, the local governing unit whose leaders were the gentry class. (2) There was a de facto limit to the authority of the central government. Local affairs, managed in the community by the gentry, were hardly interfered with by the central authorities. (3) Legally there was only one track - from the top 36

down - along which passed imperial orders. But in actual practice, by the use of intermediaries such as the government servants and a locally chosen shang-yao, or functionary, of the same type, unreasonable orders might be turned back. This influence from the bottom up is not usually recognized in discussions of the formal governmental institutions of China, but it was effective nevertheless. (4) The mechanism of bringing influences to bear from the bottom upward was worked through the informal pressure of the gentry upon their relatives in office and out or upon friends who had taken the same examinations. By this means influence could be brought to bear sometimes even upon the emperor himself (5) The self-governing organization so called arose from the practical needs of the community. The power of this group was not derived from the central imperial power but came from the local people themselves." (H.-t. Fei, et al., 1968, pp. 83-84) Finally, an important distinguishing characteristic of rural Chinese community can be seen in a sense of morality; in a moral code quite different from that of modern society. According to Fei's research the code of morality was, by and large, based on the philosophy and principles of Confucianism. The guiding precept being, argues Fei, that of "Ke ji fu li". This is a phrase of Confucianism and its meaning in English is: Subdue thy self and adhere to the rituals. The cultivation and development of one's self according to Confucianism principles was, for every individual in society "the starting point in the system of morality inherent in Chinese social structure." (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 74) The philosophy, or religion, of Confucianism prescribes a number of ritualistic moral obligations which individuals must adhere to in their daily lives. These rituals include filial piety (of children to their parents), fraternal duty (in between brothers), and loyalty and sincerity (between friends).

In a paper titled Rule of Ritual, Fei contends that these rituals are, in fact, the 37

rules that governed daily life in rural China. (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 96) In his study on Chinese traditions, Bary has pointed out that such rituals afford "an ideal means for ordering one's personal life" and also represent "the ideal mode of governance" (De Bary, Bloom, Chan, & Adler, 1999, p. 43). To explain how this ideal mode of governance functioned at a practical level, Fei undertook a detailed analysis of the practice of Confucianism rituals in rural Chinese society. Fei determined that there are two significant aspects to the concept of such rituals in rural China which encompass "both the ritual itself and the action taken to conform to the ritual" (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 98). The rituals are those "publicly recognized behavioral norms" which have been passed down from generation to generation and not only include those "behavioral norms", but also the "accumulated social experience" that can direct or guide behavior and resolve social problems and issues. A major precondition for the rule, or governance, by rituals is the existence of a stable societal structure and cohesive culture. Equally and opposing, in a society undergoing rapid and frequent change, the accumulated social experience and the established behavioral norms based on the society's history lose their validity: "A society governed by rituals cannot easily appear in an era of rapid changes." (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 100) Because the societies of rural China had the necessary stability and cohesiveness due to the long tradition of community constructed by "Chaxugeju", it was possible to have governance in rural China based on a "rule of rituals."

The consensus of public opinion in traditional Chinese communities was also a 38

very powerful force: "Morality is sustained by public opinion. If you do something immoral or scandalous, people will ostracize you, and you will be shamed" (X. Fei, et al., 1992, p. 99). The existence of a firm public opinion and a communal moral understanding provided a felt restraint, and the conformance of the individual to the community standards was important for maintaining order. The community was where children grew up together and where everybody was familiar with everybody else: "It is as if there were ten eyes watching you and ten fingers pointing at you all the time" (X. Fei, et al, 1992, p. 99). Nonetheless, the "rule of ritual" was not restricted to just the standard of public opinion. The specific rituals of Confucianism were sometimes very harsh in their demand for adherence from the individual, and in consequence for non-adherence could demand the ultimate: death. As such, the rituals asked for unquestioning obedience and clearly dictated people's behavior in their daily lives. In Analects, the central text of Four Books of Confucianism, there is a parable discussing the ritual of practicing humaneness and benevolence called "ren":

Yan Yuan asked about ren. The Master said, "To subdue oneself and conform to rituals is ren. If a man can for one day subdue himself and conform to rituals, all under heaven will ascribe ren to him. Is the practice of ren from a man himself, or is itfrom others? " Yan Yuan said, "I beg to ask the steps of that process." The Master replied, "Look not at what is contrary to rituals; listen not to what is contrary to rituals; speak not what is contrary to rituals. " Yan Yuan then said, "Though lam deficient in intelligence and vigor, I will 39

make it my business to practice this lesson. "l0 In essence, the underlying message for the reader on the practice of the ritual is to strictly "obey"; do your duty and do not act or behave in any manner that is "contrary to rituals".

Fei also expounds on the self-sufficient characteristic of community, a view which is supported by Thaxton in his research on the economic structures in rural Chinese villages. Thaxton emphasizes the autonomous self-supporting character of the economic system in rural Chinese villages: "Nearly every peasant family strove to produce its own means of existence" and yet "self-help" was extended to the whole community, as Fei points out: In the villages there were also "joint family mutual-aid groups" that could help poor or distressed families get through difficult seasons. The basic agricultural activities made peasants stay in their own farmland, and the related traditional economics also has "its own local marketing system" (Thaxton, 1983, p. 8) that makes the local economics self-sufficient.

The external relationship between the rural communities of China with the power structures of the national central government, according to Duara, was conducted, or parented, on behalf of the rural community by the (previously discussed) "local elites". The leading figures of the local elite were, according to the dictates of

10

Confucian Analects, Book 12, Ch. 1. Legge, J. (1966). The Chinese classics (Di 2 ban. ed.). Vol. I. (p 250). Taibei: Wen xing shu dian. 40

Confucianism rituals, quite literally viewed as the "parents" of all the peasants in their village. (Bellah, 1965, p. 103) As a practical level of Confucianism, the relationship between the peasants and local elites was defined by the ritual called filial piety. Filial piety is not restricted to the expression of respect and affection towards one's parents, but is centrally about the precept of duty, as the Hsiao Ching11: The Services of love and reverence to parents when alive, and those of grief and sorrow to them when dead: - these completely discharge the fundamental duty of living men. (Ch. 18.)12 Filial piety is the root of (all) virtue, (the stem) out of which grows (all moral) teaching. (Ch. I.)13 Filial piety is the constant (method) of Heaven, the righteousness of Earth, and the practical duty of Man. (Ch. 7)14 Filial piety is one of the five core precepts defining relationships and duties in Confucianism. The determination that the ritual of filial piety is the guiding precept for governance and political relationships is expressed as unambiguously as Confucianism ever expresses itself: The duke Jing of Qi asked Confucius about government. Confucius replied, "There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son." (Confucian Analects, 12:11)

11

Hsiao Ching, one of Confucianism Five Classics. Its central topic is about Confucianism filial piety. See Confucius, & Legge, J. (1966). The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism. (P488). Delhi,: Motilal Banarsidass. 12

13

See Confucius, & Legge, J. (1966). The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism. (P466).

Delhi,: Motilal Banarsidass. 14

Confucius, & Legge, J. (1966). The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism, (p. 473).

Delhi,: Motilal Banarsidass. 41

In the political sense, the ritual of filial piety is thus: A peasant must perform his duty as a peasant; a landlord must perform his duty as a landlord. In practice, by the end of the 19th century, the governmental relationship between the central state and the local rural societies were, by and large, dominated by a model which Duara has termed "protective brokerage" (Duara, 1988), in which the local elites conduct themselves as the parental advocates of their rural society, especially in a commercial dealing, with the central government.

However, during the late Qing Dynasty, and due to a series of pressing problems faced by the central government (such as the growing importance of generating revenue for the state) the central government began dealing with the power structures of the rural communities using a second brokerage model. In addition to the traditional parental or protective brokerage, now "entrepreneurial brokerage" was introduced. (Duara,

1988, p. 56) The distinguishing characteristic of the

entrepreneurial model was that "fee charging" by the broker was standard practice. (Duara, 1988) Although Duara found that a minority of the local elites became involved in both kinds of brokerage schemes, the key difference between the two practices was that the protective brokers were universally seen to be members of the local "cultural nexus" (Duara, 1988, p. 56). In his research Duara describes a transitional process in which the commercial relationship between the traditionally autonomous rural communities moved from the practice of locally-directed protective brokerage to the model of entrepreneurial state-directed brokerage. We can find 42

supporting evidence of a similar transition in Thaxton's study of the pre-modern social relations in northern China. (Thaxton, 1997) Thaxton concluded from his examination of the late Qing Dynasty and the period of nationalist republican government (respectively: the late 19th century and the early 20th century) in northern China, that the traditional social cohesion was based on a durable moral code and a system of autonomous self-reliance. Both were jeopardized by the emergence of an immoral form of landlordism in the rural villages. (Thaxton, 1983) This new breed of landlords declined to interact with the peasants "on the basis of mutuality" as dictated by the parental-protective ritual of Confucianism as had long been the tradition. They refused to "deal personally with the peasants they were exploiting." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 37) In some areas the emergence and establishment of this form of landlordism actually broadened the social and economic gap between landlord and peasant, as well as destroying the tradition of ritualistic Confucianism which had bonded their relationship to one another. Further evidence for the emergence and establishment of this new model of exploitative landlordism and the destruction of the traditional landlord-peasant/father-son relationship can be found in the research of Hinton (1967) and Philip Huang (1988). There is little doubt, according to Thaxton, that the peasants interpreted this change in the relationship as a betrayal of the traditional moral code of Confucianism: "By the late 1920s, the adolescent peasant had come to know the kind of landlord who had broken many promises to his father and grandfathers, regardless of their work performance." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 37) 43

Essentially, this was the state of the social and economic dynamic between the peasants and the local elites (composed largely of landlords) which the work teams for the CCP's Land Reform Movement and mobilization campaigns encountered when they arrived in a rural village. In addition, the forces of the CCP were confronted not only with the challenge of disenfranchising the local elites, but also had to cope with the deep traditional roots of "Jia", the kinship lineage; with "Chaxugeju", the sense of community; with "Ke ji fix li", the Confucianism moral code, and, of course, above and beyond that, with the specifics of each community's local political, social and economic conditions.

Almost from the inception of the CCP, Mao had categorically classified the local elites as "local tyrants and evil gentry." (Tse-Tun Mao, 1927, p. 25) The identification and eradication of this class enemy was the primary mission and ambition of the CCP in earliest phase of the party. In 1927 Mao formulated this goal in one of his initial publications: "The patriarchal-feudal class of local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords has formed the basis of autocratic government for thousands of years and is the cornerstone of imperialism, warlordism and corrupt officialdom. To overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the national revolution." (Tse-Tun Mao, 1927, p. 27) Clearly, as outlined and summarized in this chapter, there were a significant number of other factors which the CCP had to take into consideration if the campaign to implement radical land reform were to be successful. But, as we will discuss later, the challenge of overthrowing the "tyrants and evil gentry" posed 44

considerable difficulties for the Land Reform Movement.

1.2 Historical Background: The Implementation of Land Reform 1.2.1 The Role of the Work Team

Land reform was carried out using a number of well-crafted political instruments and strategies which had been developed and refined by the CCP over a considerable length of time. The most important instruments for the execution of land reform policy in the rural territories were the so-called "work teams". The 16th item in the "May Fourth Directive" issued by the Central Committee in 1946 ordered each local party bureau to conduct seminars for the members of the work teams to prepare them for the implementation of land reform: "Transfer larger number of cadres, ask them join the short term training programs, then dispatch them to the newly liberated areas for the work (of land reform)." (C. Archives, 1981, p. 6) In practice, the local CCP authorities, such as regional bureaus or county governments, were authorized and obligated to conduct all revolutionary actions and operations in their entirety. 45

Directives and orders from the Central Committee of the CCP were obeyed, in this case by dispatching operational work teams to every rural village to assist and coordinate the efforts of cadres there in executing a range of important political campaigns.13 These activities included the investigation and classification of social status, conducting Suku Movement actions, and, of course, the preparation for and implementation of land reform. In a letter written by Liu Shaoqi16 to the Jin-Sui17 party bureau, Liu emphasized the important role which the work teams had to play in land reform. A strong work team, he wrote, will not only provide excellent preparation for land reform, but it will also, "by providing organization and discipline, make sure that the Land Reform Movement does not become dangerous" (C. Archives, 1981, p. 63)18 Shue has also provided a concise description of the usual operational process: "Work teams, small groups of cadres and activists usually organized at the county or sub-district level, were briefed and then sent into the villages specifically to assist with almost every major political and economic reform carried out during the early

15 For example, in a report from one party bureau on Land Reform in August 29 of 1946, it says: "In the last two months there were more than twelve thousands cadres dispatched to rural areas." ("Report from the Northeastern Bureau on Promoting the Mass Land Reform Struggle", (C. Archives, 1981, p. 29) After 1949, the Central Committee of the CCP also dispatched a large number of work troops. According to the diary of Yang Hansheng, before December of 1951 the NCCPPCC (the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) had already dispatched sixteen work troops throughout all of China for land reform. Each work troop had about 100 members. (Yang, 1985, p. 483) 16 Liu Shaoqi was one of the five Central Committee Secretaries of the CCP at that time; see Dittmer, Lowell 1998: Liu Shaoqi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Revised edition. M.E. Sharp, Armonk, New York. 17 Jin-Sui: Shanxi Province and Sui yuan Province (C. Archives, 1981, p. 62). 18

Liu Shaoqi. (1947). : "A Letter from Liu Shaoqi to Jinsui Comrade about Resolving Land Problem

Sufficiently". (C. Archives, 1981, pp. 63-79). 46

1950's."19 (Shue, 1980, p. 19)

Shue also gives out a good definition of the term 'cadre'. According to her, the term 'cadre' (or 'kan-pu' in Chinese) was used rather loosely at this time and could refer to anyone at a high or lower level position of responsibility in a government organ or a mass organization. Cadres were not necessarily members of the Communist Party, nor did they necessarily have a long history of working for the revolutionary cause. The core task for the work teams and cadres, and of central importance to all major political and economic reforms and campaigns, was the preparation and implementation of land reform. And, in turn, the core task and of vital importance in preparing and building the Land Reform Movement was effective mass mobilization of the peasants.

Almost every single political directive issued by the Central Committee of the CCP in this Civil War period, as well as those issued by all of the local bureaus of the party, called for, or was concerned with, mass mobilization efforts. For example, in a proclamation issued by the Jinan20 bureau in 1946, it says: "The work of every organ and every department must be centered on mass mobilization. The previously conducted work and formulated plans need to be re-examined. All of those that are in

19

Shue erred in his timeline of the use of work teams. Because the Land Reform Movement was actually carried out within CCP's conquered territories before 1949, so also the history of work teams began earlier than 1950. According to Fanshen, Hinton went to Long Bow village with a work team in 1948. (Hinton, 1966, p. xi) 20 August 15, 1946, "A Decision from the CCP Jinan Committee Concerning Carrying Out and Supporting a Mass Fanshen Movement". See (H. Archives, 1990). Jinan refers to the southern area of Hebei province. 47

conflict with the mass mobilization efforts must be corrected or abolished. In the future, if issued orders are not closely related to mass mobilization efforts - unless they concern urgent military action - they should be limited to as few as possible; all other missions are of secondary importance and should be temporarily postponed or called off."

21

(H. Archives, 1990, p. 79)

1.2.2 The Diary of Yang Hansheng

Specific insight into the procedures and methods of the mass mobilization work can be found in the personal diary of "Land Reform Experiences" of Yang Hansheng.22 This diary originated from a report by Wu, Maosun at a national preparatory conference in 1951 for the members of work teams and cadres before they were dispatched to rural areas to conduct land reform. The "experiences" recorded in the diary from the conference report can be recognized here as an authentic and valid portrayal of the routine methods of land reform and mobilization because they were officially used for training purposes at a national event sanctioned and run by the CCP itself.

21

October 08, 1946, "A directive from Jirtji Prefectural Administrative

Office Concerning

Mass

Mobilization for Implementation of Land Reform". (H. Archives, 1990, pp.87-91). 22 Yang Hansheng was a famous dramatist, and also a CCP leader after 1945. After 1949, he became a principal aide, to Zhou Enlai, in charge of culture and art works. In the early 1950s, Yang joined a work team as a representative of intellectuals for the purpose of better understanding the Land Reform Movement. In his diary he recorded some of his central experiences working in the Land Reform Movement (Yang, 1985). 48

The first and second sections (of four) in Wu Maosun's conference report are concerned with outlining the broader preparatory work necessary for the work teams; initially at the regional or county level and then at the local village level. Once the work teams had entered a village, as is prescribed in the third section, the actual mission of recruitment for mass mobilization was undertaken. This stage included education and indoctrination, the introduction of policy, and the establishment and regulation of organizations in the village. The fourth section of the report is concerned with the process and procedures necessary for conducting classification. What follows here are the excerpts from the diary contained in these latter two sections:

Section 3. On Mobilization (1) Villagers' Congress. Only poor peasants, hired peasants and middle peasants can attend. (2) Conduct a series of general assemblies centered on Suku. These include an old peoples' assembly, an assembly of the women, and an assembly of the children. Children are organized into a Children's Corps and don't attend the Struggle Meeting. (3) Fang Pin Wen Ku (to visit poor families; to inquire of their sufferings): Determine who the activists are; educate them; investigate to comprehend the status of both the enemies and of the people. (4) Reconstitution of the Villagers' Congress. The number of poor peasants and hired peasants should comprise 2/3 of the Congress and middle peasants should comprise 1/3. Resolutely banish the elements with alien class status. Educate the people who are in support. Regulate the re-organization at every step. (5) Educate the activists by establishing study groups and training classes in the methods of Land Reform, etc. (6) Begin the Struggle Meeting. Organize a small Struggle Assembly. Target the evil exploiters; most of them were heads of the Bao-Jia23 who 23

The Bao-Jia system was a neighborhood administrative system used by the KMT in its regime. Each Bao-Jia had its own head who was in charge of security, taxes, education, etc. 49

commandeered and raped women. In the Court of the Struggle Assembly, poor and hired peasants are seated in the middle, middle peasants are seated on both sides, and rich peasants are in the back. Landlords should stand or kneel at the side. Cultivate the expression of suffering. Peasants go to a raised platform, point down at the landlords, pour out their grievances and put the blame on the landlords. The Landlord must admit his evil doings in public and accept his debt for his blood-drenched crimes. Section 4 On Classification (1) Rely on the poor and hired peasants from the beginning; mobilize them to unite in solidarity with the middle peasants. (2) Take the Four Steps: Talk, differentiate, review and approve. Talk means to explain the method, policy and standards of classification. Differentiate means the classification of the villagers into smaller groups. Review the classifications and then give final approval. (3) Continually criticize and denounce the landlords at the same time. (4) Eliminate the five aspects of feudalism: In politics, in economics, in the military, in organization and in thought. (5) During assemblies, form the villagers into different lines according to their different class identity. (6) During classification, conduct Suku generally and Struggle Meetings specifically. (7) Peasants must renounce the KMT; quit its related organizations and otherfeudalist reactionary gangs. (8) Compare: Contrast the history and life stories expressed in impressions andfeelings. (Yang Hansheng, 1985, pp. 479-81). The detailed tasks for the work teams, which the above excerpts from Yang's diary show, were preparatory; they first laid the groundwork before actual land reform - "confiscation and re-distribution of land and other properties" - could begin. To reiterate, as Fang Huirong summarized in 1997: The mid 20th century was a period in 50

which the new government of China regarded its top priority for implementing sweeping land reform as being twofold: The ideological education of the poor and middle peasants, and the essentially Marxist ideological classification of the entire rural population. The examination of the procedures outlined in the diary of Yang, a work team member, finds that the powerful method which the work teams employed to fulfill their mission, the CCP's top priority, was also twofold: One component was the "investigation and research" of factual social and political conditions, and the other component was the practice of Suku - the confession and "pouring out of grievances" in a public forum.

1.2.3 Investigating the Villagers

One significant complication in the process of social classification was that it necessarily encompassed each and every person in every village. As such, this also included the cadres and party members from the village with whom the work teams liaised. Although the preparatory work, before classification was undertaken, called for "an accurate estimate of affairs" it was complicated because the external work teams could have only limited trust in the local cadres.

The work called for the teams to gather detailed information within the village community about the village community. This included, for example, details of the basic economic situation, social relations and the existing power structures; information which, sometimes paradoxically, could only be known by village insiders. 51

The work teams had the intent, the power and the authority to conduct the investigation in preparation for land reform, but their nominal allies and facilitators, the local cadres, were as yet unclassified, and thus themselves suspect. Usually these suspicions were that the local cadres might have intrinsic common interests with the local landlords or wealthy peasants, or that their activism for the Land Reform Movement was to co-opt it for their own interests. This reigning skepticism came from on high, from the Central Committee itself, which deemed local CCP committees ideologically suspect unless the members had gone through a Party training program at a higher level. Evidence to this effect can be found in Yang's diary and Hinton has also described this suspicion. In his work Fanshen, Hinton recorded that when a work team came into a village named Long Bow "all mass organizations remained dissolved, all village cadres remained suspended, all Communist Party members continued to meet in secret session. Long Bow was treated as a village where the whole slate had to be wiped clean and the peasant movement had to be reorganized from the ground up." (Hinton, 1967, p. 274)

As Yang's diary shows, the first task in a village was to identify the truly poor peasants and potential activists and establish a new local political organization, an assembly, constituted of them. That this was standard procedure has been supported by other research and studies. (Crook & Crook, 1959; Hinton, 1967; Siu, 1989; Yang, 1948) This was the first step not only of classification, but the CCP ordered it to come before all other missions. (Tse-Tun Mao, 1965a) And the work teams were expected 52

to fulfill their political mission not just successfully, but also quickly. Given the circumstance that the work teams had only vague knowledge of the local social, economic and political conditions, the necessary procedure for identifying the poor and the activists was investigation and research in the village: "The thorough investigation, which the cadres had earlier bypassed, crowded all other matters off the agenda after all." (Hinton, 1967, p. 274) In her work on Suku, Fang Huirong finds that there were two important aspects of the classification: (1) "the work team must know more than what they heard from the local cadres about the local facts"; (2) "the 'authenticity' of the interviewee had to be doubted, questioned and double checked throughout" (Fang, 1997)

The task of investigation and research were mainly carried out using the method cited in section three, point three of Wang's diary: "Fang Pin Wen Ku" (to visit poor families, to inquire of their sufferings). This "experience" technique was initially developed in 1947 by the leader of a work team in the Hebei province named Wang Yuanshou. His stated intention was to find a better way of understanding the situation in a village his work team was investigating. In 1947, the CCP party newspaper in Hebei province, Jidong Daily, published a party-sanctioned article explaining and promoting use of the "Wang Yuanshou Working Method of Investigation". According to the report, when Wang was dispatched to the village of Baiquan, he found that the local cadres had no sense of responsibility for his mission and the peasants were indifferent to the efforts of his work team. In response to this situation, Wang began 53

the method, or practice, that he called "Fang Pin Wen Ku", or "to visit poor families, to inquire of their sufferings". The newspaper quotes him at length: "Some cadres at the time went into the village; they would like to go into some store immediately. They wanted to stay in a good and comfortable house and eat delicious food. But I was not used to that. I felt ill at ease in their presence; I couldn't and didn't want to stay with them. I took my chances and left, I went to some poor families, ate with them, lived with them, talked about everything without any restrictions, staying there like in my own home. I have always felt myself like a poor wretch, I don't know how to enjoy good stuff, I only know how to deal with poor people. (Rich) people offer me cigarettes; I will refuse and use my own pipe,"24 Based upon Wang's depiction of the origin of the "Fang Pin Wen Ku" method, it is clear that his motivation was to better fulfill the two mandatory aspects of investigation which Fang has determined: Because Wang was not satisfied with the report on conditions which the local cadre and committee provided, he decided to visit the poor peasant families personally and delve deeply into their status and situation. The adoption of "Fang Pin Wen Ku" as standard procedure for the work teams allowed the them and the cadres to exercise enormous power over the villagers; in essence, the practice of "Fang Pin Wen Ku" determined not just the class membership of each interviewee, but cemented their new identity forthwith. The power dynamic of the relationship between the work teams, who represented the whole of the national political authority, and the lone individual peasant was complex. In the interview-interrogation cum dialogue of "Fang Pin Wen Ku" the villager had a vested 24

"Wang Yuanshou's Story In His Own Words", Jidong Daily, July 14, 1947. [Cf ] Fang, H. 1997, p. 43). 54

interest in convincing the work team and cadres that they were genuinely poor or hired peasants, or at the most, a middle peasant; an important vested interest of the work team members and cadres however, was to practice and display their own class identification with the CCP ideology, which they could best do by rigorously questioning and denouncing the authenticity and honesty of the interview subject's every statement and demanding witnessing or discrediting statements from other villagers. Thus the investigative process from this perspective became a "power game" of competing interests between the peasant and the work team.

In order to avoid the perceived and real existential danger of being classified as a reactionary, the villager had to present the work team with a personal narrative of their suffering as a poor or hired peasant. If this narrative depiction of their personal suffering and oppression was convincing enough to overcome the mandatory skepticism of the work team and cadres, they would be rewarded with the "good peasant" classification. It was of great importance in the "Fang Pin Wen Ku" dialogue for the peasant - because it carried great weight in swaying the opinion and decision of the work team - to provide a contrasting depiction to their own plight and misery by informing the work team with details about other villagers and families; especially concerning the wealthy families.

For work team members, "Fang Pin Wen Ku" was not only a method of evaluation; it was also a teaching method for the state's ideology. Dining their 55

interaction with the peasants, as Yang describes it in the diary, the work team members could also "educate them" by leading the peasants into a dialogue about the social and economic circumstances of their daily life and existence. It was the professed aim of this dialogue to teach the peasants how to reflect upon and interpret their circumstances and identity in a ready-made narrative language which the political ideology of the CCP provided.

This was, without question, a complex teaching process, especially in the contextual "classroom" of traditional rural China, and the form and difficulties will be discussed soon. Of primary significance here is the determination that even before land reform was actually conducted (from the outset, in fact, of preliminary investigation of the individual's circumstances) the role and practice of narrative were of crucial importance: Political narrative, confessional narrative, and suffering as narrative were being twisted together in the process of classification - and of identification.

1.2.4 The Difficulties of Classification Upon completion of their duties of investigation and research, a work team would determine the classification of the villagers; it was the key prerequisite for executing land reform. According to Mao, classification was not only important as an expression of the authority which the CCP and its work teams had - which it was - nor only 56

because it facilitated the re-constitution of the societal power structures through land re-distribution. Mao understood classification as the key to mobilizing the support of the peasant masses for the revolutionary cause. (Mao, 1926, p. 13) Some scholars also consider classification the central procedure of the Land Reform Movement (Fang, 1997) and mobilization, because it provided the basis for making an unambiguous distinction between the enemy and the people, and it was necessary for every other revolutionary campaign or mission to follow. Shue also explains the urgency at the outset of Communist China: "A main cause of continuing unrest and apprehension was that there had not yet been time, in most villages, to carry out a thorough classification (ch'eng fen) assigning each person unequivocally to one class or another." (Shue, 1980, p. 18) Land reform was far more than just an economic reform. From the perspective of classification, it was a means to an end; the historic realignment of all facets of the society conducted through class struggle. The main mission of the work teams was to use classification as the means to mobilize support for the revolution from the poor and hired peasants who composed the large majority of the population.

However, for the work teams there were two major difficulties in conducting classification. The first major hurdle was the discrepancy between theory and reality, or, using Philip Huang's phrasing, the divergence between "representational and objective reality." (Huang, 1995, p. 1105) We will address this problem again in a moment. The second major difficulty was the discrepancy between theory and 57

practice: The guidelines for classification in the field, which were to be referenced by work teams undertaking the actual policy execution, were composed of a series of directives concerning land reform. These stemmed, as outlined previously, from the Central Committee of the CCP and from the lower level regional and local CCP bureaus. Yet, in all of the directives provided to the work teams there is only one explicit standard for determining classification, formulated as follows: "The possession of the means of production (in the main: land, in rural areas); the extent of said possession and its relationship to the total amount of production (i.e. the exploitative relationship)." (Archives, C. 1981, 91 f5 Beyond this, the general lack of clarity was a factor which led to many misunderstandings in the field work considered to be "left deviations", which means the works of classification often went to a direction of radical violence. In the year following the directive cited above, Ren Bishi, Secretary of the Central Committee, issued a supplemental directive in a committee report on land reform.

Clearly

realized that the local poor peasant association's attitude of land reform became much more radical and violent than the Party could even imagine, in this directive Ren called for a policy of lenient treatment towards the wealthy peasants and landlords and again emphasized the importance of solidarity with the middle peasants.

25

"Working Committee of Central Committee: A Directive on How to Analyze Class", December 31,

1947. See Archives, C. (Ed.). (1981). pp 96-97. 26 Ren Bishi, "Several Problems in Land Reform: A Report to the Enlarged Meeting of the Frontline Committee of the Northwestern Field Army, Presented 12 January, 1948" (Archives, C., 1981, Pp. 103-126). Ren Bishi was one of the five Central Committee Secretaries of CCP (Party Literature Research Centre of the CPC Central Committee. (2004) 58

According to this policy, landlords could have their class status changed after renouncing exploitation and working for five years, and wealthy peasants after working for three years. As will be discussed here later, there are other factors which explain this new leniency towards landlords and wealthy peasants. But, on the surface at least, this policy modification was not only trying to correct the "left deviations" of the Land Reform Movement but also aimed to garner support of the wealthy peasants and landlords once they had "refreshed" their class consciousness by becoming authentic workers.

Different areas of rural China presented the work teams with, sometimes vastly, different social and economic circumstances. This made it a great challenge for the work teams to universally apply the CCP's guidelines on classification. But, as Siu argues: "The lack of clear-cut boundaries allowed room for maneuver." (Siu, 1989, p. 134) Moreover, in some areas, the social reality was so different from the classification framework that the CCP had constructed and provided to the work teams in guidelines from the Central Committee of the CCP (CCCCP) that the class framework was simply not applicable. (Shue, 1980) Huang argues that this "difference" is obvious evidence for the aforementioned "growing divergence between representational and objective reality" (Huang, 1995, p. 110), and is substantiated by Zhang Xiaojun's research about the symbolic capital of classification. (Zhang, 2004)

59

As Li Lifeng and other researchers have pointed out in recent works, there is considerable evidence which calls into question the validity of the official CCP portrayal of both class structure and land ownership in rural China. The official version was made definitively by Mao in 1947: "Although the proportion of landlords and rich peasants in the rural population varies from place to place, it is generally only about 8 percent (in terms of households), while their holdings usually amount to 70 to 80 per cent of all the land. Therefore the targets of our Land Reform are very few, while the people in the villages who can and should take part in the united front for Land Reform are many - more than 90 per cent (in terms of households)." (Tse-Tun Mao, 1965c, p. 164) However recent researches have shown that the concentration of landownership among a small minority of landlords and gentry was not as great as Mao depicts; and this was already true in mid-19th century China: Land-holding peasants (defined as middle peasants in CCP's terms) were actually the largest group and they possessed most of the land. (L. Li, 2007, p. 98; Thaxton, 1983, p. 10) A series of historical studies supports the judgment that the evolving re-distribution of land ownership in China as a whole during the first half of the 20th century - although very different in different areas - was characterized by increasing diversity, not concentration. (Friedman, Pickowicz, & Selden, 1991; D. Guo, 1989; Wu, 1998; Y. Zhang, 1988)

Another difficult aspect of classification was rooted in the challenge of teaching the peasants class consciousness. Class education was an essential part of the 60

Land Reform Movement (Cheng, 1999) and the work teams were duty-bound to raise the class consciousness of the poor peasants, to "awaken" them, so they would be inspired to take a leadership role in the movement. The CCP Central Committee believed strongly in the power of the "awakened" poor peasants, as Mao proclaimed: "Leadership by the poor peasants is absolutely necessary. Without the poor peasants there would be no revolution. To deny their role is to deny the revolution. To attack them is to attack the revolution." (Mao, 1927, p. 33) Yet the poor peasants first had to be educated so they would join the "class struggle" of their own free will. As can be seen in the diary of Yang Hansheng, the next step for a work team, after investigating the existence of exploitative and oppressive conditions in a village, was to educate and convince the poor peasants that the demand for land reform made upon the reactionary landlords and elites was justified. The educational aim was not only to legitimize the revolutionary actions of the Land Reform Movement, but also to convince the peasants that land reform would be implemented comprehensively and permanently.

In some rural territories where exploitative landlordism was rampant, and especially in northern China where the CCP had built its "revolutionary base", the efforts for mass mobilization were not difficult. In those areas the CCP didn't need to expend a lot of effort on education or on fomenting hatred of the poor peasants towards the "immoral landlords" and elites. Their resentment was easily stirred. In fact, as Thaxton has documented, when the CCP entered some villages in northern 61

China, the peasants were already engaged in desperate conflict with the local gentry. (Thaxton, 1983, pp. 93-94) The entry of the CCP into these local arenas of conflict with its mass mobilization and organization efforts, were greeted by the peasants who seized "the opportunity to overthrow landlord, gentry, and government figures who had de-legitimized themselves in the post-Qing decades." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 93) In some other areas, according to Fei's research in 1936, both because of the pressure of economic depression and the growing awareness and influence of new ideas from leftist groups such as the communists, many peasants started feeling "justified when they 'neglected' to pay rent". (Fei, 1983, p. 91)

In such areas, the efforts to educate the peasants in class consciousness met little resistance from them or were eagerly received, because, as Thaxton argues, the peasants were already impatient for an opportunity to engage in the class struggle. But in other areas of China, it was far more difficult for the work teams and local cadres to educate, indoctrinate, and raise class consciousness among the peasants. The traditional conservatism of the peasants saw the mere concepts of class and radical land reform as antithetically new and patently ridiculous. (Crook & Crook, 1959; Hinton, 1967; Myrdal, 1965; Shue, 1980; Yu, 1964) For example, Shue's research found that "many people resisted the new categories; others who generally accepted them still found them not suitable for all facets of life and continued to identify themselves partly along more traditional lines. And very often such persistent allegiances brought on fragmentation of the new polity that the Party labored to shape 62

and much trouble in implementing village reforms." (Shue, 1980, p. 44)

In southern China, according to Siu, the "highly-charged class politics" actually increased the difficulties for the Land Reform Movement: "Major problems had arisen from applying such policies to the land tenure system and the mutually accepted system of rights and duties." (Siu, 1989, p. 125) Fei found that the traditional rent system was more than an economic system; it was also a moral system. In the summation of his field research, Fei concluded: "For the older people, the payment of rent is regarded as a moral duty." (X. Fei, 1983, p. 91) Aside from this entrenched sense of moral adherence to the feudal system, it was also difficult to determine who the "landlords" were and what actually constituted "feudal exploitation" because the ownership of land was usually held by a group with kinship lineage. (X. Fei, 1983) In some cases the landowners and even the usurers played a far more positive than negative role in rural daily life. Fei refused to condemn them as "wicked persons" because, especially in poor harvest years, they could provide necessary money and material resources for the whole village: "Without them, the situation might be still worse." (X. Fei, 1983, p. 121)

In his research of conditions and attitudes of villages in northern China, Thaxton also found similarities to the above-mentioned where the actions of the landlords sometimes brought about feelings of gratitude from the peasants towards them. (Thaxton, 1983, pp. 12-13) In addition, the villagers didn't like to think of the minor 63

landowners and renters as "evil landlords", because it conflicted with their sense that they too, belonged to the village community. Siu's research and interviews with peasants found different circumstances affected the attitudes: Some of the people had attained property through diligence and hard work; some had received land from their parents; some emigrant households "consisted largely of women and children", and some of them "had contributed to community education and charity". Thus a common perception, especially among those peasants who shared Jia - the same kinship lineage - was to question why they were being singled out. For the peasants "it seemed heartless to go after their families." (Siu, 1989, p. 127)

Undoubtedly not all landowners or renters were "immoral landlords". It is apparent, coming back to Duara's term, that many of them were part of the local "cultural nexus" and performed moral duties and exhibited compassion. This conclusion does not preclude the fact that poor peasants had a genuine fear of the powerful landlords; of suffering their vengeance when the work teams had left the village. (Siu, 1989, p. 130)

Another difficulty of accurate classification - accurate in that it was at least roughly in accord with any pre-existing sense of class identity among the peasants came from the real potential of social mobility, both upward and downward, which existed in the traditional villages of rural China. As Fei has pointed out, in a traditional village a wealthy landlord could become poor for various reasons such as 64

family strife, death and family divisions and, in turn, poor or middle peasants would seize the opportunity to acquire land for themselves. (X. Fei, 1983, p. 88) Siu has done similar research and concluded that, in the traditional villages, landlordism "represented a legitimate channel for social mobility in the process of building community - and kinship lineage; in conjunction with a system of authority buttressed by literati culture and official connections." (Siu, 1989, p. 127)

Yet it was apparent to all, by definition, that the procedures of classification and of land reform in the villages would soon make the traditional dream which some poor peasants had - a prospect of upward mobility, of becoming a land-renter or even a landlord -

impossible to realize. If left unattended, the accompanying

disillusionment among the peasants, the CCP knew, would lead to their reluctance, resentment and even resistance. Under such conditions, the already urgent nature of the mass mobilization efforts aimed at drafting the peasants, body and mind, into the revolution became an imperative. And, in turn, the mobilization efforts needed a highly effective instrument for the ideological re-education and indoctrination of the peasants. This instrument was Suku.

65

Chapter II: Suku: Beyond A Political Instrument There were no dates in this history, but scrawled this way and that across every page were the words BENEVOLENCE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND MORALITY. Since I couldn't get to sleep anyway, I read that history very carefully for most of the night, and finally I began to make out what was written between the lines; the whole volume was filled with a single phrase: EAT PEOPLE!" —-Lu Xun, 1990: 32

In this chapter the development of Suku into a political instrument is outlined. In reliance on a number of original primary sources, an exploration is conducted into how Suku was used, promulgated and developed and its role in the revolutionary campaigns of China at the time. Of special significance is the Suku handbook mentioned in the introduction which was written by PLA officers and published in 1947 in order to help all PLA company commanders and work teams of the revolutionary movements in their conduct of Suku practice.

Furthermore, Suku is examined here not just to provide a context for discussing its use as a political instrument, but also as a political phenomenon that allows for interpretation later in this dissertation from various theoretical perspectives including the relationship between state and local society, the state and individual, and the social and political trends of modernity in early 20th century China. 66

2.1 The Development of Suku 2.1.1 Suku As a Revolutionary Mission

In the introductory chapter, a definition of Suku as it was published in a state-sanctioned dictionary was given.

"Suku means to share an oral personal history about being persecuted by class enemies both for the purpose of inspiring class hatred in the listeners, while reaffirming one's own class standing." (Chen 1952: 331)

This definition encompasses the whole meaning of Suku in a very concise way. Each important component part of Suku practice is mentioned: Confession (sharing of a self-history), suffering (being persecuted),

emotions

(hatred),

and class

identification (class enemy and class standing). The confession is a collective confession since the purpose of the behavior includes both the emotional effect on oneself, and - since it is in public and in a group - on others. And the suffering can be termed here as 'social suffering' since the suffering expressed has been categorized as 'class suffering', which means, it is a suffering coming not only from the individual, but arising from a social and political system. A reasonable consequence, after establishing the evidence proving social suffering, which Suku aimed to elicit from the sufferers, was, to paraphrase: This old social and political system which has brought people so much suffering must be destroyed! Thus we can take Suku as a 67

Chinese political confession: a collective confession on social suffering.

This last point is, at this juncture of course an interpretation for which the above definition of Suku does not provide enough background for discussion. Therefore, in this section, I will start from the historical beginning of the Suku technique and explore central questions such as: How was this technique specifically used for the purposes of the Land Reform Movement and even the revolution? What are the specific strategies of using this technique? What were the reactions of peasants to this technique? And what influence did it have on the history of rural China? These questions will be explored later also in theoretical contexts, but here the detailed discussions is concerned with primary resources, such as government documents and personal written relics.

