Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism. Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Since I fled Japan to the U.S. as a research fellow at University
of Wisconsin-Madison’s Political Science Department in 1995, I have tried to
communicate with American scholars of Chinese anarchist history. I visited a famous
Chinese American history professor of China’s (1919) May Fourth Movement study.
I was disappointed to find that he had neither interest nor enough knowledge of
Chinese anarchism. Rather, he was boastful of being “the last disciple of Hayek.” I also
sent my anarchist articles (in Chinese) to another professor after I read his
book Anarchism and Chinese Political
Culture (Peter Zarrow, Columbia University Press, 1990). I went to the 1996
annual conference of the Association of Asian Studies in Chicago to meet him. Besides
some shortcomings of the book (not dealing with the process of how the Chinese
anarchism prepared the condition for Marxism to China), I also wanted to learn
from the author how the legacy of anarchism be connected to current situation
in China after the June Fourth tragedy (Tiananmen Massacre) in 1989. It turned
out that he did not want to meet me. These similar experiences as I had in
Japan confirmed me that these scholars in China, Japan and the U.S. of Chinese
anarchism have no understanding or interest of anarchism; they wrote on this
area study only for their academic career.
Thus, though I knew the name Arif Dirlik and his study on Chinese
anarchism, I
did not read his books until now. Surprisingly, this book is actually what I
have long expected from a true Western scholar who understands both anarchism
and modern Chinese history. “…between the October Revolution of 1917 and the
founding of the Communist Party of China in mid-1921. It examines in detail the
ideological and organizational development in these years that brought radical
intellectuals from no appreciable understanding of Marxism, and even a negative
appraisal, to a conclusion that only in a Marxist-inspired Communism lay the
solution to China’s problems.” (Preface viii).
The book has eleven chapters, but the essence is well summarized
in “Chapter 1 Perspectives and perceptions: May Fourth Socialism and the
Origins of Communism in China”. It is worth to cite some relevant contents. “During
the years around 1919, the May Fourth period, anarchism pervaded radical
thinking on social and cultural change, and ‘communism’ was identified with
‘anarcho-communism.’ Anarchism, moreover, served as ‘midwife’ to Marxism; the
majority of those who turned to Bolshevism after 1920 went through an anarchist
phase in the course of their radicalization, as they acknowledged freely in
later years.” (p.3) “not only that it remained influential through the May
Fourth period, but even that anarchists paved the way for acceptance of Marxism
by introducing the vocabulary of socialism into the language of Chinese
politics.” (p.4) “Not only did anarchism pervade radical thinking during the
period when Marxism was introduced (or re-introduced) into Chinese thought, but
anarchists played an important part in the early organizational activities that
culminated in the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1920-1921.” (p.4)
“Marxism was not merely one among the competing socialisms of the immediate May
Fourth period, we might add, but the weakest one, in both the number committed
to it and, even more so, Chinese intellectuals’ familiarity with it; and
Leninism was virtually nonexistent as ideology.” (p.10) “If ideologically the
Communist party benefited from the intellectual conditions prepared by
anarchism, it benefited organizationally from the existence of study societies,
which had emerged with the activism generated by the New Culture and May Fourth
movements, in which anarchist ideas played an important role.” (p.11) “The
victory of Marxism over its socialist rivals was not ideological, the
ascendancy of truth over false consciousness, as Chinese historians would have
it, but organizational: by guaranteeing ideological disciplines, the Communist
organization allowed effective social and political activity.” (p.14).
