Structure

By the end of the 1950s the residual structure had become a shadow of its former reality, to be evoked only by the selection of representative criticism targets and other mnemonic devices. What resulted was a period of structural ambiguity, in which a residual structure of dwindling objective significance coexisted with an emergent structure of socialist institutions, and grievances against the latter were systematically redirected against the former. As the residual structure gradually lost plausibility, however, a ritualization of mass criticism occurred. During the Hundred Flowers, a fleeting experiment with spontaneity permitted criticism for the first time to be directed against the emergent structure, provoking a shocked elite backlash. With the Cultural Revolution Mao once again unleashed mass criticism against the emergent structure (more specifically against deviant cadres within it, but these cadres were indicated so vaguely that criticism tended to be indiscriminate), and this time he successfully resisted elite attempts to suppress the movement in statu nascendi . By repudiating elite attempts to defend themselves against criticism from their subordinates (and enforcing this interdict with the PLA), the structure of socialist authority was canceled as an active political force—soon it would disintegrate under critical fire as even a passive target. This development left the structure of polemical symbolism to function as the sole source of meaning in the melee.

The polemical symbolism formed its own structure, which metaphorically reproduced the experience of "two worlds" commonly fostered by the institutional segmentation of reality described in chapter 3. In four different dimensions, a set of "binary oppositions"^[6] emerged: (1) light/darkness, (2) revealed/concealed, (3) pure/defiled, and (4) active/passive.

1. The metaphor of light was pervasive, symbolized by the color red. The orthodox Communist "red/white" color symbolism (as in "white terror," "Red Army") was changed into "red/black" to accord with the light metaphor. Red denoted ideological orthodoxy: "red hearts" (hong xin ) stood for militance and loyalty; a "red lantern" (hong deng ) was a source of doctrinal illumination; "red flowers" (hong hua ) referred to the Red Guards and other objects of praise.^[7] Some young rebels even demanded that the "go" signals in traffic lights be changed from green to red! The following message illustrates the frequency of this color's appearance:

[6] See Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), chapters 2, 10, 11; also The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 80.

[7] H. C. Chuang, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: A Terminological Study (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, August 1967). I rely heavily on Chuang in this section.

On that day, countless red flags waved in the breeze at Tiananmen Square. Tens of thousands of Red Guards wearing red armbands and carrying red-colored Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong sang with gusto, "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman." The whole square became a surging ocean of red.^[8]

So many people wished to show their love for the Chairman by painting their walls red that there was a shortage of red paint. Jiang Qing finally had to prohibit this "red sea" (hong haiyang ).

Contrary to red was black—which in traditional Chinese color symbolism has clandestine and sinister connotations, whereas red connotes good luck and prosperity. Thus "bourgeois authorities" were said to use "black language" (hei hua ), to write "black books" (hei shu ), post a "black flag" (hei qi ) and were characterized as a "black gang" (hei bang ), "black line" (hei xian ), or "black inn" (hei dian ).^[9] Anthony Grey, a British journalist held prisoner several months by Red Guards, was struck forcibly by the pervasiveness of this color symbolism upon returning to his redecorated apartment:

Black paint ran down every wall. Every square foot had been daubed with slogans in Chinese and English. . . . Even the sheets of my bed had been daubed with Chinese characters saying "da dao Gelai!"—"Down with Grey!" . . . The bathroom mirror was covered with slogans and there was one other refinement. The bristles of my toothbrush had been carefully painted black with slogan paint . . . The inside of the bath had been painted black too, putting it out of action.^[10]

The primary symbol of light was the "red sun" (hong taiyang ), identified with Chairman Mao or his Thought. In ritual adherence to the principles of Chinese geomancy (fengshui ), the exhibition halls of the life of Mao that were constructed throughout the country were invariably built to face east, the source of light, just as the emperors' palaces had earlier been built to face south, the source of warmth.^[11] Like the sun, Mao's Thought radiated life: "Sun, rain, and dew nourish the pine trees, Mao Zedong's Thought nourishes [buyu ] heroes." Thus it was deemed advisable to incorporate it into the body: "Mao Zedong's Thought is the red, red sun in our hearts."^[12]

[8] RR , September 1, 1966, as cited in Chuang, Cultural Revolution .

