Party: Connotation of Revolutionary Personality within the Concept of “Cadre”and the Concretization of New Man in the Current Socialist Society by Xiong Chengshuai

Translated by Deniz Kızılçeç

Published in Shenzhen Social Science, No. 4, 2023.

The author is an associate Prof. at the School of Marxism, Northwestern Polytechnical University.

Translator’s Note: We are publishing a only part of Xiong Chengshuai’s valuable article which explains close relation between “new man o socialism” and a good communist party cadre.  The CPC has 4 cadre academies where “new man of socialism (party cadres) are trained with highest care, one is the Central Party School in Beijing; the second is in the Shanghai Pudong New Industrial Zone, the third is in the Jinggangshan mountains, the first revolutionary base area, and the fourth is in the mountains of Yan’an, the central headquarters of the Party in during the revolution period. Besides each province has Party schools wherein annually 40-to 60 thousand Party and state cadres are trained.

In addition to the two connotations of position and job status, this article tries to suggest that the concept of “cadre” in the CPC’s discourse also has a third connotation: “revolutionary personality”. Compared with the Leninist concept of “professional revolutionaries”, the CPC’s “cadre” concept additionally implies a moral dimension. Of course, the morality here is the “revolutionary morality” formed in the history of revolution and revolutionary struggle. As Liu Shaoqi put it: “Communist Party members should possess all the greatest and noblest human virtues, and at the same time have a strict and clear proletarian stance (i.e., party character and class character). Our morality is great precisely because it is the morality of proletarian communism. This morality is built, not on the basis of degradation and the protection of the interests of the individual and of a few exploiters, but on the basis of the advancement of the proletariat in relation to the interests of the final emancipation of all mankind, the liberation of the world from fire and water, and the building of a happy and beautiful communist world”. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm

Although the main part of Liu Shaoqi’s argument is the entire Communist Party, this classic document “On the Cultivation of Communist Party Members” is mainly a study material for CPC cadres, and the target of Liu Shaoqi’s argument is still mainly targets the CPC cadres.

If the Leninist concept of “professional revolutionary” emphasizes the external political identity of “revolution as a profession,” the “revolutionary personality” emphasizes the internal self-regulation of the cadres within themselves.

The “revolutionary personality” emphasizes the internal self-regulation of the cadres themselves, which involves the cadres’ deep-rooted and hidden values and shapes the specific personality qualities of the cadre ranks.

In the ideal type of cadre personality, self-sacrifice and organizational quality are two distinctive features of CPC cadres. A typical characteristic of CPC cadres is that they place their individual lives in the context of the world history of national liberation and human liberation, and that they closely link the specific work they do with the process of broad historical development, so that the individual life course of CPC cadres forms an integral part of the overall social and historical progress. This communist idealistic outlook on life and on history has constructed a spiritual temperament and personality character  of self-sacrifice for the cadres of the CPC. Self-sacrifice is not a kind of moral preaching, but a pursuit of life based on a systematic worldview, systematic historical outlook and systematic life outlook. The basic identity of CPC cadres is that of revolutionaries, professional revolutionaries, and those who dedicate themselves to the revolution.

Chen Yun, who had presided over the education and training of cadres for a long time, pointed out that the cadres of the Communist Party “should be sure that they should be a victim of the creation of a new era of communism.”

On the one hand, “the cause of communism will not be realized for quite a long time – one cannot see communism for oneself”; on the other hand, “this cause will meet with deadly opposition from the class enemy – one’s life will be in danger”. risk of one’s life.”

Therefore, the cadres need to fight for communism to the end, and by “to the end”, I mean until death, that is, “to be sure that they will live exclusively for the communist revolution in the future,” and “to be sure that they should be one of the victims of the creation of a new era of communism.  Here to die” means ‘to be sure that one should live exclusively for the Communist revolution’ and ”to be sure that one should be a victim of the creation of a new era of Communism.

In order for Party cadres to grow themselves into such people, they need to solve three problems: first, when dealing with various social relations, such as family relations and male-female relationships, they should put “the interests of the revolution first.”

Second, when faced with the danger of losing their lives “by killing their heads, going to jail, or being left without food (by pulling a cart to sell cakes and doughnuts)”, they should be revolutionary to the end and should be willing to be a sacrifice.

