30th January 1649 – Execution of Charles Stuart

Posted on 30/01/2017 by Michael

Execution of Charles Stuart, 30th January 1649

30th January 1649 – Execution of Charles Stuart

The 30th January marks the 372nd anniversary of the execution of Charles Stuart, the ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy’, who had claimed to rule what later became known as the United Kingdom by ‘divine right’ – that he was chosen by the Christian God and therefore could do what he wanted. In defending his right to absolute power he caused destruction to rain on his country, causing death and suffering in an unprecedented scale on the general population.

Executions, and public ones at that, were not rare occurrences in England in the 17th century, but it wasn’t normal to decapitate those who had ‘been anointed by God’, although those individuals in previous centuries had had no reluctance to do so to others who might have displeased the Royal authority. However, Charles Stuart was the first king to face such a fate and be executed through the authority of the people.

The propaganda machine behind monarchies worked hard through the centuries to give kings – who were basically leaders of the most successful gangs of thugs, murderers, rapists and thieves at a particular time – an element of legitimacy that still exists to the present day. In Britain present day royalists loudly proclaim that the UK has the longest, unbroken line of monarchy in the world. This conveniently forgets that from the time of the first king (who might be Egbert in 827 or Alfred the Great in 871, depending upon whose authority you believe) this line is not from the same family – as it is popularly and misguidedly believed.

Gang leaders fell out and ended up killing erstwhile friends and allies; invaders from other parts of Europe came in wanting a slice of the action; wars raged across the country for decades as different pretenders to the throne slugged it out, until one of them lay dead in the mud of the battlefield; at times ‘kings’ were invited in by minor gang leaders as the only way to avoid more costly and fruitless internecine strife; one time the ‘chosen’ one was number 54 in line of succession, all the ones with a lower number being Roman Catholics – so in place of choosing someone based on merit the eventual candidate got the job merely because he wasn’t a ‘Papist’; at one time the royal family had to change its name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor as they feared the young soldiers being sent to live (and many to die) with the rats in the mud, water and noise of the trenches in France, fighting against likewise ill-fated German workers, might wonder why the King they were dying for had a German name.

Charles Stuart was the son of one of those monarchs brought in when a space had to be filled.

But Stuart had an abundance of arrogance that comes from being told you are God’s anointed. He spent most of his reign (from 1625) in opposition to Parliament as he struggled to get the finances he needed to avoid bankruptcy. Here he was not after money to improve the condition of the people but to finance wars against Spain, France and then against the Irish – kings are very keen on wars. (Unfortunately, after Stuart’s death the then republican leaders of the country continued their reactionary policy which led, first, to the needless death of many thousands of Irishmen and women but also the demise of the republic itself.)

When Stuart failed in his many attempts to get his own way he ran away from London and then, when he was able to collect around himself enough armed toadies, he instigated the First Civil War, 1642-46.

As we know from any cursory study of history civil wars are particularly pernicious and tend to be more costly in terms of casualties and last longer when inter-State wars would look for a way out, or at least a truce for a short time before starting again. That was the case, more or less, up to the 20th century when all common sense seemed to drown in the water-filled shell holes of the Western Front. Civil Wars tend to divide communities and this means that revenge comes into the equation when cities and towns change hands following the fluctuating fortunes of the two sides involved.

The Royalist had a few success but ultimately were defeated in May 1646. Stuart was imprisoned and it was suggested to him by the Parliamentarians that he accept the imposition of a Constitutional Monarchy – where he could sit on the throne but which would require him to renounce his ‘divine right’.

His arrogance meant that he would never accept such a situation and was obviously given too much freedom during his captivity and although still technically in the hands of his enemies was able to communicate with those followers who had not been eliminated and this resulted in the Second Civil War – a shorter conflict than the First not least because many Royalists refused to break their parole (an agreement not to take up arms against Parliament in return for their freedom to live a normal life). Stuart broke his parole and was therefore not trusted by many Parliamentarians and this inevitably led to his trial – a novel idea at the time.

