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Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village
More than forty years after its initial publication, William Hinton's Fanshen continues to be the essential volume for those fascinated with China's revolutionary process of rural reform and social change. A pioneering work, Fanshan is a marvelous and revealing look into life in the Chinese countryside, where tradition and modernity have had both a complimentary and caustic relationship in the years since the Chinese Communist Party first came to power. It is a rare, concrete record of social struggle and transformation, as witnessed by a participant. Fanshen continues to offer profound insight into the lives of peasants and China's complex social processes. Rediscover this classic volume, which includes a new preface by Fred Magdoff.
1000 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
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June 17, 2020
No longer using this website, but I'm leaving up old reviews. Fuck Jeff Bezos. Find me on LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/profile/...
I read this book to challenge my politics and learn about what happens when we win a revolution, especially on a grand scale. However you view China today (the planet's sweatshop with some of the worst human, labor, and environmental abuses ever committed, but labeled "Communist" so that they can shoot striking workers dead without outrage from the Stalinoid wierdos who also call themselves "Communists"), the contents of this book contain a revolution of an immense magnitude, and yet one that the author makes feel very intimate.
I was struck by the tremendous poverty of the Chinese countryside after 1840 and before the Second World War. The poor peasants in Long Bow plant in the spring and summer, but in Winter, they sit inside. One would think that one could make handicrafts or something during the winter, not to waste a moment of time, but the truth of a Long Bow winter for a poor peasant is that you cannot afford it. You sit as still as possible, using up as little calories as you can, because you know you don’t have enough calories to make it through until the next harvest otherwise. You already know you will be bickering with your neighbor over the leaves on the trees and the wild herbs that you will need to harvest, just to stay alive. Furthermore, you prepare latrines by the side of the road, hoping that passing cart vendors will stop at *your* latrine, so that you can have a little extra “night soil” fertilizer.
This diminished carrying capacity is not a natural phenomenon. It is a result of the devastation of a series of wars of foreign invasion turned internecine warlordism. It is a result of the exploitation of the resources by foreign empires, followed by the flushing of the market with cheap machine-made goods, which made whole swaths of the urban population return to the countryside with dwindling prospects of land. And, most crucially, it is a result of the landlords who recieved these landless people and pinched the class of people who owned a tiny amount of their own land. The problems China faced were started by feudalism, but exacerbated by a constant feedback loop between imperialism and the merciless local bourgeoisie.
“The rising tide of landless and destitute people enabled landowners to stiffen the terms of tenancy, to raise rents and jack up interest rates. [...] Weighed down by high interest rates, harassed by heavy taxes, caught in the snares of a rigged market, many landowning peasants went bankrupt, sold out their holdings strip by strip, and ended up with the yoke of rent around their necks, or left for the city hoping to find work [...] that would keep them alive. [...] "There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him.""
When Japan invaded China, two official resistance movements emerged: the Nationalists, as lead by Chiang Kai-Shek, whose power came from the gentry (landlords) and the south of China, and the Chinese Communist Party, lead by Mao Tse-tung, drawing power from the radical peasant movements (big C communist and not) of North China. Terrified of losing their stranglehold of peasant China, the nationalists underwent a bizarre calculation for “resisting” the foreign occupation: the bending path to freedom. Seeing that the Japanese would soon be defeated by the United States, the Nationalists surrendered and accepted posts in the occupying government. When the Japanese withdrew, the Nationalists would be in power. Needless to say, in the areas liberated by the People’s Liberation Army, things went a little differently. Mao declared the Draft Agrarian Law:
“"With sentences as abrupt as the strokes of a fodder-chopping knife, the new law claimed the death of landlordism:
Article I: The agrarian system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation is abolished. The agrarian system of "land-to-the-tiller" is to be realized.
Article II: Landownership rights of all landlords are abolished.
Article III: Landownership rights of all ancestral shrines, temples, monasteries, schools, institutions, and organizations are abolished.
Article IV: All debts incurred in the countryside prior to the reform of the agrarian system are cancelled."”