Third, in the case of high-level cadres, to obey the Party’s arrangements to give up their personal fame, status and power. Chen Yun added:, “These questions are touchstones.” When CPC cadres join the revolution and lead it, they must have the awareness and quality of self-sacrifice.

The revolution concept of the Communist Party of China is based on the theoretical foundations of Marxism Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, The CPC firmly believes that “the Communist Party is a party representing the proletariat, and it has no interests and goals of its own except the interests of proletarian liberation”. The cadres of the CPC are the leading force in realizing the liberation of the proletariat, and “if the proletariat cannot liberate all the working people, all the nations, and all mankind, then the proletariat cannot liberate itself.”

In this sense, the Chinese revolution was not merely a political struggle on the phenomenal level, but an important link in the cause of the liberation of all mankind, which is of world-historical significance. The revolutionary cause to which the CPC cadres have dedicated themselves is the common cause of the CPC, the Chinese working and peasant classes, the Chinese nation and all mankind. Therefore, “‘losingone’s own body’ and ‘sacrificing one’s life for righteousness’ are, when necessary, taken for granted for most communists. And this is not due to their empty dreams or to gain fame, but to their knowledge and consciousness of the science of social evolution.” This communist idealistic spirituality constitutes an important personality connotation of the concept of “cadre”.

The quality of self-sacrifice often forms the basis of the personality of CPC cadres in dealing with issues of family, marriage, and personal interests. When Xie Jueya was sixty years old, looking back on his life, he thought, “I have not yet died, and I am not yet in a state of decline; one of the reasons for this is that, although I have not exercised my body, I have not destroyed it. Another reason is that after joining the Party, life has changed, and many laborious hard human affairs of the old society, such as begging for land, marrying men and marrying women, and being unemployed, have been swept away; and what occupies the mind is the noble cause of liberating mankind and the beautiful ideals, which are approached step by step, and thus are more and more joyful day by day.”

In Xie Jueya’s ideological concept, seek the field, male marriage, unemployment, are laborious human affairs, are far less meaningful and valuable than working for the cause of human liberation. The Party’s cause and the cause of communism are regarded as the highest value beyond personal family emotion and personal gain or loss, which is the value choice of cadres and constitutes the key link of “revolutionary personality”. At the same time, the concept of “cadre” also contains a highly realistic connotation of personality, which is the organizational character of cadres.

Organizational character refers to the ideology of treating organizational identity as the first identity of the individual and integrating the individual into the organization. Since its founding, the CPC has attached great importance to fostering a sense of identity and belonging among its members to the party organization (and has actively promoted the internalization of this organizational nature as a quality of the cadres themselves.

Organizational character is also expressed as collectivism, and its connotation includes multiple factors such as a) cadres’ self-perception, b) cadres’ value orientation, and c) cadres’ emotional state.

First, organizational character means that at the level of self-perception, one sees oneself as a member of the party organization and becomes a cell of the party organization.

Secondly, organizational character means taking collective interests as the value target, and the pursuit of collective interests becomes the most important value in the individual’s life.

Thirdly, organizational character means that individuals are emotionally attached to the organization, and the organization becomes the most important network of interpersonal relationships, constituting a family in the psychological sense of the cadres, the so-called  seeing“party as a home”.

Mao Zedong emphasized that communists should “take the interests of the revolution as their first life, and subordinate their personal interests to the interests of the revolution” (……), caring more for the Party and the masses than for the individual, and more for others than for themselves.  In How to Be a Communist, Chen Yun advocated:, “Only those who truly join the organization, who obey it in all respects and who are willing to contribute all of themselves to the Party’s cause, to the cause of Communism, can become Communists.”

Of course, it is difficult to empirically count the number of cadres who have developed the personality as described above, but the values of self-sacrifice and organizational charcter, as part of the political culture promoted by the CPC, have a far-reaching power to shape the mebers’ revolutionary personality.

Because the concept of “cadre” has special connotations of revolutionary personality and moral regulations, both the party organization and the general public regard “cadres” not only as leaders and revolutionaries, but also see them as a support for ideal politics and a model of moral character. It is precisely because the concept of “cadre” has this personality connotation that when a few cadres have moral problems, they are often severely criticized both inside and outside the Party.

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