After the fighting ended Stuart was imprisoned in Hurst Castle in Hampshire whilst his ultimate fate was decided upon in London and at the end of 1648 he was escorted by Major General Thomas Harrison, of the Parliamentarian Army, to be closer to the place of his trial.

The trial began on 20th January where he was accused of high treason and using his position to pursue self-interest rather than the good of the people. The indictment stated that he;

‘for accomplishment of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented”, and that the “wicked designs, wars, and evil practices of him, the said Charles Stuart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation.’

Further, the indictment held him ‘guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages and mischiefs to this nation, acted and committed in the said wars, or occasioned thereby.’

There will forever be a debate of how many people actually suffered during the two civil wars for which Stuart was being held responsible – all depending, in many senses, on which side of the Monarchist/Republican fence you place yourselves. After all, during the period in question such statistics were not considered in the same way as they are now and the disruption caused by the very nature of the conflict would have meant that even the best intentions in information collection would be thwarted.

Any figures would also vary depending on whether only military casualties are considered or whether the greater picture is taken into account. At the beginning of the 17th century a huge swathe of the population would have been living an existence barely more than subsistence. Such a condition needs very little to push that subsistence into outright starvation. And starvation leads to susceptibility to disease.

Marauding armies crisscrossing the country would play havoc with agriculture which, remember, was still based on the unproductive and wasteful feudal strip system. Any draft animals would be requisitioned by the armies and surpluses, if achieved, under threat of being stolen by hungry, armed men. Trade would have virtually ceased to exist, even in the locality, as fear of marauders and a poor transport infrastructure would keep people very much at home. As well as that many able-bodied men would be actually fighting instead of working on the land and their deaths or serious injury would have an impact on the rural communities long after the fighting stopped – and the Royalists kept on coming back with more death and destruction – even after the death of the war criminal.

And that was what Stuart was accused of being. He instigated the conflict as a significant proportion of the country wouldn’t play the game by his rules. He refused to accept reality and used the sycophancy and toadyism that always accompanies the monarchy to gather around himself a significant military force. As consequence something like 860,000 men, women and children died – of a population of seven million (in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) being about 12% of the population, more than any other conflict before or since.

When that level of death and destruction occurred in the 20th century the Fascist perpetrators in Germany and Japan were held to account and tried, convicted and sentenced. Stuart faced his Nuremberg 296 years before the Nazis.

If someone was guilty of such crimes today the international community would be branding him/her a ‘war criminal’ guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ (as long as the individuals concerned were not citizens of the United States) and demanding that s/he face judgement at a special tribunal of the International Court of Justice located in The Hague, Netherlands. If seems strange, therefore, that some people cast aspersions upon the legitimacy of the trial that took place in London in January, 1649.

Maintaining his arrogance Stuart refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the court and constantly referred to his supposed ‘divine right’.

Charles Stuart Death Warrant

Faced with overwhelming evidence he was found guilt and sentenced to death on 26th January. The orders for the execution to take place on Tuesday 30th January were signed and sealed the day before.

That order reads:

At the High Co[ur]t of Justice for the tryinge and iudginge of Charles Steuart, Kinge of England, January xxixth, Anno D[omi]ni 1648

Whereas Charles Steuard, Kinge of England is and standeth convicted, attaynted, and condemned of High Treason, and other high Crymes: and sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Co[ur]t, to be putt to death by the severing of his head from his body; of w[hi]ch sentence, execuc[i]on remayneth to be done; these are therefore to will and require you to see the said sentence executed in the open streete before Whitehall, uppon the morrowe, being the Thirtieth day of this instante moneth of January, between the hours of tenn in the morning and five in the afternoone of the same day, w[i]th full effect. And for soe doing this shall be yo[u]r sufficient warrant. And these are to require all officers, souldiers, and other, the good people of this Nation of England, to be assistinge unto you in this service. Given under o[ur] hands and seals.

To Col. Francis Hacker, Col. Hunks, and Lieut-Col. Phayre, and to every of them.