[9] RR , July 26, p. 4; Guangming Ribao (hereinafter GM ), July 17, 1966, p. 2; HQ , no. 9 (1966): 35; all as cited in Chuang, ibid.

[10] Anthony Grey, Hostage in Peking (London: Michael Joseph, 1970), pp. 104–5.

[11] Adrian Hsia, Die Chinesische Kulturrevolution (Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand, 1971), p. 265.

[12] RR editorial, March 18, 1967, translated in Joint Publications Research Service (hereinafter JPRS ), no. 40525 (April 5, 1967). JPRS translations are sometimes questionable; wherever possible I have checked them against the originals.

A secondary symbol of light was fire: "They try everything from struggle to encirclement for attack in their vain attempt to extinguish the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which are bound to become a prairie fire." "They spread the sparks of revolutionary rebelling." "They light the flames of criticism."^[13] Again, only the wicked are assumed to be flammable; fire has an annealing effect on the righteous, "steeling . . . and and maturing them in the furnaces of the great Cultural Revolutionary . . . crucible." Yao Wenyuan was said to have lit the flames of the Cultural Revolution in his November 1965 broadside against Wu Han, and other authorities were warned that they must "not only mobilize the masses and start a fire to burn ourselves, but also take the initiative to appear and carry out self-revolution." Otherwise, "One day, the blazing flames of revolution will burn your monster and devil group all to death." By contrast with the metaphor of fire, the enemy threatens to become a "free-flowing inundation."^[14]

The locus of the enemies with reference to the light/dark dimension is, of course, in outer darkness. Yet the most sinister danger is posed by those enemies who seek to emigrate from the world of darkness to the world of light under false pretenses: "The enemy in daylight look like men, in darkness devils. To your face, they speak human language, behind your back the language of devils. They are wolves clad in skins of sheep, man-eating smiling tigers. . . . The enemies without guns are more hidden, cunning, sinister and vicious than the enemies with guns."^[15]

2. The second dimension is that of revealed/concealed, public/private. The enemies are "tigers" who must be "lured from their lair"; "snakes" who "crawl underground," hide in "holes," from whence they must be "dragged out"; they "shield" themselves with "masks," or even "fig leaves," which must be "ripped off"; they are "bullets" with "sugar coats," "wolves clad in skins of sheep," and so on.^[16] "We have torn aside

[13] Jinggangshan editorial, no. 5 (December 26, 1966), p. 3; "The Struggle against the Bourgeois Reactionary Line," Hongqi (Beijing Aeronautical Institute), no. 3 (December 26, 1966): 3–4; Kuai Dafu, "Destroy the Liu-Deng Bourgeois Reactionary Line and Strive for New Victories," Hongweibing [Red guard], no. 15 (December 30, 1966): 2, 4, 17–22. All are Red Guard publications.

[14] Wu Bin, "Struggle Firmly against Class Enemies," Zhongguo Qingnian [China youth], no. 13 (July 1, 1966), trans. in JPRS , no. 39235 (December 22, 1966), pp. 46–48; Commentator, "Cast Away Three Wrong Ways of Thinking," Tiyu Zhanbao [Physical education battle news], Shanghai, in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 115–16; "The Flame That Cannot Be Put Out," Dongfanghong Bao [East is red news], May 9, 1967, in JPRS , no. 42503 (September 7, 1967), pp. 129–35; "Resolutely Smash the Counterattacks of the Bourgeois Reactionary Line," Hongweibing Bao , no. 15 (December 15, 1966), pp. 3, 84 (cited in that sequence).

[15] JFJB editorial, August 23, 1966.

[16] At times, a castration threat seemed implicit in the threat to expose; see "Regard Chairman Mao's Works Throughout the PLA," JFJB editorial, as translated in SCMP , no. 3712 (June 6, 1966), p. 5.

your filthy curtain of counterrevolution and caught you red-handed. We shall strip you of your disguises and expose you in all your ugliness."^[17] The archetypal symbol for this imagery is that of an underworld, or Hades, which the Red Guards were also determined to assault: "Overthrow the king of Hell and free all the little devils!"

