UNIVERSITY OF SAO PAULO UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA ANDREA PIAZZAROLI LONGOBARDI THE WORKERS’ UNIVERSITY IN THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION SÃO PAULO 2018 ANDREA PIAZZAROLI LONGOBARDI The Workers University in the Chinese Cultural Revolution PhD Thesis submitted to the Program of Economic History of the University of São Paulo and to the Department of History of the University of Bologna in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in History Area of Studies: History Advisor: Professor Lincoln Ferreira Secco, Economic History Program, Department of History, University of São Paulo Co-Advisor: Professor Claudia Pozzana, Department of History, University of Bologna SÃO PAULO 2018 I authorize the partial or total reproduction of this work, by any digital or conventional means, for purposes of study or research, since the sources are referred. Autorizo a reprodução e divulgação total out parcial deste trabalho, por qualquer meio convencional ou digital, para fins de estudo e pesquisa, desde que citada a fonte. Serviço de Biblioteca e Documentação Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo LONGOBARDI, Andrea Piazzaroli – A Universidade dos Trabalhadores na Revolução Cultural Chinesa (The Workers University in the Chinese Cultural Revolution) / Andrea Piazzaroli Longobardi; orientador Lincoln Ferreira Secco; coorientadora Claudia Pozzana. São Paulo, 2018. Tese (doutorado) – Departamento de História Econômica – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo. Área de concentração: História Econômica Nome: LONGOBARDI, Andrea Piazzaroli Titulo: A Universidade dos Trabalhadores na Revolução Cultural Chinesa (The Workers University in the Chinese Cultural Revolution) Phd thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in History in the Program of Economic History of the University of São Paulo and the Program of History in the University of Bologna Approved in _____________________________ Advisor _________________________________ Professor Lincoln Ferreira Secco University of São Paulo Co-advisor _______________________________ Professor Claudia Pozzana University of Bologna Professor: _______________________________ Institution: _______________________________ Professor: _______________________________ Institution: _______________________________ Professor: _______________________________ Institution: _______________________________ Dedicatory I dedicate this (unfinished) work and effort to my parents, who gave me everything so I could have, one day, attempted to write a PhD thesis. I dedicate this (unfinished) work and effort to all miners, peasants and workers that had engaged in the Revolution in Education, particularly, to an elderly Beijing miner that recently told me, with sparkling eyes, that: “at that time, everyone studied”. Acknowledgments Production is collective, also academic production. This thesis is the result of five years of research, to which many people collaborated. Without the help of many professors, colleagues, friends, I would not have been able to write this thesis. First, I must thank for the financial support I received from Brazilian’s Education Ministry agency CAPES during the last three years of the PhD. I also thank for the Association of Asian Studies for the CIAC grant I received in 2016, so we could organize an international conference in Brazil with the participation of many great professors from many countries. I am deeply grateful to my former advisors, Lincoln Secco, Claudia Pozzana and Alessandro Russo, who accepted me as their student even knowing this was a difficult topic of research, that required a long and uncertain process of scholarship. Professors Pozzana and Russo helped through the whole research, giving me access to innumerous documents and helping me analyze some of the events in focus. Also, I am very grateful to some Chinese professors, whom I unfortunately cannot mention here by name, since in China this still a delicate topic of study. However, I should say they helped me by giving documentation and the opportunity of personal meetings that I would never find for myself, and that gave not only historical resources that enriched the research, but also motivation and direction to write this thesis. I profoundly thank some close friends, who patiently listened to these stories many times, and helped me interpret some of the facts referred in this thesis: Marcos Visnadi, Tomaz Mefano, Gaia Perini, Gustavo Motta, Steve Payne, Carolina Menegatti. I am also specially grateful for some important advices I received from Tani Barlow, Christine Dabat, Ignacio Adriasola and Kim Cheehyung. Indeed, sometimes, a question asked by someone was the starting point to important decisions concerning this thesis. So I have to thank