A Voluntarist Model of Organization

The Communist Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of I966 will probably be considered in socialist history to be as mysterious or significant as the Paris Commune of I87I. The Chinese communists have called the Cultural revolution 'the Second Revolution', claiming it has made a marked and decisive step towards communism. The interpretation and assessment of the cultural revolution is by no means clear or conclusive, but one thing that stands out rather clearly is that it has captivated the enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity of students of China, Marxist and non-Marxist. The study of the Chinese cultural revolution must be approached at two analytically distinct levels: actual and symbolic. The actual level deals with the concrete, historical cultural revolution which appears as a mixture of real politik, violence and romantic sentimentalism; the symbolic level deals with the historical and cultural significance of the cultural revolution which may transcend its subjective irrationality.l This paper is mainly addressed to one of the most important aspects of the cultural revolution at the second symbolic level. One of the most significant legacies of the cultural revolution is its anti-bureaucratism. Indeed, the whole revolution can be viewed as a movement of the ruled masses against the ruling bureaucratic establishment. The cultural revolution was the product of Mao Tse-tung's ingenious use of his personal charisma in mobilizing the romantic idealism and revolutionary dynamism of the third generation, the red guards, in order to engage them in all-out war with the Liu Shao-chi-led party-state apparatuses. By the eve of the cultural revolution, Communist China had witnessed a process of bureaucratization, as anticipated by Weber in his work on socialism. Mao's intervention was a kind of charismatic breakthrough from the bureaucratic routinization. During the initial stage of cultural revolution, the party-state apparatuses were indiscriminately attacked. Party-charisma was stripped off overnight. What emerged in its place was a 'charismatic bureaucracy' in which the charismatic leader, Mao, developed a direct dialogue with his disciples, the millions of red guards. As a result, a fanatical mass activism and romantic spontaneity replaced

Aesthetics · Communism · Marxist philosophy · Political science · Proletariat · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Philosophy

• Public Administration in the People's Republic of China

  John A Worthley•Public Administration Review•1984

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