The book further introduces: “Anarchist activity took the form
primarily of cultural and propaganda activity, but they were also the first
among Chinese radicals to engage in labor organization.” (Part I Chinese
Radicals and the October Revolution in Russia, Prologue). The book’s strength
can be demonstrated from its analysis of Li Dazhao, the so-called “China’s
first Marxist” and the second important co-founder of the Communist Party of
China besides Chen Duxiu. “Meisner has pointed out that there was nothing
particularly Marxist in the way Li comprehended the Revolution at this time [to
enthusiastically respond to the October Revolution]. I would like to take this
a step further and suggest that not only was Li’s comprehension not Marxist,
but his discussions of the Revolution at this time were infused with the
vocabulary of anarchism….he expressed views that within the Chinese context
were clearly of anarchist inspiration.” (Chapter 2 A Revolution Perceived: The
October Revolution through Chinese Eyes, p.25) “Meisner commented on Li’s
continued fascination with Kropotkin: ‘looked with great favor upon Kropotkin’s
theory of mutual aid; but the influence of Kropotkin was most strongly evident
after Li had already declared himself a Marxist in 1919, and he then used the
idea of mutual aid for the explicit purpose of reinterpreting the Marxist
theory of class struggle.’”(Chapter 3 The October Revolution and Marxism in
China: The Case of Li Dazhao, p.45) “Li was not in fact the first Chinese in
1918 to hail the Revolution as the harbinger of a new era of history. That
honor actually belonged, ironically, to the anarchist journal Labor magazine
(Laodong) (the first journal in China to use ‘labor’ in its title)” (p.26). After
the book’s publication in 1989, recent documents from China show a more
complicated figure of Li’s political relation to the Comintern and the Soviet
Union. “The two discussions of the Revolution in the
second issue of Labor (April 1918) are among the most detailed reports on the
meaning and the ideology of the Revolution published in China in 1918. (This
issue was also the first of any Chinese journal to celebrate May Day.)” (p.27)
“In early 1920, the government reported that it had confiscated eighty-three
‘extremist’ publications. The list of these indicates that they were mostly
anarchist,” (p.32-33) “the American government instructed its consuls in China
to root out ‘Bolshevist’ activity. Most of the ‘Bolshevists’ they discovered
turned out to be anarchists” (p.33). “In March 1920, the Soviet government
declared its unilateral renunciation of the Unequal Treaties with China it had
inherited from the czarist government. Even the most avid pursuers of early
Russian influence have conceded that this declaration invoked immediate
enthusiasm in China and provoked a dramatic interest.” Xiang Qing “has
suggested that the declaration eased the tensions between China and Russia, and
let to a relaxing of the Chinese government’s vigilance over the border which
for the first time made possible sustained contact between Chinese radicals and
the Soviet Union.” (p. 41).
The book is not easy to read for American public because it was
written for the narrow circle of Chinese history study. But the somewhat
repetitious materials in different chapters confirm the vital role of
anarchism. “If ‘social change was at the heart of what progressive May Fourth
publications advocated and discussed’ in 1919, anarchism was the tongue in
which this advocacy found its expression.” (Chapter 5 Radical Culture and
Social Activism: Anarchism in May Fourth Radicalism, p.74) The book
specifically points out that “the diffusion of anarchist ideas among Chinese
youth was not the result of a spontaneous petit-bourgeois utopianism (however
that may have helped to prepare a fecund ground for it) but of anarchists’
persistent efforts over the preceding decade to spread their ideas. Anarchists,
the only socialists to participate actively in the New Culture movement,
significantly contributed to its intellectual climate.” (p.75) “Before
socialism had become a visible feature of the Chinese intellectual scene,
anarchists had already introduced the issues of socialism.” (p.76) “What
distinguished anarchist writings in these years was not their claim to
socialism, but their advocacy of a social revolution, the hallmark of socialist
ideologies in China since 1905….They introduced not just socialist ideas and
vocabulary but a social vision. This not only prepared the ground for the
efflorescence of socialism after the May Fourth Movement, but also helps
explain why anarchism enjoyed an immense popularity among competing socialist
ideologies in the early May Fourth period.” (p.76-77)
The book then traces the founding members of the Communist Party
of China, including Mao Zedong, and concludes: “Almost all of the later
Communists, with possibly the single exception of Chen Duxiu, in other words,
were introduced to social radicalism through anarchist ideas.” “Radical
intellectuals, at least those who still sustained their radical will, were all
dressed up with nowhere to go. At this moment Gregory Voitinsky arrived in
China.” (Chapter 8 May Fourth Radicalism at a Crossroads: Study Societies,
Communes, and the Search for Social Revolution, p.179, 190) The book further
describes that the Comintern missionary “Voitinsky played as architect of the
Party” (Chapter 9 The Comintern and the Organization of Communism in China,
p.191). The book concludes: “Anarchists may have been naïve as revolutionaries;
they were not wrong in their perception of this crucial relationship between
revolutionary organization and the revolutionary society of the future. To
recall these origins, rather than subvert socialism, may from this perspective
help put socialism in China on the right track once again. …The very act of
remembering may restore to Chinese socialism its long-forgotten origin in a
democratic vision that was not just political, but social and cultural as
well.” (Chapter 11 Paths to the Future: Communist Organization and Marxist
Ideology, p.273) Indeed, the democratic movement in 1989 (when the book was
published) witnessed the rebirth of Chinese anarchism.
I don’t know how many anarchists or socialist-minded people read
the book. Probably not many. The majority readers are Chinese history students,
as indicated from comments of another history professor: “By far the most
detailed, sophisticated, and comprehensive treatment of the origins of the
Communist Party of China yet written….In particular, it provides a very
sophisticated analysis of the competing socialist doctrines, especially
anarchism” (Maurice Meisner). Rather than pointing out its shortcomings from
the academic methodology, I
really want someone from anarchist point to edit the book to make it a short
lesson of the legacy of the Chinese anarchism as the path to the future
socialism for the general public in the world.
Jing Zhao
US-Japan-China
Comparative Policy Research Institute
