By Harsh Thakor
EXAMPLES OF PRACTICE IN CHINA
FACTORIES AND REVOLUTIONARY COMMITEES
One worker explained that he was working in a dyeing and weaving
workshop in Factory No2since he was 17 years old. His father had died from
illness because he didn't have proper medical care and his salary meant to
support 5 people could hardly keep 2 people alive. They had to eat bean curd
and potatoes and in the winter had only thin jackets. Workers had hernias and
rheumatism and hid their illnesses for fear of being been laid off. However in
the liberation period in 1949 the conditions of life were like “going to
heaven."
Besides the Revolutionary Committee in the factory the workers representative committee played an instrumental role. It was an organ of red power elected by all the workers and in charge of the daily problems of the factory. It co-ordinated with the revolutionary committee and with the workers council replaced the trade Union. The party has a leading role, the Revolutionary Committee is responsible for management, and the workers council is in charge of the revolutionary reorganization of work and acts as a control from the base levels on the higher echelons. Piecework wages and incentive bonuses were abolished. The highest salary was 120 yuan, the lowest 50 yuan. The difference between the pay of an engineer and that of a skilled technician was 40 Yuan. A struggle-criticism-transformation movement dealt with the salaries problem (Taken from Daily Life in Revolutionary China).
In revolutionary China peasants built their own houses through
co-operative efforts. A peasant explained that before the liberation the
peasants had no political power. They merely had a harvest of 450 pounds per
mou and had to give 350 to the landlord. After liberation they could purchase a
bicycle, a sewing machine and furniture. For the first time in their lives they
could get clothes, ate what they wanted and sent their children to school.
(Taken from Daily Life in Revolutionary China).
MEDICINE AND BAREFOOT DOCTORS
Barefoot doctors performed phenomenal feats. One doctor re-attached 2 fingers on a peasant’s hand-something unheard of in pre-revolutionary China swearing by Mao TseTung Thought. Similarly poor peasant women had her leg replaced. A professor narrated his experiences of meeting the poor peasants and how it changed his life. The peasants re-educated the professor enabling him to transform his entire outlook. Working in the Countryside made the professor a different person. Despite being over 70 years of age the professor traveled climbing mountains to share the experiences of toiling people. He started how he leant Marxism Leninism from direct contact with peasants rather than books. One Comrade Lin told reporters where he went to the villages to learn from the poor peasants. He explained how their team stopped in a village where there was a woman who was considered incurable. The family was already preparing for the funeral. Applying Mao TseTung Thought he developed a form of medicine that cured the patient. The patient was suffering from chronic Arthritis. Another professor explained that only by being re-educated by the peasants and changing his ideology he cured 20 incurable patients. He elaborated by transforming his world outlook he developed his techniques and that the peasants had cured him of his ' ideological sickness.' There was a child who had a tumour on his arm as large as the head of a foetus. The Doctors cut away the diseased part and re-attached the arm This could never have been done in Pre Revolutionary China. Doctors were able to remove a 100-pound tumour said to be incurable. An electric mower cut one peasant's hand and his fingers fell to the ground. The new doctors looked for his fingers, found them and put them on ice. The fingers were re-attached! In the old society this could never have taken place. Another girl who once had a clubfoot was operated. Her tendons were lengthened and now she could carry a load of about 50 pounds on her shoulders. The peasant and the girl attributed their cures to Mao TseTung Thought. This in actual fact meant de-centralization of medicine, which brought doctors to the most remote places, which made them test their skills. The doctors traveled through the mountains, border regions, islands Etc Revolutionary Committees ran hospitals and each ward had its own revolutionary committee. (Excerpted From Daily Life in Revolutionary China)
This is a quote from a specialist in internal medicine.
