MAOISM
Revolution Chinese revolutionary strategies
This essay takes Mao's own expressions
of his thoughts as the basis for defining Maoism. While the contributions of
Mao's CCP comrades are acknowledged, they are not regarded as an integral part
of Maoism if Mao himself did not accept or adopt them. In identifying the basic
features of Maoism, moreover, it is essential to test them against the
development of Mao's thoughts as a historical process. Indeed, unless Mao's own
changing ideas are carefully examined, it is impossible to grasp the essence
and basic features of Maoism.
Maoism as utopian vision
At its core, Maoism is first and
foremost a utopian vision. Throughout Mao's political career, he fought for the ideal of
universal justice and equality "all under heaven." This vision
derived at one level from Mao's Sinification of Karl Marx's concept of a
communist society, yet it was also compatible with the age-old Confucian ideal
of a "society of
great harmony." Despite the vision's central position in Mao's
conceptual realm, Mao was never able to define clearly the path and the means
by which it would be turned into reality. The extraordinary ambiguity of Maoism
as a utopian vision provided, on the one hand, space for Mao and his comrades
to develop the CCP's ideology, strategies, and policies given the changing
requirements of the Chinese revolution, and, on the other, created serious
internal tensions in the Maoist system—especially when Mao's ideals proved
unable to stand the test of people's lived experience.
Maoism as political ideology
Maoism is also a political ideology,
representing Mao's theories and methodologies about how China and the world should be transformed in
revolutionary ways. Three important features distinguished Mao's concept
of revolution from other revolutionary theories in the tradition of
Marxism-Leninism.
First, Mao's perception of revolution was characterized
by a unique notion of permanentness
in time and unlimitedness in space. In particular, Mao persistently
emphasized the necessity of "continuing the revolution" after the CCP
seized power in 1949. However, Mao's notion of permanent revolution was by no
means a simple repetition or minor alteration of earlier formulations by Marx,
Lenin, or Trotsky. While adopting such Marxist discourse as the "law of historical development"
to justify his revolution, Mao often used the Chinese term tianxia ("all
under heaven") to define the space in which the revolution should occur.
The tianxia concept had its historical/cultural origin in the
long development of Chinese civilization—implying that the Chinese way of life
was the most superior in the known universe. Used in connection with tianxia was
the Chinese word geming—a term that in modern times would be
adopted to represent the concept "revolution." The original meaning
of geming was that violent means must be used to deprive a ruler of heaven's mandate to
rule. In employing tianxia to define the space in
which geming should occur, Mao, in a China-centered manner, at
once attached the qualities of permanentness and unlimitedness to his perceived
revolution.
Second,
Mao's perception of revolution reflected the profoundly voluntaristic belief
that human consciousness, rather than the material conditions of society, would determine the orientation of historical
development. For Mao, an essential condition for a revolution was the
consciousness and will on the part of the "great masses" to carry out
revolutionary changes. In the final analysis, whether a revolution should be
judged a success or a failure depended on whether it had created a new order in
the hearts and minds of the people.
Third, and closely connected with the above two
features, the Maoist notion of revolution put greater emphasis on destruction than on construction.
Indeed, Maoism proved more ready to deal with tasks of destroying the
"old" than to cope with missions of constructing the "new."
Mao believed firmly that "no construction happens without destruction; only when
destruction is under way does the process of construction begin." Not
surprisingly, Mao's revolution was one of the most violent and destructive in
history, not only during the stage of "seizing political power," but
in the stage of "continuous revolution" as well.
Maoism as revolutionary strategies and tactics
Maoism also represents a series of strategies and
tactics concerning how to make, enhance, and sustain the revolution. Mao
certainly was a theorist and a man of ideas; but he also viewed himself as a
practitioner and a man of action.
The central mission of Maoist
revolutionary strategies concerned mass mobilization. In particular, Mao emphasized the
importance of taking the peasants as the main force of the Chinese revolution.
This clearly distinguished Maoism from the urban, working-class–centered
mobilization strategies favored by orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Yet Mao's dependence on peasants
drove him into a fundamental dilemma in furthering his "continuous
revolution" after 1949. While adhering to the populist belief that the
peasants' spontaneous "revolutionary initiatives" represented a
natural source of the "revolution after revolution," Mao was
simultaneously obsessed by the "petty bourgeois tendency" of the
peasants in practical life. When the "socialist planning economy,"
which made industrial development the top priority, encountered resistance from
the peasants, Mao argued that "a serious question is how to educate the
peasants."
In Mao's own summary of his
revolutionary strategies, he highlighted
armed struggle, united
front, and the Party's
leadership role as the three keys that led the Chinese revolution toward
victory. A firm believer in the idea that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"
(Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 224), Mao invested great energy in
developing strategies and tactics for waging revolutionary wars with both
domestic and international aims. He summarized the basic principle of guerrilla war as "when the enemy advances we
retreat to avoid him, when the enemy stops we harass him, when the enemy is
tired we attack him, and when the enemy retreats we chase after him"
(Mao Zedong wenji, vol. 1, p. 56). He also emphasized the
importance of "making everyone a soldier" in waging a "people's war." The
"united front" strategy was designed to "unite with all of those
who can be united" in order to fight against the primary and most
dangerous enemy. The adoption of this strategy in international affairs was
often influenced by the traditional Chinese concept of "checking one
barbarian by borrowing strength from another." In emphasizing the
importance of the Party's leadership role, Mao originally embraced Lenin's
"democratic centralism." However, with the deepening of his
revolution he increasingly obscured the distinction between his own leadership
role and that of the Party. Consequently, in his later years Mao openly
celebrated the "correct personality cult," making enhancement of the
cult of himself a crucial condition for the ongoing revolution.
In practice, Mao often interwove his
ideas and plans with the discourse of revolutionary nationalism. Constantly
appealing to the Chinese people's "victim mentality"—which was unique
in the sense that it reflected the sharp contrast between the Chinese people's
collective memory of their nation's glorious past and their perception of its
experience of humiliation in modern times—Mao found a powerful source that
continuously rendered help to legitimize his programs of transforming China and the world.
The above features of Maoism, to be
sure, both persisted and evolved over the course of Mao's long career. In order
to achieve a genuine understanding of these features, therefore, it is
essential to undertake a historical review of the shaping of Mao's worldview,
as well as of the development of Mao's thought.
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