La Commune de Shanghai

by Hongsheng Jiang

Février 1967, la Révolution culturelle est à son point d’incandescence. Shanghai bouillonne. Un groupe d’ouvriers et d’étudiants rebelles, d’abord minoritaire mais bien décidé, va réussir l’impossible : se débarrasser du vieux parti communiste local et de la municipalité somnolente, et prendre le pouvoir dans la ville. Se réclamant explicitement de la Commune de Paris, ils créent un organisme nouveau, la Commune de Shanghai. Les ouvriers et les étudiants sont maîtres de la plus grande ville industrielle de Chine.Le livre retrace presque jour par jour cette aventure unique : la montée de la révolte, les luttes internes, la résistance féroce de ceux qui s’accrochent au pouvoir en s’appuyant sur l’armée, la victoire de la Commune – et puis le recul sur ordre de Mao qui craint lui-même que l’armée le lâche. La Commune de Shanghai, qui devient Comité révolutionnaire, aura duré moins longtemps que la Commune de Paris.Outre cette prodigieuse histoire, ce livre propose une réévaluation de la Révolution culturelle, que le pouvoir postmaoïste cherche à faire oublier. Hongsheng Jiang a rencontré dans sa recherche de grandes difficultés : les protagonistes ont été exécutés ou sont morts en prison, les documents ont été détruits ou mis sous clef, les mensonges de Pékin sont repris par l’Occident tout entier. On n’en appréciera que plus la somme d’enseignements – et d’enthousiasme – de ce livre exceptionnel.La préface d’Alain Badiou souligne l’importance de la Révolution culturelle et de l’épisode de la Commune de Shanghai, « l’un des cinq paradigmes de l’histoire des révolutions modernes, le plus combattu, déformé, travesti, passé sous silence… »

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finally finished this book, of which the paper on which it was based can be found here. Written by a Chinese-American MA student who through contact with "netizens" gained a fiercely anti-Deng ideology, The Paris Commune in Shanghai:the Masses, the State, and Dynamics of “Continuous Revolution” is a textbook case of "anti-revisionist maoist" thinking turning into practical trotskyism. It envelops a vast amount of social movements, groups and organisations headed by a still larger amount of ideologists, of which very few are described in any detail or assigned to any political tendency - the majority of the "rebels" seemingly fought for the interest of their immediate social groups, whether they be harbour workers or university students. Jiang fully sides with these rebels, sprinkling his paper with Badiou and Zizek in support of his thesis that this militancy was the high point of socialist construction in China. This narrative immediately falls apart once you apply any kind of critique to it: what were they fighting for? Alright, direct local ownership of their Means of Production, which in the case of Shanghai apparently even resulted in an uptick in productivity. But what was the goal of this struggle; what new future did they strive for with themselves at the helm? Jiang depends on a quasi-anarchist framework that heavily underlines the "withering away of the state" as the final goal of social progress, but without understanding the most basic marxist justification for this - the withering, accodring to marxism, happens almost as an afterthought, as the material necessity for the state is superseded. The very fact that Jiang sees a millions-strong superstructural rebellion as the only condition required for this, camouflaged by Lenin and Marx quotes, demonstrates his theoretical shortsightedness.

The book has endless quotes, if you're interested in that, but by departing from a fundamentally flawed angle, he doesn't succeed at crafting these facts into a theory that can in any way be applied. Fun scribbling under the tutelage of Hardt and Jameson, but a rigourous analysis this is not.

[Lauteure_a_disparu · Rating 4 out of 5]

La Révolution Culturelle est un chapitre très controversé de l'histoire. Ce livre a l'intérêt de se centrer sur un seul "morceau" de cette période, et de décrire en détail les différentes factions, luttes de pouvoir etc... qui ont participé à la création de cette nouvelle Commune.
Il y a pas mal de notes mais parfois j'avais quand même l'impression qu'il me manquait des éléments de compréhension, sûrement lié au fait que je connais assez peu la culture chinoise.
Malgré ça, je recommanderais ce livre. Il m'a donné envie d'en savoir plus sur la révolution culturelle.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without a doubt the most interesting book I've read all year. A great overview of one of the most pivotal events in the GPCR, that does a great job of providing the necessary context for these events, without getting dragged down into the depths with all of the details of this very complicated, complex period of Chinese history

I think it also does a good job at imagining what future cultural revolutions might look like and how future generations should learn from events like the Paris Commune and the GPCR

[Fidel Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un livre intéressant sur les acteurs / ices de la révolution culturelle notamment à Shanghai. Très voire trop partisan, et probablement trop optimiste.

[Rodolfo · Rating 3 out of 5]

--I am reviewing the PhD thesis which is freely available. I do not know if the contents of this book vary much from the PhD thesis--

This thesis is a rather long story of the what exactly happened in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution period, including the story of how the Shanghai commune came to be, and why it was replaced by the Revolutionary Committee shortly after. It also details how the ideas of the Paris Commune gained credence in Maoist China, and what the Paris Commune meant to Chinese people (in a way, class-based universal suffrage). The book is rather Maoist inclined, to the point of sectarianism, especially when it talks about certain historical facts such as the "wind of economism", so it must be complemented by other historical works (Proletarian Power comes to mind). However, the literature review and the polemics against other communists (especially Alain Badiou) make it a worthwhile read.