At first, the “land to the tiller” movement was merely anti-collaborationist, but quickly changed to a class-based redistribution. This is what the book concentrates on, the struggle of a small rural town to redistribute land and therefore wealth in an equitable fashion, to abolish landlordism and feudalism and embark on a new economic project. The author is careful to paint every detail of this amazing process that takes place within this tiny representative sample of the North Chinese countryside. This is not only useful for a narrative grasp on the 600 page book, but also because the scale of a BILLION people working to redistribute wealth and land is so immense that the humanity of the struggle could be overlooked in favor of dead statistics. Luckily, this book maintains a narrow focus on the village to humanize the nuts-and-bolts struggles. Every once in a while, however, we are treated to a contextualizing of these struggles, with the concomitant vertigo of zooming out to such an enormous degree: “In these months Chiang had lost a total of 2,640,000 men who were killed, wounded, or captured. In the same period the People’s Liberation Army had added 1,600,000 regular and irregular troops to its forces.” [482] The book does an amazing job of humanizing events and keeping them within the (ahem, much) larger political and military context, including both overall strategy used by the military commanders (it is said that the revolution was successful because while Chiang Kai-Shek was playing chess, Mao was using the Chinese map like a Go board) and entertaining details (the People’s Liberation Army mocked their adversary: ““America is our arsenal, and Chiang Kai-shek is our quartermaster.” In every major engagement they captured thousands of rounds of ammunition, mountain guns, machine guns, trucks, bazookas, and even tanks.” [483])
The Communist Party of China acts as a shephard for the peasant revolt, sometimes with impressive wisdom, and sometimes with ugly politics carried over from the worst of Marxist-Leninism. The wisdom comes through most readily with the willingness to criticise themselves and change the direction of a policy when it is shown to be ineffectual. And where the revolution invites the deep participation of regular people in the decisions that affect their lives the most, it is the most beautiful. The poorest of peasants, once given enough land on which they could sustain themselves, gathered weeds and organic matter to burn into ash, collecting nitrates used in munitions on the front. “How much more direct, how much more personal is the involvement of a people who must burn leaves and trash to make their own nitrates than of a people who need only contribute dollars to a munitions industry they have never seen.” [594] In a meeting in which the population was consulted to decide on the class standing of themselves and their peers:
“No votes were taken. To decide such matters by a vote meant to impose the will of the majority on the will of the minority, with all the hard feeling such an imposition was sure to cause. [...] This system enabled shy people to speak first in small groups and gradually build up confidence to the point where they were willing to stand up and talk before the multitude. Truth was well served by such an arrangement because what one person forgot another was sure to remember. The collective proved wiser than any individual, and in the end a consensus of the participants emerged." [278] This was not some imposed structure from the Party or strict political dogma, but the organic decisionmaking structure of a people in rebellion.
The Communist Party of China often made successful selfless contributions to this movement. Communists bottomlined working on the field of People’s Liberation Army soldiers so that they could be sure that their families were well taken care of without their labor. The earnest young cadre threw themselves on the most intimidating workload without any noticeable reward, and even come up with charming euphemisms like “Revolutionary Heat:” the fleas and lice that have found new hosts in the itchy flesh of young revolutionaries who have moved to the countryside to make sure that the land redistribution goes smoothly. And the Communists were adept at focusing the struggle: “Where analysis showed an objective community of interest the Party tried to bring people together regardless of the subjective animosities and suspicions that divided them."
But there were other times in which the leadership structure itself steered the movement of the people away from rebellion or made unself-conscious power grabs, which forms a practical criticism of the state form and the use of it to liberate a people.
At first, petty tyranny reared its ugly head when the Communists came to power locally. Governing without the consent of the people was called “commandism,” and ran parallel with corruption and cruelty from the cadres. As happens with all states, especially states-in-waiting, "that strange dichotomy- slack discipline within the revolutionary [sic] ranks coupled with harsh measures to enforce obedience among the people as a whole.[...] Abuses of power characteristic of the political machine of the old regime re-emerged, albeit still in pale reflection." [225] The book seems to think that it is ironic that the worst abuses of power were committed by the people with the most access to this power: "Ironically, it was Wang Yu-lai, vice-chairman of the Peasants' Association, who was responsible for the worst abuses of power" [232] This is not surprising in the least.
This form of counterrevolution was largely abated, however, by the criticism and self-criticism which came about soon after. The formation of “gates” to pass through to be a part of the Communist Party, and the meting out of punishments for the offenders was a respectable step towards justice, though it maintained the state form. Sometimes, tradition such as patriarchy was too great for the revolutionary peasants to overcome: “Many stories revealed that Liberation had not yet guaranteed free marriage or even the property rights upon which free marriage must be based. In East Portal one woman had been forced to marry a veteran. The cadres said, ”This man has faught for us for many years. How could we live a peaceful life if it hadn’t been for his efforts? We must reward him with a wife.” When the woman refused, she was ordered to explain herself at a mass meeting.” [398]
As the victory of the People’s Liberation Army drew nearer, there comes a backlash of institutional power which intervenes to protect the middle peasants and the capitalist mode of production. “Whenever the peasants are mobilized for struggle, they push toward extreme equalitarianism, and the cadres are carried along with them. It is for this reason that the peasants need proletarian leadership.” [607] The purpose of the revolution as steered by the Communist Party is revealed as being capitalist in nature, if state-owned capitalist: “Not abstract justice, not absolute equality, but the development of production, the industrial transformation of the country- this was the goal of the revolution.” [487] The Communist Party, on the verge of taking power over all of China, turns on Leftism and equality. “Only under Communism, when the land belongs to the country as a whole, and abundance is the order of the day, can equality be realized. [...] We oppose the feudal system primarily because it hinders production.” [492]
The restructuring of the revolution against equality and for the consolidation of power within the state was clearly painful for the cadre and for the people of Long Bow. The money and land “unjustly” seized by the peasants from the “middle peasant” class was taken back and put at the disposal of the state, and politics and law were consolidated beneath them. “Those who use democracy as an excuse for criminal acts must be punished by law[...] “Now each person can vote for the men and women he wants to see as cadres. But after the election is over [...e]veryone is obliged to carry out the decisions of the elected. [...] If he is no good, if he does his job poorly, then you can elect someone else to take his place. But as long as he is in office, you must listen to him. That is only fair. Otherwise, we can have nothing but anarchy. [Party members] were relieved to find that enforcement was part of the new system and that the work team meant to tackle the growing trend toward anarchy.”
