Every society prefers to keep their shared history close, and those who would dispute it closer. A shared sense of a collective's memory is critical in modern society for a number of reasons. It is a basis for the construction and maintenance of collective solidarity around which a collective constructs itself and then sees itself in that construction. The Biblical narratives are an important and anoint example. But then so are the narratives of revolutionary solidarity woven around collectives the legitimating premise of which is that they are a manifestation of the leading social forces of society with an acute sense of a mission (in liberal democracy the mission is to ensure a protected space for the realization of mass desires expressed through bottom up interactions; in Marxist-Leninist worldviews the mission is to lead and guide the masses toward the realization of a communist society by marching along the socialist path). It is also a way in which the ideological basis of the social order can be embedded in the forms and arc of the "story" of the collective. These include not just hero stories (see my discussion in the the construction of a welfare narrative in the United States here), but also stories that deepen an alignment of national ethos with the political-economic-social system, on which its institutional structures are grounded and thereby made more legitimate. This dialectic between national or other collective (his)stories In addition, the history of a collective--and especially its birth stories--are meant to provide the justification for the ordering of the social collective. Stories of the birth of a nation, or people, or group. These narratives
of identity are as useful to the construction of LGBTQ+ identity as it
is to the construction of any ethno- or national-identity. The relationship between (his)stories and the first principles of collective organization are inherently structurally inter-subjective--in the sense that each reflects and expresses the other, and that this relationship acquires a dynamic element as that process of expression is repeated. All of this is well known and often the subject of consideration in several fields (philosophy, politics, economics, and now modeling).
A challenge that has become more important to social collectives--including states--is focused more intensely on the way a collective might best to manage the unavoidable dialectic processes inherent in the production and cultivation of these (his)stories. In all systems this managing of historical collective intersubjective dialectics is built around--and derives its strength from--a dialectical process that is shaped by and shapes the political-economic system in which it is embedded.
Official history is the way that normative values in political can
travel through time from out of the past and into the future. Power over
history (again understood as the project of rationalizing the past
through the application of normative assumptions also tends to
rationalize or "prove" those normative assumptions by reference to the
rationalization proffered as official history. The fighting for a
supreme cultural authority over the meaning of history--that is its
rationalization in the service of some overarching normative meaning,
and in the embedding of some quite strategic baseline self-awareness as a
social and political necessity for the members of the political
collectives--is in this sense not merely an important political project,
but one that exposes factional rifts in political communities as they
develop. If the etymological roots of the term "history" is a compound
of "seeing" and "knowing" then this approach to historical narrative is
one that emphasizes the "knowing" as the predicate for "seeing." ("Resolution
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major
Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past
Century" [中共中央关于党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验的决议（全文）] Text and Thoughts).
In liberal democracies it is aligned with the structures of fractured and aggregating interactions. In simpler terms, it is premised on the privileged autonomy and driving force of the individual (German Basic Law Article 1 manifests this first principle in the political legalities of the state), which, when aggregated, produce an effects based social solidarity which can be discerned by what is left over from these self- and inter-individual interactions. Those leftovers or effects, then, constitute the expression and movement of the dialectic and the shape of solidarity at any one point in time. Control, and the resulting stability for the collective of all of these moving parts, is realized in two principal ways. The first is that the process is iterative--it builds itself and thus it is constrained by itself within arcs of time; that also suggests linearity (though that may be disappearing in an age of digital simultaneity through hyperlinking, multiple visualization and data herding). The second is that the process is an expression of the alignment between the first principles of solidarity and its manifestation in aggregating individual dialectical encounters with them. The example of the dialectics of the first principle of equality in liberal democracy suggests the complexity, iterative, and evolutionary process of the principle within a stability enhancing framing structure for which the institutions of the social collective are devoted. Thus the hard distinction between revolutionary and noisy solidarity affirming dialectic. Again, much of this is well known and generations of interested people have developed their own arc of intersubjective dialectic about the subjective dialectics of the liberal democratic collective order. The efforts to universalize these mechanisms and the process have proven less successful. All of this is expressed through (in part) and forms the basis for the
casting and recasting of history, understood as a contemporary
reflection of the past to support the structures of solidarity in the
present and provide a basis for its further evolution in the future. As
contentious as it might be, and subject to revolutionary overthrow
(traditionally the thrust of Marxist analytics, though volatility at the margins can produce decay in the structures without the help of outside vanguards), the
structures and processes of fracture in liberal democracy are themselves critical to the stability; they are critical precisely because these are collective systems built on the privileging of individual autonomy the aggregations of which produce dynamic social cohesion (considered here, here). What appears to make the system of social collectivity built around the driving force of aggregating expressions of individual autonomy (in themselves and in their relations with others) weak serves the opposite purpose--to strengthen stability through the polycentric dialectics of anarchic (order without a center) of liberal democracy (and its markets and its fractures.
