胡平年轻时代的痛苦经历，包括他做中学生以及1960年代到1970年代初知识青年上山下乡，都是作为这本书的背景出现的，对这些经历他只明确提到过一次，他说自己在文化大革命期间一直是“官方意识形态的虔诚信徒”。
但是，在整本书里非常明确的是，他与他自己时代以及前代几乎所有的知识分子都共同经历了持久、痛苦的经验，即改造自己、努力相信党是正确的；而回顾持续了很长时期的这种自我斗争也许甚至是更加痛苦的。现在，党已经放弃了旧时的信仰，胡平和其他有思想的中国人继续努力探索着这个问题：究竟什么使得如此众多知识分子完全接受一个虚假的意识形态成为了可能。
胡平用“思想改造运动”作为他的书名，而不是用任何一个单一的运动，如上世纪40年代的 “整风运动”、50年代整肃自由主义知识分子的运动或文化大革命。这是共产党在1949至1976年毛统治时期控制知识分子思想的整段历史。这段历史没有完全成为过去式，因为，如胡平指出的，他描述的这种现象如今还在以一种衰减的形式继续存在。胡平所要探索的难题是，为什么这种思想改造运动居然可以持续这么久、取得这么彻底的成功。
他的答案分两部分。第一部分是关于党获得对思想控制所使用的方法。核心方法显然是对各种各样能产生恐惧的惩罚手段。但仅仅恐惧并不会导致真信。党将其受害者困于伪科学的认识论中，在那里“真理”是一元的——只有一个真理——任何对真理的偏离都是错误。它剥夺了他们获得其它信息和言论的来源。然后，它添加了社会隔离，以至于使个人无法找到对离经叛道信念的支持，哪怕在朋友和家庭这样私密的环境里。然后，它继续着由真理到它要求的忠诚的转变，创造出一种持续的意识形态不确定环境，使得个人始终难以达到信仰上的安全境地。最后，利用了人最优秀本质——他们愿意相信生活中一些更深刻的意义——去说服知识分子相信，如果压制自己的思想自由，他们就在为比知识分子道德更有价值的目标做出贡献。
但是，胡平分析中更原创更重要的部分在于他对主动使自己符合党的要求的情感过程所做的移情、多层次说明。这是一部哲学家的著作，因为哲学帮助他在知识分子被迫接受的信仰中发现了逻辑裂痕。但这还是一部心理学家的著作，因为此书的核心难题是为什么人们在遵循党的要求之外，还要去真心相信荒谬。
他们确实这样做了。胡平举了很多知识分子的例子，包括他本人和他的许多朋友，以及著名人物，如戏剧家曹禺，忠诚地相信党的记者刘宾雁。他们相信自己受了“资产阶级世界观”的影响，但如胡平指出的，按照马克思的理论，如果一个人受了资产阶级世界观的影响，就不可能认识到自己受了资产阶级世界观的影响。尽管“不理解而相信”在逻辑上是不可能的，但他们相信“不理解而相信”是必要的。他们相信“真理的阶级性”。胡平剖析了在相信的过程中，心理学机制是怎样发生作用的。人们在高压恐惧之下被迫照官方的要求说话，为了保住自己的尊严，他们必须说服自己相信自己的信念是真实的。人们发现公开谴责自己可以让他们找到一种奇怪的轻松，因为这样的一个过程有助于他们逃脱受害者的处境，使自己部分地加入到镇压者的行列中去。通过承认自己思想落后，人们能够感受到更多意识形态上的先进。首先，胡平指出“当恐惧感强化到一定程度，当强制持续到一定阶段，我们常常会在自觉的意识层面上忘掉恐惧和强制的存在。……既然我们出于恐惧而不敢涉入禁区，那么由于我们不涉入禁区因而就不再感到恐惧。”总之，“我们由于不敢怀疑毛泽东思想，因而我们对毛泽东思想没有怀疑。”一旦按照党的要求去相信了，许多人发现就再也不可能摆脱那些信念而使自己获得自由，甚至在毛泽东死后、党不再要求他们相信的时候。胡平通过一个小故事称此为“失节者之节”。许多被平反的人在受了20年甚至更长时间的残酷虐待之后却不能对这种虐待感到愤怒，原因是这种虐待本身已经让他们接受了党的历史性正确。还有些人相信，继续接受党的意识形态——尽管这个意识形态也在改变——他们仍可致力于在党内进行改革，使其更自由化。如胡平指出的，这是一个悖论，这些“体制内”的知识分子决定为了争自由必须先放弃自由。
在党的意识形态要求大为降低，对信息的控制有所让步，对人民的惩罚意愿有所减弱的情况下，胡平对从强制遵守到主动相信的转变的分析至今依然适用。中国知识分子并没有忘记“六四”的教训：不予相信是危险的。这有助于解释为什么许多中国人实际上选择了——无论他们有意还是无意——接受这个政权有关其合法性的指称，而同时在他们的理性思维中他们知道这是虚假的。
胡平分析的最透彻的是他就为什么打破沉默如此困难、为什么异议人士受到不公平迫害时人们采取观望态度所做的评论。这是一个“搭便车问题”的经典案例：当反抗的代价非常昂贵时，只有少数勇敢的人（或学生）会加入反抗的队伍。这从理性选择的角度来看是可以理解的。但是，如同胡平指出的，“一个人自动地放弃责任这件行为本身，却必须由这个人自己负责。”
