Two Whatevers
두 개의 모든
The line set out in the joint editorial of People’s Daily, Red Flag and the PLA Daily on 7 February 1977: “We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.” It underpinned the legitimacy of Mao’s successor Hua Guofeng and collapsed with the truth-criterion debate and the Third Plenum of 1978.
In depth
The sentence in the editorial “Study the Documents Well and Grasp the Key Link” rested on Mao’s testament naming Hua as his successor, and implied keeping the verdicts of the Cultural Revolution, including Deng Xiaoping’s fall of 1976. Deng, before his rehabilitation, said on 24 May 1977 that it did not accord with Marxism: neither Marx nor Engels, nor Lenin or Stalin, nor Mao himself had put forward any “whatever” doctrine, and Mao Zedong Thought had to be understood correctly as an integral whole.
“Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth” of May 1978 shook its theoretical basis, and in June Deng told the All-Army Political Work Conference that Marxist theory was not “lifeless dogma”. At the Third Plenum Hua criticised himself and called the “Two Whatevers” a mistake. Its supporters Wang Dongxing, Ji Dengkui, Wu De and Chen Xilian, known as the “whateverist faction” or the “Little Gang of Four”, lost all their posts at the Fifth Plenum in February 1980.