3. Filth, feces in particular, became one of the more popular metaphors for the enemy. He was "wallowing in the mire," a "pile of dogshit" who must be "criticized until he stinks." "Where the broom does not sweep, the dirt does not vanish of itself." The Cultural Revolution was a cleansing agent: whereas water assumes a counterrevolutionary aspect in relation to fire, here it becomes a revolutionary purgative. "The turbulent stream of the revolutionary mass movement has been washing away the filth left by the old society." "The roaring torrent of the great democratic movement under the command of the Thought of Mao Zedong is flowing on with surging waves under the bright sun, washing the whole of the old world." "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, like a mighty red torrent, is sweeping away the old."^[18] Again, the test of the true revolutionary is his willingness to submit to this overwhelming experience, under the assumption that authentic revolutionary ardor is waterproof: "If you are a genuine proletarian revolutionary . . . you will surely hail and be inspired by the rise of the hundreds of millions of people, join the masses in making revolution and throw yourselves into the torrent for criticism of the bourgeois reactionary line."^[19] The notion of a "test by water" appears again in a Liberation Army Daily editorial: "Only by following Chairman Mao's instructions and putting 'daring' and 'doing' above everything else, and courageously plunging into the practice of war—tempering ourselves in the teeth of storms and learning to swim by swimming—can we acquaint ourselves with the laws of war and master them."^[20]

4. In deliberate defiance of the traditional Chinese attachment to peace and harmony, the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution stressed violent action. The rebel forces called themselves (or were called by others) "shock troops" (chuangjiang ), and "small generals" (xiaojiang ), chris-

[17] "Tear Aside the Bourgeois Mask of 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,'" RR editorial, June 4, 1966, in SCMP , no. 3714 (June 8, 1966), p. 3.

[18] Hongweibing Bao , no. 15, p. 3; Wang Li et al., "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," HQ , no. 15 (December 13, 1966); "A Proposal by 57 Revolutionary Organizations," New China News Agency (NCNA), Beijing, January 29, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41202 (May 29, 1967), pp. 23–27; "Hold Fast to the Main Orientation in the Struggle," HQ , no. 12 (September 17, 1966), in JPRS , no. 29235 (December 22, 1966), pp. 41–44.

[19] "Lord She's Love of Dragons," RR editorial, December 21, 1966, in JPRS , no. 40525.

[20] "Study Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War," JFJB editorial, trans. in PR , January 13, 1967, p. 18. The interest in braving the waves is perhaps also a tribute to Mao's well-known swimming skills.

tened their tabloids "battle news" (zhanbao ), and referred to their factions in military terms such as "brigade," "regiment," or "garrison headquarters." They described their exploits with cataclysmic metaphors that suggested a desire to feel part of a vast, impersonal, destructive force: "with the fury of a hurricane," "with the force to topple mountains and upturn seas," "with the power of thunder and lightning from the heavens, this has enveloped all China and the world."^[21] The enemies, on the other hand, were accused of passive, pacifist tendencies: they tried to "extinguish class struggle," sought rapprochement with American imperialism and Soviet revisionism (Mei di Su xiu ), espoused "inner-Party peace," a "parliamentary road" to socialism that circumvents violent revolution, and so forth. In public struggle meetings against prominent political figures, these respective roles would be acted out: the target would be forced into an abject, dependent position, forbidden to make extended remarks or to counterquestion, while the surrounding rebel interrogators would assume a questing, aggressive stance.^[22]

In denouncing these enemies, rebel polemicists advocated consequential ruthlessness, renouncing what they conceived to be the characteristic Chinese tendency to develop pity for an enemy midway in the attack and then spare him, with the result that he (or she) would revive and counterattack. The contrast between the old and new attitudes toward violence may be illustrated by comparing the Cultural Revolution shibboleths "Beat the dog even when it has fallen into the water" (do luo shui gou ) and "Once you start beating it, beat it to death" (Lu Xun), and "With power to spare we must pursue the tottering foe" (Mao Zedong)^[23] —with Mencius' dictum that if a child fell into a well it was "human nature" to pull it out, even if it happened to be the child of one's worst enemy.^[24] Although the vehemence of such expressions was perhaps considered necessary to overcome deeply rooted cultural inhibitions against criticism of authority, once these psychic barriers were breached the distinction between symbolic and physical violence proved impossible to maintain, and the struggle soon began to escalate to truly lethal proportions.^[25]

To wit, the dichotomous imagery of the Cultural Revolution portrays

[21] "A Proposal by 57 Revolutionary Organizations," January 29, 1967; "Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Yielding of Power in the Seven Ministries of Machine Building," Fei Ming Di [Flying whistling arrowhead], February 17, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41779 (July 11, 1967), pp. 101–5; RR editorial, June 8, 1966, in Current Background , no. 392 (October 29, 1969).