胡平指出，党用放逐来惩罚许多批评者是一种悖论。为什么放逐对他们来说不是一件好事呢？毕竟他们是向往自由民主的人。胡平回答说，被放逐者失去了接触他们最关心的事业——中国的民主化——的渠道，而必须去融入一个尽管意识形态符合他们的喜好但却是完全不同的环境。从中国的监狱获释被放逐到西方世界，“实际上是一种惩罚”——一种胡平自己从1986年以来将近30年一直在忍受的一种惩罚。
胡平曾是北大西方哲学系的学生，然后到哈佛大学。他在书中经常引用东西方思想家的话，从索福克勒斯和亚里士多德，到康德、密尔（他自己的学术专长）、黑格尔、马克思、索尔仁尼琴、阿伦特，以及当代社会学家包括曼瑟尔·奥尔森、阿尔伯特·赫希曼和弗朗西斯·福山。但这并没有让他的研究仅局限于学术。他的书是与读者的对话，用一种周到、从容、谈话的基调写成，其中引用了许多轻松幽默的中国谚语和寓言。
自1986年以来，胡平一直处于被放逐状态（透露一下：他和我都是中国人权理事会理事）。他一直不间断地为支持民主的杂志和网站供稿，是最重要的当代中国政治思想家之一，尽管他的著作在中华人民共和国被禁，他在海内外中国知识分子中广受尊重。
虽然他一直受到放逐的惩罚，胡平认为——并从他著作中显示出——人对尊严的向往是不会泯灭的。只要极权统治者无法窒息自由的声音，胡平说，那他们“就是输”；只要自由的呼吁者还未失败，那他们“就是赢”。这本书为英文读者提供了一个宝贵的机会来了解当今中国最受尊重、最勇敢的哲学家之一的思想。
附录：胡平《人的驯化，躲避与反叛》电子文本：
http://www.huping.net/works/obey-evade-rebel.htm
附录本文英文版：
英文书名：中共的思想改造运动
原中文书名：人的驯化、躲避与反叛
作者：胡平
译者：菲利普·F·威廉姆斯 詹娜吴
出版社：阿姆斯特丹大学出版社
出版日期：2012年9月15日
包装：平装本
页数：313
The Thought Remolding Campaign of the Chinese Communist
Party-State
Hu Ping
Translated by Philip F. Williams and Jenna Wu
Amsterdam University Press
Publication Date: September 15, 2012
Paperback: 313 pages
A Book Review by Andrew J. Nathan
Hu Ping’s painful experiences as a middle school student and sent-down
youth in the 1960s and early 1970s lie in the background of this book,
but he mentions them explicitly only once, describing himself during
the Cultural Revolution as having been “a pious disciple of official
ideology1
But it is clear throughout the book that he shared with almost all
intellectuals of his own and the previous generations the protracted,
painful experience of struggling to make himself believe the Party’s
truth, and what is in retrospect perhaps even more painful, of
succeeding for a long time in that endeavor. Now that the Party has
abandoned its old truth, Hu Ping and other thoughtful Chinese continue
to struggle with the question of how it was possible for so many
intelligent people to subscribe so fully to a false ideology.
