💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › samuel-clarke-betraying-anarchy.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:52:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Betraying Anarchy? Author: Samuel Clarke Date: 17 December 2020 Language: en Topics: Chinese Anarchism Source: Retrieved on 1st June 2021 from https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/betraying-anarchy-xin-shiji-the-four-elders/
Today there is often a great deal of discussion about what makes (or
inversely, what does not make) someone an anarchist. This can involve
some unfair gatekeeping, say in the outright exclusion of the
individualist or market anarchist, but can also involve some very frank
discussions about our theory and political praxis. What appears to be
universal amongst anarchists (historical and modern), however, is a
complete denunciation of electoral and party politics. Stepping into the
party ranks, to the majority of anarchists you will speak to, is to
become in thrall to the ballot box. Following the party line is to
ignore two key facts about electoral politics:
power, and give its citizens only the illusion of representation.
of any movement.
It might therefore be difficult, near-impossible even, to imagine
popular anarchists taking on roles of incredible influence in a
political party. Despite this, the four Chinese intellectuals Wu Zhihui,
Li Shizeng, Zhang Renjie, and Cai Yuanpei, who all played major parts in
the development of anarchism in China, had no trouble with the idea.
They came to be known in the 1920s as the ‘Four Elders’ of the
Kuomingtang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party that fought and lost to
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1940s. How could this be?
To begin, you have to paint a picture of the China of their time: a
kingdom under the rule of the Manchu (a minority ethnic group from
Manchuria) Qing Dynasty and suffering from the intrusion of European,
and more specifically British, colonialism. Among the majority Han
population (and others), a social movement was brewing, seeking
independence both from their Qing overlords and from foreign aggressors.
Leading this fight both in and out of exile was the revolutionary, Sun
Yat-sen, who sought to establish a free, powerful, and just state. At
the core of his dream for China were three principles which would come
to be known as the Three Principles of the People:
Chinese people.
to control their own government.
as ‘socialism,’ and the vaguest of Sun’s principles.
It is important to understand the significance of these principles and
their influence on Chinese politics. Their influence was so
transcendent, in fact, that both the CCP and KMT claimed to uphold its
legacy when in power. On top of this, Sun Yat-Sen’s fight for a national
liberation of Han (majoritively, but not totally) people against the
Manchu ruling elite played a crucial role in the revolutionary politics
of the day — attracting even anarchists into the fold. Although
anarchist theory often derides both the logic and rhetoric of
nationalism, anarchists themselves have often taken part in nationalist
movements where it is deemed necessary for emancipation. See, for
example, my article on nationalism in the Korean anarchist movement.
It is safe to say that the Four Elders were indeed mobilised by the
rhetoric of Sun Yat-Sen, with some remaining his lifelong friends, but
were also keen to push him to add a cultural and educational dimension
to his movement. Seeing that Chinese students were already attending
‘work-study’ programs in Japan and the United States, Cai Yuanpei and Li
Shizeng were particularly keen to start a similar one in France — which
the group of four saw to be a more progressive society than their own.
They started the Diligent Work, Frugal Study Movement in Paris
(留法儉學會) and introduced students from across China to a western,
secular education funded by their labour in a factory producing soy
products. It may surprise you to know that this association, led by a
group of anarchists, later hosted famous authoritarian communists like
Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping.
Their work in Paris did not stop there. In 1906, the Four Elders and
their companions, who would come to be known as the ‘Paris Group,’
started the New World Society (Xinshijie She). In 1907 it began
publishing a journal, New Era (Xin Shiji), which ran for three years and
had over a hundred issues that laid out an anarchist program of
education and social revolution. In contrast to their contemporaries in
the ‘Tokyo Group,’ who took inspiration from indigenous societies in
China, Japan and Korea, the Paris anarchists favoured the works of
Western anarchist thinkers such as Grave, Bakunin and Kropotkin. They
also looked to the work of Western scientists, finding as they did a
great deal of truth in the “Darwin-era” of scientific discovery. In
fact, Li Shizeng would come to remark that ‘there is nothing in European
civilization that does not have its origin in science’ (make of that
what you will), and in science there came a natural pairing with Western
humanism which they likened to ‘justice, fairness, and equality.’ Wu
Zhihui would come to succinctly demonstrate the core values of the
‘Paris Group’ when he wrote that a socialist revolution would:
‘seek equality, freedom, happiness and welfare for society, make justice
(gongdao) the measure of achievement, expunge whatever harms society, or
runs contrary to this goal such as despotism and classes, the roots of
all calamity, institute scientific progress to achieve a real world
civilization, and, ultimately, establish a humanitarian commonwealth
(rendao datong) and a paradisiacal world (shijie jilo).’
The manner in which this socialist paradise could be actualised was
through a consistent social revolution, which educated the masses both
in why they should help create that paradise and what they would need to
know in order to do so. According to the Paris Group, a social
revolution would lead to a large-scale adoption of socialist and
anarchist values across the population. You can read this sentiment in
Wu Zhihui’s pamphlet Education as Revolution (1908), in which he asserts
that ‘when education is popularized, everyone abandons old habits and
starts a new life,’ but also in the Paris Group anarchist Chu Minyi’s
text, Universal Revolution (1907), in which he insists that once
‘justice’ is made apparent through education, ‘people will know the
necessity of revolution and understand that revolution is evolution.’
Chu Minyi also saw education as the path to avoiding violent revolution,
and as a step towards a simultaneous worldwide transformation in which
‘everyone has the same idea’ and ‘weaponry will be automatically
discarded and government will lose its foundation.’