(Here is should be noted that the date at the top of 1648 was correct at that time. The new year was then considered to start on 25th March and this wasn’t changed to what we now use as the beginning of the year, 1st January, until 1752. As an aside, this was at the same time as the Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian – a change which led many people to believe they had been robbed of 11 days of their life.)

Underneath were 57 signatures and seals of the Commissioners (those who sat in judgement) – some signatures were over erasures, so some of them were cowards and couldn’t deal with the seriousness of the crime of which Stuart was convicted. Then, as almost certainly would be the case in a similar situation now, the insidiousness and perniciousness of the tradition of the monarchy being different from us mere mortals playing a role in that decision.

Just before 14.00 on the afternoon of the 30th Stuart walked through the space provided by the removed window on the first floor of the Palace of Westminster on to a specially constructed scaffold. He was accompanied by the same Thomas Harrison who had brought the war criminal from Hurst Castle the month before and would have been the last person with which Stuart would have talked.

Execution of Charles Stuart – contemporary cartoon

Stuart’s head was separated from his body by one sharp blow – so a professional was used, the identity of whom is still not definitively known.

Such was not to be the fate of those 57 signatories still alive in 1660 when the monarchy was invited back to be a parasite on the body politic of the British Isles.

In the discussions with Stuart’s eldest son, also named Charles there was an implied agreement that there would be no retaliation to those who had signed the death warrant of the father, being, as they were, merely servants of the people. When the new king had his feet under the table (and before he started his whoring and followed his favourite hobby of collecting mistresses) he started the process of extracting vengeance on the regicides.

Major General Thomas Harrison

The first to suffer at the hands of the vengeful spoilt brat was the very Thomas Harrison who had accompanied Stuart Elder to the scaffold. But Thomas didn’t get the quick death afforded the war criminal. His punishment was to be hung, drawn and quartered.

This process, which had been around since the early part of the 13th century, had fallen into disuse during the time of the Commonwealth (from 1640-60). Rather than being hung with a drop that would break the neck the victim to be executed was dangled at the end of a rope, being throttled rather than hung. Just before loosing consciousness he (it was always a he, women liable to such punishment (that is, the crime of high treason) were merely burnt at the stake – for the sake of ‘public decency’) would be cut down, castrated and then shown the package, In the case of Thomas his abdomen was slashed open and molten metal poured into the wound. (At this point Thomas lashed out and hit his murderer who then immediately cut off his head – which seems to be a strange sort of punishment but was probably caused by the current level of ignorance and fear that a ‘dead’ man was able to react in such a manner.) The entrails would have been thrown into a nearby fire, his head cut off and the body hacked into four pieces, the separate five pieces then being distributed around the city of London, as a warning to others. The Royalists even took out the revenge on the dead, exhuming those who had died before 1660 and hanging the rotting copses from cages in various parts of London. Cromwell’s severed and preserved head even appearing in fairgrounds way into the 19th century.

Hanging, drawing and quartering was the punishment for high treason so Stuart could quite legally have been submitted to such treatment.

This form of torture existed in Britain until 1870.

At least Thomas died with dignity, the same couldn’t be said of the others in the country who had fought against Stuart but then kowtowed to the new monarch that was installed on the throne in 1660. They might have dies peacefully in their beds but they died as forelock-tuggers, sycophants and gutless cowards.

No one should really have been surprised that the agreement before the Restoration wasn’t honoured. Way back in 1381 Wat Tyler, one of the principal leaders of the Peasants Revolt, met with the boy Richard of Bordeaux. Trusting the monarchy was to be Tyler’s last act as he was treacherously stabbed in the back by William Walworth, the Mayor of London, and then hacked to pieces by surrounding soldiers. The revolt didn’t last long after that. The lesson that should have been learnt then was ‘never trust the monarchy’.

An interesting aspect of the picture at the very top (a contemporary painting of the event) is the image of the fainting woman. When revolutions break out there’s no way anyone can foretell how events will develop. This realisation didn’t exist in the 17th century as such popular uprisings were few and far between, peasant revolts being the only benchmark. Unfortunately, after many more recent workers led revolutions many still don’t understand that ‘a revolution is not a dinner party’ (Mao Tse-tung), that things happen that have never happened before and that a revolution can eat its own.

