Campaign against spiritual pollution

Intellectual debates

The campaign against spiritual pollution came as a response to an unprecedented public intellectual discussion that heated up in the early 1980s on the question of "alienation" and "humanism". Within the CCP, the term "spiritual pollution" did not have a consensus meaning. Different elements of the CCP used the term differently to characterize behaviors they deemed ideologically unacceptable.

Context

Humanistic thoughts had long been sidelined by the official discourse in the post-1949 China. As early as in the 1940s, in the Yan'an Rectification Movement, Mao had criticized the idea of what he called "theory of human nature (人性论)" and "love of human (人类之爱)" manifest in the literature by arguing that not until the elimination of class, there can never exist such "all-inclusive love" among human, which is merely an idealistic notion that denies class distinction and speaks for the bourgeoisie. Fifteen years later, starting in another ideological mass campaign that began in 1957, different critiques that had a humanistic tinge among which most noticeable "On Human Nature (论人性)" by Ba Ren (巴人) and "On 'Literature is the Study of Human'" by Qian Gurong (钱谷融) also incurred criticism from the party with the accusation that their advocacy of humanity as the center of literature creation is, again, agitating for "the individualism of the bourgeoisie".

Criticisms on this line didn't cease to emerge until the end of the Cultural Revolution when the public sphere began to reflect on the suppression of human dignity not only in the Cultural Revolution but also throughout the past few decades of socialist experiments. As Wang Jing argues, "What was remembered was not only personal wounds inflicted upon each individual by the Revolution and the Gang of Four--a cliche that outlived its appeal by the mid-1980s--but also the repressed memory of the early history of Marxism, specifically, the humanist epistemology of the young Marx epitomized in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844". ^:10 A public intellectual debate, as part of a larger movement of cultural reflection, had thus heated up. It was estimated that from 1980 to 1982, there emerged on newspapers 400 plus articles discussing the question of humanism.

The debate emerged at the time when there were three strains of Marxists as identified by Bill Brugger and David Kelly. There were "orthodox Marxist-Leninists", commonly found among power holders in the high establishment; "revisionists", widely regarded by the West as reformists or progressives; and the young humanist Marxists, recognized by a continuously critical voice.^{: 45} All of them, while facing external challenge from the liberals, also experienced internal ideological fragmentation inside the broader Marxist framework^{: 4}, which was in dire need of an "overall guiding ideology",^{: 139} hence the room for the stirring of humanism.

Central issues contested

The debate can be roughly divided into two lines of thoughts between what is often referred in Western academia as "the alienation school" represented by Wang Ruoshui and Zhou Yang, and the official discourse represented by Hu Qiaomu, then the member in charge of ideological micro-management in the Central Politburo.

While the two sides both mainly presented their arguments through interpreting original texts by Marx or Engels, they offer two different distinctly views on the continuity of Marx's works. One source that the alienation school often cited was the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in which Marx developed the theory of alienation, but this work is often regarded by the anti-humanism side as an immature work by Marx, whose theory of alienation later developed into the theory of surplus-value, and is therefore not creditable as Marx's own thoughts. The anti-humanism school thus claimed that there is an epistemological break between the young and the old Marx that undermines the authenticity of the other side's reference to Marx as a whole.^{: 175}

"Point of Departure"

One of the core questions at the center of the debate is which is the "point of departure" for Marx—humans or social relations? This line of argument started with Wang Ruoshui's assertion that "man is the starting point of Marxism" in one of his signature works. For Wang, as long as the man being [endorsed] here is a "realistic, social, practical" man—that is, one as a member of a given class in a class society, as opposed to the overgeneralized, abstract men in a Feuerbachian sense whose class distinctions are ignored—Wang's conception of Marxism would stand. Hu Qiaomu, in opposition to this idea, argued instead that "social relations" rather than "abstract human" should be the starting point. For Hu, the clarification from the humanist Marxists regarding human as "practical human" is still invalid, for as long as one needs to explain human as "a practical man who engage in real-life activities", one has to start from one's concrete "social relations" rather than "man" itself. Yet for Wang, not all social relations are "the realization of human essence"—those that are alienated are not. Wang also challenged the specious dilemma Hu has artificially created—that is, one has to choose between either choose social relations or humans as the "point of departure", which Wang believes can co-exist in a dialectically united manner.

Based on Wang's argument, Bill Brugger and David Kelly, in their Chinese Marxism in the Post-Mao Era, interpret it as the idea that "A Marxist view of human nature should be not pre-social in the manner of the social contract theorists but trans-social"^{: 161}. According to his view, they add, "we do not come into the world as persons with God-given rights or as utility-maximizing packages," but "with propensities for self-realization and for the achievement of a society where that self-realization may flower" – "the datum of progress is as teleological as it is deterministic"^{: 163}. This interpretation is supported by Wang's own words:

What is "self-realization"? To explain this, we must first understand ... "potential" and "realization". This ... can be traced back to Aristotle: in modern times Hegel ... explained it ... The challenge and development of things are a process from "potential" to "realization"; or, in other words, from possibility to reality. Egg is egg, and chicken is chicken. How can an egg become a chicken? ... The [fertilized] egg ... itself contains the internal cause for becoming a chicken. Therefore, an egg is a "potential" chicken, while a chicken is a "realized" egg.^{: 163-164}

Reconcilability with Marxism

Another central question is to what extent are Marxism and humanism reconcilable. For Wang and Zhou, Marxism is not equivalent to humanism but it includes the latter; for Hu, the two are distinctively different. At the center of Hu's argumentative framework is a dichotomy he created between humanism as a "historical, world outlook" and humanism as a system of "ethical principles and moral codes". While the former is "fundamentally conflicting" to Marxism, the latter, in so far it is based on the historical materialist framework of Marxism, can be regarded as a "socialist humanism" that can be accepted and popularized. Wang, again, vehemently opposed such artificial dichotomy. For Wang, "humanism is essentially a set of values," one that cannot be separated from worldview and one whose task, beyond that of a worldview, is to make a value judgement of the world for the sake of transforming it, rather than merely an interpretation.