As a unique political technique, Suku has no precedent in China's history or elsewhere. And it differs greatly from some other political techniques and instruments that were perhaps borrowed or inspired by developments in the former Soviet Union (Yu 1964: 3), Suku was first implemented in the CCP's Land Reform Movement and later on by the PLA army with the express purpose of raising political consciousness. The initial method or technique was improved largely in its use by the army and as such was recognized, in its refined form, to be a practical political tool or instrument; so it was then re-introduced nation-wide back into the campaigns of the Land Reform Movement. As we can find in the work team member Yang's diary, from a 68

presentation at a national conference on land reform work in 1951, Suku was considered to be the central instrument for conducting preparatory education and classification leading up to mass mobilization and land reform efforts.

Although there is no official record of from whom and where the Suku concept originated(Guo, 2001), it can be deduced however, from a directive of the CCCCP in 1946, that the CCP had already adopted the term Suku in reference to a political technique and had already emphasized the importance of soliciting tales of suffering for mobilizing the masses. In May 13 of 1946, the CCCCP issued a directive on propaganda efforts to promote the Land Reform Movement, and in the second section of that political directive it says:

"In order to support the current mass movement, newspapers in every province should disclose the evils of traitors, the gentry and tyrants, and continually report the suffering and exploitation of the peasants. Newspapers in each province should discover more stories like that of Bai Mao nv,27 and report them continually. The exemplary and touching stories of suffering that were found everywhere during past Suku actions should be reported in order to show the just nature of the mass movement and the guilt and punishment of the local gentries. Writers and artists 27

Bai Mao nv, translated means 'the white-haired girl'. It is a Chinese operatic ballet, and was also performed at the Beijing Opera and a made into a film after 1950. The opera was based on the true stories of women in Western China in the 1940's. The main story here is about a miserable suffering girl who is persecuted by a local landlord. She can't stand the persecution and escape into the mountains, relying on the support and food from people worshipping the local God in a temple. Her hair becomes white because of a lack of salt. That's why she was called 'the white-haired girl'. 69

should produce more works like Bai Mao nv. " (Archives, C., 1981: 10)

The date of this directive is just nine days after the "May 4th Directive of 1946", which shows how important a priority the Suku Movement was for the larger mission of land reform. From this directive it can seen that using exemplary stories had already become a central tenet of Suku. Moreover, the instrument of conducting Suku had also been used in those local bureaus for the training programs which the 16th item of the May 4th Directive mentions. For example, in October of 1946, a directive from Jinji Prefectural Administrative Office28 advises that: "The principle training program should be one of exemplary reporting, recollection and self-examination." (Archives, H., 1992: 89) According to another report that was published in Jizhong Daobci29, Suku was already recognized as a catalyst and the major instrument used in mass mobilization, as it says in apt metaphor: "Suku is the blasting fuse of the mass Fanshen30 movement." (Archives, H., 1992: 98)

In another report on field experiences dining the Land Reform Movement, issued in February of 194731, Suku had already become a major instrument in the conduct of the work teams used for mass mobilization. In this report, besides addressing the training program for work teams and local cadres (the first step), and 28

"A DirectivefromJinji Prefectural Administrative Office Concerning the Mass Mobilization for Implementation ofLand Reform" October 08, 1946, Hebei Archives, 1992. Jinji refers to Shanxi province and Hebei province. 29 "The Preliminary ExperiencefromNine Local Bureaus ofJizhong Concerning Land Reform", Jizhong Daobao, October 23, 1946, Hebei Archives, 1992. 30 'Fanshen' translated literally means "to turn over". This term was used widely during China's revolution and in revolutionary narrations to describe the action of poor and hired peasants who had been "repressed" by "masters" before the revolution. The best known work on the topic is William Hinton's Fanshen. 31 "The CCP Bohai District: Preliminary Experiences of Land Reform Work From Huanghua andJinnan County", February of 1947, Hebei Archives. 70

the use of political propaganda to advance land reform policy (the second step), the third step was to establish and conduct a "Poor Peasants' Suku Assembly":

"From February 11th, every district started practicing Suku. In the Suku assembly in the town of Chengguan, after only one person's Suku, all those peasants had already started bellowing and to cry. Some people went back home, where the whole family again cried bitterly together. In Wang village, one cadre cried until they fainted on the spot; in Kou village, five peasants cried until they fainted; in the other districts and villages there were similar situations. According to incomplete statistics, in one district of Huanghua county, there were 5184 peasants who did Suku in the whole of the year. 4551 of them cried bitterly during Suku, 12 cried until they fainted, 195 cried until sick. The content of the Suku combined the matters of poverty and persecution. According to incomplete statistics, there were 323 peasants speaking their bitterness about starvation; 546 speaking their bitterness about begging for food; 115 speaking their bitterness about selling sons and daughters; 42 speaking their bitterness about scattered family; 116 speaking their bitterness about relatives being killed by bandits; and there are a lot more other kinds of bitterness that are too numerous to count. In the Suku Movement, cadres and people became one family: Cadres felt an aching to see the people's crying, people persuaded the cadres stopping crying. People said; "This is the Communist Party! 71

The Communist Party is also our poor!" (Archives, H., 1991: 163-64)

From reports such as this, evidence was gathered that Suku could successfully provoke very strong emotional reactions among of masses: Extreme hatred toward landlords, and then toward the KMT, while, at the same time, invoking extreme feelings of love toward the Land Reform Movement and the CCR The work teams strived to take advantage of the people's emotional turmoil brought up in the Suku Assembly, by proceeding to the first two steps recommended for the conduct of Suku: Gathering accounts of suffering and education or 'brainwashing'.32

The first procedure for accumulating stories of suffering was to create separate gatherings, or symposiums, on different topics of suffering such as accounts from hired peasants, from poor peasants account, etc. "In every kind of symposium, one model did the calculation first, then the others did the additional discussions. Some people started with labor's account, then went to exploitations; some people started with exploitations, then went to labor's account. By doing this, cadres and activists learned how to calculate, and they could do the report to masses so that the later knew how to calculate in separated groups." (Archives, H., 1992: 163). The amassed tales of suffering, statistically documented, brought more "crying, sighing and coughing. In calculation, the people woke up." (Archives, H., 1992: 163)

In its report, the Bohai local bureau uses the word "Shua Naojin" in reference 32

The report uses a term from local dialect "Shua Naojin", which can be exactly translated as "brainwashing". The word "Shua" means washing or painting; "Naojin" means head or brain. 72

to a large Suku campaign conducted for the purposes of land reform and mass mobilization. In the Bohai local dialect, the word "Shua Naojin" is an exact translation of 'brainwashing' and the "Shua Naojin meeting" was part of an indoctrination campaign. According to the bureau's report, there were four topics and related purposes for the discussion at the meeting. The first was to dismantle the "muddled ideas of the Fanshened mass", which refers to those peasants that believed that exploitation was reasonable and felt a moral duty to pay rent. The second topic was to dissolve the apprehensions of the masses about "a change in the weather" -which meant the restoration of reactionary rule. The third was to gain the confidence of the Fanshened mass in order to establish organizations. The fourth purpose was to destroy the traditional moral codes that reigned in the rural area.

The enhancement of political consciousness and class consciousness was called "awakening". In its conclusion, the report sums up the results of conducting the Suku assembly and the initial procedural steps of gathering accounts of suffering and brainwashing, or education, and said, following the three procedures: "People changed their minds totally. This process works to change the people, and also demonstrates our exemplary efforts. Doing this well will make people change their minds, and become Fanshened activists." (Archives, H., 1992: 167).

2.1.2. The development of Suku in the PLA 73

The Suku technique already included the steps of gathering and documenting incidents of suffering, and of education and indoctrination. Moreover, further steps in the process had been adopted, such as the use of 'exemplary narrators' which involved seeking out particularly good models of suffering to 'perform' at assemblies and, by example, help the other peasants to "wake up." Later on, in 1947, the Suku technique made it's own 'great leap forward' when it was tremendously expanded and refined, from a relatively casual technique, into a formal and field-tested political instrument. This came about through the widespread adoption of Suku by the PLA.

The political consciousness of the PLA and especially the army commanders was highly developed and this was always important for the CCP. As Mao himself said, when comparing the PLA to the KMT: The CCP's army "is powerful because all its members have a discipline based on political consciousness; they have come together and they fight not for the private interests of a few individuals or a narrow clique, but for the interests of the broad masses and of the whole nation. The sole purpose of this army is to stand firmly with the Chinese people and to serve them whole-heartedly." (Mao, 1945: 214)

According to Mao's directive, the CCP's army and soldiers should clearly understand that they are the people's army and they are fighting for the people's interests. If this "thought problem" cannot be resolved, Mao asserted, then the army would not have any combat effectiveness. Following this "spiritual" directive, the 9th 74

army from the 20th regiment of the 7th division in the Northeastern People's Liberation Army (PLA) first used the Suku technique as a method of class education. According to the memoirs of Feng Kai, the battalion political instructor of the army, the major problem at the time was its battle effectiveness. The army had been re-constituted from surrendered KMT soldiers and most of the soldiers were insubordinate and more and more were deserting.

Army commanders decided to attempt "thought reform" work by asking some questions to stimulate discussion with the soldiers, especially those "liberated" soldiers, that is, those surrendered or captured KMT soldiers. Questions such as "Rich peasants and poor peasants; who feeds whom?" The aim was to enhance the class consciousness of those soldiers and promote solidarity so that they would "fight for poor people". The questions started a huge discussion with the soldiers; some soldiers who "had suffered bitterly" started to tell of their past sufferings as a poor peasants "in old society". When the discussion reached its crescendo, according to Feng Kai, "soldiers of the whole army unit cried bitterly for their past sufferings" because most of the soldiers, both former KMT and CCP soldiers, were from poor peasant families. (Feng Kai, 2000: 34) As a consequence, Feng Kai began refining the technique, focusing more of the questions on suffering; asking those soldiers who "have suffered bitterly in old society to talk about themselves" in order to inspire recollection among the others of their own suffering, and leading the discussion in the direction of political consciousness and deep class hatred. (Feng kai 2000). 75

Soon each squad spent time discussing topics such as universal suffering, the causes for suffering and "what should we do." The practice was considered successful, as recorded in Biography of Luo Ronghuan, following such a Suku session: "Liberated soldiers enhanced their class consciousness immediately; in the Suku movement, every soldier was examining his 'forgetting who he is, forgetting where he is from, forgetting the past suffering of parents and ancestors, and forgetting the suffering of poor people all over the world'; and all of them vowed that they must follow the CCP to rise in revolution, to kill the enemies and to make contributions for the revolution." (LRBT 2006: 259)

Thus Suku was thought to have helped the soldiers remember who they really were and what they should do. The Political Commissar of the Northeastern PLA, Luo Ronghuan saw the technique and realized that "this is an invention with great significance. It solves the main concern and technique of present education. It is the direction of political education in army." (LRBT 2006: 259)

Luo then ordered instructions for implementing Suku in the army.(Xiao Hua & Tang Conglie,, p.37) And he also asked the Dongbei Daily to write an editorial, titled The Direction of Army Education and published on August 26, 1947 in order to popularize the Suku political technique. Soon after, Suku was being practiced in every division of the Northeastern PLA. This widespread adoption was made easier with the issuance of an instructional handbook which outlined the tried-and-true procedures for 76

conducting Suku.

In late September of 1947, Mao personally edited the handbook, wrote a personal dedication and ordered that the Suku handbook be published and distributed to the whole of the PLA.(Xiao, hua & Tang, Conglie, 1988, P. 37; Sun, Chengwu, 1994, P.20) Suku was soon being used in all the "liberated" areas not only for the educating and boosting morale among soldiers, but also for the implementation of land reform in the villages. Large volumes of the Suku handbook were printed and distributed to the PLA units and commanders but also to the work teams responsible for conducting land reform. The success of Suku for education and "thought reform" was immediate and great, according to the reports: "Usually after only one Suku meeting, they are ready for battle. Liberated soldiers become an important resource of the new PLA army and re-education has become an important part of political work in the army." (LRBT 2006: 261) We can find a further support of how important this ideology education was for CCP in its war with KMT from Mao's works. In March of 1948, Mao especially emphasized the important status of Suku and its excellent effect. He said in an essay that: "... What is most noteworthy, however, is the new type of ideological education movement in the army, which was carried out for more than two months last winter by the methods of pouring out grievances and the three check-ups. The correct unfolding of the movement for pouring out grievances (the wrongs done to the laboring people by the old society and by the reactionaries) and the three check-ups (on class origin, performance of duty and will to fight) greatly heightened the political consciousness of commanders and fighters throughout the army in the fight for the emancipation of the exploited working masses, for nation-wide land reform and for the destruction of 77

the common enemy of the people, the Chiang Kai-chek bandit gang. It also greatly strengthened the firm unity of all commanders andfighters under the leadership of the Communist Party. "(Mao, 1947/1956, P. 214) And furthermore, Mao points out that this kind of ideological education had already been carried out in PLA troupes throughout the whole country.

2.1.3. A Handbook of Suku

In a handbook that was printed and distributed by the CCP's PLA army in 1947, we can find how this Suku technique was organized, structured and used as a political instrument, first within the army. This instructional handbook is titled: Suku and Revenge: Suku education's experience and method.33

This handbook outlines sixteen procedural steps, or 'experiences' for the army's conduct of Suku actions. Some of them were dictated as necessary procedures to follow in the cooperative efforts with local peasants for conducting land reform. These steps, or 'experiences' are (author's translation, in italics, with annotations):

1) Gather statistical accounts of suffering. This was part of a "new method of class education." The company commanders sought out some "typical soldiers", that is, soldiers from poor or hired peasant families and asked them very detailed questions about their economic relationship with landlords. Two questions/issues are posed: "1) When landlords demand rent is that exploitation, or is it collecting earnings from the production of 33

From the Chinese National Library; see Appendix A. 78

the land? Long-term and hired laborers work to earn wages from the landlords. But if they did not suffer in place of and at the hands of the landlords, why then would the landlords give money to long-term and hired laborers?"34.

2) Education at any opportunity. This step/experience ordered the PLA company commanders to seize on any opportunity that could be used for class education.

3) Comparative education. The commanders should compare, in dialogue, not only the different lives of the landlords and the poor and hired peasants, but also the different lives before and after the Land Reform Movement. The content of comparisons should refer to food, housing, clothes, etc. At the same time, the commander had to lead the local peasants and soldiers in shouting out such slogans as: 1 Compare the lives!'; 'The rich dress warm in winter and cool in summer, the poor have only a worn quilt for the cold winter!', and 'The poor's life is difficult and full of suffering, the landlord's evil can't be expressed at all!"

4) Find Exemplary Suku narrators and do Suku together with the people. The company commander had to find the "best" Suku storytellers, praise them, comfort them, and conduct a special ritualized Suku meeting for 34

The page numbering of the handbook is in logical disorder. This passage starts on page 57, but the following page is numbered as 38, not 58. 79

both soldiers and the local people, where they asked those exemplary Suku narrators to express their suffering in public.

5) Battlefield Suku. After each battle, the army should call together the local people around the battlefield and hold a Suku assembly there. The commander should lead the local peasants in pouring out their sufferings under the governance of the KMT.

6) Air complaints against Chiang Kai-shek as an important part of Hatred Education. Company commander should be assigned to collect reports of the evil crimes of the KMT's army against the people. Begin with those collected materials and then turn to individual Suku.

7) Throw away dirty stuff. Dirty stuff means, first, the personal material belongings that 'liberated' soldiers received when they were members of the KMT army, and second, it means the past guilt which they accumulated when they were KMT soldiers. This was essentially a confessional practice. "Liberated" soldiers should not only hand in their personal belongings but also confess what they had done in the past, and most importantly, they should show cognizance of how evil their behavior was and should prove that he had already turned over a new leaf. Dirty stuff doesn't only refer to the personal belongings and past "guilt", but here also means those tainted thoughts and ideas that were not in keeping 80

with socialism or communism.

8) After heart-to-heart talks, do Suku and dig out the "three roots of suffering" (poor root, unjust root, and hatred root); the army should hold a memorial ceremony for all the CCP soldiers, family members and friends who were "persecuted to death " by the old evil society.

9) The "liberated" soldiers should shout the oath for joining the CCP's army; swear to join the CCP's army and to fight for the "suffering people ".

10) Drink the one-heart (unifying) wine. After Suku practice, the company commander should have dinner with soldiers; lead those who didn't speak in the Suku meeting because of apprehension to pour out their own stories of past suffering.

11) Conduct two meetings. In addition to the Suku assembly, there should be another meeting for celebrating Fanshen, and for swearing to protect the "fruits of victory. "

12) Read from family letters. Collect some personal letters that have content which encourages the soldier to fight

and read them publicly.

13) Conduct panel discussions for soldiers from families ofpoor and hired 81

peasants. Focus the topic

on "different lives" before and after land

reform.

14) (Pages missing)

15) Document examples from some "model" army Suku narrators. After Suku assemblies, the commanders had to ask their exemplary sufferers and narrators to give a report to be passed on within the army. The purpose was to help the Suku Movement growth in other units of the army.

16) Conclusion of the experiences.

Following this summation, the handbook concludes the list of experiences above and outlines, in more detail, four general procedural steps for carefully crafted Suku practice. Here they are provided verbatim, accompanied by interpretation:

The first step is sufficient prepare and mobilization; break down the apprehension. This step usually includes collective mobilization, separated

discussions,

comparing sufferings, heart-to-heart talks about suffering, and organizing the soldiers to read typical stories of suffering, or to listen to them. Let suffering draw out suffering. Make sure soldiers totally understand that it is just and reasonable to 'pour out suffering if there is any, voice grievances if there are any, and vow revenge if there is any hatred'. Make sure the soldiers totally understand that the purpose of Suku is to enhance political consciousness, to know the truth, to 82

distinguish enemies from the people, and to avenge and fanshen; make sure soldiers understand what suffering is, why Suku is needed, and make sure they ask for Suku of their own initiative. If the preparatory work was not sufficient, just order the soldiers to shout the slogans. Know that

they could have the following

small apprehensions: Traditional thoughts, the restoration of reactionaries, the poor are doomed to suffer, predestination, and the uselessness of Suku, shame to share their suffering, or apathy to say anything repeatedly, or they believe that Suku is only a trick played on them by superiors. In order to implement the Suku Movement, we must break down those apprehensions. Sufficient preparation and mobilization is the first step for conducting successful Suku.

This is the initial step for the practice of Suku. The core aim of this step is to break down the reluctance and apprehension of the peasants. Since most of the soldiers come from poor rural families, their apprehension towards revolutionary thought were very similar to that of other peasants and they were conservative. The key component of this step is to make sure that the soldiers totally understood that it is just and reasonable to "do Suku". In order to achieve this goal, the mobilization through collective actions tries to make normal soldiers reflect on their own daily lives, and tells them that there is a "truth" behind their daily lives. To know this truth is to understand "suffering"; why they had "suffering" and then to recognize the difference between "enemies and people." Learning this truth was important; it was made out as a "political" mission for soldiers. 83

There were several different methods used to achieve this goal, including organizing numerous forums and forms for discussion. Collective confession soon took precedence because it could not only let "exemplary stories" be heard by all the soldiers, but it also let "suffering draw out suffering." In other words, the PLA had refined and tried various methods and had already established that collective confession could achieve the goal most effectively.

The second step is; find out and cultivate the exemplary Suku narrators, models who promote the whole. To find exemplary narrators it is necessary to know the particular situation of every soldier very well, to feel deep sympathy to their sufferings, and you need to keep eyes open during the preparation and mobilization step by visiting the poor, listening to stories of suffering, having heart- to- heart talks and investigative activities. When seeking or selecting the exemplary it is of vital importance that the commander must first have a solid class standing and a deep empathy for those who have suffered; if otherwise, he cannot find an exemplary Suku narrator. " Cultivating the model is a meticulous process that requires patience. (Company commanders) should help the soldier to structure, summarize, and focus on one point in the Suku; Help him to recollect additional

stories

with details

displaying

and

enhancing

his

political

consciousness. Typical model narrators should be those soldiers who were persecuted the most, suffered the most, with the deepest hatred, and are the most recalcitrant. Besides this, cultivate different types of models, such as the type 84

telling the suffering of landlord exploitation, the type telling of the suffering under the KMT's bad governance, the type telling of the suffering from the KMT's evil army, etc. Different Suku has different education meanings and they should influence each other.

The second step of Suku practice focuses on the power of using exemplary narrators during Suku meetings or sessions. The use of this technique was especially emphasized by the CCP, so much so, that in the official dictionary definition of Suku at the time, the aspect of "inspiring others", which exemplary speakers apparently did so well, was included.

More concretely, in the directive of the Central Committee concerning Bai Maonv, the importance which the CCP believed exemplary role models could have for the revolutionary work is very apparent. An exemplary speaker during a Suku meeting could first touch the listeners, emotionally, to make them empathize with the Suku speaker's feelings - to feel sad listening to a story of misery and hardship and to feel hatred and outrage towards the speaker's persecutors and exploiters.

The second important role of the exemplary narrators was to help the listeners to reflect on their own daily lives - to teach them the way of thinking, or the way of practicing Suku, or, in the CCP's term, the way of enhancing "political consciousness". That's why the handbook also advises finding different types of models: Different speakers would influence different groups of people to different 85

degrees, depending on whether the listener identified with the narrator. Suku sessions were 'stage-managed' to make sure that the listeners had the greatest opportunity and encouragement to think and feel, or learn to think and feel; in the same way the exemplary Suku speaker presented his thoughts and feelings.

This could be challenging work for the exemplary speaker. In her fieldwork, Fang Huirong found that Chinese traditional rural peasants could easily feel and be aware of suffering and misery in their existence. However, when asked to share concrete events or stories, they couldn't come up with one. Fang argued that this was because the peasants didn't have a sense of the modern "event", or "affair". One of the goals of Suku was to train them in this ability. However, despite Fang's argument, the examination of primary source documents from the practice of Suku suggests another reason to explain the inarticulateness of the interviewed peasants: The "events", or "affairs" that were shared and bemoaned during Suku sessions, were not "events" or "affairs" in a primary social and political context: they were all small extractions from the routines of the peasant's ordinary daily life. It was only in the forum and in the context of Suku, and draped in the revolutionary language, that they became unusual, became an "event", and emerged with any distinctness from the ordinariness of the peasant's life.

Without question the "models" or "exemplary speakers" were not chosen spontaneously; that is to say, in the context of an open Suku meeting. Rather, they 86

were carefully sought out and interviewed by PLA commanders and work teams; their stories of suffering and persecution refined and cultivated; their language, semantically and in terms of thought was modulated, refined and 'cleansed'. In other words, the exemplary narrators and the tales they told were not 'discovered'; they were carefully created and crafted. Not every peasant made for an ideal or exemplary Suku narrator. Only those peasants were chosen who could both convincingly present a plausible and moving story of suffering and who had social standing which enhanced their influence on others of similar standing - who could identify with the narrator. Their function was that of the role model; one exemplary soldier showing other soldiers an idea of the person he could aspire to become, and furthermore, illuminating the path - the revolutionary path - to follow to achieve this transformation. In Suku, the exemplary narrator's meaning was all in the interpretation of his or her performance by the listeners. (Jakobson, 1960)

The third step is to conduct the practice of Suku comprehensively. This step should follow in this order: I. Speak of suffering and discover the root of the suffering; 2.) Speak of goodness and discover the root of goodness; 3. Confession and discarding of dirty stuff All suffering must be totally confessed. Assemblies should be held at each level from squad to company to battalion. Big meetings should combine the smaller ones. The aim should be: Practice Suku if there is suffering to be shared, listen to the Suku of others if the soldier has no suffering to 87

share; all the people listening should feel and share in the suffering till everybody cries bitterly. Strong feelings of class hatred should be stirred up. Dig out the root of suffering by asking about old affairs; keep detailed account of the amount of suffering; compare (such as the past life and now, old society and new society, KMT' area and the CCP area, landlord's happy life and the poor's man's miserable life, etc.). Be persistent in asking questions - from small Chiang to old Chiang15, from the small root of suffering to the main root of suffering. The work of finding the root of suffering is extremely important. Finishing this step successfully could make the following two steps much easier. Speak of goodness and discover the root of goodness - this is the same as in the first step This step can make people remember their class origin and have a strong belief in fighting firmly. Confession and throwing dirty stuff are the natural result of building up class hatred. Those comrades who were cheated and who were not sure of their own class standing, can now rejoin the oppressed class. They will have the courage to discard everything that is not good for the poor or for the oppressed class.

This is the 'watershed' step in the Suku process. The aim of Suku was not to just reveal the extent of suffering in rural society and provide a forum for expressing it. Suku was a political instrument to be used to seek out the "the root of suffering", essentially a facade, since it was pre-determined by the authority of 33

Small Chiang means Chiang Ching-kuo, old Chiang means Chiang Kai-shek. 88

the CCP that this root meant the "old" social and political system, as already discussed. Nonetheless, "finding" the root or cause in the context of Suku was an educational step which aimed to extend discussion from the private suffering of the individual and his or her private daily life to the public and political suffering of the whole "old society" and then attaching the CCP meaning, the revolutionary truth, to both: the "old society" was the root of all suffering and all evil. Virtuousness and goodness, on the other hand, were defined as everything that done or brought about by the CCP, most notably the land reform which was destroying the old society. The CCP, in the new moral code, was the embodiment of goodness so "speaking of goodness" meant to shower praise on the PLA, the CCP and on the associated works and projects undertaken by the CCP. For the novice Suku listener, such as the apolitical soldier from peasant stock, the stark contrast of this comparison - 'old' is evil, 'new' is good - could come as a "shock", which was intentional in the Suku Movement's strategy to affect social and political change. In Suku the "shock" method was intensified by repetition at a series of Suku session.

From the instructional handbook it is also clear that the Suku Movement was not haphazard but was strictly organized. Every soldier in the PLA, at every level, had to participate in Suku, either as speaker or listener. It was mandatory and there was no 'opt-out'. This disciplined approach is unsurprising after Suku's adoption and development by the PLA, used to military discipline, and it 89

contributed greatly to the spread of Suku and amplified Suku's affect. Moreover, as this step of the process shows, by exerting strict control, Suku aimed to direct the thoughts of the participants from their small personal domain of daily suffering to the large public domain of the social and political system where the suffering originated. The handbook clearly points out that "the work of digging out root of suffering is extremely important." It was "extremely important" because Suku, when successful, could make personal daily life political as never before. And this, in turn, was the key to creating the "Communist soldier" and creating class identity.

The fourth step is to lead the movement in a certain political direction; turn the class hatred into real power.

The fourth step of the Suku handbook is one of emphasis: Suku is not successful if it is only a cathartic personal event where pain and suffering, anger and hatred are openly expressed and released. Using the elicited emotional reaction, the leaders of Suku were expected to mobilize concrete support and meaningful action for the CCP/PLA. The crying and shouting of the soldiers and peasants during Suku was only of use if it could be harnessed, in consequence, for real action, especially if that action served the political mission. Since, at the time the handbook was written, the mission of greatest importance was combating the KMT, so the main goal of Suku in the PLA was to enhance the military 90

capabilities. The fourth step outlines some of these possibilities:

First, arouse the soldiers to make plans, to organize and to avow their resolve to fight. Topics of discussion should be on the current central political mission, such as on military training, or on a campaign for rendering meritorious service.

Second, in the movement of Suku, the guiding principle for leading the soldiers' thought processes is: From suffering to pain, and from pain to hatred. The more suffering, the more pain, the more pain, the more hatred, and the more hatred, the more powerful. Company commanders must grasp such rules, must feel the same suffering as the soldiers do, must cry with them, and must feel the same hatred which they do. Cultivate them patiently; lead them carefully, according to their emotions. Use tasks such as preparing the Suku setting, organizing memorial ceremonies, preparing forms for recording revenge, and invent some easy but clear slogans that must be done very well. Create an atmosphere of suffering that is be pervasive, and everywhere and all the time strong feelings of revenge must be constantly stirred up. Every method available must be used to educate the soldiers, starting with the easiest stuff and then with more difficult ideas; make them understand more about class and enhance their political consciousness. Educate those who don't know what class oppression and class exploitation are until they know what they are. And educate those who didn't feel suffering so that they can 91

feel what it is, those who didn't feel class hatred to feel it, and those who didn't know revenge to want to avenge - from avenging personally to avenging publicly and generally. The following message of political consciousness should be instilled: The poor, all under the heavens, are all suffering; and the poor in this world are all one big family; we are brothers and sisters, and we should unite together to save ourselves, to abolish the roots of class exploitation and repression: the landlord class and their boss Chiang Kai-shek.

Third, following the Suku session the army's political consciousness will be enhanced, the morale and will to fight will be stronger. However, this is only the beginning. This is not enough, and in order to consolidate the achievement and to improve even more, the following work should be done:

1) Encourage soldiers to join the Land Reform movement and to join the Fanshen struggle. Let them learn of the evil guilt of landlords and of the great power of the people. Improve the real work of thought reform in practice.

2) Intensify the education about the current political situation and strengthen their confidence in the cause.

3) Intensify the education on vengeance and on rendering meritorious service. 92

4) Do more Suku actions. Intensify the soldiers' class hatred. Once there is a turnover of 1/3 in the members of an army, a new Suku session is necessary. Certain times, such as when soldiers are transferred, during military training, and when local forces are upgraded to serve in the regular army are all good opportunities for having a new Suku assembly. The New Year and other festivals can all be usedfor conducting Suku. And a Suku meeting can even be part of the routine daily schedule.

5) Invite fanshened peasants and local cadres to come and speak about their happy life since their liberation. Inspire the soldiers 'love for the PLA and the CCP, and inspire them to work resolutely for the people.

6) Cultivate those soldiers and activists with a poor peasant and hired peasant family background. Raise their sense of honor and responsibility for being a "master" in the army. Encourage them to play an active role in daily work and in battle. And draft some of the good soldiers into the Party. Using Suku, imbue the idea of an army built on the system of class.

Obviously, the Suku movement is the people's "change of heart" movement; it is a movement where people liberate themselves. Commanders thus must have a "people's " viewpoint, must believe the truth that people liberate themselves, and must carry out the project of "people power. " The commander himself should be in charge of this movement. Both military officials and political officials must join the movement 93

and learn from the people; and cadres should take the lead in Suku. Concentrate resources and time on this movement and enhance the class consciousness of the cadres: This is at the core of the army's political work; it is the important guarantee of victory and of improving every effort.

The Suku handbook clearly points out that the purpose of Suku movement is to win the "people's heart". It is a movement of awakening the people so they can be drafted and mobilized to "liberate themselves." Suku, as a tool, is considered so important that it is emphasized here again and again that it should not be undertaken just once, but as many times as possible until everyone has had their political consciousness raised. Which is to say; until the total indoctrination in CCP ideology has brainwashed each and every soldier, cadre and peasant.

Moreover, this step also orders the recruitment of soldiers for the local Land Reform Movement as a method of 'class education'. This was considered a strategy of reciprocal value which could benefit both soldiers and the local land reform efforts. For the local work teams, an influx of fresh soldiers would also bring fresh and motivating stories of suffering for Suku practice, and in all likelihood, with exemplary quality since the soldiers had honed their narrative skills in the PLA. And the engagement of soldiers in the revolutionary fieldwork, as the handbook says, would enhance their class-consciousness - soldiers would leam of the "evil guilt" of landlords and the great power of the people. 94

From the preparatory work to the exemplary model, from creating the emotional upheaval of Suku assemblies, to harnessing this upheaval for the political mission; the four steps were woven tightly together to guarantee the success of Suku and the revolution.

2.1.4 Suku in the Villages

The work of the Land Reform Movement was usually carried out in parallel with the military campaigns of the PLA (Editorial of Liberation Daily, December 14, 1946); as a territory was 'liberated' the land reform effort, in the form of the work teams would move in and begin their work. In some territories the company commanders of the PLA were even assigned to administer the local land reform and mass mobilization. (Archives, H., 1992, p. 79)36 Regular soldiers, too, were recruited to join the local Land Reform Movement, as has been discussed above. With both — commanders and soldiers — came a transference of valuable Suku "experience" and knowledge from the army which was needed immediately in preparing land reform. Moreover, the largest numbers of soldiers in the PLA army were from "fanshened" peasants. (LRBT, 2006, p. 261) Thus Suku movement and land reform were closely related to each other.

In 1948, Mao further pointed out that "this new type of ideological education movement in the army" should be combined with land reform. (Mao, 1947/1956, p. 36

"A Decision from the CCP Jinan Committee Concerning Carrying Out and Supporting Mass Fanshen Movement. August 15, 1946. Hebei Archives, 1990. Jinan means the south of Hebei province. 95

215) Thus Suku started to become one of major political techniques that were used in land reform. During land reform, Suku was usually organized and conducted by the work teams overseeing the practical implementation. As the most common political instrument employed by the work teams,37 and for the land reform efforts, Suku was further refined for use at the local village level.

For the work teams, the mission was clear: First, using Suku, establish that the peasant population was suffering intolerably; establish that this suffering was not extraordinary, but was systemic and pervasive in the daily life of the peasants. The work teams could successfully complete their mission by 'saving' the peasants from their suffering through land reform, which was essentially a change of systems.

The central issue in the practice of Suku for the work teams was not, in fact, exploratory, that is, not to find out whether the peasants had and were suffering; that was assumed and asserted from high above in the CCP hierarchy. As Mao had said: "We hail from all corners of the country and have joined together for a common revolutionary objective...The Chinese people are suffering; it is our duty to save them and we must exert ourselves in struggle. Wherever there is struggle, there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence." (Mao, 1944, p. 177).The real issue was how to present the suffering in an appropriate and useful manner - useful for furthering the revolutionary cause.

37

CCJP (Ch'ang Chiang Jih Pao), 8 Jan. 51 [221] and CCJP, 6 Jan, 51 [370]; and [CF], Shue, 1980, 73. 96

At the outset, the work teams and local cadres would usually call a public meeting and ask poor peasants to "air their old grievances against landlords and other wealthy villagers and to describe the misery of their own lives directly or indirectly attributable to their exploitation by the landlords. The purpose of the meetings was essentially twofold: to convince peasants that they had indeed suffered enough under the feudal system that they were justified in seizing landlords' property and to build their courage for actually implementing the deed." (Shue, 1980, p. 74)

Most of the stories told at such public meetings were common knowledge in the village; such as who worked for landlords, how hard the work was, how little the wages and salary were. The leaders attempted to provoke and draw out a contrast between the landlords' good life and the peasants' miserable lives. Most of the knowledge exchanged at the meeting was common and had been taken for granted by the peasants as such. However, the work teams and the local cadres made every effort to convince the poor and hired peasants to look at the commonplace situations in a new way; from the revolutionary perspective of class oppression. This was an 'awakening' or eye-opening process that consisted, first of all, of educational procedures not only for the local peasants and cadres, but even for some work team members: "The repetition and reminder of old acts of cruelty and the tales of deprivation not only served to enflame peasant hatred but also frequently constituted something of an education for the work team cadres, especially those from

97

'enlightened gentry' families and from the cities."38

Hinton describes the whole procedure of preparing and conducting a Suku in Long Bow, a village of Hebei province in northern China. Before preparatory work at the village level began, on January 16th 1946,39

the local cadres were first trained

for their mission in a meeting which was held in Li Village Gulch. At this training session the local cadres were presented with three questions and asked to discuss them in both small groups and in a large meeting. The three questions, according to Hinton, were: "Who depends upon whom for a living? Why are the poor poor and the rich rich? Should rent be paid to landlords?" (Hinton, 1966, p. 128)

Since very few scholars joined the Suku movement, or even participated in land reform, Hinton's work provides a rare anthropological record of the Suku movement.

According to Hinton, it was easy for the cadres at the preparatory meeting to voice "grievances against individual landlords," but when it came to the discussion of changing the local land distribution, the local cadres, despite still showed reluctance to openly discuss such changes. Eventually, after the presentation of district leaders' reports — most of the reports were on "the economic basis of the old society" ~ and within the larger group discussion, the local cadres began to 'realize' that oppressive and extreme exploitation did exist in the villagers' daily lives. After much coaching 38 39

CCJP, 11 Jan. 51 [56], [CF] Vivienne, 1980, 74. Just as we found above, the practice of Suku movement was actually earlier than "May 4th Directive of 1946". 98

and coaxing, the cadres finally gave the prepared answers to the three questions posed at the outset: "The landlords depended on the labor of the peasants for their very life. The rich were rich because they 'peeled and pared' the poor. Rent should not be paid to the landlords." (Hinton, 1966, p. 128)

Although local cadres were not necessarily party members, all of them had to at least be "activists" or involved in local revolutionary affairs. The common assumption was that class education for cadres should be much easier than teaching common people. So, as Hinton reports, after this training meeting, with the three questions and three answers, and imbued with enthusiasm and motivation from this meeting, the local cadres returned to Long Bow village. The cadres first organized a local Peasants' Association, which were officially recognized by the district CCP governments as "the only legal organ for carrying out agrarian policy, conducting the struggle against the landlords, receiving confiscated property, and distributing it to the landless and land poor." (Hinton, 1966, p. 131)

With the authority of this organization behind them, the local cadres called together 30 of the poorest peasants for a first Suku session. At the assembly, the same three questions from training were now addressed to the peasants. Kuei-ts'ai, a leader of the local cadres, asked each peasant to tell his/her own life story and to seek the answer to one or all of the three questions in his or her own story. The following excerpts from Hinton show, among other things, that the exemplary model approach 99

was used here to great affect:

"Once again Kuei-ts'ai led o f f . In order to move the others he told his own history. 'In the past when I lived in Linhsien I stayed with my uncle, 'he said. 'In order to get married my uncle borrowed 20 silver dollars. Within a year the interest plus the principal amounted to more than 300 dollars. We could not possibly repay this. The landlord seized all our lands and houses and I became a migrant wandering through the province looking for work.'

This reminded poor peasant Shen T'ien-his of the loss of his home. 'Once when we needed some money we decided to sell our house. We made a bargain with a man who offered a reasonable price, but Sheng Ching-ho, who lived next door, forced us to sell our house to him for almost nothing.'

Then poor peasant Ta-hung's wife spoke up. 'You had to sell your house, but my parents had to sell me. We live in a prosperous valley but we owned no land. In the famine year we were starving and my parents sold me for a few bushels of grain. If you had had some land I could have found a husband and been properly married. Instead, I was sold like a donkey or a cow.'

Story followed story. Many wept as they remembered the sale of children, the death of family members, and the loss of property. The village cadres kept asking 'What is the reason for this? Why did we all suffer so? Was it the 'eight ideographs' 100

that determined our fate or was it the land system and the rents we had to pay? Why shouldn't we now take on the landlords and right the wrongs of the past?"'' (Hinton, 1966, pp. 132-133)

We can find from the quotation that, since traditional village is a community, all the people in this community are familiar to each other. Under such a circumstance, everybody could feel sympathy with other's miserable stories. And once somebody (such as exemplary Suku speaker) breaks the ice, the others felt easier to follow. By these questions, and by a guided speaking bitterness movement, work teams and local cadres did mass motivation successfully, got the support from poor and hired peasants. The motivated peasants started mobilizing more and more peasants joined the Peasants' Association; 30 peasants soon became more than 100 families. And they decided to do something about the rich people in the village. Although there was a theoretical framework on how to do classification, peasants and local cadres usually chose their attacking sequence according to their own sentiments, which means those rich peasant who didn't have good relationship with poor people would become the first target. In Long Bow village, peasants firstly arrested Kuo Ch'ung-wang, who was not the richest landlord in this village, but was "one of the meanest" (Hinton, 1966, p. 133)

Carefully organized by the work team according to what they learnt from their training program and from their directives, the Suku movement functioned smoothly 101

and successfully. In the following days, Poor peasants were organized in Long Bow village into small groups in order to prepare their thoughts and opinions before a large Suku assembly. "Those with serious grievances were encouraged to make them known among their closest neighbors and were then mobilized to speak out at the village-wide meeting to come." (Hinton, 1966, p. 134) In contrast to the initial closed meeting, these Suku assemblies were held to discuss specific landlords, who were order to attend. In these meetings, increasing class consciousness emerged, especially in the face-to-face confrontations with the landlord. Peasants started to experience a new feeling of "us" and "them"; they started to assume their new identity based on a new interpretation of their past lives which encompassed the ideas of class struggle, daily suffering and exploitation. The strength of the new identity began to assert itself almost immediately, as Hinton observed, because in the context of the Suku meeting, the traditional family relationships became secondary. For example, the peasant Fu-yuan was a cousin of Ch'ung-wang, but Fuyuan was also the first speaker in the meeting to give voice to grievances against Ch'ung-wang.

