THE COUNTERREVOLUTION IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

         

        Stephen Gould has often pointed out that science “cannot escape its curious dialectic,” its relationship to culture. What was the philosophy of science in Cultural Revolution China and why was it controversial? What impact on science resulted from this philosophy? Why does it matter who does science?

        Dialectical materialism is and was officially the philosophy of science in China. While the Maoists obviously see overlap between the philosophy of science in the West and in the East, they would claim that some cultures are better than others in the promotion of science. According to the Maoists, Marxism embraces and guides the natural sciences better than any other philosophy. Furthermore, “Marxism is the crystallization of the entire human knowledge including natural science.” Moreover, dialectical materialism is “applicable to every branch of natural science;” even though, this does not mean taking over the “specific object of study.”

        The dictatorship of the proletariat has something to say about the culture and philosophy that science is promoted through. The dictatorship of the proletariat would determine whether it is worthwhile or not to fund participants in any research on any scientific question, but Mao said that “questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through work in these fields.”

        Mao thought that “administrative measures” are incorrect for debates such as that in Stalin’s Soviet Union over Lysenko. Ultra-Stalinist and ultra-leftist “Maoists” that Richard Lewontin cited in an essay in the Radicalization of Science do not respect the autonomy of the “specific object of study.” Once again we see that Mao’s position must be distinguished from that of the ultraleft. When asked about Lysenko, who won a debate in biology in the Soviet Union through the intervention of Stalin, some scientists in Cultural Revolution China debated amongst themselves and told their American questioner that “Lysenko thinks potato degeneration is induced by high temperatures. We think his theory isn’t correct.”

        Outside the natural sciences, the Marxists do make claims such as that all history is the history of class struggle. Broadly speaking, the Maoists also claim that matter is always changeable and divisible. The emphasis on contradiction, struggle and qualitative change has been attributed to Darwin’s impact on China’s culture in James Pusey’s whopping 544 page book China and Charles Darwin. Sun Yat-sen, the great republican revolutionary leader still cherished in China for his role in the Revolution of 1911 said, “while the twentieth century is a world governed by the struggle for survival and the survival of the fittest, how can government, industry, or anything progress without struggle and competition?”

        Lu Xun, who was one of the most influential Chinese in Mao’s life, viewed the New Culture Movement in Darwinian light. “Hereafter, we really do have only two roads. One is to embrace our ancient writing style and die. The other is to discard our ancient writing style and survive.”

        Pusey goes so far as to say “Darwin justified revolution and thereby helped the cultural revolutions of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang K’ai-shek, and Mao Tse-tung.” Darwin is also seen as responsible for the ideas of historical inevitability, futurism and the perfectibility of humans that the Chinese are fond of. Mao Zedong Thought itself is a “mixture of Darwinian ironies and contradictions,” and Pusey agrees with Mao that in China “‘socialism, in the ideological struggle, now enjoys all the conditions to triumph as the fittest.’”

        Darwin was not the only great scientist to interact with China’s culture. Edward Friedman insists that the Einsteinian revolution in physics influenced Mao’s Cultural Revolution outlook. The Maoist truth that “one divides into two” was extended into particle physics. Mao predicted that each of the constituents of the atom—proton, neutron and electron—would break down. He came to influence Japanese physicist Sakata Shoichi, who was a world class physicist who discovered some particles. In addition to talks with Sakata in China, Chinese scientists received the resources to search for underlying particles. This included one 50 GeV proton accelerator. Physicist S. Glashow at Harvard even named an undiscovered particle the “Maon.” Dialecticians expect that particles will break down in stages and the Chinese hoped to vindicate dialectics with their work in high energy physics.

        So far, it should be clear that science has had a big impact on Chinese culture and that science provides some of the very ideas that constitute that culture and the dialectical philosophy of science. Here it must be admitted, however, that China did not really change the basic results of the theoretical sciences right away. Studies of proton decay go forward without the impetus of the Cultural Revolution.

        Instead, the results of science have been affected by the allocation of resources. The dialectical approach stresses the unity of theory and practice. During the Cultural Revolution theoretical research was curtailed. In 1965, there were 106 different research institutes in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and 22,000 personnel. By 1973, there were 53 institutes and just over 13,000 research personnel. The one thing that unites 28 different Western authors who put together Science in Contemporary China is political. “It is clear that the adverse effects of the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent rule of the Gang of Four in the educational system will continue to hamper China’s progress in science and technology throughout the 1980s.”

        Unfortunately, Western and current Chinese scientists often assume the necessity and superiority of research work over applied work. Many times since 1976 Chen Jingrun, who made a “breakthrough” on the Goldbach conjecture and hid to do research during the Cultural Revolution, has been lauded in China and in the West. The old Whig interpretation as Gould calls it, pictures an heroic scientist like Chen risking everything to carry science forward.