[22] Cf. "Three Trials of Pickpocket Wang Guangmei," pp. 2–4.

[23] Cited in Chuang, The Little Red Book and Current Chinese Language (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, 1968), p. 28.

[24] James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics, II: The Works of Mencius , reprint of 1895 ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 201–2.

[25] Cf. John Gittings, "Inside China," Ramparts 10, no. 2 (August 1971): 10–20; see also William Hinton, "Hundred Day War," Monthly Review , 24 (July–August 1972).

two worlds: the apparent world is filled with light, purity, and publicity; but this world is suspected of being unreal. Behind "masks" or hidden in "holes," there is a real world of darkness and squalor. This underworld is inhabited by all manner of savage beasts: there are "man-eating" tigers, "noxious vermin," "voracious wolves," "poisonous snakes," and others. As if these metaphors were inadequate to describe the dangers lurking below, the demonology of popular Buddhism is invoked: there are "bull-ghosts and snake-spirits" (niugui sheshen , usually freely translated as "freaks and monsters"), and "demons" who masquerade in "painted skin," speak "ghost language," and practice "black magic."^[26]

What divides these two worlds is a forbidding barrier, variously referred to as a "line of demarcation," "shackles," a "fortress," or (most commonly) "frame" (kuangkuang ). This barrier is heavily fortified, and must remain so. Between good and evil one must "draw a clear line of demarcation" (huaqing jiexian ), and those who "deliberately confuse the line of demarcation between . . . revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries" are denounced as "two-faced and three-sworded"—that is to say, treacherous.^[27] As previously noted, the nuclear family was sometimes rent by this ideological division, which severed husband from wife, parents from children. Yet, paradoxically, it is the wish of the young rebels to shatter this barrier, an act they describe with verbs of violent penetration such as "smash," "crush," "bombard the fortress," and "break the frames." This penetration is said to require courage and to occasion high excitement: "With the tremendous and impetuous force of a raging storm [the rebels] have smashed the shackles imposed on their minds by the exploiting classes for so long."^[28]

The motives for penetration appear mixed. On the one hand, the rebels expressed the desire to "destroy all evil winds," "sweep all demons and freaks away," and otherwise annihilate the enemy. They also wished, however, to emancipate the repressed. An article entitled "Don't Be Afraid of Washing Dirty Linen in Public" asserted, for instance, that "fear to discuss our shortcomings and mistakes actually is fear to touch our own souls and dig up the dirty things in our minds."^[29] It was felt necessary not only to "dig up dirty things," but thoroughly to assimilate them: "The revolutionary young people must tumble millions of times in the mud of the masses."^[30] Emancipation and assimilation of the re-

[26] Cited in Chuang, Little Red Book , p. 18.

[27] HQ editorial, no. 4 (March 1, 1967), in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 46–53.

[28] "Sweep Away All Freaks and Monsters," RR editorial, June 1, 1966, in SCMP , no. 3712 (June 6, 1966), p. 2.

For an intimate account of how the concept of a "line of demarcation" might apply within the nuclear family, see Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution , pp. 40–80.

[29] GM , March 23, 1967, in JPRS , no. 41450, pp. 53–54.

[30] "Learn to Swim While Swimming," RR editorial, August 17, 1966.

pressed was desirable because although this hidden world was a source of danger and pollution, it also harbored an uncanny power, and by unleashing this power the rebels could exploit it to confound their opponents and cleanse the world. The effect was like that of a dam bursting:

For the sake of our country never changing color, for the sake of the complete liberation of the proletariat, you [viz., Mao] personally lighted the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. . . . The billows of the historically unprecedented revolution surge and roll in an irresistible force which sweeps over the old world and which will completely bury imperialism and modern revisionism. The hearts of the revolutionary peoples boil with anger and their spirits are soaring.^[31]

