Outward and Visible Signs of Inward and Spiritual Culture Change: Provocations to Social History

- 35 OUTWARD A.'lD VISIBLE SIGNS OF I~'WARD MD SPIRITUAL CULTURE CHANGE: PROVOCATIONS TO SOCIAL HISTORY For my suggestions about likely areas for professional prospecting, I will submit a proposition: We have not taken seriously the idea of Revolution ln Republican China; we have little idea of how (or whether) it came about. This is true not only of those of us who doubt the power of the Revolution to change water into wine but also of those of us who are enthusiastic. We have mostly taken "revolution," as ~·ell as its analo~ue and antagonist "modernization," as concepts to be assumed rather than tested. To the extent that we have wg.rked on the process of revolution, we have decided that it was a matter of CCP int~llectuals gettyi'g the word in the 1920's, falling, a.~1riculture schools, and the model showcase techniques that ue see at Tachai, to centiGn only a few. Great differences separate the CCP from the ~. but It would be wrong to Ignore their parallels, overlappings, and unities. This area of overla? seemed to ce politically represented by the policies of New De~ocracy. For some people the early technical achievements of the rural reconstruction movecent and their subsequent political frustration meant that politics W3S indeed in co::icand, and that revolution was the means to carry out reform. The twin ev!l:; of ''ieudalis&i" and 11 imrerialism11 were well suited for a political platform: cc~~~e=~ s~~oing but 3Ctually va~ue, rallying cries· not academic analysis. For others, sue~ as Yen hi=.self, "ho rejected Mao and his revolution, these and the other issues raisi?..:! ~y 'Sc·..r Denocracy ...,ere. at least real. In other words, the old reform versus re,olucion, 11beral versus radicaf, technical versus political dichotomies did not seem to describe what_ I saw. Yet "hen I turn?d to other monographs and surveys, I found that the picture there \.'as rather different, and I was led to look more at the terms in ..-hich the arg\!::ent was pitched. First of all, the ~ew Cultural "liberal" has come in for a drubbing. History :1kes :iberals, but it likes ~inners even better. Joseph Levenson, for instance, says that "li~erali5~ see=ed cu!turally off-balance in China, leaning to Europe and A..":.erica," \oihile Co::xr::..:nis::i \.·as "nic:el)· c:-entered bet\.:ecn moribunj Confucianism and the non-Confucian Wast which had disco=fctted Confucianism In the first place." (Problems of "istorical Significance, Vol. III of Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, p. 54.) ~~urice Xeisner, in his bicgraphy of an intellectual who urged others to go to the village but went there hinself only to hide from the police, sees Chinese liberals mainly as follcvers of De·•ey. Oe;;ey's program for China, he concludes (although no wor~ of De~ey's is cited or appears in the bibliography), 1.1as "neither radical nor ccnse:-:ati\·e but largely irrelevant" in the face of China's "total crisis." (Li !a-ct.ao, p. 108.) Enn treh~nsible to his p~ople, alien to thee" becau::Ie Hu was 11 by nature, by ex?erience, and by education prepared to claim the liberties he prized," and, one s~c::e:s i:sc fa:ro, "akost infinitely estranged from the mute and miserable existences of :::c7' an= ·-·:~.en biir.ce~ still by i!'-norance, struck dumh by indifference to any fate sa,·e c)"iei:- c·.71 anc crip;>lec by the social lethari;iy of unnumbered generations." (Hu S~i~ and the Chi:eoe Re~aissan:e, pp. JJS-339.) Hu was an East~rrl Erasmus, c~s~~?clita~izcd by r~siCe~ce in Ithaca and }~orningside Heights; although. in the age of Eliot, Jcvce, and Yeats, he thought of modern culture in late 19th-century terms. G:-ieder feel~ that Eu ~as, by being modern, cut off from the brutish and uncultured ::..asses. r:-.at is, it seer:s to me that Hu appears "modern"~ !.h!_ ~that he is cut. off from China. ~ealin& ~ith a so:::e~hat later period, Merle Goldman, in conclusion describes her "'-.:-iters "s "alienated intellectuals...