The copy of Fanshen that I read was an old Paperback I bought thirdhand, and was literally fell apart as I read it. I would have to carefully peel the book open less than halfway, and read it partially obscured. The experience got worse as I continued through the book and found myself holding a chunk of pages that had separated itself from the binding entirely. I patched it together with scotch tape when I could. There is a cheap metaphor in here somewhere about the Chinese Revolution itself.
Despite the consolidation of counterrevolution (passed off by the author as necessary to maintain the revolution), the events described in this book were literally world-changing. A fifth of all humanity was deeply affected by the actions of the Communist Party of China, more than not in a strikingly positive way. The gains of the revolution have given something no counterrevolution could have taken away: “As they marched along [the road to fanshen] they gradually learned the central lesson of our times, that only through participation in common struggle can any individual achieve personal emancipation, that the road to fanshen for one lies through the fanshen of all.”
I read this book to challenge my politics and learn about what happens when we win a revolution, especially on a grand scale. However you view China today (the planet's sweatshop with some of the worst human, labor, and environmental abuses ever committed, but labeled "Communist" so that they can shoot striking workers dead without outrage from the Stalinoid wierdos who also call themselves "Communists"), the contents of this book contain a revolution of an immense magnitude, and yet one that the author makes feel very intimate.
I was struck by the tremendous poverty of the Chinese countryside after 1840 and before the Second World War. The poor peasants in Long Bow plant in the spring and summer, but in Winter, they sit inside. One would think that one could make handicrafts or something during the winter, not to waste a moment of time, but the truth of a Long Bow winter for a poor peasant is that you cannot afford it. You sit as still as possible, using up as little calories as you can, because you know you don’t have enough calories to make it through until the next harvest otherwise. You already know you will be bickering with your neighbor over the leaves on the trees and the wild herbs that you will need to harvest, just to stay alive. Furthermore, you prepare latrines by the side of the road, hoping that passing cart vendors will stop at *your* latrine, so that you can have a little extra “night soil” fertilizer.
This diminished carrying capacity is not a natural phenomenon. It is a result of the devastation of a series of wars of foreign invasion turned internecine warlordism. It is a result of the exploitation of the resources by foreign empires, followed by the flushing of the market with cheap machine-made goods, which made whole swaths of the urban population return to the countryside with dwindling prospects of land. And, most crucially, it is a result of the landlords who recieved these landless people and pinched the class of people who owned a tiny amount of their own land. The problems China faced were started by feudalism, but exacerbated by a constant feedback loop between imperialism and the merciless local bourgeoisie.
“The rising tide of landless and destitute people enabled landowners to stiffen the terms of tenancy, to raise rents and jack up interest rates. [...] Weighed down by high interest rates, harassed by heavy taxes, caught in the snares of a rigged market, many landowning peasants went bankrupt, sold out their holdings strip by strip, and ended up with the yoke of rent around their necks, or left for the city hoping to find work [...] that would keep them alive. [...] "There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him.""
When Japan invaded China, two official resistance movements emerged: the Nationalists, as lead by Chiang Kai-Shek, whose power came from the gentry (landlords) and the south of China, and the Chinese Communist Party, lead by Mao Tse-tung, drawing power from the radical peasant movements (big C communist and not) of North China. Terrified of losing their stranglehold of peasant China, the nationalists underwent a bizarre calculation for “resisting” the foreign occupation: the bending path to freedom. Seeing that the Japanese would soon be defeated by the United States, the Nationalists surrendered and accepted posts in the occupying government. When the Japanese withdrew, the Nationalists would be in power. Needless to say, in the areas liberated by the People’s Liberation Army, things went a little differently. Mao declared the Draft Agrarian Law:
“"With sentences as abrupt as the strokes of a fodder-chopping knife, the new law claimed the death of landlordism:
Article I: The agrarian system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation is abolished. The agrarian system of "land-to-the-tiller" is to be realized.
Article II: Landownership rights of all landlords are abolished.
Article III: Landownership rights of all ancestral shrines, temples, monasteries, schools, institutions, and organizations are abolished.
Article IV: All debts incurred in the countryside prior to the reform of the agrarian system are cancelled."”
At first, the “land to the tiller” movement was merely anti-collaborationist, but quickly changed to a class-based redistribution. This is what the book concentrates on, the struggle of a small rural town to redistribute land and therefore wealth in an equitable fashion, to abolish landlordism and feudalism and embark on a new economic project. The author is careful to paint every detail of this amazing process that takes place within this tiny representative sample of the North Chinese countryside. This is not only useful for a narrative grasp on the 600 page book, but also because the scale of a BILLION people working to redistribute wealth and land is so immense that the humanity of the struggle could be overlooked in favor of dead statistics. Luckily, this book maintains a narrow focus on the village to humanize the nuts-and-bolts struggles. Every once in a while, however, we are treated to a contextualizing of these struggles, with the concomitant vertigo of zooming out to such an enormous degree: “In these months Chiang had lost a total of 2,640,000 men who were killed, wounded, or captured. In the same period the People’s Liberation Army had added 1,600,000 regular and irregular troops to its forces.” [482] The book does an amazing job of humanizing events and keeping them within the (ahem, much) larger political and military context, including both overall strategy used by the military commanders (it is said that the revolution was successful because while Chiang Kai-Shek was playing chess, Mao was using the Chinese map like a Go board) and entertaining details (the People’s Liberation Army mocked their adversary: ““America is our arsenal, and Chiang Kai-shek is our quartermaster.” In every major engagement they captured thousands of rounds of ammunition, mountain guns, machine guns, trucks, bazookas, and even tanks.” [483])
The Communist Party of China acts as a shephard for the peasant revolt, sometimes with impressive wisdom, and sometimes with ugly politics carried over from the worst of Marxist-Leninism. The wisdom comes through most readily with the willingness to criticise themselves and change the direction of a policy when it is shown to be ineffectual. And where the revolution invites the deep participation of regular people in the decisions that affect their lives the most, it is the most beautiful. The poorest of peasants, once given enough land on which they could sustain themselves, gathered weeds and organic matter to burn into ash, collecting nitrates used in munitions on the front. “How much more direct, how much more personal is the involvement of a people who must burn leaves and trash to make their own nitrates than of a people who need only contribute dollars to a munitions industry they have never seen.” [594] In a meeting in which the population was consulted to decide on the class standing of themselves and their peers:
“No votes were taken. To decide such matters by a vote meant to impose the will of the majority on the will of the minority, with all the hard feeling such an imposition was sure to cause. [...] This system enabled shy people to speak first in small groups and gradually build up confidence to the point where they were willing to stand up and talk before the multitude. Truth was well served by such an arrangement because what one person forgot another was sure to remember. The collective proved wiser than any individual, and in the end a consensus of the participants emerged." [278] This was not some imposed structure from the Party or strict political dogma, but the organic decisionmaking structure of a people in rebellion.
The Communist Party of China often made successful selfless contributions to this movement. Communists bottomlined working on the field of People’s Liberation Army soldiers so that they could be sure that their families were well taken care of without their labor. The earnest young cadre threw themselves on the most intimidating workload without any noticeable reward, and even come up with charming euphemisms like “Revolutionary Heat:” the fleas and lice that have found new hosts in the itchy flesh of young revolutionaries who have moved to the countryside to make sure that the land redistribution goes smoothly. And the Communists were adept at focusing the struggle: “Where analysis showed an objective community of interest the Party tried to bring people together regardless of the subjective animosities and suspicions that divided them."
But there were other times in which the leadership structure itself steered the movement of the people away from rebellion or made unself-conscious power grabs, which forms a practical criticism of the state form and the use of it to liberate a people.
At first, petty tyranny reared its ugly head when the Communists came to power locally. Governing without the consent of the people was called “commandism,” and ran parallel with corruption and cruelty from the cadres. As happens with all states, especially states-in-waiting, "that strange dichotomy- slack discipline within the revolutionary [sic] ranks coupled with harsh measures to enforce obedience among the people as a whole.[...] Abuses of power characteristic of the political machine of the old regime re-emerged, albeit still in pale reflection." [225] The book seems to think that it is ironic that the worst abuses of power were committed by the people with the most access to this power: "Ironically, it was Wang Yu-lai, vice-chairman of the Peasants' Association, who was responsible for the worst abuses of power" [232] This is not surprising in the least.
This form of counterrevolution was largely abated, however, by the criticism and self-criticism which came about soon after. The formation of “gates” to pass through to be a part of the Communist Party, and the meting out of punishments for the offenders was a respectable step towards justice, though it maintained the state form. Sometimes, tradition such as patriarchy was too great for the revolutionary peasants to overcome: “Many stories revealed that Liberation had not yet guaranteed free marriage or even the property rights upon which free marriage must be based. In East Portal one woman had been forced to marry a veteran. The cadres said, ”This man has faught for us for many years. How could we live a peaceful life if it hadn’t been for his efforts? We must reward him with a wife.” When the woman refused, she was ordered to explain herself at a mass meeting.” [398]
As the victory of the People’s Liberation Army drew nearer, there comes a backlash of institutional power which intervenes to protect the middle peasants and the capitalist mode of production. “Whenever the peasants are mobilized for struggle, they push toward extreme equalitarianism, and the cadres are carried along with them. It is for this reason that the peasants need proletarian leadership.” [607] The purpose of the revolution as steered by the Communist Party is revealed as being capitalist in nature, if state-owned capitalist: “Not abstract justice, not absolute equality, but the development of production, the industrial transformation of the country- this was the goal of the revolution.” [487] The Communist Party, on the verge of taking power over all of China, turns on Leftism and equality. “Only under Communism, when the land belongs to the country as a whole, and abundance is the order of the day, can equality be realized. [...] We oppose the feudal system primarily because it hinders production.” [492]
The restructuring of the revolution against equality and for the consolidation of power within the state was clearly painful for the cadre and for the people of Long Bow. The money and land “unjustly” seized by the peasants from the “middle peasant” class was taken back and put at the disposal of the state, and politics and law were consolidated beneath them. “Those who use democracy as an excuse for criminal acts must be punished by law[...] “Now each person can vote for the men and women he wants to see as cadres. But after the election is over [...e]veryone is obliged to carry out the decisions of the elected. [...] If he is no good, if he does his job poorly, then you can elect someone else to take his place. But as long as he is in office, you must listen to him. That is only fair. Otherwise, we can have nothing but anarchy. [Party members] were relieved to find that enforcement was part of the new system and that the work team meant to tackle the growing trend toward anarchy.”