        According to China’s current rulers, the elite of scientists were right not to concern themselves with the Cultural Revolution. An important and strong mythology has built up that the Cultural Revolution persecuted and diverted scientists from their work which is seen as essential to the Four Modernizations.

        In truth, scientists during the Cultural Revolution continued to publish theoretical work, albeit in diminished quantities; went to the countryside and factories to apply their knowledge and engaged in political discussion about one day a week. There are shelves of scientific material from 1966 to 1969 to 1976, published and translated by the U.S. Government in the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS). The topics of research include crops, fish-breeding, and properties of baking soda. On a larger scale, oil and coal production took off during the Cultural Revolution and increased several fold, while both oil and coal production suffered declines in 1980 and 1981. Science was transferred from the lab and the library to the factory, field and hospital during the Cultural Revolution.

        Many examples of advanced technical work will not show up in the analyses of research-oriented observers. First, in agriculture, the famous Red Flag Canal was built in Lin County. This canal allowed for irrigation and made Lin lush in vegetation. The canal is 70 kilometers long. It was cut through rocky mountains with tools, dynamite and hard labor. When the peasants first drew up the plans, the Party Committee called in some “experts” from the cities. These experts who were obviously removed from the actual conditions in Lin said that the canal could not be done. After debate, the Cultural Revolutionaries convinced the party to go ahead with the project anyway. During the four years that the canal was built, orders from capitalist-roaders were given to stop the canal construction four times. The project was completed in partial secrecy and without state support. Although many of the peasants who worked on the canal were illiterate, they had learned by doing.

        Secondly, a different approach was taken in health. In the case of cancer researchers, instructions were given to go out to the factories where cancer was most frequent. The researchers lived among workers and did much to isolate the occupational causes of cancer rather than laboratory cures for cancer. Another example was acupuncture. Research was done to “reduce” the effectiveness of acupuncture to neural and or hormonal causes. At the same time, however, elementary students were instructed in the use of acupuncture as a pain-reliever. Moreover, one hospital reported 90% effectiveness in 2300 operations with acupuncture anesthesia. Again, what is ordinarily left to full theoretical understanding can often be resolved at the level of practice.

        Finally, the ship-building industry provides some famous examples of how learning through doing can replace the work of experts. Total shipping tonnage produced increased six-fold between 1965 and 1974. “More tonnage has been built in the eight years since the cultural revolution began than in the 17 preceding years.” 10,000 ton ships were built on 7,000, 5,000 and even 3,000 ton ways. Similar feats include the building of a 500 ton floating crane on a mud beach and the construction of 10,000 horsepower engines from scratch at various shipyards. Innovation by workers and use of common materials at hand were attributed.

        What Stephen Gould would call biases block experts sometimes from seeing all the possibilities for accomplishing a task. Not only are experts blinded by biases in their own theoretical work as Gould would argue, but also their nature as specialists prevents them from giving up problems that should be solved in practice or in another field. Class enters the picture at this point. As a group, scientists and technicians have an interest in making themselves valuable. Gould locates that interest in the very first ruling class that separated itself from manual labor and mystified its role in magic and brain work. Furthermore, he calls the “belief in the inherent superiority of pure research” to be “social prejudice.” The advantage of the Cultural Revolution approach is that it includes the practical knowledge of the workers. Even Western analyst Nicolaas Bloembergen recognizes that the approach works well for China, which can easily get its theory at international conferences, from journals and from equipment purchases. For example, semiconductors have been successfully copied. The unity of theory and practice not only helps in meeting the needs of the Chinese people—for example, the synthesis of insulin—and breaking down class divisions, but also it works.

             This brings us to the question of who does science. In the United States, it is hard to appreciate the economic context of education in China. Approximately 50% of youth in the United States go to college. In China, it’s the top 1% of students who go on to college, only because China cannot afford to support multitudes of students. (By the way, this is a fact that Western observers seldom take into account in their criticisms of Cultural Revolution education or their support for student demonstrations.) Only 5% of children who complete primary school gain admission to universities or secondary technical schools combined. In the United States, if someone needs a technical skill, that person is expected to go to college and take some courses. Accessible education for Chinese, equivalent to night school for instance, tends to have the applied nature held in low regard in the West. Even today’s “key universities,” such as Nankai in Tianjin engage their elite students in majors such as tourism.