" 'In the famine year,' Fu-yuan began, talking directly to Ch 'ung-wang, 'my brother worked for your family. We were all hungry. We had nothing to eat. But you had no thought for us. Several times we tried to borrow grain from you. But it was all in vain. You watched us starve without pity.'

Then Ho-pang, a militiaman, spoke up. His voice shook as he told how he had 102

rented landfrom Ch 'ung-wang. 'One year I could not pay the rent. You took the whole harvest. You took my clothes. You took everything. 'He broke down sobbing as a dozen others jumped us shouting.

'What was in your mind?'

'You took everything. Miao-le and his brother died.'

'Yes, what were your thoughts? You had no pity. Didn't you hound P'ei Mang-wen's mother to her death?'

'Speak.'

'Yes, speak. Make him talk. Let's hear his answers!'" (Hinton, 1966, p. 134)

More and more peasants joined this kind of pouring grievous meetings. And the class consciousness became clearer and clearer for peasants. Finally, even those "old women who had never spoken in public before", started to stand up to accuse the landlords. And brothers could accuse brother, son could accuse father for doing exploitations. The political and class consciousness of peasants were successfully raised from a lower to a higher level.

In such a meeting, the traditional relationship in village community was replaced by "class struggle". We should remember that such a Suku movement that happened in a small village was not a spontaneous and independent event. It happened 103

under the whole revolutionary background. And it happened everywhere in China's "liberated area" at that time. Such a Suku movement, like all the other Suku movements, was organized carefully by the political techniques that work teams and local cadres learned from their training program. Peasants were encouraged to make a struggle with their "class enemy": the landlord class. Ch'ung-wang became a representative of such a class, a representative of the cause of past village suffering. The enemy of Suku speakers was usually a combination of past suffering, body pain, and village politics. And furthermore, such Suku, as we can find from Hinton's work, was not only about words, but also involved violence and emotions like fear and anger. And this was especially the case when classifying the peasants. The poor peasant association's reaction toward their "class enemies" in land reform, as we can also find from Ren's directive, was much more radical and violent than CCCCP expected. This has already been pointed out by Mao himself again and again. (Mao, 1945/1956, p. 72; Mao, 1948/1956, p. 215; Mao, 1948/1956, p. 228) And this has also been cleared by various studies of land reform. (Zhang, Yiping, 2009, P. 114; Ye, Mingyong, 2008)

Moreover, in such a meeting, everybody started to feel his/her own identity. Meanwhile a series of differences were built up between people and enemy, good and evil, suppressed class and suppressive class, and finally between the CCP and KMT.

2.1.5. The Effects of Suku 104

A number of primary resource materials have preserved a record of the "miraculous" effects of Suku. A propaganda worker in Northeastern China at the time wrote: "We felt that speaking bitterness was extremely effective in stimulating class hatreds and heightening feelings of vengeance... The purpose of war became clear, and the emotions of the troops were raised." (Mo 1991: 194)

The instructional handbook, together with and records of actual Suku activities reveal the structure of Suku. It was, foremost, the practice of political narration in a collective. The purpose of Suku was to produce certain kinds of emotions by amassing a record of suffering from the past and then leverage the contact with the peasants to conduct educational 'consciousness-raising' that would ready them for mass mobilization and other revolutionary missions including Land Reform and supporting the PLA. The collective meetings in which the confessional narratives were presented were tightly regulated, even staged, by local cadres, work team leaders and PLA commanders. By employing exemplary narrators was one method used to lead the Suku sessions in the 'correct' ideological direction: The narrative confessions of personal suffering were to be interpreted within a "class" framework; the peasants and soldiers should think according to the rigid class ideology that the CCP espoused and feel what the CCP wanted them to feel -feelings that also reinforced the ideological class framework - by expressing hate for the exploitative landlords and reactionary KMT; and love for the Party. Ultimately, the purpose of Suku was to aid in the construction of a new political identity for the peasants, also according to class 105

concepts; the peasants would become "the people" in the CCP's ideological language.

In addition to the practice of Suku, other CCP policy affected the conditions under which Suku was conducted and its reception. For example, the CCP pushed forward a policy of more equality for women in the rural areas, which necessarily brought confrontation between the new revolutionary morality and the traditional conservative morality. The CCP had early campaigns promoting "woman work" and equal rights for women in general had long been of importance to Mao. In 1927 Mao wrote in a report on the Hunan peasant movement that the overthrow of the patriarchal authority of husbands over wives was one of the "fourteen great achievements" of peasant movements. (Mao, 1927: 44) On February 09 of 1947, the Central Committee issued a directive encouraging women to join the Land Reform Movement40. It says: "In the process of Land Reform, leaders must actively and timely mobilize women, the more the better. Repressed women should be Fanshened along with the Fanshen of the whole peasants. Break down the ideas, social system, and traditional habits of feudal restriction on women in the past thousands of years. We also hope you can collect the experiences of mobilizing women and of women joining the struggle, and report them in land conferences. If there is any typical case, send it to Xinhua Press for reporting". (Archives, C., 1981, P. 47)

Later on, both the Land Law Outline and National Land Conference 40 Central Committee's Directive Concerning Mobilizing Women to Join Land Reform and Concerning Collecting Experiences ofMobilizing Women, See Central Archives, 1981: 47. 106

acknowledged that women had the same rights as men in terms of land ownership and politics. On June 06 1949, the Central Committee issued a directive regarding women's land ownership, saying "admit that men and women have the same right on both a legal and practical level; and protect women's ownership...Nobody, not anywhere, can change this." (Archives, C., 1981, P. 531)

Traditional rural China had been a patriarchal society, "a rigid hierarchy of authority, including families." (Yao, 1983, P. 155) Before the revolution women in rural China held the lowest possible status in society, many patriarchal practices, such as foot binding, selling and buying girls, and concubines still existed. The CCP's policies for "liberating" women in rural areas were aimed at confronting these 'traditions', and received strong support from women. Women, in fact, were objectively not only the first but the greatest beneficiaries of the liberated society; moreover they were also "recognized as a powerful contributing force to social re-construction." (Yao, 1983, p. 156) According to Yao, the rural women were encouraged to be major participants in the Suku movement, which is also confirmed by reports from local bureaus of the CCP during Land Reform.

In their study, Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng find that even in traditional Chinese society where Chinese women were strictly limited by the distinction between the inner (women should stay inside family and house) and the outer (for man, outside and beyond family and house), women could still have influences on the 107

outside in numerous ways. The sharp line between inner and outer "was drawn precisely in order to emphasize the interdependency between the two parts." (Mann & Cheng, 2001, p. 3) Through their readings of texts that were written throughout Chinese history, Mann and Cheng find that though women were of the lowest rank in traditional Chinese society, nonetheless, "even the most homebound womanly practices reached far beyond the domestic sphere and well outside the conventional forms of the family." (Mann & Cheng, 2001, p. 6) That is; women could have a great influence on traditional local society and culture. This 'womanly' influence was found also in the practice of Suku where the CCP expressly recruited and encouraged the prominent participation of women.

2.2 Suku: More Than a Political Instrument The section above focused on the development of Suku as an instrument that was employed by the CCP to pursue various political aims. In this section Suku is analyzed as a historical phenomenon from ancillary perspectives.

A valid and far-reaching examination of Suku cannot be carried out without addressing other historical and political phenomena. If Suku is placed back into the context of the Land Reform Movement and land reform is seen as a historical 108

movement that connected state power to local rural society, it provides a possible perspective to interpret Suku. The perspective still encompasses Suku as a practical political instrument used both for mass mobilization and for constructing/creating a new political identity. A number of scholars have studied the process of "nation building" from this perspective. (Guo, Y. S., Liping. , 2002). Guo and Sun have argued that Suku, as a political instrument, successfully organized, refined and focused the peasant's original suffering and their rationales to explain their suffering. Through this, Suku led the peasants to act beyond the scope of their traditional normal life, and connected it through the raising of class consciousness to nation building. During the process - bringing together Suku, class consciousness, Fanshen and state identity — new people were constructed in the immediacy of their own daily lives.

The revolutionary proclaimed aims Land Reform Movement, of building a new state and constructing new "people", greatly aroused the passions of poor peasants and hired peasants. In the history of China, the protections of private property and the less than egalitarian distribution of land ownership had been the most important cause of various rebellions of peasants. (Thaxton, 1983, p. 1) The CCP's radical land reform policies changed the traditional social and political structure, by, most importantly, dismantling the historical ownership of land. Moreover, the Suku Movement successfully combined the peasants' greatest passion—protection of their own land— with the revolution. From the examination of large number of records and documents it can be determined that it was the practice of Suku which ultimately gave peasants 109

the belief and confidence that joining the PLA and helping the CCP was the best and only way to protect the land they received as a result of the Land Reform Movement.

This perspective shows that we can understand how the CCP used state power to influence the local society, as a means of gaining support for nation-building and simultaneously for constructing the new political identity of the people. This was attempted with a series of political instruments, especially Suku. The essential point to grasp of this perspective can be found in Lifton's work on indoctrination. Lifton describes how the works of confession and re-education were combined to achieve the aim of "thought reform" or, in the blunter term; brainwashing. Lifton says confession and re-education "both bring into play a series of pressures and appeals — intellectual, emotional, and physical — aimed at social control and individual change." (Lifton 1963: 5)

A second context for Suku, which provides another perspective, is that of the local community. Some scholars take an inclusive view of peasant village life in their discussions of the interactions between state and society. (Ying, 2009; Strauch, 1981; Oi, 1989). Oi argues that there are two contrasting models for understanding the relations of state and society in Communist nations. The first one is a totalitarian model which stresses the domination of state power and its influence on society; the works of Friedrich and Brzezinski are representative of this outlook. The second model is called the "interest group model", which places an emphasis on the influence 110

of local identifiable groups on the national state power. In his study, Oi uses the rural peasant village as the embodiment of society in his society-state model which differs from the aforementioned two models, because Oi describes the village politics in China as "clientelist" and chooses a "clientelism model to describe the village politics, especially on the elite-mass linkage." (Oi, 1989, p. 7)

However, from the study of Land Reform, Suku and classification, we find that the relationships between the individual, community and state are more complex than this. The CCP's efforts and experiments to influence by entering the local society were immediately enmeshed and ensnared in the local social and political structures. The local power structures and conditions had a reciprocal influence on the external power, the CCP, and on its ambitions and missions. For example, in her fieldwork in Liuping village, Cheng Xiuying found that all the landlords that had been classified as such during the Land Reform Movement's initial incursion into the village were in fact, not qualified according to the official CCP standard at all. Yet they had been "made" into landlords by their fellow villagers during classification process for various reasons, mostly due to power struggles and rivalries within the local political culture. (Cheng, 1999) Moreover, Guo Jinhua has also pointed out that the 'class' terms that were accepted by peasants were all in accordance with their own pre-revolutionary understanding: The peasants just used their traditional daily life and worldview to interpret the revolutionary terms. (Guo, 2001)

ill

As a result, there were usually many deviations in the execution of the CCP policies from the official party line which, in some situations, caused a serious dilemma for the CCP representatives. For example; the remembrances of Suku speakers were sometimes a combination of simultaneously lamenting past suffering and lauding the "great kindness" of local landlords. (Li, 2000, p. 107). Just two months after the May 4th Directive, in July of 1946, the Jizhong Committee of the CCP issued a new directive clarifying how to carry out the May 4th Directive41, in which the local bureau had already expressed concern about the influence of local social and political structures on their mission: "According to our estimation, some comrades within the Party, because of their personal and family interests, will be reluctant to implement, or even resistant to the May 4 th Directive." (Archives, H. 1990, p. 77).

Later on, Liu Shaoqi, in a letter to the Jinsui party bureau, in 1947, admits his

surprise that, after an investigation, he had found undue influence from the local structures on local cadres and even on the work teams:

"In the Jinchaji area (same as Sui), a large percent of cadres who work at the county levels of government or above are from landlord families, or from rich peasant families. At the subdivision level and village level, most cadres are from middle peasants, and in more than a few places, landlord and rich peasants still occupy the controlling position directly or indirectly.

41

"A Decision from Jizhong Committee of the CCP Concerning Implementing Measures of the May 4th Directive and the CC's Directives", June 28 1946, See Hebei Archives, 1990. Jinan refers to the southern province of Hebei. 112

Poor peasants and hired peasants were major part of the Party in the beginning of the War of Resistance; however, they are only a minor part of the Party now. And they are not influential at all. They are still the most repressed class. Very few local cadres who are from middle and poor peasant families cannot be influenced by landlords or rich peasants within or without the Party. A lot of the military cadres are from landlord and rich families; and many of them married the daughters of landlords. Some of them helped their father-in-law during Land Reform; and there was even an anti-Land Reform Movement in the army. This has already been corrected. In our old base areas, you can hardly find any landlords and rich peasants who don't have any relatives or friends in our cadres. A lot of landlords have dropped their class status with the help of our cadres. They are using our own organization to protect themselves and to repress the masses... the leading organizations have been turning a blind eye to all these situations... in some areas, village cadres split into two or three sects. They are against each other... " (Liu Shaoqi, 1947: 72-73)

Later on, these conditions were acknowledged and addressed in the Central Committee's directives to local bureaus. (Archives, C., 1981: 82) The Central Committee started to worry that the influence of local power structures would undermine the Land Reform Movement and jeopardize the mass mobilization efforts. Despite the revolutionary process, in reality, the peasants at this time were still largely 113

subservient and dependent on clients in their relationship and dealings with state power. And during this process, friction and opposition built up between peasants and the local clients, that is, the local cadres.

Clearly realizing that if the friction became widespread opposition, the CCP would be deprived of the support from the peasant masses, Liu presented the issue to the whole of the Central Committee. The Central Committee's was with the dilemma that if they imposed harsh penalties on the local cadres and "several hundreds of thousands of Party members and cadres" were punished or expelled it too would lead to serious incidents. (Archives, C., 1981, p. 76) The Central Committee chose another method to solve this dilemma: A campaign of 'thought reform' within the Party for its members. In choosing this method the CCP tacitly acknowledged that it had not and could not destroy the whole of the local organizational and power structures as it had loudly and triumphantly claimed.

As Perry has found, the 'emotional' techniques of the CCP included, aside from Suku, also the techniques of "Kong-su" (denunciation), "Piping-ziwo piping" (Criticism and self criticism), "Zheng feng" (rectification) and "Sixiang gaizao" (thought reform). Among those techniques, Suku and Kong-su were applied to the masses, while Zheng feng, Sixiang gaizao, and Piping-ziwo piping were used almost exclusively within the party. (Perry, 2002, pp. 117-118)42 As we can find from the 42

According to Lifton, some techniques, such as Sixiang gaizao, were also used for the purpose of indoctrination and brainwashing of the masses in China after 1949 (Lifton, 1963) 114

research of Crooks and Hinton, even for those techniques that were used within the party, Suku was still at the core of all of them. For those Party cadres who had made mistakes, or came from a "non-people" family, the emotional techniques and procedures, such as criticism and self-criticism, rectification and thought reform, were offered or imposed to "correct their errors and make a fresh star." Lifton also found in his research: "The thought reform process is one means by which non-people are permitted, through a change in attitude and personal character, to make themselves over into people." (Lifton, 1963, p. 433) In the Land Reform movement, besides the techniques that could allow some tainted Party members to change from "non-people" into one of "the people", local bureaus also issued some directives on how to deal with the problems that Liu Shaoqi had discovered. For example, in Jizhong's directive,43 the local bureau asked that "all those Party members who were from landlord and rich peasant families should persuade their families to adopt open mindedness; give their lands to peasants voluntarily. This exemplary behavior will greatly promote the implementation of the May Fourth Directive." (Archives, H., 1990, p. 77) The advice to give away the land "voluntarily" has similarity with the seventh item of Suku practice; "throw off dirty stuff'. All in all, with this comparatively gentle method at course correction, the CCP left some wiggle room for those Party members who were from "non-people" background families, and, more importantly, successfully avoided the potential danger of increasing opposition to the 43 "A Decision from Jizhong Committee of the CCP Concerning Implementing Measures of the May 4111 Directive and the CC's Directives", June 28 1946. See Hebei Archives, 1990. Jinan refers to the southern province of Hebei. 115

Party.

The third perspective worthy of examination here, is that of the relationships directly in-between the peasants and the state. However, this perspective differs from the first one. The art of Suku was applied to peasants directly; meanwhile, the peasants also had their own thoughts on the local politics, community and made their own choices. From this perspective, it would be a disservice to the argument if the peasants were simply categorized as pawns that are controlled, or mobilized, or constructed passively in a large development of history over their heads: The peasants were a homogenous and initiative social group. The community that they lived in made it easy to choose a similar attitude to the neighbors, however, this didn't mean that individually, or as a group, they were easily handled or manipulated. The peasants had their own thoughts, interests, and plans when making their own choices. Ren Daoyuan adopts this perspective when he, from his research, argues that the peasants joined the Suku Movement and strived to excel at the practice of confessional political confession because it offered the rewards of more resources, material and otherwise, and, potentially, of transcending their peasant status and joining the newly formed elite group. (Ren, 2002).

According to Philip C.C. Huang, there are three traditional views of Chinese peasantry in studies from different disciplines. The first tradition, which is represented by western economists, such as Theodore Schultz (1964) and Samuel Popkin (1979), 116

describes the peasant as a kind of capitalist entrepreneur. The second tradition, which is represented by Karl Polanyi (1957), suggests a "substantive" economics "that would stress the social relationships in which economic behavior in premarket societies was 'embedded'." (Huang, 1985, p. 5) The third tradition, which contrasts sharply with the preceding two on both formal and substantive points, is the Marxist tradition, from Karl Marx to Mao Zedong.

In his critically-acclaimed book The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Huang presents a critique of all three traditions: A common tendency in the studies mentioned above is, says Huang, to see the villages as units which are "socially and economically integrated" into larger social and economic systems. At the same time, peasants have "generally been depicted as a single 'peasant class' that transcended villages and acted as one." (Huang, 1985, p. 27) In contrast, Huang attempts to locate the peasants within their own specific village communities and to explore the political function of Chinese villages in the 20th century from this "community"—state perspective. He argues that China's "village-state" relations "were shaped not only by the nature of governmental power, but also by the internal structures of the villages." (Huang, 1985: 32) By showing how the state power interacted with the "indigenous village political organizations" in early and mid 20th century China, Huang notes "how the larger processes of agricultural involution and social differentiation... affected village communities and their relations with the state." (Huang, 1985, p. 32) 117

Although in agreement with Huang that locating the peasants in their local communities facilitates a better understanding, nonetheless, in this discussion we shall also locate the peasants who practiced Suku within another larger process of social and political differentiation: This sees Suku as a natural result of both the historical developments following the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and peasants in the historical transition of the traditional Chinese village into the modern age.

Undoubtedly, the former rural Chinese society was a self-sufficient world with its own socio-political structures and codes. Economic activities were integrated into such structures and the rent relationship was widely accepted to be a representative of the moral code. With land reform, the CCP attempted to destroy the whole system and construct a series of new identities. Although the efforts and experiments were confronted with many difficulties in the beginning, in the end, with the refinement of strategies and political instruments for mass mobilization, the CCP successfully achieved the goal. Suku was not only a political instrument for this campaign. But rather Suku can be described as a result of the ideological development of China that began with the May Fourth Movement of 1919.

The May Fourth movement in 1919 was primarily rooted in a student protest responding with outrage to the Chinese government's signing humiliating treaties with the Allies after World War I: the Treaty of Versailles, and especially the Shandong Problem. This initial protest soon grew into a nation-wide movement that was against 118

not only the imperialist, but also the traditional, Chinese culture; the very social and political system. The broader use of the term "May Fourth Movement" refers to the period from 1915-1921. It is more often, in China, called the New Culture Movement, and it was dominated by some influential scholars and writers who had experienced the Western world or Japan as international students — such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun and Hu Shi. The movement stressed Western ideas of science and democracy, and exercised a broad and deep influence on a new generation of Chinese. As Chow Tse-tsung describes, in such a movement: "Traditional Chinese ethics, customs, literature, history, philosophy, religion, and social and political institutions were fiercely attacked. Liberalism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, anarchism, and many varieties of socialism provided the stimuli. The protest of May 4th marked the pivot of these developments." (Chow, 1967, p. 1) In the May Fourth Movement, intellectuals started to re-examine traditional China from various perspectives. Great efforts were especially made to attack traditional rituals. Lu Xun, perhaps the most famous writer of 20th century China, criticized Confucianism harshly in the guise of a madman in his best known novel, Diary of a Madman that was published in 1918: "You have to really go into something before you can understand it. I seemed to remember, though not too clearly, that from ancient times on people have often been eaten, and so I started leafing through a history book to look it up. There were no dates in this history, but scrawled this way and that across every page were the words BENEVOLENCE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND MORALITY. Since I couldn't get to sleep anyway, I read that history very carefully for most of the night, and finally I began to make out what was written between the lines; the whole volume was 119

filled with a single phrase: EAT PEOPLE!" (Lu Xun, 1990: 32) Later on, Lu Xun points out that this novel was written to "disclose the evil of the kin lineage system and morality." (Lu Xun, 1935) In the description of kin lineage and morality — the same system that Fei described, and which has been discussed here in Chapter I — the characters of rural China become monsters that have been consuming people for the last four thousand years.

The May Fourth Movement and the new ideological development that it brought are keys to understanding the rise of modern China during the mid 20th century, including the Chinese revolution. It gave birth to the CCP — some of the major leaders of the movement were the earliest communists in China, such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, and some of the student protesters became Communists and later on leaders of China's revolution with much influence, such as Qu Qiubai and Zhou Enlai. Many revolutionary modes of thought and projects were first initiated by the May Fourth Movement, such as anti-imperialist and anti-feudal ideological stances.

In the Land Reform Movement, the logic arguments used as a rationale for the actions and campaigns seems, at a glance, to have been lifted straight from the satirical logic and premise of Lu Xun book: Describing the traditional morality as "eating people" in the process of Suku. The traditional rural society, including its power structure, social ranks, kin lineage and morality, became a difficult problem for the CCP to solve. The traditional relationships between landlords and peasants, the 120

logic and language of them, as Fei Xiaotong described above, were actually "drawn from Confucian doctrine". Thaxton concludes: "The Confucian ethos to which the agrarian elite subscribed expressed the unshakable conviction that peasants were dependent on its benevolence for their livelihood. The land-owning patriarchs and the officials who drew on this logic as they dispensed goods to the village people quite naturally praised themselves as superior, while relegating peasants to a subordinate species." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 16) Such a relationship is not only economic or political, but also moral: The Confucian moral code. In land reform, the CCP's effort through Suku mainly focused on the problem of over-turning this traditional moral code. Especially in their efforts towards "liberating" women this aim can be seen.

With various techniques, the CCP tried to instill another morality, or moral code, to erect it against the traditional Confucian morality. Ironically, some leading figures of the CCP actually began their political careers expressly because of the immoral landlords' betrayal of the Confucian moral value system, as Thaxton wrote: "By the late 1920s, the adolescent peasant had come to know the kind of landlord who had broken many promises to his father and grandfathers, regardless of their work performance, and not a few of these rural youths will reappear in later pages as members of the CCP in the border region." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 37)

This dichotomy provides some clues to understanding Suku and the revolution in China. If Suku narratives are closely examined we see that the thrust of the stories are, 121

of course, about their sufferings, their pain, anger and outrage. And then, too, we see the apparent source for the expression of angry outrage among the peasants. But we also find that actually the content of Suku implies the same traditional angry feelings of the peasants towards immoral landlordism ~ which is anger at the landlords' betrayal of the traditional Confucian values.

It is here that the ideology carried forward from the May Fourth Movement was confronted with another form of historical development: The modern transition of Chinese villages and rural society. In such a transition "the development of immoral landlordism threatened the shared resources of whole villages." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 42) These shared resources included both natural resources and moral resources. From this perspective, Suku, as a practice pitted against the traditional system, was actually borrowing and building upon the emotional resources which came from the value of Confucianism: Peasants' outrage and sense of loss was twofold; outrage at their past sufferings mixed with outrage at the loss of their treasured Confucian moral code, and both sufferings were attributed to the immorality of the landlords.

This behavior during Suku not only gave voice, literally, to political expression that was against the traditional Confucian morality code and the socio-political system, but was also an expression of feelings that implied a disappointment of the tradition in the name of revolution. And even the practical method of Suku was used to express communal feelings towards traditional society. Many scholars have already 122

determined that there was a size correlation for struggle meetings, which was a key in determining the success rate of the mobilization effort. That is why collective confession is important: "When only a few dozen people were present, the mass worker usually found little response to emotional charges against a target, but, in an agitated group of hundreds or thousands, peasants soon forget their vulnerability... and acted like totally different people. They became bold and aggressive." (Chen, 1986, p. 187) Other researchers also found the size of a meeting could change the emotion of the mass. (Hinton, 1966; Crook and Crook, 1979; Shue, 1980; Siu, 1989) The community feelings that Fei has described could provide a good explanation: Peasants could feel comfortable only in their community, and in that they found it easy to draw the same conclusion, and share the same feelings with one another, not only toward suffering, but also toward "class enemies."

The CCP aspired to dismantle the old Confucian moral code and ritualistic system and taught its ideological value system as a revolutionary new moral and value system. This combined aspects of old morality; virtuousness, the good or sanctity, with values connected to the means of production and the relationship to production. In the practice of the Suku Movement, for example, this involved having the peasants reflect on their daily activities which they took for granted, and grappling to understand and accept the revolutionary component of the code. Another area, addressed above, was a re-alignment of policy towards the place of women in society, and associated moral and value codes. 123

However, in this effort, as well as in all of the other revolutionary campaigns, the CCP didn't take its legitimacy from an interpretation of Marxism or Leninism, but tapped the common traditional values that the peasants shared. The CCP even cautiously rectified the "tendency of its cadres to replace the hegemony of the defunct 'Confucian shop' with their own Communist Weltanschauung." (Schurmann, 1966: 24) So although some "thought" categories, such as class, were taken from Marxist theory, the emotional values such as antipathy toward landlords and sympathy toward communal sufferings44 were not at all new for the peasants.

In examining the process now, in retrospect, it is evident that the CCP, instead of the KMT, could draw on deep support from the peasants, less evident but equally true is: this was a clear choice made by the peasant. And this too strengthens the perspective that Suku was never only a mono-directional manipulative process of mass mobilization.

44 The prescriptive doctrine of showing sympathy toward the suffering of other people is found quite often in the classic texts of Confucianism, such as Mencius. 124

Chapter III: On Social Neurosis

"If the development of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity to the development of the individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilization - possibly the whole of mankind-have become 'neurotic'? " -Sigmund Freud, 1930/1985: 338

125

"Freud's meta-psychology is an ever-renewed attempt to uncover, and to question, the terrible necessity of the inner connection between civilization and barbarism, progress and suffering, freedom and unhappiness - a connection which reveals itself ultimately as that between Eros and Thanatos. " Herbert Marcuse, 1955: 17

Following the Suku topic in the first chapter, the focus of this and the following chapter is on two fundamental forms of human suffering: which will be termed as 'normal' and 'abnormal' suffering. In this chapter, concerned with normal suffering, and

building

on

the

foundation

of

Freud's

classical

psychoanalysis,

a

psychoanalytical-sociological framework is constructed for the definition and understanding of existential hardship and suffering in normal daily life. We will begin with the introduction and interpretation of Freud's development of "social neurosis", and to ascertain its relevance to a discussion of Suku. Neurosis is an important conception for Freud as he says that "theory of the neuroses is psychoanalysis itself' (Freud, Strachey, & Richards, 1991, p. 426) And Freud's main concern about neurosis is to "point up the psychogenic mechanism in a whole series of disorders". (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1974, p. 268) What makes Freud's work different from Charcot was that he finds the meanings of symptoms are not only clinical but also historical: they are related with patients' experience and lives. From this perspective, Freud's discussion of neurosis is an exploring work of understanding basic psycho-mechanism of modern 126

human beings. Such a disease, for Freud, could break through the secret ordinary life that had been taken for granted in intellectual world. The theory of social neurosis here will be applied not only to further the understanding of Suku and rituals of political confession, which contain both sociological and psychological dimensions, but also to postulate a theory of the difficult plight of the individual in a modern state. To prepare the ground work for this, the examination will be moved to Marcuse's diagnosis of modern society before concluding in a discussion of both Freud and Marcuse as it relates to both the practice and the history of Suku in modern China.

3.1 Freud's Human Disease Freud denotes neurosis as the central term of psychoanalysis, but how to understand neurosis? Freud developed four main determining factors to answer this question, which will be discussed here in a chronological manner.

Following a few early exploratory works, Freud's first major discussion on neurosis was published in 1895, in which he discussed the 'anxiety neurosis' in order to differentiate a specific aspect of it from neurasthenia that had been the cause for some confusion in the field. As his editor at the time has noted, at the stage when Freud wrote this paper, he had not yet adopted the concept of the unconscious. Along with his discussions on clinical symptomatology and the incidence and aetiology of anxiety neurosis, Freud emphasized the importance of considering sexual factors for 127

understanding anxiety neurosis, (Freud, Strachey, & Richards, 1979, p. 50) though he directly addressed only a distinction to be made between 'somatic sexual excitation' and 'sexual libido, or psychical desire'. At this time, 1895, Freud had already determined the mechanism of anxiety neurosis "is to be looked for in a deflection of somatic sexual excitation from the psychical sphere and in a consequent abnormal employment of that excitation." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 50) From this understanding of the anxiety neurosis mechanism, Freud was already moving in the direction of his later theoretical framework which found a similar mechanism between ego instinct and sexual instinct. The similarities in the theoretical structure emerged when Freud made a fundamental distinction between the nervous system and excitations: "In the neurosis, the nervous system is reacting against a source of excitation which is internal, whereas in the corresponding affect it is reacting against an analogous source of excitation which is external." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 60)

Freud's early discussions on anxiety neurosis took into consideration both symptomatology and aetiological conditions. Freud examined anxiety neurosis from a dualistic perspective: "Anxiety neurosis is actually the somatic counterpart to hysteria." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 63) Later on, in 1906, Freud applied the concept of multiple 'hysterical neuroses', and categorized anxiety as one of those neuroses. By that time, he had already determined the importance of sexual factors both in neurosis and repression. In the first of his Three Essays, Freud wrote, "all my experience shows that these psychoneuroses are based on sexual instinctual forces." (Freud, 128

Richards, & Strachey, 1977, p. 77). Freud introduced this discovery from a dual perspective of both life-history and life world. On the one hand, Freud recognized that the "trivial sexual experiences of early childhood" might be the cause of a "life-long" hysterical neurosis; on the other hand, he also recognized the potential for conflict between a normal society and a personal private sexuality. Both would become major themes in his later discussions of civilization and neurosis.

Freud's was convinced of a clinical relationship between abnormal (infantile) sexuality and neurosis. The two most important positioning markers he was insisting upon were sexuality and infantilism. In the mid-1910's, in introductory lectures on psychoanalysis, Freud constructed his own theoretical system of neurosis according to his study and examination of 'transference neuroses', which included anxiety hysteria, conversion hysteria and obsessional neurosis. In this effort, Freud deduced an initial interpretation for neurotic symptoms: "Neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual satisfactions." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 342) Furthermore, Freud emphasized the importance of the infantile period by tracing the roots of abnormal sexuality, namely perversion, to infantile sexuality: "Perverse sexuality is nothing else than a magnified infantile sexuality split up into its separate impulses."

(Freud, et al., 1991, p. 352)

Both perverse and normal sexuality are developed from infantile sexuality. However, in this comparison, Freud showed how perverse impulses are different from those of normal sexual life in which normal sexuality is expressed. Originating from the prehistory state of the human body, normal sexuality develops to a matured, regulated 129

state by "weeding out certain features of that material as unserviceable and collecting together the rest." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 365). Normal sexuality refers specifically to that conduct and expression of sexuality which subordinates itself to a new and socially recognized aim: reproduction.

In the early 1910's, Freud started to reference the term libido in describing neurosis. (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 119). In the aforementioned lectures, libido was introduced as a key term for understanding sexuality and hence neurosis. Freud's use of libido contains the nature of a life-history. Sexual life, which is the libidinal function, according to Freud, will pass through a series of periods in conjunction with the growth and maturation of the individual. Ultimately it becomes a socially recognized function: "The turning point of this development is the subordination of all the component sexual instincts under the primacy of the genitals and, along with this, the subjection of sexuality to the reproductive function." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 371). During this early development, the relations between "the component sexual instincts" and "their object" bring out in the individual his first psychical repression, which is also the origin of an initial Oedipus complex: The child's mother becomes his love-object. For Freud, although examining the Oedipus complex is first and foremost important for understanding the sense of guilt which happens frequently in neurosis, it is also a valuable clinical subject for understanding the normal individual, the origins of societal structure and furthermore for grasping the internal logic of society: "Mankind as a whole may have acquired its sense of guilt, the ultimate source 130

of religion and morality, at the beginning of its history, in connection with the Oedipus complex." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 375) Thus not only the individual, but also the whole of mankind cannot escape its destiny of being subjected to suffering normal suffering — as a condition of the human condition, so to speak,

In his theory of libido, Freud postulates four factors for understanding neurosis. The first factor is that people "are deprived of the possibility of satisfying their libido." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 389) This is the "frustration" factor giving rise to neurosis. The subject can't find his/her satisfaction in the external world and there is no alternative or substitute internally. The libido is pent up and the individual is confronted with the experience of this tension. From this perspective, the symptoms of neurosis are a substitute for "frustrated satisfaction" and the neurotic symptoms will accumulate historical dimensions in the life of the patient. This is what Freud means when he says that the meaning of a symptom lies "in some connection with the patient's experience" and hence has a connection with his life story and history. This is also a factor of recognizing the normal mechanism. Aside from transforming psychical tension into active energy, a second approach to remaining healthy when afflicted with libidinal frustration can be done "by renouncing libidinal satisfaction, sublimating the dammed-up libido and turning it to the attainment of aims which are no longer erotic and which escape frustration." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 120). However, being healthy does not mean there will be no suffering for the individual: both approaches to being healthy are fraught with tension. 131

The second factor for understanding neurosis is also related with libido: "Fixation of the libido which forces it into particular directions." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 397). The libidinal fixation is primarily understood as traumatic. Traumatic fixation means an individual is unable to deal with an "excessively powerful" experience; this aspect brings a first dimension of routine daily life into Freud's understanding of neurosis although this, by itself, is not enough. With the help of Breuer's research, Freud demonstrated that the meanings of symptoms lie in unconscious mental processes. Moreover, "there is an inseparable relation between this fact of the symptoms being unconscious and the possibility of their existing." (Freud, et al., 1991). Freud finds from his clinical work that a patient's symptoms are functioning as substitutes of something which had not happened in his/her past: The constructional power of symptoms comes from the unconscious. Both of the two "senses" of a symptom which Freud found were related with the unconscious: it's 'whence' and it's 'wither'. The whence of a symptom refers to impressions from the outside, the external, which had been, at some point, conscious but may have become unconscious "through forgetting." The wither of a symptom refers to the internal mental processes arising from the whence, that used to be conscious but also became unconscious. This can explain why Freud strived in his practical work to "make conscious everything that is pathogenically unconscious." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 323) But that is not an easy task, because such efforts in psychoanalytic treatment are met with powerful opposition from a censorship mechanism between the unconscious and the 132

preconscious. This pathogenic process which demonstrates censorship, opposition and resistance was named by Freud: repression.

The ego's successful defense mechanism - repression — will expel those "intolerable experiences" into the unconscious, where they can still be dynamic and find a way "back into consciousness by means of symptoms and the affects attaching to them." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 77) For Freud, the repressions of specific experiences now became a way of making a distinction between the normal and the abnormal individual. And also, by applying the concept of repression, Freud could make distinctions between health (normal), perversion (abnormal) and neurosis. For Freud, the healthy person, or normality, is "a result of the repression of certain component instincts and constituents of the infantile disposition and of the subordination of the remaining constituents under the primacy of the genital zones in the service of the reproductive function." Whereas perversions are "disturbances of this coalescence owing to the overpowering and compulsive development of certain of the component instincts." Finally, as the negation of perversions, neuroses "can be traced back to an excessive repression of the libidinal trends." (Freud, et al., 1979, pp. 78-79).

In his lectures, Freud divided the fixation of the libido into two parts: The inherited constitution and the disposition acquired in early childhood." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 408). In his Three Essays, Freud diagnosed perverse, repression and sublimation as three results of constitution. By 1905, when he wrote the Three Essays, 133

Freud could draw his map of neurosis causation: Causation of Neurosis= Disposition due to Fixation + Accidental [Adult] experience of Libido

(Traumatic)

Constitution

Sexual Infantile Experience (Prehistoric Experience)

(Freud, 1991, p. 408)

The third factor for understanding neurosis is "the tendency to conflict". Conflict here refers to psychical conflict between the ego instinct and the sexual instinct. This factor is based on Freud's distinction between ego-instincts and sexual instincts. First, the concept of repression helped Freud to delineate the relationship between the two instincts. If libido fixates at a particular point in its development, the ego may accept it, and the result will be perverse or infantile; but the ego may also reject it, and then "the ego experiences a repression where the libido has experienced a fixation." Neurosis arises from the development of ego "which rejects these libidinal impulses." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 397). Secondly, each instinct has its own path of development and each has its own relationship with the principle reality. Finally, Freud found that sexual instincts are the easier triggers of anxiety than ego-instincts. 134

There are always some instincts from sexual trends which rejected by the ego. With the determination of this factor, Freud made a further step towards establishing a comprehensive mechanism of neurosis: The direct cause of neurosis is not sexuality, but the conflict with sexuality. Later in that lecture series, in his study of narcissism, Freud demonstrated his insight into the structure of the ego and furthermore developed his topography of the individual's soul - the id, ego, and super-ego. Then in the 1920's, Freud began describing the mechanism in terms of the relationships between the id, ego and super-ego. Neurosis, he argued, is the result of conflict between ego and id. Ego undertakes this conflict with id "in the service of the super-ego and of reality; and this is the state of affairs in every transference neurosis." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 214)

This dynamic view was still not sufficient for completely understanding neurosis. So, finally, Freud introduced an economic dimension. The conflict between ego instincts and sexual instincts will not result in conflict if they don't reach certain intensities: The quantitative factor is just as decisive as the dynamic dimension. At this point, Freud introduced the concept of sublimation. The likelihood of neurosis also depends on "what quota of unemployed libido a person is able to hold in suspension and how large a fraction of his libido he is able to divert from sexual to sublimated aims." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 422) This dimension is also related to the ultimate aim of mental activity. If we concur with Freud that mental activity should pursue pleasure and avoid un-pleasure, then this is a necessary perspective for 135

understanding not only neurosis, but also the regulatory psyche mechanism: Maintaining the appropriate amounts of excitation in order to limit their accumulation which creates un-pleasure. Freud argued for the addition of the economic perspective based on two theories of psychoanalysis: "First, the thesis that the neuroses are derived from the conflict between the ego and the libido, and secondly, the discovery that there is no qualitative distinction between the determinants of health and those of neurosis, and that, on the contrary, healthy people have to contend with the same tasks of mastering their libido - they have simply succeeded better in them." (Freud, et al., 1979, p. 126)

3.2 From Civilized Sexuality to a Disease of Civilization In addition to the four factors for understanding neurotic psyche-mechanism and thence the normal psyche-mechanism, Freud's discussions on neurosis focused on relations between the individual and the collective level, the latter of which included both groups and civilization. Freud's patients were given more than clinical care because a unique character of his methodology was that he extended his approach beyond medical treatment, by applying his diagnoses and prescriptive healing to the collective daily suffering of society as well as to the narrative life histories of his patients. Stemming from this approach, Freud's study and research on neurosis had already foreshadowed and developed tangible results which emerged in his civilization diagnoses. For Freud, civilization first meant "the knowledge and capacity 136

that men have acquired in order to control the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction of human needs", and second, "all the regulations necessary in order to adjust the relations of men to one another and especially the distribution of the available wealth" (Freud, 1985: 184), including "mental assets of civilization" (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 189)

In his earlier discussion on civilization, Freud's first concern lay in the conflicts between civilized life and individual sexuality. The antagonism between man and civilization plays a major part in his theories of civilization. In Freud's view, neurosis attacked modern subject so pervasively that it has already become the disease of modernity. In other words, pervasive neurotic suffering was part and parcel of the normal individual's daily life and existence, and as such, also the destiny of society as a whole. Freud saw the most important etiological factor of this disease in civilization's suppression of sexual life on civilized people "through the 'civilized' sexual morality prevalent in them." (Freud & Dickson, 1985).