The copy of Fanshen that I read was an old Paperback I bought thirdhand, and was literally fell apart as I read it. I would have to carefully peel the book open less than halfway, and read it partially obscured. The experience got worse as I continued through the book and found myself holding a chunk of pages that had separated itself from the binding entirely. I patched it together with scotch tape when I could. There is a cheap metaphor in here somewhere about the Chinese Revolution itself.
Despite the consolidation of counterrevolution (passed off by the author as necessary to maintain the revolution), the events described in this book were literally world-changing. A fifth of all humanity was deeply affected by the actions of the Communist Party of China, more than not in a strikingly positive way. The gains of the revolution have given something no counterrevolution could have taken away: “As they marched along [the road to fanshen] they gradually learned the central lesson of our times, that only through participation in common struggle can any individual achieve personal emancipation, that the road to fanshen for one lies through the fanshen of all.”
November 8, 2014
I feel it's appropriate to warn that this book describes some pretty violent scenes at certain points, especially rape. It never goes into detail but they can still be quite upsetting. The descriptions of some of the abuses inflicted by Japanese puppet forces are where it's densest but there's a section where it talks about some of the abuses by cadres before the work team arrived and it mentions a rape and it did so in a way that made me pretty uncomfortable - not dismissing it at all but maybe not as seriously as it should have been? I don't know exactly how to describe it. There are a few other bits where I felt vaguely uncomfortable with the descriptions of women but none that were too bad.
Apart from that, a really, really fantastic and fascinating book. Hinton is a highly sympathetic observer and highly supportive of the CPC but also not strictly party line and he notes down so many details about the process that it's a valuable tool for even people who strongly oppose the Chinese revolution for whatever reason to learn about how things took place. By offering minute detail about how exactly the land reform process worked (even though obviously it's only in a single village) alongside the party's general policy recommendations, he gives us an incredible insight into the contradictions exposed in general by radical action - it was kind of unreal to me how closely some of what happened paralleled my own experience in radical spaces right now. Hinton gets a lot of valuable first hand accounts from before he arrived in the village and during it, with people describing their experiences, their problems with cadres, their grievances with the moment, how much the land reform has helped them, etc - seeing people speak in their own words is really incredible. By giving us all this first hand detail he allows us to directly assess the problems experienced during the process. His account of pre-revolution China is also absolutely heartbreaking - the stories of starvation and poverty and total abuse at the hands of the Japanese forces told directly by those who experienced it made me tear up several times. Anyone could read this and say "well they went wrong at x place" or whatever but the important part is saying the way problems were resolved and to take away lessons from actual revolutionary experience for things now. The most important lessons come out in revolutionary struggle. Someone mentioned that it almost feels too good to be true sometimes with how land reform actually worked out in the village and yeah it's important to realise this is only one village and I imagine a lot of other villages had things work out far more shakily (he mentions a few others with worse problems) but that doesn't make it any less valuable a document.
Some things it made me think about a lot - how is it possible to get justice for a crime with no obvious restitution? how can discipline of party members be done most effectively? how can people be encouraged to act without the existence of vanguard party type organisations? how can you effectively build a coalition of as many people as are your natural allies without alienating people unnecessarily or compromising far too much? None of these questions have easy answers but you get a very valuable sense of how they were handled at the time and it's more useful than a thousand completely ungrounded books purporting to talk about these subjects. And of course I disagreed with some of how it was handled by them at the time in the book! It's probably a mark of how well written it is that I genuinely felt connected to the struggle and the people involved and felt genuine frustration with stuff like the probably far too extensive forgiveness for cadres (as long as they genuinely recanted) even for awful crimes. But that just makes it clear to me more what's at stake and the pros and cons of these kinds of transformative justice ideas (ha).
One thing that did stick out at me is the importance of self-criticism for people in leadership positions. It's a very valuable tool.www
Apart from that, a really, really fantastic and fascinating book. Hinton is a highly sympathetic observer and highly supportive of the CPC but also not strictly party line and he notes down so many details about the process that it's a valuable tool for even people who strongly oppose the Chinese revolution for whatever reason to learn about how things took place. By offering minute detail about how exactly the land reform process worked (even though obviously it's only in a single village) alongside the party's general policy recommendations, he gives us an incredible insight into the contradictions exposed in general by radical action - it was kind of unreal to me how closely some of what happened paralleled my own experience in radical spaces right now. Hinton gets a lot of valuable first hand accounts from before he arrived in the village and during it, with people describing their experiences, their problems with cadres, their grievances with the moment, how much the land reform has helped them, etc - seeing people speak in their own words is really incredible. By giving us all this first hand detail he allows us to directly assess the problems experienced during the process. His account of pre-revolution China is also absolutely heartbreaking - the stories of starvation and poverty and total abuse at the hands of the Japanese forces told directly by those who experienced it made me tear up several times. Anyone could read this and say "well they went wrong at x place" or whatever but the important part is saying the way problems were resolved and to take away lessons from actual revolutionary experience for things now. The most important lessons come out in revolutionary struggle. Someone mentioned that it almost feels too good to be true sometimes with how land reform actually worked out in the village and yeah it's important to realise this is only one village and I imagine a lot of other villages had things work out far more shakily (he mentions a few others with worse problems) but that doesn't make it any less valuable a document.
