Classics and Cultural Hegemony—

On the Contemporary Significance of Red Literary Classics

Liu Jiming · 2025-07-21 · Source: Renjing

In contrast, the proletariat ascended the political stage to establish a socialist system and dominate cultural hegemony for only a few short decades, yet in these few short decades, the broad proletariat created such rich and diverse, brilliant literary and artistic works embodying their values and aesthetics. Compared to those works extolled by the bourgeoisie, they are simple, vigorous, and fresh, pioneering an entirely new aesthetic style unprecedented in literary history—sufficient to be passed down as classics to posterity, allowing people to remember the proletariat's glorious moments, letting people know that creating a new world without exploitation and oppression, where everyone is equal, is possible.

[Original Editor's Note: This article is a speech draft written by Teacher Liu Jiming for the Shajiabang Reading and Writing Summer Camp and the "My Favorite Red Literary Classic Competition" awards ceremony. The event was canceled for various reasons. Renjing Website publishes it with authorization for readers' benefit.]

The theme I'm discussing with everyone today is: Classics and Cultural Hegemony—On the Contemporary Significance of Red Literary Classics.

Let's first understand what classics and cultural hegemony are.

Regarding classics, Baidu's explanation is: having exemplary and authoritative nature; selected through history as most valuable; best expressing an industry's essence; most representative works.

Throughout Chinese and foreign history, in various knowledge domains, those exemplary and authoritative works, especially those with originality and foundational nature, are singularly called "jing" [经 = classics/canonical texts], such as Laozi, Analects, The Bible, Diamond Sutra, I Ching, Buddhism's Heart Sutra, etc. In Chinese literary history, the Four Great Classical Novels—Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber—are all classics.

Then there's an extended interpretation: classics, through unique worldviews and unrepeatable creation, highlight profound cultural accumulation and spiritual connotation, raising fundamental questions concerning human spiritual life. They integrate with specific historical periods' vivid sense of the times and present consciousness, possessing enduring power to shock/move] and appeal, thus forming important ideological and cultural traditions. Classics are the result of interaction between interpreters and interpreted texts.

From the above interpretation we can draw a conclusion: classics must withstand the test of time; they cannot be privately awarded by a few individuals, groups, or authorities, but must be consensus formed through repeated reading by many, many people, even generations.

This appears to be an authoritative explanation of classics, but it contains a major cognitive misunderstanding. Since classics are "consensus 'formed through repeated reading by many, many people, even generations,'" and according to Marxist views, all of human history has been history of class struggle, the dominant thought in a society and era necessarily represents the ruling class's thought, there cannot be true "consensus" between the ruled class and ruling class. So-called consensus is merely the result of the ruling class imposing upon the ruled class. In other words, in the humanities and literary arts fields, there exist no classics of universal significance. In class society, so-called classics are all products of class. The bourgeoisie venerates works embodying their class values and aesthetic tastes as classics; the proletariat also venerates works embodying their class values and aesthetic tastes as classics. This includes the Four Books and Five Classics [Note: Confucian canonical texts]—the reason they were venerated as classics by successive ruling dynasties was all for the need to maintain ruling class interests. Therefore, Mr. Lu Xun said: Open up history, and on every page are written two large characters: "cannibalism." When we discuss this topic, we must first demystify "classics, break or shatter the various halos imposed by the ruling class, and restore the concealed class essence and substance.

Classics mean authority, orthodoxy, veneration, obedience—they are an important component of the ruling class constructing cultural hegemony, such as "dismissing the hundred schools and venerating only Confucianism" in Chinese history, scholastic philosophy in medieval Europe, etc. Cultural hegemony, as a theoretical concept, was mainly proposed by Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party and Marxist theorist. It refers to the ruling class, through non-coercive means such as education, media, art, and cultural institutions, winning the consent and recognition of the ruled class, thereby achieving spiritual leadership of society and ideological control. When examining Western capitalist social structures, Gramsci discovered that the bourgeoisie not only relied on political and economic coercive means to maintain rule but also consolidated its position through infiltration of culture and ideology. He therefore proposed the concept of cultural hegemony, emphasizing the importance of ideological struggle in social transformation. In Gramsci's theory, civil society is the site where cultural hegemony is realized. It differs from the traditional political state, being instead a complex network composed of various social organizations, cultural institutions, and civil groups. In this network, the ruling class shapes the consciousness and behavior of the ruled class by disseminating its own values and beliefs. Gramsci believed that intellectuals play a key role in constructing and disseminating cultural hegemony. They are not only creators and disseminators of culture but also bridges between ruling and ruled classes. Through education and cultural activities, intellectuals transform ruling class ideology into universally accepted values and behavioral norms.