So events like the execution of a monarch can happen. However, there was a kind of evolution in people’s thinking when the next European king was to lose his head. Women fainted in 1649, they knitted in 1793 when Louis Bourbon had an appointment with Madam Guillotine.

The immediate political fallout of Stuart’s execution was that the English Revolution lost its momentum and direction. There wasn’t a formed ideology before the First Civil War started but once the people had taken on the established order, and especially the monarchy and the whole concept of ‘divine right’, this encouraged a flowering of ideas and debates.

The Levellers, who were probably most influential in the couple of years between the first and second civil wars, argued for what is implied in their name. They wanted a more equal society, with equal participation of those who had previously been marginalised, by both the monarchy and Parliament – which itself represented land owning interests. Many of the young men who joined the Roundheads (the name given to Parliament’s army) were apprentices from the towns. They were given arms and training, had seen parts of the country which without the war would not have happened, were mixing with people who they never would have met in normal life and started to think. But thinking is dangerous and the ruling class doesn’t want the workers to do anything so dangerous.

Soon after the execution Cromwell, who had become the most powerful general in the army due to his successes against the Royalists, had become virtual ruler of the country in Stuart’s place. (Just as it used to happen in Rome.) A mad Puritan – Protestant fundamentalist – he had a hatred of Catholics and there were a lot of Catholics in Ireland who he saw as a potential threat. He planned to send an expeditionary force to Ireland but parts of the army, those parts where Leveller influence was the greatest, refused. After all why had they fought tyranny to become tyrants themselves in another part of the British Isles?

A group of soldiers mutinied and ended up being surrounded by troops loyal to Cromwell in the Church in Burford, Oxfordshire. Three of their leaders were executed, whilst the rest looked on, on 17th May 1649. This was the virtual end of the Leveller movement.

At about the same time the Diggers (sometimes called the True Levellers) perhaps a more radical group of activists, inspired by the almost poetic writings of Gerrard Winstanley, occupied common land on George’s Hill, in Weybridge, Surrey. This experiment was crushed, yet again by troops loyal to Cromwell, the working class always being the ones who trample on movements that seek to take the whole class out of the mire in which they live.

For a short period of time in the 17th century the English had got up off their knees and could have improved their lot if they but had the courage. The execution of Stuart in 1649 seems to have made them dizzy and they knelt down again, only periodically getting off their knees over the next 400 years, but never for long enough to change society.

‘The Currency of Communism’ and the role of money under Socialism

Posted on 27/01/2018 by Michael

Albania 3 Lek – 1964

In the early part of 2018 the British Museum hosted a small exhibition under the title ‘The Currency of Communism’. It was hardly a huge exhibition, barely more than a half a dozen (small) display cabinets in a room where you can swing a cat – but only just.

In such a tiny space you’re not going to get a lot but what is there is quite interesting in the sense that many of the notes are from countries where the construction of Socialist is no longer in vigour. But it does give the visitor a chance to see some of the images that have been used on coins and notes in the last hundred years – since the Great October Revolution in Russia in November 2017.

Although I haven’t mentioned coinage or notes in my discussions about Socialist Realist Art they are another area where the different socialist societies sought to present the values of collectivity and to promote labour as something to celebrate and honour.

As it mentions in this exhibition the images on the notes were part of the propaganda battle that all socialist societies have to wage against the insidiousness of the capitalist past in a particular country and the capitalist present in a hostile world.

But when the word ‘propaganda’ is used in most circumstances in Britain it’s always in a negative context. THEY, i.e., the enemy, use propaganda WE, the good guys in all this (although the country is constantly invading other countries and killing people in their millions) don’t stoop to such perfidy.

For some reason in Britain it is not accepted that having the head of a Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on all British coins and notes has nothing to do with the promotion of a monarchy. That having the face of a bloated, drunken, racist and class warrior for his class – the aristocracy – doesn’t also promote the values that he believed in to his core and carried out with total disregard to the harm he might cause to ordinary people both in this country and abroad. The values of the monarchy and Churchill are those of the perpetuation and promotion of a society of oppression and exploitation.