Freud's discussions on civilization are not only concerned with the history of human society, but also with personal life histories. In addition to the point of conflict between the id and ego, (which is subservient to the super-ego that is representative of external society), the aspect of infantile sexuality also plays a role in their relationships within a broader cultural and social context. In his research, Freud found that from the sixth to the eighth year of life, children will go through a period of 137

latency. This is a period of "halt and retrogression in sexual development" in which the individual (child) meets the regulating power of society, and through forgetting, as a mechanism, "veils our earliest youth from us and makes us strangers to it." (Freud, et al., 1991, p. 368).

The development of sexual instincts will progress through those periods "from auto-eroticism to object-love and from the autonomy of the erotogenic zones to their sub-ordination under the primacy of the genitals, which are put at the service of reproduction." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 40). Along with these periods of suffering, the individual matures. Besides the goal of reproduction and perversions, as mentioned in the previous section, one of the individual self-protective processes which gains "special cultural significance" is sublimation. For Freud, sublimation is an essential social phenomenon which mirrors the dual mechanism between the individual and civilization. Civilization has been built on the suppression of individual sexual instincts. And the individual has developed the ability to adapt and change his/her sexual aims from one which is unacceptable and suppressed by civilization/society to another one which is "no longer sexual but which is psychically related to the first aim." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 39). Sublimation is therefore not only a relief mechanism, or psycho-catharsis, for the individual, but it also plays a role in the repressive mechanism of society and civilization

Generally, there are three stages of civilization in personal life history: 138

"A first one, in which the sexual instinct may be freely exercised without regard to the aims of reproduction; a second, in which all of the sexual instinct is suppressed except what serves the aims of reproduction; and a third, in which only legitimate reproduction is allowed as a sexual aim. This third stage is reflected in our present-day 'civilized'sexual morality."

(Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 41)

One of the outcomes of suppression by civilization of the individual is psychoneuroses. Neurosis works as a way of frustrating the civilization's regulation, and functions as a representative of suppressed mental forces that are hostile and disallowed by civilization. That's why Freud describes neurosis as the "negative" of the perversion. Perversions and neuroses have a relationship of "positive and negative" because neuroses could make perverse impulses possible to "manifest" themselves, rising from the unconscious.

From the neurotic perspective, civilization's demands of sexuality on every social individual is an "injustice" since not everybody can conform to the regulations without difficulty, that is, without paying the price of more or less (neurotic) pain and suffering. The second stage is the origin of existential suffering in normal daily life. And the third stage, which limits the sexuality within marriage, can also barely maintain a "normal" or "healthy" condition due to the restrictions of the civilized sexual morality. Under such circumstances, it is hard to avoid occurrences of neurotic illness among husbands and wives, but also among the children. It is in an essay on 139

this subject, which was first published in 1908, that we can find Freud's reflections on the state of marriage and morality, and in which he is a strong advocate for liberal reforms. (Freud & Dickson, 1985, pp. 54-55)

In his later works on civilization, Freud's diagnosis of human society becomes much more pessimistic. In his work Civilization and its Discontents, neurosis got its basic pattern even before the primal horde. In his Totem and Taboo, Freud describes the transformation from the primal family, which didn't have to contend with the essential characteristics of civilization, in primitive communal life "in the form of bands of brothers." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 290) During such a transformation, the primitive people were confronted with their first law: The observance of taboos. Taboo is defined as everything that is recognized as "the vehicle or source" of a mysterious attribute which "can be conveyed by them through the medium of inanimate objects." (Freud, 1960, p. 20) It also indicates the prohibition which arises from the initial mysterious attribute. "And finally, it has a connotation which includes alike 'sacred' and 'above the ordinary', as well as 'dangerous', 'unclean' and 'uncanny'." (Freud, 1960, p. 22) These three attributes give taboo its essential character echoed in modem-day touching phobia. Freud later extended this to a principle of prohibition and as the nucleus of 'taboo neurosis'.

In the same transformation process from primitive family to communal life, two fundamental principles became the basic drives for the development of 140

civilization: Eros, which means the power of love and "made the man unwilling to be deprived of his sexual object - the woman"; and 'Ananke', which describes the compulsion to work, and is "created by external necessity." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 290) Along with the two fundamental principles, the desire stemming from sexuality of breaking laws are responsible for the emergence of the classical Oedipus complex. For Freud, the Oedipus complex is "regarded as the root of all neurosis." (Brown, 1985, p. 6) Oedipus complex doesn't just develop within a family, but also in the primal horde. For Freud, it is love relationships (or emotional ties) which "constitute the essence of the group mind" and hence characterize a group. And the essence of this emotional tie lies in the relationships between the mass and their leader: Another Oedipal Myth.

In his study of Group Psychology, Freud clearly points out that libido is the concept that he uses to analyze group psycho-neuroses. (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 119) From this perspective, love relationships and emotional ties, become "the essence of the group mind," and suggestibility is another fundamental characteristic that cannot be neglected. (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 120)

According to Freud, there are usually two kinds of "libidinal ties" in any organized group: "On the one hand to the leader, and on the other hand to the other members of the group." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, pp. 124-125). And following from these ties, Freud constructs a meaning for the identification of an individual in any 141

given group. In his definition, Freud includes the common Oedipal bond that all members share to a leader or a common authority; the mutual identification and the connection between them. (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 137) In such group conditions the mass or common members, who can also be termed as brothers, first demand equal status among themselves. Yet they will still thirst for authority that is "superior to them all" - though it's a love-hate relationship at the same time. (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 153).

However, when we extend the discussion from of the group level out to the greater society, the situation becomes more complicated. Based on his study of Oedipus complex, Freud formulates a classic sociological question regarding society: The possibility of inter-subjectivity. Freud questions the famous biblical injunction, which was first articulated in Leviticus 19:18 and later elaborated on in Christian teachings: 'Love thy neighbor as thy neighbor loves thee'. Freud, playing devil's advocate, asks: How could I love my neighbor if he is a stranger? Would it be fair for my family if I gave a stranger the same love as I give to my family? Moreover, "not merely is this stranger in general unworthy of my love; I must honestly confess that he has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 300) Thus Freud postulates the inherent aggressive nature of man. Which, in turn, is why Rieff says that Freud finds the "permanently unsocial natural man" and stands with Hobbes: "Not that man is good and society corrupts him, but that man is anarchic and society restrains him." (Rieff, 1959, p. 221) Although this portrays only one 142

aspect of Freud's postulation, we can however extrapolate from it that the wish of man to violate laws has already extended from the family to the society.

The desire to violate laws - that is, the Oedipus complex - remain buried in the unconscious and repressed in obedience. Civilization, of course, has long since constructed mechanisms to prohibit and suppress these desires. With his classical Oedipus myth, "Freud sets up a dialectic whereby the self craves its own restriction. Antinomian feelings automatically give rise to compensating self-reproaches, and these in turn to that 'renunciation of a possession or a liberty' psychologically experienced as repression and publicly objectified as taboo or law." (Rieff, 1959, p. 226) From here Freud's discussion of taboo draws a historical prototype of repression, and hence the constitution of a sociological dialectic structure of civilization between oppression and rebellion.

The tie of repression and rebellion brings with it feelings of anxiety, guilt and conscience. Libido will turn into anxiety when it suffers repression. Meanwhile, the unconscious' need for punishment emerges and behaves as part of conscience. "Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us. The stress is, however, upon the fact that this rejection has no need to appeal to anything else for support, that it is quite 'certain of itself. This is even clearer in the case of consciousness of guilt - the perception of internal condemnation of an act by which we have carried out a particular wish." (Freud, 1960, p. 68) In 143

addition, the relationship between conscience and guilt, which Freud also deduced from neuroses is that "a sense of guilt has about it much of the nature of anxiety." (Freud, 1960, p. 69).

Society thus developed its nature of oppression, while the individual developed his/her potential for neurosis. From his early period to his later period, Freud used different conceptions to describe neurosis; however, the fundamental mechanism is found in the conflict between libido instincts and ego instincts (interest of self-preservation). In such conflicts "the ego had been victorious but at the price of severe sufferings and renunciations." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 309) The study of neurosis, we can say, provides an understanding of the development of both civilization and the individual for Freud. Neurosis is representative of social and socio-individual structure and is a model for interpreting modern subjectivity.

Along with the development of civilization and the rise of science, human beings also transitioned into modern society. The more developed the technology and the higher the civilization was, the further the human beings considered themselves from the uncivilized "barbarians". Freud's discussions imply the same hypothesis as Norbert Elias: It is a form of dualism in the development of civilization, such as clean and dirty, civility and barbaric. Such dualism also exists in the relationship between a civilized adult and a growing child. As Freud says, the "similarity between the process of civilization and the libidinal development of the individual" (Freud & Dickson, 144

1985, p. 286) is reflected in the importance of discipline, order and cleanliness for civilization.

However, for Freud, the fundamental mechanism of conflict between ego instincts and libidinal instincts still exists, and modern people are not happier than their ancestors. Freud uses the antagonism between the pleasure principle and the reality principle to demonstrate the suffering endured by the modern individual. In his Civilization and its Discontents, Freud says that there are three sources of our modern sufferings: "The superior power of nature, the feebleness of our own bodies, and the inadequacy of the regulations which adjust the mutual relationships of human beings in the family, the state and society." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 274). Civilization encompasses not only the achievements of human beings (such as modern science and technology), but also the regulations of modern society because civilization has two functions: To protect the people and to adjust their mutual relationships. Among the three sources, the third one can be seen perhaps as the most 'astonishing' deduction; this is because regulations are supposed and assumed to play a positive role in modern society. But for Freud, modern man develops neurosis mostly because he cannot cope adequately with the frustrations stemming from the demands made by society "in the service of its cultural ideals." The ideal aim of civilization argues Freud, is to serve the Eros from a social perspective: 'To combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 313). Now Freud's conceptual civilization 145

contains a dualism. Civilization comes from the struggle between Eros (procreative instinct for life) and Death (aggressive instinct, or the instinct of destruction): "This struggle is what all life essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization may therefore be simply described as the struggle for life of human species." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 314)

This ideal means that the individual is subjected to more regulations and disciplining of his/her sexuality and aggressiveness with the progressive development of civilization. This is not only the third source, according to Freud, of modern existential suffering, but it also the origin of modern individual neurosis: "Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 306) However, it does not follow that neurosis stems from "the peculiar strains and complexity of modern civilization". Neurosis is not the result of influences from society on the individual, but the consequence of conflicts between the society and the individual. Although modern civilization may provide a key for understanding neurosis, it is not a key to unlocking and freeing the individual: "The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 284)

Whether as a social mechanism, or as a system of behavioral norms, civilization can't handle the problems between society and the individual adequately. Thus the natural aggressiveness of man is internalized and "sent back to where it 146

came from - that is, it is directed towards his own ego." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 315). In this tension between super-ego and ego Freud sees the "sense of guilt" as well as a need for punishment. This is one manner that civilization exhibits control of the individual's aggressiveness. And this is also the way for Freud to penetrate the deeper structures of group psychology when he finds "the double kind of tie" which made it possible for him to make a distinction between the ego and the ego ideal by: "identification and putting the object in the place of the ego ideal." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 162) Civilization exerts control in both its history of development and in any individual life history. Guilty feelings come from "bad" behaviors or intentions. What is bad? Freud argues that in the beginning the bad is "whatever causes one to be threatened with loss of love", since love provides protection from powerful authority. Whether it has already occurred, or is just an intention, the danger of losing love from authority always causes "social anxiety." Since the authority has already been internalized as super-ego, social anxiety then becomes a general state of mind in modern society or in a modern group. With the establishment of super-ego, Freud established a link between the phenomenon of conscience with the sense of guilt. As discussed above, the sense of guilt doesn't only come from the tension between the ego and super-ego, but also from the tension between ego instincts and libidinal instincts. Thus Freud finds two origins of the sense of guilt: "One arising from fear of an authority, and the other, later on, arising from fear of the super-ego. The first insists upon a renunciation of instinctual satisfactions; the second, as well as doing this, 147

presses for punishment, since the continuance of the forbidden wishes cannot be concealed from the super-ego." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 319). For any individual, civilization of body means powerful control of both libido instincts and aggressiveness. Super-ego thus "torments the sinful ego with the same feeling of anxiety and is on the watch for opportunities of getting it punished by the external world." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 318). The sense of guilt then goes back to Oedipus complex and ego finds no way to get rid of it: "This conflict is set going as soon as men are faced with the task of living together." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, p. 325) Modern society thus plays the role of father and acts oppressive. Everybody becomes neurotic. This is why Norman Brown speaks of "a disease called man.": "Neurosis is an essential consequence of civilization or culture." (Brown, 1985, p. 10). Though it may be inevitable, such a process is not peaceful: It is fraught with challenges and demands from the individual to the civilization and the very nature of social neurosis is found in this dynamic.

Furthermore, the challenges doesn't only emanate from the individual. We can find similar situations in what Freud calls "cultural frustration". Freud believes that "this 'cultural frustration' dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings." (Freud & Dickson, 1985, pp. 286-287) Cultural frustration is a potential area of analysis for a better understanding of social neurosis. By the end of his Civilization and its Discontents, Freud contends that if we can aptly apply neurotic analysis to the relationships between civilization and the individual; why not, by 148

extrapolation, apply neurotic analysis to the relationships between a part of civilization and the whole of civilization or society. Could neurosis become a diagnostic tool for understanding civilization itself?

"If the development of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity to the development of the individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilization - possibly the whole of mankind - have become 'neurotic'?"

(Freud & Dickson,

1985, p. 338)

Freud believes this is possible as long as we recognize the difficulties within such analysis. He defined the conflicts between the individual and "normal" society as individual neurosis. However, it's difficult to find similar conflicts between parts of a civilization and the civilization as a whole, and it's also hard to find such authority which a normal society could represent.

Freud was confronted with such difficulties because he didn't consider the complex development of civilization within a modern society. His social neurosis is actually a Kultur neurosis45. If we adopt the distinction between "culture" and "civilization" in modern German intellectual life which has been made by Norbert Elias, then Freud even scorned the distinction between culture and civilization. 45

See Albeit Dickson's note for Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. In Freud, 1985:182. 149

(Brenkman, 1987, p. 141) Although this attitude indicates the degree to which Freud considered relationships between culture and daily life, it also shows his lack of historical specification, his inability to consider the social and historical nature of the reality principle, and the complexity of modem capitalist society and its interactions with the individual. For these reasons Schneider makes his criticism that Freud could only find foundation for his "etiology of neurosis" within the private family and could not reflect on the relationships between family and "certain forms of production." (Schneider, 1975, p. 159) Furthermore, John Brenkman denies Freud's competence to perform social analysis because he failed to examine the relationship between the individual and modern capitalist society: "Freud's failure to grasp the specific way in which the capitalist mode of production constructs the 'self-preservative instinct'has consequences on several levels. It causes him constantly to shift ground in his formulations regarding the sexual instincts and the ego-instincts; it stamps his various reflections on society and history with the kind of anachronistic projections that preclude any truly social and historical problematic. Finally, the failure to recognize that self-preservation is not an instinct at all, but rather a socially determined, practical relation of human beings to reality, causes Freud to take refuge in biological concepts whenever the purely psychological description of subjectivity founders, rather than seeing in the ambivalences and impasses of psychological theory the need for a social theory adequate to the discoveries of psychoanalysis itself" (Brenkman, 1987, p. 178). Moreover, Freud couldn't develop a comparative theory on the differences between traditional society and modern society. Although he recognized the importance of science for modern society, and even recognized the disability of

150

science to answer meaningful questions concerning the modern individual46, Freud's efforts in this regard were essentially fruitless and less than illuminating because he didn't conduct his examination against the background of modern society. In this regard, the efforts of the Frankfurt School and other Freudian-Marxist discussions have done more valuable work which has opened a space for us to contemplate the combination of the psychoanalytic and Marxist traditions.

3.3 Marcuse's Social Oedipus Although Marxist commentaries on Freud were dismayed by the lack of a social-historical dimension, as discussed above (Brenkman, 1987, p. 142), they soon found a way negotiate Freud through social analysis, which is largely focused on modern capitalist society and the middle class. In this section, in order to prepare the groundwork for the theoretical discussion of

Suku in the subsequent section, the

focus here is not on points concerning modern capitalism, but rather on how the theorists, most specifically Marcuse, developed their analyses.

Through his critical analysis of modern advanced capitalism, Marcuse deduces a different form of domination from that found in Freud's work. Thus the story of Oedipus also acquires a different face. 46

Such as he argues that although science has made modern human beings "omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods", and he even becomes "a god himself', but "those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times" (Freud, 1985, p. 280). 151

In the primal horde, basic conditions lead to a sort of order that is established by "patriarchal despotism". The relationship between a father and his sons has a love-hate nature. Through both emotions, of love and hatred, the secret identification of the son is, of course, to his father, a father with his own "historical rights". And as for the political structure, Marcuse explains: "This hierarchical division of pleasure was 'justified' by protection, security, and even love: because the despot was the father, the hatred with which his subjects regarded him must from the beginning have been accompanied by a biological affection - ambivalent emotions which were expressed in the wish to replace and to imitate the father, to identify oneself with him, with his pleasure as well as with his power. The father establishes domination in his own interest, but in doing so he is justified by his age, by his biological function, and (most of all) by his success: he creates that 'order' without which the group would immediately dissolve. In this role, the primal father foreshadows the subsequent domineering father-images under which civilization progressed. In his person and junction, he incorporates the inner logic and necessity of the reality principle itself. He has 'historical rights "' (Marcuse, 1955, p. 56). In such a condition, the hatred "culminates in the rebellion of the exiled sons". This hatred is toward the father: Not only toward his governing, but also toward his "taboo on the women of the horde" (Marcuse, 1955, p 57) Marcuse believes that such rebellion is only a rebellion toward the specific man, and there is no element in this rebellion directed toward the system: "No 'social' protest against the unequal division of pleasure is involved." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 57) What the rebellious sons want is just the same as their father: "Lasting satisfaction of their needs." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 58) And such a rebellion presupposes its own feeling of guilt: "The assassination of the father is the supreme crime because the father established the order of reproductive 152

sexuality and thus is, in his person, the genus which creates and preserves all individuals" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 58).

In his analysis of Freud's theory, Marcuse asserts the importance of fundamental fact: Scarcity is what lies beneath the repressive reality principle of Freud. In modern society, the management and distribution of scarcity has already changed from mere violence into "a more rational utilization of power." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 33) In addition to finding the domination of this rationality in modernity, Marcuse also asserts

the rationality of domination. And different incarnations of

domination bring about different forms of reality principle. Based on the basic meaning and functions of reality principle that were discussed by Freud, Marcuse argues that there are "additional controls" from "the specific historical institutions of the reality principle and the specific interests of domination" over the individual under different socio-historical conditions. Marcuse calls these additional controls "surplus repression" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 32). The corresponding "prevailing historical form of the reality principle" is what Marcuse terms the "performance principle." (Marcuse, 1955, p.32)

In the transformation from human animals to human beings, and using the currency of scarcity, rationality became the reins of control and the society was stratified according to the economic performance of its competing members. Under such conditions, reason has already become the truth and is represented by the reality, 153

which is "the totalitarian universe of technological rationality." (Marcuse, 1964, p. 123). Such rule of reason has already pre-determined the "closed operational universe of advanced industrial civilization with its terrifying harmony of freedom and oppression, productivity and destruction, growth and regression." (Marcuse, 1964, p. 124). In advanced industrial societies, the form of capitalism had also changed from "free" to "organized". And at the same time, "large-scale impersonal groupings and associations" had replaced the family and personal enterprises. Social values and morality were also affected and changed from "autonomous judgment and personal responsibility" to "standardized skills and qualities." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 87)

In many respects, these changes transformed the individual's process of growing up, which is reflected by "the decline of the social function of the family." (Marcuse, 1966, p. 96) In traditional society, as Freud has said, the formation of superego, the repressive modification of impulse, renunciation and sublimation were personal experiences because people grew up in a family setting. However, in modern society, the society has taken the place of guardianship from the family in the process of the individual's of growing up. As Marcuse points out: "Now, however, under the rule of economic political, and culture monopolies, the formation of the mature superego seems to skip the stage of individualization: The generic atom becomes directly a social atom." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 88) The objective administration has taken the place of father in order to execute the prohibitions on aggressive impulses. The images of the father "have gradually disappeared behind the institutions." (Marcuse, 154

1955, p. 89) What the individual is confronted with while growing up are anonymous institutions. And, by and large, it is these anonymous institutions that determine, satisfy and control the individual's needs in modern society. In Freud's terms, the super-ego of the individual has been changed by society into collective state. The main task of consciousness has become the regulation of "the co-ordination of the individual with the whole." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 94) Such co-ordination both lessens the unhappiness and alters the meaning of happiness. 'The concept denotes a more-than-private, more-than-subjective condition;" and at the same time, that which produces the individual's happiness becomes the "general anesthesia" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 94).

The society as a whole assumes the fatherly role in the individual's maturation, and the relationship between this society-father and individual-son is also different from their archetype. These differences necessitate corollary changes in other respects:

"The social authority is absorbed into the 'conscience' and into the unconscious of the individual and works as his own desire, morality, and fulfillment. In the 'normal'development, the individual lives his repression

gratifications are profitable to him and to others; he is reasonably and often even exuberantly happy." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 42) 155

The basic characteristics of this relationship are Marcuse's posited 'performance principle' and 'surplus-repression'. Under the performance principle, the individual begins to experience and comprehend their alienation both through labor and even in the satisfaction of desire. In such alienation, the individual's erotic performance is "brought in line with his societal performance" (Marcuse, 19SS, p. 42). Such alienation brings Marcuse to argue for an understanding of modern domination: 'The conflict between sexuality and civilization unfolds with the development of domination" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 42). The performance principle and its organization of society unify "various objects of the partial instincts into one libidinal object of the object sex." In modern society, the partial instincts cannot develop "freely into a higher" stage of gratification which preserves their objectives. This is because society has already developed the de-sexualization of the human body: "The libido becomes concentrated in one part of the body, leaving most of the body, leaving most of the rest free for use as the instrument of labor" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 44). Furthermore, the spare time of labor has been seized by the alienation as well. For this purpose, industrial civilization has developed the "entertainment industry which directly controls leisure time." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 44) The leisure time of the individual begins to be dominated by the working time. Thus, both the desires and the gratifications for the individual are produced by industrial society.

Throughout such a process, Marcuse's individual has been integrated into the totality of such a society and "the manifold processes of introjections seem to be 156

ossified in almost mechanical reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole." (Marcuse, 1964, p. 10)

The novel feature of this society/father is that it/he continually strives to soften the contours, dull the edges, and lessen the differences and inequalities between the society/father and the individual/son. This can be achieved by unifying and blurring the lines between the entertainment and educational systems, which helps to erase the pains of growing up. By the same token, the individual loses his identity of "himself' in his confrontation with his society/father, and hence the individual loses the ability to think for himself. Thus the individual in modem society has become the one-dimensional man: Not only his desire and satisfaction, but also his consciousness and way of thinking have been determined by the society.

Nonetheless it would be false to assume that modern advanced capitalist societies are intolerant of rebellion per se. On the contrary, we can find at least nominal freedom and tolerance. But in his work Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse examines "the idea of tolerance" in advanced industrial society and concludes that the tolerance which is "proclaimed and practiced" is actually "serving the cause of oppression." (Marcuse, 1965, p. 81) Marcuse argues that in modern advanced capitalism, the social and political structures have already blocked any true possibility of real free expression and communication. And there is no way for real reflection, 157

given the situation that even "the meaning of words is rigidly stabilized." (Marcuse, 1965, p. 96) In such a society, although there is space defined for such speech and communication, the "totalitarian democracy" can successfully stifle and marginalize any subversive action or expression because, "it is the whole which determines the truth...In the sense that its structure and function determine every particular condition and relation." (Marcuse, 1965, p. 83).

From his analysis, encompassing the modern capitalist state, Marcuse develops an Oedipus theory that is differentiated from the Freudian model. In modem society, along with the development of rationality, Marcuse argues that "the development of a hierarchical system of social labor not only rationalizes domination but also 'contains' the rebellion against domination." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 82) For Marcuse, Oedipus complex on modern social level ends up with a new system of domination. In such a new domination, real rebellion becomes impossible. This also applies to revolution, as Marcuse says:

"From the slave revolts in the ancient world to the socialist revolution, the struggle of the oppressed has ended in establishing a new, 'better' system of domination; progress has taken place through an improving chain of control." (Marcuse, 1955, p. 82)

In this new structure, the traditional domination of the father is extended into the whole society. In the (unlikely) case of revolution the inevitable result would just 158

be a new refined mode of domination that is more difficult to evade or overthrow than the previous one. A fundamental trait of the modern affluent society is its "normal functioning". Marcuse illustrates this normal functioning by adopting the terminology of the institutional medical establishment found in the society itself where "healthy" and "diseased" are no longer personal attributes used for the individual. There are now healthy banks and diseased neighborhoods. Marcuse asserts that the insertion of the medical definition of health into the social dimension serves the society by providing a factor of normality: "'Normal' seems to be understood as a social and institutional rather than individual condition." (Marcuse, 1988, pp. 249-250)

Normal functioning doesn't necessarily mean that the society is normal, or healthy or functioning well. It is actually a function that allows or encourages people to feel normal under the circumstances and a sick society also possesses its normal functioning. This normal functioning could make its people "capable of being sick, of living his sickness as health, without his noticing that he is sick precisely when he sees himself and is seen as healthy and normal." (Marcuse, 1988, p. 250) By this term of sick society, Marcuse wants to define a social state which basic functions had already lost: "we can say that a society is sick when its basic institutions and relations, its structure, are such that they do not permit the use of the available material and intellectual resources for the optimal development and satisfaction of individual needs" (Marcuse, 1988, p. 251) Even in such a sick society, Marcuse argues, we could still find a tendency or force of "surplus-repression". The established apparatus of 159

social production have their own requirements on social behavior and other social reality in order to keep themselves going well. Under such a circumstance, a "normal" or "healthy" individual in a specific society means "a human being equipped with all the qualities which enable him to get along with others in his society, and these very same qualities are the marks of repression, the marks of a mutilated human being, who collaborates in his own repression, in the containment of potential individual and social freedom, in the release of aggression" (Marcuse, 1988, p. 254)

With the help of Freud, Marcuse also finds a way back from individual mental structure to social structure. The discussion of normal functioning of modem affluent society makes Marcuse possible to talk about social aggressiveness. There are two foremost sources of social aggressiveness among many of them for Marcuse: "(1) The dehumanization of the process of production and consumption"; and "(2) The conditions of crowding, noise, and overtones characteristic of mass society" (Marcuse, 1988, p. 258). The aggressiveness of society lies in its specific historical structure and hence becomes one of its basic characters. Meanwhile, according to Marcuse's discussion of normal functioning, individual in this society "becomes at one and the same time more aggressive and more pliable and submissive" (Marcuse, 1988, p. 262). People in modern society become more pliable and submissive because they are civilized human beings; and they become more aggressive because the aggressiveness nature of the society is released and transformed into individual in a kind of "normal" behavior. For example, the technological aggression which is carried out in a 160

"neutral" and "objective" way which has already become part of modern daily life.

Marcuse's analysis on social Oedipus can also get support from Horkheimer and Adorno. Their social critical analysis also focuses on the domination of instrumental reason. In the process of conquering material environment, modern human beings have already been transformed into "disciplined, purposive agents" and society into "a totally bureaucratized and administered system". Moreover, since the conquest had already become the normality of modern society, the price that individual pays for it -

the "reification of the self' becomes his/her destiny. This

integration of the self has been followed by violence since the beginning and throughout all its development periods: "Men had to do fearful things to themselves before the self, the identical, purposive, and virile nature of man, was formed, and something of that recurs in every childhood" (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1979, p. 33). Furthermore, the ego must defend its boundaries against both the inner nature and outer nature. "Toward the inside, the autocratic ego represses the polymorphous perversity of the individual's instinctual makeup to forge a unified self. And toward the outside, the same ego imposes instrumental reason on the particularity and diffuseness of external nature to control and manipulate it" (Whitebook, 1995, p. 23).

Moreover, in his discussions on the authoritarian state, Horkheimer extended the subject from individual to "groups": "integration is the price which individuals and groups have to pay in order to flourish under capitalism" (Horkheimer, 1978, p. 161

99). The regimentation of modern factory and technology extends not only the individual psyche-structure, but also the internal logic of entire society. This control is thorough and absolutism. The authority of bureaucracy has been enforced "to the utmost in all phases of life". The "free structuring" of society is strictly forbidden by the authoritarian state. This authoritarian state is "repressive in all of its forms", and thus for this system, "the other is always in danger" (Horkheimer, 1978, p. 102). Horkheimer's Authoritarian state acquires a similar function of ego. He uses USA and Europe as example to indicate this function. Both of them have their own oppressive function to both inside and outside threats or danger.

In such a domination structure, as Marcuse says, the Oedipus revolt has already become impossible. Such a revolt would be supreme crime, evil and impossible because such a revolt would not be against any individual any more: it is to against the whole society, against "the wise order which secures the goods and services for the progressive satisfaction of human needs" (Marcuse, 1955, p. Pp83-84).

Whether the violent self-preservation toward libidinal instincts, or the normal functioning of the modern advanced capitalism, both of them are destination of modern society from its beginning. They are the special achievement that is developed not only by modern capitalism, but also by revolution as well. Marcuse's Social Oedipus is derived from Freud's structure of Oedipus complex. If we can still 162

take it as the root of social neurosis, may we say that there is a possibility of social neurosis which is different from but also related with Freud's neurosis? May we say that in such a social neurosis, we can find a space for discussing the sociological oppressive structure which is twisted together with psychological repressive structure? In Marcuse's analysis of totally domination society father, we can find neither a possibility of conflict, nor the nature of dynamic.

According to Freud's theory, both super-ego and civilization have their own corresponded libidinal instincts and aggressiveness. Following the questions in last paragraph, then how do we find out the corresponding side of this authoritarian state and normalizing father-society? Horkheimer's study on authoritarian and Marcuse's study on social domination make us possible to achieve an understanding of social neurosis. However, where could we find the corresponding side of this authoritarian state and normalizing father-society? In next section, with all of these questions, I will analyze the Suku movement, trying to find out a new perspective of understanding social neurosis in a social-political transition from feudalism to communism.

3.4 Toward a Neurosis Analysis of Revolution: China's Suku Schneider has already pointed out that if we consider the repressive-repressed 163

relationship from a "social power" perspective, there is a possibility of discussing "social neurosis" (Schneider, 1975, p. 162). However, different from his interpretation which is based the possibility of neurosis on class struggle within affluent capitalism; I would like to find the possibility of doing social neurosis from an analysis of the "Suku" phenomena with a horizon of understanding China's revolution.

As Freud says, there are three sources of our modern suffering, in which the third one is the "mutual relationships of human beings in the family, the state and the society" (Freud, 1985, p. 274). This third one, according to Freud, is the most "astonishing" and the most important reason for understanding neurosis. The possibility of social neurosis, as Freud says, may be found from the diagnosis of some part of the civilization or "some epochs of civilization". This is what I am trying to find out in Suku.

According to Fei Xiaotong and some other scholars, China's traditional rural society before the revolution was a self sufficient community that was consisted of kinship lineage, and was dominated by local elites, whether they are "protective brokerage" or "entrepreneurial brokerage". We can describe such a structure also as a patriarchal despotism. The ordinary peasants relied on local elites on almost every aspect of their daily lives because the local elites owned almost all resources including wealth, power, qualification of morality interpretation and connections with the power of central government and with world outside. In such self-sufficient local 164

society, the local elite class played a role of father to local ordinary peasants. There were both love and hatred emotions from the local peasants to local elites. On the one hand, the peasants need landlords on almost everything, and the establishment of landlord's authority is also justified by various aspects including his economic success, political success, even moral superiority and his age. Without his authority, the local society could not go on. Even those entrepreneurial brokerages still had a similar function like a primal father. And local elites were those people who got their "historical rights". On the other hand, there were also hatred feelings toward those landlords, especially in those exiled peasants. However, such kind of hatred and even rebellion toward the authority of local elites were only about the governing position, or their social superior status, but not about the system. Thus the authority of the rural society and the ordinary peasants formed an oppressing-oppressed structure. And this relationship consists of the very basic political structure of traditional rural China. Along with the love and hatred feelings toward landlords, ordinary peasants put landlord as their model, as we described in the first chapter: landlords are their identification. All of these characteristics give us a clear model of Oedipus complex on social level.

In revolution, such a structure was broken, or was reversed: by defining the term people, the CCP constructed a new authority in rural China along with the process of Land Reform, classification, and Suku. This reversion is the very essential meaning of "Fanshen". Ordinary peasants, especially the poor and hired peasants, 165

become the new power holder in revolutionary practices. Meanwhile the former local elites, the former "father" of local society, became the "oppressed" class. Thus we can find three clues about emotions in Suku practice from Oedipus complex perspective. The first, a coming true of the dream of Oedipus: the former sons now "fanshen", and become the authority of the local world. And secondly, the realization of such Oedipus dream contains a kind of angry feeling toward the landlords, as we talked in Chapter I and Chapter II, an angry that comes from peasants for the lost of traditional Confucianism morality. However, there is one more level in this revolutionary Oedipus revenge. The fanshened peasants still held the emotion that was formed by the former Oedipus complex: the hostility toward their father. In Suku, the past daily life becomes a story of how did an Oedipus violate his father. In other words, in revolution, the reversion of the past social structure extended into the narrative of Suku. In such a narrative, even the overthrown landlord class, the former fathers themselves, started to feel that they were the sons and their former daily activities toward peasants were evil: they had been patricidal! According to Freud's Oedipus theory, peasants who joined the revolution should have a huge sense of guilty. However, this sense was abolished successfully by Suku. The double reversion gave a birth of both the great guilty feelings of former landlords and the conscience feeling of the former peasants. Thus a myth called revolution is produced: in this myth, the children band together to kill their primal father and take the authority. And this is not even the end of the story. Liu Shaoqi pointed out anxiously in his letter that a lot of 166

local cadres "married daughters of landlords as wives" (Archives, C., 1981, p. 72). This phenomenon can exactly be explained by Freud's words:

"Identification is known to psychoanalysis as the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person. It plays a part in the early history of the Oedipus complex. A little boy will exhibit a special interest in his father; he would like to grow like him and be like him, and take his place everywhere. We may say simply that he takes his father as his ideal. This behavior has nothing to do with a passive or feminine attitude towards his father (and towards males in general); it is on the contrary typically masculine. It fits in very well with the Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare the way." (Freud, 1985, p. 134)

That is the following story of the Oedipus: after killing his father, he married his father's women. Those CCP leaders, or local cadres, or members of work teams, who used to be the exiled sons of local authority, now come back. After killing their fathers, they take their lands, take over their authority and marry their women. These behaviors clearly indicate their Oedipus complex. They want to become "them". The different thing is just that, those revolutionary Oedipus do that without any feeling of guilty. This Freudian Oedipus revenge hides itself behind the mask of revolution. The practice of revolution and the hidden complex of Oedipus thus fit in together very well.

This historical reversion in revolution brought a double reversion in Suku 167

practice. In Suku, the daily life that used to appear no problem to peasants now becomes a problem throughout a problematic process. The former fathers become the "local tyrants and evil gentries" and also the targets of political struggle. The daily life in Suku become a history of how did the today's bad son, that is, the former landlords, repressed today's justice father in the past years, that is, the former peasants.

Different from Freud's Oedipus myth, which is only against toward the specific father, Suku turns to criticize the former social and political structure. One important technique of Suku is to help the peasants to "raise up" their "class consciousness", to help them know that there is a "class" behind the specific person. The reality behind Suku's critical confession is the "normal" structure that was constructed by revolution. In revolution, the authority of "people" become normal whereas the former social-political structure become "evil", "sick", or "abnormal". The Oedipus Suku is a revolutionary moral confessional practice. It is the place where the new feelings of "conscience" and "guilty" were produced. It is the place where the new revolutionary morality was produced. Thus Suku brings us a real oedipal topic: patricide is justified! Such a murder gives the senses of conscience as well as guilty: peasant's conscience and landlord's guilty. Most people who did Suku started to feel both extremely hatred and extremely love: hatred toward "old society" and love toward the CCP and "new society". After the patricide, peasants got a brothers' regime which still contains two kinds of "libidinal ties": mutual identification and their common Oedipal bond with their new authority - the CCP. The distinction between past and now brings another 168

conclusion: revolution is advanced. People can feel the "good" of revolution and they are getting away from the "old" and "evil" society. By such construction of a linear history, the CCP adopted a role of "savior", "God", or a role of "therapeutic": it is the One that can heal the suffering of Chinese; it is the One that can save China.47

Such senses of conscience and guilty ironically twisted together with the traditional morality: in revolution, part of the traditional morality was not abandoned, but strengthened. For example, according to Ying Xing's research in Liu Ping village, there were few peasants that were classified as "local tyrants and evil gentries" in land reform. However, there was only one who was executed by new government. And the real reason, according to Ying Xing's research, was his immoral sexual affairs from the perspective of Confucianism. And according to Ying Xing's research, such immoral sexual affairs, in the Liu Ping area, were not sufficient reason for execution even according to traditional morality. However, during the period of revolution, traditional morality was ironically twisted together with revolutionary morality and was evened strengthened.

Through the land reform period, in order to become the CCP's (or God's) people, kinship families must differentiate themselves. Thus different classes came out. The revolutionary practices constructed a sense of "otherness". It seemed that the former "embedded" self that Fei Xiaotong described had already been abolished. 47

There are a large number of the "red songs" that were written in China's revolution for appraising the CCP. And many of them portrayed the CCP as the messiah of China. 169

Peasants started to look at themselves and look at each other not through a "we-relationship", but through an eye of "class". "Others" that outside the camp of "people" are all in danger and even is evil. The former neighbor now becomes stranger. And this strange other is a Freudian other: "people" cannot find a reason of loving his/her neighbor, on the country, neighbor become the object of hatred. Thus people, as a whole group, adopted a nature of aggressive. And even in people's camp, peasants are also different to each other, though this difference was within people's class and was not as big as difference between people and reactionaries. In such a historical construction process, "people" started to feel that they had been oppressed by landlord class and liberated by the revolution.

