CLIQUE

May and June 1955
PREFACE

June 15, 1955

To meet the needs of the broad reading public, we have made a compilation
of the material on the counter-revolutionary Hu Feng clique which appeared
in three instalments in the People's Daily between May 13 and June
10, 1955 and also the People's Daily editorial of June 10, and are
having it issued by the People's Publishing House under the title Material
on the Counter-Revolutionary Hu Feng Clique. In this book we have also
reprinted Hu Feng's "My Self-Criticism" as source material, but in an appendix
coming after the material supplied by Shu Wu [1] so
that readers can study this double-dealing counter-revolutionary. We have
made a few verbal changes in the editor's notes and the footnotes to the
three instalments of the material. We have revised some footnotes, added
others and inserted two more editor's notes in the second instalment. For
the sake of consistency, the term "anti-Party clique" in the title of the
first and second instalments has been changed to "counter-revolutionary clique",
as in the third instalment. Otherwise, the text is unchanged.

It may be expected that, as with the publication of the material in the
People's Daily, the publication of this book will attract the attention
of two kinds of people. On the one hand, counter-revolutionaries will pay
attention to it. On the other, the masses of the people will give it even
more attention.

Counter-revolutionaries and those with certain counter-revolutionary sentiments
will find that the correspondence of the Hu Feng elements strikes a sympathetic
chord. Hu Feng and his clique are indeed spokesmen for all counter-revolutionary
classes, groups and individuals, and the curses they hurl at the revolution
and the tactics they use in their activities will be appreciated by all those
counter-revolutionaries who can get hold of this book, from which they can
derive some counter-revolutionary education about class struggle. Nevertheless,
this will in no way save them from their doom. Like all the counter-revolutionary
writings of their backers, the imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang,
which were directed against the Chinese people, these writings of the Hu
Feng elements are records not of success but of failure. They did not save
their own clique from destruction.

The masses of the people are very much in need of this material. How do
counter-revolutionaries employ their double-dealing tactics? How do they
succeed in deceiving us by their false appearances, while furtively doing
the things we least expect? All this is a blank to thousands upon thousands
of well-intentioned people. On this account, many counter-revolutionaries
have wormed their way into our ranks. The eyes of our people are not keen,
they are not adept at distinguishing good people from bad types. When people
operate in normal conditions, we know how to tell the bad from the good,
but we are not adept at seeing through those who operate in unusual conditions.
The Hu Feng elements are counter-revolutionaries who put on a disguise to
hide their true features and to give a false impression. But since they oppose
the revolution, it is impossible for them to cover up their true features
entirely. As for the leading spirits of the Hu Feng clique, they have had
disputes with us on many occasions before and since liberation. They are
different in word and deed not only from Communists but also from vast numbers
of non-Party revolutionaries and democrats. They were recently exposed to
the full simply because we got hold of a mass of solid evidence against them.
As for many of the individuals in the Hu Feng clique, they were able to deceive
us because our Party organizations, state organs, people's organizations,
cultural and educational institutions or enterprises failed to make a strict
examination of their records before admitting them. It was also because we
were in a stormy period of revolution in the recent past and people of all
sorts tried to get close to us as we emerged the victors; so inevitably the
waters were muddied, the bad became mixed with the good, and we have not
yet got around to sifting them thoroughly. Furthermore, success in spotting
and clearing out bad elements depends on a combination of correct guidance
from the leading organs with a high degree of political consciousness on
the part of the masses, but in this regard our work in the past was not without
shortcomings. These are all lessons for us.

We attach importance to the Hu Feng case because we want to use it to educate
the masses of the people, and first those cadres who can read and also the
intellectuals; to them we recommend this Material for raising their
level of political consciousness. The Material is striking for its
extreme sharpness and clarity. Counter-revolutionaries will naturally pay
attention to it and revolutionary people even more so. If the masses of the
revolutionary people learn something from this case and this material and
thereby increase their revolutionary ardour and their ability to discriminate,
we shall have all sorts of hidden counter-revolutionaries gradually uncovered.