Essentially, according to Bill Brugger and David Kelly's reading of Wang, it is this "need for humans to transform society according to human ends" that qualifies humanism to be not necessarily an idealistic worldview. Wang drew from examples of various Western thinkers ranging from Thomas More to John Locke, all of whom shared an idealistic worldview and recognition of humanism, to argue "humanism takes on different forms in different kinds of society" but "there is a humanism in general". He classifies these theorists as materialists, however, according to their "recognition that humans were the products of society", and as humanists as well because of their "conclusion that society had to be changed as a consequence"^{: 169: 162-163}. Ultimately, Marxism and humanism are compatible for Wang in the sense that there is no necessary linkage between humanism and idealism both as worldviews; humanistic can be a worldview that is materialistic as well.

Alienation

When it comes to alienation, the central question becomes to what extent can this concept be applied—in particular to a socialist society. Hu, again, created a dichotomy between alienation as a "basic principle", "theory", and "methodology", and alienation as "a concept that reflects certain phenomenons in certain historical periods". While Marx rejects the former definition, Hu argues, he uses the latter also in a limited sense, referring only to a society with intense class antagonism, in particular a capitalistic society. Therefore, according to Hu, alienation can never exist in a socialist society, and the growing application of such concept to certain phenomenons in society is mere abuse.

In sharp contrast, both Wang and Zhou believe that even though "a socialist society is much superior to a capitalist one," alienation can also happen in a socialist society. More specifically, both of them acknowledged the existence of three sorts of alienation—intellectual, political, and economic. Intellectually, alienation is manifest through people's cult of Mao in the previous era, which runs the risk of being dogmatic and detached from the popular masses; politically, the ever-growing state apparatus is susceptible to the corruption, turning from "the servants of society into the masters of society", a prospect that Marx and Engels warned against; economically, the state's well-meaning attempt to enhance economic growth, while disobeying "objective economic laws", can also be dangerous and counterproductive in a long term.

Speaking of possible remedies, Zhou concluded that the origin of alienation is not the socialist system (Chinese: 制度; pinyin: Zhìdù) but merely certain problems within the "establishment" or "institutional structure" (Chinese: 体制; pinyin: Tǐzhì), which he called for reform.

Significance and legacy

In Brugger and Kelly's conception, the critical elements within the alienation school's theories "have played an important historical role"^{: 169} and that "humanism was in fact taking a new turn in Wang Ruoshui's hands".^{: 165} In Wang's vision, the notion of freedom was "no longer a utopian vision to be realized in the far-off future state of communism", but had come to resemble the democratic institutions of Western countries, a more concrete goal that can be strived for in the present.^{: 165} Since roughly 1985, Wang "has increasingly made him sound like a champion of bourgeois constitutionalism" through close analysis of young Marx.^{: 5} Because of the ideological undertone his view has, Wang came to provide an "important intellectual support" for students who participated in the pro-democracy demonstrations in late 1986 and early 1987.^{: 5}

More broadly, for Brugger and Kelly, the party's silencing of the humanist discourse—as represented by the launch of the campaign and the hardline tone set by Deng's and Hu's speeches—embodied the loss of the last chance for a "genuinely critical Marxism"^{: 5} to flourish in China and, in other words, for the Party to construct an orthodox interpretation of Marxism instead.^{: 169} Had the Party adopted and re-packaged it as the official ideology, Brugger and Kelly argue, it could have avoided the occurrence of another "series of abortive mass campaigns" such as the campaign against spiritual pollution, all of which resembled the destructive, counterproductive movements of the past.^{: 5}

Among the cultural legacies of the campaign was its impact on the genre of science fiction in China. During the campaign, influential people including Qian Xuesen criticized the science fiction genre for promoting irrational and unscientific thinking. This legacy of the campaign is one reason for the comparative predominance of hard science fiction within the genre in China.

Limitation and critiques

Zhou Yang's view that the presence of alienation shows merely a malfunction of socialism rather than the inherent shortcoming of the system itself became one of the major targets of critiques from later scholars. In her High Cultural Fever, Wang Jing criticized Zhou's "failure to critique alienation from within".^:18 For Wang Jing, the fact that the alienation school remains theoretically limited stems from their belief that "de-alienation could be achieved simply by resorting to the objective emancipatory means implemented by a revitalized socialist system and an enlightened Party leadership,"^{: 18} while foreign commentators like Jing Wang may suggest that the communist party, which has the monopoly over the materials and course of production, might be "the real problem".^{: 17}

The alienation school's approach also faced challenges from David Kelly, though on a more positive note. For Kelly, who wrote as early as in 1987, there seemed to be a "moral conviction" among intellectuals like Wang Ruoshui to develop, within the framework of Marxism itself, a remedy to the calamities in the fanatical periods of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Wang Ruoshui's focus was, therefore, more on "values rather than institutions" with the demands he made "designed to minimize conflict with the four basic principles".