But then, as they don’t get challenged by enough people they can get away with their lies. That’s OK, they fight for their class the problem is that too few of us fight for our class. And, what’s worse in some respects, don’t even know their own history to be able to challenge the idea that the aristocracy are parasites on the body politic and their destruction is necessary for our freedom.

Back to the currency.

There were a few things of interest in the handful (literally) of notes and coins on display.

One was the innovative manner in the manner in which all kinds of materials were used as a stop-gap when the old currency became useless after a revolution. You can’t allow the old currency to remain in circulation as the old rich will be able to remain rich. One example following the February Revolution in Russia was of a small sheet of postage stamps over printed with the declaration of the abdication of the Tsar. Other examples were simple printed pieces of paper that gained their value from the trust that people placed in them or the over stamping of coins with a hammer and sickle – which soon became the symbol of Soviet Communism and an integral part of the coat of arms of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

When financial stability had been achieved the new states started to produce notes as are recognised throughout the world. Now they used the skill of proletarian artists and engravers to reproduce the story of the building of Socialism as was seen in art galleries throughout the socialist world as well as in that most extensive of all Socialist Realist Art galleries – the Metro systems, primarily Moscow but also Leningrad and other major cities, in the Soviet Union.

But what grated with this exhibition was the ignorance of the curator/s and their total lack of understanding of what Communism is all about. Obviously they haven’t read any Mao Tse-tung as they write (giving the impression of authority – after all it’s the British Museum) about something they know absolutely nothing.

Not only do they not know anything about the ideology of Marxism-Leninism (the overriding theory that has been behind all the socialist revolutions of the last hundred years and will be the ideology of those revolutions to happen in the future) they know nothing of history.

The curators state: ‘Communism proposes that money has no role in a utopian society. To date though, no communist state has successfully removed money from its economy.’ Here they create a false premise just so that they can then attack it and add to the propaganda battle of capitalism against those who aim to construct a better society free from oppression and exploitation.

The existence of a Communist Party as the ruling party in any particular country doesn’t mean that the country has achieved the ultimate aim of the establishment of Communism.

No Marxist-Leninist of the 20th century ever argued that Communism had been established in any country. Socialism had been established, the first and necessary stage of Communism, but that would exist for an indeterminate time until the conditions for the establishment of Communism arose. And they were unlikely to arise when so much of the world was still under the yoke of capitalism and imperialism.

In the limited ‘explanation’ given in the text in this small room there was constant reference to the fact that many things that are paid for by money in capitalist societies (such as health, education, housing, leisure, transport and social services) are included as part of a worker’s social wage. However, this does not mean that ALL that people need in their daily existence in a Socialist society is there for people to take without some sort of cash transaction taking place.

It is true that the vestiges of the old order, that are demonstrated by the existence of money, means there are opportunities for the unscrupulous and corrupt to take advantage of that ‘weakness’ in Socialism and attempt to use that weakness for their personal benefit. Realising that the taking of State power was only the first act along the road to Communism and that all could be sabotaged by such rotten elements Stalin declared: ‘The Party becomes strong by purging itself of opportunist elements.’ For it was in the ruling party that such opportunists saw their best chance of success.

No Socialist society has existed for more than 46 years (in Albania) so even the best of Communists is more than likely to be tainted by the venom that has been bred into people’s attitudes over the millennia of various systems of exploitation and class differentiation. The construction of Socialism, aiming for Communism, is both a struggle to create the material level to satisfy the needs of the whole of the population but it is also a struggle of ideas to temper their desires to a level that the is sustainable for the whole of society.

Save for the Future

‘Consumerism’ that developed, principally after 1945, in the capitalist countries was a serious problem for the war damaged Socialist countries. An increasing number of ordinary working people were seen as being able to surround themselves by ‘luxuries’, a term used in the past for items that are now considered the norm. But this consumerism is, and has always been, fed by debt. It started out with Hire Purchase and is reaching its nadir at the moment with credit card debt where people are buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have and, in many cases, won’t ever have.