During this construction process of different class, the CCP's work teams played a role of authoritarian state exactly as Horkheimer describes. The authority of the CCP reached to the every aspect of life and had been enforced to the utmost in all phases of life from the decision of identity to the interpretation of history, from the distribution of land to decisions of life and death. The "free structuring" was also strictly forbidden. The authoritarian state was repressive "in all of its forms". Thus besides the new father that was brought by revolutionary reversion to rural area, that is, besides the establishment of peasants' authority, there is another real "authority" hidden behind: the authoritarian state.

Suku, or revolution provides peasants an access to "modern" factors: it abolishes 170

the former social-political structure in rural society and brought a sense of "state". In revolution, the state took the position of family in the process of individual's growing up. The image of traditional father had "gradually disappeared behind the institutions" (Marcuse, 19SS, p. 89). Although the land reform was majorly carried out on grass roots level, and the practice of land reform often went into a direction of chaos and violence, CCP's state bureaucratic institutions still started to approach and tried to control every aspect of daily life in villages. Along with such a change of super ego, the basic characters of performance principle and surplus repression are all changed, as well as the meaning of love and hatred. Although there were different class within the camp of the people, however, since they all belonged to the people camp, most of the peasants in rural society could have been integrated successfully in the totality of such a society and the result is the "immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole" (Marcuse, 1964, p. 10). Moreover, by constructing evil and dangerous enemies outside the people's camp, the CCP flatted out of the contrast, differences and inequality in-between itself and peasants.

Suku, or revolution provides peasants a chance of expressing their internal emotions. This gives us another model of understanding repressive tolerance. CCP encouraged the rebellions of peasants on both thoughts and practical levels. As we can find in Chapter I, in Suku, other words could be spoken and heard, and other interpretations of past sufferings could be expressed, however, under the "supervision" or direction of work teams and local cadres, these words were 171

immediately regulated, or using Marcuse's words, "evaluated". There was a kind of special language that determined "a priori" the direction of this kind of thought reform movement. Thus under the direction of the Party, "a mentality is created for which right and wrong, true and false are predefined wherever they affect the vital interests of the society" (Marcuse, 1965, p. 95).

So, by encouraging peasants' rebellion through Suku movement and Land Reform, the CCP actually built up and fostered its own control on peasants. The more the peasants did Suku in a certain way, the more bitter feeling they felt; the more bettering feeling they felt, the stronger emotions they had for the CCP as well as KMT.

The standard of classification, as we discussed in Chapter I, has a clear characteristic of "standard qualities". A series of policies, directories, and handbooks that were issued and distributed and a series of conferences that were held by CCCCP and every local bureau ensured such kind of "standard qualities". The core of this standard revolutionary practice is that the different classes and their different roles in the new revolutionary morality and their social values were actually determined by a series of "quantities" or skills. For example, the more lands a landlord had owned, the more evil he would become in revolution, or the better skills of Suku a peasant had, there were more chances for him to become a "model" for new morality, and there were more chances he would get to join the CCP and become part of new authority. It 172

is here that what Marcuse's critical analysis on capitalism can also be used for understanding revolution: there was a change of social values and morality from the old one to "standardized skills and qualities" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 87)48. Through such a technique, the CCP successfully built up different identities and different feelings for different social-political groups. Thus in Suku movement, besides the three kinds of emotions we talked, peasants could also feel one more feeling: class oppression. Under such a circumstance, the psychological repression and sociological class oppression are all twisted together in such a political confession movement.

All of these happened after the restoration of the new authority. Looking beyond the village level, we can find that such kind of new domination, just as Marcuse says, is "normally no longer personal" (Marcuse, 1955, p. 68). The superego becomes "automatization" and "depersonalized". And the former self-sufficient rural society becomes part of the "organized" communism state. Now we can say that China revolution has a similar process of abolishing the traditional family that Marcuse describes. However, there are essential differences between the two processes: what the China revolution abolished was a traditional kinship lineage community; and the self of peasant was not "individual" self, but a self that was embedded into the community. Moreover, different from Marcuse's individual, we can find a different image of individual from China peasant's reaction to the

48 Although the "old one" in traditional rural China society is different from what Marcuse's "autonomous judgment and personal responsibility". (Marcuse, 1955, p. 87)

173

domination of state in revolution. The sccond perspective we choose in Chapter I to analyze Suku has already indicated how did the local society meet and "neutralize" the state domination. Furthermore, the third perspective of Suku even showed us how the peasants used the power of such domination in order to achieve their own target. Revolution was not a "pure" process. And people in such a historical process was not "one-dimensional", neither the revolution itself. There were endless conflicts in various aspects and in every period. From the story of Suku, what we can find is not only a revolutionary myth of Oedipus, but also a possibility of discussing social neurosis.

My basic purpose of using the term of social neurosis is to describe the daily suffering that is brought by the interaction between individual, local society and state society. This suffering does not only mean the "real" suffering that happens in daily life, but also includes those "constructed" sufferings through Suku (constructed suffering in the past daily life), and other revolutionary practices such as classification (sufferings of those people from "counter-revolutionary camp"). Suffering is the way for Freud to question culture (Marcuse, 1955, p. 17). This is also why do I choose suffering as my perspective of looking at China' revolution, in which Suku itself becomes the test of Enthomethodology. From such an Enthomethodological research, we can find that it would be oversimplified to say that land reform or even revolution itself was either a form of liberation or oppression for peasants. On the surface, Suku movement successfully made them believe that they were liberated from an oppressed 174

situation. And this is what the revolutionary language wants people to believe and to remember. However, from our analysis of Suku, we can find that the psychological feeling of liberation was always involved into history—the history that was precisely denied by revolution. Moreover, according to our analysis of Marcuse has also pointed out that such kind of revolutionary social-psycho evolvement must be understood within a context of authoritarian state, which makes it more difficult to understand revolution only from a framework of liberation or oppression. Thus I choose Suku as an abnormal method for understanding normal or daily sufferings, and furthermore, for understanding the revolution, and even the whole approach of China toward modernity. However, there were more dimensions for us to understand this approach itself.

Chapter IV: On Social Suffering

"Man began to consider himself part and parcel of the two superhuman, all-encompassing processes of Nature and History, both of which seemed doomed to an infinite progress without ever reaching any inherent telos or approaching any preordained idea." - Hannah Arendt, 1998: 307

In the previous chapter, the term social neurosis was applied to interpret the historical event of Suku. Social neurosis provided us with an analytical method for 175

understanding modern society's internal mechanisms and for more precisely defining the category of "normal" social suffering here—even though Suku itself may be categorized as an atypical or abnormal political instrument. The overall relevance to this examination of Suku is not only because the term social neurosis is rooted in the normal characteristics of modern society, such as the eternal conflict between individual and society, but also because social neurosis and suffering are an inevitable characteristic of daily life and existence.

There is though, also another kind of suffering that cannot be neglected in a thorough examination of modern social suffering. This is what here will be termed as "abnormal suffering" and is exemplified by the Holocaust. This chapter first explores the nature of the Holocaust in the context of abnormal suffering and modernity and does so primarily through the presentation and interpretation of the work of Hannah Arendt, before, in the latter stages, again introducing Suku into the discussion. As I mentioned in Introduction, since my work focuses mainly on sufferings that were "unleashed" by modern age, I will not choose Arendt's work on revolution as my major theoretical source but her works and thoughts on modernity.

4.1 Radical Evil: Understanding Totalitarianism

176

How are we to understand totalitarianism and the Holocaust? Hannah Arendt explored this question throughout her lifetime. In her early writings, in the years directly after WWII, Arendt first coined the term "radical evil" to characterize the horrifying inhumanity of the Holocaust. At the same time, Arendt wrote that the Holocaust and radical evil were historically incomprehensible.

Arendt continued to study the Holocaust in her research and writings on totalitarianism. By examining the Holocaust in the context of Nazi Germany's totalitarianism system, Arendt argued that the Holocaust could only be understood if one first understood totalitarianism: "Radical evil has emerged in connection with a system in which all men have become equally superfluous." (Arendt, 1968, p. 459) So any discussion of radical evil must be based on her study of totalitarianism. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt describes concentration camps as "the most consequential institution of totalitarian rule." (Arendt, 1968, p. 441) They are "the laboratories" of the totalitarianism state and "the true central institution of totalitarian organizational power." (Arendt, 1968, pp. 438,441) If concentration camps are representative of the true nature of the totalitarian state, Arendt argues, in order to understand the system, the nature of the concentration camps needs to be distilled. Arendt's subsequent analysis identified a number of characteristics specific to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany:

Harmlessness: "The overwhelming majority of people who formed the 177

bulk of the camp population were completely innocent from the point of view of the regime, quite harmless in every respect, guilty neither of political convictions nor of criminal actions." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 238) Simply put, most people who were incarcerated in the camps were innocent victims.

Permanence: Arendt notes the "permanent character" of the concentration camp system in which the ovens and gas chambers never stopped working as long as there was a steady stream of "material" delivered. The industrial factory model of the camps "made the hunt for new 'material' needed to fabricate more corpses almost a necessity" because of the "costly apparatus." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 238)

Administration: Arendt recognized a "new type of camp administration" which "regulated the death rate and strictly organized torture" which, in turn, became features that highlighted the extent of cruelness and inhumanity in the camps. Moreover, the internal operations of the camps were largely "given into the hands of the prisoners themselves, who were forced to mistreat their fellow-prisoners in much the same way the SS did." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 238)

SS (State Security) Officers: The men chosen to serve in the SS, and specifically selected for the concentration camps were, in Arendt's opinion, 178

"completely normal". Abnormal personality traits, such as a prcdilcction for cruelty, or a sadistic streak, were not criteria in the selection process.

Isolation: Arendt found that the characteristic "most difficult to imagine and most gruesome to realize" was that of isolation. The camps were separated as far as possible from the world "as if they and their inmates were no longer part of the world of the living." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 239)

Just as these characteristics are representative of the concentration camps, so too are they characteristics of the Holocaust. Taken together, these characteristics, as well as others which Arendt ascertains, compose the most striking aspect of the camps, the Holocaust and of totalitarianism itself, which Arendt describes as "total domination". In respect to the camps, Arendt finds that totalitarianism "strives to organize the infinite plurality and differentiation of human beings as if all of humanity were just one individual." (Arendt, 1968, p. 438) Through the industrial-mechanical control combined with the specter of inescapable and absolute terror, the camps fabricated "a kind of human species resembling other animal species whose only 'freedom' would consist in 'preserving the species'." (Arendt, 1968, p. 438) Under such conditions "each and every person can be reduced to a never-changing identity of reactions... Spontaneity itself is an expression of human behavior, and of transforming the human personality into a mere thing, into something that even 179

animals are not." (Arendt, 1968, p. 438)

When seen as a massive experiment in social engineering, it was only possible to conduct the Holocaust in the confines of such concentration camps. Arendt concludes that there were several stages necessary for the genocidal experiment which had the ultimate goal of destroying the individual's personality, and/or of creating abnormal suffering on an obscenely massive scale. The first stage in the process was what Arendt terms the "arbitrary arrest" of the individual. The arbitrary arrest was neither the extension of a judicial process or due to any contrarian action or opinion of the individual. The aim at this stage was to classify the individual as "abnormal" which Arendt describes thus: ' ...To kill the judicial person in man. This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the non-totalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting its inmates outside the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty. Thus criminals, who for other reasons are an essential element in concentration-camp society, are ordinarily sent to a camp only on completion of their prison sentence. Under all circumstances totalitarian domination sees to it that the categories gathered in the camps - Jews, carriers of diseases, representatives of dying classes - have already lost their capacity for both normal or criminal action." (Arendt, 1968, p. 447) In the logical world of the concentration camps there was no distinction between criminals and innocents as in the in normal social world of human laws, in fact, the system aspired to negate the normal: "Under no circumstances must the 180

concentration camp become a calculable punishment for definite offenses." (Arendt, 1968,p.448)

While the domination and authority of the system delivered the necessary material, in the form of innocent people, to keep the "death factories" working, the arbitrariness of the process denied the validity of categories such as innocent and guilty. Its aim was "to destroy the civil rights of the whole population", including "every inhabitant of a totalitarian state." (Arendt, 1968, p. 451) However, Arendt asserts that the arbitrary system didn't mean that a totalitarian regime was necessarily lawless. On the contrary, she argues, totalitarian states are characterized by their adherence to the laws of Nature and History, interpreted chiefly and respectively by Darwin and Marx: "It is the monstrous, yet seemingly unanswerable claim of totalitarian rule that, far from being 'lawless', it goes to the sources of authority from which positive laws received their ultimate legitimation, that far from being arbitrary, it is more obedient to these superhuman forces than any government ever was before, and that far from wielding its power in the interest of one man, it is quite prepared to sacrifice everybody's vital, immediate interests to the execution of what it assumes to be the law of History or the law of Nature. " (Arendt, 1968, p. 159) A second significant trait of concentration camps was the isolation or separation from the outside world, which included both the normal world and even "the outside world of a country under totalitarian rule." (Arendt, 1968, p. 438) Through this isolation or separation, martyrdom could be made "senseless, empty and ridiculous" (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 240) While at the same time another aim - the 181

destruction of the "moral personality" of the individual - could be made more achievable. This isolation from the world was so radical in that, by making death "anonymous", it robbed the act of death of its meaning "as the end of a fulfilled life." Placed in the circumstances of the concentration camps, the individual could not choose the meaning attached to his or her death. By taking the control and meaning of death away from the individual, the concentration camps made evident to the individual that "nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one." And ultimately, that "his death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never really existed." (Arendt, 1968, p. 452)

By separating and isolating the camps, Arendt argues, the totalitarian regime achieved its "most terrible triumph" which was that it succeeded "in cutting the moral person off from the individualist escape, and in making the decisions of conscience absolutely questionable and equivocal." (Arendt, 1968, p. 452)

An ultimate aim of totalitarianism, and one especially visible in the camp system was "the destruction of individuality itself', and this target was achieved "through the permanence and institutionalizing of torture." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 240) Torture was an "essential feature of the whole totalitarian police and judiciary apparatus" and there were two fundamental uses of torture: The rational use which was conducted with an aim, more or less justified, such as eliciting information; and the irrational use, which "pursued no aims and was not systematic, but depended on 182

the initiative of largely abnormal elements." (Arendt, 1968, p. 453)

Finally, as a consequence of these obscenities, human beings were successfully reduced to "the lowest possible denominator of 'identical reactions'." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 240) In the system of totalitarianism they become "superfluous". The perfection of such superfluity of man could only be achieved successfully in the concentration camps, but not in the totalitarian state as a whole. Nonetheless, as Arendt points out, it is the inherent ambition of a totalitarian system: "Totalitarian states strive constantly, though never with complete success, to establish the superfluity of man." (Arendt, 1968, p. 457)

What makes it so difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the Holocaust? For Arendt, the first difficulty in understanding stems from the complete lack of any historical background or trail leading up to the rise of Nazism: There is no plausible tradition preceding Nazism in the West, whether German or not. All the traditional Western strains of thought, many in fact German, whether stemming from "Thomas Aquinas or Machiavelli or Luther or Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche", Arendt argues, "have not the least responsibility for what is happening in the extermination camps", or for the "German problem." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 108)

Nazism defies efforts to explain it through recourse to traditional historical comparative analogy. The defining characteristic of totalitarianism for Arendt - total domination - differentiates it from any historically known regimes of tyrannical 183

domination, because 'rule by terror' - which is in the very nature of a totalitarian state - is inherently different from the 'rule by fear' found in tyranny. (Arendt, 1968, p. 172) Nazism then, must be seen as a "breakdown" of all Western tradition, including German tradition. It then logically follows that this unique characteristic of Nazism makes it impossible for us to understand both phenomena - Nazism and the Holocaust - within a context of traditional Western thought. This dilemma is itself a danger, according to Arendt says: "Ideologically speaking, Nazism begins with no traditional basis at all, and it would be better to realize the danger of this radical negation of any tradition, which was the main feature of Nazism from the beginning." (Arendt 2005 (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 108)

Before the defining characteristic of total domination had completely manifested itself in the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany, Arendt argues, there were first some intermediary stages of development of the ideology of total domination. Evidence of this can be seen in the (relatively) normal and comprehensible actions of the state, such as the "wars of aggression" and the "massacres of enemy populations." However, all of these actions had clear motives and utilitarian purpose "in the accepted sense of the terms." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 234) In stark contrast to this, the Holocaust was both "unprecedented" and it had no perceived or real utilitarian benefit to anybody at all; furthermore, Arendt asserts, it did not make any sense: "The extraordinary difficulty which we have in attempting to understand the institution of the concentration camp and to fit it into the record of 184

human history is precisely the absence of such utilitarian criteria; an absence which is more than anything else responsible for the curious air of unreality that surrounds this institution and everything connected with it." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 234) Arendt acknowledges that there is a history of anti-Semitism in Europe, however, she finds it provides insufficient evidence to explain the Holocaust: "Anti-Semitism only prepared the ground to make it easier to start the extermination of peoples, beginning with the Jewish people." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 235) And Arendt cannot find any historical trail of clues in Western tradition that can be traced forward to the rise of totalitarianism. Totalitarian government "exploded the very alternative on which definitions of the nature of government have relied since the beginning of Western political thought." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 339)It is "lawless" because "it defies positive law"; and equally and paradoxically, it is "lawfulness" because "it obeys with strict logic and executes with precise compulsion the laws of History or Nature." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, pp. 339,340)

By applying the logic of History and Nature, not traditional models of Western theory, Arendt eventually comes to grasp the "fundamental difference between totalitarian and all other conceptions of law", but also to interpret the general spirit of the modern age. While History or Nature provides "the source of authority for positive laws", they do not do so for the totalitarian state. In the totalitarian state, History and Nature "are themselves movements." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 340) The positive laws are "considered to be changing and changeable in accordance with 185

circumstances"; but their intention is permanent. Whereas in the totalitarian state, the meaning of the term "law" is different: it simply expresses the actions of humans themselves. Arendt concludes this distinction as follows: "If law, therefore, is the cssence of constitutional or republican government, then terror is the essence of totalitarian government." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 341)

The aim of totalitarian ideology is not "the transformation of the outside world or the revolutionizing transmutation of society, but the transformation of human nature itself." (Arendt, 1968, p. 458) Arendt believes that the superfluity and loneliness of human beings are basic characteristics not only of the totalitarian state, but also of modem society, as long as such a society is "atomized and utilitarian". For Arendt, totalitarianism and its corollary "radical evil" stem from "rootlessness and homelessness" which harbor "the danger of loneliness and superfluity".

The next section of this dissertation explores Arendt's thoughts on modernity more carefully because Arendt also argues that both loneliness and superfluity are "symptoms of mass society" and warns that the shadowy specter of the Holocaust - of another Holocaust - lurks within the contours of modern society: "The danger of totalitarianism lays bare before our eyes - and this danger, by definition, will not be overcome merely by victory over totalitarian governments." (Arendt & Kohn, 2005, p. 360) This danger may manifest itself because "totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up 186

whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man." (Arendt, 1968, p. 459)

According to the research of Richard Bernstein, Arendt never defined the term "radical evil", which she coined, as a specific reference to the murder of millions of people condoned and carried out by monsters or demons. Others interpreted it as such. "There is no evidence that Arendt ever held anything like this belief. On the contrary, she categorically rejected such a claim." (Bernstein, 1996, p. 132) It is perhaps by removing this misinterpretation that we can better understand the later development of Arendt's thoughts defining the Holocaust from radical evil to the banality of evil.

4.2 From Radical Evil to the Banality of Evil

In her later writings, especially with the publication of her study on the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, it becomes apparent that Arendt modified her analysis of the Holocaust. In a letter to Gershom Scholem, Arendt wrote: "I changed my mind and no longer speak of 'radical evil'." (Arendt, 1978, pp. 250-251) Her research and reflection on the trial of Eichmann, led Arendt to step away from her earlier assertion that evil is 'radical': "It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never 'radical,' that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can

187

overgrow and lay wasted the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is 'thought-defying,' as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing." (Arendt, 1978, pp. 250-251)

In its place, Arendt postulated the "banality of evil"; which views the Holocaust no longer as a specific event that happened only to German and European Jews, but rather as an affliction on and of human beings in general. There are two threads to Arendt's revised argument: First, the Holocaust was a "crime against humanity" and second, there is an "Eichmann in every one of us." For Arendt, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem raised a series of questions which moved her reflection and thought far from just the so-called "Jewish problem." The overarching aim of totalitarianism, she deduced, is to destroy the individual's humanity. Humanity, for Arendt, is "the very nature of mankind" and thus she argued that the crimes perpetuated by the Nazi regime were "crimes against humanity." (Arendt, 1963, pp. 268-269)

Arendt describes the banality of evil using an approach of phenomenological anthropology. In her study of Eichmann, Arendt characterizes the man as "normal". She portrays him as a sort-of worker bee in an institutional hive; a man who works, without thinking or reflecting upon his duties, in a modern bureaucratic system. Larry May concluded that Arendt's analysis, Eichmann in Jerusalem, gives great weight to 188

the role which bureaucratic socialization played in facilitating the Holocaust. In summarizing Arendt's work, May describes again the conditions of the modern bureaucratic system which was the core of Eichmann's routine life: "First, due either to societal or to institutional factors, individuals came to feel increasingly vulnerable economically, especially with regard to the continuance of their jobs. Second, these individuals experienced a loss of autonomy, or at least a loss of control over their lives within the institution. Third, loyalty to the institution was instilled as the chief moral value for these individuals. Fourth, the meaning of conscientiousness was transformed, to a point where following orders scrupulously and then going beyond the call of institutional duty was the most virtuous behavior a person could engage in. " (May & Kohn, 1996, p. 85) Arendt herself viewed the modern bureaucratic system as the essence of totalitarian government, as what "makes functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus dehumanizes them." (Arendt, 1963, p. 289) Parallel to the machine-like functioning of the modern bureaucratic system, which is normalized and impersonal by nature, Arendt's character study of Eichmann, the man, found him to be unremarkable, no different from other people: An average and normal man. Not surprisingly, Arendt deduces, he shared a common and banal character trait of many other individuals in modern society: He performed his job and tasks thoughtlessly, unquestioningly: "Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter 189

colloquially, never realized what he was doing... It was sheer thoughtlessness - something by no means identical with stupidity - that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period... That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man - that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. " (Arendt, J963, pp. 287-288) This thoughtlessness - "He merely never realized what he was doing" - is essentially what made the Holocaust possible, argues Arendt. The "normal man" in his normalness and unthinking banality is the embodiment of modern evil - the banality of evil. And as Bauman also argues; every historic "factor" and condition that led to the Holocaust was "normal" because "normal" refers to those basic factors of modernity, such as the bureaucratic system and modem technology. Bauman argues that modern civilization delivered the necessary conditions for the Holocaust: "Modern civilization was not the Holocaust's sufficient condition; it was, however, most certainly its necessary condition. Without it, the Holocaust would be unthinkable. It was the rational world of modern civilization that made the Holocaust thinkable." (Bauman, 1989, p. 13) At the same time, the Holocaust is clear evidence of the potential dangers which can be wrought by modernity: "I propose to treat the Holocaust as a rare, yet significant and reliable, test of the hidden possibilities of modern society." (Bauman, 1989, p. 12)

Both the creation, of first, the terminology and systemic approach which was the "Endlosung" - final solution - and second, of the 'practical' system it advanced of efficient death factories, are clearly representative of the modern bureaucratic system 190

as well as modern technological achievement. Although Arendt didn't intend to construe all modern bureaucratic systems as being ideologically of the same nature as Nazi Germany, she did point out that there are two dangers inherent in all modern systems.

The first danger is that bureaucratic institutions "impede people's sense of participation because the rule by decree characteristic of bureaucratic order causes them to feel cut off from the decision-making structures that affect their lives." (May & Kohn, 1996, p. 88) Or as Arendt wrote: "One can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is." (Arendt, 1963, p. 289) The second danger is what she distilled from the Eichmann trial: The thoughtlessness. There is no place for reflection or conscience in such a system, she contends, and thus Eichmann "did not have to fall back upon his 'conscience'." (Arendt, 1963, p. 293) Due to the economic pressure of "more urgent needs of living" in modern society, the bureaucratic institutions can successfully force people to stop thinking. In such a system which eliminates the individual from the decision-making process, and divorces cause-and-effect from the tasks of their daily lives, people are led inexorably to lose their sense of responsibility.

Whether radical evil or the banality of evil, Bernstein argues that with both terms Arendt is actually presenting the same mode of analysis for understanding the Holocaust and other crimes of Nazi Germany. Arendt never described the Nazi crimes 191

as "the deeds of monsters and demons"; neither did she understand the totalitarian domination as "satanic greatness". Furthermore, the meaning of "radical evil" actions aimed at making human beings superfluous - is not contrary to the meaning of the term "banality of evil" as outlined above. (Bernstein, 1996)

Moreover, in her study on Eichmann Arendt had already asserted the development of modem science and technology as a necessary condition for superfluity: "The frightening coincidence of the modern population explosion with the discovery of technical devices that, through automation, will make large sections of the population 'superfluous' even in terms of labor, and that, through nuclear energy, make it possible to deal with this twofold threat by the use of instruments beside which Hitler's gassing installations look like an evil child's fumbling toys, should be enough to make us tremble." (Arendt, 1963, p. 273) Although in Arendt's discussions on evil she does increasingly shift her descriptive term from superfluity to thoughtlessness, this is, however only a nuanced change of perspective when examining the nature of evil. A similar nuanced shift can be found in her early reference to the "historical backgroundlessness" of radical evil versus her later reference to the "thought-defying" aspect of the banality of evil. In any case, the two different perspectives certainly do not identify two different evils.

Arendt's reflections on the Holocaust cannot be understood without consideration of her thoughts on modernity and the condition of modern man. The 192

development of modern science, of technology, of society and of a bureaucratic political system can essentially explain the nature of modernity. Both the "technical developments in the instruments of violence" and the emergence of a complex bureaucratic system are, in Arendt's view, what made the "final solution" possible. The Holocaust arose not as an effect of war or from virulent anti-Semitism, but had its roots in modernity. For Arendt, it is those normal characteristics which define modernity that made the implausible, the Holocaust, possible. Thus studying the Holocaust is not only a way of understanding Nazi Germany and totalitarianism, but also provides valuable lessons for understanding ourselves and understanding modern Western civilization: "If it is trite that the elements of totalitarianism can be found by retracing the history and analyzing the political implications of what we usually call the crisis of our century, then the conclusion is unavoidable that this crisis is no mere threat from the outside, no mere result of some aggressive foreign policy of either Germany or Russia, and that it will no more disappear with the death of Stalin than it disappeared with the fall of Nazi Germany. It may even be that the true predicaments of our time will assume their authentic form - though not necessarily the cruelest - only when totalitarianism has become a thing of the past. " (Arendt, 1968, p. 460) Arendt argues that the danger which gives rise to totalitarianism lies in modernity itself, and the rise of Nazi Germany was evidence of only one form of this potential danger and perhaps not even the worst form; even crueler manifestations may be yet to come.

193

4.3 The Modern Age and the Holocaust

According to Arendt, there are two distinct modern ages: The first, from the 16th century to the 19th century, saw the initial rise of society and certain phenomena which Arendt terms "world alienation"; and the second modern age, beginning in the early 20th century, is characterized by historical phenomena which she connotes as "earth alienation".

The main thrust of the examination and interpretation here will be conducted, by and large, by referencing her works The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem. As Dana R. Villa has pointed out, in The Human Condition Arendt turns from examining the dynamics of totalitarian to "consider other 'world destroying' forces that the modern age has unleashed." (Dana R. Villa, 2001, p. 131) Arendt, as discussed previously, has concluded that the Holocaust was both unprecedented and a symptom of modernity. However, the Holocaust is not only modern because it was historically unprecedented. Arendt's theory of modernity provide an excellent tool for interpreting the banality of evil, in and beyond the context of the Holocaust; most specifically for examining social suffering as a whole in modern society.

4.3.1 Arendt's Terms and Definitions

194

At the beginning of The Human Condition, Arendt makes a distinction between the activities, the conditions, and the spaces of the vita activa. There are three fundamental human activities: labor, work and action. Arendt provides definitions of the three categories of activities as follows: "Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor...Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species' ever-recurring life cycle. Work provides an 'artificial' world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings.. .Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human conditions of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." (Arendt, 1998, p. 7)

The conditions that the three activities correspond to are life, worldliness and plurality. As Arendt says: "The human condition of labor is life itself...The human condition of work is worldliness.. .Plurality is the condition of human action." (Arendt, 1998, pp. 7-8)And finally, Arendt writes: "All three activities and their corresponding conditions are intimately connected with the most general conditions of human existence: Birth and death, natality and morality." (Arendt, 1998, p. 9)

The spaces for activities include public and private spaces: Labor and work 195

take place in the private sphere, while action occurs only in a public sphere. Arendt describes the difference between the public and private spaces by indicating the differences between necessity and freedom, futility and permanence, shame and honor and finally: "The most elementary meaning of the two realms indicates that there are things that need to be hidden and others that need to be displayed publicly if they are to exist at all." (Arendt, 1998, p. 73)

Last of all, the term vita activa refers to the sum of the three activities. With this term Arendt's ambition is to recover the traditional meaning of vita activa and free it of modern distortions: "My contention is simply that the enormous weight of contemplation in the traditional hierarchy has blurred the distinctions and articulations within the vita activa itself and that, appearances notwithstanding, this condition has not been changed essentially by the modern break with the tradition and the eventual reversal of its hierarchical order in Marx and Nietzsche." (Arendt, 1998, p. 17)

4.3.2 The Rise of Society and World Alienation

Parallel to the emergence of the modern age, a new phenomenon came into being; the social realm, "which is neither private nor public." Along with the rise of the society, the private space and its activities becomes a "collective" concern. Moreover, this rise of society corresponds with a decline of the family, which "indicates clearly that what actually took place was the absorption of the family unit into corresponding social groups." (Arendt, 1998, p. 40) The household and the 196

housekeeping activities, which used to belong to the private sphere, started to be integrated into the public realm. The essential aspect here is that the labor, which previously belonged to the private realm, was "freed" into the public realm. For Arendt, the rise of society played an important role by blurring the distinction between public and private realms. The growth of labor in the public realm "derives its strength from the fact that through society it is the life process itself which in one form or another has been channeled into the public realm." (Arendt, 1998, p. 45)

One of the characteristics of society which differentiates it from the private sphere is that society excludes the possibility of action "on all its levels", which was previously typical of the household. Moreover, society began to perform a 'normalizing' function: "Society expects from each of its members a certain kind of behavior, imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to 'normalize' its members, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement." (Arendt, 1998, p. 40) During this formative process, unlimited action cannot be the mode of human relationships, though eventually the society can achieve success in the form of modern equality, which is very different from equality in pre-modem social structures.

The essential core of the public realm, for Arendt, is "the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which the common world presents itself and for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be 197

devised." (Arendt, 1998, p. 57) However, in mass society, as discussed above, Arendt believes that this isn't possible. The individual is confined in a situation of the absolute private. This in turn gives rise to "the mass phenomenon of loneliness" and potentially to the "most extreme and most antihuman form" of isolation: totalitarianism.

On the other hand, due to the "emancipation of the laboring activity itself'; that is, because labor was permitted to move into and occupy the public realm; the so-called modern consumer society emerged. This consumer society has struggled from the outset with an internal tension of dissatisfaction and unhappiness "due on one side to the troubled balance between labor and consumption and, on the other, to the persistent demands of the animal laborans to obtain a happiness which can be achieved only where life's processes of exhaustion and regeneration, of pain and release from pain, strike a perfect balance." (Arendt, 1998, p. 134) 'Happiness' then, becomes the supreme truth that modern man in the consumer society seeks. Along with this truth, there is nonetheless wide-spread unhappiness with which it must coexist: "The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and these are but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to live in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented." (Arendt, 1998, p. 134)

In the reality that labor has largely become production which "consists 198

primarily in preparation for consumption", lays the seeds for a perverse inversion in modern society of the traditional concept of ends and means: Man and labor has been alienated in modern industrial society by the machines that they themselves invented as objects of their desires. This self-perpetuating chain of convoluted ends and means, Arendt argues, generates meaninglessness: "The perplexity of utilitarianism is that it gets caught in the unending chain of means and ends without ever arriving at some principle which could justify the category of means and end, that is, of utility itself. The 'in order to' has become the content of the 'for the sake of'; in other words, utility established as meaning generates meaninglessness. " (Arendt, 1998, p. 154) Arendt's human plurality is a necessary condition of both action and speech, and "has the twofold character of equality and distinction." (Arendt, 1998, p. 175) For Arendt, otherness is the basic element of identity. That is, a man can know who he is, can know his distinctness only in a public realm in relation to others. This can only be possible in the condition of plurality: "In man, otherness, which he shares with everything that is, and distinctness, which he shares with everything alive, become uniqueness, and human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings." (Arendt, 1998, p. 176)

Action and speech are intertwined with each other. And under the conditions of plurality, these two closely related phenomena allow "men (to) show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world." (Arendt, 1998, p. 179) 199

A significant element of action is "its inherent unpredictability." (Arendt, 1998, p. 191)The full meaning of an action can only be comprehended afterwards: "This is not simply a question of inability to foretell all the logical consequences of a particular act, in which case an electronic computer would be able to foretell the future, but arises directly out of the story which, as the result of action, begins and establishes itself as soon as the fleeting moment of the deed is past." (Arendt, 1998, p. 192) It is only after the end, as when a storyteller chronicles a tale of past events, but not in the immediacy of the acting, that the meaning of an action and its consequences are revealed; only then will the story be told and understood. And only in this story and story-telling will the individual find his or her identity: "Human essence - not human nature in general (which does not exist) nor the sum total of qualities and shortcomings in the individual, but the essence of who somebody is - can come into being only when life departs, leaving behind nothing but a story." (Arendt, 1998, p. 193)

The presence of others provides man with the basic guarantee of "the reality of the world." This space in which others appear comes into existence together with the speech and action and it "does not survive the actuality of the movement which brought it into being, but disappears not only with the dispersal of men - as in the case of great catastrophes when the body politic of a people is destroyed - but with the disappearance or arrest of the activities themselves." (Arendt, 1998, p. 199)

200

Arendt postulates 'world alienation' - a term which she uses to describe one of the most significant attributes of a modern society. This alienation has its roots in the expropriation of man, and is compounded by an increasingly affluent yet disparate society. Arendt describes the two stages in the development of world alienation, both of which have had great impact on daily life in modern society: "The first stage of this alienation was marked by its cruelty, the misery and material wretchedness it meant for a steadily increasing number of 'laboring poor', whom expropriation deprived of the twofold protection of family and property, that is, of a family owned private share in the world, which until the modern age had housed the individual life process and the laboring activity subject to its necessities. The second stage was reached when society became the subject of the new life process, as the family had been its subject before. Membership in a social class replaced the protection previously offered by membership in a family, and social solidarity became a very efficient substitute for the earlier, natural solidarity ruling the family unit. Moreover, society as a whole, the 'collective subject'of the life process, by no means remained an intangible entity, the 'communist fiction' needed by classical economics; just as the family unit had been identified with a privately owned piece of the world, its property, society was identified with a tangible, albeit collectively owned, piece of property, the territory of the nation-state, which until its decline in the twentieth century offered all classes a substitute for the privately owned home of which the class of the poor had been deprived. " (Arendt, 1998, p. 256)

Arendt is convinced that world alienation will "assume even more radical proportions if it is permitted to follow its own inherent law." (Arendt, 1998, p. 257) The collapse of the public realm, which has been brought about by the rise of modern society, is "so crucial to the formation of the lonely mass man and so dangerous in the formation of the world-less mentality of modern ideological mass movements." (Arendt, 1998, p. 257) For Arendt, it is the individual's alienation from the world, 201

instead of Max Weber's self-alienation, which is the "hallmark of the modern age". (Arendt, 1998, p. 254) Modern men, in a state of world alienation, have already been "thrown upon themselves." (Arendt, 1998, p. 254)

4.3.3. Earth Alienation

Earth alienation is the term that is used by Arendt for interpreting the role of modern science. The dangers of modern science for society, argues Arendt, can be found is in its invasion into daily life. Along with the rise of modern society, mathematics became "the science of the structure of the human mind." By this Arendt means that the way of thinking has been colonized - detrimentally - by the science of mathematics. Arendt expounds: "When Descartes' analytical geometry treated space and extension, the res externa of nature and the world, so 'that its relations, however complicated, must always be expressible in algebraic formulae,' mathematics succeeded in reducing and translating all that man is not into patterns which are identical with human, mental structures." (Arendt, 1998, p. 266)

Moreover, the ever-growing influence of modern science over modern life has become so pervasive that it is difficult to distinguish between the two. As Arendt says: "If we wish to draw a distinctive line between the modern age and the world we have come to live in, we may well find it in the difference between a science which looks upon nature from a universal standpoint and thus acquires complete mastery over her, on one hand, and a truly 'universal' science, on the other, which imports 202

cosmic processes into nature even al the obvious risk of destroying her and, with her, man'smastership over her. " (Arendt, 1998, p. 268) The way modern science approaches and seeks to master nature is with experiments and instruments. This scientific approach prescribes "the rules of behavior and the new standards of judgment" in the modern age and ultimately it prescribes the way of thinking both in and of the world. (Arendt, 1998, p. 278) Theory, which had previously been "the contemplative glance of the beholder who was concerned with" the nature of the world, and thus used to witness "the reality opening up before him", has been usurped by the scientific quest for success and so "the test of theory became a 'practical' one." (Arendt, 1998, p. 278) Arendt argues that "the test of theory became a 'practical' one - whether or not it will work." (Arendt, 1998, p. 278) Along with this modern scientific process, "theory became hypothesis, and the success of the hypothesis became truth." (Arendt, 1998, p. 279) This standard of success in the modern age, Arendt says, is "inherent in the very essence and progress of modem science quite apart from its applicability." (Arendt, 1998, p. 278) This success in the science was "a veritable triumph of human ingenuity against overwhelming odds." (Arendt, 1998)

The modem turn of philosophy since Descartes' postulation of doubt echoes this triumph: "That even if there is no truth, man can be truthful, and even if there is no reliable certainty, man can be reliable. If there was salvation, it had to lie in man himself, and if there was a solution to the questions raised by doubting, it had to come 203

from doubting". (Arendt, 1998, p. 279) This Cartesian introspection is so important because it corresponded with the conclusions that had been drawn by science and had together became the most widespread spirit in the modern age: "Though one cannot know truth as something given and disclosed, man can at least know what he makes himself." (Arendt, 1998, p. 282) This has already become the "common sense" of modern society.

The enormous shift to the scientific which paralleled and characterized the rise of modernity, as outlined above, also brought a momentous spiritual consequence for man in the modern age: The reversal of the hierarchical order between the vita contemplative

and the vita active,

that is, between thinking and acting.

