Chapter 42 Section 2 Meetings to Fully Promote Democracy

The Central Work Conference has fully promoted democracy. All the people who participated in the conference felt it personally and were very satisfied with it. The participants of the meeting dared to think and speak, bravely broke into those areas that were considered "forbidden areas" in the past, and said things that people were afraid to say in the past. This is to exercise their democratic rights.Democracy does not wait for a gift from above.At the same time, the participants of the meeting will not hit other speakers with sticks, wear hats, set the tone, or draw frames. The speaking time is not limited, the number of speeches is not limited, and the scope of speeches is not limited.There is no limit to these few, the leader of the meeting did not announce it, but it was implemented naturally.Of course, this is related to the level and high level of self-awareness of the participants in the meeting, and it is also related to the fact that the leaders of the meeting have never done anything that is not conducive to the full development of democracy.If some member of the Standing Committee said something that was not conducive to the full development of democracy, but those who participated in the meeting remained silent and did not come out to correct it, the situation would be much different.That was not the case at this meeting.

One such thing happened at the meeting.At a meeting where the conveners of each group reported the speeches of each group to the Standing Committee, the time of this report was the eve of the second meeting on November 25. I did not record the specific time in my notebook. Comrade Wang Dongxing said : "We must consider the overall situation. We should not be chaotic. We must practice democracy, democracy with leadership, centralization with leadership, and unity in the whole party. We must not say things that are not good for the party, and do not do things that are not good for the party."

These words are literally correct, but when Wang Dongxing said such words at the report meeting at that time, it meant to criticize or warn in advance the speeches made at the group meeting.Those who participated in the Central Work Conference were all experienced senior cadres in the party. How could they fail to understand the meaning of these few words?Therefore, after this word was passed down, the attendees of each group expressed strong dissatisfaction. When the convener reported to the Standing Committee of the Central Committee on the evening of November 27, each group put forward such an opinion: what Vice Chairman Wang said at the last meeting about democracy and centralization with leadership is the same as Chairman Hua’s discussion at the meeting on the 25th. Conference estimates do not fit.Our meetings these days do not involve the issue of leadership. "Don't say anything that is not conducive to unity, and don't do anything that is not conducive to unity" is also not good.The purpose of this meeting is to make things clear.At the report meeting, when the convener of the group reflected the opinions of each group on Wang Dongxing's speech, Wang Dongxing was present, and Wang didn't say anything more about these criticisms that confronted him face to face.The speeches of the attendees in each group were not affected by Wang Dongxing's words.

Criticizing and exposing comrades who said and did things that had a bad influence on real life during the "Cultural Revolution" and in the two years after the crushing of the "Gang of Four" is a way to fully promote the democratic spirit at this Central Work Conference. important aspects of.A prominent manifestation of this is the criticism by name, including the criticism by name of a vice chairman of the Party Central Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.This was not only satisfactory to the participants, but the Standing Committee of the Central Committee also gave special praise at a group meeting.Despite the sharpness of the critics, there is no atmosphere and pressure to prevent others from pleading and rebutting.To speak face to face is to listen to different opinions.

Speeches are only one major aspect of a meeting where democracy is fully developed.Yet another important aspect is the participation of meeting attendees in drafting and revising meeting documents.The method is to let the meeting participants know what the meeting is going to make a decision, and hope that they can fully express their opinions, and collect these opinions as the basis for revising the originally prepared draft document.The development of the two documents on agriculture that were prepared for the meeting is an example of the full development of democracy in this regard. The Central Working Conference does not have the right to adopt central resolutions or elect members of the Central Committee and the Politburo. Therefore, those who attend this meeting do not have such voting and voting rights, but they have the right to vote and make suggestions. used this right.

The speeches at this meeting were very active, and almost everyone expressed their views.I want to do a job to make a statistics on my participation in the speeches of the Northwest Group to illustrate the enthusiasm of the speeches. To talk about democracy is to talk about equality.Members of the Politburo of the Central Work Conference were the same as the general meeting participants in the group meeting. Others did not regard them as leaders of the same level, and their speeches were not particularly "serious and cautious", so that People forget that they are Politburo members.As for the five members of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, they were not organized into the six groups, but the Standing Committee members also expressed their opinions, sometimes at the Standing Committee meeting, and sometimes at the report meeting of the conveners of each group.They also expressed their own views, and most of these views were passed on to each group, and comrades in each group could also express their opinions.At the report meeting, the members of the Standing Committee used their democratic rights to express their opinions.There are two aspects to their speeches. One is that each person expresses his or her own point of view, and the other is that the moderator represents the Standing Committee to express the guiding nature of the meeting.The former part falls within the scope of fully developing democracy.