Although cultural hegemony is a modern theoretical concept, it has extremely important significance. It profoundly reveals the relationship between social structure and power, reveals the mystery of how the ruling class consolidates its position through infiltration of culture and ideology, and also points out the possibility for the ruled class to fight for their own rights in ideological struggle. It can be said that its significance in culture is no less than Marx's discovery of surplus value in Capital, and it has important reference value for our understanding of the production and dissemination of classics.

Gramsci believed that seizing cultural hegemony is a long-term, complex struggle, similar to positional warfare in military terms. The ruling class needs to continuously consolidate its own positions (i.e., cultural institutions and ideological domains) while launching attacks on the ruled class's positions to expand its own influence. The ruled class does the same. Throughout Chinese and foreign history, whether ruling class or ruled class, both highly value the right to name and interpret classics. Chairman Mao said: Before a class seizes political power, it always first creates public opinion—revolutionary classes do this, and counter-revolutionary classes also do this. This is also why, after New China's founding, Chairman Mao particularly emphasized cultural construction and cultural struggle.

But surveying human history, whether slave society, feudal society, or capitalist society, cultural hegemony has always been dominated by emperors, generals, ministers, and capital elites along with the intellectual elites they feed. The broad laboring masses have long been in positions of being deceived and enslaved. This includes the culture and art they produced through labor—in the ruling class's eyes, these could never reach refined halls, much less become mainstream or classics. Only when, with the spread of Marxism, the proletariat ascended the historical stage, Lenin led the world's first socialist state into being, the international communist movement surged like wind and clouds, including China, Eastern Europe, and Asia-Africa-Latin America, proletarian revolutions successively seized power and established socialist state systems, did human society end the history of minority rule over majority and open a new era of majority rule over minority. Only during this historical period did the culture created by the broad laboring masses, previously in positions of enslavement and exploitation, ascend to refined halls and become mainstream. Many red literary classics were produced precisely during this period.

So what are red literary classics?

Red literary classics as we commonly call them, also known as proletarian literature, left-wing literature, and socialist literature classics, refer to literary works with the theme of reflecting and depicting revolutionary struggles led by the Chinese Communist Party, possessing profound ideological connotations, high artistic value, and broad influence. These works record historical events and experiences of the Chinese Communist Party during the War of Resistance Against Japan, the War of Liberation, and China's socialist revolution and construction period, eulogize working-class heroic figures emerging in revolution and construction, and are important components of Chinese revolutionary culture and world proletarian literature. They were mainly created in the 1950s and 1960s, with some also created during the Cultural Revolution period.

The appearance of these works had an important historical condition: the oppressed proletariat and laboring masses, under Chinese Communist Party leadership, became masters and leading class of the nation. The long-suppressed and marginalized so-called "lower-class" culture replaced feudalist and bourgeois literature and art depicting mainly emperors, generals, ministers, and talented scholars and beautiful ladies, becoming mainstream, creating brilliant socialist literature and art. Among them, those with greatest influence and highest achievement were the world's two largest socialist countries—China and the Soviet Union.

China, as a socialist country established under Marxist-Leninist guidance, had high similarity and isomorphism with the Soviet Union—the world's first socialist country—in values, social systems, and economic policies. Therefore, in literature and art, it was also deeply influenced by socialist realist literature. This was reflected not only in the 1950s and early 1960s when China translated and introduced large quantities of socialist realist works, but also in Chinese literary circles producing many works created using socialist realist methods, such as long novels on revolutionary historical themes: Defend Yan'an (Du Pengcheng), The Song of Youth (Yang Mo), Red Flag (Liang Bin), Red Sun (Wu Qiang), Red Crag (Luo Guangbin, Yang Yiyan), Bitter Cauliflower (Feng Deying), Tracks in the Snowy Forest (Qu Bo), Three Family Lane (Ouyang Shan); reflecting the agricultural cooperativization movement: Sanliwan (Zhao Shuli), Great Changes in a Mountain Village (Zhou Libo), Bright Sunny Sky (Hao Ran), Fragrance in Four Seasons (Chen Canyun); reflecting capitalist industry and commerce transformation and public-private partnership: Morning in Shanghai (Zhou Erfu); reflecting socialist construction poetry: Yumen Poetry (Li Ji), Tianshan Pastoral Songs (Wen Jie), Zhanghe River (Ruan Zhangjing), Sing Aloud (He Jingzhi), etc.

