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Thought Reform and Cultural Revolution: An Analysis of the Symbolism of Chinese Polemics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Lowell Dittmer
Lowell Dittmer*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
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Abstract

Although the major purpose of the Cultural Revolution was to transform Chinese political culture, the way in which this transformation took place has remained unclear. This paper attempts to understand cultural transformation as a process of interaction within a semiological system, consisting of a network of communicators and a lexicon of political symbols. The pragmatic aspect of this process is the outcome of an interplay among the intentions of the elites, the masses, and the target of criticism: political circumstances during the Cultural Revolution were more benign to the cathartic and hortatory intentions of the masses and elites than to the expiatory needs of the target. The syntactic aspect of the system concerns the relationship among symbols: These were found to form a dichotomous structure divided by a taboo barrier, which elicited strong but ambivalent desires to achieve a revolutionary breakthrough. The semantic aspect of the symbolism refers to problematic dimensions of experience in Chinese political culture–the psychological repression imposed by a system of rigid social censorship, the political discrimination practiced against certain social categories, the persistence of differences in income or educational achievement in a socialist system–and suggests that these “contradictions” may be resolved by bold frontal assault.

The symbolism of Cultural Revolution polemics has now become part of Chinese political culture. Its impact seems to have been to inhibit social differentiation (particularly hierarchical), to encourage greater mass participation, and to foster more frequent and irreconcilable conflict among elites.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 67 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Tang Tsou, Nathan Leites, Susanne Rudolph, John Starr, and many others for their comments on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to participants in a China seminar at the University of Toronto in November 1974 for their suggestions on an earlier version.

References

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