those who supported, also, those who criticized, because all questions and advices were (and still are) very important to this research. ABSTRACT During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976, there were a series of debates inside and outside of the Party, that problematized the basic categories that defined Socialism. Some production units throughout the county set experimental schools in their spaces, summoning workers, peasants, students and cadres to gather in study groups and develop theoretical analysis of the ongoing political economic contexts. This thesis analyze the history of the Workers Universities in China during the Cultural Revolution, the mobilizations it engendered and the materials produced by the workers-students enrolled in these organizations. KEY WORDS: Cultural Revolution, workers, Socialism, education, labor, China RESUMO Durante a Revolução Cultural Chinesa, entre 1966 e 1976, houve uma serie de debates dentro e fora do Partido, que problematizaram categorias fundamentais que definiam o Socialismo. Algumas unidades de produção no país, organizaram escolas experimentais em suas instalações, convocando trabalhadores, estudantes e quadros para participarem de grupos de estudo e desenvolver analises teóricas da situação politica em curso. Esta tese analisa a historia das Universidades dos Trabalhadores durante a Revolução Cultural, suas problemáticas e desdobramentos, e alguns materiais produzidos por seus estudantes-trabalhadores. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Revolução Cultural, trabalhadores, Socialismo, educação, China Abbreviations CC – Central Committee CCP – Chinese Communist Party CR – Cultural Revolution MZDWG – Mao Zedong’s manuscripts after the foundation of the PRC PRC – Popular Republic of China RC – Revolutionary Committee SMA – Shanghai Municipal Archive SMTF – Shanghai Machine Tools Factory SPC – Shanghai Party Committee SRC – Shanghai Revolutionary Committee WPT – Workers Propaganda Team WU – Workers University Archives consulted: China: Cultural Revolution Archive, Fudan’s University, Shanghai Shanghai Municipal Archive (SMA) Italy and UK (during the doctoral exchange period financed by the Brazilian High Education Financial Program PDSE-CAPES): Pozzana-Russo Archive, University of Bologna (PRA) SOAS Chinese Library Digital Archives consulted: Digital archive of Chinese Studies at the SOAS University of London, consulted the SOAS Chinese Library The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database http://ccradb.appspot.com Research Net of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (中国文革研究网) www.wengewang.org Digital Archive “Ten Years of Cultural Revolution” (文革十年文献库) http://www.71.cn/acastudies/classicdoc/CulturalRevolutionLi/ Banned Thought http://www.bannedthought.net/ China Famine 1959-1961 (documents) http://www.yhcw.net/famine/index.html Collection of Mao Zedong’s Writtings (毛泽东博览) http://www.mzdbl.cn/maoxuan/ Marxist Philosophy (Chinese and English Databases) http://marxistphilosophy.org/ChinLangPhil.htm Marxists Internet Archive www.marxists.org Mass Line http://www.massline.org/ The Black Vault www.theblackvault.com Wilson Center Digital Archive http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. 11 Chapter 1 - An experiment to reveal our dark side: From the debate on the Democratic Centralism to the Cultural Revolution……………………………….. 19 Chapter 2 – From the Red Guards to the Workers University – Outlining the Line Struggle……………………………………………………………………………… 58 Chapter 3 – Construction is within destruction – negotiating proletarian power……. 101 Chapter 4 – Studying theory in production units…………………………………….. 155 Chapter 5 – Limiting Capitalism…………………………………………………….. 188 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………... 218 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………… 220 11 INTRODUCTION In this thesis, we attempt to outline the struggle between divergent economical politics during the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976). During those ten years, the opposing propositions for the State administrative organization and for the production relations unfolded in nationwide theoretical debates inside and outside of the Communist Party. This survey particularly deals on how these debated occurred within the organizations called Workers Universities, established in many production units.1 There is a great set of documentation, documents written about the Workers Universities and by its students. This documentation is available in many government or university’s archives, however, it was scarcely explored by academical scholarships. Claudia Pozzana and Alessandro Russo (professor at the Bologna University) were the first researchers to call attention to these collections and to the relevance of its content: