China and the West

Coates, Ken. Foreword. In : Russell, Bertrand. The problem of China [ID D5122]. [Enthält Text von Mao Zedong über Russell].
I
Bertrand Russell decided to reprint this book unaltered in 1966, even though, as he said at the time, hardly anything else had 'remained unchanged during the intervening forty-three years' since it was first published in 1922. The present edition is very slightly different from that of 1966, in that it includes a postscript, originally published in a earlier reissue of the book in 1926. Then, 800 unsold copies from 1922 had their appendix removed and index reset, with the postscript substituted in the space that was created by these changes.
The postscript is notable for Russell's acid summary of British policy :
"The British view is still that China needs a central Government strong enough to suppress internal anarchy, but weak enough to be always obliged to yield to foreign pressure."
In those far off days, Britain was still a major world power, and the centre of a huge empire. This was the context in which Russell could write that
"The concentration of the world's capital in a few nations, which, by means of it, are able to drain all other nations of their wealth, is obviously not a system by which permanent peace can be secured except through the complete subjection of the poorer nations… The real government of the world is in the hands of the big financiers, except on questions which rouse passionate public interest. No doubt the exclusion of Asiatics from America and the Dominions is due to popular pressure, and is against the interests of big finance. But not many questions rouse do much popular feeling, and among them only a few are sufficiently simple to be incapable of misrepresentation in the interests of the capitalist. Even in such a case as Asiatic immigration, it is the capitalist system which causes the anti-social interests of wage-earners and makes them illiberal. The existing system makes each man's individual interest opposed, in some vital point, to the interest of the whole. And what applies to individuals applies also to nations ; under the existing economic system, a nation's interest is seldom the same as that of the world at large, and then only by accident. International peace might conceivably by secured under the present system, but only by a combination of the strong to exploit the weak."
II
These conclusions were born in upon Russell during his extended visit to China, when he lectured at the University of Peking. There he debated with Chen Tu-Tsu, the founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Among his audience was Mao Tse-Tung, then a young student. Here is what Mao wrote about the event ;
"In his lecture at Changsha, Russell… took a position in favour of communism but against the dictatorship of the workers and peasants. He said that one should employ the method of education to change the consciousness of the propertied classes, and that in this way it would not be necessary to limit freedom or to have recourse to war and bloody revolution… My objections to Russell's viewpoint can be stated in a few words : 'This is all very well as a theory, but it is unfeasible in practice'. Education requires (1) money, (2) people, and (3) instruments. In today's world, money is entirely in the hands of the capitalists or slaves of capitalists. In today's world, the schools and the press, the two most important instruments of education, are entirely under capitalist control. In short, education in today's world is capitalist education. If we teach capitalism to children, these children, when they grow up, will in turn teach capitalism to a second generation of children. Education thus remains in the hands of the capitalists. Then the capitalists have 'parliaments' to pass laws protecting the capitalists and handicapping the proletariat ; they have governments to apply these laws and to enforce the advantages and the prohibitions that they contain ; they have 'armies' and 'police' to defend the well-being of the capitalists and to repress the demands of the proletariat ; they have 'banks' to serve as repositories in the circulation of their wealth ; they have 'factories', which are the instruments by which they monopolize the production of goods. Thus, if the communists do not seize political power, they will not be able to find any refuge in this world ; how, under such circumstances, could they take charge of education ? Thus, the capitalists will continue to control education and to praise their capitalism to the skies, so that the number of converts to the proletariat's communist propaganda will diminish from day to day. Consequently, I believe that the method of education is unfeasible… What I have just said constitutes the first argument. The second argument is that, based on the principle of mental habits and on my observation of human history, I am of the opinion that one absolutely cannot expect the capitalists to become converted to communism... If one wishes to use the power of education to transform them, then since one cannot obtain control of the whole or even an important part of the two instruments of education — schools and the press — even if one has a mouth and a tongue and one or two schools and newspapers as means of propaganda… this is really not enough to change the mentality of the adherents of capitalism even slightly ; how then can one hope that the latter will repent and turn toward the good ? So much from a psychological standpoint. From a historical standpoint… one observes that no despot imperialist and militarist throughout history has ever been known to leave the stage of history of his own free will without being overthrown by the people. Napoleon I proclaimed himself emperor and failed ; then there was Napoleon III. Yuan Shih-K'ai failed ; then, alas, there was Tuan Ch'i-jui… From what I have just said based on both psychological and a historical standpoint, it can be seen that capitalism cannot be overthrown by the force of a few feeble efforts in the domain of education. This is the second argument. There is yet a third argument, most assuredly a very important argument, even more important in reality. If we use peaceful means to attain the goal of communism, when will we finally achieve it ? Let us assume that a century will be required, a century marked by the unceasing groans of the proletariat. What position shall we adopt in the face of this situation ? The proletariat is many times more numerous than the bourgeoisie ; if we assume that the proletariat constitutes two-thirds of humanity, then one billion of the earth's one billion five hundred million inhabitants are proletarians (I fear that the figure is even higher) who during this century will be cruelly exploited by the remaining third of capitalists. How can we bear this ? Furthermore, since the proletariat has already become conscious of the fact that it, too, should possess wealth, and of the fact that its sufferings are unnecessary, the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and has already become a fact. This fact confronts us, we cannot make it disappear, when we become conscious of it we wish to act. This is why, in my opinion, the Russian revolution, as well as the radical communists in every country, will daily grow more powerful and numerous and more tightly organized. This is the natural result. This is the third argument…
There is a further point pertaining to my doubts about anarchism. My argument pertains not merely to the impossibility of a society without power or organization. I should like to mention only the difficulties in the way of the establishment of such form of society and of its final attainment… For all the reasons just stated, my present viewpoint on absolute liberalism, anarchism, and even democracy is that these things are fine in theory, but not feasible in practice…"
III
Mao's letters never came to Russell's attention. I found them shortly after he died, in a collection which had been published by Stuart Schram. I was thus able to draw attention to them in a memorial collection which honoured the Russell Centenary, two years later.
At that time, Mao was still wielding almost absolute power in the People's Republic of China, which he and his Party had created, unifying the country and subjecting it to powerful central control. No doubt, had he been reminded of these earlier judgements on Russell, he would have thought that they were self-evidently justified. Had he not, in 1949, brought the Communist Party into power ? Had not that victory been a feat of arms, by the Red Army moulded in the shape of his own doctrines ? Had he not then called up, in 1966, a further insurgency to prevent any thought of restoration, and oppose bureaucracy ? And had not the Great Cultural Revolution registered an apparently complete success in its struggle against 'capitalist roaders', and indeed all others who took a different view of Chinese development ?
And yet, within months of Mao's death, his Cultural Revolution was repudiated, and some of its more eminent proponents in the 'Gang of Four' were on trial. The principal capitalist roader, Deng Xiaoping, was soon to become paramount leader, and China was to embark on a feverish programme of foreign investment. Multinational corporations were to become welcome. Hong Kong and Taiwanese developers built massive and luxurious hotels all over the country from which oases great entrepreneurs could journey forth, foraging for profit. For one night's stay in these palaces, they might pay the equivalent of a peasant's annual income. Not only was all the hated apparatus feared by Mao soon to be introduced, but much of it was to be celebrated by baroque embellishment and exaggeration. Western newspapers no longer reported on youthful insurgents waving little red books, but instead described the dreadful scenes at the Shenzen Stock Exchange, when people were crushed underfoot in the rush to subscribe to new issues.
In 1993, Chinese capitalism is developing with enormous verve and dynamism, under the benign encouragement of the Chinese Communist Party, which maintains a political regime of stringent authoritarianism. A Chinese trade union leader in Tientsin assured me that Western apprehensions concerning his members were entirely false : "They think our workers will soon demand much higher wages and better conditions", he said. "But they do not understand that labour will remain cheap in China for very many generations, because we have hundreds of millions of rural people who will accept work in the towns for very modest rewards.” Modest though they may be, such rewards are still much greater than the customary earnings of poor peasants, so that the new policy is not unpopular. Indeed, the Politbureau may draw some relief from this result of controlled capitalism, with which it seems able to co-exist in comfort. For its part, Capital does not seem incommoded by the undoubted cruelties which maintain autocratic rule in China. After all, order rules. The framework of commerce is stable. One's money does not evaporate in inflation or turmoil. Everyone knows his or her place, even if he or she might wish it to be different.
Russian capitalism is an altogether feebler growth, but the Communist Party in its old form has ceased to exist there. Thus the world resumes something closer to the condition that was familiar to Bertrand Russell at the beginning of this convulsive century, against which Mao launched his ragged and heroic legions.
Russell would have drawn small comfort from this, since he was no admirer of the power structure against which both he and Mao Tse-Tung were, each in his own way, in rebellion. Neither brute force, nor sophisticated pleading, have produced the results which optimists awaited.
Yet the conflicts between rich and poor, the polarities between capitalist power centres and peripheral zones of famine, all endure. It is still too soon to put these ghostly voices behind us, if we seek a more human outcome from the world's traumas.