To smash the frames was to obliterate the distinction between revealed and concealed and to "drag out" those lurking in darkness into the light. The result was that "ghosts" and "men" intermingled freely without distinguishing earmarks, a situation that was termed "chaos" (luan ). During the movement's initial stages (i.e., up to the "February adverse current," in 1967), chaos was deliberately fostered, in an apparent attempt to shatter the conventional barriers of shame that supported the emergent socialist authority structure. As Mao told the young rebels: "Do not be afraid to make trouble. The more trouble you make and the longer you make it the better. Confusion and trouble are always noteworthy. It can clear things up . . . wherever there are abscesses or infections we must always blow them up."^[32] And the rebels responded with enthusiasm: "We want to wield the massive cudgel, express our spirit, invoke our magic influence and turn the old world upside down, smash things into chaos, into smithereens, the more chaos the better!"^[33]

Frames are to be smashed, then—but why? Consider once again the structure of polemical symbolism: above is the world of appearance, full of light, purity, public spirit and virtuous action; underground, stealthily concealed, a world of darkness, selfishness, defilement, passive dependency. Dividing the two worlds is a formidable barrier, which seems to arouse intense ambivalence. It is graphically depicted in figure 1.

This symbolic construct corresponds to three dimensions of experience in Chinese social life: moral, psycho-cultural, and stratificational. The moral implications are perhaps most readily apparent: the upper row represents virtue and the lower row represents evil. The barrier dividing

[31] RR , June 7, 1966, cited in Chuang, Cultural Revolution .

[32] "Chairman Mao's Important Instructions" (n.d.), trans. in JPRS , no. 49826, p. 23. For a penetrating psychoanalytic perspective on "chaos" see Richard Solomon, "Mao's Effort to Reintegrate the Chinese Polity: Problems of Authority and Conflict in the Chinese Social Process," in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action , pp. 271–365.

[33] Red Guards of Qinghua Middle School (Beijing), "Long Live the Revolutionary Rebel Spirit of the Proletariat" (June 24, 1966), quoted in HQ , no. 11 (August 21, 1966), p. 27.

Figure 1
Polemical Symbol Structure

the two rows represents moral inhibitions against deviation. China is what anthropologists call a "shame" culture, in which virtue is promoted by assuring group acceptance of a set of norms and by exposing behavior to maximum publicity, so that any deviant is immediately confronted by unanimous censure, just as any act of heroism is greeted by widespread applause.^[34] Those human impulses that conflict with official norms must either be repressed or allowed some form of surreptitious or symbolically disguised expression. In such a system, any relaxation of normative controls (as in this case the paralysis of the Party) would allow two distinct "worlds" to become clearly visible where only one had been apparent before, making the intervening barrier subject to challenge. Liberalization would (under these circumstances) threaten moral havoc by subverting conventional controls on immorality, at the same time revealing moral nuances and unwonted pluralism. From the moral point of view the correct response would thus seem to be to reinforce the barrier between the two worlds, decry any attempt to obscure or extenuate this barrier as hypocrisy or subversion, and to drive invaders from the subterranean world back out of sight.

The psycho-cultural dimension of this symbolic construct seems to correspond roughly to the defense mechanism of repression, in which the world of light represents the realm of freedom and rationality and the world of darkness the unconscious realm of repressed and irrational impulses. According to classic psychoanalytic theory, aggressive and sexual impulses are hedged by taboos in most civilized societies and therefore likely to play a prominent role in the unconscious. There is ample evidence that these impulses have been even more stringently regulated in China. In the course of the mass criticism movement, normally illicit sexual impulses were both symbolically and directly expressed.^[35] In-group aggression, normally subject to painstaking regi-

[34] See Weston LaBarre, "Some Observations on Character Structure in the Orient. II. The Chinese, Part 1," Psychiatry 9 , no. 3 (August 1946): 215–39.

[35] According to Zhou Enlai, sexual promiscuity during the Cultural Revolution accounted for a measurable increase in China's population growth rate. Edgar Snow, The Long Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 45. Vivid eyewitness accounts of such activity may be found in Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven: Journal of a Young Chinese (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1972), pp. 14, 31, 30, 119, 121, 146, 250, 332–33; also Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution , pp. 126–27. Sexual imagery is also apparent in thelanguage of the polemics: there is a confrontation envisaged between two opposing (and yet strangely attracted) forces, separated by a taboo barrier, the penetration of which is destructive and yet necessary, dangerous and yet thrilling. This seems to be defloration symbolism, as John Weakland has also noted in a quite different (but analogous) context. See his "Chinese Film Images of Invasion and Resistance," CQ , no. 47 (July-September 1971): 438–71.

mentation,^[36] was unleashed against both Party-government authorities and rival rebel factions.