"Contemplation itself became altogether meaningless" says Arendt, and this occurred not only in intellectual arenas, but also "within the range of ordinary human experience." (Arendt, 1998, pp. 292,304)

Thus man can only know and trust what he has made by himself. This conviction means that "one might learn about those things man did not make by figuring out and imitating the processes through which they had come into being." (Arendt, 1998, p. 295) The emphasis of science shifted from questions of 'what' or 'why' to the question of 'how'. The actual objects of knowledge became the "process" and the object of science thus became the documentation of the process' history. The processes thus become "the guide for the making and fabricating activities of homo 204

faber in the modern age". (Arendt, 1998, p. 295) Here Arendt draws essentially the same conclusion which she found in her examination of modern consumer society: "From the standpoint of homo faber, it was as though the means, the production process or development, was more important than the end, the finished product." (Arendt, 1998, p. 297)

This conviction of homo faber, that "man is the measure of all things", has already become "a universally accepted commonplace." (Arendt, 1998, p. 306) And the triumph of this hubristic belief brings with it the belief that "everything is possible." By logical extension it finally finds its ultimate expression in the totalitarian projects of "fabricating mankind". The primary phenomena which totalitarianism must suppress and overcome in order to successfully achieve this aim are human plurality and freedom; this in consequence led to the very conditions for the Holocaust. As Dana R. Villa points out, the Holocaust is then a result of modernity in a deeper sense because "it gives exaggerated expression to what Arendt considers to be the defining spirit of the age, namely, a hubristic belief in the limitless nature of human power." (Dana R. Villa, 2001, p. 128)

The development of modern science and the "concomitant unfolding of modem philosophy" brought about a decisive change in the mentality of the modem individual. And this change, which was manifested in modem daily life and the reigning common sense, was not different from the internal philosophical logic of 205

totalitarianism at that time: "Man began to consider himself part and parcel of the two superhuman, all-encompassing processes of Nature and History, both of which seemed doomed to an infinite progress without ever reaching any inherent telos or approaching any preordained idea." (Arendt, 1998, p. 307)

Finally, Arendt addresses the question of why, when faced with the contrary massive forces of modernity outlined above, nonetheless, the sanctity of life continued to be the highest good, of the highest value, in the modern age, as before. Arendt's argument concludes that despite the modern reversal and the modern secularization, Christian society's belief "in the sacredness of life" wasn't shaken. The sanctity of life "over everything else" remained deeply embedded as a "self-evident truth" for modern thinkers. Yet even if the modern processes of scientific secularization, of the Cartesian doubt and its consequences, and the general loss of faith haven't reached and poisoned those deeply embedded Christian roots, they have worked together to erode and deprive the "individual life of its immortality, or at least of the certainty of immortality." (Arendt, 1998, p. 320) Modem man, without a belief in another coming and better world, is "thrown back upon himself." And this is itself an enormously serious consequence: "Whatever the word 'secular' is meant to signify in current usage, historically it cannot possibly be equated with worldliness; modern man at any rate did not gain this world when he lost the other world, and he did not gain life, strictly speaking, either; he was thrust back upon it, thrown into the closed inwardness of introspection, where the highest he could experience were the empty processes of reckoning of the mind, its play 206

with itself. The only contents left were appetites and desires, the senseless urges of his body which he mistook for passion and which he deemed to be 'unreasonable' because he found he could not 'reason,' that is, not reckon with them. The only thing that could now be potentially immortal, as immortal as the body politic in antiquity and as individual life during the Middle Ages, was life itself, that is, the possibly everlasting life process of the species mankind. " (Arendt, 1998, p. 321) Thus the individual life has been "submerged into the over-all life process of the species" and the individual is only required to "let go, so to speak, to abandon his individuality, the still individually-sensed pain and trouble of living", and to "acquiesce in a dazed, 'tranquilized,' functional type of behavior."; As Arendt wrote: "The last stage of the laboring society, the society of jobholders, demands of its members a sheer automatic functioning." (Arendt, 1998, p. 322)

This discloses some real difficulties for modern theories of behavioral and other social sciences. The core issue is not that their methodologies, which purport to scientifically describe and identify an individual's life by ascertaining and examining certain patterns, is wrong, but rather that, by design, they "could become true". Looming over and above this possibility of modern science and of modernity - the premise of 'becoming and creating truth' - is the gloomy specter that "the modern age - which began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human activity - may end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known." (Arendt, 1998,p. 322)

207

4.4 The Holocaust, Suku and Modernity Regardless of the perspective taken, the Holocaust is a necessary touchstone in any discussion of any form of politically induced or politically sanctioned social suffering today. The inclusion of the Holocaust is especially relevant because, as Bauman says, "the Holocaust was not simply a Jewish problem and not an event in Jewish history alone. The Holocaust was born and executed in our modern rational society, at the high stage of our civilization and at the peak of human cultural achievement, and for this reason it is a problem of that society, civilization and culture." (Bauman, 1989, p. x) Examining the Holocaust against the background of modem society, of modernity itself, raises the same fundamental question as before, but in a contextual framework: How could the Holocaust be possible - and be possible in modern society?

Efforts to comprehend the Holocaust, as Arendt has written, have led from the beginning to frustration, and not because of the lack of historical precedent. The cause of frustration, Arendt argues - and here she acknowledges the theoretical groundwork of Weber - , has it roots in a modern society which has lost its faith. The accelerated process of secularization in modern society, combined with the widespread acceptance of the Cartesian principle of doubt, have, taken together, deprived the "individual life of its immortality, or at least of the certainty of immortality." (Arendt, 1998, p. 320) The consequence for the modern man, without his faith in a coming, 208

better world, has been that he is "thrown back upon himself." (Arendt, 1998, p. 320) It is exactly when modern man lacks this faith and is deprived of his sense of immortality that Arendt pinpoints the banality of evil, and, furthermore, she postulates the possibility of an "Eichmann" lurking inside every one of us. The Holocaust and totalitarianism can then, Arendt argues, be understood as manifestations of that internal possibility arising from modernity.

Now, if the Suku Movement is examined from Arendt's perspective, we will postulate that Suku, as a practice of political confessional narrative, also reflects and contains the essential logic of the modern age which has been elucidated by Arendt. To wit: the development of Nature and History. And furthermore, this can be supported by examining the major and more or less catastrophic political events in modem China from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution.

In the preceding chapter it was explained how the practice of Suku was conducted using a constructed and 'developmental' logic which pre-classified essentially all past experiences and circumstances of the poor peasants' life histories as consisting of suffering, pain and evil, while, at the same time, denoting and emphasizing the revolutionaries role as that of the 'savior' come to rescue them from their miserable existence; which the 'savior' would do by fundamentally dismantling every facet of the peasants' world, including their identity. It is obviously not a 'great leap forward' to characterize this logic as an exact manifestation of Arendt's laws of 209

Nature and History. As Arendt says, such a logic "is more obedient to these superhuman forces than any government ever was before, and that far from wielding its power in the interest of one man, it is quite prepared to sacrifice everybody's vital, immediate interests to the execution of what it assumes to be the law of History or the law of Nature." (Arendt, 1968, p. 159)

Beyond this, the logic of the Chinese revolution and the Suku Movement has a deeper connection with Arendt's assertion of "earth alienation" in modernity. A critical aim during the practice of a Suku action was to determine an answer to the question "How do the landlords exploit the poor and hired peasants?" In that this question was placed at the top of the Suku agenda, posed as the first topic for discussion, it is evident that the crucial aim was first to destroy the traditional and moral beliefs of the peasants. This was done by casting doubt - not Cartesian, but doubt nonetheless - which deprived the peasants during Suku of their faith in another world, and at the same time, they began to teach them the revolutionary Truth: That they, the peasants, are the measure of this world.

The peasants, specifically the poor and hired peasants, were taught that they were important and powerful. Once this belief had been successfully instilled, the triumphal revolutionary conviction soon took root: Together we can do anything! Or: Everything is possible. Using the method and practice of Suku, the peasants were "educated" again and again to believe in their own power; in their manifest destiny. 210

And that power was defined as limitless in nature: It could not only destroy the whole of feudalist 'old China', but could also be harnessed to build a totally new China.

Mass mobilization of the peasants was the raison d'etre for the Suku Movement. First by educating the peasants in a linear interpretation of history, in which the peasants were the 'winners' of destiny; and then by motivating the peasants to 'fight' ruthlessly for the goodness of their own "class" and for a better "new world." The logic and consequence of Suku practice coincide exactly with Arendt's analysis of totalitarian logic: "Man began to consider himself part and parcel of the two superhuman, all-encompassing processes of nature and history, both of which seemed doomed to an infinite progress without ever reaching any inherent telos or approaching any preordained idea." (Arendt, 1998, p. 307) Relative to the "great" revolutionary mission, the fate of the individual was insignificant and banally unimportant; everyone's vital interest could be sacrificed for the cause. The only value measurement which remained for the individual's life was the extent of his or her contribution to the whole, to the "great" historical development. And that "great" cause was the construction of a new and modern Communist China, in which the logic dictated that the traditional rural society, family and peasant were not just expendable, but targeted for annihilation.

A close examination of Suku, as is being undertaken here, not only shows the parallels to Arendt's thoughts on modernity. It also exposes some aspects which have 211

been missed or neglected by Arendt. Hand in hand with the destruction of the traditional rural communities in China, came a change in the traditional identity of the rural peasants. The traditional "self' which had been embedded in the local community, culture and moral code of Confucianism was also destroyed; not incidentally, but purposefully by the practice of Suku. To use Arendt's phrase, the traditional rural peasants were "thrown upon themselves." However, Arendt's argument and phrase are inadequate, because while they accurately describe the development of a passive and isolated state of man and his identity, in the case of Suku and the rural peasants, the developmental process was considerably more active, more reflective, and had an express purpose and desire of creating Communist "people".

The revolution destroyed the existing power structures of traditional rural community, the few local elites, by essentially inverting the power pyramid and establishing the dictatorial domination of the "masses". Social differentiation during Suku practice came a process of assigning and creating new identities. Another differentiating aspect of Suku was that peasants and reactionaries could be "thought reformed" - rehabilitated or reinstated - through a number of political manners. This was, it is argued here, also a significant and modern political mechanism, and yet one which Arendt doesn't discuss.

Dana R. Villa has argued that Arendt, following Heidegger, was also 212

concerned with the subjectification of the "real" in the modern age, and moreover, that this problem with the "real" can be found in "the existential resentment that drives modern humanity to take itself so far out of the world, to ascribe to itself a position from which the world might be mastered, remade, and disposed of." (Dana R. Villa, 1997, p. 184) However, the examination of Arendt's earth alienation, must conclude that this alienated "world" only refers to the natural world; the natural world as a research object of modern science. And in her study of Eichmann, Arendt explicitly describes a thoughtless man. This man, because of his banality and normality, she asserts, is not even capable of stepping back from himself, of truly reflecting on his circumstances and how he got there.

However, the whole Suku Movement, it can be argued, was predicated on a contrary premise about, and belief in, appealing to the conscience of the ordinary banal peasant. The practice of Suku was all about asking the peasants to step back and reflect on the circumstances, past and present, of their daily life; to question, to doubt, and then assist in the destruction of their very way of life in favor of a new world. Furthermore, Suku demanded, ultimately, that the peasants step back and shed their traditional identity and beliefs; they were expected to disown their selfs.

The premise of the belief underlying Suku was not only that the whole old social order, but also the whole subjectivity of man could be mastered and remade. And this process of radical thought reform, as the Suku Movement exemplifies, could 213

successfully pursued with tools of active, thoughtful and reflective engagement.

Arendt loses no words on this aspect, just as she does not discuss Hitler's My Struggle, nor take into consideration the large number of Germans who were aslo 'educated' by the Nazi government and enthusiastically supported and fought for its causes. In other words, Arendt neglects to consider the creation of man in history as a sociopolitical animal.

Whether in the context of radical evil, the banality of evil or the modern human condition, Arendt's thoughts for understanding the Holocaust and abnormal suffering return again and again to one key marker: The oppressive character of 'the normal' in modern society. The potential for danger, for abnormal suffering, can be found in the modern world's routine daily life. In Arendt's theories on modern, abnormal social suffering, the development of the bureaucratic system and the rise of modem science and technology are obviously two fundamental and necessary conditions. Moreover, modern society has also imposed significant and heavy constraints on the individual: Unprecedented superfluity, alienation, thoughtlessness and isolation and loneliness.

The argument here is that further evidence for the creation and existence of abnormal suffering in modernity can also be found in the practices of the Suku Movement and in the basic logic on which modern revolutionary China was built. Thus we can take Arendt's words of warning as a reference to Suku. In her opinion, as 214

she wrote, the totalitarian methods of the Nazis will not necessarily be confined, in the future, to only similar totalitarian regimes, In the modern age "totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man." (Arendt, 1968, p. 459)

Now we can say that, the practice of Suku, despite its express revolutionary aim of alleviating the historical 'normal" daily suffering of the peasants, actually harbored a real corollary danger of creating massive abnormal suffering. And this could be found from the modern revolutionary history of China, from Great Leap Movement to Cultural Revolution.

Chapter V: Suku and Power

"Why tell the truth? How do we come to feel obliged to tell the truth - particularly the truth about ourselves? For years, Foucault had waged a kind ofguerrilla war, in theory as well as in practice, against the imperative to tell the truth ...Perhaps the most chafing of these constraints, in Foucault's mind, was the duty to confess - one of the most insidious legacies that Christianity had bequeathed to modern society. " -James Miller, 1993: 357-358 "At the end of the Middle Ages, leprosy disappeared from the Western world. " 215

- Michel Foucault, 1973: 3

In the previous two chapters our discussion moved from Freud and Marcuse, to then focus on the parallels between Suku and the work done by Hannah Arendt concerning the Holocaust, while critically examining the application of their theories to the Suku phenomenon. In Chapter III we explored some of the social/psychological dimensions which Suku and the confession of "normal" daily suffering had in the early stages of revolutionary China. Chapter IV argued that the practice of Suku, or confession in a public and political context, not only was part and parcel of the inherent revolutionary system pushed forward by the CCP, but also expressed and created real "abnormal" suffering. Moreover, in reflecting on the parallels between the Suku Movement and Arendt's examination of the Eichmann trial and the Holocaust, a number of pertinent aspects were discovered which Arendt's analysis either neglected or, at least, considered beyond the scope of her study.

This chapter will now attempt to deepen the understanding of Suku and its significant role in the overarching revolutionary movement by examining Suku in the context of social and political theories of power. For this analysis, this chapter will most predominantly apply the work of the philosopher Michel Foucault because of the unique and preeminent nature of his contributions to the study of power theory. The ambition here is to argue for the existence and relevance of a particular power structure constructed and reinforced by the practice of Suku and political confession. 216

Building on the discussion presented in the previous chapters, this exploration primarily focuses on an analysis and interpretation of the Suku handbook which was examined in Chapter II. The Suku handbook is not only the most important primary resource for comprehending the actual practice of Suku. Because it was the instructional manual used by the work teams and commanders of the PLA to conduct Suku actions, the content of the handbook provides deep insight into the political machinations and the power relationship between the gazing of state power and the lives of "infamous men". The Suku handbook, it will be postulated here, was essentially a manual for constructing a new identity, a new breed or species of modern human beings if you like, for hundreds of millions of Chinese - "the people" - and setting the stage for a massive and historically unprecedented - both in size and scope - social and political revolutionary experiment.

217

5.1 A Foucaultian Method of Interpretation Although the major thrust of Foucault's theories on power and confession are found in his well-known studies of sexuality and sexual relations, Foucault also authored another known essay titled The Life of Infamous Men which, in its astonishing conciseness and synthesis of Foucalt's arguments, provides an excellent framework for understanding and examining the Suku Movement.

The essay The Life of Infamous Men was written as the preface to a book of collected texts and provides us with an almost ideal theoretical framework for understanding the Suku Movement, both its practice and purpose. In his essay, Foucault examines the relationship between narrative, private/personal life and the dynamics of power, both political and psychological. To this end, Foucault reflects upon the relevance of work by some of the same primary theorists as has been done in the preceding chapters of this dissertation in the context of Suku. The focus which Foucault chooses for his examination are largely the confessions of suffering to be found in the narratives of ordinary people speaking of their routine, daily lives and their existential struggles. One important question which Foucault addresses, which is transferable perfectly and in its entirety to the plight of the Chinese peasants in revolutionary China is this: (They) "should have really taken part in the miniscule history of these existences, of their misfortune, of their rage or of their uncertain madness" in various ways, including "complaints, denunciations, orders or reports." 218

(Foucault, 2003, p. 78)

In The Life of Infamous Men Foucault argues that his aim is to fully grasp the significance of the confessional narratives collected in the book and, as such, it's necessary to place them in a proper political and historical context; to discover why such confessional narratives were themselves existentially necessary, and what kind of role they play in the power relations of ordinary people with political institutions or practices they reference. Most importantly, Foucault tries to understand the relationship between power and knowledge, or the relationship between "the truth and knowledge", as he writes: "I undertook to know why it had been suddenly so important in a society like ours to 'suppress' (as one stifles a cry, smothers a fire or suffocates an animal) a scandalous monk or a fantastic and inconsequential usurer; I sought the reason for which the poor spirits had been so zealously prevented from walking upon unknown paths." (Foucault, 2003, p. 77)

This paper applies the same interpretive method developed for reading the Suku handbook as Foucault used in his essay, even though the primary confessional narratives which were collected by Foucault differ from the text and content of the Suku handbook in one significant aspect: In the Suku handbook there are no stories, or personal narrative recorded per se, but rather it is a descriptive text on how to teach or train the reader - PLA commanders and work team members - to solicit or draw out such confessional narratives of suffering from "infamous men" when telling their 219

life stories using the Suku method. Nonetheless, because of the overwhelming preponderance of parallels applicable to the Suku Movement, this "Foucaultian" method of interpretation extrapolated from the essay The Life of Infamous Men will be used in this chapter to understand and analyze the Suku handbook.

The explicit purpose of the Suku handbook was to teach the work teams the tried-and-true method for extracting confessional narratives from people - the peasants - of the suffering in their daily existence. As has been outlined and argued already, Suku played an important role in what Foucault describes as the "miniscule history" of the peasants existence as a methodology for creating a politicized form of confession. Suku must be grasped "in its barrenness"; its very existence and creation must be contextualized to discover and examine the machinations and manipulations of power and the tremendous socio-political changes which it wrought. The initial question to be raised here is whether the power relationship between the ordinary peasant and the representatives of state authority is inherently reflected in the instructional content of the Suku handbook. Some of the corollary questions which need to be asked from this perspective are: How did the Suku technique which the handbook promotes actually influence the lives of ordinary people subjected to it? In which ways did peasants confront or assimilate the practice of Suku into their own cultural worldview? And, in comparison to Foucault's analysis and conclusions regarding the role and nature of narrative confession; which characteristics are exemplified or found in the practice of Suku? 220

Foucaultian

A second Foucaultian perspective used here is to interpret the Suku handbook as to how it speaks to the confrontation between the state authorities and the structures of local society and community as a whole. From this perspective, other questions are raised: How did the CCP use Suku to dismantle or destroy the traditions of local society for its revolutionary mission? How did the handbook attempt to predict and preempt the reaction and resistance of the local society and community to the power of the state? And, at this communal micro-level, what kind of new manipulative and machine-like forms did the exertion of state power exhibit?

Finally, a third Foucaultian perspective which will be addressed in this chapter is an exploration of the confrontation between knowledge and truth; between the traditional wisdom and knowledge in rural China and the modern ideological truths underpinning the revolution and the teaching method outlined in the Suku handbook. Foucault argues that power and confession are inter-related and thus must be understood through their relationship with each other. Power, for Foucault, is not something that is simply "held" or wielded: Power is always "alive"; in action, in relationships, and in conflict. Foucault understands power to have more than only a repressive dimension; it also necessarily has a productive nature and dimension which Foucault expounds upon in his theoretical discussion of the nature of confession. Essentially, Foucault argues that confession has become an instrument for eliciting truth and authenticity in modern (western) society, and, as such has already become an engrained and necessary characteristic of modernity itself. Hence modern western 221

societies can be termed confessional; and it follows that the human beings living in such societies have a confessional identity. In Foucault's landmark work examining the nature and significance of confession, The History of Sexuality, he concluded that confessional practices in narratives of sexual expression and sexuality simultaneously conceal and produce authentic truths. Foucault postulates that "the transformation of sex into discourse" and "the dissemination and reinforcement of heterogeneous sexualities" are closely linked together. Ultimately, Foucault draws the conclusion that narrative confession is itself a space in which power, truth and sexuality are intertwined; and that the study of narrative confession, as a phenomenon, is a valid and valuable tool for understanding modern society, subjective experience of the modem individual, and of modernity itself.

This argument can be extended, and is particularly applicable, to our understanding of Suku as well as to Suku's role in the greater execution and manifestation of the revolutionary re-making of China and Chinese society. The aim of cultivation and constructing new classes of "good" and "reactionary" people for the modern revolutionary society is clearly outlined in the Suku handbook discussed here. The handbook functioned not just as an instructional manual for the local work teams and PLA company commanders in their mission, but also provided a primary authoritative text which, then and now, provides a slew of references to the ideological, political and historical context. This is most apparent when interpreting the handbook using Foucault's theories on the workings of power, knowledge, and 222

subjectivity.

In an interview toward the end of his life (Foucault & Rabinow, 1984, p. 251), Foucault indicated that the relationship between power, knowledge and subjectivity had been the major concern he'd pursued in his thought throughout his work. Thus, for a full understanding of the arguments that Foucault postulates on confession in The Life of Infamous Men, it is necessary to grasp his essential thoughts on knowledge/truth, power, and subjectivity in the context of earlier writings. Equally so, the discussion of the Suku handbook here will reference and be supported by other earlier revolutionary primary resource materials.

5.2 Suku, Daily Life and Power One of the fundamental traits of modern society, Foucault wrote, is the relationship between the impotence of the individual's personal daily existence and the power of the impersonal state authorities. (Foucault, 2003, p. 80) It is the chief concern here to ask how the daily life of the peasants and villagers was impacted when confronted with the power of the state in the actions and contextual space of the Suku Movement. This is a key question, although other aspects will be addressed here as well.

The Suku handbook describing the methodology of the Suku Movement is 223

invaluable for furthering understanding of the revolutionary process because it illustrates the mechanics of the interaction between the forces of revolutionary power and the traditional lives of the peasants. Looking through this prism sheds light upon the manner and dynamics of the peasants' "encounter" with the revolutionary and life-altering agents of change at perhaps the most mundane of levels - in daily life.

Although the recorded stories, narratives, diaries and other primary source materials, including state-issued documents, might be misleading or mendacious, or might portray injustice or excessiveness, Foucault argues there is one thing that is undeniably true of such confessional narratives despite this subjective reality: The narratives and texts are part of a historical reality - a reality which, in the case of Suku, is now called the Communist Revolution in China. They do not only refer to it, Foucault asserts, but also "perform in it" and "play a part in it." (Foucault, 2003, p. 78) The fact, as presented previously, that the leader of the revolution, Mao Zedong, endorsed and enthusiastically promoted the use of Suku as a political instrument, led directly to Suku's being used extensively by the PLA army so that Suku did play an important part in numerous revolutionary campaigns for class education, for mass mobilization, as well as for the Land Reform Movement. Important as this was, when seen from the perspective of the peasants the revolution impacted their lives even more dramatically. Clearly, if all the other aspects of the Suku Movement are left aside for a moment, and the focus is only on the relationship between the life of the peasants and the act of confessional narrative, then it becomes apparent that there 224

were "fragments of discourse trailing the fragments of a reality in which they take part." (Foucault, 2003, p. 79)

In his earlier works, Foucault studied the history of confession in western society from Christianity to the modern age. Confession, he found, was an "astonishing" invention, developed in the rise and spread of Christianity, which had become the most important instrument for organizing and manipulating "power's hold over the commonplace of life." (Foucault, 2003, p. 83) Through the creation and refinement of confessional rituals, over time, the authentic and original content of the individual's narrative would disappear along with the disappearance of the individual's voice; nothing would remain and nothing would be preserved.

Beginning in the 17th century, according to Foucault's research, this mechanism of confessional ritual - initially practiced in the confines and context of the church — had become so established and refined that it began to mutate into "a mechanism of registration". The key characteristic of the newly developing confessional mechanism was/is a modern bureaucratic system which permeated and influenced all aspects of the individual's daily life: "Everything thus said is registered in writing, accumulates and constitutes dossiers and archives." (Foucault, 2003, p. 84) The rise of this mechanical registration brought with it, in turn, a new dynamic to the relationship between power, narrative discourse and daily life. The content of the individual's personal narrative, including subjective confessional experiences, were documented, 225

collected and deposited into a massive repository which is the modern bureaucratic system and state. A new relationship now existed in which the individual, the confessor, continued to "speak" or confess to a higher authority, but that authority was no longer God, represented by the church, but rather the bureaucratic institutions that represent the modern state. This state exercised and controlled this powerful confessional tool by rigorously demanding, recording and managing the mundane minutiae of each individual's daily life. Confession was no longer a private, personal ritual between a man and his God, but became a public and political ritual: "The minuscule wrong of misery and misconduct is no longer conveyed to heaven by the scarcely audible confidence of the avowal; it is accumulated on earth in the form of written traces. It is quite a different type of relations which is established between power, discourse and the everyday, quite a different way of regulating the latter and of formulating it. Thus is born, for everyday life, a new mise en scene." (Foucault, 2003, P- 84)

Although these two confessional mechanisms are significantly different, however, in such a transition, Foucault found that, at least in part, one objective of both remains the same despite the transition from private to public, from personal to political, namely: "The bringing of everyday life into discourse, the surveying of the infinitesimal universe of unimportant irregularities and disturbances." (Foucault, 2003, p. 84) The characteristics which define both historical confessional mechanisms in the West can be found in the confessional method of Chinese Suku. The aim of 226

conforming and re-forming the peasants' value system during the narrative confession of daily life was urged and highly encouraged during Suku practice. A critical step in the Suku process - one with parallels to the religious Christian confessional rituals of the West - was the "annihilation of sin".

In the Suku handbook, the seventh step of the outlined procedures calls on the practitioner to "discard dirty stuff". The handbook explains what was considered tainted: "Dirty stuff means, first, the personal material belongings that 'liberated' soldiers received when they were members of the KMT army, and second, it means the past guilt which they accumulated when they were KMT soldiers."

For those "liberated" KMT soldiers, whether captured or turncoats, the "dirty stuff' was the "evil" contained in their life's narrative because they had actively participated in the reactionary KMT army. The premise of the procedure was that, if the confessor demonstrated in their Suku performance an awareness of the evilness of their class status, acknowledged their bad behavior as an enemy of the people, and convincingly proved during confession that he had rooted out the source of his "evil past", then he could be rehabilitated and given a fresh start; a new class identity. In most cases the "sin" was to be found in the confessor's "thought mistakes", but also in the class status of his/her family background. By totally renouncing his/her past identity or a "non-people" family background during Suku, he/she could be recognized as having corrected his past errors; of having annihilated his sins. As 227

Lifton finds in his research on thought reform: "The thought reform process is one means by which non-people are permitted, through a change in attitude and personal character, to make themselves over into people."

(Lifton, 1963, p. 433)

The idea of using Suku and confession as a pragmatic instrument for transforming class status for another group - not former KMT soldiers - is also apparent in a letter to the Jinsui party bureau in 1947 by Liu Shaoqi. Liu is clearly disturbed by the evidence that during the Land Reform Movement, a lot of the CCP cadres were in cohorts with the former local elites. The worse aspect of this situation was, Liu wrote, that those landlords started to use the CCP's "own organization to protect themselves and to repress the masses." (C. Archives, 1981, p. 47) Confronted with that danger, the CCCCP decided to remedy the situation by giving those cadres or party members who made such "political mistakes" a second chance through the same "thought reform" process of Suku; they too, by confessing "criticism and self-criticism", could wash away their sins.

Just as one function of Christian confessional ritual is to provide a mechanism for rehabilitation and cleansing, so it was for significant segments of the Chinese population who navigated the process of Suku: The so-called "annihilation of sin" clause in the Suku handbook allowed them to correct their "bad" in narrative and have a chance of obtaining the desired "good" class status.

However, for the larger segment of the population, Suku also exhibited all the 228

chief characteristics of the modern confessional mechanism which Foucault describes. Although the possibility of wiping the slate clean did exist in certain circumstances, a convincing Suku performance by the individual was not enough, by and large, to eradicate all details of one's past life history, bad behavior or reactionary class status. The past wouldn't simply disappear because, in addition to the individual's performance during the Suku actions, ongoing political reports and other documents gathered in the investigation and research stage, including but not limited to their family background, protocols of events in their life history, and their daily activities were collected and recorded by the work teams in many ways. In such a bureaucratic system, as Foucault points out, they "deposit themselves in an enormous documentary mass and thus build up through time as the endlessly growing memory of all the wrongs of the world." (Foucault, 2003, p. 84)

As our previous discussion of the "Wang Yuanshou Working Method" during the investigation and research phase of land reform showed; Wang Yuanshou, and every other work team member, was, in fact, a representative of the state authority in a power relationship with the peasants. (Fang, 1997, p. 41) A primary function of that authority using the Wang Yuanshou Working Method, or "Fang Pin Wen Ku", was to comprehensively record and document. And it was already at this stage that peasants were motivated, under threat of negative classification information landing in the dossier of the system, to apply an advantageous interpretation during the narration of the mundane events and circumstances in their daily lives.

This interpretation of the individual's ordinary life and biography through a revolutionary lens became even more focused and intense in the practice of Suku when state authority trained the ordinary peasants in an art of narrative confession which could and would, the peasants were aware, influence their destiny in the revolutionary society. It was at this point in history, Foucault argues, that a new relationship connecting power, narrative discourse and daily life was established; a relationship with wide-reaching and complex effects both on the regulation and conduct of the individual's existence and place in society.

5.3. State Power and Local Society In his work, Foucault argues that society should be seen as distinct from political institutions and structures. Society, he argues, is a separate manifestation with its own culture, structure and internal mechanisms which make it a historical reality that describes and ultimately defines modernity: "Government not only has to deal with a territory, with a domain, and with its subjects, but it also has to deal with a complex and independent reality that has its own laws and mechanism of action, its regulations as well as its possibilities of disturbance. This new reality is society." (Foucault & Rabinow, 1984, p. 242)

In contrast to Foucault's view - which is predicated on an examination of Western systems - there was a real local society in traditional rural China; but it was not a "new reality" that can be said to be indicative of modernity in any way 230

whatsoever. On the contrary, it was a long-standing, self-sufficient society with its own local politics, history and culture, as has been outlined here in Chapter I. The traditional character of rural China at the time of the revolution was, as previously discussed, seen as an obstacle to modernity by both the KMT and the CCP. Taking control of the countryside was a significant challenge for both the KMT and the CCP in their efforts to build a modern state. Thus the main thrust of all the CCP's campaigns in the countryside; of mass mobilization, of the Land Reform Movement, and of Suku, was to subdue and conform the local societies to their modern vision.

For members of the local rural society of China, the reflexive attitude, traditional by definition, was that the invasion of state power threatened to radically change their culture, history and politics. This perception was, of course, objectively correct, and this dynamic of conflict in turn reflects the applicability of Foucault's theory of the power relationship between individuals, societies and state authorities. According to Foucault, the allocation and exercise of power exists in "complex circuits, and in a whole play of demands and responses." (Foucault, 2003, p. 85)

The complexity and difficulties of power relations were felt by the work teams at the forefront of the Land Reform Movement and mass mobilization efforts. In some areas, especially in Northern China, as Thaxton has pointed out, the "immoral landlordism" had already shown the seeds of revolt before the arrival of the CCP. Land reform, and its related actions of classification and Suku, easily found roots 231

there. The Suku Movement and mobilization efforts simply provided the peasants with an opportunity to engage in a struggle they had longed for, sometimes for years. But in most other areas of the country, the indoctrination efforts and revolutionary education were much more difficult because, for those local cultures, the revolutionary ideology was felt to be totally foreign to their lives, even considered ridiculous by conservative-minded peasants. (Crook & Crook, 1959; Hinton, 1967; Myrdal, 1965; Shue, 1980; Yu, 1964)

In his essay Foucault emphasizes the regulation that state power put on individual thought: "I sought the reason for which the poor spirits had been so zealously prevented from walking upon unknown paths." (Foucault, 2003, p. 77) In comparison to the control which Foucault perceived, the resources providing a depiction of Suku in action seem to show that the Suku Movement, in most areas where it was practiced in China, both aimed and encouraged the peasants to walk down that "unknown path" of thinking. But where the ideological thought process led, which the peasants was coaxed or coerced to engage in, may have been "unknown" to the peasant, it was not unknown to the administrators of Suku; they maintained control.

The explicitly defined aim of bringing the population through Suku to walk down this "unknown path" was to educate the peasants; to teach them to think in radically different terms than their traditional culture contained, and ultimately to 232

mobilize them en masse for the revolutionary causes. Bringing the peasants to reflect on their existence and life circumstances according to terms dictated by the revolutionary ideology rooted in Marxism, was a challenge and not just for poor peasants: Every social and economic stratum of traditional rural Chinese society was confronted by the cultural foreignness of the CCP's "unknown path".

The authors of the Suku handbook clearly recognized the formidability of this challenge. This is evident in the priority given - it is the first step of action outlined in the instructional handbook - to do "sufficient preparation and mobilization" aimed at quelling the apprehension and reflexive resistance of the peasants towards the revolutionary mode of thought. This preparation should, as outlined in the first step of the Suku handbook, take the form of coaching the initial dialogue with the peasants in a specific frame of reference. Two questions/issues are posed:

"I) When landlords demand rent is that exploitation, or is it collecting earnings from the production of the land?

2) Long-term and hired laborers work to earn wages from the landlords. But if they did not suffer in place of and at the hands of the landlords, why then would the landlords give money to long-term and hired laborers?" (Suku and Revenge 1947: 57)49

49

The page numbering of the original handbook is not logically consistent. This citation is on the page numbered 57, but the following page is numbered 38. 233

The purpose of the two questions is clearly to encourage the peasants to reflect on the nature of their relationship with landlords, to reevaluate their traditional social and economic status, and to call into question the beliefs they hold or held, for example about property and ownership. The first question provokes the peasant to question the existing relationship between landlords and rent-payers. It introduces the foreign (for the peasants) concept and term "exploitation" into the discussion. The aim was to first bring the peasants to understand the concept and then to adopt it; although the latter was more difficult than the former for an ordinary peasant. First the peasants had to learn the revolutionary categories and vocabulary, as well as comprehend the non-traditional logic of revolutionary narrative. Yet, once accepted and adopted, the term "exploitation" and others, would provide a totally new system of meaning and belief with which peasants could, and should, interpret the circumstances of their lives, past, present and future.

The second question posed carefully raises the issue of suffering and attempts to make it directly relevant to the peasants. Nonetheless, for many peasants the engrained attitude towards their own misery and suffering in daily life; be it in their work for landlords or otherwise, was largely fatalistic and suffering was simply considered, culturally, part and parcel of a traditional rural existence. This necessitated further and deeper educational work by the Suku work teams to define the economic relationship between peasant and landlord as not just "exploitative", but that the landlord class was, in fact, the root cause of the peasants' eternal sufferings. 234

The encouraged and anticipated conclusion: The peasants must think that their lives, their existential struggle to survive, Chinese society and even the world as a whole were all unjust and spoke to the truth of the revolutionary ideology! If the peasant accepted this conclusion and took this first step down the "unknown path", the next step was pre-ordained by the revolutionary logic: The evil reign of injustice must be overturned and corrected; join us, mobilize!

The function of the two questions of the initial step for Suku practice is similar to the function of the three questions from Hinton's book quoted previously in Chapter II, which were aimed at alleviating the apprehension of the peasants. In any case, there is evidence that the effectiveness of this step was higher for PLA company commanders applying it to "liberated" soldiers, essentially uprooted individuals, from the KMT. However, a work team dispatched to a self-sufficient society with its own tradition of culture, laws and politics faced other hurdles than the PLA commanders. Difficulties might include one or all of the following:

- Cadres and local party members, although representatives and agents of revolutionary power, were often co-opted by, or in cohorts with the local elite of landlords and gentry.

- Peasants rejected or resisted the revolutionary categorization, or interpreted the revolutionary discourse using their own language and cultural references; that is, essentially not in Marxist terms. (J. Guo, 2001; 235

Shue, 1980)

- The two developments outlined above, when they existed, often undermined the effectiveness of revolutionary campaigns for land reform, classification and the practice of Suku as they became ensnarled in local politics and cultural clashes. In some cases, the revolutionary instruments, especially Suku, were co-opted by peasants for conducting local political battles and rivalries.

This last development is not surprising to Foucault, who opined that revolutionary language, such as the handbook taught, constituted "the instrument of revenge" and "the weapon of hatred." (Foucault, 2003) In such situations the Suku actions, which were by definition in a public forum, could become a space, or forum, in which the evil or "guilty" target of the peasants' Suku confessional narrative was an "immoral" peasant - immoral by local community standards, not according to CCP doctrine. At the same time, many of the actual landlords were given appreciation and sympathy from poor peasants, often because of their benevolent and charitable behavior. In her research Cheng Xiuying also found that some50 of the landlords classified as such during the Land Reform Movement weren't actually landlords at all. They had been "made out" to be landlords by other villagers for various reasons, most often because their behavior contravened local moral codes. (Cheng, 1999) Yingxing

50

In her fieldwork, Cheng found that all most all, if not all, of those who had been made landlords were not according to the standard. However, this is obviously not the general situation. 236

found similar evidence in his research: Some people were classified as landlords and "class enemies" not according to their economic status, but according to local political and cultural considerations. (Chu, 1992; Ying, 2009)

The temptation was great for some peasants, in some circumstances, to manipulate the revolutionary machinery. And, if he or she could convincingly perform the confessional narrative at the core of Suku using the terms, logic and language of the revolutionary dialectic, then the language of the revolution became an effective instrument for conducting local political power struggles. "Everyone could make use of the enormity of absolute power for themselves, to their own ends and against others: It was a kind of placing of mechanisms of sovereignty, a given possibility, at the disposal of whoever is clever enough to tap them, to divert its effects to their profit." (Foucault, 2003, p. 85)

In these scenarios the entanglement of state authority with the power relationships within the villages and communities had a huge influence on the practice of Suku. The work teams conducting Suku actions had created - unintentionally, but true nonetheless - a space where their revolutionary mission was perverted by the historically pre-existing political conditions of the village. The villagers used the performance in the Suku narrative forum to conduct political struggles with each other, to manipulate and compromise one another. The villagers could and did leam from the role model of the exemplary narrators how to employ the revolutionary dialectic to 237

position themselves and others within a new emerging local elite and for acquiring other political resources and advantage. The re-distribution of power; the changes in the power relationship was not just between the local society and state authority, but also within the local society, in the changes wrought on the traditional culture and political system. Thus mastering the intricacies of the revolutionary dialectic was of crucial importance to the villagers for their own reasons; and they could learn this mastery from the "exemplary" narrators.

The importance of finding and using such "exemplary" narrators was high on the list of necessary actions to be taken in the practice of Suku. As described in Chapter II, the handbook advises - in steps one, two and four - that such model speakers be sought out, cultivated and employed to show the subsequent speakers the "correct" terms of thinking and ways of expressing themselves. In their performances they - the model narrators - were to exemplify the relationship between the power of state authority and the personal life history of the individual and local society. It is imperative to analyze the role of exemplary narrators more precisely using Foucaultian theories on power and truth.

5.4 Local Wisdom versus Revolutionary Truth As discussed previously, in most areas of China the population was not readily receptive to the revolutionary ideology which the CCP promulgated. For effective mass mobilization, the CCP had to "educate" the rural population as if they were 238

naive children about the revolutionary truth and demonstrate in this educational process that this "truth" was evident in, and applicable to, their local society and conditions. The PLA company commanders and the work teams were the teachers embodiment of both the state authority and the revolutionary truth. As the Suku handbook shows, the use of exemplary narrators was the teaching tool of choice for the PLA and the work teams because it was thought to be most effective in reconciling the new "truth" of the revolution with the traditional wisdom of local knowledge.

