Gu Zhun: "The spirit of exploring the truth has the power to travel through time and space"

(NongJian/Photo)

(This article was first published on August 22, 2019 in the "Southern Weekend" National History New Record and Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of New China series of Chinese speakers)

"The exploration of history, for those who aspire to serve mankind, has always served the current reality of reform and planned the future direction."

Half of Gu Zhun's ashes were placed in the Wan'an Cemetery in Beijing, and the other half were scattered in a small river in the Sanlihe area in accordance with his will.

In his twilight years, Gu Zhun Changwu took a walk along that river, not far from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he had worked for a long time.

In 1956, Gu Zhun was transferred to the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the building of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he wrote an article entitled "On the Law of Commodity Production and Value under the Socialist System", which "broke the ground" and put forward the view that socialist production can also be spontaneously regulated by the law of the market.

Wu Jinglian, who was acquainted with Gu Zhun that year, was therefore admired as "the first person in The Chinese economic circles to propose the implementation of a market economy under socialist conditions" and "only Gu Zhun clearly proposed to let prices rise and fall spontaneously, that is, the real market law to regulate production."

But Gu Zhun's exploration is much more than that. During the turbulent decade, he also made great achievements in the fields of history, philosophy, and politics.

A true story has been mentioned many times in many articles commemorating Gu Zhun. At an academic conference, foreign counterparts asked the mainland academic community: "In the 1960s and 1970s, did you have any thinkers who could be called slightly decent?" Faced with such a question with potential challenges and ridicule, a senior scholar stood up and answered: Yes, there is one, that is, Gu Zhun.

<h3>"Dogs that have lost their families"</h3>

Speaking of Gu Zhun, people always marvel at his talent.

Born in Shanghai in 1915, Gu Zhun, a teenager in the middle of the family road, dropped out of school after studying accounting for two years in junior high school, and went to Lixin Certified Public Accountants as a trainee at the age of 12, becoming a professional through self-study, and won the appreciation of Pan Xulun, the founder of the firm.

At the age of 16, Gu Zhun was invited by Pan Shulun to give a lecture at Lixin Night School. Three years later, Gu Zhun's "Bank Accounting" was published, which was the first textbook in this field in China and was adopted by universities, and Gu Zhun was 19 years old.

Such endowments have never faded with time.

Biographer Luo Yinsheng is the author of "Gu Zhun's Biography", who has traveled to Beijing and Shanghai dozens of times, visiting people who are familiar with Gu Zhun everywhere. The story that made him most suspicious was that according to Gu Shuzhen, former director of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Finance, when Gu Zhun was in Shanghai, he did not need to give a speech to make a report, and once made a 3-hour report, while speaking, he wrote another article on the stage, and the article was also written at the end of the report.

Gu Zhun, who is talented and intelligent, has been in turmoil and displacement all his life.

In 1930, he left his homeland and went into exile in Beiping for the first time. Since the age of 25, he has successively traveled to the liberated areas of southern Jiangsu, central Jiangsu, Shandong and Shanghai to do local financial and economic work, during which he also entered the Yan'an Party School to study. In 1949, Gu Zhun returned to Shanghai with the army and was appointed director of the Shanghai Municipal Finance Bureau that year.

At the age of 37, Gu Zhun was dismissed from his post as director of the Shanghai Municipal Finance Bureau because of "a consistently serious personal heroism." A year later, he was transferred to Beijing as Director general of the Finance Department of the Central Construction and Engineering Department.

Soon, he entered the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was later sent to Hebei, Henan and other places.

As the only person in the country who has been classified as a "rightist" twice, Gu Zhun's family is a tragedy created by the times. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, his wife Wang Bi and her children drew a clear line with Gu Zhun. In 1968, Wang Bi committed suicide, and since then, the children have remained isolated from their father, and Gu Zhun has not been able to see his three children again until he died.

But Gu Zhun has always been deeply in love with his closest relatives. Once, an old colleague Luo Gengmo invited Gu Zhun to dinner, and after the meal, Gu Zhun proposed to go back from a small road. That road was not close, walking to the front of a building, Gu Zhun stared at a window upstairs, and his eyes stayed silently for a long time. Luo Gengmo knew that Gu Zhun had deliberately gone to the former residence of his deceased wife to pay his respects.

In his later years, his children were not by his side, and he could not avoid regrets in his heart. Gu Zhun laughed at himself by borrowing the "dog that lost his family".

But in Luo Yinsheng's narrative, Gu Zhun's later years are not lonely, he likes to talk, likes to make friends, and a large number of young talents surround him.

<h3>"There's no such effort as this one."</h3>

1956 was a key year for Gu Zhun to engage in economic research. In that year, the planned economy had been implemented for 4 years, but Gu Zhun found that his understanding of the planned economy was gradually disordered.

When he was the director of finance in Shandong before liberation, Gu Zhun realized that "the financial management of state-owned enterprises is an unresolved problem in our financial work." This meant that, from the outset, he became wary of possible management abuses in state enterprises.

Beginning in the spring of 1956, Gu Zhun frequently displayed similar confusion in his diary.

In March 1956, Gu Zhun questioned Stalin's exposition on socialist economy, saying that "the theoretical system of the whole socialist economy is now fragmented, emphasizing remuneration according to work and simply not recognizing the role of remuneration according to work in the form of commodity monetary value."