Prominent though such impulses were, it would be unduly simplistic to "reduce" the elating sensation of freedom described by so many participants solely to the liberation of repressed sexual and aggressive instincts. Within the broad latitude of freedom allowed by the collapse of conventional authority, these young rebels had unprecedented opportunities to exercise initiative, to roam the world, to explore new ideas and pursue their logical implications without official censure, to realize previously untapped potentialities for leadership and self-expression.^[37] From a psycho-cultural perspective, then, the Cultural Revolution implied an opportunity to smash taboo barriers and emancipate culturally and psychically repressed vital impulses of all kinds—an opportunity that many Chinese young people found exciting.

The stratificational dimension of the polemical symbolism refers to what Alan Liu calls a "political culture of dualism": the Chinese màsses had been taught to cultivate "boundless love" and self-sacrifice for the "people" and "boundless hate" for "enemies of the people."^[38] From this

[36] A Japanese reporter made these painstaking observations of a Beijing rally in support of North Vietnam in 1965: The buildings in Beijing along Changan Street are equipped with red flags to be hung and lights to be turned on within minutes after they receive an order. Each of the paving stones in the Tiananmen Plaza is numbered, so that students can be given standing orders to form great ideographs and geometrical patterns (e.g., "Fifty students from X Commune stand from A-13 to A-15.") The march routes and dispersion points are all designated in advance (e.g., "When the demonstration is over, the W Commune shall turn at the corner of X, march down Y Street and disperse when they reach the buses waiting at point Z.") When certain paving stones are removed and a blue canvas tent is erected, certain parts of the road become public lavatories that can accommodate about thirty people within ten minutes (the lavatories are directly connected with the sewage system). Since the masses become thirsty from shouting slogans and singing songs, first-aid teams are dispersed throughout the crowd, and stands serving hot water are set up, with a red-colored antiseptic solution used to disinfect the cups. Yomiuri , February 25, 1965, trans. in Daily Summary of the Japanese Press (Tokyo: U.S. Embassy), March 3, 1965, p. 16.

[37] See Gordon Bennett and Ronald Montaperto, Red Guard : The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1971); as well as Ling, Revenge ; and Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution . For a balanced secondary analysis, see Andrew J. Watson, "A Revolution to Touch Men's Souls: The Family, Interpersonal Relations and Daily Life," in Stuart Schram, ed., Authority , Participation and Cultural Change in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 291–331.

[38] Alan P. L. Liu, Political Culture and Group Conflict in Communist China (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1976), pp. 24–31.

perspective the frames should be smashed and the enemies eradicated, or at least severely punished. The identity of these enemies however remained ambiguous, as residual and emergent criteria for the classification of classes competed with one another in the public arena.^[39] If residual criteria were applied, the "spearhead" would be turned downward, targeting representatives of the former propertied classes; if emergent criteria were selected, representatives of the bureaucratic New Class could be targeted. The implication that the class enemy should be destroyed (or at least transformed), in the context of the ambiguous semantics of this term, meant that any heightening of the rhetoric resulted only in an intensification of internecine conflict.

Altogether, then, the polemical symbolism of the Cultural Revolution had at least three dimensions, the third of which contained an unacknowledged contradiction between residual and emergent criteria for defining its referents. It is graphically depicted in figure 2.

Figure 2
Semantic Dimensions of the Polemical Symbolism

Each of these dimensions had different action implications, although paradoxically the "condensation" of divergent meanings in the same polemical symbolism seemed to magnify rather than mitigate its mobilizational efficacy. Both psycho-cultural and stratificational dimensions legitimated smashing the frames of the established authority structure, in the first case for the purpose of emancipation, in the second for repression. Morality, on the other hand, reinforced this barrier, intensifying the excitement attached to its smashing when the authorization of the other two dimensions sufficed to motivate this taboo violation. The empirical referents of each dimension proved to be sufficiently vague to permit tactical flexibility on the part of faction leaders.