The issue with these ideas, and what sets it apart from the work of many
European anarchists that they took inspiration from, is that their
notion of social revolution was extremely abstract and focused on almost
unidentifiable long-term goals. Their socialist principles, as cited,
were certainly as vague and open to interpretation as Sun Yat-Sen’s
Minsheng Zhuyi or ‘people’s livelihood,’ and made little comment on
revolutionary praxis or short-term goals. In fact, Wu Zhihui remarked on
multiple occasions that an anarchist revolution could take up to 3,000
years to achieve — essentially side-lining the need to imagine
constructing an anarchist society to the distant future. Compare this to
Kropotkin, who envisioned an anarchist revolution taking place in five.
Unlike the CCP, the Paris Group’s long march to victory would have
seemingly lasted until our great-great-great-great grandchildren were
long dead. This is in rather stark contrast to other Chinese anarchists,
such as those “led” by Liu Shifu in their efforts to organise workers in
Guangzhou, and who would come to greatly criticise anarchist
collaboration with the KMT. Though not as influential as the Paris
anarchists, the local orientation of groups like Shifu’s led them to
develop more grounded social organisations and therefore to a critique
of those giving over power to bourgeois forces.
The Paris anarchists’ rather pessimistic vision in turn justified
anarchist collaboration with party forces, as has been argued by the
historian of Chinese anarchism, Arif Dirlik. Any short-term win, despite
the principles compromises, could be supported if it got them a step
closer to that distant goal of a ‘universal revolution.’ Therefore,
anarchists in the Paris Group joined the KMT with the firmly held belief
that a bourgeois revolution in China would be the next step towards
their goal, and if Sun Yat-Sen’s Three Principles were vague, then they
could at least be steered in an anarchist direction by the Four Elders.
But, as Dirlik himself pointed out:
‘What anarchists overlooked, however, was that the appropriation of the
Three People’s Principles for anarchism also made possible the
appropriation of anarchism by the organizational ideology of the
Guomindang as that took shape with the consolidation of party power.’
The theoretical conflict in anarchist circles this caused were
irreconcilable:
‘This fundamental contradiction, present in the anarchist collaboration
with the Guomindang from the beginning, would in the end divide the
anarchists themselves and doom their undertaking even before the
Guomindang actually stepped in to bring it to an end.’
Unable to see the potential dangers of joining hands with the
nationalists, the Four Elders and their allies would come to oversee and
support political oppression. As the KMT turned against their communist
members, expelling, suppressing, and later killing them, anarchist
supporters joined up with the KMT’s conservative faction. Their original
good intentions, and their professed devotion to ‘justice’ and
‘equality,’ became little more than abstract principles that, over time,
eroded in the face of collaboration with an oppressive force. Their
commitment to the benefits of a social revolution, spread amongst the
masses through education, fell short due to their comparative lack of
political and organisational action and exposure to hierarchical
politics. For the most part, in fact, Zhang Renjie and Cai Yuanpei were
no longer anarchists. The former started trading stocks on the Shanghai
market, and the latter became president of Peking University and would
later be known more so for his general educational work.
By the time the KMT had all but fled to China in 1949, the two of the
Four Elders still known today as anarchists had developed close personal
relationships with the party elites. Wu Zhihui, though refusing to take
on any official government positions, is quoted by Dirlik to have ‘spent
his time following Chiang Kai-Shek,’ the party leader, around ‘whilst
militarists all around the country engaged in terror against
revolutionaries.’ He fled to Taiwan with the rest of the nationalists
where he spent the rest of his life. Li Shizeng would come to do the
same, dying in Taiwan in 1973 and seen out by a funeral attended by many
high ranking statesmen. Whether they died as anarchists or not, all four
of the Elders came to have the same politics from a practical
perspective. They all collaborated with the KMT, they all oversaw its
suppression of leftists within the party, and they would all come to
have enduring legacies in the hearts of the early political leaders of
Taiwan — not a demonstration of anarchist politics by any means.
The brevity and complexity of the history of anarchism matches that of
its own supporters, activists, and thinkers. There are those who won
victories, and there are those who lost; there are those who stuck to
their principles, and those whose principles faltered. Either way, there
are lessons to learn. The Four Elders were incredibly influential in
their time. Their brand of anarchism inspired people in China long
before Marxism took hold, and their actions will be remembered by many.
Where they came to fail and where their values did not come to fruition
has already been discussed. Similar parallels may be drawn with the CNT,
whose decision to join the government over fears of both Franco and
authoritarian communists appeared to be a necessary compromise of their
principles, but ultimately did not halt their later suppression. With
this in mind, we can reflect on some words by Errico Malatesta in
Towards Anarchism, who provides an apt criticism of anarchists who
dabble in parliamentary politics:
‘The problem lies in knowing how to choose the road that really
approaches the realisation of the ideal and in not confusing the real
progress with hypocritical reforms. For with the pretext of obtaining
immediate ameliorations these false reforms tend to distract the masses
from the struggle against authority and capitalism; they serve to
paralyse their actions and make them hope that something can be attained
through the kindness of the exploiters and governments.’
Malatesta’s comments sit in line with the anarchist conception of the
function of the ‘means and ends’ in a revolution. A flip of
Machiavelli’s famous statement ‘the ends justify the means’, anarchists
see the steps taken on the path to revolution and one and the same with
the steps taken after that revolution. As noted by another anarchist
theorist and activist, Emma Goldman:
‘Methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means
deployed become, through individual habit and social practise, part and
parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently
the aims and means become identical.’
In essence, do not choose the path of politics simply because it
improves things right now without considering what that might do in the
long term. A victory for a seeming good cause might appear to be putting
you along the right path, but what will you have to sacrifice to achieve
it? The Four Elders may have achieved much in their time under the KMT,
but where did that lead them in the realisation of an anarchist goal,
and what did they sacrifice in themselves to achieve them? That is,
unfortunately, clear for us to see.