I was recently perusing through Arif Dirlik’s Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution and it was a remarkable read. I learned about Chinese revolutionaries who tried to re-chart history in the 20th century, an era which would soon witness many anti-colonial struggles and national liberation movements. Despite the well-known extremes taken against the Chinese past by the certain communists decades later, most notably in some of the more bizarre practices of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the early anarchist revolutionaries (1905-1930) were about social transformation and therefore refused to uncritically emulate archaic norms. Their intellects were turned into weapons against the colonial world super powers (i.e. May 4th Movement in 1919) as well as landlordism, class oppression, and traditional Confucian strictures. As Dirlik himself writes, “The distinguishing feature of the Chinese revolutionary movement during these years…was a mass mobilization…which brought into the radical movement entire social groups (students, women, laborers) in pursuit of a new place for themselves in the revolutionary reorganization of Chinese society.”

To them authority should be questioned, the past can be re-interpreted, and metaphysical uncertainties must be uncovered. Granted, while the Chinese anarchists sometimes did fall into the trap of considering themselves to be scientifically “objective”, they never the less did not strait jacket one another into a rigid set of ideological dogmas or practice but rather, were organized around certain themes which led them to challenge the prevailing status quo and contemplate a more just social order. However true that this may have hurt their organizational strategy it also prevented them from lapsing into authoritarianism.

One can then recall the case of Jiang Kanghu and Taixu. The former was a teacher in Beijing but also managed to study in Europe and Japan. A lecture on “Socialism and Women’s Education” brought him much fame. Eventually he was to help form the Chinese socialist party in late 1911. The party’s platform consisted, among other things, of supporting a Chinese republic, heavily curtailing taxes, and ending the inheritance system. Taixu was ordained as a Buddhist monk but came under the sway of anarchic-socialist ideas, and at one time was associated with Kanghu’s group but he eventually broke with it. He believed that Buddhism had to be re-thought to suit modern needs and began supporting an even more radical outlook. His Social Party platform included inculcating an internationalist outlook, abolishing class divisions, and “…[to] eliminate all divisions among people on the basis of state, family, and religion…”

One of the most famous anarchists went by the name of Shifu who established the Cock-Crow society. Aside from emphasizing communal living, and teaching Esperanto his group managed to publish their own magazines and within a decade (by 1920) managed to organize over forty labor unions in the Canton province including membership among barbers, masons, and shoe-makers.

But this was not all. Some time earlier the Society for the Study of Socialism was established in 1907, founded by Liu Shipei and He Zhen. Despite being anti-modern agrarian socialists, they never the less challenged China’s pre-modern heritage. He Zhen was very much concerned with female oppression and took inspiration from Engel’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. She was critical both of rural oppression of women but also of current working conditions. The Paris anarchists who corresponded with the Tokyo group, may have been more radical in their rejection of China’s classical thought as they considered Confucius to be a thinker, “…of the age of barbarism…” and his teachings to be “…the source of the superstitions in Chinese society that had oppressed women and youth and served as an instrument of power…Superstition they believed, was the basis for authority...” And thus a “Confucian revolution” was needed. It is interesting to note that future communist leaders Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai also had links to anarchists when they were in Europe and the ideas of mutual-aid and the transformation of mental/manual labor ended up finding a place in Chinese communism including in Mao Zedong thought. The anarchists even worked with the Guamindong until the late 1920s/early 1930s where the latter began a crack down on leftist dissidents including anarchists, labor activists, and communists.

It can then be said that this was a very unique period in which almost no stone was left unturned. No doubt, this does not repudiate the classical heritage of China but it definitely allowed Chinese revolutionaries to free themselves of what they believed to be an unjust social order that had been buttressed by patriarchy and arcane scholastic points. It was not only the control of the means of production that were important but the social relations that surrounded it as well. Therefore one had to be mindful of the dialectical interplay of both. And for the current observer, it shatters Orientalist stereotypes about a “static” Chinese society, and or some cultural “essence” that compromises Chinese history throughout time. To be sure, with the rise of Chinese capitalism and the current predicament the contradictions of modernity/post-modernity are certainly not resolved but perhaps, a study of the Chinese anarchists can help one envision a more just social democratic order that simply does not mimic traditions of the past or the triumphalism of the present. And it is also for this reason that Dirlik’s book should become, if it is not already, a classic.