Originally, the content of democracy is multi-faceted, and people's enthusiasm and creativity can be said to be one of the fundamental contents.At this meeting, everyone felt that their enthusiasm was not suppressed in any way.Of course, it was also constrained by the traditional forces at the time. For example, I had to spend a lot of thought on the issue of holding high the banner of Mao Zedong Thought, and the question of what is meant by "holding high": whether to repeat Mao Zedong's words over and over again is "holding high", or to look at reality realistically. The business of life is "exalting", no one is willing to comment on whether the term "exalting" itself is correct or not, and no one has raised such a question.

Writing a paragraph promoting democracy in a national comprehensive work document seems to have become a "normalized" behavior since I don't know when, so it often becomes a cliché.Routine words have their functions, but they can only function as clichés, and cannot give people a fresh feeling, nor can they give people ideological inspiration and education, and cannot arouse people's enthusiasm for democracy.If there are deep insights, fresh language, and practical content, the situation will be different. At this central working conference, whether Ye Jianying or Deng Xiaoping, what they said about democracy in their speeches at the meeting left a deep impression on the participants, and also on the cadres and the masses who read their speeches.

In Ye Jianying's speech at the closing meeting, he specifically talked about the topic of fully promoting democracy (rather than generally talking about promoting democracy).He spoke very thoroughly, pointing out that the "Gang of Four" fabricated the bizarre theory that practicing democracy is tantamount to practicing capitalism, and that feudalism was used to pass off socialism, and our important task is to pay attention to overcoming feudalism.Ye Jianying also said that leading cadres should not talk about democracy every day, but when some sharp opinions come, their faces will be stretched.These speeches touch the essence of the matter and are not clichés at all.He also requested that the democratic spirit carried forward by this Central Working Conference can be persevered forever.These words he said on the issue of democracy are very sincere, and they still have profound educational significance today.

Deng Xiaoping mentioned "active power" to the cadres below, which is very fresh.To fully promote democracy is to give everyone positive power.Some people may ask: These two speeches were delivered on the closing day of the conference. Did they have any effect on the process of the conference?I would like to point out that their thoughts on democracy were revealed long before the closing ceremony. Deng Xiaoping's statement about "active rights" was made in November when the conveners of various groups reported to the Standing Committee. If you go to each group, you will be encouraged to give full play to the enthusiasm for democracy.