It is this relationship between knowledge, truth and power which is the core concern of almost all Foucaultian theory. For Foucault, the historical development of confession (outlined above) was also paralleled in the historical development of "madness" and "civilization". Foucault explored questions in both studies such as: How was the narrative discourse of people defined, constrained, or regulated? Which topics could become the subject of "science"? What kind of mechanisms were developed that could explain these historical phenomena? Foucault postulated: "The problem now is this: Who is speaking; are they qualified to speak; at what level is the statement situated; what set can it be fitted into, and how and to what extent does it conform to other forms and other typologies of knowledge?" (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997, p. 184) From these questions we can find that Foucault's mode of analysis when approaching knowledge and confession is actually founded on his genealogical and archeological models of examination. 239

Foucault's purpose in applying methods of genealogy and archaeology was, in his own words: "A sort of attempt to dissubjugate historical knowledge, to set them free; or in other words to enable them to oppose and struggle against the coercion of a unitary, formal, and scientific theoretical discourse... Archaeology is the method specific to the analysis of local discursivities, and genealogy is the tactic which, once it has described these local discursivities, brings into play the desubjugated knowledge that have been released from them." (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997, pp. 10-11)

Subjugated knowledge, in Foucault's terms is "the historical contents that have been buried and disguised in a functionalist coherence or formal systemization"; and secondly, he infers that that knowledge which could not be subjugated - or "dissubjugated" knowledge - was just not qualified to be "coded" in a "system". (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997) Thus what Foucault tries to do through his genealogical and archaeological approach is to 'excavate' and distinguish between that knowledge which has been coded, and that which has been concealed, obscured or lost through the processes of scientification and authoritization. Moreover, Foucault reminds us that there is a dangerous caveat inherent to this approach: Knowledge(s) might be "recorded and re-colonized by these unitary discourses" (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997) or be lost, obscured or concealed by themselves.

Foucault argued that knowledge is an "invention" (Foucault & Lotringer, 1989, 240

pp. 13-14). For Foucault, knowledge is not an independent thing, (or body, as in the most common English language metaphor 'body of knowledge') but rather expresses itself as a kind of state; one of tension, which in Foucault's terms is a power struggle. Furthermore, Foucault explains archeology to be "a domain of research" where he distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: Savoir and Connaissance. Foucault explains the distinction as follows: "By Connaissance I mean the relation of the subject to the object and the formal rules that govern it. Savoir refers to the conditions that are necessary in a particular period for this or that type of object to be given to Connaissance and for this or that enunciation to be formulated. " (Foucault, 1972, p. 15) Whereas Connaissance refers to a specific state or subject of knowledge, defined by a relationship of rules between the subject and object, Savoir is the sum of necessary conditions which make the existence or construction of Connaissance possible. The former, Connaissance, can take its "form", for example, through scientific publications and government documents and regulations, such as the Suku handbook.

In Foucault's study on history, he extrapolates on four procedural 'goals' used to distinguish between the two kinds of knowledge: Selection, normalization, hierarchicalization, and centralization. The application of these four procedures, Foucault argues, first began in the 18th century when "knowledges were disciplined" These procedures led, Foucault finds, to "a change in the form of dogmatism" (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997, p. 183) and new mechanisms to control knowledge. This 241

control, or power,

was

not exerted

over

the

content

or subject of a

knowledge/discipline, but rather by dictating the narrative rules of discourse within it.

The Suku handbook provides us with a number of rich and detailed examples of how this Foucaultian power/control mechanism functioned in practice, one of which is the significant role which the utilization of "exemplary narrators" played for the administrators - work teams and PLA commanders - of state authority.

In the Suku handbook the second procedural step to be followed is: "Seek out and cultivate those exemplary narrators of Suku who provide a model which promotes the whole movement" Furthermore, the handbook defines the standards for selecting the potential model narrators and recommends how to "cultivate", or refine, their narrative performance. For example, for the PLA commanders who 'recruited' among soldiers, the handbook expressly advises: "Typical model narrators should be those soldiers who were persecuted the most, suffered the most, with the deepest hatred, and are the most recalcitrant." And also: "When seeking or selecting an exemplary narrator, it is of great important that the commander who is doing the seeking must have class standing. The commander himself must first have a solid class standing and a deep empathy for those who have suffered; if otherwise, he cannot find an exemplary Suku narrator." And finally, the most important procedure in this step is to cultivate those 242

selected potential models: "Cultivating the (chosen) model is a meticulous process that requires patience. (Company commanders) should help the soldier to structure, summarize, and focus on one point in the Suku; Help him to recollect additional stories with details displaying and enhancing his political consciousness." In examining this process of cultivating exemplary narrators, the distinction between the two Foucaultian typologies of knowledge becomes apparent. As well, the process that Foucault describes of four procedural "goals" (selection, normalization, hierarchicalization and centralization) between Savior and Connaissance can also be found. To wit: The models for "typical" Suku narrators were first selected according to a narrowly defined set of rules and standards constructed solely by the power of state or state-like authority with the explicit aim of manipulating and defining 'norms'. Furthermore, in the following steps of the procedure the life stories, or narrative discourses, of the chosen "exemplary narrators" were carefully structured and organized according to the centralized system of state authority.

The structure and organization of the narrated experiences during Suku was intended to provide evidence for the hypothetical truth of class oppression. All suffering, past and present, in the daily existential struggle for survival of the peasant; all the unjust social and political conditions; and all pains, trials and tribulations could be categorized, summarized and explained by the existence of class oppression. Moreover, the essentially Marxist theory of class oppression was not only flexible enough - at least during Suku - to interpret all the suffering in the lives of ordinary 243

people as evidence of the theory's truth, but also provided a framework for interpreting even the real "charitable and benevolent" behavior of some landlords (which was appreciated by many poor peasants) as further evidence of the insidious ways in which class oppression functioned. So, in practice, the better understanding and mastery a soldier or peasant had of the logic and rules of the revolutionary dialectic, the better able he or she could conform and perform during his or her narrative presentation of suffering at the core of Suku. By highlighting and enhancing his or her "political consciousness" during the discourse, the peasant could greatly influence, even determine, their ultimate political designation and destiny.

The next step in the Suku handbook, after selection and cultivation of exemplary narrators, was to make the chosen models into evangelists for the revolutionary truth and dialectic. The exemplary narrators had to circulate among and speak to other villagers, teach and influence them in how to best conduct themselves during their own Suku performance. By promulgating and promoting the revolutionary truth in this way, the ordinary villagers were manipulated into reflecting on their suffering and circumstances in revolutionary terms. And with the "assistance" of the exemplary narrators, the poor peasants were encouraged to discover and share more and more stories in their biographies which detailed their suffering. This had a cascading effect, just as the Suku handbook predicts in the first procedural step: "Suffering draws out more suffering." Along with the sharing, discovery and creation of ever more tales of suffering, punctuated by anguished sobbing, weeping and sighing, the intended "class 244

education" was successfully carried out too. More and more peasants were "awakened", became "class conscious" and learned the revolutionary truth.

Such kind of Suku had been gazed closely by power. This can be illustrated by a straightforward side-by-side comparison of two text passages; one is taken from the practical Suku handbook, and the other from the theoretical analysis Foucault's aforementioned essay The Lives of Infamous Men.

The paragraph from the Suku handbook:

"Company commanders must grasp such rules, must feel the same suffering as the soldiers do, must cry with them, and must feel the same hatred which they do. Cultivate them patiently; lead them carefully, according to their emotions."

51

The paragraph from Foucault: "But for that to happen the omnipresence, both real and virtual, of the monarch was necessary to imagine him as fairly close to all these miseries, as fairly attentive to the least of those disturbances; it was necessary that he should himself appear as endowed with a kind of physical ubiquity. In its initial form, this discourse on everyday life was quite entirely turned towards the king; it addressed itself to him; it had to creep into the great ceremonious rituals of power; it had to adopt its form and to assume its signs." (Foucault, 2003, p. 87) In the PLA, the company commander represented the authority of the CCP or state, not unlike a king or monarch. It was essential, the handbook excerpt shows, that 51

From Suku and Revenge. See Appendix A. 245

the commander have the confidence of the Suku participant; that he or she felt and believed that the CCP was present and supportive in the shape of the commander. With that trust, the solider could then apply the political precepts for interpreting his life experiences. To be successful, this was the only acceptable path during a Suku confessional narrative - he must act, speak and interpret using the rules, logic and language provided. This is what Foucault describes in his essay: "The banal could only be said, written, described, observed, graphed and qualified in a power relation which was haunted by the figure of the king - by his real power and by the phantasm of his potency." (Foucault, 2003, p. 87)

Thus the practice of Suku during the Chinese revolution is the embodiment of the important moment in historical development, which Foucault describes, when the state authority has taken control and indoctrinated the language, logic, and structure of discourse and the power relations with "turns of phrase and constructions, rituals of language." Once imposed upon ordinary, insignificant people, they are then obliged to learn the rules and how to reflect upon their existence, the conditions of their lives, their biographies and their identities within the framework of this public, political discourse. And of course the narrative discourse came with the threefold conditions that the "discourse be addressed and put into circulation in a well-defined apparatus of power; that it make the hitherto scarcely perceptible foundation of existences appear; and that, starting from this lowly war of passions and of interests, it should give power the possibility of a sovereign intervention." (Foucault, 1980, p. 89) The only 246

difference between this Foucaultian analysis and Suku was nominal: In China the sovereign power which aspired to intervene was not vested in a monarch, but rather in the authority of Mao, the CCP and its representatives.

Thus we can deduce that knowledge is always intertwined with power, especially when it is in the process of being "subjugated" and begins to emerge as a process of "truth production". From our analysis of the Suku handbook it also is apparent that the system, or mechanisms, for manufacturing truth/knowledge are a somewhat circular process: The production of truth is predicated on having control and power, while, at the same time, the exercise of power is conditional on the production of truth. In Foucault terms: "There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth." (Toews, 1994, p. 31) We can concur with Foucault's argument that the modern mechanism of power in society urges the individual to speak the "truth". The "truthful" confessional narrative becomes the hallmark of identity in modern society as well as of the modern individual: "We must speak truth; we are constrained or condemned to confess or to discover the truth." (Toews, 1994, p. 32) In the practice of Suku this modern mechanism of power also urged the individual narrator to confess, to contribute to the production of "truth" in the solely revolutionary terms of the CCP. Hence Suku was the key political instrument which China's revolution powers needed, created and 247

used.

5.5 Power, Suku and Subjectivity In rounding up the preceding discussion analyzing the political-historical context of the Suku handbook wit is important to reiterate Foucault's perspective that this is not just a collection of a few portraits, but rather a document which provides deep insight into the "snares, weapons, cries, gestures, attitudes, ruses, intrigues for which the words have been the instruments." (Foucault, 2003, p. 79). Is it not fair to say that the Suku handbook had, in its consequences, although of relatively inconsequential length, an enormous and lasting influence on the biographical tra jectory of hundreds of millions of people? The practice of Suku, we now know from examining the handbook and other primary resources, more often than not ultimately determined the liberty, the fortune and/or misfortune of each of these individuals. In a single word: Suku defined his or her destiny. Again, Foucault has aptly described it: "The words have been the instruments... These discourses have really affected lives; these existences have effectively been risked and lost in these words." (Foucault, 2003, p. 79)

By examining Suku through the prism of Foucault's theories on power, we see that Suku demonstrated Foucault's argument that power is dynamic, not something 248

that can be held, or is stable: "Power is not something that is given, exchanged, or taken back... It is something that is exercised and that exists only in action... It is primarily, in itself, a relationship of force." (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997, p. 15) Following this point, Foucault analyzes power in terms of "conflict, confrontation and war" and deftly inverts Clausewitz's famous supposition: "Politics is the continuation of war by other means." (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997, p. 15) In effect, Foucault rejects the "economistic schemata" for interpreting and understanding power, and provisionally concurs with aspects of two other weighty hypotheses on the nature of power: Reich's hypothesis, which argues that power is a repression mechanism; and Nietzsche's hypothesis, which argues that "the basis of the power-relationship lies in a war-like clash between forces." (Foucault & Rabinow, 1997, p. 16)

The nature of the relationship between power and truth, as discussed above, is an important consideration for Foucault to analyze power as more than Reich's hypothesis of a repressive mechanism. What is essential, according to Foucault, for understanding modem history and modern western society - modernity itself - can be found in the study of relations between sexuality and confession. Foucault asserts that modern society is not only a sexually repressive society because the practice of confessional narrative contains far more than just repressive censorship of sexuality. Power, although repressive in nature, also has its productive nature exhibited in its "warlike clash between forces."

Thus Foucault merges elements of Nietzsche's

hypothesis with Reich's hypothesis. Power doesn't only "weigh on us as a force that 249

says no, but it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse." (Foucault, 1980, p. 119) As this examination of Suku has shown, power produces truth.

The Suku Movement may have been entirely designed, organized and regulated by the CCP; but Suku itself was not a one-way repressive process. Another crucial facet of Suku was the central role which 'awakening' played; the anti-repressive consciousness-raising of the individual to their class oppression. Suku aimed to bring the revolutionary truth to light - a productive mechanism. Moreover, Suku, in the process of producing revolutionary truth, didn't only produce negative emotions of pain and suffering, bitterness, and hatred towards the "class enemies" among the participants. Suku undeniably stimulated the production of subjectively warm emotions - of happiness, pleasure and fanatical love for the CCP, for the revolutionary new society and for the individual's newly-constructed identity as one of "the people". This dimension of positive production in Suku was not incidental or accidental; it was the expressed aim of the third step outlined in the Suku handbook: "Speak of virtuousness and discover where the roots of virtuousness and goodness lie."

Furthermore, in addition to the 'dual' dimensionality of these aspects of Suku, it can also be argues that Suku contained a sense of morality in its creation/construction of revolutionary identity. In his early work Madness and Civilization, Foucault describes the genesis of madness - or modern "mental illness" - and how the 2S0

development of reason, post-Middle-Ages, constructed madness as a new genus for delineating reason itself. This was not only a historical process of isolating the "mad" people from the normal and reasonable people; of creating/constructing normal and reason. Foucault examines it also as a historical disciplinary process aimed at both the individual's body as well as his mind. For Foucault, the very concept of the asylum, the "madhouse", is far more a moral than a scientific categorization. In their relationship with doctors, the socially deviant "mad people" were considered to be special "children" in need of education and care. This "parental complex" between authority, or civilization, and madness is, for Foucault, the pre-Freudian forerunner for the "Oedipal complex" of modernity, and hence for modem social neurosis too.

For Foucault, the aim of the asylum was to turn madness into "the castle of our conscience." (Foucault, 1967, p. 11) By attempting to educate the inmates; by imposing the concepts of guilt and shame, moral valuations were made, and more importantly, were "shifted inside." (Foucault, 1967, p. 261) Furthermore, Foucault sees Freud's psychoanalytic approach as "the ultimate product of the problematic disciplinary practices." (Taylor, 2009, p. 117), and he questions Freud's position that psychoanalysis is "the culmination and optimization of the genealogy of the modem subject." (Taylor, 2009, p. 117) In his clinical work, Freud asked his patients to talk, to narrate. However, throughout Freud's case histories, Foucault could not find a single topic in the Freudian dialogue between authority and patient that is not transgressive: 251

"The absence of language, as a fundamental structure of asylum life, has its correlative in the exposure of confession. When Freud, in psychoanalysis, cautiously reinstitutes exchange, or rather begins once again to listen to this language, henceforth eroded into monologue, should we be astonished that the formulations he hears are always those of transgression? In this inveterate silence, transgression has taken over the very sources of speech. "(Foucault, 1967, p. 262) Foucault's characterization of Freud's clinical work is strikingly similar to the Suku handbook. For Foucault, the analyst-analysand relationship is a microcosm of the relationship-structure in the asylum; here Freud becomes the alienating authoritarian figure in his own "confessional" clinical work. The transgressive character of such clinical confessional practice had already contributed validity to Foucault's theory of the power as well as social structure in the history of civilization and madness. In Suku practice, the structured process was also one in which the narrator was continually guided, instructed, supervised and corrected. And of course, the confessional narrative of Suku, like Freudian confession, was not only strictly ritualistic, but also a desired collective behavior that was closely intertwined with the narrator's own identity and desires.

In revolutionary China, starting from a class-oppressive hypothesis, Suku provided peasants a drive to speak about suffering. With its public confessional ritual, the practice of Suku actually created a space where the expression of existential suffering and struggles by the individual was not just condoned or encouraged, but required by the power and authority of the state. At the same time, to express suffering, was not just an obligation in the process of Suku, it was also a right 252

extended to the correct class of people. To suffer, to have suffered, and to share one's suffering became a moral category represented in Suku as a kind of revolutionary truth. Usually the more suffering and exploitation a peasant had endured, if convincingly presented in his/her confessional narrative, the more just and moral his/her status became. The accumulated suffering of the past, once narrated to and certified by the Suku process, became the peasant's symbolic capital which could be leveraged to claim tangible resources, such as land, food and the power of a desirable class status.

In this manner Suku constructed a new moral system to replace the traditional one. Once the classification of the people into landlords, poor peasants, middle peasant and wealthy peasants had been made, the individual was then irrevocably chained to his/her documented and certified past life and biography. The degree of suffering and exploitation were the moral measuring stick. In

traditional

pre-revolutionary society, hard work, the existential struggle of daily life, and the moral and cultural codes of Confucianism provided the suffering peasant, despite his misery, with the elements and path to his individual freedom.

Once the poor peasants were inserted into the revolution's system of virtuousness, in other words, once they were liberated from these chains of feudalism, they were then told that virtuousness was contingent on having been hard-working and suffering. Furthermore, in the new society, to retain their moral and virtuous standing they must 253

perform essentially as before; as real poor peasants should. In the modern age, the age of liberation, the chains were now unbreakable. Any chance the individual peasant may have had of transcending his station in life, of perhaps becoming a landlord, or even of harboring such a dream, was obliterated by the moral imperatives of the revolution. The peasant must hate the class of landlords; all guilty of exploitation. This guilt was publicly established and then internalized as a corollary of identity, not only by the landlord class, but also by the peasants, as victims. They acknowledged the suffering of their pre-revolutionary existence, and more importantly, accepted the political interpretation of suffering, of having participated in the exploitative system. By the same token, the landlord class had to acknowledge their guilt and feel guilty for their past biographies too.

As discussed in Chapter II, the construction of a new "people" was pursued with the powerful authority and under the direction and guidance of the CCP. The CCP's agents played the role of listener during the Suku dialogue in which the narrator and listener established a mutual understanding - an interdependence giving control to the listener - for interpreting historical circumstances in "correct" revolutionary terms.

In his work Discipline and Punishment, Foucault outlines a major shift of the historical development of punishment in the modern age. The roots of this change, according to this work, can be found in the technocratization of government. Foucault uses the term panopticism to describe a system which characterizes modern society. In 254

this panopticism Foucault sees a process, not a stable relationship, but a process of supervision maintained by a tension between the supervisor and the supervised. In such a tension-based process, transgression can serve as an instrument for providing and maintaining the discipline. Similarly, in the Suku process this kind of panoptic governance was efficiently enforced and internalized both by the supervising CCP agents and by the supervised peasant-narrators in the interaction between listener and speaker. This can be seen in the efforts made by the peasants to conform to, not transgress, the interpretive boundaries set for the confession of one's life experiences; and, on the other side, in the efforts made by the Suku work teams to teach, train and modulate the narrative construction of "correct" identity.

So, in such circumstances, as discussed in Chapter II, the peasants necessarily began to reflect upon their identity not only in terms of the traditional family, but also in terms of their new political class identity. As Foucault writes in The Lives of Infamous Men: "There is nothing astonishing about this tendency which, little by little, opened up the relations of togetherness; of dependency traditionally bound up with the family, to administrative and political control." (Foucault, 2003, p. 86)

In the introduction of Madness and Civilization, Foucault writes: "At the end of the Middle Ages, leprosy disappeared from the Western world." (Foucault, 1967, p. 3), A good development, to be acknowledged, but Foucault argues that the scourge of leprosy was quickly replaced by the designation of madness and socially deviant mad

people as the new lepers in Western societies - which defined their identities by social exclusion. In revolutionary China, the purge of its lepers - the KMT, the landlords and other reactionaries - went hand-in-hand with the emergence of a new "people" and identity. Among other questions, we must ask is how important a role for the construction of the new people and new identity, of the individual and the society, did social/political classification play in revolutionary China?

Chapter VI: Suku, Modern China, and Beyond

The aim of this dissertation, as stated in the introduction, has been to provide the 256

reader with more than just an understanding of Suku within its socio-historical context of an emerging modern state. Although that is both important and necessary; because of the unprecedented magnitude of the Suku phenomenon, and because of the lack of almost any detailed examination of the Suku Movement in the Western world despite 60 years of opportunity and Sinology. Beyond that foundational groundwork, a serious effort has been made herein to bridge the gap between West and East by providing an analysis and interpretation of the uniquely Chinese Suku Movement using specific 'building materials' of uniquely Western psychoanalytical and sociopolitical thought: First Freud and Marcuse; then Arendt and Foucault, and in this summation, all of the above and Paul Ricoeur. Suku was a political and social phenomenon which has opened up a historical space for us to understand a series of theoretical questions including how revolution was possible in China and what change the revolution bring to China's society and Chinese identity. These questions are framed similarly to the central issue investigated by Reich and the Frankfurt School in their work: Why was fascism possible in Germany? Hannah Arendt, as we have seen, explored similar questions, in regards to the Holocaust and modernity, which led to the postulation of the banality of evil as one of the essential possibilities in the modern age. Similar to Arendt, if we attempt to understand Mao's revolution from the ideological developments in China after the May Fourth Movement in 1919, Suku occurred at the peak of China's efforts for modernization in the first half of 20th century. China. Thus revolutionary Suku, on its 257

practical level, actually provides a possibility for understanding from a perspective of mass psychology. This final discussion will first conclude the discussion on the relationship between narrative and identity with the help of Paul Ricoeur's theories. Then a framework will be set up to draw conclusions on political confession based on the works of both Foucault and Ricoeur. With the help of this framework, some final discussions and conclusions then follow which arise from the examination of Suku in the previous chapters, including the psyche-sociological involvement of the Suku and the basic revolutionary logic of Suku performance. And finally, some of the fundamental internal problems that modern China confronts in its effort of modernization will be addressed.

6.1 Ricoeur's Theory of Narrative and Identity The works of Paul Ricoeur offer another important theoretical approach for understanding the relationship between identity and narrative. Firmly rooted in the tradition of modem phenomenological hermeneutics, Ricoeur's thinking on narrative and identity was highly influenced by Dilthey's thoughts on life and identity. Like Dilthey, Ricoeur also defines life as life history and explores narrative identity from this specific perspective. (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 141; 1991, p. 195). From his early work The Symbolism of Evil to his later work Oneself As Another, Ricoeur has devoted much of his thought to the exploration of narrative identity. 258

Unlike Foucault, who chiefly studied the dynamics of power relations, Paul Ricoeur explores confession within the tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics. A cornerstone of his efforts was building up a rigorous phenomenology of confession. Ricoeur explored the utterance of "the confession of the evil in man by the religious consciousness." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 4) In Ricoeur's examination, the concept of original sin becomes a key for him to explore the relations between rationalization and confession. In developing his thoughts on the relationship between original sin and man Ricoeur found myth: "A traditional narration which relates to events that happened at the beginning of time and which has the purpose of providing grounds for the ritual actions of men of today and, in a general manner, establishing all the forms of action, and thought by which man understands himself in his world." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 5) In the modern age, myth loses these functional attributes. However, in the process of losing function, myth becomes a dimension of the subject and, consequentially, does attain a symbolic function in modern society: Myth is imbued with the power of "discovering and revealing the bond between man and what he considers sacred." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 5) Ricoeur's theorizing on original sin leads him to examine the original Biblical myth of the "Fall of Man" where he finds that the "substructure of meaning" of myth lies in the "confession of sins" and "the prophetic appeal for 'justice and righteousness'." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 6) The act of confession, Ricoeur submits, reveals

the diversity of experiences of guilt, of'sin', and moreover; of defilement. The avowal of sin and the quest for the origin of sin in confession itself leads to the original and "astonishing" alienation of the confessant: The confessing subject cannot see or understand himself - he is blinded by his sin. Thus the ritualistic original confession, of original sin, sows the seed of possibility that narrative confession can give rise to a process of reflecting on identity. On the other hand, since the language used in confession is largely symbolic, Ricoeur finds that "the consciousness of self seems to constitute itself at its lowest level by means of symbolism and to work out an abstract language only subsequently, by means of a spontaneous hermeneutics of its primary symbols." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 9). The reflective identity of the confessional process takes its nature from the symbolism and the narrative confession itself, from the very beginning, opens up a space of hermeneutics. Ricoeur's understanding of symbolism is founded on three dimensions: The cosmic, the oneiric and the poetic. Ricoeur notes in his discussion of the manifestation of the "sacred", that there is no difference between the "cosmos" perspective and the "psyche" perspective. For Ricoeur, they are just two poles of the same 'expressivity': "I express myself in expressing the world; I explore my own sacrality in deciphering that of the world." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 13) Moreover, the polar or dual expressivity of Ricoeur has yet a third pole: Poetic imagination. The three poles are always interconnected to through symbols. As Ricoeur 260

explains: "The structure of the poetic image is also the structure of the dream when the latter extracts from the fragments of our past a prophecy of our future, and the structure of the hierophanies that make the sacred manifest in the sky and in the waters, in vegetation and in stones." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 14) Thus Ricoeur unearths the significance of narrative through his phenomenology of confession. And the manner/method/process of this narration is not only about the basis for the ritualistic act in modern society, but also about the meanings and understandings of the self in a phenomenological life world. However, Ricoeur also realized the dilemma of the symbiotic relationship between confession and transgression. Aside from confessional narrative, there is no other language for evil-doing. As Blomfield points out, although Ricoeur can find it in "epic, poetry, myth, and the language of the religions of the world", nonetheless: "None of this language can be called philosophical." (Blomfield, 1997, p. 2) This, perhaps, could explain why Ricoeur turned his thoughts to Freud. In his work Freud and Philosophy Ricoeur approaches Freud, as the title implies, not as a psychoanalyst but rather as a philosopher. This allows him to move from the notions of symbolism to a broad "anthropological field". For Ricoeur, it is consciousness itself that "ceases to be what is best known and becomes problematic" in Freud's era. And consciousness is only one of the special functions of psychic processes, only a final expression of what is going on in man's body and life; and because it "essentially yields perceptions of excitations coming from without and 261

feelings of 'pleasure' and 'pain' which can only be derived from within the psychic apparatus." (Freud, 1957, p. 150) Through his examination of Freud, Ricoeur broadens his theoretical horizon to encompass the Freudian system of Perceptual Consciousness and he positions it between the outer and the inner. Given the specific character of instincts, the "vicissitudes of instincts" become the "vicissitudes of meaning" (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 116) and ultimately are unified in a proposition put to narrative: "How do desires achieve speech? How do desires make speech fail, and why do they themselves fail to speak?" (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 6) This exploration thus leads to the analytic experience: "Namely, that analytic experience unfolds in the field of speech and that, within this field, what comes to light is another language, dissociated from common language, and which presents itself to be deciphered through its meaningful effects - symptoms, dreams, various formations, etcetera. Not to recognize this specific feature leads one to eliminate as an anomaly the interrelationship of hermeneutics and energetic in analytic theory." (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 367) In the narrator-listener relationship, analysis works "primarily and essentially" because it is the struggle against the origin of neurosis - the resistances. Since Freud's clinical technique is "defined as the struggle against resistances", so also is the "art of interpretation subordinated" to this technique: "The rules of the art of interpretation are themselves part of the art of handling the resistances." (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 408) In this, Ricoeur has found the relationship between "hermeneutics and energetics" on the 262

praxis level. On the other hand, in his exploration of Freudian narrative confessions, Ricoeur points out that the core theory of all Freudian theory, the Oedipus complex, translates in meaning to the "tragedy of destiny." It represents the harshness of the culture, and the experience of suffering: "Suffering accompanies the task of culture like fate. The fate illustrated by the Oedipus tragedy." (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 196) Considering the psychic placement of suffering in-between the dimensions of resistances and suppressions, this suffering refers to the same "normal suffering" which Chapter III of this paper discussed in the context of social neurosis. This principle, suffering as reality, finds its place "at the heart" of Ricour's discussions of Freud. (Blomfield, 1997, p. 7) Later on, in his work Time and Narrative, Ricoeur defines the word identity as a "practical category". Quoting from Hannah Arendt, Ricoeur says that identity means answering questions such as "Who did this?" and "Who is the agent, the author?" The answer of the "Who?" question is necessarily an answer with a nature of "narrative". The purpose of this answer lies in the narrative of the life story. In answering, the story that is shared by someone tells "the action of the 'who' and the identity of this 'who' therefore itself must be a narrative identity." (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 246). Thus the question of identity is unanswerable without referring to narration. Ricoeur's narrative identity applies to both the community and the individual, because "individual and community are constituted in their identity by taking up narratives 263

that become, for them, their actual history." (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 247) Ricoeur examined Freud's case histories for examples that might extend his exploration of individual "narrative identity." He found that psychoanalysis helps the analysand by leading the analysand to re-construct a "coherent and acceptable story" for himself/herself, which constitutes "his or her self-constancy." Ricoeur argues that: "In this regard, psychoanalysis constitutes a particularly instructive laboratory for a properly philosophical inquiry into the notion of narrative identity. In it, we can see how the story of a life comes to be constituted through a series of rectifications applied to previous narratives, just as the history of a people, or a collectivity, or a institution proceeds from the series of corrections that new historians bring to their predecessors' descriptions and explanations, and, step by step, to the legends that preceded this genuinely historiographical work. As has been said, history always proceeds from history. The same thing applies to the work of correction and rectification constitutive of analytic working through. Subjects recognize themselves in the stories they tell about themselves. " (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 247) The same thing happens at the collective level too. The example that Ricoeur uses to explain the narrative community is biblical Israel. Their historical narratives, taken from canonical texts, Ricoeur says, "expresses, or even reflects" their own character. In such a community narrative, the relationship between narrative and identity becomes an endless circle. And furthermore, whether it is on the individual level or on the collective level, the constitution of narrative identity is in the "fusion between narrative and fiction." (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 188) As a necessary follow-up of "temporal implications" from his work Time and Narrative, Ricoeur starts to explore in Oneself as Another, the confrontation between two components of identity: idem (identity as sameness) and ipse (identity as 264

selfhood). The meanings of the two terms are different and yet the reorganization of their differences, Ricoeur asserts, is the key to understanding identity because their difference is "the difference between a substantial or formal identity and a narrative identity." (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 246) In this, Ricoeur concurs with Heidegger and his interpretation of selfhood. He agrees that selfhood "belongs to the sphere of problems relating to the kind of entity" that Heidegger called "Dasein" and which he characterized as "the capacity to question itself as to its own way of being and thus to relate itself to being qua being." (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 191). Furthermore, using Heidegger's terms, Ricoeur indicates the break between idem and ipse: "The break between self (ipse) and same (idem) ultimately expresses that more fundamental break between Dasein and ready-to-hand/present-at-hand. Only Dasein is mine, and more generally self. Things, all given and manipulable, can be said to be the same, in the sense of sameness-identity." (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 192) "The genuine nature of narrative identity", Ricoeur says, "in my opinion, is only in the dialectic of selfhood and sameness." (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 140). Considering the relationship between time and narrative, Ricoeur argues that self-sameness "rests on a temporal structure that conforms to the model of dynamic identity arising from the poetic composition of a narrative text." (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 246). It is because of this narrative identity "within the cohesion of life time" that Ricoeur believes he can escape the classical dilemma of identity between "the same" and "the other". From this perspective, "the subject then appears both as a reader and the writer of its own 265

life." (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 246) From a perspective of phenomenological hermeneutic, Ricoeur equates a life with "the story or stories that we can tell about it." (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 195) Ricoeur finally argues that during the narrative of life stories, the individual can construct a narrative identity: "Narrative constructs the durable properties of a character, what one could call his narrative identity, by constructing the kind of dynamic identity found in the plot which creates the character's identity. So it is first of all in the plot that one looks for the mediation between permanence and change, before it can be carried over to the character... The narrative identity of the character could only correspond to the discordant concordance of the story itself." (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 195)

6.2 Confession: In-Between Power and Identity At the beginning of this dissertation, Chloe Taylor's definition of confession was appropriated for the purposes of this discussion. Taylor defines confession no longer necessarily as "a speech act which serves as an expression of guilt over what one has done", but which more importantly reflects a desire to tell another who one is" (Taylor, 2009, p. 250). This definition of confession was chosen not only because it indicates the "modern-day confessional experience", but also because it provides a framework for interpreting Suku through the theories of both Ricoeur and Foucault. No attempt will be made here to "combine" Foucault and Ricoeur, since each of their theories of confession is actually deeply embedded in the context of their whole 266

theortical works. As Dreyfus and Rabinow point out in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, although Foucault and herraeneutics stand the same on Heidegger's term "clearing", which means "practices 'free' objects and subjects," there are other fundamental differences between them. (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 79) From a perspective of "inside", hermeneutics is staked to the claim that "non-discursive practices 'govern' human action by setting up a horizon of intelligibility in which only certain discursive practices and their objects and subjects make sense." (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 79) However, from an archaeological perspective, Foucault believes that "the discursive practices themselves provide a meaningless space of rule-governed transformation in which statements, subjects, objects, concepts and so forth are taken by those involved to be meaningful." (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 79) So, at this juncture, the aim is to combine the perspectives of power and identity in an analysis of Suku. This approach is both possible and valid because it is Suku itself that provides us with a space where both dimensions, of power and of identity, can be found and analyzed. In Foucaultian terms, the revolutionary practice of Suku was an issue of modernity, in that Suku practice was confronted with both China's local rural society and with its traditional peasants. According to Foucault, there is a major shift in the forms of power which manifest themselves in modern society: Daily life and life history become the center of attention for the powers of the state. This is exactly what we 267

have found in the examination of Suku: The power of the state intensely gazing at the peasants' daily life and their revolutionary interpretation of this life. Foucault emphasizes the spread and the influence of state power over the individual's life-world through "the construction of a specific technology: The confession of the individual subject, either in self-reflection or in speech." (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 169) He also points out that the situation at the practical level is more complex: Power relations are not a mono-directional repressive mechanism only running from the state to the individual. The circuits of power are themselves "circular" in function, and this process is mirrored in the process and practice of Suku. Our examination of Suku has shown that, as a uniquely Chinese political confessional narrative, the practice of Suku was, in its essence, successfully designed to create and open a space where state power, local politics, and the manipulations and machinations of individuals could intertwine. The questions raised here are not only concerned with how Suku, as a state practice, impacted on the life of ordinary peasants, but also with how the Suku, as a political instrument, was practiced or used in the peasants' daily life for their own purposes in local and pre-modern politics. Within this Suku space, state power first expressed its repressive nature, which indicated the dimensions of its authority and control in politics, society and culture in relation to the individual peasant. And secondly, within this Suku space this power also exhibited its constructive, or productive, nature embodied in its guiding hypothesis of class oppression. 268

This constructive nature is indicated by the relationship between power and truth and even more essentially, by the construction of a modem subjectivity. In the historically unprecedented Suku practice of political confession, the individual becomes an historical achievement - the people - in the objective trajectory of the micro-level manipulation of power. An explanation of this historical phenomenon can also be found in Foucault's thoughts on the combined affect of power and knowledge on confession. For Foucault, as we discussed, the modern individual becomes "the effect and object of a certain crossing of power and knowledge," or more specifically, the individual "is the product of the complex strategic developments in the field of power and the multiple developments in the human sciences." (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 160) This is what we found at the conclusion of the preceding penultimate chapter of this paper: The Suku movement was the production of revolutionary truth, the construction of revolutionary morality, as well as - the cultivation of 'people'. However, this analysis of Suku is still incomplete without the help of Paul Ricoeur, at least not if we are to consider the transformation of daily life into revolutionary narrative discourse coached in terms of suffering, social oppression and the quest for just class standing within a tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics, Paul Ricoeur first built a phenomenology of confession in which original sin became the crucial touchstone for understanding confession and human subjectivity. Then Ricoeur described myth as a traditional narration of original sin in order to understand the basic structure of the individual's life-world, as well as - through the narrative of 269

myth - of the individual's or society's identity. In the earlier chapters outlining the practice of Suku, numerous revolutionary stories that had been told and heard during Suku were presented. The basic schematic common to all of these stories is this: How evil the old society was; and the landlord class was too! And how good the CCP is; and the revolution too! Because they will not only destroy the old evil society and landlord class; but they will also bring us peasants a totally new world through revolution! The structure of meaning found in this revolutionary myth lies in the confession of the sins of the 'landlord class' and the revolutionary appeal for 'justice and righteousness'. (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 6) Through the process of moving from local knowledge to revolutionary truth, as can be seen from Foucault's perspective, the practice of Suku encompassed a series of selections, normalizations, cultivations, corrections and centralizations, through which the ordinary life stories were carefully modulated into a kind of revolutionary myth. Through its narrative of this revolutionary myth, Suku presents both speakers and listeners with a new history which relates to those past events or daily life that happened before the beginning of the "revolution epoch", or before the history of revolution. Meanwhile, Suku also had the function of providing grounds for revolutionary "ritual actions" and other routines to help the peasants think as "the people". Suku alone was authorized to speak: There was no other language or forum that was permitted to openly address the relationship between the old evil society and 270

the new revolutionary society. Or, to formulate it according to Ricoeur: In this new revolutionary myth, the original sin of the "old society" became a key to understanding Suku and there were no other language remnants of the evil old society, just Suku in the revolutionary epoch. Moreover, the avowal of a certain class' sins and the quest for the origin of sin -which leads the Suku to its doubt of the "old society" - completes the original alienation of the confessant subject: He cannot understand himself anymore; neither does he know this world anymore. The power of interpreting this world has been monopolized by the authoritarian state. The peasants become the children that need to be educated. And their past social world became a sick society that needed to be cured. Among all the great works in the revolutionary epoch, the very first thing the peasants needed to do wass to learn how to confess, how to do Suku. The language used in Suku was purely symbolic but attached to their real daily life. During the cultivation of "the people", we can find that "the consciousness of self seems to constitute itself at its lowest level by means of a spontaneous hermeneutics of its primary symbols." (Ricoeur, 1969, p. 9) Through this process, the very first thing which the peasants needed to learn was to change their fundamental worldview totally and thoroughly. For Ricoeur, worldview is another expression of the self and evidence of this can also be found in Suku. The cosmic belief of the peasants had been "overturned" by the Suku movement along with a radical change of the "psyche". The core concern of Suku was 271

to make people doubt their traditional culture and morality which, up until then, had been intimately involved in their political/economic daily activities. To think of the world in revolutionary concepts was key to becoming one of "the people"; to achieving a new revolutionary identity. Thus from Ricoeur's phenomenology of confession, we can find that Suku was not only the foundation for revolutionary ritual actions, but also the way to construct a new schematic of meaning and understanding for the revolutionary self. From Ricoeur's perspective, the identity problem was already of concern when we analyzed confession, because the questions that related to "who" were raised. We can also argue that Suku provides a somewhat instructive laboratory for a philosophical inquiry into the nature of new revolutionary identity. In this laboratory, we can see how the story of a life or the story of a community "comes to be constituted through a series of rectifications" which were carefully analyzed in the previous chapter. In such a narrative process, the narrators began to know themselves within a new framework provided by Suku. It is at this point in the process that Ricoeur's distinction between idem and ipse manifests itself. In this new interpretation of past life we can find the dialectic of selfhood and sameness. In Suku, the subject performs simultaneously as a reader and as a writer. The revolutionary narrative and the life history are complementary in this power dynamic. Life history is not the exclusive source for this totally new narrative. To the contrary, it existed only within the narrative. In the process of learning the new 272

self-knowledge, they had already performed the new self-interpretation. Moreover, Ricoeur's discussion on narrative identity applies to both levels of individual and collective. The confession of sin and the quest for the origin of sin in such confession brings the individual his/her original alienation. This original alienation delivers the possibility of reflecting on identity in confession. In this respect Foucault and Ricoeur are almost bedmates: One of the essential characteristics of confession is that the narrator must be placed into a power structure with one or even more authorities. This is a repressive relationship as well as a productive relationship. In such a structure, the individual is first deprived of the ability to understand his/her own stories, body, and life history — the individual can't see or grasp himself/herself. The narrator must be given some meaning that he/she did not know of before. In such alienation, identity has a symbolic nature which includes three dimensions: cosmic, oneiric and poetic. And this confession has already opened the door to a possibility of a hermeneutics. In such a hermeneutics, consciousness is not enough for Ricoeur to understand confession. His discussion on Freud's works finds a core problematic between individual and society: the Oedipus complex. Ricoeur takes it as the "tragedy of destiny" of individual and the essential suffering of culture. The argument to be made here that Ricoeur again shares the same point with Foucault on the relationship between individual and society. Both Foucault and Ricoeur's works on confession deal with Freud's technique of psychoanalysis. Foucault tries to integrate 273

psychoanalysis into the story of modern scientific construction of subjectivity and the related institutionalized practices,52 while Ricoeur cares more about the possibility of understanding in such a technique. However, both of them argue that the Oedipus tragedy tells one of the essential characteristics of confession: The "normal suffering" explored in the discussion of social neurosis. Now we have a framework for political confessional practices. A confession is not necessarily a narrative of guilt or sin. It could be life stories full of tales of suffering. This framework understands confession as a power structure of a narrator and a listener which usually represents the power authority. This power structure is repressive as well as productive. And it also reveals an Oedipus relationship between the individual and modem society. At the same time, the confessional practice is also an essential way of achieving narrative identity on both individual and collective levels. Here the perspective shifts away from Freud's psychoanalysis, which presents itself as a therapy for "individuals" and thence refers back to a specific life history. The collective political confession aspect of Suku is interpreted here to understand how an individual histoiy was transferred into a collective identity and the complex political identification that was involved in this process. And finally, this framework also addresses both the genealogy of modern subjectivity and its historical existence. 52

