The 40th anniversary of the sentencing of the Gang of Four- Part 1

ON 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF SENTENCE IN SHOW TRIAL LET US RESSURECT THE RELENTLESS SPIRIT OF THE COMRADES CHAING CHING/ 江青, CHANG CHUN CHIAO, WANG HONG WEN AND YAO WEN YUAN. TILL THE LAST BREADTH WERE CRUSADERS OF SOCIALISM TILL THE LAST BREADTH.LET US LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED IN CONDEMNING THE SOCIAL FASCIST REGIME OF CHINA NOT ONLY FOR  INCARCERATING THE FOUR COMRADES BUT FOR REVERSING ALL THE POSTIVE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CPC FROM 1949-76.WHATEVER SERIOUS ERRORS  COMMITTED THEY WERE MAJOR ARCHITECTS IN SHAPING REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRACY TO A HEIGHT NEVER ATTAINED IN HISTORY. THEIR NAMES SHOULD BE INSCRIBED IN LETTERS OF GOLD.
              

By Harsh Thakor 

On January 25^th we commemorate the 40 ^th anniversary of the historic show trial of Chiang Ching/江青, Wang Hognwen/王洪文, Chang Chun Chiao/张俊彦 and Yoa Wen Yuan/姚文元 or the’ gang of four‘ in China. There could have been no better illustration of how after 1978 under Deng Xiaoping/邓小平. China turned into a Social fascist state. The verdict of the trial was the final death blow to the current of socialist revolution in China. The last nails in the coffin were struck to tear the fabric of a Socialist Society. It is ironic how Marxist revolutionaries were awarded life or death sentences in a society that just a few years before had taken socialist ideology to its helm. There could no more abject lesson in the need for leaving no stone upturned to confront capitalist roaders within a socialist state. Revisionism has to be combated at the very backbone. I have no doubt that they were crusaders for liberation till their last breadth.

Since 1978 the policies of China took 180 degrees turn or were in direct contrast to the line and practice chairman Mao Zedong/毛泽东 adopted leading the CPC from 1949-76.It dismantled all the people’s communes and invited America to build Free Economic Zones. Billionares were created amongst Communist party members with a motto of ‘Get Rich’ propagated amongst the youth. Western intellectuals looked at Chin under Mao with great scorn treating him as a brutal dictator of the Chinese state as an autocratic one. They went out of the way to distort the great strides socialist China made in the fields of literacy, medicine, agricultural production, housing and revolutionary democracy. Workers and peasants enjoyed rights or power never achieved in a bourgeois democratic state or any third world country. I acknowledge gross errors occurred in terms of excesses in killings, sectarian approach towards artists and intellectuals, particularly by the red guard depradations. Even non –Marxists like Edgar Snow praised the magnitude of democratic development within socialist China in “The Other side of the River.” and ‘The Long Revolution.” Today China virtually functions as a social fascist state even if it is challenging American hegemony. The army attack on the Tianemen square Student demonstrations was a testimony of this in 1989. It also dealt very harshly with bourgeois democrats in recent years. I recommend all democrats to read the essays written by Moba Gao, Dongpin Hanand Hao Qi which have been compiled in a booklet “Remembering Socialist China 1949-76 by the Research Unit for Political Economy in issue of Aspects of India’s Economy nos 59-60.With living examples they illustrate the democratic significance of the movements of the Cultural Revolution. Pao yu Ching/金寶瑜 has also done great justice to its’ achievements in her book ‘ Re-thinking Socialism.’The interview of Fred Hengst  by Omarkan Ulker in Monthly Review in 2017 is also a must read, where he elaborates the necessity of staging the Cultural Revolution.

Many within the Communist revolutionary camp considered the 'Gang of four' to have been anarchist elements who attempted to conspiratorially seize a coup and supported Hua Guofeng/华国锋in 1976.The majority of Maoist groups only after 1981 in India recognized that China had turned into a Social Imperialist state. They still upheld the “three worlds theory” unfortunately, attributing it to Chairman Mao and maintained that the 'gang of four' were counter revolutionaries. It was only comrades like Comrade Harbhajan Sohi of India, Chairman Gonzalo of Peru and Bob Avakian of America who supported the 'Gang of four' as the true revolutionaries.

 This is part one of this article. The rest of this will be posted soon.

Continued=>