"In the fall of 1968 I went into the countryside to learn
from the poor peasants. Once our team stopped in a village where there was a
woman who was considered incurable. The family was already preparing for the
funeral. I decided I had to pay a call on those women too. I examined her
closely and I realized that she had a generalized arthritis; she had not been
treated in time and she had swelled up. I asked her family,' Why don't you take
her over to the doctor?' Her husband told me angrily that they had taken the
sick women on a stretcher to[o1] a city hospital four
years before, that this had cost them much money, but that the hospital had
told them she was incurable. Back in her village, the woman took the medicine
prescribed for her but her sickness worsened steadily. I learned from her
husband that the doctor inn question belonged to the same hospital as I did.
When I returned, I looked through the files and found that the doctor who had
made the incorrect diagnosis was me" Here he lowered his head like a
guilty man. "I was tremendously upset and full of self-contempt.' Whom do
we serve? I always replied to that question in the following way. We live in a
Socialist Society. It is therefore clear that we serve the workers, peasants
and the soldiers. For a young person like me, the important thing is to raise
the level of medicine to serve the people. But the story of the sick woman
taught me many things. I was medically prepared to cure the sick, bit I just
lacked an ideology. That was why first I examined the women superficially and
was unable to meet the correct diagnosis.
"I returned to the countryside and took up my work with the
barefoot doctors. The treatment I gave her for me the beginning of the struggle
of seeing the world differently. After 2 months I had cured the women. She was
able to get up."
"After I changed my ideology, I cured 20 patients who had been considered incurable. It was the poor peasants who cured me of my ideological sickness, and not I who cured the peasants."
One Dr .Ling stated. "In 1968, 10,000 worker doctors were sent from Shanghai into rural zones. A revolutionary Committee runs the hospital and each ward has its own revolutionary committee. Since the re-construction of the party -reorganization, which took place during the last year, the party is in charge of the hospital's political direction, while administrative matter are handled by the Revolutionary Committee various decisions are approved by the leadership after it has been elected according to democratic election principle of the Paris Commune. Here there is no trace left of the former hierarchy. Now there was a hospital chief and a committee of hospital administration composed of professors and specialists. men who had transformed their conception of the world. The Old director now works as an ordinary doctor. The Peoples Liberation Army Comrades work in administrative work too. There is a three in one combination operating. Specialists and professors are allowed to work in rotation.
Control by the masses is necessary for the good administration of the hospital. The patients are the best judges of this, but they are not allowed to participate in the elections because they are only here temporarily. However, they can set up groups to study Mao Thought in which patients and doctors work together. The Revolutionary Committee has created a special team, which collects the criticisms and opinions of patients on the operation of the hospital and on the abilities and political spirits of doctors.
We have a safety network of worker-doctors who go to work in particular enterprises. The doctors live in the factories and study what the most recurring illnesses are. They examine inquiries and take preventive measures. Only because they live in the factory can the doctors accomplish this. For example, in a chemical factory harmful fumes circulate during production. The doctor who has practical experience of living in the factory knows exactly what has to be done to eliminate toxic gases.
Medical students do a type of medical internship we call open
instruction. Students are sent to factories and into the countryside to deepen
their knowledge.
Scientists share a comradely relationship with ordinary doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel Scientists carry out struggle-criticism -transformation and are not paid higher salaries than doctors or nurses.
"Western and Chinese medicine is fused the metaphysical aspects of Western Science is cut out. Dialectical materialism teaches us that everything is in movement and transformation. Human knowledge and its potential for transforming what seems incurable that is why we say that there are no illnesses that are absolutely incurable. Even Cancer will be cured when we learn the natural law they obey as has happened with other laws they obey. The movement of transformation in the World of objective reality is without end, and hence man is never done learning the truth from practice."
