8—
Epilogue: Social Change and History

"The problem of history," George Lichtheim has written, "is the problem of consciousness."^[1] The problem of consciousness, it might be added, is the problem of social existence. Chinese historical consciousness in the twentieth century has evolved in a dialectical relationship with the revolutionization of Chinese society. The adoption of historical materialism marked a new stage in the search for a "new history" that was set in motion around the turn of the century by a new awareness of society generated by new political needs. By the mid-twenties, society and social change had come to occupy a central place in thought on political change. Historical materialism helped articulate the new historical consciousness that accompanied this change in Chinese political thought.

The rapid social changes that became evident in the twenties were responsible for the crystallization of the new outlook. But in hindsight it is clear that Marxism cannot claim the responsibility for introducing into Chinese historical thought the idea of the central importance of society as a datum of history or even the sociological conception of history. The origins of this concern with society reached back to the turn of the century. H. Lefevbre has observed that "revolutions . . . disclose societies as totalities."^[2] The deepening of the. awareness of society in China was ultimately the product of the revolutionary changes that got under way from the beginning of the twentieth century. The expression of dissatisfaction with traditional views of

[1] Lichtheim, The Concept of Ideology , p. 43.

[2] Lefebvre, Sociology of Marx, p. 53.

history predated the twentieth century and originated in the internal tensions of Confucianism, but it was not until the twentieth century that the critique of the traditional historical outlook was tied in with affirmation of the role of society in history.^[3]

It is not surprising that as the need for change drove Chinese intellectuals to question the premises of traditional political theory, they also questioned the traditional conception of history. From the beginning, advocates of political change turned to history as the clearing house for legitimacy: Advocates of institutional change, proponents of a new national identity, a new citizen, a new culture, a new individual, social revolution, all employed history as witness to the legitimacy of their demands. Particularly important was the emergence of national consciousness which went with new ideas of politics. As the nation took the place of civilization in the Chinese self-image, as Levenson has argued cogently, the traditional basis of rule was shaken and with it the traditional conception of history.^[4] Considerations of national strength, or survival, led to the conclusion that the virtue of the ruler was less important for desirable politics than the unity of the people who constituted the nation; that progress rather than faithfulness to eternal norms was the way to achieve strength; and that history had a crucial role to play in achieving this goal. It was not fortuitous that Liang Chi'i-ch'ao was the first Chinese thinker to call for a "new history" and to bring together in his 1902 essay of that title all these various considerations.

Liang was the first Chinese thinker to perceive the need for a new community as the basis of nationalist politics and to decide that the realization of the new community would require the creation of a new Chinese, a "new citizen."^[5] He penned "New History" in the same year that he composed his political essay,

[3] For an excellent discussion of the evolution of Liang's thought on these matters, see Chang Hao, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).

[4] Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, vol. 1.

[5] For a discussion of this concept, see Chang, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao , and Philip Huang, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), pp. 62–67.

"The New Citizen." In "New History" he blamed China's weakness on the absence of national consciousness in China which, in turn, he explained in terms of the deficiencies of traditional history. History in China, he observed, had been restricted to the stories of "kings and heroes," and excluded the people from its scope with the result that there had been no way for the Chinese to develop a national consciousness. His essay called for a "new history," which would be the history of the people, and went on to present a Darwinistic view of history where those lacking in national consciousness were condemned to oblivion.^[6]

This concern was by no means restricted to Liang in the early part of the century; other important thinkers (for example, Chang Ping-lin) affirmed the importance of history for national consciousness and joined in the demand for the rewriting of Chinese history. Side by side with the call for greater emphasis on society in historical writing went an emphasis on universal or comprehensive history (t'ung shih ) which, these thinkers believed, would provide a better sense of history than had been possible with the dynastic histories of imperial China.^[7] Liang elaborated his ideas in a more historiographical strain in his 1921 essay, Chung-kuo li-shih yen-chiu fa , which he supplemented in 1927 with a detailed plan for rewriting Chinese history.^[8]

The search for a "new history" became more complex as the Chinese approach to change gained new dimensions, especially with the New Culture Movement. In the early twenties, the most conspicuous trend in history was the turn to the examination of the validity of assumptions that had informed traditional historical views, as part of the general New Culture attack on tradition. Hu Shih's call for the "reorganization of the

[6] Liang, "Hsin shin-hsueh," in Yin-ping shih wen-chi (Collection of Essays by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao), vol. 4 (Taipei: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1960), pp. 1–32.

