College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University

Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism. by Jiwei Ci Review by: Richard Madsen The China Journal, No. 38 (Jul., 1997), pp. 171-173 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2950340 . Accessed: 19/04/2012 03:24
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REVIEWS

Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism, by Jiwei Ci. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1994. vii + 281pp. A$32.50 (paperback). Writing in what he calls the 'philosopher's way', the author tries to give us a new way of thinking about the Chinese revolution. His interpretive framework owes most to Nietzsche, with important influences from Hegel and the Frankfurt School. Though Ci uses a large number of works in Western political theory, his bibliography cites few works on China. Ci writes as someone who has experienced much of the history of that revolution and is steeped in its culture but who thinks about it through the lenses of Western philosophy. His book is a profound, original interpretation of the Chinese revolution's moral logic. Unlike many interpreters, including myself, who have seen Maoism as a kind of revolutionary asceticism ? a transcendent moral vision that called on its followers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the collective ? Ci sees it as a sublimated hedonism. By this he means that the Maoist moral project was ultimately based on a promise of this-worldly satisfaction rather than, as for with ascetic Christianity, on other-worldly salvation. Maoism example enjoined its followers to struggle against the self for the sake of the public good, not because such struggle was good in itself or because Mao's followers would be rewarded in an after-life, but because their efforts would create a stronger, materially prosperous China, which one day would obviate the need for constant struggle and self-sacrifice. Many Chinese under Maoism deeply internalized this utopian vision. This made Mao's totalitarianism and invisible' therefore 'subjectively overwhelmingly strong. However, there was a limit to the credibility of this vision, which was set by the limit of how far into the future the Maoists could postpone hedonistic self-gratification. When Mao plunged the country into chaos in the Cultural Revolution, while calling for nothing less than ceaseless revolution, he postponed the hedonistic fulfillment of the revolutionary promise too far into the future for people to bear. They gave up hope in the revolution and gave up faith in Maoism. What remained then was nihilism, which the author defines as 'a situation in which reality and meaning have become so separated that the gap between them no longer seems to offer the

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possibility either for the meaningful interpretation of present reality or for hope-inspired action with a view to the future' (p.5). In the way Ci defines it, nihilism cannot be a permanent, satisfying intellectual position. It is a call for some new meaning and for a new social and moral equilibrium. Out of the nihilism of the post-Maoist era, then, came two new trends ? a de-sublimated hedonism and political liberalism. Like Maoism itself, the political liberalism of the late 1980s was in the end based on a sublimated hedonism. When dissidents called for freedom and democracy, they saw these not as goods in themselves but as the most efficient means to eventually achieve widespread material gratification. 'When the government crushed the democracy movement, what it sought to eradicate was not its underlying hedonism but only the political products of its sublimation', (p.8). With the hope for democracy stifled, people now turned to the de-sublimated hedonism ? the instant ? of an gratification emerging consumer society. The antiindividualistic collectivism advocated by the Maoists and the socially responsible individualism advocated by the democracy movement now gave way to an unrestrainedly selfish individualism, which produced an atomized citizenry quite amenable to authoritarian political control. In the author's view, 'the chances are ... that, barring major economic setbacks, hedonism will continue to flourish .... As long as the need for sublimation ? the source of all politics ? keeps being reduced, the of Chinese society will shift more and more from political control problematic to technical management' (p.241). People will no longer be sublimated hedonists who give themselves over to the collective because of faith in a utopian promise, but self-centered, de-sublimated hedonists who live for present enjoyment within an iron cage. The circular movement from hedonism to utopianism to nihilism back to hedonism is presented, in 'the philosopher's way', not so much as a socialor a political process as a logical process but more as a psychological movement of ideas than of people. The author does not attend to the complex ideal and material interests of different sectors of the Chinese population, nor to the complicated political struggles and historical contingencies that shaped the Chinese revolution. He hypostasizes the billion people of the People's Republic into a unitary China driven dialectically by grand ideas. This style of discourse will be frustrating to those who follow the historian's way or the social scientist's way. It will probably be frustratingto professional academic philosophers, who now prefer more tightly focused, delimited arguments. There is something old-fashioned about the grandness and abstractness of Ci's interpretation. It might be better characterized as the 'theologian's' rather than the philosopher's way. Yet I found his argument stimulating and compelling. Though the argument is complex, the book is beautifully written, with graceful sentences and arresting turns of phrase. It is presented with great conviction and passion. The explication of the underlying logic of Maoism seems quite plausible, though there will undoubtedly be room for other interpretations of the Maoist

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project. The author's Western philosophical apparatus, for example, draws out the logic of those parts of Maoism that were imported from the West, but it does not easily grapple with those parts that were adaptations to Chinese cultural traditions. A world-historical event like the Chinese revolution needs bold thinkers with big ideas to take its measure. The structure of modern Western academia keeps most scholars focused on narrow specialties and keeps them from grappling with such big ideas. We should be grateful to Jiwei Ci for directing us to the ultimate questions and grand themes which a great revolution properly challenges us to consider. Richard Madsen of California, San Diego University

Mass

Politics in the People's Republic: State & Society in Contemporary China, by Alan P. L. Liu. Westview Press, Boulder, 1996. xiii + 251pp. US$65.00 (hardcover), US$19.95 (paperback).

The focus of this work is best indicated by the subtitle, if revised to 'state versus society'. The four main chapters are concerned with peasants, workers, students and ethnic separatism. With the partial exception of the 'adversarial between the state and industrial workers, Liu emphasizes symbiosis' the social groups' antagonism and resistance to the state during the throughout whole Communist period, and especially during recent years. He attempts to go beyond generalized statements concerning state-society relationships by mobilizing a broad comparative social science literature, by reviewing developments over the Communist period, and by distinguishing among different parts of Chinese society. His approach is undermined by drawbacks in Liu's analysis. For a start, his conceptual framework is both overblown and underdeveloped. There is no lack of conceptual apparatus in the introductory chapter, but often the reader is merely exposed to the confusion and mystification of social science jargon. This is most evident in an extended discussion of 'public opinion', raising a bewildering series of concepts, definitions, analytical distinctions, charts and classification schemes with reference to a wide range of literature. It is not at all clear how any of this assists in Liu's later analysis. There are occasional references to such concepts throughout the work, but usually they merely put into different language points which could easily be made in a much more straightforward and clearer fashion. On the other hand, there is far too little attention paid to the crucial concepts in Liu's discussion, especially that of the 'state'. The introduction concentrates on 'three aspects of the Chinese state ... its self-perception, past