These works constitute what we today call the red literary classics lineage. Red literary classics are important representatives of proletarian and socialist values and aesthetics, produced accompanying the historical conditions of proletarian dictatorship, socialist revolution, and construction. When these historical conditions were interrupted, the culture and art they represented ceased to exist.

After reform and opening, with literature's transformation from "people" to "person," red classics were severely belittled and even stigmatized, excluded from mainstream literature. Replacing them was "scar literature" criticizing and denouncing the Cultural Revolution and even the first thirty years. Regarding literary achievements of the first thirty years represented by red classics, rightist elites also gave complete negation—not only negation but also adopting methods of opening skylights [Note: censoring by leaving blank spaces] and sealing away. Contemporary literary history doesn't mention them at all; when occasionally mentioned, it's as objects of derogatory meaning and criticism, dismissed with the two characters "ultra-left."

When I lectured at the writing workshop, I once quoted a passage from the famous scholar and Peking University Professor Kong Qingdong. He said: "Works from the Cultural Revolution period are voluminous enough. Even someone as fond of reading as me hasn't read most of them—I've only read a portion. And having read only a portion, I became a person of some cultivation. Very regrettably, after entering university, I discovered university literary history doesn't discuss these works. Those works that my little companions and I once loved, that all the people loved—now university literary history doesn't have them! So many little companions, so many common people have read Raging Flames and Gleaming Steel, Boiling Mountains, Sparkling Red Star—how could they not have read them? You can say these books aren't good, you can reasonably explain what's not good about them; but things read by hundreds of millions of people—your book doesn't have them! This isn't a professional attitude, this isn't seeking truth from facts..."

Kong Qingdong and I are about the same age. These novels he listed and those he didn't list can also be called red literary classics—I've read them all. But to rightist elites, these works are all products of ultra-left politics, having no artistic value whatsoever, so in their eyes, "those ten years" were a cultural desert with no books to read.

This isn't strange. Literature has class nature, classics also have class nature. Rightist elites vigorously negate red literature, revolutionary literature, and left-wing literature, while extolling scar literature and bourgeois literature, treating them as classics in university classrooms. The proletariat extols and loves red literary classics, spreading them enduringly among the people. This is all determined by respective class natures, reflecting the sharp opposition between two classes in ideology and cultural domains. Therefore, our advocacy today of reading red classics is not only because of their artistic value but also a pursuit and rediscovery of their historical value. Carrying forward the socialist and communist spirit contained in red classics is actually the proletariat's struggle with the bourgeoisie for cultural hegemony.

In 2021, I gave a presentation titled "Revolution, Pendulum, and Middle Literature" at the "Culture and Revolution of the Short 20th Century" symposium held at Tsinghua University, saying: "Both the bourgeoisie and proletariat during their ascendant periods produced brilliant cultures and gave rise to countless literary works embodying their respective classes' aesthetic ideals." However, in the long river of human history, cultural hegemony for the vast majority of time has been dominated by feudal and bourgeois classes, which is why so many classics embodying their values and aesthetics were produced. In contrast, the proletariat ascended the political stage to establish a socialist system and dominate cultural hegemony for only a few short decades—academic circles call these decades the "short twentieth century." Yet in these few short decades, the broad proletariat created such rich and diverse, brilliant literary and artistic works embodying their values and aesthetics. Compared to those works extolled by the bourgeoisie, they are simple, vigorous, and fresh, pioneering an entirely new aesthetic style unprecedented in literary history—sufficient to be passed down as classics to posterity, allowing people to remember the proletariat's glorious moments, letting people know that creating a new world without exploitation and oppression, where everyone is equal, is possible, thereby inspiring people to struggle tirelessly to realize this great ideal.

This is the contemporary significance of our reading red literary classics.