[7] For a discussion of the new interest in t'ung shih , see Chin Yu-fu, Chung-kuo shih-hsueh shih (History of Chinese Historiography) Taipei, 1968; reprint of 1944 ed., pp. 296–326.

[8] Chung-kuo li-shih yen-chiu fa (Method of Researching Chinese History), with supplement (Taipei: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1968).

nation's past" (cheng-li kuo-ku ) culminated in the textual research of the ku-shih pien historians, who challenged the dearest assumptions of traditional historiography. The "reorganization" was conceived by Hu Shih to have both negative and positive aspects; on the one hand, questioning traditional historiography through scientific analysis of materials and, on the other hand, using the scientific method to rewrite Chinese history. In the end, the negative aspects of the "reorganization" overshadowed its positive aspects; if it was able to "apprehend the goblins" and "beat the ghosts," it fell short of writing history.^[9]

Simultaneously, however, the early twenties witnessed the proliferation in China of interest in sociology and social science, in relation to history as well as in its own right. Liberal Chinese thinkers, in search of a methodology of sociohistorical analysis, played an important role in this trend. A foremost advocate of sociological history in these years was the American-educated historian Ho Ping-sung, who conveyed to China contemporary American interest in social history. He translated into Chinese J. H. Robinson's New History under an identical Chinese title and published an adaptation of La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales by Seignobos and Langlois under the significant Chinese title of T'ung shih hsin i (New Meaning of Universal History). Ho explained in his preface that the new t'ung shih differed from traditional Chinese universal history in being based on sociology.^[10] His works, complemented by other general works on historiography that proliferated during these years, demonstrated the increasingly sociological view of history that was gaining ground in China in the twenties. More significantly, Western works such as those translated by Ho were products of currents in Western historical thought to which Marx's social-economic interpretations of history had contributed considerably; it was not only through Marxist works, in effect, that Chinese were exposed to the ideas of historical materialism.

[9] I Eber, "Hu Shih and Chinese History: The Problem of cheng-li kuo-ku ," Monumenta Serica , vol. 27 (1968), p. 179.

[10] Ho Ping-sung, T'ung shih hsin i (1928). See preface (edition referred to here is the 1965 Taiwan edition).

These developments in the twenties, however, were academic. Historians such as Ku Chieh-kang made a point of keeping contemporary problems out of historiography. Nevertheless, their historical outlook reflected the dominant ideas on change of their period. New Culture thought was essentially ahistorical, even antihistorical. In their critique of tradition, New Culture thinkers set the timeless norms of reason and science against what they considered to be the historically bound values of Chinese civilization. Their goal was to change China by creating liberated individuals motivated by a scientific outlook. Nevertheless, their standpoint heightened the concern for social change. First, they tied the values of old society to its social structure with the implication, which they did not pursue, that to get rid of old ideas it was necessary to transform the old society. New Culture thinkers placed their emphasis instead on education as the means to social change. Similarly, they criticized the old society for obstructing the growth of social consciousness, which they deemed essential to a modern society, and sought to liberate individuals from the weight of tradition supported by social institutions such as the family. In fact, as argued here in Chapter 2, Marxism itself was put to work in the service of these ideas in the early twenties. Regardless, New Culture thinkers, much more so than the thinkers of the 1900s, pointed to society as the source of many of China's problems.

It was social mobilization in the twenties that converted the heightened concern with the weight of old society into an immediate problem of Chinese politics. The failure of the revolutionary movement in 1927 demonstrated the magnitude of the problem of society. In 1927 many Chinese radicals would have agreed with Marx's statement that "Men make their own history; but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."^[11] It was this realization that turned Chinese intellectuals to the search for the discovery of those circumstances.

[11] The 18th. Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , p. 15.