"As we examine the human body, we consider that it is
always a unity of opposites. Its various parts are united, one to the others:
They are in opposition and at the same time depend on each other. It is only in
dialectically examining the relations between the parts and the whole I all
their aspects, and in regulating them, that we can know the disease and cure
it. "In the case of fractures we put little wooden splints on the limb to
fix the bone after setting it back to position, and we make sure that movement
can begin after setting it back to position, and we make sure that movement can
begin as soon as the bone has set. It is a question of resolving the
contradiction between the stability and movement. By Western methods, the limb
is enclosed in a cast to wait for the bones to merge again. The arm can't move,
and sometimes it takes 3-6 months of absolute immobility. Since we previously
did not use x-rays, we did not know that in traditional medicine, exactly how
the bone had broken and that was a drawback. In short, one type of method treat
only the fracture and neglect articulation and the overall body. Others do not
limit their interest to the beneficial aspect of immobility for setting a bone,
but also note he drawbacks of a healing method that prevents the simultaneous
reassertion of the bone's solidarity and the functioning of the whole limb.
Thus in short, the doctor workers of China combine what is
positive in Western medicine and what is positive in traditional Western
medicine. This is an example of the Unity of Opposites.
"Regarding research for Cancer in medical centres people study plants and prepare local recipes for medicines that are tried in the treatment for cancer. For cancer, too we apply the dialectical process."
"Barefoot doctors are all attached to Communes who divide their time between medicine and soil. Generally they are 25 years old and earn 250 to 300 Yuan, 100 from Agricultural Work, the rest in fees. Barefoot doctors earn as much as the manual workers in the Countryside. They treat the less serious diseases thus the peasant can be treated within his village. Barefoot doctors also make plant medicines which cure burns constipation, stomach aches, diarrhoea etc. The work of the barefoot doctors ensured a basic health system, for where Universities take years to produce a doctor; we take only a few months to train a barefoot doctor.
"In a surgical department for children, there was a child who had a tumour on his arm as large as the head of a foetus. Previously they would have amputated his arm. But what would a worker's son have done with only one arm? "We cut away the diseased part and re-attached the arm."
"We are able to re-attach hands higher up when they have
been severed. When one peasant lost a part of his forearm, we attached his hand
at the mid-point of the forearm. Not only can we attach completely severed
arms, but also fingers cut off by thresher’s legs severed by trains Etc.
"In the overall context the expression, “The Thought of Mao
Tse Tung meant that due to de-centralisation of medicine doctors were brought
to the remotest places, which made them test their skills, using every means
they could find on the high plateaus, in the border regions, on islands, in
order to cure people considered incurable.
THOUGHT OF MAO TSE TUNG
Writer Han Suyin with remarkable insight and perspective in her book ‘China in the year 2001’ summarised the essence of the ideology of Mao TseTung thought and how it paved the path for liberation. She explained the very thread of continuity of the Chinese Communist party and the Red Army from the Chingkang mountains in 1928 to the launching of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
Quoting writer Han Suyin in Cinia in the year 2001.’The Thought of Mao is universalised and its main application to the present epoch is ‘Road to Chingkang mountains’, use of military might to develop insurrection, ‘The road of the Chingkang mountains is the road of the armed struggle, characterised by the establishment of the rural proletarian revolutionary base areas and the countryside encircling the cities and ultimately taking them. In other words, it is the road of Mao TseTung that is guiding the revolution to victory. ‘This means a continuing series of people’s wars.’
‘It was upon the manpower reserves of the peasantry that the Chinese revolution was based. In his speeches Mao TseTung refers to its peasant base to the alliance of the worker peasant, which formed the red army: The great task of the Communist Party in its militant expression, the Red base area, was the solution of the peasant question and the liberation of the peasantry from oppression. In Mao’s mind, the educated, scientific minded peasant, who can plant and plough, write and discuss philosophical concepts, and also handle a gun or a machine is the new man the society must build.’
‘The defeat of the revolution in 1927 by Chiang Kai Shek[1] and
Mao’s subsequent actions to save the Communist Party remnants and establish the
first base areas in the Chingkang mountains are inseparable from his view of
the role of the army, its organisation and leadership. The red bases could only
survive because of army-peasant co-operation, and this co-operation was in turn
based on fulfilling the peasant’s co-operation, and this co-operation was built
on fulfilling the peasant’s aspirations, abolishing taxes, carrying out
land reform, and making the army ‘brother’ to the peasant. ‘It was this
background that developed the people’s wars’’.
To be continued=>
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