What Became of Maoism?
CHANG, C.M.
What Became of Maoism ? AL L RECENT visitors to China agree that there is nothing in that country which can be called "Chinese Communism." The question naturally arises: What has become of...
...In the eyes of the "returned-student faction," he was a mere "native" Communist who knew no foreign languages and whose knowledge of Marxism-Leninism was based on second-hand sources...
...It has served its purpose...
...In practice, as in other Communist countries, the Party has replaced the proletariat and is invested with the historic mission...
...He never hesitated to throw theory into the ashcan if it did not fit in with his immediate purposes...
...As for Mao's reliance on the peasantry as a revolutionary force, the following things should be said: 1. Though he relied on the peasants to fight his wars, Mao never regarded them as the main force of the revolution...
...In China," he wrote in 1938, "the main form of struggle is war and the main form of organization is the army...
...He was a "military first" man who believed that, in a semi-colonial country like China, the possession of military strength was the first prerequisite for the capture of power...
...the less fortunate ones lost their lives for trying...
...Lenin stressed the importance of giving the peasant movements in Asia a revolutionary character, of organizing the peasants into Soviets, and of bringing about "the closest possible union" between the Communists and the peasantry...
...Defeat and even annihilation stared it in the face...
...He knew only that the conditions prevailing in China at that time favored the development of a "workers' and peasants' armed independent regime" in the mountainous countryside...
...Stalin was even more pragmatic...
...In any case, however, the men in Peking are no longer interested in the problem of adaptation...
...Application, he said, is the sole test of mastery...
...In the Russian revolution, Lenin perceived that the peasant's hunger for land was a great revolutionary force to which he could appeal...
...Marxism-Leninism must necessarily undergo certain modifications before it can be successfully applied to China...
...That the Chinese revolution must pass through a "bourgeois-democratic" phase, that the government in the "bourgeois-democratic" stage of development must be a coalition of "all revolutionary classes" including the "national bourgeoisie," that its economic system must be a mixture of state ownership and private enterprise, that the poor and landless peasants must be given adequate land—all these features of the "new democracy" were commonplaces in Comintern literature of the 1920s and 1930s...
...the fear of revenge at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek and the landlords will make it impossible for him to lead a normal life again...
...IF MAO has shown himself a stickler for orthodoxy rather than an originator of new doctrines, why was he regarded by so many people as having made vital contributions to Marxist-Leninist theory...
...The American effort at mediation was based on this assumption...
...Mao Tse-tung was placed in charge of the agrarian revolution in Hunan Province...
...Maoism" was hailed as a vital contribution to Marxist-Leninist theory...
...The Chinese Communists, it was widely believed, did not plan a ruthless totalitarian regime on the pattern of the USSR, but rather a coalition government with the Kuomintang and other political groups in order to make China more democratic...
...These, we are told, constitute distinct contributions to the theory and practice of revolution...
...Once it was a necessity, but that time has passed...
...The people's democratic dictatorship" established in 1949 is described as "led by the working class, based on the alliance of workers and peasants...
...Between 1927 and 1935, the Chinese Communist party was torn by factionalism and intra-party strife...
...Although he never concealed the fact that his ultimate objective was the establishment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," the "new democracy" program as a whole appeared to have a liberal ring...
...The Communists, besides achieving "hegemony" in the Wuhan Government, were at the same time to "secure the plebeian solution of the agrarian problem from below by the tens and hundreds of millions of the peasants themselves...
...Ideologically, it was far from monolithic...
...In any case, the "new democracy" is fast becoming an anachronism...
...Today, many otherwise well-informed observers persist in believing the best about Mao Tse-tung...
...His technique was to undertake indiscriminate confiscation and violence in order, first, to destroy the peasants' means of making an independent living, and, second, to instill in them the fear of retribution...
...Ch'u Ch'iu-pai, Li Li-san, Ch'en Shao-yu (Wang Ming) and Ch'in Pang-hsien (Po Ku) followed one another as leaders in rapid succession...
...Mao was driven to this formula by the force of circumstances...
...After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, a war which the Communists had hastened, the Party prospered under Mao's leadership...
...Upon analysis we find that one of the reasons for its occurrence lies in the incessant splits and wars within China'g compradore class and landed gentry...
...What he did was to plunge rural society into such depths of despair that the peasants had little choice but to follow him...
...When the Communists took over the mainland, manypeople thought that the new regime was no menace to the rest of the world...
...The armies of the old-time warlords were peasant armies...
...Now the high tide of "socialist construction" has thrown it into virtual oblivion...
...When Michael Borodin arrived in Canton in September 1923 to take up his duties as adviser to the Kuomintang, one of his first proposals was the promulgation of a decree authorizing confiscation of land by the peasants...
...For half a decade, he struggled with the Moscow-trained Ch'en Shao-yu, Ch'in Pang-hsien and others—sometimes known as the "28 Bolsheviks" or the "returned-student faction"—for Party leadership...