However, as John E. Towes points out, there is a danger in Foucault efforts: "Foucault paid little attention to the particular differences through which the Freudian texts

established their own discursive reality, and thus to the cultural formation of psychoanalysis as a critical reflection and transcending, transformative action in relation to its own various contexts" (Towes, 1994, p. 131). 274

6.3 Toward an Analysis of Mass Psychology of China's Revolution As we have already interpreted, the meaning of Suku includes "Su" as political confession, and "Ku" as social suffering. Based on the preceding analysis, an apt description of this interpretive effort might be political theology. The topic of this revolutionary myth was primarily about suffering. Suffering has been a hallmark of the history of modern society; as a shadow of modernity it can't be cast off. Dominated by the principles of rationality and pleasure, modern suffering people must question the meaning of suffering. The understanding and interpretation of suffering, no matter what kind of expression language that is used, must find one or more frameworks of meanings. Iain Wilkinson concludes that social suffering has two attributes which make it hard to be understood: "unsharability" and "unspeakable" (Wilkinson, 2005, pp. 16-17). The unsharability of suffering means suffering is essentially a personal experience and feeling. Unspeakable first means that it is difficult for people to speak of their own suffering because of the unsharability, and secondly it refers to "the capacity of suffering to resist conceptualization", especially in the work of modern social sciences. (Wilkinson, 2005, p. 18). That's why Wilkinson surprisingly concludes that, aside from Arendt, there are very few serious attempts "to devise new languages for expressing precisely what happened to people's humanity" in the Holocaust. (Wilkinson, 2005, p. 6) 275

For this reason, Suku provides an ideal opportunity and prism for reflection on China's efforts at modernization. It is not a dilemma which makes suffering a good perspective for considering modern society. By exploring the genealogy of daily suffering in modern society, we can find out the internal mechanism of modernity. And by exploring how modem people deal with abnormal suffering provides us a way of understanding modern subjectivity. Just as George Kateb says, it is specifically because of this effort that Arendt herself becomes "one of the principal theoretical expositors of modernity." (Kateb, 1984, p. 150). This is why, in Chapter III and Chapter IV, with a purpose of understanding Suku and revolution from perspectives of modernization and identity; the focus was especially kept on how the Suku Movement dealt with suffering. In the first two chapters of this paper we saw that rural local society in China was actually a parental society dominated by a local elite class. Although Mao called the local elites "evil gentry", he himself also admitted that it was "patriarchal" (Mao, 1927, p. 27). Combining Fei and the studies of other scholars, we deduced that such parental society structures were deeply embedded in the local culture, traditional Confucianism morality and local economics. This local society, however, was destroyed in the modern government's efforts of building a modern state. Such a socio-political process is mirrored in the analysis of Suku performance. In Suku performance, although the daily sufferings that happened in the "old society" were used by thr Suku Movement on purpose in order to prove the evil of this "old society", 276

the essential feelings of suffering were actually from the peasants' disappointment at the loss of the traditional social morality as well as the loss of the traditional parental social structure due to the local society's modernization. What made the peasants really angry was neither the exploitation system of their former social world, which they learned to interpret as such; nor was it their miserable condition, that they were trained to reflect upon. As indicated here in the first two chapters, the anger and pain was there because the traditional morality had been destroyed, because many promises to their fathers and grandfathers had been broken, "regardless of their work performance." (Thaxton, 1983, p. 37) In extending Fei's works, however, we can further argue that this feeling was of abandonment; a feeling of children toward their social-political parents. The CCP's purposes for Suku, however, were totally contrary to this. As concluded in the foregoing section, the basic scheme of the revolutionary myth in Suku lay in the message of the original sin of the "old society, in the just and righteous role of the CCP's revolution and in the political construction of a new identity of "people". In this narrative of revolutionary myth, the CCP took the role of saviour and successfully executed its political mission of mass mobilization of the peasants. Yet this story is different from the peasants' Suku narrative, even though there are overlaps. The education in "grand narrative" became possible only through a combination and accumulation of trivial issues of everyday life. And in this overlap we can recognize the imprint of the CCP's logic on Suku and the prescriptive diagnosis: Clinical 277

revolution for a sick parental society. In revolution, through the Suku movement, peasants learned that there was a new parent: The CCP. Following this parent, they could feel warm and happy; they could get land, food and most important of all, through all these changes, they could feel that they were loved. Thus extreme love was also stimulated and reciprocated toward the CCP parent. Meanwhile, since their feelings could only be allowed to be expressed in a certain revolutionary manner, the peasants started to receive their new identity as "the people" along with the new interpretation of their misery-ridden life stories. Under such circumstances, the social neurosis analysis model for Suku and the revolution which is elucidated in Chapter III became possible. Using such an analysis, we find that after the patricide was justified, the CCP and its state power took the position of social authority. Suku gave the peasants a modem sense of state. In comparison to Freud's classical psychoanalysis, we find that Freud's thoughts provide us an image of therapy for modern "individuals" through a moral interpretation of their unique life histories; however, the essence of Suku is to make personal suffering into a vehicle for national-class identity and membership in "the people". A further understanding of Suku's effort of creating a new state authority, however, starts with the question of how: How did the peasants accept such a restoration of the new authority? Alternatively, this question can be asked as: How could the revolution be possible in China? And how do we understand this revolution? 278

Wilhelm Reich has already pointed out through his study of the Soviet Union that the effort of building an authoritarian state in the Soviet Union was actually "founded on the authority-craving structures of the masses of people." (Reich, 1970, p. 216). And this kind of mass psychic structure actually makes a genuine social revolution impossible because, as Reich points out, no matter what changes happened in the social and political structure, through their own understanding, they just "reproduce the ideology and forms of life of political reaction in their own structures and thereby in their new generation." (Reich, 1970, Pp. 216-217). The diagnosis of Reich on Soviet Union is that, it did not deliver a real or genuine liberation of the masses because it "did not effect the slightest change in the typical, helpless, subservient character-structure of the masses of people." (Reich, 1970, p. xxvi) And furthermore, the authoritarian state, if we use it to describe the Soviet Union, is possible partly because of the mass craving for authority. A similar situation could be found in China's revolution. The parental rural society analyzed in the first chapters prepared a psychic basis for a new revolutionary authoritarian state. In chapter III, we found that Suku provides us with a laboratory to examine and understand social neurosis. Now this can be further supported by Reich's discovery in his study on mass psychology of fascism in which he writes: "The family is the authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment required of him later." (Reich, 1970, p. 30). Thus through the analysis of China's revolution, we can draw a conclusion 279

similar to that of the Frankfurt School: "The rise of a new type of despotism that does not depend on the authoritarian family but precisely on its dissolution." (Lasch, 1975, p.85) A difference, which must be pointed out, is that this is a Frankfurt School's diagnosis on modem advanced capitalism. But the conclusion is drawn from this author's analysis of China's revolution. More specifically, such "rise of a new type of despotism" depends specifically on the mass psyche structure that was entwined with the past parental society and its morality. The CCP brought parental love as well as discipline to the peasants. However, it must be acknowledged that the peasants were not powerless, helpless infants who knew nothing. The way for them to comprehend revolution was in the melding of their own daily life and revolutionary myth. Out was from this mixture, it is argued here, that the peasant's revolutionary identification with the CCP, or with the state authority, became possible. Likewise, this argument now diverges from the parenting theory that Kieran Bonner concluded, which emphasizes the total power of parents and state. (Bonner, 1998, pp. 5, 19) In order to understand the identification with an authoritarian state, we must consider the mass psychology itself in the context of its own history, culture, and especially, its family structure. Suku asked the peasants to step back from their own life-world and interpret it through a totally different worldview. On the one hand, by putting it into the context of China's revolution, it can be argued that this is a peak of China's efforts of reflecting traditional culture, morality, philosophy and political economic structure in 280

the first half of the 20lh century. On the other hand, we have already analyzed that the mass support of this practice had roots in traditional social structure and morality. But of course, since all other political alternatives were not allowed in this revolution epoch, Suku could also be seen as a "breakdown" of Chinese tradition. However, it must be clearly recognized that this political technique, at its practical level, involved the whole of traditional society and its psychic structure that had been formed over circa four thousand years. Moreover, there was something new in this Suku practice, something that the peasants had never heard of before in their daily life. Suku clearly told the people that the purpose of revolution is to receive salvation, destroy the old world, and construct a new world. And that they must fight for this purpose: Salvation must come from you yourselves! At this point we must return again, first, to Arendt's diagnosis of modernity: "If there is a salvation, it had to lie in man himself." (Arendt, 1998, p. 279) However, it must be emphasized that what Arendt describes is different from Suku. Here, in Suku, although people are encouraged to talk, their truth is still something that is disclosed or given by authority. It is just, the spirit in this given truth is what Arendt concludes: "Man is the measure of all things" - Here, 'people' replaces 'man', and becomes the measure of all things. And furthermore, based on the belief of this people's power, everything becomes possible, including the destruction of the old world and the construction of a new world. In order to achieve this "great target", The people must be mobilized to fight for their shining future through Suku practice. Thus 281

the revolution started to bring a never heard of revolutionary myth and a new sense of "beginning" (Arendt, 1963, p. 13). Since all other interpretative political models to explain the world were not allowed in the Suku Movement, nor, in fact, throughout the whole revolutionary epoch, the result of this thought reform movement was actually thoughtlessness; a corollary to that which Arendt deduced in her study of the Eichmann trial. And this thoughtlessness became part of the nature in the identification of the peasants with state authority. More importantly, the interpretation scheme that Suku used, in its "thoughtless identification", employed the logic of Arendt's "law of History". And according to Arendt, this is how the real danger of modernity manifests itself in daily life. China's revolution, as a part of its efforts of modernization, has contained such a danger from the beginning.

6.4 Comparative Notes on the TRC If we place Suku in the broader context of the modern age and observe it as a political confessional practice, what kind of contribution can get from the discussion? First of all, Suku provides an opportunity to reflect on the basic works from classical psychoanalysis -Freud's works. There is next to no work from the tradition of classical psychoanalysis which focuses on the political confession. Freud's theoretical works and case studies are all about clinical, private, and in his own word, "scientific" practices. In Freud's works, with the help of his technique, patients tell Freud of their 282

suffering, pains and stories in their lives. This narrative process is not only the method for Freud to understand and interpret patients' subject meaning, but also the process for patients to make their own transformation through self-understanding. Freud gives the patients' life-world the same important status as their body expressions. This confessional practice is a clinical, private narrative only between Freud and his patients. By analyzing Suku, the higher aim here has been to find a new way of discussing the understanding and interpretation of subjective meaning through narratives of suffering from the perspective of political identity. Suku provides another possibility of understanding subjectivity through the public, political and collective confession of suffering. With that purpose, this paper explored not only understanding and interpretation of subjective meaning and related identity through a confession of suffering, but also how an individual understands and interprets national political language, how personal life experience and national language work in conjunction with each other during this political and public narrative of personal suffering, and to what extent people gained their own new political identity during this narrative. For the author, this is not only about the micro-power interaction between national political language and personal experience in a public-Freudian narrative on personal life, it is also about the origin of Chinese cultural identity in a modern globalized world, where most words of the new national language were imported from western Marxist ideology. 283

There is a similar political practice that was carried out in South Africa. In contrast to Suku, which has been neglected for 60 plus years in the West, the post-apartheid Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa has been explored from various perspectives including the possibilities for justice and forgiveness, the role of public and collective storytelling, the creation of people and social end political events, and of course, even the role, purpose and meaning of the TRC institution itself (Graybill, 2002) Among all these perspectives, storytelling obviously played an important role and is an interesting parallel to Suku,. For Lyn this is a psycho-religious healing practice. In such political confessions, survivors and victims could find that their sacrifice was acknowledged, their pain was recognized, and finally, they found their identity, and stopped feeling ignored. And the basic idea behind this storytelling practice was the "restorative power of truth-telling". The hidden stories, details and feelings became public during such narrative, and were heard with respect and empathy. This could bring meaning to narrators' suffering, like survivor Albie Sachs said, "We need to feel that basically we did right, that we did not deserve what was inflicted upon us. This gives us a sense of lightness to the world, not just to us but to the future."(Graybill, 2002, p. 90, [cfj Dowdall, 1996, p.35) However, this healing effect of public narrative was probably exaggerated. Some victims couldn't feel release after their narratives; some even felt worse (Graybill, 2002, p. 83). And also different from the Suku Movement, the TRC didn't transform this past suffering into a constructive feeling. 284

There has also been discussion on the narrative methods of the TRC. Although it have the same healing purpose as the clinical practice of psychoanalysis, the clinical therapeutic method doesn't push the patients hard to quickly tell of sufferings. And even in Suku, we can also find that a large amount of the stories were preparedCompared with clinical methodology and Suku practice, the TRC operated with the simple idea of healing and asked patients directly to tell their own grievous stories. Moreover, also different from the TRC, clinical psychoanalysis practice requires ongoing consultation; and the ongoing practice of collective Suku was also clearly required in the Suku handbook. This ongoing aspect of the work is missing in most of the narrative cases of the TRC. We may say that both Suku and the TRC practices provided a way of making victims, perpetrators and bystanders have a "common memory of the past" through public storytelling. And moreover, by this political public storytelling, both Suku and the TRC provided some collective agreement on what was right and what was wrong in the past. This brought some moral judgment of past events, and also a new collective political and moral identity. As Clair says, the TRC also had its function of nation building (Clair, 2006, p. 258) The difference is, the TRC tried to achieve reconciliation through this political public storytelling while Suku's purpose was mass mobilization. Compared with the TRC, I think Suku is a richer political confessional movement that could make a unique contribution not only to the political 285

psychoanalysis

but

also

to

the

phenomenological

hermeneutics

about

self-understanding and the question of inter-subjectivity. It is not a coincidence that the discussions in our three theoretical chapters all have the close relationship with the everyday life, in a phenomenological sociological word: the life-world. And our study of Suku has also supported the argument that life world could become a possibility to reflect on modernity, or the problems when culture confronts the modern age. All things considered, this examination of Suku is not only with a purpose to understand China's revolution, but also to understand the subjectivity of the Chinese, which includes myself, in this globalized modern world.

6.5 Suku, China, and Beyond By describing Suku as a political confessional practice, we can find more perspectives than we have already discussed in this dissertation. The revolutionary myth indicates a topic of salvation: the promise of goodness, happiness and freedom could all be found from Suku practice. And the way of achieving this promise includes two steps: (1), the faith in CCP, who plays several of roles at the same time including new parents, educator, Governor and Philosopher King; (2), the "enlightenment" of everybody himself/herself, which means everybody must be mobilized to fight for their good future. In this process of salvation, everybody could feel happiness and hope for their future. However, the price they paid for this salvation and happiness, which is also the meaning of the two steps, is to give 286

themselves to their new lord: CCP. The result of this giving is very similar with the promise to a Christian, "God alone, therefore, can satisfy the desire which is in a man and make a man blessed" (Aquinas, 2002, p. 26). Our discussion meets Hobbes as well as Hannah Arendt at the same time through this psychoanalytical giving out of the self in Suku. It is here that the question I got from my study on Suku also applies to today's China: in order to accomplish the promise of a "better future", in order to achieve the modernity, and in order to avoid the evil of discord or evil, shall we necessarily give ourselves to a strong central authority? Doesn't this "giving out" make the promised salvation ironically impossible from the beginning? On the other hand, our discussions make us can go further back to the history of western political philosophy. Our discussions on Suku and China's revolution even bring us an opportunity to reflect China's confront with modernity—China's "present"—from the perspective of a Western tradition of thoughts on Enlightenment that is indicated Foucault (Foucault, 1984). And by such a reflection, shall we say that China's revolution in 20th century brings us a fresh contribution to modern philosophy?

Appendix A: Suku and Revenge: Suku education's experience and method

287

• -iasjjaws^iujfU^sfttt r • atesm; JteHWM . « * j -wiisr »Si**! jfrSflBa-WSte jt^M^ft^Mtin^ftSfcrJHB • -

• •

ian"

•

•

- *ft-f»3 5 «

» >;*«*«**»«*»» 1\ >

«

>

289

i

- 1 tt

I | r » * J » * * » * * ! * «• * * * * * t ~ ( * t t » ! » * » « * » » j M H |

f nm% i

* * ® « »- *g«ff|»»*ai - wa*«*?«« •• * i w • ' *>•*****»# • .****>:»

'

.

!

v'

K f i : - - . v . . " m*

-'

.'..•' A,-'-1, /'•/ AJ'.V X".

;.'-.'

: "= 1

a--, . ^ * • < ' • • • • ' - A " . ' j .

; . -, • ri

'

m^mGmn-m

291

s; i^: •. ivr: >, v? ,; >

;;

I

292

'ji ,

" :

'•! : • . ' i

i^'kd&b)

293

* N

;

-

A'f'iJ ; J . ,ir. .A--' ' - '*J.X - X'

.•.••••.•...•,.. - « . • •:• :

303

"

•

.

. . . . . . .

^

- •

-

ggg

•

• i •- ' j

jr

I

•

i. . AV 'D": —v..,:.

^ ^ ^

1 XV-.G _ ;„

. , . ... .

304

".. - •

--.V-" GG: J 7? . - " ,, j. .• ; : g g x j g , J

Alitto, G. (1979). Rural Elites in Transition: China's Cultural Crisis and the Problem of Legitimacy. In S. M. Jones (Ed.), Select Papers from the Centre for Far Eastern Studies, 1978-1979 (pp. 218-275). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Apter, David Ernest & Saich, Tony. (1994). Revolutionary discourse in Mao's

epublic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uiversity Press. Archives, C. (Ed.). (1981). Selected Documents on Land Reform during the War of Liberation. Beijing: Central Party School Press. Archives, H. (Ed.). (1990). Selections of Hebei Land Reform Archives and Historical Materials. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Renmin Press. . Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem : a report on the banality of evil (Revised and enlarged edition, ed.). New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, H. (1968). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Arendt, H. (1978). Eichmann in Jerusalem: An Exchange of Letters between Gershom Sholem and Hannah Arendt. In R. H. Feldman (Ed.), Hannah Arendt: The Jew as Parah (pp. 240-251). New York: Grove Press. Alitto, G. (1979). Rural Elites in Transition: China's Cultural Crisis and the Problem of Legitimacy. In S. M. Jones (Ed.), Select Papers from the Centre for Far Eastern Studies,1978-1979 (pp. 218-275). Chicago: University of Chicago 306

Press. Apter, David Ernest & Saich, Tony. (1994). Revolutionary discourse in Mao's republic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uiversity Press. Archives, C. (Ed.). (1981). Selected Documents on Land Reform during the War of Liberation. Beijing: Central Party School Press. Archives, H. (Ed.). (1990). Selections of Hebei Land Reform Archives and Historical Materials. Shijiazhuang: Hebei Renmin Press. . Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem : a report on the banality of evil (Revised and enlarged edition, ed.). New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, H. (1963). On Revolution. New York: The Viking Press. Arendt, H. (1968). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Arendt, H. (1978). Eichmann in Jerusalem: An Exchange of Letters between Gershom Sholem and Hannah Arendt. In R. H. Feldman (Ed.), Hannah Arendt: The Jew as Parah (pp. 240-251). New York: Grove Press. Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Arendt, H., & Kohn, J. (2005). Essays in understanding, 1930-1954 : formation, exile, and totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bellah, R. N. (1965). Father and Son in Christianity and Confucianism. 307

Psychoanalytic Review 52:2, 92-114. Bemstein, R. J. (1996). Hannah Arendt and the Jewish question (1st MIT Press ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Blomfield, Jocelyn Dunphy. (1997). From a Poetics of the Will to Narratives of the Self: Paul Ricoeur's Freud and Philosophy. In

Joy Morny (Ed.). Paul

Ricoeur and Narrative: Context and Contestation.

Calgary: University of

Calgary Press. Bonner, Kieran. (1998). Power and Parenting: A Hermeneutic of the Human Condition.

Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd ; New York: St.

Martin's Press. Brenkman, J. (1987). Culture and domination. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Brown, N. O. (1985). Life against death : the psychoanalytical meaning of history (2nd ed.). Middletown, Conn. Scranton, Pa.: Wesleyan University Press ;Distributed by Harper & Row. Burns, J. P., & University of California Berkeley. Center for Chinese Studies. (1988). Political participation in rural China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chen, B. (Ed.) (1952) Renmin Xuexi Cidian (People's Dictionary for Study) Shanghai: Guangyi Press. Chen, Yuan-fa. (1986). Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cheng, X. (1999). Sufai, Identity and Social Re-construction: a Mind-History Study of "Yi Ku Si Tian". Thesis, Peking University, Beijing. Chen, Yuan-fa. (1986). Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chow, Tse-tsung. (1967). The May fourth movement intellectual revolution in modern

China.

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press.

Chu, Y.-H. (1992). The Counter-Revolution: A Family of Crimes, Communist Revolutionary Rhetoric, 1929—1989. Paper presented at the the Academic Knowledge and Political Power: An International Symposium, University of Maryland. Confucius, & Legge, J. (1966). The Sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism. Delhi,: Motilal Banarsidass. Crook, I. J., & Crook, D. (1979). Ten Mile Inn: Mass Movement in a Chinese village,. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Crook, I. J., & Crook, D. (1959). Revolution in a Chinese village, Ten Mile Inn. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Current Background 42. 1950. Hong Kong: American Consulate General. De Bary, W. T„ Bloom, I., Chan, W.-t„ & Adler, J. (1999). Sources of Chinese tradition. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. D'Entreves, Maurizio Passerin. (1994). The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt.

309

London and New York: Routledge. Dittmer, Lowell. (1998). Liu Shaoqi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Revised edition. M.E. Sharp, Armonk, Newyork. Dong, Zhikai. (1987). Land Reform During the War of Liberation. Beijing: Peking University Press. Dowdall, G. W. (1996). The eclipse of the state mental hospital. Albany: State University of New York Press. Dreyfus, Hubert & Rabinow, Michel. (Eds.). (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Duara, P. (1988). Culture, power, and the state : rural North China, 1900-1942. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1963). The political systems of empires. [New York]: Free Press of Glencoe. Esherick, J., Rankin, M. B., & Joint Committee on Chinese Studies (U.S.). (1990). Chinese local elites and patterns of dominance. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fang, H. (1997). "Non-Event" State and the "Real" in Life World-Peasants' Memory of Social Life about Land Reform in Xicun Village. Master, Peking University, Beijing. Fei, H.-t., Hamilton, G. G, & Wang, Z. (1992). From the soil, the foundations of Chinese society a translation of Fei Xiaotong's Xiangtu Zhongguo, with an

introduction

and

epilogue

Retrieved

from

http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp'?action=summary&v=l&bookid=10001 Fei, H.-t., Park Redfield, M., Yung-teh, C., & Redfield, R. (1968). China's gentry. Essays in rural-urban relations. Rev. & ed. by M. Park Redfield with six life-histories of Chinese gentry families collected by Yung-teh Chow and an introd. by R. Redfield ([2nd impression], ed.). Chicago etc.: University of Chicago Press. Fei, H.-t. u. (1939). Peasant life in China. A field study of country life in the Yangtze valley; etc. [With plates.]. London,. Fei, X. (1983). Chinese village close-up (1st ed.). Beijing, China: New World Press : Distributed by China Publications Centre. Fei, X., Hamilton, G G., & Wang, Z. (1992). From the soil, the foundations of Chinese society : a translation of Fei Xiaotong's Xiangtu Zhongguo, with an introduction and epilogue. Berkeley: University of California Press. Feng Kai. (2000). How Did the Suku Education Come About. Internal Reference.

Foucault, M. (1967). Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the Age of Reason. London, Sydney etc.: Tavistock Publications. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge ([1st American ed.). New York,: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality, Volume 1: an introduction. New York:

311

Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended : lectures at the College de France, 1975-76. New York: Picador. Foucault, M., & Lotringer, S. (1989). Foucault live : (interviews, 1966-84). New York: Semiotext(e). Foucault, M., & Rabinow, P. (1984). The Foucault reader (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M., & Rabinow, P. (1997). Ethics : subjectivity and truth. New York: New Press. Freud, S. (1960). Totem and taboo; resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics. New York,: Random House. Freud, S., & Dickson, A. (1985). Civilization, society and religion : group psychology, civilization and its discontents and other works. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Freud, S., Richards, A., & Strachey, J. (1977). On Sexuality three essays on the theory of sexuality and other works. London: Penguin Books. Freud, S., Strachey, J., & Richards, A. (1979). On psychopathology : Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety, and other works. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin. Freud, S., Strachey, J., & Richards, A. (1991). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. London: Penguin. Friedman, E., Pickowicz, P., & Selden, M. (1991). Chinese village, socialist state.

New Haven: Yale University Press. Gamble, S. D. (1968). Ting Hsien. A North China rural community. Foreword by Y. C. James Yen. Field work directed by Franklin Ching-han Lee. Reissued. Stanford, Calif,. Geisert, Bradley K. (1979). Power and Society: The Kuomintang and Local Elites in Kiangsu Province, China, 1924—1937. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Virginia).

Graybill, lyn S. (2002). Truth and reconciliation in South Africa miracle or model?

Boulder : Lynne Rienner Publishers. Guo, D. (1989). Land Ownership and its Trend in Old China. Social Sciences in China, 4. Guo, J. (2001). You Chayi de Suku Yu Tugai Mubiao de Shixian—Zuowei Yizhong Sehuizhuyi Yunzuojizhi de Gonggong Biaoda (Different Suku and The Attainment of Land Reform s Target—A Public Express As a Mechanism of Socialism). Master, Peking University, Beijing. Guo, Y. S., Liping. (2002). Shuku: yizhong nongming guojia guannian xingcheng de zhongjie jizhi. (Speaking Bitterness: The formation of peasant concepts of nationalism). China Scholarship, 12 No. 4. Hanssen, Beatrice. (2000). Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory. London and New York: Routledge. 313

Hayford, Charles Wishart. (1990). To the People: James Yen and Village China. New York: Columbia University Press, Hinton, W. (1967). Fanshen; a documentary of revolution in a Chinese village. New York,: Monthly Review Press. Hofheinz, R. (1977). The broken wave: the Chinese Communist peasant movement, 1922-1928. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Horkheimer, Max. (1940). The Authoritarian State. Telos, 15, Spring 1973,

3-21.

Horkheimer, Max, & Adorno, Theodor W. (1972). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder. Huang,

Philip C. C. (1995). Rural Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution: Representational and Objective Realities from the Land Reform to the Cultural Revolution. In Modern

China 21, No.l, Symposium:

Rethinking the Chinese Revolution. Paradigmatic Issues in Chinese Studies, IV, 105-143. Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Huang, P. C. (1985). The peasant economy and social change in North China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Jakobson, Roman. (1960). Linguistics and Poetics. In T. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in Language (pp.

350-377). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Johnson, Chalmers A. (1962). Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kataoka, Tesuya. (1974). Resistance and Revolution in China: The Communists and 314

the Second United Front. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kateb, George. (1984). Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil. Totowa. N.J.: Rowman &

Allanheld

Lasch, Christopher. (1977). Haven in a heartless world: the family besieged. New York: Basic Books. Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J. B. (1974). The language of psycho-analysis. New York: Norton. Legge, J. (1966). The Chinese classics (Di 2 ban. ed.). Vol. I.

Taibei: Wen xing shu

dian.

Li, F. (2000). Fansheng and Production in North China's Land Reform. Master, Peking University, Beijing. Li, K. (1999). 15 Years in Xicun Village: From Revolution to Revolution—the Change of Substratum Organization in Jidong Village from 1938-1952. Ph.D, Peking University, Beijing Li, L. (2007). Grievance-Venting in the 1946 Land Reform: A Microanalysis of the Ways. Journal of Nanjing University (Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences) 44, 97-109. Li, Qiaoning. (2007, June 30). Fighting Landlords in the Land Revolution of Liberated Areas. Twenty-First Century, 63. Retrieved from http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/21c/

Lifton, R. J. (1963). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism : a study of brainwashing in China. New York: W.W. Norton. Lin, R (1967, Augest 4). Long Live the Victory of the People's War. Peking Review. Lippit, V. D. (1974). Land reform and economic development in China : a study of institutional

change

and

development

finance.

White

Plains,

N.Y.:

International Arts and Sciences Press. LRBT(Luo Ronghuan Biography Team). (2006). Luo Ronghuan Biography. Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House. Lu, Xun. (1990). Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. Translated by William A. Lyell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lu, Xun (Ed.) (1935). Qiejieting Zawen Ji (Qiejieting Collection of Essays). Shanghai: Sanxian Book House. MacCannell, Juliet Flower. (1991). The Regime of the Brother: After the Patriarchy. New York, NY & London, UK: Routledge. Madsen, Richard. (1984). Morality and power in a Chinese village. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

Mann, Susan & Chen, Yu-Yin. (Eds). (2001). Under Confucian Eyes, Writings on Gender in

Chinese History.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mao, T.-T. (1926). Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society. In T.-T. Mao (Ed.), Selected Works of Mao, Tse-Tung (Vol. 1, pp. 13-21). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press

Mao, T.-T. (1927). Report On An Investigation Of The Peasant Movement In Hunan. In T.-T. Mao (Ed.), Selected Works of Mao, Tse-Tung (Vol. 1, pp. 23-59). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press Mao, T.-T. (1948). Northwest Victory and Ideological Education in the Army. In T.-T. Mao (Ed ), Mao, Tse-Tung, Selected Works (Vol. 5, pp. 211-217). 1956. New York: International Publishers. Mao, T.-T. (1965a). Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society. In T.-T. Mao (Ed.), Selected Works of Mao, Tse-Tung (Vol. 1, pp. 13-21). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Mao, T.-T. (1965b). On The People's Democratic Dictatorship. In T.-T. Mao (Ed.), Selected Works of Mao, Tse-Tung (Vol. 4, pp. 411-424). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press Mao, T.-T. (1965c). The Present Situation and Our Tasks. In T.-T. Mao (Ed.), Selected Works of Mao, Tse-Tung (Vol. 4, pp. 157-176). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press Mao, T.-T. (1967). Introductory Remarks to The Communist. In T.-T. Mao (Ed.), Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung (Vol. 3, pp. 596-600). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and civilization; a philosophical inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press.

317

Marcuse, Herbert. (1988). Negations: Essays in Critical Theory. Ttranslated from the

German by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Publisher's foreword by Robert M. Young.

London : Free Association Books. Originally published in 1968. Marcuse, Herbert. (1965). Repressive Tolerance. In Wolff, Robert Paul, Moore, Barrington & Marcuse, Herbert, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (pp. 81-117). Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, Herbert. (1964). One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial

Society.

Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. (1955). Eros and Civilization: a Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston:

Beacon Press.

May, L., & Kohn, J. (1996). Hannah Arendt: twenty years later. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Meisner, M. J. (1967). Li Ta-chao and the origins of Chinese Marxism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Miller, James. (1993). The passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Simon & Schuster. Mo Wenhun, 1991. "Jiefang Zhanzheng Shiqi Liaodong Junqu de Zhenzhigongzuo" [Political Work in the Liaoddong Military Zone during the War of Liberation] Zhonggong Dangshi Ziliao [Chinese Communist Party History Materials] No. 39. Moon, Claire. (2006). Narrating Political Reconciliation: Truth and Reconciliation in 318

South

Africa. Social & Legal Studies 15 NO. 2, 257-275.

Myrdal, J. (1965). Report from a Chinese village. Illustrated and with photos, by Gun Kessle. Translated from the Swedish by Maurice Michael. New York,: Pantheon Books. Neu, Jerome. (1991). The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oi, Jean C. (1989). State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy Of Village Government. Berkeley Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. Party Literature Research Centre of the CPC Central Committee. (2004). Ren Bishi Biography. Beijing: Party Literature Research Centre Press. Pepper, Suzanne. (1978). Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Perry, E. J. (2002). Moving The Masses: Emotion Work In The Chinese Revolution. Mobilization: An International Journal, 7 (2), 111-128. Polanyi, Karl, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson. (Eds.). (1957) Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, ILL.: Free Press. Popkin, Samuel. (1979). The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rabinow, Paul. (Ed.). (1984). The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.

Rawski, Thomas G. (1979). Economic Growth and Employment in China. New York: Published

for the World Bank [by] Oxford University Press.

Reich, Wilhelm. (1970). The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Newly translated from the German by

Vincent R. Carfagno. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Ricoeur, Paul. (1992). One Self As Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. (1991). Narrative

Narrative Identity. In Wood, David. (Ed.). On Paul Ricoeur: and Interpretation. London ; New York : Routledge.

Ricoeur, Paul. (1984). Time and Narrative Vol 3. Translated by Kathleen Blarney and David

Pellauer. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.

Ricoeur, Paul. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: an Essay on Interpretation. Translated by Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. (1969). The Symbolism of Evil, translated from the French by Emerson Buchanan. Originally published in 1967. Boston: Beacon Press. Ren, D. (2002). Class Struggle in Revolution Situation: Class Struggle from a Perspective of Peasant Movement. Master, Peking University, Beijing. Rieff, P. (1959). Freud: the mind of the moralist. New York: Viking Press. Schneider, M. (1975). Neurosis and civilization : a Marxist/Freudian synthesis. New York: Seabury Press. Schurmann, Franz. (1966). Ideology and Organization in Communist China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schultz, Theodore W. (1964). Transforming Traditional Agriculture. New Haven, 320

Conn.: Yale University Press. Selden, Mark. (1971). The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shandong Archive & History Institute, Shandong Academy of Social Science. (Eds). (1985). Selections of Shandong Revolutionary History Archived Material, Vol. 18: November, 1946-April, 1947. Jinan: Shandong Renmin Press. Shue, V. (1980). Peasant China in transition : the dynamics of development toward socialism, 1949-1956. Berkeley: University of California Press. Siu, H. F. (1989). Agents and victims in south China : accomplices in rural revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press. Snow, Edgar. (1973). Red Star over China. New York: Random House. (Originally work published 1938). Strauch, Judith. (1981). Chinese Village Politics in the Malaysian State. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press Sun, Chengwu. (1994). Suku Movement: An Important Experience of Army Building in North-eastern Battle Field of War of Liberation. Heilongjiang Shizhi. 1994, 04. 18-20.

Taylor, George E. (1940). The Struggle for North China. New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations. Taylor, C. (2009). The culture of confession from Augustine to Foucault: a genealogy of the "confessing animal". New York: Routledge. 321

Thaxton, R. (1983). China turned rightside up : revolutionary legitimacy in the peasant world /Ralph Thaxton. New Haven: Yale University Press. Thaxton, R. (1997). Salt of the earth : the political origins of peasant protest and communist revolution in China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thaxton, R.

(2008). Catastrophe and contention in rural China : Mao's Great Leap

famine and the origins of righteous resistance in Da Fo Village. New York: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Chloe. (2009). The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of

the 'Confessing Animal'.

New York: Routledge.

The Agrarian Reform Law of the People's Republic of China. (1952). Peking: Foreign Language Press. Thomas, & Dyson, R. W. (2002). Political writings. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. Toews, J. E. (1994). Foucault and the Freudian Subject: Archaeology, Genealogy, and the Historicization of Psychoanalysis. In J. Goldstein (Ed.), Foucault and the Writing of History (pp. 116-134). Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Tudi Gaige Zhong Zenyang Fadong Qunzhong (How to Mobilize Mass in Land Revolution).

(1952).

Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Press.

Tugai Yu Sixianggaizao: Wanbei Wenjiao Cankao Ziliao Congkan Diyiji (Land Reform and Thought Reform: The first Volume of Reference Materials for Literature and Education in

Wanbei Area). (1950). Wanbei Wenjiao Press.

Villa, D. R. (1997). Modernity, Alienation, and Critique. In C. M. Calhoun, John (Ed.), Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics. Minneapolis& London: University of Minnesota Press. Villa, D. R. (2001). Totalitarianism, Modernity, and the Tradition. In S. E. Aschheim (Ed.), Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem.

Berkeley • Los Angeles • London:

University of California Press. Wasserstrom, J. N. (1991). Student protests in twentieth-century China : the view from Shanghai. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Whitebook, Joel. (1995). Perversion and Utopia: a Study in Psychoanalysis and

Critical Theory.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Wilkinson, Lain. (2005). Suffering: A Sociological Introduction. Cambridge, UK; Maiden,

MA: Polity.

Wolff, Robert Paul. (1969).

A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon Press.

Wong, J. (1973). Land reform in the People's Republic of China; institutional transformation in agriculture. New York: Praeger. Wu, T. (1998). How Many Lands did the Landlords and Rich Peastants owned in Old China. Collected Papers of History Study, 1. Xiao Hua & Tang Conglie. (1988). Suku Movement in The Third Troupe of Liaodong Military District. Over the Party History. 1988, 06. 34-37. Yaoqi Zhang & Shashi Kant. (2005). Market Versus Administrative Reallocation of 323

Land: An Econometric Analysis. In Peter Ho (Ed.). Developmental Dilemmas: Land Reform and Institutional Change in China (Pp. 249-69). London and New York: Routledge. Yang, C.K. (1959). Chinese Communist Society: The Family and the Village. Cambridge, Mass: Mit Press. Yang, Hansheng. (1985). Yang Hansheng Diary Selections. Chengdu: Sichuan Literature & Art Publishing House. Yang, M.-c. u. (1948). A Chinese village : Taitou, Shantung Province. London: Paul, Trench, Trubner. Yao, Esther S. Lee. (1983). Chinese Woman, Past & Present. Mesquite, Tex. : Ide House. Ye, Mingyong. (2008). An Review of Studies on Land Reform Movement after the Founding of New China. Beijing Party History. 2008, No.5. 25-30. Ying, X. (2009). Cunzhuangshenpanshi zhongde daodeyuzhengzhi: 1951-1976nian zhong guo xi nan yige shancun de gushi (Morality and Politics In A Village's History of Trial: 1951-1976, Stories from a Mountain Village in South Western of China). Beijing: Intellectual Property Press. Yii, T.-c. (1964). Mass persuasion in Communist China. New York: Praeger. Zhang, X. (2004). Land Reform in Yang Village: Symbolic Capital and the Determination of Class Status. Modern China, 30. No. 1, 3-46. Zhang, Y. (1988). A Re-Calculation of China's Land Ownership Distribution in 1920s

and 1930s. The Journal of Chinese Social and Economic History, 2, 9. Zhang, Yiping. (1999). Review and Thoughts on the Studies of China's Land Reform in Past 30 Years. Zhonggong Dangshi Yanjiu, 2009, No. 1.

325