Some things it made me think about a lot - how is it possible to get justice for a crime with no obvious restitution? how can discipline of party members be done most effectively? how can people be encouraged to act without the existence of vanguard party type organisations? how can you effectively build a coalition of as many people as are your natural allies without alienating people unnecessarily or compromising far too much? None of these questions have easy answers but you get a very valuable sense of how they were handled at the time and it's more useful than a thousand completely ungrounded books purporting to talk about these subjects. And of course I disagreed with some of how it was handled by them at the time in the book! It's probably a mark of how well written it is that I genuinely felt connected to the struggle and the people involved and felt genuine frustration with stuff like the probably far too extensive forgiveness for cadres (as long as they genuinely recanted) even for awful crimes. But that just makes it clear to me more what's at stake and the pros and cons of these kinds of transformative justice ideas (ha).
One thing that did stick out at me is the importance of self-criticism for people in leadership positions. It's a very valuable tool.www
January 26, 2013
This is the kind of history book I really enjoy: an eyewitness account, filled with lots of anecdotes and dialogue with real people. But Hinton also has an excellent sense of context -- I especially appreciated the overview of daily life in Long Bow Village that begins the book, history and cultural trends -- and he's got a novelist's sense of setting and detail. Very readable. And indispensable if you are serious about social change, especially the practical application of communism. Anyone who believes that real human beings can collectively struggle for a just, egalitarian society, ought to read this. And anyone who doubts it. Hinton is clearly a narrator sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party (as I am, in its origins), but he doesn't shy away from the petty, nasty, and brutal potential in human behavior, either. There are beatings, rapes, homicides, gossip-mongering and abuses of power. What's more interesting to me (and to Hinton) is how the Party and local acitivists responded to these problems and work at institutional, systemic reforms. You will deeply care about the people in this book, halfway doubt that it could have all happened the way Hinton says, and desperately hope that it did. (and that it can happen again)
August 15, 2024
Extraordinary document, required reading, so on and so forth. The military skirmishes are never that far away but the focus is on one rural village and its inhabitants in the years 1945-49. Many interlocking narrative arcs between the characters that illustrate the process of social transformation in ways theory can't dream of. Something that really stood out was the demonstration of what real reason and objectivity look like: a large part of the book is just meetings, meetings where voting is seen as a dirty compromise compared to consensus based on extensive discussion. These discussions 'work' (more or less, in the long run) because they're grounded on the truth of the revolution, which shows itself plainly in the miraculous breaking of historical cycles of violence and misery.
March 20, 2014
han peasants beat theire wives the middle peasants beat their hire labourers the landlords beat their tenants the gentry beat everyoen the japanese beat the chinese the eighth route army beat the japanese the communist party beat the kuomintang the cadres beat the collaborators and the peasants beat the gentry PHEW
June 18, 2011
if you're living in a brutal feudal society, read this book if you want to enact land reform. good luck everyone.
March 14, 2018
If there's any single way to summarize Fanshen, it's that in a revolution the overthrowing is actually the easy part - it's the reforging of social and material relations that is the terrain of pioneering, experimenting, failing and learning. William Hinton stayed in revolutionary China in the late 40s and kept a detailed journal of the struggles of communist cadres, women's groups, poor peasant organisations and an intricate balance of direct council democracy and single-party guidance. Despite what I've read in liberal reviews, Hinton does not at all seem "ideologically blinded" - the picture painted of the revolution is one of brash expropriation and redistribution policies, at first unheeded by the impoverished and wary masses, later overapplied in the punishment of even non-exploitative peasant households, sorely needed correctives, and never-ending discussions between cadres and village people of all backgrounds. Absolutely wonderful read.
January 30, 2023
Really kicking myself for letting this one sit on my shelf unread for so long.
A monumental work, perhaps the best single book documenting the on-the-ground process of building revolution I've ever read. Hinton is extremely thorough in covering the day to day work of the cadres in the rural village he visited during the period between the end of the war with Japan and the victory over the KMT. I've read plenty of high level overview histories of the Chinese Revolution and they're great and useful and I recommend them. But very rarely have I read such a detailed and well thought out account of the process of revolution at a small scale.
While acknowledging the huge differences in the material conditions of our struggle for socialism here in the Imperial Core in 2023 and those of rural China in 1947, I think organizers can take away so many lessons from this account. I cannot recommend it enough. This is a must read for any serious revolutionary.