The “thought remolding campaign” of Hu Ping’s title is not any single
campaign, such as the zhengfeng (整风运动)2movement of the 1940s, the
campaigns against liberal intellectuals in the 1950s, or the Cultural
Revolution. It is the whole history of the Communist Party of China’s
effort to control the beliefs of the intellectual class during the
period of Mao’s rule from 1949 to 1976. Nor is it entirely a past
history, because as Hu points out, the phenomena he describes continue
today in attenuated form. The puzzle Hu Ping probes is why it was
possible for this thought remolding campaign to succeed so fully for
so long.
His answer has two parts. The first concerns the techniques the Party
used to gain control over the minds of its targets. The core technique
obviously was punishment of various kinds, which induced fear. But
fear alone does not produce belief. The Party trapped its victims in a
pseudoscientific epistemology within which “truth” was monistic—there
could be only one truth—and anything deviating from truth was error.
It deprived them of alternative sources of information and opinions.
Then it added social isolation, so that an individual could find no
support for deviant beliefs even in private among friends and family.
It then kept changing the truths to which it demanded loyalty,
creating an environment of constant ideological uncertainty so that
the individual never reached a secure position of belief. Finally, it
tragically took advantage of people’s best nature—of their natural
desire to believe in some deeper meaning in life—to persuade the
intellectuals that in suppressing their own freedom of thought they
were contributing to a project more valuable than their own
intellectual integrity.
But the more original and important part of Hu’s analysis lies in his
empathic, multilayered account of the emotional processes involved in
bringing oneself into accord with the Party’s demands. This is a book
by a philosopher, because philosophy helps him to identify the logical
flaws in the beliefs that intellectuals were forced to accept. But
even more it is the book of a psychologist, because the central puzzle
of the book is why people went beyond complying with the Party’s
demand for conformity to authentically believe in absurdities.
And believe they did. Hu gives numerous examples of intellectuals,
including himself and many of his friends, as well as famous figures
like the playwright Cao Yu and the journalist Liu Binyan, who honestly
believed. They believed, for example, that they were infected by a
“bourgeois worldview”: yet as Hu points out, a person infected by a
bourgeois worldview should according to Marxist theory be unable to
realize that he is infected by a bourgeois worldview.3 They believed
in the necessity to “believ[e] the doctrine without understanding
it.”4, although belief without understanding is a logical
impossibility. They believed in “the class-based nature of truth.”5
Hu anatomizes the psychological mechanisms at work in such a process
of belief. Forced to voice the official line by fear of coercion,
people would preserve their sense of dignity by persuading themselves
that their belief was authentic.6 People found strange comfort in
publicly denouncing themselves because the process of doing so helped
them escape the position of victim to identify however partially with
their oppressors.7 People were able to feel more ideologically
advanced by confessing to being ideologically backward.8 Above all, Hu
Ping points out, “when fear has intensified to a certain degree, and
when coercion has persisted to a certain phase, we often forget about
the existence of fear and coercion at a self-conscious level. . . . [W]e
consequently no longer set foot in such a forbidden zone and thus we
no longer feel afraid.”9 In short, “[B]ecause we did not dare to doubt
Mao’s ideas, we never doubted them”10
Once having acceded to the Party’s demand to believe, many people
found it impossible to free themselves from those beliefs even after
Mao’s death when the Party itself no longer demanded that they believe
them. Quoting an old Chinese story, Hu Ping calls this “the chastity
of those who have lost their chastity.”11 Many who were rehabilitated
after twenty or more years of cruel mistreatment were unable to feel
anger for how they were treated because the mistreatment itself had
led them to accept the historical rightness of the Party. Others
convinced themselves that they could do more to reform and liberalize
the Party by continuing to accept its ideology, even as that ideology
changes. As Hu points out, it is paradoxical that these
“within-system” intellectuals have decided to forgo freedom in order
to fight for freedom. 12
Hu’s insights into the transition from coerced conformity to belief
remain relevant even today, when the Party’s ideological demands are
much reduced, its control of information compromised, and its
willingness to punish people weakened. Chinese intellectuals have not
forgotten the lesson of June Fourth: it is dangerous not to believe.