In Marxist-Leninist systems the management of collective intersubjective dialectics produces a considerably different structural mechanics. That management is necessarily aligned with the core principle of the leadership of the vanguard of leading social forces organized first as a revolutionary, and then as a part in power. Marxist-Leninism in its revolutionary phases seeks to use the modalities of collective dialectics against the stability of liberal democracy itself (on the basis of a theory that posits that liberal democracy is neither liberal nor democratic, in the sense understood by a Marxist vanguard) and that its internal decay and collapse must be enhanced by using its greatest strength against it. Fair enough. But a revolutionary vanguard has little to lose when it seeks to accelerate the decay of a collective order inimical to its own set of first principles. What strengthens the Leninist order is the unalterable conviction of the inevitability of a forward movement towards communist society for which a Leninist revolutionary and then institutional order must provide the guiding force and through the leadership of which a controlled and centrally managed dialectic may be developed to ensure that the vanguard leading the masses relentlessly follows the socialist path toward the communist ideal. Coordinated dialectics from the top becomes the essential lubricant of forward motion.
It follows that when the vanguard forces, organized as a communist party, become the party in power and must build a state around them for the management of the masses and the project of having the masses travel forward along the socialist path (a journey guided by and a path made visible through the efforts of the vanguard) toward the establishment of a communist society,
the dynamics change. Now the process of autonomous intersubjective dialectics driving social movement becomes a destructive force. It becomes, in the face of the overarching critical legitimating obligation of the Communist vanguard to guide and to lead, both an oppositional force and a substantial threat to the legitimacy and forward movement (as that is understood by the vanguard) of the socialist path toward communism mission.
It becomes nihilism. And not just an academic nihilism, but one that is inherently political. Its nihilism emerges precisely because it rejects the unalterable foundation of any set of first principles as other than socially constructed. That starting point--that one can test and re-test everything--is fundamentally incompatible with any system that posits a set of starting premises, precisely because, at its limit, it can be used to undo the system itself (again precisely what, as a revolutionary party seeks). A Marxist Leninist vanguard seeks to enhance and accelerate the decay of the liberal democratic system that its own theory posits must make way for the socialist road and its unalterable routing toward the establishment of a communist society. But that is incomprehensible where the revolutionary party becomes the party in power; now the "operating system" is set, and efforts to challenge it becomes an expression of backwards rather than forward movement along the only road that it is possible to follow--the socialist path (see, e.g.,
here). But this impulse is not
sui generis to Marxist-Leninism; it forms the basis for virtually all religious systems, and in the form of one of its Christian manifestations suggests the need to mediate between
Fides et Ratio (between faith and reason).
It is to the protection of the vanguard against uncontrolled impulses to test--toward criticism and self-criticism--that the principle of historical nihilism in Chinese Marxist-Leninist theory.
The term inherits the prevalent interpretation of nihilism in western philosophy as a negation of ‘truth’ and the lack of purpose in human life. However, by putting the adjective ‘historical’ in front of nihilism, the term represents a conception of historical narration which doubts and negates the truthfulness and legitimacy of the CCP-endorsed modern Chinese history. The critique of this conception of history allows the CCP to brand any scepticism and public doubt over the credibility of the historical achievements of the CCP, its leaders and heroes as ‘nihilistic’. By doing so, it forestalls any debate about CCP-endorsed modern Chinese history in order to maintain the CCP’s legitimacy and credibility in history writing. (Jian Xu, Qian Gong,and Wen Yon, "Maintaining Ideological Security and Legitimacy in Digital China: Governance of Cyber Historical Nihilism" (2022) 185(1) Media international Australia 26-40, 28).
