The Latter-Day Prophet

From the moment they first got fragmentary reports of Mao Tse-tung's "secret" speeches propounding the heretical notion that there can be "contradictions" between a Communist government and its people (TIME. May 27), Western experts have been debating whether or not Red China's boss was trying to assert ideological independence of Moscow. Last week, as Polish Communists began to leak quotations from his pronouncements, it became apparent that Chairman Mao was putting himself on a par not just with Khrushchev but with the prophets of Marxism. "Marx and Engels." Mao had said with bland Oriental condescension, "did not know about these problems . . . Lenin mentioned them but did not enlarge upon them ... As for Stalin, his opinions can be considered only negatively."

As befits a man whose minions are estimated to have killed between 10 million and 15 million people since 1949, Mao began his revision of Marxist dogma by admitting that murder is a vital tool in the construction of a Communist society. "The total number of those liquidated by our own security forces," he said in a burst of frankness, "is 800,000." But now, he insisted, "we are no longer using methods of terror." Where the Russians went wrong, he implied, was in not recognizing that even after a Communist government has crushed all organized opposition, it may face "internal antagonisms," and they are, to a degree, legitimate.

"If one persists in using the methods of terror in solving internal antagonisms," declared Mao, "it may lead to transformation of these antagonisms into antagonisms of the nation-enemy type, as happened in Hungary," where the Communist Party, because it chose "repression instead of persuasion . . . simply disappeared in the matter of a few days." The right way to allay popular unrest, he went on, is to encourage public criticism and then, by means of "persuasion and education," eradicate both the criticism and the mistakes that caused it. "It can even be said," proclaimed Mao, "that small strikes are beneficial because they point to mistakes committed."

Releasing Steam. This was one of the most explosive bits of creative Marxism ever expounded by a Communist ruler. In Mao's eyes, toleration of an occasional strike presumably had at least two things to recommend it. It would give 1) the hard-pressed Chinese masses a chance to let off a bit of steam without doing too much damage, and 2) the government a line on potential revolutionaries. But, as Hungary and Poland had demonstrated, Moscow could only look with horror on the concept of "beneficial small strikes" in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Rumania. (When Khrushchev's American TV interview was published in Russia, the only remark censored was Khrushchev's benign dismissal of the Mao Doctrine that there could be any friction between leaders and people in Russia.)

Why had Mao turned this specter loose in the Communist world? The answer seemed to be that Mao was primarily concerned with solving the strains and stresses created by Red China's grave economic difficulties--and perhaps was trying to prevent a Hungarian-style outbreak in his own land.

In one of his speeches Mao rejected the doubts of some Chinese bureaucrats as to the wisdom of his policy of "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend": "Marx never said that he should not be criticized. To those who do not follow that teaching of Marx, I would address an old saying: he who does not allow himself to be criticized during his life will be criticized after death." And last week, as an encouragement to some understandably timid flowers, the Peking regime released Author Hu Feng, whose arrest in 1955 was the keystone of a campaign to silence China's intellectuals.

In his hundred-flowers role, Mao set up his methods as sounder than Moscow's; but his rhetoric required a little deflowering. Persuasion may have a soothing sound, but in Mao's thinking, only one side is open to persuasion, after which the persuaded must accept "unity." If the terror is over in Red China (as Western experts largely agree), it has been followed by a form of persuasion known as "reform through labor." Chou En-lai declared recently: "More than 80% of criminals detained have been given work in agriculture or industry," i.e., as slave labor.

Mao himself, in his secret speech, acknowledged that China's food situation is desperate, and that its population must be held down. And at the very moment he was celebrating "beneficial little strikes." he made it clear in one sentence that nothing could be done about just grievances. "We do not have at present enough funds to increase the pay." said Mao, "even for those who rightly claim more for their work." Let a hundred schools of thought contend about that.

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