Tomorrow at 8:30 AM, I will walk into a classroom and begin a course on contemporary Chinese politics. The starting point, of course, is The Revolution. This may be the most daunting aspect of the class: how can I convey to 20 year-olds the passion and commitment, however misplaced at times, of Chinese revolutionaries in the the first half of the twentieth century? We live, now, in a fundamentally unrevolutionary time and my students, most of them, will have no sense of the reality of revolutionary fervor that was so central to Maoist China. How can I get that across to them?
And this set me to thinking about revolution more generally. It really has receded from the world. The Color Revolutions of the past few years in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were important, but they were not sustained revolutionary movements. They drove governments from power, but they lasted only briefly, and outcomes have not been as transformative as some had hoped (maybe that is always true of revolutions). They pale, as historical events, in comparison to the titanic struggles in Russia and China and Vietnam. Of course, those larger revolutions consumed their own supporters and, in some cases, leaders. They failed as liberatory projects. But they defined a good part of the twentieth century. How can I get my students to understand the centrality of the idea of revolution at that time?
In the case of China, my turn toward ancient philosophy in recent years makes me see, even more, just how deep revolution reached there. Although there is a hint of revolution in Mencius, institutionalized Confucianism was a powerful anti-revolutionary force. Taoists would have receded from such extreme activism. Chinese revolutionaries had to create a new culture as they went. It was not just about overthrowing a particular party or group of leaders, but it was aimed at complete social and cultural, as well as political and economic, transformation. And it is largely over now.
Or is it? In an odd sort of way the Revolution is over, but China had never been more revolutionary in some ways. The Revolution defined as the use of centralized state power to transform society in the direction of socialism or communism ended in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping rejected the Maoist project and turned the country toward capitalism. But, while the political system has resisted change, for the most part, since then, the economy and society and culture have all experieneced dizzying alteration. Chinese culture has changed more in the past 25 years than in the previous 200. Is that true? I think it may be.
And so, the final thought, is a return to Taoism. The Maoist socialist revolutionaries tried hard to bring about sweeping change. And they did, but to terrible effect with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revoution. Perhaps they tried too hard. The Dengists and neo-Dengists (can we give that moniker to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao?) are trying not to change too much, especially in politics, but are actually bringing about more change than the Maoists. Makes me think of Passage 24 from the Tao Te Ching:
Stand on tiptoes and you never stand firm.
Hurry long strides and you never travel far.
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