Rectification Suppresses Enlightenment
Ruoshui Wang
ABSTRACT
With the advent of the 21st century, we find that the goals of the May Fourth
movement remain yet to be achieved. Why? Were they overwhelmed by "national
salvation," or by "revolution," as some scholars have claimed?
In the late 1930s, inspired by the cause of the Anti-Japanese War andthe
democratization of China, thousands upon thousands of students and intellectuals
rushed toYan'an, the capital of the Red Area in China, where they were confronted
with the RectificationMovement.
A Rectification Movement had long been propagandized as an emancipationmovement
of the mind. Indeed, as long as it aimed at the dogmatism of the Comintern,
this is in fact what it was. But Maoextended his target to all intellectuals
and to book learning. According to Mao, intellectualscarried a great deal
of the muck of the exploiting classes in their heads; hence it wasessential
to launch an ideological struggle. This struggle resulted in terrorism
and masspersecution, of which Wang Shiwei was a well-known victim.
Our analyses show that Mao's real target was the spirit of enlightenment
and the tradition of critical thinking that had been embraced by intellectuals.
While he was contending withWang Ming, Mao needed to borrow some enlightenment
principles as an weapon; but whenthe intellectuals expressed theirown
enlightened ideas, Mao condemned them and forbade them inthe name ofthe "workers-peasants-soldiers."
In Mao's eyes, the intelligentsiawas an inferiorstratum, and they would
need to humiliate themselves for along period of time before they could become
trueproletarian revolutionaries.