EDITOR'S NOTES (Selections)

May and June 1955

1

A faction -- called "coterie" by our forefathers and "ring" or "outfit" by
people today -- is something quite familiar to us. To attain their political
ends people who pursue factional activities often accuse others of being
factional, and being factional, they say, is not upright; for themselves,
they claim to be upright, and upright people just don't have anything to
do with factions. Those who followed Hu Feng's lead were said to be "young
writers" and "revolutionary writers" "hated" and "persecuted" by the Communist
Party, the faction that had "bourgeois theories" and "formed an independent
kingdom"; therefore, Hu Feng and company wanted revenge. The question of
the Literary Gazette[2] was "merely
a breach that has been seized upon" and was "by no means an isolated one",
it was most necessary to "extend and generalize" it and "show that the question
was one of factionalist rule", and "factionalist and warlord rule" at that.
The matter was so serious that they "fired of E" a lot of ammunition to mop
us up. In so doing Hu Feng and company attracted attention. After careful
investigation of many of these persons, this clique was found to be of some
size. Previously they were known as "a small group". No, that's not so, there
are quite a few of them. Previously they were known simply as a group of
men of letters. No, that's not so, they have wormed their way into political,
military, economic, cultural and educational departments. Previously, they
seemed to be a group of revolutionaries operating in broad daylight. No,
that's not so, most of them have a very shady background. The main force
of the clique consists of imperialist and Kuomintang secret agents, Trotskyites,
reactionary army officers, or renegades from the Communist Party; with these
persons serving as the backbone, a counter-revolutionary faction hidden in
the revolutionary camp, an underground independent kingdom, was formed. This
counter-revolutionary faction, this underground kingdom, has set itself the
task of overthrowing the People's Republic of China and restoring imperialist
and Kuomintang rule. Whenever and wherever possible, they go nosing around
for our shortcomings which they use as pretexts for sabotage. Wherever they
have their men, strange things happen. After liberation, this
counter-revolutionary clique expanded and, if unchecked, would go on expanding.
Now that the truth about Hu Feng and company has come to light, many phenomena
can be satisfactorily explained and their activities stopped.

2

Sure enough, Hu Feng subsequently acted on Lu Tien's suggestion to use offensive
tactics for defence. Thus he came to Peking to ask for a job, requested that
his case be discussed, submitted the 300,000-word memo to the Central Committee,
and finally seized upon the question of the Literary Gazette to
open fire. Generally, when things are going badly for them, all kinds of
representatives of the exploiting classes use offensive tactics as a means
of defence in order to survive today and grow tomorrow. Rumours are fabricated
out of thin air and lies told point-blank; certain superficial phenomena
are seized on for attacking the essence of things ; some people are lauded
while others are condemned; and matters are distorted and exaggerated to
"make a breakthrough at certain points" so as to put us in a difficult position.
In short, they are assiduous in studying what tactics to use against us and
"spying out the land" in order to attain their end. Sometimes they "play
possum" and wait for a chance to "spring a counter-attack". They have long
years of experience in class struggle and are skilful in different forms
of struggle, legal and illegal. We revolutionaries must know their tricks
and study their tactics in order to defeat them. Never be so bookish and
naive as to treat complex class struggle as a simple matter.

3

It is conceit, self-complacency, lack of vigilance and absorption in the
day-to-day job to the neglect of politics on our part as revolutionaries
that have made it possible for many counter-revolutionaries to "penetrate"
our "liver". They are by no means confined to the men of the Hu Feng clique,
many other secret agents and bad elements have also sneaked in.

4

When a Party member is criticized for his liberalistic tendencies, Hu Feng
elements say he is "being attacked". If his "fighting will is rather weak",
that is, if he does not cling to his liberalistic stand but is willing to
accept Party criticism and come over to the correct stand, then he is not
much of a hope to the Hu Feng clique and cannot be dragged away. On the contrary,
if his "fighting will" to cling to his liberalistic stand is not "rather
weak" but "rather strong", he is in danger of being dragged away. Hu Feng
elements are sure to "have a go" at it, and they are already calling him
"comrade". Shouldn't this be taken as a warning? What then should be the
attitude of a Party member when he is criticized for having made ideological
and political mistakes? There is a choice of two courses before him: one
is to correct his mistakes and be a good Party member, the other is to slide
further down the path and even fall into the pit of counter-revolution. The
second alternative really exists and counter-revolutionaries may be beckoning
him on.