A monumental work, perhaps the best single book documenting the on-the-ground process of building revolution I've ever read. Hinton is extremely thorough in covering the day to day work of the cadres in the rural village he visited during the period between the end of the war with Japan and the victory over the KMT. I've read plenty of high level overview histories of the Chinese Revolution and they're great and useful and I recommend them. But very rarely have I read such a detailed and well thought out account of the process of revolution at a small scale.
While acknowledging the huge differences in the material conditions of our struggle for socialism here in the Imperial Core in 2023 and those of rural China in 1947, I think organizers can take away so many lessons from this account. I cannot recommend it enough. This is a must read for any serious revolutionary.
August 3, 2008
This is probably the best single book that exists for coming to understand the great Chinese Revolution of 1949, and how the ordinary peasants of rural China were won over to carry it out. When I first read it in 1966 it opened my eyes to what communists are trying to do and what they are all about.
It remains a major classic of political history. It demonstrates how the revolutionaries went about applying the "mass line" to lead the ordinary people in transforming the world around them.
I honestly believe that Westerner who has not read this book can fully understand the Chinese Revolution.
It remains a major classic of political history. It demonstrates how the revolutionaries went about applying the "mass line" to lead the ordinary people in transforming the world around them.
I honestly believe that Westerner who has not read this book can fully understand the Chinese Revolution.
February 22, 2015
a beautiful documentary of an unfairly-maligned revolutionary moment. Hinton was aligned with one of the few non-Eurocentric, solidly socialist mags at the time and today still--Monthly Review. this is very much in that tradition--no sneering purist trots here, and no Orientalist liberals who only wish that Mao had been less of an idealist. just a great rendering of a transformative process. read alongside Meisner's _Mao's China_ for a more textbook take.
November 1, 2019
One of the classic accounts of the Chinese Revolution. The author spent a year (1947-48) living in a village in Shanxi, north China, as part of a team of academics investigating and helping to guide the process of land reform - the transformational 'fanshen' process whereby formerly poor peasants broke down the thousand-year-old social relations of feudalism and came to be masters of their own destiny. There's lots of detail - too much at times - but it feeds into a very vivid picture of the time, the place, the characters, the specific historic and political themes (Chinese revolution, the struggle against feudalism) and the more general psychosocial themes.
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March 9, 2021Hinton gives us a view into the the revolution that is simultaneously an insider's and an outsider's. An insider's because he was there, in the village; an outsider's because he saw it from the vantage point of a different language and culture.
The Chinese revolution was such a victory for the people of China and the world: I have the urge to study them like a coach would study a winning team. Let us play back the tapes and see where were the strokes of genius and missteps. Hinton describes the party's researches into 400 years of revolutionary movements in China to inform their own struggle. They wanted to learn from those who had come before them and failed.
It is clear, however, that we can't do the same thing they did; different conditions, of course, call for different tactics -- if the Maoists ever come to my apartment demanding I give an account of my millet stores, I'm afraid they will mistakenly class me as a 'poor peasant'.
That's not to say that nothing will carry over. There are lessons in this book about the social and organizational skills of the cadres that are still useful. Some of the vivid personalities we find in Hinton's village will no doubt be found in every town or city, however inflected by their place and time. As William Blake once said of Chaucer's pilgrims in 'Canterbury Tales'
In short, there is nothing new under the sun. Hinton, for his part manages to capture the people of Longbow village with what I am convinced is fidelity (I have no other reference points for what 1940s village life was like in China). Out of these dashes of personalities in conflict, a portrait of a whole village during a couple of crucial years emerges. At his best, Hinton even can make me feel that this one village can represent all of China.
The Chinese revolution was such a victory for the people of China and the world: I have the urge to study them like a coach would study a winning team. Let us play back the tapes and see where were the strokes of genius and missteps. Hinton describes the party's researches into 400 years of revolutionary movements in China to inform their own struggle. They wanted to learn from those who had come before them and failed.
It is clear, however, that we can't do the same thing they did; different conditions, of course, call for different tactics -- if the Maoists ever come to my apartment demanding I give an account of my millet stores, I'm afraid they will mistakenly class me as a 'poor peasant'.
That's not to say that nothing will carry over. There are lessons in this book about the social and organizational skills of the cadres that are still useful. Some of the vivid personalities we find in Hinton's village will no doubt be found in every town or city, however inflected by their place and time. As William Blake once said of Chaucer's pilgrims in 'Canterbury Tales'
The Characters of Chaucers Pilgrims are the Characters that compose all Ages & Nations, as one Age falls another rises. different to Mortal Sight but to Immortals only the same, for we see the same Characters repeated again & again in Animals in Vegetables in Minerals & in Men. Nothing new occurs in Identical Existence .. Accident ever varies Substance never suffer change nor decay
In short, there is nothing new under the sun. Hinton, for his part manages to capture the people of Longbow village with what I am convinced is fidelity (I have no other reference points for what 1940s village life was like in China). Out of these dashes of personalities in conflict, a portrait of a whole village during a couple of crucial years emerges. At his best, Hinton even can make me feel that this one village can represent all of China.