...It does not require a particularly original mind to see that...
...The problem now is "socialist transformation," and the key to this is slavish imitation of the Soviet way...
...It was the "united front against Japan" tactic that saved the Communists from complete ruin...
...A new base was finally found in the loess country in northwestern China...
...Though there was no one in the Party who could challenge him, he was painfully aware that his leadership lacked the stamp of legitimacy...
...Other forms, like mass organization and mass struggle, are extremely important and definitely indispensable and must not be overlooked, but they are for the sake of war...
...He made it clear that he was willing to accept anyone who could be useful regardless of his political past...
...The first—the adaptation of Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions—is nothing more than common sense...
...indeed, it offered what seemed to be a reasonable, progressive program of social and political action...
...Yet, Mao did not feel secure...
...Mao merely presented them in a new garb...
...When Chiang Kai-shek broke with the Communists in April 1927, Moscow instructed the Chinese Communist party to make use of the agrarian revolution to achieve "proletarian hegemony" within the Wuhan regime...
...So long as splits and wars continue within these classes, the workers' and peasants' armed independent regime can also continue to exist and develop...
...The organization of peasant associations, the "land reform," and various forms of mass movement—these were not ends in themselves, but were all "for the sake of war...
...3. Mao's "new democracy" program...
...Stalin, who had backed the "28 Bolsheviks" up to 1935, was now ready to give full support to Mao...
...So were the armies of the National Government...
...It was on this agrarian issue that the so-called Left Kuomintang in Wuhan was finally forced to take drastic steps against the Communist party...
...The proposal was not accepted by Sun Yat-sen, who compromised by issuing an order authorizing the organization of peasant associations...
...The question naturally arises: What has become of so-called "Maoism," about which we have heard so much...
...Inside China, it created the impression that Mao was an independent, original thinker whose brand of Communism was tailored to China's needs, giving many Chinese what seemed to them, under the stress of war and inflation, a plausible explanation of the present and an acceptable account of the future—a future in which all social classes would have an honorable role to play...
...Lenin had only contempt for those who used Marxism not as a guide to action but as a rigid dogma, a Procrustean bed on which reality must be stretched and mutilated to fit...
...4. The idea of bringing the peasantry actively into the revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries started not with Mao Tse-tung but with Lenin...
...hence, China must develop her own theories on the basis of Marxism-Leninism...
...he became a major figure in the international Communist movement...
...After the dissolution of the alliance between the Left Kuomintang and the Communists, Mao was ordered by the Party to foment an armed peasant insurrection in Hunan...
...This is said to have proved, in a setting quite unforeseen by the Kremlin hierarchy, that Communist-led revolutions in colonial and semi-colonial countries can succeed by combining national liberation with anti-feudal social-reform movements without depending on proletarian insurrections in the urban centers...
...Private ownership in industry and commerce has come to an end...
...With Stalin's encouragement, Mao and his right-hand man Liu Shao-ch'i began the so-called cheng-feng or "correction-of-unorthodox-tendencies movement...
...Internationally, it fostered the illusion that Chinese Communism was not as harsh as the Soviet variety...
...Before answering this, let us make clear what is meant by "Maoism...
...He was also favored by the fact that the Nanking Government was too busy completing the Northern Expedition to pay much attention to him...
...A Communist document of those days put the purpose of the "land reform" in plain terms: "to make the peasant participate in mob violence so as to brand him forever as a Mao Tse-tung man...
...2. Mao's reliance on the peasantry as a main force of the revolution...
...Not without reason, many genuine liberals were attracted to the Communist standard...
...For one thing, he had come to power without the express approval of the Kremlin...
...With Moscow's backing, the latter group continued to hold the key positions in the Central Committee...
...The explanation is that in the 1940s it suited the interests of both Russia and the Chinese Communists to boost Mao's ideological stature...
...And V was determined to make the most of his opportunities...
...The few who emerged victorious became kings and emperors...
...Mao knew that the most important thing was not to frighten people, to appear liberal, and to create as little psychological resistance to his program as possible...
...In January 1935, two months after the start of the "Long March," Mao succeeded in taking over control of the Party at an emergency meeting of the Central Committee...
...In his lectures at Yenan in 1942, Mao ridiculed those of his followers who could recite the works of Marx, Lenin and Stalin by rote and yet could not apply the substance of their theories to actual Chinese problems...
...5. Mao's so-called formula for success—the possession of a peasant army and a territorial base on which to operate—was, of course, not a new invention...
...This, however, does not mean that the industrial workers are in actual control...
...At the Second Comintern Congress in 1920...
...If the main force of the revolution had been the peasantry, the Communist party would have become a peasant party...
...Mao Tse-tung, as head of the so-called "real-power faction" of the Party, was a figure to reckon with...
...As soon as the Communists fought their way back to the cities, they lost no time in giving the industrial workers a prominent place in their regime...
...The Party was preparing for the great struggle against the Kuomintang for control of China...