        Hence it was not nearly so unrealistic as might be thought to say in Cultural Revolution China that “science is the summation of the experience of the working people.” By this view, science was to be advanced by making the masses scientists who would solve their own problems and take care of their own needs. In contrast, Hu Yaobang, before he was demoted in the party hierarchy, said “‘the key to the four modernizations is the modernization of science and technology.’” Furthermore, the official line is that “to attain our magnificent goal” of the Four Modernizations “in the final analysis it is a matter of how to arouse this group of people who have mastered the knowledge of science and technology so as to give play to their enthusiasm and role.” No statement could better encapsulate the restoration of the Whig view of science done by a heroic minority.

        The planned expansion of the research force to 800,000 (less than 1 in 1,000 of China’s population) by 1985 (Fang Yi’s speech at the National Science Conference 1978) and the placement of scientists to direct projects represents a shift back to the bourgeois mystification of science and bourgeois rule. Whereas proletarian dictatorship used to be applied to the questions of what would be funded, today’s policy is to dump the non-scientists for direction from the Scientific Council.

     “Unity-criticism-unity” has been stressed in order to give the bourgeois intellectuals the tranquility they desire to get on with their work. The change in the philosophy of science may be characterized as a deemphasis of struggle and practice and a renewed emphasis on unity and theory. The intellectuals have been taken out of production in order that new exploiters might be established. The problem is that the so-called modernizers have to figure out how to make the work of the intellectuals relevant to the Four Modernizations. With the anti-reductionist Cultural Revolution approach, there were accomplishments in high brow science, but scientists mostly made their contributions in concrete and historically-contingent situations—the factories, fields and hospitals.

  

             TECHNOCRATS: THE RESURGENT MIDDLE CLASS

         

   “You all know the saying, ‘Cadres decide everything.’ The truth of the statement has been amply proved.” (Chen Yun, “On Cadre Policy,” Beijing Review no. 13, 1984, p. 16) [Reviving a saying of Stalin’s criticized by Mao.]

    

        In his very important book China Since Mao (1978), Charles Bettelheim said that “civilian cadres who were far from sympathetic to the Cultural Revolution” “constituted the social and political basis on which Hua Kuo-feng was to rely in his coup d’etat.” Furthermore, because of the numerical weakness of the Chinese proletariat, the revolutionary trend had to rely on “petty-bourgeois trends,” especially after the fall of Lin Biao and the ensuing compromises. Although the thesis here stresses the two line struggle between the revolutionaries and the revisionist upper levels of the party and state, it is important to note why Bettelheim’s ideas are not so far from reality.

        In 1978, Bettelheim could not help being impressed by the changes in the status of the civilian cadres—the technical and bureaucratic elite. Before the coup, Hua coauthored some documents with Deng that came to be known as the “Three Poisonous Weeds,” which were used in the Four’s criticisms of Deng. Hua was not criticized by name. The “Weeds” speak of the need to “rectify” “enterprise management.” In the same breath, Hua and Deng want to “make their [enterprise] rules and regulations more strict.” Furthermore, “someone must be put in charge of every piece of work and every station, and every cadre, every worker, and every technician must have clearly defined duties.” There is no mention of revolutionary committees. The emphasis is on the “unified leadership” of the party committees. It is very significant that the new reliance on experts—meaning technicians and bureaucrats—goes hand and hand with a crackdown on labor and an emphasis on distinct responsibilities.

        Just how far have the intellectuals been removed from production into theoretical work? Already in the “Weeds,” Deng says, “it is by the adoption of the most advanced technologies that the industrially backward countries catch up with the industrially advanced countries in the world.” Of course this entails training the “necessary technical forces” to go along with technology importation, but this is not so notable as the attribution of “backbone roles of specialized research agencies.” Later in Hua’s 1978 Constitution, the task is no longer to make the masses scientists but to combine “professional contingents with the masses.” Not to be outdone, Deng sanctifies the division of labor between mental and manual labor by saying intellectuals do mental labor and should be revered as part of the productive forces. Then he makes the typical argument that any work done within the context of inherently socialist state-ownership advances socialism. Therefore, if a scientist does not know much about politics that is all right as long as he works for China and not some other country. In addition, “professional scientists and technicians form the mainstay of the revolutionary movement for scientific experiment.” Still, it would be hard to beat Hua, contrary to Leo Orleans’ belief that Hua stands for science for the masses. On August 11th, 1977 in one paper is the following gem: “The degree of a country’s industrialization is mainly in direct proportion to the development of mathematics in that country.” Theoretical science has reached a new high in China.