In April, he pondered whether Keynes's prescription for capitalism would fail. The answer he came to was "no", but he was puzzled that "the report of the twentieth congress of the [CPSU] does not say so".

It was an age of authority. Stalin was not only a political authority, but also a theoretical authority.

Gu Zhun advised himself in his diary to stop thinking about these problems, and even laughed at himself, "Live a family life, be satisfied with a few houses, accumulate a few money to buy a radio, and prepare to tie up the Huangshan Mountains."

But in the summer, he said in his diary that "that article has already begun to be written" and even felt that in his writing career, "there was no such effort as this time."

The article, "On the Law of Commodity Production and Value under socialism," argued that the socialist economy should regulate the production and circulation of products through prices, and was published in 1957.

Zhong Xiangcai, executive director of the Society for the History of Chinese Economic Thought, devoted himself to Gu Zhun's research on economic thought, told the Southern Weekend reporter that although in terms of breadth and depth, Gu Zhun did not position the entire social system as a market economy as it is now, "but at that time, the planned economy had not yet appeared a great reality heresy, he had already found problems in theoretical research and early work affairs, and realized that under socialist conditions, a good planned economy should be an economic system that follows market price signals, which is its profound point."

<h3>"It is necessary to restore Gu Zhun's original appearance</h3>."

In the following ten years, Gu Zhun was twice classified as a "rightist", and his life became more and more difficult, but his thoughts were digging a little.

In 1968, Wu Jinglian and Gu Zhun spent their days and nights in a cadre school in Henan. They read history and translation together, and especially loved to study and discuss the Greek city-state system, which was the origin of Western civilization, and Gu Zhun hoped to draw nourishment from it.

The understanding of Greek history that Gu Zhun developed at that time became an abuse of those discussions in his later book "The Greek City-State System". Years later, Wu Jinglian recounted the influence that Gu Zhun brought to himself: "I have benefited greatly from him. ”

Not only did he study it himself, Gu Zhun also advised his younger brother Chen Minzhi to read more About Western history. He told his brother, "Chinese always know some outlines of the changes and transmutations of their own country's dynasties, but if you don't understand Western history, it's hard to really understand Marxism."

From 1973 to 1974, Gu Zhun and Chen Minzhi exchanged letters in which they discussed historical or practical issues of mutual interest. Chen Minzhi compiled these contents into "From Idealism to Empiricism", and his notes covered a wide range of fields such as history, economy, politics, and philosophy.

It was during that period that Gu Zhun used Lu Xun's proposition "What will happen after Nala left" to raise a contemporary question—about where the country should go after the socialist revolution is completed.

This is a question that Gu Zhun pondered bitterly, "The exploration of history, for those who aspire to serve mankind, has always served the current reality of reform and planned the future direction." ”

Just when Gu Zhun was delving into the study, the doctor found that he had cancer. At midnight on a winter day in 1974, Gu Zhun died at the age of 59. Six years later, on February 9, 1980, Gu Zhun was "rehabilitated", and the Chinese Academy of Sciences held a memorial service for Gu Zhun and his wife Wang Bi.

In 1994, the Collected Works of Gu Zhun was finally published. The notes gu zhun "came from hell step by step" were like pearls strung together and compiled into a collection.

After another 5 years, Gu Zhun's first biography was published.

Since the late 1980s, Luo Yinsheng, who teaches at Lixin Accounting Institute, has begun to write a biography for Gu Zhun. When visiting Chen Min, Luo Yinsheng learned that Chen Minzhi had already had this intention, and the purpose was to "restore Gu Zhun's original appearance."

In that era, due to the reform of the economic system, Gu Zhun's economic ideas were gradually recognized. "But the study of Gu Zhun's entire ideological system after the 1990s is far from enough, and his articles in the 1950s are more talked about, and now we should focus on his historical research in the 1960s and philosophical studies in the 1970s." Zhong Xiangcai added, "Gu Zhun's theory is a whole, and only by integrating the three parts can we fully understand the profundity of Gu Zhun's thought. ”

The efforts to approach Gu Zhun ran through Luo Yinsheng's entire youth. 20 years after the completion of "Gu Zhun's biography", he told the Southern Weekend reporter, "Gu Zhun's writing is full of dynamics and beauty, it is natural, and it is condensed with hard work. And that spirit of searching for truth has the power to travel through time and space. ”

When Luo Yinsheng first arrived at Lixin Accounting College, some of his former students and colleagues were still alive. They often talk about Gu Zhun, but then they look dark, because the genius figure "died prematurely."

Luo Yinsheng once collected a detail in an interview. Gu Zhun, who was in his twilight years, once said to his friend Zhang Chunyin: "I am like an old farmer, and now I am waiting for the harvest of Kaika." ”

According to the plan, Gu Zhun intended to spend ten years "systematically studying (first) Western, then (then) Chinese history, philosophy, economy, etc., and then making comprehensive comparisons on this basis, in order to find the trajectory of human social development and plan the future direction."

But this grand and huge academic program came to an abrupt end with Gu Zhun's passing.

Southern Weekend reporter Tang Yucheng Southern Weekend intern Zhu Jingxuan