April 18, 2022
Holy shit this book is so good. I feel like I say this a lot but this is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It's an amazing, detailed, and moving account of the Chinese revolution as it played out in one particular village in the years leading up to 1949. It's not at all dense, but instead reads like a beautifully written novel about an imperfect but deeply human revolutionary process.
May 2, 2008
It took me a long time to read this beautifully-written documentary of land reform and revolution in a small Chinese village in 1948.
The author describes the revolution through a long series of engaging stories and anecdotes.
The nitty-gritty process of revolution really comes out through his stories: how people who are afraid to speak up find their voice; how organizers get people to take action to change their lives (including bullying them to go to meetings); and the role of organized radicals.
Ultimately I felt very moved by the tragic situation of the peasants in the book--their village was so poor that even after they re-distributed all the land, there still wasn't a lot of wealth to go around.
The author describes the revolution through a long series of engaging stories and anecdotes.
The nitty-gritty process of revolution really comes out through his stories: how people who are afraid to speak up find their voice; how organizers get people to take action to change their lives (including bullying them to go to meetings); and the role of organized radicals.
Ultimately I felt very moved by the tragic situation of the peasants in the book--their village was so poor that even after they re-distributed all the land, there still wasn't a lot of wealth to go around.
January 29, 2013
This is a twentieth century classic of on the spot reporting of the Maoist revolution in China and the hisorical background leading up to it.I have never forgotten Hinton's descriptions of the dire poverty in which the peasants lived and the rapacity of the landlords. Not will I ever forget his description of how the women of one village cut their landlord to death with scissors. Revolutions are by their nature brutal and this one was no exception to the rule.
A must read for anyone interested in the background of modern China.
A must read for anyone interested in the background of modern China.
July 10, 2015
Fanshen is the story of the revolution for a small rural peasant village in the north of China called Long Bow. It is filled with evidence and does not second guess itself, which allows for the documentary style to flourish, with the prime purpose of building up a story of the actions and heartbreak of the people of Longbow as they made changes to their centuries long feudal way of life.
A very inspiring history-from-below contribution.
A very inspiring history-from-below contribution.
December 17, 2012
An absolute must read. Chronologically speaking, it can be a bit hectic, but then again, so was the evolution of Chinese revolution in the first half of the 20th century. Hinton manages to bring decades of political unrest together in this coherent, eye-opening, myth-disposing tour de force.
November 5, 2008
Very informative. Explains why a revolution was necessary in rural China.
July 16, 2017
Definitely a must-read.
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March 23, 2026Hjalp med Historie IAen min blant annet og er kjempeinteressant, tror ikke noe kan være mer verdt enn dette når det er snakk om hvordan folket opplevde jordreformene. Hinton var woke asff men jeg ble litt sånn lost mange steder i boka. funka bra som en kilde da :P takk!
April 19, 2024
top 5 wow
February 1, 2018
A long read, a good read and a testament to Hope. Better than what I expected, statements are thoroughly qualified & so it becomes a little tedious with the emergence of numbers.
It has left me impressed with the incredible transition that Communism enabled, an immense shift from Feudalism to something a little more modern. Failures are not ignored, and Mr. Hinton's direct exposure to Chinese Communism was finished before certain failures, such as Tienanmen Square or the modern treatment of Uighur people.
It has left me impressed with the incredible transition that Communism enabled, an immense shift from Feudalism to something a little more modern. Failures are not ignored, and Mr. Hinton's direct exposure to Chinese Communism was finished before certain failures, such as Tienanmen Square or the modern treatment of Uighur people.
February 2, 2016
I like the way William Hinton (or 韩丁) wrote the whole book. Instead of a document targeting academics, this book is more like a vivid novel. This makes the reading experience much more enjoyable, especially for a 637-page book.
However, I found I only started to "truly believe" the author's words from page 251 since, as he mentioned in the prologue, he didn't really get to know Low Bow (the field) until March 1948.
In general, this is a classic:-)
However, I found I only started to "truly believe" the author's words from page 251 since, as he mentioned in the prologue, he didn't really get to know Low Bow (the field) until March 1948.
In general, this is a classic:-)
July 17, 2018
This book is definitely worth reading, but you have to read between the lines. The author is hopelessly enamored with the Maoist revolution, but seems to accurately report what happened in the village. So if you're interested in a practically-inside view of the Chinese Communist revolution, this is a great resource. You just have to ignore a lot of excuse-making editorialization that goes along with it.
March 9, 2023
Maybe I'm overrating this because the subject matter was new to me. It's very well written. It doesn't seem to put a romantic gloss on events, and so paints a picture of revolution that is very human and frank, but still hopeful.
Detailed review with my review of the sequel, Shenfan .
Detailed review with my review of the sequel, Shenfan .
August 10, 2007
Ridiculously loooong, difficult book but definitely made me think later about revolution, war, life in rural China and so on. Historical accounts written as short stories, yet all tied together, too....
April 11, 2016
this book is great if youre interested in Marxism or just in a bunch of cool anecdotes about the brutal misery of peasant life and then the catharsis when peasants start bashing and shooting all their evil landlords
August 8, 2008
I read this more than twenty years ago but it sticks in my mind because it very graphically and simply explains how the revolution happened in rural China
June 6, 2011
Amazing!!!
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