This helps explain why many Chinese actually chose—whether they do so
consciously or not—to accept claims by the regime about its legitimacy
that at the same time they know in their rational minds to be false.
Among Hu Ping’s most incisive insights are his comments on why it is
so hard to break the silence, and why people stand by when they see
dissidents unjustly persecuted. It is a classic case of the free rider
problem: when resistance is costly, only a few courageous (or
stubborn) people will engage in it. This is understandable from a
rational-choice point of view. But, as Hu Ping points out, “a person
has to take responsibility for the very act of . . . voluntarily
forfeiting his individual responsibility.”13
Hu Ping points to the paradox that the Party punishes many of its
critics by exiling them. Why is exile not a gift for those who, after
all, yearn for liberal democracy? Hu’s answer is that the exiles lose
their access to the project they care most about—the democratization
of China—and have to assimilate to a society that they find profoundly
foreign despite its ideological conformity with their preferences. To
be released from the prison of China to the freedom of the West “is
actually a form of punishment”—a form of punishment Hu Ping himself
has endured since 1986, for almost three decades.
Hu Ping was a student of Western philosophy at Beida and then at
Harvard. His book draws frequently on insights from thinkers East and
West, ranging from Sophocles and Aristotle to Kant, Mill (his own
academic specialty), Hegel, Marx, Solzhenitsyn, Arendt, and
contemporary social scientists including Mancur Olson, Albert
Hirschman, and Francis Fukuyama. But this does not make his inquiry
forbiddingly scholastic. It is a dialogue with the reader, written in
a thoughtful, deliberate, and conversational tone, and leavened with
numerous gently humorous Chinese proverbs and fables. The easy tone of
the original Chinese text does not come across fully in the rather
literal translation, but the English version is accurate and clear.
Hu Ping has lived in exile since 1986 (disclosure: he and I are both
board members at Human Rights in China). He has contributed a constant
stream of articles to pro-democracy magazines and websites, emerging
as one of the most important contemporary Chinese political thinkers,
widely respected among Chinese intellectuals at home and abroad
despite the ban on his works in the People’s Republic of China.
Despite the punishment of exile he has suffered, Hu Ping believes—and
demonstrates by his work—that the human desire for dignity cannot be
extinguished.14 So long as the authoritarian rulers cannot stifle the
voices of freedom, he says, “they have lost”; so long as the advocates
of freedom have not lost, “they have won.”15 This book offers a rare
opportunity for the English language reader to understand the thought
of one of the most respected and courageous philosophers of China
today.
Andrew J. Nathan (黎安友) is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science
at Columbia University and chair of the steering committee of the
Columbia University Center for the Study of Human Rights. He is the
chair of the board of Human Rights in China, co-editor of The
Tiananmen Papers and How East Asians View Democracy, and coauthor,
with Andrew Scobell, of China’s Search for Security.
1 Hu Ping, The Thought Remolding Campaign of the Chinese Communist
Party-State, trans. by Philip F. Williams and Jenna Wu (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 195.^
2 Zhengfeng Yundong (整风运动), also known as the Rectification Movement,
was an ideological campaign carried out by the Chinese Communist Party
from 1942 to 1944. During the campaign, the Party attacked
intellectuals in an attempt to replace the culture of the May Fourth
Movement with that of Communist culture. More than 10,000 were killed.
3 Hu, Thought Remoulding, 28.^
4 Ibid., 34.^
5 Ibid., 45.^
6 Ibid., 91.^
7 Ibid., 119.^
8 Ibid., 132.^
9 Ibid., 85.^
10 Ibid., 86.^
11 Ibid., 92.^
12 Ibid., 255.^
13 Ibid., 150.^
14 Ibid., 267.^
15 Ibid., 273.^
首发《中国人权论坛》，2013年第一期（7月）：
http://iso.hrichina.org/cn/crf/article/6769
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