Lenin had a brilliant insight on democracy, that is, democracy requires conditions.The law says that a certain person has the same democratic rights as another person, but how can a person who has to occupy almost all of his time to obtain his own minimum means of subsistence not have enough time to participate in social politics? What about living a democratic life?Some people don't have their own auditorium for meetings, and they can't afford to rent an auditorium, so their activities have to be greatly restricted.Everyone in capitalist countries knows that running for an office costs a considerable amount of money.Anyone who wants to run for a high-level office like the president must never run without a lot of money. No matter how popular you are, people without financial means cannot afford to run for office.When we hold such a working meeting, there is a good place like Jingxi Hotel, there are many good meeting rooms, and there are good food, accommodation, and services. This provides the material guarantee for the meeting.Those of us are party and state cadres, and we basically have guaranteed time to participate in political activities. Here we are talking about the issue of time. What we mean is that this working meeting gives the attendees more time to say what they want to say.At the beginning of this meeting, Hua Guofeng said that he planned to hold it for more than 20 days.Starting on November 10, it will end around the end of November, and it is planned to start the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee on December 7.Later, it was extended one by one according to the needs, and it was extended to 36 days. The time should be said to be relatively generous. For those who participate in the Central Work Conference, the briefing work is a very important condition for the full development of democracy.If there is no briefing work, those of us will only be active in our own group except to participate in the conference, and we will not know the situation of other groups, let alone discuss beyond the scope of our group.I have attended or attended many meetings of the Central Committee, and briefings are usually issued at the meetings.Frankly, some meeting briefings are so full of cliché that there is really nothing to read.The reason is that on the one hand, some people seem to have the habit of saying clichés, and on the other hand, many of the substantive opinions expressed by people have been suppressed by "Jane", so besides this group, the situation in other groups is almost unknown .The briefing of this Central Work Conference is very interesting. Through it, you can learn about many situations of other groups, participate in discussions on issues raised by other groups, and express your opinions on the speeches of comrades in other groups. I am very satisfied with the briefing work of the meeting.I gave a lot of speeches at the Central Work Conference, some of which were drafted, and some were extemporaneous.I didn't compare my speech with the abstract published in the briefing. At that time, I had the impression that the abstract was good, and the important content of my speech was not deleted.And the briefing came out quickly.From the briefings of other groups, I can also see the materials I am interested in. Some, such as the speeches of comrades who adhere to the "two whatevers" position and resist the discussion of the standard of truth, I can see through the briefings. Make comments based on briefings, discuss with them.The briefing of the meeting is a must-read material for me at the Central Work Conference.I think the comrades doing the briefing work at this meeting must be very nervous.They are the unsung heroes at this meeting, but people who have done a very important job.But I don't know any of them.I would also like to know which comrade or comrades lead the briefing. At the same time, the briefings in the first few days of the meeting were not exactly the same as the subsequent briefings. There seemed to be more problems in the first few days. On November 13, Hu Yaobang's speech in the Northwest Group was very long, but the briefing was very short.At first I thought it was Hu Yaobang who cut it short on purpose. Recently, I found a record of Hu Yaobang’s speech at the Northwest Group on November 15 in my "old paper pile". Cadres who deal with problems.” There is another sentence: “The briefing should not delete key issues.” Hu Yaobang once had an opinion. At a meeting where the convener reported to the Standing Committee, our group reported that Xu Xiangqian expressed his dissatisfaction with the briefing of the meeting six days later.It seems that Xu Xiangqian, Hu Yaobang and others made changes to the way the briefing was compiled.What I am most satisfied with is the joint speech of Jiang Yizhen, Yang Xiguang and myself on November 20. After criticizing Wang Dongxing by name, the briefing was not deleted, and it was published very quickly, which was very satisfactory. Probably the policy of compiling the briefing work at that time It has been made clear that it cannot be deleted or delayed casually.However, when criticizing the mistakes made by some Politburo members elected at the First Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee during the "Cultural Revolution", Wang Dongxing also advocated "later briefings on issues involving the Politburo" at a Standing Committee meeting.The Standing Committee did not agree to this. Of course not everyone is happy with the briefing.Different people will have different feelings about how their own speeches were reported after reading the briefing and how others' speeches were reported.I feel satisfied, but some people don't necessarily see it that way.In one newsletter, I saw that a spokesperson made comments on the newsletter, and the newsletter also published this opinion.But I think it is a good performance that the briefing can be published like this. There were quite a few briefings for this conference.I know that more than 70 briefings of the Northwest Group have been published, and the number of briefings of other groups is similar. They are very valuable materials for studying this Central Work Conference.The party history research department must have all the materials, but the exposure of many people in the briefing presented at a certain report meeting of the Central Work Conference may not be in line with the facts;I agree with this proposition of the Standing Committee.First of all, because these reports are basically accurate, and at the same time, the Party Central Committee will not deal with these people’s problems based on briefings, but will conduct serious and practical investigations and obtain various physical and witness witnesses. This is a very scientific set. strong work.As for the exposure at the meeting, it can only be treated as a clue and a reflection.The nature of the investigations mentioned above is not to verify the briefings, and it is neither necessary nor possible for us to take the time to check the briefings. All in all, I am very impressed and think it is worth remembering that briefings have been a tool for the full development of democracy. I don't think it should be thought that the conference briefing is a trivial matter that doesn't deserve a lot of my time here.I want to reply that it shouldn't be seen that way.Because since it is a conference, the participants are here to participate in this conference, not to participate in a certain group meeting. He has the right to know about the situation of other groups, and also has the right to let others hear his speech. Restricting briefings is restricting rights inherent to attendees.Moreover, the briefing work directly reflects the democratic thought, awareness and style of the meeting chairperson. Even if the meeting participants don’t say it, they can experience it personally and know it in their hearts.A bad briefing will directly damage the image of the meeting host.