Political Science 208
Fall 2008
Mao Zedong Thought
-- adapted from William A. Joseph, “Ideology in China’s Political Development” [DRAFT] in Politics in China: An Introduction, edited by William A. Joseph (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2009-10).
The Chinese Communist Party first formally proclaimed “Mao Zedong Thought” as its guiding ideology in the party constitution of 1945, which was promulgated in Yan’an towards the end of World War II and before the resumption of the civil war. The process of enshrining and giving official primacy to Mao’s theories had begun a couple of years before. The Rectification Campaign of 1942 had eliminated Mao’s major opponents, and in the spring of 1943, he was elected Chairman of the party, a position he held literally until his last breath on September 9, 1976.
It was a conscious decision of the party leadership in 1945 to use the term “Mao Zedong Thought” (Mao Zedong sixiang) as the designation for Mao’s contribution to communist ideology.[i] They could have chosen – and did consider – other terms, including what would be translated as “Maoism” (Mao Zedong zhuyi), but that particular rendition had a foreign connotation, as in the Chinese translation for “Marxism-Leninism” (Makesi zhuyi, Liening zhuyi). “Mao Zedong Thought” was chosen as an unmistakable statement that Mao’s thinking was neither derivative of nor subordinate to Marxism-Leninism, but embodied the successful “Sinification” of Marxism-Leninism. “Sinification” refers to the process by which ‘something’ absorbs (and is absorbed by) Chinese culture and history. In 1931, Mao had cited adapting the European ideology of Marxism-Leninism to China’s particular situation as a critical step in the revolutionary process.
After the founding of the People’s Republic, the relationship of Mao Zedong Thought to Marxism-Leninism—to say nothing of the “true” meaning of Mao Zedong Thought – would become a matter of both spirited ideological contention and ferocious, even violent political struggles within the Chinese Communist Party. But the general formulation that Mao Zedong Thought is the integration of the “universal truth” of Marxism-Leninism with the “concrete practice” of the Chinese revolution became the CCP’s standard formulation early in the Maoist era and remains so today. The “universal truth” of Marxism refers to class struggle as the key to understanding the development of human history and the ‘inevitable’ downfall of capitalism and the triumph of socialism-communism. For Leninism, it is the theory of the building of a vanguard proletarian party to lead the revolution and the nation. It is Mao’s adaptation and enrichment of these “universal truths” to Chinese circumstances that form the essence of Mao Zedong Thought. As Schurmann put it, Marxism-Leninism is the “pure ideology” part of Chinese Communism, while Mao Zedeong Thought is the “practical ideology.”[ii]
There has been a very vigorous academic debate among China scholars about the extent to which Mao Zedong Thought is based Marxism-Leninism. One side argues that the core of Maoism is faithful to the fundamental the principles of that ideology. The other side concludes that Mao’s Thought, while employing communist terminology and rhetoric, deviates so severely from Marxism-Leninism that should be considered as an entirely different school of political thought, one more deeply influenced by other sources, such as Chinese philosophy and culture. Some see Mao Zedong Thought as an innovative amalgamation of Marxist-Leninist and Chinese characteristics. Others see it as an utter betrayal or perversion of Marxist ideas. Then there are those who portray Mao as having no ideology or guiding principles other than the pursuit of personal power at any cost.[iii]
What are the distinguishing features of Mao Zedong Thought, which is still often referred to outside of China as “Maoism.” and how has it influenced China’s political development?