Marxism had been in the ascendancy in the twenties, but before 1927 it was the nationalistic implications of the Leninist version of Marxism that had impressed Chinese intellectuals the most. It was not until they encountered society as a totality that Chinese radicals appreciated the full significance of Marxist sociology as a total theory of society. This discovery accompanied the realization that revolution required the transformation of the social structure. Even if earlier Chinese thinkers had been aware of the importance of society, it was not until this time that the revolutionary current in Chinese politics turned to social change as the ultimate basis of political and intellectual transformation. In the new conception, politics appeared as an extension of social structure and ideas as ideology that reflected social interest. Historical materialism benefited from the spread of this attitude; it also helped articulate it.

Kuo Chan-po, writing in 1935, credited the Social History Controversy with the generation of discussions that promised to illuminate problems of Chinese society and history.^[12] Even non-Marxist and anti-Marxist intellectuals were provoked to participate in these discussions by the challenging interpretations Marxist historians placed on Chinese history.

The Marxist historical outlook also spread among Chinese intellectuals at this time through the medium of social history. Reviewing history in modern China in 1935, Fung Yu-lan identified three successive trends marked by basic differences in attitudes toward China's past.^[13] Fung's characterizations of these trends were in the abstract; he did not attach his categories to particular groups. But the associations were evident. The first trend, hsin-ku (belief in antiquity), referred to those who took ancient traditions to be historical truth. It typified the attitude of traditionalists, whether of the "Old Text" or the "New Text" variety, who relied on the authority of ancients in their historical interpretations. Fung cited the advocates of "reading classics" (tu-ching ) as heirs to that legacy in the

[12] Kuo, Chin wu-shih nien Chung-kuo ssu-hsiang shih , p. 338.

[13] Fung Yu-lan, "Chung-kuo chin nien yen-chiu shih hsueh chih hsin ch'u-chih" (New Tendencies in Recent Chinese Historiography), draft of speech given in Kuo, Chin wu-shih nlen Chung-kuo ssu-hsiang shih , pp. 221–224.

thirties. The second trend, i-ku (doubting antiquity), described those who disbelieved everything contained in the old records. The attitude plainly characterized post-May-Fourth historians, in particular those involved in the "Critiques of Ancient History" (Ku-shih pien ) one of whom, Ch'ien Hsuan-t'ung, had gone so far as to adopt i-ku as his personal appellation. Using Hegelian categories, Fung observed that the latter trend stood to the former as antithesis to thesis. Their synthesis had produced the latest trend that dominated the historical outlook of the thirties, "explanation of antiquity" (shih-ku ). The "explainers of antiquity" neither believed nor disbelieved ancient traditions but held that it was possible "to catch glimpses of parts of the reality of ancient society" through those traditions.^[14]

The view that history should be explained rather than believed or disbelieved was characteristic of the historical attitudes of Marxist historians. T'ao Hsi-sheng, one of the leading Marxist social historians, explicitly depicted the historical attitude of the Social History Controversy as the "explanation of history."^[15] Li Chi and Liang Yuan-tung, two other prominent Marxist historians, criticized Ku-shih pien historians for their failure to reach beyond historical materials to the sociohistorical context which had produced the materials.^[16] In their own work, of course, Marxist historians strove to explain all phenomena of history in terms of their socioeconomic foundations.

The designation "explanation of history" implicitly denoted explanation through social structure; the "social explanation of history," therefore, conveys the essential thrust of the new historical attitude. This attitude extended beyond the circle of Marxist historians and points to the reorientation of Chinese

[14] Ibid., p. 222.

[15] T'ao Hsi-sheng, "I-ku yu shih-ku" (Doubting Antiquity and Explaining Antiquity), Shih huo Pan-yueh k'an (Food and Commodities Semi-Monthly), 3.1 (December 1, 1935):1.