But what, then, is it, that one encounters, when one considers evolving Chinese Leninist encounters with historical nihilism? Of course, one encounter bumps up against the idea that an ideology that rejects the power of ideology is itself a contradiction that distracts from the imperatives of social collective solidarity. It may be useful as a basis for thinking through issues, but as a governing ideology it eventually posits disintegration. That is easy and not very useful. More interesting are the pragmatics that follow. First, the idea is that historical nihilism as an ideology is effectively reactionary when it confronts a socialist revolutionary vanguard, even after it has assumed its role as a party in power. It is effectively the kryptonite of Marxist-Leninist collectivity. For Chinese commentators, for example, the disintegration of Soviet Leninism (and its Marxist project) can be attributed to, in part, the criticism of the system itself, and more particularly, to its leadership. That is what is sometimes extracted from a Chinese Leninist reading of the decay and disintegration of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. The problem, here, was that the dialectics of leadership within the vanguard were used as gateways to broader attacks on the system itself.
"Khrushchev’s “secret speech” set a precedent of repudiating the CPSU’s history and rang up the curtain on the first wave of historical nihilism within the CPSU. . . When Leonid Brezhnev came to power, however, he selectively ignored Stalin’s errors and stressed only his achievements, going from one extreme to another. Brezhnev mounted a full defense of Stalin and of the CPSU’s history and did not treat them dialectically. This kind of one-sided assessment of history had exactly the opposite effect, which exacerbated the spread of “de-Stalinization” in theoretical circles. . . The second upsurge of historical nihilism within the CPSU occurred during the Gorbachev era. Gorbachev launched a campaign to “re-evaluate history” and directed its attack at CPSU leaders and Soviet socialism." (Hu Zhongyue 胡中月, "The Symptoms, Damages, and Lessons of Historical Nihilism in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" [苏共党内历史虚无主义的表现、危害及启示], Contemporary World and Socialism 当代世界与社会主义 (2019)).
The solution inevitably follows--in order to avoid historical nihilism one either adopted the dialectical approach of Deng Xiaoping relating to Mao Zedong, or one avoids criticizing leaders in front of the masses (unless, of course, they are to be made an example--corruption, treasonous behaviors, etc.).
The essence of the counter to historical nihilism is to protect against the repudiation of one's own history in the process of dialectical progression (Ibid., p. 4-5). That, in turn, requires that such a dialectical process remain firmly in the collective hands of the vanguard. The object is to use history to guide the masses, rather than confuse them with the messiness of the dialectical process of the vanguard as it seeks to march forward (mostly) along the socialist path (ibid., pp. 5-7). The solution is to carefully preserve the core ideological values the care and development of which has been undertaken by the vanguard of leading social forces now the party in power; view history through a Marxist lens, and carefully manage the expression of these dialectics within a public space. (Ibid., pp. 7-9).
Where does the leave dialectics? And history? Within the structures and practices of democratic centralism.
It seems that some of our comrades still do not understand the democratic centralism which Marx and Lenin talked of. . . Comrades, we are revolutionaries. If we have really committed mistakes of the kind which are harmful to the people’s cause, then we should seek the opinions of the masses and of comrades and carry out a self-examination. This sort of self-examination should sometimes be repeated several times over. If once is not enough and people are not satisfied, then it should be done a second time. If they are still not satisfied, it should be done a third time until nobody has any more criticisms. . . Criticism and self-criticism is a kind of method. It is a method of resolving contradictions among the people and it is the only method. There is no other. But if we do not have a full democratic life and do not truly implement democratic centralism, then this method of criticism and self-criticism cannot be applied. . . Without democracy there cannot be any correct centralism because people’s ideas differ, and if their understanding of things lacks unity then centralism cannot be established. What is centralism? First of all it is a centralization of correct ideas, on the basis of which unity of understanding, policy, planning, command and action are achieved. (Mao Zedong, Talk At An Enlarged Working Conference Convened By The Central Committee Of The Communist Party Of China (January 30, 1962); consider the analysis HERE).
History is what must be projected outward from the vanguard to the masses (discussed here); it serves as a part of the controlled dialectic subsumed within the parameters of the mass line (considered here, here, and here). What is projected inward within the institutional structures of the vanguard itself is political dialectic, which remains a process by which the vanguard, as its own subject, seeks to move forward (more or less) along the socialist path. This, then, might well be the real starting point for any discussion of historical nihilism within Chinese Marxist-Leninism (see also here, here).