The Role of the Peasant Class in the Revolution
First, and most fundamentally, what is distinctive about Maoist Marxism is its insistence on the peasants as a leading force in China’s revolution. As noted above, Marx saw socialism and communism as the result of a proletarian revolution that would take root in and spring from the factories and cities of advanced industrial capitalist societies. Marx had little positive to say about peasants and rural society. He regarded the peasantry as among the most exploited classes in capitalist society, but one that history had passed by on its march towards industrialization and urbanization—and socialism. He once called the peasantry “a class of barbarians standing halfway outside of society, a class combining all the crudeness of primitive forms of society with the anguish and misery of civilized countries” and compared peasant society to “a sack of potatoes”[iv] because of its lack of cohesion and class consciousness, both of which he saw as prerequisites for revolutionary action. The Communist Manifesto actually applauds capitalism for having “subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.”[v]
Lenin was somewhat more optimistic about the revolutionary potential of the peasantry in Russia. He thought rural dwellers – particularly the poorest peasants – could be a valuable ally of the proletariat in seizing power. But, like Marx, he was skeptical that they could see beyond their desire for “freedom and land” to the ultimate goals of socialism, including the abolition of private property.[vi]
Mao went quite a bit further by identifying the peasantry as a playing a leading role in bringing the revolutionary movement to power, concluding from his own investigations in his home province of Hunan in early 1927 that
In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide. There are three alternatives. To march at their head and lead them? To trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly. [vii]
He went on to make the case that the poorest peasants, which he estimated at 70 percent of the rural population, were “the most revolutionary group” and the “the vanguard in the overthrow of the feudal forces,” by which he meant the landlord class that had dominated rural society for millennia. He then put the center of gravity of China’s struggle squarely in the countryside by claiming that to “overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the national revolution.” Mao’s rural strategy of “surrounding the cities from the countryside” became the dominant approach of the CCP after Chiang Kai-shek’s attacks against the party in the late 1920s drove them out of the urban areas into the countryside and then forced them to undertake the Long March to the hinterlands of Ya’nan in the mid-1930s.
China scholars have reached very different conclusions, and argued with great intensity, about whether Mao’s views of the role of the peasantry in China’s revolution – and the undisputed reliance of the movement led by him on the peasants—constitute a profound break with “orthodox” Marxism or merely an adjustment in strategy to accommodate circumstances that left him and the communist party no real choice. There is no dispute that Mao exhibited a certain kind of political genius in recognizing that peasants would, out of necessity, be the leading force in the struggle to gain power. But he never abandoned the Marxist assumption that the industrial proletariat was the leading class and the peasants a subordinate partner in the revolutionary coalition whose ultimate goal was to bring socialism and modernization to China. Nevertheless, Maoism is a distinctive variant of Marxism in the degree to which it puts a positive emphasis on the rural factor in influencing the revolution both before and after the acquisition of power.
After the founding of the People’s Republic, Mao, at many times and in various ways,
continued to express and act on his ideological view that the peasantry had a special role in bringing about revolutionary change. The most dramatic – and ultimately tragic – example was his decision to launch the Great Leap Forward in 1958. In essence, the purpose of the Leap was to recalibrate China’s approach to building socialism away from the Soviet-style five-year plan model with it strong urban bias to a strategy of economic development that would “walk on two legs” in benefiting both city and countryside and promoting both industry and agriculture. Furthermore, the vanguard of the Leap into communism would again be the peasants and its most revolutionary thrust would be in the rural areas with the founding of the radically egalitarian people’s communes. It was also among the peasantry that the Leap took its most terrible toll of the 20-30 million who perished because of famine, illness, and mistreatment.[viii] The Cultural Revolution, although it was to be a “great proletarian” movement and was a largely urban phenomenon in its first phases, had roots in Mao’s concerns in the early 1960s about the growing inequality and cadre corruption in the rural areas that had resulted from the polices sponsored by Liu Shaoqi and especially Deng Xiaoping to promote recovery from the ravages of the GLF. And when the Chairman became disenchanted with factionalism and violence of the Red Guards in the initial years of the Cultural Revolution, he sent more than 20 million of them “down to the countryside and up to the mountains” where they could be reeducated by the peasants about what it really meant to make revolution.
To a certain extent, Mao was ambivalent about the role of the peasantry in the building of socialism. He retained a somewhat utopian view about the revolutionary enthusiasm of the rural folk and the political purity of the countryside. He was also skeptical about the corrupting influences of city life. But his vision of the socialist (and communist) future was not a pastoral one. He wanted the rural areas to modernize with the goal of overcoming what he called the “Three Great Differences” between industry and agriculture, town and country, mental and manual labor. Like Marx and Lenin, he believed that the ultimate objective of seizing political power and building socialism was to unleash the productive forces and usher in an era of modernization that would lead to unprecedented bounty. But Mao Zedong Thought does ascribe to the rural peasants a much more vital role as a revolutionary force in achieving those ends.
