China Under the Rule of Mao

Mao Zedong was greatly influenced by his readings as a child. He didn¡¯t enjoy reading the Chinese classics but rather stories about rebellions and romances of the old Chinese literature. According to an interview with Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, Mao told him,

¡°In the winter of 1920, I organized workers politically, for the first time, and began to be guided in this by the influence of Marxist theory and the history of the Russian Revolution. During my second visit to Beijing I had read much about the events in Russia, and had eagerly sought out what little Communist literature was then available in Chinese. Three books especially deeply cared in my mind, and built up in me a faith in Marxism, from which, one I accepted it as the correct interpretation of history, I did not afterwards waver. These books were the Communist Manifesto¡­and the first ever Marxist book ever published in Chinese; Class Struggle by Kautsky; and a History of Socialism, by Kirkupp. By the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist, and from this time on I considered myself a Marxist.¡±

Mao saw the poverty and the class struggle between the peasants and the landlords in charge as well as experiencing the peasant life himself when growing up and was compelled to make his way into politics.

How He Rose to Power

He started off in local politics and proved himself as an able leader and tactician for the Hunan branch of the Communist party. He then worked within the Guomingdang-Communist united government in Shanghai, Hunan and Canton. However, after Chiang Kai Shek came into power of the Guomingdang party after the death of Sun Yat-sen, Mao was forced to take refuge in the countryside. This gave him an opportunity to fuse guerrilla warfare and peasant support with his Communist leadership position. This system later allowed him to become chairman of the CCP.

In 1937, the Japanese invaded China and forced the two parties, the CCP and the Guomingdang, to unite and fight against the common enemy. This helped Mao and the Communist Party gain a reputation as defenders of China. After Mao showed that he was an able leader and talented tactician on the national level, the party grew. Civil war resumed after World War II and the CCP defeated the Guomingdang rather quickly.

Why it Became Necessary (from His Point of View) that His Nation Embraces Communism

He believed that the bourgeois system cannot work with a county that is under the influence of imperialist oppression. Mao said in his 20^th anniversary commemoration of the CCP speech in 1941:

¡°There are bourgeois republics in foreign lands, but China cannot have a bourgeois republic because she is a country suffering under imperialist oppression. The only way is through a people¡¯s republic led by the working class¡­¡±

Mao also saw that China¡¯s main problem was its agricultural development. He felt that it was of high priority to collectivize the farms similarly to what Stalin did.

To What Extent Did His Communist System (Regime) Contained Elements of Marxist Theory As Expressed in The Manifesto

I. ¡°Oppression comes from the exploitation of others¡¯ labor. It ends when the workers control the ¡®fruits¡¯ of their own labor.¡±

Mao gave power to the workers and believed that they should be in control in accordance to the Democratic Centralism idea that Lenin came up with. Mao had an emphasis on the peasant farmers because they were the largest group of working citizens. However, not everything did turn out as expected.

II. An industrial proletariat will crush the owners and supporters of industry (bourgeoisie). The revolution must be violent.

Mao¡¯s main turn from Marxist theories was that instead of industrial workers, he used peasant farmers to start the revolution. This was mainly due to the fact that the majority of the Chinese citizens were peasants rather than industrial workers.

However, Mao did believe that revolution can only come through violent means and that ¡°political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.¡± (Howarth 74)The fact of the Japanese invasion simply made it easier to have a violent revolution. Also, the former governing body, the Nationalists, were losing quite a lot of popularity following the World War for being known as the group that didn¡¯t try to help protect China from the invaders.

III. A socialist ¡°State¡± will set up the 10 components necessary to move society from the former dialectic into a communist utopia.

Mao had some sort of plan to transition China¡¯s government into the utopian state. However, he did not carry through with these plans and scratched the 5-year plan and switched to his focus on developing China¡¯s agriculture instead due to the dominance of the peasant population. ¡°The peasant economy is scattered, and the socialization of agriculture will require a long time and painstaking work¡­without socialization of agriculture, there can be no complete, consolidated socialism.¡± (Little 03)

IV. Although a hierarchy will exist within the State, this ¡°State will wither away¡± as the utopia is achieved.

A hierarchy did exist within the government though Mao did attempt to impose the idea of democratic centralism where everyone was a comrade and shared equal power in this new State. However, the hierarchy system did not wither away nor was the utopia ever achieved.

V. Religion must be abolished and all individuals regardless of gender or ethnicity will live in a classless society where every person is a comrade (equal citizen).

Mao laid down the definition of his Democratic Centralism views by saying, ¡°Some comrades do not understand the Party¡¯s system of democratic centralism, in which the minority is subordinate to the majority, the low level to the higher level, the part to the whole, and the entire membership to the Central Committee.¡±(Howard 246)

The abolition of religion was fueled by his skeptic personality that he developed when he was younger despite the fact that his mother was a devout Buddhist.

VI. Communist ideology must be exported and encouraged globally though organized State policies.

Like the Soviets, Mao was less concerned about spreading communist ideology globally than he was concerned about his own country¡¯s state and benefits. He had to achieve a communist utopia before he could concentrate on spreading it globally. He did make an effort to spread it within his own country during the Cultural Revolution when he produced Mao¡¯s Little Red Book as it is now commonly known.

VII. The ¡°State¡± and the eventual communist utopia represent TRUE democracy.

Mao believed that his democratic centralism did represent the true democracy because it keeps everyone on an equal level of power despite their positions. However the eventual communist utopia has not been reached.

Conclusion: Mao¡¯s communist state of China wasn¡¯t exactly the paragon country of the Marxist Theory. Mao did try to follow the Marxist ideas as much as possible, but sometimes the situations that Mao found himself in called for other actions. He believed that ¡°communists must always go into the why¡¯s and wherefore¡¯s of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness.¡± (Little 28)

His Motivations for Creating and Examples of How He Created a Marxist System/Philosophy that Differs from The Manifesto

Ironically, Mao seriously removed workers¡¯ control of the fruits of their labor. In 1953, food requisitioning was taken to the extreme, and grain was rationed out at levels far below subsistence. Families starved several months out of the year. By early 1955, peasants were eating plants reserved for pigs and tree bark, as well as abandoning their children. In mid-1955 collective farms were established, so that the inefficient requisitioning system of going farm-to-farm to collect grain was streamlined into one where the grain was always in the government¡¯s hands, and peasants could be regulated more easily. The state actually started controlling when and how hard the workers worked (Change 394). Rather than the state withering away, the government became the new owners of production. Mao¡¯s purpose in taking food from the peasants was to sell it to the USSR, who gave China machines in exchange. (Chang 380) Mao¡¯s ultimate goal was to become a military superpower, which is more nationalist than communist, since communism is supposed to be a world-wide movement.

The Communist party came to power by defeating the former ruling party, not through a revolution of the working class. China didn¡¯t really even have a working class; rather, Mao though of the peasants as a sort of ¡°rural proletariat¡±. As the ¡°China Between Wars¡± packet stated, ¡°It broke all Marx¡¯s rules for when and where and how a communist revolution should take place. It had been based on the support of millions of peasants, not city workers. It had appealed to national feeling against the Japanese as much as class feeling against men of property. It had been an open struggle, not a conspiracy.¡± (Packet 205) China was still somewhat in the feudal stage, ruled by warlords and whoever had the largest army. It never actually entered the capitalist stage.

To What Extent Can He Be Considered a Totalitarian Dictator?

I. All power is controlled by a leader or a council of leaders. The leader is viewed as a hero and symbol of the state.

Mao stated that the workers are the ones in power though are still subordinate to those in governmental power. Everyone was a comrade. However, what ended up happening was that Mao became a hero figure and the symbol of the new People¡¯s Republic of China. This is evident in the erection of Mao statues across the nation as well as large portraits hanging on walls or entrance ways. Mao ordered the number of statues to be reduced, but the pictures of him still hang on major political buildings or public squares.

II. The state is viewed as greater and more important than the individual. Citizens must be ready to sacrifice for the state.

When the communist was in power, he stated that sacrifices must be made to benefit as much of the country as possible, hence the Great Leap Forward movement. Though this was contradicted by his view that people need to rebel when they are being oppressed into doing things they harm them. However, nationalism was still strong with the people and many did sacrifice for the state. Those who didn¡¯t were purged one way or another. Such sacrifices were evident in the commune system. Mao stated, ¡°At no time and in no circumstances should a Communist place his personal interests first, he should subordinate them to the interests of the nation and of the masses.¡± (Little 28)

III. The State runs the economy with and emphasis on industrialization/modernization.

Even though there was heavy industrialization underway from China¡¯s 5-year plan with the support of the Soviets ($300,000,000 and 10,000 consultants), Mao decided to not carry through with it and kicked the Soviets out. Though this was a big blow to China¡¯s industrialization efforts, his main focus was on the agricultural development and the peasants rather than industrial progressions on the city workers because there were simply a lot more peasants than workers. He did believe in modernization, however, but not necessarily through industrialization just because of the situation he is in.

IV. There is an official enemy of the state. Enemies must be destroyed. A secret police terrorizes all opposition.

Regarding official enemies, Mao's Little Red Book states,"U.S. imperialism, and European and domestic reactionary forces, represent real dangers, and in this respect are like real tigers. " However, the greater enemy was within, represented by those who didn't go along with Mao's ideas. Mao was not even in power when he openly employed the Red Guard, children and university students, who rebelled against any politicians perceived as anti-Mao, mostly in Beijing (Howarth 251). The general population had their food taken away during the mid 1950s to trade with China, but this was done openly by the general police force, and was not in response to dissent.

V. Only one party is legal. Individual rights are viewed as weak and leading to chaos. Militarism is a virtue.

In 1956 Mao initiated a movement that translates as ¡°Let a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand schools of thought contend.¡± In "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,¡± (1957) he wrote of it, ¡°Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. ¡°Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.¡± Writers and teachers from every side started to criticize him. In response, most of them had their jobs taken away and were sent to labor camps (Howard 247).

VI. Propaganda is organized and controls all media. Education is used to indoctrinate (propagandize) children.

Mao said in the Little Red Book, ¡°Our educational policy must enable everyone who receive and education to develop morally, intellectually, and physically, and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.¡± (Little 16) The Socialist Education Movement occurred during the Cultural Revolution. It reformed the school system into a work-study program. Intellectuals were being drafted for manual labor, and the new education prepared them for that. The ultimate goal was to renew professional's dedication to the party, and not their own field (History 26). The Beijing Red Guard was also established then by Mao. David Howard described it as, ¡°mass parades of youngsters holding their Little Red Books and chanting slogans¡±. The Red Guard targeted government leaders who did not agree with Mao¡¯s interpretation of China¡¯s ideal future (Howard 251).

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