...The peasants were merely allies of the proletariat...
...The phenomenon that within a country one or several small areas under Red political power came into existence amid the encirclement of White political power," Mao wrote in November 1928, a year after he had taken to the mountains, "is one which, of all countries in the world, has occurred only in China...
...Those who criticized him on the score of ideological impurity were effectively silenced...
...Under his leadership, the peasant associations confiscated land and armed themselves with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on...
...In China, all armies are peasant armies...
...China hopes to become a fully socialized state with a sizable modern industry by 1960...
...If this tactic proved effective in Russia, how much more effective it would be in the far more backward countries of Asia where the industrial proletariat was nonexistent or politically immature and where millions of peasants were ready to revolt...
...General Marshall, after the failure of his mission, still believed that there was "a definite liberal group among the Communists, especially of young men who have turned to the Communists in disgust at the corruption evident in the local governments—men who would put the interest of the Chinese people above ruthless measures to establish a Communist ideology in the immediate future...
...He was fond of quoting Stalin's dictum: "In China, armed revolution is fighting armed counterrevolution...
...Mao's great accomplishment has been to change Marxism from its European to its Asian form...
...This has never been the case...
...When people speak of Maoism, they generally have in mind one or all of the following things: 1. Mao's insistence that Marxist-Leninist theory be made to suit conditions in China...
...This new propaganda line contributed much to the Communist party's success in winning support both at home and abroad...
...3. Once Mao decided that he must have an army in order to achieve power, he looked to the peasant to supply him with the manpower...
...The Communist armies were not very different in kind, except that they were provided with the Marxist ideology...
...As a trained Communist, he knew how to coordinate mass power with military power...
...This was always the proletariat as represented by the Communist party...
...He was thus given an opportunity to expand his influence to other parts of Kiangsi...
...His was a bandit band, one of many which ravaged the countryside in the 1927-1930 period, when civil wars raged from one end of China to the other...
...The Party was in a critical situation...
...Agrarian revolution was regarded as "the fundamental, inner socio-economic content of the new stage of the Chinese revolution...
...In Communist China these days, the term "Maoism" is seldom mentioned...
...their pre-eminence is only theoretical...
...While other bandit bands had no real political idea and soon flickered out, Mao's flourished...
...2. Mao was no peasant-lover...
...Communist China, in the words of Mao Tsetung, is "advancing with complete confidence along the road to socialism...
...The Hunan countryside tottered on the edge of bloody chaos...
...The Bolsheviks were swept into power on the slogan of "Land, bread and peace...
...Mao needed the Kremlin's help to enhance his ideological stature both inside and outside the Party...
...The Korean War helped to dispel some of the illusions about Peking, but not for long...
...He regarded the masses as well as the intellectuals as dupes and pawns in his skilful political maneuvers...
...In addition to this, the existence and development of such an armed independent regime require the following conditions: (1) a sound mass basis, (2) a first-rate Party organization, (3) a Red Army of adequate strength, (4) a terrain favorable to military operations, and (5) economic strength sufficient for self-support...
...The claims ol originality made for Mao's "new democracy" are even less justified...
...6. Mao swelled the ranks of his "Red Army" through the "land reform...
...Nor did the idea of adaptation originate with Mao...
...Almost 80 per cent of the peasants have already been forced to join cooperatives, and "the elementary semi-socialist form of agricultural cooperation" is expected to give way to full collectivization by 1958...
...In the old days, this was known as "taking up the stick," i.e., gathering together a band of desperadoes, arming them with sticks and other primitive weapons, and raising the standard of revolt, first in some mountainous, inaccessible locality and then, after gaining sufficient adherents, in broader and more fertile areas...
...In these early days of his struggle, Mao never imagined that he was making an original contribution to revolutionary theory and practice...
...By April 1945, Mao felt strong enough to call a Party congress, the first in 17 years, to write "Maoism" into the Party's revised constitution...
...It was quickly suppressed, and Mao, with a small band of armed peasants, fled to the Chingkanshan mountains on the Hunan-Kiangsi border...
...For another, his leadership had not been confirmed by a Party congress...
...It was the traditional Chinese way of achieving political power...
...Let us, however, examine these "contributions...
...The "bourgeois-democratic" phase of the revolution, though officially still in force, is actually a thing of the past...
...This is said to have shown that the proletariat can cooperate with other social classes in building a democratic society and that it is possible for two distinct phases of history—new capitalism and new democracy—to coexist in an extended transition...
...The situation in which the Communists found themselves after the 1927 debacle was analogous to the first phase of the Russian revolution (from 1903 to the March revolution in 1917), in which, according to Lenin, "the proletariat must push the democratic revolution through to an end, inducing the mass of the peasantry to join forces with the workers in order to break the power of the autocracy and to overcome the vacillations of the bourgeoisie...
...Thereafter, he ceased to be a mere "native" Communist...
...The Party played up Mao's ideological pre-eminence...
Vol. 39 • September 1956 • No. 89