Leninist Populism—or Populist Leninism
The Leninist theory of revolution that is based on the assumption that the masses cannot lead the revolution on their own, but must be mobilized and directed by a vanguard communist party. Mao was, at bottom, a good Leninist, but in a way that was tempered by a deep populist streak. “Populism” is an approach to politics (one could say, a kind of ideology) that claims to represent the interests of ordinary people particularly against predatory elites whose own wealth and power depends on a status quo that disadvantages the vast majority. Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell define populism as pitting "a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice.”[ix] One of Mao’s first important political essays, written while he just beginning to learn about Marxism-Leninism, was called, “The Great Union of the Popular Masses” (1919). This essay resounds with populist themes in its call to action against all the woes that plagued China in the tumultuous decade after the fall of the Qing dynasty. “The decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme,” he wrote:
Where is the method of improvement and reform? Education, industrialization, strenuous efforts, rapid progress, destruction and construction are, to be sure, all right, but there is a basic method for carrying out all these undertakings, which is that of the great union of the popular masses. If we look at the course of history as a whole, we find that all the movements which have occurred throughout history, of whatever type they may be, have all without exception resulted from the union of a certain number of people. A greater movement requires a greater union, and the greatest movement requires the greatest union.[x]
Mao rails time and again against “the union of powerful people” who have caused the abject misery of humankind. The essay calls only for “reform and resistance,” not revolution, and the perspective is clearly one in which the heretofore powerless masses will, on their own, undertake the struggle for justice.
Once he was a committed Marxist-Leninist, Mao’s faith in the masses was tempered, if not tamed, by his belief in the Chinese Communist Party as the vanguard of the revolution, and, in both thought and action, he often seemed torn between the two poles of populism and Leninism. During his ascent to power he reminded his communist colleagues that the party had to “be concerned with the well-being of the masses” if they were to win them over to their side, and if they failed in that task, they would fail in making revolution. The party had to think of the masses as more than foot soldiers in the revolution, but as a kind of partner in a mutual cause. The people wouldn’t be swayed to join the cause by abstract ideological appeals. Rather, “if we want to win,” he said in 1934,
We must lead the peasants' struggle for land and distribute the land to them, heighten their labor enthusiasm and increase agricultural production, safeguard the interests of the workers, establish co-operatives, develop trade with outside areas, and solve the problems facing the masses-- food, shelter and clothing, fuel, rice, cooking oil and salt, sickness and hygiene, and marriage. In short, all the practical problems in the masses' everyday life should claim our attention. If we attend to these problems, solve them and satisfy the needs of the masses, we shall really become organizers of the well-being of the masses, and they will truly rally round us and give us their warm support. Comrades, will we then be able to arouse them to take part in the revolutionary war? Yes, indeed we will![xi]
The enemy – at that time defined as “imperialism and the Kuomintang”-- may have superior weaponry and shield itself in “iron bastions,” but if the revolutionary forces have the people on their side, then the CCP had nothing to fear and victory was assured:
What is a true bastion of iron? It is the masses, the millions upon millions of people who genuinely and sincerely support the revolution. That is the real iron bastion which no force can smash, no force whatsoever. The counter-revolution cannot smash us; on the contrary, we shall smash it. Rallying millions upon millions of people round the revolutionary government and expanding our revolutionary war we shall wipe out all counter-revolution and take over the whole of China.[xii]
The populist impulse of Maoism often asserted itself after 1949. In the Hundred Flowers Movement (1956-57), Mao called on the people to criticize the party’s shortcomings, particularly “bureaucratism” (being out of touch with the masses) of its first years of rule. At the start of the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), which was in large measure a turn from an elite-centered model of socialist development to a radically populist one, the Chairman exclaimed that the “most outstanding thing” about China’s people was that, for the most part, they were “poor and blank.” This gave them “the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution.” Furthermore, he said, “On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.”[xiii] And in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution (1966-69) Mao literally unleashed the masses to attack authority in all its personal and institutional manifestations, including the party. That each of these episodes resulted in catastrophes that took a terrible toll on the Chinese people and ended not only with a firm reassertion of Leninist authority reflects both the perils of Maoist populism and Mao’s deep ambivalence about giving power to the people.
The Mass Line
The tension between populism and Leninism in Mao’s thought can be clearly seen in his theory of leadership, which is called the “mass line” Both the theory and practice of the mass line took shape during the years that the CCP spent in rural base areas from Jinggangshan (1927-1929) to Yan’an (1935-45). It is method of leadership – or “workstyle” – emphasizing that those with authority (“cadres”) must always remain in close touch with those they lead. It rejects both leaderless, spontaneous action by the masses and leadership that is aloof or divorced from the masses: