Maoism


Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.
From the 1950s until the reform and opening up of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, Maoism was the political and military ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and Maoist revolutionary movements worldwide. After the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union each claimed to be the sole heir and successor to Joseph Stalin concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and the ideological leader of world communism.

History

Chinese intellectual tradition

At the turn of the 19th century, the contemporary Chinese intellectual tradition was defined by two central concepts: iconoclasm and nationalism.

Iconoclastic revolution and anti-Confucianism

By the turn of the 20th century, a proportionately small yet socially significant cross-section of China's traditional elite found themselves increasingly sceptical of the efficacy and even the moral validity of Confucianism. These skeptical iconoclasts formed a new segment of Chinese society, a modern intelligentsia whose arrival—or as the historian of China Maurice Meisner would label it, their defection—heralded the beginning of the destruction of the gentry as a social class in China.
The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 marked the final failure of the Confucian moral order, and it did much to make Confucianism synonymous with political and social conservatism in the minds of Chinese intellectuals. This association of conservatism and Confucianism lent to the iconoclastic nature of Chinese intellectual thought during the first decades of the 20th century.
Chinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and vociferously by Chen Duxiu during the New Culture Movement, which occurred between 1915 and 1919. Proposing the "total destruction of the traditions and values of the past", the New Culture Movement, spearheaded by the New Youth, a periodical published by Chen Duxiu, profoundly influenced the young Mao Zedong, whose first published work appeared in the magazine's pages.

Nationalism and the appeal of Marxism

Along with iconoclasm, radical anti-imperialism dominated the Chinese intellectual tradition and slowly evolved into a fierce nationalist fervour which influenced Mao's philosophy immensely and was crucial in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model. Vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in 1919. The Treaty aroused a wave of bitter nationalist resentment in Chinese intellectuals as lands formerly ceded to Germany in Shandong were—without consultation with the Chinese—transferred to Japanese control rather than returned to Chinese sovereignty.
The adverse reaction culminated in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, during which a protest began with 3,000 students in Beijing displaying their anger at the announcement of the Versailles Treaty's concessions to Japan. The protest turned violent as protesters began attacking the homes and offices of ministers who were seen as cooperating with or being in the direct pay of the Japanese. The popular movement which followed "catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert and dormant."
Another international event would have a significant impact not only on Mao but also on the Chinese intelligentsia. The Russian Revolution elicited great interest among Chinese intellectuals, although the socialist revolution in China was not considered a viable option until after the 4 May Incident. Afterward, "o become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual to reject both the traditions of the Chinese past and Western domination of the Chinese present."

Yan'an period between November 1935 and March 1947

Immediately following the Long March, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party were headquartered in the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi. During this period, Mao established himself as a Marxist theoretician and produced most of the works that would later be canonised as the "Thought of Mao Zedong". The rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist ideology is laid down in Mao's numerous dialectical treatises and was conveyed to newly recruited party members. This period established ideological independence from Moscow for Mao and the CCP.
Although the Yan'an period did answer some of the ideological and theoretical questions raised by the Chinese Communist Revolution, it left many crucial questions unresolved, including how the Chinese Communist Party was supposed to launch a socialist revolution while wholly separated from the urban sphere.

Mao Zedong's intellectual development

Mao's intellectual development can be divided into five significant periods, namely:
  1. the initial Marxist period from 1920 to 1926
  2. the formative Maoist period from 1927 to 1935
  3. the mature Maoist period from 1935 to 1940
  4. the Civil-War period from 1940 to 1949
  5. the post-1949 period following the revolutionary victory

    Initial Marxist period (1920–1926)

Marxist thinking employs immanent socioeconomic explanations, whereas Mao's reasons were declarations of his enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone would transition from capitalism to communism for three main reasons. the capitalists would not repent and turn towards communism on their own; the rulers must be overthrown by the people; "the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and had already become a fact."

Formative Maoist period (1927–1935)

In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and employed a minimum of Marxist category thought. His writings in this period failed to elaborate on what he meant by the "Marxist method of political and class analysis".

Mature Maoist period (1935–1940)

Intellectually, this was Mao's most fruitful time. The orientation shift was apparent in his pamphlet Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War. This pamphlet tried to provide a theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary practice. Mao started to separate from the Soviet model since it was not automatically applicable to China. China's unique set of historical circumstances demanded a correspondingly unique application of Marxist theory, an application that would have to diverge from the Soviet approach.
In the late 1930s, writings and speeches by Mao and other leaders close to Mao began to emerge as the Communist Party's developing ideology. This was described as the Sinicization of Marxism. Mao's view was that these concepts were not a complete system of thought but were still developing. As a result, he decided not to use the term "Maoism" and instead favoured characterising these ideological contributions as Mao Zedong Thought.
Beginning in the Yan'an period, Mao Zedong Thought became the ideological guide for developing revolutionary culture and a long-term social movement.

Civil War period (1940–1949)

Unlike the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren. Mao focused more on revolutionary practice and paid less attention to Marxist theory. He continued to emphasise theory as practice-oriented knowledge. The most crucial topic of the theory he delved into was in connection with the Cheng Feng movement of 1942. Here, Mao summarised the correlation between Marxist theory and Chinese practice: "The target is the Chinese revolution, the arrow is Marxism–Leninism. We Chinese communists seek this arrow for no other purpose than to hit the target of the Chinese revolution and the revolution of the east." The only new emphasis was Mao's concern with two types of subjectivist deviation: dogmatism, the excessive reliance upon abstract theory; empiricism, excessive dependence on experience.
In 1945, the party's first historical resolution put forward Mao Zedong Thought as the party's unified ideology. It was also incorporated into the party's constitution.

Post-Civil War period (1949–1976)

To Mao, the victory of 1949 was a confirmation of theory and practice. "Optimism is the keynote to Mao's intellectual orientation in the post-1949 period." Mao assertively revised the theory to relate it to the new practice of socialist construction. These revisions are apparent in the 1951 version of On Contradiction. "In the 1930s, when Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective reality. In Dialectal Materialism of 1940, he saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective reality. In the 1940s, he introduced no new elements into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. In the 1951 version of On Contradiction, he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity."
In 1956, Mao first fully theorised his view of continual revolution.