[16] Li Chi, "Tui-yu Chung-kuo she-hui shih lun-chan ti kung-hsien yu p'i-p'ing" (Contributions to and Criticisms of the Chinese Social History Controversy), part 1, TSTC , 2.2–3 (March 1932), and Liang Yuan-tung, "Ku-shih pien ti shih-hsueh fang-fa shang-chueh" (An Evaluation of the Historical Methodology of the Critiques on Ancient Society), Tung-fang tsa-chih , 27.22, 24 (November, December 1930).

historical thought in the decade of the thirties. The tendency was nowhere more evident than in the case of Ku Chieh-kang, the moving spirit of the Ku-shih-pien group, whose historical work stretched over the two decades after 1919. Laurence Schneider has observed in his perceptive intellectual biography of Ku that during this period Ku's emphasis shifted "from textual criticism to social criticism," that is, from a preoccupation with the veracity of historical records to the investigation of the socially determined motives that underlay their distortion.^[17] Though there is no direct evidence that the shift in Ku's attitude was prompted by the example of Marxist historians, his approach to history in the thirties was consistent with prevailing historical attitudes, and it is at least suggestive that the change was in the direction advised by his Marxist critics.

To appreciate the significance of historical materialism, it is necessary to look beyond Marxist historiography to the outlook that informed it. The total view of history within its social context not only departed radically from the traditional historical outlook but also from the sociological currents in modern Chinese thought that contributed to preparing the ground for the acceptance of Marxism. Since the 1930's, Chinese historians have added little of general interpretative originality or significance to the work of the early Marxist historians. The Marxist historical outlook, on the other hand, has spread beyond intellectuals to the Chinese population at large. By the sixties and seventies, Chinese leaders could point with pride at the pictures of peasants discussing the Marxist interpretation of Chinese history in the very fields where they made their livelihood.

This is not to say that the incorporation of the materialist outlook in the Chinese view of the past has effected a total transformation of Chinese historical consciousness. The Marxist historicization of the past has not led to a comfortable abandonment of the past, as Levenson suggested, as is witnessed by the fact that even confirmed Marxist historians in China have not felt comfortable with the idea that since certain values of

[17] Laurence A. Schneider, Ku Chieh-kang and China's New History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), chap. 6.

traditional society coincided with a particular social configuration, they should be regarded as irrelevant in the present.^[18] The predisposition to the kind of explanation historical materialism offered has involved more than the problem of ideas and values created by the confrontation between China and the West. What the materialist conception of history contributed to Chinese historical consciousness was the awareness that ideas and values are not suprahistorical universals but creations of socioeconomic existence. This is indeed an essential feature of the historicist outlook, but it does not necessitate that ideas and values be denied validity outside of specific social circumstances, even if Marxism, including official Marxism in contemporary China, has encouraged the interpretation of ideas and values simply as extensions of class interest among its more mechanistic disciplines. The consciousness of the historicity of ideas and values does, however, complicate existence by forcing on the individual an awareness of the social and political implications of intellectual choice. It was radical social change in China that brought Chinese intellectuals to this awareness, especially as social conflict compelled the delineation of social loyalties in the realm of ideology. The Chinese have provided ample evidence of their painful awareness of this problem. Marxism has helped articulate this awareness; the conflicts within Chinese Marxism have also borne witness to the tensions created by the interplay between revolutionary change and the Marxist theory of society.

The Chinese experience with history in the twentieth century has parallels in other societies undergoing revolutionary social transformation, including the Western experience since the Enlightenment, but especially since the early nineteenth century when social change and mobilization forced on Western intellectuals a new awareness of the significance of society and history.^[19] Marx's was one of the most significant explanations of

[18] See M. Goldman, "The Role of History in Party Struggle, 1962–1964," China Quarterly , 51 (July–September 1972):500–519.

[19] Karl J. Weintraub, "Toward the History of the Common Man: Voltaire and Condorcet," in R. Herr and H. Parker, Ideas in History (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), pp. 39–64.

the problems of nineteenth-century Europe, and it was possibly the most unequivocal of all in rooting all problems in the socioeconomic foundation of society. It is not surprising that Chinese intellectuals turned to historical materialism when deep-rooted changes in Chinese society brought them face to face with similar problems. It is quite apparent from the evidence of the last decade that the Marxist historicization of Chinese tradition did not lay the problem of history to rest in China. The problem has been resurrected time and time again as the revolutionization of Chinese society has taken new twists and turns. And it seems safe to predict that as long as the problem of revolution persists, so will the problem of history.