        At the same time, Bettelheim is especially correct that scientific management represents a crackdown on workers. He should not be criticized for targeting scientists who are just powerless professionals cloistered in the Ivory Towers. The academic elite in China is really much more elite than in the United States. More importantly, in China, scientism extends to management. “Our major current problems in developing science and technology and the economy are management problems.” Furthermore, “in the development of scientific and technological undertakings, the scientists, and technicians and the management personnel—from first to last—are the two principal forces.” The push for “scientific management” includes time-motion studies and Taylorism. Time motion studies were suspended from 1966-1976. Piece-rates, which were used under Stalin too, came under heavy criticism as coercive and divisive of the working class during the Cultural Revolution and abandoned. Piece-work resumed in 1978. Also, task-rates are a major form of remuneration in agriculture. Moreover, Bettelheim points out that labor emulation drives have lost any of their spontaneity. Now they serve as opportunities for management to correct worker habits. In order to expand coal production “the Ministry of Coal Mining. . . has recently organized 125 of the country’s mines in an emulation movement to last one hundred days, starting on January 1.” In short, China is developing a science of domination.

        Again, Hua led the way in the issue of scientific management. Bettelheim cites an article dated March 22, 1977. “It is necessary to have a scientific attitude in the managing of modern enterprises. . . . In the managing of modern enterprises it is necessary to employ a number of scientific methods.” According to Bettelheim, the article may have forged a quote from Mao on scientific management because the Red Guard version of Mao’s quote contained no reference to scientific management. Furthermore, the same article states that in management “the most important question” is “developing the productive forces.” Thus, Hua differed little from his successor Deng on management.

        Indeed, Hua’s press of New Year’s Day in 1978 proclaimed the theory of the productive forces. “Why do we say the socialist system is superior? In the final analysis, it is because the socialist system can create higher labor productivity and make the economy develop faster than capitalism.” Moreover, by November 27th, 1977, Chinese radio was broadcasting that “politics must serve economics.” “Losses of a political nature” must “be reduced to the minimum” argues the CCP on November 9th, 1977. The theory of the productive forces was already in perfect form by September 21st, 1977. “In the last analysis, the economic basis is the decisive factor in social progress, and the productive forces are the most active and revolutionary factor in the economic basis. Thus, in the last analysis, it is the productive forces that determine production relations.”

      Perhaps the new atmosphere concerning labor is best summed up in the Chi Hsin’s criticism of the Gang of Four. The Four had the slogan that “it is better to have a socialist train that is late than a capitalist [fascist] train that is on time.” Chi Hsin disagreed. A similar slogan of the Four was criticized in an article titled “‘Behave at the Docks as Masters, Not as Slaves to Cargo Tonnage’—How this slogan harmed work at the Shanghai Harbour.” The campaign to force workers to toil started under Hua’s regime.

             Pragmatism or the philosophy of doing what works or being “realistic” and “practical” favors the capable elite who can obtain quick results. The possibilities of the masses’ learning through the transformation of their own conditions is restricted by those who would separate the experts from the masses as is done in China. It is no coincidence that pragmatism and the discipline and restriction of workers by regulation to certain tasks occur together. The masses’ participation in the politics and economy of China are restricted in favor of the rule of experts. If fascism gets the job done, then fascism is necessary by this logic. Yu Guangyuan, a vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said:

  

            We support any system of ownership which

            promotes the development of the productive

            forces to the maximum extent; we accept with

            reservation any system which promotes such a

            development to a rather limited extent; we do

            not support any system which does not promote

            such a development, and we resolutely oppose

            any system which hinders such a development.

   

        Senior scientists and high-ranking intellectuals in China can be considered part of the state capitalist class. The majority of cadres form a middle-class of popular support for pragmatism. Bettelheim is right about the middle class to the extent that it is a recruiting ground for the state capitalist class and to the extent that it has a material interest in pragmatic production policies. He is wrong to the extent that the real base of the counterrevolution is in the higher reaches of the party and government.

        Leo A. Orleans offers a non-Marxist analysis of the changes in the position of scientists in China. He claims that the scientists were “deeply scarred by the Cultural Revolution,” which was a “decade of abuse.” Still, he has no illusions about the role of China’s scientists who “actually occupy key positions in government, while many more can exert significant influence through highly developed informal relations with officials in policy making positions.” In fact, “in the years since the gang of four, the higher echelon scientists have tended to the elitist and isolated position of the traditional Chinese intellectual.” Consequently, recently there “reappeared a clear-cut distinction between mental and manual labor.” Orleans concludes that the severe test for Beijing will be to turn around the much more elitist and isolated scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The evidence he gives is that research has accelerated, but application lags. “Prompt” application occurs for only 10% of China’s science projects as opposed to 80 to 85% in the U.S. Furthermore, 28 of 63 projects in Shanghai were replications, 24 of which were duplications of work done in 1973 and 1974. There are fully 980 projects on haploid seed breeding.