Perhaps the people in socialist societies were asked for too much of a sacrifice, working for the future without getting something over and above the necessities today. This idea is represented in the exhibition by the reproductions of posters which encouraged workers and collective peasants to save rather spend all they earned on goods for the present. This is one of the many aspects of the first period of Socialist construction that will need to be considered during the start of the second.

The opposite is the case in capitalist countries where all the State and capitalist propaganda is geared to encourage workers to live only for the now, only for consumerism. How else is it possible to explain the inane concept of ‘retail therapy’? All the debt is being pushed into the future, for later generations to deal with – which will almost certainly lead to a military conflict – as has been the solution so many times in the past.

Because money under capitalism leads to regular economic crisis. It creates the conditions for the innumerable ‘bubbles’ that have plagued capitalism from the start and which are growing in various aspects of present day society. Even staunch supporters of the capitalist system talk of ‘when’, not ‘if’, the crisis will occur when referring to the future.

Capitalism concerns itself only for gratification now and to maintain its control of society does all that it can to instil such a narrow-minded, short-term attitude in their populations. This can be seen in the manner that the system has cut a swathe through cultures, nature and the lives of countless millions of working people. They are prepared to destroy the world if it means they can accumulate more and more wealth, more ‘money’.

This is why all past Socialist societies have argued for the gradual diminution of the importance of money and its eventual abolition – but only when the conditions are right.

In the village of Nanjiecun, in central China, a small community of a few thousand have been able to reduce the amount of cash transactions but not all. But it’s a small, isolated community, an oasis in a vast ocean of capitalism, in China itself as well as the rest of the world. In such a situation it will never be anything more than an aberration, however admirable the effort might be.

Under conditions of Socialism the slogan is: from each according to his ability; to each according to his work. Money will cease to exist when the slogan, under conditions of Communism, is: from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs. (‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’, Karl Marx, 1875.)

When that time arrives ‘intellectuals’ will work for the betterment of society in general and won’t be the self-important, self-congratulatory, self-aggrandising bunch of self-serving sycophants they are now. Is it a surprise they had a hard time in the past in those countries where the construction of Socialism was taking place?

This is probably the smallest exhibition the British Museum has ever presented but brings up some of the biggest questions.

The ‘East is Red Square’ Nanjiecun

Posted on 07/01/2018 by Michael

The East is Red Square, Nanjiecun

Nanjiecun (South Street Village) is in Linying County, Henan Province in the central part of the People’s Republic of China. What makes this place special (with a population of no more than 13,000 people) is the fame it has achieved as being ‘the last Maoist Commune in China.’

Whether it’s really possible for such a small place to maintain a Socialist Revolution is more than questionable, having to depend upon both loans from the Chinese capitalist banks as well as external, Japanese, investment. It can really be no more than a tolerated anomaly, a curiosity or a tourist theme park. If it ever posed a threat to the present day ‘capitalist roaders’ in Beijing then Nanjiecun would be crushed, both literally and figuratively, out of existence.

The fact that Nanjiecun exists (as does the politics and the actions of its people in the village of Marinaleda, in southern Spain) only goes to show the limitations of a small group of people attempting to build something better in a huge ocean of exploitation and oppression. Their efforts may be applauded and, at times, admired but we should never forget that to extend such ‘experiments’ demands the destruction of the present capitalist structure and until that is achieved (on a long-term, multi-generational basis) all is but chimera.

However, the merits or otherwise of Nanjiecun are not the subject of this post. A proper analysis of what has happened there – and why only there – since the destruction of Socialism in China would need a thorough study to understand why the Chinese people, in general, have rejected a past where the potential for the betterment of all has been rejected for the benefit and advancement of a relatively few corrupt thieves who are now some of the richest people int he world. It would also require a proper analysis of how we actually measure ‘poverty’. Capitalist standards are only concerned with ‘things’ and not the, sometimes, financially unquantifiable social capital that Socialism brings – the ‘iron rice bowl’ in the Chinese context.