5

Just as we constantly appraise the balance of forces in the international
and domestic class struggle, so does the enemy. But, being backward and decadent
reactionaries, our enemies are doomed; they are ignorant of the laws of the
objective world, are subjective and metaphysical in their thinking, and thus
are invariably wrong in their judgments. They are inexorably driven by their
class instinct to believe that they are very superior and that the revolutionary
forces can never amount to much. They invariably overestimate their own strength
and underestimate ours. We have witnessed many counter-revolutionaries toppled
one by one -- the Ching Dynasty government, the Northern warlords, the Japanese
militarists, Mussolini, Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek; they made mistakes in
thought and deed and could not do otherwise. All contemporary imperialists
are bound to repeat such mistakes. Isn't it ludicrous? According to the Hu
Feng elements, the Chinese people's revolutionary forces led by the Communist
Party are "doomed", and they are nothing but "the sere, the yellow leaf"
and "a rotting corpse". And how about the counter-revolutionary forces
represented by the Hu Feng elements? Although "some fragile sprouts may be
smothered", large numbers of sprouts "are breaking through" and will "grow
sturdily". If to this day Royalist representatives are found in the bourgeois
French National Assembly, then it is highly probable that some representatives
of the Chiang Kai-shek dynasty will remain active here and there years after
the complete elimination of all exploiting classes from the face of the earth.
The worst die-hards among them will never admit defeat. That's because they
need to deceive themselves as well as others, or else they could not carry
on.

6

In this letter, the phrase "those veiled feudal forces are madly killing
people" indicates that the counter-revolutionary Hu Feng clique is
terror-stricken by the great struggle of our people's revolutionary forces
to suppress the counter-revolutionary forces, and this feeling is typical
of all counter-revolutionary classes, groups and individuals. What strikes
terror into their hearts is precisely what makes the revolutionary masses
jubilant. "Unprecedented in history" -- that's correct too. Except for the
revolution which replaced the primitive communal system by the slave system,
that is, a system of non-exploitation by one of exploitation, all revolutions
in the past ended in the replacement of one system of exploitation by another,
and it was neither imperative nor possible to do a thorough job of suppressing
counter-revolutionaries. Only our revolution, the revolution of the masses
of the people led by the proletariat and the Communist Party, aims at the
final elimination of all systems of exploitation and all classes; therefore,
the exploiting classes which are being eliminated are bound to come out and
put up resistance through their counter-revolutionary political parties and
groups or through certain individuals, and the masses of the people on their
part must unite and suppress these forces of resistance resolutely, thoroughly,
wholly and completely. Only at this time is such suppression imperative and
possible. "The struggle has inevitably deepened" -- this is quite correct,
too. The expression "veiled feudal forces", however, is wrong; it is a derogatory
expression for "the people's democratic dictatorship led by the proletariat
and the Communist Party and based on the worker-peasant alliance", just as
the word "mechanism" used by this clique is a derogatory term for "dialectical
materialism".

7

Here again we come across this Chang Chung-hsiao. He has a pretty good
counter-revolutionary nose and outmatches many in our revolutionary ranks,
including a number of Communists, in level of class consciousness and keenness
of political sense of smell. Compared with men of the Hu Feng clique, many
of our own people are vastly inferior in these respects. We must study and
heighten our class vigilance and make our political sense of smell keener.
If there is anything positive the Hu Feng clique can offer, it is that through
the present soul-stirring struggle we shall raise our own political consciousness
and sensitivity much higher, firmly suppress all counter-revolutionaries
and greatly strengthen our revolutionary dictatorship; we shall thus carry
the revolution through to the end and achieve the objective of building a
great socialist country.

NOTES


1. This refers to "Some Material About the
Counter-Revolutionary Hu Feng Clique" submitted by Shu Wu, a member of the
clique. It contains excerpts from a number of counter-revolutionary confidential
letters Hu Feng wrote to Shu Wu before and after liberation.

2. From the end of October to the beginning of December
1954, the presidiums of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles of China
and of the Union of Chinese Writers held enlarged joint meetings to examine
the mistakes of the Literary Gazette in suppressing the criticism
by young writers of the bourgeois ideas prevalent in studies of The Dream
of the Red Chamber. Hu Feng believed his opportunity had come and began
attacking the Communist Party. He said in a confidential letter to one of
his followers, "This is merely a breach that has been seized upon, and it
is most necessary to extend and generalize the matter."

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.