No, this post is concerned with a single area of this present day commune – The East is Red Square.

In the Socialist societies in Europe (including the Soviet Union) the Communist Parties sought to commemorate the revolutionary past (and present) with statues. (One of the fallen statues, of Frederick Engels, from the Ukraine has even been recently installed anew in Manchester.) This preponderance of statues was not the case – at least to the same extent – in China. Yes, there were innumerable posters of Chairman Mao and his image was everywhere, on posters, in paintings and on the badges worn by most of the population. However, statues as such were relatively few. This means that when a statue has been installed – at the same time as the renegades within the Communist Party of China are going further and further away from Chairman Mao’s ideas – there’s always a story behind the decision, although sometimes that story might be difficult to find.

The large statue of Chairman Mao in front of the railway station in Dandong (the principal border crossing point between China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is a case in point. So far I have failed to find out any information of why or when.

The situation is clearer in Nanjiecun.

The people in the village decided to reject and roll back the ‘de-collectivisation’ and privatisation that was becoming the norm in China with Deng Xiaoping’s claim that ‘to get rich is glorious’. Selfishness, that had been challenged in the years following Mao’s declaration of the People’s Republic in 1949, was turned into a virtue and the predominantly peasant population of the country fell back into the insularity and individuality of their backward, pre-revolutionary, rural culture.

Nanjiecun’s ‘experiment’ must have been relatively successful in the 1980s as there was enough surplus for them to pay for the installation of a large statue of Chairman Mao in what is now known as ‘The East is Red Square’. The statue was erected in 1993 and I assume it was inaugurated on the 26th December – the centenary of Chairman Mao’s birth.

At some time in the next decade the four large portraits of the ‘greats’ of Marxism-Leninism – Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Stalin – were added to the monumentality of the square. (I, personally, would have added a fifth – Enver Hoxha of Albania – but I know a number of Maoists would not agree.)

There’s always a potential problem when it comes to Socialist art – nuance can be everything. To give an idea of how this is an issue I’ll refer to capitalist commentators who can ‘see’ subversion in a painting or a musical score produced in the Soviet Union that went unnoticed by the authorities (i.e., the ‘intellectuals’ were too clever for the ‘stupid’ Communists) only seconds after arguing that art is ‘apolitical’ and that capitalist art doesn’t aim to perpetuate the system. It’s not their analysis I dislike and detest – it’s their crass hypocrisy

I’ve always argued that art IS political and so it’s valid to critically evaluate any new monuments or ‘celebrations’ of the past (in whatever form they might take place) that might be appearing in China. As the present leader, Deng IV, seems to be attempting to take on some of the trappings of Mao – stripped of any revolutionary, Communist ideology – this might become an issue in the not too distant future.

It’s possible to attack Mao by praising Mao – this was something that took place during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. After attacking the so-called ‘personality cult’ of Mao from the late 1970s those enemies of Maoism could well create a new ‘personality cult’ of Mao based solely on the person.

Chairman Mao in Dandong

The Chinese Revisionists and Counter-revolutionaries have been unable to achieve the same rejection of Mao as happened in the Soviet Union with Lenin and Stalin or in Albania with Hoxha. Mao is still seen in China, by the overwhelming majority of the population, as a great Chinese leader – millions still queue every year to visit the Mao Mausoleum in Tienanmen Square in Beijing. It’s possible, therefore, that those who seek to establish greater legitimacy and maintain their hold on power will try to play the nationalist card and turn Mao into a purely ‘Chinese’ personality – the antithesis of how Mao would have seen his achievements – thus turning the country inward. This is not that far-fetched as it might seem as the level of nationalistic fervour has been stoked up in recent years to justify China’s imperialistic ambitions.

All this doesn’t accept what made Mao great in the first place – that was the taking of Marxism-Leninism, applying it in the Chinese context and by learning from both the success and mistakes of the past Socialist revolutions developing the theory of the Cultural Revolution and taking Marxism to a new level, (although becoming a bit of a mouthful) to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

The statue of Mao in Dandong is one such example of this new, depoliticised, depiction of the great Chinese leader. There’s nothing on, or around, the statue which refers to what made him such a great leader in the first place, his uniqueness as a leader of the world proletariat and peasantry – his being a revolutionary Communist. It’s a great statue but you get the impression that, like the statues of the Roman Emperors, you could just replace the head with whoever was in power at the time and there would be no real difference. As it stands at the moment it’s just a statue of a 60 year old wearing a big overcoat who, for some unknown reason, has his right hand raised and pointing to some unknown location in front of him.

The statue of Mao in Nanjiecun doesn’t suffer from that defect. Coming from those who knew the importance of the politics, of the necessity of a Communist Party, of the necessity of a revolutionary ideology, all these attributes are represented in the statue itself in a very simple and almost unobtrusive manner, but there nonetheless, – and that’s the star on the cap he holds in his hand.

The Red Star

As I’ve written in a number of posts about the Albanian lapidars (such as the mosaic on the Historical Museum, the mosaic of Bestrove, the Durres monument to the anti-Fascist struggle, amongst others) where the star has often been the target of the fascists and reactionaries – eradicate that and they think they can eradicate Communist politics. So including it in a ‘new’ monument the people of Nanjiecun made their own political statement.

That political statement was made even stronger with the addition of the four portraits of the Marxist ‘Greats’. Whether whoever designed the layout of the square considered how it would look when completed what we have now is a history of the development of Marxism thought through; successes and failures; revolutions and counter-revolutions; twists and turns; suffering and sacrifice; elation and despair, to arrive at where we are now with Maoism being the pinnacle of the development of the revolutionary theory of the working class. We are not in a situation that we would have wished just over a hundred years after the October Revolution of 1917 but we are where we are. At least the revolutionary theory has moved forward. Whether we make the most use of all that history is another matter.

In a sense the statue and portraits in The East is Red Square are in a bit of a time warp – that of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao’s image is of what he would have looked like in the mid 1960s and the paintings of the four Marxists are almost exact copies of the coloured posters that were available throughout the world from the late 1960s until the counter-revolutionary coup of Deng and his goons after the death of the Chairman in September 1976.

JV Stalin

The portraits are behind Mao as he looks to the east. In front of him, on either side, are two large billboards with a lot of text in Chinese characters. (In fact for a Socialist political monument there’s a lot of text full stop – including on the plinth upon which Mao stands. Although unusual it shows the level of literacy that the Socialist state had achieved during the time of Communism. The people can actually understand what is written – unlike most religious locations throughout the world where emphasis is upon image due to the high level so of illiteracy.)

The one on Mao’s right also carries an image which looks very much like the photo of him making the declaration of the People’s Republic in Tienanmen Square in October 1949. Unfortunately I’m not able to understand Chinese characters but would surmise that the text is that very declaration.

Declaration of the People’s Republic of China 1949

On his left the image is of an older Mao, probably from the 1960s, so I would hazard a guess that the text is from one of the exhortations he made from the podium over the Gate of Heavenly Peace to the massed Red Guards in Tienanmen Square.

The area has changed over the years. I’ve seen photos where there were trees behind the statue. They might have been OK as bushes but started to become a bit much after a few years and they have been removed so the immediate area around the statue is now clean and clear. I’ve also read that there was a permanent ‘guard’ at the site but there was no evidence of that during the (regrettably short) time I was there. Also there was no music playing (as is often reported) so don’t know if this is the now permanent situation.

I made a number of mistakes and got to the village quite late in the afternoon and many of the places immediately next to the square were closed so I wasn’t able to get a feeling of how the area had been developed for the growing number of tourists that visit Nanjiecun.

Getting there

It’s possible to stay in the Commune’s own hotel, which is located right next to the square. The problem is one of communication as the staff only speak Mandarin.

If a day trip is all that is looked for then getting to Linying railway station is the best bet and then walking a kilometre or so or getting a taxi to the village. There are also regular buses from Zhengzhou (the nearest big tourist destination) to Linying.